First of all, what has damaged Euskara most is that the Basque-speaking (euskaldun) population have not had a recent political entity that allowed its cohesion with Euskara as the official language. Historically, there have only been two Basque political units which existed during the Middle Ages, but none of them used Euskara in drafting their official documents

The first of them was established over the 7th century A.D. and it was the Duchy of Vasconia. At that time, the Merovingian chroniclers mentioned the Basque government leaders as Vasconum Dux (Vascon duke) in their writings for the first time, although this political entity, which was located on both sides of the Pyrenees, already began to take shape since the decline of the Roman Empire by the second half of the 3rd century A.D.. That political unit was reaffirmed with the beginning of the Germanic invasions from the year A.D. 400, where the Basques came together under the Vascon leadership to defend the Roman institutions and way of life against what the Basques considered German Barbarians.

The fights against the Franks (to north) and Visigoths (to south) led the Basques to make an alliance with the Romani Aquitanians (8) and be at war over three centuries. The optimal organisation and military training of the Vascon forces allowed the Pyrenean territories to become the only region of western Europe that was not totally submitted by Germans after centuries of fights. All that we know about this historic period comes for the most part from the Frankish chronicles.

The Basque-Aquitanian allliance at its high. The west of Europe in 711 AD, before the Muslim invasion of the Iberian peninsula .

(8) Romani Aquitanians: they were the Aquitanies of Latin speech. The Aquitanians of Basque speech that lived in the area of Novempopulania were assimilated by the Vascones since the 6th century A.D.. Due to the alliance between the Vascones and the Romani Aquitanians, the Duchy of Vasconia and the Duchy of Aquitaine were both ruled by the same Dux, that could be either of Romani Aquitanian or Vascon origin.

 

 

We owe this period the development of Common Euskara for all the Basques, as well as the diffusion of the current Basque terms 'Euskal Herria' and 'euskaldun' on both sides of the Pyrenees, which are just the Basque forms of the words 'Vasconia' and 'Vascon' respectively.

At the beginning of the 9th century, Vasconia was exhausted. The territory was facing the submission to the Carolingian Franks to north and southeast; to the Asturians (the heirs of the former Visigothic Kingdom) to southwest and to Arabs to south. However, thanks to the weak control of the Franks over the mountainous area of Navarre and the understanding between the Vascones from the mountains and the Vascon-Muslims from the Ebro riverbank (Banu-Qasi), there would arise a lordship at the historical city of Pamplona, which was the capital of the Vascones. That lordship would later become a kingdom, which took over from the Duchy of Vasconia and became one of the most important European realms in the 11th century, as well as the main barrier in western Europe to the expansion of Islam. Western Europe in 1034, at the height of the reign of Sancho III of Navarre, called the Great. Click on the map to enlarge

Therefore, the second political entity arose by means of the Kingdom of Pamplona, which was known in the 11th century as Kingdom of Pamplona-Nájera, under the reign of Antso Gartzeitz III.a Nagusia (Sancho III Garcés, called the Great). At that time, the realm included all de Basque-speaking population that extended from the middle of Cantabria (to west) to western Catalonia (to east) and northwards to the middle of Gascony, (with the exception of the Basque-speaking minority that lived in the southern area, specifically in the territories of the Ebro riverbank that were ruled by the Muslims).

Although Euskara was the language of most of the subjects (the population of Latin speech were a minority in the Pyrenean area), it was not used for administrative purposes. On the contrary, Latin was the language that was used first in drafting the official documents in the Kingdom of Pamplona (9th century), the Kingdom of Pamplona-Nájera (10th-11th centuries) and later the Kingdom of Navarre (the name that the realm took since the 12th century). Afterwards, the Aragonese language was used and subsequently Castilian. Finally, Gascon became the language of administration some years before the disappearance of the realm.

 

 

 

 

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The History of Euskara continues on the following page >> The loss of ground of the Basque-speaking area II