Transcriber’s Note: As a result of editorial shortcomings in the
original, some reference letters in the text don’t have matching entries
in the reference-lists, and vice versa.

THE HISTORIANS’ HISTORY OF THE WORLD

[Illustration: PRESCOTT]

                             THE HISTORIANS’
                                 HISTORY
                              OF THE WORLD

    A comprehensive narrative of the rise and development of nations
   as recorded by over two thousand of the great writers of all ages:
    edited, with the assistance of a distinguished board of advisers
                          and contributors, by

                       HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS, LL.D.

                         IN TWENTY-FIVE VOLUMES

                      VOLUME X--SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

                           The Outlook Company
                                New York

                         The History Association
                                 London

                                  1905

                            COPYRIGHT, 1904,
                        BY HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.

                         _All rights reserved._

                       Press of J. J. Little & Co.
                           New York, U. S. A.

Contributors, and Editorial Revisers.

    Prof. Adolf Erman, University of Berlin.
    Prof. Joseph Halévy, College of France.
    Prof. Thomas K. Cheyne, Oxford University.
    Prof. Andrew C. McLaughlin, University of Michigan.
    Prof. David H. Müller, University of Vienna.
    Prof. Alfred Rambaud, University of Paris.
    Capt. F. Brinkley, Tokio.

    Prof. Eduard Meyer, University of Berlin.
    Dr. James T. Shotwell, Columbia University.
    Prof. Theodor Nöldeke, University of Strasburg.
    Prof. Albert B. Hart, Harvard University.
    Dr. Paul Brönnle, Royal Asiatic Society.
    Dr. James Gairdner, C.B., London.

    Prof. Ulrich von Wilamowitz Möllendorff, University of Berlin.
    Prof. H. Marczali, University of Budapest.
    Dr. G. W. Botsford, Columbia University.
    Prof. Julius Wellhausen, University of Göttingen.
    Prof. Franz R. von Krones, University of Graz.
    Prof. Wilhelm Soltau, Zabern University.

    Prof. R. W. Rogers, Drew Theological Seminary.
    Prof. A. Vambéry, University of Budapest.
    Prof. Otto Hirschfeld, University of Berlin.
    Dr. Frederick Robertson Jones, Bryn Mawr College.
    Baron Bernardo di San Severino Quaranta, London.
    Dr. John P. Peters, New York.

    Prof. Adolph Harnack, University of Berlin.
    Dr. S. Rappoport, School of Oriental Languages, Paris.
    Prof. Hermann Diels, University of Berlin.
    Prof. C. W. C. Oman, Oxford University.
    Prof. W. L. Fleming, University of West Virginia.
    Prof. I. Goldziher, University of Vienna.
    Prof. R. Koser, University of Berlin.

                                 PART XV

                    THE HISTORY OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

              BASED CHIEFLY UPON THE FOLLOWING AUTHORITIES

      LOPEZ DE AYALA, BAKHUYZEN VAN DEN BRINK, H. BAUMGARTEN, F. DE
        FONSECA BENEVIDES, G. BERGENROTH, ANDRES BERNALDEZ, ULICK
         R. BURKE, E. CASTELAR, NUÑEZ DE CASTRO, PINHEIRO CHAGAS,
          J. A. CONDE, W. COXE, R. DOZY, S. A. DUNHAM, FLOREZ Y
            LAFUENTE, V. DE LA FUENTE, L. P. GACHARD, DAMIÃO
                DE GOEZ, A. HERCULANO, A. DE HERRERA, N.
                       ROSSEEUW ST. HILAIRE, M. A.
    S. HUME, H. C. LEA, DIOGO DE LEMOS, JUAN A. LLORENTE, R. H. MAJOR,
       JUAN DE MARIANA, W. F. P. NAPIER, JOÃO P. OLIVEIRA-MARTINS,
           J. ORTIZ Y SANZ, W. H. PRESCOTT, P. DE SANDOVAL, M.
                 SURIANO, A. DE VERTOT, GERONIMO ZURITA

                     WITH ADDITIONAL CITATIONS FROM

     PEDRO DE ABARCA, GIULIO ALBERONI, CRÓNICA GENERAL DE ALFONSO X,
     ANNALES COMPLUTENSES, ANNALES TOLEDANOS, BARONIUS, IBN BASSAM,
     M. BAUDIER, A. BAUMGARTNER, E. BÉGIN, A. BUCHOT, J. DE BURGOS,
       M. M. BUSK, CESARE CANTÙ, L. G. DE CARBAJAL, F. S. CASADO,
            BARTOLOMÉ DE LAS CASAS, BERMUDEZ DE CASTRO, PEDRO
            CEVALLOS, F. A. DE CHÂTEAUBRIAND, V. CHERBULIEZ,
                   N. DE LA CLÈDE, DIEGO DE CLEMENCIN,
                           CABRERA DE CORDOBA,
    FELIX DAHN, F. DENIS, JOHN DUNLOP, EL-LAGI, ANTONIO ENNES, E.
       GARIBAY, MANUEL DE GODOY, A. GOMEZ, H. GRAETZ, F. PEREZ
          DE GUZMAN, GUSTAVE HUBBARD, VICTOR A. HUBER, MODESTO
           LAFUENTE, P. VAN LIMBORCH, WILLIAM LITHGOW, FERNÃO
               LOPES, J. M. ORTO Y LARA, LUCIO MARINEO, M.
                   DE MARLIANI, J. F. DE MASDEU, J. M.
                      MAS-LA TRIE, LUIS DE MENEZES,
                           CHARLES DE MOÜY, W.
      MÜLLER, JAMES C. MURPHY, CHR. G. NEUDECKE, ISIDORUS PACENSIS,
         AMÉDÉE PICHOT, RUY DE PINA, ANTONIO DE PIRALA, HERNANDO
            DEL PULGAR, G. T. RAYNAL, H. REYNALD, W. H. RULE,
              SEBASTIANUS SALMANTICENSIS, HEINRICH SCHURTZ,
                MONACHUS SILENSIS, E. SILVERCRUYS, ROBERT
                SOUTHEY, H. MORSE STEPHENS, W. C. SYDNEY,
                 JEAN B. R. DE TESSÉ, RODERICUS XIMENES
                   TOLETANUS, J. M. DE TORENO, OVIEDO
                   Y VALDES, A. VARILLAS, H. E. WATTS,
                          N. W. WRAXALL, WULSA,
                               ZANETORNATO

                             COPYRIGHT, 1904
                         BY HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS

                          _All rights reserved_

CONTENTS

                                 VOLUME X

                                  SPAIN

                                                                     PAGE

                                CHAPTER I

  LAND AND PEOPLE; AND GOTHIC SWAY (TO 711 A.D.)                         1

    The Celts and Celtiberians, 3. The Phœnician invasions,
    4. The Greek colonies; the Carthaginian conquest, 5. The
    Romans in Spain, 7. Roman administration, 10. Introduction
    of Christianity, 11. Barbarian invasions, 14. The Goths
    arrive, 15. Progress of the Gothic conquest, 17. Leuvigild
    and Ermenigild, 21. Recared I and Catholicism, 23. Petty
    monarchs, 24. The reign of Wamba, 25. Ervigius and Ergica, 28.
    Witiza, 29. The fable of Roderic and Florinda, 31. Visigothic
    civilisation, 32. Hardships of the Jews, 34. Burke’s estimate
    of Gothic rule, 35.

                               CHAPTER II

  THE TIME OF MOSLEM DOMINATION (711-1214 A.D.)                         36

    The Asturias and Leon under Pelayo, 38. Sebastian’s account of
    the battle of Covadonga, 39. Alfonso the Catholic, 40. Alfonso
    the Chaste and Bernardo del Carpio, 42. Alfonso the Great,
    43. Alfonso’s successors, 43. Origin of Castile, 46. Sancho
    el Mayor, 47. The history of Castile, 48. Origin and earliest
    history of the kingdom of Aragon, 50. Burke’s estimate of the
    Cid, 52. The historical Cid, 53. Christian Spain in the twelfth
    century, 58. Foundation of the Spanish orders of knighthood,
    59. Overthrow of the Moslems, 62.

  THE HISTORY OF CASTILE TO THE DEATH OF PEDRO THE CRUEL
  (1214-1369 A.D.)                                                      63

    Ferdinand (III) el Santo, 65. Burke’s estimate of Queen
    Berengaria, 65. Ferdinand’s conquests, 66. Alfonso the Learned
    (el Sabio) and his successors, 68. Mariana’s account of the
    Divine judgment on Ferdinand IV, 71. Alfonso XI, 72. Mariana’s
    account of Pedro the Cruel, 73. Ayala’s account of the king’s
    honeymoon, 76. Pedro’s false marriage, 78. Ayala’s account of
    the murder of Fadrique, 80. Other royal murders, 83. The war
    with Henry of Trastamara, 84. Battle of Najera or Navarrete,
    87. Ayala’s account of the quarrel between Edward and Pedro,
    88. A new revolt; the end of Pedro the Cruel, 89. A final
    estimate of Pedro the Cruel, 91.

                               CHAPTER IV

  ARAGON TO THE UNION WITH CASTILE (1162-1475 A.D.)                     93

    James the Conqueror, 94. Pedro III and his Sicilian wars, 95.
    Political growth, 98. Interregnum in Aragon, 106. Aragon under
    rulers of the royal house of Castile, 107. Rising in Catalonia,
    111.

                                CHAPTER V

  HENRY OF TRASTAMARA AND ISABELLA OF CASTILE (1369-1479 A.D.)         114

    Juan I and the Portuguese wars, 116. John of Gaunt in Spain,
    118. The Good King Henry III, 119. Guzman’s portrait of Juan
    and his minister, 122. Chronicle of the constable Don Alvaro
    de Luna, 124. Internal dissensions, 124. The fall of Alvaro,
    126. Hume’s estimate of Juan II, 127. The disasters of Henry
    IV, 128. Marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, 130. War of the
    Succession, 132.

                               CHAPTER VI

  FERDINAND AND ISABELLA (1474-1504 A.D.)                              134

    Resistance to papal encroachment, 139. The regulation of trade,
    140. The pre-eminence of the royal authority, 141. Progress of
    the war, 145. The siege of Malaga, 149. The capture of Granada,
    151. End of Moslem sway in Spain, 154. Spanish explorers and
    Christopher Columbus, 155. The expulsion of the Jews, 157.
    Persecution and revolt of the Moors, 161. Spain in Italy;
    the Great Captain, 163. Illness and death of Isabella, 166.
    Prescott’s estimate of Isabella, 169. Burke’s estimate of
    Isabella; Hume’s estimate, 176.

                               CHAPTER VII

  THE REGENCIES OF FERDINAND (1504-1517 A.D.)                          178

    Philip enters Spain, 181, The reign of Philip I, 183. Death
    of Philip; Juana’s madness, 185. The return of Ferdinand,
    187. Was Queen Juana insane? 189. Ferdinand’s second regency,
    192. Death and character of Ferdinand, 193. The regency of
    Cardinal Ximenes, 196. Death and character of Ximenes, 198.
    The two chief works of Ximenes, 200. Comparison of Ximenes and
    Richelieu, 201. Review of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella,
    202. Discovery and colonisation, 205. The golden age of Spain,
    207.

                              CHAPTER VIII

  THE EMPEROR CHARLES V (1517-1556 A.D.)                               211

    King Charles becomes emperor, 213. Charles’ struggle with the
    cortes, 216. Revolt of the germaneros and the comuneros, 218.
    Queen Juana released, 219. The Moors under Charles V, 223.
    Charles retires from the world, 226. De Marliani’s review of
    the influence of Charles V on Spain, 230.

                               CHAPTER IX

  THE REIGN OF PHILIP II (1556-1598 A.D.)                              233

    Philip’s marriage with Mary Tudor, 234. Philip’s character,
    235. War with the Turks, 239. Wars with France, 239. The
    Netherlands, 240. English affairs and the Armada, 244.
    Acquisition of Portugal, 246. Moriscos revolt, 247. Moorish
    atrocities, 248. Christian atrocities, 249. The misfortunes of
    Don Carlos, 251. Fate of the king’s secretary, Perez, 253. De
    Castro’s estimate of Antonio Perez, 255. The death of Philip,
    256. Dunham’s estimate of Philip II, 259. Watson on Philip’s
    imprudences, 259.

                                CHAPTER X

  THE LAST OF THE SPANISH HABSBURGS (1598-1700 A.D.)                   261

    Causes of Spain’s rapid decline, 262. Philip IV, “the Great,”
    266. The Catalan insurrection, 267. The Thirty Years’ War and
    the Treaty of the Pyrenees, 268. Death of Philip IV, 271. King
    Charles II and the French War, 271. The fate of the young
    queen, 274. Last years of Charles II, 275. The distresses of
    Spain, 277.

                               CHAPTER XI

  REVIVAL OF SPAIN UNDER THE FIRST BOURBONS (1700-1788 A.D.)           279

    French influence dominates, 280. The new queen and the
    princess Orsini, 282. War of the Spanish Succession, 283. The
    Catalan revolt, 290. A new European war, 292. Philip abdicates
    and returns, 294. The adventures of Ripperdá, 295. Spanish
    account of the war with England, 298. The war of the Austrian
    Succession, 300. The Good King Ferdinand VI, 301. The singer
    Farinelli, 301. Charles III, 303. Expulsion of the Jesuits, 306.

                               CHAPTER XII

  SPAIN AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION (1788-1808 A.D.)                     310

    The rise of Godoy, 311. Godoy as minister, and the war with
    France, 313. Spain in alliance with France against England,
    317. The autocracy of Godoy, 320. Napoleon schemes for Spain,
    325. Charles IV abdicates; the Bourbons at Bayonne, 327.
    Lafuente’s account of the Dos de Mayo, 329. The royal family at
    Bayonne, 333.

                              CHAPTER XIII

  THE PENINSULA WAR (1808-1814 A.D.)                                   336

    War declared on France, 337. Joseph Bonaparte chosen king of
    Spain, 337. The English appear, 340. Moore’s famous retreat,
    343. Napier’s story of Moore’s retreat, 345. A Spanish opinion
    of the retreat, 348. French successes, 348. Wellington resumes
    control, 350. The lines of Torres Vedras, 353. Failures in
    Spain, 357. Napier’s account of the assault on Badajoz, 359.
    British progress, 365. Napier’s account of the retreat,
    367. Affairs of 1812-1813, 367. Return of the Bourbons,
    370. England’s share in the war, 372. Napier’s estimate of
    Wellington, 373.

                               CHAPTER XIV

  THE RESTORATION OF THE BOURBONS (1814-1902 A.D.)                     375

    The reign of terror, 379. The tyrannies of Ferdinand “the
    Desired,” 380. A serial revolution, 382. Châteaubriand’s
    account of the chaos, 386. Civil war, 387. Intervention of the
    Holy Alliance, 389. The French invasion, 390. The return of
    Ferdinand, 392. Rise of Carlism, 395. War of the Christinos and
    Carlists, 396. The stormy regency of Christina, 398. Espartero
    regent, 399. The profligate queen Isabella II, 399. The
    rebellion of 1868, 402. Pirala on the “Mild Anarchy” of 1869,
    403. Estimate of Cherbuliez of General Prim, 404. The hunt for
    a king, 406. Amadeo’s reign and the republic, 407. Republican
    Spain under Castelar, 411. The Basques and Carlism, 412. The
    dictatorship of Serrano, 414. The Bourbon Alfonso XII elected,
    416. Alfonso XII and the European powers, 418. The regency of
    Maria Christina, 418.

  BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS                      422

           BOOK II. THE HISTORY OF PORTUGAL FROM THE EARLIEST
                          TIMES TO THE PRESENT

                                CHAPTER I

  EARLY HISTORY TO JOÃO I (TO 1383 A.D.)                               425

    Land and people, 425. The origin of Portugal, 427. Herculano’s
    estimate of the first Portuguese king, 432. Reigns of Sancho I
    and Alfonso II, 434. Sancho II called Capello (“the hooded”),
    437. Sancho deposed, Alfonso III succeeds, 438. Political
    importance of Alfonso’s reign, 440. Don Diniz, 441. The romance
    of Iñes de Castro, 444. Pedro the Severe, 446.

                               CHAPTER II

  THE PERIOD OF GLORY AND DISCOVERY (1383-1521 A.D.)                   452

    The taking of Ceuta, 455. Prince Henry the Navigator, 459.
    The reign of Duarte, or Edward, 461. The regency of Pedro,
    465. Alfonso V and La Beltraneja, 468. Reign of João (II) the
    Perfect, 470. Character of João II, 472. Progress in discovery,
    474. Martius’ account of Vasco and Cabral, 475. The conquest of
    India, 479. Emmanuel the Fortunate, 484. The great voyage of
    Magellan, 486.

  THE FALL, THE CAPTIVITY, AND THE REVOLUTION (1521-1640 A.D.)         489

    The Portuguese in Africa, India, and Brazil, 490. Ennes’
    account of the decadence of Portugal, 492. The regencies and
    the reign of Sebastian, 495. The débâcle at Kassr-el-Kebir,
    496. The cardinal-king and the Portuguese succession, 498.
    Philip II of Spain becomes Philip I of Portugal, 500. The
    English in Portugal, 502. The false Sebastians, 503. Chagas’
    account of the loss of the colonies, 504. Domestic disaster,
    506. Philip II, 508. Philip III (Philip IV of Spain), 508.
    Ennes’ account of the conspiracy, 510. Chagas’ account of the
    1st of December, 511.

                               CHAPTER IV

  JOÃO IV TO JOÃO VI (1640-1822 A.D.)                                  514

    Alfonso VI, 516. Pedro II; João V, 519. The colonies decline,
    521. The reign of José I, 522. The great minister Pombal, 523.
    The earthquake at Lisbon (November 1st, 1755), 525. Pombal and
    the Jesuits, 527. A plot to assassinate the king, 528. The
    exile of the Jesuits, 529. War with Spain, 530. Schlosser’s
    estimate of Pombal, 531. The new queen and reaction, 533. The
    regency and the French Revolution, 536. The invasion of the
    French, 537. The Throne moves to Brazil, 538. The Peninsula
    War, 539. Portugal an English province, 541. The revolt and
    recall of the king, 542. The loss of Brazil, 543.

                                CHAPTER V

  THE NINETEENTH CENTURY (1822-1900 A.D.)                              544

    Portugal receives a new ruler and a new constitution, 546.
    Dom Miguel seizes the power, 547. Maria II, 550. Cabral and
    the Chartists in power, 553. The Septembrists overthrow Costa
    Cabral, 554. The reign of Luiz, 557. Carlos I becomes king,
    559. Portuguese literature, 560.

                               APPENDIX A

  THE INQUISITION                                                      562

    The Cathari, 564. The Waldenses, 565. Crusade against the
    Albigenses, 566. The Inquisition established, 567. Method of
    procedure with a suspect, 570. John Fox on the evils of the
    Inquisition, 572. How a penitent was treated, 573. The history
    of torture, 574. A contemporary account of the preliminaries
    to torture, 575. Limborch’s account of the fate of a Jew, 578.
    The other forms of torture, 580. Tormento di Toca, 580. The
    chafing-dish; the water-cure, 580. The proceedings against an
    Englishwoman, 581. Inquisitorial documents, 582. How the record
    was kept, 583. The proper form of torture for women, 583. Later
    history of the Inquisition of Spain, 584. State of the Jews
    in Spain, 585. “Conversion” of the Jews, 586. Queen Isabella
    persuaded to persecution, 587. The Inquisition of 1481, 589.
    The Spanish or “Modern” Inquisition established, 590. The Auto
    da fé, 591. Torquemada and his successors, 592. Llorente’s
    computation of the victims of the Inquisition, 595. Effects and
    influences of the Inquisition, 598.

  BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS                      599

  A BRIEF RÉSUMÉ OF SPANISH HISTORY (711-1902 A.D.)                    601

  A BRIEF RÉSUMÉ OF PORTUGUESE HISTORY (997-1903 A.D.)                 628

  A GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SPANISH HISTORY                            637

  A GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PORTUGUESE HISTORY                         650

BOOK I

THE HISTORY OF SPAIN FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE PRESENT DAY

CHAPTER I. LAND AND PEOPLE; AND GOTHIC SWAY

[Sidenote: [TO 711 A.D.]]

Few histories afford lessons of greater value than those of Spain and
Portugal. They teem with proofs that independence and liberty are not
less important to the wealth and political power of a country than to
its happiness; that neither natural advantages nor the character of
the inhabitants, neither increase of territory nor external peace and
domestic tranquillity can in any measure counterbalance the destructive
effects of a foreign yoke, or of a despotic government.

The Spanish peninsula, considered as a whole, combines most of the
advantages of an insular, with those of a continental, position. Almost
entirely surrounded by the sea, Spain is an island with regard to trade
and fisheries; whilst the neck of land that connects her with France
at once furnishes in the Pyrenees a mountainous barrier against that
country, and preserves her from entire dependence upon winds and waves in
her external relations.

In the climate, the genial warmth of the south of Europe is tempered
by sea-breezes, in nearly every direction, and the fertile soil yields
equally the necessaries and the luxuries of life--corn, fruit, wine, fine
merino wool, and olive oil. The mountains abound in mineral treasures,
and afforded in early times one of the principal supplies of gold and
silver. The natives of this favoured land are brave, sober, hardy, and
enterprising. Yet notwithstanding all these sources of prosperity, Spain,
which in the sixteenth century startled Europe with the first fears of
universal monarchy, was long the most enslaved, oppressed, ignorant, and
indigent, of civilised countries.[b]

In the earliest stage of its history we find Spain occupied by a
comparatively homogeneous people--the Iberians, who are related as
to language; but this is probably only the result of a long, already
complete development and does not at all represent the original state of
the country. Unfortunately, prehistoric investigation in Spain is too
far behind to offer much towards a solution of even the most pressing
problems. We may assume primarily that the Pyrenean peninsula, like
northern Africa, southern Europe, and western Asia, was originally
settled by that short-headed, dark-haired, and light-skinned race for
whom the name of Armenoids, or, from a philological standpoint, of
Alarodians, has been suggested.

But the people who afterwards were called Iberian are probably nothing
else than a mixture of this ancient population with the long-headed,
blond race of Cro-Magnon, which came from the north and appears in France
and northern Africa. For that reason alone they might be supposed to have
been in Spain, situated as it is between the two, even if certain remains
of their culture did not make this supposition almost a certainty. The
large number of blonds which, contrary to general opinion, are found in
Spain and Portugal may in the main go back to this earliest invasion
of northern hordes, which was followed by two more in the course of
history. Possibly the new race forced its language upon the original
inhabitants and perhaps the traditions of the Iberians, which tell of
the immigration of their forefathers from Gaul, refer to the invasion of
this blond population. The Sicanians and Siculians in southern Italy,
likewise inhabitants of territories neighbouring northern Africa, are
also supposed to be related to the Iberians.[c]

Whence the Iberians came has always been, and must remain, a matter
of dispute. That they, like the Celts, were a branch of the great
Indo-European family, and had spread along the south of Europe from
the slopes of the Caucasus, was long held as an article of faith
by scholars whose opinions were worthy of respect; but more recent
investigations tend somewhat to shake belief in this theory. That they
were a dolichocephalic (long-headed) race of short stature and very
dark complexion, with plentiful curly black hair, is certain, and they
probably inhabited the whole of Spain in the neolithic age, either
as successors of a still earlier race--of which it is possible that
the Basques, who still form a separate people in the north of Spain
and southwest of France, may be the survivors--or as the primitive
inhabitants dating from the prehistoric times when Africa and Europe,
and possibly also America, were joined by land. In any case, what is
known of their physique seems to negative the supposition that they were
of Indo-European or Aryan origin; and to find their counterpart at the
present time, it is only necessary to seek the Kabyle (Kabail) tribes of
the Atlas, the original inhabitants of the African coast opposite Spain,
who were driven back into the mountains by successive waves of invasion.
Not alone in physique do these tribes resemble what the early Iberian
must have been, but in the more unchanging peculiarities of character and
institutions the likeness is easily traceable to the Spaniard of to-day.
The organisation of the Iberians, like that of the Atlas peoples, was
clannish and tribal, and their chief characteristic was their indomitable
local independence.

From the earliest dawn of history the centre of Spanish life, the unit
of government, the birthplace of tradition, and the focus of patriotism
have been the town. A Spaniard’s _pueblo_ means infinitely more to him
than his town means to an Englishman or a Frenchman. No master race
has succeeded in welding the Kabyles, Tuaregs (Tuariks), and Berbers
into a state, as the Romans did with the mixed Iberians and Celts; and
in Spain, to the present day, with its numberless paper constitutions
and its feverish political experiments, the pueblo keeps its practical
independence of a centralised government, which has federated pueblos
into provinces, but has never absorbed or entirely destroyed the
primitive germ of local administration. The village granary (_posito_)
still stands in the Spanish village, as its counterpart does in the
Atlas regions; the town pasture and communal tillage land continue on
both sides of the straits to testify to the close relationship of the
early Iberians with the Afro-Semitic races, which included the Egyptian
or Copt, the Kabyle, the Tuareg, and the Berber. The language of the
Iberians has been lost, but enough of it remains on coins of the later
Celtiberian period to prove that it had a common root with the Egyptian
and the Saharan tongues, which extend from Senegal to Nubia on the
hither side of the negro zone. With all this evidence before us we may
be forgiven for doubting the correctness of the theory which ascribes a
Caucasian origin to the primitive Iberian people. Long before the dawn of
recorded history, while mankind was hardly emerging from the neolithic
stage, a vast incursion of Celts had come from the north and poured over
the western Pyrenees into Spain.[d]

THE CELTS AND CELTIBERIANS

The second invasion from the north, that of the Celts, falls in the first
period of recognised history, so that we know little of how it came about
or the conditions preceding it, and can only enumerate the results.
It cannot even be determined if the march of the Celts upon Spain was
contemporaneous with the violent incursion of Celtism into upper Italy
and southern Germany, which in its further advance carried single troops
as far as Asia Minor and Greece; at any rate it is probable.

The Celts introduced a new culture into the land south of the Pyrenees,
which lay off from the main track, since they represent the period
which as the advanced iron age followed the age of bronze. Before them
agriculture was yet in its beginning; the pure-blooded Iberians for
a long time afterwards held to the rough conditions of the preceding
era, lived from the products of their goat-herds, on the acorns from
the mountains and from the scanty grain they raised by their primitive
methods of agriculture. The Celts, indeed, like most conquering nations,
considered agriculture unworthy a free man, but compelled their
dependents to cultivate their territory regularly and to deliver up a
part of its products.

The Celtic flood inundated only a portion of the peninsula. One
tribe--later called the Celtics--settled in the region about the middle
Guadiana, the centre of which is the present Badajoz. The Artebrians
inhabited the northwestern coast without mixing much with the native
population. On the other hand a large mixed race, afterwards called the
Celtiberians, grew up in what is to-day Old Castile, and brought into
subjection the neighbouring Iberian tribes who were more cultured and
less warlike than the dwellers in the mountains. The domination of the
Celts over the whole Pyrenean peninsula is not to be thought of: not even
among the Celtic tribes themselves was there unity. The genuine mountain
peoples, such as the Lusitanians in the west, the Asturians, Cantabrians
and Vasconians in the north, preserved complete independence. Southern
Spain, where under a milder sky a certain culture had developed at an
early date, was also preserved from Celtic encroachment and saw indeed
more welcome strangers at its coasts--the Phœnicians, whose commercial
spirit found here a glorious field for its activity. Even before their
arrival the inhabitants of the country may have fashioned ornaments from
the precious metal which was so abundant in their land, without valuing
this treasure particularly, or expending much toil in procuring it; now
for the first time, when the marvels of a foreign culture were offered
them in exchange for these things, did they turn their attention to the
hidden treasures of their land. But the Phœnicians were hardly the first
to visit the western shores of the Mediterranean as traders and pirates;
the very fact that tribes of Iberian descent had pushed as far as lower
Italy points to the existence of intercourse by ships. In the same way
Etruscan commerce must have touched Spain. The _nurhags_--those curious
solid towers, which are especially frequent on the coasts of Sardinia
and which must once have served as places of refuge for the people when
in danger--are dumb but intelligible witnesses to the fact that the
Mediterranean must have been peopled with pirates even in prehistoric
times. Egypt, the only country in the world whose inhabitants at that
time already kept historical records, often saw robber hordes appear
on its coasts. But we know no further particulars of these ancient
conditions.[c]

THE PHŒNICIAN INVASIONS

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1500-600 B.C.]]

The Phœnicians, as already observed, were among the first who, attracted
by the never-failing instinct of gain, directed their course to a country
which promised the highest advantages to their commerce. The precise
period of their entering into relations with the inhabitants is unknown.
For some time their settlements, of which Gades, now Cadiz, was the
first and most powerful, were confined to the coasts of Bætica, whence
they supplied the natives with the traffic of Asia Minor and the shores
of the Mediterranean, in exchange for the more valuable productions
of the peninsula, such as gold, silver, and iron.[1] Previously to
their arrival, the use of these metals was, it is said, unknown to the
Celts and Iberians. At first, for the convenience of their trade and
their worship the Phœnicians obtained permission to build magazines
and temples: these soon expanded into villages, and the villages into
fortified towns. Besides Cadiz, Malaga, Cordova, and other places of
minor note were monuments of their successful enterprise, and proofs
of their intention to fix their permanent abode in a country on which
nature had lavished her choicest gifts. In time they penetrated into the
interior, and arrived in the heart of the mountainous districts of the
north, probably to superintend the operations of the mines which they had
prevailed on the natives to open. Coins, medals, and ruins, attesting
their continued location, have been found in most provinces of Spain, and
even at Pamplona in Navarre. Almost everywhere have they left traces of
their existence, not only in medallic and lapidary inscriptions, but in
the religion, language, and manners of the people.

It is possible, however, that the residence of this people in Spain may
have been confounded with that of the Carthaginians. The similarity in
language, manners, and superstitions might naturally have diminished
the distinction between the two nations, and in time destroyed it. The
uncertainty which hangs over this period, and the apparent incongruity of
the few dates handed down to us, with the transactions which accompany
them, confirm the suspicion. The whole period, indeed, from the first
settlement of the Tyrians to the wars between the rival republics of
Rome and Carthage, is too conjectural to deserve the name of historical,
though some few facts are seen to glimmer through the profound darkness
which surrounds them.

THE GREEK COLONIES; THE CARTHAGINIAN CONQUEST

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 600-227 B.C.]]

The successful example of the Phœnicians stimulated the Greeks to pursue
the same advantages. The Rhodians arrived on the coast of Catalonia,
and founded a town, which they called Rhodia (Rosas) from the name of
their island. They were followed by the Phocians, who dispossessed
their countrymen of Rosas, and extended their settlements along the
shores of Catalonia and Valencia. Other expeditions departed from
the numerous ports of Greece, towards the same destination, but at
intervals considerably distant from one another, and gave names to new
establishments, some of which may be still recognised, notwithstanding
the changes that time has made. It does not appear that either the
Phœnicians or the Greeks aimed at domination; the towns which they
founded, and continued to inhabit, were but so many commercial
depots--populous indeed, but filled with peaceable citizens, whose
lucrative occupations afforded them neither time nor inclination for
hostilities. Not so with the Carthaginians, who joined all the avarice of
merchants to all the ambition of conquerors.

The African republic had long watched with jealousy the progressive
prosperity of the Tyrians, and waited for an opportunity of supplanting
them. That opportunity at length arrived (480 B.C.). The avarice
of these merchants had caused them to adopt measures which the
high-spirited natives considered as oppressive. A dispute arose: both
parties recurred to arms; and, after a short struggle, the lords of
the deep were forced to give way before their martial enemies. Several
of the Phœnician settlements fell into the hands of the victors, who
appeared bent on rescuing their soil from these all-grasping strangers.
Seeing Cadiz itself threatened, the latter implored the assistance of
the Carthaginians, who had already a settlement on the little island
of Iviza. The invitation was eagerly accepted; perhaps, as has been
asserted, the Carthaginians had fomented the misunderstanding, and urged
it to an open quarrel. However this be, they landed a considerable
force on the Bætican coast; and, after a few struggles, the details of
which we should vainly attempt to ascertain, they triumphed over both
Phœnicians and natives, and seized on the prize they had so long coveted.
Thenceforth Cadiz served as a stronghold whither they could retreat
whenever danger pressed too heavily, and as an arsenal where fetters
might be manufactured for the rest of Spain.

The progress of the Carthaginian arms, we are told, was irresistible; it
was not, however, rapid, if any reliance is to be placed on the dates of
ancient writers: the provinces of Andalusia, Granada, Murcia, Valencia,
and Catalonia did not acknowledge the supremacy of the republic until,
with some other provinces, they were overrun, rather than subdued, by
Hamilcar, father of the great Hannibal (235 B.C.), and most of the
warlike nations in the interior, especially in the mountainous districts,
never afterwards bent their necks to the yoke, though the veteran armies
of Africa were brought against them.

Eight years were spent by the Carthaginian general in extending and
consolidating his new conquests. He had need of all his valour--and few
captains had ever more--to quell the perpetual incursions of tribes
glorying in their independence, and strangers to fear. For this purpose
he built several fortresses (the important city of Barcelona is said to
have been among the number), in which he distributed a portion of his
troops to overawe the surrounding country; while, with another portion,
he moved from place to place, as occasion required his presence. Probably
his severity alienated the minds of the people from the domination he
laboured to establish. He was checked in the career of his conquests
by the Edetani and Saguntines, who openly revolted, and made vigorous
preparations for their defence. He fell upon them, but neither the number
of his forces nor his own bravery could succeed against men to whom
the hope of freedom and of revenge gave irresistible might. Two-thirds
of his army perished, and himself among the number. His son Hannibal
being too young to succeed him, the administration of the Carthaginian
provinces and the conduct of the war devolved, by a decree of the senate,
on his son-in-law Hasdrubal, who adopted towards the natives a line of
conciliation; he could be cruel when he chose; but as there is reason to
believe that he aimed at an independent sovereignty, he wished to secure
their support in the event of a struggle with Carthage. Punic loyalty,
like Punic faith, could subsist no longer than a regard to self-advantage
would permit.

[Sidenote: [227-219 B.C.]]

The city of Cartagena, which Hasdrubal founded on the modern gulf of that
name, and which he furnished with an admirable harbour, was the most
glorious monument of his administration. The success of his arms, the
nature of his designs, roused the fears both of the Greek colonies on
the coast of Catalonia and Valencia, and of several independent nations
in the interior. They resolved to call in a third power, which had long
regarded with jealousy the growing prosperity of Carthage. Rome eagerly
embraced the cause of the discontented states (227 B.C.), probably,
indeed, she had secretly fomented that discontent. She sent a deputation
to Carthage, which obtained from the senate two important concessions:
that the Carthaginians should not push their conquests beyond the Ebro;
that they should not disturb the Saguntines and other Greek colonies.
Though Hasdrubal promised to observe them, he silently collected
troops, resolved to make a final effort for the entire subjugation of
Spain before Rome could succour the confederates. In three years, his
formidable preparations being completed, he threw off the mask, and
marched against Saguntum. On his way, however, he was assassinated by the
slave of a man whose master, a native prince, he had put to death.[2] The
attachment of this slave to his master’s memory could be equalled only
by the unshaken firmness with which he supported the incredible torments
inflicted on him by the fierce Hannibal.

This famous Carthaginian was in his twenty-fifth year. He was more to
be dreaded than all his predecessors united. To military talents and
personal valour, perhaps unexampled in any age, he joined astonishing
coolness of judgment and inflexibility of purpose. While Hasdrubal was
actuated only by selfish considerations, Hannibal recognised, as the
great principle of his actions, revenge--revenge against the bitter enemy
of his country, and still more against the destroyers of his kindred.
There is a moral grandeur in this all-engrossing purpose of Hannibal,
which, notwithstanding its fell malignity, unaccountably rivets our
admiration.

The young hero lost no time in extending his conquests, and amassing
resources for the grand approaching struggle with the Romans. Having
subdued some warlike tribes of modern Castile and Leon, and brought into
full activity some rich silver mines at the foot of the Pyrenees, he
marched at the head of 150,000 men against Saguntum, which he invested in
due form. In vain did the Roman deputies whom the senate despatched for
the purpose intimate to him that an attack on the ally of the republic
would be regarded, as a declaration of war against the republic herself.
He had vowed the destruction of the city. Yet, though he pressed the
siege with the utmost vigour, such was the valour of the defenders
that neither his mighty genius for war nor his formidable forces could
reduce the place in less than nine months: it would not even then have
fallen, had not famine proved a deadlier enemy than the sword. The
citizens resolved that the last act of this fearful tragedy should be
a suitable consummation of the preceding horrors. Having amassed all
their valuable effects, and everything combustible, into one pile, and
placed their wives and children around it, they issued from the gates,
and plunged into the midst of the surprised enemy. The slaughter was
prodigious on both sides; but, in the end, numbers and strength prevailed
against weakness and desperation; the Saguntines were cut off almost to
a man. No sooner was their fate known in the city than their wives, who
were in expectation of the result, set fire to the pile, and cast both
themselves and children into the devouring element. The city in flames
soon discovered the catastrophe to the Carthaginians, who immediately
entered, and put what few stragglers they could find--chiefly the aged of
both sexes--to the sword.[3] Some, however, had previously secured their
safety by flight. Thus perished one of the most flourishing cities of
Spain, and one which will be forever memorable in the annals of mankind
(219 B.C.). Its destruction hastened, if it did not occasion, the Second
Punic War, as described in the history of Rome.

Hannibal mustered his forces for the invasion of Italy. The exploits
of the Carthaginian hero beyond the bounds of the peninsula have been
treated of in the history of Rome. While he is spreading destruction
around him, and the towers of “the eternal city” themselves are
tottering, our task must be to cast a hurried glance at the transactions
which, after the invasion of Scipio, happened in the country he had
left behind. The Carthaginian yoke is allowed on all hands to have been
intolerable. The avidity with which the local governors sought pretexts
for seizing on the substance of the natives; the rigour with which some
of the captive tribes were made to labour in the mines; the exactions of
a mercenary and haughty soldiery; the insolence of success on the one
hand, and the smart of wrongs endured on the other--prepared the way to
the commotions which shook all Spain to its centre, and ultimately ended
in the destruction of its oppressors.[g]

THE ROMANS IN SPAIN

[Sidenote: [219-206 B.C.]]

The Romans, either alarmed by the progress of Hannibal, or becoming aware
of the value of such allies as the Spaniards, now sent larger armies to
their assistance, headed by their ablest generals. Spain was the theatre
of the first exploits of Publius Cornelius Scipio, afterwards surnamed
Africanus from his victories over the Carthaginians in Africa. In Spain,
Scipio gained the hearts of the natives by his great and good qualities,
not the least of these being his self-command--one instance of which has
ever since been a favourite theme with painters, poets, and moralists.
The charms of a beautiful captive had touched his young heart, and the
laws of the age made her in every respect his slave. He respected her
undefended loveliness, and restored her, in unsullied purity, to her
betrothed bridegroom. In cordial co-operation with the Spaniards, Scipio
finally expelled the Carthaginians from Spain in 206 B.C.

[Sidenote: [206-45 B.C.]]

The object of the Romans, in assisting the Spaniards against Carthaginian
oppression, had not been the emancipation of their gallant allies. They
immediately proceeded to reduce the peninsula to the condition of a Roman
province, governed by their prætors. This was not easily or speedily
accomplished. The natives resisted their new, as they had done their
former invaders. Numantia, besieged by a second Scipio, emulated the
heroism of Saguntum.[b] In vain did the inhabitants send deputations to
the consul; he coolly replied that he was content to await the inevitable
effects of famine. But their impatience could not await the slow effects
of such a death; some took poison; some fell on their swords; some set
fire to their houses and perished in the devouring flames. Thus perished
all; not a living creature survived (133 B.C.).[g] The Cantabrians, who
inhabited the northwestern part of the peninsula, were not even nominally
subdued during the continuance of the Roman Republic. The other portions,
Celtiberia in the north, Bætica in the south, and Lusitania in the west,
were conquered after a long struggle, and constituted the Roman province,
but remained the scenes of constantly recurring warfare. The natives
revolted against the extortion and tyranny usually practised by the Roman
governors of subject states; and the leaders of republican factions, when
defeated everywhere else, often found in Spain abundant means of making
head against the masters of the world.

[Illustration: GALLO-ROMAN WEAPONS]

The most remarkable of the native insurrections was that organised in
Lusitania by Viriathus. This extraordinary man was bred a shepherd; he
turned robber, became the captain of a band of outlaws, and raising
a standard to which all the disaffected flocked, he defeated several
Roman armies. He was vanquished by treachery, the consul Servilius
having bribed three of his followers to assassinate him in his sleep.
After his murder, the rebellion, as the haughty conquerors termed every
insurrection for self-defence, was speedily quelled. Spain was soon
afterwards the theatre of the last struggle of the horrible civil wars
with which Marius and Sulla desolated the Roman world. When Sulla had
finally triumphed at Rome, Sertorius, a leader of the defeated party,
fled to Spain, and there long bade defiance to the dictator’s power.
He was at length vanquished by Cneius Pompeius Magnus, familiarly
called Pompey the Great, and, like Viriathus, was murdered by his own
treacherous partisans. Pompey, during his command in Spain, merited the
good-will of the nation, which subsequently espoused his cause in his
contest with Julius Cæsar. After Pompey’s death his party still held
out in Spain. But Cæsar repaired thither in person; his military skill
prevailed, and the province was shortly pacified.[b] As long as Rome
treated the provincials merely as a conquered people the provincials
remained unsubdued; but as soon as wiser and more friendly counsels
generally prevailed, the Roman Spaniard grasped the hand that was
extended to him, and became one of the proudest and most loyal citizens
of the empire. Left to themselves, the tribes were ever divided,
factious, disturbed. United under Lusitanian Viriathus or even under
Roman Sertorius, they long successfully withstood the power of the
republic. United under Julius and Augustus Cæsar, they became the most
Roman of the provincials of Rome.

[Sidenote: [229 B.C.-138 A.D.]]

[Illustration: A GALLO-ROMAN]

A great susceptibility to personal influence has ever been a striking
characteristic of the Spanish people. Under the sympathetic Hasdrubal
they accepted the dominion of Carthage; under the fiery Hannibal they
fought, the hardiest and most loyal of his soldiers, in the Punic armies
in Italy. In the early days after Saguntum, when Roman Scipio came, not
as a destroyer but as a deliverer, and displayed his greater qualities
of clemency and justice, the Spaniards would have compelled him to
be their king. But Scipio was not always clement. The successors of
Sempronius Gracchus were not always just. They were not even judicious.
“For great men,” says the Spanish proverb, “great deeds are reserved.”
And the coming of one of the greatest men the world has ever seen was the
beginning of the end of the dark days of early Spanish history. Cæsar,
indeed, marched sternly through the country at the head of his legions;
nor did he stay his hand until he had reached far off Corunna, where he
chastised and astonished the wild tribes of Brigantium or Finisterre; but
his policy in the more settled districts was ever genial and pacific.
Four times did Cæsar visit the peninsula; and the fourth time--his
legions well filled with loyal and admiring Spaniards--he fought, “not
for glory but for existence,” on the bloody field of Munda. And with the
final triumph of the great Julius begins the peace and prosperity of
Roman Spain.[j]

Disturbances, however, again broke out, and it was only under Cæsar’s
successor, Augustus, that it was finally and completely subjugated,
even the Cantabrians being then at last subdued. Once reduced to
submission, Spain appears to have slumbered for ages in the tranquillity
of servitude, under the despotic sway of the Roman emperors. It was
esteemed one of the most valuable and flourishing provinces of the
empire, containing, as we learn from Pliny,[h] not less than 360 cities.
During her subjection to a thraldom, shared with all the then known
world, Spain boasts of having given birth to the celebrated Roman poets
Lucan and Martial, to the philosopher Seneca, and to two of the very few
good Roman emperors, Trajan and Hadrian, as well as to many other men of
distinguished character, though of somewhat inferior note.[b]

ROMAN ADMINISTRATION

[Sidenote: [206 B.C.-161 A.D.]]

It must not be supposed that the authority of the Roman officers extended
at first over all the cities of the peninsula. Some cities were governed
even in the last resort by their own laws; some depended immediately on
the metropolis of the Roman world; some were free, and left to their
ancient laws and tribunals. They were colonial, municipal, Roman, allied,
tributary; and others there were which enjoyed the right of Latium.
Thus the province of Tarragona contained 179 cities, of which 12 were
colonial, 13 Roman, 18 enjoying the Latin law, 1 ally, and 135 tributary.
Bætica had 185 cities; _viz_., 9 colonial, 18 municipal, 29 of the Latin
law, 6 free, 3 allied, 120 tributary. Lusitania had 45; 5 colonial, 1
municipal, 3 Latin, 36 tributary.

The colonies were peopled by the citizens of Rome, chiefly by soldiers.
The inhabitants of these establishments forfeited not the slightest
of their privileges by their location in the provinces. The municipal
cities were those which were admitted to the honour of Roman citizenship;
which were in like manner exempted from the jurisdiction of the
provincial governors; and the inhabitants of which could aspire to the
highest dignities even in “the eternal city.” The right of Latium was
less valuable: in the cities possessing it, the magistrates only were
recognised as Roman citizens. The free cities (_immunes_) were such as
the conquerors left in the undisturbed possession of their native laws
and tribunals, and were not taxed towards the support of the rest of the
empire. This privilege was conferred with reluctance, or rather extorted
by necessity, and was always regarded with jealousy; to six Spanish
cities only was it granted. The allied cities (_confæderatæ_) were still
fewer in number, and were at first really independent, as the word
implies. The tributary cities (_stipendiariæ_) occupied the lowest grade
in the scale of civic society, and were those which chiefly supported the
cumbrous frame of Roman government.

[Illustration: A GALLO-ROMAN WOMAN]

But the distinctions between these various classes were not long
maintained. By Otho many Spaniards were admitted to the rights of
citizenship; by Vespasian, such of the cities as had not the privilege
already were presented with the right of Latium; and by Antoninus every
remaining barrier was removed, all his subjects throughout his vast
empire being declared citizens of Rome: from this moment the civil
constitution of that empire was of necessity uniform. The cities which
obeyed the constitution of Rome were governed in a manner similar to
those of Italy. Each had its municipal council or curia, the members
of which (_decuriones_) were chosen from the principal inhabitants of
the provinces. Their office, however, appears to have been unenviable,
because it was in all probability gratuitous and because they were
responsible for the payment of customs. Nothing need be said on its laws,
as they are the same as those which governed Rome under the republic and
the empire.

The military state of Spain under the Romans is a subject little
understood. That a considerable number of troops for foreign wars
was furnished by this important province is attested by numerous
inscriptions; but, except in cases of difficulty and danger, the Roman
troops in the peninsula seldom exceeded three legions--a force so
inconsiderable that either the natives must have lost all desire to
recover their ancient independence, or they must have become completely
reconciled to the domination of their proud masters. The policy, indeed,
which admitted them not only to the honour of citizenship, but to the
highest dignities, civil, military, and even religious, must have been
admirably adapted to insure not merely the obedience but the attachment
of the conquered.

So long as the empire continued prosperous, Spain, notwithstanding the
evils it was made to endure, could not but participate to a certain
extent in the general prosperity. The arts of life, the most elegant no
less than the useful, were taught to flourish: that architecture had
reached a high degree of perfection is evident from the numerous remains
of antiquity which time has spared; that agriculture was cultivated
with equal success, is no less apparent from the testimony of that most
excellent of judges, the naturalist Pliny. The riches of the soil, in
corn, in oil, and in fruits, were almost inexhaustible; and the sheep
were held even in higher estimation in those days than in the present.
The vine was cultivated with so much success that the juice of the grape
produced in the environs of Tarragona was pronounced equal to the best
wines of Italy. These productions, with those of the mines, and the
demand for native manufactures, gave rise to an extensive commerce; more
extensive, indeed, than that which had existed under the Carthaginians.
There was this important difference between the two conquering nations:
while the African, with the characteristic selfishness of a trader,
engrossed every advantage to himself, the noble-minded Roman admitted
others to a free participation in those advantages.

INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY

[Sidenote: [206 B.C.-305 A.D.]]

If tradition as an authority had not long ceased to be recognised on
this side the Pyrenees, the historian would have little difficulty in
fixing the period of the introduction of the Christian faith into Spain.
Its uninterrupted voice has named St. James the Elder as the first
herald of the Gospel to the idolatrous people of that country. That the
apostle traversed the peninsula, from Lusitania and Galicia to the heart
of Aragon; that while at Saragossa he was honoured by a visit from the
Virgin, and that by her express command he erected on the spot a church
in her honour; that after his martyrdom at Jerusalem his body was brought
by his disciples from Syria to Iria Flavia (now El Padron), in Galicia,
and thence transferred to Compostella, to be venerated by the faithful
as long as the world shall endure, no orthodox Spaniard ever doubted.
With equal assurance of faith it is believed that St. Paul, in person,
continued the work of his martyred fellow-disciple, and sowed the seeds
of the new doctrine in Catalonia, Aragon, Valencia, and, above all, in
Andalusia. Certain it is that Spain can adduce her martyrs as early as
the second century--perhaps even in the first.

It was during the reign of the fierce Diocletian that the fires of
persecution blazed with the greatest fury throughout the peninsula.
It must not, however, be concealed that the crown of martyrdom
was sometimes pursued with an eagerness that evidenced rather the
intemperance of a mistaken zeal, than the soberness of a rational
principle. The fury of persecution cooled after the death of Diocletian.
During the civil wars which ravaged the empire under Maximian and
Constantius Chlorus, the Christians began to breathe: Constantine
followed; and, after his conversion, the church had peace from without;
but within, the partisans of Athanasius and Arius clouded the horizon of
her tranquillity.

[Sidenote: [305-400 A.D.]]

Of the three national councils held during the first four centuries, the
first is that of Illiberis or Eliberis, a town once seated near modern
Granada. It may also be termed the most interesting, as it was probably
held before the conversion of Constantine, and, therefore, some years
anterior to that of Nicæa: if so, it is the most ancient council, not
merely of Spain, but of the Christian world, the acts of which have
descended to us. That of Cæsar-Augusta (Saragossa, 380 A.D.), which was
also national, consisted of only twelve bishops, and was convened for the
sole purpose of condemning the heresy of Priscillian. The third, which
was the first council of Toledo (400 A.D.), was attended by nineteen
bishops, with a corresponding number of inferior ecclesiastics. Its first
act was to admit the canons of Nicæa; especially those which relate to
the ordination of priests; but it is chiefly remarkable for its symbol of
faith, in which that great Catholic doctrine, the procession of the Holy
Ghost from the Father and the Son [_filioque_], is expressly asserted;
a doctrine, as is well known, not formally received by the universal
church before the fourth Lateran council in 1215. Its twenty canons
relate to holy orders, to the chastity of virgins devoted to God, and to
the continency of ecclesiastics and their widows. From these councils it
does not appear that the Spanish church had yet received the dignity of
primates, archbishops, or metropolitans. The bishops seem to have been
equal in power, and independent of one another, the only superiority
admitted arising from priority of consecration; neither is there any
reason for concluding that appeals were of necessity carried to Rome,
though the superior veneration attached to that see, and the superior
characters of those who filled it, rendered such appeals by no means
uncommon. The bishops and the clergy were elected by the people. Baptism
was administered by the bishop or the presbyter, or, in their absence, by
the deacon. In cases of urgent necessity, it could also be administered
by a layman, provided he had not contracted a second marriage.

Ceremonial penance was a public satisfaction given to the church where
the crime was more than usually scandalous; the penitent, in this case,
occupied a place separated from the rest during a period proportioned
to the heinousness of the offence. A penance of one year was inflicted
on the player of dice, because the heathen deities were necessarily
invoked in this ancient game; of two years on the subdeacon who married
a third time, and on the ecclesiastic who wore a crown in imitation
of the pagan priests; of three years on him who lent his apparel for
the use of pagan processions; on the deacon who confessed a mortal
sin before ordination, and on the parents who broke the betrothals of
their children; of five years on him who married his daughter-in-law or
sister-in-law, on the widow who sinned and married her accomplice; on
backbiters, in however trivial an affair, of husbands or wives guilty of
adultery, on single women guilty with different men, on deacons proved
guilty of any capital crime previous to ordination; and on housewives
who by stripes occasioned, involuntarily, the death of their slaves (if
voluntarily, the penance was seven years); of ten years on the apostate
or heretic on returning to the faith, on the Christian whom curiosity led
to the heathen sacrifices, on all prostitutes, and on all consecrated
virgins who broke their vow; of the whole life on the widow of a bishop,
presbyter, or deacon, who remarried, on those who frequently violated
their conjugal fidelity, and on the gentile priests who, after conversion
and baptism, sacrificed to idols. Besides these regulations, the bishop
had power to suspend from all intercourse with the faithful the man who
sat at the table of a Jew, him who distributed satirical or libellous
compositions, and him whose scandals deserved public censure.

There was one means by which the offenders just mentioned could
obtain their restoration to the privileges of communion, even before
the expiration of the time of penance decreed by the canons. This
was, by soliciting peace from the confessors; that is, from such as
had sustained persecutions and torments for the faith of Christ. The
confessor gave his peace to the penitent in an instrument which he called
_literæ confessoriæ_ or _pacificæ_. This the penitent presented to the
bishop, who immediately absolved him; and in token of his readmission
to the rights of communion, gave him another instrument, _literæ
communicatoriæ_, which secured him access to the sacramental table in
whatever church he appeared. This superstitious custom was founded on the
opinion that, from the abundance of their merits, the confessors could
well afford a portion to such penitents as had none of their own. What
a fruitful train of abuses indulgences occasioned at a much subsequent
period, and how repugnant they appeared to the common sense and common
justice of mankind, is well known.

[Illustration: GALLO-ROMAN SWORD AND HORN]

On the matrimony and continency of the Spanish clergy, there has been
much acrimonious disputation: one party contending that strict celibacy
was obligatory on them from the apostolic times; the other, that marriage
was permitted to them, under certain restrictions, no less than to
laymen. One of the most singular characteristics of the early councils
of Spain is the permission granted to bishops and other ecclesiastics to
follow any honourable branch of commerce, but in their own districts.

Persons consecrated to God were acknowledged and protected by the early
church; but monasteries were not introduced into Spain during the
first four centuries. The women who took, in the hands of the bishop
and before the altar, the vows of virginity; and the men who, in the
same manner, subjected themselves to the obligations of continence and
religious contemplation, passed their lives sometimes in their own
houses, but generally in communities of two or three in the abodes
of aged ecclesiastics. The former assumed the veil from their first
profession, as a public sign of their calling. But lest war should
be sworn before the strength of the enemy was known, the council of
Saragossa decreed that no woman should utter the irrevocable vow, or
assume the veil, before the age of forty years, though previous to that
period chastity was strongly recommended, and its observance consecrated.
Some of the provisions, especially of the first council, will appear
unreasonably severe. We must, however, take into consideration the
prevalence of idolatry at the beginning of the fourth century, and the
anxiety of the fathers of Illiberis to preserve their flocks from the
infection of paganism. The canons which regard the remarriage of the
widows of ecclesiastics are sufficiently absurd. The sixty-seventh, which
prohibited Christian women from keeping long-haired slaves, requires
explanation. These slaves were males, generally of Gaul or Germany, and
their ostensible business was to dress the hair of the rich ladies; their
real one--such was the depravation of manners produced by paganism--was
to gratify the licentious desires of their mistresses. But the gradual
decline of heathenism, no less than the increasing influence of
Christianity, purified the female mind.

[Sidenote: [380-395 A.D.]]

Like the other Christian provinces of the empire, Spain had its heresies.
Omitting that of Arius--which, during the reign of Constantine and his
sons, so much distracted the Christian world, and against which Osius,
the bishop of Cordova, signalised himself with a zeal only inferior
to that of Athanasius himself--the most remarkable was the heresy of
the Priscillianists. One Mark, an Egyptian heretic, having sown the
seeds of gnosticism in Gaul, passed into Spain, where the fluency of
his speech, no less than the nature of his doctrine, procured him some
disciples, among whom Priscillian was the most eminent. This Spaniard
was rich, eloquent, subtle, enterprising, and consequently well adapted
both to extend and to multiply the errors of Mark, of which he soon
became the acknowledged head. He taught that marriage was an unnatural
and tyrannical restraint; that pleasure was one of the great privileges
of our nature; that to live according to the impulses of nature was the
part no less of virtue than of wisdom. He held the Manichæan doctrine of
the two great principles; and, with Sabellius, confounded the persons
of the Trinity. To all this he joined the Chaldean superstition of
starry influences, and the metaphysical subtleties of the Egyptians
and Greeks. A multitude of women soon embraced the sensual system of
this arch-heretic; their example constrained the other sex: even the
clergy were at length infected by the pleasing errors; and, to crown
all, two bishops of Bætica openly professed themselves the followers of
Priscillian. The orthodox party beheld with alarm the progress of this
detestable heresy. Finally the vindictive fury of his enemies prevailed,
even more than the justice of their cause. Priscillian and his partisans
were beheaded (384 A.D.).

So long as Maximus lived, the numerous adherents of Priscillian were
pursued with unrelenting severity by Idatius; but soon after the death of
that emperor, this turbulent prelate, whose cruelties had long revolted
his episcopal brethren, was banished, and the heat of persecution began
to abate. Yet Priscillianism was not extirpated; notwithstanding its
renewed condemnation by the first council of Toledo, it continued to
distract the church of Spain long after the accession of the Gothic
dynasty.

BARBARIAN INVASIONS

From the accession of Honorius the Roman Empire existed only by
sufferance. The fierce hordes of northern Europe now prepared to inundate
the fertile provinces of the south, and the more powerful local governors
to secure themselves an independent sovereignty. Spain was soon agitated
by the spirit which spontaneously burst forth from Britain to Thrace.
While Constantine, who had assumed the purple, raised England and the
Gauls against the feeble successor of the Cæsars, his son Constans passed
the Pyrenees to gain over the natives of the peninsula. The youth found
or made adherents, and was for a time successful; but in the sequel he
was compelled to return to Gaul for reinforcements. The appearance of
another candidate for empire (Jovinus) distracted the attention and
weakened the efforts of the kindred adventurers; and ultimately all these
became successively the victims of imperial vengeance, chiefly by means
of the warlike tribes whom the minister of Honorius had marched from the
shores of the Baltic, to crush the new insurrections. But the policy of
that minister was, if not perfidious, at least short-sighted.

[Sidenote: [395-415 A.D.]]

The barbarians whom he had thus introduced into the heart, and to whom
he thus betrayed the weakness of the empire, from allies soon became
masters. They looked with longing eyes on the rich plains of southern
France and of Spain. At length, finding the Pyrenean barrier but
negligently guarded, the Suevi, under their king Hermeric, the Alans
under Atace, and the Vandals or Silingi, under Gunderic, burst through
it, and poured the tide of destruction over the peninsula (409 A.D.). The
ravages of these barbarians, we are told, were dreadful. Towns pillaged
and burned, the country laid waste, the inhabitants massacred without
distinction of age and sex, were but the beginning of evils. Famine and
pestilence made awful havoc; the wild beasts, finding nothing to subsist
on in their usual haunts, made war on the human species; and the latter
consumed the very corpses of the dead. Nay, mothers are said to have
killed their children to feed on their flesh.[4] The conquerors at length
ceased from their wantonness of desolation. They found that to turn the
country into a wilderness was not the best policy in men who designed
it for a permanent abode. They divided it by lot: Bætica fell to the
Vandals, Lusitania to the Alans, and Galicia, with a great portion of
Leon and Castile, to the Suevi.

_The Goths Arrive (411 A.D.)_

A fourth people, more formidable than the rest combined, came to
trouble the new settlers in their possessions. These were the Goths
under Atawulf, (Ataulphus) whom Honorius had the address to remove from
Italy, by ceding to them the fertile provinces of southern Gaul, and the
peninsula. Having established the seat of his kingdom at Narbonne, where
he married his imperial captive Placidia, he passed the Pyrenees, made
a triumphant entry into Barcelona, and from thence undertook several
expeditions against the Vandals. A conspiracy was formed against his
life; and the sword of a dwarf pierced his body, as he was conspicuously
watching the evolutions of his cavalry, in the courtyard of his palace at
Barcelona.

Sigeric succeeded, whose ruffianly conduct instantly drew on him the
detestation of the Goths. Scarcely had he put to death the six surviving
children of Atawulf, and compelled the widowed Placidia to adorn his
triumph by walking barefoot through the streets of Barcelona, than
another conspiracy deprived him of his throne and his life. The election
of the Goths now fell on Wallia, a chief every way worthy of their choice
(415). His first expedition, however, against the Roman possessions
in Africa was disastrous. A violent tempest destroyed his fleet, and
forced him to relinquish his design. The news of this disaster soon
reached Gaul, and brought Constantius, the general of Honorius, at the
head of a numerous army, towards the Pyrenees. Wallia collected the
remnant of his troops, and hastened to receive him. Fortunately for the
Gothic king, love rather than ambition occasioned the hostile approach
of Constantius. That general was more anxious to gain possession of
Placidia, whose hand had been promised him by the emperor, than to effect
the destruction of the king. No sooner did the two armies encamp in sight
of each other, than he proposed peace on conditions too advantageous to
be rejected. Wallia had only to surrender the royal widow, and promise
to march against the Suevi and the other nations who held possession of
the peninsula, to secure not merely the neutrality but the favour of the
Romans. Placidia was restored, and peace made with the Romans.

[Sidenote: [415-429 A.D.]]

Hostilities were now vigorously commenced against the kindred barbarians.
The Vandals were expelled from their habitations, and forced to seek an
asylum among the Suevi of Galicia. The Alans of Lusitania were almost
entirely cut off, with their king Atace: the remnant incorporated with
the Vandals, and their name forever disappeared from the peninsula. The
Suevi would doubtless have shared the fate of one or other of these
people, had they not hastened to acknowledge themselves tributaries
of Rome; they were left in undisputed possession of the country they
inhabited. The pride of Honorius caused him to regard these signal
successes as for his own benefit. The victor was rewarded with a portion
of Languedoc and Gascony, from Toulouse to the ocean. That city he made
the seat of his kingdom, where he died, two years after his glorious
triumphs. From this time to the reign of Euric, the Goths remained
chiefly in their new possessions, and were seldom in Spain. Though
they considered themselves the rightful lords of the country, the real
sovereignty rested with the Suevi and Vandals.

Under the reign of Theodoric I, Wallia’s successor, the Vandals made war
on the Suevi. The latter retreated to the fastnesses of the Asturias.
The Vandals forsook Galicia, and fought their way to their former
settlements in Bætica, whence Wallia had expelled them. To that province
they communicated their name--Vandalusia; which was subsequently changed
into Andalusia.[5] There they maintained themselves, in opposition to
the imperial generals. The ports of Andalusia and Granada presented them
with facilities for pushing their successes on the deep. They constructed
a fleet; infested the Balearic Isles; pillaged the coast of Valencia;
sacked the city of Cartagena; laid waste the shores of Mauretania;
and returned to Seville, where the last act of their king, Gunderic,
was to despoil the opulent church of St. Vincent.[6] A new and higher
career was now opened before them. The offer made them by Boniface, the
African prefect, of two-thirds of that country, if they would assist him
against his enemies, they joyfully accepted. Before embarking, however,
they inflicted a terrible blow on their enemies, the Suevi, whom they
overthrew near Merida--whom they precipitated, with their king, into the
waters of the Guadiana. They then tranquilly returned to the sea coast;
and, to the number of eighty thousand, passed over to Africa, in March,
429, eighteen years after their arrival in Spain.

PROGRESS OF THE GOTHIC CONQUEST

[Sidenote: [429-469 A.D.]]

The retreat of these restless barbarians did not insure tranquillity to
Spain. The Suevi, under their new king, Hermeric, issued from their dark
mountains, and bore down on the peaceable inhabitants of Galicia. But
it was reserved for his son Richilan, to whom, in 438, he resigned his
sceptre, to raise the fame of the nation to the highest pitch. He routed
the Romans on the banks of the Venil, and seized on Merida and Seville.

In the meantime, Theodoric was no less occupied in humbling the Roman
power in southern Gaul. While meditating hostilities against the
triumphant Suevi, he was summoned to encounter the renowned Attila,
king of the Huns. His well-known valour placed him at the head of the
right wing of the Franks, Romans, and Goths, who combined to arrest the
progress of the tremendous torrent. His death on the plains of Châlons
(451) where the pride of the barbaric king was humbled, endeared him
still more to his subjects, who gratefully elevated his son Torismond to
the vacant throne. But the reign of the new king was brief, and his end
tragic. In one year, by the hands of his two brothers, he was deprived
of empire and of life, in his capital of Toulouse; and Theodoric II,
the elder of the fratricides, was elected in his place.[7] The reign
of this prince was diversified by alternate success and disaster. He
first turned his arms against the Suevi, whom he vanquished, and made
their king, Richiarius, prisoner; but being recalled to France, the army
which he left in the peninsula was routed by the natives of Leon, who
were indignant at the excess it committed. The whole country was now in
the most miserable condition. Goths and Romans and Suevi traversed it
in every direction, and everywhere left melancholy vestiges of their
barbarous fury. Another fierce tribe, the Herulians, landed on the coast
of Catalonia, and zealously prosecuted the same work of desolation. Then
the Suevi split into two parties, which pursued each other with the most
vindictive feelings, but which were always ready to combine when the
natives were to be plundered, or when Goths and Romans were to be opposed.

The Spaniard was the prey of all: his labour was doomed to support the
innumerable swarms which spread from the Pyrenees to the rock of Calpe,
and which, like so many locusts, destroyed wherever they settled. The
scourge was more than galling--it was intolerable. Native bands were
at length formed in most parts of the peninsula, not merely to take
vengeance on the rapacious invaders--for in that case they would have
been a blessing to their country--but to plunder all who came in their
way. Many of these horrors would have been averted, had Theodoric been
at liberty to return in person to Spain, and finish its subjugation; but
his wars with the Romans, the Burgundians, and the Franks found him for
some years employment enough. At length he was assassinated, it is said,
by his brother Euric, in his capital of Toulouse. One of the first acts
of Euric was to despatch an army to humble the pride of the Suevi. His
arms were eminently successful. The Suevi sued for and obtained peace,
and were allowed to remain in undisturbed possession of Galicia, with a
portion of modern Leon and Portugal, and to retain their kingly form of
government. So completely were they become the vassals of the victors
that during a whole century they remained in quiet subjection. We hear
no more of them until the time of Leuvigild, who dealt the last blow to
their national existence, and, as we shall hereafter see, incorporated
them with his Gothic subjects.

[Sidenote: [469-522 A.D.]]

The Romans were less fortunate; their domination in the country was ended
forever by the fall of Tarragona. They continued, indeed, to hold a few
unimportant places on the coast; not because they had valour to defend
them, but because Euric had no naval force to assail them from the sea.
The conqueror, though master of all Spain, disdained to be confined
within limits which his ambition deemed much too narrow. Rome was now
tottering to her fall; and he resolved to pluck some of the most fertile
provinces of Gaul from her feeble grasp. Odoacer the Mercenary, king of
Italy, renounced in his favour all the Roman provinces beyond the Alps,
as far as the Rhine and the ocean: and thenceforward the Goths regarded
Gaul and Spain as their lawful inheritance. The victor established
the seat of his empire at Arles, where he passed in tranquillity the
remainder of his days. He died in that capital, (484 A.D.) after engaging
his subjects to elect for their king his son Alaric. Euric was the
founder of the Gothic kingdom of Spain. The extinction of the Roman
sway, and the subjection of the Suevi, rendered him absolute lord of the
country. The six kings, his predecessors, were rulers in Gaul, not of
Spain; however they might regard its provinces as rightfully their own,
they could obtain possession only by force of arms. Their conquests,
however, had been partial and temporary; before Euric, the peninsula was
overrun, not subdued. He was also the first legislator of his nation. The
laws which he collected and committed to writing served as the foundation
of the famous Gothic code, known by the name of the _Forum Judicum_,
or _Fuero Juzgo_. He was a great prince; but the fratricide which is
believed to have opened him the way to the crown, and the cruelty with
which he persecuted the orthodox (like his predecessors, he was an
Arian), are dreadful stains on his memory.

But Alaric was unable to tread in the steps of so great a prince as his
father. In vain did his father-in-law Theodoric, who had just founded
the kingdom of the Ostrogoths in Italy, interpose in his behalf: the
fierce Clovis marched towards Poitiers, where Alaric then lay, resolved,
as he said, to expel the heretical Arians from the soil of Gaul.[8] The
Visigoths, after a sharp conflict, were routed with great loss, and their
king was left dead on the field. Clovis pursued his successes, and soon
reduced the greater part of their possessions in the south of France, and
entered victorious into their capital of Toulouse.[9] Alaric left a son;
but as he was too young to be intrusted with the government, his bastard
brother, Gesalric (Gensaleic) had the address to procure the elective
crown. But the king of the Ostrogoths invested Gaul, overthrew the
Franks, who were pressing the siege of Carcassonne, and forced Gesalric
to seek for safety in Barcelona. The humbled Clovis was glad to sue for
peace from the formidable Theodoric, who united the two kingdoms of the
Ostrogoths and Visigoths under his own sceptre. To Theudes, one of his
ablest generals, he intrusted the administration of the country and the
guardianship of his grandson. Theodoric resigned the sceptre of Spain to
his grandson, on that prince’s arriving at a suitable age. Theudes now
retired into private life.

[Sidenote: [522-554 A.D.]]

Amalaric was the first Gothic king who established his court in Spain, in
the city of Seville. To Athalaric, the successor of Theodoric, he ceded
that portion of France which lies between the Rhone and the Alps, and
received in return his father’s treasures, which Theodoric had removed
from Carcassonne to Ravenna: in the rest of Gothic Gaul, with all Spain,
he was solemnly confirmed by Athalaric. To secure his possessions in
Gaul against the formidable Franks, Amalaric demanded and obtained the
hand of Clotilda, the sister of the royal sons of Clovis. But the union
was unfortunate. The king was a violent partisan of Arius; the queen as
obstinate a professor of orthodoxy: at first each attempted to convert
the other; but finding their efforts ineffectual, the one was filled
with rage, the other with contempt. Childebert marched against his
brother-in-law; the result was fatal to Amalaric, who fell by the swords
of the Franks, whether on the field of battle, as Procopius[o] asserts,
or afterwards as he was seeking sanctuary in a church, must forever
remain undecided. The battle in question appears to have been fought,
not in Gothic Gaul, but in Catalonia. Childebert returned to France with
his sister and the immense treasures which he had seized in the Arian
churches.

With Amalaric ended the royal line of the mighty Alaric. Theudes was
unanimously elected to the vacant throne (531). He appears to have been
engaged in hostilities for some years with the vindictive or ambitious
sons of Clovis. Gothic Gaul he was compelled to abandon to its fate, but
he vigorously defended his peninsular dominions, which were invaded and
laid waste by Childebert and Clotaire. Elated with his successes, the
victorious Theudes passed the straits of Gibraltar, and laid siege to
Ceuta, then in possession of the imperial troops. The place was invested
with vigour; and this recent conquest of Belisarius would soon have
passed to the Visigoths or the Vandals, but for the pious scruples of
the king. Though an Arian, he revered the Sabbath; on which he not only
refrained from hostile operations, but with his soldiers was occupied in
public worship. Less strict than their foe, the besieged issued from the
walls, fell on the Goths at the hour of prayer, and committed on them a
carnage so horrible that the king had some difficulty to escape. He did
not long survive this disaster. An assassin contrived to penetrate into
the recesses of his palace, and with a poniard to deprive him of life.
Before he expired, he is said to have ordered that the murderer should
not be punished, as in his death he recognised the hand of heaven, which
thus chastised him for a similar crime he had himself committed many
years before. He left behind him the character of a just, a valiant,
and an able ruler, who secured to his kingdom the blessings of internal
peace by avoiding all invidious preference of his own religious sect, and
treating the orthodox with as much favour as his Arian brethren.

Of the next two princes who successively swayed the Gothic sceptre,
very little is known. The former, Theudisela, who had been the general
of Theudes, and had acquired considerable fame in the war with the
Franks, was a monster of licentiousness. This second Sardanapalus had
scarcely reigned eighteen months before his destruction was effected by
his enraged nobles. He was supping with them one evening in his palace
at Seville, when the lights were suddenly extinguished, and a dozen
swords entered his body. He was succeeded by Agila, whose reign was one
continued series of commotions. Many cities refused to recognise his
election. He marched to chastise them, but was vanquished and ultimately
slain by his own soldiers after being defeated by Atanagild, a Gothic
noble (554).

[Illustration: TOLEDO]

[Sidenote: [554-567 A.D.]]

Scarcely had Atanagild obtained the throne, the great object of his
wishes, when he discovered how fatally his ambition had blinded him. The
troops of Justinian, his imperial ally, had no intention of leaving the
country. From their fortresses in the Carthaginian province they defied
his power to expel them. Nor were his successors more fortunate; the
unwelcome intruders remained until they were insensibly incorporated
with Gothic inhabitants. This prince is more famous from the misfortunes
of his two daughters than from his own deeds. The one he married to
Sigebert king of Metz, the other to Chilperic king of Soissons. The
latter, Galeswintha, Galsvinda, or Gosvinda, was murdered by order of her
husband--no doubt at the instigation of his mistress, Fredegund. In Spain
the memory of her sister Brunehild, is held in the highest reverence:
in France, it is branded with infamy. The persecutions which after her
husband’s death she sustained from the unprincipled Fredegund, and the
ferocious Chilperic, and her tragical end, many years afterwards, by the
command of Clotaire, are events which belong to the history of France
rather than that of Spain. Into the question of her guilt or innocence
no inquiry need be instituted here: there are authorities enough to be
consulted on both sides; and in both abundant reason may be found to
lament the influence of national prejudice, which can blind the wise and
exasperate the good.[10]

During the reign of Atanagild, the Suevi, who had abandoned paganism
for the errors of Arius, in the time of their king Rechiarius, about a
century before, were converted to the orthodox faith. Though subject to
the Goths, they had still preserved, as before observed, their kingly
form of government. Theodomir, their present monarch, and his court
solemnly abjured Arianism, were rebaptised, and admitted into the bosom
of the church. After a peaceful, just, and useful reign of near fourteen
years, and an interregnum of five months, occasioned by want of unanimity
among the electors, the party of Narbonne in Gothic Gaul succeeded in
raising Liuva [Leuva or Leova] to the throne. He contented himself with
Gothic Gaul; and, in the second year of his reign, he confided to his
brother Leuvigild (Leovigild) the sovereignty of Spain. Of Liuva no more
is known except that he died in three years from his election, leaving
his brother sole ruler of the kingdom.

LEUVIGILD AND ERMENIGILD

[Sidenote: [567-583 A.D.]]

The reign of Leuvigild is more interesting than that of his predecessors.
His arms were triumphant in every direction. The soldiers of the empire
were again compelled to take refuge in their fortresses on the coast;
and the fierce inhabitants of Biscay, Alava, and even Cantabria, to
surrender at discretion. But the most painful, if not the most formidable
of his enemies, he found in his eldest son Ermenigild. Yet few sons had
ever more reason for filial gratitude. By an affectionate father, on his
marriage with the princess Ingunda, daughter of the famous Brunehild
and of Sigebert (which was celebrated in Toledo in 582) he had been
associated in the royal dignity, and in every other respect treated
with the utmost liberality. But Ingunda was orthodox, and Gosvinda,
the second wife of Leuvigild, a professor of the Arian sect. The two
queens could not long agree: the two husbands, finding that their palace
was scandalised by disgraceful scenes, agreed to have separate courts:
while the elder remained at Toledo, the younger established his court at
Seville, which in splendour was little inferior to that of Leuvigild.

Ermenigild had not long been established in his new palace before he
abjured Arianism, and embraced the Catholic religion. His conversion
was chiefly the work of his consort, who had acquired great ascendency
over him. Leuvigild declared that the crown of the Goths should never
adorn the brow of an apostate. It is difficult to say which of the two
first drew the sword in this unnatural warfare; but there is probability
for throwing the guilt on the son. When no hope of resistance remained
the rebel betook himself to a church, whence he implored pardon from
his justly incensed father. The king promised to spare his life, if he
would leave the sanctuary. By the persuasion of his brother Recared,
who appears to have acted throughout in a manner highly creditable both
as son and brother, he came out; and, with all the outward signs of
repentance, threw himself at the feet of the king. The latter raised him,
kissed him, and wept. For some time the father struggled with the king.
At length he ordered that the rebel should be despoiled of the royal
ornaments, and exiled to Valencia, thenceforward to live as a private
individual.

Had all ended here, the justice of Leuvigild would have been approved by
posterity, and the rebel would never have been lauded for virtues which
he did not possess. But Ermenigild had scarcely arrived at his place of
exile, when he again pursued his guilty plots against his country and
king. He again connected himself with the Greeks, the most faithless and
most formidable enemies to the repose of Spain; instigated the natives
to rebellion; and, at the head of this combined force, made an irruption
into Estremadura. The indignation of Leuvigild may well be conceived.
Having collected a veteran body of troops, he opened another melancholy
campaign against the arch-rebel; he was delivered--or he fell--into their
hands, and thrown into the dungeons of a prison in Tarragona. Leuvigild
despatched several confidential messengers to the prince, promising, it
is said, not only pardon but a restoration to royal favour, if he would
return to the Arian faith. With a constancy which certainly does him
honour, Ermenigild alike disregarded promises and threats, and declared
his unalterable resolution of living and dying in the Catholic communion.
Then it was that Leuvigild, in a fit of ungovernable fury, gave orders
for the execution of the youth. The order was but too promptly obeyed:
the ministers of vengeance hastened to the dungeon, and a hatchet cleft
the head of the prince of the Goths.

[Sidenote: [583-584 A.D.]]

That the crimes of Ermenigild deserved death, no one can attempt to
deny; but nature shudders when a parent, in however just a cause,
becomes the executioner of his child: no excuse can shield Leuvigild
from the execration of posterity. But neither will historic truth permit
the victim to be called a martyr. But what are we to think of St.
Ermenigild[11]--what of the daring impiety which could invest a weak and
wicked youth with attributes little less than divine? By the breviary of
the Spanish church, and one or two ancient chroniclers, we are told that
the dungeon of the saint, on the night of his execution, was illuminated
with celestial light; that angels hovered over the corpse, and celebrated
his martyrdom with holy songs! Then as to the miracles wrought by his
intercession--omitting all mention of those which are said to have
occurred during the darkness of the Middle Ages--a darkness in Spain
“that might be felt”--what are we to say of Morales,’[u] a writer who, so
late as the close of the sixteenth century, gravely tells us that in his
behalf a signal miracle has been performed through the instrumentality of
this precious saint?[12] Even the judicious Masdeu,[r] at the close of
the eighteenth century, could not, or perhaps dared not, divest himself
of the pitiful prejudices of his country’s faith.

After the news of Ermenigild’s death, the brothers of Ingunda armed in
the cause of their widowed sister. At the same time the Suevi showed a
disposition to be restless, and prepared to descend from the mountains
of Galicia, on the plains of central Spain. Nothing could exceed the
promptitude with which Leuvigild met these threatening disasters. While
he himself marched to subdue his rebellious vassals, whose nationality
he had long resolved to destroy, he despatched his son Recared into Gaul
to oppose the Franks. Both expeditions were eminently successful. All
Galicia submitted, and a final period was put to the domination of the
Suevi, 177 years after their arrival in Spain. In the latter expedition,
Recared, after various successes, expelled the invaders from Gothic
Gaul. The great Leuvigild was now undisputed master of the peninsula,
with the exception of some maritime fortresses still held by the Greeks.
Unfortunately, however, for his fame, he stained the lustre of a splendid
reign by persecuting the orthodox or Catholic party. He is the first
of the Visigoth kings[13] represented on ancient coins, with the royal
diadem on his brow. But his riches were not wholly expended in idle pomp.
The city of Recopolis, which he founded in Celtiberia, in honour of his
son Recared, was a monument of his patriotism. Such, also, were the
improvements which he introduced into the national legislation.

[Sidenote: [586-589 A.D.]]

Leuvigild died in 586. A year before his death, he associated his son
in his royal dignity. His greatest glory, in a Spaniard’s eye, is his
suspected conversion to the Catholic faith a few days before his death.
If the alleged change were less disputable, we should hear no more of his
defects; they would be carefully covered by the veil of orthodoxy.

RECARED I AND CATHOLICISM

On the death of his father, Recared I was unanimously acknowledged sole
king of the Goths. In about a year after his accession, this prince
conceived the hardy project of reclaiming his subjects from heresy. Time
and patience, as well as a prudent dexterity, were indispensable towards
the success of his project. By inviting his Catholic and Arian prelates
to dispute in his presence, and by assuming the appearance of perfect
impartiality between them, he laid the foundation of the change he
meditated.

His next was a bolder step, though in perfect accordance with his new
policy: he restored to the Catholic churches the treasures of which they
had been deprived by his predecessors, and secured to the more indigent
ones a considerable augmentation of revenue. When he saw his preparations
sufficiently matured, he assembled his nobles and clergy at Toledo (May
8th, 587), to discuss his proposal. Having prevailed on the assembly to
pass three consecutive days in fasting and prayer, he opened the business
of the meeting in an elaborate speech. He submitted that, if unity of
religion could be restored, an end would be put to the troubles which
had so long agitated the kingdom. Lastly, he caused an instrument to be
read, containing his abjuration of Arianism, and the confession of his
belief in the co-equality of the Three Persons, and in the authority of
the Catholic and apostolic church; and entreated all who were present to
follow his example. When he and his queen had solemnly signed the act
of confession, most of the prelates and nobles in the assembly hastened
to do the same. The Catholic faith was thus declared the religion of
the state. Spaniard, Sueve, and Goth were thus joined in one communion;
and a canon was drawn up at the suggestion of St. Leander and the king,
and with the full concurrence of the several members present, that
henceforth no person should be admitted to the Lord’s Supper who should
not previously recite the symbol of belief, as sanctioned by the council
of Constantinople.

[Sidenote: [589-621 A.D.]]

Scarcely had the Gothic monarch effected the conversion of his subjects,
when he was called to defend those of southern Gaul against Gontram,
king of the Franks (589). Near Carcassonne they were utterly routed,
and their camp seized by the general of Recared, nine thousand of their
number being left dead on the field. Not less signal was his success
over the Basques, who, with their characteristic restlessness, had long
harassed the neighbouring provinces. The imperialists, too, he humbled,
and compelled them to seek refuge in their fortresses. The rest of this
monarch’s reign was a continual effort to promote the happiness of his
people: his administration was beyond example prosperous; and he enjoyed
to an unrivalled extent their confidence and affection. It has been truly
said of him that there arose no war in which he was not victorious;
no rebellion which he did not crush; no conspiracy which he did not
discover. In his last illness this king was devout enough, according to
St. Isidore,[p] the contemporary bishop of Seville, to make a public
confession of his sins, in conformity with the practice of the primitive
church. He died in 601.

PETTY MONARCHS (601-672 A.D.)

Of the eleven succeeding sovereigns little is known, and that little
is not very interesting. In general their reigns were brief, and their
actions unimportant; so that we have the less reason to regret the
scantiness of our historic materials. Liuva II, the eldest son and
successor of Recared, ere two years were passed, was assassinated by
the same Witteric whom his father’s clemency had pardoned. Witteric had
little reason to congratulate himself on his success. In his wars he was
uniformly unfortunate; and in his family he was not more to be envied. In
the seventh year of his reign he was murdered at his own table, and his
body buried without honour.

Gundemar, the next king (610), was more fortunate in his warlike
enterprises. He triumphed over the Basques and the imperialists. He had
one advantage--an advantage not always enjoyed by the Visigoth monarchs
of Spain--that of dying a natural death. Sisibut (Sisebert) was much
superior. His successes over both the Basques and the imperialists were
more signal: they were also more solid, since he reduced and retained
several fortresses belonging to the latter; those which lay near the
straits of Gibraltar were lost to them forever. But he deserves greater
praise for his humanity than for his valour or skill in war. He wept over
the wounds of his prisoners; and, with his own money, often redeemed such
as were taken by his soldiers. Whenever a town was sacked, he ordered
it to be proclaimed that the enemies who, even when the contest was
hopeless, should reach his quarters and claim his protection, should
escape with both life and liberty. Such an expedient is indicative enough
both of his own admirable clemency and of the blood-thirsty disposition
of his Goths, who were accustomed indiscriminately to massacre every
living thing that fell in their way.

Strange that this prince, who was thus indulgent to his very enemies,
should so rigorously have persecuted his Jewish subjects! He published an
edict which left them no alternative but baptism or scourges and utter
destitution. Eighty thousand of the poor wretches submitted to the rite;
a great number escaped into France; such as remained and were obstinate
in their faith were treated with great cruelty. At length, however, the
church wisely desisted from this execrable policy. It was accordingly
ordained by the fourth council of Toledo that the holy sacraments should
no longer be administered to such as were unwilling to receive them. In
other respects Sisibut was a wise and patriotic monarch. The construction
of a fleet for the purpose not only of the country’s defence, but of
making his subjects acquainted with maritime affairs, was, in a Gothic
king, a magnificent thought. He is also believed to have surrounded the
city of Evora with fortifications. He died in 621. His son, Recared II,
reigned only three months.

[Sidenote: [621-673 A.D.]]

Suintila, the next in succession, is represented as a strange compound
of great and vicious qualities; at least his life exhibited, at two
different periods, a strange contrast with itself. On the one side
he had the glory of effecting what his predecessors had attempted in
vain--he reduced all the fortresses held by the imperialists, and forever
ended their influence in the peninsula: he was thus the first Gothic
monarch of all Spain. With equal success he quelled the commotions of
the Basques. His triumphs changed him: the hours which he had formerly
devoted to the happiness of his people were now passed in sensuality.
He became cruel. What still more exasperated the Goths, so tenacious
of their original equality, and so jealous of their sovereign’s
prerogatives, was his conferring on his son Recared the title of king,
and thereby laying the foundation of hereditary monarchy. Seeing the
universal dissatisfaction inspired by this once popular ruler, one
Sisenando, a noble Goth, planned his deposition. The Goths deposed their
king, and proclaimed Sisenando the successor (631). The fourth council
of Toledo (assembled in 633), after passing some canons for the better
discipline of the church, entered fully into his views by excommunicating
Suintila, the wife, children, and brother of that monarch.

On the death of this monarch the choice of the Goths fell on Chintella
(Chintila), who, in conformity with the regulation just mentioned,
convoked the prelates at Toledo to confirm his election. These fathers
issued another decree, that in future no one should be nominated as king
who was not of noble blood and of Gothic descent; all candidates, too,
were subjected to excommunication who should endeavour to attain their
end by unlawful means. In another council (the sixth of Toledo), held
about eighteen months afterwards, the third canon obliged all future
kings to swear, not only that they would not suffer the exercise of any
other religion than the Catholic, but that they would rigorously enforce
the laws against all dissidents, especially “that accursed people,” the
Jews. Tulga, who was elected in 640, was also a model of the peaceful
virtues. The aged and inflexible Cindasuinto (Chindaswind), who ascended
the throne in 642, associated with him in the royal dignity his son
Recesuinto (Receswind), and on his death in 653 that prince remained in
secure possession of the crown. The piety of this monarch made him the
favourite of the church; the readiness with which he sanctioned a law
that the wealth acquired by future kings should be transmitted, not to
their children or heirs, but to their successors, rendered him no less
that of the nation.

THE REIGN OF WAMBA

[Sidenote: [673-677 A.D.]]

After the death of Recesuinto in 672, the eyes of the Gothic electors
were turned on Wamba, whose wisdom and virtues were well known to the
whole nation. But this excellent man, who had filled some of the most
honourable posts in the monarchy, and had found little happiness in
greatness, was little inclined to accept the proffered dignity. He
alleged his advanced age, and his consequent incapacity to undertake
duties requiring such labour and activity. Prayers and tears were vainly
employed to move him. At length, one of the dukes of the palace placed a
poniard at his breast, and bade him choose between the sepulchre and a
throne. Such a choice was no longer difficult, and Wamba reigned.

If Wamba, as there is reason to believe, had been induced to refuse
the crown chiefly from an apprehension of popular levity, his prudent
foresight was verified by the event. The Basques revolted, and their
example was instantly followed by the inhabitants of Gothic Gaul. The
evil was increased by the bigotry of the king; he issued a decree,
banishing all Jews who refused to be baptised: these exasperated
exiles flocked to Nîmes, whose count, Hilderic, had drawn many nobles
and prelates into the rebellion. The cause of the monarch appeared
hopeless, when Duke Paul, a Greek by nation, and consequently wily and
unprincipled, who had been despatched at the head of an army to suppress
the commotion beyond the Pyrenees, prevailed on his troops to join the
malcontents, and on several important fortresses to open their gates to
him. Even Barcelona and Narbonne were detached from their fidelity to the
king.

In the meantime the artful Greek had prevailed on the Goths of Gaul
to proclaim him king. The prudent Wamba, after the successful issue
of the Cantabrian war, marched towards Catalonia. On the confines of
that province, he divided his forces into three considerable bodies; of
which, while one was conveyed by sea, the other two proceeded towards
the Pyrenees by two different routes. Barcelona submitted almost without
resistance; Gerona offered none; two of his generals speedily reduced the
fortress of Clausina, on the site of the modern Clusas, and made Hilderic
and Ranosind prisoners. The victorious king now marched on Narbonne, in
the hope of ending the war by the reduction of that capital, and the
seizure of the rebel. But Paul, whose self-confidence seemed to have
greatly abated, had precipitately retired to Nîmes, leaving the defence
of Narbonne to Duke Wittimer. He surrendered, and, with his companions,
was publicly scourged as a rebel.

[Illustration: A SPANISH FLAGELLANT]

The reduction of Narbonne was followed by that of other strong places in
the neighbourhood. No time was now lost in marching against Nîmes, where
Paul was entrenched with his bravest troops. The assault was delivered
with fury, and was as furiously repelled. Eventually the walls were
surmounted: the struggle on the summit was terrible, but short; it was
renewed in the streets, but the sword of the Goths still pursued its
destructive career. Wamba now entered triumphantly into Nîmes, by the
pardoned inhabitants of which he was received with unfeigned gratitude.
By his command Paul, with the other leading rebels, was dragged, by the
hair of the head, from the vaults of the amphitheatre. The judges of the
tribunal voted for the death of the most guilty; but the merciful monarch
satisfied himself with condemning them to wear shaven crowns, and to a
religious confinement within the walls of Toledo. Having pacified the
whole of Gothic Gaul; having deposed some governors, and created others;
having repaired the towns which had been injured, and banished the Jews,
Wamba returned to his capital.

[Sidenote: [677-680 A.D.]]

After those glorious exploits, Wamba applied his undivided cares to
the interests of his subjects. By cultivating the arts of peace, by
bettering the temporal condition of the people, by encouraging the
clergy to greater diligence, by strengthening the walls of Toledo,
and by causing justice to be administered with mercy, he secured the
confidence of his kingdom. The bases of his character seem to have
been incorruptible integrity, an ardent zeal for his country’s good,
and a rare union of moderation with firmness. He was also unrivalled
for prudence; he provided for everything. Foreseeing the enterprises
to which the fanatic ambition of the Saracens would inevitably impel
them, he prepared a fleet for the defence of the coast. He had soon to
congratulate himself on his prophetic caution. About the year 677, a
fleet of 170 barques, filled with these barbarians, passed the straits
of Gibraltar, and attempted to land: they were assailed, dispersed, or
taken by the ships of the king, whose vigour long kept the Mussulmans in
awe. Though masters of nearly all northern Africa, from the Nile to the
Atlantic Ocean, they wisely respected for many years the territories of
the Goths. Had Wamba been succeeded by monarchs of equal prudence and
activity, the scourge of Saracenic domination, the greatest, perhaps,
that ever afflicted any people, would probably have been forever averted
from Spain.

But neither the virtues nor the abilities of Wamba, it is said, could
exempt him from the fate common to so many of the Visigothic kings--from
domestic treason. If that fate, however, be common in kind, it differs
widely in manner, in the present instance. On Sunday, October 14th, 680,
the king fell into a state of insensibility, and seemed to be deprived
of life. As no doubt appeared to be entertained by his servants that
he was dying, in conformity with the custom of his times, his head was
hastily shaven, and he was enveloped in a penitential habit; in other
words, he was transformed from a layman into a member of the monastic
profession. Though he recovered in about twenty-four hours, his doom was
everlastingly sealed: though his profession had been involuntary, and
even forced on him while in a lifeless state, the obligation was not the
less imperative. Disqualified thus strangely from enjoying the honours
and from participating in the duties of public life, he retired to the
monastery of Pampliega, near Burgos, where he passed the remainder of his
days.

Such are the facts of this strange occurrence. The only difficulty is
to determine whether the suspension of the vital powers in Wamba was a
natural or a previously contrived event. Two chroniclers of the ninth
century (Sebastian[v] of Salamanca, and the anonymous monk of Albelda[w])
assert that the indisposition or trance of Wamba, and his consequent
tonsure, were the work of Ervigius, a nephew of King Cindasuinto, who
had long aspired to the throne. He administered, say they, a draught to
the monarch, which he considered potent enough to destroy reason, if not
life itself; and in the lethargy which followed the monastic penitence
was imposed, whether by his contrivance, or through the piety of the
royal attendants, is doubtful. But what reliance is to be placed on
the testimony of these chroniclers, who wrote so long after the event?
Not a hint is given of this treason in the work of the contemporary
prelate St. Julian,[x] nor in the acts of the twelfth council of Toledo,
assembled after the retirement of Wamba, nor in the epitome of Isidore
of Badajoz,[z] who wrote about seventy years after the time; in short,
there is no contemporary authority whatever for fixing so deep a stain
on the character of Ervigius. On the contrary, the three instruments
which he produced on his accession were acknowledged to be authentic:
the first, which was signed by the great officers of the palace, stated
the fact of the tonsure and habit being imposed; the second, which was
signed by Wamba himself, contained his renunciation of the crown in
favour of Ervigius; and the third was an injunction addressed by that
monarch to the metropolitan of Toledo to proceed with the coronation of
his appointed successor.

On the other hand, it may be contended with some appearance of reason
that the silence of St. Julian and of the fathers of the council is
sufficiently explicable: neither would wish to draw on themselves the
vengeance of the reigning king by giving utterance to their suspicions.
And as to the three instruments so carefully adduced, does not that
very care imply an apprehension on the part of him who took it that his
proceedings would be narrowly watched, his motives, perhaps, called in
question? Would innocence, which, like charity, never judges harshly,
or suspects, have taken such pains to furnish evidence so connected
and elaborate? Undue anxiety has often shot beyond its mark. Then
the subsequent conduct of Ervigius, which, as we shall soon see, is
censurable for something worse than imprudence, must naturally confirm
the suspicions of such as incline to the opinion of his guilt. On such a
subject, however, where certainty can never be expected, the wise will
hesitate to decide, and the good to condemn.[14]

ERVIGIUS AND ERGICA

[Sidenote: [680-687 A.D.]]

Having summoned a council at Toledo, the twelfth held in that city (680),
Ervigius had little difficulty in persuading the fathers to acknowledge
the authenticity of the three instruments he produced; and, consequently,
his claim to the Visigothic crown. They even showed a blind devotion to
his will in other respects, not very honourable to their characters,
nor respectful to the memory of an excellent prince. But, with all his
wily contrivances, Ervigius had the mortification to see the bulk of the
people still attached to their late sovereign. To make that sovereign
appear tyrannical, and to attach to his interests all who now justly
suffered for their participation in the rebellion of Paul, he summoned
the thirteenth council of Toledo, and requested the assembled prelates to
reverse the salutary measures of his predecessor. Accordingly, the first
canon restored to their ranks, possessions, and rights, all who had ever
taken arms against Wamba. Even yet Ervigius was apprehensive. He sent
for Ergica, the nephew[15] of Wamba; and offered that prince the hand of
his daughter, with the succession to the throne, on the condition that
the latter would swear to protect his family when he should be no more.
The proposal was eagerly accepted; the marriage was solemnised; and, on
the death of Ervigius, the crown of the Goths fell on the brows of the
son-in-law.

Gratitude is not always the virtue of princes. Scarcely was Ergica in
possession of the envied dignity, than he showed his hostility to the
memory of his benefactor. Resolving to use the same weapons as had been
employed by that king, he convoked the fifteenth council of Toledo to
aid his views of vengeance; he represented to the fathers the oath which
he had taken to protect the family of Ervigius, and how difficult it
was to be observed amidst the general complaints of his people against
the rapacity of that family. The supple ecclesiastics, who had long
lost sight of the independence of their vocation, and were become
the mere ministers of the monarch (in fact, the bishops were, _ex
officio_, ministers of the crown, in a state which has been truly called
theocratic), immediately declared that an unjust oath was not binding;
and that the king might punish or reward any of his subjects, the
relatives of Ervigius among the rest, as justice or equity dictated. In
consequence of this decree, Ergica is said to have punished with severity
the enemies of Wamba and his house--in other words, the partisans of
Ervigius; and even to have repudiated his wife, thus dissolving the only
remaining bond which connected him with the rival family.

[Sidenote: [687-709 A.D.]]

In the sixth year of his reign Ergica was afflicted with a rebellion,
which spread into Gothic Gaul. He had also engagements with the
Franks--probably connected with the conspiracy of Sisebert; but in none
did he obtain any advantage. A more formidable conspiracy was discovered
the following year. Notwithstanding the severity of the penal laws
against their nation, many Jews, though outwardly Christians, were
retained in the peninsula by the attractions of a lucrative commerce;
but their souls groaned within them under the oppressions they were made
to endure; and they were naturally eager to engage in any undertaking
which promised them toleration and revenge. On the present occasion they
were said to have secretly conspired with their brethren of Africa;
perhaps, too, with the Saracens, on whose arms they had long prayed
for success. To avert the threatened explosion, the king convened the
seventeenth council of Toledo, which decreed severe penalties against
the guilty. The eighth canon (_de Judæorum damnatione_) not only reduced
to perpetual slavery all the baptised Jews--and Spain had long suffered
no other--who relapsed, or who conspired against the state, but ordered
that, at seven years of age, their children should be taken from them,
and educated under the direction of approved Christians.[16] In 698
this king associated with him his son Witiza, and caused that prince to
be recognised as his successor. Witiza, to whom Galicia was confided,
established his court at Tuy; and thenceforth, to the death of Ergica,
the coins of the kingdom bore two royal heads, with the motto _Concordia
Regni_. The father died at Toledo in 702, leaving behind him a doubtful
reputation.[17]

WITIZA (702-709 A.D.)

Of Witiza we know little that is certain, but much that is apocryphal.
Over his character, his actions, and even his death, there rests a
cloud of uncertainty which will probably never be removed. It is,
however, agreed that in the beginning of his reign he evinced many great
qualities; that he redressed many grievances inflicted by his father;
that he restored their possessions and liberty to many who had been
unjustly deprived of both; and that he remitted the heavy arrears of
taxes due at his accession--nay, that, to prevent the possibility of
their being collected, he caused the books in which the names of the
defaulters were contained to be publicly burned. On the other hand,
we are told that he was addicted to the greatest luxury; that he took
many concubines, with whom he lived openly, in defiance of church
remonstrances; that in the indulgence of his brutal appetite he spared
neither the high nor the low, neither wife nor maiden; and that, to
stifle complaint, he published an edict by which he allowed all his
subjects, ecclesiastics no less than laymen, as many concubines as they
could obtain.

All this, however startling and improbable, may possibly be true.
Though not a word of it is to be found in the continuator of Joannis
Biclarensis,[ff] nor in the contemporary historian Isidorus Pacensis,[z]
the brevity of those writers, who do no more than chronicle, in the most
meagre terms, a few of the more striking facts, may perhaps account
for the omission. The vices too of Witiza are mentioned by the monk of
Moissiac,[hh] who wrote about one hundred years after the destruction of
Spain, and are alluded to by Sebastian of Salamanca,[v] who finished his
chronicle towards the close of the ninth century.[g]

The history of Witiza’s reputation is a model of the gentle art of
blackening a character, especially in the interests of a religious cause,
which can command the progressive aid of generations. Paquis[gg] tells
the story briefly, noting that “the further the historians are from
the time of Witiza, the more detailed become their recitals, and the
more severe their reprobation.” A century after his death the foreign
and anonymous writer of the _Chronicle of Moissiac_[hh] says that he
was addicted to extreme luxury. Nearly a century more, and the Spanish
Sebastian of Salamanca[v] broke out more strongly: “Witiza plunged into
odious debauches, lived in a cloud of women and concubines, and finally
to escape the censures of the priests dissolved the assemblies of the
bishops and braved the canons of the church; he even ordered the bishops
and priests to marry. His impieties caused the ruin of the Goths.”

Another chronicler[w] of the same time omits mention of the orgies and
the attack on the church, but accuses Witiza of killing the father of
the great Pelayo and of pursuing the famous hero himself. Two centuries
more, and the monk of Silos[ii] adds that Witiza put out the eyes of
a prince of whom he was jealous. Yet again two centuries, and Lucas
Tudensis[jj] discovers that, in addition to previously recorded crimes,
Witiza, fearing rebellion, disarmed every subject and tore down the walls
of every city but three; and that he chased from Toledo the bishop Julian
to place there his own son Oppas, besides mutilating the son of King
Cindasuinto. In fact, there was no Bishop Julian at that time; Oppas was
not Witiza’s son; and the son of Cindasuinto, of whom Witiza was said
to be jealous, must have been over eighty years old at the time, even
imagining him to have been the son.

About this time Roderic Ximenes,[kk] finding the old chronicles praising
Witiza as virtuous and the later condemning him as vicious, combined the
two by representing Witiza’s character as undergoing sudden degeneration
from its high beginnings. This patchwork mantle was long worn by Witiza
in the later histories of Morales,[u] Mariana,[q] Ferreras,[aa] and
Aschbach.[ll] More recent authorities have, however, inclined to discard
the evil side of Witiza’s reputation as a mere fiction of later writers
who hated him because he spared the Jews and resisted the church in some
things.

As a picturesque example of how closely allied to fiction is the
development of supposed history, the story of Witiza is of value. There
is much uncertainty as to his end. There seems to have been a rebellion,
and the power seems to have been divided with Roderic, who was called the
son of King Cindasuinto, but was more probably a descendant. The story
was told that Roderic finally, with the aid of Greek allies, captured
Witiza and put out his eyes; but of this the contemporary Isidorus
Pacensis[z] says no word. We can only be sure that Roderic reigned
supreme in 709. So fabulous is the fame of this Roderic, “the last of
the Goths,” that some historians have been tempted to deny that he ever
existed at all. Dahn[mm] calls him an historical phantom; and even less
credence is given to the famous romance of the lovely Florinda, to whose
virtues he showed no mercy, and whose father in revenge called in the
Arabs from Africa to the rich conquest lying at their very feet. This
romance, though so little credible, is so closely allied with the Moslem
conquest of Spain, that it may well be briefly told, especially as there
is nothing impossible or improbable in the main incidents, once the story
is rid of its miraculous fairy-story accretions, such as the enchanted
tower of Hercules, where Roderic found inscriptions prophesying the
coming Arab storm.[a]

THE FABLE OF RODERIC AND FLORINDA (709-711 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [709-711 A.D.]]

Among the ladies of King Roderic’s court, say the later chronicles of
Spain, there was one of uncommon beauty, named Florinda or La Cava,
the daughter or wife of one Doyllar or Don Illan, or Don Julian. She
had the misfortune to please the king; but as her virtue was equal to
her loveliness, she indignantly rejected his overtures. But kings, and
least of all Gothic kings, were not to be repulsed with impunity; and
Roderic accomplished by force what he could not do by persuasion. The
lady dissimulated her deadly hatred until she had an opportunity of
communicating her dishonour to her father, then absent against the Moors.

All on fire at the indignity done his child and house, the count resolved
on a revenge with which the whole earth should ring. He entered into a
compact with the misbelievers, engaging to put them in possession of
the whole country, if they would wash away his dishonour in the blood
of the foul ravisher. He wrapped his purpose in great secrecy until
he had rescued his daughter from the clutches of the king: he himself
fetched her from the court of Toledo, and behaved to Roderic with so
much courtesy that no one could suspect he knew of his wrong, much less
that he was about so fatally to avenge it. On his return to Ceuta, the
seat of his government, he found the Moors prepared for the expedition:
he openly joined them, accompanied the infidel general to Gibraltar, and
thus commenced the famous struggle which was to end in the subjugation of
a great nation.

The whole story of Florinda is evidently a romance--probably of Arabic
invention--similar to the many thousand others which formed the amusement
of the people in the Middle Ages. It is first mentioned by the monk
of Silos,[ii] who wrote about four hundred years after the Mohammedan
invasion. No doubt, however, can be entertained that Count Julian was
among the most influential and active of the conspirators who called the
Arabs into Spain.

The chivalric _Romance of Don Roderic_[nn]--about as good an authority
as the monk of Silos on such a subject--gives us a minute account of the
amour, its progress, and termination. From the whole conversation, as
given by this anonymous novelist, Roderic might be justified in believing
that the scruples of La Cava were not insuperable[18]--that, in fact,
she was willing in heart, but coy through maiden bashfulness. Even at
last, when she might have so easily alarmed the palace, she was silent
through fear of her cries reaching the ears of the queen. Count Julian’s
daughter is made a model of virtue by Southey, and Roderic himself is
represented as scarcely inferior.

VISIGOTHIC CIVILISATION

[Sidenote: [415-711 A.D.]]

The government of the Visigoths was, in appearance, an absolute
monarchy; yet the power of the chief was so restrained in its exercise
by the controlling influence of the prelates, that it might, with equal
propriety, be termed a theocracy. In the infancy of their office, the
Gothic kings were no less controlled by their nobles; they were, in
fact, but _primi inter pares_; they had no royal descent, no hereditary
honours, nor, indeed, much transmitted wealth, with which to captivate
or influence their rude companions. Every fierce chieftain considered
himself as good as his king, and might become one himself. His titles
were high-sounding: “Your Glory” was the most usual; though the epithets
of Pious, Conquering, etc., were often added. Recared was the first of
the Visigothic kings distinguished by the name of Flavius. Whether he
assumed it after the imperial family of that name, or from its reputed
Gothic signification, is unknown; but it continued to adorn the titles of
his successors. His father was also the first who surrounded the throne
with regal state, and whose effigy bore the impress of a crowned head.
The successors of that monarch improved on his magnificence: robes of
purple, thrones of silver, sceptres and crowns of gold, distinguished
them still more from the time of Cindasuinto.

Soon after the establishment of the Visigothic monarchy at Toledo, the
power of the crown seems to have been bounded by two restrictions only:
(1) The king could not condemn without legal trial, but he had power to
soften the rigour of severe justice or entirely absolve the delinquents
brought before his tribunals; (2) the second restriction related to the
decrees of king, which were received as binding during his life; but
which had no force in perpetuity, unless sanctioned at the same time by
the signatures of the bishops and barons in council assembled. In other
respects he was unshackled. He could make war or peace at pleasure; he
could issue proclamations which had the force of law, subject to the
restriction just mentioned; he commanded in the field, and presided in
the court of justice. The jurisdiction of the king was not confined to
affairs purely temporal. He could issue general regulations relating to
the maintenance of discipline, or the interests of religion. He could
preside in tribunals of appeal, even in affairs purely ecclesiastical.
The king nominated to all vacant bishoprics, and even translated from
one see to another; but this prerogative was very gradually acquired.
The fourth and last ecclesiastical prerogative of the king was that of
convoking national councils, and of confirming them by his authority. He
was thus, in the widest sense, in a degree unknown among other Catholic
nations, the protector of the church. In consequence, the bishops became
courtiers, and generally submissive to the royal will; and even the
fathers of the Toledan councils were swayed by fear, or by the hope of
gaining favour.

In other respects the king was invested by the laws with much outward
reverence. Whoever conspired against his life was punished with death;
or if the capital penalty was remitted, the delinquent was blinded,
shaven, and doomed to perpetual confinement. He who even affronted the
king was, if rich, mulcted in half his possessions; if poor, he remained
at the monarch’s disposal. Whoever defamed the character of a dead king,
was punished with fifty stripes. Yet, with all this studied respect, no
monarchs were ever so unfortunate as those of the Visigoths--none whose
empire, liberty, or even life, was so insecure. From Atawulf to Roderic,
the greater number were assassinated or deposed.

We cannot fail to be struck with the national pride of the Goths: they
alone were styled _nobiles_, while the rest of the community were
_viliores_. Under the latter humiliating term were included not merely
_servi_ and _liberti_, or slaves or freedmen, but even the _ingenui_,
or free-born, whatever might be their wealth or consideration; and, to
preserve the privileged caste uncontaminated, marriages were rigorously
forbidden between the victors and the vanquished, until Recesuinto
abolished the prohibition. Not only was the slave who presumed to marry a
free woman put to death, but the free woman, who either married or sinned
with a slave, was burned at the stake with him. Again, the relative
importance of the three classes, nobles, freemen, and slaves, was
carefully graduated by the laws. For the same crime a greater punishment
was awarded to the second than the first, and to the third than the