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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 Procopiuso 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).
Toledo
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 (Sebastianv of Salamanca, and the anonymous monk of Albeldaw) 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]