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.
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]
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. Paquisgg 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 Moissiachh says that he was addicted to extreme luxury. Nearly a century more, and the Spanish Sebastian of Salamancav 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 chroniclerw 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 Silosii adds that Witiza put out the eyes of a prince of whom he was jealous. Yet again two centuries, and Lucas Tudensisjj 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 Pacensisz 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. Dahnmm 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
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 Rodericnn—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.
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 second. If from the civil we pass to the military state of the country, we shall find that the Goths were one vast nation of soldiers, the words soldier and man being considered almost as synonymous. The obligation of service was imperative on all freemen; nor were the sons of the king admitted to his table until they had made their essay in arms. Slaves were also admitted to join the levies, since every owner was required to take with him to the field one-tenth of the number he possessed. All Goths capable of bearing arms, whether lay or clerical, were subject to military duty; and heavy were the penalties with which he was visited who absented or hid himself to escape the conscription.
Matrimony, the last of the sacraments mentioned in the Visigothic canons, was considered of unrivalled importance among a people so tenacious of their privileges, and so jealous of the purity of their blood. As before observed, marriages between the victors and the vanquished were rigorously prohibited, until Recesuinto repealed the obnoxious law. The damsel could not give her hand to anyone, unless he were not merely approved, but selected for her, by her parents; or, if an orphan, by her natural guardians; and, if she married contrary to their wishes, she not only forfeited all right to her share of her future prosperity, but both she and her husband became slaves—the slaves of the man for whom her relatives had intended her. The dowry was given by the bridegroom, not by the guardians of the bride, and was carefully preserved by them. The impediments to matrimony were numerous. (1) The male was always to have the advantage of years over the female. (2) He or she who had been betrothed to anyone could not marry another before the expiration of two years; if this prohibition was disregarded, slavery was the doom of both. (3) He who forced a woman could not marry her. (4) If a Christian married a Hebrew, both were banished to different places. (5) The monastic orders, public or devotional penitents, virgins veiled and vowed, were naturally excluded from this sacrament; so also were kindred to the sixth degree.
A married couple could at any time separate by mutual agreement; but they could not return to each other, much less remarry. It was only in case of adultery, or when the husband committed the most abominable of sins, or when he wished his wife to commit adultery, that the vinculum matrimonii was declared forever dissolved, and she was at liberty to marry another man. Adultery was reputed so enormous a crime among the Visigoths, that the person who committed it became the slave of the injured partner. If a husband caught his wife in flagrante delicto, he could, with perfect impunity, destroy both her and her paramour—a permission of which a modern Spaniard would not be slow to avail himself. When the actual guilt was not witnessed, every means, not excepting tortures, were used to arrive at its knowledge.
Under the Goths, Spain was no more exempt from heresies than she had been under the Romans. The first is that of Nestorius, respecting the mysterious union of the divine and human natures in Christ; but it was speedily repressed. The Manichæans and Priscillianists were not more successful; both Arians and Catholics united in banishing them: extirpation was reserved for later times. After the accession of Recared, when the Catholic religion became the only one in Spain, severe penalties were decreed against all who presumed to differ from the established faith. In the reign of Chintella, and in a council held at Toledo (the sixth), a decree was made that thenceforth none but Catholics should be allowed to remain in the country; and all succeeding kings were to swear that the Jews, the only misbelievers remaining, should not be tolerated.
By a subsequent law this odious intolerance was more clearly and fatally defined. Under the penalty of confiscation of property and perpetual banishment, it prohibited all men, of whatever condition, whether natives or resident foreigners, ever to call in question, either in public or private, the holy Catholic and apostolic faith, the evangelic institutions, the definitions of the fathers, the decrees of the church, whether ancient or recent, the sacraments, or anything whatever which that church held as holy. After these decrees the poor Jews could expect little mercy; they had never, indeed, enjoyed much security since the Roman domination. Sisibut, Sisenando, Chintella, Cindasuinto, Recesuinto, Wamba, and Ervigius were the most eager rivals in the race of persecution. They decreed that the Jews should be baptised; that such as were baptised should not be allowed to have Christian servants; that they should observe Easter Sunday according to the Christian rite; that they should respect the matrimonial impediments already noticed; that they should eat whatever Christians ate, however solemnly forbidden in their own law; that they should neither read nor receive into their houses any book contrary to the Christian religion; that they should not be admissible to any civil offices; that their evidence should not be received in a court of justice, unless ample testimony were borne to their moral habits; that when travelling they should make their confession of faith, and exhibit an episcopal passport at every town they entered; that they should spend every Sunday in company with Christians, who should then witness their devotions; and that they should always be present whenever the catechism was repeated or expounded.
But as, in spite of all these tyrannical measures, the sincerity, if not the conduct of the forced converts, was naturally suspicious, two successive confessions of faith, expressed in the most awful terms, were framed for them. In these confessions they were compelled to swear, in the most solemn and public manner, by the great Incommunicable Name and Attributes, that they utterly abhorred, and from their souls forever renounced, all the rites, ceremonies, customs, and solemnities they had previously respected and observed; that they would thenceforward live in the most holy faith of Christ, their Creator and Redeemer; that they would observe all the rites of God’s church, and shun even the most distant form of intercourse with Jews. This oppressed nation was, in the sequel, righteously revenged. Who can blame the readiness with which they received the Mohammedans, and the zeal with which they endeavoured to overthrow the most accursed government that ever existed in Europe.g
Spain, with its fertile soil, its varied climate, its noble rivers, its extensive seaboard, its inexhaustible mines, and its hardy and frugal population, was the richest inheritance of the Gothic race. Yet, after three centuries of undisputed enjoyment, their rule was overthrown at once and forever by a handful of marauders from Africa. The Goth had neglected all his opportunities, despised all his advantages, heeded no warnings. He had been weighed in the balance and found wanting; and his kingdom was taken from him—for he had shown himself unfit for power.
Of all the various systems of government that have been attempted on this earth, theocracy, or more properly hierocracy, is undoubtedly one of the very worst. And in all circumstances and conditions where the priest and the confessor usurp the authority that properly belongs to the magistrate and to the man, disaster is the inevitable result. From the death of Recared to the death of Roderic, the government of Spain was a theocracy, tempered by revolution. At the opening of the eighth century, Spain had no industry, no commerce, no arms. Not even letters had survived. For the Catholic church discouraged, if it did not actually prohibit, the study of polite literature. Virgil and Homer, Tacitus and Livy, were pagans and atheists, and their works were unprofitable and impious. The study of natural science or of medicine, the development of manufactures or of industry, the cultivation of the arts—these were equally unedifying to the devout Catholic. That sublime manifestation of “poetry in stone,” so strangely called Gothic architecture, is not only not Visigothic, but it was unknown in Spain for over four hundred years after the destruction of the Goths. And although the great province is still covered with the glorious remains of Roman constructive art, there is scarcely found trace or fragment of the rude architecture of the Visigoths to tell of their dominion in the peninsula.
When Atawulf first crossed the Pyrenees at the head of the Visigoths, Latin was already the language of the Roman diocese. When Roderic threw away his crown on the banks of the Guadalete, Latin was still the language of the Visigothic kingdom. The Goth had been absorbed by the Roman. But a nation without a national language is doomed; a state without a state language is dead. Latin was the mother-tongue of the Romish church of Spain; but the Visigothic state was speechless. The kingdom, like Wamba, had been shorn and habited by the ecclesiastical power, and the kingdom, like the king, disappeared at the touch of the aggressor.j
[1] Aristotle shows more credulity than philosophy when he makes the Phœnicians acquire at Tarifa (then Tartessus) a quantity of silver so prodigious that the ships could not carry it; and says that their anchors and commonest implements were of the same metal. The exaggeration only proves, perhaps, the abundance of silver in the country.
[2] Polybiuse says that he was murdered one night in his tent by a certain Gaul, in revenge of some private injury. The variation in the account is exceedingly slight.
[3] For an interesting account of this siege, the reader is referred to Livy.f It is improbable, however, that the destruction was so universal as is affirmed. Polybiusg says it was stormed and plundered; but he makes no mention of the conflagration or the self-immolation.
[4] [“Matres quoque necatis vel actis per se natorum suorum sint pastæ corporibus,” according to old Idatius,i but this statement always accompanies stories of famine.]
[5] [The etymology of this name has been disputed, some claiming with Casirik and Gibbonl that it comes from the Arabic Hondalusia, “the region of the West”; but Condé,m Hume,d Burkej and the general majority prefer the Vandalusian theory.]
[6] Of course the death of Gunderic was the work of the offended saint. He was struck dead on the threshold, says one account; he died after securing the plunder, says another. Both agree that he was carried away by the devil. Idatiusi says: “Gundericus Rex Vandalorum, capta Hispali, cum impie elatus manus in ecclesiam civitatis ipsius extendisset, mox Dei judicio dæmone correptus, interiit.”
[7] Jordanesy extends the reign of Torismond to more than three years; the authority of the bishop Idatiusi, who was a contemporary, is to be preferred. From the same prelate the death of the king appears not to have been wholly unprovoked: he had probably meditated as much towards his brothers, who seem to have acted from self-defence. “Thorismo rex Gothorum spirans hostilia in Theodorico et Frederico patribus jugulatur,” are the meagre words of Idiatus. Of this catastrophe Jordanesy gives a different account.
[8] [This has been called a “fifth century crusade” and “the first religious war of Europe.”]
[9] [The single combat between Alaric and Clovis, the miraculous fall of the walls of Angoulême, and other circumstances related by Gregory of Toursn render his authority in these wars of little weight in any case, unless supported by other testimony, as that of Procopiuso and St. Isidore.p Burkej calls this battle “the foundation of the Frankish Kingdom of France and the origin of the Gothic Kingdom of Spain.”]
[10] See Marianaq and above all, Masdeu,r who base their defence on the praises bestowed on the princess by her contemporaries, as Gregory of Tours,n and on the silence of contemporary writers as to the crimes reported to have been committed by her. Both charity and chivalry would induce us to take part with the Spanish historians in favour of a lady, did they not attempt to conceal her real frailties (of crimes she was probably guiltless), and raise a weak, in some respects an imprudent woman into a saint. That she was undeserving the severe censures of Baroniusx is more than probable; but we must agree with Montesquieuf that the queen, daughter, sister, and mother of so many kings would never have been permitted to sustain the torments she did, had she not forfeited, in some way or other, the favour of a whole nation.
[11] Ermenigild was not canonised until the pontificate of Sixtus V, towards the close of the sixteenth century. One of his bones is preserved as a holy relic in the church of Saragossa.
[12] Morales,u fell, he says, into the water at Port St. Martin, enveloped in his cloak. As he could not swim, he called on God and “his glorious saint” for his soul’s salvation, being hopeless of bodily safety. He had sunk twice, when a sailor from an adjoining vessel stretched out a pole on which he laid hold, and was thereby extricated from death. On measuring the pole afterwards, he found it so short that it could not reach the water! No doubt the saint had lengthened it, and when its service was done, permitted it to regain its natural dimension. He assures us that he could enumerate many mercies vouchsafed to him “through the intercession of this holy prince.” In honour of his patron this author has a poem in Latin hexameters, equal in extent to a book of the Æneid.
[13] [Yet Burkej says, “If Recared is called the first of the Catholics, Leuvigild may fairly be styled the last of the Visigoths in Spain.”]
[14] [Among modern historians few feel any doubt of the guilt of Ervigius or Erwig. Among those who believe he administered the sleeping draught may be named Mariana,q Ferreras,aa Hume,d and Burke.j But the caution expressed above by Dunhamg and by Masdeur should modify the certainty of opinion.]
[16] [The unending torments the Jews endured in Spain are described in detail in the work of Amador de los Ríos.bb]