IV. THE VISIGOTHIC MONARCHY
507–712
Origin and Character of the Goths--Their Invasion of the Peninsula--Power of the Clergy--Ecclesiastical Councils--The Jews--The Visigothic Code--Profound Wisdom of Its Enactments--Provisions against Fraud and Injustice--Severe Penalties--Its Definition of the Law--Condition of the Mechanical Arts--Architecture--Byzantine Influence--Manufactures--Votive Crowns--Agriculture--Literature--Medicine--Slave Labor--Imitation of Roman Customs--Parallel between the Goths and the Arabs--Coincidence of Sentiments and Habits--Causes of National Decline--Permanent Influence of the Gothic Polity.
Among the countless hordes of barbarians who in the third and fourth centuries overran the provinces of the Roman Empire, and insulted the majesty of the sovereigns of the East, none were so pre-eminently distinguished for valor, loyalty, generosity, and chastity as the Goths. From the third century, when the luxurious tastes of Rome impelled adventurous traders to penetrate to the shores of the Baltic in search of amber, to the establishment of an independent monarchy in Italy by Theodoric in the fifth, their name was familiar to Europe--now suggestive of a bulwark of the tottering throne of Byzantium, and again, as a synonym of murder, pillage, and devastation. Of towering stature and fierce aspect, their forms were cast in the gigantic proportions which pagan mythology loved to attribute to its gods and heroes. Their habitations were situated in the depths of gloomy forests, on the banks of deep and rapid streams, or were surrounded by marshes, over whose treacherous and yielding surface a winding pathway usually led to a remote and well defended stronghold. Like all people whose intellectual development had scarcely begun, they believed implicitly in omens, auguries, signs, and dreams; their religious ideas were vague and ill defined; and neither history nor tradition has preserved for us the appellation or attributes of a single Gothic divinity. At their banquets, defiled by drunken orgies, and not infrequently the scenes of violence and even homicide, were celebrated, in uncouth ballads, the exploits of the famous warriors of the nation. Their very name, indicative of the superiority which their prowess never failed to exact, signified The Nobly Born. Without literature, save a fragmentary translation of the Bible, without government, save the dominion of some chieftain who, covetous of renown, temporarily enjoyed the precarious title of sovereign, eager for change, the most reckless of gamesters, the most pitiless of conquerors, destruction was with them a passion, and war an amusement. In common with other barbarians, with whom the ignorance and fears of the age have confounded them, they claimed and exercised, to the utmost, the privileges of individual dignity and personal freedom. An arbitrary classification, dependent upon a fortuitous geographical distribution, had divided this people into Ostrogoths and Visigoths, according to their relative location upon the eastern and western banks of the river Borysthenes. The pressure from the north, which had dispersed the tribes of the forests of Germany and Pannonia over the European provinces of the Roman Empire, had induced the Visigoths, by necessity or choice, to seek a home in Gaul, which country they occupied in common with the Vandals, the Suevi, the Alani, and other more obscure, but not less formidable, barbarians; and scarcely had the division of the empire between Arcadius and Honorius been effected in the first years of the fifth century, when the inhabitants of Spain, either through treason or from the negligence of the garrisons stationed in the passes of the Pyrenees, were overwhelmed by a deluge of savage marauders.
For four hundred years, the beautiful, the rich, the fertile and densely populated Peninsula had enjoyed the inestimable blessings of peace. With the defeat and death of the sons of Pompey, the last vestige of civil war and intestine discord had disappeared from its borders. Its fields were cultivated with assiduous care; its seaports were thronged with the shipping of the Mediterranean; the manufacturing interests of its inland cities were diversified and important. Its people, who had inherited from Rome and Carthage that love of pleasure which was at once their boast and their disgrace, with Epicurean unconcern, lived only for the present, in the participation of all the luxury which boundless wealth and national prosperity could bestow. Upon this earthly paradise--with its splendid cities, its sumptuous villas, its majestic souvenirs of Roman greatness, its traditions of heroic achievement and maritime adventure; where Hannibal had gained his boyhood’s laurels, and Cæsar, moved by the sight of Alexander’s statue, had first aspired to the dominion of the world--now descended the brutal and licentious plunderers of the North. The excesses perpetrated by them in other provinces of the empire were trivial when compared with the havoc they committed in Iberia. No considerations of public policy, no sentiments of mercy, interposed to mitigate the calamities which befell the smiling plains of the Anas, the Iberus, and the Bætis. Such of the inhabitants as were fortunate enough to find an asylum behind the walls of fortified cities, soon paid for their temporary security with the pangs of famine. The growing crops, delivered to the torch, left to-day a blackened waste where only yesterday had been every promise of an abundant harvest. A smoky pall, appropriate symbol of destruction, overhung the sites of prosperous hamlets and marble villas, where a few smouldering embers alone indicated the former abode of taste and opulence. Heaps of corpses, denied the rites of sepulture, covered the land, which was infested with incredible numbers of wolves and birds of prey, attracted from every side to their loathsome and inexhaustible repast. A feeling of utter despair fell upon the survivors; the instincts of humanity and the feelings of nature were suspended or destroyed; men murdered their families and then committed suicide; women devoured their offspring; exposure, want, suffering, and anxiety produced their inevitable consequences; and the crowning misfortune, the pestilence, daily claimed its victims by thousands. The savage masters of the country, satiated with rapine and mutually jealous of power, now began to quarrel with each other. In the contests which ensued, almost from the first, the superior organization and martial genius of the Goths acquired for them the acknowledged supremacy over their adversaries--a supremacy which soon became coextensive with the Peninsula and laid the foundations of an extensive kingdom. Early in the fifth century the extermination, expulsion, or absorption by intermarriage, of the various tribes, and the emigration of the Vandals, in a body, to Africa, gave the control of the entire country, with the exception of a few seaports still tributary to Constantinople, to the Visigoths. In political organization, in nomenclature, in the construction and in the application of the maxims of jurisprudence, in the election of their rulers, in the punishment of criminals, in the regulation of their amusements, they observed the traditions and honored the observances of their old homes on the Vistula and the Baltic. The accident of conversion, a matter of indifference to the majority of the nation, and one, in this instance, partially dependent upon policy, had made them Arians, and consequently heretics. The Gothic Church, in its independence of the See of Rome, while it honored the Supreme Pontiff, and recognized, to a certain extent, the religious supremacy of the Papacy, presented an anomaly in the Christian world. The monarch chosen for his wisdom or his bravery had not as yet assumed the exterior insignia of royalty, and the laws held him to a strict accountability for the lives and property of his subjects, but in ecclesiastical affairs his authority was undisputed and supreme. He convoked at his pleasure and presided over the national councils--assemblies originally composed entirely of the clergy, and in which, at all times, the theocratical element largely preponderated; he published encyclical letters; he possessed the power of revising the decrees of councils before their adoption and promulgation; and his wishes and suggestions were received with a respect surpassing that usually accorded by his haughty vassals to the majesty of the throne. The clergy were in fact absolutely dependent upon the sovereign; their immunities were subject to his will or his caprice; and, far from enjoying the exemption they obtained in after times by reason of their sacred office and superior sanctity, they were liable to taxation, and amenable to punishment for the violation of the laws as strictly as were the laity. Not only were these restrictions imposed upon them, but the interests of the secular portion of the community were carefully guarded against the possible encroachments of ecclesiastical tyranny; the judges were particularly enjoined to scrutinize the conduct of the priesthood; and instances were by no means rare where heavy fines were imposed upon them for acts of injustice and for the oppression of their parishioners. From the decision of every bishop and metropolitan an appeal lay to the throne, a privilege conceded. to the meanest peasant; the king could suspend or abrogate the rules of ecclesiastical discipline; no canon was valid without his sanction; and he assumed the rights of nominating, and of translating from one see to another, the greatest prelates of the Church. But as assemblies of men who possess a monopoly of the learning and worldly wisdom of a nation, conscious of mental superiority and incited by motives of ambition, are never satisfied with acting in a subordinate capacity; the ecclesiastical councils of Spain almost imperceptibly, but none the less surely, began to encroach upon the royal prerogative, and, assisted by the weakness or gratitude of princes whose titles had been assured by their confirmation, aimed at the seizure of absolute power. By the institution of the rite of anointing, which imparted a sacred character to the monarch, and invested in them an implied control over his coronation--a rite first used in Spain and not adopted in France till the reign of Pepin, in the eighth century; by the framing of laws favorable to their order, and whose essential provisions were carefully disguised under the specious name of enactments for the public welfare; by a command of a majority of the votes which elected the sovereign; and lastly, by the conversion of the whole nation to the doctrines of the orthodox faith; the Gothic clergy advanced unswervingly towards the establishment of their claim to political supremacy. The Third Council of Toledo was the first of these important convocations in which questions relating to the settlement of the constitution of the Gothic monarchy were debated and settled. From this time until the meeting of the Eighth Council in 653, the palatines did not participate in the deliberations of these assemblies, which now began to assume the appearance of legislative bodies, in which the aims of exclusive ecclesiastical representation were already clearly disclosed by the partiality and exemptions which characterized the canons treating of the rights and privileges of the priesthood. After the middle of the seventh century, although the nobles were admitted as members of the national councils and took part in their discussions, the influence of the clergy became paramount, and the duties of the nobility were confined to a passive assent to, and registration of, their edicts. A separate tribunal for the final adjudication of all disputed points of doctrine which might incidentally arise in the ordinary administration of justice was granted to ecclesiastics; the latter were prohibited from engaging in commerce, which the poverty of the Church had formerly rendered necessary; it became customary to select bishops for the negotiation of treaties, and for the direction of military embassies which were invested with the all-important powers of peace and war; the councils occasionally claimed jurisdiction over secular causes--an unwarranted assumption of power which the indifference or bigotry of the sovereign usually failed to resent; and the intolerant character of the canons treating of heresy indicate, but too plainly, the growing spirit of persecution--the germ of future inquisitorial atrocities.
But, notwithstanding the acceptance of Catholicism, and the consequent advance towards the enjoyment of absolute independence, the Church was hampered by many serious restrictions. Bishops, clerks, and monks remained subordinate to the secular arm and responsible to the courts of the realm; they could not, with impunity, disregard their processes, still less defy their authority; and the commission of crime rendered them liable to heavy fines and long terms of imprisonment; although, like the nobility, they could not be subjected to the punishments inflicted upon the lower orders, such as scourging and branding--the latter being considered especially infamous. The immunity which subsequently attached to the character of the clergy as non-combatants was not known to the founders of the Gothic monarchy. When a city was besieged or the country threatened with invasion, every subject, regardless of his profession, was obliged to serve in the army, and no ecclesiastic could plead his sacred office in bar of military duty to his sovereign, under penalty of confiscation and exile; the tonsure was regarded as of peculiar significance and sanctity, and any one whose locks had once been shorn, or who had assumed the clerical habit, was henceforth excluded, as a rule, from all military and civil employments, and consecrated for life to the service of the cloister; a law which, when abused by fraud or ignorance, was more than once productive of important results, and even of changes in the royal succession. Upon the whole, however, the influence of the Church in those days of intellectual darkness was highly beneficial. Its monopoly of the scanty wisdom of the time was often employed for the protection of the oppressed, for the alleviation of suffering, for the frustration of tyranny, for the consolation of death. The bishop stood as a guard between the helpless peasant and the unjust judge; his mediation with the throne, in cases of flagrant injury, was not optional but mandatory; and his official conduct was subject to the constant supervision, and was liable to the censure, of the magistrate. The ambition and political aspirations of the clergy, joined to their insatiable greed of dominion, which increased with each successive encroachment upon the civil power, with the daily accumulation of wealth, and the acquisition of extensive estates by gift, extortion, bequest, or purchase, disclosed themselves in time in their legitimate consequence, religious intolerance. The Arian Church in Spain never disgraced its rule by persecution for differences of opinion. With the acceptance of the orthodox belief in the sixth century, however, the spirit of vindictive malevolence,--which has always animated and directed the genius of Catholicism when in the ascendant, at once infected the counsels of the ecclesiastical tribunals, and indirectly, through their influence and example, the decisions of the courts of law. The coronation oath rendered obligatory the expulsion of all heretics without consideration of birth, position, or previous service to the state. The Jews, in whom were vested the most important offices, and who possessed the bulk of the wealth of the kingdom, were banished, imprisoned, plundered, or burnt; and while it is true that the severity of the laws against this sect defeated, erelong, the object of their enactment, even their partial enforcement was the cause of great and wide-spread suffering. With the consciousness of power came the increase of pomp and the desire for prohibited enjoyments and indulgence in carnal pleasures wholly inconsistent with the observance of the vows of poverty and chastity as well as contrary to the rules of ecclesiastical discipline. The canons enacted from time to time by the councils, and whose provisions were designed to impose restraints upon the irregular conduct of the clergy, show, more conclusively than the pages of any chronicle, the lax morality and deplorable condition of the religious society of that age. Stringent regulations were adopted against the acceptance of bribes as the price of exemption from persecution--especially referring to the Jews--a proof that the zealous protestations of the clerical order could not withstand the pecuniary arguments of the astute Hebrew; while the censures fulminated against priests and monks who abused the privileges of the confessional, or violated nature in the commission of revolting crimes, indicate the secret and universal corruption which had already begun to pollute the sacred offices of the Church and impair the usefulness of its ministers. The Eighteenth Council of Toledo, at the dictation of King Witiza, whose profligate conduct and contempt for religion had aroused the horror of Christendom and provoked the anathemas of the Pope, had, with unexampled servility, passed laws authorizing the marriage of ecclesiastics, the institution of polygamy, and the practice of promiscuous concubinage. Under these conditions of sacerdotal degradation, sanctioned by custom and established by law, the influence of the Church was everywhere diminished; the faith of men in the existing religion was weakened; and the public mind was insensibly prepared for the new revelation which, appealing to the strongest passions of the human breast, stripped of metaphysical distinctions, and inculcating moral precepts such as the most skeptical and dissolute must applaud, was soon to be published to the discontented and priest-ridden subjects of the Gothic empire. The ill-defined powers of the Crown and the Mitre, at first reciprocally dependent, led eventually to a clashing of interests and a struggle for precedence between the royal and the sacerdotal authority, in which the clergy, though their aspirations were occasionally checked by some monarch of stern and decided character, in the end invariably obtained the advantage. The dependence of the sovereign upon the priesthood was never lost sight of. No occasion which might remind him of the obligation he owed to the order whose suffrages had conferred, and might, with equal facility, resume possession of his crown, was suffered to pass unimproved. The anointing with holy oil, which symbolized the right of divine consecration, had already forged another link in the chain which bound the king to the Church. The anathemas denounced upon a prince for failure to execute the laws against heretics, far exceeded in virulence those to which any subject was liable. At one time, the wishes of the sovereign were anticipated by the subserviency of the prelates; at another, his prerogative was invaded and his commands disobeyed with an arrogance worthy of the imperious spirit of Julius II. or of Gregory the Great. The populace, through ignorance, prejudice, and habit, blindly devoted to the sacerdotal order, furnished a formidable body of auxiliaries, ever ready to hearken to the appeals of their ghostly advisers, a force which the dignity and assurance of the haughtiest ruler could not with impunity disregard. The turbulent and illiterate nobility, although the king was selected from their number by the voices of the assembled bishops--in which ceremony the concurrence of the palatines was admitted, in reality, only through courtesy--possessed, in the practical application of the precepts of the Gothic constitution, scarcely the shadow, still less the substance, of power. The council was the embodiment and representative of the intellect and the collective wisdom of the nation. Its canons were, for the most part, framed in strict accordance with the principles of equity, and the deliberations and conclusions of its sessions were often characterized by a breadth of understanding and a degree of impartiality which clearly indicated that its members were not deficient in the knowledge and requirements of enlightened statesmanship. The results of their labors are contained in the Gothic Code, a body of laws remarkable in many respects, when we consider the general illiteracy and ignorance of the age in which it was compiled, and its transcendent importance as the prototype of the systems of jurisprudence which now regulate the civil and criminal procedure of the courts of Europe and America. In the extraordinary minuteness of its details, in its thorough and comprehensive treatment of the manifold transactions of daily life, and in its provisions for almost every contingency which could arise in the administration of the sovereigns under whose auspices it was framed, this extraordinary work presents the modern legislator with a subject eminently worthy of his attention and study. The contact with races which had long enjoyed the blessings of civilization, and the development of the intellectual faculties consequent upon the experience obtained in frequent expeditions and protracted campaigns, imperceptibly modified the ancient laws of the Goths; the very essence of which was, from the first, and long continued to be, the assertion of the principle of personal liberty. Rome, whose toleration of the religious prejudices and customs of the nations subjected to her dominion--so long as they did not conflict with her interests or contravene her authority--was one great secret of her power, had, in accordance with that policy, indulged the Iberians in the use of their own laws, and only those who enjoyed the privileges of citizenship could be summoned before the tribunal of the imperial magistrate. The incursions of the barbarians had abolished every restraint, and transformed the previous quiet and peaceful condition of the Peninsula into a state of anarchy. There was then no law but the will of the chieftain, who was inclined to encourage, rather than to repress, the excesses of a brutalized soldiery. All records and muniments of title had disappeared; boundaries had ceased to exist; the tenure of lands was entirely dependent upon the numerical strength of the claimants; and when the fields of one district were exhausted, the discontented settlers sought a new residence in another locality, whose wealth had excited their avarice, and the inferior military resources of whose occupants rendered the retention of their possessions uncertain. The cessation of hostilities was always accompanied with the plunder and impoverishment of the vanquished; no treaty was valid, because no moral obligation, or superior power by which it could be enforced, existed; every vice was committed with impunity; every grudge was satisfied with all the abuse of unrestricted license; the caprice of the military commander had supplanted the precedents of the prætor, and the sword had become the only acknowledged arbiter of every controversy.
During the reign of Euric, in the year 479, was codified and published the first book of Gothic law, the basis of the subsequent complex and exhaustive system of jurisprudence which increased in size, and gathered reverence and authority with the reign of each succeeding sovereign. It was known as the Forum Judicum, or the Book of Judges, and consisted mainly of a compilation of the rules applicable to the various customs and ordeals, which had been approved by time and experience as beneficial in the administration of the government of the Gothic nation, combined with such maxims of Roman law as had gradually been absorbed through frequent association with the courts and magistrates of the empire. The new rights and duties arising from the acceptance by the Goths of the orthodox belief in the latter half of the sixth century, necessitated a revision of the existing laws and the formulation of another code of far more extensive scope than the one which already existed. By certain provisions of the former the constitution of the Iberian church was definitely established and the predominance of the clergy in secular matters assured; measures of portentous significance, whose evil effects upon the intelligence and prosperity of the Spanish people are discernible even in our day. From the date of its adoption and promulgation, the inhabitants of the Peninsula were, without exception, declared subject to its statutes. From this time dates the absolute supremacy of the Church in the Peninsula. The hold which it then obtained upon temporal affairs it has never relaxed. The awful consequences of that supremacy upon all classes and conditions of men owing allegiance to the Spanish crown are familiar to every reader of history.
The Visigothic Code exhibited, in the restrictions it imposed upon the royal prerogative, that spirit of jealous independence always conspicuous in the character of the German warrior, and which had been preserved through many centuries by the importance that distinguished the privileged orders under an elective monarchy. The king, who, at first, had been liable to censure and judgment by his subjects, was informed, when invested with his office, that even its dignity could not exempt him from the obligation to observe the law, a principle of justice and equality which he shared with every resident in his dominions. The authority of the turbulent and illiterate nobles, who, with all the arrogance of power, did not hesitate to threaten and insult the creature of their choice, was curbed in time by the potent yet gentle influence of the clergy, whose learning and talents at first swayed, and finally absolutely controlled, the deliberations of the National Councils. The high rank of the prelates, their superior accomplishments in an age of universal ignorance, and their claims as members of an independent hierarchy, which even the Supreme Pontiff himself scarcely ventured to contradict, in the end communicated to the Visigothic constitution all the worst characteristics of an irresponsible and intolerant theocracy.
The Forum Judicum consists of twelve books, which not only define the rights of the different classes of society, but prescribe at length, and in copious detail, the mode of procedure to be followed in the various tribunals. Every precaution which ingenuity could devise was adopted to insure the fidelity, the honesty, and the impartiality of the magistrate, whether of the civil or the ecclesiastical order. It was the duty of the judge to observe and report upon the decisions of the bishop and the priest, while, on the other hand, the higher clergy possessed, under certain contingencies, the power of examining causes and rendering judgment when the proper official had refused or neglected to exercise his judicial functions, and the interests of either of the parties litigant were exposed to injury in consequence. The courts were open from dawn to dark, and the period of vacation and the hours of rest were strictly regulated by law. The trial of causes could not be delayed except for valid reasons; the speedy rendition of judgment was compulsory; the procrastination, injustice, or corruption of the judge was punished by a fine amounting to double the loss incurred, and when the circumstances were peculiarly aggravating his property was confiscated and he was publicly sold as a slave. No person, however indigent, was debarred, for that reason, from the benefits of justice, and a fund was set apart in every town for the support of impecunious litigants, which was disbursed by the municipal government with the approval of the bishop. An appeal from the decisions of the inferior tribunals was granted as a matter of unquestionable right, and the slightest suspicion of interference by the throne in the proceedings rendered them invalid and worthless. The ceremonies relating to the administration of the law were characterized by great simplicity, and the pleadings were divested of unnecessary verbiage. The highest reverence for the officers of the crown was inculcated and enforced; and a resort to litigation was persistently discouraged by public opinion, excepting where it was imperatively demanded by the interests of justice. In the rules of evidence, as well as in their application, traces of the deeply rooted superstitions of the Teutonic barbarians still remained. The ordeals of fire and water were not infrequently adopted. The wager of battle could not be refused, without ignominy; and the oaths of compurgators were, at times, invoked to restore the lustre of some tarnished escutcheon, or to remove the stain attaching to a suspected violation of female honor. Torture was allowed, but excessive severity in its application was prohibited, and, in case of death or permanent injury resulting from its abuse, the judge was liable to forfeiture both of his possessions and his liberty. In determining the competency of testimony, an unwise and unjust discrimination was made against the poor, through the unwarrantable presumption of temptation to bribery, and this exclusion also applied to Jews--even though apostates--as well as to their descendants, and to slaves. The crime of perjury was mentioned with horror; its commission was deemed worthy of the severest punishment; and the false witness, visited with public execration, was condemned to life-long servitude. In general, the criminal code of the Visigoths was conspicuous for the moderation with which it treated offenders against the public peace. The penalty of death was rarely inflicted, and was confined to cases of arson, rape, and murder. A regular schedule of minor crimes and their punishments existed; the severity of the latter depending upon the social rank and political importance of the individual. In flagrant instances of malicious prosecution, bribery of public officers, or abuse of political power, the culprit became the slave of the injured party, with the sole limitation to his resentment, that the life of his former oppressor should be spared. Rebellion was punished by banishment; infanticide by blinding; and the counterfeiter, or the forger of a royal edict, suffered the loss of the right hand. When the atrocious nature of an offence against morals demanded a penalty of corresponding infamy, the head of the criminal was shaved and branded, marking him for life as a social outcast, to be forever an object of public abhorrence. Scourging was the penalty of most universal application, and even a freeman, however exalted his station, was not exempt from its infliction, if he ventured to provoke the vengeance of retributive justice, and was not possessed of the stated fine which was the legal equivalent of the lash. The right of asylum, a privilege whose importance as a salutary check upon the passions of a fierce and tyrannical nobility, in an age of violence, is with difficulty appreciated in modern times, was recognized by the Gothic constitution; and no suppliant, who had sought protection at the foot of the altar, could be removed without the consent of the proper ecclesiastical authority. In the provisions which define the civil relations of society, the Forum Judicum recalls to every one conversant with the Commentaries of Blackstone, the familiar maxims and precedents of the Common Law of England. The different grades of relationship, and the rights of inheritance in the ascending and descending lines, were treated of exhaustively in the books of the Visigothic Code. In the protection of the interests of children its sections displayed a paternal and anxious care. No child could be disinherited unless it had been guilty of some aggravated act of violence towards its parent. In all questions relating to the descent of property, no preference was accorded to sex, and the female remained on the same footing as the male. A minor of ten years could, without restriction, dispose of his or her possessions by will. Guardians were appointed by the courts, who were required to observe the conditions of their trust, and to render accounts of the funds which passed through their hands; and the power of appointing a guardian ad litem was frequently exercised, where the affairs of a minor necessitated the institution or the defence of a suit at law. The boundless control of the father over the child, which formed so prominent a feature in the domestic regulations of Rome, was repugnant to the independent spirit of the Goths; the parental duties and responsibilities were expressly defined; the son who resided with his father was entitled to two-thirds of his earnings; and the courts exercised unremitting and vigilant supervision over the persons and estates of minors and orphans. A reminiscence of the ancient custom of marriage by purchase survived in the price paid by the bridegroom to the relatives of the bride; all clandestine alliances were considered invalid; a woman could sue, and be sued, without joining with her husband; and no responsibility attached to either for the illegal acts of the other. Integrity of descent and purity of blood were preserved by laws of exceptional severity; a free-born female who abandoned her person to, or even contracted marriage with, a slave was scourged and burnt with her unfortunate paramour or spouse. A wife who had incurred the guilt of adultery was delivered over absolutely to the tender mercies of the injured husband. This offence, which evoked ordinarily the strongest denunciation from the descendants of the cold and sluggish barbarians of the Baltic, was, however, in an ecclesiastic rather reprobated as an amiable weakness than condemned as a crime; an indulgence to be attributed partly to the predominant and sympathetic caste of the legislature, and partly to an appreciation of the opportunities and temptations which beset the father-confessor, who, after conviction, was immured in some comfortable monastery until he professed penitence and received absolution.
The conditions of vassalage and serfdom, as understood and practised elsewhere in Europe, and especially in Germany, were foreign to the polity of the Visigoths. Feudalism, with its mutual rights and obligations as subsequently known to Europe, strictly speaking, did not exist. The relations affecting the status of lord and vassal were, to some extent, borrowed from the Roman system and modelled upon those of patron and client. The sections relating to the conditions of servitude were minute and voluminous. The master had generally unrestricted power over the life of his slave. He who aided the escape of the latter was legally responsible for his value. Recognizing the peculiar facilities for criminal intercourse, and the corresponding difficulty of its detection, the law sentenced the servile adulterer to the stake. While the most liberal encouragement was given to the manumission of slaves, the numbers of this unfortunate class were constantly increasing, by the capture of prisoners of war, by the degradation of dishonest officials, by the submission of debtors, and by the conviction of criminals. Every slave belonged to a certain rank, and castigation for petty delinquencies, as well as punishment for serious crimes, was inflicted with more or less rigor, according to the cause of his servitude, his industrial ability, and the social condition of his owner, whether he was born, purchased, or condemned; whether he was a skilful artisan or mechanic, or an ordinary laborer; or whether he was the property of the Crown, of the Church, or of an individual. The influence of the Visigoths did much to lighten the burdens of slavery; the bloody spectacles of the gladiatorial contests possessed no allurements for a nation not degraded by cowardice and cruelty; the treatment of bondmen was, in some localities, so softened and modified that scarcely more than the name of hereditary servitude existed; and in cases of intolerable oppression, where the slave took refuge in the sanctuary, the master could be compelled to dispose of him to some one more actuated by feelings of kindness and pity.
The precepts of the Forum Judicum which relate to bailments, to strays, to trespass, to accessories before and after the fact, to the obstruction of highways, to malicious mischief, to the attestation of documents, and to contracts made under duress, are substantially the same as those set forth in our law-books of to-day. A statute of limitations, which recognized a period varying from thirty to fifty years, beyond which even some criminal prosecutions could not be instituted, was in force. The legislation pertaining to agriculture, irrigation, and the boundaries of land was particularly complete and exhaustive. Security was obtained by bonds and pledges; inventories were required of guardians; and the culprit who was guilty of slander was not only responsible in damages for his intemperate language, but was also often liable to corporeal punishment; as, for instance, if he called another a “Saracen,” or even insinuated that he had been circumcised, he might consider himself fortunate if he did not receive fifty lashes at the hands of the common executioner.
Considering the general condition of society, the antecedents of a nation whose energies had hitherto been directed to the overthrow of every institution which secured the perpetuity of peace and order, the previous slender opportunities of its authors, and the limited educational facilities at their command, the Code of the Visigoths presents us with a system of legislation of extraordinary interest and value. So remarkable is this body of jurisprudence in the wisdom, foresight, humanity, and knowledge of mankind which characterize its leading maxims, that they almost seem to have been suggested by divine inspiration. Its first statutes appeared when the comprehensive system of Justinian, which had enlisted the talents and exhausted the erudition of the most accomplished jurists of the Eastern Empire, was nearly perfected. It borrowed but little, however, from the learning of Tribonian and the laborious ingenuity of his seventeen coadjutors. The eternal principles of justice, it is true, are equally the basis of both of these collections; but their construction and the methods of their application, under similar conditions, are widely different; and the superiority, upon the whole, is largely on the side of the so-called barbarian. In the majority of instances, excepting where ecclesiastical ambition and monastic prejudice perverted the ends of legislation, the laws of the Visigoths were uniformly framed for the protection of the weak, the relief of the oppressed, and the general welfare of society. Unlike the practice of more civilized nations in comparatively recent times, the judicature of the former confined its penalties to the personality of the offender, and imposed no disabilities, either by forfeiture or attainder, upon his innocent relatives and descendants. It restrained the tyranny of the monarch; it defined with conciseness and accuracy the rights of the subject; it accorded unprecedented concessions to the widow and the orphan; it respected the unfortunate and helpless condition of the slave. It prohibited encroachments upon personal liberty, and declared the sale of a freeman to be equivalent in atrocity to the crime of homicide. In almost every provision which did not conflict with the claims of the priesthood, it hearkened to the voice of mercy and humanity. By the constant menace and certain infliction of civil degradation, confiscation, and perpetual servitude, it secured the fidelity of the judges and fiscal officers of the state. It accepted the great principle of the Salic law, and, with worldly prudence, forbade the election of a female sovereign. But, when the theocratic influence which pervaded every branch of the Gothic constitution comes to be examined, its effect upon contemporaneous legislation is seen to be pernicious and deplorable. The power of the clergy was irresponsible, ubiquitous, and thoroughly despotic. It dictated the proceedings of every assembly. It whispered suggestions of questionable morality in the ears of the monarch. When thwarted in its unholy aims, its vengeance was implacable. The abuse of the convenient and formidable weapon of excommunication had not reached the extreme which it subsequently attained, yet the all but omnipotent hand of the priesthood was already able to invade the privacy of domestic life, to interfere with the sensitive and delicate mechanism of commerce, to violate the rights of property, to desecrate the sacred precincts of the grave. Ecclesiastical intolerance dictated the passage of ex-post-facto laws, a measure whose monstrous injustice is patent to every unprejudiced mind. The disability imposed upon the Hebrew race, and the savage spirit of the canons enacted for its oppression, point significantly to the prospective horrors of the inquisitorial tribunals. The practice of sorcery and magic--so dreaded in an age of intellectual inferiority, and especially offensive to the Church, which tolerated no wonder-workers outside of its own pale--was severely reprobated, and punished with excessive severity. The ends of the clergy, when not obtainable by the arts of controversy, were secured by other means not unfamiliar to the intriguing courtiers of mediæval Europe; its propositions were advanced with caution and debated with consummate skill; and its arguments were either insinuated with more than Jesuitical adroitness, or urged with all the energy of sacerdotal zeal.
In its respectable antiquity; in the sublime morality inculcated by its precepts; in the obligations incurred by every nation which has drawn upon its accumulated stores of wisdom; in its freedom from the dishonorable expedients of legal chicanery; in the simplicity of its procedure; in the certainty and celerity required by the practice of the tribunals where its authority was acknowledged; in the inflexible impartiality with which it invested the decisions of those tribunals; in its well-founded title to public confidence; the Visigothic Code is without parallel in the annals of jurisprudence. But great as are its claims upon the gratitude and reverence of the jurist and the legislator, they are scarcely comparable to the indebtedness imposed upon the historian. The meagre information to be gleaned from the works of native chroniclers is, in great measure, thoroughly unreliable. The literature of the age, scanty in itself, consists mainly of the recital of ecclesiastical fables, the martyrdom of legendary saints, the discovery of spurious relics, the averting of calamities by invocation and miracle, and trivial incidents in the lives of holy men and women, whose preternatural gifts the indulgent credulity of their biographers has handed down to the contempt and ridicule of posterity. The pages destined for such records were too precious to be defiled by the accounts of wars and insurrections and the interesting descriptions of mediæval society. The diligence of the compilers of the Forum Judicum has, however, largely supplied the deficiencies of the monkish annalists. In their various civil and prohibitory enactments, they have unconsciously delineated the follies, the vices, the superstitions, and the crimes of the age. The penalties imposed for the violation of statutes denote infallibly the barbarian origin of those who formulated them. The law of retaliation--tolerated only among the lowest races of men--occurs repeatedly among the provisions of the Visigothic Code. The deterrent effect of criminal legislation was almost always subordinated to considerations of vengeance. The magistrate was regarded as the vindicator of wrong, rather than the calm representative of judicial dignity and the impartial interpreter of the laws. Scalping, maiming, blinding, scourging, branding, emasculation, were punishments prescribed without discrimination, for offences varying widely in the nature and degree of misconduct and criminality. The period of transition which separated the barbaric rudeness of Adolphus and the effeminate luxury of Roderick is traceable, step by step, in the progressive legislation of centuries. The rise and consolidation of ecclesiastical power; the limitation of the royal prerogative; the decline of the insolent pretensions of the nobility; the elevation of the peasant from the position of a beast of burden to a self-respecting being, who, however steeped in ignorance he might be, was always sure of an impartial hearing before the magistrate; are there related with all the fidelity and minuteness of a chronicle. There too are depicted the sources of that inspiration which animated and sustained the sinking hopes of the founders of the Spanish monarchy, from its organization as a little principality in the Asturias, down through the turbulent era of Moorish domination, until it attained the summit of greatness as the dictator of Europe and the arbiter of Christendom. These are the general characteristics of that incomparable monument of jurisprudence whose noble conceptions of the ends of legislation are best expressed in its own concise and energetic language:
“The law is the rival of divinity, the messenger of justice, and the guide of life. It dominates all classes of the state, and all ages of humanity, male and female, the young and the old, the wise and the ignorant, the noble and the peasant. It is not designed for the promotion of private aims, but to shelter and protect the general interests of all. It must adjust itself to time and place, according to the condition of affairs and the customs of the realm, and confine itself to exact and equitable rules so as not to lay snares for any citizen.”
Lost in the confusion attending the Conquest, the Forum Judicum was carefully preserved by the Moors for the benefit of future generations; and, recovered when the Moslem capital was taken by St. Ferdinand, it was subsequently translated into Castilian.
Among the nations composing the heterogeneous population of Spain, the most important in intelligence, wealth, commercial activity, and talent for administration, in ancient times, were the Jews. Classed with the first colonists of the Peninsula, the earliest mention of Iberia by the Greek and Roman historians represents the Jewish population as already rich and prosperous. If we consider their intimate relations, kindred interests, alliances by marriage, and common inclination for traffic, with their Tyrian neighbors, it is not improbable that the settlement of the Hebrew in Bætica was coincident with that of the Phœnicians. The first National Council that assembled at Illiberis in 325--the same year in which were determined the principles of orthodox Christianity as set forth in the Nicene creed--inaugurated the long and bloody persecution which finally culminated in the wholesale expulsion of the unfortunate race by Philip V. By the canons of this council, the blessings of the rabbi, to which the husbandman seemed to attach a virtue and an importance equal if not superior to those presumed to attend the benediction of the priest, and which custom from time immemorial had invoked upon the growing crops, was declared an offence against religion, punishable by summary expulsion from the Church. The morose spirit of ecclesiastical bigotry did not hesitate to violate the rites of hospitality and cast a shadow over the amenities of social life. With an exquisite refinement of malice, it pronounced subject to excommunication all who, even in cases of charity or under circumstances of the most urgent necessity, shared their food with a Jew. The passive submission of the entire race to the barbarian invader procured, however, for its members, in many instances, a degree of consideration not enjoyed by their Christian neighbors. With their natural talents for business, their capacity for intrigue, and, above all, their superior knowledge of mankind, they were not long in securing the confidence of the conquerors. Under the Arian sovereigns, their religious opinions remained for generations unquestioned, and their worship unmolested. But hardly had the nation renounced its ancient communion, before the disturbing spirit of the new hierarchy began to assert itself. The edict of Sisebut, in 612, published the decrees of the Third Council of Toledo which had been drawn up for the pious purpose of “eradicating the perfidy of the Jews,” whose general prosperity and political power had aroused the apprehensions of the priesthood. From this era until the accession of Roderick in 709, the legislation of the councils relating to the Jews presents the extremes of brutal harshness and occasional liberal indulgence. In all these enactments, however, the offensive qualities of injustice and malevolence largely preponderated. The aggressiveness of Catholicism demanded instant and uncompromising submission to its creed. What was at first attempted by the imposition of civil disabilities was soon after exacted by degrading insults, by torture, by slavery, and by death. Such was the unrelenting ferocity of this persecution that it awakened at times the indignation even of a semi-barbarous and fanatical age. But despite continuous and systematic repression, this maligned and down-trodden race prospered; the forbearance of royal and ecclesiastical inquisitors was purchased, and the clamors of furious zealots were silenced by opportune contributions to the monastic orders; for the services of the most capable diplomatists and financiers of the time could not be dispensed with in a society where even a large portion of those who devised measures for their oppression could neither read nor write. The superiority of the Jews was also indicated by the prices they commanded when their liberty had been forfeited by law. While slaves of other nationalities ranked as “bestias de cuatro pies,” and were purchasable upon the same terms as a horse or an ox, the Jew was worth a thousand crowns. The great possessions of the Gothic nobles, which the universal illiteracy of the latter made them incompetent to manage, rendered the shrewd and accomplished Hebrew a necessary steward. He enjoyed the confidence of the monarch. He administered the royal revenues, always with discernment and in most instances with fidelity. His advice was eagerly solicited in exigencies of national importance, and in the crooked arts of diplomacy he proved more than a match for the ablest negotiators of the age. His wealth, his political and social influence, which he preserved in defiance of civil disabilities and ecclesiastical malice, his scholastic attainments, the elegance of his manners when contrasted with Teutonic rudeness; all of these qualities ingratiated him into the favor of the palatines, by whom he was often treated with the consideration deserved by a friend, rather than with the abhorrence due to an outcast.
The political organization and legal privileges which the Jews possessed in the early days of the Visigothic monarchy magnified their importance, increased their wealth, and fostered their spirit of exclusiveness. The latter feeling was also strengthened by the policy of separation which it was deemed expedient to adopt, during the Middle Ages, in Christian communities, towards the Hebrew race. For a considerable period of the Gothic dominion, the Jews were confined to a certain quarter of every city and village, over which magistrates of their own blood exercised both civil and criminal functions, unrestricted, save in questions that affected the national faith or where personal injury had been inflicted upon a Christian. The jurisdiction of each provincial assembly was rigidly subordinated to the supreme authority of the central synagogue. The territory beyond the limits of the town--which was often entirely Jewish--was subject to the control of a governor who was responsible only to the sovereign. At one time the Jews controlled the most important landed interests of the kingdom. The prejudice attaching to payments for the use of money did not deter the Hebrew banker from the practice of usury, although the legal rate of thirty-three per cent. certainly offered sufficient inducements to abstain from the violation of the law which he either secretly evaded or openly defied.
The activity displayed by the Jews of the Peninsula in every department of science, literature, government, commerce, agriculture, and finance was incessant and indefatigable. No contemporaneous people could boast, in proportion to their numbers, so many men of genius and erudition. Their influence was so extensive that it was acknowledged alike in the hovel of the peasant and in the council chamber of the king. Their powerful individuality survived the cruel impositions which repressed their enterprise, but could not damp their ardor; and the patriotism which attached them to a country in which they were only tolerated as exiles, was sufficient to induce their descendants to heartily aid, by every means in their power, the famous princes and warriors whose capacity and resolution supported, amidst continuous disaster and defeat, the doubtful fortunes of the struggling monarchy of Castile.
In their application to the mechanical arts, and in their development of architecture, the Visigoths disclosed rather an imitative faculty than a spirit of marked originality. What is known to us as the Gothic style owes nothing to that nation to which popular belief has ascribed its invention, and, in fact, was not introduced into Spain until the thirteenth century. The name has been arbitrarily given it to distinguish the pointed arch--its principal characteristic--from the rounded one peculiar to the edifices of Rome. The rude and primitive structures of the German forests, constructed of logs, stained with mud, and designed solely for purposes of shelter and defence, could neither suggest nor transmit traditions of architectural elegance and beauty. The sight of the noble memorials of Roman genius which had escaped the destructive impulses of the predatory barbarian, erelong inspired the uncouth conqueror with the spirit of emulation. In the Iberian Peninsula these vast and splendid structures abounded. The walls which once encompassed the seats of its proconsul; the fanes from whence had arisen the incense to its gods; the colonnades which adorned its capitals; the aqueducts rising to prodigious heights, and surmounting difficulties which would have perplexed any engineer save a Roman, were worthy of one of the richest provinces of the empire. From such models the Visigothic architect, wholly destitute of experience, yet animated by the desire of imitating an excellence which had awakened his admiration, designed the palace and the basilica. The wealth which, from the earliest times, Spain has lavished upon her children, furnished the means, while the religious spirit which pervaded every class of society afforded the incentive, for public display and private munificence. An innumerable body of slaves and dependents, available at a moment’s notice, facilitated the rapid construction of edifices of the largest proportions. Churches grand in dimensions and barbaric in decoration were erected by priests, abbots, and private individuals, whose generosity was commensurate with their devotion. Before the shrines of these temples were deposited vases, reliquaries, diptychs, crosses, of precious materials and curiously intricate patterns. The religious enthusiasm of the Gothic princes, mingled perhaps with a certain share of worldly ambition, impelled them to a generous rivalry, and nourished in the bosom of each the desire to surpass his predecessor in liberality to the Church. Hence the various temples were, under each successive reign, enriched with royal gifts of inestimable value and ostentatious magnificence. Sacramental tables of gold studded with emeralds, diamonds, and sapphires, whose wondrous beauty and richness Saracen tradition has transmitted to posterity, with monstrances and ciboria of ingenious design and encrusted with jewels, formed a portion of the pious donations of the sovereigns of the Goths. The influence of the arts and taste of Byzantium, communicated through the channels of commerce, the interchange of civilities, and the frequent intercourse between the courts of Constantinople and Toledo, appears in the mural ornamentation of the temples and in the vessels of their shrines, as well as in the habitations, utensils, and trinkets of the people. Geometric forms and floral designs--afterwards so popular among the Moors, who unquestionably derived them largely from this source--were almost exclusively employed by the Gothic goldsmiths and architects. Vines, leaves, buds, and quatrefoils enter into almost every combination in great variety and with charming effect. The churches were dimly lighted by means of marble slabs pierced with intersecting cruciform apertures, which increased the mystery and awe of the interior, devices which are visible to-day in places of worship as widely separated and of as originally diverse character as the chapels of the Asturias and the Mosque of Cordova. As soon as the rage and hatred inspired by the resistance of their enemies--and which was wreaked upon the edifices of the latter with hardly less vindictiveness than upon the ranks of their legions--had been allayed, a desire to profit by the skill and experience of their Roman subjects became paramount; new structures of simple design and enduring materials arose in the cities; the ancient monuments were spared; and the superior state of preservation which distinguishes the Roman remains in the Peninsula affords incontrovertible evidence of the enlightened appreciation of the Visigoths.
In the encouragement of the useful and elegant arts, the Visigoths displayed an enterprising spirit considerably in advance of the other branches of the great Teutonic nation. Manufactures of clothing, glass, armor, weapons, thread, and jewelry are known to have existed in their dominions. But it is in the fabrication of church furniture, votive offerings, and utensils designed for the service of the altar, that the labors of their artisans are best known to us. In the province of Guarrazar, a few miles from Toledo, was accidentally discovered, in the middle of the last century, a deposit of objects which had evidently been hastily buried by the priests on the approach of the Saracen invader. It was composed of a number of votive crowns--some of which were inscribed with the names of the donors--sceptres, censers, crosses, candlesticks, lamps, chains, girdles. All of these were of gold enriched with precious stones. The ignorance, fear, and avarice of the peasants who discovered this treasure resulted in the dispersion and loss of the most precious portion of it; but the crowns were saved, and are now in the Hotel de Cluny at Paris, and the Royal Armory at Madrid. These articles enable us to form an excellent idea of the condition of the arts at the beginning of the eighth century. The accounts given by Christian and Arab historians of the Visigothic kings, and of the enormous booty obtained by the Moors, had, until this discovery was made, been ridiculed by critics as exaggerations, due to the national vanity of both conquered and conqueror. From even a cursory examination of these objects--unique in the world--can readily be detected the taste and style of the Byzantine, whose influence over the artistic traditions of the Peninsula, far from disappearing with the Gothic dynasty, was exhibited in some of the most magnificent creations of the Moslem domination. The clumsy but massive patterns of the crowns show that the value of the materials was taken into consideration, quite as much as the labor that was expended upon them. From their ornamentation is revealed a not inconsiderable familiarity with the art of the enameller. Some of the settings are of polished silicates, inserted, probably by way of contrast, at intervals in lines of uncut gems. The accuracy with which they are adjusted and their points united is indicative of long practice and extraordinary skill. A separate intaglio belonging to the same treasure discloses a hitherto unsuspected degree of perfection in the glyptic art. The carving of stones as hard as the jacinth gives us a still further acquaintance with the skill of the Gothic lapidary, and the delicacy of the filigree borders is of almost equal excellence with the best work of modern Italy.
While the manufactures of Gothic Spain were due to the talents and industry of slaves, its commerce was monopolized by foreigners. The genius of the barbarian, fearless in adventure upon land but too indolent for application to mercantile employments, instinctively shrank from the perils and the hardships incident to protracted navigation of the seas. In agriculture, however, great progress was made. Pastoral occupations had been largely superseded by the tillage of the soil. The character of the various enactments relating to real property shows the importance with which that branch of the law was already invested, and the attention its occupancy and its tenures had received from the legislative power. In literature the Visigoths could boast of few productions of merit, and what we designate by the name of science was to them totally unknown. But a single name, that of San Isidoro of Seville, one, however, famous in every department of knowledge--historian, polemic, commentator, theologian, and saint--has emerged from the chaos of literary obscurity which enveloped the life of Visigothic times. His acquirements were prodigious for the age. The oracle of ecclesiastical councils, his writings were perhaps more voluminous than those of any other author that Spain has ever produced, and they are still regarded by Catholic divines as authoritative in settling controverted points of doctrine.
The practice of medicine--in addition to being subordinated to the irresponsible intervention of the priesthood, whose imposture reaped a profitable harvest by the working of spurious miracles and by the application of relics--was hampered by the prejudices of the ignorant, and by the absurd restrictions imposed by the jealousy of an ecclesiastical legislature. No matter how pressing the necessity, a physician was not permitted to attend a free woman unless her male relatives were present. If great weakness resulted from his treatment he could be heavily fined, and in case death ensued he was abandoned to the vengeance of the family of his patient. The law, however, as a partial compensation for the inconveniences to which he was subjected, exempted him from imprisonment for all crimes save that of murder. A limited knowledge of anatomy and some, acquaintance with the fundamental principles of surgery were possessed by these practitioners, as is disclosed by their successful operations for cataract. Their compensation was regulated by statute, and was, besides, subject to special agreement; but, in case the patient was not cured, no fee could be collected, and the physician was liable, at all times, to prosecution for flagrant acts of malpractice.
The empire of the Visigoths, during the period of its greatest prosperity, extended from the valleys of the Loire and the Garonne to the Mediterranean. The surrender of a portion of this territory to Clovis consolidated the power of both the kingdoms of France and Spain, by adopting for their common boundary the natural rampart of the Pyrenees. The tastes and traditions of the Teutonic nation, heretofore averse to sedentary occupations, and considering all labor, and especially the cultivation of the soil, as degrading to the character of a freeman, caused such employment to be abandoned to the former subjects of the Roman Empire; nor was it until several centuries had elapsed, and the advantages resulting from industrious tillage had been demonstrated, that this prejudice was in some degree removed. At all times during the sway of the Visigoths, every species of manual labor was largely performed by slaves. The institution of colleges of artificers--a custom inherited from the most polished nation of antiquity--had been adopted by the barbarian conquerors, and the slaves composing these bodies, where the talents of the father were transmitted to the son, were naturally ranked among the most valuable of personal possessions. Large numbers of these artisans were the property of the Crown and of the Church, being respectively under the control of the Royal Treasurer and the Bishop, and the unique specimens of the goldsmith’s skill which the fortunate discovery at Guarrazar has preserved for us, reveal to what proficiency in the mechanical arts these accomplished bondmen had attained.
The greatest luxury and pomp were indulged in by the Visigothic nation, a people which the world still calls barbarian. Their palaces were encrusted with precious marbles. The furniture of their apartments was of the most expensive character. The garments of the nobility were of silken fabrics embroidered with gold. The ladies of the court used for their ablutions basins of silver, and admired their beauty in exquisitely chased mirrors set with jewels. The horses of the royal household were covered with harnesses and trappings blazing with the precious metals. A hundred wagons laden with baggage and all the paraphernalia of boundless extravagance followed in the train of the monarch. Such was the lavish expenditure of even the middle and lower classes, that it became necessary to enact a law prohibiting the bestowal of a dowry of more than one-tenth of the property of a bridegroom upon the bride.
Not only did the Visigoths strive to imitate their Roman subjects in the style and finish of their edifices, but in every public employment, in every department of art and labor, was the potent influence of the subjugated people visible. The organization of the various corps and divisions of the army was modelled after that of the legion. The most popular amusements were, with the exception of gladiatorial combats, identical with those which had excited to frenzied enthusiasm the vast audiences of Rome and Constantinople in the circus and the amphitheatre. The dress of the citizen, the armor of the soldier, were Roman; the ornaments of the ladies, the insignia of royalty, the decorations of the churches, were Byzantine. The language in common use was a barbarous and bastard Latin. The fusion of hostile races, the amalgamation of the conqueror and the conquered, that political problem which has taxed the skill of the wisest statesmen, was almost brought to a successful solution by the broad statesmanship of the Visigothic sovereigns. The adoption and enforcement of a uniform and well-conceived body of laws did much to accomplish this end. But the acceptance of orthodox Christianity as the recognized form of national faith, and the legalizing of intermarriage between the different peoples of the Peninsula, by their tendency to remove the formidable barriers raised by caste, which had hitherto isolated the various classes of society, did far more to promote the union of the discordant elements of society. The Basques--constant types of the primitive Iberian--alone, among the multifarious tribes which acknowledged the supremacy of the court of Toledo, have preserved their nationality, and have obstinately refused to surrender those distinctive racial peculiarities that have made them for centuries the subject of the entertaining speculations of the ethnologist.
In some respects a striking parallel, in others a decided contrast existed between Goth and Arab, representatives of the Aryan and Semitic branches of the human family, who crossed swords in Europe for the first time in history, on the plains of the Spanish Peninsula. Between these two great ethnographical divisions, a spirit of irreconcilable enmity has always prevailed. No fusion between them has ever been effected. Where one has obtained ascendency in any part of the world, the other has either preserved its special traits or gradually become extinct. Considerations of political expediency, the claims of divine revelation, the benefits of trade, the ultimate prospect of national union and social equality, have not been sufficient to counteract the influence of an antagonism which anticipates all human records in its antiquity. The customs of nomadic peoples are proverbially persistent; their occupation frequently survives the change of residence, the accidents of migration, and the influence of new and radically different associations. Both the Goths and the Arabs placed their principal dependence upon their flocks and herds, but neither ever hesitated to exchange the crook of the shepherd for the spear of the robber. The love of war and violence was the predominating characteristic of both. They had a common admiration for courage as the greatest of virtues; a common appreciation of the noble qualities of personal liberty, of private honor, of generous hospitality. Their habits were slothful, their existence precarious. Their jealousy of power forbade their acknowledgment of royal authority. They considered all industrial employments as beneath the dignity of manhood. Their worship was tainted with the most objectionable features of idolatry,--the adoration of stones, the practice of fetichism, the horrors of human sacrifice. Alike were they drunkards and desperate gamesters, who eagerly placed their liberty at stake, whose revels resounded with brawling, and whose disputes were settled with the sword. They recognized no permanent ownership in the soil, possessed little portable wealth, were ignorant of the arts and without the knowledge of letters. Like all barbarians, they believed disease and insanity to be caused by demoniacal possession. With both, love of poetry was a passion, and the personality of the bard the object of almost idolatrous reverence. Such were the traits common to two nations, separated by a distance of eighteen hundred miles, ignorant of each other’s existence, and living under entirely dissimilar climatic conditions. The atmosphere of the Baltic was perpetually cold and damp, that of Arabia dry and torrid almost beyond endurance. Eastern Europe was covered with dense forests, traversed by noble rivers, and dotted with impassable swamps. In the Desert nothing was so rare as a tree or rivulet. The physical conformation of the Goth and the Arab respectively was controlled by his environment to an even greater degree than was the mental constitution of either. The former was of giant stature and strength, and of fair complexion; the latter slender. nervous, and swarthy. With the Goth, female chastity was held in the highest esteem; with the Arab, it was the subject of caustic epigram, of jest, and of satire. The Goth, a monogamist, knew nothing of the pleasures of gallantry; the polygamous Arab placed indulgence in them second only to the excitement of battle. The Goths were among the first and most devout proselytes of Christianity; the Arabs have ever obstinately refused to acknowledge the divinity of Christ or the superior authority of the Gospel.
That invincible prowess which, nurtured by poverty and an abstemious life, was displayed with equal distinction and success amidst the forests of Europe and on the sandy plains of Africa, was the potent weapon which obtained for each of these great nations supremacy over their adversaries; an advantage which, through internal dissension, sectarian prejudice, and social corruption, was eventually lost; but not until the moral and physical peculiarities of both had impressed themselves upon their contemporaries, so deeply as to insure their transmission, with but little modification, to subsequent ages.
The spirit of the Visigoths was, almost from the first, decidedly progressive. This general tendency towards improvement, and a desire for the blessings of civilization, stimulated commercial activity, increased domestic happiness, and opened a field for the development of art, the advancement of science, the strict administration of justice, and the consequent decrease of brutality and crime. The wisdom of the Gothic polity and the equity of its laws afford a pleasing and instructive example of the capacity of a people to raise itself unaided from barbarism--a people which, in addition to the romantic interest attaching to its history, is entitled to the grateful remembrance of mankind for the beneficent influence it has exerted upon the political institutions and the social order of Europe; as well as for the creation of a judicial system whose merits and whose principles, confirmed by the experience of centuries, are still acknowledged by the most august tribunals of the civilized world.
V. THE INVASION AND CONQUEST OF SPAIN
710–713
General Conditions and Physical Features of the Spanish Peninsula--Various Classes of the Population--Supremacy of the Church--Tyranny of the Visigothic Kings--Fatal Policy of Witiza--Accession of Roderick--Count Julian--Invasion of Tarik--Battle of the Guadalete--Its Momentous Results--Progress of the Moslems--Arrival of Musa--His Success--Immense Booty secured by the Victors--Quarrel of Tarik and Musa--Interference of the Khalif--Submission of the Goths--Musa’s Vast Scheme of Conquest--The Two Generals ordered to Damascus--The Triumphal Procession through Africa--Fate of Musa--Causes and Effects of the Moslem Occupation of Spain.
The encroaching spirit of Islam, dominated by the potent motives of avarice, ambition, and fanaticism, was not content with its marvellous achievements and the possession of two continents, it aspired to universal conquest. The submission of Africa was now complete. The sovereignty of the Byzantine Empire had vanished forever from the southern coast of the Mediterranean. The tact and military skill of Musa had won the confidence, and inspired the respect, of the treacherous, warlike, and hitherto intractable, tribes of Mauritania. A large number of the latter had embraced Mohammedanism. A still greater proportion who, either from association, policy, or conviction, professed attachment to the law of Moses, maintained an intimate correspondence with their oppressed brethren of the Spanish Peninsula. The latter in secret brooded over the accumulated wrongs of centuries, and, under an appearance of resignation, harbored designs that boded ill to the temporal and ecclesiastical tyrants of the Visigothic monarchy. The restless glance of the Arabian general had long contemplated with envy, mingled with an insatiable desire for plunder, the rich and splendid cities of ancient Bætica; its teeming mines; its pastures, with their myriads of cattle; its plains, traversed by innumerable canals and rivers; where even a careless and incomplete system of cultivation produced harvests almost rivalling in luxuriance those of the famous valleys of the Euphrates and the Nile. A strait, of less than eight miles in width in its narrowest part, now presented the sole physical impediment to the further progress of the conqueror. It was defended upon the African side by the fortress of Ceuta, whose governor was a vassal or tributary of the Visigothic king, and whose valor had rendered nugatory the efforts of the bravest Moslem captains, who, fully appreciating the strategic importance of this stronghold, had made repeated and desperate attempts to capture it. This promontory, which formed one side of the channel, familiar for ages to the Phœnicians, and supposed by the ignorant to be the end of the world, was protected from foreign intrusion by the portentous fables and prodigies invented by Tyrian artifice. Facing it, on the Spanish shore, stood the Temple of Hercules, with its dome of gilded bronze, its columns of electrum, and its mysterious altars raised to Art, Old Age, and Poverty. Unlike other Pagan shrines--for it contained no visible representation of a divinity--it was always approached by the Phœnician mariner with feelings of gratitude and awe. It was associated with his naval superiority over the other nations of antiquity. It was intimately connected with the increase of his wealth; with the continuance of his prosperity; with the discovery of lands unknown to his contemporaries and rivals; with the preservation of his stores of occult wisdom, whose sources he explored with such acuteness and concealed with such success. Every device of fable and superstition had been employed to clothe this locality with such a character as might effectually check the efforts of an inquiring or aggressive commercial spirit. To the accomplishment of this end, the phenomena of Nature lent their powerful aid. The contracted passage between two of the greatest bodies of water known to the ancients was of unfathomable depth. On both sides, despite the agitation of the waves, its level remained the same. Even during both the ebb and flow of the tide, the current always ran strongly towards the east. Its force was steady, constant, invariable; the waxing and waning of the moon, the most furious tempests, exerted no appreciable influence over the inflexible regularity of its motion. It was not without reason that the apparent suspension of the laws of equilibrium and of the forces of Nature was attributed by the superstitious to the divinity whose temple guarded the famous portals upon which he had imposed his name. It has been maintained by scholars that within this shrine was preserved, as a sacred relic, a fragment of magnetic ore, of great antiquity, known to the Tyrian navigator as a priceless talisman--the precursor of the mariner’s compass--which had guided his course to distant Britain, and assured to his countrymen the empire of the seas. According to popular belief, through this channel the way led to the realm of Chaos. To brave its unknown and dreaded perils was sacrilege, and to none, save those authorized by the priests of Melcareth, was this undertaking permitted. In subsequent times, invested with little less mystery, this region had bequeathed not a few of its reminiscences to the Roman, and awakened the curiosity of the Arab, as he fixed his gaze upon the white-topped waves sparkling in the sunlight between continent and continent and sea and sea, like the facets of a precious gem; or, in the beautiful imagery of the Oriental chronicler, “like a diamond between two emeralds and two sapphires, the master-stone in the ring of empire.”
In the beginning of the eighth century the kingdom of the Visigoths presented every appearance of prosperity and power. Its inherent weakness was imperfectly disguised by the pomp of its hierarchy and the luxury of its court, which veiled the defects of its constitution and the abuses of its government with a false and delusive splendor. Its licentious sovereign retained none of the primitive virtues of his ancestors, whose intrepid spirit and resistless valor had sustained them on a hundred fields of battle, and had borne their arms in a long succession of triumphs from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. The successor of Reccared and Wamba had degenerated into a feeble tyrant, who reigned by a disputed title, and in whose sensual nature neither the rites of hospitality, the obligations of friendship, the dignity of the regal office, nor the infirmities of age, interposed any obstacle to the indulgence of his unbridled passions.
A haughty nobility decimated by the sanguinary feuds promoted by a contested succession, and divided into factions whose members hated each other with far greater intensity than that which they bore to a common enemy; unaccustomed to the exercise of arms; destitute of faith and honor; concealing treasonable sentiments under the semblance of enthusiastic loyalty, endeavored to sustain, by vainglorious boasts and barbaric ostentation, the dignity of their order and the majesty of the throne. The martial ardor of the legions which had for centuries upheld the greatness and the renown of the Roman name had been supplanted by the zeal and avarice of the monastic hordes, who defended by every expedient of fraud and violence the rising cause of the church militant. The crosier, in the hands of an arrogant caste which monopolized the learning of the age, had become far more potent than the sword or the sceptre, and the origin of all political measures of national importance was to be sought not in the palace but in the cathedral. The wise, tolerant, and judicious policy of the early ecclesiastics, that had animated and directed the councils of the Church, which by its humanizing influence had softened the prevailing rudeness of the age, and framed laws whose equitable maxims have served as models for succeeding legislators, had been abandoned for the degrading but profitable occupation of hunting down and plundering heretics. The proud and exclusive hierarchy of the Visigoths refused to acknowledge the supremacy, or respect the edicts, of the See of Rome. When the Pope interfered in the spiritual affairs of the Peninsula--an occurrence, however, that rarely took place--he did so rather in the capacity of a mediator, or even a suppliant, than as a mighty ruler, the head of Christendom, and the Vicar of God. His titles were assumed and his prerogatives usurped by the Spanish prelates; his infallibility was questioned, not only by the higher clergy, whose ministrations were declared to be endowed with equal virtue, but even by the sovereign and the nobles, who openly ridiculed his pretensions and defied his authority. The evil example of royal profligacy had infected every grade of the priesthood. The episcopal palace became the scene of daily turmoil and midnight orgies, which scandalized the populace, itself far from immaculate; while the excellence of the wines and the beauty of the female companions of priest and primate were matters of public jest and infamous notoriety. The relative positions of the great officials of Church and State had, by reason of the peculiar functions exercised by the former, who had entirely usurped the legislative power, been reversed. The prelate, while still retaining the outward insignia of his sacred profession, had, from the practice of the generous and self-sacrificing duties of a minister of grace and mercy, descended to the ignoble arts of an active, scheming, unscrupulous politician. The nobility, after having virtually surrendered to their spiritual advisers the complete control of the administration, preserved, to a pharisaical degree, the outward semblance of devotion. In private life, the morals of both classes were stained with degrading vices and crimes which were thinly veiled by a more or less rigid observance of the prescribed forms of religious worship.
No country in Europe had, from the earliest times of which history makes mention, constantly offered such inducements to the enterprise and prowess of an invader as Spain. The Orient and the Occident met upon her shores. Every material advantage which could attract the attention of man, which could stimulate his ambition, increase his wealth, insure his comfort, supply his necessities, and minister to his happiness, was hers. The balmy air of her southern provinces--whose skies for months were unobscured by a single cloud--was tempered by the breezes of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. The varied landscape of hill and plain, seamed with a net-work of artificial rivulets, was covered with a mantle of perpetual verdure. Her orchards furnished an inexhaustible supply of the most delicious fruits. The products of her mines had made the fortune of every possessor--Phœnician, Carthaginian, Roman, Vandal, and Goth. Her gold and silver had embellished the thrones of Babylon, the shrines of Tyre, the palaces of Memphis, the temple of Jerusalem. Her coasts, easy of access from every point, offered a succession of safe and commodious harbors. The Visigoths, despite their barbarian prejudice against manual labor, recognized the importance of agriculture. The provinces of the realm were apportioned among the nobility. A stated tribute was required of their vassals by the great landed proprietors, who rarely had the justice to grant indulgence for a failure of the harvests or a deficiency resulting from public or private misfortune. The cultivators were attached to the glebe, which could not be alienated without them, and, forming an hereditary caste, were, to all intents and purposes, slaves; although, under the Gothic polity, their position was nominally superior to that of the unfortunate who was exposed for sale in the market. From these two classes, dispirited by generations of arduous toil and constant oppression, were recruited the rank and file of the army, who were expected to fight for the preservation of their tyrants’ possessions and the continuance of their own degradation. The lot of the serf under later Visigothic rule was, in general, far more grievous than that of the slave had been under the Roman. The Teutonic custom which encouraged the imposition of personal service in return for protection was unknown under the Empire. The rendering of this obligation an hereditary charge--a cardinal principle of the German constitution, but which became in a measure obsolete under the later Visigothic kings--added to the aggravation which attended its performance. The restrictions upon marriage, the separation of families, the severity of punishment imposed for even trifling offences, added to the humiliation and hardships of the servile condition. While the Arian heresy was predominant, the burdens of serfdom were lightened, and its state had been gradually improved. The generosity of the bishops was displayed in every way that kindness and consideration could suggest; in the diminution of labor; in rewards for fidelity; in attendance in sickness; in sympathy in misfortune. The unhappy serf, deceived by these concessions and favors, not unnaturally concluded that they portended increased liberty and ultimate emancipation. The clergy gave color to this presumption by frequent declarations from the pulpit that slavery was contrary to the teachings of the Gospel. In time, with the increase of influence, the control of royal elections, and the absolute dictation of the policy of the throne, these spiritual statesmen found it expedient to forget the benevolent precepts of government which they had formerly so earnestly inculcated. After the acceptance of the orthodox faith, the inherent evils of the servile system were magnified to an unprecedented degree. The high rank, sacred character, and practically unlimited power of the great prelates of the Church, offered unusual opportunities for the indulgence of the passions of tyranny and avarice. The dependents of bishops walked in the processions, by which were celebrated the great festivals of the Church, attired in silken liveries embroidered with gold. The appointments of their palaces and the magnificence of their trains surpassed even those of the sovereign. The estates of these dignitaries were the most extensive and important of the kingdom; in many instances they exceeded in value the royal demesnes. Immense numbers of slaves were employed upon them, not merely in the cultivation of the soil, but in the producing and perfecting of every article, then known, which could contribute to the pleasure of their luxurious lords. For these unhappy laborers, whose tasks each year became more arduous, and whose aspirations for liberty, cherished during many generations, were now destroyed, the prospect of relief from their unsupportable burdens seemed absolutely hopeless. Inferior in numbers to these two classes of agricultural serfs, and the individuals condemned by the accident of birth, or the process of law, to perpetual bondage, but vastly superior to them in intelligence, in shrewdness, and in all the arts of deceit, were the Jews. A sweeping decree of the Seventeenth Council of Toledo had confiscated their possessions and sentenced them to servitude. A hundred thousand of these sectaries, in whose breasts rankled a spirit of fierce and sullen hatred, born of hostility handed down for ages, and aggravated by a system of repression scarcely justifiable even by the sternest demands of political necessity, constituted an element of a far more dangerous character than all of the others whose machinations and discontent had undermined the fabric of the Visigothic empire. The national sentiment of superiority--born of theocratic government, of the claims of an arrogant priesthood, of the alleged favor of the Almighty, and of the traditions of three thousand years--was then, as now, all-powerful in the minds of the Jewish people. The defective annals of that age have failed to furnish us with data by which we can determine with what degree of strictness the laws against the Hebrews were enforced. It is probable, however, that in the cities, where a higher condition of intelligence existed and more correct ideas of justice obtained, observance of these inhuman edicts was frequently evaded. In the villages and hamlets the fanaticism and jealousy of the peasantry undoubtedly inflicted every hardship and indignity upon the Jews. In vain might the favored steward or counsellor of the noble, who still retained his residence in the palace, and continued to supply by his own talents and experience the deficiencies produced by his employer’s sloth and incapacity, attempt to alleviate the wretchedness of his countrymen. With the ignorant rabble, the possession of wealth and the exertion of political power by heretics were always unpardonable crimes. The clergy, on all occasions, for ends of their own, fomented the popular discontent, lauded this cruel policy as acceptable to God, and by every device sought to perpetuate the ancient antagonism of the Aryan and Semitic races, in which is to be sought one cause of the irrational and widely-diffused prejudice against the Jew. This feeling was also intensified by the current tradition that, during the reign of Leovigild, the Hebrews had, with unconcealed alacrity, aided the heterodox clergy in persecuting members of the Roman Catholic communion. Under these circumstances, too much importance cannot be attached to the part played in the Moorish occupation of Spain by this numerous and enterprising sect, skilled in all the arts of dissimulation, and exasperated by centuries of oppression, which the Visigothic kingdom nourished in its bosom. Without the information afforded by its members the Arab attack would probably have never been undertaken. Without its support and co-operation it is certain that the subjugation of a nation of six million souls could never have been accomplished in the space of a few months by a mere handful of undisciplined horsemen.
No nation has ever flourished under the rule of a hierarchy. The circumstances indispensable for the security and happiness of the subject are incompatible with the demands of the alleged representatives of divine inspiration and omnipotent power. The narrow policy inseparable from protracted ecclesiastical domination is inevitably productive of national ruin and disgrace. In this instance, it dispossessed the Spanish people of the richest part of their inheritance for eight hundred years. Under the monarchs of the Austrian line--incapable of profiting by the experience of their predecessors and deaf to the warnings of history--similar acts of imprudence and folly contributed more than aught else to deprive the Spanish Crown of the political supremacy of Europe.
The events in the annals of Spain which relate to the close of the seventh and the commencement of the eighth century are involved in more than ordinary obscurity. It was a period fraught with political and social disturbance. Treason and regicide, crimes from which, heretofore, the Gothic people had been proverbially exempt, were now considered justifiable expedients by every ambitious noble who aspired to raise himself to the throne. The degrees of favor and absolution which the successful traitor could expect from the clergy were directly proportionate to the value of the gifts which he was able to deposit in the treasury of the Church. Every offence, no matter how flagrant, was pardonable after satisfactory pecuniary intercession with the priest. The fulminations of the Holy Council were denounced against all who refused allegiance to the royal assassin, whose election had been ratified by the votes of the assembled prelates. Where the aspirant to kingly power lacked the courage for deeds of blood, a resort to fraud was deemed excusable, provided it was attended with success and the customary liberal contribution for ecclesiastical purposes was not forgotten. To such a depth of degradation had fallen the descendants of the loyal, brave, and generous warriors of the Teutonic race!
The greatness of the Visigothic monarchy had departed with the reign of Wamba, the last of its heroes, and one illustrious for the practice of every public and every private virtue. Deprived of his crown by an artifice which reflected more credit on the astuteness than on the integrity of his successor, he was condemned to pass the latter portion of his life in a convent. The new king Ervigius, after an uneventful reign, left his kingdom to his son-in-law Egiza. The character of the latter monarch, while not destitute of the manly virtues of courage and resolution, was tarnished by insatiable rapacity. He was as persevering in his pursuit of wealth as he was unscrupulous in his methods of obtaining it. He commuted the enforcement of penal laws for the payment of fines, which varied with the pecuniary ability of the culprit to discharge them, without regard to the degree or the circumstances of the crime. Under trivial pretexts, he banished wealthy citizens and confiscated their property. He imposed excessive taxes. Emboldened by the impunity of power, he did not hesitate to resort even to forgery; and, by means of spurious documents, implicated in offences against the state such wealthy individuals as had the hardihood to resist his importunate demands. And, worst of all, he lost no opportunity to appropriate the revenues of the Church, under whatever pretence his ingenuity or his audacity might suggest. By an unprincipled and tyrannical hierarchy the former misdemeanors might be overlooked, but the latter offence was tainted with the double reproach of oppression and sacrilege. After formal and unavailing remonstrance, a plot was formed in 692 by Sisebert, Archbishop of Toledo, which had for its object the assassination of the King and his entire family. Some of the most powerful nobles were involved in this conspiracy, which was hatched by the principal ecclesiastics of the capital. Timely information of the plot having reached the ears of the sovereign, the most vigorous means were taken to counteract it. The metropolitan was arrested and deposed. A number of the chief conspirators were executed or exiled. Scarcely had this conspiracy been suppressed, before the existence of a still more formidable one was revealed. The Hebrews, whose condition under this and the preceding reign had been more favorable than for many years, evincing no gratitude for the leniency with which they had been treated, and remembering only past indignities, exulting in their numbers and influence, and assured of aid from Barbary, made arrangements for a general revolt, with a view to a complete reorganization of the government and the metamorphosis of Spain into an absolutely Jewish kingdom. This treasonable design was discovered, however, almost at the moment when it was ripe for execution. The authorities took measures to insure their safety with exemplary severity. A council was convoked and a decree passed, by which the Jews were condemned to be banished, enslaved, stripped of their possessions, and deprived of their children. The outrageous cruelty of the measure, however, caused an almost immediate reaction, and it was not generally enforced. The discontented sectaries, grieving under their accumulated wrongs, and exasperated by the miscarriage of their plans, continued to hope for assistance from abroad, and embraced every opportunity to send information of the public disorders to their sympathetic brethren in Africa. The reign of Egiza, agitated hitherto by almost incessant political convulsions, was now threatened with the evils of foreign invasion. A Saracen fleet, well manned and equipped, descended upon the defenceless Spanish coast, ravaged the fields, plundered the villages, and carried the inhabitants into captivity. To provide against this new danger a naval expedition was fitted out, and entrusted to the command of Theodomir, an officer of approved experience, and a noble of the highest rank. Setting sail, the Gothic admiral lost no time in encountering the hostile fleet. A bloody engagement took place; two hundred of the enemy’s vessels were destroyed or taken; and the embryotic maritime power of the Moslems was swept from the seas. In the following year a war with the Franks, the cause of which is unknown, was carried on for several months with the indecisive results characteristic of the operations of desultory warfare. Egiza, being advanced in years and conscious of his infirmities, was desirous of associating his son Witiza with him in the administration, and of securing to him the succession at his decease. A council having been convoked for this purpose, his wishes were realized without opposition, and Witiza was raised to the regal dignity. The following year the old King died, leaving to his young and inexperienced successor the sole responsibility of government, and a series of difficulties and embarrassments such as no other monarch of his time had hitherto been forced to contend with, and which involved both the stability of the Visigothic empire and the preservation of the Christian faith. The accession of Witiza promised a happy and prosperous future to the country afflicted with so many calamities. His youth had been distinguished by the practice of the virtues of temperance, generosity, justice, and filial reverence. As soon as he attained to absolute power, he evinced a disposition to win the attachment of the people by making amends for the pecuniary exactions and oppressive laws which had been imposed by the avarice and extortions of his family. A general amnesty was proclaimed. The forged documents by which the wealthy had been plundered were destroyed. All taxes, except such as were absolutely necessary to the support of the government, were remitted. Great numbers of exiles were invited to return, and their possessions were surrendered. The Jews were restored to partial favor; but, as the popular prejudice was still bitter and universal, a politic appearance of severity was maintained, which, however, it was evident would be entirely removed in time. Under such favorable auspices began the reign of Witiza, whose magnanimity, tact, and affable demeanor had already won the hearts of his subjects. The opinion of the latter was at first confirmed by the mild disposition and virtuous behavior of their youthful sovereign. But this fair promise of future greatness was fallacious, for Witiza soon plunged into excesses which awakened the horror of his subjects, and provoked the censures of the clergy, ever disposed to be lenient towards such transgressions except when they threatened their influence or their revenues. The whole court was soon abandoned to indiscriminate licentiousness. Not only was the violation of the most sacred traditions of the Church permitted, but polygamy and concubinage were openly encouraged by sacerdotal authority and example. The pious instructors of the people were the first to improve the opportunities afforded by these impolitic enactments, and the feelings of the devout were outraged by excesses which did not respect even the sacred precincts of the altar and the confessional. No scandals, however, aroused such indignation as the indulgence which was manifested towards the Jews. Every ecclesiastic, especially, considered any moderation of the condition of this down-trodden race an affront to his order, and a crime worse than sacrilege. Enraged by the contempt with which Witiza treated their remonstrances, the clergy lost no occasion of increasing the prevailing discontent, and, with a view to strengthening their position by enlisting the aid of the Holy See, they secretly despatched an embassy to Rome. The ire of the Pope was excited by the representations of the envoys of the Spanish Church, whose prelates, though not acknowledging his supreme jurisdiction, did not disdain to solicit his intervention as an affair which seemed to involve the interests of Christendom. Elated by the hope of establishing his authority in the Peninsula, the Holy Father Constantine, without delay, sent a message to the recalcitrant monarch threatening him with the loss of his kingdom, unless he at once revoked the offensive edicts and permitted the unrestricted persecution of the Jews. To this Witiza retorted with contempt that if the Pope did not cease intermeddling with what did not concern him, he would drive him from the Vatican; and he forthwith published an edict that no attention should be paid to the mandates of the Papacy under penalty of death. These proceedings further embittered the prejudices of both the clergy and the people, and the popular clamor became so loud that Witiza began to tremble for both his crown and his life. Agitated by his fears, and resolved to afford as little encouragement as possible to any treasonable undertaking, he dismantled the principal fortresses, and razed the walls of every city in the kingdom, excepting those of Toledo, Astorga, and Lugo; an act of folly which not only failed of its object, but in the end directly contributed to the overthrow of the monarchy. The Jews, on the other hand, now placed in positions of profit and responsibility, far from appreciating the honors with which they were invested and the confidence which was reposed in them, with characteristic treachery and ingratitude, availed themselves of their power for the destruction of their royal benefactor. Aided by their intrigues, a formidable conspiracy broke out. The majority of the clergy and a considerable body of the nobles joined the insurgents; a rival king was elected; and, after a short conflict, Witiza was deposed and probably murdered, for history has preserved no record of his fate.
The new monarch, Roderick, although he had reached the great age of eighty-two years, retained, in an unusual degree, the strength and activity of early manhood. His life had been passed amidst the athletic pastimes which exercised the leisure of the Gothic youth, and, in occasional expeditions undertaken against the hardy mountaineers of Galicia and Biscay, he had earned a well-merited reputation for courage and military skill. Although not of royal blood, his natural endowments, the dignity of his carriage, the apparent but deceptive austerity of his manners, and the mildness of his temper, gained for him the respect of all who were admitted to his presence. In the elegant luxury of his palace, in the splendor of his retinue, in the majestic pomp which distinguished every public ceremony over which he presided, he far surpassed his predecessors, and emulated, with no little success, the magnificence of the Roman court in the age of imperial decadence.
The intriguing spirit which animated the subjects of a monarchy essentially elective, but one where courtesy and real or apparent merit occasionally made an exception in favor of hereditary descent, had established, among the Visigoths, the custom of retaining near the throne the children of powerful families; nominally for purposes of education, but in fact to insure the fidelity of their relatives often entrusted with the custody of frontier strongholds or important military commands. The sons, until they attained to manhood, served as pages in the royal household, and were trained in all the manly and martial exercises of the time. The attendants of the queens were recruited from the noble maidens, whom this prudent custom placed and retained in the precincts of the court, and who were carefully instructed in the few but graceful accomplishments indispensable to the position of ladies of distinguished lineage. Among the latter, at the court of Roderick, was the daughter of Count Julian, formerly a vassal of the Byzantine Empire, and the commandant of the fortress of Ceuta; whom political necessity, the isolation consequent upon the subjugation of every Greek settlement in Africa, and the rapidly increasing power of the Moors, had compelled to appeal to the nearest Christian monarch for protection, and to transfer his allegiance to the court of Toledo. This girl, who was of great beauty, excited the licentious desires of the King, who, failing to accomplish his object by fair means, in an evil hour resorted to force. Informed of the injury which had been inflicted upon his family, Count Julian, braving without hesitation the storms of winter, hastened to the capital. Dissembling, with true Greek astuteness, his outraged feelings, he asked permission to remove his daughter to the bedside of her mother whom he represented as being dangerously ill. Without any misgivings Roderick granted the request, and, manifesting every appearance of respect and loyalty, the veteran officer left the court and retraced his steps. No sooner had he arrived at his post, than he began to carry out the plan of vengeance which he had already fully matured. The castle of Ceuta was the key of Europe. Impregnable to all the resources of military engineering in an age when gunpowder was unknown, its value as an obstacle to foreign invasion was not understood by the Visigoths. The immunity of centuries; the contempt for barbarians; the ignorance of the mighty and unexampled power of Islam; the inertia produced partly by the influence of climate, but principally by an abuse of all the pleasures of unbridled luxury, had disposed the sovereigns of Toledo to consider their kingdom inaccessible to attack, and their empire eternal. As has already been mentioned, this haughty and corrupt nation was constantly agitated and its integrity menaced by a score of discordant factions. Its recent monarchs had bent all their energies to the abrogation of the statesmanlike measures inaugurated by their forefathers. The nobles and the clergy, inflamed with mutual animosity, suspicious of their partisans, and arrayed against each other, were engaged in a mortal struggle for superiority. The Jews, indulged and persecuted by turns, lived in a continual state of apprehension and despair. All the salutary restraints of religion were apparently removed; the Church was regarded as a convenient instrument for the attainment of political power; the priesthood were devoted to the practice of nameless vices; the people to indiscriminate libertinage. A large body of slaves, who, under the lash of brutal masters, still preserved the traditions of liberty, were ripe for revolt, and longed for the day of their deliverance. A disastrous famine, followed by its usual successor the pestilence, and whose effects were still apparent in untilled fields and deserted hamlets, had contributed to increase the popular suffering and discontent. Fortified on one side against the incursions of the Franks by the natural rampart of the Pyrenees, and isolated on the others by the Mediterranean and the ocean, the inhabitants of the Peninsula, in the enjoyment of a salubrious climate and fruitful soil, rested in fancied security, and had long since laid aside the armor whose weight had become oppressive, and abandoned those warlike exercises whose preservation was their only safeguard.
Incited by a spirit of desperation which considered neither the consequences of his acts nor the means by which they were to be accomplished, Count Julian sought the presence of Musa. He found the Moslem general at Kairoan, which had been selected as the seat of the viceregal government of Western Africa. The intrepid character of his visitor was not unknown to the great Arab soldier whose designs upon Ceuta had been twice frustrated, by the valiant Greek, after the employment of all the resources at the command of the Khalif, and Count Julian was received with every token of honor and respect. Unfolding his project, he descanted long and earnestly upon the riches of the Gothic monarchy and the facility of its conquest. He explained the feuds and bitter feelings engendered by disappointed ambition, by religious persecution, by the seizure of hereditary estates, by the sufferings of wounded pride. He expatiated on the sense of injury experienced by the advocates of hereditary descent, who considered the reigning monarch of foreign lineage and inferior rank that had justly incurred the odium of usurpation. He portrayed in glowing terms the innumerable attractions of the country, its productive valleys, its crystal streams, the medicinal value of its herbs and plants to which magical virtues were attributed by popular report, its mines, its fisheries, the precious spoil which awaited the hand of the invader, the transcendent beauty of its women. He described the effeminate character of the inhabitants, enervated by idleness, luxury, and sensual indulgence. Much of this information was already familiar to Musa, but hitherto the impassable barrier of the fortress defended by the stubborn courage of the governor of Ceuta had checked the aspirations of the Moslem commander; nor had it been possible to even confirm the accuracy of the wonderful tales which had been related concerning Ghezirah-al-Andalus, or the Vandal Peninsula, as Spain was known to the Arabs.
Thoroughly appreciating the importance of the proposal, the magnitude of the interests involved, and the uncertainty which would attend the issue of the expedition, and, at the same time, distrusting the good faith of the Goth, Musa determined to obtain the consent of the Khalif before returning a definite answer. Despatches, with complete information, were accordingly sent to Damascus. The reply of Al-Walid, who then occupied the throne of the khalifate, was favorable; but he strongly advised the exercise of caution, a recommendation entirely superfluous in the case of a man of Musa’s suspicious and crafty disposition. Sending for Count Julian, Musa informed him that he would be required to prove his fidelity by heading a reconnaissance into the enemy’s country. The count accepted the condition with alacrity; crossed the strait with a small detachment of soldiers belonging to his garrison; ravaged the coast in the neighborhood of Medina Sidonia; burned several churches; destroyed the growing harvests, and returned with considerable booty. Knowing his ally to be now compromised beyond all hope of pardon, and the trifling resistance encountered having apparently demonstrated the feasibility of the enterprise, Musa announced his willingness to negotiate. The conditions of the compact which disposed of one of the richest kingdoms of Europe have escaped the notice of history. There is reason to believe, however, that Count Julian was promised substantial pecuniary remuneration in addition to the gratification of revenge; and that their hereditary estates were to be restored to the family of Witiza, whose sons were present at the conference, and whose brother Oppas was not only privy to the conspiracy but was one of its principal promoters. The keys of Ceuta were surrendered, and Count Julian, having sworn allegiance to the Khalif, was invested with a command in the Moslem army.
The wary old veteran Musa was not yet satisfied, and determined to send a second expedition, under one of his own captains, to explore the Spanish coast. He selected for this purpose one of his trusty freed-men, Abu-Zarah-Tarif by name, who, embarking with one hundred cavalry and three hundred infantry, landed at Ghezirah-al-Khadra, now Algeziras, in July, 710. The incursion of Tarif differed little in its results from that of his predecessor, but confirmed the representations of the latter, and proved beyond doubt the defenceless condition of the Visigothic kingdom. Preparations for war were now made upon a larger scale, but one which still could not contemplate the overthrow of the monarchy in the incredibly short period required to accomplish it, and which, indeed, was designed only as a predatory expedition. The command of the troops was given to Tarik-Ibn-Zeyad, a Berber, whose red hair and light complexion disclosed his descent from the Vandals. The similar names of these two officers, both of whom were freed-men of Musa, have led to a confusion and mistaken identity, which has greatly embarrassed the narratives of both ancient chroniclers and modern historians. Tarik was a soldier of approved experience, extraordinary enterprise, and unflinching courage. His army was one of the most motley forces which had ever been assembled under the Moslem standard. The number was comparatively insignificant, amounting to only seven thousand, of whom but few were cavalry. The bulk of the troops was composed of Berbers--fierce savages of the Atlas Mountains, proselytes reclaimed from fetichism by the policy and eloquence of Musa--among them being representatives of the tribes of Ghomarah, Masmoudah, and Zenetah, names destined to a cruel celebrity in the subsequent history of Spain. Every nation whose types chance, misfortune, the love of plunder, or the spirit of adventure had impelled upon the African coast, was represented in the ranks of the invaders; descendants of the Vandals and the Goths; Bedouins from the Hedjaz; political exiles from the far Orient; conspirators from Syria; apostate Byzantines who had renounced allegiance to the Emperor of Constantinople; and a considerable body of Jews, whose relations with their Spanish brethren rendered them valuable auxiliaries, swelled the command of Tarik. In the latter were adherents of every form of religion,--the adorer of fire, the worshipper of the stars, the Pagan votary of the gods of Olympus, the orthodox and the heretic Christian. Each tribe was marshalled under its respective banner, and the varied nationality of the rank and file was equally displayed in the widely diverse origin of the subordinate officers--Count Julian the renegade Greek, Tarik the Berber, Mugayth-al-Rumi the Goth, and Kaula-al-Yahudi the Jew. Vessels for the passage of the strait were furnished by Count Julian, who impressed such merchantmen as lay at anchor in the ports under his jurisdiction, the only ones obtainable; the number of these, however, was so insufficient that the transportation of the army consumed several days. The Moslems finally disembarked at the foot of an immense promontory known to the ancient world as Calpe, but which, rechristened by the Arabs Gebal-al-Tarik, the Mountain of Tarik, has transmitted its new appellation, almost unchanged, to future ages as the famous Gibraltar. Scarcely had the invaders landed, when they were attacked by the Goths under Theodomir, that chieftain whose successful conduct of the naval expedition during the reign of Egiza had induced Roderick to invest him with the command of the forces at his disposal. The ill-equipped and undisciplined troops of the Gothic general at once disclosed their inability to withstand the onset of the fiery horsemen of the Desert, and Theodomir was compelled to retreat. He sent, without delay, the alarming news of the invasion to the King, revealing the universal dismay with which this strange enemy was regarded, in the following language: “Our land has been invaded by people whose name, country, and origin are unknown to me. I cannot even tell thee whence they came, whether they fell from the skies or sprang from the earth.” This ominous despatch reached Roderick before the walls of Pampeluna, which had recently revolted against his authority. Whatever were his faults, the Gothic monarch was certainly not deficient in courage and resolution. Raising the siege, he hastened to Cordova, and devoted all his energies to the assembling of an immense army for the defence of the kingdom. Every resource was employed,--promises of amnesty, threats, bounties, and conscription, until a hundred thousand men had been mustered under the royal standard. But this great host was formidable only in appearance. The levies of which it was composed were wholly wanting in discipline and unaccustomed to the perils of warfare. Their weapons were mainly implements whose use was familiar in the practice of the peaceful arts of husbandry. The rank and file, a tumultuous rabble of slaves and hirelings, marched on foot. Horses were few and expensive in the Peninsula; only the nobles were mounted; and to the deficiency of cavalry among the Goths the Arab historians have largely attributed the crushing reverses sustained by their arms. To the unwieldy and disorderly character of the Gothic army was added the secret and fatal influence of treason. Thousands had been enrolled to defend the imperilled crown of Roderick, whose chief desire was the transfer of that crown to a rival dynasty. Others, high in rank, had tendered their services with the hope that, amidst the general confusion, they might push their political fortunes and gratify an inordinate ambition. The imperative necessity of the occasion had compelled the enlistment of the leaders of the hostile faction who had been injured beyond reparation, and whom it was equally dangerous to trust or further to offend. At the head of these were the sons and brothers of Witiza, who, while they repulsed the conciliatory overtures of Roderick, eagerly accepted a command which might promote their schemes of vengeance. Scores of those belonging to the noble and ecclesiastical orders, and the Jews to a man, inflamed with revenge and hatred, were in daily communication with the head-quarters of the enemy. The jealousy of rival commanders tended still further to impair the efficiency of the Christians, whose feuds and discontent being well known to their adversaries had a tendency to inspire the latter with a well-grounded hope of victory.
In the mean time, Tarik had seized and occupied the ancient town of Carteja, and, fortifying himself securely, sent foraging expeditions far and wide throughout the surrounding country. These were, without exception, successful, and the rapid movements of the Arab cavalry, their seemingly invincible character, and the valuable booty they secured, not only struck terror into the astonished natives, but greatly encouraged the main body of the invading army, encamped under the shadow of Gibraltar. The emissaries and secret allies of Tarik, who swarmed in the court and camp of Roderick, lost no time in apprising him of the preparations being made for his destruction. Alarmed by the accounts he received, he despatched a messenger to Musa for reinforcements. A detachment of five thousand Berber cavalry was sent to his aid, which with the remainder of his troops amounted to twelve thousand veterans; a mere handful when compared with the army of the Goths, but composed of warriors inured to privation, accustomed to conquer, inflamed with religious zeal, and bearing a devoted and unswerving attachment to their commander.
On the morning of a beautiful July day, in the year 711, the beginning of an era most notable in the annals of Spain, the hostile armies faced each other near Lake La Janda, upon the rolling plains of Medina-Sidonia. The Moors, flushed with the uniform success which had hitherto attended their arms, relying upon the dissensions of the enemy as much as upon their own valor, and impatient for the conflict, appeared in glittering mail, wearing snowy turbans, and equipped with sword and lance; while over their shoulders was suspended the Arabian bow, whose shafts, like those of the Parthian, made the archer all the more formidable in retreat. The Moorish general, after performing the rites of his faith, addressed his soldiers in a few stirring and well-chosen words. With consummate skill, he availed himself of the strongest passions which control humanity,--avarice, military glory, the love of woman, the priceless rewards of religious constancy. He revealed to them a dream, in which the Prophet had announced that the issue of the conflict would be favorable to the adherents of Islam, and which portended the confusion of the infidel. He placed before them their desperate position, where defeat implied annihilation, and victory was the only hope. He exhorted them to banish all thought of fear, and to rely upon their courage tested upon many fields of battle. He pictured in burning language the attractions of the country and the matchless charms of the Gothic houris who inhabited it. He repeated the passages of the Koran which promised that all the martyrs who fell in battle would at once receive the reward of their devotion amidst the ineffable delights of Paradise.
Upon the other hand, the bribes, the appeals, and the threats of Roderick had brought together the entire available military power of the Gothic monarchy. The King, surrounded by his nobles and escorted by his guards, displayed all the pomp and splendor of the Orient. He was borne to the front by white mules, upon a litter of ivory richly inlaid with silver, and sheltered by a canopy of many-colored silk; a purple cloak covered his shoulders, upon his head was the royal diadem, and his robes of cloth of gold were enriched with priceless jewels. The devices of the nobles marked the order of the various divisions, and in the rear was led a train of many thousand beasts of burden whose only loads were ropes with which to bind the prisoners. The details of the battle which changed the destiny of Western Europe are unusually meagre, even for the unlettered and credulous age in which it occurred. It seems to have consisted of a series of indecisive skirmishes which lasted eight days, during which time the two armies traversed a distance of twenty miles, to the neighborhood of the modern city of Jerez de la Frontera. Here, with amazing ignorance, or with fatal disregard of the elementary rules of military tactics, the Goths took up their position with the river Guadalete in their rear. Upon the final charge of the Arabs, the treason of the former partisans of Witiza became apparent. A large body of nobles with their retainers openly deserted; a panic ensued; and the vast array took to headlong flight. Pressing forward with the shrill war-cry of the Moslem, which struck terror into the defeated Goths, the Moorish squadrons drove the enemy into the rapid waters of the Guadalete. The carnage was terrible. Exasperated by days of fighting, and haunted by the constant jeopardy of servitude and death, the soldiers of Tarik gave no quarter. The ground was heaped with corpses. The channel of the river was choked with the dead and dying, with horses, and chariots, and camp equipage, with treasures which the fugitives vainly tried to save. Of the invaders, three thousand are said to have fallen, but no computation was made of the loss of the Goths. The remnants of the army which escaped the swords of the Arabs were pursued to the very gates of the neighboring cities. Many were cut to pieces before they could reach a place of safety; and finally, satiated with blood, the conquerors found upon their hands a great number of prisoners whom the ropes which they themselves had provided now served to secure. The war-horse of Roderick covered with trappings of great value was taken, but no trace remained of the King. One of his sandals, encrusted with rubies and emeralds, was found on the bank of the river, which would seem to indicate that he perished by drowning; but his body was never recovered, and his fate is a mystery; notwithstanding that Spanish romance and monkish credulity have invested his disappearance with many extravagant legends, attested by a formidable array of ecclesiastical evidence. The booty which fell into the hands of the Moslems was incalculable. The number of horses taken was so large that the entire army was mounted, thereby adding greatly to its efficiency. The housings of these animals--whose possession among the Goths implied the enjoyment of rank and fortune--were of the costliest description; many of the finest chargers were shod with silver or gold. The Gothic nobles, rather accustomed to vie with each other in the service of their tables, the size of their retinues, and the magnificence of their equipages than in valor and military knowledge, and little dreaming of the result, had brought with them their most valuable possessions in plate and jewels. Their love of ostentation caused them to surround themselves with multitudes of slaves, whose daily broils kept the camp in a continuous uproar, and between whom and the enemy existed a secret understanding, whose effects were fearfully manifested in the hour of disaster. All of this wealth, together with the ornaments and insignia of the royal household, became the spoil of the conqueror. The fifth, which according to the law of Islam belonged to the Khalif, having been set aside, the remainder was divided on the field, amidst the tumultuous acclamations of the exultant soldiery.
The battle of the Guadalete is justly ranked with the great and decisive victories of the world. Indeed, if we consider the relative number of the combatants, the duration of the action, and the importance of its results, it has no parallel in the annals of warfare. While the intrigues of unscrupulous factions contributed largely to the success of the Arabs, the fact must not be lost sight of, that the numbers of the latter were scarcely appreciable when compared with the vast masses of their antagonists, and that they labored under the additional disadvantage of fighting in the enemy’s country. As to generalship, none could have been displayed on either side. The Moslems were little better than banditti, commanded by barbarians and renegades whose sole military experience had been acquired by predatory raids in the African Desert. The Goths, idle and effeminate in life, debilitated in body, cowardly, debased, and wholly unused to arms, were dominated by inordinate vanity and filled with contempt for their opponents. The tyranny, excesses, and arbitrary acts of Witiza having caused the exclusion of his posterity from the throne, the partisans of the latter were willing to sacrifice their country and their religion to insure the overthrow of the usurper and to satisfy their insatiable cravings for revenge.
Thus fell the enfeebled and tottering monarchy of the Goths. It had long survived its glory and its prestige. The severe political maxims of its founders, suited to the frigid regions of the Baltic, had been found incompatible with the physical and moral conditions imposed by the voluptuous climate of Bætica and Lusitania. Undermined by the vices of the nobility, by the turbulent ambition of the priesthood, by the treasonable machinations of the Jews, and by the supine indifference of the masses to any fate--provided only that it involved a change of masters-- the first shock of a determined enemy swept it from the face of the earth. In its stead arose a new empire and a strange dynasty of exotic origin, foreign alike in dress, in laws, in customs, in constitution, in religion. Far from being uncongenial, the meteorological conditions of the semi-tropical Peninsula, which have insensibly determined the manners, the policy, and the fate of so many races, were eminently favorable to the highest intellectual development of its people. Through the wise and noble ambition of its rulers was established that universal culture which made Cordova the intellectual centre from whence diverged those rays of light which illumined the darkness of the mediæval world. From the genius of its statesmen, the skill of its generals, and the prowess of its armies arose that constant apprehension of impending disaster, a portentous shadow, which, hanging over Europe like the imperfectly defined outlines of a gigantic spectre, threatened for centuries the overthrow of the Seat of St. Peter, and the destruction of that system of faith which had risen upon the ruins of Pagan idolatry and superstition.
Great and wide-spread was the consternation which seized the Goths after the rout of the Guadalete. The entire resources of the kingdom had been staked and lost. The sovereign had mysteriously disappeared. In the carnage of the field, and in that which had accompanied the still more disastrous retreat, the nobility had suffered so greatly that few, if any, of its members who were eligible to the throne had survived or remained at liberty. The sacred profession of the priesthood, which had encouraged by its presence and exhortations the flagging spirits of the soldiery, had not been able to protect them from the edge of the Moorish scimetar. The hatred and fanaticism of the invaders were aroused to frenzy by the sight of the vestments and insignia of the Church, and even the most venerable prelates were massacred; for the ferocious Moslem gave no quarter to the ministers of Christianity, and disdained even the menial services of those who had denounced to eternal perdition the followers of the Prophet. The accumulated wealth of generations, which the vanity and ostentation of the palatines had exhibited at the court, on the march, and in the camp, had been swept into the coffers of the victor. The fugitives who were so fortunate as to escape took refuge in the neighboring cities; whither they were soon followed by the peasantry, who beheld with dismay the sight of their burning homes and desolated fields. In one engagement, and virtually in a single day, one of the most populous and opulent countries of Europe had succumbed to the impetuous but desultory attack of an unknown foe. For the space of two centuries, and under far less favorable circumstances, the Carthaginian and Iberian provinces of the Peninsula had successfully defied the resources and the prestige of the Roman arms. For three centuries longer, the Visigoths, relying upon the traditions and military fame of their ancestors, had protected, without difficulty, their possessions wrested from the feeble hands of the Cæsars, and had repeatedly rolled back the tide of Frankish invasion from the slopes of the Pyrenees.
With the advent of overwhelming national misfortune, there fell upon the terror-stricken people the apathy of despair. The public wretchedness was augmented by the censures of the clergy, who, with characteristic effrontery, declared the invasion to be a divine punishment for the crimes of the wicked; crimes in which they themselves had not only participated, but by their shameless conduct had obtained an infamous pre-eminence in an age of unprecedented corruption.
The Moslems under the lead of the enterprising Tarik, who displayed the talents of a skilful general in his ability to profit by every advantage, lost no time in securing the fruits of victory. From the army--now a compact and active body of cavalry--were sent in all directions detachments to cut off straggling parties of the enemy, and to capture supplies destined for the overcrowded cities already threatened with the horrors of starvation.
Tidings of the wonderful success upon the plains of Jerez soon spread far and wide through the towns and provinces of Africa. Animated by the hope of plunder and glory, the Moslems, many of them abandoning their homes and making use of every available craft to cross the strait, flocked by thousands to the standard of Tarik. The latter, after thoroughly reorganizing his new recruits, and appointing to the command officers of tried fidelity and experience, took Sidonia. The strongly fortified city of Carmona next claimed his attention. As its reduction by the slow process of a siege was out of the question with the resources at his command, resort was had to stratagem. A squadron of the retainers of Count Julian, headed by that worthy in person, and apparently pursued by a body of the enemy, appeared before the walls. Shelter was at once given the fugitives, who in the dead of night killed the sentinels and opened the gates to the enemy. Thence Tarik advanced upon Ecija, where the greater portion of the survivors of the battle of the Guadalete had taken refuge. The Goths, disdaining the protection of their defences, and nerved to despair by their situation, which involved the alternative of slavery or famine, boldly encountered the Moslems in the field. The action was hotly contested, and although the loss sustained by the invaders was greater, in proportion to the number of combatants engaged, than any suffered during the Conquest, the Goths were in the end defeated, and the city taken. Ecija swarmed with members of the monastic orders, and the nuns, who largely predominated, were famous for their beauty. The prospect of the infidel harem filled these pious virgins with horror; and they adopted the heroic expedient of mutilating their features, hoping by the sacrifice of their charms to preserve both their honor and their lives. The compassion of the Moslem freebooter, infuriated by this attempt to deprive him of his prey, was not moved by the evidences of saintly devotion; the sight of a conventual habit became the signal for outrage; death followed fast upon violence; and many hundreds of the self-mutilated spouses of Christ received the crown of martyrdom.
In the mean time, Musa had forwarded despatches to Damascus announcing the victory, but, actuated by the petty jealousy which formed such a prominent feature of his character, he carefully concealed from the Khalif the name of the successful commander. Having formed the determination to cross over to Spain and conduct the campaign in person, he sent peremptory orders to Tarik not to advance farther until he arrived. But the hero of the Guadalete, fully alive to the importance of affording the enemy no opportunity for rest and reorganization, and advised by Count Julian to march at once on Toledo, was of the opinion that the interests of his sovereign, as well as his own fortunes, would be promoted by disobedience of the commands of his superior. He therefore paraded his troops, and after enjoining them to make war only upon those actually in arms, to leave all non-combatants unmolested, and scrupulously to respect the religious prejudices of the people, set out for Cordova at the head of a numerous army. The latter city was strong and well defended, and Tarik, after nine days, seeing that the siege would probably be of long duration, left its conduct to his lieutenant, Mugayth-al-Rumi, and moved without delay upon Toledo. The governor of Cordova, who was of the royal blood of the Goths, and a brave and determined officer, inspirited by the departure of the main body of the enemy, made no question of his ability to defend the city against a force not greatly exceeding his own in numbers. But the good fortune which seemed to attend the Moslems upon every occasion did not desert them in the present emergency. Information was soon brought to Mugayth-al-Rumi of a weak point in the fortifications which might be scaled. Aided by a dark night and the noise made by a storm of hail, a detachment crossed the river under the guidance of a shepherd, and reached the place which had been indicated. A fig-tree which stood near the wall was mounted by an active soldier, who, unrolling his turban, drew up several of his comrades, who occupied the battlements without resistance; for the severity of the tempest had driven the sentries from their posts. Proceeding quietly and rapidly through the streets, the guard at the gates was surprised and cut to pieces, the army was admitted, and by daybreak the city was in the hands of the Moslems. The governor, with four hundred of the garrison, fled to the church of St. George, which stood outside the western wall, and being surrounded by a moat and supplied with water by a subterranean conduit from a spring in the neighboring mountains, offered all the obstacles of a fortress whose towers and barbicans could bid defiance to an enemy destitute of military engines and ignorant of the mode of conducting a siege. For a considerable time the Goths repulsed the attacks of the band of Mugayth-al-Rumi, until at last, after diligent search, the source of the water-supply having been discovered and the aqueduct cut, the besieged, reduced to extremity, were compelled to surrender. The majority of the garrison were permitted to join their countrymen in the North, but the officers and the governor--who was a personage of too great importance to be set at liberty--were retained in the camp of the victor.
Before leaving Ecija, Tarik had sent one of his officers, Zeyd-Ibn-Kesade, at the head of a considerable force, to overrun the southern portion of Andalusia. In this region, as elsewhere, the mysterious terror which attended the exploits of the invaders had preceded them. Baja, Antequera, Elvira, and the adjoining districts yielded almost without resistance, but Granada, relying upon its fortifications, refused to accept the proffered terms and was carried by storm. The small number of the Moslems rendered it impossible for them to leave garrisons in the captured towns, and the most important of the latter were placed in charge of Arab governors, with whom the Jews, who seemed to have thriven under persecution, engaged themselves to co-operate. So numerous was the Hebrew element in Granada that it was practically a Jewish community, and, with its aid, a single company was sufficient to hold in subjection a city of nearly a hundred thousand souls. Having accomplished the object of his expedition with trifling loss, loaded with rich booty, and accompanied by innumerable slaves of both sexes, Zeyd, sacking Jaen on his way, hastened to join Tarik at Toledo.
Eight months had elapsed since the battle of the Guadalete before the Moslem army appeared before the gates of the Visigothic capital. Perched upon a lofty eminence, and almost surrounded by the Tagus, whose current ran swiftly through a deep channel worn in the living rock, art had combined with nature to render its position impregnable. Walls built of stones of almost cyclopean dimensions environed it, and rose to a great height even on the side towards the river, where the precipitous cliffs themselves discouraged all attempts at escalade. The approach from the north had been protected by barbicans and outworks of double strength. These defences had been designed and perfected by Wamba, the last of the Gothic kings whose martial genius had, for a brief period, revived the glorious traditions and long forgotten exploits of the ancient dynasty. The imperial capital, a citadel in itself, where all the resources of a vast monarchy had been lavished and all the knowledge of military engineering of the age had been employed to insure the safety of the court, now trembled in the presence of a few thousand roving barbarians. The dread which was associated with the unknown enemy was augmented by the rapidity of his movements, which to the superstitious fears of the Visigoths made him appear ubiquitous. A sufficient military force had been available to defend this fortress, but the sentiments of patriotism, loyalty, and courage, so essential to the preservation of obedience and discipline, had disappeared. Instead of preparing for resistance, each individual thought only of his own preservation, when news arrived that the foe was approaching. The majority of the citizens, leaving their possessions, fled to Galicia and the Asturias. The lawless soldiers of the garrison pillaged the deserted houses, and stripped without hindrance the defenceless fugitives. The clergy, considering the evil as only temporary, walled up the treasures of chapel and convent in crypts, where to-day the greater portion of them still remain undiscovered. The primate, laden with the most precious effects of the churches, and leaving his ecclesiastical inferiors to contend for the prize of martyrdom offered by the infidel, accompanied his terrified parishioners in their flight, nor did he arrest his steps until safe within the walls of Rome. A disorderly rabble of priests and monks, actuated either by faith or indolence, remaining at their posts, endeavored to avert the impending calamity by fasting, prayer, and pilgrimage to the innumerable shrines situated both within and without the city. Unfortunately, however, no divine response was vouchsafed to these last frantic efforts of a despairing hierarchy. The waving pennons and sparkling lances of the Arab cavalry appeared in the distance, and their light and active squadrons swept around the walls. The fields were laid waste. The convents and the villas which embellished the suburbs were razed to the ground or burnt. Every unlucky straggler was compelled, at the point of the sword, to renounce the religion of his fathers or submit to the fate of a slave. In a town deserted by its garrison, half depopulated, without provisions, deprived of every prospect of relief, and principally occupied by non-combatants and Jews who were in sympathy with the enemy, no idea of resistance could be entertained. The usual conditions offered by the Moslems were eagerly accepted. All had permission to retire who desired to do so, with the understanding that such abandonment of their homes involved a forfeiture of every description of property. Those who preferred to remain were assured of protection, under payment of a reasonable tribute. Both Jews and Christians were indulged in the practice of their religious rites; but half of the churches were confiscated for the use of Islam, and no new houses of worship could be constructed without permission of the government. The tributaries were left subject to their own laws, enforced by their own tribunals, as long as these did not conflict with the policy of the dominant power. No impediments to proselytism were tolerated, and severe punishment was denounced against such as should offer intimidation or insult to Christian renegades. Such were the terms imposed upon the inhabitants of the Peninsula by the generous policy of the conqueror; a pleasing contrast to the brutality of the barbarians, the duplicity of Carthage, and the avarice and selfishness of Rome.
Notwithstanding the most valuable treasures of the imperial capital had been carried away by the fleeing population, the plunder secured by the Moslems was immense, and even their rapacity, ordinarily insatiable, was for once appeased. The variety and number of the precious objects which met their bewildered gaze was so great, that the rude warriors of the Atlas not infrequently turned aside from the splendid vestments and jewel-studded furniture destined for the service of the Church, to more portable and gorgeous baubles which caught their momentary fancy. It is related by the most accurate of the Christian and Moorish chroniclers, that two Berbers, having found an altar-cloth of gold brocade enriched with rows of hyacinths and emeralds which was too heavy for them to carry, cut out that portion containing the jewels and rejected the balance as worthless. Another, who had secured a golden vase filled with pearls, kept the precious receptacle, but, ignorant of their value, cast away its contents. In the cathedral were found many votive crowns of gold, each inscribed with the name of a Gothic king. The confusion incident to a hasty flight had left in the religious houses of every description a vast amount of wealth, which fell into the hands of the conqueror. An apartment was discovered in the palace occupied by Tarik which was literally filled with the treasures and royal insignia of the various dynasties which had for ages swayed the fortunes of the Visigothic monarchy. Chains and diadems, urns and uncut jewels, sceptres, richly decorated weapons, costly armor, robes of cloth of gold, have been enumerated among the spoil by the historians of the time; by the Christian, with regret and shame, by the Mohammedan, with all the exultation of victory.
After the surrender of the capital, Tarik, leaving the city in charge of his faithful adherents, the Jews, at once advanced northward in pursuit of the retreating Goths. The latter, in every instance when it was possible, upon the appearance of the cloud of turbaned horsemen, abandoned their burdens and took refuge in the mountain fastnesses. Overtaking a body of fugitives a short distance beyond Toledo, Tarik captured a magnificent table, or lectern--used to support the Gospels--which had belonged to the cathedral; whose origin the romantic credulity of that age attributed to Solomon, and supposed to be a portion of the booty brought by Titus from the sack of Jerusalem; but which more reliable accounts have demonstrated to have been the handiwork of Visigothic artisans. The body and framework of this precious jewel were of the purest gold. Into it were inserted alternate rows of hyacinths, rubies, pearls, and emeralds, and, as it was the custom of each monarch to contribute something to its embellishment, royal emulation had exhausted itself to surpass the efforts of preceding reigns in the decoration of an object whose sanctity made it more priceless in the eyes of the superstitious than even the inestimable value of its materials and ornamentation. It stood upon four feet, the latter being so encrusted with emeralds as to convey the impression that each was formed of a single stone. This table, whose estimated value was five hundred thousand crowns, and which has been described with such exaggeration as to have even aroused the doubts of historical critics concerning its existence, was set aside with the portion of the spoil destined for the Khalif.
The capture of Toledo was the last important exploit of the Berber general, whose success could not atone for the gross insubordination of which he was guilty. A few other cities had been taken, a large area of territory had been ravaged, when the news of the approach of Musa, and the anticipation of his commander’s wrath, suddenly checked the career of Tarik in the full flush of conquest and glory.
The fame and popularity of the latter as well as the report of the vast riches amassed by him had excited, to the full measure of their malignity, the envy and the hatred of Musa. The adventurers who had hastened to Iberia to serve under the standard of Tarik had depleted the garrisons of Africa, and it was fourteen months after the main expedition had sailed before Musa was able to muster a sufficient force to take the field in person. Crossing the strait with a numerous body of troops--which included representatives of the most distinguished families of Arabia, many of whom had enjoyed the rare distinction of being friends of the Companions of the Prophet, as well as the flower of the African soldiery--he disembarked at Ghezirah-al-Khadra. His jealousy of the success of Tarik, and the certainty that the Berbers had left no city or hamlet unplundered in their march, led Musa to desire to proceed to Toledo by a different route. Informed of his wish, his guides promised to gratify him, and place within his power cities of far greater extent and magnificence than those which had submitted to his rebellious lieutenant. They conducted him first to Carmona, which, like most of the other towns of Andalusia, had cast off the Moslem yoke as soon as the departure of the army of Tarik had inspired its inhabitants with confidence; and this well-fortified place, despite its strength, seems to have at once yielded to the summons of the invader. Seville, then as now one of the largest, wealthiest, and most beautiful cities of Spain, was next besieged. One month sufficed to reduce it, but not without many bloody engagements, in which the Moslems sustained considerable loss. A garrison was left in the citadel, and Musa marched upon Merida, famous from the days of the Romans for its massive fortifications, its imposing public works, and the architectural grandeur and richness of its temples. Founded by the veterans of Augustus, and honored with his name, Merida still retained, in the eighth century, a few of the stupendous memorials of her pristine splendor, which nearly three hundred years before had so impressed the astonished barbarians of Germany, and now exerted their awe-inspiring influence upon the simple and superstitious tribesmen of Africa and Arabia. The partiality of the Roman emperors had lavished upon this provincial capital treasures that had enabled its citizens to raise structures rivalling those of Rome itself. Bridges, of such extraordinary length and huge proportions as to almost defy the efforts of modern science to demolish them, crossed the sandy bed of the sluggish Guadiana. Aqueducts, suspended upon tiers of graceful arches, traversed, high in air, the populous and highly cultivated plain. Monuments of the reigns of Hadrian and Trajan spanned the streets and towered in the forum. In the suburbs stood the theatre, the circus, and the naumachia; buildings worthy of the taste and grandeur of any city of the empire. The population was one of the most prosperous and opulent in the kingdom. The archiepiscopal see of Merida vied in dignity and influence with the primacy of Toledo. It had not been many years since the vassals and slaves of the metropolitan, to the number of nearly a thousand, glittering with jewels and cloth of gold, had dazzled the eyes of the populace, and excited the envy of the nobles, while participating in the ceremonial pageantry of the Church--exhibitions so well adapted to impress the beholder with the greatness, the pomp, and the resources of ecclesiastical power. Well might the enthusiasm of the predatory Arab be excited by the architectural magnificence and historic souvenirs of the far-famed capital of Lusitania! While the gigantic proportions of its edifices called forth his admiration, and led him to attribute their erection to giants and demons, his avarice was, at the same time, stimulated by the thought of the booty to be obtained by the pillage of a place of such extent and importance. But the inhabitants, worthy of the renown of their ancestors, and undismayed by the sudden appearance of an unknown foe, did not hesitate to engage him on equal terms. A series of combats followed, in which the valor of the besieged acquired for them a temporary advantage. In the face of such determined resistance, and wholly unacquainted with the methods of carrying on a siege, the Moslems began to falter. But their veteran commander, confident in his skill, now brought to bear the experience which he had acquired in many hard-fought campaigns in Syria and Africa. The city was completely blockaded. Every foraging party which issued from the gates was intercepted and captured or cut to pieces. The stratagems of Berber warfare were adopted to the confusion of an intrepid but unwary enemy. Detachments which sallied forth to attack the besieging lines were lured into ambush and annihilated. Military engines familiar to that age were constructed, but the activity and courage of the Visigoths were such that, although breaches were made, no forlorn hope could effect a lodgment within the fortifications; and one which succeeded in penetrating them--a circumstance which gave to the place where it occurred the suggestive name of the Tower of the Martyrs-- was destroyed to a man. Each day, with the rising of the sun, the battle was renewed, and Musa saw with rage and apprehension his well-tried veterans and the bravest of his officers perish before his eyes. The fortifications appeared impregnable; and had it not been for the opportune arrival of Abd-al-Aziz, the son of the Arab general, with a reinforcement of seven thousand cavalry and five thousand crossbow-men, the Moslems would have been compelled to abandon the undertaking. Disheartened by this change in their fortunes, and beginning to suffer from a scarcity of provisions, the inhabitants of Merida now made overtures for a surrender. Although in the position of suppliants, the envoys provoked the resentment of Musa by their demeanor, and several conferences were necessary before the citizens would condescend to accept the usual terms of capitulation. When all had been arranged and hostages delivered, the Moslem army took possession of the city. Great wealth fell into the hands of the grasping Musa, who appropriated as his slave Egilona, the captive widow of Roderick, a princess whose subsequent marriage to his son Abd-al-Aziz was the source of many calamities to his family and nation.
The heroic defence of Merida had inspired with the hope of freedom the cities of the South, upon whom the Moslem yoke but recently imposed sat lightly, and Seville, Malaga, Granada, and Jaen rose simultaneously in revolt. The attention of Musa was first directed to Seville, the latest and most valuable of his recent acquisitions. The rebels of that city had massacred thirty men of the garrison and put the rest to flight, while the Jews, true to the instincts of a people long degraded by servitude, not only refused to assist their allies, but hastened with cringing servility to make peace once more with their old oppressors. For this defection, a terrible retribution was exacted. Abd-al-Aziz carried the place by storm, and put to death without mercy every Christian and Hebrew male who was found within its walls. The Moslems, taught by experience the imperative necessity of colonization, and being now in sufficient numbers to justify a division of their forces, placed a strong garrison in Seville; while the confiscated lands were partitioned among the natives of Arabia the Happy present with the invading army, who hastened to take possession of the luxurious estates of the Gothic merchants and nobility. This was the first instance of the settlement of conquered territory by the natives of a particular country, afterwards so common under Mohammedan rule; a stroke of policy whose effects are to this day apparent in the traditions, the dialects, the customs, and the popular superstitions of the different provinces of Spain. Abd-al-Aziz easily reduced to obedience the remaining rebellious cities of Andalusia, which, colonized in like manner, remained ever faithful to their allegiance. A portion of Murcia was also occupied; and unusually advantageous terms were, at the surrender of Orihuela, accorded to the Christians through the address of the Gothic general Theodomir, whom, after the death of Roderick, a faction of the Goths had invested with the supreme command.
The authorities are so contradictory that it is impossible to ascertain how far into the enemy’s country Tarik penetrated after the capture of Toledo. It is probable, however, that his operations were mere inroads, destitute of historical importance. The spirit of the nation was broken; its armies were scattered; its leaders killed or enslaved; its capital in the hands of the enemy. The subjugation of the Peninsula was virtually ended, and the successful general could well afford to rest upon his laurels and devise means to avert the just indignation of his superior, provoked by flagrant disobedience to his orders, an offence which under the strict regulations of military law was punishable with death.
The two captains met at Talavera, whither Tarik in his anxiety had advanced, attended by his officers and loaded with costly presents, the choicest spoil of the Visigothic capital. The envious spirit of Musa, however, was not to be appeased by gifts whose splendor only served to suggest the greater value of the plunder which he had lost. He assailed his insubordinate lieutenant with bitter reproaches, and, forgetting the magnitude of his recent services, even went so far as to remind him of his former servile condition by striking him in the presence of the entire army. Then placing him under arrest, he hurried to Toledo, and ordered him instantly to collect and deliver all the booty which had fallen into his hands at the surrender of the city. Of the latter, the so-called table of Solomon, whose fame had long before reached Musa, was by far the most valuable. Tarik, thoroughly cognizant of the baseness and injustice of his commander, and suspecting that he would appropriate as his own the credit of this important prize, with an astuteness worthy of his Berber origin, had secretly removed one of its emerald-studded feet. In this condition it was delivered to Musa, who, being assured that it was thus mutilated when found, had the missing foot replaced with one of gold; no jewels of corresponding size being obtainable, although the collections of individuals and the coffers of the Gothic treasury were diligently ransacked for that purpose. Musa, having secured the coveted booty, now deprived Tarik of his command, and threw him into a dungeon. The keen foresight of the Berber chieftain, who knew that such a step was only the prelude to assassination, did not abandon him in this trying emergency. Having, through the mediation of his friends, succeeded in bribing a messenger whom Musa despatched to Damascus, a special envoy was sent by the Khalif ordering the immediate release of the illustrious captain and his restoration to authority. With unconcealed reluctance Musa complied with the orders of his sovereign, and Tarik, relieved of his chains, resumed his duties amidst the acclamations of the troops. A temporary and apparent reconciliation was effected between the antagonistic leaders, who in public treated each other with courtesy, but in whose hearts smouldered the inextinguishable fires of mutual hatred, kindled by unpardonable wrong and baffled enmity. With united forces, eager for glory, they invaded Aragon. Each horseman was provided with a small copper pot, a leathern bag for provisions, and a bottle for water; the infantry carried nothing but their arms. The camp equipage was loaded on trains of pack-mules. Military and political considerations required and enforced the observance of the strictest discipline. Non-combatants were unmolested. Pillage was forbidden under pain of death, save in actual battle and during the storming of cities. The religious prejudices of the people were respected, and no property was destroyed except when resistance or violence was offered the troops. The province was overrun, and its capital, Saragossa, taken and settled by adventurers from Africa. Upon the inhabitants of this city Musa imposed a fine new in the annals of Islam, denominated the Contribution of Blood, which was exacted before the army entered the gates and exempted the conquered from annoyance. The Valley of the Ebro pleased the colonists, who intermarried with the people, and the governor, Hanash-Ibn-Ali, signalized his administration by the erection of a splendid mosque, vestiges of which still remain. Catalonia and Valencia next submitted to the common fate, and then the two generals, reversing their course, marched to the wild region of the West where, among the mist-enshrouded sierras of Galicia and the Asturias, the remnant of the Visigothic nation, led by its honored prelates and indomitable chieftains, had borne its venerated relics and its household gods; to lay under such unpromising auspices the foundations of a far grander and more powerful empire, destined in after years to command the admiration and the terror of the world.
The reports of Musa to the Khalif show that the Arabs fully appreciated the value and importance of their conquest. “In the clearness of the sky and the beauty of its landscape it resembles Syria; in softness of climate even Yemen is not its superior; in profusion of flowers and delicacy of perfumes it suggests the luxury of India; it rivals Egypt in the fertility of its soil, and China in the variety and excellence of its minerals,” wrote the experienced veteran to whom the wealth and resources of both Asia and Africa were familiar. The multitude of captives acquired by the Moslems struck the old general with surprise. “It is like the assembly of nations on the Day of Judgment,” he exclaimed; although he doubtless remembered that Mauritania had yielded its prisoners by the hundred thousand, and human chattels were so cheap that it was not an unusual occurrence for an able-bodied man to be sold in the bazaar of Kairoan for a handful of pepper. A female merchant, who dealt in trinkets and perfumes, left Toledo after its surrender with five hundred slaves in her train. Thirty thousand Christian maidens, selected for their beauty, were destined for the markets of the East. The Jews especially reaped a rich harvest from the misfortunes of their former oppressors. Profiting by the ignorance of the soldiers, they purchased for trifling sums the sacred utensils of the altar, the jewels which had graced the beauties of the court, and all the rich and costly appliances of Gothic luxury. From the Saracen conquest, with the enormous wealth it afforded them, dates the prominence subsequently attained by the Hebrews in the political and financial affairs of Europe.
The strange fatality which preserved for future greatness and renown the broken fragments of the Visigothic monarchy, even now at the very outset, when it seemed inevitable that the entire Peninsula should become Mohammedan, asserted its mysterious power. Tarik had reached Astorga and Musa was still at Lugo, when a message was delivered from the Khalif Al-Walid ordering both generals to return to Damascus. This step had been resolved upon, not so much on account of the mutual hostility of the two leaders which, manifested even in their despatches, seriously impaired the prestige of the Moslem arms and menaced the stability of the Moslem conquests, as from fear lest the ambition of Musa might lead him to usurp the sovereignty of the newly acquired possessions. Prudential considerations also prevented the appointment of Tarik as governor of the Peninsula. His popularity was even greater than that of Musa, and the remote situation of the conquered territory was but too favorable for the establishment of an independent monarchy, whose subjection in case of rebellion would be difficult, if not impossible. The aspiring genius of the veteran commander had formed a vast scheme of conquest, a project so grand as at first sight to appear extravagant, yet which, after careful examination, might be considered far from impracticable. It was his wish to emulate the example and surpass the achievement of Hannibal by traversing Europe, and to meet before the walls of Constantinople an army which could co-operate with him in the siege and capture of the Byzantine capital. Had this gigantic design been realized, the domain of the Khalifate of Damascus would have far exceeded the limits of the Roman Empire. He had seen with what ease the Visigothic kingdom, possessed of incalculable wealth, and animated by the military traditions of three centuries, had been subverted in a day. The unprecedented success of their recent military operations had induced the fanatical and credulous soldiery to regard themselves as the special favorites of Allah. It was moreover a matter of common notoriety that the able chieftain who had crushed, and then converted, the hitherto independent tribes of the Libyan Desert and the Atlas Mountains, and swept resistlessly over the plains of the Peninsula, had, in campaigns which extended over an entire generation, never failed in an enterprise or lost a battle. The very mention of a crusade against the infidel roused the wildest passions in the Moslem’s heart. Unlimited treasure was available for any undertaking, however extensive; a consideration of but little moment, however, with a force accustomed to be paid in booty, and whose subsistence was wrested from the enemy. The barbarian monarchy of France, perpetually vexed by internal dissensions, was not likely to offer more serious impediments to invasion than those which had vanished before the tempest of the Guadalete. Was it then chimerical for Musa to hope that, with the combined aid of his own genius and the invincible prowess of his veterans, he might add to the domains of the successor of Mohammed the fairest regions of Europe, in the very seat of the Papacy proclaim from the towers of the Eternal City the doctrines of Islam, and, passing eastward, exchange greetings upon the shores of the Bosphorus with his friends and brethren of Syria? This plan of conquest, doubtless suggested by the invasion of the Carthaginian general, but which promised far more important results, owing to the thoroughly disorganized condition of the provinces once constituting the Roman Empire, an enterprise worthy of the ambition and daring of any military leader, was unhesitatingly condemned by the suspicious Khalif, who saw in its successful execution the portentous menace of a rival monarchy. With inexpressible grief and vexation, yet, to some degree, sustained by the hope that a personal interview might accomplish what written explanation had failed to do, Musa prepared to obey the mandate of his sovereign. In furtherance of this resolution, and to gratify a not unreasonable vanity, he determined to parade before the court and populace of Damascus the trophies of Africa and Spain with a pomp proportionate to the splendor of those conquests.
A general rendezvous was appointed at Seville, now designated as the capital of the kingdom, by reason of its proximity to the sea, and its ease of access to the Moslem settlements of Africa. There were assembled the spoil of palaces, the sacrilegious plunder of churches, the booty of many a battle-field, the throngs of noble captives, the insignia of fallen royalty. Ponderous vehicles were constructed for the conveyance of this treasure, whose value for once exceeded the wildest estimates of Oriental exaggeration. When all was ready, Musa, having appointed his son Abd-al-Aziz viceroy during his absence, crossed over to Ceuta. In obedience to orders issued previously to his arrival, every town of Al-Maghreb in the line of march contributed its contingent to increase the magnificence of the triumph. The fierce chieftains of Mauritania trooped after the victor in the character of warriors, proselytes, or slaves. Heaped in picturesque confusion upon endless strings of camels were the primitive spoils of the Desert--rude weapons, defensive armor, wearing apparel, and coarse trappings upon which had been lavished all the resources of barbaric decoration. Hundreds of the wild and beautiful Kabyle maidens, selected for their superior charms and fettered with chains of gold, toiled wearily along the dusty roads which ultimately led to the distant harems of Syria. Four hundred Gothic nobles, in whose veins coursed the royal blood, clothed in gorgeous robes secured by golden girdles, and crowned with diadems, represented the departed fortunes of the dynasties of Iberia. Thirty wagons hardly sufficed to convey the enormous quantities of gold, silver, and precious stones--objects of public ostentation, private luxury, and personal adornment--the gem-encrusted receptacles of the Host, the costly vessels of the mass, besides other and innumerable mementos of the most finished efforts of Visigothic opulence and Byzantine art. Among the guards of Musa, splendidly equipped, rode descendants of the proudest families of the Koreish, and the most distinguished officers of the Moslem army. In the rear of this brilliant cavalcade followed, to the number of more than a hundred thousand, the less important captives taken in the campaigns of Africa and Spain.
Arrived at Kairoan, Musa divided the government of Africa among his three sons Abdallah, Abd-al-Melik, and Abd-al-Ala, in the hope of perpetuating in his family the authority which he realized that he now held by an uncertain tenure, and then resumed his journey.
Tidings of his approach having preceded him, the wanderers of the Desert and the inhabitants of the cities of the coast alike poured forth in countless multitudes to do him honor. It was a strange and impressive spectacle, one which had not been seen since the laurel-crowned victor, preceded by his trophies and his captives, had traversed the streets of Rome amid the acclamations of the populace, to deposit his offerings upon the shrine of the Capitoline Jupiter. With the progress of the triumphal procession the number of curious spectators increased, reaching its culmination at Cairo, where the way was blocked by the teeming myriads from the banks of the Nile. During the course of the journey, Musa, elated beyond measure by the adulation heaped upon him, was prompted to the commission of an act of tyranny which seriously prejudiced his fortunes. Desirous of neglecting no opportunity of magnifying his importance, and utterly unscrupulous in appropriating the credit due to others, he demanded of Mugayth-al-Rumi the captive governor of Cordova, whom the latter held as his slave, and designed as a present to the Khalif. Upon the refusal of that officer to comply with his demand, Musa ordered the immediate execution of the Gothic prince, and by this deed of violence and injustice increased the enmity of Mugayth-al-Rumi, whose sympathies had already been enlisted on the side of Tarik, his friend and former comrade in arms.
Hardly had Musa passed the borders of Syria, when there was placed in his hands a secret message from Suleyman, heir presumptive of the Khalifate, announcing the fatal illness of his brother Al-Walid, and desiring him not to advance further until he received authentic information of the death of his sovereign. Suleyman was induced to make this request, not only on account of the prestige which his accession to the throne would derive by the public exhibition of the vast plunder of the nations of the West, but also because the personal gifts presented to the family of the Khalif, presumably of immense value, would be lost to his successor. Musa, however, whose native tact and shrewdness seem to have been diminished by age and disappointment, paid no attention to the representations of Suleyman; and without an hour’s delay marched on to Damascus. He entered the city on Friday, and proceeding to the great mosque, where Al-Walid was at prayer, entered at the head of the captive nobles and chieftains, all of whom were clothed in the costumes of their respective countries and adorned with the insignia of their rank. After the service the Khalif embraced Musa, clothed him with his own robe, and presented him with fifty thousand dinars, in addition to pensioning his sons and the most worthy of his subordinates. The inferior captives and the royal fifth were then placed in the custody of the officers of the Treasury. The wonderful table was, as Tarik had conjectured it would be, claimed by Musa, who, on being interrogated concerning the golden foot, declared it was in that condition when he found it. Thereupon, Tarik, who was present, advanced, claimed the honor of the capture, and after relating the stratagem he had practised, produced the missing portion in corroboration of his testimony, to the speechless rage and confusion of his rival. Al-Walid, who estimated this work of art solely by the value of its materials, caused the jewels to be removed, and then sent the frame of the table as an offering to the temple of Mecca.
Forty days after Musa’s arrival at Damascus Al-Walid died, and Suleyman ascended the throne. The latter, notorious for the ferocity of his disposition and the vulgarity and gluttony of his tastes, lost no time in imposing upon Musa the full weight of his displeasure. The first judicial act of his administration was the arraignment of the veteran general, now more than eighty years of age. The evidence of corruption, extortion, and tyranny, to which Musa could make but a feeble defence, having been presented, he was found guilty, sentenced to be stripped of his property, and required to pay a fine of two hundred thousand pieces of gold. In addition to this severe penalty, he was also forced to remain chained to a post under a blazing sun, as a punishment for having publicly reproached the Khalif for his ingratitude. Through the intercession of friends he was released after many hours of torture, and permitted to retire from the court, accompanied by a single faithful slave. His remaining years were passed in poverty; dependent upon alms, he begged his bread from the Bedouin tribes, putting aside every dirhem he could obtain to be applied to the payment of his fine, until he died in abject wretchedness at Wada-al-Kora, a remote settlement of Arabia. Such was the miserable end of one of the greatest military leaders Islam ever produced. His courage was dauntless, his sagacity almost amounted to inspiration, his resources were inexhaustible. His zeal, which bordered upon fanaticism, assured him of the favor of Allah, and infused into his troops the most unbounded confidence in his genius. The bursts of his oratory rivalled in eloquence and enthusiasm the rhetorical efforts of the greatest preachers of the age. He observed the ceremonial of his faith with scrupulous diligence. His prudence and the accuracy of his perceptions were proverbial. In all his experience, where he held command in person, no enemy ever prevailed over him. His suspicious nature and intuitive knowledge of mankind made him more than a match for statesmen whose lives had been passed in the atmosphere of courts. Increasing his wealth by the most questionable methods, he excluded his companions from all participation in his prosperity, and under his incessant peculation the royal revenues were sensibly diminished, an offence which more than all others insured his ruin. Thus, in spite of his extraordinary talents, his avarice--whose gratification no bond of friendship, no obligation of loyalty, no precept of religion, and no fear of punishment could restrain--proved his destruction, and the famous commander who had acquired kingdoms, and accumulated wealth which excited the envy of princes, died poor and despised; an outcast in the centre of a barren and lonely region far from the scenes of his glory, and an object of curiosity and compassion to the barbarian shepherds and brigands of the Desert. History is silent as to the fate of Tarik after the settlement of his controversy with Musa. Had he been prominent thereafter in either good or evil fortune, it is certain that the Arabian chroniclers would have mentioned the fact. It is probable that he was permitted to pass the remainder of his life in obscurity and comfort, if not in luxury; and it is beyond question that he was not intrusted with any important employment; for the jealous court of Damascus feared the ambition and the ability of the distinguished general who had achieved the most splendid conquest of his time. And thus disappeared from the stage of the world the second of those noted characters to whom was due the acquisition of the beautiful land of Iberia by the crown of the Khalifate. Of Count Julian, the third and last of them, whom the undiscerning prejudice of monkish writers and the animosity of churchman and Spaniard, intensified by baffled ambition and injured pride, have for thirty-six generations branded with the name of traitor, we have accounts but little less unsatisfactory. His nationality, his antecedents, his relations to the Goths, the origin of his appointment as governor of Ceuta, the scope of his authority, his obligations to the court of Toledo, are, for the most part, matters of conjecture. Even the story of the outrage to his family, the immediate cause of his defection, though supported by the testimony of almost every Arab chronicler, has been disputed. There are excellent reasons for presuming that he occupied the position of a mere tributary of the King of the Visigoths, and had voluntarily surrendered his daughter as a pledge of his fidelity. Under these circumstances his allegiance could not have been deeply grounded; and his conduct appears under a less odious aspect than the treason of an hereditary vassal would have done, especially when it is remembered that he was not the aggressor. The general and unqualified abhorrence with which his name is associated can be traced to ecclesiastical writers, who have neglected no opportunity to blacken the character of every political adversary, heretic, and apostate in the eyes of posterity.
After the Conquest, Count Julian retired to Ceuta, which city, with a portion of the contiguous territory, was erected into a principality and bestowed upon him as a reward for his services. Notwithstanding his intimate Mohammedan associations, he and his immediate descendants remained steadfast in the Christian faith. The preponderating influence of Islam was, however, shown in the second generation of his descendants; and his great-grandson Abu-Suleyman-Ayub, who lived in the tenth century, and had studied under the greatest doctors of the time, became famous as one of the most acute and learned expounders of Moslem jurisprudence. The posterity of Tarik was known and esteemed for several centuries in Spain, until his identity and remembrance were finally lost in the civil wars and proscriptions which accompanied the establishment of the dynasty of the Almohades.
The engagements entered into with their allies were performed by the Moslems with scrupulous fidelity. Oppas was rewarded with the government of Toledo. The royal demesnes, amounting to three thousand of the richest estates of the kingdom, were restored to the House of Witiza. Many benefits at once resulted to the masses from the Arab conquest. The condition of the serfs was greatly improved. Tribute was regulated by law, and ceased to be dependent upon the capricious demands of avarice. The burdens of taxation were, however, still excessive; the cultivator paid four-fifths of the products of the land to the owner; from those who tilled the public domain--which comprised a fifth part of the conquered territory--one-third of the results of all manual industry was exacted. The tax of the landed proprietor was approximately twenty per cent. of his income, that of the tributary Christian varied from twelve to forty-eight dirhems--sixteen to sixty-four dollars--a year. A treaty, whose provisions determined the obligations of lord and serf, of subject and sovereign, and signed by Tarik and the representatives of the Gothic nobility before the arrival of Musa, was subsequently ratified by the government of Damascus. Upon this treaty were based all the laws which governed the tributaries in the Peninsula during the long period of Moslem dominion.
Less than fourteen months sufficed for the complete and irrevocable overthrow of the Visigothic empire. Within two years, the authority of the Moslem was firmly established from the Mediterranean to the Pyrenees. History presents no similar instance of the celerity, the completeness, the permanence of conquest. Political discord, social disintegration, the uncertainty of government, the insubordination of the noble, the rapacity of the priest, the despair of the slave, were among the most important aids to Mohammedan success. The aspirations of all not included in the privileged orders were repressed by the inexorable tyranny of caste. The middle class, from whose exertion and industry is necessarily derived the prosperity of a nation, had long been absorbed by the vast body of serfs whose labors contributed to the wealth, and whose numbers swelled the retinues, of the palatine and the bishop. The same conditions prevailed which had three centuries before heralded the fall of the Roman Empire. Force dominated everything. The spirit of individual freedom, the most prominent feature of the Teutonic constitution, had become extinct. The royal prerogative was subordinated to the claims of the nobility, the latter--not, however, without protest--had fallen under the dominion of the priesthood. The prospect of affluence, the enjoyment of power, the indulgence of luxury, were most easily obtained through the avenues of ecclesiastical preferment. A long peace, attributable largely to geographical isolation, had removed alike the necessity for martial exercises and the incentives to military distinction. Concentration of power, in spite of apparent anarchy, in the end tending to the exercise of absolute despotism, had become the controlling principle of government. Yet all of these evidences of national decadence are scarcely adequate to explain the sudden collapse of a great monarchy. Disappointed ambition, organized treason, the wholesale defection of the Jews, contributed their weighty influence to hasten and complete the catastrophe. Among the Visigoths, patriotism, a quality necessarily dependent upon individual attachment to one’s country, was unknown. Public spirit had been supplanted by a thirst for authority, in the gratification of which all moral considerations were ignored. The facility with which the Peninsula was won offers a suggestive contrast to the enormous difficulties which attended its reconquest. The fate of the Visigothic domination was determined in a week. After two short years, nothing remained of its greatness but the melancholy souvenirs of an enslaved people. The conquerors, in their turn, underwent the same experience. The irreconcilable elements of which they were composed, from the very beginning disclosed the defects of their polity which portended inevitable destruction. These elements were far more active and dangerous than those that had undermined the strength of the Gothic state. Nevertheless, it required many centuries of conflict to expel from Western Europe the race whose light-armed horsemen had, almost without resistance, swept the country from Bætica to Provence, from the mountains to the sea.
Thus passed into the hands of another branch of the Semitic race a country which, in former ages, had long flourished under the rule of Tyre and Carthage. Its attractions had been for centuries the theme of every poet, its wealth the aim of every conqueror. Despite repeated changes of government, invasions, conspiracies, revolutions, in its inaccessible fastnesses, its autochthons, the Basques, had preserved unimpaired their liberty and their national characteristics, a fate which distinguished them from all the other nations of Europe. On the fields of the Peninsula the most renowned soldiers of Rome had learned the art of war. The highest civilization of the Teutonic race had been attained in its cities. In its tribunals the most complete system of jurisprudence the world had until then known was perfected. The dignity of its ecclesiastical councils had maintained their independence, and enabled the Spanish hierarchy to withstand alike the insidious plots and the aggressive usurpations of the Papacy. But, of the many races of strangers which had established themselves within its borders, none had been of such a pronounced and original type as that which now occupied all but a small corner of its ample domain. The causes which led to, and the results which proceeded from, this national catastrophe present one of the most curious phases of civil organization and mental development. That an exotic people should at one blow overturn a monarchy of three centuries’ duration is certainly extraordinary. But that this same people, who possessed nothing in common with the vanquished, no acquaintance with the arts, no knowledge of civilization, should, in a few years, found an empire whose inhabitants had already become eminent in every accomplishment which renders nations learned, illustrious, and powerful, and be able to take precedence of all their contemporaries, is far more extraordinary. For an extended period, the affairs of the Peninsula had been ripe for a domestic upheaval. Little respect remained among the masses for the traditions of a monarchy once elective, now nominally hereditary, but whose crown was always obtainable by purchase, assassination, or intrigue. The piety of the priesthood had been supplanted by an insatiable thirst for temporal power. In every part of the body politic flourished antagonistic religious doctrines, racial prejudices, factious opinions, and discordant social interests. The military spirit had disappeared. The authority of the civil magistrate was despised. The enforcement of the laws was regulated according to the rank and influence of the offender rather than by the measure of his guilt. Rival candidates for the throne contended for the glittering prize with all the infamous arts of the conspirator and the demagogue. Organized bands of robbers preyed upon the defenceless; and their chieftains, disdaining disguise, stalked insolently through the streets of the great cities. Boundless luxury and misgovernment had brought in their train a degree of corruption which equalled that caused by the worst excesses of the Cæsars. The labors of the husbandman for two successive seasons had been fruitless, and hunger and disease in their most fearful form contributed in no small degree to the accumulated misery of the nation. In every community the members of a united and isolated sect under the ban of sanguinary laws, yet still powerful in intellect, in wealth, and in political craft, labored as one man for the humiliation of their enemies and their own emancipation. At first the invasion was considered as a mere inroad, and no one supposed that the occupation of the country would be permanent. With the settlement of colonies, the opening of seaports to the commerce of the East, the partition of lands, and the erection of mosques, however, the Visigoths recognized the full extent of the calamity which had befallen them. But the moderation of their new rulers tempered the bitterness of defeat. The payment of tribute, proportioned to the degree of resistance or obedience to the laws, insured protection to the humblest peasant. The orthodox zealot was allowed to perform the ceremonies of his ritual without interference; the heretic could offer his petitions without apprehension from the furious efforts of sectarian hatred. Ecclesiastical dignitaries exercised in peace the functions of their calling, and the monkish chronicler penned fierce anathemas against his indulgent masters within hearing of the call to prayer from a hundred minarets. The accounts of Catholic writers, in which the most flagrant outrages are attributed to the Saracens, are manifestly exaggerations or falsehoods. Still, there can be no doubt that the inevitable accidents of warfare were productive of much suffering. An inconsiderable number of monks, whose clamors and insulting demeanor made them conspicuously offensive, were martyred. A few hundred nuns exchanged the orthodox companionship of canons and bishops for the delights of the seraglio. Fields of grain were given to the torch. Magnificent villas were levelled with the ground. Altars were despoiled of their treasures and sacred relics trodden under foot. But no pledge of security was violated; and absolute immunity in person, property, and religion was afforded by timely submission--a privilege appreciated by the majority of the people, and contemned only by intemperate fanatics who cursed the generous enemy whose prosperity they shared and whose indulgence they abused.
The ancient judicature was respected, and its regulations, subordinated to the legal procedure of the ruling power, were permitted to prevail among the vanquished, so far as they did not directly conflict with those of the Code of Islam. By its example of equity, toleration, and mercy, the new government rapidly gained the attachment of its subjects; the Jew prospered, the Christian forgot his bigotry, and the slave eagerly repeated the formula which released him from bondage and placed him on an equality with kings.
In the dark recesses of the cloister, without knowledge of the outer world, without gratitude for the clemency which permitted him to live, without appreciation of the increasing benefits of civilization, the surly friar, alone in his malice and his ignorance, nourished a spirit of sullen animosity, and with scourge and haircloth performed his frequent penance; listening, with a vague foreboding of even greater evil to his Church and order, to the muezzin’s daily repetition of that ominous monotheistic maxim--ever before the eyes of the fanatic Moslem, whether it appeared carved amidst the marble foliage of his temples, or, emblazoned upon his banners in letters of gold, it glittered in the van of his victorious armies--“There is no God but the Immortal, the Eternal, who neither begets nor was begotten, and who hath neither companion nor equal.”