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LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF 
CALIFORNIA 

SAN  DIEGO 


by 

Dr.  Helen  S.  Nicholson 


HISTORY   OF    SPAIN 


ABERDEEN   UNIVERSITY   PRESS. 


HISTORY   OF   SPAIN 

FROM  THE  EARLIEST  TIMES  TO  THE  DEATH 
OF  FERDINAND  THE  CATHOLIC 


BY 

ULICK   RALPH    BURKE,   M.A. 

SECOND  EDITION 

EDITED,    WITH   ADDITIONAL  NOTES   AND   AN    INTRODUCTION, 
BV 

MARTIN  A.  S.  HUME 

EDITOR   OF   THE   "  CALENDARS   OF   SPANISH    STATE   PAPERS,"   PUBLIC    RECORD   OFFICE, 

AUTHOR   OF  "SPAIN,    1479-1788,"  "MODERN    SPAIN,    1788-1898,"   "  PHILIP  II.," 

ETC.,   ETC.,    ETC. 


IN    TWO    VOLUMES 
VOL.  I. 


LONGMANS,    GREEN,    AND    CO. 

39  PATERNOSTER  ROW,  LONDON 

NEW  YORK  AND  BOMBAY 

1900 


GEORGE   SALMON 

Provost  of  'Trinity  College,  Dublin 

these  volumes  are, 

by   special  -permission, 

very  respectfully  dedicated. 


INTRODUCTION. 

THE  great  difficulty  that  besets  even  the  most  modest 
compiler  of  anything  like  a  comprehensive  History  of  Spain, 
is  the  difficulty  of  concentration  of  interest.  The  regions  to 
be  traversed  are  so  immense  and  so  boundless,  the  byways 
are  so  numerous  and  so  inviting,  that  it  is  often  hard  to  know 
which  is  the  great  central  track  that  must  be  taken,  if  the 
end  is  ever  to  be  reached. 

The  development  and  decline  of  the  Roman  Empire,  the 
overrunning  of  Europe  by  the  Northern  Barbarians,  the 
origin  of  the  political  power  of  the  Christian  Church,  the 
rise  and  fall  of  Mohammedanism  in  Western  Europe,  the 
discovery  and  colonisation  of  America;  these  are  five  of  the 
most  interesting  and  most  important  of  the  phases  of  human 
progress  during  the  last  two  thousand  years;  and  with  each 
one  of  these  the  History  of  Spain  and  of  the  Spaniards  is 
indissolubly  connected. 

The  origin  and  language  of  the  Basques,  and  their  identi- 
fication with  the  early  Iberians,  the  wandering  civilisation  of 
the  early  Celts,  the  commerce  and  industry  of  Tyre  and  Sidon, 
the  rise  and  fall  of  Carthage,  though  they  are  to  some  extent 
outside  the  History  of  Spain,  assuredly  each  and  all  claim 
some  share  of  our  attention.  The  lives  of  Hannibal  and  of 
Scipio,  of  Pompey  and  of  Caesar,  are  all  largely  Spanish ;  and 
each  one  of  them  is  a  study  in  itself.  For  hard  upon  seven 
hundred  years  the  fortunes  of  Spain  are  so  intimately  con- 
nected with  the  greatness  and  the  decline  of  the  Roman  Re- 
public and  of  the  Roman  Empire,  a  subject  of  the  utmost 
complexity  of  interest  and  of  detail,  that  it  is  impossible  to 
avoid  being  drawn  into  that  most  fascinating  of  labyrinths ; 
and  a  hundred  years  before  the  Imperial  troops  had  left  the 
Province,  we  are  suddenly  confronted  by  a  new  and  strange 


viii  INTRODUCTION. 

civilisation,  on  the  arrival  of  the  Goths  with  their  German  in- 
stitutions, their  Adrian  Faith,  their  Northern  laws,  their  hopes 
of  regenerating  the  old  world — their  disappointment,  their 
demoralisation  and  their  decay.  When  at  length,  after  three 
hundred  years  of  tolerably  straightforward  progress — though 
the  country,  it  must  be  admitted,  is  for  the  most  part  an  un- 
explored wilderness — something  like  unity  seems  at  length  to 
be  reached,  the  scene  suddenly  changes  with  the  rapidity  of  a 
theatrical  transformation,  and  we  are  carried  away  in  a 
moment  to  farthest  Araby,  to  wander  hopelessly  over- 
whelmed by  the  vast  range  of  new  interests,  with  a  new  race, 
a  new  civilisation,  a  new  religion,  and  the  most  tremendous 
power  that  has  arisen  in  the  world  during  the  last  nineteen 
hundred  years. 

The  spread  of  Mohammedanism,  whether  considered  as  a 
religious  or  a  political  phenomenon,  is  as  yet  but  very  imper- 
fectly understood.  The  East  has  been  contented  to  accept, 
and  the  West  has  not  cared  to  study  it.  The  History  of 
Islam  has  yet  to  be  written.  To  ascertain  and  set  down  the 
true  story  of  the  conquest  and  civilisation  of  the  Peninsula  by 
the  Arab,  many  years  and  many  volumes  would  be  necessary ; 
but  in  a  Short  History  of  the  Spanish  People — I  have  not 
ventured  to  adopt  the  well-known  words  on  my  title  page — 
the  amount  of  space  that  may  be  devoted  to  the  rise  and 
progress,  and  to  the  decline  and  fall,  of  the  Empire  of  the 
Moslem  in  Spain,  must  necessarily  be  small. 

The  intrigues  and  the  rebellions  of  the  Alfonsos  and  the 
Sanchos  are  in  themselves,  perhaps,  of  no  greater  interest  than 
the  intrigues  and  the  rebellions  of  the  Yusufs  and  the 
Mohammeds  against  whom  they  contended.  But  out  of  the 
freebooters  of  Aragon  and  Navarre,  out  of  the  cut-throats 
of  Leon  and  Castile  was  evolved  that  great  nation,  before 
whose  arms  the  last  Moslem  was  driven  out  of  United  Spain. 
The  Mohammeds  and  the  Yusufs  came  and  went.  We  may 
admire  their  valour ;  we  may  respect  their  civilisation ;  we 
mourn  over  their  destruction.  But  they  are  gone.  And 
their  history  is  in  no  wise  the  history  of  the  Spanish  people. 

To  give  a  connected  and  intelligible  account  of  the  rise 
and  progress  of  the  various  Christian  kingdoms  of  the  Penin- 
sula is  a  task  of  far  greater  difficulty  than  the  treatment,  be 


INTRODUCTION.  ix 

it  brief  or  be  it  full,  of  the  splendour  and  the  decay  of  the 
Moslem.  A  well-known  writer  has  sought  to  evade  the  diffi- 
culty by  writing,  under  the  name  of  a  History  of  Spain,  seven 
histories  of  the  various  States  that  rose  and  fell  in  the  Penin- 
sula from  the  eighth  to  the  sixteenth  century;  so  that  the 
reader  who  has  in  the  first  volume  arrived  at  the  year  1681, 
finds  himself  on  opening  vol.  ii.  relegated  to  718 ;  and  having 
reached  1516  by  the  end  of  this  second  volume,  he  is  con- 
founded at  finding  himself  beginning  in  vol.  iii.  with  the  his- 
tory of  885.  A  system  of  alternate  chapters — with  such 
dissertations  and  digressions  as  appeared  necessary — as  far  as 
possible  in  chronological  order,  will  probably  be  found  at  once 
more  convenient  and  more  artistic  in  its  plan. 

With  regard  to  the  actual  scheme  of  the  work,  however 
carried  out,  my  object  has  been  to  present  Spanish  history,  as 
I  believe  it  never  to  have  been  presented  before  in  moderate 
limits,  as  one  continuous  whole ;  to  tell  the  story  of  the 
growth  and  development  of  a  great  nation ;  and  I  have  sought 
to  show  how  Trajan  and  Hadrian,  how  Martial  and  Theodosius 
the  Great,  how  Quintilian  and  Prudentius,  how  St.  Vincent 
and  the  uncanonised  Hosius  of  Cordova  were  all  as  truly 
Spanish  heroes  as  the  Cid  or  Berengaria ;  that  Averroes,  for 
all  that  he  believed  in  Mohammed,  was  no  less  an  Andalusian 
than  Seneca,-  that  St.  Leander  and  St.  Dominic,  St.  Isidore 
and  St.  Raymond  Lull  were  all  the  fellow  countrymen  of 
Ximenez,  and  that  Viriatus  was  but  the  forerunner  of  the 
Great  Captain. 

I  would  moreover,  had  I  not  been  dissuaded  therefrom  by 
those  whose  opinion  is  of  far  more  value  than  my  own,  have 
entitled  my  work  a  history  of  The  Making  of'  Spain,  or  The 
Making  of' the  Spanish  People.  The  limit  of  a  sketch  so  con- 
ceived, would  naturally  be  the  accomplishment  of  the  great 
national  work  of  construction  or  of  evolution ;  but  if  it  was 
the  conquest  of  Navarre  that  put  the  finishing  touch  to  the 
making  of  Spain,  it  was  the  death  of  Ferdinand  the  Catholic, 
within  a  year  or  two  of  this  crowning  act  of  policy,  that  left 
the  United  Spanish  People  for  the  first  time  in  history,  to  be 
governed  by  a  single  sovereign. 

That  the  legitimate  Queen  of  Spain  was  judged  incapable 
of  wielding  the  sceptre ;  that  her  more  magnificent  and  more 


x  INTRODUCTION. 

fortunate  son  preferred  a  German  Diadem  to  the  Crown  even 
of  United  Spain ;  that  he  kept  his  mother  a  prisoner,  and 
made  her  kingdom  a  province  of  his  Empire;  these  things 
belong  rather  to  the  marring  than  to  the  making  of  Spain. 

With  regard  to  the  actual  execution  of  the  work,  the  spell- 
ing of  the  Proper  Names  of  places,  has  been  to  me  a  constant 
difficulty.  I  set  out  upon  my  work  with  the  intention  of 
writing  a  book  in  the  best  English  that  I  could  command, 
and  of  using  as  few  foreign  words  as  was  possible  without 
obscurity.  After  many  diversions  and  excursions,  and  much 
hesitation  and  consideration,  I  am  of  opinion  that  this  prin- 
ciple was,  and  is,  the  right  one ;  and  I  have  endeavoured  to 
conform  to  it  faithfully  and  reasonably  in  my  completed  work. 

I  was  pleased  at  one  time  with  the  idea,  which  at  least  as 
far  as  I  am  concerned  was  original,  of  writing  the  names  of 
Places  as  they  were  known  to  those  who  from  time  to  time 
inhabited  them.  The  Celtiberian  Salduba  became  Caesarea 
Augusta  under  the  Romans  and  Sarakostah  under  the  Arabs,  to 
develop  into  Zaragoza  in  the  language  of  modern  Spain.  The 
method,  as  it  suggested  itself  to  me,  was  picturesque,  but 
after  many  endeavours  to  carry  it  out,  it  proved  too  subtle  for 
practical  use.  To  write  of  Aquas  sextoe  on  page  200  and  of 
Aix  on  page  350  would  have  marked  the  transition  from  the 
Roman  to  the  French  supremacy ;  but  it  might  possibly  have 
puzzled  an  unlearned  reader,  who  did  me  the  honour  to  take 
up  my  book,  with  the  very  laudable  design  of  informing  him- 
self upon  the  history  of  Spain.  The  change  from  Hispalis  to 
Seville  again  might  have  been  too  abrupt  to  be  appreciated ; 
while  between  my  last  reference  to  the  river  Anas  and  my 
first  notice  of  the  Guadiana  it  would  have  been  necessary  to 
speak  of  the  Wady  ""al  'Ana,  which  would  have  caused  still 
further  confusion — to  say  nothing  of  the  fact  that  in  the  case 
of  all  the  Arabic  names  of  places  from  A.D.  711  at  least  as  far 
down  as  A.D.  1252  there  would  have  been  the  further  immense 
difficulty  of  transliteration. 

Whenever,  therefore,  the  name  of  any  place  outside  the 
limits  of  our  own  country  has  an  equivalent  in  our  own  lan- 
guage, I  have  invariably  spoken  of  it  by  that  name ;  and  have 
thus  written  Corunna,  Gallicia  and  Carthagena  instead  of  La 
Coruna,  Galicm  and  Cartagena ;  but  when  the  place,  as  most 


INTRODUCTION.  xi 

generally  happens,  has  no  regular  English  name  or  equivalent, 
I  have  spoken  of  it  as  the  natives  of  the  country  in  which  it 
is  situate  are  accustomed  to  write  the  word  at  the  present 
day,  or  in  the  case  of  Moorish  or  Arab  names  of  places  in  the 
Peninsula,  transliterated  as  far  as  possible  according  to  the 
fashion  of  the  best  authorities,  not  of  England,  but  of  Spain. 

The  treatment  of  proper  names  of  persons  has  presented 
fewer  difficulties.  But  with  Romans  and  Goths,  with  Basques 
and  Arabs,  with  Catalans  and  Castilians,  with  Navarrese  and 
Neapolitans  and  Sicilians  to  speak  of  in  English  sentences, 
the  task  has  been  by  no  means  easy.  With  some  few  excep- 
tions I  have,  whenever  it  was  possible,  spoken  of  the  royal 
personages  of  all  countries  by  their  Christian  names  and  titles 
as  usually  spelt  in  English.  I  have  preferred  Philip  the  Fair 
to  Philippe  le  Bel,  Peter  the  Cruel  to  Pedro  el  Cruel,  Clovis  to 
Hchlodzvig,  Isabella  to  Isabel,  Ferdinand  to  Fernando,  and, 
after  much  hesitation,  Berengaria  to  Berenguela  of  Castile, 
and  James  to  Jayme  of  Aragon ;  though  I  regret  the  loss  of 
local  colour  in  speaking  of  the  king  who  is  so  well  known  as 
Don  Jayme,  by  the  less  distinctive  English  word  James.1 

In  the  case  of  the  Catalan  Ramon  Berenguer,  I  have  con- 
sidered the  double  name  as  a  distinctly  and  distinctively 
foreign  appellation,  not  to  be  translated  by  the  English 
Raymond,  which  I  am  able  to  use  for  the  Raymonds  of 
Burgundy  and  of  Provence.  Peter  stands  upon  quite  a 
different  footing.  Pedro  is  a  purely  Castilian  equivalent  of 
the  Aragonese  P^-re,  and  Peter  is  quite  as  good  a  word  as 
either,  and  a  fair  translation  of  both. 

I  fear  that  the  Frenchified  Latinity  of  Charlemagne  may 
be  displeasing  to  certain  critics.  But  Charlemagne,  as  the 
name  of  a  personage,  appears  to  me  to  be  j  ust  as  good  Eng- 
lish as  Charles,  and  much  better  than  Karl;  and  I  do  not 
choose  to  rob  the  Frank  Emperor  of  the  picturesque  and 
distinctive  name  by  which  he  has  been  known  in  history 
for  a  thousand  years,  either  by  the  use  of  strange  words 
in  an  English  sentence,  or  by  adding  to  the  overgrown 


1  The  English  James  indeed  stands  for  at  least  three  distinct  Christian  names 
in  the  Peninsula,  Diego,  Jago,  as  Santiago,  and  the  Catalan  or  Provencal  Jacmt 
or  Jaume. 


xii  INTRODUCTION. 

list  of  those  sovereigns  who  are  commonly  called  "The 
Great".1 

In  the  case  of  private  individuals,  I  have  written  their 
names  as  they  would  be  written  by  the  historians  of  their  own 
country,  save  in  the  case  of  those  rare  and  distinguished  per- 
sonages who  have  received,  as  it  were,  letters  of  naturalisation 
in  the  English  language.  To  speak  of  Don  John  of  Austria 
as  Don  Juan  would  be  a  species  of  impertinence ;  and  while 
Cisneros  may  be  good  Spanish,  it  is  the  fame  of  Ximenez 
that  has  crossed  both  the  Pyrenees  and  the  Atlantic.  But 
in  all  cases,  in  the  interpretation  of  my  own  rules  and  systems, 
I  have  sought  to  avoid  anything  that  savoured  of  pedantry. 

With  regard  to  notes,  although  I  endeavoured  from  the 
first  to  cite  only  such  passages  from  authorities,  ancient  and 
modern,  as  might  really  illustrate  the  text,  the  number  and 
length  of  the  extracts  and  quotations  was  severely  criticised  by 
more  than  one  reader  of  my  MS.,  which  has  been,  in  conse- 
quence, subjected  to  severe,  but,  I  hope,  not  unskilful  prunings. 

C'est  le  defaut  des  erudits,  says  Prosper  Merimee,  de  se 
passionner  pour  les  recherches  de  detail.  Parcequelles  ont 
etc  longues  et  souvent  penibles,  Us  s'imaginent  que  le  lecteur  va 
les  recommencer  avec  euoo.  Iljfaut  quelquefois  avoir  le  courage 
de  garder  pour  soi  lafatigue,  et  de  ne  presenter  au  public  que 
les  resultats  obtenus.2 

If  I  have  not  ventured  to  go  as  far  as  the  brilliant 
Frenchman  in  my  demands  upon  the  confidence  of  my  readers, 
I  have  rarely  cited  any  authorities  in  the  original,  more  espe- 
cially in  the  case  of  Spanish  works,  save  for  some  special 
object  or  reason,  which  may,  I  trust,  be  in  each  case  judged 
sufficient.  The  same  may  be  said  with  regard  to  simple 
references,  which  have  been  most  freely  employed  in  cases 
where  the  facts  stated  in  the  text  are  new,  startling  or  doubt- 
ful. A  mere  record  of  the  various  books  that  I  have  read  or 
consulted  in  connection  with  Spanish  history,  during  the  four 

1  Le  surnom  de  Grand,  Magnus,  qui  a  6t6  donn6  a  Charles  d'un  commun  con- 
sentement  par  la  post6rit6,  et  qui  est  devenu  en  quelque  sorte  une  partie  de  son 
nom  propre,  ne  semble  pas  lui  avoir  6t6  attribu6  pendant  sa  vie,  ou  du  moins 
n'e'toit  point  alors  r£gulierement  joint  a  son  nom.  Mabillonius  veter.  Analecta, 
t.  ii.,  420,  Sismondi,  Hist,  des  Franfois,  ii.,  314. 

2  Melanges  historiques  (1876),  p.  242. 


INTRODUCTION.  xiii 

happy  years  of  varied  research  that  have  been  specially 
devoted  to  the  preparation  of  these  two  volumes,  would  fill 
many  vain  and  useless  pages. 

In  the  preparation  of  my  Index,  which,  in  a  work  covering 
such  a  great  extent  of  ground — over  seventeen  hundred  years 
— must  necessarily  be  somewhat  lengthy,  I  have  been  guided 
solely  by  my  experience  of  what  I  found  most  useful  in  my 
own  study.  I  have,  I  trust,  indexed  most,  if  not  all,  of  the 
names  that  occur  in  the  text,  and  most  of  the  events  ,•  I  have 
avoided,  as  far  as  possible,  sub-headings  and  narrative  of  any 
description,  save  where  absolutely  necessary,  preferring  to 
make  use  of  the  space  at  my  disposal  to  give  a  greater  number 
of  direct  references  than  would  otherwise  have  been  possible. 

I  had  intended  at  one  time  to  print  the  names  of  places  in 
a  separate  Index,  and  had  actually  prepared  the  MS.  I 
designed  also  to  add  an  Index  of  authorities,  and  such  an 
Index  was  partly  compiled ;  but  upon  fuller  consideration  I 
have  entirely  abandoned  the  latter,  as  being  somewhat  more 
pretentious  than  useful ;  and  have  included  all  names  of  places 
in  the  General  Index,  as  being  on  the  whole,  more  convenient 
for  reference. 

For  her  great  and  ever-willing  assistance  in  the  preparation 
of  these  various  published  and  unpublished  Indexes,  I  have  to 
thank  my  friend,  Miss  Reinhart,  though  the  ultimate  respon- 
sibility for  their  accuracy  is,  and  must  be,  entirely  my  own. 
The  following  general  authorities  have  been  so  frequently 
cited  by  me  in  the  course  of  the  work,  that  in  order  to  avoid 
much  vain  repetition,  I  have  usually  referred  to  them  in  the 
abbreviated  form  that  is  set  down  below : — 
MARIANA — Historia  general  de  Espana,  Juan  de  Mariana, 

9vols.     (Valencia,  1783-96.) 
MASDEU — Historia  de  Critica  de  Espana,  Juan  Francisco  de 

Masdeu,  20  vols.     (Madrid,  1783-1805.) 
LAFUENTE — Historia  general  de  EspaTia,  Modesto  Lafuente, 

26  vols.     (Madrid,  1850-62.) 

GAYANGOS — History  of  the  Mohammedan  Dynasties  in  Spain, 
from  the  Arabic,  etc.,  etc.,  Pascual  de  Ganyangos,  2  vols. 
(1840.) 

FOED — Murray's  Handbook  Jor  Spain.  The  date  of  publi- 
cation is  added  to  every  reference.  The  earlier  editions 


xiv  INTRODUCTION. 

are  historically  the  most  valuable,  as  well  as  the  most 
racy.  The  first  edition  was  suppressed — as  somewhat 
too  racy  ? — immediately  on  publication,  in  1845.  Of 
this  only  five  copies  now  exist,  one  of  which  is  in  the 
British  Museum  Library. 

Of  the  Second  Edition,  for  all  practical  purposes  the 
first  published,  also  in  1845,  two  thousand  copies  are 
said  to  have  been  sold  in  a  few  months ;  a  second  edition 
was  published  in  1847,  the  last  in  1892. 

DUNHAM — Lardner's  Cabinet  of  History,  etc.,  etc.,  Spain  and 
Portugal,  by  Samuel  Astley  Dunham,  5  vols.  (1832.) 

DOZY,  HISTOIRE — Histoire  des  Musulmans  d'Espagne,  by 
Reinhart  Pieter  Dozy,  4  vols.  (Leyden,  1861.) 

DOZY,  RECHERCHES  —  Recherches  sur  I'histoire  poliitique  et 
litter aire  de  TEspagne,  2  vols.  (Leyden,  1881.) 

ESP.  SAGRAD. — Espana  Sagrada,  etc.,  etc.  (1754-1879),  by 
F.  H.  Florez,  continued  by  D.  Vicente  de  Lafente. 
Volume  51  was  published  in  1879. 

CALENDAR,  etc. — Calendar  of  Letters,  Despatches,  and  State 
Papers,  relating  to  the  negotiations  between  England 
and  Spain,  preserved  in  the  Archives  at  Simancas  and 
elsewhere.  Edited  by  G.  A.  Bergenroth.  Vol.  i.  (1485- 
1509),  London,  1862 ;  vol.  ii.  (1509-1525)  was  pub- 
lished in  1866,  and  a  third  volume,  supplementary  to 
vols.  i.  and  ii.,  in  1868. 

DOCUMENTOS  INEDITOS — Coleccion  de  Documentos  Ineditos 
para  la  Historia  de  Espana.  Tom.  i.  (1842),  is  by  Don 
Martin  Fernandez  Navarrete,  Don  Miguel  Salvd.,  and 
Don  Pedro  Sainz  de  Barander.  The  last  that  I  have 
had  the  opportunity  of  consulting  is  that  published 
in  1893  by  the  Marques  de  la  Fuensanta  del  Valle. 

Among  other  books  that  I  have  constantly  cited, 
representing  as  it  were  the  two  poles  of  religious  or 
ecclesiastical  thought  and  criticism,  are  the  Historia 
de  los  Heterodoxos  Espanoles,  por  Don  Marcelino 
Menendez  Pelayo,  three  vols.  (Madrid,  1880) ;  and 
Mr.  Henry  Charles  Lea's  History  of  the  Inquisition  in 
the  Middle  Ages,  three  vols.  (London,  1888),  a  perfect 
storehouse  of  knowledge,  and  a  monument  of  pains- 
taking and  intelligent  research. 


INTRODUCTION.  xv 

Of  all  the  kind  friends  who  have  in  various  ways  assisted 
and  encouraged  me  in  the  course  of  my  work,  it  would  be 
impossible  to  speak.  Yet  must  I  set  down  a  word  of  the 
gratitude  that  I  feel  to  Mr.  Cecil  Bendall — but  for  whom  the 
work  might  never  have  been  written  ;  and  Mr.  John  Bury — 
but  for  whom  it  might  never  have  been  published,  for  their 
constant  and  practical  help,  counsel  and  criticism  ;  to  Mr.  John 
Ormsby,  for  many  valuable  suggestions,  conveyed  in  most 
delightful  letters ;  and  to  Don  Juan  Riano,  for  suggestions  no 
less  valuable,  and  conveyed  by  word  of  mouth  during  my  last 
visit  to  Madrid,  where  the  genial  hospitality  of  Sir  Henry 
Drummond  and  Lady  Wolff  has  added  to  the  many  agree- 
able recollections  that  I  treasure  of  that  much  abused  but  to 
me  ever  sympathetic  city.  Among  the  many  friends  whom 
I  have  to  thank  for  help  in  the  preparation  of  my  chapter  on 
Spanish  Music — a  chapter  which,  I  am  not  ashamed  to  confess, 
I  have  re-written  four  times — I  cannot  pass  over  the  name  of 
Dr.  Culwick ;  and  in  the  final  revision  of  the  pages  dealing 
with  Architecture  as  well  as  Music,  and  of  other  chapters  in 
my  second  volume,  I  have  been  greatly  and  most  kindly 
assisted  by  Dr.  Mahaffy.  To  the  librarians  and  bookmen, 
great  and  small,  in  Bloomsbury,  in  St.  James's  Square,  in 
Kildare  Street,  in  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  and  in  other  public 
and  private  libraries  at  home  and  abroad,  I  am  under  a 
substantial  debt  of  gratitude,  of  which  so  general  an  acknow- 
ledgment is  very  far  from  being  an  adequate  requital. 

I  have,  finally,  to  acknowledge  with  much  gratitude,  and 
not,  I  confess,  without  some  pride,  the  liberality  of  the  Board 
of  Trinity  College  in  making  a  pecuniary  grant  to  me  in  aid 
of  the  expenses  of  publication,  a  compliment  whose  value  is 
enhanced  by  the  manner  in  which  the  offer  was  conveyed  to 
me,  and  the  unconditional  nature  of  the  gift. 

CHRISTMAS  EVE,  1894. 


EDITOR'S    PREFACE. 

THE  history  of  Spain,  better  than  that  of  any  other  European 
country,  enables  the  philosophical  historian  to  trace  the  con- 
catenation of  causes  and  effects  in  the  life  of  a  nation,  and 
thus  not  only  to  demonstrate  the  scientific  basis  of  his  own 
teaching,  but  also  to  draw  the  deductions  and  conclusions 
failing  which  the  study  of  history  would  be  useless  as  an  aid 
to  wisdom.  This  peculiarity,  and  the  geographical  and  ethno- 
logical reasons  to  which  it  may  be  mainly  attributed,  add 
infinitely  to  the  fascination  of  Spanish  history  as  a  study, 
and  to  its  usefulness  as  an  introduction  to  the  systematic 
teaching  of  the  history  of  other  countries  whose  national 
phenomena  are  more  complicated  and  less  obviously  connected 
with  anterior  facts. 

Situated  at  the  most  westerly  point  of  the  European 
continent,  and  farthest  from  the  centres  of  ancient  civilisation 
in  the  Eastern  Mediterranean,  the  Iberian  Peninsula  received 
from  succeeding  civilisations  the  last  waves  successively  sent 
forth  during  their  periods  of  energetic  development  and 
expansion  :  so  that  each  succeeding  culture  reached  Spain  at 
its  highest  stage  of  vigour,  and  ran  through  its  course  of 
maturity,  decline  and  extinction  on  Spanish  soil.  The  his- 
tory of  the  country  consequently  presents  a  concentrated  view 
of  the  war  of  diverse  systems  which  during  the  Middle  Ages 
decided  the  fate  of  the  civilised  world.  Thus,  in  historically 
recorded  times,  at  least  four  great  types  of  progress  have 
made  Iberia  their  last  bulwark  in  Europe  against  the  ad- 
vancing tide  of  new  dispensations  which  were  to  overwhelm 
them.  Carthaginian,  Roman,  Visigothic  and  Arab  culture, 
one  after  the  other,  flourished,  lingered  and  expired  in 
Spain ;  but  each  system  left  behind  it  traditions  and  me- 
mories of  its  own,  by  which  some  continuity  of  progress  was 

b 


xviii  EDITOR'S  PREFACE. 

preserved  :  and,  in  one  case,  the  last  remaining  spark  of 
ancient  learning  was  kept  alive  in  the  almost  universal 
gloom  to  rekindle  the  great  illumination  which  was  after- 
wards to  flood  the  world  with  light. 

It  may  be  asked  why  the  history  of  Spain,  recording  as  it 
does  so  many  separate  invasions  and  dominations,  and  deal- 
ing with  so  vast  and  momentous  a  subject  as  the  series  of 
struggles  which  decided  whether  the  Aryan  or  the  Semite 
was  to  bear  sway  in  western  Europe,  should  present  greater 
simplicity  of  phenomena  than  the  history  of  other  nations 
whose  political  institutions  have  been  more  continuous,  and 
whose  vicissitudes  have  been  of  less  universal  importance. 
At  first  sight  it  may  appear  that  the  constant  internal  wars, 
and  the  bewildering  alternate  aggregation  and  disintegration 
of  the  petty  kingdoms  of  the  Peninsula,  often  ruled  by  con- 
temporaneous sovereigns  of  similar  names,  would  make  the 
study  of  Spanish  history  more  than  ordinarily  confusing  and 
fruitless.  An  explanation  why  the  contrary  is  the  case 
must  be  sought  to  a  large  extent  in  the  physical  conforma- 
tion of  the  country,  and  the  effect  it  has  had  upon  the 
ethnology  of  the  inhabitants.  A  consideration  of  these 
points  will  enable  us  to  evolve  from  the  chaos  something 
approaching  a  rule ;  and  by  the  aid  of  it,  we  may  see  that 
national  movements  have  been  controlled  much  more  by 
influences  of  locality  and  race  than  by  the  personal  char- 
acters of  the  crowd  of  Alfonsos,  Ferdinands  and  Sanchos  who 
loom  so  large  upon  the  written  page. 

A  glance  at  the  map  of  the  Peninsula  will  prove  its 
almost  complete  isolation ;  surrounded  as  it  is  on  three  sides 
by  the  sea,  and  on  the  north  by  the  great  range  of  the 
Pyrenees,  across  which  only  a  few  difficult  passes  were  prac- 
ticable, with  the  exception  of  the  road  on  the  extreme  east. 
But  what  influenced  the  making  of  the  Spanish  nation  much 
more  than  its  isolation  was  the  fact  that  it  is  divided  by 
mountain  ranges  into  a  certain  number  of  well-defined  sepa- 
rate regions  with  widely-divergent  conditions  of  climate, 
aspect  and  natural  productions.  The  region  between  the 
Cantabrian  Mountains  and  the  sea,  forming  the  whole  of  the 
north  coast  on  the  Atlantic,  is  cut  off  completely  from  the 
rest  of  the  country  by  almost  impassable  peaks.  A  land  of 


EDITOR'S  PREFACE.  xix 

frequent  rain,  of  giant  oaks  and  of  rich  pasture  on  the  lower 
slopes  and  valleys,  it  has  not  a  single  feature  in  common  with 
the  bleak,  arid  table- land  of  the  centre  or  with  the  sub- 
tropical south-east.  As  a  main  division  there  runs  from  the 
Cantabrian  Mountains  to  the  extreme  south  of  Spain  an 
almost  continuous  range,  dividing  the  valleys  of  the  Duero 
and  the  Tagus  from  that  of  the  Ebro  :  and  from  this  range 
there  branch  three  others  from  east  to  west,  dividing  respec- 
tively the  basins  of  the  Duero  and  the  Tagus,  the  Tagus  and 
the  Guadiana,  and  that  of  the  Guadiana  from  the  Guadal- 
quivir. The  great  Sierra  Morena  isolates  the  south  from 
Castile  :  the  mountains  of  Toledo  shut  in  the  central  table- 
land on  the  south,  as  the  Guadarramas  enclose  it  on  the 
north  ;  and  all  round  the  coast  high  ranges  divide  the 
interior  from  the  littoral.  From  these  various  ranges  there 
run  transverse  spurs  and  buttresses  innumerable ;  and  the 
whole  of  Spain,  with  the  exception  of  the  inhospitable  central 
plateau,  and  portions  of  La  Mancha,  is  scored  into  isolated 
valleys  and  plains  dominated  by  ever- visible  mountains.  Such 
a  country  as  this  would  necessarily  render  the  process  of  racial 
amalgamation  and  national  unification  slow  and  difficult ; 
and  would  develop  strong  individuality,  local  jealousy,  and 
consequently  a  warlike  spirit  in  the  races  that  inhabited  it : 
would,  in  fact,  make  Spaniards  what  they  are  ;  intensely  local 
in  their  attachments  ;  proud  and  pugnacious,  with  a  horror 
of  being  merged,  either  personally  or  collectively;  good 
soldiers  in  small  bodies  and  indifferent  soldiers  in  large  bodies, 
and,  finally,  better  citizens  than  patriots. 

But  the  deep  divisions  into  which  the  soil  of  Spain  is 
divided  have  done  more  than  set  this  general  impress  upon  the 
various  races  which  inhabit  the  Peninsula,  and  thus  enable  us 
frequently  to  distinguish  the  mainsprings  of  national  action  ; 
they  have  kept  the  races  themselves  apart  through  the  ages, 
and  the  character  and  influence  of  the  several  waves  of  invasion 
which  have  flooded  the  country  can  be  to  a  great  extent  ap- 
preciated by  the  yet  distinct,  or  only  partially  amalgamated, 
elements,  of  which  the  population  of  the  different  regions 
consist.  A  study,  for  instance,  of  the  characters  of  the 
Gallego  and  the  Asturian  reveals  the  history  of  their  pro- 
vinces better  than  pages  of  description  would  do.  The 


xx  EDITOR'S  PREFACE. 

minds  and  persons  of  the  inhabitants  clearly  prove  that 
Moorish  or  Arab  blood  forms  a  small  part  of  their  composi- 
tion, and  though  they  speak  a  Latin  tongue  more  closely  ap- 
proaching the  ancient  speech  of  Rome  than  does  the  Castilian, 
yet  little  of  the  Latin  is  in  their  race.  The  somewhat  dreamy 
poetic  Celt,  with  his  vivid  imagination  and  love  of  home  and 
family,  is  in  the  Gallego  tempered  by  a  large  admixture  of 
a  strong  Germanic  stock,  which  makes  him  laborious,  patient 
and  enduring ;  an  almost  exact  counterpart  of  the  Irishman 
in  those  parts  of  Ireland  where  the  English  and  Celtic 
populations  have  blended.  Compare,  again,  this  Gallego 
or  Asturian  with  the  Valencian,  and  it  will  be  seen  that  in 
the  latter  both  the  Celtic  and  Germanic  elements  are  com- 
paratively insignificant,  and  are  swamped  by  the  Semitic. 
The  Valencian  also  speaks  a  dialect  of  Latin  resembling  that 
of  his  racial  cousin  the  Provencal.  He  is  above  all  a  keen 
chafferer,  vehement  of  gesture,  superstitious,  false  and  a 
fatalist ;  a  man  whose  Christianity  is  to  a  large  extent  an 
adaptation  of  the  paganism  of  his  forbears  :  fond  of  luxury 
and  bright  colours,  he  is  obviously  the  direct  descendant  of 
Phcenecians,  Carthaginians,  Greeks  and  Arabs ;  and  the 
influence  of  his  descent  may  be  traced  in  every  action  of  his 
life.  To  the  north  of  him,  his  neighbour  the  Catalan,  speak- 
ing the  same  dialect,  is  yet  of  another  racial  composition. 
His  character  and  conduct  prove  at  once  that  he  possesses  a 
much  greater  Germanic  and  Latin,  and  less  of  the  Moorish 
element  than  his  brother  of  Valencia.  Hardworking,  inde- 
pendent, turbulent  and  grasping,  the  Catalan  character 
explains  not  only  to  what  extent  and  by  whom  the  province 
has  been  dominated,  but  also  the  action  of  the  inhabitants 
from  the  dawn  of  history  to  the  present  day.  Of  the  pleasure- 
loving  passionate  Latin  and  Berber  of  Andalusia,  of  the 
grave,  haughty  and  magnanimous  Celtiberian  -  Latin  of 
Castile,  of  the  pure-blooded  Basque  of  Biscay  and  Navarre, 
a  similar  story  may  be  told. 

Thus  it  happens  that  the  history  of  each  of  the  natural 
regions  into  which  Spain  is  divided  may  be  epitomised  in  its 
ethnology  and  geography  to  a  greater  extent  than  is  the  case 
in  any  other  of  the  nations  of  Europe  which  have  exercised 
a  moving  influence  in  the  progress  of  mankind.  The  lack  of 


EDITOR'S  PREFACE.  xxi 

unity  so  conspicuous  amongst  the  Spaniards  of  to-day  has 
existed  throughout  history,  save  only  on  those  few  occasions 
when  some  powerful  personality  or  some  great  cause  arousing 
a  general  sentiment  has  temporarily  knit  them  together 
into  national  unity.  On  each  of  the  occasions  that  the 
country  has  been  overrun  and  dominated  it  has  had  to  be 
conquered  piecemeal,  town  by  town,  valley  by  valley.  The 
inhabitants,  so  long  as  they  were  fighting  for  their  own 
homes,  fought  like  lions,  but  with  little  cohesion  ;  and  the 
task  of  overrunning  the  country,  although  in  some  cases  a 
long  one,  has  never  been  relatively  difficult.  The  difficulty, 
as  will  be  seen  in  the  present  history,  has  always  been  to 
impose  upon  the  various  peoples  a  uniform  law  which  should 
constitute  them  a  united  nation.  The  Carthaginians  never 
entirely  succeeded  in  doing  it,  although  the  greatest  of  them 
— Hamilcar,  Hasdrubal  and  Hannibal — made  Spain  rather 
than  Africa  their  base  for  the  bold  attempt  at  the  conquest 
of  Rome  and  the  world  ;  and  to  them  it  was  of  vital  im- 
portance that  Iberia  should  be  solid  at  their  backs.  Warriors, 
they  could,  and  did,  draw  in  plenty  from  the  peoples  whom 
their  arms  had  subdued ;  for  so  long  as  their  organisation  was 
local,  and  neighbours  and  fellow- townsmen  were  not  separated, 
the  Celtiberians  would  fight  anybody,  anywhere.  But  united 
action  against  a  common  foe,  or  even  willing  submission  to 
a  common  law,  was  foreign  to  their  nature.  In  the  Punic 
armies  under  Hannibal  the  Carthaginian  that  besieged  the 
heroic  Iberian  city  of  Saguntum,  there  were  as  many  Celt- 
iberians as  Africans,  and  in  the  hosts  that  the  same  great 
commander  led  on  his  wondrous  march  across  the  Alps  to  the 
very  gates  of  Rome  25,000  soldiers  out  of  his  100,000  were 
men  of  Spanish  birth.  And  yet  Scipio  the  Roman  found  no 
difficulty  in  raising  as  many  more  Celtiberians  to  fight  on  the 
other  side.  Thus,  for  ever  divided  amongst  themselves,  the 
Celtiberians  were  easily  made  use  of  by  the  conquering  peoples 
to  overcome  their  own  countrymen.  Now  and  again  in  the 
course  of  history  a  great  leader  of  men  like  Sertorius  might 
temporarily  weld  together  these  warring  tribes  into  a  solid 
people,  but  the  moment  the  overpowering  personality  dis- 
appeared the  elements  became  again  disintegrated. 

The    seed    of    Roman    civilisation    and,    above    all,    of 


xxii  EDITOR'S  PREFACE. 

Roman  pride,  fell  upon  fertile  ground  in  the  Peninsula. 
When,  after  well  nigh  200  years  of  gradual  conquest, 
the  farthest  point  of  Iberia  was  crowned  by  the  Roman 
eagle,  and  Caesar  with  a  hand  of  iron  imposed  the  lex 
Romana  on  the  wild  Celtic  tribes  of  Brigantium,  already 
the  settled  districts  of  the  south  and  east  were  rejoicing  in 
the  prosperity  and  security  that  Roman  splendour  and  the 
rule  of  law  brought  in  their  train.  Ever  ready  for  fighting, 
so  long  as  friends  and  neighbours  were  not  separated,  the 
Celtiberian  legionaries  under  the  masterful  military  organi- 
sation of  Rome  were  not  only  for  ever  face  to  face  in  their 
own  land  with  the  might  of  the  metropolis,  but  were  carried 
to  the  uttermost  ends  of  the  Empire  to  fight  its  battles  abroad. 
From  Rome,  from  Britain,  from  Gaul,  from  the  Danube,  such 
of  the  few  Spanish  legionaries  as  came  back  to  their  native 
valleys  were  full  of  pride  for  the  glory  of  the  Republic  or  the 
Empire,  whose  eagles  they  had  borne  triumphant  over  subject 
peoples,  and  whose  law  they  had  enforced  in  lands  where  no 
law  was  ever  known  before.  They  had  never  been  Spaniards, 
for  to  them  Spain  meant  nothing,  and  their  own  valleys  or 
villages  everything ;  but  they  were  Romans  now,  for  the  power 
of  the  Imperial  city,  reaching,  as  they  saw,  to  the  ends  of  the 
earth,  was  to  them  a  real  tangible  glory  of  which  they  were 
proud  to  claim  their  share. 

And  so  for  400  years  bound  together  by  Roman  bureau- 
cracy Spain  approached  nearer  to  being  a  united  nation 
than  ever  she  had  been  before ;  but  whilst  there  was  a 
powerful  link  that  bound  all  Spaniards  to  Rome,  there  was 
but  a  slight  bond  which  united  them  with  each  other.  Trajan, 
Hadrian  and  Marcus  Aurelius  ruled  the  world  from  the  throne 
of  the  Caesars,  and  they  were  Spaniards ;  Seneca,  Lucan, 
Martial  and  Quintillian,  and  a  host  of  other  writers  who  added 
lustre  to  Imperial  Rome,  proved  that  the  keen  Celtiberian 
wit  grafted  well  on  to  the  Latin  culture  of  an  earlier  time. 
All  over  Spain,  says  St.  Augustine,  rose  the  odwsa  cantio  of 
native  children  learning  Latin,  and  the  literary  exquisites  of 
Rome  itself,  to  their  horror,  found  that  Spanish  provincialisms 
and  the  "  strange,  thick  "  pronunciation  of  the  Iberians  were 
corrupting  the  daily  talk  of  the  Roman  citizens.  But  the 
Spanish  nation  had  no  existence  apart  from  the  metropolis ; 


EDITOR'S  PREFACE.  xxiii 

and  when  the  Empire  crumbled  her  satellite  crumbled  too, 
and  became  an  easy  prey  to  the  barbarians.  No  united 
resistance  was  offered,  and  from  valley  to  valley  the  savages 
swept  on  their  devastating  way.  The  corruption  of  Rome 
had  eaten  into  the  very  heart  of  her  great  dependency.  The 
degenerate  Spaniards  had  become  such  good  Roman  citizens 
as  to  be  unable  or  unwilling  to  protect  their  own  homes,  for 
country,  in  the  broad  sense  of  the  word,  they  had  none,  and 
the  only  unity  they  knew  was  Roman  officialism. 

The  social  impress  that  the  Romans  left  upon  the  people 
has  never  been  obliterated  or  greatly  diminished.  Their 
speech  and  literature  are  Latin ;  from  Rome  they  took  their 
religion,  fervently  as  was  their  nature  to  do,  leaning  ever  to 
the  imaginative  and  picturesque  phases  of  it.  Goths  and 
Moors  successively  dominated  them,  and  introduced  new 
racial  elements  into  their  composition  ;  but,  withal,  the 
Latin  form  of  civilisation  was  most  in  accordance  with  the 
Celtiberian  nature,  and  its  features  have  only  been  furrowed, 
not  altered,  by  subsequent  dispensations. 

One  of  the  principal  reasons  which  rendered  the  Roman 
form  of  government  sympathetic  to  the  Celtiberian  peoples 
after  the  conquest  was  complete,  was  the  fact  that  the 
municipality  was  the  unit  of  control  and  taxation,  and  the 
city  or  town  continued  to  be,  as  it  had  been  in  earlier  times, 
the  real  fatherland  of  the  people,  the  Roman  provincial  organ- 
isation being  simply  superposed  upon  it.  Very  far  from  de- 
stroying this,  the  Gothic  kings  still  further  strengthened  the 
municipal  form  of  government ;  and  although  in  all  depart- 
ments of  life  they  made  local  administration  and  representa- 
tive institutions  more  vigorous  than  under  the  decadent 
empire,  the  Goths  ended  by,  to  a  great  extent,  merging  their 
own  traditions  into  those  of  the  people  they  had  conquered. 
The  laws  of  Spain,  after  many  attempts  at  unification,  were 
based  finally  more  on  the  Roman  than  the  Gothic  code ; 
Latin  in  the  last  years  of  the  Gothic  domination  became  the 
universal  language ;  and  the  Arian  form  of  belief  professed 
by  the  Goths  fell  before  the  more  poetic  and  mystical  Latin 
form  of  Christianity.  During  the  long  era  of  reconquest  from 
the  Moors  the  same  characteristics  are  displayed.  The 
Moslem  invaders  themselves,  temporarily  united  by  a  great 


xxiv  EDITOR'S  PREFACE. 

ruler,  were  welded  together  under  the  Cordovan  Caliphate ; 
but,  true  to  the  geographical  features  of  the  country,  they 
broke  up  into  petty  kingdoms  immediately  after  the  Caliphate 
fell ;  and  similarly  the  Christians,  with  every  need  for  united 
action  to  wrest  the  country  from  the  Moslem,  were  eternally 
at  issue  amongst  themselves  for  centuries,  in  face  of  the 
foreign  foe  who  had  possessed  themselves  of  the  land.  We 
are  compelled  to  suppose  that  they  must  have  seen  the 
advantage  they  would  have  gained  by  combined  national 
movement,  and  to  acknowledge  that  they  were  impelled  to 
discord  and  division  by  the  overpowering  reasons  that  have 
been  set  forth.  It  frequently  happened  that  there  was,  in 
the  later  years  of  the  struggle,  more  consanguinity  and  racial 
sympathy  between  Moors  and  their  Christian  neighbours 
than  between  the  latter  and  other  Spaniards  of  their  own 
faith.  Seen  by  this  light,  the  long  and  complicated  nature 
of  the  reconquest  becomes  easily  explainable,  and  the  personal 
characters  of  the  Alfonsos  and  Ferdinands  appear  to  be  of  less 
importance  in  controlling  events  than  at  first  sight  appears. 

The  strong  regional  feeling,  which,  as  has  been  pointed 
out,  is  the  principal  factor  of  Spanish  history,  explains  also 
the  enormous  influence  exerted  on  the  world  by  the  marriage 
of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella.  With  a  jealous  or  antagonistic 
Aragon,  Isabella,  Queen  of  Castile  alone,  might  have  been 
unable  in  her  time  to  conquer  the  kingdom  of  Granada ; 
certain  it  is  that  without  the  added  strength  of  Castile  to 
that  of  his  own  poor  realm,  Ferdinand  would  have  been 
powerless  to  embark  on  a  far-reaching  foreign  policy  and 
aggression  abroad  solely  with  the  object  of  promoting  the 
traditional  ambitions  of  the  House  of  Aragon — an  object 
in  which  the  larger  and  richer  kingdom  of  Castile  had  no 
share.  It  was  for  Aragon,  and  not  for  Castile,  that  Ferdinand 
drew  Spain  into  antagonism  with  France,  which  lasted  for 
full  400  years.  It  was  for  Aragonese  ends,  and  not  for 
Castilian,  that  he  brought  upon  the  land  the  catastrophe 
which  ruined  her,  by  mating  his  daughter  with  the  son  of  the 
Emperor,  and  the  heir  of  Burgundy ;  and  for  the  same  ends 
alone,  in  order  to  weaken  France,  did  the  Aragonese  secure 
for  his  other  daughter  the  hand  of  a  Tudor,  and  so  indirectly 
bring  about  the  English  Reformation.  And  whilst  her 


EDITOR'S  PREFACE.  xxv 

husband  was  thus  using  the  strength  of  her  kingdom  for  his 
own  regional  interests,  Isabella  herself  was  enabled,  thanks  to 
his  administrative  ability  and  moral  support,  to  extend,  as 
otherwise  she  could  not  have  done,  the  interests  of  Castile  by 
the  expulsion  of  the  Moors  and  the  conquest  of  America. 
Similarly,  the  religious  bigotry  and  persecution,  which  after- 
wards became  so  tremendous  a  political  instrument,  and  is 
usually  assumed  to  be  characteristic  of  the  Spanish  nation, 
was  a  policy  deliberately  adopted  by  Isabel,  Ferdinand  and 
Jimenez  to  provide  the  national  cohesion  necessary  to  them. 
The  isolation  of  races  and  deeply-rooted  regional  jealousy  had 
always  made  Spaniards  intolerant  of  foreigners,  in  which  term 
they  would  include  the  men  who  lived  on  the  other  side  of 
their  own  mountains,  and  although  at  first  there  was  no 
especial  religious  feeling  in  it,  their  antagonism  to  their 
neighbours  afforded  a  fertile  soil  in  which  clever  statesmen, 
persecuting  priests  and  covetous  ignorance  might  sow  the  evil 
seed  which  brought  forth  the  horrors  of  the  Inquisition.  The 
policy  strangled  Spain,  but  it  gave  her  the  unity  which  made 
her  temporarily  great. 

In  countries  where  the  physical  features  of  the  land 
allowed  a  more  complete  fusion  of  the  races,  and  greater 
rapidity  of  development,  most  of  the  elementary  factors  in 
the  national  history  were  evolved  in  times  so  remote  that  no 
written  records  aid  the  student  to  unravel  the  story ;  but,  as 
we  have  seen,  it  is  otherwise  in  Spain,  where,  owing  to  the 
slowness  and  lateness  of  events,  the  conclusions  of  the  ethno- 
logist and  the  philologist  can  be  checked  by  Greek,  Roman, 
Jewish  and  Arab,  as  well  as  early  Christian  writers,  and 
afford  to  the  reader  an  opportunity  for  basing  his  knowledge 
of  history  in  general  on  a  solidly  scientific  foundation. 

It  was  fitting  that  the  early  history  of  a  nation  possessing 
this  advantage  should  be  written  with  all  the  resources  of 
modern  scholarship  and  widely  extended  research,  and  on  its 
first  appearance  Mr.  Ulick  Burke's  learned  work  was  deservedly 
greeted  as  unquestionably  the  best  history  of  early  Spain  that 
had  appeared  in  the  English  language.  Unfortunately,  be- 
fore the  first  edition  could  be  revised,  the  gifted  author  died, 
and  it  has  fallen  to  me,  however  unworthy  I  may  be  of  the 
task,  to  make  such  alterations  and  corrections  as  the  author 


xxvi  EDITOR'S  PREFACE. 

himself  would  have  made  had  he  been  spared.  Regarding, 
as  I  do,  an  author's  style  as  a  revelation  of  his  personality, 
I  have  refrained  from  altering  the  form  in  which  ideas  are 
conveyed,  except  in  a  few  cases  where  the  meaning  appeared 
obscure.  Where  obvious  errors  of  statement  have  crept  into 
the  text,  and  I  have  been  able  to  detect  them,  they  have 
been  corrected  ;  and  in  a  large  number  of  instances  where  the 
information  seemed  to  need  qualification,  explanation  or  sup- 
plement, I  have  ventured  to  append  an  additional  footnote 
signed  with  an  initial  H.,  in  order  that  the  opinions  of  the 
author  may  still  stand  as  he  wrote  them.  There  is  much  in 
the  arrangement  of  the  book  which  perhaps  might  have  been 
reformed,  but  on  mature  consideration  I  have  decided  that 
this  could  hardly  be  done  without  recasting  and  to  some 
extent  rewriting  it ;  which,  in  the  case  of  a  work  which  I 
hope  may  be  regarded  as  a  classic,  I  hold  that  an  editor  is 
not  justified  in  attempting.  My  alterations  therefore  in  this 
respect  have  been  confined  to  transferring  the  chapters  on  the 
Bull  Fight,  Architecture,  the  Monetary  System,  and  Music, 
to  the  end  of  the  text ;  in  order  to  restore  to  the  narrative  a 
closer  chronological  continuity  than  it  possessed.  In  its  new 
form  I  can  only  hope  that  Mr.  Ulick  Burke's  erudite  and 
attractive  work  will  be  adjudged  at  least  not  to  have  suffered 
at  my  hands,  and  that  the  hearty  and  deserved  welcome 
extended  by  scholars  to  the  first  edition  will  be  even  exceeded 
by  that  accorded  to  the  second. 

MARTIN  A.  S.  HUME. 

London,  November £1899. 


TABLE    OF   CONTENTS. 

PA«E 

INTRODUCTION vii 

EDITOR'S  PREFACE xvii 

CHAPTER  I. 
THE  CELTIBERIANS — 

1.  Pre-historic  Times I 

2.  Saguntum 7 

CHAPTER  II. 
NUMANTIA , 14 

CHAPTER  III. 
HlSPANIA  ROMANA 29 

CHAPTER  IV. 
THE  BARBARIANS— 

1.  Theodosius  tfte  Great        .........       39 

2.  The  Coming  of  the  Visigoths     ........       44 

CHAPTER  V. 
CHRISTIANITY 54 

CHAPTER  VI. 
THE  KINGDOM  OF  TOULOUSE 65 

CHAPTER  VII. 
LEOVGILD 76 

CHAPTER  VIII. 
THE  GREAT  METROPOLITANS — 

1.  Reccared ....      85 

2,  Isidore  of  Seville 89 


xxviii  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

CHAPTER  IX. 
CHURCH  AND  STATE— 

1.  Wamba 95 

2.  The  Spanish  Church ,        .         .     102 

CHAPTER  X. 
THE  LAST  OF  THE  GOTHS— 

1.  The  Jews .     108 

2.  Roderic 112 

CHAPTER  XI. 
THE  FAILURE  OF  THE  VISIGOTHS 114 

CHAPTER  XII. 
THE  MOSLEM  CONQUEST — 

1.  Taric 121 

2.  The  Mozarabs  . 126 

3.  Abdur  Rahman        . 130 

CHAPTER  XIII. 
THE  KINGDOM  OF  THE  ASTURIAS— 

i.   Covadonga 133 

I.  Roncesvalles 138 

CHAPTER  XIV. 
ISLAM — 

1.  The  Mezquita 142 

2.  The  Fakihs 146 

3.  Ziriab 148 

CHAPTER  XV. 
SANTIAGO— 

1.  Alfonso  the  Chaste    . 152 

2.  Catalonia 153 

3.  Compostella 155 

CHAPTER  XVI. 

THE  CALIPHATE  OF  CORDOVA — 

1.  Abdur  Rahman  an  Nasir —  163 

2.  The  City  of  Cordova 167 

3.  Almanzor         .        ^     .........  171 

CHAPTER  XVII. 
THE  KINGDOM  OF  LEON 178 


CONTENTS.  xxix 

PAGE 

CHAPTER  XVIII. 
THE  Cm 185 

CHAPTER  XIX. 

AVERROES— 

1.  The  Almoravides 201 

2.  The  Almohades 204 

3.  The  Learning  of  Cordova 205 

4.  The  Grandson          . 208 

CHAPTER  XX. 
THE  RISE  OF  ARAGON — 

1.  The  Inheritance  of  R amir o 213 

2.  Catalonia 216 

CHAPTER  XXI. 
DOMINIC 219 

CHAPTER  XXII. 
IMPERIUM  ROMANUM— 

1.  The  Gothic  Missal 228 

2.  The  Emperor 231 

3.  Berengaria 233 

CHAPTER  XXIII. 
THE  GREAT  MILITARY  ORDERS— 

1.  Calatrava 241 

2.  Santiago 245 

3.  Alcantara 246 

4.  The  Grand  Masters 248 

CHAPTER  XXIV. 
JAMES  I.  OF  ARAGON— 

1.  Catalonia  and  Aragon 252 

2.  James  the  Conqueror 257 

3.  The  Troubadours 261 

CHAPTER  XXV. 
ALFONSO  X.  OF  CASTILE— 

1.  El  Sabio 263 

2.  The  Alfonsine  Tables       .         .         .         .  ^ 270 

3.  Language  and  Literature  of  Castile .         ."' 273 

4.  The  Ballads 276 

5.  The  Siete  Partidas 281 


xxx  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  XXVI. 

THE  UNIVERSITIES — 

1.  Education  at  Cordova 284 

2.  The  Maestrescuelas 288 

CHAPTER  XXVII. 
FOREIGN  POLICY  OF  ARAGON— 

1.  Peter  the  Great 298 

2.  Alfonso  III. 306 

3.  James  III. 3o6 

4.  Raymond  Lull 310 

CHAPTER  XXVIII. 
DOMESTIC  DISCORD  IN  CASTILE— 


i.    The  Bravos 


The  Hermandad 


313 
317 


3.  Alfonso  XI. 

4.  Literature 321 

CHAPTER  XXIX. 
PETER  THE  CRUEL — 

1.  A  Royal  Assassin 325 

2.  Edward  the  Black  Prince .     332 


CHAPTER  XXX. 
ARAGON  IN  SPAIN 


340 


CHAPTER  XXXI. 
CASTILE  BEYOND  THE  SEA  — 

1.  The  Lancastrian  Claims  to  Castile  .......  351 

2.  The  Embassy  to  Tamerlane      ........  356 

3.  The  Canary  Islands         .        .         .......  31-0 

4.  Pedro  Lopez  de  Ayala       ..........  362 

CHAPTER  XXXII. 
CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY  .......... 


CHAPTER  XXXIII. 
ALFONSO  OF  ARAGON  AND  NAPLES    ........    376 

CHAPTER  XXXIV. 
JOHN  II.  OF  CASTILE— 

1.  The  Good  Regent  Ferdinand    ........     383 

2.  Alvaro  de  Luna        ..........     384 


CONTENTS.  xxxi 

PACK 

TABLES— 

I.  VISIGOTHIC  KINGS 391 

II.    KINGS  OF  THE  ASTURIAS   AND   LEON 392 

III.  THE  HOUSES  OF  ARAGON  AND  BARCELONA  ....  393 

IV.  KINGS  OF  CASTILE  AND  OF  LEON,  1027-1230       .        .       .  394 
V.  ROYAL  HOUSES  OF  CASTILE  AND  ENGLAND         .        .        .  395 

VI.  KINGS  OF  CASTILE  AND  ARAGON 396 

VII.  AMIRS  AND  CALIPHS  OF  CORDOVA 397 

VIII.  MOSLEM  KINGS  OF  GRANADA 398 

APPENDICES— 

I.  THE  BASQUES 399 

II.  ON  CUSTOMARY  CONCUBINAGE  OR  BARRAGANERIA     .        .  404 

III.  THE  LAWS  OF  THE  VISIGOTHS 406 

IV.  ETYMOLOGY  OF  Andalusia 410 

V.  SAINT  GEORGE 412 

VI.  THE  ALFONSOS  OF  CASTILE  AND  LEON        ....  415 


HISTORY    OF    SPAIN. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  CELTIBERIANS. 

I. — Pre-historic  Times. 

THE  earliest  inhabitants  of  the  Spanish  Peninsula  of  whom  we 
have  any  knowledge,  whether  from  history  or  from  tradition, 
are  the  Celts  and  the  Iberians.1  Of  the  origin  of  the  Celts, 
intimately  connected  as  they  are  with  ourselves  or  our  an- 
cestors in  Britain,  we  know  but  very  little.  Of  the  Iberians  and 
of  their  origin,  we  know  practically  nothing  at  all.  Established 
in  the  Peninsula  previous  to  the  Celtic  immigration,  they  are 
found  at  the  earliest  dawn  of  Spanish  history  occupying  a 
considerable  part  of  that  romantic  country  to  which  they  have 
given  the  name  of  Iberia.  Their  earliest  settlements  are  said 
to  have  been  on  the  eastern  and  southern  coasts  of  the  Penin- 
sula ;  but  they  have  ever  been  specially  identified  with  those 
more  interesting  districts  among  the  mountains  in  north-western 
Spain,  of  which  the  inhabitants  have  been  known  at  various 
times  as  Iberians,  Cantabrians  and  Basques.2  When  they 
arrived,  how  they  travelled,  whom  they  dispossessed,  even 
tradition  does  not  presume  to  say ;  though  tradition,  in  the 
pages  of  many  Spanish  historiographers,  tells  of  the  exploits  on 
Spanish  soil  of  Hercules,3  Bacchus,  Osiris,  Atlas,  Nebuchad- 

1The  Iberians  are  said  by  many  Spanish  writers  to  have  been  immigrants 
into  Spain  from  Asia  Minor,  or  the  Eastern  Mediterranean.  But  that  the  Iberians 
of  Spain  are  the  children  of  the  Iberians  of  the  Caucasus  is  at  best  an  historic 
fancy,  unsupported  by  anything  that  can  be  called  evidence. 

JSee  Appendix  I.    THE  BASQUES. 

'Hercules,  the  Phrenician  Melkarth,  is  in  a  special  manner  identified  with 
the  southern  coasts  of  Spain.  He  is  still  considered  the  founder,  and  in  some  sense 
the  patron  of  Cadiz  ;  his  effigy,  grappling  with  two  lions,  is  borne  upon  the  city 
arms :  and  his  pillars,  with  the  proud  motto,  Plus  Ultra,  are  displayed  upon  the 
celebrated  Spanish  dollar,  and  are  said  to  have  suggested  the  well  known  sign  $. 
See  Pliny,  Hist.  Nat.,  xxxvi.,  5.  Erythea,  the  scene  of  the  legendary  labour  of 
the  recovery  of  the  oxen  of  Geryon,  is  usually  taken  to  signify  Spain. 
VOL.  I.  1 


2  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

nezzar,  and  even  of  the  patriarch  Noah.  Tubal,  indeed,  son 
of  Japhet,  is  said  by  some  of  these  Spanish  enthusiasts,1  upon 
the  uncertain  authority  of  Josephus,  to  have  been  the  father  of 
the  Iberians.  And  Setubalia,  which,  according  to  Masdeu,2 
was  one  of  the  ancient  names  of  Spain,  is  derived  by  him  from 
that  of  the  Patriarch.  The  same  word,  whatever  be  its  origin, 
no  doubt  survives  in  the  town  of  Setubal 3  in  modern  Portugal. 
Coming  it  may  be  from  the  East,  the  Iberians  would  natur- 
ally have  established  their  first  colonies  on  the  eastern  coasts 
of  Spain  ;  and  they  may  have  occupied  Catalonia  and  Aragon, 
and  given  their  names  to  the  great  river  Ebro,4  before  they 
arrived  at  the  westermost  limit  of  their  wanderings,  on  the 
shores  of  the  wide  Atlantic,  and  made  their  home  amid  the 
mountains  in  which,  alone  among  the  peoples  and  nations 
of  Europe,  they  have  maintained  the  freedom  and  the  purity  of 
their  race  for  three  thousand  years.  For  in  Spain  the  Iberian 
blood  has  constantly  prevailed  over  that  of  the  Celts  and 
Phoanicians,  the  Carthaginians  and  Romans,  the  Goths  and  the 
Moors,  by  whom  the  country  has  been  successively  occupied, 
from  Carthagena  to  Finisterre,  and  it  still  flows  in  its  greatest 
purity  in  the  veins  of  the  ever  hardy  mountaineers  of  modern 
Cantabria.5 

1  Josephus,  Hist.Jud.,  i.,  6,  and  Ant.  Jud.,  lib.  xi.,  cap.  12,  quoting  the Indica 
of  Megasthenes.  Cf.  Genesis  x. ,  2-5.  The  most  ingenious  of  all  the  Spanish 
historians  is  a  certain  Senor  Ferreras,  who,  unable  to  satisfy  himself  as  to  time  and 
manner  of  the  early  peopling  of  Spain,  suggests  (torn,  i.,  c.  i),  that  the  first  inhabi- 
tants may  have  come  by  air,  or  dropped  down  from  heaven  ! 

2Lafuente,  i.,  290-293.  Mariana,  lib.  i.  Masdeu,  ii. ,  66  and  251.  Strabo, 
i.,  2,  27.  Wentworth  Webster,  Spain,  pp.  70-75. 

3  This  Setubal  has  been  conventionally  Anglicised  into  St.   Ubes.     I  do  not 
know  if  any  more  sacred  origin  has  been  discovered  for  this  etymological  saint ! 

4  The  etymology  of  Ebro  is  very  uncertain.     Romey  and  the  French  writers 
generally  would  assign  to  it  a  Celtic  origin,  as  Aber  =  a  confluence  of  rivers;  a 
root  to  be  found  in  such  English  names  as  Aberdeen,  Aberdovey,  etc.     Others 
would  derive  it  from  the  Basque  /data   =  running  water.     It  would  seem  in  any 
case  to  be  connected  with  Iberia.     The  word  Ift-np,  for  the  river,  and  Ifiypfs,  for 
the  Spaniards  generally,  are  met  with  at  least  as  early  as  the  Periplus  of  Scylax, 
compiled  probably  about  B.C.  350;  or  according  to  Fabricius,  Bibl.  Gr<ec.,  lib.  iv., 
c.  2,  as  early  as  B.C.  520.     See  the  editions  of  this  early  geographer  by  Gronovius 
(1700),  pp.  3  and  179,  and  that  of  the  Marquis  Fortia  d'Urban  (Paris,  1845),  p. 
321.     Cf.  &.  Hiibner,  Monumenta  Lingua  Ibericce  (1893) ;  Prolog.,  Ixxv. ,  and  p. 
220,  and  Romey,  Hist.  d'Espagne,  torn,  i.,  cap.  i. ,  and  torn,  ii.,  Appendix  I. 

5  This,  so  far  as  it  infers  that  the  modern  Basques  are  identical  with  the 
ancient  Iberians,  is  at  least  open  to  considerable  question.     It  is  true  that  place- 
names  with  Basque  roots  are  to  be  found  all  over  Spain  ;  but  the  assumption  that 
therefore  the  Iberians  spoke  Basque  does  not  at  all  follow,  as  the  names  had  been 
given  in  all  probability  by  the  Basque-speaking  primitive  inhabitants  before  the 
Iberians,  perhaps  a  people  speaking  a  Sanscrit  tongue,  arrived  in  the  country.     So 
far  from  the  Iberians  withstanding  the  Celts,  it  is  more  probable  that  in  Cartha- 


THE  CELTIBERIANS.  3 

But  if  our  knowledge  of  the  works  and  ways  of  the  ancient 
Iberians  is  so  very  imperfect,  our  information  as  to  the  Celts  is 
scarcely  more  satisfactory,  except  of  course  as  regards  the 
language.  The  Celtic  immigrants  probably  entered  Spain 
from  Gaul  along  the  shores  of  the  bay  of  Biscay,  and  finding 
no  lodgment  in  the  Basque  provinces,  already  occupied,  it 
may  be,  by  the  Iberians,  they  extended  themselves  over  the 
plains  of  northern  Spain,  and  occupied  the  wilder  south- 
west country,  afterwards  known  as  Lusitania.1  That  Lusi- 
tania  was  peopled  by  Celts  at  the  earliest  times  of  which 
we  have  any  historic  or  even  traditional  knowledge,  is  at  least 
tolerably  certain.2  How  they  reached  that  ancient  far  west  of 
Europe  is  more  than  uncertain ;  it  is  impossible  to  ascertain. 
The  fact  is,  that  with  the  exception  of  one  or  two  words  in 
Herodotus  and  Scylax,  and  an  incorrect  and  doubtful  descrip- 
tion of  part  of  the  east  and  south  coasts  by  Eratosthenes,  we 
know  nothing  certain  of  Spain  nor  of  the  tribes  that  inhabited 
it,  until  after  the  fall  of  Saguntum. 

From  this  time,  thanks  to  Livy  and  Appian,  to  Polybius 
and  Florus  and  other  Roman  historians,  we  have  some  slight 

ginian  times  the  mass  of  the  population  of  Central  Spain  consisted  of  a  fusion  of 
the  two  peoples,  speaking  some  form  of  Sanscrit,  more  or  less  closely  allied  to 
what  we  know  as  Celtic ;  the  original  Basque-speaking  inhabitants  being  forced 
up  into  the  northern  mountains  where  they  still  remain,  and  have  in  course  of  time 
engrafted  upon  their  ancient  tongue  many  words — though  little  or  none  of  the  form 
— of  the  language  of  those  who  had  displaced  them.  It  is  the  opinion  of  many 
philologists  that  the  children  who  were,  as  St.  Augustine  tells  us,  so  eager  to  learn 
Latin  and  to  forget  their  mother  tongue,  did  not  speak  Basque  but  some  Sanscrit 
form  allied  to  Celtic.— H. 

1 "  The  heights  in  the  north  of  Spain  whence  the  Tagus,  Durius,  and  Minius 
flow  towards  the  sea,  and  whence  on  the  other  side  smaller  rivers  carry  their 
waters  towards  the  Ebro,  were  inhabited  by  Celts  who  were  also  called  Celtiberians ; 
other  Celts  bearing  the  name  of  Celtici  dwelt  in  Algarbia  and  the  Portuguese- 
Estremadura ;  and  others  again  inhabited  the  Province  of  Entre  Douro  e  Minho 
in  the  north  of  Portugal.  These  three  Celtic  nations  were  quite  isolated  in  Spain. 
The  Celtiberians  were  not  pure  Celts,  but,  as  even  their  name  indicates,  a  mixture 
of  Celts  and  Iberians  ;  but  the  Celts  in  Portugal  are  expressly  stated  to  have  been 
pure  Celts." — Niebuhr,  Lectures  on  Ancient  and  Modern  Geography  and  Ethno- 
graphy, ii.,  280,  281. 

2Masdeu,  following  other  Spanish  historians,  devotes  an  entire  chapter  or 
book  (lib.  iii.),  of  sixty  pages,  to  proving  or  asserting  that  the  Spanish  Celts  are 
more  ancient  than  those  of  France,  and  that  Celtic  Gaul  was  colonised  from  Celtic 
Spain  as  late  as  the  third  century  before  Christ.  This  author  derives  the  Celts 
from  Tubal,  and  the  Iberians  from  his  nephew  Tarsis ;  and  asserts  that  these 
Iberians,  migrating  northwards  in  the  fourteenth  century  before  Christ,  overran 
France,  descended  into  Italy,  and  thus  founded  the  Roman  Empire.  Cf.  Masdeu, 
ii.,  126.  Martial,  himself  a  Spaniard,  boasts  of  his  descent  "ex  Ibens  et  Celtis 
genitus" — lib.  x.,  ep.  65.  Cf.  iv. ,  55.  See  also  Depping,  Hist.  fEspagne,  i., 
pp.  21-45  I  anc^  Debrosses,  Hist.  Komaine,  ii. ,  134. 


4  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

knowledge  of  the  south  and  south-eastern  districts  ;  and  as  the 
Roman  conquests  were  extended,  we  hear  something  of  the 
tribes  and  districts  of  the  interior.  But  we  are  told  that  as 
late  as  the  time  of  Cato  the  Censor  the  greater  number  of  the 
independent  tribes  who  inhabited  the  north  and  west  of  the 
Peninsula  were  as  yet  scarcely  known  to  the  Romans,  even  by 
name.  And  although  after  the  fall  of  Numantia  the  Central 
Provinces  as  well  as  Southern  and  Eastern  Spain  had  become 
more  or  less  rapidly  Romanised,1  we  have  no  detailed  informa- 
tion of  the  tribes  and  tribal  divisions  of  the  Peninsula  until  the 
time  of  Strabo,  whose  Geography  was  written  in  all  probability 
within  twenty  years  after  the  commencement  of  the  Christian 
era.2  By  this  time,  as  he  tells  us,  the  Southern  Provincials  had 
not  only  been  converted  to  Roman  manners,  and  adopted  the 
Roman  dress,  but  they  had  entirely  forgotten  their  own  language 
or  languages,  Iberian,  Celtiberian,  Phoenician,  or  Carthaginian.3 

Yet  Niebuhr,  in  the  absence  of  direct  authority,  ingeniously 
conjectures  that  after  centuries  of  warfare,  in  which  the  Celts 
may  have  been  more  successful  in  the  south  and  the  Iberians 
in  the  north  of  the  Peninsula,  the  two  races,  meeting  in  the 
great  central  plain  on  more  or  less  equal  terms,  may  have  en- 
tered into  that  traditional  agreement  to  share  the  country 
between  them,  which  would  be  at  once  the  earliest  example  of 
a  political  convention  in  ancient  Europe  and  the  origin  of  the 
Spanish  people.4  And  however  imperfectly  the  high  contracting 
parties  may  have  carried  out  the  provisions  of  the  treaty,  their 
alliance  and  friendly  intercourse  gave  birth  to  a  nation  of  mixed 

1  The  wars  in  Spain  of  Sertorius  and  of  Caesar  were,  in  a  great  measure, 
Roman  civil  wars  ;  nor  did  they  change  to  any  considerable  extent  the  nature  of 
the  Imperial  dominion  in  Spain  from  the  fall  of  Numantia,  B.C.  133,  to  the  final 
conquest  or  pacification  of  the  Asturias  in  A.D.  19. 

2  Books  i.  to  iv.  were  published  about  that  time. 
8  Strabo,  iii.,  2,  15. 

4SeeDiodorus  Siculus,  v.,  33,  i;  Lucan,  Hieron ;  and  W.  von  Humboldt, 
translation  by  Marrast,  sub  tit.  Recherches  sur  les  habitants  primitifs  de  t  Espagne 
(1766),  pp.  120,  125.  See  Strabo,  iii.,  3,  4  and  5;  Arnold's  Hist,  of  Rome,  iii., 
396  ;  and  John  Ormsby,  in  Cornhill  Magazine,  1870,  p.  425.  The  words  of 
Niebuhr  to  which  I  refer  are  as  follows  :  "  As  one  part  of  England  was  occupied 
by  Germans  so  completely  as  to  destroy  every  trace  of  the  ancient  inhabitants, 
while  in  other  places  the  Britons  lived  among  the  Germans  and  became  mixed 
with  them,  so  in  Spain  the  Iberians  expelled  the  ancient  Celtic  population  where  - 
ever  the  nature  of  the  country  did  not  protect  it ;  but  the  Celts  maintained  them- 
selves in  the  mountains  between  the  Tagus  and  the  Iberus,  and  the  Iberians  only 
subdued  them  and  then  settled  among  them.  Thus  in  the  course  of  time  the  two 
nations  became  amalgamated  "  (Niebuhr,  Lectures,  ii. ,  281). 

See  also  Memorial  de  la  Real  Academia  de  Historic,,  torn.  iii. ,  pp.  1-244,  and 
torn.  iv. ,  pp.  1-75. 


THE  CELTIBERIANS.  5 

race,  split  up  unhappily  in  course  of  time  into  numerous  rival 
tribes,  but  all  known  to  the  early  Roman  historians  under  the 
general  name  of  Celtiberians. 

Thus,  if  the  Spaniard  was  a  Celt,  he  was  a  Celt  with  a  dif- 
ference, and  in  his  distinguishing  characteristics  he  was  always 
essentially  Iberian.  He  was  a  man  of  great  and  powerful 
individuality,1  hardy  and  determined,  sober  and  frugal,  chival- 
rous but  vindictive,  restless  but  stubborn,  careless  of  life,2  ever 
reckless  of  danger.  He  was,  moreover,  factious  and  unmanage- 
able ;  hardly  to  be  led,  never  to  be  driven  ;  a  faithful  friend,  a 
fearless  foe,  an  impatient  ally.  But,  above  and  beyond  all  these 
characteristics,  the  Celtiberian  had  something  peculiar  to  him- 
self, like  that  subtle  essence,  baffling  analysis  and  defying 
imitation,  which  makes  the  vintage  of  the  Gironde  so  entirely 
different  from  the  red  wine  of  precisely  similar  chemical  ele- 
ments that  is  made  on  the  banks  of  the  Rhone  or  the  Danube. 
For  two  thousand  years  the  Spaniard  has  perpetuated  this 
noble  individuality,  and  has  stood  alone  among  European  nations 
in  the  constancy  of  his  Peninsular  originality  ;  most  conspicuous 
in  the  days  of  his  greatness,  when  the  sun  never  set  on  his 
empire,  and  his  soldiers  were  the  terror  of  Europe ;  but  dis- 
tinguishable e^ten  in  the  days  of  his  abasement,  when  his  factions 
were  organised  by  favourites  and  his  faithfulness  was  played 
upon  by  priests.  His  vices  are  still  partly  Latin  and  partly 
Gothic,  yet  their  fashion  is  distinctly  Peninsular ;  and  if  some 
of  his  greatness  no  doubt  is  Roman,  his  virtues  are  all  his  own. 

Of  the  religion  of  these  early  forebears  of  the  Spanish  people 
we  know  absolutely  nothing.3  The  education  of  their  youth 

1  Cantaber,  ante  omnis  hiemisque,  sestusque,  famisque 

Invictus  :  Silius  Italicus,  Hi.,  326. 

2  Neque  adbuc  hominum  memoria  repertus  est  quisquam,  qui,  eo  interfecto, 
cujus  se  amicitiae  devovissent,  mori  recusaret :  Caesar,  Bell.  Gall.,  iii.,  22. 

Prodiga  gens  animae  et  properare  facillima  mortem  : 

Silius  Italicus,  i. ,  226.  See  Livy,  lib.  xviii.,  and  xxxiv. ,  17.  As  to  their  contempt 
for  pain  and  torture,  and  the  singing  and  jesting  of  Celtiberian  prisoners,  even 
when  nailed  upon  the  cross  by  the  Romans,  who  would  have  cowed  them,  see 
Strabo,  iii.,  4. 

3  We  may  be  pretty  sure  that  the  ancient  Celtiberians  were  religious.     Lafu- 
ente  speaks  of  human  sacrifices,  though  the  authorities  he  quotes  seem  hardly  to 
justify  an  assertion  which  ic  in  all  probability  entirely  correct.    See  also  Depping, 
i.,  pp.  34-37,  quoting  St.  Augustine,  afudVives. 

The  god  of  the  Celtiberians  was  known  as  "  Elman,  or  the  god  of  blood,"  a 
fit  forerunner  of  the  evil  genius  of  the  mediaeval  religion  in  Spain. — See  Memorias 
de  la  Real  Acad.  de  Hist.,  vol.  iii.,  157-8.  Masdeu,  after  giving  a  long  list  of  the 
Divinidades  que  suelan  creerse  propias  de  la  nation  Espaftola,  comes  to  the  con- 
clusion that  all  were  of  either  Phoenician  or  Carthaginian  or  Greek  or  Roman 
origin,  vii.,  356-359.  Cf.  Strabo,  iii.,  14,  16. 


6  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [B.C. 

consisted  chiefly  in  military  and  gymnastic  exercises,  in  feats  of 
arms,  in  displays  of  boldness  and  endurance.  The  Celtiberians, 
we  are  told,  from  their  earliest  childhood  were  brave  and  hardy, 
contemptuous  of  pain  and  danger,  and  inspired  from  their  very 
infancy  with  an  almost  passionate  love  of  personal  independence. 
The  women  not  only  educated  the  younger  children  and 
cultivated  the  land,1  but  took  their  places  in  times  of  special 
danger  by  the  side  of  their  husbands  or  their  fathers  in  battle 
array. 

The  occupations  of  the  men  appear  to  have  been  exclusively 
those  that  were  connected  with  war.  The  military  arts  were 
cultivated  by  them  with  conspicuous  success ;  and  we  find  that, 
apart  from  their  reckless  bravery,  they  were  more  skilful  both 
as  strategists  and  tacticians  than  any  of  the  other  Barbarians 
with  which  the  Romans  were  at  any  time  engaged  in  arms.2 
Nor  were  they  less  successful  in  the  manufacture  than  in  the 
use  of  their  weapons.3  So  admirable  was  the  temper  of  their 
steel  that  no  Roman  shield  nor  helmet  could  resist  their  stroke ; 
and  the  short  Spanish  sword  of  Bilbilis,  forerunner  of  the 
celebrated  blade  of  Toledo,  was  introduced  by  the  admiring 
Romans  into  the  armies  of  the  Republic  as  early  as  the  days  of 
Hannibal.4 

1 A  characteristic  example  of  early  maternal  discipline  is  recorded  by  Florus, 
iii. ,  8,  Cibum  puer  a  matre  non  accipit  nisi  quern,  ipsa  monstrante,  percusserit. 

2  See  F.  Hoefer,  Diodore  de  Sidle,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  33,  34  (notes).  Sword  and 
lance  were  used  with  equal  dexterity  by  cavalry  and  infantry.  Of  the  Celtiberian 
slings,  of  their  short  and  long  lances,  as  well  as  of  their  defensive  arms,  the  shield 
and  the  helmet,  see  Diod.  Sic.,  lib.  v. ,  cap.  33,  last  lines,  and  Livy,  lib.  xxii.,  46; 
Aul.  Gell.,  xv.,  30.  Polybius  describes  a  peculiar  practice  among  the  Celtiberians. 
When  the  cavalry  saw  that  the  infantry  was  hard  pressed,  they  would  quit  their 
horses  and  leave  them  standing  in  their  place  while  they  helped  the  infantry.  We 
must  presume  that  this  was  done  on  occasions  when  the  mounted  men  for  some 
reason  could  be  of  no  use  as  cavalry.  These  early  dragoons  had  small  pegs, 
iraffffa\iffKovs,  fastened  to  the  end  of  their  reins,  and  they  used  to  fix  these  pegs 
in  the  ground,  their  horses  being  trained  to  stand  by  them  till  the  riders  returned 
and  took  them  up,  Polybius,  Fragment,  iii.,  3  in  ed.  Casaubon  (1763),  vol.  iv., 
p.  283  ;  cf.  Diod.  Sicul.,  v.,  35,  ad  hoc. 

*  The  celebrated  gladius  hispanensis.  See  Livy,  vii. ,  10,  and  xxii. ,  46  ;  Poly- 
bius, iii.,  24;  Diod.  Sicul.,  v.,  33.  It  is  curious  enough  that  while  the  Roman 
soldiers  wore  their  swords  suspended  at  the  right  side,  the  ancient  Celtiberians  wore 
theirs  on  the  left,  as  is  now  the  case  throughout  the  world.  The  authorities  for 
both  these  statements  will  be  found  collected  by  Masdeu,  vii. ,  119,  120.  The  Pilum 
or  heavy  spear  of  the  Roman  Legionary  is  said  to  have  been  also  adopted  from  the 
Iberians.  It  is  no  doubt  the  Sparus  of  Livy,  xxxiv.,  15. 

This  spear  is  to  be  seen  in  the  hands  of  the  horsemen  in  many  of  the  old 
Ibero-Roman  coins.  See  Ford  (1845),  i.,  177. 

4  Bilbilis,  a  Celtiberian  word  of  uncertain  meaning,  was  a  town  on  the  river 
Salo,  whose  water  gave  an  unrivalled  temper  to  the  steel.  The  modern  town  of 


1130.] 


THE  CELTIBERIANS. 


Of  the  Celtiberian  literature,  if  literature  they  possessed, 
not  a  fragment  has  come  down  to  us.  Their  very  language  is 
lost.1  And  of  their  way  of  life,  when  not  actually  ranged  in 
battle,  we  have  neither  record  nor  tradition.2 

The  Celtiberians  had  no  Gildas.  All  that  we  know  of  them 
— and  it  is  little  enough — is  told  by  those  who  waged  cruel  war 
against  them,  and  the  tale  of  the  enemy  is  one  of  valour  and  of 
generosity,  of  restless  vigour  and  of  almost  heroic  endurance. 

II. — Saguntum. 

If  the  Celts  and  the  Iberians  were  the  first  settlers,  they 
were  not  long  permitted  to  be  the  sole  occupants  of  the 

Calatayud is  built.'not  on,  but  near  the  site  of  Bilbilis,  which  was  dilapidated  by  Ayub, 
the  nephew  of  Musa,  the  conqueror,  to  supply  the  materials  for  the  Moslem  Fort, 
Kilo,  't  Ayub.  Bambola,  about  two  miles  to  the  east  of  Calatayud,  is  supposed  to 
occupy  the  site  of  Bilbilis.  See  Pliny,  N.H.,  xxxiv.,  14,  41.  Justin,  xliv.,  2,3; 
and  Martial — the  greatest  of  the  sons  of  Bilbilis — i. ,  50,  3,  12;  iv.,  55,  11-15  > 
x.,  20,  103,  104  ;  xii. ,  18,  9.  Cf.  Ukert,  Geog.  ii.  (i),  460. 

1  The  Cantabrians  at  least  are  said  to  have  originally  written  from  right  to  left, 
after  the  manner  of  the  Semitic  nations,  and  to  have  given  up  this  ancient  system, 
called  by  them  agercaya,  for  the  Roman  alphabet,  not  long  before  the  Christian  era. 
Baudrimont,  Hist,  des  Basques,  p.  175. 

'The  beauty  of  the  Celtiberian  coins  is  spoken  of  with  admiration  by  Lafuente. 
The  earliest  existing  Spanish  coins  are  those  of  the  Greek  cities  of  the  N.  E.  coast, 
notably  of  Emporiae  (Ampurias)  and  Rhode  (Rosas),  eminently  Greek  in  design, 
and  bearing  Greek,  or  more  rarely  Iberian  inscriptions.  See  Head,  Historic. 
Numorum,  p.  i;  Heiss,  Description  gtnfrale  des  monnaies  antique*  de  TEspagne, 
1870  ;  Zobel  deZangroniz,  Estudio  Historico  de  la  Moneda  Antigua  Espanola,  and 
various  special  works  by  D.  Celestino  Pujol  y  Camps,  printed  within  the  last  few 
years  at  Seville.  In  the  more  distinctively  Iberian  coins  of  the  central  provinces, 
Roman  or  Greek  influences  are  also  seen.  The  horse,  whether  natural,  winged, 
or  man-headed,  is  one  of  the  most  frequent  designs.  The  following  list  of  the 
devices  on  coins  found  in  Spain  with  Iberian  inscriptions  may  be  interesting  : 
Man's  Head,  Female  Head,  Horse  (of  common  occurence),  Escallop  Shell  (Pecten), 
Moon,  Star  (usually  of  eight  points),  Eagle,  Dolphin,  Prow  of  a  Ship,  Stern  or 
Helm  of  a  Ship,  Horseman  (by  far  the  most  frequently  found),  Lion,  Wolf  or  Dog, 
Crossed  Fishes,  Bull,  Caduceus,  Bay  Tree.  The  coins  of  Carthaginian  cities  are 
said  to  have  borne,  as  a  rule,  a  rude  representation  of  a  pair  of  Tunny  Fish.  Some 
of  these,  according  to  Senor  Zobel  de  Zangroniz,  may  be  as  old  as  B.C.  350 ;  but 
the  oldest  coins  in  the  British  Museum  collection  are  supposed  to  be  rather  later 
than  earlier  than  B.C.  268. 

One  of  the  oldest  that  I  have  seen  is  a  copper  piece  with  the  words  "  OBULCO" 
on  the  reverse,  and  an  Iberian  inscription  on  the  obverse.  This  coin  is  not  later 
than  133,  and  may  be  as  old  as  B.C.  268.  The  most  recent  authority  on  Spanish 
coinage  is  D.  Alvaro  Campaner  y  Fuertes,  Indicadornumismatico,  i  vol.,  1891. 

Upon  the  earliest  periods,  in  addition  to  the  works  already  referred  to,  I  have 
consulted  Saulcy,  Essai  de  Classification  des  monnaies  autonomes  d*Espa%ne,  1840 ; 
P.  A.  Boudard,  Etude  sur  F alphabet  ibtrien,  et  quelques  monnaies  autonomes 
d'Espagne  (1852) ;  also  his  Numismatique  iberienne  ;  Joseph  Gaillard,  Description 
des  monnaies  espagnoles,  Madrid,  1852  ;  Antonio  Delgado,  Nuevo  Metodode  Clasift- 
cacion,  etc.  (Seville,  1871). 


8  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [B.C. 

Peninsula.  The  Phoenicians  of  Tyre,  sailing  westward  in  search 
of  gain,  founded,  according  to  tradition,  some  eleven  hundred 
and  thirty  years  before  Christ,  the  city  of  Gades  or  Gadeira  l  on 
the  site  of  the  modern  Cadiz.  A  hundred  and  fifty  years  later 
we  hear  of  another  Phoenician  settlement 2  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Baetis  or  Guadalquivir,  the  city  of  Tartessus  or  Tarshish,  no 
less  celebrated  in  the  days  of  the  Phoenician  supremacy  than 
Gadeira  itself.  But  the  glories  of  Tarshish  had  departed 
almost  before  the  dawn  of  serious  history.  Its  site  is  now 
uncertain;  and  its  very  existence  has  of  late  been  called  in 
question.3 

In  course  of  time,  the  Phoenicians  established  themselves 
along  the  whole  of  the  south  coast  of  the  Peninsula,  deriving 
immense  riches  from  the  skilful  working  of  those  famous  mines 
which  made  Spain,  as  Gibbon  has  aptly  said,  the  Peru  and 
Mexico  of  the  ancient  world ;  and  they  founded,  in  addition  to 
Cadiz  and  Tartessus,  the  cities  of  Malaga,4  Seville,5  Cordova,6 
and  probably  Medina  Sidonia,  named  after  their  own  beloved 

1  Gadeira,  perhaps  derived  from  Gadir,  in  Hebrew  and  Phoenician — a  fence, 
i.e. ,  a  fenced  city.  See  Niebuhr,  Lectures,  ii. ,  287-8.  For  other  possible  and 
still  less  likely  derivations,  see  Depping,  Hist.  d'Espagne,  i.,  43-45,  and  Heeren, 
Politique  et  Commerce  des  Peuplesde  VAntiquitl,  torn.  iv. ,  Appendix  ;  and  Romey, 
Hist,  a" Espagne,  torn,  i.,  p.  68. 

2 See  Herodotus,  i.,  163,  and  Rawlinson's  Phasnicia,  ed.  1889,  pp.  125 and  418. 

3  If  it  is  the  Tarshish  of  Scripture  (i  Kings  x.  22),  its  prosperity  and  import- 
ance must  have   been  even  anterior  to  the  time  of  Solomon — say  B.C.   1000 — 
whose  navy  of  Tarshish,  distinct  from  the  navy  that  brought  gold  from  Ophir, 
brought  him  once  in  every  three  years  gold  and  silver,  ivory  and  apes  and  pea- 
cocks.     See  Rawlinson's  Phoenicia  (1889),  pp.    125  and  431 ;    Stanley's  Jewish 
Church,  pp.   182-187.     Marina — quoted  by  Depping,   i. ,   41 — is  of  opinion  that 
Tarshish  is  but  a  general  name  for  the  sea.     But  this  is  clearly  untenable.     See 
other  authorities  quoted  Depping,  in  loc.  cit.,  as  well  as  the  Discurso  historico- 
critico  sobre  la  primera  venida  de  los  Judios  en  Espafta,  by  Fr.  Martinez  Marina, 
published  in  the  third  volume  of  the  Memorias  de  la  Acad.  Real  de  Hist.,  pp.  317- 
469,    and  a  long  note  in  Masdeu,  vol.  iii. ,  pp.  273-285.     Cf.  Ezekiel  xxvii.   12, 
Psalm  Ixxi. ,  and  Isaiah  xxiii.   10,  where  Tyre  is  addressed  by  the  poet  as  the 
Daughter  of  Tarshish.     Dr.  Arnold  is  clearly  of  opinion  that  Tyrian  Tartessus  was 
the  Tarshish  of  Scripture  (Hist,  of  Rome,  iii.,  323). 

4  Malaga  :  Lat.,  Malaca ;  Hebrew  and  Phoenician,  Malac-carth  —  a  royal  city. 
Cf.  Niebuhr,  op.  cit. ,  ii. ,  287-8. 

"Seville:  Phoenician,  Sephela  or  Spela  =  a  plain.  This  became  in  Greek 
'Io-7roAa  ;  in  Latin,  Hispalis  ;  in  Arabic,  Ishbiliah  ;  whence  the  modern  Seville. 

6  Cordova — Latin,  Corduba — is  said  by  Depping,  op.  cit.,  i. ,  53,  on  very  doubt- 
ful authority,  to  be  derived  from  Corteba  =  an  oil  mill.  The  Phoenician  Karth 
uba  =  rich  city,  as  given  by  El  Edris,  is  far  more  likely.  Yet  Niebuhr,  in  loc.  cit., 
considers  that  Cordova  is  in  its  origin  certainly  a  Roman  colony,  and  had  no 
existence  before  A.u.C.  640,  when  it  was  founded  by  Marcellus,  much  as  Italica 
was  founded  by  Scipio.  See  Descripcion  de  Espafta  de  Xerif  al  Edris,  traduccion 
de  J.  A.  Conde,  Madrid,  1799. 


800.]  THE  CELTIBERIANS.  9 

Sidon  in  their  home  in  the  eastern  Mediterranean.1  And  thus 
if  the  most  flourishing  of  all  the  Phoenician  settlements  on  the 
shores  of  the  western  sea  was  in  the  north  of  Africa,  the  riches 
that  made  the  Tyrians  the  first  merchant  princes  of  the  world 
were  dug  out  of  the  soil  of  Iberia.  And  at  the  present  day, 
two  thousand  years  after  the  annihilation  of  Carthage,2  the 
mines  of  Almaden  and  the  Rio  Tinto  are  still  among  the 
richest,  as  they  are  the  most  ancient,  of  all  the  possessions  of 
Spain. 

After  the  Phoenicians  came  the  Greeks ;  and  of  these  it 
was  the  Phocians,  says  Herodotus,  "who  first  performed  long 
voyages,  and  who  made  the  Hellenes  acquainted  with  Iberia 
and  the  city  of  Tartessus  "  ;  and  it  was  the  Rhodians,3  wafted 
westwards  across  the  great  sea,  who  settled  themselves,  some 
eight  centuries  before  Christ,  on  the  coast  in  the  extreme 
north-east  of  Spain,4  and  gave  to  their  colony  the  name  of 
Rhodas  and  Rosas,  while  they  established  their  Emporium  hard 
by,  on  the  side  of  the  modern  Ampurias. 

Farther  down  the  coast,  between  Valencia  and  Alicante, 
there  was  another  Greek  colony,  where  the  new-comers  set  up 
a  magnificent  temple  dedicated  to  the  goddess  Diana,  after 
whom  the  town  was  named  Dianium,  surviving  in  the  modern 

1  Tarraco,  the  modern  Tarragona,  is  said  by  different  authors  to  have  been 
founded  by  Iberians,  Celtiberians  and  Phoenicians.     It  was,  at  least,  as  far  back  as 
the  time  of  Eratosthenes  (circ.  B.C.,  300-250),  an  old  and  flourishing  city. 

2  The  quicksilver  of  Almaden  or  Sisapo  was  known  to  the  early  Greeks,  and 
highly  prized  by  the  Romans,  Strabo,  iii. ,  2,  8  ;  Pliny,  xxxiii.,  cap.  7;  Arnold,  Hist, 
of  Rome,  iii.,  328.     As  to  silver,  see  Strabo,  iii.,  2,  3,  8,  10.     As  to  the  vermilion 
(Cinabrio)  found  at  Almaden,  see  Masdeu,  vii. ,  72-3,  151.      Posidonius  wrote  a 
treatise  on  the  mines  of  Spain  which  has  perished  ;    but  Strabo  and  Diodorus 
Siculus  have  both  cited  extracts  from  his  work,  speaking  of  the  wonderful  mineral 
riches  of  the  country.     And  Phylarchus,  Athcn.,  ii. ,  44  b. ,  speaks  of  the  Iberians  as 
the  richest  of  men,  ir\ovffi<i>raTovs  iu/6p<aircov.     See  Depping,  i.,  10-14.     And  see 
also  Vives'  edition  of  St.  Augustine,  De  Civitate  Dei,  Fol.  Paris,  1585,  lib.  viii., 
cap.  9,  note,  where  the  condition  of  the  Spaniards,  after  the  riches  of  their  country 
had  attracted  merchants  and  settlers  from  all  parts  of  the  world,  is  contrasted  with 
that  of  the  inhabitants  in  earlier  times.      The  description  is  most  flattering,  and 
may  be  referred  to  by  those  who  are  curious  in  such  matters  ;  but  it  seems  to  rest 
on  no  good  authority,  for  St.  Augustine's  eulogy  of  the  early  Spaniards  is  confined 
to  the  inclusion  of  the  Hispani  among  those  early  nations  who  were  Sapientes  vel 
Philosophi.      I  have  been  at  some  pains  to  find  the  passage  ;    the  references  to  it 
having  been  erroneously  given  in  every  work  that  I  have  consulted. 

3 Herod,  i.,  c.  163;  Strabo,  iii.,  i,  4.  These  Rhodians  are  said  to  have  also 
occupied  the  Gymnesiae  or  Balearic  Islands  about  the  same  time.  As  to  the  treaty 
between  these  Greek  colonists  and  the  Indigetes  already  established  at  the  foot  of 
the  Pyrenees,  see  Livy,  xxxiv. 

4  See  D.  Jos6  Pella  y  Forgas,  Historia  de  Ampvrdan  (Barcelona,  1883),  with 
its  excellent  map  of  all  this  part  of  the  country. 


10  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [B.C. 

name  of  the  existing  town  of  Denia ;  while  some  adventurers 
from  the  island  of  Zante,  or  possibly  from  the  Tyrrheno-Pelasgic 
city  of  Ardea,  founded  on  the  site  of  the  modern  Murviedro 
the  more  famous  city  of  Saguntum.1 

But  all  these  settlers  were  merchants  rather  than  soldiers.2 
For  long  years  they  would  seem  to  have  made  no  attempt  to 
extend  their  possessions  into  the  interior  of  the  country ;  and 
the  first  departure  from  their  peaceful  policy  was  the  signal 
for  a  change  of  masters.  About  four  hundred  and  eighty  years 
before  Christ,  some  eager  spirits  at  Gadeira  undertook  an 
expedition  into  Southern  Celtiberia,  seeking  no  doubt  new 
mines  rather  than  new  dominions.  But  the  bold  tribesmen 
of  the  central  provinces — defending  their  territory  with  un- 
expected vigour,  replied  to  the  aggression  of  the  foreigners  by 
a  counter  invasion,  and  by  the  destruction  of  many  of  their 
settlements  on  the  coast.  Gadeira  itself  was  threatened  with 
assault  ;  and  the  Phoenicians,  greatly  alarmed,  applied  for 
assistance  to  their  brothers  or  cousins  across  the  narrow  sea  at 
Carthage.  Such  requests  are  ever  dangerous,  and  such  succour 
has  ever  been  of  evil  omen  in  Spain.  The  Carthaginians  ac- 
cepted the  invitation,  landed  in  force,  beat  off  the  Iberians ;  and 
then,  turning  their  arms  against  those  who  had  invited  them 
into  the  country,  they  took  possession  of  the  city  which  they 
had  relieved,  and  extended  their  operations  with  such  vigour 
and  such  success,  that  in  a  few  years  there  was  left  to  the 
Phoenicians  no  foothold  in  the  entire  Peninsula  of  Spain. 

JSee  Livy,  xxi.,  7.  Saguntum — but  eighteen  English  miles  to  the  north  of 
Valencia  along  the  coast — has  developed  into  Murviedro,  by  the  change  of  name 
from  that  of  the  heroic  city,  not  once,  but  often  destroyed,  to  that  of  its  old  -walls 
— Muri  veteres :  Muros  viejos  =  Murviedro.  But  within  the  last  few  years  a 
patriotic  attempt  has  been  made  to  restore  the  ancient  name,  and  the  town  is 
officially  known  as  Sagunto.  It  was  here,  on  the  last  day  of  the  year  1874,  that 
Martinez  Campos  put  an  end  to  the  Republic  under  Serrano,  by  proclaiming 
Alfonso  XII.  King  of  Spain. 

2  The  distinct  influence  exercised  over  the  country  by  the  Greek  and  Phoenician 
colonists  respectively  must  not  be  lost  sight  of.  The  Phoenicians  were  attracted  to 
the  land  simply  by  a  commercial  love  of  gain,  and  kept  up  a  close  connection 
with  their  mother  country.  Neither  their  methods  nor  their  aims  were  in  accord  with 
the  Iberian  spirit,  and  they  were  always  unpopular  with  the  natives.  The  Greeks, 
on  the  other  hand,  were  formed  into  communities  whose  first  settlements  had  been 
prompted  mainly  by  political  or  other  uncommercial  reasons,  and  were  practically 
independent  of  their  mother  country.  They  therefore  identified  themselves  much 
more  closely  than  the  Phoenicians  with  the  life  of  the  people  amongst  whom  they 
had  made  their  new  homes.  Their  civil  and  religious  organisations  also  were 
sympathetic  to  the  natives,  and  from  all  these  reasons  combined,  the  influence  of 
Greek  civilisation  in  Spain  was,  in  comparison  with  the  extent  of  the  colonisation, 
much  greater  than  that  of  the  Phoenicians. — H. 


219.]  THE  CELTIBERIANS.  11 

For  nearly  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  the  Carthaginians 
ruled  the  coast  and  a  fringe  of  the  interior,  much  as  the 
Phoenicians  had  done  before  them ;  treating  the  country  rather 
as  a  source  of  revenue  than  as  a  theatre  of  military  glory,  and 
pouring  the  rich  treasures  of  the  Spanish  mines  into  the  lap  of 
Carthage ;  and  no  attempt  was  made  to  subdue  the  greater 
part  of  the  country  until  the  time  of  the  great  Hamilcar  Barca.1 
But  after  the  Roman  successes  which  brought  to  a  close  the 
first  Punic  war,  and  the  seizure  of  Sardinia  by  the  Senate,  and 
while  the  Carthaginians  were  occupied  with  the  mercenary 
revolt  which  followed  in  Africa,  Hamilcar,  consummate  states- 
man no  less  than  skilled  commander,  conceived  the  bold  and 
brilliant  scheme  of  strengthening  his  position  in  Europe  rather 
than  in  Africa,  as  a  step  to  the  invasion  and  subjugation  of 
Rome,  by  extending  and  consolidating  the  Carthaginian  pos- 
sessions in  Spain.2  Hamilcar,  though  he  quickly  overran  Baetica, 
found  it  no  easy  task  to  vanquish  the  sturdy  Celtiberians.  After 
over  nine  years'  warfare,  and  the  foundation  of  the  city  which 
preserves  the  proud  title  of  Barca3  in  the  modern  name  of 
Barcelona,  he  was  killed  in  the  retreat  after  the  battle  of  Bellia 
(the  modern  Belchite)  where  his  Celtiberian  ally  turned  his 
arms  against  him,  Spain  was  not  only  still  unconquered,  but 
the  central  and  northern  provinces  were  almost  untrodden  by 
the  Carthaginians. 

Hasdrubal,  the  son-in-law  and  successor  of  Hamilcar,  wisely 
preferring  peaceful  to  warlike  methods,  ruled  over  Carthaginian 
Spain  for  some  eight  years  [228-221]  organising  and  consoli- 
dating the  Punic  Empire,  and  cultivating  the  friendship  of  the 
native  Celtiberians.  The  most  enduring  monument  of  his  sway 
was  the  city  of  New  Carthage,4  lying  on  a  noble  bay  over  against 
the  Punic  capital  in  Africa,  a  city  which  still  flourishes,  after  a 
lapse  of  over  two  thousand  years,  as  Carthagena.  The  peaceful 
conquests  of  Hasdrubal  were  rudely  and  disastrously  checked  by 
his  assassination  at  the  hand  of  a  slave  ;  and  his  sympathetic 
policy  was  unhappily  and  abruptly  reversed.  For  the  young 

1  See  Diodorus  Siculus,  lib.  v. ,  cap.  35 ;  also  the  authorities  cited  in  James' 
Gibraltar,  cap.  i. 

2  As  to  the  oath  taken  by  Hamilcar  Barca  and  his  son  Hannibal,  see  Polybius, 
iii.,  ii. 

3  Bark,  Hebrew  and  Arab,  Lightning  ;  cf.  Bosworth  Smith,  Carthage,  cap.  ix. , 
Lafuente,  i. ,  330. 

4  Carthagena  :   Phcen. ,    Carth  =  city  ;  gena  =  new.     Founded  in  B.C.   228. 
Polybius,  ii.,   13,  36;  Livy,  xxi.,  2. 


12  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [B.C. 

commander  who  succeeded  him  was  before  all  things  a  man  of 
war. 

Hannibal,  the  greater  son  of  the  great  Hamilcar  Barca,  had 
been  brought  up  from  his  early  childhood  in  Spain.  In  Spain 
he  had  served  his  apprenticeship  in  arms.  He  had  married  a 
Spanish  wife.  His  friends  and  companions  were  rather  Spaniards 
than  Carthaginians,  and  his  only  foe  was  Rome.  And  when,  at 
the  age  of  twenty-six,  he  succeeded  to  the  supreme  command 
in  Punic  Iberia,  his  armies  numbered  as  many  Spaniards  as 
Africans  in  their  ranks.  Grasping  the  slackened  reins  of  mili- 
tary dominion  in  his  master  hand,  Hannibal  inspired  every 
soldier  under  his  command  with  his  own  dauntless  spirit,  and 
he  soon  carried  his  victorious  army  over  the  whole  of  southern 
and  eastern  Spain.  One  city  alone  resisted  ;  and  the  name  of 
SAGUNTUM  lives  in  history,  as  glorious  as  that  of  Hannibal  him- 
self. 

By  a  treaty  made  but  a  few  years  before,  between  the 
Roman  Senate  and  the  diplomatic  Hasdrubal,  it  had  been 
stipulated  that  Saguntines  should  be  considered  as  allies  of 
Rome,  and  that  their  ancient  rights  and  privileges  should  be 
respected  by  the  Carthaginians.  But  good  reasons  are  ever 
to  be  found  for  the  rupture  or  evasion  of  treaties,  and  a  real 
or  imaginary  attack  made  by  the  Saguntines  upon  the 
neighbouring  semi-Carthaginian  tribe  of  the  Turditanians, 
afforded  Hannibal  a  specious  pretext  for  laying  siege  to  the 
city.  The  population  of  Saguntum  was  largely  Iberian. 
And  in  the  Punic  armies,  thanks  to  the  genial  policy  of 
Hasdrubal,  and  the  magic  military  charm  which  ever  attended 
the  name  of  the  younger  Hannibal,  were  found  great  numbers 
of  those  Iberian  or  Celtiberian  soldiers  in  whose  veins  flowed 
the  blue  blood  of  the  future  Spanish  people.  The  attack  was 
tremendous,  the  defence  unflinching.  For  nearly  nine  months 
the  city  withstood  all  the  assaults  of  the  besiegers.  Hannibal 
himself,  fighting  in  the  forefront  of  a  party  of  the  assailants, 
was  wounded  under  the  walls ;  and  in  spite  of  all  his  skill  as 
a  general  and  all  his  impetuosity  as  a  soldier,  in  spite  of  the 
presence  of  a  host  which  is  said  to  have  amounted  to  one 
hundred  and  fifty  thousand  men,  in  spite  of  the  invention  and 
use  of  new  engines  of  battery  and  escalade,  the  fall  of  Saguntum 
was  due  rather  to  famine  than  to  force  of  arms.  Embassies 
were  despatched  from  the  beleaguered  city  to  Rome.  But 
Rome  was  too  busy  with  party  politics,1  and  Rome  sent  no  help. 

1  Dum  Romas  consulitur,  Saguntum  expugnatur. 


219-]  THE  CELTIBERIANS.  13 

Good  advice  indeed  was  offered  to  the  besieged.  Threats  were 
conveyed  to  the  besieger.  But  Hannibal  was  undismayed. 
The  Saguntines  would  hear  of  no  surrender ;  and  after  nine 
months'  agony,  came  the  inevitable  end.  The  spoils  of  the 
victors  and  the  slaughter  of  the  vanquished  were  equally 
enormous ; l  and  the  self-immolation  of  the  Saguntine  leaders, 
who  preferred  to  perish,  with  their  wives,  their  children,  and 
their  treasure,  rather  than  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  victorious 
enemy,  is  immortalised  in  the  glowing  pages  of  Livy.2 

1  "  Signo  dato  ut  omnes  puberes  interficerentur,"  Livy,  xxi.  14. 

2 See  Saint  Augustine,  De  Civitate  Dei,  Hi.,  20;  Livy,  xxi.,  7-15;  Appian, 
Iberica ;  Silius  Italicus,  i.,  271 ;  Polybius,  iii. ,  15;  and  for  the  inevitable  counter 
criticism,  Niebuhr's  unsympathetic  contention  that  "  Livy's  account  of  Saguntum 
is  a  childish  exaggeration  well  suited  to  a  rhetorician  like  Ccelius  Antipater,  from 
whom  he  took  his  description.  .  .  .  Saguntum  was  restored  by  the  Romans,  and 
became  a  considerable  town  under  the  Empire,"  Niebuhr,  Lectures  on  Ancient 
Geography  and  Ethnography,  ii.,  292-3. 


CHAPTER  II. 

NUMANTIA. 
(B.C.  209 — B.C.  27.) 

THE  events  that  immediately  followed  the  fall  of  Saguntum, 
important  as  they  are  in  themselves  and  in  the  annals  of 
Carthage  and  of  Rome,  are  chiefly  interesting  to  the  student  of 
Spanish  history  in  so  far  as  they  led  to  the  invasion  of  Spain,1 
and  the  ultimate  absorption  of  the  whole  country  into  the 
Roman  Empire.  Of  the  varying  fortunes  of  Romans  and 
Carthaginians ;  of  the  ever  changing  alliances  between  the 
high  contending  parties  and  the  native  Celtiberians ;  of  the 
successes  of  Hannibal  and  his  Spanish  soldiers  in  far  away 
Italy;  of  the  coming  of  Publius  and  Gnaeus  Cornelius  Scipio, 
who  took  the  field  with  twenty  thousand  Celtiberian  allies 
against  Hasdrubal  and  his  Carthaginians  in  Spain ;  of  the 
defection  of  the  Spaniards,  and  the  defeat  and  death  of  the 
Roman  generals  in  Spain ;  of  all  these  things  but  little  need  be 
said  in  this  place,  partly  because  it  concerns  Spain  so  little,  and 
partly  because,  in  the  plain  language  of  Thomas  Arnold,2  "  we 
really  know  nothing  about  them".  What  we  do  know  is 

1  The  derivation  of  the  name  of  Spain,  Espana,  Hispania,  is  most  uncertain. 
To  the  Greeks  the  country  was  known  as  Hesperia,  the  land  of  the  setting  sun, 
and  as  we  have  seen  in  Scylax,  ante,  p.  i,  as  Iberia,  the  land  of  the  Iberians,  and 
of  the  Ebro  ;  and  as  Hispania,  which  has  been  derived  (i)  from  Phcen. ,  Span  = 
hidden  or  distant,  as  being  the  most  remote  land  known  to  them ;  (2)  from  Phcen. , 
pahan  =  a  rabbit,  from  the  number  of  rabbits  found  in  the  country,  cuniculosa.     On 
some  of  the  coins  struck  in  the  reign  of  Hadrian,  during  his  visit  to  the  Peninsula, 
the  bust  of  the  Emperor  is  seen  on  the  obverse,  and  on  the  reverse  a  female  figure 
with  an  olive  branch  in  her  hands  and  a  rabbit  [conejo]  at  her  feet,  and  the  legend 
Hispania.     Humboldt  derives  Espana  from  the  Basque  Espana,  margin  or  edge, 
as  being  on  the  margin  or  edge  or  border  of  western  Europe,  an  idea  possibly 
apparent  in  the  poetical  name  of  Hesperia.     See  Marrast's  edition  of  Humboldt 
(1866),  pp.  54-56. 

According  to  Mariana,  Spain  is  called  after  its  founder  Hispanus,  a  son  or 
grandson  of  Hercules  ;  and  he  devotes  many  pages  to  the  history  of  his  reign ! 
Mariana,  i.,  cap.  8-n. 

2  Hist,  of  Rome,  vol.  iii.,  p.  215;  Bosworth  Smith's  Carthage,  cap.  xvii. 


NUMANTIA.  15 

certainly  not  to  the  advantage  of  the  Roman  commanders,  nor 
even  of  the  Roman  soldiers.  Had  they  been  more  successful, 
their  records  would,  no  doubt,  be  more  definite.  But  the 
arrival  of  Scipio  Africanus  in  209  j  his  taking  of  New  Carthage, 
or  Carlhagena,  and  his  masterly  display  of  unaccustomed 
humanity  after  the  fall  of  the  city,  entirely  changed  the 
condition  of  affairs. 

The  historic  or  legendary  episode  of  "The  Continence  of 
Scipio,"  which  has  formed  the  subject  of  so  many  well-known 
pictures,  is  supposed  to  have  taken  place  after  the  capture  of 
Carthagena.  Whether  the  youthful  commander  actually  re- 
stored the  weeping  virgin  x  to  her  lover,  or  whether  the  graceful 
story  is  one  of  the  fables  of  history,  it  is  certain  that  Scipio 
distinguished  himself  by  a  most  politic  and  most  honourable 
clemency,  more  fruitful  even  than  his  military  successes  in 
obtaining  for  him  the  admiration  and  respect  of  the  sympathetic 
Iberians,  who  offered  to  salute  him  as  their  king.  When  Scipio 
returned  to  Tarragona,  in  208,  Rome  had  well  nigh  triumphed 
over  Carthage  in  Spain  ;  while  his  crowning  victory  less  than  a 
year  afterwards,  with  an  army  composed  almost  entirely  of 
Spaniards,  apparently  put  an  end  to  the  struggle. 

But  although  the  Carthaginians  were  thus  defeated,  it  was 
impolitic  as  well  as  ungenerous  in  Scipio  to  treat  his  Spanish 
allies  as  a  conquered  people.  The  Iberians  promptly  responded 
to  his  change  of  attitude  by  rising  against  the  Roman  arms : 
and  when  Mago  at  length  abandoned  Cadiz  [B.C.  206],  the  last 
of  the  Carthaginian  possessions  in  Europe,  the  war  in  Spain  was 
only  about  to  begin.  And  the  new  enemy  was  far  more  stub- 
born than  the  old.  The  details  of  battle  and  siege  are  for  the 
most  part  entirely  wanting ;  but  we  read  in  the  scanty  annals  of 
the  time  how  the  unknown  Iberian  defenders  of  a  well-nigh  for- 
gotten town,  with  a  determination  hardly  equalled  at  Saguntum, 
and  not  exceeded  at  Numantia,  preferred  death  to  surrender ; 
and  leaving  a  small  guard  within  the  city,  to  slay  the  women 
and  children  and  to  set  fire  to  the  town,  sallied  forth  from 
unconquered  Ataspa,2  and  died  every  man  with  his  face  to 

1 "  Adulta  virgo  .  .  .  eximia  forma,"  Livy,  xxvi.,  50;  Polyb.  x.,  19. 

8  The  town  was  Ataspa  [see  Livy,  xxviii. ,  22-23]  on  the  Baetis  or  Guadalquivir. 
It  is  referred  to  by  Mariana,  lib.  vii. ,  cap.  9,  as  a  rebellious  city  as  late  as  A.D. 
888.  The  etymology  of  Ataspa  is  highly  interesting ;  Asia  in  Basque  means 
rock  ;  and  is  the  root  of  the  word  Asturia  =  the  country  of  rocks,  and  Asturica  = 
water  of  the  rock  ;  asta  =  rock ;  ura  —  water.  Ataspa  is  still  used  in  modern 
Basque  for  "a  house  at  the  foot  of  a  rock  or  rocks,"  pa  =  foot.  Ataspa  must  thus, 
in  the  time  of  Livy,  have  been  an  ancient  Iberian  town. 


16  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [B.C. 

the  foe,  by  the  unsparing  swords  of  the  Roman  besiegers  [B.C. 
206]. 

It  was  about  this  time,  in  207,  or  more  probably  206,  that 
Scipio  founded  the  city  to  the  north  of  Hispalis,  and  on  the 
other  side  of  the  river,  which,  peopled  as  it  was  by  Italian  troops 
and  camp  followers,  was  known  as  Urbs  Italica,  the  birthplace  of 
Trajan  and  of  Theodosius  the  Great,  the  family  city  of  Hadrian. 
Italica  was  long  a  celebrated  municipium,  and  bore  the  proud 
title  of  Julia  Augusta.  But  its  rival  Hispalis  survives  as  Seville, 
while  Italica a  is  but  a  memory  of  departed  greatness.  The  very 
name  is  lost ;  and  on  the  spot  where  the  town  once  stood  a  few 
wretched  hovels  are  now  known  as  the  village  of  San  Ponce  or 
Seville  la  Vieja. 

Of  the  marching  and  counter-marching  of  the  Romans,  reck- 
ing all  too  little  of  Spanish  friendship,  now  that  the  Cartha- 
ginians had  taken  their  departure  ;  of  the  intrigues  of  Massinissa 
and  Syphax ;  of  the  Roman  and  African  politics  of  the  day,  the 
student  of  early  Spanish  history  need  seek  to  know  little  or 
nothing.  Suffice  it  here  to  say  that  by  the  year  205  the  Roman 
Senate,  rejoicing  over  Scipio's  successes,  already  regarded  Spain 
as  a  cpnquered  country  ;  and  the  entire  Peninsula,  conveniently 
divided  by  the  river  Ebro  into  two  provinces,  Citerior  and  Ulterior,2 

JSee  Townsend's  Journey  in  Spain  (1791),  vol.  ii.,  p.  331.  Italica,  according 
to  Mommsen  (Hist. ,  iii. ,  4),  was  intended  by  Scipio  to  be  a  Forum  et  conciliabulum 
civium  Romanum,  as  Aquizsextte  (Aix),  in  Gaul,  afterwards  was.  As  to  the  true 
signification  of  the  word  ' '  Italica ' '  see  a  long  and  very  learned  note  by  Masdeu, 
vii. ,  pp.  339-350.  He  is,  as  usual,  ultra-patriotic.  Cf.  Justino  Matute  y  Gaviria, 
Bosquejo  de  Italica  (Seville,  1827),  and  Ukert.  Geog.  ii.,  372. 

2 See  Strabo,  iii.,  4,  7,  19;  Caesar,  Bell.  Gall.,  iii.,  73;  Pliny,  iii.,  i,  2.  The 
geography  of  the  time  is  even  more  confusing  than  the  chronology.  Hither  Spain, 
or  'I/3r)pia,  included  generally  the  eastern  portion  of  the  province  as  citerior  or 
nearer  to  Rome.  Further  Spain,  or  K.f\Ti/3ripia,  included  the  western  portion  of 
the  province  as  ulterior  or  further  from  Rome.  The  river  Ebro,  if  taken  as  a 
boundary,  would  give  to  Hither  Spain  only  a  corner  of  the  north-east  of  the 
Peninsula ;  and  Polybius  makes  the  boundary  start  from  a  point  near  Saguntum  ; 
and  Urci,  or  Almeria,  in  Murcia,  was,  in  later  times,  the  southern  starting-point  of 
the  common  frontier.  A  line  drawn  on  the  map  of  modern  Spain  from  Almeria  to 
Saragossa  and  thence  to  Gerona  would  probably  leave  Hither  Spain  to  the  east  and 
Further  Spain  to  the  west,  much  as  the  division  existed  during  a  great  part  of  the 
first  and  second  centuries  B.C.  The  capital  of  Hither  Spain  was  at  one  time  as  far 
south  as  New  Carthage,  though  it  was  more  permanently  fixed  by  Augustus  at 
Tarraco  (Tarragona).  The  capital  of  Hispania  Ulterior  was  sometimes  Corduba 
and  sometimes  Codes.  We  find  the  divisions  sometimes  spoken  of  as  'lavavlu 
fieya\ri  and  'Imravia.  ftiKpd,  which  is  a  much  more  reasonable  nomenclature,  if  the 
Ebro  was  really  the  line  of  demarcation  between  the  provinces.  The  fact  is,  no 
doubt,  that  the  boundaries  between  Citerior  and  Ulterior  Spain  were  never  very 
clearly  defined  ;  and  while  at  first  Citerior  included  little  more  than  the  north-east 
corner  of  Spain,  it  had,  by  the  time  of  Julius  Caesar,  eaten  up,  as  it  were,  the  greater 
part  of  the  Peninsula,  except  Baetica  and  Lusitania,  which  were  always  included  in 


218.]  NUMANTIA.  17 

was  committed  by  Rome  to  the  care  of  two  Proconsular  Prae- 
tors.1 

But  Rome  reckoned  without  the  Spaniards.  Many  long 
years  had  to  pass,  and  many  dark  and  disastrous  deeds  to  be 
done,  before  the  country  was  finally  subdued.  And  the  tardy 
conquest  cost  the  great  Republic  more  of  her  blood  and  of  her 
treasure  than  the  subjugation  of  the  rest  of  the  world. 

From  the  day  that  Publius  and  Gnaeus  Scipio  landed  at 
Rosas  in  218  to  the  day  when  the  mountaineers  of  remote 
Asturias  laid  down  their  arms  before  the  generals  of  Augustus 
Caesar,  it  was  a  struggle  of  full  two  hundred  years,  a  struggle 
in  which  the  greatest  captains  and  the  bravest  troops  of  Rome 
were  often  humbled  by  the  sturdiest  and  proudest  of  the 
barbarians. 

An  army  of  forty  thousand  legionaries  was  constantly  main- 
tained in  the  Peninsula,  and  although  the  tide  of  Roman 
conquest  flowed  gradually  over  the  country,  the  conquerors 
were  often  driven  back  for  a  season,  and  were  often  well  con- 
tented to  hold  their  own.  But  Rome  never  abandoned  the 
territory  that  she  had  once  occupied.  The  proud  boast  that 
each  camping-ground  of  the  advancing  army  was  ever  Roman 
soil — Ubi  castra,  ibi  Respublica — was  not  merely  a  sentence,  it 
was  a  fact.  So  Iberia  became  slowly  but  surely  Roman.  Yet 
for  long  years  the  fortune  of  war  seemed  not  unequally  divided  ; 
and  the  frontier  provinces  of  Roman  Spain  were  too  often  re- 
occupied  by  the  indomitable  Celtiberians.  From  the  very  first, 
battles  and  skirmishes  were  of  daily  occurrence ;  and  in  less 
than  ten  years  after  the  departure  of  Scipio  the  whole  of  Hither 
Spain  was  in  revolt  (198-197).  Minucius,  the  Praetor  in  com- 
mand, hardly  made  head  against  the  insurgents ;  Marcus  Cato, 
the  consul,  was  despatched  from  Rome  to  take  over  the  supreme 
command  in  Hispania.  After  two  years  of  fighting,  with 
varying  fortune,  an  important  victory  enabled  the  Romans  to 
effect  a  general  disarmament  of  the  provincials  in  195,  as  the 
only  means  of  securing  peace  in  the  province.  But  in  spite  of 
this  prudent  measure  a  Roman  army  was  once  more  routed  by 

Further  or  Ulterior  Spain.  This  difficult  question  is  very  fully  gone  into  by 
Masdeu :  torn.  vii. ,  pp.  6-34  and  284-292.  Cf.  also  Pliny,  Nat.  Hist.,  iii.,  3, 
"Citerioris  Hispaniae  sicut  complurium  provinciarum,  aliquantum  vetus  forma 
mutata  est ".  And  see,  on  all  these  questions  the  most  interesting  chapter,  Les 
Provinces  Espagnoles,  in  the  second  vol.  of  Mommsen,  and  Marquardt's  Organisa- 
tion de  I' Empire  Romain  (Paris,  1892). 

1  The  first  governors  were  styled  Proconsuls ;  afterwards  they  were  Prators, 
with  Proconsular  authority. 

VOL.    I.  2 


18  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [B.C. 

the  Celtiberians  in  191 .  Nor  does  the  perpetual  fighting  appear 
to  have  ceased  until  ^Emilius  Paullus  (189)  and  Calpurnius  (185) 
succeeded  in  pacifying  or  destroying  the  hostile  tribes  of  north- 
eastern or  Hither  Spain.  Southern  or  Further  Spain,  indeed, 
was  already  counted  among  the  Roman  dominions ;  but  Rome 
had  no  acquaintance  with  the  country  to  the  north  of  the  Douro 
until  the  consulship  of  Quintus  Flaccus  in  181,  and  little  or  no 
real  authority  in  those  wild  districts  until  the  time  of  Augustus. 
During  the  thirty  happy  years  that  immediately  followed  the 
organisation  of  the  province  of  the  Ebro  by  Sempronius  Grac- 
chus in  179,  Hispania  Romana  enjoyed,  on  the  whole,  the 
blessings  of  peaceful  if  not  always  of  just  government.  And 
if  Hispania  Ulterior  was  wisely  let  alone  by  the  legionaries, 
Hispani  Citerior  made  rapid  steps  in  the  path  of  Roman  civili- 
sation.1 

But  an  outbreak  in  Lusitania  in  154  put  an  end  to  these 
halcyon  days ;  and  was  itself  but  the  commencement  of  new 
and  greater  troubles.  In  153  Fulvius  the  Consul  arrived  from 
Rome  with  thirty  thousand  men ;  and,  although  reinforced  by 
a  troop  of  Numidian  horse,  with  ten  elephants,  sent  over  by 
Massinissa  from  Africa,  he  was  twice  defeated  by  the  Arivaci, 
under  Carus  of  Segede,  near  Numantia.  And  these  defeats 
were  followed  by  the  loss  of  all  the  Roman  stores  and  military 
chest  at  Ocile,  possibly  the  modern  Ocana.  The  Roman  war 
in  the  Peninsula  differed,  as  Polybius  remarked,  from  all  other 
wars,  both  in  its  character  and  in  its  continuance.  The  wars 
in  Asia  and  Greece  were  usually  decided  in  a  single  battle, 
and  a  battle  was  usually  decided  by  the  first  onset.  But  the 
Celtiberian  war  was  protracted  year  after  year,  hardly  inter- 
rupted even  by  winter ;  and  every  battle  after  being  continued 
until  nightfall  was  resumed  at  the  dawning  of  the  ensuing  day. 

The  defeated  Fulvius  was  succeeded  in  152  by  the  Consul 
Marcellus,  who,  more  prudent  than  his  predecessor,  entered 
into  a  treaty,  honourable  alike  to  the  insurgents  and  to  the 
Romans,  which  was  signed  under  the  walls  of  Numantia.  To 
secure  the  necessary  ratification  by  the  Senate,  envoys  from 
the  various  tribes  were  sent  to  Rome,  and  were  duly  admitted 

JTwo  colonies  were  founded  with  the  object  of  permanently  fixing  Roman 
civilisation  in  the  country.  One  Carteia  (a  Latinised  form  of  the  Phoenician 
Garth = city)  was  founded  near  the  modern  Algeciras,  for  Celtiberian  freed  slaves 
and  the  illegitimate  children  of  Roman  legionaries  by  native  women ;  the  other 
for  Romans  and  half-castes  of  higher  rank  at  Cordoba,  whose  beautiful  villas  and 
the  luxury  of  whose  inhabitants  soon  became  famous,  and  gained  for  it  the  name  of 
the  "  Patrician"  City.— H. 


150.]  NUMANTIA.  19 

to  audience.  The  proud  and  dignified  bearing  of  these  un- 
conquered  barbarians  astonished  the  Roman  Fathers :  and  the 
Senate  hesitated  to  make  a  direct  reply  to  their  demands.  The 
Roman  answer,  they  were  told,  would  be  given  by  Marcellus 
in  Spain.  The  envoys  accordingly  returned  to  Numantia ;  and 
the  Senate  prepared  to  continue  the  interrupted  war.1 

A  new  army  raised  with  difficulty  in  Rome  was  sent  into 
Spain  under  the  command  of  the  new  Consul,  Lucullus.  Mar- 
cellus was  recajled.  The  treaty  that  he  had  made  was  disre- 
garded. The  Celtiberian  war  was  to  continue.  But  before  the 
arrival  of  Lucullus,  Marcellus  had  entered  into  a  new  and  more 
definite  treaty  with  the  Celtiberians,  and  had  accepted  the 
enormous  sum  of  six  hundred  talents  of  silver  to  put  an  end 
to  the  war.  Lucullus  on  his  arrival  found  that  Rome  had  no 
longer  an  enemy  ;  but,  hungering  for  booty,  he  attacked  and 
spoiled  the  friends  and  allies  of  the  Republic.  Marching  first 
upon  Cauca,  or  Coca,  between  the  modern  towns  of  Madrid  and 
Valladolid,  he  entrapped  and  massacred  the  entire  population — 
some  twenty  thousand  souls — and  carried  off  a  vast  amount 
of  plunder.  Yet  his  career  even  as  a  robber  was  not  successful ; 
for  shortly  after  the  massacre  at  Cauca,  he  was  forced  to  sue  for 
terms  at  Valladolid.  And  the  terms  were  granted  by  the 
Celtiberians,  not  to  Lucullus  himself,  but  on  the  word  of  honour 
of  a  young  and  noble  Roman  2  who  served  in  his  army,  and  who 
was  afterwards  known  to  fame  as  the  destroyer  of  Carthage 
and  Numantia.  The  Celtiberian  was  ever  generous.  And 
Lucullus,  defeated  and  disgraced,  retired  to  winter  quarters 
at  Cordova. 

Galba,  who  was  Praetor  in  the  same  year,  emulating  the 
achievements  of  the  Consul,  contrived  by  an  odious  act  of 
treachery  to  enslave  the  greater  part  of  three  Lusitanian  tribes, 
who  had  confided  themselves  and  their  arms  to  his  Roman 
honour  ;  and  the  whole  of  the  western  and  central  Provinces 
were  soon  in  a  blaze.  A  subsequent  massacre  of  some  thirty 

1  During  the  absence  of  the  Celtiberian  envoys,  Marcellus,  unmolested  in  a 
peaceful  and  well-satisfied  country,  made  his  winter  quarters  in  the  south  of  the 
Province,  at  a  spot  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Bcetis  or  Guadalquivir,  famous  in  suc- 
ceeding ages  as  Colonia  Patricia  ;  as  a  Roman  city,  as  a  Moorish  capital,  and  as  a 
Spanish  town,  "the  best  of  all  Spanish  towns  to  be  born  in,"  the  birth-place  of 
Gonsalvo  de  Cordova.  Strabo,  iii.,  iv.  9 ;  Polybius,  xxxv.,  2  ;  Ford'sSfatn  (1878), 
P-  73- 

8  One  of  the  terms  of  this  treaty  was  that  the  Celtiberians  should  hand  over 
to  the  Romans  some  ten  thousand  ffdyoi  or  cloaks  ;  a  very  early  reference  to  the 
National  Capa  of  Spain.  See  Appian,  Iberica.  The  trusted  Roman  was  of  course 
Scipio  Africanus  the  younger,  who  was  serving  as  military  tribune. 


20  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [B.C. 

thousand  refugees,  entrapped  once  more  by  another  shameful 
practice,  filled  up  the  cup  of  his  enormities,  and  even  brought 
down  upon  him  the  unwonted  penalty  of  a  state  prosecution 
on  his  return  to  Rome.  Among  the  remnant  of  the  unhappy 
Lusitanians  who  escaped  the  bloody  knife  of  Galba,  was  a  man 
whose  name  happily  illuminates  the  darkest  days  of  Republican 
oppression  and  perfidy  in  the  Peninsula  ;  no  Roman,  indeed,  but 
the  most  distinguished  of  the  enemies  of  Rome,  the  first  and 
not  the  least  remarkable  of  the  great  generals  of  Spain. 

A  Lusitanian  shepherd,  a  fugitive  from  Roman  treachery 
(B.C.  150),  Viriatus  found  himself  suddenly  raised  to  the  com- 
mand of  a  small  army  of  men,  most  of  them  fugitives  like 
himself,  in  wild  Estremadura.  Well  acquainted  with  the  country, 
and  entirely  trusted  by  his  fellow-countrymen,  he  succeeded  in 
uniting  the  ever-divided  tribes  by  his  rare  personal  influence, 
and  he  held  the  field  for  ten  successive  years  against  the  best 
generals  that  Republican  Rome  could  send  against  him.  A  born 
leader  of  men,  he  transformed  himself  from  a  shepherd  into  a 
guerilla  chieftain ;  from  a  guerilla  chieftain  into  a  commander 
of  armies.  Learning  in  his  irregular  successes  the  great  lessons 
of  war,  Viriatus  became  not  only  a  tactician,  but  a  strategist ; 
not  only  a  bold  leader,  but  a  consummate  general.  Seven  times 
in  the  open  field  he  routed  with  his  rustic  soldiery  the  famed 
legions  of  Rome.  Rarely  did  he  suffer  defeat ;  never  disaster. 
And  at  length  in  141,  by  a  crowning  masterpiece  of  strategy, 
he  succeeded  in  drawing  the  forces  of  Fabius  Servilianus  into  a 
defile  in  the  mountains,  near  Erisane  in  Lusitania,  where  he 
held  them  as  completely  at  his  mercy  as  Von  Moltke  held  the 
French  at  Sedan,  or  the  Samnites  hemmed  in  Pontius  at  the 
Caudine  Forks.  But  instead  of  the  general  massacre  which 
Roman  example  invited,  and  which  Lusitanian  opinion  would 
scarcely  have  condemned,  Viriatus  offered  his  antagonist  terms 
of  honourable  capitulation,  which  were  promptly  accepted  ;  and 
the  Roman  army  was  permitted  to  depart  unharmed  and  un- 
molested to  Tarragona.  The  treaty  under  which  the  Lusitanians 
remained  in  possession  of  their  own  territory,  as  the  friends  and 
allies  of  the  Roman  people,  was  ratified  by  the  Roman  Senate. 
But  Roman  avarice  rather  than  Roman  pride  forbade  so  honour- 
able a  termination  of  the  war  ;  and  treachery  accomplished 
what  valour  had  been  unable  to  achieve.  Enraged  at  the  final 
success  of  Viriatus,  and  at  the  loss  of  plunder  which  the  peace 
brought  with  it,  a  Roman  general,  the  brother  and  successor  of 
the  vanquished  Servilianus,  compassed  the  assassination  of  the 


147.]  NUMANTIA.  21 

victor  :  and  the  acceptable  crime  met  with  no  reprobation  in 
the  Roman  Senate.1 

Viriatus  was  allowed  even  by  his  enemies  to  have  been 
distinguished  for  his  justice  and  his  magnanimity,  for  his  tem- 
perance and  his  generosity,  and  for  the  still  more  remarkable 
virtues  of  humanity  and  good  faith.  Untainted  by  the  avarice 
of  Rome,  frugal  in  his  habits,  affable  and  unostentatious  in  his 
demeanour,  distinguished  by  his  sallies  of  native  wit,  surpassing 
every  one  of  his  soldiers  in  temperance  and  in  toil,  he  was  true 
to  his  friends,  just  to  his  companions,  moderate  in  prosperity, 
undismayed  by  adversity — nor  did  his  successes  destroy  the  native 
simplicity  of  his  character  or  corrupt  the  sturdy  honesty  of  his 
dealing.  To  the  last  he  remained  the  leader — not  the  tyrant — 
of  his  countrymen.  Viriatus  was  a  man  of  whom  two  modern 
kingdoms  have  equal  right  to  be  proud  ;  whose  memory  should 
be  honoured  alike  on  the  banks  of  the  Tagus  and  on  the  plains 
of  Castile.  He  died  the  victim  of  his  own  generosity.  But  his 
murder  brought  no  advantage  to  Rome. 

Viriatus  was  dead.  But  Numantia  remained  :  Numantia,  a 
city  on  the  Douro,  near  the  modern  town  of  Soria,  in  the  heart 
of  Old  Castile — the  bravest  town  in  Celtiberia.  And  Numantia 
shut  her  gates,  and  defied  the  arms  of  the  Republic.  Pompeius, 
relieved  of  Viriatus,  called  upon  the  place  to  surrender,  but  the 
Roman  summons  was  disregarded  by  the  inhabitants,  and  the 
Roman  attack  was  repelled.  Once  more  a  treaty  was  made,  by 
which  the  Numantines,  for  a  considerable  payment,  were  to 
remain  in  the  undisturbed  possession  of  their  city.  But  Popilius, 
who  succeeded  Pompeius,  refused,  according  to  Roman  usage, 
to  be  bound  by  the  treaty.  The  war  was  continued.  And 
Popilius  was  no  more  successful  as  a  warrior  than  Pompeius 
had  been  before  him.  Numantia  remained  unsubdued. 

Hostilius  the  Consul,  taking  the  place  of  the  defeated 
Popilius,  found  himself  and  his  besieging  army  in  their  turn 
besieged  by  the  Numantines  ;  and  he  sought  safety  in  sudden 
flight.  But  the  men  of  Numantia  were  not  far  behind  him ; 
and  after  an  immense  slaughter,  the  entire  destruction  of  the 
Romans  was  only  averted  by  yet  another  treaty  of  peace  between 
the  flying  Romans  and  their  victorious  but  generous  adversaries. 
Upon  this  occasion,  it  was  only  by  the  personal  influence  of 
Tiberius  Gracchus,  who  had  served  in  the  country  as  Quasstor, 
and  who  was  supposed  to  be  a  man  of  honour,  that  the  Celt- 

1  Floras,  ii.,  17 ;  Appian,  vbi  supra  ;  Lafuente,  i.,  443  ;  Dunham,  i.,  45. 


22  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [B.C. 

iberians  were  induced  to  trust  in  Roman  engagements.  Once 
more  the  Roman  army  was  saved.  But  once  more  the  Roman 
Senate  refused  to  ratify  the  treaty.1  And  new  hosts  were 
pushed  forward  under  the  command  of  new  leaders  to  be  again 
repulsed  at  Numantia.  Hostilius  gave  place  to  Lepidus ;  Lepidus 
to  Brutus  ;  and  Brutus  to  Furius.  But  Numantia  remained  un- 
taken.  Yet  the  unequal  conflict  between  a  single  city  and  the 
Roman  world  could  not  be  maintained  for  ever.2  Scipio  Afri- 
can us  the  younger  was  despatched  from  Rome  with  a  large 
contingent ;  and  an  auxiliary  force  of  horse  and  foot  under 
Jugurtha,  with  twelve  elephants  from  Numidia,  was  added  to 
the  powerful  army  under  the  command  of  the  greatest  of  living 
generals.  For  six  years  the  Numantines  had  defied  the  armies 
of  Rome ;  and  now  Numantia,  like  Carthage,  was  to  be  destroyed  ; 
and  Scipio  was  once  more  to  be  the  destroyer.  Scipio  made 
his  preparations  in  a  very  diiferent  fashion  from  that  of  his 
predecessors.  The  army  was  drilled  and  disciplined  by  a  master 
hand.  The  assaults  were  conducted  with  skill  as  well  as  with 
determination.  Nothing  that  consummate  generalship  could 
suggest  was  neglected.  The  siege  at  length  was  turned  into 
a  blockade.  Not  a  single  sally  of  the  besieged  found  the 
besiegers  unprepared.  Scipio  not  only  superintended  every- 
thing as  general-in-chief ;  he  fought  on  foot  in  the  ranks. 
Numantia  was  doomed.  What  could  six  thousand  starving 
defenders  avail  against  sixty  thousand  hearty  besiegers  ?  Yet 
as  long  as  their  supplies  lasted,  the  Numantines  defied  and 
defeated  all  the  Roman  assaults.  But  the  boldest  sallies  of  the 
citizens  were  all  in  vain.  Famine  at  length  assailed  the  town ; 

1  As  to  the  casuistry  of  the  grave  arguments,  and  the  legal  subtlety  of  the 
decrees  by  which  the  Senate  released  themselves  and  their  officers  from  the  obliga- 
tion of  this  treaty,  made  and  solemnly  sworn  to  by  Hostilius  and  Tiberius  Gracchus, 
see  George  Long,  Hist,   of  the  Roman  Republic,  i. ,  pp.  77-84.     As  part  of  the 
formal  Absolution,  Hostilius,  who  had  returned  to  Rome,  was  solemnly  brought 
back  to  Numantia  and  exposed,  naked  and  bound,  under  the  walls  of  that  city. 
The  Numantines,  ever  generous,  refused   to   take  advantage  of  his  defenceless 
condition  ;  and  after  lying  a  day  and  a  night  untouched  by  the  enemy,  Hostilius 
was  carried  back  by  his  friends  to  the  Roman  camp,  as  soon  as  the  Aruspices  had 
given  a  solemn  decision  that,  by  so  doing,  no  religious  duty  would  be  violated. 
And  on  returning  once  more  to  Rome,  he  was- restored  to  his  position  and  honours  ; 
having  been  supposed,  by  a  convenient  legal  fiction,  never  to  have  left  his  own 
house! 

2  It  should  be  remarked  that,  although  the  centre  of  the  struggle  was  the  open 
and  unprotected  city  of  Numantia,  whose  main  defence  was  the  difficulty  of  the 
mountain  passes  that  led  to  it,  the  whole  of  the  Arivaci  and  Carpetanian  tribes 
took  part.     These,  indeed,  were  the  only  peoples  except  the  tribes  of  the  extreme 
north-west  remaining  unsubdued,  and  the  fall  of  Numantia  really  meant  the  al- 
most complete  Roman  domination  of  Spain. — H, 


123.]  NUMANTIA.  23 

and  the  Numantine  leaders,  recalling  their  frequent  generosity 
to  their  Roman  foes,  sought  terms  of  honourable  capitulation. 
But  Rome  was  an  unflinching  enemy.  Numantia  was  to  be 
destroyed.  No  peace  was  to  be  found  at  the  hands  of  the 
destroyer.  Famine,  said  the  relentless  Scipio,  should  alone 
subdue  the  town. 

It  was  not  magnificent ;  but  it  was  war.  And  in  the  sixteenth 
month  of  the  great  siege,  starvation  did  its  work  ;  and  Numantia 
was  destroyed.  But  no  Numantian,  at  least,  fell  into  the  hands 
of  the  enemy ;  for  a  universal  self-slaughter  of  those  whom 
famine  had  spared,  a  doom  solemnly  decreed  and  relentlessly 
executed,  saved  the  heroic  remnant  from  slavery  and  dishonour 
— wives  and  daughters  at  the  hands  of  husbands  and  fathers ; 
the  father  by  the  spear  of  the  son ;  the  brother  by  the  sword  of 
the  brother ;  friend  cut  down  relentlessly  by  friend ;  all  were 
slain  ;  and  the  last  man  set  fire  to  the  town,  and  cast  himself 
into  the  blazing  ruins.  Numantia,  "  the  terror  of  the  Republic," 
needed  no  further  destruction  at  the  hands  of  the  Roman 
destroyer ;  and  when  the  army  of  the  victors  marched  through 
the  tenantless  city,  they  found  nothing  but  "ruin,  blood, 
solitude  and  horror  ".  Scipio,  no  longer  merely  Africanus,  but 
Numantinus,  returned  in  triumph  to  Rome,  where,  as  the 
Spanish  historians  are  glad  to  remember,  he  met  with  a  violent 
and  disgraceful  death. 

And  thus,  after  fourteen  years'  defiance  of  Republican 
Rome,  the  town  on  the  Douro  was  destroyed.  But  they  died 
not  in  vain,  those  old  Castilians  who  defended  it.  For  if  their 
city  has  perished  so  that  no  shred  of  its  ruins  can  be  found  by 
the  antiquary,  their  story  lives  in  the  hearts  of  their  country- 
men, one  of  the  richest  and  most  enduring  of  the  treasures  of 
their  country.1  After  two  thousand  years  of  honour  and  of 
shame,  Numantia  was  not  forgotten  at  Saragossa. 

The  fall  of  Numantia  opened  the  greater  part  of  the 
country  to  the  Roman  Legions.  The  north-west  of  course  was 
still  untamed,  yet  within  ten  years  after  the  great  victory  of 
Scipio,  Hispania  is  spoken  of  as  the  most  flourishing  and  the 
best  organised  Province  of  Rome.2  For  half  a  century  we  have 
little  or  no  record  of  the  operations  either  of  war  or  of  peace ; 
and  the  last  serious  struggle  for  Iberian  independence  that  was 

1  See  Livy,  Epitome,  lib.  Ixx. ,  36 ;  Florus,  Hist.,  lib.  ii.  ;  Orosius,  lib.  v. ,  cap. 
7;  Appian,  Iberic a  ;  St.  Augustine,  De  Civitate  Dei,  iii.,  21. 

3  And  already  (B.C.  123),  with  a  Latin-speaking  population,  Mommsen,  Hist, 
of  Rome,  iii.,  p.  19. 


24  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [B.C. 

made  in  the  Peninsula  was  undertaken  under  a  Roman  leader 
from  Italy.  Quintus  Sertorius  was  born  at  the  village  of 
Nursia,  the  son  of  a  Sabine  father  and  a  Spanish  mother,  to 
whom  he  was  devotedly  attached.  He  had  fought  with  dis- 
tinction in  the  Roman  armies  in  Gaul,  and  served  as  military 
tribune  in  Spain  in  97.  Here  he  obtained,  like  Hannibal,  to 
whom  he  was  often  compared  by  the  Spaniards,  an  intimate 
knowledge  of  their  manners  and  disposition ;  and  in  spite  of 
the  severity  of  his  discipline,  his  justice  and  his  honesty,  virtues 
rare  indeed  among  Romans  in  Spain,  caused  him  to  be  loved  as 
well  as  respected  by  the  natives.1 

Returning  to  Italy  as  Quaestor,  and  attaching  himself  to  the 
party  of  Marius,  he  commanded  an  army  under  that  leader 
until  83,  when  he  became  Praetor  at  Rome.  An  exile  on  the 
return  of  Sulla,  and  the  only  eminent  surviving  soldier  of  the 
Marian  party,  he  made  his  way  through  Gaul  to  Spain,  and 
thence,  though  well  received  by  the  inhabitants,  he  continued 
his  flight  into  Africa.2  After  much  fighting  by  land  and  sea 
with  Romans,  and  Moors,  and  Cilician  pirates  ;  and  after  many 
successes,  including  the  siege  and  capture  of  the  Mauretanian 
capital  of  Tingis  or  Tangiers,  he  yielded  to  the  earnest  invita- 
tion of  his  old  friends  the  Lusitanians,  and,  landing  in  southern 
Spain,  he  set  up  the  standard  of  organised  revolt  against  the 
Roman  Republic.  His  army  consisted  partly  of  Mauretanians 
whom  he  brought  over  with  him  from  Africa,  and  partly  of 
Marian  exiles  from  Italy,  like  himself,  content  to  bear  arms 
against  the  forces  of  Sulla ;  but  he  promptly  organised  the 
Lusitanians,  and  many  of  the  neighbouring  tribes  of  Celti- 
berians,  into  a  united  force,  with  which  for  many  years  he 
successfully  defended  his  adopted  country  against  all  the 
assaults  of  the  Roman  arms.  In  81  he  defeated  Cotta  in  a 
sea-fight  in  the  Straits  of  Gibraltar.  In  80  he  defeated  Fufidius 
on  the  banks  of  the  Boetis  or  Guadalquivir.  In  79  he  routed 
Metellus,  the  Consul,  on  the  banks  of  the  Anas  or  Guadiana, 
and  then,  turning  northward,  he  defeated  two  Roman  armies  in 
Catalonia.  Such  were  his  military  successes.  But  Sertorius 
was  far  from  being  only  a  skilled  and  fortunate  general.  He 
shone  more  especially  as  a  civil  administrator,  at  a  time  and  in 

1  Cf.   Niebuhr,  Lectures,  etc.,  ii.,  300.     Like  Hannibal  and  other  heroes  in 
Spain,  Sertorius  had  lost  an  eye  in  battle. 

2  Froude,  Casar,  p.  89.     The  reason  for  the  flight  of  Sertorius  into  Africa  was 
that  the  Celtiberians,  tired  of  fighting,  at  first  refused  to  listen  to  him ;  and  his 
lieutenant  Salinator  was  routed  by  the  Roman  Caius  Annius. — H. 


72.]  NUMANTIA.  25 

a  country  where  the  administration  of  civil  government  was 
almost  exclusively  confined  to  the  extraction  of  money  from  the 
governed.  He  established  his  capital  and  his  modest  court  at 
Evora,  which  he  beautified  with  many  works  of  art,  and  where 
for  some  years  he  ruled  over  a  united  and  a  loyal  people.  A 
statesman  rather  than  an  adventurer,  and  in  complete  sympathy 
with  his  Spanish  subjects,  Sertorius  aspired  to  the  foundation 
of  an  independent,  a  peaceful,  an  industrious,  and  well 
administered  State,  a  State  which  might  vie  in  prosperity 
with  Rome  itself.1 

With  this  end  in  view,  he  granted  to  the  people,  as  soon  as 
his  authority  was  generally  accepted,  a  complete  system  of 
Government,  modelled  to  a  great  extent  on  that  of  the 
Republic ;  with  Praetors,  Quaestors,  and  Tribunes.  He  founded 
a  school  or  college  at  Huesca,  where  Celtiberian  youths  studied 
under  Latin  and  even  Greek  professors.  He  gave  rich  prizes  to 
successful  students ;  and  he  did  much  personally  to  encourage 
the  pursuits  of  science  and  of  literature.  Manufactories  were 
established  ;  arsenals  constructed ;  and  the  mines  were  worked 
with  renewed  vigour.  The  army  was  equipped  and  trained 
after  the  best  traditions  of  Rome ;  and  the  pride  of  the  troops 
was  gratified  by  the  adoption  of  rich  uniforms  and  splendid 
accoutrements.  A  small  but  active  fleet  was  equipped  and 
stationed  at  Dianium,  between  Carthagena  and  Valencia,  which 
may  be  considered  as  perhaps  the  first  more  or  less  regular 
navy  of  Spain.  For  once  the  Spaniards  were  united  by  good 
government,  and  the  Romans  divided  by  faction ;  and  the 
success  of  Sertorius  was  rapid  and  complete.  "  His  power,"  says 
George  Long,  "  was  at  this  time  probably  acknowledged  in  every 
part  of  the  Peninsula  which  had  ever  felt  the  Roman  arms.  A 
strict  disciplinarian,  vigorous  but  kindly  administrator,  a  con- 
summate general,  Sertorius  maintained  the  conflict  with 
somewhat  varying  fortune  until  B.C.  72,  when  he,  like  Hasdrubal 
and  Viriatus  on  Spanish  soil,  met  his  death  at  the  hand  of  an 
assassin.  Metellus,  his  Roman  adversary,  had  not  scrupled  to 
put  a  price  upon  his  head.  And  Perpenna,  his  Roman  sub- 

1  With  the  most  decided  political  and  patriotic  tact,  Sertorius  acted  whenever 
he  could  do  so,  not  as  Condottiere  of  the  Lusitanians,  in  revolt  against  Rome,  but 
as  a  Roman  general  and  Governor  of  Spain.  Mommsen,  History  of  Rome,  iv. , 
20 ;  and  Roman  Provinces,  ix. ,  pp.  75-77.  This  is  enforced  by  the  reply  given 
by  Sertorius  to  Mithridates  when  the  latter  offered  his  aid.  He  was  not,  he  said, 
in  arms  against  his  country  but  against  those  who  oppressed  her.  Sertorius  would 
doubtless  have  maintained  great  autonomous  rights  for  Spain,  but  he  would  never 
have  permanently  severed  her  connection  with  Rome. — H. 


26  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [B.C. 

ordinate,  did  not  scruple  to  strike  the  fatal  blow." l  The 
Sertorian  Commonwealth  existed  only  through  Sertorius.  It 
was  destroyed  by  the  dagger  of  Perpenna.  And  the  Spaniards, 
disheartened  and  disorganised  once  more  by  the  death  of  their 
leader,  submitted  themselves  throughout  the  greatest  part  of 
the  country  to  the  arms  of  Pompey,  who  succeeded  the  Consul 
Metellus  in  71,  as  leader  of  the  Roman  armies  in  Spain.  But 
the  heroic  defence  of  Calagurris  (Calahorrd)  on  the  Ebro,  which 
had  yielded  only  to  the  last  extremities  of  famine  [in  72]  after 
the  women  and  children  had  been  killed 2  to  provide  food  for 
the  defenders,  made  it  plain  to  Afranius,  the  Roman  commander, 
that  the  destruction  of  Numantia  had  not  broken  nor  even  tamed 
the  proud  spirit  of  the  Celtiberians. 

But  the  days  of  these  Spanish  horrors  were  well  nigh  past. 
It  was  time  that  Caesar  should  appear.  The  success  of  Sertorius 
might  indeed  have  led  even  a  less  politic  Proconsul  to  think 
that  after  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  of  fighting,  it  was  possible 
to  do  something  better  with  a  Spaniard  than  to  slaughter  him  ; 
and  a  change  of  policy  was  gradually  and  silently  adopted.  As 
long  as  Rome  treated  the  Provincials  merely  as  a  conquered 
people,  the  Provincials  remained  unsubdued ;  but  as  soon  as 
wiser  and  more  friendly  counsels  generally  prevailed,  the  Roman 
Spaniard  grasped  the  hand  that  was  extended  to  him,  and 
became  one  of  the  proudest  and  most  loyal  citizens  of  the 
Empire.  Left  to  themselves,  the  tribes  were  ever  divided, 
factious,  disturbed.  United  under  Lusitanian  Viriatus,  or  even 
under  Roman  Sertorius,  they  long  successfully  withstood  the 
power  of  the  Republic.  United  under  Julius  and  Augustus 
Caesar,  they  became  the  most  Roman  of  the  Provincials  of 
Rome. 

A  great  susceptibility  to  personal  influence  has  ever  been 
a  striking  characteristic  of  the  Spanish  people.  Under  the 
sympathetic  Hasdrubal  they  accepted  the  dominion  of  Car- 
thage ;  under  the  fiery  Hannibal  they  fought,  the  hardiest  and 
most  loyal  of  his  soldiers,  in  the  Punic  armies  in  Italy.  In 
the  early  days  after  Saguntum,  when  Roman  Scipio  came,  not 
as  a  destroyer  but  as  a  deliverer,  and  displayed  his  greater 
qualities  of  clemency  and  justice,  the  Spaniards  would  have 

1  Appian,  Iberica. 

2  The  Calahorrans  are  said  not  only  to  have  killed  their  wives  and  children  for 
food,  but  to  have  salted  the  remains  of  these  horrible  repasts  for  future  use.     Geo. 
Long,  op.  cit. ,  i. ,  479. 


27.]  NUMANTIA.  27 

compelled  him  to  be  their  king.1  But  Scipio  was  not  always 
clement.  The  successors  of  Sempronius  Gracchus  were  not 
always  just.  They  were  not  even  judicious. 

"For  great  men,"  says  the  Spanish  proverb,  "great  deeds 
are  reserved."  And  the  coming  of  one  of  the  greatest  men  the 
world  has  ever  seen  was  the  beginning  of  the  end  of  the  dark 
days  of  early  Spanish  history.  Caesar,  indeed,  marched  sternly 
through  the  country  at  the  head  of  his  legions ;  nor  did  he  stay 
his  hand  until  he  had  reached  far-off  Corunna,  where  he  chastised 
and  astonished  the  wild  tribes  of  Brigantium  or  Finisterre ;  but 
his  policy  in  the  more  settled  districts  was  ever  genial  and 
pacific.  He  put  down  the  banditti.  He  organised  the  ad- 
ministration with  the  rapid  skill  that  always  so  remarkably 
distinguished  him.  He  sent  home  large  sums  of  money  to  the 
Treasury.  His  work  was  quickly  done,  but  it  was  done  com- 
pletely. The  quality  of  mercy,  a  hatred  of  unnecessary  slaughter, 
an  immense  generosity  to  fallen  foes ;  these  were  among  his 
most  distinguishing  characteristics  ;  nor  were  extortion  and 
oppression  permitted  by  this  stern  but  sympathetic  soldier. 
Good  faith  was  to  be  maintained  by  the  victors  as  well  as  the 
vanquished.  For  the  exactions  of  the  rapacious  Varro  there 
was  not  only  condemnation,  but,  for  the  first  time  in  the  history 
of  Roman  Spain,  there  was  restitution  of  ill-gotten  treasure  to 
the  astonished  victims.  Cassius,  not  he  of  the  itching  palm, 
but  one  Longinus,  whose  palm  had  itched  not  in  vain  during  his 
government  of  Baetica,  was  compelled  to  fly  the  country,  and  an 
avenging  storm  sent  the  Praetor  and  his  money-bags  to  the 
bottom  of  the  sea.  Four  times  did  Caesar  visit  the  Peninsula ; 
and  the  fourth  time — his  legions  well  filled  with  loyal  and 
admiring  Spaniards — he  fought,  "not  for  glory  but  for  exis- 
tence "  on  the  bloody  field  of  Munda.2  And  with  the  final 

1  It  is  indeed  surprising,  says  Niebuhr,  to  see  how  a  Roman  general  with 
humane  feelings  was  able  to  win  the  affections  and  confidence  of  the  tribes  of 
Central  Spain,  and  it  was  thus  that  Sempronius  Gracchus  concluded  the  war  in 
B.C.  179,  by  a  peace,  on  terms  honourable  to  the  Celtiberians  and  which  so  won 
the  hearts  of  the  natives,  that  the  Roman  power  was  ever  after  assured  in  the  rich 
and  important  districts  of  Catalonia,  Valencia,  and  Aragon. 

2  Munda  is  sometimes  identified  with  the  modern  Monda,  near  Marbella,  to 
the  south-west  of  Malaga.     But  it  was  more  probably  a  town  close  to  Cordoba, 
whither  the  remnant  of  Pompey's  army  retreated  after  the  battle,  and  where  twenty 
thousand  fugitives  are  said  to  have  been  slain.    See  Strabo,  iii.  ,2,2;  Pliny,  iii. , 
i,  3  ;  Florus,  iv.,  2 ;  Dion  Cassius,  xliii.,  39,  and  Froude,  Ceesar,  p.  430. 

Some  remains  of  walls  near  the  modern  town  of  Martos,  are  probably  all  that 
is  left  of  this  once  celebrated  city. 


28  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

triumph  of  the  great  Julius,  begins  the  peace  and  prosperity  of 
Roman  Spain.1 

1  Yet  peace  was  as  yet  by  no  means  an  accomplished  fact.  The  south  was 
already  Roman.  The  Central  Provinces  were  well  affected  to  the  Republic.  But 
the  north  was  still  hostile,  ever  disturbed  ;  and  from  the  departure  of  Julius  to  the 
coming  of  Augustus,  no  less  than  seven  Roman  Governors  won,  not  merely  battles, 
but  triumphs  on  the  slopes  of  the  Pyrenees.  Cn.  Calvius  in  36  ;  C.  Flaccus  in  34 
and  29 ;  L.  Marcius  Philippus  between  34  and  29  ;  M.  Lepidus  in  36 ;  Appius 
Claudius  Pulcher  between  34  and  29  ;  C.  Sabinus  in  39  ;  S.  Appuleius  celebrated 
his  triumph  in  B.C.  25.  See  Mommsen,  Roman  Provinces,  1886,  vol.  i.,  p.  64. 


29 


CHAPTER  III. 
HISPANIA  ROMANA. 

(B.C.  38— A.D.  192.) 

THIRTY-EIGHT  years  before  the  birth  of  Christ,  at  the  close  of 
the  Macedonian  war,  when  the  administration  of  the  Roman 
world  was  divided  among  Lepidus  and  Antony  and  Octavian, 
Spain  fell  to  the  share  of  the  future  Augustus  Caesar,  and  a 
new  tax  was  imposed  upon  the  Province  in  order  to  provide 
for  the  exigencies  of  the  Imperial  Treasury ;  and  from  the  date 
of  this  impost,1  or  Acs,  commences  the  Spanish  JEra,  or  era  of 
Caesar,  the  basis  or  starting  point  of  a  chronological  system 
adopted  and  maintained  in  the  Peninsula  for  over  thirteen 
centuries.2 

One  of  the  earliest  decrees  of  Octavian  was  calculated  to 
bind  Spain  yet  more  closely  to  the  Empire.  For  in  his  fifth 
Consulship  (B.C.  29),  he  divided  the  country  anew  into  three 
provinces,  directly  tributary  to  Rome,  and  enjoying  all  the 
advantages  of  Roman  Unity  and  Roman  Law.  Bcetica,  the 
most  civilised  and  easily  governed,  and  which  included  the 
modern  provinces  of  Andalusia,  Granada,  and  a  portion  of 
Estremadura,  was  to  be  administered  by  the  Senate ;  while 
Lzisilania,  which  comprised  northern  Estramadura,  Southern 
Portugal,  the  Algarves,  and  part  of  Leon — all  the  wildest  and 
most  turbulent  districts  in  the  Peninsula,  was  to  be  governed 
by  the  Emperor ;  and  that  great  tract  of  country,  henceforth 
known  as  Tarraconensis,  which  comprehended  the  whole  of  the 
rest  of  Spain,  and  whose  most  important  city,  Tarraco,  took 

1lt  was  used  in  Catalonia  down  to  1180;  in  Aragon  till  1350  ;  in  Castile  till 
1380.  Solo  por  esta  paga  y  no  por  el  Senorio  de  Augusto  sobre  Espana  se  ha  de 
fijar  la  Epoca.  Espana  Sagrada,  vol.  ii. ,  cap.  vi.,  pp.  147-154;  and  Garibay,  lib. 
vi.,  cap.  26.  The  somewhat  fanciful  derivation  of  era  by  Florez  is  adopted  by 
most  Spanish  historians.  Modern  Etymologists  derive  the  word  from  JEs,  plur : 
Aera  =  counters  ;  not  perhaps  very  much  more  satisfactory. 

2  See  Bury,  Students'  Roman  Empire,  cap.  vi.,  sec.  iii.,  p.  87. 


30  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [B.C. 

the  place  of  Carthagena  as  the  capital  of  the  entire  Province, 
was  also  reserved  for  the  direct  rule  of  Augustus.  Baetica,  the 
peaceful,  was  administered  by  a  resident  Proconsul.  The  Im- 
perial Provinces  were  committed  to  a  legatus  Augustipro  Prcetore.1 

Shortly  after  this  new  division  of  the  Roman  dominions 
(B.C.  27),  and  his  own  assumption  of  the  Imperial  title,  Augustus 
determined  to  visit  the  important  Spanish  provinces  of  his 
Empire.  The  Temple  of  Janus  had  been  closed  at  Rome  ;  but 
Roman  troops  were  still  vainly  engaged  in  the  never-ending 
struggle  in  Cantabria.  Augustus,  the  undisputed  master  of  a 
peaceful  world,  was  not  yet  master  of  the  Spanish  Asturias, 
nor  was  he  as  immediately  successful  as  he  had  expected  on  his 
arrival  in  the  country  ;  and  after  a  fruitless  march  through  the 
wild  regions  of  north-west  Spain,  he  retired  to  Tarraco,  leaving 
to  his  lieutenant,  Marcus  Agrippa,  the  duty  of  receiving  the 
formal,  but  scarcely  substantial  submission  of  the  Asturian  and 
Cantabrian  mountaineers,  "  the  last  to  submit  to  the  arms  of 
Rome,  and  the  first  to  throw  off  the  yoke  of  the  Arabs".2 

North-west  Spain,  indeed,  was  in  the  end  rather  overcome 
than  subdued ;  but  as  long  as  the  natives  yielded  nominal 
obedience  to  the  Romans,  they  were  permitted  to  enjoy  their 
freedom,  if  not  their  independence.  If  Augustus  failed  to 
conquer  the  Asturians,  he  spent  two  fruitful  years  (27-25)  in 
Spain,  devoted  to  the  more  peaceful  objects  of  reforming  the 
manifold  abuses  of  the  Imperial  administration,  and  consolidating 
Roman  power  in  the  Peninsula.  Yet  nothing  was  left  undone 
by  the  Emperor  to  ensure  the  continued  subjection  of  the 
turbulent  mountain  tribes  of  Cantabria,  and  the  safety  of  their 
more  peaceful  neighbours  in  the  plains. 

Three  legions  were  permanently  stationed  on  the  north- 
west frontier ;  two  legions  in  the  Asturias,  with  military  head- 
quarters at  Asturica  Augusta  (Astorga)  and  Bracara  Augusta 
(Braga),  and  one  legion  for  Cantabria  and  the  modern  Province 
of  Leon,  with  headquarters  at  Pisoraca,  now  Herrera,  between 
Santander  and  Palencia ;  and  a  military  road  was  constructed 
from  one  town  to  another,  along  the  entire  frontier.  So  com- 
plete and  so  successful  were  these  timely  precautions  that,  with 

1  Similarly  in  British  Imperial  India,  the  old  and  well  settled  Presidencies  are 
somewhat  differently  and  more  constitutionally  governed  than  the  Non-Regulation 
Provinces  lying  on  the  frontier.  The  Governor  of  Bombay  and  Madras  are  often 
styled  Proconsuls ;  the  Lieutenant-Governor  of  the  Punjab  is  a  noble  modern 
Propraetor. 

2"Te  Cantaber  non  ante  domabilis,"  Horace,  Carm.,  iv. ,  4.  Cf.  Gibbon, 
chapter  i.  ;  Livy,  xxviii.,  c.  12. 


18.]  HISPANIA  ROMANA.  31 

the  exception  of  a  trifling  revolt  in  the  time  of  Nero,  we  hear 
of  no  more  fighting  in  the  north-west  of  Spain  until  the  arrival 
of  the  Suevians,  more  than  four  hundred  years  after  the  visit  of 
Augustus.  As  the  population  became  more  settled,  the  number 
of  legions  was  diminished,  until  at  length,  from  the  time  of 
Diocletian  to  the  time  of  Honorius,  the  Cantabrian  Provinces 
remained  without  any  standing  garrison ;  and  three  legions 
were  judged  sufficient  to  maintain  the  Pax  Romana  throughout 
the  length  and  breadth  of  the  Peninsula. 

Not  only  in  the  north-west,  but  in  every  part  of  Spain,  the 
Imperial  visit  inaugurated  an  era  of  unwonted  peace,  content- 
ment and  prosperity ;  the  name  of  the  first  and  greatest 
Augustus  was  long  held  in  honour  by  the  grateful  inhabitants, 
and  lives  in  the  present  day  in  the  names  of  many  Spanish 
cities.  Merida  or  Emerita  Augusta  recalls  its  prudent  foundation 
by  grants  of  land  to  retired  soldiers  or  Emeriti,  who  were 
induced  to  settle  there  about  B.C.  18.  Astorga  is  Aslurica 
Augusta  ;  Braga  is  Bracara  Augusta  ;  Lugo  is  Lucus  Augusti — all 
frontier  garrison  towns  founded  about  the  same  time  by  the 
same  Emperor.  The  city  which  survives  as  Leon  was  estab- 
lished a  few  years  later  on  the  north-west  frontier,  and  has  nothing 
to  do  with  the  lions  that  are  displayed  on  the  noble  coat  of 
arms  of  the  Province.  The  charge,  if  heraldically  canting,  is 
etymologically  deceptive.  For  Leon,  Urbs  septimce  Legionis, 
takes  its  name  from  the  seventh  Legion,  which  was  stationed 
there  to  keep  in  check  the  wild  tribes  of  the  neighbourhood,1 
and  is  the  city,  not  of  the  Lion,  but  of  the  Legion.  Ccesarea 
Augusta  or  Ccesaraugusta,  formerly  Salduba,  and  now  Saragossa, 
perpetuates  the  very  name  of  its  founder ;  and  in  Pax  Augusta, 
or  Badajoz,  we  have  perhaps  the  most  happily  named  of  all  the 
Spanish  cities  of  Augustus.  For  his  Empire  was  really  peace — 
the  Pax  Augusta;  and  for  full  four  centuries  after  his  visit, 
Spain  enjoyed  that  happiness  which  is  proverbially  said  to  be 
the  lot  of  those  countries  which  have  no  history. 

1  Some  ingenious  Spanish  archaeologists  have  not  only  asserted  that  the  lion 
is  displayed  on  the  civic  shield  in  consequence  of  the  presence  of  the  king  of  beasts 
in  north-east  Spain,  but  they  go  to  the  length  of  saying  that  the  Leonese  lions 
were  brought  into  the  country  from  Africa  by  the  Carthaginians !  The  lion  was  of 
course  adopted  as  an  appropriate  device  for  the  city  of  the  Legion,  after  the  name 
had  been  softened  into  Leon,  which  was  not  until  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century, 
and  not  in  the  reign  of  the  Lion  King,  Leovgild,  as  is  frequently  asserted. 

Furthermore,  heraldic  charges  are  no  older  than  the  end  of  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury, and  it  is  unlikely  that  towns  adopted  any  cognisances  for  another  fifty  years. 
See  Manual  Risco,  Historic  de  la  Ciudad  y  Corte  de  Leon  (Madrid,  1792),  and 
Iglesias y  Afonasterios  de  Leon  (Madrid,  1792),  chap.  iv. ,  3. 


32  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [B.C. 

Of  the  general  condition  of  the  Peninsula,  and  of  the  cities 
and  districts  inhabited  by  the  various  more  or  less  Romanised 
native  tribes  at  this  period  we  have  a  most  interesting  account 
in  the  great  work  of  Strabo.  The  southern  provinces,  at  once 
the  most  accessible  and  the  most  civilised,  naturally  claim  the 
largest  share  of  his  attention.  Gadeira  (Cadiz)  had  long  been 
one  of  the  most  celebrated  seaports  of  the  world ;  Malaca 
(Malaga)  was  already  a  considerable  town ;  and  the  famous  Rock 
of  Calpe,  half-way  between  the  two,  and  held  by  an  Iberian 
tribe,  the  Bastuli  or  Bastulani,  is  frequently  mentioned  by  the 
traveller.  Starting  on  a  westerly  course  from  these  favoured 
regions  and  passing  the  Sacred  Promontory,  now  Cape  St. 
Vincent,  Strabo  first  surveys  the  western  coasts,  and  speaks 
of  the  city  of  Ulysipo  or  Olisipo,  the  landing  place  of  Ulysses, 
now  Lisbon,  at  the  mouth  of  the  Tagus.  And  he  finds,  as  he 
proceeds  northwards  in  his  survey,  Celts,  Lusitanians,  Carpet- 
anians,  Oretanians,  Vettones,  and  Gallicians,  "the  last  to  be 
subdued "  ;  to  the  east  of  these,  Asturians,  Celtiberians,  and 
most  distant  tribe  of  all,  north  of  the  Minius  (Minho),  the 
Arrotrebse,  inhabitants  of  the  great  promontory  of  Nerium, 
the  modern  Finisterre  ;  lawless  and  plundering  mountaineers 
every  man  of  them,  though  peace  and  the  influence  of  the 
legions  of  Tiberius  had  already  done  much  to  soften  their 
rough  and  savage  manners. 

Turning  from  these  wild  regions,  and  starting  once  more 
from  Malaga,  in  a  north-easterly  course,  he  finds  Bastitanians, 
whose  country  is  represented  by  the  modern  Province  of  Murcia, 
with  the  cities  of  Carthagena  and  Denia  (Dianium)  on  the  coast. 
The  Contestanians  inhabited  part  of  Murcia  und  Valencia,  the 
country  of  the  Esparto  grass,  already  highly  appreciated  in  the 
markets  of  Italy.  The  Edetanians  occupied  part  of  Valencia 
and  Aragon,  with  the  ever  famous  city  of  Saguntum ;  and  the 
Gymnesiae  or  Balearic  Islands  lay  off  the  coast.  The  Ilercarones 
were  found  on  the  northern  shores  of  Valencia ;  and  the  Cose- 
tanians  inhabited  South  Catalonia  and  the  imperial  city  of 
Tarragona.  Northward,  again,  he  met  with  Laletanians  in 
North  Catalonia,  and  Indigetes  in  the  country  just  south  of  the 
Pyrenees,  with  the  old  Greek  town  colonies  of  Rhodope  and 
Emporium.  To  the  west  of  these  were  found  the  Ilergetes  ;  and 
inland  to  the  south-west  as  far  as  Caesaraugusta,  which  is  classed 
as  a  Celtiberian  city,  was  the  country  of  the  Ausetanians. 

Beyond  this,  Strabo's  geography  is  somewhat  confused ;  but 
he  speaks  of  the  inland  country  generally  as  Celtiberia,  and  of 


18.]  HISPANIA  ROMANA.  33 

its  "most  renowned  city  Numantia,"  which  had  apparently 
been  already  rebuilt  after  its  destruction  by  Scipio.  But  his 
greatest  admiration,  and  a  great  part  of  his  book  on  Spain 
is  reserved  for  Turdetania,  the  most  civilised  and  the  most 
prosperous  district  in  Hispania.1 

Turdetania  was  bounded  on  the  west  and  north  by  the  river 
Anas  or  Guadiana,  on  the  east  by  the  tribes  of  the  Carpetani 
and  the  Oretani,  on  the  south  by  the  sea  ;  and  it  thus  included 
the  modern  Provinces  of  Malaga,  Cadiz,  Seville,  Huelva,  Badajoz 
and  Cordova,  and  was  pretty  nearly  conterminous  with  Roman 
Baetica.  The  chief  cities  were  Hispalis,  Gadeira,  Corduba, 
Italica,  and  Munda.  There  was  a  large  population  settled  on 
either  side  of  the  Baetis  or  Guadalquivir,  which  flowed  through 
the  heart  of  the  Province,  and  was  navigable  for  ships  as  far  as 
Hispalis,  and  for  boats  as  far  as  Corduba.  The  old  geographer 
was  amazed  at  the  endless  succession  of  groves  and  gardens,  at 
the  marvellous  fertility  of  the  soil,  and  at  the  skill  with  which 
it  was  cultivated.  Nor  was  he  less  struck  by  the  material 
wealth  of  the  country ;  by  the  immense  production  of  corn 
and  wine  and  oil ;  2  by  the  vermilion  and  scarlet  dyes,  the  wool 
of  surpassing  quality,  the  stuffs  of  incomparable  texture,  the 
wax,  the  honey,  the  pitch,  the  leather,  the  cattle,  the  game — 
more  especially  the  rabbits  3 — and  the  fish,  of  which  the  tunnies 
and  congers  were  of  peculiar  excellence,  and  of  which  an 
enormous  quantity  was  annually  salted  for  export.  He  is  amazed 
at  the  number  and  size  of  the  merchant  ships,  built  for  the 
most  part  of  Turdetanian  timber ;  and  at  the  almost  fabulous 
richness  and  variety  of  the  mines.  Nor  is  he  less  struck  with 
the  purity  of  the  air,  and  the  politeness  and  urbanity  of  the 
inhabitants,  who  had,  he  says,  for  the  most  part  so  entirely 
adopted  the  Roman  mode  of  life  as  even  to  have  forgotten 
their  own  language.4 

Of  the  towns,  in  addition  to  those  already  referred  to,  he 
specially  notices  Pax  Augusta  (Badajoz)  among  the  Celtici,  and 
Augusta-Emerita  (Merida)  among  the  Turduli.  But  he  does 
not  mention  either  Bracara  Augusta,  Asturica  Augusta,  or 
Portus  Cale,  in  the  north-west ;  nor  even  Barcino  (Barcelona) 
in  the  north-east. 

Of  the  tribes  and  districts  of  the  interior,  Strabo  speaks  very 

'Strabo,  lib.  Hi.,  cap.  2.  2Polyb.,  in  Athen.,  L,  28. 

3  See  as  to  the  ancient  mode  of  ferreting,  the  most  graphic  account  in  Strabo, 
iii.  ,2,6.     The  rabbit  (Ae/STjpis)  as  we  have  seen,  was  an  ancient  device  of  Hispania. 
4Ticknor,  Hist,  of  Span.  Literature,  vol.  iii.,  p.  320. 
VOL.   I.  3 


34  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [B.C. 

vaguely,  and  he  neither  knows  nor  cares  to  know  very  much 
about  them.  Celtiberia,  including  the  modern  Leon  and  New 
and  Old  Castile,  with  some  parts  of  the  adjacent  provinces,  was 
a  geographical  expression  indicative  at  once  of  ignorance  and  of 
indifference ;  for  the  Celtiberians  were  regarded  by  a  citizen  of 
Hispalis  and  Gadeira  much  as  a  mediaeval  Londoner  would  have 
regarded  the  Picts  and  Scots  of  the  Caledonian  Highlands.  In 
summarising  the  characteristics  of  the  Spaniards  of  his  day, 
Strabo  speaks  of  them  as  obstinate  and  self-sufficient,  split  up 
into  contending  tribes  and  factions,  incapable  of  united  action, 
and  thus  powerless  against  attacks  from  without.1 

Before  the  death  of  Augustus,  Spain  had  become  not  only 
an  integral  but  a  very  important  part  of  the  Roman  Empire. 
The  capital  was  fed  with  Spanish  corn.  The  legions  were  filled 
with  Spanish  recruits ;  and  the  Emperor  had  entrusted  the  im- 
mediate guardianship  of  his  person  to  a  bodyguard  of  three 
thousand  Spanish  soldiers.2  Spanish  poets,  Spanish  rhetoricians, 
and  even  Spanish  teachers  were  welcomed  and  respected  at  the 
capital.  Tarragona  and  Merida,  Saragossa  and  Carthagena, 
Cordova  and  Cadiz  were  among  the  great  cities  of  the  Empire. 
Spain  had  been  rather  absorbed  than  conquered  by  Rome,  and 
had  in  a  very  brief  period  of  time,  become  "  deeply,  heartily  and 
thoroughly  Roman".  At  the  death  of  Augustus,  the  Roman 
language  and  even  the  Roman  dress  prevailed  throughout 
Southern  and  Eastern  Spain.  Cicero  3  himself  could  find  but  a 
slight  foreign  flavour  in  the  Latinity  of  the  poets  of  Cordova  ; 
and  Marcus  Porcius  Latro,  a  native  of  the  same  distinguished 
city,  was  the  teacher  and  model  of  Ovid,  of  Maecenas,  and  of 
Augustus  himself.  Another  Cordovan  of  the  same  period,  who 

1  The  word  avOaSeia,  which  I  have  rendered  by  obstinacy  and  self-sufficiency, 
is  usually  translated  moroseness,  conveying  an  unfavourable  and  misleading  idea  of 
Strabo's  meaning. 

The  elder  Pliny,  who,  after  Strabo,  has  left  us  the  most  interesting  account  of 
the  geography  of  Spain  in  the  first  century  of  our  era — Nat.  Hist.,  lib.  iii. — was 
sent  as  Procurator  to  Tarraconensis,  by  Nero,  and  not,  as  is  usually  stated,  by 
Vespasian.  'Tis  well  to  give  even  Nero  his  due.  His  nephew,  Pliny  the  younger, 
was  gratefully  remembered  as  having  successfully  defended  the  rights  of  the 
Andalusians  against  the  exactions  of  the  Proconsul,  Caecilius  Classicus  (A.D.  104) 
in  the  time  of  Trajan.  The  fullest  restitution  was  made  to  the  plundered  cities. 
The  Proconsul,  convicted  by  the  Senate,  had  committed  suicide  before  the  trial ; 
but  his  accomplices  were  banished,  and  the  daughter  of  Caecilius  was  judiciously 
permitted  to  inherit  from  her  father  the  wealth — and  no  more — that  he  had  pos- 
sessed before  he  left  Italy  for  Spain. 

2  Calagurritans.     See  Suetonis,  Octav. ,  49.     Augustus  had  a  German  body- 
guard up  to  A.D.  9. 

*"  Pingue  quiddam  atque  peregrinum,"  Cicero,  pro  Arch.,  10. 


18.]  HISPANIA  ROM  AN  A.  35 

was  known  as  Antonius  Julianus,  was  a  rhetorician  in  high 
favour  at  Rome. 

The  first  Provincial  that  ever  rose  to  the  Consulship,  or  was 
accorded  the  rarer  honour  of  a  triumph,  was  Balbus,  a  Spaniard 
of  Cadiz,  in  the  early  days  of  Augustus.  The  first  Provincial 
that  ever  sat  upon  the  throne  of  the  Caesars  was  Trajan,  a 
Spaniard  of  Seville.  And  from  the  death  of  Sertorius  to  the 
death  of  Honorius,  no  part  of  the  world  beyond  the  limits  of 
Italy  contributed  so  much  to  the  resources  of  the  Empire  as 
Spain,  nor  did  any  Province  claim  and  receive  so  large  a  share 
of  the  favours  and  of  the  honours  of  the  Roman  government. 
When  the  power  of  Rome  waned,  and  the  rule  of  Christ  waxed 
strong,  Spain  from  the  first  took  her  place  in  the  forefront  of 
Western  Christendom  1 ;  and  when  Athanasius  and  Constantine 
at  Eastern  Nicaea  were  formulating  new  doctrines  for  the  Roman 
world,  the  greatest  and  the  most  powerful  of  western  ecclesi- 
astics was  not  found  in  an  Italian  city,  but  in  the  Palace  of 
Hosius,  Bishop  of  Cordova. 

Under  Trajan,  and  under  his  fellow  countryman  and  successor 
Hadrian,  Spain  flourished  exceedingly.  Nor  was  the  Province 
less  prosperous  under  another  noble  Andalusian,  the  Emperor 
Marcus  Aurelius.  The  rule  of  the  Roman  had  brought  peace  and 
law  to  the  home  of  the  Spaniard ;  and  the  rule  of  the  Spaniard 
gave  peace  and  law  to  the  world.2  "  If  a  man  were  called," 
says  Gibbon,  "  to  fix  the  period  in  the  history  of  the  world 
during  which  the  condition  of  the  human  race  was  most  happy 
and  prosperous,  he  would  without  hesitation  name  that  which 
elapsed  from  the  death  of  Domitian  to  the  accession  of  Corn- 
modus."  And  the  Spaniard  is  proud  to  remember  that  during 
more  than  sixty  of  these  eighty-three  golden  years,  the  world 
was  under  the  personal  rule  of  a  Spanish  Emperor. 

Some  slight  changes  were  made  from  time  to  time  in  the 
system  of  provincial  administration.  Fifty-four  years  after  the 
death  of  Augustus,  the  African  Province  of  Tingitana,  or  the 

1  St.  James  the  Great  with  seven  disciples  is  said  by  Spanish  writers  to  have 
preached  Christianity  on  the  Cantabrian  coasts  as  early  as  A.D.  3,  and  the  new 
religion  spread  more  rapidly  in  Spain  than  elsewhere  ;  the  character  of  the  people, 
in  the  Celtic  north-west  especially,  being  notably  receptive  of  devotional  ideas. — H. 

2  Theodosius  the  Great  was  also  a  Spaniard,  born  either  at  Italica  or  Cauca  ; 
Trajan  was  a  native  of  Italica  or  Seville  ;  Hadrian  and  Marcus  Aurelius,  both  born 
at  Rome,  were  also  Spanish  by  race. 

In  the  year  385  the  Pope  (Damasus),  the  Emperors  (Theodosius,  and  his  rival 
Maximus),  the  arch-Heretic  (Priscillian),  and  the  first  Inquisitors  (Idatius  and 
Ithacus)  were  all  Spaniards. 


36  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

country  around  Tangiers,1  was  united  for  a  season  with  more 
peaceful  Baetica.  In  the  time  of  Hadrian,  who  spent  some  time 
in  Spain  in  122  and  123,  the  immense  area  of  Tarraconensis  was 
divided  into  three  districts :  Gallicia,  Tarragona  and  Cartha- 
gena,  while  the  boundaries  of  Lusitania  remained  as  before.2 

Under  good  government,  Spain  grew  rapidly  in  wealth  and 
importance,  and  in  the  Peninsula,  if  not  in  the  Empire,  the 
operations  of  war  gave  way  to  the  arts  of  peace.  Husbandry, 
the  only  form  of  labour  that  was  not  considered  unbecoming  in 
a  Roman  citizen,  was  cultivated  as  a  science,  and  practised  with 
signal  success.3  The  olive  flourished  not  only  in  Baetica  but  in 
Tarraconensis.  The  cultivation  of  the  vine  was  extended  from 
Turdetania  to  the  slopes  of  the  Pyrenees  ;  and  the  wines  of 
Tarragona  became  highly  appreciated  in  Rome.  Nor  was  in- 
dustry wanting  to  develop  the  natural  resources  of  the  country. 
The  Spanish  oil  held  its  own  by  the  side  of  the  product  of 
Central  Italy.  The  Spanish  steel  challenged  comparison  with 
that  of  Damascus.  The  flax,  which  is  said  to  have  been  intro- 
duced by  the  Phoenicians  was  worked  by  fair  Spanish  hands 
into  the  finest  linen  that  was  to  be  found  in  Western  Europe.4 

1  Esp.  Sag.,  i.,  xiv. ,  128-134.     Bury,  Student's  Roman  Empire,  cap.  vi. ,  sec. 
iv. ,  p.  89.    Masdeu,  torn,  vii.,  cap.  v.    On  the  death  of  Nero  the  legionaries  of  the 
provinces  sought  to  impose  a  successor  upon  Rome,  Galba,  Praetor  of  Tarracon- 
ensis, Otho,  Praetor  of  Lusitania,  and  Vitelius,  being  successively  chosen  by  the 
soldiers.     The  second  of  these,  Otho,  added  Tingitana  to  Bastica  for  the  purpose 
of  gaining  popularity  for  himself  and  increasing  the  importance  of  the  Spanish 
provinces. — H. 

2  It  would  be  impossible  within  the  limit  of  this  work  to  go  into  the  question  of 
the  Communal  System  and  popular  assemblies  in  the  great  provincial  towns  of  the 
Roman  Empire.     But  it  is  equally  impossible  to  refrain  from  mentioning  that  it 
is  owing  to  the  comparatively  recent  discovery  of  two  documents  in  Spain  that 
modern  criticism  has  been  able  so  fully  to  understand  these  questions.     These 
documents   are:  (i)  The  Municipal  Laws  of  the  Latin  Communes  of  Salpensa 
and  Malaca  in  Bastica,  prepared  between  82  and  84  under  Domitian,  and  discovered 
in  1851.     Cf.   M.   R.   D.   Bulanga,   Estudios  sobre  los  dos  bronces  encontrados  a 
Malaga  a  fines  de  octubre  1851  (Malaga,  1853),  410  ;  Mommsen,  Die  Stadtrechte 
der  latinischen   Gemeinden  Salpensa  und  Malaga  in  der  Provinz  Betica  (Leipsic, 
1855) ;  and  (2)  The  law  or  statute  of  foundation  of  the  Colonia  Julia  Genetiva 
(Urso)  in  Baetica,  by  order  of  Julius  Caesar  or  shortly  after  his  death.     This  most 
interesting  document  was  discovered  in  two  fragments,  one  at  Osuna  (Urso)  in 
1870,  and  the  other  at  the  same  place  in  1875.     Bulanga,  Los  bronces  de  Osuna 
(Malaga,  1873);  ar>d  Ch.  Giraud,  Les  nouveaux  bronzes  d'Osune  (Paris,  1877)'; 
and  see  authorities  quoted  generally  on  this  subject  in  Marquardt,  L' Organisation 
de  r  Empire  Romain  (1892),  torn,  ii.,  pp.  64-80. 

3  See  Masdeu,  vii.,  pp.  83-91,  105. 

4  Masdeu,  vii.,  pp.  64,  65,  66,  88,  92,  98  and  108.     In  the  time  of  the  early 
Empire,  according  to  this  author,  there  were  no  less  than  ninety-three  mints  in 
Spain.     Caligula,  however,  abolished  all  these  local  rights  of  coining  money,  and 
transferred  the  whole  to  Rome.    This  was  of  course  a  great  loss  both  of  dignity 


100.]  HISPANIA  ROMANA.  37 

The  exclusively  military  roads  that  had  been  made  for  the 
defence  of  the  frontiers  were  supplemented  by  what  may  be 
called  trade  routes  in  every  part  of  the  Peninsula.  The  great 
road  along  the  east  coast  from  the  Pyrenean  frontier  to  the 
mouth  of  the  Guadalquivir,  the  via  Augusta,  was  only  one  of  the 
many  noble  roads  that  opened  the  rich  country  to  the  merchant 
and  the  traveller,  and  secured  to  the  miner  and  the  husbandman 
the  full  reward  of  his  industry.1 

Nor  were  the  imperial  works  restricted  to  those  of  mere 
utility.  Noble  bridges  crossed  the  broad  streams  that  flowed 
through  the  country.  Aqueducts,  circuses,  baths,  public  build- 
ings of  every  kind  sprang  up  throughout  the  land ;  and  it  is 
from  the  days  of  the  great  and  good  Spanish  Emperors,  Trajan, 
Hadrian  and  Marcus  Aurelius,  that  date  most  of  those  monu- 
ments of  imperial  grandeur  which  are  still  to  be  found, 
glorious  even  in  their  decay,  throughout  the  Peninsula.  The 
beautiful  arch  of  Torre  d'en  Barra  in  Catalonia,  the  ever- 
famous  bridge  of  Alcantara  in  Estremadura,  the  colonnade  of 
Zalamea-de-la-Serena,  the  tower  at  Corunna,  the  Monte  Ferrada 
or  Furado  in  Gallicia,  the  circus  of  Italica,  and  the  magnificent 
aqueducts  of  Tarragona  and  Segovia ;  these  are  the  living 
records  of  the  days  when  the  Roman  Spaniards  ruled  the  world. 
Nor  were  the  glories  of  Hispania  confined  to  the  development 
of  material  wealth,  nor  even  to  the  splendour  of  the  imperial 
administration.  From  the  death  of  Ovid  to  the  death  of  Martial, 
there  is  not  one  Latin  writer  of  the  first  rank  who  did  not  come 
from  Spain.2  The  elder  Seneca,  with  his  yet  more  distinguished 
son,  the  philosopher3 — as  true  a  Spaniard  as  ever  lived — and 
his  nephew  Lucan,  the  author  of  the  Pharsalia,  were  all  born 
at  Cordova.  Pomponius  Mela,  the  first  Roman  geographer,  was 

and  of  profit  to  Spain,  which  was  forced  from  that  time  to  furnish  the  raw  material 
for  the  imperial  coiners  in  Italy. 

1  It  extended  from  Milan  by  way  of  Marseilles  and  Narbonne  to  Tarragona, 
and  thence  it  divided  into  three  ;  one  to  the  city  of  Leon,  another  to  Astorga, 
and  the  third  and  greatest  went  by  the  coast  to  Valencia,  Carthagena  and  Cor- 
dova to  Cadiz.     For  a  list  of  the  principal  Roman  roads  in  Spain,  and  the  list  is 
long,  see  Masdeu,  vii.,  138-140.     The  public  roads  of  all  the  provinces  were  State 
property. 

2  Tacitus  indeed  had  begun  to  write  a  few  years  before  the  death  of  Martial. 

3  "  There  is  none  of  the  ancient  moralists  to  whom  the  moderns,  from  Montaigne 
downwards,  owe  more  than  to  Seneca  ;  he  touches  the  great  and  eternal  common- 
places of  human  occasion,  friendship,  health,  bereavement,  riches,  poverty  and 
death,  with  a  hand  that  places  him  high  among  the  divine  masters  of  life.     Men 
have  found  more  abundantly  in  his  essays  and  letters  than  in  any  other  secular 
writer,  words  of  good  counsel  and  import." — John  Morley,  Aphorisms, 


38  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

a  native  of  Algeciras,  near  Gibraltar.  The  authority  for  ascrib- 
ing a  Spanish  origin  to  the  historian  Florus  is  doubtful ;  and 
we  must  abandon  the  old  unfounded  notion  that  Silius  Italicus, 
the  poet  of  the  Punic  wars,  took  his  name  from  Italica,  near 
Seville.  But  Columela,  the  father  of  agriculture,  "and  the 
first  and  most  important  of  all  the  Latin  writers  on  rural  affairs," 
was  certainly  a  native  of  Cadiz.  Martial  was  born  at  Bilbilis, 
near  Calatayud,  in  Aragon,  and  after  his  brilliant  career  at 
Rome,  returned l  to  die  in  his  beloved  Spanish  country  ;  and 
Quintilian,  greatest  name  of  all,  left  his  home  at  Calahorra  to 
give  to  Rome  and  to  the  world  "  one  of  the  most  excellent,  if 
not  the  most  excellent,  of  the  great  text-books  that  we  owe  to 
antiquity."  2 

1  Sic  me  vivere,  sic  juvat  perire,  xii.,  18. 

2  Mommsen,  frov.,  i.,  p.  77.     A  list  of  some  of  the  most  celebrated  Roman 
commanders  and  other  soldiers  of  Hispania  will  be  found  in  Masdeu,  vii.,  pp. 
54-58,  and  a  list  of  the  principal  Spanish  Roman  writers  in  pp.  148-195. 

Seneca  the  elder  was  born  at  Cordova,  circ.  B.C.  54,  ob.  circ.  A.D.  39.  Seneca 
the  younger  was  born  at  Cordova,  circ.  B.C.  5,  and  faced  death  at  the  command 
of  Nero,  A.D.  65.  His  elder  brother,  Marcus  Novatus,  better  known  to  us  by  his 
adoptive  name  of  Gallic,  referred  to  in  Acts  xxiii.,  was  also  a  Cordovan  of  great 
and  well-deserved  reputation.  His  nephew  Lucan  was  born  at  Cordova  in  A.D. 
39,  and  died,  likewise  at  Nero's  command,  in  65.  Of  Pomponius  Mela  we  can 
only  certainly  say  that  he  flourished  in  the  time  of  the  Emperors  Claudius  or  Nero, 
circ.  A.D.  60. 

Columela  lived  and  wrote  during  the  middle  of  the  first  century.  Silius  Italicus 
was  born  traditionally  at  Italica  (near  Seville),  circ.  A.D.  28,  ob.  circ.  101.  Martial 
was  born  at  Bilbilis  about  A.D.  40-43,  and,  after  his  successful  career  at  Rome, 
returned  to  his  birthplace,  circ.  A.D.  98-100,  where  he  died,  circ.  A.D.  102-4. 
Quintilian  was  born  at  Calagurris  (Calahorra)  A.D.  40,  and  died  circ.  95.  The 
birth  of  Florus  is  uncertain  ;  he  wrote  his  Epitome  during  the  reign  of  Trajan  or  of 
Hadrian. 

I  am  indebted  to  my  friend,  Mr.  J.  B.  Bury,  the  historian  of  the  later  Roman 
Empire,  for  his  most  kind  revision  of  this  and  other  chapters. 


CHAPTER  IV. 
THE  BARBARIANS. 

(A.D.  180—411.) 
I. — Theodosius  the  Great. 

THE  unworthy  successors  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  beginning  with 
the  most  detestable  son  of  that  virtuous  Emperor,  concerned 
themselves  little  with  the  affairs  of  Spain.  Nor  have  its 
provinces,  from  the  accession  of  Commodus  to  the  accession 
of  Honorius,  any  history  beyond  that  of  the  declining  and 
decaying  Empire,  and  of  the  rise  and  progress  of  the  new  and 
living  religion  which  has  exercised  so  enormous  an  influence 
on  the  fortunes  of  the  Spanish  people.  Spanish  wars  there 
were  none  ;  for  there  was  no  one  in  Spain  to  fight,  and  nothing 
in  Spain  to  fight  for.  Public  works  decayed.  Letters  died 
out.  The  civil  government  concerned  itself  only  with  the  col- 
lection of  the  taxes.  The  Spanish  provinces,  like  the  rest  of 
the  Empire,  were  gradually  bleeding  to  death  at  the  hands  of 
the  imperial  Procurators.  The  worst  and  most  oppressive  fiscal 
system  that  has  ever  been  invented  or  practised  was  doing  to 
death  the  industrious  population  of  the  world,  to  provide  for 
the  lusts  and  the  caprices  of  the  worst  and  most  oppressive 
of  tyrants  at  Rome.  The  celebrated  decree  of  Caracalla,  in- 
vesting all  the  provincials  with  the  empty  honour  of  Roman 
citizenship,  compelled  them  to  pay  the  taxes  incident  to  that 
position,  without  any  relief  from  the  burden  of  the  tribute 
which  was  still  collected  from  them  as  provincials.1  And  the 
obligation  of  supplying  the  city  of  Rome  with  an  amount  cal- 
culated as  the  equivalent  of  one-twentieth  of  the  annual  pro- 
duction of  corn  in  the  country — at  a  rate  fixed  by  the  Roman 

1  When  the  name  of  Roman  citizenship  became  worthless,  and  implied  no 
immunity  from  taxation,  imprisonment,  death,  or  even  torture,  it  was  forced  on 
the  whole  world  by  Caracalla.  E.  A.  Freeman,  Oxford  Essays,  1856,  p.  304  ;  but 
see  Bryce,  Holy  Roman  Empire,  pp.  6,  7,  and  Gibbon,  chapter  vi. 


40  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

civic  magistrates  themselves — pressed  with  peculiar  hardship 
on  the  cultivators  of  the  rich  corn  lands  of  the  Peninsula. 

The  third  century,  dreary  and  disastrous  throughout  the 
Roman  world,  brought  no  exceptional  happiness,  nor  indeed 
any  exceptional  misery,  to  Spain ;  although  it  was  during  that 
most  calamitous  period  of  four  and  twenty  years,  from  the 
accession  of  Philip  the  Arabian,  to  the  death  of  Gallienus, 
(244-268)  a  period  pre-eminently  of  shame  and  misfortune,  that 
the  Peninsula  was  exposed  for  the  first  time  to  the  fury  of  the 
Northern  Barbarians.  In  the  reign  of  the  unfortunate  Decius 
(circ.  250),  the  great  barrier  between  the  Rhine  and  the  Danube 
was  first  broken  through  by  these  savage  hordes.  The  degene- 
rate Romans  were  unable  to  offer  any  serious  resistance ;  and 
Gaul,  and  even  parts  of  Spain,  were  soon  overrun  by  the  Franks. 
The  Goths  and  the  Suevians  encountered  a  more  serious  re- 
sistance in  the  east  of  Europe ;  and  they  fought  with  varying 
fortunes,  on  the  banks  of  the  Danube,  in  Moesia,  in  Greece,  and 
even  in  North  Italy.  But  for  twelve  long  years  (256-268)  the 
fertile  provinces  of  Spain,  more  especially  the  northern  and 
eastern  districts,  were  ravaged  by  the  terrible  Franks.  Tarra- 
gona was  sacked  and  almost  destroyed,1  and  the  Barbarians, 
seizing  the  ships  in  the  harbours  of  the  east  and  south-east 
coasts  of  the  Peninsula,  made  more  than  one  descent  upon 
Africa. 

At  length  the  day  dawned,  after  the  dark  night  of  Roman 
shame,  and  the  valour  and  virtue  of  Claudius  (268-270),  who, 
on  the  death  of  Gallienus,  succeeded  to  the  purple,  and 
nobly  earned  the  title  of  Gothicus ;  and  the  still  greater 
success  of  the  yet  more  admirable  Aurelian  (270-275),  prepared 
the  way  for  Diocletian  (284-305),  who  saved  Italy  at  least  for 
another  century  from  the  inroads  of  the  northern  hordes.  In 
theory,  the  first  Autocrat  of  the  old  Empire ;  in  reality,  the  first 
Statesman  in  a  new  Europe,  Diocletian  saw  clearly  enough 
that  over-centralisation  was  the  bane  of  the  Roman  adminis- 
tration ;  and  while  on  the  one  hand  he  magnified  the  impor- 
tance of  the  imperial  office,  on  the  other  he  divided  the  Empire 
into  a  number  of  well-nigh  autonomous  governments,2  each 

1  Aurelius  Victor,  De  Ccesaribus,  23.  33;  Eutropius,  ix.,  6;  and  generally  for 
all  events  between  A.D.  15  and  A.D.  578,  Clinton's  Fasti. 

2 The  Spanish  historians  assert  that  this  politic  decentralisation  was  begun  in 
the  second  century  by  a  Spanish  Emperor,  Hadrian,  and  that  the  unwieldy  area  of 
Tarraconensis  was  divided  into  four:  Gallaecia,  Tarraconensis,  Carthaginiensis, 
and  the  Balearic  Islands  ;  but  this  division  was  probably  not  made  before  the  time 
of  Diocletian.  See  Marquardt,  ubi  supra,  torn,  ii.,  p.  79. 


250.]  THE  BARBARIANS.  41 

one  with  its  own  elaborate  hierarchy,  in  all  but  the  name  a 
kingdom.  The  foundations  of  modern  Europe  were  already 
laid. 

This  magnificent  decentralisation  was  carried  still  further 
by  Constantine  (306-337),  who  divided  the  entire  Roman  world 
into  four  vast  Prefectures:  1.  ITALY;  2.  THE  EAST;  3.  IL- 
LYRICUM  ;  4.  GAUL  ;  each  under  the  more  than  regal  government 
of  a  Praetorian  Prefect. 

Of  these  Prefectures,  Gaul  contained  three  great  dioceses, 
each  one  administered  by  a  Vicar :  Hispania,  Septem-provincice, 
and  Britannia.  The  diocese  of  Hispania  contained  seven  pro- 
vinces :  1 .  Baetica,  2.  Lusitania,  and  3.  Gallaecia — each  under 
the  immediate  government  of  a  Consular, — 4.  Tarraconensis, 
5.  Carthaginiensis,  6.  Tingitana,  and  7.  Insulae  Balearum,  each 
under  the  immediate  government  of  a  President.1  The  capital 
of  Tarraconensis  was  naturally  fixed  at  Tarraco,  and  that  of 
Baetica  at  Corduba ;  the  Consular  of  Lusitania  held  his  court 
at  Emerita,  and  the  Consular  of  Gallaecia  at  Bracara,  while 
the  provincial  capitals  of  Carthaginiensis,  Tingitana,  and  the 
Balearic  Islands  were  at  New  Carthage,  at  Tingis,  and  at 
Palma.2 

Each  of  these  Provincial  Governors  was  directly  responsible 
to  the  Vicar  of  the  diocese,  who  held  his  court  at  Hispalis. 
And  the  Vicar  in  his  turn  was  responsible  to  the  Prefect,  whose 
court  was  held  for  some  time  at  Treves  (Augusta  Treverorum), 
on  the  Moselle,  but  whose  capital  was  afterwards  fixed  in  the 
more  central  position  at  Aries  (Arelate)  on  the  Rhone. 

The  Praetorian  Prefect  was  indeed  one  of  the  great  ones  of 
the  earth.  His  purple  robe  differed  by  but  a  few  inches  of 
length  from  that  which  was  worn  by  the  Emperor  himself.  His 
huge  silver  inkstand,  his  writing-case  of  solid  gold,  his  lofty 

1  As  to  the  exact  nature  of  the  offices  and  dignities  of  the  Legati  August! 
propraetore,  and  the  other  classes  of  Legati — the  Praefecti,  the  Procuratores,  the 
Praesides,  and  the  entire  Hierarchy  of  Roman  administration — see  a  very  interesting 
and  admirable  chapter,  "  Du  Gouverneur  et  ses  Agents,"  in  vol.  ii.  of  Mommsen  and 
Marquardt,  L 'Organisation  de  f  Empire  Romain  (Paris,  1892),  more  especially  pp. 
572-586.  See  also  Espana  Sagrada,  i. ,  xiv. ,  128-134  ;  and  ii.,  xiv.,  xv. 

The  Gallic  provinces  most  interesting  to  th.e  student  of  Spanish  history  are 
of  course  the  more  southern :  Narbonensis  Prima,  with  the  capital  at  Narbo 
(Narbonne)  ;  Narbonensis  Secunda,  with  the  capital  at  Aquae  Sextae  (Aix) ; 
Novempopuli,  with  the  capital  at  Audi  and  Fauze ;  Aquitania  Prima,  with  the 
capital  at  Avaricum  (Bourges) ;  and  Aquitania  Secunda,  with  the  capital  at  Burdigala 
(Bordeaux).  See  also  Bury,  Roman  Empire,  pp.  85,  86. 

2 See  Bocking,  Notitia  Dignitatum,  i.,  69  and  458  ;  and  Ukert,  Geog.  der  G. 
und Rom.,  ii.,  356. 


42  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

chariot  were  among  the  many  magnificent  ensigns  of  his  exalted 
office.     In  all  but  in  name  he  was  a  king. 

But  the  Vicar  in  his  diocese,  the  Consular  or  the  President 
in  their  respective  provinces,  enjoyed  an  authority  and  a  per- 
sonal consideration  scarcely  less  than  that  which  is  accorded  to 
modern  sovereigns. 

But  all  this  magnificence  and  all  this  systematic  adminis- 
trative perfection  did  not  avail  to  save  the  Empire.  It  rather 
prepared  the  way  for  its  dissolution.  Rome  indeed  never  died. 
The  religion  of  Constantine  achieved  in  less  than  a  century 
the  final  conquest  of  the  Roman  Empire  ;  but  the  victors  them- 
selves were  insensibly  subdued  by  the  power  of  their  vanquished 
rival.1  Nepos  might  give  place  to  Augustulus,  and  Augustulus 
to  Odoacer.  But  for  eight  hundred  years  Heraclius  and  the 
successors  of  Heraclius  kept  back  the  forces  of  Islam,  and  saved 
Europe  from  the  dominion  of  the  Moslem.  When  at  length  in 
New  Rome,  Constantine  succumbed  in  the  palace  of  the  Caesars 
to  the  forces  of  Mahomet,  there  was  still  at  Old  Rome  the 
legitimate  and  more  powerful  descendant  of  the  Roman  Ponti- 
fex  Maximus,  crowned  with  the  triple  tiara  of  imperial  do- 
minion over  the  kings  of  the  earth.  When,  twelve  centuries 
after  the  division  of  the  old  world  by  Roman  Diocletian,  Roman 
Alexander,  himself  a  Spaniard,  divided  a  new  world  undreamed 
of  by  the  early  Caesars  among  the  Iberians  and  Lusitanians  of 
the  sixteenth  century,  he  only  asserted  that  imperial  Roman 
authority  which  had  been  exercised  by  his  predecessors  from 
the  days  of  Numa  Pompilius,  first  of  the  Pontiffs  of  Rome. 

When,  four-and-twenty  centuries  after  the  first  Pontificate 
of  Numa,  eight  hundred  subject  princes,  the  rulers  of  the  great 
dioceses  into  which  the  modern  world  is  yet  divided,  flocked 
obedient  at  the  bidding  of  Pius  to  the  banks  of  the  Tiber,  it 
was  to  cast  themselves  at  the  feet  of  the  imperial  image,  and 
once  again  to  hail  Caesar  as  divine,  omnipotent  and  infallible. 

But  in  the  fourth  century  the  great  Roman  provinces  of 
Spain,  like  Rome  itself,  grew  weaker  and  poorer,  until  the  time 
came  when  Spain,  like  Rome  itself,  passed  under  the  dominion 
of  the  rude  but  vigorous  Barbarians  of  the  North.  Italy  was 
worn  out,  decayed,  literally  rotten  to  the  core.  Rome  was  in 
one  sense  rich ;  but  rich  only  in  useless  and  demoralising 
luxuries ;  in  the  splendid  spoils  of  other  nations ;  in  the 

lAs  to  the  connexion  between  Pagan  and  Catholic  Rome,  see  Conyers 
Middleton's  Letters  from  Rome  (Dublin,  1731),  and  Mourant  Brock,  Rome,  Pagan 
and  Papal  (London,  1883). 


337.]  THE  BARBARIANS.  43 

splendid  remains  of  other  days  ;  producing  nothing  ;  consuming 
everything ;  eaten  up  with  sensuality  and  self-indulgence, 
forgetful  even  of  the  Pagan  pride  of  life,  in  degrading  self- 
abandonment  to  the  lusts  of  the  flesh  ;  draining  the  world  of  its 
true  wealth  ;  without  respect,  without  ambition,  without  hope. 
And  if  Rome  was  full  of  silver  and  gold,  Italy  was  on  the  brink 
of  starvation.  Gaul  produced  little  or  nothing  ;  Greece  was  but 
a  name.  Africa,  it  is  true,  provided  corn  and  wild  beasts. 
Further  east,  Egypt,  Syria,  Asia — these  were  no  sources  of 
strength  nor  of  wealth.  Britain  was  a  source  of  weakness. 
But  Spain,  with  its  boundless  corn-fields  and  its  inexhaustible 
mines,  with  its  hardy  population  who  worked  for  the  Empire  at 
home,  and  its  hardy  soldiers  who  fought  for  the  Empire  abroad ; 
these  things  made  Spain  the  sheet  anchor  of  the  drifting  world.1 

One  struggle  moreover  was  made  against  the  old  forces  of 
decay  and  the  new  forces  of  Barbarism.  One  man  was  found 
at  the  supreme  moment  to  stand  between  the  living  and  the 
dying  world — and  that  man  was  a  Spaniard.  To  Theodosius 
the  Great,  the  countryman  and  the  descendant  of  Trajan,  is 
due  this  crowning  honour.  And  the  record  of  the  great  deeds 
of  the  most  Christian  of  the  Emperors  may  be  read  in  the 
admiring  pages  of  Gibbon. 

The  reign  of  Theodosius  was  marked  by  the  struggle  of  the 
new  forces  against  the  old.  With  one  hand  he  kept  back  the 
new  Barbarism  from  the  old  Empire,  once  more  united  under 
his  sway.  With  the  other  he  beat  down  the  old  Paganism, 
struggling  for  life  in  a  changing  and  decaying  society.  In  one 
hand  was  found  the  Sword ;  in  the  other  the  Cross.  Looking 
back  we  have  Julius  ;  looking  forward — Gregory  ;  at  all  times — 
Caesar. 

Theodosius  was  the  first  Christian  Inquisitor.  He  was  the 
last  Emperor  of  the  world.  The  massacre  at  Salonica  might 
have  been  the  act  of  Nero.  The  submission  to  Ambrose  might 
have  been  the  act  of  Henry  IV.  The  fifteen  edicts  against 
heresy  might  have  been  dictated  by  Philip  II.  The  destruc- 
tion of  Antioch  might  have  been  decreed  by  Caracalla.  The 
Council  of  Constantinople  might  have  been  convoked  by  Edward 
the  Confessor.2  Barbarism  without ;  heresy  within ;  these 

1See  Salvian,  vi.,  121-123,  and  vii. ,  137. 

2  The  first  edict  of  Theodosius  after  his  baptism  into  the  Christian  religion 
ran  as  follows:  "It  is  our  pleasure  that  all  nations  which  are  governed  by  our 
clemency  and  moderation  should  steadfastly  adhere  to  the  religion  which  was 
taught  of  St.  Peter  to  the  Romans,  which  faithful  tradition  has  preserved,  and 


44  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

were  the  forces  against  which  Theodosius  strove,  and  strove 
with  immediate  success.  But  against  himself  he  strove  not  at 
all.  He  lived  and  died  a  tyrant  and  a  bigot.  His  tongue  was 
ever  ready  to  proclaim  or  to  confess  his  faith ;  but  his  hands 
were  swift  to  shed  blood.  He  ordered  massacres ;  but  he 
convoked  councils.  He  destroyed  cities  ;  but  he  dictated  laws. 
The  character  of  Theodosius  was  thoroughly  Spanish — devout, 
passionate,  noble-minded.  Reckless,  when  excited,  of  human 
life  and  suffering,  he  was  alternately  a  resolute  and  skilful 
general,1  and  an  indolent  and  superstitious  persecutor.  But  his 
arms  did  not  save  Italy,  his  laws  did  not  save  society,  and  his 
orthodoxy  did  not  save  religion. 


II. — The  Coming  of  the  Visigoths. 

Theodosius  died  in  395,  and  in  five  years  Alaric  was  in  Italy. 
But  his  first  coming  was  not  that  of  a  conqueror.  For  his 
Gothic  Barbarians,  surprised  in  their  pious  celebration  of  Easter 
by  the  less  scrupulous,  if  more  orthodox,  Vandal  Barbarians  in 
the  service  of  Honorius,  were  defeated  at  Pollentia  on  Easter 
Day,  402,  and  Rome  was  saved  from  Alaric 2  the  Goth,  by 
Stilicho  the  Vandal,  for  seven  inglorious  years.  And  thus  it 
came  to  pass  that  Spain  and  not  Italy  first  became  the  abiding 
place  of  the  invader.  But  for  the  immediate  cause  of  the 
occupation  of  the  Peninsula  by  the  Barbarians,  we  must  look 
not  to  Italy  nor  to  the  fatherland  of  Alaric,  but  to  Britain. 

Far  away  beyond  the  Straits  of  Dover,  a  common  soldier  in 
the  ranks  of  a  Roman  Legion,  bearing  the  auspicious  name  of 

which  is  now  professed  by  the  Pontiff  Damasus,  and  by  Peter,  Bishop  of 
Alexandria,  a  man  of  apostolic  holiness.  According  to  the  disciples  of  the  apostles 
and  the  doctrine  of  the  Gospel,  let  us  believe  the  sole  deity  of  the  Father,  the  Son, 
and  the  Holy  Ghost,  under  an  equal  majesty  and  a  pious  Trinity.  We  authorise 
the  followers  of  this  doctrine  to  assume  the  title  of  Catholic  Christians,  and  we 
judge  that  all  others  are  extravagant  madmen  :  we  brand  them  with  the  infamous 
name  of  Heretics,  and  declare  that  their  conventicles  shall  no  longer  usurp  the 
respectable  appellation  of  Churches.  Besides  the  condemnation  of  Divine  Justice, 
they  must  expect  to  suffer  the  severe  penalties  which  our  authorities,  guided  by 
heavenly  wisdom,  shall  think  fit  to  inflict  upon  them."  See  Cod.  Theod.,  lib.  xvi., 
tit.  v.;  Leg.,  6,  23;  Godefroy's  Commentaries,  torn.  vi. ,  pp.  104-110;  Gibbon, 
chap,  xxvii. ,  326,  327;  Sozomen,  lib.  vii. ,  c.  12. 

1  See  Hodgkin,  Italy  and  her  Invaders,  i. ,  182,  and  197,  198. 

2 Bury,  Later  Roman  Empire,  i. ,  148  ;  Orosius,  vii.,  37.  Hodgkin,  ubi  supra, 
p.  289.  Montalembert,  Les  Moines  de  r  Occident,  i.,  4.  For  a  very  appreciative 
sketch  of  the  character  of  Stilicho,  see  an  article  in  the  Nineteenth  Century, 
September,  1892,  by  Sir  Herbert  Maxwell,  published  after  this  chapter  was  written. 


395.]  THE  BARBARIANS.  45 

Constantine,  had  been  elected  by  his  fellows  as  Augustus — or 
Tyrant,  after  the  fashion  of  the  day — in  Britain.  This  bold 
aspirant  to  supreme  power  had  easily  mastered  the  feeble 
government  of  Honorius,  and  had  crossed  over  the  narrow 
Straits  into  Gaul,  dreaming  of  yet  larger  conquest.1  To  oppose 
or  embarrass  the  rebel,  Stilicho,  by  one  of  those  strokes  of  policy 
so  common  and  ever  so  disastrous  in  history,  had  invited — or 
permitted — the  Barbarian  hordes,  long  kept  back  beyond  the 
Rhine  by  the  imperial  allies  who  guarded  the  frontier,  to  cross 
over  into  Gaul.  And  on  the  last  day  of  the  memorable  year 
406,  an  immense  concourse  of  Vandals  and  Suevians  and  Alans 
made  their  way  across  the  river  and  ravaged  the  rich  and 
peaceful  districts  of  Eastern  Gaul  at  their  pleasure.  They 
served  Stilicho's  immediate  political  purpose,  no  doubt,  by 
embarrassing  Constantine  ;  yet  that  prudent  rebel  was  skilful 
enough  to  avoid  their  onslaught,  and,  continuing  his  career  of  easy 
conquest,  removed  his  capital  from  Treves  (Augusta  Treverorum), 
on  the  Moselle,  to  the  richer  and  no  less  august  city  of  Aries 
(Arelate),  on  the  Rhone. 

Having  strengthened  himself  in  his  new  capital,  he  defeated 
the  imperial  troops  despatched  against  him  under  Sarus,  at 
Valence  on  the  Rhone,  and  was  soon  acknowledged  by  all  that 
was  left  of  Roman  within  the  confines  of  Gaul,  while  the 
Barbarians  were  at  once  discouraged  and  dispersed. 

Thus  Constantine,  everywhere  triumphant,  and  aspiring  to 
even  greater  empire,  crossed  the  Pyrenees,  and  pursued  his 
course  of  victory  into  the  rich  province  of  Spain.  The  northern 
districts  of  the  Peninsula  would  seem  to  have  been  promptly 
and  easily  occupied.  Constantine,  albeit  a  usurper  and  a  rebel, 
had  all  the  authority  of  Prefect  of  Gaul,  and  he  was  received 
without  opposition  at  Tarragona. 

The  authority  of  Honorius  counted  for  little  in  the  province  ; 
yet,  as  a  Spaniard  by  race,  and  the  son  of  the  great  Theodosius, 
the  Emperor  was  not  without  friends  and  even  relations  in 
Spain.  But  the  imperial  troops  offered  little  or  no  resistance 
to  the  Tyrant  from  Aries.  The  great  mass  of  the  population 
cared  little  whether  the  taxes  were  collected  in  the  name  of 
Honorius  or  in  the  name  of  Constantine.  The  usurper  would 
possibly  be  less  exacting  than  the  regular  oppressors.  And  it 
was  the  rude  levies  of  slaves  and  dependents  raised  by  some  of 
the  faithful  kinsmen  of  Honorius  that  alone  appear  to  have 

1  See  Olympiodorus,  12  ;  Zosimus,  vi. ,  a. 


46  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

offered  any  opposition  to  the  arms  of  Constantine.1  The 
Barbarian  levies  of  the  Tyrant  from  Britain  proved  more  than 
sufficient  to  overthrow  these  rustic  troops ;  and  two  bands  of 
Scottish  soldiers  are  said  to  have  played  an  important  part  in 
the  determination  of  this  early  Peninsular  War. 

Within  a  few  months  the  authority  of  Constantine  was  at 
least  nominally  supreme  from  the  Wall  of  Antoninus  to  the 
Columns  of  Hercules.  Honorius,  ever  prompt  in  weakness, 
recognised  the  successful  rebel  as  Augustus  and  imperial 
brother ;  and  Constantine,  committing  his  new  possessions  to 
the  care  of  his  son  Constans — another  Augustus— and  his 
lieutenant  Gerontius,  a  British  general  of  distinction,  quitted 
Spain  for  Ravenna,  proposing  to  drive  Alaric  out  of  Italy. 

Constantine  marched  as  far  as  Verona  on  his  way  to  relieve 
or  to  possess  himself  of  the  Western  Empire ;  but  having 
reason  to  suspect  treachery  on  the  part  of  his  ally  Honorius, 
and  feeling  that  in  such  very  doubtful  company  he  was  no 
match  for  the  Goths  of  Alaric,  he  hastily  retraced  his  steps  to 
the  Rhone,  and  retired  within  the  walls  of  his  capital  at  Aries. 
Gerontius,  taking  advantage  of  the  absence  of  Constantine,  and 
of  a  mutiny  among  the  soldiers  of  various  nationalities  engaged 
in  Spain,  rebelled  against  the  youthful  Constans,  and  set  up 
his  own  son  Maximus  as  Emperor  or  Augustus,  with  his 
imperial  capital  at  Tarragona.  And  the  new  usurper — seeking 
to  overthrow  the  reigning  usurper — adopted  the  old  tactics,  and 
invited  the  Barbarians,  who  were  driven  hither  and  thither  in 
Gaul,  to  cross  the  Pyrenees,  and  assist  him  against  the  imperial 
forces  of  Honorius  and  the  quasi-imperial  forces  of  Constantine 
in  Spain.  And  thus  it  was  that  the  Vandals  and  the  Suevians 
and  the  Alans,  introduced  into  Gaul  by  Stilicho  to  embarrass 
Constantine,  and  introduced  into  Spain  by  Gerontius  to  em- 
barrass Constans,  promptly  turned  their  arms  against  their 
various  allies,  and  proceeded  to  ravage  Spain  for  themselves.2 

1  The  levies  of  Verenianus  and  his  brothers  seem  to  have  arrived  too  late  to 
defend  the  passes  of  the  Pyrenees.     As  soon  as  the  Barbarians  had  actually  crossed 
the  mountains,  their  immense  numbers  would,  of  course,  have  overwhelmed  the 
patriotic  Guerilleros  in  the  plain  country. 

Of  the  four  brothers  who  raised  and  led  these  rude  levies  in  defence  of  the 
rights  of  their  contemptible  kinsman,  Lagodius  and  Theodosius  escaped  the 
destruction  of  their  followers.  Verenianus  and  Didymus  were  taken  prisoners  and 
immediately  executed,  after  the  savage  fashion  of  the  day,  at  Aries. 

2  See  Bury,  op.  cit.,  i. ,  41 ;  Freeman,  in  Eng.  Hist.  Review,  i. ,  60.     There  were 
now  six  Emperors !     Theodosius  at  Constantinople,  Honorius  at  Ravenna,  Con- 
stantine at  Aries,  Constans  at  Saragossa  (Cassaraugusta),  Maximus  at  Tarragona, 
and  Attalus  at  Rome. 


406.]  THE  BARBARIANS.  47 

The  Romans,  indeed,  of  all  parties  in  Spain,  fared  equally 
ill  at  the  hands  of  the  invaders,  who  showed  themselves,  with 
a  pleasing  impartiality,  equally  hostile  to  Honorius,  to  Con- 
stantine,  to  Constans,  and  to  Gerontius.  Constans  fled  at 
their  approach,  and  sought  refuge  at  Vienne,  where  he  was 
taken  and  put  to  death  by  his  old  tutor  Gerontius — himself  a 
fugitive  from  his  own  unruly  allies.  Constantine,  besieged  at 
Aries  by  the  imperial  general  Constantius,  and  finding  further 
resistance  impossible,  assumed  the  habit  of  a  Christian  priest, 
and  craved  his  life,  without  success,  at  the  hands  of  the  victors. 
Gerontius,  hard  pressed  by  the  imperial  legions  on  the  Rhone, 
fled  into  Spain,  where  he  fell  by  his  own  sword  to  escape  the 
violence  of  his  own  troops.  Meanwhile,  the  only  man  who 
could  cope  with  the  Goth  had  already  found  his  reward  at  the 
hand  of  his  sovereign.  Stilicho,  the  mainstay  of  the  falling 
Empire,  had  been  sacrificed  to  a  Court  intrigue,  and  had  been 
executed  with  his  whole  family  at  Ravenna  in  408.  It  was 
time  for  Alaric  to  advance.  Italy  was  undefended,  Rome  was 
at  the  mercy  of  the  Barbarian.  But  the  city  was  ransomed  and 
spared  by  the  invader.  The  title  of  Emperor  had  no  charms 
for  the  King  of  the  Visigoths ;  and  Alaric  contemptuously 
invested  one  Attalus,  a  Roman  Prefect,  with  the  imperial 
purple,  of  which,  after  twelve  months'  hesitation,  he  no  less 
contemptuously  stripped  him.  Disgusted  at  length  by  the 
tergiversation  and  treachery  of  Ravenna,  Alaric  turned  his 
arms  once  more  against  Rome.  And  then  no  puppet  Emperor, 
no  Court  intrigue,  no  religious  ceremonial,  was  found  to  stay 
his  hand.  The  priests,  indeed,  had  unwittingly  fought  for 
Alaric  in  the  palace  at  Ravenna.  For  they  had  induced  the 
feeble  Honorius  to  issue  that  disastrous  and  insulting  edict 
by  which  neither  heretics  nor  pagans  were  to  be  permitted  to 
engage  in  the  armies  of  the  Empire.  And  thus  forty  thousand 
of  the  best  troops  that  would  have  served  to  resist  the  invaders 
were  dismissed  from  the  Imperial  service  at  the  moment  of  the 
Imperial  danger.  The  issue  was  never  doubtful.  Rome  fell ; 
but  the  victor  did  not  long  survive  his  victory. 

While  the  sturdy  Goth  triumphed  in  Italy,  the  Vandals  and 
their  savage  companions  were  devastating  Spain.  The  north- 
west was  occupied,  if  not  entirely  overcome,  by  the  Suevians ; 
Lusitania  was  overrun  by  the  Alans,  while  the  central  and 
southern  provinces  were  ravaged  by  the  Vandals.  The  Alans 
were  led  by  Atacius,  the  Suevians  by  Hermanaric,  and  the 
Vandals,  the  fiercest  of  the  three,  by  the  terrible  Gunderic, 


48  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

who  was  succeeded  by  the  yet  more  terrible  Gaiseric.  The 
destruction  wrought  by  these  hordes  of  Barbarians  was  terrific. 
They  not  only  conquered,  they  destroyed.  "Not  only  man- 
kind," says  Orosius,  "but  the  fruits  of  the  earth,  the  beasts  of 
the  field,  cities,  storehouses,  everything  perished  as  if  devoured 
by  the  flames  of  a  general  conflagration.  And  the  horrors  of 
ensuing  famine  gave  place  only  to  pestilence.  For  so  great 
was  the  number  of  unburied  bodies  of  man  and  beast,  that  the 
entire  country  became,  as  it  were,  a  vast  charnel-house." 

It  is  difficult  to  account  for  the  extraordinary  facility  with 
which  these  Barbarians  appear  to  have  been  able  to  possess 
themselves  of  the  greatest  of  the  provinces  of  Rome.  The 
terror  that  was  inspired  by  the  vast  numbers  of  their  terrible 
tribes,  and  the  very  names  of  their  yet  more  terrible  leaders, 
was  no  doubt  enormous.  But  the  rapidity  with  which  they 
overran  the  Spanish  Peninsula  is  still  well-nigh  inexplicable. 
Three  months  before  their  descent  into  Spain,  just  such  Bar- 
barians had  been  driven  out  of  the  heart  of  Italy.  Four  years 
earlier  Alaric  himself  had  been  repulsed  on  the  very  frontier 
of  that  country.  Why  were  the  degraded  Romans  of  Spain  so 
inferior  to  the  degraded  Romans  of  Italy  ?  Stilicho  and  his 
Barbarian  troops  counted,  no  doubt,  for  much  in  the  struggle. 
A  skilful  commander  in  those  days  was  worth  at  least  as  much 
as  Napoleon's  forty  thousand  men.  But  were  there  no  Spaniards 
left  in  Spain  ?  Was  the  old  Celtiberian  blood  entirely  ex- 
hausted ?  No  explanation  is  offered  by  history.  We  are  merely 
told  that  five  centuries  after  Numantia,  a  Barbarian  host  marched 
unchecked  across  the  Peninsula,  that  the  fatherland  of  Viriatus 
was  invaded  and  occupied  without  the  serious  opposition  of  a 
single  Lusitanian ;  and  that  the  country  which  had  for  two 
hundred  years  resisted  the  forces  of  Republican  Rome,  which 
had  defied  Consuls  and  defeated  armies,  and,  when  exhausted 
by  long  years  of  conflict,  had  hardly  yielded  to  the  generalship 
of  Pompey  and  of  Caesar,  was  content,  almost  without  striking 
a  blow,  to  submit,  not  merely  to  a  change  of  masters,  but  to 
utter  destruction  at  the  hands  of  a  horde  of  savages.  It  is  hard 
to  believe — it  is  still  harder  to  understand.  It  is  reasonable  at 
least  to  seek  to  solve  the  enigma. 

I.  The  devastation  that  was  wrought  both  in  Italy  and  in 
the  provinces  by  the  incidence  of  Imperial  taxation  and  the 
tyranny  of  the  Imperial  tax-collectors — more  especially  after 
the  time  of  Caracalla — though  it  has  perhaps  been  rhetorically 
exaggerated  by  contemporary  Christian  writers,  was  undoubt- 


406.]  THE  BARBARIANS.  49 

edly  a  terrible  reality.  Of  the  exactions  of  the  tax-gatherers  ; 
of  the  financial  persecution ;  of  the  legal  and  illegal  torture  to 
which  even  Roman  citizens  and  all  industrious  and  worthy  men 
were  exposed ;  of  the  ruin  and  flight  of  the  municipal  magis- 
trates ;  of  the  decay  of  industry  ;  of  the  universal  impoverishment 
and  misery  and  despair  of  the  whole  nation,  we  may  read  in 
the  heart-rending  lamentations  of  Salvian.  It  is  not  hard  to 
understand  that  the  provincials  so  harassed,  and  driven  to 
actual — and  not  merely  figurative — despair  by  this  "consuming 
hierarchy  of  extortion  "  should  await  with  indifference  the  ap- 
proach of  the  terrible  Vandal,  as  of  something  likely  to  change 
at  least  the  nature,  if  it  might  not  lighten  the  weight,  of  the 
burden  of  their  insupportable  misery.1 

The  exactions  of  the  publicans  and  farmers  of  the  revenue 
had  long  been  proverbial,  even  in  the  palmy  days  of  the  Em- 
pire ;  and  while  the  assistance  of  the  Imperial  officers  was 
easily  obtained  by  the  legalised  oppressor,  the  succour  of  the 
Judges  or  Tribunes,  in  cases  of  even  the  most  flagrant  ex- 
tortion, could  hardly  be  purchased  by  the  oppressed.  After  the 
time  of  Caracalla  the  oppression  became  more  severe  throughout 
the  provinces.  And  the  reforms  of  Diocletian  completed  the 
misery  of  the  entire  population.  For  not  only  did  the  army  of 
new  provincial  officers  entail  increased  taxation  to  provide  for 
their  support,  but,  as  a  matter  of  administrative  discipline,  each 
town  was  made  responsible,  in  the  person  of  its  Curials,2  or  chief 
municipal  officers,  not  only  for  its  own  taxes,  but  for  those  of 
the  surrounding  districts.  The  Curials,  thus,  from  honoured 
and  honourable  functionaries,  engaged  in  the  gratuitous  per- 
formance of  civic  duties,  became  exposed  as  tax-collectors  or 
unremunerated  publicans  to  the  odium  of  their  fellow-citizens, 
while  they  were  themselves  ruined  by  the  burden  of  their 
financial  responsibilities  to  the  Imperial  Government.  It  was 
not  surprising  that  respectable  citizens  should  flee  from  their 
homes  to  escape  election ;  and  the  office  was  bestowed  upon  men 

1  See  Salvian,  De  Gubernatione  Dei,  lib.  v ;  Lactantius,  De  Mortibus  perse- 
cutorum,  with  special  reference  to  the  time  of  Diocletian  ;  Zosimus,  Hist. ,  ii. ,  38  ; 
Montalembert,  op.  cit.,  i.,  18 ;  Littre',  Etudes  sur  les  Barbares,  pp.  41,  126,  123, 
201. 

Masdeu,  vii.,  39,  gives  a  terrible  list  of  the  principal  Imperial  functionaries 
engaged  in  the  collection  of  the  rates  and  the  harassing  of  the  taxpayers : 
Procuratores,  Agentes,  Censitores,  Exactores,  Arcarii,  Commentatores,  Tabularii, 
Publicani,  Rationales,  Actuarii,  Frumentatores,  Carnicularii,  Accensi,  Questionarii, 
Assessores,  Appositores. 

2  See  Littre,  op.  cit.,  p.  40. 

VOL-     .  4 


50  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

with  neither  means  nor  morality,  who  invoked  the  forces  of  the 
Empire  to  enable  them  to  plunder  their  neighbours.1 

So  numerous,  says  Lactantius,  were  the  receivers  in  com- 
parison with  the  payers,  and  so  enormous  the  weight  of 
taxation,  that  the  labourer  broke  down,  the  fields  became 
deserts,  and  woods  grew  where  the  plough  had  furrowed  the 
soil.  It  was  impossible  to  number  the  officials  who  were  rained 
upon  every  province  and  upon  every  town ;  or  to  make  head 
against  the  condemnations,  the  exactions,  and  the  outrages  of 
which  the  peaceful  and  once  prosperous  inhabitants  were  the 
daily  victims. 

That  such  a  system  of  administration  and  oppression  should 
render  the  Provincials  indifferent  to  any  change  of  masters  is 
scarcely  to  be  wondered  at.2  Yet  this  financial  ruin  is  but  one 
of  many  causes  that  combined  to  render  Spain  an  easy  prey  to 
the  Barbarian. 

II.  Almost  equally  important,  though  to  some  extent  de- 
pendent upon  it,  was  the  decay  of  the  Spanish  manhood. 
That  the  slaves  and  paupers  who  composed  the  greater  part 
of  the  population  of  Roman  Spain  in  406,  should  be  willing  or 
even  able  to  take  up  arms  in  defence  of  the  Empire  was  hardly 
to  be  expected.  For  five  hundred  years  the  free  manhood  of 
the  province  had  marched  under  the  Roman  standards  to  be 
slain  on  every  frontier  of  the  Empire.  The  Spanish  troops 

1  See  Sheppard,  Fall  of  Rome  and  Rise  of  New  Nationalities.     The  whole 
question  of  provincial  taxation,  as  well  under  the  Republic  as  under  the  Empire, 
will  be  found  treated  in  a  masterly  manner  by  Joachim  Marquardt,  L organisation 

financilre  chez  les  Romains,  1888,  pp.  207-309.  As  to  the  various  heads  and 
divisions  of  provincial  taxation,  ordinary  and  extraordinary,  and  the  administration 
of  taxes  generally,  see  a  most  admirable  rhumf  in  the  same  work,  pp.  335-400. 
As  to  the  responsibility  of  the  Curials,  see  Cod.  Theod. ,  lib.  xii. ,  tit.  ' '  Si 
Curia  les  ".  In  Spain,  before  the  Gothic  invasion,  the  land  tax  alone  had  grown  to 
35  per  cent,  upon  all  the  agricultural  produce  of  the  country.  The  corvee,  or  the 
obligation  of  personal  service,  was  rigorously  enforced,  and  the  Emperor  himself 
had  become  far  the  largest  landed  proprietor  in  Spain  as  well  as  in  Italy. 

2  See  Lactantius,  ubi  supra;   Salvian,  v.  ;  Orosius,  vii.,  41.     It   is  hard  to 
believe  these  writers  when  they   speak  of  the  Barbarians,  not  only  the  ignavi 
Visigothi,  but  the  terrible  Vandals  and  Suevians,  being  actually  welcomed  by  the 
oppressed  Provincials.     Sidonius  Apollinarius  speaks  (Epist.,  vii.,  14)  in  a  very 
different  strain.     Cf.  Littr^,  op.  cit.,  p.  200.     It  is  pretty  certain  that  the  outrages 
committed  by  the  invaders  were  regarded  with  leniency  by  those  earnest  Christian 
men,  who  thought  but  little  of  the  death  of  the  body,  and  who  looked  upon  the 
Romans,  still  half  Pagan  in  religion,  and  entirely  Pagan  in  morality,  as  killers  of 
the  soul.     The  Spaniard  Prudentius  seems   to  have  been  almost  the  only  one 
among  the  early  Christian  writers  who  had  any  patriotism.     His  kingdom,  no  less 
than  that  of  Salvian,  was  in  heaven.     But  as  long  as  he  lived  on  earth  he  was 
proud  to  be  a  Roman  citizen.     As  to  Salvian  generally,  see  Hodgkin,  op.  cit.,  vol. 
i. ,  chapter  x. 


406.]  THE  BARBARIANS.  51 

were  not  only  the  sturdiest  in  the  armies  of  Rome,  but  they 
were  perhaps  the  most  numerous  ;  and  the  legionary  never 
returned  to  Spain.  He  settled  in  far  away  Roumania,  where 
his  ancient  language  is  still  spoken  by  his  modern  descendants. 
He  killed  himself  with  riotous  living  at  the  capital.  But  in 
nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  cases  out  of  a  thousand,  he  died 
in  his  harness,  fighting  the  battles  of  the  Empire.1  And  his 
death  at  least  was  not  inglorious.  He  lived  a  free  Spaniard, 
and  he  died  a  Roman  soldier ;  while  his  less  fortunate  brother, 
who  remained  at  home  in  his  province,  lived  and  died  a  Roman 
slave. 

III.  The  large  estates  or  lalifundia,  which  were  said  to  have 
destroyed  Italy,  had  also  destroyed  rural  life  in  the  provinces. 
The  whole  of  Roman  Africa  at  the  time  of  Honorius  is  said 
to  have  belonged  to  six  great  landholders,  and  though  the  evil 
was  not  so  enormous  in  the  Peninsula,  the  extension  of  prse- 
dial  slavery,  in  the  absence  of  free  labourers,  or  even  of  free 
agricultural  tenants,   combined  with  other  causes  to  destroy 
agriculture,  and    that  great    agricultural   class    which    has    so 
constantly  been  at  once  the  support  and  the  glory  of  Spain. 

IV.  The  enormous  growth  of  slavery  in  the  towns  was  not 
so  disastrous  as  the  destruction  of  free  labour  in  the  country, 
but  it  tended  to  degrade  the  whole  race.     For  domestic  slavery 
in  the  Roman  Empire  was  by  far  the  most  demoralising  form  of 

1  The  detailed  lists  given  by  Masdeu,  vol.  vii.,  pp.  50-54,  of  the  Spanish  legions 
employed  abroad,  and  the  foreign  legions  quartered  in  Spain,  are  most  instructive. 
And  yet  this  most  painstaking  of  historians  does  not  take  any  account  of  the 
Spanish  soldiers  who  found  service  in  legions  not  distinctly  Spanish,  and  fought 
for  the  Empire  throughout  the  world.  See  also  Booking,  Notitia  Dignitatum, 
etc.  (1839-1853).  On  the  farthest  frontier  of  far  away  Britain,  defending  the  Roman 
Wall  against  the  Picts,  we  find  records  of  many  Spanish  legions  and  Spanish  com- 
manders. Asturian  troops  were  long  quartered  at  Axelodunum,  at  ^Esica,  at 
Condercum,  at  Cilurnum  on  the  Tyne.  See  The  Roman  Wall,  by  Collingwood 
Bruce,  1867,  3rd  ed.,  pp.  68,  149-158.  A  monument  to  an  Asturian  leader  named 
Aventinus  is  still  extant,  ibid.,  p.  64.  An  inscription  at  Cilurnum,  of  the  time  of 
Elagabalus,  records  the  fact  of  the  restoration  of  the  temple  in  which  the  stone 
was  set  by  the  soldiers  of  an  Asturian  legion,  ibid.,  pp.  158-60.  An  altar  near 
I^aryport  in  Cumberland  was'dedicated  by  the  Prefect  of  the  first  cohort  of  the 
Spaniards,  ibid.,  pp.  365-6.  And  the  memory  of  a  Temple  in  the  same  distant 
land,  dedicated  to  the  Spaniard  Marcus  Aurelius,  by  two  legions  of  Spanish  foot, 
and  one  cohort  of  horse  soldiers,  is  perpetuated  in  an  inscription  reproduced  at  pp. 
412,  413  of  the  same  interesting  work. 

It  is  sufficiently  strange  that  the  first  recorded  mention  of  a  British  fleet  is  in 
connection  with  the  Spanish  Emperor,  Hadrian,  and  that  the  fleet  itself  was  com- 
manded by  a  Spanish  Prefect.  On  a  slab  found  in  Umbria,  and  referred  to  by 
Bruce,  op.  cit.,  p.  13,  is  the  following  inscription  :  Rlecto  a  Divo  Hadriano  el 
misio  in  expcditionem  Britannicam.  trib.  cohor  I,  Hispan.  Equit.  Prof,  classis 
Britannicae. 


52  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

the  dark  institution  that  has  ever  existed  in  the  civilised  world. 
And  while  it  degraded  labour,  and  rendered  the  great  human 
duty  of  work,  one  scarcely  to  be  performed  by  a  free  man,  and 
thus  struck  at  the  root  of  all  perfection  and  of  all  progress  in 
any  art  or  craft,  it  demoralised  the  slave-owners  to  an  extent 
which  it  is  difficult  to  convey  in  an  English  printed  book,  and 
which  the  pages  of  Suetonius  and  Juvenal  may  but  suggest  to  the 
diligent  and  careful  student  of  human  corruption.  And  so  it 
came  to  pass  that  when  the  Vandal  thundered  on  the  frontier, 
there  were  not  only  no  Roman  soldiers — there  were  no  free 
Romans  left  to  bar  his  entry.  The  garrison  of  Spain  had  been 
gradually  reduced  to  the  most  insignificant  proportions.  And 
the  soldiers  who  composed  the  single  legion  that  sufficed  for 
the  maintenance  of  public  order  were  either  degenerate  Pro- 
vincials, unworthy  to  take  their  place  in  the  armies  ever  fighting 
on  the  frontier,  or  the  still  more  degenerate  Italians,  who  had 
been  sent  over  to  take  the  place  of  better  men,  in  the  most 
peaceable  of  the  Roman  provinces.1  For  in  Spain  there  had 
been  no  fighting  for  four  hundred  years.  Even  the  Cantabrians 
needed  no  subjugation,  or  no  one  had  cared  to  subdue  them. 
The  old  fighting  stock  had  departed  ;  the  old  fighting  traditions 
had  died  away.  Peaceful  men  and  peaceful  pursuits  had  taken 
their  place.  Those  who  were  not  slaves  or  paupers  were 
decayed  and  emasculated  by  luxury,  and  the  slaves  and  paupers 
had  no  heart  to  fight,  for  they  knew  of  nothing  that  was  worth 
the  push  of  a  lance. 

V.  In  the  last  place,  Christianity  was  by  no  means  the 
least  of  the  manifold  influences  that  tended  to  weaken  the 
resistance  of  the  Roman  province.  It  was  not  only  that  the 
new  religion  was  a  religion  of  peace ;  Christians  have  fought, 
and  fought  better  than  other  men,  when  they  have  had  any- 
thing to  fight  for.  But  the  rise  of  Christianity  was  already  a 
source  of  disunion  among  the  forces  of  the  Roman  world.  Few 
Christians  who  could  avoid  military  service  were  to  be  found  in 
the  ranks  of  the  legions.  Their  best  men,  their  boldest  spirits 
were  presbyters  and  deacons  ;  their  natural  leaders  were  metro- 
politans and  bishops.  Hosius,  who  might  have  led  the  armies 
of  Viriatus,  had  devoted  his  magnificent  energy  to  the  sub- 

1  After  the  time  of  Gratian,  the  Roman  soldiers  complained  of  the  weight  of 
the  armour,  which  they  seldom  wore !  The  relaxation  of  discipline  rendered  them 
less  able  and  less  willing  to  support  the  fatigues  of  the  service.  The  heavy  weapons 
of  their  ancestors,  the  short  sword  and  the  pilum  which  had  subdued  the  world, 
insensibly  dropped  from  their  feeble  hands.  See  Gibbon,  cap.  xxvii. 


411.]  THE  BARBARIANS.  53 

jugation  of  Arianism.  Vincent,  who  might  have  held  the 
breach  at  Numantia,  had  only  been  called  upon  to  maintain  his 
faith,  undaunted  by  the  tortures  of  an  over  zealous  president. 
The  empire  of  Christ  was  not  of  this  world,  and  for  worldly 
empire  the  Christian  would  hardly  care  to  fight.  The  end  of 
the  age  was  daily,  almost  hourly,  expected.  The  faithful  soldier 
and  servant  of  Christ  would  render  unto  Caesar,  aye,  even  to 
Maximus  or  to  Galerius,  the  things  that  were  Caesar's ;  but  the 
business,  the  pleasure,  the  entire  work  of  his  life,  was  devoted 
to  the  things  that  were  God's. 


CHAPTER  V. 

CHRISTIANITY. 

(A.D.  60—600.) 

IN  no  part  of  the  Roman  Empire  in  the  west  did  Christianity 
spread  more  rapidly,  or  grow  more  vigorously,  than  in  the 
Peninsula.  That  St.  Paul  intended  to  visit  the  Christians  in 
Spain  is  as  certain  as  that  he  wrote  his  Epistle  to  the  Christians 
at  Rome.  And  that  his  intentions  were  carried  out  would  seem 
at  least  to  be  fairly  probable  1 ;  although  history  is  silent  as  to 
the  fact  of  his  visit,  and  even  tradition  is  meagre  and  uncertain 
as  to  the  details.  Where  and  when  the  apostle  landed,  how 
long  he  stayed,  whence  and  whither  he  journeyed,  what  churches 
he  strengthened,  what  heathen  he  converted,  what  Christian 
disciples  he  left  behind  him — on  all  these  points  nothing  certain 
is  told.  Had  his  personal  influence  been  as  powerful  and  ex- 
tensive as  it  most  undoubtedly  was  in  other  provinces  of  the 
Empire,  we  should  have  expected  to  find  a  somewhat  more 
definite  record  of  his  preaching  and  teaching  in  the  Peninsula. 

But  St.  Paul  has  never  been  as  popular  in  Spain,  nor,  indeed, 
in  any  Roman  Catholic  country,  as  many  other  Christian  saints. 
Pedros  and  Juans,  Joses  and  Diegos,  are  to  be  found  in  every 
hamlet,  while  Pablo  is  not  much  commoner  than  Caesar  or 
Horacio  in  the  towns  and  villages  of  Castile. 

The  apostle  whose  name,  at  least,  has  played  the  leading 
part  in  the  religious  development  of  Spain,  is  Saint  James 
or  Santiago,2  the  special  property  of  the  Spaniard — his  battle- 
cry  in  two  worlds,  the  inspirer  of  his  chivalry  in  all  ages,  the 
hero  of  his  great  National  Miracle,  the  patron  under  whose 
sacred  banner  his  armies  have  marched  to  victory  for  a  thousand 

1  See  Romans  xv.   24 ;  Eusebius,   apud  Rohrbach,   ii. ,   614 ;  Neander  (ed. 
Bohn),  i.,  117,  and  a  number  of  ancient  authorities  quoted  by  Lafuente,  ii.,   185. 
Cf.  Muratorian  Fragment ;  Antiq.  Ital.,  iii.,  353. 

2  As  to  the  legend  of  Santiago,  see  post,  chapter  xv, 


CHRISTIANITY.  55 

years.  And  to  doubt  that  the  bones  of  the  saint,  martyred  at 
Jerusalem,  and  heaven-sent  to  the  shores  of  Spain,  now  rest 
in  most  sacred  Compostella,  amid  the  wild  mountains  of 
westeni  Gallicia,  would  be  an  affront  not  only  to  the  religious, 
but  to  the  national  sentiment  of  the  Peninsula. 

The  rise  and  progress  of  Christianity  in  the  Roman  world 
is  one  of  the  most  interesting  questions  that  can  engage  the 
attention  of  the  historian ;  but  its  consideration,  even  in  the 
briefest  manner,  would  be  quite  outside  the  limits  of  the  present 
work.  Of  the  spread  of  the  new  religion  in  Spain  during  the 
second  and  third  centuries  of  our  era,  we  have,  unfortunately, 
but  the  scantiest  and  most  uncertain  records.  And  as  in  the 
political  history  of  these  early  days,  we  hear  of  little  but  battles 
and  military  heroes,  so  the  history  of  religion  or  religious  thought 
is  represented  only  by  records  of  bloody  persecutions  and  legends 
of  the  martyrs  of  the  faith. 

The  actual  extent  of  the  persecution  of  the  Christians  under 
the  earlier  Emperors,  as  well  as  the  character  and  causes  of  the 
various  outbreaks  of  Imperial  intolerance  of  Christianity,  have 
always  been  matters  of  the  greatest  uncertainty ;  but  it  would 
seem  probable  that,  in  the  provinces  of  Hispania  at  all  events, 
with  the  exception,  perhaps,  of  a  short  period  during  the  reign 
of  the  virtuous  Trajan,  the  Christians l  were  subjected  to  no 
general  or  systematic  persecution,  whether  on  account  of  their 
religion  or  their  political  opinions,  until  the  dark  days  of 
Diocletian. 

Eugenius  of  Toledo,  who  suffered  under  Domitian,  is  the 
first  great  name  in  the  Spanish  martyrology ;  Mancius  died  for 
his  faith  at  Evora  under  Trajan ;  Facundus  and  Primitivus  in 
Gallicia  under  Marcus  Aurelius,  and  the  more  celebrated 2 
Fructuosus  suffered  death  at  Tarragona,  under  Gallienus. 
These  were  the  gallant  witnesses  among  the  early  Christians, 
who  met  their  death  bravely  with  their  faces  to  the  foe.  For 
rashness  rather  than  reserve  characterised  the  attitude  of  the 
converts  to  the  faith  in  the  One  True  God,  and  many  were  the 
endeavours  made  by  more  prudent  leaders  to  restrain  the  over 
zealous  from  condemning  themselves  to  unnecessary  martyrdom, 
by  offering  public  and  gratuitous  insult  to  the  religion,  and  even 
to  the  civil  authorities,  of  the  Empire. 

1  See  Renan,  Marc  Aurlle  ;  and  as  to  Trajan's  policy  as  regards  the  Christians 
generally,  Bury,  Student's  Roman  Empire  (1893),  pp.  445-448. 

2  A  long  list  of  the  early  Christian  martyrs  of  Spain  will  be  found  in  Masdeu, 
vii.,  pp.  217,  220.     Fructuosus  is  still  the  patron  saint  of  Tarragona. 


56  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

But  the  night  grew  darker  before  the  dawn ;  and  the 
weakness  rather  than  the  policy  of  Diocletian  devoted  the 
Christians  throughout  the  Roman  world  to  a  final  and  fruitless 
persecution.  Yet  the  agony,  if  dreadful,  was  at  least  of  brief 
duration.  It  was  only  in  303  that  Galerius  persuaded  the 
Emperor  at  Nicomedia  to  issue  the  dreadful  edict.  In  305 
Diocletian  resigned  the  purple ;  and  Spain  was  released  from 
the  destroyer.  Galerius  bore  no  rule  in  western  Europe ;  and 
while  a  pitiless  persecution  was  carried  on  in  Italy  and  in  the 
east,  Constantius  Chlorus,  the  amiable  father  of  Constantine, 
who  ruled  in  Spain,  not  only  displayed  a  most  generous  tolera- 
tion, but  secretly  favoured  the  new  religion  by  every  means  in 
his  power.  Had  it  not  been  for  one  Dacian,  president  of 
Aquitania  Secunda,  who  seems  to  have  taken  upon  himself 
the  position  of  arch-inquisitor  in  the  Tarraconensis,  upon  the 
promulgation  of  the  edict  of  Nicomedia,  the  last  persecution  to 
which  the  Christian  Church  was  subjected  would  have  left  Spain 
unmolested  and  unharmed. 

But  under  Dacian,  incited  by  Galerius,  and  hardly  checked 
by  Constantius,  the  Spanish  Christians  suffered  for  their  faith 
throughout  the  north  and  north-east  of  the  province ;  and  at 
Csesaraugusta  more  especially,  patria  sanctorum  marlyrum,  the  cruel 
and  treacherous  conduct  of  the  Roman  president  recalled  the 
darker  days  of  Lucullus  and  Galba. 

Of  all  the  victims  of  Dacian,  St.  Vincent,1  who  faced  death 
and  torments  at  Valencia  in  the  course  of  the  year  304,  is  the 
most  celebrated  in  Christian  story.  Of  the  pious  and  learned 
bishop,  the  intrepid  witness,  the  unflinching  sufferer,  the  tale 
of  the  almost  superhuman  constancy  was  told  throughout 
Europe  in  the  plaintive  and  graceful  verse  of  Prudentius. 

Our  knowledge  of  this  Spanish  persecution,  such  as  it  was, 
is  derived  indeed  almost  entirely  from  the  works  of  this  first  of 
Christian  poets ;  and  a  poet,  however  honest,  is  scarcely  a  safe 
guide  in  matters  historical,  more  especially  when  his  feelings  are 
deeply  stirred  by  the  subject  of  his  own  recital.  But  in  306 
Constantine  was  proclaimed  at  York  ;  and  his  influence  at  once 
made  itself  felt  throughout  the  Roman  world.  Persecution 
ceased.  Christianity  was  at  least  permitted  to  every  Roman 
citizen.  A  dozen  years  later  it  was  to  be  the  faith  of  the 

1  For  the  origin  of  the  name  of  Cape  St.  Vincent,  so  far  removed  from  Valencia, 
see  Mariana,  vii.,  4  ;  and  as  to  the  removal  of  a  holy  coat  of  St.  Vincent  from 
Saragossa  to  Paris,  szepost,  p.  65  of  this  work.  Cf.  fcsp.  Sag. ,  viii. ,  249. 


321.]  CHRISTIANITY.  57 

Empire.  Upon  the  proclamation  of  Theodosius  it  became  the 
only  form  of  religion  recognised  in  the  Roman  world.1 

In  Spain,  ever  marching  in  the  van  of  ecclesiastical  develop- 
ment, we  have,  from  the  very  beginning  of  the  fourth  century, 
the  records  of  the  Spanish  Councils  which  afford  us  much  insight 
into  the  religious  life  of  the  province. 

At  Illiberis  or  Elvira,  on  the  site,  it  may  be,  of  the  more 
celebrated  city  of  Granada,  some  three  hundred  years  after  the 
birth  of  Christ,  was  held  the  first  Christian  Council  of  whose 
proceedings  we  have  any  authentic  record.2 

Nineteen  bishops  and  thirty-six  priests,  with  an  uncertain 
number  of  Christian  deacons,  constituted  this  early  Council,  and 
if  every  one  of  its  eighty-one  decrees  is  of  transcendent  interest 
to  the  student  of  theology,  there  are  not  wanting  among  them 
some  few  of  almost  equal  interest  to  the  student  of  Spanish 
history.  Conspicuous,  yet  not  supreme,  among  their  early 
councillors  was  Hosius,  Bishop  of  Cordova,  the  greatest  of 
Spanish  Churchmen  in  the  early  days  of  the  Christian  Church. 
He  was  not,  indeed,  counted  among  the  martyrs  of  the  faith, 
nor  has  the  memory  of  his  noble  and  stirring  career  procured 
for  him  the  posthumous  honour  of  canonisation ;  yet  he  was 
"  approved,"  says  Eusebius,  for  the  sobriety  and  genuineness  of 
his  faith,  and  for  his  virtuous  life,  and  pronounced  by  no  less  a 
doctor  than  Athanasius,  to  be  "  the  most  illustrious  of  men  ".3 
Born  in  southern  Spain  about  256,  we  know  nothing  of  his 
career  until  at  the  close  of  the  persecution  under  Dacian  he 
was  consecrated  Bishop  of  Cordova ;  and  his  earliest  public  act 
in  connection  with  the  Christian  Church  was  his  appearance  as 
Vice-President  of  the  Council  or  Synod  of  Elvira. 

In  316,  we  find  him  at  the  Imperial  Court  of  Constantine, 
whose  respect  and  admiration  he  was  not  slow  to  acquire,  and 
who  entrusted  him  in  321  with  the  celebrated  mission,  enjoining 
doctrinal  uniformity,  to  Alexander,  Bishop  of  Alexandria,  and 
to  the  more  renowned  Arius — a  mission,  in  the  words  of  the 
ecclesiastical  historian  Socrates,  "  the  most  honourable  and  the 

1The  Pax  Ecclesice  was  proclaimed  in  312.  "  La  Religion  Chrgtienne  cessait 
4  peine  d'etre  proscrite  que  deja  elle  devenait  prote'g^e,  puis  dominante,"  Monta- 
lembert,  Moines  d  Occident,  i. ,  5. 

2  Possibly  as  early  as  306  ;  the  date  is  very  uncertain.    In  any  case  the  council 
was  held  not  later  than  316  ;  nine  years  at  least  before  that  of  Nicaea  (325).     The 
name  Illiberis  is  derived  by  so  good  an  authority  as  Mr.  Wentworth  Webster 
(Spain,  p.  75),  from  the  Basque  or  Iberian  beri  —  new,  iri  =  town,  i.e.,  Newtown. 

3  Dean  Stanley  gives  him  the  pre-eminence  over  all  his  contemporaries,  in- 
cluding even  Athanasius  himself,  Eastern  Church,  p.  244  (Ed.  1862). 


58  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

most  important  that  could  have  been  confided  to  any  Church- 
man "  of  the  day.1  The  mission  failed ;  and  by  the  advice  of 
the  Bishop  of  Cordova,  Constantine  convoked  the  Fathers  of 
the  Christian  Church  to  meet  him  at  Nicaea. 

The  exact  precedence  accorded  to  Hosius  at  this  ever- 
celebrated  council,  is  a  matter  of  bitter  controversy.  He 
probably  took  the  first  place,  pre-eminent  over  all  other 
ecclesiastics,  by  the  side  of  the  Emperor  himself;  and  his 
influence  was  undoubtedly  enormous.  Whether  his  position 
was  that  of  the  legate 2  or  the  rival  of  Rome ;  whether  he  sat 
at  Nicaea  as  the  Pope's  man  or  as  the  Emperor's  man,  or  as 
Hosius,  Bishop  of  Cordova,  it  is  certain,  says  Dean  Stanley, 
"  that  he  was  himself  an  object  of  deeper  interest  to  Christendom 
than  any  Bishop  of  Rome  ".  On  his  return  from  Constantinople 
to  Spain,  the  year  after  the  assembling  of  the  council,  he  paid 
a  visit  to  Italy,  and  saluted,  or  was  saluted  by,  Pope  Sylvester. 
For  twenty  years  more  he  lived  at  Cordova,  occupied  with  the 
business  of  his  See,  until  at  length,  in  347,  he  was  summoned 
once  more  by  the  Emperor  at  Constantinople,  to  preside  at  the 
Council  of  Sardica,  a  city  in  Upper  Moesia,  better  known  to 
modern  readers  by  its  modern  name  of  Sofia,  the  capital  of  the 
still  more  modern  principality  of  Bulgaria.3 

The  Bishop  of  Cordova  was  then  over  ninety  years  of  age. 
The  journey  from  the  Sierra  Morena  to  the  Balkans  would  have 
deterred  many  a  younger  man  from  accepting  the  Imperial 
commission.  But  the  fine  old  Spaniard,  a  citizen  of  no  mean 
city,  mounted  his  mule,  and  rode  across  mountain  and  river, 
through  forest  and  marsh,  for  full  sixteen  hundred  miles  from 
Cordova  to  Sofia,  and  back  again  from  Sofia  to  his  home  at 
Cordova,  when  he  had  finished  the  work  that  had  been  given 
him  to  do. 

But  he  was  not  yet  suffered  to  rest.  Six  years  after  his 
return  from  Sardica  he  was  summoned  to  Milan  by  the  Emperor 
Constantius  II.  (353),  and  urged  to  abandon  the  doctrines  of 
Nicaea  for  those  of  the  rival  and  then  more  popular  school  of 
Arius.  Hosius,  now  nearly  one  hundred  years  of  age,  obeyed 
the  Imperial  summons,  but  disregarded  the  Imperial  dictation. 
He  withstood  the  Emperor  in  his  palace  ;  and,  more  faithful 

1  Socrates,  Hist.  Eccl.,  i. ,  4.  2  Stanley,  op.  cit.,  pp.  in,  112. 

3  As  to  the  secession  of  some  eighty  of  the  eastern  members  of  the  Council  of 
Sardica,  and  their  meeting  at  Philippopolis,  when  both  Hosius  and  Pope  Julius 
were  solemnly  denounced,  see  De  Potten,  Considerations  sur  les  Princifaux  Con- 
dies,  i. ,  330-337.  See  also  Sozomen,  lib.  iii.,  c.  xii. 


358.]  CHRISTIANITY.  59 

or  more  consistent  than  Pope  Liberius,  he  endured  personal 
duress,  if  not  actual  torture,  for  nearly  twelve  months  at 
Sirmium,  rather  than  subscribe  a  formal  declaration  against  the 
teachings  of  his  old  friend  Athanasius,1  and  the  doctrines  which 
he  had  himself  had  so  large  a  share  in  promulgating. 

To  what  extent  he  may  have  relented  in  his  opposition  to 
Arianism  during  his  visit  to  Sirmium  it  is  now  impossible  to  say. 
He  seems,  at  all  events,  to  have  consented  to  hold  communica- 
tion with  two  Arian  bishops,  Valens  and  Urgacius,  an  exhibition 
of  Christian  amity  for  which  he  has  been  severely  blamed  by 
Hilary  of  Poictiers,  and  other  orthodox  critics.  Where  our 
knowledge  of  the  facts  is  so  imperfect,  praise  and  blame  are 
alike  impertinent,  and  we  know  little  more  for  certain  than  that 
Hosius  ultimately  obtained  the  Emperor's  permission  to  return 
to  Spain,  and  that  he  died  at  Cordova  in  357  or  358,  at  the  age 
of  at  least  a  hundred  years. 

Hosius  was  a  fine  specimen  of  a  Christian  Churchman  and 
a  noble  Spaniard  ;  advising  Emperors,  reasoning  with  arch- 
heretics,  convening  councils — neither  fearing  the  strong  nor 
persecuting  the  weak — throughout  a  long  and  honoured  career ; 
and  in  the  evening  of  life  bearing  the  burden  of  his  years 
bravely  across  Alps  and  Pyrenees,  and  holding  his  own  against 
the  arguments  or  the  commands  of  a  fourth  century  Emperor — 
consistent  to  the  last,  even  if  he  did  lapse  into  a  little  over 
Christian  toleration  of  Christian  heresy  ! 

But,  alas !  the  toleration  of  Hosius  was  rare  even  in  the 
fourth  century  ;  and  the  Christians  who  had  braved  and  con- 
verted the  Pagan  world  by  loting  one  another,  were  found 
corrupted  2  by  the  corruption  of  the  Empire  into  which  their 
religion  had  been  absorbed — seeking  to  promote  the  spread  of 
their  faith  in  an  all  merciful  God,  by  the  methods  of  Galerius 
and  Dacian.  Nor  were  these  Christian  rigours  reserved  for 
the  obstinate  heathen.  It  was  Christians,  as  time  and  thought 
developed  differences  in  doctrine  and  practice,  who  suffered 
most  severely  at  the  hands  of  Christians ;  and  within  less  than 


1  See  Socrates,   Hist.   Eccl.,   ii. ,   25,  26.     As  to  what   Hilary  (de  Synodis) 
speaks  of  as  "  the  Blasphemy  of  Hosius,"  and  of  the  character  and  import  of  the 
formularies  that  the  Bishop  of  Cordova  is  said  to  have  signed,  a  full  account  will 
be  found  in  De  Pptten,  Considerations,  etc.,  i. ,  357,  361.     See  also  Fleury,  Hist. 
Ecclesiastique,  xvi.,  46;  Stanley's  Eastern  Church,   ubi  supra;  and  Tillemont 
torn.  vii. 

2  "  Quam  dissimilis  est  mine  a  se  ipso  populus  Christianus,  id  est  ab  eo  quod 
fuit  quondam  .  .  .  sentina  vitiorum  !  "  Salvian,  De  Gub.  Dei,  lib.  v. 


60  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

fifty  years  from  the  baptism  of  Constantine,  a  Spanish  bishop,1 
with  his  attendant  presbyters,  and  a  noble  lady  disciple,  were 
publicly  executed  as  heretics  by  a  Christian  Emperor  at  the 
earnest  solicitation  of  more  orthodox  Christian  ecclesiastics. 
The  death  of  Vincent  was  followed  in  less  than  a  century  by 
the  death  of  Priscillian,  the  proto-martyr  of  Non-Conformity 
in  the  Christian  world. 

Priscillian  was  a  man  of  wealth  and  position,  born  probably 
about  the  year  340,  in  some  part  of  southern  Spain.  Attracted 
by  the  Christian  teaching  of  one  Marcus,  a  preacher  from  Egypt, 
he  became  an  earnest  advocate  of  certain  mystic  religious  views 
regarding  the  nature  of  the  Trinity,  the  inspiration  of  Holy  Scrip- 
ture, and  the  origin  of  evil,  which  were  not  in  accordance  with 
those  commonly  accepted  by  the  Spanish  Churchmen  of  the  day.2 

But  Priscillian  was  zealous,  devoted,  rich  ;  of  considerable 
intellectual  power,  simple  and  frugal  in  his  habits,  liberal  to 
others,  pure,  faithful,  persevering.  He  soon  drew  after  him 
many  devoted  followers  ;  and  two  bishops,  Instantius  and 
Salvianus,  were  among  his  earliest  disciples.  His  teaching 
gradually  attracted  so  much  attention,  that  a  council  was 
summoned  to  meet  at  Caesaraugusta  to  condemn  his  unknown 
theology.  The  council  was  held  in  380.  Priscillian  and  his 
teaching,  though  what  his  teaching  was  is  not  by  any  means 
certain,3  were  authoritatively  denounced.  But  Priscillian  was  not 
silenced  by  his  enemies.  He  was  inspired  with  renewed  vigour. 
He  was  consecrated  Bishop  of  Avila  ;  he  was  spoken  of  through- 
out the  country  ;  his  disciples  increased  in  number.  Two 
members  of  the  council  thus  set  at  nought,  Idacius,  Bishop  of 
Merida,  and  Ithacius,  Bishop  of  Ossonoba,  appealed  for  assist- 
ance to  the  secular  government. 

1  "Us  persecutaient  pour  le  compte  d'Arius  comme  leurs  pre"de*cesseurs  1'ont  fait 
pour  le  compte  de  Jupiter  et  de  Venus,"  Montalembert,  op.  cit.,  i.,  9.     In  the 
Theodosian  code  there  are  no  less  than  sixty-six  enactments  against  Christian 
heretics,  and  a  much  smaller  number  against  Pagans,  Jews,  apostates,  and  ma- 
gicians.   Lecky,  Rationalism,   ii. ,   1-36.     See  also   Gibbon,    chapter  xxvii.,  and 
authorities  there  referred  to. 

2  An  Egyptian  or  gipsy  by  name  Mark,  says  D.  Vicente  de  la  Fuente,  passed 
from  Memphis  through   France   into  Spain  ;    and  .  .   .  became  the  teacher  of 
Priscillian.     Don  Vicente  classes  the  followers  of  Priscillian  with  Freemasons  and 
Jews  as  being  amongst  the  earliest  members  of  Secret  Societies  in  Spain  !     Hist,  de 
la  Sociedades  Secretas  en  Espafia  (Lugo,  1870),  pp.  17-26.     The  best  account  of 
Priscillianism  that  I  have  yet  seen  is  in  Senor  Menendez  Pelayo's  Heterodoxos 
Espanoles  (1880),  torn,  i.,  pp.  100-148. 

3  The  Priscillian  heresy  is  usually  understood  to  be  a  disbelief  in  the  Incarna- 
tion and  the  assertion  of  absolute  predestination.     It  was  thus  a  sort  of  Unitarian 
fatalism. — H. 


385.]  CHRISTIANITY.  6l 

And  at  Milan,  in  381,  the  Emperor  Gratian  granted  a  res- 
cript excluding  all  heretics  from  the  Christian  Churches,  and 
sending  them  into  perpetual  exile.  The  Spaniard  Damasus 
had  been  elected  Pope  in  366,  and  Priscillian  appealed  in  person 
to  his  compatriot  at  Rome.  But  Idacius  and  Ithacius  were  at 
Rome  before  him.  And  he  accordingly  failed  even  to  obtain 
an  audience  of  the  Pope. 

Turning  back  undismayed  to  Milan,  he  contrived  by  judicious 
bribes  to  the  palace  officials,  to  obtain  the  rescission  of  the 
Imperial  rescript ;  and  returning  triumphant  to  Spain,  he  in- 
duced Volventius  the  Vicar  to  summon  Idacius  and  Ithacius  to 
appear  before  him  as  defendants  in  some  legal  process.  What 
the  charge  was,  we  know  not ;  we  only  know  that  the  orthodox 
bishops  declined  to  appear  before  the  Imperial  Diocesan,  and 
fled  for  safety  and  succour  to  Troves. 

Seville  was  the  capital  of  the  diocese.  Milan  was  the  capital 
of  the  Empire.  But  Treves  was  the  capital  of  the  Prefecture 
of  Gaul.  And  at  Treves,  Maximus,  himself  a  Spaniard,  dis- 
contented with  the  prefectorial  purple,  had  recently  (384) 
proclaimed  himself  Caesar.  Thus  inclined  to  orthodoxy,  the 
bishops  appealed  to  him  not  in  vain.  A  council,  by  the  com- 
mand of  the  Imperial  usurper,  was  convoked  at  Burdegala  or 
Bordeaux,  in  385.  Priscillian  and  Instantius  were  summoned, 
and  duly  appeared ;  the  councillors  delayed  to  determine,  and 
showed  themselves  unwilling  even  to  discuss ;  and  the  defen- 
dants, unable  to  obtain  a  fair  hearing,  demanded  that  the  case 
should  be  remitted  for  the  decision  of  Caesar  himself.  The 
appeal  was  allowed  ;  and  the  Spanish  Christians,  the  accusers 
and  the  accused,  journeyed  on  to  the  august  city  on  the  Moselle. 
A  court  was  constituted  by  Maximus.  The  prefect  presided. 
The  orthodox  bishops  prosecuted  ;  and  the  issue  was  never 
doubtful.  Priscillian  and  his  followers  were  pronounced  guilty 
of  heresy,  and  their  offence  to  be  worthy  of  death  ;  and  the 
sentence  was  confirmed  by  the  pious  Maximus,  whose  hands 
were  yet  "  red  with  the  blood  of  the  murdered  Gratian ".  * 
Priscillian  was  immediately  executed.  Euchrocia  and  one  or 
two  presbyters  shared  his  fate.  Instantius  and  Salvianus,  with 
a  number  of  heretics  of  lesser  degree,  were  banished  to  the 
dreary  exile  of  the  Scilly  Isles,  off  the  coast  of  Britain. 

Idacius  and  Ithacius  were  triumphant.2     For  a  short  time, 

1Scx;rates>  Hist.  Eccl.,  v.,  ii. 

2  Idacius  is  said  to  have  been  afterwards  excommunicated  by  St.  Ambrose  in 
389.  As  to  his  tenure  of  the  See  of  Merida,  see  Masdeu,  torn.  vii.  ;  Ilustracion, 
xiv. 


62  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

indeed,  the  cause  of  the  martyrs  waxed  strong  in  Spain.  Yet 
Priscillianism  without  Priscillian  was  a  dead  thing,  and  the 
heresy  soon  ceased  to  attract  any  serious  attention ;  though  it 
was  mentioned  at  the  councils  at  Toledo  in  400  and  447,  and  in 
that  of  Braga,  in  448.  It  is  last  heard  of  as  an  extinct  form  of 
Arianism  at  the  council  of  Braga  in  563  ; 1  and  its  errors  are  now 
unknown  or  forgotten. 

One  of  the  most  curious  and  characteristic  features,  indeed, 
of  this  early  manifestation  of  Christian  intolerance  is  that  no  one 
seems  to  have  troubled  himself  very  much  with  the  nature  of 
the  heresy,  nor  with  the  actual  doctrines  and  practices  of 
Priscillian.  It  was  apparently  sufficient  that  he  thought  for 
himself.  No  one  assuredly  concerned  himself  with  his  con- 
version or  that  of  any  of  his  followers.  The  prosecuting  or 
persecuting  bishops,  the  representatives  of  the  Holy  Office  of 
the  day,  intriguing  at  the  corrupt  court  of  one  of  the  most 
contemptible  of  the  Christian  or  even  of  the  Pagan  Emperors, 
procured  the  sentence  of  condemnation.  Priscillian  intriguing 
with  equal  or  greater  success,  procured  the  repeal  of  the  decree. 
The  Pope  would  hear  no  arguments.  The  council  at  Bordeaux 
would  arrive  at  no  decision ;  and  Maximus — a  strange  judge  of 
religious  truth — condemning  the  heretics  to  death,  seems  to 
have  been  autocratically  annoyed  at  any  one  presuming  to  oppose 
the  constituted  authorities,  and  politically  glad  to  be  able  to 
please  the  official  Episkopoi  of  a  Church  that  was  already  be- 
coming a  power  in  the  Empire.  And  it  is  sufficiently  curious 
that  the  Pope  and  the  Emperor,  no  less  than  the  accusers  and 
the  accused,  should  all  have  been  natives  of  Spain.  But  there  is 
one  Spaniard  whose  name  is  remembered  in  pleasant  contrast  to 
those  of  these  early  persecutors.  Marcus  Aurelius  Prudentius,2 
the  greatest  Christian  poet  of  the  early  Church,  and  the  glory 
of  Spanish  Latinity  in  the  fourth  century,  was  born  at  Calagurris 

1  See  Sulpicius  Severus,  Hisloria  Sacra,  Hi.  ;  Tillemont,  Hist.  Ecclesiastique, 
vii.,  498  ;  F.spana  Sagrada,  iv.,  appendix  iv. ,  and  xiv.,  359;  Gaillard,  Rivalite  de 
la  France  et  de  I'Espagne,  i.,  22.     But  as  to  the  influence  of  dead  Priscillianism 
upon  living  heretics  from  A.D.  1200  to  1250,  see  Vicente  de  la  Fuente,  ubi  supra, 
p.  26.     The  Albigenses  too,  says  that  author,  were  Priscillianists — full  of  the  errors 
of  Egypt — ib.,  pp.  28,  29. 

2  The  honour  of  producing  a  still  earlier  Christian  poet  must  also  be  assigned 
to  Spain.     Caius  Vettins  Juvencus,  the  first  Christian  writer  of  Latin  verse,  pre- 
ceded his  greater  countryman,  Prudentius,  by  some  twenty  years  (circ.  A.D.  330). 

Pope  Damasus,  who  died  in  384,  and  was  also  a  poet,  and  Dracontius,  who 
flourished  in  the  early  part  of  the  fifth  century,  and  was  the  author  of  the  Christian 
poem  the  Hexaemeron,  were  also  natives  of  Spain.  See  Masdeu,  torn,  viii.,  pp. 
185-188,  and  Mayor's  Latin  Literature  (1875),  pp.  102-111. 


400.]  CHRISTIANITY.  63 

or  Calahorra,  on  the  Spanish  slopes  of  the  Pyrenees  in  348.  Of 
good  family  and  position,  he  practised  at  first  as  an  advocate, 
but  was  soon  appointed  to  an  important  civil  office  at  Tarraco, 
and  afterwards  at  the  court  of  the  Emperor  at  Milan.  Later  in 
life  he  seems  to  have  joined  some  religious  society,  and  to 
have  been  moved,  after  a  visit  to  Rome,  to  write  and  publish  his 
poems  on  subjects  directly  connected  with  the  Christian  religion. 

The  character  of  Prudentius,  as  it  appears  to  us  from  his 
writings,  is  not  only  admirable,  but  is  undoubtedly  most  attrac- 
tive. A  thorough  Roman,  proud  of  the  Empire,  and  loyal  to 
the  Imperial  authority,  at  a  time  when  both  were  in  their 
decay,  he  was  still  prouder  of  his  religion,  as  yet  in  the  full 
charm  and  glory  of  its  early  perfection  and  purity.  Distinguished 
among  his  fellow  Christians  by  a  fondness  for  art,  Prudentius  z 
set  his  face  against  the  destruction  of  the  Pagan  statues  that 
fared  so  ill  at  the  hands  of  his  contemporaries.  His  large 
toleration  was  the  outcome  of  true  charity.  He  recognised  the 
virtues  of  Julian  and  the  eloquence  of  Symmachus,  and  he  would 
not  persecute  the  heretics  whose  errors  he  most  deplored.  As 
an  author,  his  style  is  not  only  easy  and  fluent,  but  terse, 
epigrammatic,  and  at  times  humorous  and  satirical.  The  great 
fault  of  those  of  his  works  that  have  survived  to  our  own  time 
is  no  doubt  their  prolixity.  Their  greatest  merit  is  that  they 
illustrate,  by  their  numerous  references  and  allusions  to  con- 
temporary affairs,  the  true  life  and  feelings  of  the  age. 

The  historic  and  antiquarian  value  of  the  poems  is  thus 
very  great,  not  only  as  regards  early  Christian  theology  and 
practice,  but  as  regards  the  manners  and  customs  of  the  times, 
the  luxury  and  extravagance  of  the  rich,  the  misery  of  the 
poor,  the  gladiatorial  shows,  the  modes  of  punishment  and  of 
torture  in  common  use,  the  early  Christian  painting  and  art 
generally,  dress,  relics  and  religious  ceremonies  and  symbols — 
with  an  immense  number  of  historical  and  topographical  details 
of  the  very  highest  interest. 

1  As  to  the  theology  of  Prudentius,  see  F.  St.  John  Thackeray,  Selections  from 
Prudentius  (London,  1890),  Prefatory  Memoir,  pp.  xxxiii.-lv.  Cf.  Cod.  Theodos. , 
xvi. ,  10,  8.  As  to  his  liberal  and  intelligent  appreciation  of  the  Pagan  works  of 
art,  his  own  words  are  worth  quoting : — 

"  Marmora  tabenti  respergine  tincta  lavate, 

O  proceres  !  liceat  statuas  consistere  puras 

Artificum  magnorum  opera,  hse  pulcherrima  nostrse 

Ornamenta  fuant  patriae,  nee  decolor  usus 

In  vitium  versae  monumenta  coinquinet  artis  ". 

Contra  Symm. ,  v. ,  501-506. 
See  also  Ozanam,  La  Civilitation  au  Cinquieme  Silcle,  torn,  ii.,  c.  xxi. 


64  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

Prudentius  was  brought  into  contact  with  the  three  great 
forces  of  the  day :  the  Pagan,  revived  under  Julian,  and  tole- 
rated in  the  days  of  Theodosius ;  the  Barbarian,  already 
thundering  on  the  frontier;  and  the  Christian,  accepted  by 
the  edict  of  Milan  in  313,  and  supreme  after  the  death  of 
Gratian  in  382.  And  in  his  works  we  find  something  of  this 
three-fold  influence.  The  Liber  Cathemerinon,  the  Christian 
Day,  as  Mr.  Lilly  calls  it,1  is  a  collection  of  hymns,  and  is 
certainly  the  most  important ;  after  that,  the  Liber  Peristephanon, 
the  Martyr's  Crown,  consisting  of  fourteen  lyric  poems,  is  the 
most  valuable  ;  the  Psychomachia  was  perhaps  the  most  popular 
in  the  Middle  Ages,  together  with  the  Hamartigenia — a  treatise 
on  the  origin  of  sin,  now  rather  of  archaeological  than  of  theo- 
logical interest.  Prudentius  wrote  before  rhyming  Latin  verse 
was  thought  of,  and  after  quantity  had  ceased  to  be  critically 
regarded ;  and  his  poetry  has  thus  a  slovenly  and  unfinished 
character,  only  redeemed  by  the  exceeding  earnestness  of 
the  writer,  the  beauty  of  his  thoughts,  and  the  immense 
interest  to  modern  readers  of  his  presentment  of  ancient  life. 
"  The  Horace  and  Virgil  of  the  Christians,"  according  to  no 
less  a  critic  than  Bentley,  "  the  poet  of  dogma,"  and  "  the 
forerunner  of  Calderon  and  Lope  de  Vega,"  Prudentius  has 
from  the  first  been  held  in  high  honour  at  home  and  abroad. 
His  works  were  edited  in  the  sixth  century  by  the  Consul 
Vettius  Agorius  Basilius,  the  editor  of  Horace  ;  and  they  were 
used  as  a  school  book  from  the  tenth  to  the  fifteenth  century 
in  every  country  in  civilised  Europe.2 

1  Chapters  on  English  History,  i. ,  208. 

2  No  less  than  thirty- three  MSS.  are  still  in  existence ;  and  sixty  editions  of  his 
works  are  said  to  have  been  printed  since  1470. 


65 


CHAPTER  VI. 
THE  KINGDOM  OF  TOULOUSE. 

(411—569.) 

ON  the  death  of  Alaric,  his  brother-in-law,  Atawulf,  was  pro- 
claimed King  of  the  Visigoths. 

The  dream  of  the  Goth  was  at  this  time  to  destroy  the 
Roman  Empire,  and  to  found  a  great  Gothic  Monarchy  on 
its  ruins.  But  Atawulf  had  none  of  the  direct  and  uncompro- 
mising vigour  of  Alaric ;  and  after  many  marchings  and 
counter-marchings  in  Italy,  after  many  attempts  at  honourable 
negotiations  with  the  shifty  and  faithless  Honorius,  Atawulf 
made  his  way  into  Gaul,  defeated  Jovinus,  one  of  the  numerous 
upstart  Caesars  of  the  period,  proclaimed  himself  to  be  the 
friend  and  ally  of  Rome,  and  thus  "employing  the  sword  of 
his  Goths,  not  to  subvert,  but  to  restore  the  prosperity  of  the 
Roman  Empire,"  he  re-conquered  the  greater  part  of  Gaul, 
not  for  himself,  but  for  Honorius.  He  then,  and  not  for  the 
first  time,  solicited  the  hand  of  Galla  Placidia,  a  captive  in 
his  train,  whom  he  respected  rather  as  the  daughter  of  the 
great  Theodosius,  than  as  the  sister  of  his  degenerate  suc- 
cessor. 

Honorius,  the  degenerate  Emperor  of  the  West,  a  powerless 
refugee  at  Ravenna,  refused  his  consent  to  the  restorer  of  Gaul ; 
but  the  marriage — delayed  but  not  prevented  by  his  opposition 
— was  celebrated  with  Imperial  pomp  and  splendour  at  Nar- 
bonne  in  the  course  of  the  year  414.  It  would  have  been 
wise  as  well  as  kind  to  conciliate  this  Gothic  brother-in-law, 
who  had  shown  himself  to  be  not  the  destroyer  but  the  sup- 
porter of  declining  Rome.  It  is  ever  politic  to  be  grateful  to 
a  powerful  benefactor.  But  the  weak  are  rarely  politic,  and 
are  often  ungrateful  ;  and  the  weakness  of  Honorius  was  only 
exceeded  by  his  ingratitude.  The  ignoble  murderer  of  Stilicho 
knew  not  how  to  take  advantage  of  the  generosity  of  Atawulf. 
VOL.  i.  5 


66  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

He  would  admit  no  favour  ;  he  would  allow  no  alliance ;  and 
above  all,  he  would  take  upon  himself  to  do  nothing  whatever. 
In  the  eyes  of  such  politicians,  to  shirk  responsibility  is  the 
only  way  to  avoid  danger. 

Meanwhile,  the  diplomacy  of  his  new  minister  Constantius 
— himself  an  aspirant  to  the  hand  of  the  wedded  Placidia — 
was  devoted  to  inducing  Atawulf  to  abandon  Gaul  to  the 
thankless  Honorius,  and  to  turn  his  arms,  unasked  and  unaided, 
against  the  barbarous  foes  of  the  Empire  in  Spain.  The  Goth, 
indignant,  but  apparently  consenting,  bound  it  may  be  to  the 
Roman  with  silken  chains,  crossed  the  Pyrenees,1  taking  with 
him  Attalus,  the  puppet  Emperor  of  Alaric.  Why,  we  scarce 
know.  Nor  do  we  know  whether  it  was  his  supposed  subser- 
viency to  his  Imperial  brother-in-law,  as  some  have  asserted,  or, 
as  it  would  seem  more  probable,  a  stroke  of  private  revenge, 
that  led  to  his  assassination  before  he  had  penetrated  further 
south  than  Barcelona,  in  August,  415.  But  even  so  he  died.2 

Atawulf  has  been  called  the  first  of  the  Visigothic  sove- 
reigns of  Spain.  But  he  was  no  more  King  of  Spain  than  he 
was  King  of  Italy.  Far  less,  indeed.  He  ruled  over  Rome; 
he  vanquished  a  rival  Emperor  at  Mayence ;  he  conquered 
Gaul.  But  if  he  was  never  King  of  Spain,  nor  of  any  other 
country  in  Europe,  he  succeeded  Alaric  as  King  of  the  Visi- 
goths.3 He  needs  no  higher  title.  The  odious  Singeric,  who 
nominally  succeeded  him,  was  never  king  of  any  nation  or 
country  outside  the  palace  at  Barcelona,  and  was  in  his  turn 
assassinated  after  a  reign  of  seven  days,  when  the  choice  of 
the  Goths  fell  upon  Wallia,  who  was  elected  as  a  determined 
foe  to  the  Roman  court.  Spain  was  to  be  conquered,  not  for 
the  Roman  enemy,  but  for  the  Visigothic  people. 

The  charms  of  Placidia  once  more  saved  the  Empire. 
Constantius,  still  aspiring  to  the  honour  of  her  hand,  now 
placed  within  his  reach  by  the  death  of  Atawulf,  promptly 
marched  into  Spain  at  the  head  of  an  Imperial  army,  and  com- 
pelled or  persuaded  the  Gothic  king  to  restore  the  daughter 
of  Theodosius  ;  and  further,  in  return  for  a  welcome  subsidy, 
bound  him  by  treaty  to  prosecute  the  war  in  Spain  against  the 

1  There  is  a  very  long  Disertacion  by  Martin  de  Ulloa  in  the  Memorias  de  la 
Real  Acad.  de  Historia,  torn.  i. ,  pp.  264-345,  on  the  origin  of  the  Gothic  Monarchy 
in  Spain,  more  especially  as  regards  the  negotiations  between  Honorius  and  Alaric. 

2  Memorias  de  la  Real  Academia  de  Historia,  torn.  i. ,  pp.  225,  and  243-264. 

8  Mr.  Bury  somewhat  happily  styles  him  the  Moses  of  the  Goths,  who  brought 
them  within  sight  of  the  promised  land,  but  died  before  its  actual  occupation. 


414.]  THE  KINGDOM  OF  TOULOUSE.  67 

earlier  Barbarians,  as  the  vassal  or  ally  of  Honorius.  Wallia 
was  faithful  to  his  engagements.  Placidia  became  the  wife  of 
Constantius.  The  Vandals  in  Baetica  were  dispersed.  The 
Alans  in  Lusitania  were  said  to  be  destroyed ;  and  the  Suevians, 
who  retained  their  possessions  in  the  north-east,  submitted 
themselves,  by  a  common  and  convenient  fiction,  to  a  nominal 
overlordship.  And  when  the  Peninsula  was  pacified,  Wallia 
retired,  faithful  and  triumphant,  to  the  capital  of  the  rich 
province  that  was  granted  to  him  on  the  northern  slopes  of  the 
Pyrenees. 

Wallia,  like  Atawulf,  is  usually  counted  among  the  kings 
of  Spain.  But  although  Wallia,  unlike  his  great  predecessor, 
actually  or  nominally  conquered  the  country,  he  conquered  it 
for  Rome.  And  at  the  hand  of  the  Roman  Emperor  he 
accepted  the  kingdom  in  southern  Gaul,  which  the  prudence 
of  Constantius  assigned  to  him.  "The  Kingdom  of  Tolosa," 
as  it  has  been  happily  called,  was  a  rich  and  fertile  territory, 
and  included  the  whole  province  of  Aquitania  Secunda  and  a 
great  part  of  Narbonensis  and  Novempopulania,  with  the 
flourishing  cities  of  Poictiers  and  Angouleme  in  the  north-west, 
with  Bordeaux  on  the  broad  Garonne,  and  Toulouse,  where 
Wallia  fixed  his  capital,  higher  up  on  the  same  noble  stream 
— almost  within  sight  of  the  Pyrenees. 

But  while  Wallia  triumphed  at  Toulouse,  the  Vandals 
remained  in  the  Peninsula.  In  420  they  were  attacked  and 
defeated  at  Bracara  Augusta  by  an  army  of  Romans  under 
Asterius,  with  the  Suevians  under  Hermeric,  and  were  routed 
with  considerable  slaughter.1  Disturbed  in  northern  Spain 
alike  by  the  Goths  and  the  Romans,  the  Vandals  pursued 
their  course  towards  the  south,  as  far  as  Baetica  to  which  they 
gave  the  name  of  Vandalusia  or  Andalusia ; 2  and  for  many 
years  they  ravaged  that  fair  and  fertile  country,  unharmed  by 
the  feeble  Romans  of  Spain,  almost  unopposed  by  the  degener- 
ate Spaniards  of  the  Peninsula.  Their  leader,  the  terrible 
Gaiseric,  restless  and  unsatisfied  even  on  the  banks  of  Guadal- 
quivir, was  at  length  persuaded  by  Boniface,  the  Tribune,  and 
Count  of  Africa,  to  assist  him  against  his  enemies.  Whether 
these  enemies  were  Goths  or  Romans,  or  both,  is  somewhat 

1  Though  this  defeat  was  revenged  two  years  later  by  a  great  victory  over 
Castinus. — H. 

2  Rather  their  name  of   Vandal  was  given  to  the  province  by  the  Africans 
whose  territory  they  invaded  from  southern  Spain.     Aa  to  the  etymology  of 
Andalusia,  see  post.  Appendix  IV. 


68  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

obscure.  It  is  more  certain  that  the  entire  Vandal  nation  then 
in  Spain,  to  the  number,  it  was  said,  of  80,000  persons, 
men,  women  and  children,  passed  over  the  Straits  of  Gibraltar l 
in  the  happy  month  of  March,  427,  to  turn  their  arms  once 
more  against  the  Roman  commander  who  had  invited  them  ;  to 
drive  out  the  Imperial  and  Gothic  troops  ;  and  to  found  the 
great  Vandal  Empire  in  Africa. 

It  was  thus  by  successive  master  strokes  of  folly  and  treachery 
that  the  Vandals,  invited  by  Stilicho  into  Gaul,  invited  by 
Gerontius  into  Spain,  and  finally  invited  by  Boniface  into 
Africa,  marched,  not  only  unchecked,  but  by  easy  stages  of 
encouragement,  from  the  wild  forests  beyond  the  Rhine  to  the 
rich  and  sunny  kingdom  that  was  prepared  for  them  beyond 
the  Pillars  of  Hercules. 

From  the  invasion  of  Gunderic  in  409  to  the  departure  of 
Gaiseric  in  427  the  political  condition  of  Spain  was  somewhat 
remarkable.  The  Roman  had  almost  ceased  to  possess.  The 
Visigoth  had  not  yet  begun  to  govern.  The  Vandal  was  but  a 
sojourner.  The  Suevian  was  a  pagan,  if  not  a  savage.  But  if 
there  was  as  yet  no  king  of  the  Visigoths,  living  and  ruling  in 
Spain,  there  was  at  least  a  king  of  the  Vandals  and  a  king  of 
the  Suevians,  harrying,  if  not  actually  possessing,  the  Roman 
provinces.  For  although  Asterius  and  the  Suevians  drove  the 
Vandals  out  of  northern  Spain  in  420,  another  expedition, 
undertaken  by  Castinus  with  a  Roman  and  Visigoth  force  two 
years  later  (422),  was  not  only  defeated  by  Gaiseric  and  his 
Vandals,  but  the  Roman  commander  was  forced  to  fly  for 
safety  to  Tarragona. 

Wallia  died,  strangely  enough,  "in  his  bed,"  as  the  phrase 
runs,  in  his  palace  at  Toulouse,  and  was  succeeded  by  Theo- 
doric,  who,  possibly  to  avoid  confusion  with  the  great  Theodoric, 
King  of  the  Ostrogoths  in  Italy,  is  usually  known  as  Theodored. 
With  his  life  in  Gothic  Gaul,  and  even  with  his  death  in  the 
moment  of  victory  on  the  plains  of  Chalons,2  the  still  Roman 
province  of  Spain  had  small  concern.  Yet  his  defeat  of  Attila 
decided  the  fate  of  Europe,  and  altered  the  course  of  history. 


1  Not  of  course  known  by  that  name  until  after  the  Arab  invasion  by  Tarik, 
when  Calpe  gave  place  to  Gibil  Tarik,  and   Gibraltar.     Strictly  speaking  the 
Straits  should  still  be  called  the  Straits  of  Gades,  and  the  Guadalquivir  the  Baetis. 

2  The  battle  of  Chalons  was  fought  in  the  Champagne  country  of  north-east 
France,  near  Moirey,  a  village  a  few  miles  from  Troyes,  no  longer  in  existence. 
The  ancient  name  of  the  entire  district  was  that  of  the  Catalauni,  or  Chalons, 
which  gave  the  well-known  name  to  one  of  the  greatest  of  mediaeval  battles. 


427.]  THE  KINGDOM  OF  TOULOUSE.  69 

The  names  of  his  successors,  Thorismund  and  another  Theo- 
doric,  are  of  little  interest  to  the  historian  of  any  country. 
Thorismund  was  assassinated  by  his  brother  Theodoric.  And 
Theodoric,  after  a  successful  campaign  against  the  Suevians  in 
Spain,  undertaken  at  the  request  of  the  Emperor  Avitus,  was  in 
his  turn  assassinated  by  his  brother  Euric,1  who  succeeded  him 
as  King  of  the  Visigoths.  A  bold  and  successful  sovereign,  Euric 
in  less  than  twenty  years  extended  the  little  kingdom  of  Tolosa 
into  a  realm  reaching  from  the  Loire  to  the  Straits  of  Gibraltar, 
and  from  the  Rhone  to  the  frontiers  of  unconquered  Cantabria. 
The  Goth  indeed  is  said  not  only  to  have  conquered  Lusitania, 
but  to  have  completely  subdued  the  Suevian  kings  in  north- 
west Spain.  But  for  five  hundred  years  the  conquest  and 
subjugation  of  Cantabria  and  northern  Lusitania  had  been  one 
of  the  most  constantly  recurring  incidents  in  Spanish  history, 
and  yet  the  Cantabrians  and  northern  Lusitanians  always  re- 
tained their  independence.2 

Against  the  old  Roman  power,  at  least,  Euric  was  com- 
pletely successful.  He  besieged  and  took  the  provincial  capital 
of  Tarragona.  He  occupied  the  Imperial  district  of  the  Arverni 
—  the  modern  Auvergne,  and  added  the  solemn  sanction  of  a 
treaty  to  the  more  important  fact  of  possession  ; 3  and  at  length 
when  Romulus  the  last  Augustus  gave  place  to  Odoacer  the  first 
Barbarian,  Euric  was  permitted  to  add  to  the  immense  Empire 
which  he  ruled  from  his  palace  at  Aries,  not  only  the  whole  of 
modern  Provence,  but  the  cities  and  districts  which  had  till 
then  continued  to  be  counted  among  the  Roman  possessions  in 
Spain.4  Nor  was  Euric  less  successful  as  a  maker  of  laws  than 
as  the  maker  of  an  Empire.5  There  was  but  one  rift  in  the 

1  For  the  reign  of  Euric,  and  generally  for  the  history  and  manners  of  Gothic 
Gaul,  the  letters  of  his  contemporary  Sidonius  Apollinaris  are  of  the  utmost  interest 
and  value,  as  is  the  modern  work  of  the  Abb6  Chaix,  Sidonie  Apollinaire  et  son 
sitcle,  2  vols.   (Clermont,   1866).     Sidonius,  though  a  layman,  was  consecrated 
Bishop  of  Clermont.     His  own  life  was  that  of  an  accomplished  gentleman,  and 
his  letters  should  interest  the  man  of  the  world  as  well  as  the  student.    I  have  used 
the  edition,  Paris,  1598. 

2  Lusitania  was  not  as  extensive  a  province  as  modern  Portugal.    Its  northern 
boundary  was  the  Douro,  and  the  country  between  the  Douro  and  the  Minho,  now 
Portuguese  territory,  formed  part  of  the  province  of  Gallicia. 

8  The  treaty  between  Euric  and  the  Empire  was  negotiated  by  Epiphanius, 
Bishop  of  Pavia,  a  very  important  personage  at  the  time.  It  was  executed  in 
475- 

4  Tillemont,  Hist,  des  Empereurs,  vi. ,  422-433. 

6  Euric's  famous  code  of  laws  is  of  the  greatest  interest,  because  it  exhibits  a 
mass  of  Visigothic  usage  as  it  had  been  modified  by  contact  with  Roman  civilisa- 
tion. Although  the  foundation  of  the  code  is  Visigothic,  many  of  the  provisions 


70  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

lute,  and  that  rift  was  religious  dissension.  The  Visigoths  were 
Arians.  The  great  bulk  of  Euric's  new  subjects  were  Athan- 
asians.  The  bishops  as  a  rule  were  hostile  to  the  king  ;  and  the 
bishops  in  the  fifth  century  were  already  beginning  to  be  a 
power  in  western  Europe.  Their  influence,  moreover,  was 
rapidly  increasing,  as  Alaric  the  Second,  the  feeble  successor  of 
the  politic  and  masterful  Euric,  had  soon  good  cause  to  know. 

Euric  died  in  his  capital  at  Aries  in  484,  having  raised  the 
kingdom  of  the  Visigoths  to  its  highest  pitch  of  power,  and  to 
its  greatest  extent  of  territory  in  Europe.1  From  the  day  of  his 
death  the  greatness  began  to  decline,  and  in  less  than  five-and- 
twenty  years  the  kingdom  was  shorn  of  nearly  half  its  territories, 
and  the  king  of  more  than  half  his  glory. 

Alaric  had  been  less  than  three  years  on  the  throne  2  of  his 
father,  when  Clovis,  King  of  the  Salian  Franks,  a  bold  young 
pagan  from  the  banks  of  the  Meuse,  descending  upon  the  city 
and  district  of  Soissons  in  north-eastern  Gaul,  had  overrun  the 
country,  and  driven  Afranius  Syagrius,  the  governor,  or  as  the 
old  chronicle  styles  him,  "  king  of  the  Romans  "  to  seek  asylum 
at  the  more  hospitable  court  of  Toulouse.  Clovis  demanded  the 
surrender  of  the  fugitive,  and  the  contemptible  Alaric  yielded 
to  his  threats,  and  gave  up  his  royal  guest  to  the  mercy  of  the 
Frank.  Thus  was  Visigothic  honour  sadly  sullied,  even  before 
the  Visigothic  dominions  were  curtailed. 

But  the  loss  of  territory  was  not  long  delayed.  Clovis  was 
the  hero  of  the  hour.  In  486  he  had  conquered  the  Gauls  at 
Soissons.  In  496  he  was  to  conquer  the  Alemans  at  Ziilpich. 
A  strong  and  masterful  barbarian,  a  heathen,  but  at  least  not  a 
heretic,  the  vigorous  pagan  at  Soissons  was  preferred  by  the 
Catholic  bishops  to  the  feeble  Arian  at  Toulouse.3 

are  evidently  inspired  by  the  Theodosian  code.  The  intention  of  Euric  in  pre- 
paring this  code  of  Toulouse  was  evidently  to  bring  about  a  fusion  of  the  peoples, 
or  at  least  to  devise  a  commonly  acceptable  set  of  laws  which  should  gradually 
bring  them  together.  This  attempt  was  a  failure,  as  the  Latinised  Spaniards 
resisted  all  attempts  to  force  Visigothic  laws  upon  them.  The  result  was  that 
Euric's  successor  Alaric  ordered  a  commission  of  jurists  to  draw  up  the  Lex 
Romano.,  a  code  mainly  founded  on  the  Theodosian  laws  as  a  supplementary  code 
to  that  of  Euric  (A.D.  506).  These  various  codes  were  augmented  by  succeeding 
kings,  and  finally  embodied,  150  years  after,  in  the  famous  Lex  Visigothorum  of 
King  Chindaswinth. — H. 

1  Euric,  like  Atawulf  and  Wallia,  is  frequently  spoken  of  as  the  first  King  of 
Spain.     It  would  be  as  reasonable  to  style  him  King  of  France.     But  he  was  the 
sovereign  not  so  much  of  any  country  as  of  a  nation. 

2  Clovis  was  born  only  in  465  or  466,  and  became  King  of  the  Franks  in  481. 
The  name  by  which  I  speak  of  him  is,  I  think,  a  good  English  word  ;  but  as  to 
the  spelling  of  this  and  other  proper  names,  see  Introduction. 

*  Clovis  did  not  establish  his  court  at  Paris  until  the  year  500. 


496.]  THE  KINGDOM  OF  TOULOUSE.  71 

The  people,  however,  as  yet  insufficiently  educated  in 
religious  politics,  hesitated  to  march  against  their  Christian 
neighbours  under  the  banner  of  a  pagan  king  ;  but  the  difficulty 
was  happily  solved  after  the  great  Prankish  victory  at  Zulpich 
or  Tolbiacum,  by  the  conversion  of  Clovis  (496)  who  found,  like 
his  celebrated  successor,  that  France  was  well  "  worth  a  Mass  "  ; 
and  the  newly-baptised  Catholic  was  ready  to  embark  upon  the 
Jirst  religious  war  of  Europe. 

Alaric,  alarmed  at  the  prospect  of  the  coming  struggle, 
craved  the  honour  of  a  friendly  interview  with  his  brother 
Clovis.  The  interview  was  granted.  The  two  kings  met  on  an 
island  in  the  Loire,  near  Amboise,  and  swore  eternal  friendship. 
Alaric  returned  contented  to  Toulouse — and  within  the  year 
Clovis  had  declared  war  against  the  Visigoths. 

No  pretext  was  needed  for  this  fifth  century  Crusade.  "  It 
was  not  to  be  endured,  "  says  the  pious  Gregory  of  Tours,  "  that 
these  Arians  should  possess  the  finest  country  in  Gaul."  l  It 
was  clearly  the  duty  of  a  Catholic  king  to  drive  them  out ;  a 
duty  insisted  upon  by  Churchmen,  enforced  by  miracles  '2  and 
entirely  agreeable  to  the  temper  of  "  the  chosen  champion  of 
Catholicism  ".  There  is  indeed  a  fine  mixture  of  the  ecclesi- 
astical and  the  temporal  at  the  Court  of  the  Frank,  where 
ambition  and  superstition  were  equally  powerful,  "  and  for  the 
first  time  in  history,"  says  Dean  Milman,  "the  diffusion  of 
belief  of  the  nature  of  the  Godhead  became  3  the  avowed  pre- 
text for  the  invasion  of  a  neighbouring  territory  ".  Clovis,4  as 
an  orthodox  Catholic,  and  a  zealous  convert,  lost  no  time  in 
invading  the  dominion  of  the  Visigoths.  And  the  great  battle  5 
on  the  Campus  Vocladensis,  near  Poictiers,  in  which  Alaric  was 
slain,  and  his  Arian  army  completely  defeated,  was  at  once  the 
foundation  of  the  Prankish  kingdom  of  France,  and  the  origin 
of  the  Gothic  kingdom  of  Spain. 

1  Gregory  of  Tours,  ii.,  37. 

2  The  milk-white  hind  at  the  ford'at  Vienne,  the  fiery  column  over  the  cathe- 
dral of  Poictiers  ;    these  and   many  equally  convincing  prodigies  are  faithfully 
recorded  by  Gregory  of  Tours. 

3  Montalembert,  Moines  de  I  Occident,  ii. ,  248  ;  Milman,  Latin  Christianity, 
vol.  i.,  p.  277. 

4  Clovis  occupied  the  remarkable  position  of  being  the  only  Catholic  king  in 
Europe.     The  Emperor  Anastasius  professed  heretical  views  on  the  Incarnation. 
Theodoric,  King  of  the  Ostrogoths,  Alaric,  King  of  the  Visigoths,  Gondebald  and 
Gondisel,  Kings  of  the  Burgundians,  and  Thrasimond,  King  of  the  African  Vandals, 
were  all  Arians. 

8  The  plain  of  Vougte  or  VouilW. 


72  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

Toulouse  was  immediately  occupied  by  the  victorious  Franks  ; 
the  Visigoths  were  driven  out  of  Gaul,  and  the  orthodox  army 
of  Clovis  was  checked  only  by  the  great  mountain  barrier  of  the 
Pyrenees. 

Alaric  left  two  sons,  Gensalic,  whose  birth  was  illegitimate; 
and  Amalaric,  a  child  of  but  five  years  old,  whose  mother  was  a 
daughter  of  Theodoric,  the  great  King  of  the  Ostrogoths  in 
Italy.  Gensalic  was  elected  on  the  death  of  Alaric  to  fill  the 
vacant  throne.  Five  years  later,  in  511,  he  was  slain  by  the 
armies  of  Theodoric,  who  had  maintained  the  rights  of  suc- 
cession of  his  grandson  Amalaric,  not  only  against  the  illegiti- 
mate pretension  of  Gensalic,  but  against  the  Catholic  ardour  of 
the  more  formidable  Clovis  ;  and  it  was  due  to  the  successful 
warfare  waged  against  the  Franks  by  the  great  Ostrogoth,  not 
only  that  Amalaric  inherited  the  new  kingdom  of  Spain,1  but 
that  the  kingdom  was  preserved  or  created  for  him  to  inherit, 
and  administered  during  the  long  minority  of  Amalaric  by 
Theudis,  the  first  Minister  Regent  of  Spain. 

On  the  death  of  Theodoric,  in  526,  the  boundaries  of  the 
Visigothic  kingdom  were  once  more  disturbed.  To  Athanaric, 
his  nephew,  the  great  Ostrogoth  left  Italy  and  the  country  to 
the  north-west  as  far  as  the  Rhone  ;  while  to  Amalaric  was  given 
not  only  Gothic  Spain,  but  Gothic  Gaul,  or  Septimania — the 
rich  country  lying  between  the  Rhone  and  the  Pyrenees,  and 
including  the  city  of  Narbonne,  where  Amalaric  established  his 
court.  His  marriage  with  Clothilda,  a  daughter  of  Clovis,  the 
vanquisher,  and  perhaps  the  actual  slayer  of  his  father,  was 
dictated  by  political  prudence,  but  it  was  attended  with  most 
unfortunate  results.  Christian  dissensions  had  already  begun  to 
vex  unhappy  Spain.  The  king  was  an  Arian,  the  queen  an 
Athanasian  Catholic,  and  neither  of  them  would  endure  the 
heresy  of  the  other.  Amalaric,  at  length,  unable  to  convince 
his  consort  of  the  truth  of  the  doctrines  that  he  professed,  for- 
bade her  the  public  exercise  of  her  religion.  It  is  not  thus  that 
alliances  were  cemented  in  the  sixth  century ;  and  Clothilda 
appealed  in  anger  to  her  brother  in  Gaul.2 

The  story  of  the  bloodstained  kerchief  sent  by  Clothilda  to 
Childebert,  as  an  eloquent  token  of  her  ill-usage  at  the  rude 

1  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Visigothic  sovereign  never  assumed  the  title  of  King 
of  Spain  ;  but  that  of  "  King  of  the  Visigoths  in  Spain."     Yet  Amalaric  was  de 

facto  King  of  Spain — the  first  of  all  the  Visigothic  kings  who  held  sway  in  the 
Peninsula,  who  were  not  kings  of  Toulouse. 

2  See  Gregory  of  Tours,  lib.  iii. 


531.]  THE  KINGDOM  OF  TOULOUSE.  73 

hands  of  her  Arian  lord,  may  be  treated  as  an  episcopal  fiction ; 
but  however  summoned,  it  is  certain  that  Childebert,  rejoicing 
to  find  so  orthodox  a  pretext  for  an  invasion  of  the  dominions  of 
the  Visigoths,  hastened  to  the  defence  of  his  sister  and  of  his 
faith.  The  Frank  triumphed.  Amalaric,  defeated  near  Nar- 
bonne,  fled  across  the  Pyrenees  ;  and  Childebert  pursued  the 
unfortunate  Arian  into  north  Catalonia  (531).  Amalaric  was 
slain  in  battle  ; l  and  Childebert  returned  to  Gaul,  bearing  with 
him  not  only  his  rescued  sister,  and  the  applause  of  his  ecclesi- 
astical patrons,  but  an  immense  booty  of  sacred  treasure,  the 
spoil  of  the  Arian  churches  of  Spain.  Amalaric  leaving  no  issue, 
Theudis,  his  worthy  tutor,  and  possibly  his  murderer,  was  elected 
to  succeed  him  on  the  throne,  and  the  old  regent  fought  not 
without  success  against  the  Gauls  or  Franks,  once  more  invading 
his  Spanish  territories ;  and  he  not  only  drove  them  out  of  the 
country  to  the  south  of  the  Pyrenees,2  but  re-established  the 
Visigothic  sovereignty  in  the  rich  province  of  Septimania,  with 
the  cities  of  Carcassonne,  Narbonne,  and  even  Nismes.  He  was 
less  fortunate  in  a  campaign  beyond  the  Straits  of  Gibraltar. 

The  Roman  Empire  of  the  East  under  Justinian  was  just 
now  showing  some  signs  of  life  in  the  south-west  of  Europe ; 
and  Belisarius  was  striving  with  a  success  long  unknown  to  the 
arms  of  the  legions,  to  recover  the  old  province  of  Africa  from 
the  Vandals.  Theudis,  dreading  the  near  approach  of  so  great 
a  neighbour,  more  especially  as  Spain  might,  like  Africa,  still 
be  considered  to  be  a  province  of  the  Empire,  responded  to  the 
entreaty  of  Hildibad,  King  of  the  Ostrogoths,  who  was  support- 
ing Gelimer  and  the  cause  of  the  Vandals  against  Belisarius  in 
Mauretania.  The  story  of  the  campaign  is  confused  and  un- 
certain. Theudis  crossed  over  the  straits  and  attempted  to 
relieve  Ceuta  ;  but  the  Gothic  armies  were  defeated  with  great 

1  How  Amalaric  died,  whether  he  fell  in  battle,  or  was  murdered  by  order  of 
Childebert,  or  by  that  of  Theudis,  is  uncertain.  The  presumption  of  probability  in 
those  days  would  seem  to  be  always  in  favour  of  the  most  unworthy. 

2"  In  the  following  year  (543),  Childebert,  King  of  the  Franks,  and  Clotarius 
his  brother,  not  satisfied  with  what  they  had  done  before,  again  made  war  upon 
Spain,  and  after  wasting  all  the  province  of  Tarragona,  laid  siege  to  Ccesaraugusta 
or  Saragossa. 

"The  citizens  had  recourse  to  their  patron  Saint  Vincent,  whose  garments 
they  carried  in  procession  about  the  walls,  imploring  his  assistance,  whereof 
Childebert  being  informed,  he  took  compassion,  and  desisted  from  doing  them  any 
further  harm.  At  his  request,  the  citizens  gave  him  that  garment,  which  he 
carried  to  Paris,  and  there  built  a  church  in  the  suburbs,  of  the  invocation  of  this 
saint— now  called  St.  Germain  des  Pres."  Mariana,  Hist,  of  Spain,  v. ,  6, 
translated  by  Stevens.  Cf.  Gaillard,  RivaliU  de  la  France  et  de  I  Espagne,  vol.  i. , 
28,  29. 


74  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

slaughter,  and  their  leaders  hardly  found  safety  in  flight.  The 
explanation  of  this  disaster  that  was  offered  by  the  Goths,  that 
they  were  surprised  at  their  Sunday  devotions,  has  a  suspicious 
resemblance  to  that  of  Alaric  at  Pollentia,  one  hundred  and 
fifty  years  before.  One  party  must  always  be  defeated  in  a 
Sunday  victory — not  always,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  the  most  devout. 

Theudis  escaped  the  sword  of  the  enemy,  only  to  perish 
some  four  years  l  later  within  the  walls  of  his  palace  at  Seville, 
by  the  ever-ready  hand  of  an  assassin.  His  immediate  successor, 
Theudisel,  who  is  said  to  have  been  a  monster  of  licentiousness, 
was  assassinated  in  his  own  chamber  after  a  reign  of  eighteen 
months'  duration  ;  and  he  was  succeeded  by  Agila,  who  found 
himself  soon  after  his  election  called  to  suppress  a  rebellion  in 
the  southern  provinces,  fomented  by  the  Roman  authorities  in 
Africa.  Liberius,  one  of  Justinian's  commanders,  had  succeeded 
after  nearly  five  years'  desultory  fighting,  in  concluding  a  treaty 
of  some  sort  with  Athanagild,  one  of  the  Visigothic  leaders,  by 
which  a  considerable  tract  of  country  in  southern  Spain  was  to 
revert  to  the  Roman  Empire  in  the  event  of  Athanagild's  suc- 
cession to  the  throne.  As  a  natural  result  of  this  arrangement 
Agila  was  assassinated  in  554,  and  Athanagild  reigned  at  Toledo 
over  what  remained  to  the  Visigoths  of  Spain.2  He  endeavoured, 
it  would  seem,  to  abandon  to  Liberius  something  less  than  was 
stipulated  in  the  treaty.  His  Imperial  deliverer  desired  some- 
thing more  ;  and  Athanagild's  war  against  his  sovereign  was 
continued  as  a  war  against  his  ally.  But  Rome  maintained  and 
even  extended  her  power  in  the  Peninsula,  until  the  Imperial 
territory  reached  from  sea  to  sea. 

The  conversion  of  the  Suevians  from  Arianism  to  the  rival 
and  more  powerful  religion  was  certainly  the  most  important 
event  in  the  reign  of  Athanagild ;  for  the  results,  both  im- 
mediate and  remote,  were  of  the  utmost  consequence  to  Spain. 
The  restoration  to  health  of  a  Suevian  prince  by  the  influence 
of  the  most  orthodox  relics  of  St.  Martin  of  Tours  led  to  the 
adoption  of  the  orthodox  religion  by  the  king,  together  with 
his  entire  people  (560) ;  and  the  hostility  which  ever  existed 
between  the  inhabitants  of  Cantabria  and  the  inhabitants  of 

1  Gregory  of  Tours,  iii. ,  30. 

2  Not  only  were  the  principal  coast  towns  of  the  south  and  south-east — Cadiz, 
Malaga,  Almeria  and   Carthagena — restored   to   the   Roman   Empire,   but   even 
Cordova  and  Illiberis,  the  site  of  more  modern  Granada.    The  Roman  dominion 
was  said  to  have  extended  "  from  sea  to  sea  "  ;  and  it  was  sixty  years  before  they 
were  finally  dispossessed  by  the  Goth. 


567.]  THE  KINGDOM  OF  TOULOUSE.  75 

Spain  was  accentuated  by  the  newly  added  zest  of  religious 
animosity.  And  the  fresh  bond  of  union  between  the  rebels  on 
the  shores  of  the  Atlantic  and  the  rivals  beyond  the  Pyrenees 
rendered  the  position  of  the  Spanish  Visigoths  more  isolated 
and  more  dangerous  than  before. 

Nor  did  the  diplomatic  efforts  of  Athanagild  tend  in  any 
way  to  save  the  situation.  Seeking,  like  Amalaric  before  him, 
to  strengthen  his  position  by  a  family  alliance  with  the  rulers 
of  the  Franks,  he  had  given  his  two  daughters  in  marriage  to 
two  princes  of  the  house  of  Clovis.1  Chilperic,  King  of  Neustria, 
had  espoused  the  elder  daughter,  Galeswintha,  while  Brunhilda 
the  younger  had  fallen  to  the  lot  of  Sigebert,  King  of  Austrasia  ; 
and  still  further  to  cement  the  union,  each  of  the  Arian  prin- 
cesses announced  her  conversion  to  the  orthodox  faith  of  her 
husband.  But  neither  Church  nor  State  were  served  by  these 
early  Spanish  marriages.  The  terrible  story  of  the  faithlessness 
of  Chilperic,  the  jealousy  of  Fredegonde,  the  murder  of  Gales- 
wintha, the  long  struggle  between  the  successful  mistress  and 
the  avenging  sister,  a  struggle  in  the  course  of  which  ten  kings 
and  queens  are  said  to  have  lost  their  lives,  and  the  final  triumph 
of  Fredegonde,  and  the  savage  murder  of  the  vanquished  Brun- 
hilda, these  things  are  familiar  to  every  reader  of  French  history.2 
But  the  character  of  Brunhilda,  who  was  at  least  a  woman  of 
immense  and  indomitable  energy,  has  become  a  matter  of  national 
contention.  In  the  eyes  of  patriotic  Spanish  historians,  she  is  a 
model  of  all  that  is  virtuous,  as  well  as  of  all  that  is  beautiful ; 3 
to  the  French  she  is  a  foreign  termagant  who  brought  confusion 
and  bloodshed  to  the  courts  of  the  early  Merovingians  (564- 
614). 

JThe  superiority  in  refinement,  in  morality,  in  royal  dignity,  and  in  civilisation 
generally  of  the  Visigothic  kings  who  ruled  in  Spain  over  the  Frank  kings  who 
ruled  in  France,  is  brought  into  very  strong  relief  by  a  distinguished  French  his- 
torian, Augustin  Thierry,  Etudes  Historiques  (ed.  1835,  pp.  375-385). 

2  Gregory  of  Tours,  Hist.  Franc. ,  lib.  iii. 

3  See  Montesquieu,  Esprit  des  Inis,  livre  xxxi. ,  c.  i.  ;  Mariana,  Hist.  Esp.,  lib. 
v.,   cap.    x.;    Feyjoo,    torn.    vi. ,  2,    6;    Masdeu,  xi.,   4;    Boccaccio,    De   Claris 
Mulieribus ;  Gailliard,  De  la  RivalM  entre  la  France  et  F  Espagne,  i. ,  pp.  47-49. 
Finally,  L'Histoirc  des  Francs,  par  Gre'goire  de  Tours — I  have  used  Guizot's  edition 
(Paris,  1823) — is  invaluable  for  all  events  between  397  and  591. 


CHAPTER  VII. 
LEOVGILD. 

(567—586.) 

ATHANAGILD  did  not  live  to  hear  of  the  murder  of  his  daughter. 
He  died  at  Toledo  in  567,  and  was  succeeded,  after  an  interval 
of  over  five  months,  by  Leova  or  Liuva,  who  was  duly  if  tardily 
elected  king  in  his  room. 

During  this  unfortunate  interregnum,  the  ungoverned  country 
had  been  distracted  by  serious  internal  dissensions  ;  and  Leova, 
who  never  crossed  the  Pyrenees,  but  reigned  and  died  at  Nar- 
bonne,  was  glad  to  entrust  the  government  and  defence  of 
greater  Spain  to  his  younger  brother  Leovgild,  whose  reign 
may  be  said  to  have  commenced  from  the  day  that  he  received 
his  commission  as  viceroy.  For  of  Leova  no  more  is  heard  nor 
known,  but  that  he  died  in  572,  when  his  younger  brother  be- 
came de  jure,  as  he  already  was  de  facto,  king  of  the  Visi- 
goths. 

But  the  first  task  that  fell  to  Leovgild,  as  king  or  viceroy 
in  569,  was  to  repel  the  encroachments  of  the  Imperial  forces 
in  Andalusia.  His  operations  were  uniformly  successful.  He 
besieged  and  took  Asido  (possibly  Jerez)  in  570  ;  and  he  occu- 
pied the  yet  more  important  city  of  Corduba  in  571,  when  the 
Romans  were  driven  beyond  the  Sierra  Nevada,  and  the  Imperial 
dominion  was  restricted  to  a  narrow  strip  of  territory  along  the 
coast,  yet  including  all  the  important  towns  and  harbours  from 
Cape  St.  Vincent  to  Carthageiia.  Nor  was  Leovgild  less  fortu- 
nate in  checking,  though  it  was  not  until  the  close  of  his  reign 
that  he  actually  subdued,  the  wild  tribes  of  Gallicia  and  the 
Asturias. 

Beset  with  enemies  from  the  first  day  he  set  foot  in  Spain ; 
with  enemies  in  the  court  and  in  the  camp,  in  the  palace  and 
in  the  Church,  harassed  by  Gothic  nobles,  by  Imperial  com- 
manders, by  Cantabrian  mountaineers,  by  Romish  bishops — 


LEOVGILD.  77 

Leovgild  showed  himself  the  ablest  of  all  the  Visigothic  kings 
of  Spain ;  and  as  a  general,  as  a  lawgiver,  and  as  an  adminis- 
trator by  far  the  most  successful.  Hampered  as  he  was  by 
ecclesiastical  opposition,  by  religious  dissension,  and  by  domestic 
treason,  he  contrived  to  raise  the  position  and  power  of  the  king 
and  of  the  kingdom  to  a  higher  pitch  than  had  ever  been 
reached  before.  He  checked,  if  he  could  not  destroy,  the 
growing  power  of  the  Church,  and  he  at  least  temporarily 
crushed  the  overgrown  power  of  the  Visigothic  nobility — that 
intractable  order  of  whom  a  contemporary  writer  says  that  they 
had  learned  "  the  detestable  habit  of  killing  their  king  when- 
ever he  displeased  them,  and  putting  another  in  his  place  !  "  l 

But  the  ecclesiastics  who  wrote  the  history  of  the  times 
were  far  more  concerned  with  points  of  doctrine,  and  matters 
of  discipline  or  ritual,  than  with  any  large  questions  of  govern- 
ment or  of  policy  ;  and  Leovgild  is  unfortunately  best  known  to 
us  in  the  part  of  the  wicked  father  in  a  wretched  domestic 
drama — a  tragedy  of  priests  and  women,  of  converts  and  rebels, 
of  a  disloyal  bishop  and  a  sanctified  traitor. 

The  beginning  of  troubles  was  found,  as  usual,  in  a 
Merovingian  marriage,  albeit  such  an  alliance  with  powerful 
neighbours  might  fairly  have  been  considered  a  prudent  and 
judicious  measure  for  strengthening  the  throne  of  the  Visigoths. 
Ermengild,  the  eldest  son  of  Leovgild,  had  been  married  to 
Ingunthis,  a  daughter  of  Sigebert  of  Austrasia  and  the  unfor- 
tunate Brunhilda  of  Spain.  But  although  Brunhilda,  on  her 
marriage  with  the  Frank,  had  been  content  to  be  converted  to 
the  Catholicism  of  her  husband,  Brunhilda's  daughter  was 
permitted  by  the  Visigoths  to  retain  her  more  aggressive  rule 
of  faith,  heterodox  though  it  was,  in  the  palace  of  her  husband 
and  of  her  husband's  kin  in  Spain.  But  neither  the  theology 
nor  the  temper  of  Ingunthis  were  found  agreeable  to  her  hus- 
band's stepmother,  Goswintha,  the  queen  consort  of  Leovgild  ; 
and  the  palace  at  Toledo  was  distracted  by  religious  and 
feminine  strife.  The  daughter  of  Brunhilda  was  not  likely  to 
submit  tamely  to  the  oppression  of  a  mother-in-law,  who  was 
also  an  Arian,  still  less  to  embrace  a  heresy  which  had  become 
doubly  odious  to  her ;  and  Leovgild,  in  the  interests  of  domestic 
peace,  contrived  to  separate  the  rival  ladies  by  investing  Ermen- 

1  The  celebrated  maxim  of  Visigothic  law  in  Spain,  Key  ser&s  si  fecieres 
derecho,  y  si  non  fecieres  derecho,  no  serds  Rey,  might  be  of  dangerous  application 
in  the  case  of  an  elective  monarchy.  The  judges  of  the  right  were  the  electors 
from  among  whose  number  the  new  monarch  would  be  chosen. 


78  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

gild  with  the  vice-royalty  or  consortium  regni  of  Baetica,1  and 
sending  him  and  his  wife  to  reside  at  Seville. 

At  the  southern  capital,  unfortunately,  was  found,  not  an 
Arian  persecutor,  but  an  Athanasian  ally  and  tempter,  in  the 
person  of  Leander,  the  celebrated  Bishop  of  Seville,  the  elder 
brother  of  his  yet  more  celebrated  successor  Isidore,  and  the 
most  powerful  prelate  in  all  Spain.  To  this  wily  Churchman 
the  young  couple  appeared  as  heaven-sent  instruments  for 
dealing  a  deadly  blow  at  the  masterful  Arian  monarch  on  the 
throne.  The  leading  Catholics,  and  possibly  even  some  of  the 
Arian  nobility,  may  have  shared  the  views  and  aspirations  of 
Leander,  and  it  was  no  hard  task  to  convert  the  vain  and 
unhappy  prince  into  a  religious  rebel.  Thus  encompassed  by 
Catholicism  within  and  without,  his  head  turned  by  his  more 
than  princely  authority,  his  heart  touched  by  the  tender  en- 
treaties of  his  young  wife,  and  the  vehement  exhortations  of 
one  of  the  most  eloquent  Churchmen  of  the  day,  it  was  but 
natural  that  Ermengild  should  have  accepted  the  theology  that 
was  agreeable  to  Ingunthis — and  the  crown  that  was  offered 
by  Leander. 

But  the  conversion  of  the  prince  would  have  been  poor  and 
barren  indeed  had  it  been  restricted  to  a  change  of  creed. 
And  when  the  royal  convert  was  solemnly  re-baptised  (580),  by 
the  triumphant  Leander,  and  made  Catholic  under  the  new 
Christian  name  of  Juan,  it  was  understood  that  the  unorthodox 
father  of  the  princely  consort  should  no  longer  be  permitted  to 
rule  over  Spain,  and  that  a  heterodox  stepmother  should  give 
place  in  the  palace  of  Toledo  to  an  eminently  Catholic  wife. 
And  thus  Ermengild,  "  the  champion  of  the  true  faith,"  proceeded 
to  take  up  arms  against  his  father,  to  coin  money  in  his  own 
name,  stamped  with  his  own  royal  effigy,2  and  to  proclaim 
himself  the  orthodox,  and,  as  such,  the  only  legitimate  king  of 
the  Visigoths.  He  solicited  the  alliance  of  Mir,  King  of  the 
ever-ready  and  now  Catholic  Suevians,  and  he  called  in  to  his 
assistance  the  Roman  legions  of  the  Emperor  Tiberius  (580), 
already  in  the  occupation  of  some  of  the  fairest  cities  in  south- 

1  Two  forces,  says  Dahn,  combined  to  make  German  kingship ;  hereditary 
succession  and  popular  election.  The  object  of  these  delegations  of  authority 
during  the  lifetime  of  the  reigning  sovereign  were  usually  to  promote  the  heredi- 
tary at  the  expense  of  the  elective  principle.  The  consortium  regni  was  one  of 
many  expedients  for  securing  the  succession  of  the  king's  son  after  the  king's 
death. 

8  There  is  a  gold  piece  of  this  issue  in  the  collection  of  the  British  Museum, 
where  I  have  seen  it. 


580.]  LEOVGILD.  79 

eastern  Spain.  Merida  and  Cordova  declared  themselves  in 
his  favour.  Rebellion  was  once  more  abroad  in  the  land.1  For 
some  time  Leovgild  attempted  to  reason  with  his  rebellious 
son.  But  messages  and  messengers,  lay  and  ecclesiastical,  were 
sent  in  vain.  The  king  at  length  determined  to  submit  the 
matter  to  a  synod  ;  and  a  council  of  Arian  bishops  was  sum- 
moned to  meet  at  Toledo  in  581,  which  pronounced  several 
decrees  in  favour  of  religious  unity,  and  generally  of  the  most 
liberal  character  as  regards  those  who  professed  the  Catholic, 
or,  as  they  expressed  it,  the  Roman  religion.2  But  the  rebels 
were  not  convinced. 

At  length  all  this  parley  gave  place  to  actual  war.  Juan 
Ermengild  marched  his  combined  forces  against  his  father  at 
Toledo ;  while  Bishop  Leander  took  his  departure  on  a  pious 
embassy  to  Constantinople,  to  solicit  the  active  support  of  the 
Roman  Emperor  against  the  King  in  Spain.  The  ever-ready 
Suevians  took  advantage  of  the  opportunity  to  rise  once  more 
in  revolt,  and  the  Imperial  forces  reoccupied  Cordova.  But 
Leovgild  was  not  unequal  to  the  occasion.  He  marched  first 
against  Mir,  the  rebel  King  of  the  Suevians,  and  reduced  him 
to  complete  submission.  He  further  laid  the  foundations  of 
a  frontier  town,  on  whose  site  now  stands  the  modern  city  of 
Vitoria,  as  a  permanent  defence  against  the  wild  tribes  that 
inhabited  the  neighbouring  mountains  of  the  north-west.  The 
Imperial  troops,  bribed  by  Leovgild,  abandoned  the  cause  of 
his  rebel  son,  and  the  king  held  his  own  in  the  south-east.  He 
reduced  insurgent  Merida3  to  subjection.  He  reasoned  yet 
more  earnestly  with  his  unhappy  son  ;  and  when  all  his  entreaties 
proved  of  no  avail,  he  besieged  him  in  his  vice-regal  capital  of 
Seville,  where  he  kept  him  a  prisoner  with  his  rebel  army  for 
nearly  two  years. 

The  betrothal  of  Ermengild's4  younger  brother  Reccared, 
to  another  Prankish  princess,  Rigunthis,  daughter  of  Chilperic, 
King  of  Neustria,  was  at  least  diplomatically  more  successful 
than  the  marriage  with  the  unhappy  Ingunthis.  And  embassies 
from  Leovgild  on  the  subject  of  the  coming  of  the  young 
princess  to  Spain  served  to  ward  off  any  hostile  combinations 

1  Ermengild  is  said  to  have  actually  held  his  court  for  some  time  at  Merida. 
8  De  Romano.  Religione. 

3  And  struck  a  medal  in  honour  of  the  victory.     Florez,  Medallas,  iii.,  18*. 

4  The  betrothal  of  Ermengild  and  that  of  Reccared  are  said  (Hist.  Franc.,  iv., 
38)  to  have  been  negotiated  at  the  same  time,  about  572.     Chilperic.  though  a 
Frank,  was  always  a  firm  ally  of  Leovgild. 


80  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

between  Chilperic  and  Childebert,  the  brother  of  Ingunthis,  or 
her  uncle  Gunthram  of  Burgundy. 

Ermengild  at  length  escaped  from  Seville,  and  made  his 
way  to  Cordova,  and  thence  to  the  neighbouring  town  of 
Ossetus,1  where  he  took  refuge  in  a  church,  and  sought,  with 
many  protestations  of  repentance  and  amendment,  to  implore 
the  mercy  and  forgiveness  of  his  father.  Reccared,  his  younger 
brother,  was  the  bearer  of  his  message  ;  and  he  appears  to  have 
behaved  with  remarkable  kindness  and  discretion.  Leovgild, 
with  the  generosity  of  greatness,  at  once  promised  pardon, 
received  the  professing  penitent  with  fatherly  affection,  and 
visited  his  crimes  with  no  further  chastisement  than  the  loss  of 
his  vice-royalty. 

It  is  not  perhaps  surprising  that  Leovgild  should  now  have 
looked  with  some  disfavour  on  the  persons  and  offices  of  the 
Roman  or  Catholic  clergy  in  his  dominions.  And  as  political 
rebels  rather  than  as  religious  dissenters,  they  were  made  to 
feel  the  weight  of  his  resentment.  We  hear  of  priests  perse- 
cuted, of  prelates  dispossessed,  of  churches  plundered.  But 
we  must  remember  that  the  good  and  the  evil  deeds  of  this 
most  Arian  king  are  known  to  us  only  through  the  writings  of 
his  most  Catholic  opponents.2  To  his  son,  at  least,  no  harshness 
was  displayed,  and  the  vanquished  rebel  was  provided  with  a 
befitting  establishment  in  honourable  retirement  at  Valencia. 

But  the  vain  and  faithless  Ermengild  was  not  to  be  won 
by  kindness.  To  such  natures  as  are  incapable  of  gratitude, 
generosity  is  but  weakness.  And  Ermengild  acted  after  his 
kind.  Within  a  year  of  his  pardon,  he  had  made  use  of  his 
freedom  to  invite  the  Franks  to  cross  the  Pyrenees,  and  carry 
their  arms  into  Spain  ;  and  he  had  contracted  a  new  alliance 

1  Ossetus  is  referred  to  in  Masdeu,  vol.  vi. ,  p.  374 :   Inscription  No.    1094. 
The  town  appears  to  have  enjoyed  the  Roman  title  of  "  Julia  Constantia  ". 

2  John  of  Biclara,  whose  chronicle  is  our  best  authority  for  the  greater  part  of 
the  reign  of  Leovgild,  was  himself  an  exile  for  his  faith.     This  most  worthy  monk, 
bishop  and  historian,  was  born  about  A.D.  540  at  Santarem  (Scalabis),  in  Lusi- 
tania,  and  is  said  to  have  passed  seventeen  years  in  study  at   Constantinople, 
"  urbs  regia  ".     Returning  to  Spain  about  576,  he  seems  to  have  suffered  persecu- 
tion from  the  Arians  of  Barcelona  in  the  time  of  Leovgild.     After  the  accession  of 
Reccared,  and  the  triumph  of  Leander,  he  founded  the  Monastery  of  Biclara,  near 
Tarragona,  about  585,  composing  a  special  rule  for  the  monks.     He  was  appointed 
Bishop  of  Gerona  in  591,  and  died  about  620. 

His  chronicle  embraces  twenty-three  years,  567-589,  written  probably  in  590, 
and  is  marked  by  singular  fairness  and  impartiality,  especially  as  regards  the 
character  and  acts  of  Leovgild,  under  whom  he  suffered  persecution,  and  who  is 
only  mentioned  by  the  Catholic  bishop  in  terms  of  admiration.  See  Esp.  Sag. , 
vi. ,  360. 


582.]  LEOVGILD.  81 

with  the  Imperialists,  who  were  to  receive  a  large  accession  of 
territory  in  his  father's  kingdom  as  the  price  of  their  assistance 
in  a  new  revolt.  Ingunthis,  who  had  been  included  in  the 
pardon  of  her  husband,  was  confided  to  the  care  of  the  Imperial 
commander  at  Carthagena ;  and  Ermengild,  with  his  Romans 
and  rebels,  was  marching  northwards  to  join  his  forces  with 
those  of  the  invading  Franks,  when  he  was  captured  at  Tarraco 
by  Sisebert,  one  of  his  father's  officers,  and  thrown  into  prison, 
where  he  was  shortly  afterwards  executed  as  a  rebel. 

The  story  of  the  Arian  bishop  who  visited  him  in  his 
dungeon,  and  who,  finding  his  ministrations  rejected,  magnified 
the  insult  to  the  king,  and  so  procured  the  immediate  murder 
of  the  prince,  not  as  a  traitor  but  as  a  heretic,  is  sufficiently 
characteristic  of  the  times.  And  it  is  but  one  of  the  many 
that  have  grown  up  round  the  pious  memory  of  the  unfortunate 
prince,  the  edifying  horrors  of  whose  saintly  end  have  been 
enlarged  upon  by  successive  historians.  John  of  Biclara  and 
Gregory  of  Tours  refer  to  the  death  of  Ermengild  in  half-a-dozen 
words.  Isidore  does  not  mention  it  at  all.  The  only  authority 
for  the  ghastly  and  miraculous  incidents  which  are  recorded  in 
the  Martyrologies  is  a  dialogue  of  Pope  Gregory  the  Great,  who 
never  set  foot  in  Spain,  and  who,  as  the  friend  and  companion 
of  Leander  during  his  exile  or  mission  at  Constantinople  pro 
causa  fidei  fttigothorum,  presents  himself  as  a  witness  at  once 
necessarily  ignorant  and  necessarily  prejudiced.  It  would  be 
unbecoming  to  say  more  of  the  testimony  of  the  only  man  who 
has  earned  the  double  title  of  sanctity  and  of  greatness,  but 
that  it  has  failed  to  convince  his  more  critical  if  less  distin- 
guished posterity.1 

For  a  son  to  compass  the  death  of  his  father  has  ever  been 
accounted  a  crime  more  grave  than  that  of  the  ordinary 
murderer.  For  a  citizen  unaggrieved  to  take  up  arms  against 
his  sovereign,  is  more  than  common  rebellion.  For  a  royal 
prince  to  call  in  the  foreigner  in  arms  against  his  own  country, 
is  more  than  common  treason.  Yet  Ermengild  takes  a  place 

1  See  Gregory,  Dialogue  Hi ,  31.  The  Dialogue  commences  :  "  I  have  learned 
of  many  things  which  came  from  Spain  ".  See  the  edition  of  the  Dialogue  by  Mr. 
Coleridge,  pp.  181,  182,  for  the  details  of  his  execution  and  the  "mighty 
singing  that  was  heard  at  his  body";  "the  night  burning  lamps  that  were 
seen  at  the  place,  by  reason  whereof  his  body,  as  of  him  that  was  a  martyr,  was 
worthily  worshipped  by  all  Christian  people".  It  is  worthy  of  remark  that  Gregory 
speaks  of  the  martyr  as  "  King  Hermengild".  Gregory  resided  at  Constantinople 
as  apocrisiarius  or  envoy  to  the  Imperial  court,  first  of  Pope  Benedict  I.,  and 
afterwards,  at  the  time  of  the  visit  of  Leander,  of  Pope  Pelagms,  whom  he  suc- 
ceeded in  the  Papacy  in  590. 

VOL.    I.  6 


82  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

not  among  the  traitors,  but  among  the  martyr  saints  of  his 
country,  more  orthodox  than  Viriatus,  and  scarcely  less  holy 
than  St.  James.1  For  the  career  of  Ermengild  found  favour  in 
the  sight  of  an  infallible  judge.  And  Pope  Sixtus  V.  perpetu- 
ated the  memory  of  his  many  virtues  by  a  formal  canonisation. 
Many  are  the  recorded  miracles  wrought  by  his  powerful 
intercession,  and  a  single  bone  of  Saint  Ermengild  forms  one 
of  the  most  precious  of  the  relics  preserved  for  the  adoration  of 
the  faithful  in  the  Cathedral  Church  at  Saragossa.2 

The  Imperial  troops  seem  to  have  returned  to  their  cities 
after  the  prince's  death,  without  further  troubling  Leovgild ; 
and  the  widowed  Ingunthis  was  sent  with  her  infant  son 
Athanagild  to  the  Imperial  capital  at  Constantinople.  Ingunthis 
died  on  the  journey,  but  Athanagild  lived  to  reach  the  shores 
of  the  Bosphorus,  where  he  was  kindly  treated  by  the  Emperor 
Maurice,  and  thus  happily  passes  out  of  the  history  of  the 
times. 

The  projected  marriage  between  Reccared  and  Regunthis 
had  been  broken  off,  partly  on  account  of  the  death  of  her  father 
Chilperic  in  584,  and  partly  from  the  reluctance  of  her  relatives 
to  part  with  her  rich  dowry.3  And  Gunthram  of  Burgundy, 
freed  from  the  restraint  of  Chilperic,  although  the  promptitude 
of  Leovgild  had  deprived  him  of  the  all-important  co-operation 
of  Ermengild  in  Spain,  declared  war  against  the  Arian  Goths, 
and  laid  siege  to  Nismes  and  Carcassonne,  two  of  the  northern- 
most towns  in  the  dominion  of  the  Visigoths.  Reccared,  dis- 
patched by  his  father  at  the  head  of  an  army,  acquitted  himself 
with  skill  as  well  as  valour,  drove  off  Gunthram  and  his  nephew 
Child  ebert,  the  leaders  of  the  Franks,  secured  the  northern 
frontier,  and  returned  in  triumph  to  Toledo. 

His  father,  in  the  meantime,  had  undertaken  a  most  suc- 
cessful campaign  against  the  Suevians.  Mir,  the  first  ally  of 
Ermengild,  had  been  defeated  and  subdued  by  Leovgild  some 
time  before.  But  on  the  death  of  that  leader,  during  Ermen- 

1  See  Morales,  Cron.  Gen.,  iii. ,  79;  Butler's  Lives  of  Saints,  sub.  Hermengild, 
and  the  Breviary  of  Span.  Church,  I3th  April. 

2  See  Gregory  of  Tours,  Hist.  Franc.,  vi.,  43.     Ermengild  was  not  recognised 
as  a  martyr  for  some  three  hundred  years  after  his  death,  Espana  Sagrada,  xvi., 
373.    Nor  was  he  canonised  until  1585  by  Sixtus  V. ,  at  the  solicitation  of  Philip  II. 
See,  on  the  question  generally,  Gorres,  in  the  Zeitschrift  fiir  Hist.  Theolog.,  1873. 
St.  Ermengild's  Day  is  I3th  April. 

3  The  way  in  which  first  the  treasure,  and  afterwards  the  Princess,  were  stopped 
on  their  way  from  Paris  to  Narbonne  is  characteristic  and  amusing.     See  Gregory 
of  Tours,  op.  cit.,  vi.  45. 


587.]  LEOVGILD.  83 

gild's  rebellion,  two  rival  kings  had  asserted  their  claims  to  the 
monarchy  of  the  turbulent  tribe,  and  Leovgild,  taking  advantage 
of  their  dissensions,  and  glad  to  make  an  end  of  such  chronic 
rebels,  marched  into  the  heart  of  Gallicia.  In  a  brief  campaign, 
he  successfully  defeated  both  the  rival  kings,  Eboric  and  Andeca, 
who,  with  shaven  heads  and  monkish  habits,  were  sent  to  pass 
the  remainder  of  their  days  in  the  convenient  shelter  of  a 
monastery ;  while  the  victor  received  the  submission  of  their 
subjects,  who  had  continued  for  a  hundred  and  seventy-seven 
years,  ever  conquered,  but  ever  independent,  a  thorn  in  the  side 
of  the  Visigothic  monarchy.  A  fleet  dispatched  by  Gunthram 
to  the  assistance  of  the  Suevians,  was  at  the  same  time  routed 
off  the  coasts  of  Gallicia  by  the  Visigothic  king,  who,  with  a 
few  vessels  hastily  equipped,  entirely  destroyed  the  Prankish 
squadron.1 

It  is  admitted  by  the  most  uncompromising  Churchmen  that 
Leovgild  was  a  great,  if  not  an  orthodox  king.  His  vigorous 
heresy  is  on  the  whole  somewhat  tenderly  dealt  with  by 
Catholic  historians.  And  the  story  of  his  conversion  to  the 
principles  of  Athanasius  a  few  days  before  his  death  in  586, 
may  be  taken  as  a  species  of  tribute  to  his  merits,  suggested  by 
the  very  natural  desire  to  preserve  the  memory  of  the  greatest 
of  the  Visigothic  sovereigns  of  Spain  from  future  condemnation. 
But  however  he  died,  it  is  certain  that  Leovgild  while  he  lived 
was  one  of  the  ablest  of  the  Gothic  rulers  of  Spain,  and  the  first 
who  maintained  anything  like  regal  pomp  and  splendour  at  his 
Court.  Of  the  magnificence  of  his  apparel,  of  his  golden  crown, 
of  his  jewelled  sceptre,  of  the  gorgeous  throne  on  which  he  pre- 
sided at  the  assembly  of  the  State  Council,  we  have  abundant 
contemporary  record.  The  coins  which  bear  his  image,  crowned, 
first  of  his  race,  with  the  insignia  of  royalty,  are  to  be  found  in 
every  collection.  As  a  general  he  was  rarely  unsuccessful.  As 
a  builder  of  cities  he  was  more  a  Roman  than  a  Goth.  As  a 
legislator  he  added  many  new  laws  to  the  statute  book  of 
Spain.2  As  an  administrator  he  first  introduced  a  regular 
system  of  finance  into  the  kingdom,  which  was  maintained 
almost  to  our  own  days.  But  the  true  greatness  of  Leovgild 

1  It  is  strange  how  every  Visigothic  king  completely  subdued  these  Suevians, 
and  how  they  continued  ever  unsubdued,  until  their  successors,  or  the  guests  of 
their  northern  descendants,  really  subdued  Spain.      (Although  in  this  case  the 
Suevian  monarchy  actually  was  destroyed,  to  be  revived  no  more. — H.) 

2  He  reformed  and  added  considerably  to  the  code  of  Alaric,  and  thus  en- 
deavoured to  conciliate  the  Hispano-Roman  part  of  his  subjects  from  whom  he 
differed  in  religion. — H. 


84  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

was  his  moral  courage.  In  spite  of  all  his  political  and  domestic 
difficulties,  aggravated  a  thousand-fold  by  the  opposition  of  the 
greatest  power  in  his  kingdom — already,  perhaps,  the  greatest 
power  in  the  world — he  never  flinched  from  his  policy  of  firm 
and  resolute  government,  by  which  he  brought  peace  and  union 
to  the  greater  part  of  his  dominions.  He  strove,  and  strove  not 
in  vain,  to  blend  into  one  great  people  Goths  and  Suevians  and 
Romans — Spaniards  of  every  tribe  and  every  origin.  He  ad- 
ministered equal  justice  to  all.  His  more  politic  son  took  a 
shorter  cut  to  union,  and  grasping  at  the  shadow,  let  slip  the 
substance  of  power.  And  if  Reccared  is  called  the  first  of  the 
Catholics,  Leovgild  may  fairly  be  styled  the  last  of  the  Visigoths 
in  Spain. 


85 


CHAPTER  VIII. 
THE  GREAT  METROPOLITANS. 

(587—672.) 
I. — Reccared. 

RECCARED  succeeded  to  a  kingdom — Arian,  Visigothic,  German. 
But  the  Teutons  had  not  lived  for  nigh  on  two  hundred  years  in 
the  most  Roman  province  of  the  Empire  without  having  them- 
selves become  largely  Romanised. 

In  two  centuries  [B.C.  208 — B.C.  19]  the  native  barbarian  of 
Spain  had  become  a  loyal  Roman  citizen,  by  the  immense 
influence  of  the  metropolis.  In  two  centuries  [A.D.  410 — A.D. 
600]  the  foreign  heretic  became  a  devoted  Roman  Catholic  by 
the  more  powerful  influence  of  the  Church.  And  Reccared, 
who  did  not  possess  the  lion  heart  of  his  father,  but  who  read 
the  signs  of  the  times  with  a  surer  judgment,  saw  that  in  Spain 
— ever  superbly  Roman — the  rule  of  Ariantsm  was  doomed,  and 
that  it  were  wisest  to  accept  the  inevitable. 

The  conditions  of  Gothic  society  had  indeed  greatly  changed 
since  Atawulf  led  his  free  northmen  across  the  eastern  Pyrenees. 
The  small  freeholders  had  almost  ceased  to  exist.  The  great 
middle  class  of  the  nation  had  sunk  to  a  condition  of  something 
like  serfdom,  if  not  of  actual  slavery.  And  although  until  the 
year  652  lawful  marriage  between  Roman  and  Visigoth  was  for- 
bidden by  law  in  Spain,  there  is  no  doubt  that  at  the  time  of 
its  legal  authorisation  under  Recceswind,  the  races  were  already 
largely  mingled ;  and  further,  that  the  great  mass  of  pure- 
blooded  Visigoths  had  become  profoundly  influenced  by  their 
Roman  neighbours.  Reccared  indeed  assumed  the  Imperial 
Roman  title  of  Flavius,  which  was  used  by  all  his  successors.1 

1  We  see  the  Teuton  endeavouring  everywhere  to  identify  himself  with  the 
system  he  overthrew.  The  Lombard  kings  when  they  renounced  their  Arianism 
styled  themselves  Flavii.  Bryce,  Holy  Roman  Empire,  p.  45;  and  ibid. ,  pp. 
30-23. 


86  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

The  great  land-owning  nobles,  on  the  other  hand,  had 
maintained  a  good  deal  of  their  ancient  Gothic  independence, 
with  some  loss  of  their  Gothic  virtue ;  and  had  become  more 
powerful  than  ever ;  more  wealthy  and  less  warlike ;  more  tur- 
bulent and  less  loyal.  Independent  to  the  last,  and  ever 
aggressively  Teutonic,  even  when  most  Roman,  they  defied  the 
power  of  the  kings,  whom  they  elected,  and  hardly  submitted 
themselves  to  the  bishops,  whom  they  feared. 

The  clergy,  recruited  largely  from  the  common  folk,  found 
themselves  more  and  more  drawn  to  that  form  of  worship  which 
was  at  once  the  religion  of  the  Spanish  people  and  of  the 
Roman  world  :  and  the  domestic  persecution  of  Leovgild  was  of 
a  nature  to  encourage  resistance,  and  to  give  to  the  adherents 
of  a  powerful  and  growing  communion  the  cheap  and  attrac- 
tive glory  of  bloodless  martyrdom.  Leovgild  had  maintained 
his  position  both  against  his  aggressive  nobles  and  his  ag- 
gressive clerics.  But  his  own  son  had  fallen  in  the  struggle. 
Reccared  was  fain  to  secure  a  victory  over  an  unconquerable 
aristocracy  by  the  assistance  of  an  unconquerable  Church.  It 
was  no  doubt  a  masterpiece  of  statecraft ;  it  may  have  been 
even  a  political  necessity.  But  it  laid  the  foundation  of  most  of 
the  evils  which  have  for  thirteen  centuries,  in  the  days  of  her 
greatness  as  in  the  days  of  her  decline,  afflicted  and  disgraced 
the  kingdom  of  Spain.1  Reccared  accordingly  declared  himself 
a  Catholic,  put  to  death  Sisibert,  the  executioner  of  his  rebel 
but  orthodox  brother,2  and  summoning  a  Council  or  Synod  of 
Arian  bishops  in  January,  587,  he  induced  many  of  the  assembled 
prelates  to  embrace  the  religion  of  their  sovereign.  But  this 
obsequiousness  was  by  no  means  universal,  and  an  invasion  of 
Septimania  by  the  Franks,  under  Duke  Desiderius,  is  said  to 
have  been  promoted  by  a  dissatisfied  Arian  ecclesiastic.  Religious 
animosity  was  not  over  scrupulous  in  the  sixth  centuiy.  The 
invasion,  however,  seems  to  have  been  easily  repulsed,  and  for 
the  next  two  years  Reccared  had  leisure  to  devote  himself  to  the 
great  work  of  the  conversion  of  the  Visigoths  to  the  faith  of  the 
Romans  in  Spain. 

The  king  worked  without  violence  and  without  haste  ; 
patiently,  prudently,  firmly.  He  invited  both  Arian  and 
Catholic  prelates  to  take  part  in  friendly  theological  discussions 

1  The  Visigothic   king,  in  the  polite  jargon  of  the  present  day,  had  dished 
his  Visigothic  nobles.     And  in  less  than  a  century  Visigothic  kings  and  Visigothic 
nobles  had  alike  been  swept  away. 

2  Morte  turpissima  perimitur,  John  of  Biclara,  Chron. 


599.]  THE  GREAT  METROPOLITANS.  87 

in  his  presence.  He  restored  to  the  Catholic  churches  the 
treasure  of  which  they  had  been  deprived  in  the  reign  of 
Leovgild.  He  showed  himself  just  and  liberal,  clement  and 
even  generous  to  all.  He,  of  course,  chastised  the  Cantabrians. 
He  received  Leander,  not  only  without  reproach,  but  with 
respect,  on  his  return  to  Spain  from  Byzantium. 

And  at  length,  the  people  being  well  disposed  to  his  person, 
and  prepared  as  far  as  possible  for  the  great  change,  he  summoned 
the  Third  Council  of  Toledo,  in  589,  when,  after  a  good  deal 
of  prefatory  explanation  and  argument,  he  formally  announced 
himself  a  convert  to  the  Catholic  faith,  and  called  upon  his 
entire  people  to  follow  his  example.1 

This  declaration  or  Confession  of  Faith  was  received  with 
applause ;  and  the  Council,  under  the  presidency  of  Leander, 
drew  up  a  reply,  in  which  all  the  members  asserted  their 
renunciation  of  Arianism,  and  their  conversion  to  Catholicism, 
and  no  less  than  twenty-three  several  anathemas  were  formulated 
against  those  who  remained  in  the  ancient  faith  of  the  Visigoths. 
In  spite  of  the  opposition  of  the  Arian  nobility,  abetted  by 
the  queen-mother  Goswintha,  and  certain  Gothic  protestors 
throughout  the  country,  the  great  bulk  of  the  people  were  con- 
tent at  once  to  follow  their  king's  example  ;  and  Spain,  if  it  re- 
mained partly  Gothic  in  blood,  became  entirely  Roman  in  religion. 

The  proceedings  of  this  ever-celebrated  Council  were  signed 
by  no  less  than  sixty-seven  bishops,  with  only  five  lay  Palatines 
or  great  officers  of  state.  Leander,  the  ex-rebel,  presided. 
Leander,  indeed,  was  the  hero  of  the  hour,  the  first  of  the 
ecclesiastical  rulers  of  Spain. 

Born  in  the  province  of  Carthagena,  between  535  and  54-0, 
the  son  of  one  Severianus,  an  Imperial  Greek 2  or  Roman, 
settled  at  New  Carthage,  Leander  was  the  elder  brother  of  the 
yet  more  celebrated  Isidore,  and  is  said,  on  very  doubtful 
authority,  to  have  been  the  brother-in-law  of  King  Leovgild.3 

1  Reccared  is  said  to  have  sent  an  embassy  to  Gregory  the  Great,  soon  after 
the  sitting  of  the  Council,  to  announce  his  conversion  to  Catholicism,  and  to  ask 
for  the  return  of  a  copy  of  the  treaty  concluded  between  Athanagild  and  the  Em- 
peror Justinian  with  regard  to  the  Imperial  dominion  in  Spain,  which  seems  to 
have  been  deposited  at  Rome.     Gregory  refused  to  give  up  the  papers,  but  sent 
instead,  probably  in  599,  a  fragment  of  the  true  Cross,  a  link  of  the  chains  that 
had  bound  St.  John  the  Baptist,  and  some  hairs  from  the  head  of  St.  Peter. 

2  The  name  I^eander,  like  Isidore,  is  of  course  Greek. 

3  His  sister  Fulgentia  is  said  to  have  been  the  first  wife  of  Leovgild,  and 
the   mother  of  Ermengild   and  Reccared.     Goswintha,    the  queen   of  whom  we 
hear  so  much,  was  Leovgild's  second  wife,  and  the  widow  of  his  predecessor  King 
Athanagild. 


88  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

At  an  early  age,  about  the  year  575,  he  was  raised  to  the 
Metropolitan  See  of  Seville,  where  he  was  distinguished  above 
all  other  Churchmen  of  his  day  by  his  zeal,  his  ambition  and  his 
marvellous  eloquence.  Of  the  part  that  he  played  in  the  re- 
bellion of  Ermengild,  of  his  mission  or  flight  to  Constantinople, 
and  his  intimacy  with  the  great  Benedictine  Gregory,  the 
apocrisiarius  of  Pelagius  and  Benedict,  we  have  already  spoken. 
Leander  was  essentially  a  man  of  action,  enthusiastic,  restless, 
reckless.  A  man  of  words  rather  than  a  man  of  books  :  he  has 
contributed  nothing  to  the  literature  of  his  times ;  a  man  of 
deeds  even  more  than  a  man  of  words  :  he  changed  the  religion 
of  Spain.1 

Eighteen  months  after  the  Council  of  Toledo,  Leander  pre- 
sided over  the  first  Synod  of  Seville.  To  record  the  various 
dogmatic  decrees  of  such  assemblies  would  be  both  tedious  and 
unprofitable.  But  one  of  the  canons  of  this  provincial  Synod 
casts  so  strange  a  light  upon  the  state  of  society  at  the  time — 
social,  ecclesiastical  and  moral-  that  it  is  worthy  at  least  of 
passing  notice.  Ecclesiastics  it  would  seem  had  been  already 
forbidden  to  keep  women  servants  in  their  houses ;  and  Leander 
and  his  provincial  clergy  ordained  as  a  punishment  for  all  such 
Churchmen  as  persisted  in  disregarding  this  prohibition,  that 
the  servants  of  the  offenders  should  be  sold  as  slaves,  and  the 
proceeds  of  the  sale  handed  over  to  the  poor.  A  doubly 
virtuous  supplement  to  the  alms  of  the  Faithful !  a  terrible 
punishment  for  the  disobedient  Priest ! 

The  affection  of  Gregory  for  Leander  continued  throughout 
their  lives,  and  in  599  the  bishop  was  gratified  by  the  coveted 
distinction  2  of  the  sacred  Pallium  at  the  hand  of  the  Pope,  an 
honour  of  which  the  precise  significance  is  discussed  with  much 
acrimony  by  ecclesiastical  historians.  But  Leander  did  not  live 
long  to  enjoy  his  new  position,  whatever  it  may  have  been ;  he 
died  at  the  end  of  the  year  599>  or  at  latest  in  600,  leaving  his 
bishopric  and  his  supremacy  in  Spain  to  his  brother  Isidore. 
Their  younger  sister,  Florentina,  who  was  the  superioress,  or, 
rather,  it  must  have  been,  the  visitor,  of  no  less  than  forty 
convents,  survived  Leander  but  two  years,  and  died  in  603. 

Reccared's  public  profession  and  record  of  orthodoxy  did  not 
save  the  country  from  another  Prankish  invasion  almost  im- 

1  That  he  was  largely  instrumental  in  changing  the  religion  of  the  Gothic 
rulers  is  true ;  but  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  three-quarters  of  the  population 
of  the  country  were  of  Hispano-Roman  blood  and  were  opposed  to  Arianism. — H. 

2  Montalembert,  op.  cit.,  ii.,  133. 


601.]  THE  GREAT  METROPOLITANS.  89 

mediately  after  the  meeting  of  the  Council  in  589.  The  Frank 
was  no  less  covetous  of  the  territories  of  the  Catholic  than  of 
the  Arian  neighbour ;  and  after  some  fruitless  negotiations,  in 
the  course  of  which  Reccared  secured  the  neutrality  of  Childe- 
bert  and  Brunhilda  by  a  handsome  subsidy,  Gunthram  invaded 
Septimania.  If  ecclesiastical  law  was  enfeebling  the  Visigoths, 
the  arm  of  Reccared  was  certainly  not  shortened  by  his  new 
theology.  He  marched  across  the  Pyrenees  on  the  first  news 
of  Gunthram's  appearance  on  his  northern  frontier,  and  inflicted 
on  him,  near  Carcassonne,  so  crushing  a  defeat  that  no  further 
operations  were  attempted  against  Spain  by  any  Prankish  power 
for  many  years.1  Against  the  Imperial  troops  in  the  south  he 
was  less  successful ;  nor  was  he  spared  the  inevitable  victory 
over  the  mountaineers  of  Cantabria,  before  his  death  at  Toledo 
in  601.2 

The  reign  of  Reccared  bridges  over,  as  it  were,  the  vast  gulf 
that  lies  between  the  old  Visigothic  and  the  new  Catholic 
kingdom — between  the  Wallias  and  the  Leovgilds  of  a  militant 
State,  and  the  Sisenands  and  the  Erwigs  of  a  dominant  Church  ; 
between  Alaric  thundering  at  the  gates  of  Rome,  and  Roderic 
fleeing  before  the  Saracens  on  the  Guadalete. 


II. — Isidore  of  Seville. 

Of  the  eighteen  Gothic  kings  who  reigned,  if  they  did  not 
rule,  from  the  death  of  Reccared  to  the  conquest  and  occupa- 
tion of  Spain  by  the  Arabs,  there  is  but  little  to  be  said.  The 
real  sovereigns  of  the  country  were  the  bishops  and  clergy  of 
Romish  Spain.  And  of  all  these,  the  greatest  name  was  that 
of  Isidore  of  Seville.3  The  youngest  brother  of  the  master- 
ful Leander,  by  whom  he  was  brought  up  on  the  death  of  his 
parents,  Isidore  gave  early  proof  "of  uncommon  intelligence,  no 
less  than  of  extraordinary  diligence  in  his  studies.  Relegated 
by  family  prudence,  if  not  by  fraternal  jealousy,  to  the  seclusion 
of  a  monastery,  the  youth  grew  up  a  student,  and  a  recluse — 
entirely  subject  to  his  elder  brother — until,  on  Leander's  death 
in  600,  Isidore  was  called  from  the  cloister  to  succeed  him  as 

1  One  of  his  commanders  in  this  Septimanian  expedition  was  Dux  Claudius, 
said  by  Mr.  Oman  (Europe,  476-918,  p.   142),  to  have  been  "the  first  man  of 
Roman  blood  promoted  to  high  rank  by  a  Visigothic  king".     Cf.  Romey,  ii. ,  157. 

2  Isidore,  Hist,  de  Reg.  Goth. 

1  Lucas  Tudensis,  Vit.  S,  Isidor. ;  Holland,  torn,  i.,  April,  p.  331. 


90  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

Metropolitan  of  Seville,  where  he  reigned  with  a  not  unkindly 
rule  till  his  death  in  636. 

Very  different  were  the  characters  and  dispositions  of  these 
two  almost  equally  famous  brothers.  Leander  was  eloquent, 
unscrupulous,  ambitious,  restless— a  man  of  the  world.  Isidore 
was  learned,  punctilious,  contented,  gentle — a  man  of  the 
cloister.  Both  were  devoted  to  their  Church,  and  jealous  of 
its  privileges.  Both  took  their  places  as  presidents  of  councils 
and  rulers  of  kings  ;  but  Leander  was  a  rebel ;  Isidore  was  at 
least  ever  loyal  to  Spain.  Isidore  has  left  behind  him  a  com- 
plete library  of  works  on  almost  every  subject  of  study,  human 
or  divine — an  encyclopaedia  of  early  learning.1  Leander  has  left 
nothing  behind  him  but  his  reputation — and  the  Catholicism  of 
Spain.2 

Of  the  writings  of  Isidore — le  dernier  savant  du  monde  ancien 
— as  Montalembert  not  unhappily  calls  him,  the  most  famous 
and  the  most  comprehensive  was  the  Etymologies,  or  Origins 
of  Things,  one  of  the  most  famous  books  of  study  of  the 
Middle  Ages ;  the  most  beautiful  was  perhaps  the  Mozarabic 
Liturgy,  the  admiration  and  the  study  of  Ximenes.  But  un- 
questionably the  most  valuable  is  his  History  of  the  Goths, 
Historia  de  regibus  Gothorum  Wandalorum  el  Suevorum,  which, 
though  its  compass  is  brief,  and  its  Latinity  ungraceful,  is  not 
only  the  best,  but  in  some  cases  the  only  authority  we  have  for 
many  important  events  in  Gothic  history.  Inferior  to  Julian 
in  literary  skill,  and  to  Leander  in  political  and  administrative 
ability,  Isidore  is  undoubtedly  the  greatest  writer,  as  well  as 
the  greatest  Churchman,  of  Visigothic  Spain,  and  one  of  the 
worthiest  saints  in  her  calendar. 

Liuva  II.,  who  succeeded  his  father  Reccared  in  601  as  titular 
King  of  the  Visigoths,3  was  murdered  in  603  by  his  successor, 


1  Arts,  sciences,  grammar,  rhetoric,  dialectics,  metaphysics,  arithmetic,  politics, 
geometry,    music,    astronomy,   physics,    natural    history,   architecture,    painting, 
military  and  naval  tactics,  shipbuilding,  and  all  things  on  earth,  in  the  sea  and  in 
the  heavens,  are  said  by  Lafuente  to  have  been  treated  of  by  Isidore.     Lafuente, 
ii.,  p.  519. 

As  to  the  so-called  Decretals  of  Isidore,  embodied  in  the  Roman  Canon  Law 
by  Pope  Nicholas  I. ,  it  is  generally  recognised  that  S.  Isidore  of  Seville  had  no 
share  in  their  preparation.  See  Milman,  Latin  Christianity,  vol.  ii.,pp.  373-380. 

2  Montalembert,    ii. ,   204.      See   Ozanam,    Civilisation.    Chrdtienne  chez  les 
Francs,  chapter  ix.  ;   Baillet,  Jugement  des  Savants,  ii.,  202;  S.  de  Sacy,  Notices 
et  Extraits,  etc.,  an.  vii. ,  torn,  iv.,  158-183. 

3  The  Visigothic  kings  never  took  the  title  of  King  of  Spain  ;  they  were  always 
Reges  Visigothorum. 


626]  THE  GREAT  METROPOLITANS.  91 

Witeric,  who  was  in  his  turn  assassinated  in  610.1  Gundemar, 
the  next  king,  after  a  reign  of  two  years,  died  a  natural  death 
at  Toledo.  Sisebut  who  followed  him  in  612,  is  said  to  have 
gained  numerous  battles  in  the  south  of  the  Peninsula  over 
the  forces  of  the  Imperial  governor  Caesarius,  and  to  have 
made  an  honourable  treaty  of  peace  with  the  Emperor  Heraclius, 
securing  to  the  Visigoths  a  considerable  accession  of  territory.2 
But  he  is  chiefly  remembered  for  his  savage  edicts  against  the 
Jews,  who  were  persecuted  even  after  they  had  embraced 
Christianity,  and  who  were  fain  to  emigrate  or  flee  in  large 
numbers  to  the  north  of  the  Pyrenees. 

Reccared  II.  reigned  but  three  months  ;  but  to  his  successor, 
Swinthila,  who  sat  for  no  less  than  ten  years  on  the  throne 
of  the  Visigoths,  is  due  at  least  the  honour  of  driving  the 
remnant  of  the  Imperial  troops  out  of  the  Peninsula.  And 
thus  the  old  Roman  territory,  reconquered  by  Justinian,  was 
won  back  again  from  Heraclius,  busy  in  the  far  East  with  his 
Persian  wars  ;  and  Spain,  already  as  Roman  as  Italy  and  far 
more  Roman  than  Byzantium,  was  finally  cut  off  from  the 
Imperium  Romanum  in  626.3 

Swinthila  was  somewhat  too  independent  to  please  the 
ecclesiastical  rulers  of  his  country  ;  and  Sisenand,  a  bishop's 
man,  compassing  his  overthrow,  invited  Dagobert,  King  of  the 
Franks,  to  invade  Spain  in  support  of  his  own  more  pious 
pretensions.  The  Franks  naturally  accepted  the  invitation,  and 
marched  as  far  as  Saragossa ;  and  then,  more  strangely,  finding 
that  Swinthila  had  been  already  deposed  by  Sisenand,  they 

1  Witeric  was  one  of  the   Arian   Gothic   nobles,  and   the   movement  which 
resulted  in  the  death  of  Liuva  II.  and  the  elevation  of  Witeric  was  mainly  Arian. 
Witeric  was  deposed  and  killed  by  a  Catholic  reaction  under  Gundemar. — H. 

2  Mariana,  lib.    vi. ,   cap.   ii.       The   two  facts   stated  are  really  connected. 
Sisebut  took  the  field  against  Imperial  encroachment,  which  nearly  reached  the 
banks  of  the  Guadalquivir.     After  gaining  several  successes,  he  made  a  treaty  with 
Heraclitus,  by  which  the  Imperial  power  was  confined  in  Spain  to  the  Algarves,  on 
condition  that  Sisebut  persecuted  the  Jews  ;  who  it  had  been  foretold  would  over- 
throw Heraclitus. — H. 

8  According  to  George  of  Cyprus,  Descriptio  orbis  Romani  (circ.  A.D.  600) 
edited  by  Prof.  Gelzer  in  1891,  a  new  province,  entitled  Mauritania  Secunda,  has 
been  formed  out  of  the  remnants  of  the  old  Mauritania  Tingatana  and  the  Imperial 
possessions  in  Spain,  including  the  Balearic  Islands.  "It  seems  probable  that 
this  last  change  was  later  than  590.  In  that  year  we  find  still  a  special  magister 
militum  Spanies  (Comenciolus,  C.  I.  L. ,  ii.,  3420);  and  we  may  suspect  that 
Spain's  annexation  to  the  prefecture  of  Africa  concerned  its  military  as  well  as  its 
civil  administration,  and  that  the  dukes  of  whom  we  hear  (e.g.,  the  dux  of  Malaca, 
605)  henceforward  obeyed  the  prefect  at  Carthage,  as  they  had  before  obeyed  the 
master  of  soldiers  at  Corduba  or  at  New  Carthage."  J.  B.  Bury,  in  Eng.  Hist, 
Review,  April,  1894,  p.  319. 


92  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

marched  back  into  their  own  country,1  not  only  without  turning 
upon  the  friends  who  had  invited  them,  but  without  even 
receiving  the  stipulated  price  of  their  intervention. 

During  the  reign  of  Swinthila  [621-631]  the  supremacy  of 
the  clergy  had  remained  to  some  extent  in  abeyance,  nor  was 
any  Council  held  in  Spain  between  589  and  633.  But  the 
summoning  by  Sisenand  of  the  Council  of  633,  which  is  known 
as  the  Fourth  General  Council  of  Toledo,  marks  an  epoch  in 
the  history  of  Spain.  For  the  councillors  not  only  assumed 
the  novel  right  of  confirming  the  election  of  Sisenand  to  the 
throne  of  the  Visigoths,  but  they  further  decreed  that  the 
election  of  all  future  kings  should  be  subject  to  the  confirmation 
of  the  bishops2  duly  assembled  in  Council.  It  was  only  natural 
that  Sisenand,  seeking  to  obtain  ecclesiastical  sanction  of  his 
usurpation,  and  public  recognition  of  the  legitimacy  of  his  suc- 
cession, should  have  submitted  himself  and  his  claims  to  the 
assembled  ecclesiastics  ;  and  the  bishops  of  633  were  not  slow 
to  accept  the  submission,  and  declare  the  legitimacy,  of  so 
faithful  a  son  of  the  Church.  But  the  Council  was  not  content 
with  the  exercise  of  its  new  power  of  king-making.  It  took 
upon  itself  the  still  more  novel  power  of  excommunication  ;  and 
the  councillors  proceeded  in  their  corporate  capacity  to  declare 
Swinthila,  his  mother,  his  wife,  and  all  his  family  "  extruded 
from  the  fellowship  of  the  Catholic  Church,  and  of  the  whole 
of  Christendom  ". 

King  Sisenand  reaped  the  fruits  of  his  subjection  to  the 
ecclesiastical  authority,  to  which  he  had  offered  so  ample  a 
recognition ;  and  he  reigned  until  his  death  in  636,  when  he 
was  succeeded  by  Chintila,  who  submitted  himself,  in  his  turn, 
not  only  to  initial  recognition,  but  to  much  subsequent  dicta- 
tion at  the  hands  of  succeeding  Councils.  Chintila,  a  mild 
monarch,  pleased  the  priests,  persecuted  the  Jews,  and  died  in 
peace  in  640.  Tulga  reigned  from  640  to  642,  when  he  was 
relegated  to  a  monastery,  somewhat  after  the  fashion  of  Wamba, 

1 A  golden  font  which  had  been  given  by  Ae'tius  to  Thorismund  after  the  battle 
of  Chalons  is  said  to  have  been  the  price  of  this  Frankish  intervention.  But 
Sisenand,  finding  himself  already  in  authority  on  the  arrival  of  the  assistance  thus 
purchased,  refused  the  promised  guerdon  ;  and  King  Dagobert  was  compelled  to 
content  himself,  after  much  negotiation,  with  a  sum  of  money,  in  lieu  of  the  precious 
relic. 

2  A  few  laymen,  members  of  the  nobility  resident  at  the  king's  court,  were 
also  included  in  the  Councils  as  Palatines,  and  are  supposed  to  be  the  Gardingi, 
whose  status  and  attributes  have  puzzled  so  many  writers  upon  the  period.  Dahn, 
apud  Mr.  Hodgkin,  Eng.  Hist.  Review,  vol.  ii.,  223. 


668.]  THE  GREAT  METROPOLITANS.  93 

to  make  way  for  a  new  king  of  more  vigorous  mould,  Chindas- 
winth,  a  successful  conspirator  at  the  age  of  seventy-nine,  who 
prolonged  his  vigorous  and  masterful  rule  until  his  death  in  his 
ninety-first  year.  And  if  he  punished  the  rebellious  nobles, 
and  coerced  the  impatient  clergy,  and  made  all  Spain  feel  that 
the  sword  of  state  was  once  again  wielded  by  a  master  hand, 
Chindaswinth  was  no  vulgar  tyrant,  but  the  greatest  of  the 
Visigothic  legislators  of  Spain. 

The  Visigothic  kings  were  nothing  if  not  law-givers.  The 
first  code  is  said  to  have  been  compiled  by  orders  of  Euric,  and 
to  have  been  the  foundation  of  the  celebrated  Breviarium 
Alaricianium,  which  was  prepared  and  published  by  Alaric  II. 
but  a  short  time  before  his  defeat  and  death  at  "  Poictiers"  in 
50(3. *  This  Breviarium,  though  written  in  Latin,  and  largely 
founded  upon  the  Theodosian  code — published  by  Theodosius 
II.  in  439— was  intended  for  the  use  rather  of  the  Goths 
than  of  the  Romans  in  the  Visigothic  kingdom,  and  was  accom- 
panied by  a  highly  interesting  Interpretatio  or  explanation  of 
the  Roman  law  for  the  benefit  of  the  Romano-Gothic  people. 

From  the  death  of  Alaric  to  the  death  of  Athanagild  little 
was  added  to  the  provisions  in  the  Breviarium.  But  Leovgild 
was  undoubtedly  a  zealous  and  intelligent  law-giver ;  and  Mr. 
Dahn  is  of  opinion  that  the  early  code  known  as  the  Antiqua 
was  the  work  of  his  son  Reccared.  Every  succeeding  king, 
with  or  without  the  intervention  of  the  Ecclesiastical  Council, 
appears  to  have  added  something  to  the  Corpus  Juris  until  the 
promulgation  of  the  Lex  Visigothorum,  within  half  a  century  of 
the  final  destruction  of  the  monarchy  in  Spain.2 

If  the  Breviarium  is  due  to  Alaric,  and  the  Antiqua  to 
Reccared,  the  Lex  Visigothorum  was  mainly  the  work  of  Chindas- 
winth, who  put  an  end  at  length  to  the  conflict  of  laws  which 
still  existed  in  his  dominions  by  a  fusion  of  the  Roman  and  the 
Visigothic  systems  of  jurisprudence,  and  the  publication  of  the 
legal  unity  of  the  two  nations  who  dwelt  on  the  soil  of  Spain.3 

1  The  promulgation  of  the  last  extension  or  edition  of  the  code  is  said  to  have 
been  by  Egica  within  less  than  a  dozen  years  before  the  end ;  but  Chindaswinth 
was  the  true  author  and  publisher  of  the  Leges  Visigothorum  ;  and,  according  to 
Mr.  Hodgkin,  divides  with  his  son,  Recceswmth,  the  honour  of  being  considered 
the  Visigothic  Justinian,  (although  Egica  with  the  aid  of  the  Fourteenth  Council  of 
Toledo  drew  up  and  promulgated  the  great  code  the  Fuero  Guzgo. — H).     Eng. 
Hist.  Review,  vol.  ii.,  p.  212. 

2  It  is  sometimes  referred  to  as  the  Breviarium  Anianium,  from  the  name  of 
the  Latin  secretary  who  prepared  it. 

3  A  brief  account  of  some  of  the  more  salient  features  of  their  laws  and  of 
those  who  administered  them  will  be  found  in  the  Appendix,    The  Laws  of  the 


94  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

The  use  of  the  Breviarium  of  Alaric  was  abolished,  and  the  Lex 
Visigothorum,  containing  a  larger  infusion  of  the  Roman  elements 
into  the  old  Gothic  code,  was  pronounced  the  only  code  of 
laws  for  the  united  population  of  Spain.  But  Chindaswinth, 
vigorous  and  clear-sighted  as  he  was,  lived  too  late  in  the 
history  of  his  race.  Within  little  over  half  a  century,  the 
Visigoth  had  ceased  to  rule  in  the  Peninsula,  and  the  Lex 
Visigothorum  had  given  place  to  the  simpler  legislation  of  the 
Koran. 

Recceswinth,  who  was  associated  by  his  father  with  him  in 
the  administration  of  the  kingdom,  succeeded  him  at  his  death, 
and  devoted  a  great  part  of  his  attention  during  his  peaceful 
reign  of  over  twenty  years  to  the  promulgation  and  mainten- 
ance of  his  laws.  But  Recceswinth  was  but  a  poor  successor l  to 
the  bold  and  masterful  Chindaswinth ;  and  the  best  that  can 
be  said  of  him,  perhaps,  is  that  he  gave  practical  effect  to  his 
father's  declaration  of  legislative  union,  by  his  celebrated 
decree  permitting  the  lawful  marriage  of  the  Roman  with  the 
Visigoth  in  Spain. 

Saint  Ildefonso,  who  was  raised  to  the  Metropolitan  throne 
of  Toledo  in  658,  was  probably  more  powerful,  and  is  certainly 
more  famous  than  any  of  his  royal  contemporaries.  For  not 
only  did  Ildefonso,  the  most  distinguished  of  the  pupils  of 
Isidore,  rule  over  Spain  for  ten  years,  after  the  manner  of  his 
episcopal  predecessors,  but  he  is  said  to  have  enjoyed  the  more 
extraordinary  favour  of  a  personal  visit  from  the  Blessed  Virgin  ;  2 
and  he  is  still  venerated,  second  only  in  honour  to  Saint  James 
of  Compostella,  amongst  the  patron  saints  of  Spain. 

Visigoths,  printed  at  the  end  of  the  present  volume.  For  the  few  lines  that  I  have 
added  to  the  present  chapter  upon  the  preparation  and  promulgation  of  the  code , 
I  have  consulted  Montesquieu,  Esprit  des  lots,  lib.  xxviii.  ;  Daroud-Oghlou, 
Histoire  de  la  Legislation  des  anciens  Germains  (Berlin,  1845),  torn.  i. ,  pp.  1-216 ; 
Savigny,  Geschichte  des  romischen  Rechts,  vol.  ii.  ;  Dahn,  Konige  der  Germanen, 
vol.  vi.,  and  Westgothische  Studien,  and  finally  a  most  interesting  article  in  the 
English  Historical  Review,  vol.  ii. ,  pp.  212-234,  by  Mr.  Hodgkin,  to  which  I  am 
indebted  for  many  valuable  suggestions  about  the  Visigothic  period  generally. 

1  Recceswinth  was  devout  if  not  moral,  licet  fiagitiosus,  tamen  bene  monitus, 
Isidore  of  Beja,  c.  15. 

2  A  legend,  says  Dunham,  received  with  the  fullest  assurance  of  faith,  not  by 
the  vulgar,  but  by  the  most  learned  and  critical,  not  by  the  stupid  Garibay  and  the 
credulous  Morales,  but  by  the  sceptical  Ferreras  and  the  able  Masdeu.     Dunham, 
i. ,  219.     The  story  may  be  found  in  the  fullest  detail  in  Morales,  torn.  iii. ,  folio 
158  et  seq. 

That  Ildefonso  should  have  written  a  treatise  De  Virginitate  S.  Marios  was 
only  becoming ;  and  his  De  Viris  illustrious,  a  continuation  of  the  work  of 
Isidore,  is  of  considerable  interest  and  value. 


CHAPTER  IX. 
CHURCH  AND  STATE. 

(A.D.  672—701). 
I. —  Wamba. 

ON  the  death  of  Recceswinth  in  September,  672,  the  choice 
of  the  nobles l  fell  upon  one  of  their  number,  a  Goth  of  gentle, 
but  not  of  princely  birth,  well  advanced  in  years,  renowned 
for  his  prudence,  his  faithfulness,  his  military  skill — Wamba, 
perhaps  the  best  known  though  not  the  greatest  of  all  the 
Visigothic  kings  who  reigned  in  the  Peninsula.  When  the 
result  of  the  free  election  was  conveyed  to  Wamba,  he  declined 
the  honour,  and  long  withstood  the  entreaties  of  his  electors ; 
and  it  is  said  that  nothing  but  threats  of  personal  violence 
induced  him  to  waive  his  objections  to  wear  a  crown. 

The  Gothic  nobility,  "who  had  acquired  the  execrable 
habit  of  killing  their  kings,"  seem  to  have  been  equally  ready 
to  adopt  heroic  measures  with  those  who  refused  to  reign ! 
But  as  soon  as  Wamba  was  fairly  crowned  at  Toledo — no 
ecclesiastical  council  was  summoned  to  affirm  his  election  by 
his  peers— he  showed  that  he  bore  not  in  vain  the  sword 
with  which  he  had  been  so  forcibly  girt. 

Gothic  Gaul,  or  Septimania,2  the  only  territory  beyond  the 
geographical  limits  of  Spain  that  at  all  times  acknowledged 
the  rule  of  the  Visigothic  kings,  was  the  weak  spot  in  their 
dominion.  The  tribes  that  inhabited  the  mountains  of  Cantabria 
indeed  were  ever  unsubdued ;  but  they  were  not  to  be  feared 
at  any  great  distance  from  their  own  boundaries.  They  were, 

1  Or  of  the  prelates  assembled  with  the  Palatines  in  the  village  of  Gerticos 
near  Valladolid,  where  Recceswinth  had  died  ;  in  accordance  with  the  decrees  of 
the  Eighth  Council  of  Toledo,  which  Recceswinth  had  summoned. — H. 

2  The  old  colony  of  the  Septimani  or  soldiers  of  the  Seventh  Legion.     See 
Mommsen,  Hist,  of  Rome,  iv.,  542. 


96  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

no  doubt,  a  thorn  in  the  side  of  every  ruler  of  Spain,  but  they 
constituted  no  danger  to  the  monarchy.  But  the  rich  and 
fertile  province  of  Septimania  had  all  Europe  as  a  possible 
depredator — or  as  a  possible  ally — and  was  ever  specially  coveted 
by  the  neighbouring  kings  of  Prankish  Gaul.  The  original 
seat  of  the  Visigothic  Government  had  been  left  far  away  from 
the  new  centre  of  gravity,  by  the  change  of  royal  residence 
from  Toulouse  to  Toledo,  and  was  separated  after  the  victory  of 
Clovis  from  the  great  bulk  of  the  Visigothic  dominion  to  the 
south  of  the  scientific  frontier  of  the  Pyrenees  ;  and  it  is  a  truly 
remarkable  fact  that  amid  the  wars  and  politics  of  the  sixth 
and  seventh  centuries,  this  favoured  land  of  rich  cities,  of  broad 
rivers,  of  fertile  fields,  with  its  Roman  citizens  and  its  Imperial 
traditions — this  Naboth's  vineyard  of  the  Gaul — should  have 
remained  for  three  turbulent  centuries  ever  subject  to  the 
Visigothic  kings  at  distant  Toledo. 

Almost  as  soon  as  Wamba  was  crowned,  he  received  the 
news  that  one  Hilderic,  governor  of  Nismes,  had  been  pro- 
claimed king  of  the  Goths  by  Gunhild,  bishop  of  Magalona. 
This  northern  pretender  was  supported  by  a  large  number  of 
the  Jews,  who  had  fled  from  Spain  to  avoid  persecution,  and  to 
whose  detestable  race  and  religion  Bishop  Gunhild  showed 
himself,  no  doubt,  for  the  time,  exceedingly  lenient.  But  the 
position  of  the  rebels  was  soon  both  strengthened  and  com- 
plicated by  the  arrival  of  a  certain  Paul,  a  Roman  Dux,  or 
military  leader,  most  probably  from  Africa,  who  had  been 
entrusted  by  Wamba  with  the  leadership  of  the  army  despatched 
against  Hilderic  in  the  north.  For  Paul,  instead  of  overthrow- 
ing the  rebels,  persuaded  them  to  join  him  in  a  still  larger 
rebellion ;  and  far  from  compelling  Hilderic  to  acknowledge 
Wamba,  he  compelled  him  to  acknowledge  Paul  as  king  of  the 
Visigoths. 

"  He  who  will  not,"  says  the  proverb,  "sends ;  he  who  will, 
goes."  l  And  it  was  high  time  for  Wamba  to  make  his  ap- 
pearance in  person  in  Gothic  Gaul.  But  Wamba  was  at  the 
moment  engaged  in  the  time-honoured  practice  of  chastising 
the  Cantabrians.  Upon  this  occasion  the  chastisement,  if 
not  sharp,  was  certainly  short,  for  it  is  said  to  have  been 
accomplished  in  seven  days  ;  and  then  Wamba  marched  north- 
west through  Calahorra  and  Huesca  and  Barcelona,  upon  the 
strong  city  of  Gerona,  which  yielded  immediately  on  his 

1  Quern  quer,  vae:  quern  nao  quer,  manda — Portuguese  proverb. 


672.]  CHURCH  AND  STATE.  97 

approach.  No  success  could  have  been  more  complete. 
Within  a  few  days  of  his  arrival  on  the  northern  slopes  of 
the  Pyrenees,  most  of  the  Septimanian  cities  had  opened  their 
gates,  and  acknowledged  Waraba  as  their  rightful  sovereign. 

The  combination  of  the  ex-king  Hilderic,  the  rebel  bishop, 
the  unhappy  Israelites,  and  pretender  Paul  from  Africa,  was 
probably  not  popular.  Narbonne  held  out  for  a  few  days, 
but  the  town  was  taken  by  storm,  while  a  large  body  of  troops 
moved  on  to  besiege  Nismes,  where  the  rebels  lay  strongly 
fortified.  Paul  made  a  stout  defence,  but  the  arrival  of 
Wamba  himself,  with  his  troops  fresh  from  their  success  at 
Narbonne,  rendered  any  further  resistance  hopeless.  The  garri- 
son despaired,  and  the  city  walls  were  carried  by  assault.  In 
the  celebrated  arena  of  Nismes,  still  one  of  the  most  interesting 
and  most  perfect  of  Roman  remains  in  southern  Gaul,  Paul  made 
his  last  stand.  A  bishop — not  Gunhild — but  one  Argabad,  at 
length  interceded  for  the  rebels,  and  Wamba  was  sufficiently 
generous  to  spare  the  lives  of  the  vanquished.  The  province 
was  quickly  pacified  ;  for  the  rebellion  had  been  personal  rather 
than  popular ;  and  though  we  may  be  sure  the  Jews  received 
the  very  fullest  measure  of  punishment  for  their  adhesion  to  the 
losing  side,  Wamba  displayed  on  the  whole  a  noble  clemency  ; 
and  returned  in  triumph  to  Toledo,  carrying  in  his  train  Paul, 
who,  with  shaven  head  and  a  leathern  crown,  set  in  mockery 
on  his  brow,1  was  doomed  to  a  life-long  religious  seclusion  in 
expiation  of  his  treachery  and  his  defeat.  Thenceforward  for 
seven  years  Wamba  reigned  in  peace,  and  ruled  wisely  and  well. 
So  wisely,  indeed,  and  so  fortunately  that  this  brief  space  of 
time  has  been  ever  known  to  succeeding  generations  of  Spaniards 
as  the  days  of  good  king  Wamba. 

Among  the  many  measures  undertaken  by  the  king  for  the 
defence  of  his  kingdom  was  the  fortification  of  the  city  of 
Toledo,2  and  the  preparation  and  equipment  of  a  fleet  in  the 
noble  harbour  of  Carthagena.  But  in  spite  of  all  his  efforts, 
and  even  of  his  early  successes  in  the  field,  Wamba  found  his 
degenerate  Visigothic  subjects  sadly  averse  from  a  military  ser- 
vice, and  his  celebrated  law  De  his  qui  ad  helium  non  vadunt  is 
a  record  not  only  of  the  vigour  of  the  sovereign,  but  of  the 

1  He  apparently  suffered  the  customary  punishment  of  Decalvation  or  scalping. 
See  Appendix  on  the  "  Laws  of  the  Visigoths". 

2  The  ornamental  stones  and  marble  decoration  of  the  Roman  circus  in  the 
neighbourhood  are  said  to  have  been  used  by  Wamba — a  true  Goth — in  the  con- 
struction of  his  new  city  wall.     Mariana,  lib.  vi.,  6. 

VOL.    I.  7 


98  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

extraordinary  change  that  two  centuries  had  wrought  among 
his  subjects.  In  case  of  a  hostile  invasion,  every  bishop,  duke, 
or  count,  every  Commander,1  Vicarius,2  or  Gardingus3  within 
one  hundred  miles  of  the  scene  of  action  was  ordered  by  this 
law  to  hasten  to  the  spot  with  all  his  followers — slaves,  it  would 
seem,  as  well  as  free  dependents.  Failing  to  render  prompt 
obedience,  the  great  ecclesiastic  was  to  be  banished  the  realm, 
and  his  revenues  were  to  be  liable  to  the  payment  of  such  a 
fine  as  the  king  might  think  fit  to  impose ;  while  the  layman, 
whether  a  noble  or  freeman  of  lower  degree,  was  to  lose  what- 
ever dignity  he  possessed,  and  be  reduced  to  the  condition  of 
a  slave.  All  this  was  sufficiently  vigorous,  and  it  is  not  likely 
to  have  increased  the  popularity  of  Wamba,  more  especially 
with  the  great  ecclesiastics,  whose  privileges  he  so  little  re- 
spected. And  in  this  last  attempt  to  revive  anything  of  the 
old  Visigothic  spirit  in  the  nation  we  may  see  the  origin  of 
these  clerical  intrigues  which  led  to  the  deposition  of  "good 
king  Wamba,"  and  the  election  of  the  contemptible  Erwig  in 
his  stead. 

Truly,  Roman  Spain  had  wrought  a  marvellous  change  in 
her  nominal  masters,  the  Visigoths.  And  the  end  of  their 
mastery,  such  as  it  was,  was  nigh  at  hand.  The  rule  of  the 
priest  had  emasculated  the  race.  The  old  manly  vigour  was 
gone.  The  sword  was  despised.  The  warrior  was  condemned. 
Dogma  reigned  supreme.  The  people  had  more  law  than  they 
could  digest ;  and  they  had  not  fighting  enough  for  their  rugged 
constitutions.  There  was  Roman  law,  and  Gothic  law,  law 
canon,  and  law  ecclesiastical,  the  laws  of  the  Councils,  and  the 
laws  of  the  Synod.4  The  whole  country  had  become  one  vast 
Doctor's  Commons. 

The  Visigoths,  who  occupied  rather  than  conquered  Spain, 
were  distinguished  among  all  other  races  of  the  world  at  that 
time  by  two  apparently  opposite  characteristics — their  love  of 
fighting,  and  their  regard  for  written  laws — the  one  evil,  the 
other  good.  Such  was  the  combination.  Yet  when  the  evil 
was  entirely  destroyed  by  the  good,  the  race  decayed,  the 
Commonwealth  perished. 

1  Thinfaths  =  Colonel,  commander  of  a  thousand  ;  just  as  the  Turkish  Bin- 
bashi. 

2  Vicarius  =  Lieutenant-Colonel,  or  Vice-Colonel. 

3  Palatine  noble. 

4  See  Appendix,  "  The  Laws  of  the  Visigoths  ". 


677.]  CHURCH  AND  STATE.  99 

The  Moor  was  already  at  the  gate.  And  the  Roman  and 
the  Visigoth,  the  Athanasian  and  the  Arian,  were  soon  to  flee 
together  before  a  new  enemy,  and  to  be  glad  to  take  refuge 
with  the  unconquerable  Cantabrian  mountaineers — those  true 
Spaniards  who,  after  nigh  on  a  thousand  years  of  warfare,  re- 
mained yet  unsubdued  to  welcome  the  remnant  of  their  enemies 
in  the  day  of  their  distress. 

From  henceforth  Biscay,  Asturias  and  Gallicia  were  not  only 
the  country  of  the  Basques,  the  Cantabrians,  the  Celts  and  the 
Suevians — they  became  the  mother  country  of  the  modern 
Spanish  people.  But  the  end  was  not  yet,  although  the  mutter- 
ings  of  the  coming  storm  l  might  already  be  heard,  and  signs  of 
the  approaching  dissolution  were  not  wanting.  The  victory  of 
Erwig  in  the  palace  of  Wamba  was  but  the  beginning  of  the 
victory  of  the  Moslem  in  the  land  of  the  Visigoth. 

The  rule  of  Wamba  had  not  been  completely  pleasing  either 
to  the  bishops  or  to  the  nobles.  His  military  successes  were 
forgotten ;  his  military  legislation  remained.  His  persecution 
of  the  Jews  had  been  lukewarm.  He  is  supposed  to  have 
meddled,  or  sought  to  meddle,  with  the  boundaries  of  the 
episcopal  sees.2  And  at  length  it  became  evident  that  a  more 
pliant  monarch  would  be  more  agreeable  to  those  who  bore  rule 
in  Spain.  The  integrity,  the  valour,  the  moderation  of  Wamba 
availed  him  nothing ;  and  a  palace  intrigue,  as  usual,  produced 
an  acceptable  successor.3  But  the  intriguers,  impelled  by  un- 

i  It  was  in  the  heyday  of  Wamba's  power  that  a  Saracen  fleet,  forerunner  of 
those  Moorish  cruisers  so  long  the  terror  of  the  Mediterranean,  and  the  special 
scourge  of  Spain,  was  seen  off  the  southern  coast.  It  does  not  seem  that  anything 
like  a  serious  invasion  of  the  kingdom  was  contemplated  by  those  early  corsairs, 
although  the  number  of  their  vessels  is  said  to  have  been  considerable — 170  accord- 
ing to  one  authority,  270  according  to  another.  But  they  failed  to  effect  a  landing 
at  any  point  of  the  south-east  coast,  and  many  were  taken,  burned,  or  sunk  by 
Wamba's  ships  before  they  were  finally  dispersed  in  677.  (It  is  at  least  very 
questionable  whether  the  Saracens  on  this  occasion  did  not  actually  land  on  Spanish 
soil.-H.) 

*SeeEspaAa  Sagrada,  iv.,  and/otf,  section  ii.  of  this  chapter. 

3Ervigius  is  said,  I  know  not  on  what  authority,  by  Galliard  (Hist,  de  la 
Rivalitt  de  la  France  et  de  /' Espagne,  i. ,  58),  to  have  been  the  grandson  of  the  son 
of  that  son  of  Ermengild  and  Ingunthis  who  was  taken  to  Constantinople  after  his 
father's  execution.  He  was  in  all  probability  no  Goth,  but  a  true  Graeculus  or  low 
Roman,  the  son  of  one  Ardobastes ;  and  he  was  born,  it  is  said,  at  either  Byzantium 
or  Carthagena.  He  is  hardly  entitled  to  the  Gothic,  albeit  most  evil-sounding, 
name  of  Erwig  ;  and  he  has  been  usually  spoken  of  by  modern  writers  as  Ervigius. 
But  as  he  was  an  adopted  Goth  long  before  he  was  a  usurping  king,  and  more 
especially  as  the  last  Roman  or  Graeco-Roman  had  left  Spain  before  he  was  born, 
it  is  scarcely  worth  while  to  be  inconsistent  for  the  sake  of  a  fancy,  and  I  have 
treated  him  as  an  Erwig.  Mariana  opens  one  of  his  chapters  (vi.,  7)  with  the 
words  "  Flavius  Ervigius  ..." 


100  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

wonted  scruples,  shrank  from  the  murder  of  their  sovereign  ; 
and  a  combination  of  apothecaries  and  ecclesiastical  lawyers 
was  devised  to  bring  the  reign  of  good  King  Wamba  to  a 
contemptible  close. 

On  Sunday,  14th  April,  after  the  celebration  of  Mass,  a 
potion  was  administered  to  Wamba  by  the  aspiring  Erwig. 
The  drug  took  effect.  And  the  king's  approaching  dissolution 
being  made  apparent  to  the  palace,  he  was  invested  with  the 
habit  of  a  monk,  and  his  unconscious  head  was  piously  shaven, 
in  order  that  his  passage  to  another  world  might  be  rendered 
more  propitious.  But  Wamba  did  not  die.  The  cup  had  con- 
tained no  poison,  but  a  sleeping  draught ;  and  in  due  time  he 
awoke,  a  frocked  and  tonsured  ecclesiastic,  incapable  under  a 
recent  law  from  sitting  upon  the  throne  of  the  Visigoths ;  and 
he  was  fain  to  retire  to  the  monastery  of  Pampliega,  near  Burgos, 
leaving  his  crown  upon  the  head  of  the  wily  Erwig.  It  was  a 
contemptible  close  to  a  worthy  reign,  contemptible  indeed  in 
every  way.  For  if  all  our  indignation  be  reserved  for  Erwig 
the  palatine,  and  Julian  the  bishop,  we  can  have  but  little 
respect  for  a  Gothic  king  who  could  submit  to  be  cozened  of 
his  kingdom  by  a  change  of  costume,  and  who  could  abandon 
his  Gothic  subjects  to  the  sacrilegious  tricksters  who  had  defiled 
the  sacred  emblems  of  the  religion  of  truth  in  the  interests  of 
their  own  worldly  pride  and  covetousness.  Had  Wamba,  in- 
stead of  kissing  the  rod,  hanged  Flavius  Ervigius  on  the  walls  of 
his  palace,  from  a  gallows  higher  than  that  of  Haman,  and 
banished  Julian  as  far  as  the  shores  of  the  Euxine,  he  would 
have  died  a  greater  king,  and,  perhaps,  no  worse  a  Christian, 
than  he  did  in  the  livery  of  fraud  in  his  ecclesiastical  prison  at 
Pampliega.  The  best  that  can  be  said  of  him  is  that  in  the 
supreme  moment  he  obeyed  the  laws  of  his  country. 

The  new  monarch  promptly  put  himself  under  the  protection 
of  the  Church.  He  summoned  a  Council,  the  Twelfth  of  Toledo, 
to  meet  in  January,  681,  and  craving1  as  a  royal  suppliant  the 
support  of  the  assembled  bishops,  he  was  duly  recognised, 
authorised,  and  accepted  as  king.  The  well  satisfied  Fathers 
then  proceeded  to  modify  the  military  laws  or  decrees  made  by 
Wamba,  to  remit  many  of  the  penalties  inflicted  upon  State 

1  The  prayer  of  the  suppliant  was  supported  by  three  pieces  of  documentary 
evidence  :  i.  A  certificate,  signed  by  the  great  officers  of  the  palace,  of  the  religious 
shaving  and  habiting  of  Wamba.  2.  A  deed  of  abdication  signed  by  Wamba 
himself.  3.  A  letter  addressed  by  Wamba  to  Bishop  Julian,  President  of  the 
Council,  praying  that  Erwig  might  be  anointed  king.  This  was  kissing  the  rod 
indeed ! 


680.]  CHURCH  AND  STATE.  101 

offenders  by  the  late  monarch ;  and,  finally,  to  formulate  the 
most  complete  and  savage  decree  against  the  Jews  in  Spain  that 
had  yet  been  issued  by  King  or  Council.  Erwig  was  glad  to 
accept  the  royal  dignity  on  such  easy  terms ;  and  another 
Council,  the  Thirteenth  of  Toledo,  sitting  in  683,  after  reversing 
all  the  obnoxious  ordinances  and  decrees  which  had  not  been 
repealed  by  the  former  Council,  restored  to  their  property  and 
civil  rights  all  the  rebels  condemned  in  the  former  reign.  The 
Council  also  passed  a  decree  forbidding  the  imprisonment  of 
ecclesiastics  by  the  royal  authority,  and  proceeded  to  menace 
with  the  greater  excommunication  all  persons  whomsoever  who 
should  attempt  to  injure  Ervigius,  in  person  or  in  property,  or 
any  member  of  his  family.  Finally,  the  complete  repeal  of 
Wamba's  military  legislation  extinguished  the  last  spark  of 
military  energy  that  had  been  re-kindled  in  the  preceding 
reign.  But  the  protection  afforded  by  two  Councils,  and  the 
condemnation  of  his  enemies  in  this  world  and  in  the  next,  did 
not  serve  to  reassure  the  apprehensive  Erwig.  He  adopted 
Egica,  a  nephew  of  Wamba,  and  accorded  to  him  the  hand  of 
his  daughter  in  marriage ;  and  at  length  after  binding  him  by 
an  oath  of  special  solemnity  to  do  nothing  in  any  way  to  injure 
the  family  of  Erwig,  the  supplanter  of  Wamba  retired,  like 
Wamba  himself,  into  a  convent,  and  Egica  reigned  in  his  stead. 

Egica  convoked  the  Fifteenth  Council  at  Toledo  in  688,  not 
only  that  it  might  recognise  his  own  accession,  but  that  it  might 
absolve  him  from  his  oath  to  Erwig.  And  the  Council,  which 
was  ready  to  bind  and  loose,  not  only  on  earth,  but  in  heaven, 
readily  complied  with  both  his  petitions.  So  King  Egica 
reigned  in  peace,  and  spoiled  the  family  of  Erwig  with  a  quiet 
mind,  even  while  he  published  or  promulgated  the  very  last 
edition  of  the  celebrated  Laws  of  the  Visigoths.1  But  Egica 
at  the  moment  of  his  greatest  power  was  only  the  second  man 
in  his  dominions. 

Julian,  Bishop  and  Metropolitan  of  Toledo  from  680  to  690, 
was  the  last  great  Churchman  of  Visigothic  Spain.'2  Like  the 
ever  celebrated  sons  of  Severianus,  Julian  was  no  Goth,  though 
a  ruler  of  Goths,  not  even  of  Greek  nor  of  Roman  blood,  but  a 
Jew,  whose  parents  had  been  converted  to  Christianity.  He 
was  born  about  the  year  645,  and  early  distinguished  himself 
by  his  scholarship,  his  vigour,  and  his  ambition.  The  historian 

1See  ante,  chapter  viii.,  p.  93. 

2  See  generally,  Espafta.  Sagrada,  v. ,  28-96. 


102  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

and  panegyrist  of  Wamba,1  he  became  jealous  of  the  king's 
independence,  and  impatient  of  his  legislation  ;  and  having 
succeeded  Quiricus  as  Bishop  of  Toledo  in  680,  he  is  supposed 
to  have  been  the  chief  instigator  in  the  treachery  of  Erwig. 
As  president  of  the  Twelfth  Council  of  Toledo,  which  he  con- 
voked in  681  to  approve  the  immuring  of  Wamba,  and  to 
recognise  the  usurpation  of  Erwig,  Julian  at  length  found  scope 
for  the  display  of  his  commanding  powers,  and  taking  his  place 
at  once  as  the  first  man  in  Spain,  he  remained  practically 
supreme  in  Church  and  State  during  the  reign  of  two  subject 
kings. 

II. — The  Spanish  Church. 

The  ecclesiastical  hierarchy  of  Christian  Spain  was  com- 
posed at  this  time  of  metropolitans,  suffragan  bishops,  deans, 
priests  (Presbiteros),  deacons,  sub-deacons,  readers,  psalmists, 
exorcists,  acolytes,  and  Hostiarii  or  keepers  of  the  sacred  wafer. 
In  the  sixth  century  there  were  added  archpriests,  who  ranked 
immediately  after  the  bishop,  archdeacons,  Primicieros  or  pre- 
centors, and  sub-deans  attached  to  every  cathedral.  The  title 
of  archbishop  was  not  introduced  until  as  late  as  1085. 

In  the  early  Christian  times  the  bishops  were  elected  by 
the  people.  But  from  the  seventh  century,  the  right  was 
gradually  exercised  by  the  king,  or  in  his  absence — and  no 
doubt  at  many  other  times — by  the  Metropolitans  of  Toledo. 
The  five  provinces  into  which  the  country  was  ecclesiastically 
divided,  each  under  the  authority  of  a  provincial  metropolitan, 
were  not  unnaturally  made  conterminous  with  the  five  adminis- 
trative divisions  of  Constantine ;  and  Hispalis,  the  residence 
of  the  Imperial  vicar,  became  the  seat  of  the  chief  metro- 
politan of  the  Church  of  Spain. 

But  after  the  removal  of  the  Visigothic  capital  from  Seville 
by  Leovgild  at  the  end  of  the  sixth  century,  Toledo  gradually 
obtained  the  pre-eminence  in  Church  and  State  ;  and  the  See 
having  been  raised  from  the  rank  of  a  suffragan  bishopric 
to  that  of  a  metropolis  in  610,  it  became,  in  the  ambitious 
hands  of  Julian,  the  prime  metropolis  of  all  Spain ;  and 
the  primate  who  ruled  over  the  kings  of  the  Visigoths  as- 
serted his  ecclesiastical  independence  of  the  Bishop  of  Rome. 
Within  thirty  years  the  primate  and  the  king  were  both 

1In  his  biographical  work,  Liber  Historic  de  eo  quod  Wambce.  Principis 
tempore  Galliis  extitit  gestum. 


610.]  CHURCH  AND  STATE.  10S 

swept  away  by  the  tide  of  Moorish  invasion,  while  Gregory 
sat  unmoved  on  his  Imperial  hills ;  and  four  hundred  years 
later  a  new  archbishop  was  well  content  to  accept  the  primacy 
of  Spain  from  the  hands  of  Urban  at  the  Vatican.1 

The  number  of  suffragan  bishoprics  from  the  end  of  the 
fourth  century  was  about  eighty,  disposed  somewhat  as 
follows : — 

In  the  province  of  Tarraconensis  there  were  fifteen :  Tarra- 
gona, Barcelona,  Gerona,  Lerida,  Tortosa,  Vique  or  Vich,  Urgel, 
Ampurias,  Tarrasa,  Zaragoza,  Tarazona,  Huesca,  Pamplona, 
Calahorra  and  Santa  Maria  de  Oca,  afterwards  Burgos.  In 
the  province  of  Carthaginieiisis  [afterwards  Toledo]  there  were 
twenty-one  :  Toledo,  Carthagena,  Oreto,  Cazlona  [Castulo],  La 
Guardia,  Guadix,  Acci,  Baza,  Valencia,  Denia,  Elche,  Felipe  de 
Xativa,  Totana,  Segorbe,  Segovia,  Siguenza,  Arcos,  Alcala  de 
Henares,  Osma,  Palencia,  Virgi  and  Bigastro.  In  the  province 
of  Bcetica  there  were  eleven :  Seville  [Hispalis],  Cordoba, 
Granada  [Illlberis],  Ecija,  Cabra,  Santiponce  [Italica],  Martos, 
Niebla,  Xerez  [Medina  Sidonia],  Malaga  and  Adra.  In  the 
province  of  Lusitania  there  were  fourteen  :  Merida,  Ebora,  Coria, 
Idana,  Estoy,  Beja,  Agueda,  Lisbon  [Olissipo]  Coimbra,  Viseo, 
Lamego,  Salamanca,  Avila  and  Caliabra.  In  the  province  of 
Gallicia  there  were  eleven :  Braga  [Bracara  Augusta],  Dumio, 
Porto,  Chaves,  Tuy,  El  Padron  [Iria  Flavia],  Orense  [Aquce 
Urientes],  Britona,  or  Mondonedo,  Lugo,  Astorga  and  Leon. 
In  the  province  of  Narbonensis,  to  the  north  of  the  Pyrenees, 
there  were  eight :  Narbonne,  Agde,  Beziers,  Magalona,  Nismes, 
Lodeve,  Carcassonne  and  Elne.2 

The  parochial  system  3  was  not  introduced  into  Spain  until 

1  The  promulgation  of  the  famous  Sixth   Canon  of  the  Twelfth  Council, 
proclaiming  the  primacy  of  Toledo  among  Spanish  Sees,  and   the  controversy 
between  Julian  and  Popes  Leo  and  Benedict  as  to  the  independence  of  the  Spanish 
Church  are  treated  of  at  great  length  by  the  authors  of  the  Espana  Sagrada,  vi. , 
pp.  241-301,  and  by  Masdeu,  Espana  Goda,  xi. ,  145-167.     See  also  Julian,  Liber 
apolegeticus  ;  the  Acts  of  the  XIV.,  XV.  and  XVI.  Councils  of  Toledo,  and  Geddes' 
Tracts,  vol.  ii. 

2  In  the  compilation  of  this  list,  I  have  chiefly  followed  Masdeu,  torn,  xi.,  pp. 
183-7.     But  the  greater  part  of  torn.  iv.  of  the  hspafla  Sagrada  is  devoted  to  the 
question,  and  a  great  many  lists  and  dissertations  thereon  will  be  found  on  pp. 
1-270.     Gams,  in  his  Series  episcoporum  (1873),  a  work  ever  to  be  depended  upon, 
gives  fifty-nine  bishoprics  in  Spain,  and  seventeen  in  Portugal,  seventy-six  in  all, 
at  the  present  day.     But  many  of  the  ancient  sees  have  ceased  to  exist,  and  new 
ones  been  added  in  later  years.     The  provincial  archbishoprics  of  modern  Spain, 
since  the  Concordat  of  1851,  are  nine:  Toledo,  Burgos,  Saragossa,  Tarragona, 
Valencia,  Granada,  Seville,  Valladolid  and  Compostella.    For  a  list  of  the  bishops 
in  partibus,  see  Espana  Sagrada,  torn.  li. 

3  See  Masdeu,  xiii.,  315-316. 


104  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

much  later  times :  the  parish  was  for  long  hardly  distinguished 
from  the  diocese ; l  and  the  tithes,  which  in  imitation  of  the 
Jewish  law  were  instituted  about  the  fourth  century,  were 
payable  2  for  a  long  time,  not  to  the  parson,  but  to  the  bishop, 
who  was  subsequently  directed  by  Charlemagne,  in  a  capitu- 
lary of  the  Empire,  to  divide  the  amount  he  thus  received  into 
three  parts — one  for  himself  and  his  clergy,  one  for  the  poor, 
and  one  for  the  building  and  repair  of  churches.  The  bishop 
presumably  divided  the  first  third  between  himself  and  his 
inferior  clergy  as  he  thought  fit.3 

Although  monasteries  were  probably  unknown  in  the 
Peninsula  until  early  in  the  sixth  century,4  the  celibacy  of  the 
secular  clergy  is  certainly  a  rule  of  Spanish  origin.  The  thirty- 
third  canon  of  the  Council  of  Elvira,  ere  the  fourth  century  was 
ten  years  old,  forbade,  for  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  the 
Church,  the  bishops,  priests,  and  deacons  of  the  Peninsula  to 
live  as  husbands  with  their  wives.  This  tremendous  dogma, 
rejected  a  dozen  years  later  by  the  greater  Council  of  Nicaea 
(325),  was  finally  promulgated  in  Spain  by  the  very  first  canon 
of  the  first  Council  of  Toledo  in  400.  The  j  udgment  of  Elvira 
and  Toledo  was  adopted  at  Aries  and  at  Macon,  and  accepted 
by  the  entire  Catholic  world. 

But  apart  from  this  clerical  celibacy,  the  origin  of  so 
much  regular  and  irregular  immorality  for  long  ages  to  come,5 

JThe  question  of  the  ecclesiastical  tithes  in  Spain  has  given  rise  to  much 
controversy,  and  I  have  myself  consulted  a  large  number  of  authorities,  which  I 
forbear  to  enumerate,  without  much  enlightenment.  A  Spanish  MS.  in  the  British 
Museum,  Egerton  Coll.,  No.  486,  has  in  cap.  vi.,  some  very  interesting  notes  upon 
the  point,  from  which  I  quote  a  few  lines,  literally  translated:  .  .  .  "  as  it  is 
certain  that  the  tithes  with  which  the  Spanish  Church  has  been  endowed  since  the 
Kestauracton  de  Espafta,  are  nothing  but  the  profane  tribute  acquired  by  the  kings, 
and  graciously  of  their  liberality  given  to  the  churches,  without  the  necessity  of  any 
assent  of  bishops,  or  even  popes  ..."  (par.  2). 

In  the  Cortes  of  Guadarrama  (1390),  the  prelates  "were  ordered  to  abstain 
from  demanding  the  tithes  due  to  the  Ricoshombres,  which  shows  that  the  payment 
of  religious  tithes  is  the  free  offering  of  the  faithful  "  (par.  10). 

"  In  all  the  enumerations  of  the  wealth  and  property  of  the  church — in  vine- 
yards, lands,  slaves,  industrial  establishments,  etc.,  no  mention  is  ever  made  of 
tithes,"  pp.  ii,  12.  A  great  mass  of  learning  and  authorities  upon  the  subject  will 
be  found  collected  in  Masdeu,  xi.,  pp.  1-411.  As  to  the  temporal  power  of  the 
Spanish  bishops,  see  Fleury,  Hist.  Eccl.,  viii.,  368-397;  and  ix. ,  68. 

2  Set  forth  at  Heristal  in  March,  779,  cap.  No.  7. 

3Hallam,  Mid.  Ages,  ii. ,  141,  142;  Milman,  Latin  Christianity,  ix.,  5-10. 

4 See  authorities  collected  in  Montalembert,  ii.,  185,  186. 

5  As  to  the  laws  or  canons  regulating  the  marriage  of  the  early  Christian 
clergy  in  Spain,  and  the  changes  which  led  to  a  more  or  less  open  concubinage, 
see  Masdeu,  vii.,  241-243,  and  H.  C.  Lea,  Historical  Sketch  of  Sacerdotal  Celibacy 
in  the  Christian  Church,  especially  pp.  204,  299,  324.  See  also  post,  Appendix 
IV.,  on  Customary  Concubinage  or  Barraganeria. 


570.]  CHURCH  AND  STATE.  105 

it  is  certain  that  from  very  early  times  vows  of  perpetual 
chastity  both  by  men  and  women  were  not  uncommon  among 
Christians  ;  and  as  early  as  the  Council  of  Elvira  penalties  are 
prescribed  for  devoted  virgins  who  may  relapse  into  a  worldly 
life.1  The  Council  of  Saragossa  (380)  declared  with  greater 
wisdom  that  no  virgin  should  be  allowed  to  devote  herself  to 
a  religious  life  until  she  should  have  attained  the  respectable 
age  of  forty  years.2 

Monasteries  are  first  spoken  of  in  the  decrees  of  the  Council 
of  Tarragona,3  in  516;  and  until  the  middle  of  the  sixth 
century  hermits  or  solitary  devotees  seem  to  have  been  far 
more  common  than  coenobites  or  monastic  associations. 

The  first  monastery  that  was  established  in  Spain  is  said 
to  have  been  that  of  Servitarium,  near  Cape  Martin  in 
Valencia,  founded  by  the  African  St.  Donatus  about  the  begin- 
ning of  the  sixth  century.4  And  after  the  time  of  St.  Emilianus 
(ob.  570)  and  St.  Martin  of  Dumium,  the  Hungarian  Metro- 
politan of  Braga  (ob.  580),  some  sixty  years  later,  monasteries 
became  common  throughout  Spain,  and  more  especially  in  the 
north-west. 

Emilianus,  the  most  celebrated  of  all  these  early  founders, 
is  claimed  by  the  Benedictines  as  joint  patron  of  Spain  with 
St.  James.  Born  a  Castilian  peasant,  about  the  year  470,  he 
began  life  as  a  shepherd,  forsook  the  world  soon  after  reaching 
man's  estate,  and  lived  as  a  hermit  for  forty  years  in  the 
mountainous  districts  between  Burgos  and  Logrouo,5  chiefly  in 
the  neighbourhood  of  Mount  Cogolla.  The  fame  of  his  sanctity 
at  length  reached  the  Bishop  of  Tarazona,  who  ordained  him, 
much  against  his  will,  to  be  priest  of  Verdejo  (Verdejum),  one 
of  the  many  towns  that  claim  the  honour  of  his  birth.  But  his 
devotion  excited  the  jealousy  of  his  brother  clerics,  and  after  a 
short  residence  at  Verdejo  he  retired  once  more,  and  for  the 
remainder  of  his  life,  to  the  seclusion  of  an  oratory  or  monastic 
habitation  in  the  neighbouring  mountains.  His  contemporary, 
Martin  of  Pannonia,  who  became  Bishop  of  Dumium,  and  after 


c.,  ///.  ,can.  13.  2Conc.  ,  Ccesar  Aug.  ,  can.  8. 

3Masdeu,  torn,  xiii.,  pp.  158-161. 

4  Montalembert,  ubi  supra,  considers  that  the  rule  of  St.  Benedict  was  from 
this  time  the  most  popular  and  the  most  powerful  in  Spain  ;  but  a  learned  contri- 
butor to  the  Dictionary  of  Christian  Biography  thinks  that,  "on  a  very  careful 
review  of  the  evidence,  it  seems  most  probable  that  the  Benedictine  rule  was  not 
known  in  Spain  until  after  the  time  of  the  Visigoths  ". 

8  The  exact  locality  has  given  rise  to  fierce  conflicts,  Espafta  Sagrada,  torn,  i., 


106  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

Metropolitan  of  Braga  [580],  is  said  on  somewhat  doubtful 
authority  to  have  been  a  Benedictine,1  and  to  have  founded  a 
monastery  at  Dumium  towards  the  end  of  the  sixth  century. 

But  the  true  glory  of  early  Spanish  monasticism  is  un- 
doubtedly St.  Fructuosus,  a  Goth  of  royal  or  noble  birth,2  who 
attained  great  celebrity  in  the  early  part  of  the  seventh  century 
for  his  holiness  as  an  anchorite,  in  the  mountainous  district  of 
El  Fierzo,  between  Astorga  and  Lugo,  where  he  founded,  at  the 
foot  of  Mount  Trago  or  Foncebadon,  and  at  the  confluence 
(complutuin)  of  the  little  rivers  Molina  and  Sil,  a  religious  house, 
which  was  built  with  the  approbation  and  possibly  by  the 
assistance  of  King  Chindaswinth,  and  was  known  as  the  Mona- 
stery of  Compludo.3 

The  country  round  about  Compludo  is  one  of  the  most 
interesting  in  the  history  of  religion  in  the  Peninsula.  Lying 
embedded  amidst  lofty  mountains,  traversed  by  the  old  pilgrim 
road  from  Leon  to  Compostella,  the  sacred  valley  of  El  Vierzo, 
extending  some  thirty  miles  from  east  to  west,  and  five-and- 
thirty  from  north  to  south,  became  the  retreat  in  the  seventh 
century  of  the  earliest  hermits  and  anchorites  of  Christian 
Spain.  It  is  the  birthplace  of  Spanish  monachism — the  Thebaid 
of  the  Peninsula — and  once  rivalled  the  holiest  districts  of 
Palestine  in  the  number  of  its  saints  and  sanctuaries.4 

Saint  Fructuosus,  first  and  chiefest  of  these  sacred  heroes 
followed  up  his  foundation  of  the  mother  of  Spanish  monasteries, 
by  the  establishment  of  a  second  religious  house,  the  Monas- 
terium  Rujianeme,  afterwards  the  famous  San  Pedro  de  Montes 
near  Ponferrada ;  and  yet  a  third  in  the  immediate  neighbour- 
hood— the  Visuniense  (650  ?).  He  soon  afterwards  undertook  a 

1  See  Mabillon,  Acta  Sanctorum,  O.  S.  B.,  torn.  i.  The  rule  of  St.  Benedict 
was  long  almost  the  only  one  established  in  Spain.  As  late  as  1050  the  National 
Council  of  Coyanza  had  actually  excommunicated  the  members  of  any  other  order 
who  should  presume  to  settle  in  the  country.  The  prohibition  availed  but  little ; 
and  about  noo  the  rule  of  St.  Augustine  found  its  way  into  Castile.  Ferreras, 
Hist.  d'Espagne,  torn.  iii. 

2S.  Isidore,  De  Viris  lllvstribus,  cap.  35,  41,  and  45. 

3  La  seule  charte  authentique  qui  nous  soit  restte  de  /'  Ipoque  Visigothique  est 
une  donation  faite  en  646  par  le  roi  Ckindaswinde  au  Monastere  de  Compludo, 
Montalembert,  op.  cit.,  ii.,  205. 

4  Espafla  Sagrada,  torn.  xvi.     Ford  (1878)  205-7.     A  village  in  the  heart  of 
the  mountain  still  bears  the  name  of  Compludo,  though  every  vestige  of  the  once 
celebrated  monastery  has  long  since  disappeared.     There  is  a  church,  well  pre- 
served to  the  present  day,  at  Santiago  de  Peiialva,  near  Compludo,  the  only 
existing  specimen  of  a  Christian  church  built  in  the  pure  Arab  style  of  the  tenth 
century.     For  a  description  and  plan  of  this  most  interesting  building  see  Gentle- 
man's Magazine,  1865,  pp.  150-156. 


660.]  CHURCH  AND  STATE.  107 

pilgrimage  into  Andalusia,  and  founded  another  monastery  near 
Cadiz,  of  which  no  trace  nor  record  remains.  He  was  then 
prevailed  upon  by  Recceswinth  to  accept  the  bishopric  of 
Dumium,  from  which  he  was  translated  to  the  Metropolitan 
See  of  Braga  at  the  Tenth  Council  of  Toledo  in  656,  and  he 
lived  to  found  yet  one  more  monastery,  on  the  road  between 
Dumium  and  his  metropolis,  a  building  which  was  in  existence 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  and  was  still  known  as  the  monastery 
of  St.  Fructuosus. 

This  founder  of  religious  houses  is  supposed  to  have  died 
about  660 ;  and  the  bones  of  the  saint,  transported  in  the 
twelfth  century  by  pious  human  hands  to  Compostella,  are 
venerated  with  good  reason  by  the  pilgrims  of  Santiago.1 

1St.  Fructuosus,  like  Sertorius,  is  said  to  have  been  accompanied  in  all  his 
wanderings  by  a  hind  or  doe.  The  poor  beast  was  killed  by  an  enemy  of  the 
saint,  who  genua  sua  sitmmo  cum  dolore  flectens,  manifested  a  noble  generosity 
towards  the  wretched  slayer  of  his  pet.  It  was  a  charming  legend  of  Christian 
gentleness  in  an  age  of  savagery. 


108 


CHAPTER  X. 
"THE  LAST  OF  THE  GOTHS." 

(701—711). 

I. — The  Jews. 

IT  does  not  appear  that  many  colonists  or  exiles  of  the  Hebrew 
race  had  settled  in  Spain  before  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem 
by  Titus ;  but  from  that  time  the  Jews  were  to  be  found  in 
great  numbers  throughout  the  Peninsula,  and  they  are  said  to 
have  adopted  to  a  very  large  extent  the  Latin  language  of  the 
country.1  Their  rights  and  liberties  were  liberally  recognised 
by  the  Roman  Imperial  authorities,  more  especially  under  the 
Emperors  Antoninus  Pius,  and  Alexander  Severus ;  and  their 
position  was  still  further  ameliorated  by  the  edict  of  Caracalla, 
conferring  equal  civil  rights  on  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  Em- 
pire. Heliogabalus,  the  Syrian  Emperor,  distinctly  favoured 
them,  perhaps  as  fellow  Orientals ;  and  from  his  time  to  that 
of  Constantine,  they  suffered  no  persecution  or  molestation  in 
Roman  Spain.  With  the  political  recognition  of  Christianity, 
their  evil  days  began,2  and  before  the  fourth  century  was  yet 
ten  years  old,  a  canon  of  the  Council  of  Elvira  forbade  all  com- 
munication between  Jews  and  Christians  in  the  Peninsula. 

1  Although  the  Spanish  title  of  Don  is  usually  supposed  to  be  derived,  like  the 
English  university  nickname,  from  Dominus,  it  is  considered  probable  by  such 
authorities  as  Lindo,  Gayangos,  and  others,  that  it  is  a  survival  of  the  Hebrew 
adon,  lord,  which  is  used  by  Jews,  like  the  English  sir,  or  the  modern  Greek, 
Kvpios,  as  a  mode  of  address.     Lindo,  History  of  the  Jews  in  Spain  and  Portugal, 
p.  j.     Cf.  also  Los  Rios,  Les  Juifs  cTEspagne  (Paris,  1861) ;  and  a  Discurso,  by 
F.  Martinez  Mariana  in  the  Mem.  de  la  Real  Acad.  de  Hist,  de  Madrid,  torn,  iii., 
pp.  317-469 ;  Dollinger,  Studies,  trans,  by  Miss  Warre  (1890) ;  Essay  on  Jews  in 
Europe  ;  and  Vicent  de  Lafuente,  Sociedades  Secretas  de  Espafia,  pp.  21-26,  where 
the  Jews  are  counted  among  the  members  of  secret  societies  ! 

2  Constantine  had  made  conversion  from  Christianity   to  Judaism   a   penal 
offence,  as  early  as  315 ;  and  Constantius  attached  the  penalty  of  death  to  all 
marriages   between  Jews  and   Christians.      Bernardo   Aldrete,  Antiguedades  de 
Espana,  ii.,  8. 


"THE  LAST  OF  THE  GOTHS."  109 

But  more  active  persecution  was  neither  preached  nor  prac- 
tised.1 

When  the  Roman  gave  place  to  the  barbarian,  the  Jews 
were  still  fairly,  if  not  kindly  treated.  Neither  the  early  Visi- 
gothic  kings,  nor  the  Arian  clergy,  sought  to  molest  them,  either 
as  foreigners,  or  as  heretics ;  and  even  the  Catholic  laity,  still 
Roman  rather  than  Romish,  suffered  their  Hebrew  neighbours 
to  abide  in  peace. 

But  with  the  conversion  of  Reccared  a  vast  change  came  over 
Church  and  State  in  Spain.  The  king  was  compelled  to  accept 
the  decrees  of  the  Council  of  589,  which  proclaimed  his  Catho- 
licity, and  which  also  opened  fire  upon  the  Jews  in  the  Peninsula, 
prohibiting  their  marriage  with  Christian  wives,  their  possession 
of  Christian  slaves,  or  the  holding  by  a  Jew  of  any  office  of  State 
in  the  kingdom.  But  even  these  comparatively  mild  ordinances 
were  never  put  in  force  with  any  vigour  by  Reccared  himself, 
or  even  by  his  immediate  successors  upon  the  throne.  Under 
Sisebut,  however,  after  612,  though  no  new  Council  was  held, 
the  old  decrees  were  more  severely  enforced.2  Many  of  the 
Jews  were  subjected  to  compulsory  baptism.  Of  those  who 
refused  or  resisted,  many  were  inhumanly  tortured,  and  a  con- 
siderable number  only  escaped  outrage  by  flight  across  the 
Pyrenees,  into  that  favoured  and  favouring  country  where  the 
contact  of  Jews  and  Christians  was  more  close  3  and  more  friendly 
than  in  any  other  part  of  Europe,  "the  happiest  resting-place 
that  the  Jew  ever  found  in  Christendom  ".4  Under  the  valiant 
Visigoth  Swinthila,  persecution  slumbered.  But  under  the  sub- 
ject Sisenand,  the  Jews,  as  might  have  been  expected,  were 
made  to  feel  the  full  weight  of  the  ecclesiastical  arm ;  and  the 
Fourth  Council  of  Toledo  (633) 5  addressed  itself  seriously  to  the 

!See  Codex  Theodos,  lib.  xvi.,  tit.  8,  9;  Oxford  Essays  (1857),  p.  207; 
Sheppard,  Fall  of  Rome,  p.  556  ;  and  W.  D.  Morrison,  The  Jews  under  the 
Romans  (1890),  chapter  xvii. 

2  As  has  already  been  pointed  out,  the  persecution  of  the  Jews  by  Sisebut  was 
one  of  the  conditions  of  his  treaty  with  Heraclitus  by  which  the  Imperial  armies 
evacuated  most  of  the  territory  they  held. — H. 

3  Histoire  Gtntrale  de  Languedoc,  i. ,  322  ;  Oxford  Essays  (1857),  p.  312. 

4  There  was  a  large  population  of  Jews  in  Provence,  and  the  exiles  were  ever 
well  received.     Marseilles  is  called  by  Gregory  of  Tours  a  Hebrew  city.     See  Mr. 
T.  F.  Tout,  in  Eng.  Hist.  Review,  vol.  ii. ,  p.  160.      Nismes  had  actually  received 
the  Hebrew  name  of  Kirjath-Jearim  (see  Num.   xv.,  60).      Lunel  was  converted 
into  Yericho,  the  moon  town,  and  Aix  or  Aquas-Sextse ,  into  Ir  Hammayim.     Cf. 
2  Sam.  xii.,  27.     See  Joseph  Simon,  Histoire  des  fuifs  de  Nismes  au  moylen  age 
(1886). 

8  Among  the  canons  of  the  Fourth  Council  of  Toledo  (633),  it  was  ordained 
that  (can.  62),  "  Any  baptised  Jews  that  do  not  avoid  the  society  of  Jews  shall  be 


110  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

task  of  extirpating  the  hated  race.  If  Judaism  could  have  been 
destroyed  by  decrees,  not  a  Jew  would  have  remained  in  the 
country.  Decrees  at  least  could  go  no  further.  For  it  was 
ordained  that  all  Hebrew  children  were  to  be  taken  from  their 
parents,  and  educated  in  convents,  or  in  orthodox  Christian 
families.  Mixed  marriages  were  declared  void.  Every  office, 
even  the  smallest,  was  closed  to  the  Jew.  And  for  him  who, 
once  baptised,  relapsed  to  the  faith  of  his  fathers,  no  mercy  was 
to  be  expected  or  found.  Yet  the  Jews  were  not  extirpated  in 
Spain.  The  Fifth  Council  of  Toledo  was  chiefly  concerned  with 
its  political  duty  of  confirming  the  election  of  Chintila,  who 
succeeded  Sisenand  in  636  ;  and  no  new  decrees  were  formulated 
against  Judaism.  But  in  the  Sixth  Council  of  Toledo  (638),  two 
years  after  the  death  of  Isidore,1  it  was  formally  declared  that 
no  one  who  was  not  a  Catholic  should  be  allowed  to  live  in  Spain. 
The  Ninth  Council,  in  655,  placed  the  converted  Jews  under  the 
special  control  of  the  bishops,  and  by  some  canons  of  the  more 
celebrated  Twelfth  Council,  in  681 — the  persecution  having  be- 
come less  vigorous  than  was  palatable  to  the  spiritual  rulers  of 
the  country — the  entire  administration  of  the  anti-Jewish  laws 
was  taken  out  of  the  hands  of  the  ordinary  judges,  and  entrusted 
to  the  ecclesiastical  courts.2 

But  the  unhappy  Jews,  deprived  of  their  civil  rights,  de- 
spoiled of  their  property,  robbed  of  their  children,  committed  to 
the  tender  mercy  of  irresponsible  ecclesiastics,  scourged,  tortured, 
reduced  to  slavery,  banished,  were  still  present  in  Spain.  If 
they  had  been  rendered  disloyal,  they  had  not  been  rendered 
entirely  impotent ;  and  in  the  last  decade  of  the  seventh  century, 
as  a  result  of  all  this  legislation  and  persecution,  it  was  discovered, 
with  equal  horror  and  astonishment,  that  the  Jews  were  con- 
spiring with  their  brethren,  and  even  with  the  Saracens,  already 
in  Africa,  against  the  rule  of  the  Visigoth  ;  seeking  some  allevia- 
tion of  their  miserable  condition  in  a  change  of  masters  in  Spain. 
To  avert  the  impending  3  danger,  King  Egica  could  do  nothing 

made  slaves,  and  the  Jews  associated  with  them  shall  be  scourged  ".  The  various 
canons  and  enactments  of  the  Visigothic  Councils  will  be  found  collected  in  Lindo, 
op.  cit.,  pp.  9-28.  The  Jew  convicted  of  proselytising  was  condemned  (accord- 
ing to  Masdeu,  xi.,  142),  to  be  stoned  or  burned  to  death  at  the  hands  of  his 
proselytes. 

1  The  influence  of  Isidore  was,  on  the  whole,  in  favour  of  toleration. 

2  By  a  decree  of  the  Sixth  Council  of  Toledo  (A.D.  638),  it  was  ordained  that 
the  whole  body  of  anti-Jewish  laws  was  to  be  solemnly  sworn  to  by  each  king  on 
his  accession.     See  Eng.  Hist.  Review,  ii. ,  226. 

3  For  a  general  and  very  fair  survey  of  the  condition  of  the  Jews  in  Visigothic 
Spain,  see  Amador  de  los  Rios,  Los  Judios  en  Espafta  (1871),  vol.  i.,  cap.  ii. 


701.]  "THE  LAST  OF  THE  GOTHS."  Ill 

more  reassuring  than  to  convoke  a  Council,  the  Seventeenth  of 
Toledo,  in  694,  and  the  Council  when  summoned  could  do 
nothing  more  politic  than  to  re-affirm  with  obstinate  iteration 
and  amplification  the  savage  decrees  that  ecclesiastical  intoler- 
ance had  suggested  in  a  hundred  years  of  power.  No  Christian, 
under  the  severest  penalties,  was  to  shelter  a  Jew  whom  the 
officers  of  the  Church  might  be  pursuing,  or  refuse  to  point  out 
his  hiding-place.  No  Jew  was  to  insult  the  true  faith  by  deed 
or  word  or  thought.  The  Passover,  the  Sabbath,  Circumcision, 
were  all  forbidden  ;  and  lest  the  Jews  should  secretly  observe 
their  festivals,  they  were  to  present  themselves  before  the 
Christian  bishop  on  every  Hebrew  feast-day.  They  were  to  eat 
the  flesh  of  swine ;  had  not  St.  Paul  said :  "  To  the  pure  all 
things  are  pure  ? "  Their  evidence  was  on  no  account  to  be 
received  in  a  court  of  law  ;  "  for  if  the  liar  before  men  is  not  to 
be  believed,  how  much  less  the  liar  before  God  ?  "  a  Yet  the 
Jews  remained  unappeased,  and  continued  to  look  across  the 
southern  straits  for  deliverance  from  their  Christian  persecution. 
Egica  was  succeeded  in  701  by  his  son  Witiza,  of  whom 
little  can  be  said  but  that  he  appears  to  have  been  a  wise  and 
tolerant  prince,  to  have  refrained  from  persecuting  the  Jews, 
and  to  have  endeavoured  not  only  to  put  some  bounds  to  the 
absolute  power  of  the  bishops  and  inferior  clergy,2  but  to  check 
the  immorality  which  was  already  so  common  among  them. 
He  encouraged  the  priests  to  marry,  and  enjoined  them  to 
refrain  from  concubinage,  and  he  seems  to  have  actually  secured 
the  co-operation,  in  these  ecclesiastical  reforms,  of  Sindered, 
Metropolitan  of  Toledo.  How  far  he  succeeded  in  his  own 
times  we  can  not  now  tell,  but  later  generations  of  Churchmen 
have  taken  their  revenge  for  his  interference,  by  blackening  his 
character  and  representing  him  as  a  monster  of  licentiousness, 
a  heretic,  a  tyrant,  a  man  who  debauched  the  wives  and 
daughters  of  his  faithful  subjects,  and  questioned  the  supremacy 
of  the  Pope  at  Rome.  It  is  possible,  no  doubt,  that  the  king 
may  have  been  irregular  in  his  private  life.  Yet  it  is  at  least 
more  certain  that  he  redressed  many  of  the  grievances  that  had 
vexed  the  people  in  the  time  of  his  father,  and  showed 
himself  a  liberal  if  not  a  strictly  virtuous  monarch.  He  re- 
mitted unjust  taxation  ;  he  recalled  from  exile  many  who  had 
been  banished  without  good  cause  ;  and  he  is  said  actually  to 

1  The  laws  affecting  the  Jews  in  the  Fuero  Jusgo,  or  code  of  the  Visigoths, 
lib.  xii.,  tit.  2,  will  be  found  in  Lindo,  op.  cit.,  pp.  28-36. 
J  See  Dahn's  Die  Konige  der  Germanen,  vol.  v.,  p.  224. 


112  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

have    burned    the  bonds   which  Egica   had  by   force   or   fraud 
extorted  from  many  of  his  subjects. 

Contemporary  historians  speak  of  him  in  highly  laudatory 
terms,  and  it  is  not  until  the  ninth  century  that  any  writer 
recorded  or  invented  that  frightful  career  of  depravity  with 
which  his  name  has  been  usually  associated.1  The  ecclesiastical 
legend  had  its  rise,  no  doubt,  in  the  action  of  the  king  as 
regards  the  irregularities  of  the  clergy,  and  his  offensive 
humanity  as  regards  the  Jews  ;  and  the  enormity  of  his  wicked- 
ness has  been  complacently  enlarged  upon  by  the  historical 
prophets  of  later  days,  who  seek  to  explain  the  ruin  of  Catholic 
Spain  at  the  hand  of  the  infidel,  by  supposing  it  to  be  a  display 
of  Divine  vengeance  upon  the  kingdom  of  wicked  Witiza.2 


II. — Roderic. 

How,  or  when,  or  where  the  king  died  we  are  not  told. 
That  after  some  wretched  rebellion,  he  divided  his  dominions 
with  that  Roderic  of  whom  we  hear  so  much  and  know  so 
little,  seems  at  least  fairly  probable.  And  Roderic,  after  the 
fashion  of  the  times,  conspired  against  and  overthrew  his 
colleague,3  ere  he  himself  reigned  sole  and  supreme,  at  some 
time  in  the  course  of  the  year  709. 

The  extravagance  of  the  legends  that  have  crystallised 
round  the  name  and  the  memory  of  "  the  last  of  the  Goths  " 
have  led  some  critics  to  question  whether  such  a  personage 
ever  lived  at  all.4  Of  the  existence,  however,  of  the  Visi- 
gothic  king  there  would  seem  to  be  no  reasonable  doubt. 
But  his  amours  with  the  beautiful  and  virtuous  Florinda  la 
Cava,  whose  legendary  surname  has  a  meaning  strangely  in- 

1  See  the  continuation  of  John  of  Biclara  (circ.  720)  and  Isidore  of  Beja  (circ. 
750),  who  speak  most  favourably  of  Witiza.     It  is  in  the  Chronicon  Moissacense, 
or  South  Gaulish  Chronicle  (circ.  818),  that  we  find  thejlrst  note  of  blame.     Lucas 
of  Tuy  (1250)  is  perhaps  the  most  extravagant  of  the  calumniators. 

2  Dahn,  op.  cit.,  pp.  225-230.  3  Ibid. 

4  According  to  Mr.  Dahn,  Roderic  appears  only  as  a  phantom  in  history. 
His  historical  existence  is  best  established  by  the  occurrence  of  his  name  in  the 
lists  of  kings  in  the  MS.  of  the  Visigothic  laws.  A  coin  with  his  effigy  is  of  doubt- 
ful authenticity.  The  inscription  on  his  tomb  at  Viseu,  in  Portugal,  is  undoubtedly 
false.  Between  him  and  Witiza  the  zeal  of  the  genealogists,  who  wished  to  trace 
back  the  Spanish  kings  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries  directly  to  "  Don 
Pelayo  "  and  even  to  Theodoric  the  Great,  and  thereby  to  outshine  the  antiquity 
and  legitimacy  of  the  royalty  of  France  and  Germany,  has  interpolated  a  king, 
Acausa,  or  Acosta,  who,  with  his  wife  and  son,  was  honoured  by  Spanish  patriots 
for  some  hundreds  of  years. 


711.]  "THE  LAST  OF  THE  GOTHS."  IIS 

consistent  with  her  legendary  character,  are  no  doubt  the 
invention  of  a  later  age.  That  the  Visigoths  had  lost  that 
reputation  for  chastity,1  which  had  so  honourably  distinguished 
them  from  the  Romans  of  Hispania  in  the  early  days  of  their 
occupation,  is  undoubtedly  true ;  and  that  the  depravity  of  the 
court  may  have  weakened  the  monarchy,  and  so  contributed 
to  the  Moslem  success,  if  it  did  not  actually  prompt  the 
invitation  to  the  Moslem  invaders,  is  also  abundantly  probable. 
That  Count  Julian,  governor  of  Ceuta,2  intrigued  with  a  dis- 
affected Churchman,3  and  with  the  sons  of  the  dethroned 
Witiza,  for  the  overthrow  of  the  reigning  monarch,  is  so  natural 
and  so  characteristic  of  the  times,  that  even  the  extravagant 
embroidery  of  later  legends  would  hardly  induce  us  to  doubt 
it.  That  some  one  of  the  contending  parties  should  have 
sought  to  gain  an  advantage  over  the  others  by  inviting  the 
aid  of  a  common  enemy,  is  only  what  may  be  read  in  the 
authentic  history  of  Spain  from  the  days  of  the  first  appear- 
ance of  the  first  Vandal  on  the  Pyrenean  frontier,  if  not  from 
the  landing  of  the  first  Carthaginian  at  Cadiz. 

But  the  enchanted  tower,  the  ancient  guardians,  the  lovely 
and  distressful  damsel,  the  avenging  sire,  the  milk  white 
steeds,  the  flight  of  Don  Roderic  across  the  Guadalete,  which 
he  could  not  have  reached,  and  across  the  Guadalquivir,  which 
he  could  not  have  swum,  these  and  a  hundred  other  romantic 
incidents  are  the  inventions  of  later  days,  investing  with  a 
halo  of  chivalry  and  sentiment  the  uncertain  tale  of  the  decay 
and  destruction  of  the  Visigothic  Empire  in  Spain,  and  of  the 
triumph  of  the  Moslem  in  Europe. 

1  Salvian,  De  Gitb.  Dei,  lib.  vii.,  6.     Florinda  is  almost  certainly  a  mythical 
personage.     The  name  of  la  Cava,  strange  to  say,  would  suggest  in  the  Arabic  a 
woman  of  evil  life.     That  such  ladies  assisted  in  the  demoralisation  and  ultimate 
fall  of  the  Visigothic  monarchy  is  likely  enough.     Cf.   Lembke,   Geschichte  von 
Spanien,  part  ii.,  lib.  i.  ;  Romey,  iii. ,  31,  32. 

2  For  the  identification  of  Julian,  see  a  very  learned  and  interesting  disquisition 
in  Dozy,  Recherches,  torn,  i.,  pp.  64-77. 

3  Oppas,  Metropolitan  Bishop  of  Seville.     He  is  said  by  Isidore  of  Beja  to 
have  been  a  son  of  Egica  and  brother  of  Witiza,  and  to  have  headed  a  party  hostile 
to  Roderic,  and  to  have  assisted  the  Moslem  invaders  with  voice  and  sword.     He 
is  afterwards  heard  of  in  the  north-west  in  the  time  of  Pelayo.     See  post,  chap.  xiii. 
(Spanish  chroniclers  state  that  the  sons  of  Witiza  and  their  uncle  Don  Oppas  ac- 
companied Roderic"  to  the  battle  of  Janda,  where  they  commanded  the  right  wing 
of  his  army.     On  the  third  day  of  the  fight  it  is  said  that  they  and  their  division 
retired  from  the  field,  and  this  gave  the  victory  to  the  Saracens. — H.) 


VOL.    I. 


114 


CHAPTER  XI. 
THE  FAILURE  OF  THE  VISIGOTHS. 

IF  the  rapidity  and  the  completeness  of  the  barbarian  conquest 
of  the  Roman  provinces,  at  the  beginning  of  the  fifth  century, 
was  calculated  to  excite  our  wonder,  we  may  learn  with  even 
greater  astonishment  that  the  conquest  of  the  Visigothic  king- 
dom by  the  Moslems,  at  the  beginning  of  the  eighth  century, 
was  at  once  infinitely  more  rapid  and  infinitely  more  complete. 

The  misery  and  corruption  of  Roman  Spain,  the  exactions 
of  the  taxgatherers,  the  bankruptcy  of  the  citizens,  the  slavery 
of  the  peasants,  the  banishment  of  the  soldiery,  and  above  all 
the  enormous  numbers  of  the  ever-advancing  multitudes  of  the 
barbarians — all  these  things  have  been  alluded  to  in  a  former 
chapter,  and  suffice  to  a  great  extent  to  explain  the  success  of 
the  earlier  invaders.  The  occupation  of  Spain  by  the  Visi- 
goths, the  gentlest  and  most  humane  of  all  the  barbarians,  was 
indeed  rather  a  deliverance  than  a  conquest ;  for  the  arms  of 
the  amiable  Wallia  were  directed  not  against  the  Roman 
Provincials,  but  against  the  terrible  Vandals  and  Suevians  and 
Alans,  who  had  ravaged  their  country  for  ten  long  and  shame- 
ful years.  But  even  these  fiercer  barbarians  had  failed  to 
possess  themselves  of  more  than  a  portion  of  the  province, 
and  a  great  number  of  the  cities  remained  in  the  hands  of 
the  Romans,  until  at  the  approach  of  Wallia  as  an  Imperial 
commander,  the  gates  were  open  to  the  Visigothic  ally,  the 
harbinger  of  peace  to  Roman  Spain.  And  when  some  fifty 
years  later  the  Imperial  authority  gave  place  to  that  of  the 
Visigoths  under  Euric,  it  was  rather  a  change  of  Government 
than  a  conquest  by  a  foreign  power. 

Thus  to  the  Visigoths  of  Spain  were  given  enormous  oppor- 
tunities and  ample  means  of  founding  a  prosperous  and  an 
enduring  Commonwealth.  Treated  from  their  first  arrival  in 
the  country  as  friends  rather  than  as  foes,  they  entered  into 


THE  FAILURE  OF  THE  VISIGOTHS.  115 

the  peaceful  occupation  of  the  richest  provinces  of  the  Roman 
•world,  and  they  divided  their  broad  lands l  with  what  yet 
remained  of  one  of  the  noblest  races  that  was  absorbed  into  the 
Roman  Empire. 

For  nearly  300  years  nine-tenths  of  the  Peninsula  remained 
undisturbed  by  foreign  invasion ;  and  while  the  rare  violations 
of  the  frontier2  were  at  all  times  promptly  repelled,  prudence 
or  weakness  forbade  retaliation,  and  the  blood  and  treasure  of 
the  country  were  never  at  any  time  wasted  in  foreign  wars.  The 
country,  too,  enjoyed  from  the  days  of  Wallia  to  the  days  of 
Roderic  the  inestimable  advantage  of  political  unity.  The 
State  was  never  divided,  like  that  of  the  neighbouring  Franks, 
into  rival  and  often  hostile  kingdoms,  with  their  endless  civil 
wars  and  family  disputes,  amalgamations,  divisions  and  revolu- 
tions. Spain,  with  its  fertile  soil,  its  varied  climate,  its  noble 
rivers,  its  extensive  seaboard,  its  inexhaustible  mines,  and  its 
hardy  and  frugal  population,  was  the  richest  inheritance  of  the 
Gothic  race.  Yet,  after  three  centuries  of  undisputed  enjoy- 
ment, their  rule  was  overthrown  at  once  and  for  ever  by  a 
handful  of  marauders  from  Africa.  The  Goth  had  neglected 
all  his  opportunities,  despised  all  his  advantages,  heeded  no 
warnings.  He  had  been  weighed  in  the  balance  and  found 
wanting ;  and  his  kingdom  was  taken  from  him — for  he  had 
shown  himself  unfit  for  power. 

Of  all  the  various  systems  of  Government  that  have  been 
attempted  on  this  earth,  theocracy,  or  more  properly  hierocracy, 
is  undoubtedly  one  of  the  very  worst.  And  in  all  circumstances 
and  conditions  where  the  priest  and  the  confessor  usurp  the 
authority  that  properly  belongs  to  the  magistrate  and  to  the 
man,  disaster  is  the  inevitable  result.3  From  the  death  of 
Reccared  to  the  death  of  Roderic,  the  government  of  Spain  was 
a  theocracy,  tempered  by  revolution. 

The  military  spirit,  the  personal  courage  and  love  of  arms 

1  Two-thirds  to  the  Visigoths  and  one-third  to  the  Romans.     Leges  Wisi- 
gothorum,  lib.  x. ,  tit.  i,  3,  6,  9,  and  lib.  v. ,  tit.  4,  19.    See  Fustel  de  Coulanges, 
Problimes  <f  Histoire  (1891),  pp.  289,  99. 

2  Principally  in  Septimania  or  the  Narbonensis.     The  invaders  rarely  crossed 
the  Pyrenees.     It  is,  however,  a  most  remarkable  fact  that  so  tempting  and  so 
exposed  a  province  as  Gothic  Gaul  should  have  been  so  long  preserved  to  the 
Visigothic  monarchy  of  Spain. 

3  It  is  only  fair  to  add  that  the  decadence  of  the  Visigoths  may  be  traced  even 
farther  back  to  the  elective  character  of  their  monarchy  which  made  it  impossible 
for  the  king  to  punish  the  excesses  and  extortions  of  the  nobles,  and  threw  the 
power  into  the  hands  of  the  bishops  and  councils  which  made  such  bad  use  of  it. — H. 


116  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

which  had  before  all  things  distinguished  the  Goths  of  the  fifth 
century,  had  in  the  seventh  century  entirely  disappeared.  The 
military  system  devised  by  the  prudent  Wamba,  to  supply  the 
place  of  the  old  national  spirit,  had  been  destroyed,  almost  as 
soon  as  it  was  established,  by  the  Churchmen  whose  power  it 
threatened.  The  new  national  spirit  had  as  yet  not  been 
created.  The  kings,  ruled  by  the  bishops,  had  nothing  in 
common  with  the  people  who  despised  or  the  nobles  who 
assassinated  them.  The  nobles,  inordinately  wealthy,  idle, 
dissolute,  unwarlike,  unrefined,  lived  lives  of  luxury  and  ease, 
whose  aimless  monotony  was  only  broken  by  occasional  rebellion. 
Alaric  and  Viriatus  were  both  alike  forgotten.  The  Cid  had 
not  yet  been  imagined.  Spain  was  not  yet  a  nation. 

The  absence  of  anything  like  the  feudal  system  made  the 
position  of  the  great  landholders  entirely  false,  their  wealth 
without  a  justification,  their  estates  without  a  reason,  their  lives 
without  an  object.  If  the  lord  had  no  influence,  the  labourer 
had  no  hope.  A  slave  in  fact,  if  not  in  name,  he  found  the 
Gothic  serfdom  as  oppressive  and  scarcely  less  demoralising 
than  the  Roman  servitude.  The  Christian  bondage,  indeed, 
was  more  odious,  in  that  it  was  more  incongruous.1  The  bishops 
were  among  the  largest  slave-holders  in  the  realm  ;  and  baptised 
Christians  were  bought  and  sold  without  a  blush  by  the  suc- 
cessors of  St.  Paul  and  Santiago.  Kings  without  power,  nobles 
without  influence,  a  clergy  already  corrupt,  a  people  not  yet 
free — it  was  a  poor  result  of  three  hundred  years  of  dominion. 
If  the  Provincials  of  Honorius  were  a  people  of  taxgatherers 
and  bankrupts,  the  subjects  of  Roderic  were  a  nation  of  priests 
and  slaves. 

Thus  had  the  Roman  and  the  Visigoth  alike  fallen  into 
decay.  The  glory  of  their  Imperial  dominion,  the  pride  of  their 
Gothic  liberty,  had  alike  departed.  The  successors  of  the 
Celtiberians  had  become  a  population  without  patriotism,  with- 
out part  or  lot  in  the  welfare  of  the  country  in  which  they 
lived.  Harassed  by  wars  which  brought  them  no  glory,  and 
by  revolutions  which  brought  them  no  freedom :  abandoned 
by  Gothic  kings  to  Romish  ecclesiastics,  the  great  body  of  the 
nation  was  ready  to  exchange  the  double  yoke  of  their  inglorious 

i  Neither  the  serf  nor  the  slave  could  marry  without  the  consent  of  his  lord. 
If  an  unauthorised  marriage  was  discovered,  husband  and  wife  were  separated  by 
force,  a  provision  more  savage  than  that  of  the  older  Roman  law.  See/ar/1,  Ap- 
pendix to  this  volume,  ' '  The  Laws  of  the  Visigoths  ".  See  also  Munoz,  Del  estado 
de  las  personas  en  los  reinos  de  Asturias  and  Leon  ;  and  Dozy,  Histoire,  torn,  ii., 
20-25. 


THE  FAILURE  OF  THE  VISIGOTHS.  117 

oppressors  for  the  Imperial  liberty  which  they  found  under  the 
Arab. 

The  weakest  spot  in  the  Visigothic  monarchy  was  the  ab- 
sence of  the  hereditary  right  of  the  kings  ;  l  and  although  in 
many  instances  a  powerful  sovereign  was  able  to  ensure  the 
succession  of  one  of  his  sons,  the  elective  principle  was  too 
valuable  a  weapon  both  in  the  hands  of  the  nobles  and  in  the 
hands  of  the  Churchmen,  to  be  suffered  to  fall  into  decay. 
Chosen  at  first  only  by  the  free  Visigoths,  the  kings  gradually 
accepted  the  position  that  the  approval  of  the  Council  was 
necessary  to  validate  their  election,  and  in  the  time  of  such 
royal  puppets  as  Sisebut,  Sisenand,  and  Chintila,  the  Council 
ruled  the  king :  the  bishops  not  only  ruled,  but  constituted 
the  Council.  Thus  an  elective  monarchy  and  a  celibate  priest- 
hood deprived  the  State  of  that  stability  of  government  and 
that  regularity  of  administration  which  are  among  the  most 
certain  advantages  of  the  hereditary  system.  Had  the  kingdom 
of  the  Visigoths  descended  as  of  right  from  father  to  son,  the 
kings  would  have  been  independent  of  the  great  metropolitans, 
and  the  nobles  would  not  have  been  tempted  to  flatter  the 
bishops,  in  the  hope  of  being  able  to  supplant  the  king.2  But 
as  things  were  ordered,  the  entire  power  passed  into  the  hands 
of  a  great  ecclesiastical  hierarchy — a  priesthood,  ignorant  and 
irresponsible,  under  the  orders  of  a  supreme  episcopate,  ambi- 
tious, eager,  arrogant,  lusting  after  temporal  power. 

For  the  Councils  3  which  play  so  large  a  part  in  the  domestic 
history  of  the  times,  had  nothing  of  the  popular,  or  even  of  the 
aristocratic  in  their  composition,  but  were  merely  assemblies  of 

1  See  Dahn,  op.  cit.,  vol.  v.,  passim. 

2  Of  the  thirteen  kings  who  reigned  from  Alaric  to  Athanagild,  411-554,  no  less 
than  eleven  died  violent  deaths  ;  two  were  killed  in  battle,  nine  were  murdered  by 
their  subjects. 

3  A  list  of  the  principal  Councils  of  Visigothic  Spain  may  be  useful  for  refer- 
ence :  Illiberis,  306  (?) ;  Saragossa  I. ,  380  ;  Toledo  I. ,  400 ;  Tarragona,  516;  Gerona, 
517 ;  Toledo  II. ,  527  ;  Lerida,  546  ;  Valencia,  546  ;  Braga  I.,  561  ;  Braga  II. ,  572  ; 
Toledo  III.,  580 ;  Narbonne,  589  ;  Seville  I.,  590 ;  Saragossa  II.,  592  ;  Seville  II., 
619;  Toledo  IV.,  633;  Toledo  V.,  636;  Toledo  VI.,  638;  Toledo  VII.,  646; 
Toledo  VIII.,  653  ;  Toledo  IX.,  655  ;  Toledo  X.,  656  ;  Merida,  666  ;  Toledo  XI., 
675  ;  Braga  III.,  675  ;  Toledo  XII.,  681  ;  Toledo  XIII.,  683  ;  Toledo  XIV.,  684  ; 
Toledo  XV.,  688  ;  Saragossa  III.,  691  ;  Toledo  XVI.,  693  ;  Toledo  XVII.,  694  ; 
Toledo  XVIII.,  701  or  702.     Of  these  sixteen  assemblies  six  only  included  a  single 
layman  among  their  members.     The  eighth  Council  of  Toledo  included  17,  the 
ninth  4,  the  twelfth  15,  the  thirteenth  26,  the  fifteenth  17,  and  the  sixteenth  16, 
See  Montalembert,  op.  cit.,  iii.,  210-12;  Geddes"  Tracts,  vol.  ii.  ;  Masdeu,  xi.,  232, 
58  ;  Lafuente,  ii.,  lib.  iii.,  cap.  8  ;  hng.  JVist.  Review  (1887),  pp.  209,  232,  234  ; 
and  Esp.  Sag.,  ii.,  197-203,  and  vi.,  50. 


118  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

Churchmen,  together  with  a  few  Palatines  or  officers  of  the 
king's  court,1  instituted  in  the  first  instance  for  the  discussion 
of  religious  and  doctrinal  questions,  and  gradually  invested,  by 
the  personal  weakness  and  doubtful  authority  of  successive 
monarchs,  with  immense  political  and  legislative  power. 

At  the  opening  of  the  eighth  century,  Spain  had  no  industry, 
no  commerce,  no  arms.2  Not  even  letters  had  survived.  For 
the  Catholic  Church  discouraged,  if  it  did  not  actually  prohibit, 
the  study  of  polite  literature.3  Virgil  and  Homer,  Tacitus  and 
Livy  were  Pagans  and  Atheists,  and  their  works  were  unprofit- 
able and  impious.  The  study  of  natural  science  or  of  medicine, 
the  development  of  manufactures  or  of  industry,  the  cultivation 
of  the  arts — these  were  equally  unedifying  to  the  devout  Catholic. 
That  sublime  manifestation  of  "  poetry  in  stone  "  so  strangely 
called  Gothic  architecture,  is  not  only  not  Visigothic,  but  it  was 
unknown  in  Spain  for  over  four  hundred  years  after  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  Goths.  And  although  the  great  province  is  still 
covered  with  the  glorious  remains  of  Roman  constructive  art, 
there  is  scarcely  found  trace  or  fragment  of  the  rude  architecture 
of  the  Visigoths  to  tell  of  their  dominion  in  the  Peninsula.4 

Vitoria  is  the  one  existing  city  that  was  founded  by  these  6 
sojourners  of  three  hundred  years,  and  the  very  name  it  bears 
is  anything  but  Gothic.  For  strangest,  perhaps,  of  all  the  many 

1  The  Palatine  nobles,  members  of  the  royal  household,  and  dukes,  who  formed 
part  of  the  later  councils,  were  not  allowed  to  vote  on  ecclesiastical  questions  ;  and 
the  common  people,  who  had  a  right  to  be  present,  were  there  only  as  witnesses. 
The  Palatine  officers  were :    the  Comes    Thesaurorum,  or  treasurer  ;  the   Comes 
Patrimonii,  administrator  of  the  Crown  estates  ;  the  Comes  Notariorum,  the  king's 
secretary  ;  the  Conies  Spartariorum,  captain  of  the  body  guard  ;  the  Scanciarum, 
the  master  of  the  household  ;  the  Cubiculi,  the  chamberlain  ;  the  Stabuli,  or  con- 
stable of  the  palace  ;  and  the  Comes  Exercitum,  commander-in-chief. — H. 

2  Dahn,  ubi  supra,  p.  225-6. 

3  Hallam,  Middle  Ages,  iii.,  269,  270,  275  ;  Lecky,  European  Morals,  ii.,  222  ; 
Milman,  Latin  Christianity,  ix. ,  4. 

4  And  what  there  is,  is  of  the  poorest  and  meanest  character.     See  Ponz, 
Viaje  de  Espafla,  vol.  i.     "  Ya  que  no  exista  hoy  edificio  alguno  de  los  construidos 
por  los  Godos  en  nuestro  suelo — seri  por  eso  imposible  formar  idea  de  la  archi- 
tectura  en  ellos  empleada?"    Jos6  Caveda,  Ensayo  sobre  la  Architectura,  ed.  1849, 
p.  65. 

5  Vitoria  is  said  by  Ford  to  be  derived  from  the  Basque  Beturia  =  a.  height. 
The  Latin   Victoriacum  is  more  obvious.     See  Marieta,    l^ratado  de  las  Funda- 
ciones  de  Ciudades,  etc.  (Cuenca,  1596),  pp.  43-52.     In  any  case  the  name  is  not 
Gothic,  although  the  city  was  almost  certainly  founded  by  Leovgild  as  a  perma- 
nent military  station  after  one  of  his  victories  over  the  Suevi,  and  is  said  to  have 
been  first  named  by  him  after  his  son  Reccared.     The  Vandals  may  have  given 
their  name  to  Andalusia,     See  post,  Appendix  IV.  ;  and  Septimania  was  at  one 
time  known  as  Gothia,  but  the  name  did  not  long  endure.     See  Freeman,  Hist, 
Geog,,  pp.  90  and  154. 


THE  FAILURE  OF  THE  VISIGOTHS.  119 

signs  of  decay  and  loss  of  national  life,  the'  Visigoths,  by  the 
end  of  the  seventh  century,  had  well  nigh  lost  their  own  lan- 
guage. And  thus  only  may  be  explained  the  truly  wonderful 
fact  that  while  every  town  and  river  and  headland  in  southern 
Spain,  even  at  the  close  of  the  nineteenth  century,  recalls  the 
dominion  of  the  long  banished  and  still  hated  Arab,  not  a  word 
is  to  be  found  in  the  local  nomenclature  of  Castile,  nor  yet  of 
the  Asturias,  to  tell  the  tale  of  the  Visigoth.1 

When  Atawulf  first  crossed  the  Pyrenees  at  the  head  of  the 
Visigoths,  Latin  was  already  the  language  of  the  Roman  Diocese. 
When  Roderic  threw  away  his  crown  on  the  banks  of  the  Guada- 
lete,  Latin  was  still  the  language  of  the  Visigothic  kingdom. 
The  Gothic  tongue  had  been  absorbed  by  the  Roman. 

The  earlier  kings,  of  course,  spoke  the  language  of  their 
forefathers,  although  they  must  all  have  been  well  acquainted 
with  the  Latin.  But  by  the  end  of  the  sixth  century  the 
Imperial  language  of  old  Rome  was  rapidly  taking  the  place 
of  the  vernacular  of  the  new  masters  of  the  country  ;  and  if 
Gothic  was  still  the  mother  tongue  of  Leovgild,  Latin  was 
certainly  the  language  of  Reccared.2  The  inscriptions  during 
the  entire  period  are  in  Latin.  The  works  of  every  writer,  it 
need  hardly  be  added,  were  composed  in  the  same  language. 
And  not  only  were  the  writers  themselves,  without  exception, 
orthodox  or  Romish  ecclesiastics,3  but  only  one  of  the  number 
is  even  supposed  to  have  been  a  Goth.  This  was  John  of 
Biclara,  who  spent  the  flower  of  his  life — seventeen  years  at 

1  Garibay  remarks  shrewdly  enough   that  of  the  so-called  Gothic  kings  in 
Spain,  who  reigned  in  the  ever-growing  north-west  after  the  coming  of  the  Moslem, 
not  one  bore  a  name  that  had  been  borne  by  any  of  the  Visigothic  sovereigns  from 
Alaric  to  Roderic  inclusive.     Every  name  was  of  Latin  origin  ;  and  the  first  Pelayo 
or  Pelagius  has  moreover  a  distinctly  heretical  flavour.     See  Romey,  iii.,  151.     By 
a  strange  accident  indeed  the  name  "Visigoth"  has  given  rise  to  our  word  Bigot 
— a  word  meaning  in  the  old  French  detested  foreigner  or  heretic.     To  the  Catholic 
Franks,  of  course,  the  Visigoths  of  southern  Gaul  or  Spain  were  objects  of  bitter 
hatred  both  on  religious  and  worldly  grounds.     See  Henry  Bradley,  The  Goths,  p. 
329.    Cf.  Littre\  Diet.,  sub  BIGOT.    Littre  is  inclined  to  favour  this  derivation.     It 
is  worthy  of  note  that  Bigote  in  modern  Spanish  means,  not  a  bigot,  but  a  mous- 
tache ;  and  that  even  in  the  figurative  sense  a  hombre  de  bigotes  is  used  to  signify, 
not  a  fanatic,  but  a  strong-minded  man. 

2  See  Dahn,  ubi  supra,  vol.  vi.,  p.  170. 

3  The  following  are  the  principal  Spanish  writers  during  the  Visigothic  occu- 
pation :  Paulus  Orosius,  380-420 ;  Idatius,  390-470  ;  Johannes  Biclarensis,  540-620 ; 
Maximus  of  Saragossa,  550-619  ;  Isidore  of  Seville,  560-636  ;  Ildenfonsus,  610-667; 
Isidore  Pacensis,  700-755.     The  last,  more  commonly  known  as  Isidore  of  Beja,  is 
supposed  by  M.  Dozy  (Kecherches,  i.,  pp.  2-16)  to  have  been  a  native  of  Cordova, 
and  neither  a  bishop  nor  an  inhabitant  of  Pax  Julia.    But  his  chronicle  is  of  the 
utmost  value. 


120  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

least — at  Constantinople,  and  who  always  speaks  of  that  city 
as  his  true  capital,  the  urbs  regia  of  his  country.  From  Alaric 
to  Leovgild,  no  doubt,  the  German  and  the  Roman  tongue 
strove,  like  all  else  that  was  Roman  and  German,  for  the  mastery 
in  Gothic  Spain.  But  the  issue  was  never  doubtful.  The 
language  of  the  Court  and  the  Church,  of  the  Forum  and  the 
Compter,  of  what  refinement  and  of  what  industry  were  still  left 
in  the  country,  the  language  of  every  tradition  of  earthly 
greatness,  and  every  hope  of  heavenly  happiness,  prevailed  over 
its  rival ;  and  the  Latin,  hardly  displaced  by  the  Gothic  occu- 
pation in  the  days  of  Honorius,  reasserted  its  Imperial  power 
in  the  days  of  Gregory.1 

But  a  nation  without  a  national  language  is  doomed  ;  a  state 
without  a  state  language  is  dead.  Latin  was  the  mother  tongue 
of  the  Romish  Church  of  Spain ;  but  the  Visigothic  state  was 
speechless.  The  kingdom,  like  Wamba,  had  been  shorn  and 
habited  by  the  ecclesiastical  power,  and  the  kingdom,  like  the 
king,  disappeared  at  the  touch  of  the  aggressor.2 

1  It  should  not  be  forgotten,  however,  that  the  Latin-speaking  races  in  the 
Peninsula  were  always  much  more  numerous  than  the  Goths  ;  and  just  as  the 
Normans  gradually  merged  their  speech  in  that  of  the  subject  Saxon  race  in  Eng- 
land, the  Goths  in  Spain  followed  the  universal  rule  of  speaking  the  tongue  of  the 
larger  number  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  country  in  which  they  lived.     It  must  be 
added  also  that  the  Latin  had  become  much  modified  during  the  Gothic  domina- 
tion, and  had  assumed  much  of  the  character  of  modern  Spanish  before  the  invasion 
of  Taric,  as  instance  the  language  of  the  Fuero  Juzgo  promulgated  by  Egica. — H. 

2  An  exhaustive  account  of  the  Visigoths  and  other  German  races  in  Spain, 
treating  not  only  of  historical  events,  but  of  the  political  life,  domestic  quarrels,  the 
immense  and  baneful  authority  of  the  Church,  the  influence  of  the  Franks,  and  a 
hundred  other  matters  will  be  found  in  Dahn's  great  work,  Die  Konige  der  Ger- 
manen,  vols.  v.  and  vi.,  pp.  1-246  and  1-631,  which  have  been  my  constant  guide 
in  the  composition  of  this  and  the  preceding  chapters. 


121 


CHAPTER  XII. 
THE  MOSLEM  CONQUEST. 

(711  —  788). 
I.— Taric. 

THE  story  of  the  Mohammedan  conquest  of  Spain  is  in  itself 
a  romance.  Nor  is  it  surprising  that  so  sudden  and  so  startling 
an  overthrow  should  have  been  productive  of  many  and  strange 
legends  among  the  vanquished  Visigoths.  When  the  rude  dis- 
cipline of  adversity  had  developed  a  new  spirit  in  the  new 
nation  that  was  formed  in  the  hospitable  mountains  of  the  north- 
west, the  bravery  of  the  sons  was  attributed  to  the  fathers  in 
many  a  glowing  tale.  But  Alfonso  ruled  over  a  handful  of  free 
Spaniards.  Roderic  had  been  followed  by  a  mixed  multitude 
of  slaves.  The  romance  of  the  invasion  has  been  sung  by  Chris- 
tian poets  ;  yet  the  glory  of  the  conquest — and  it  was  the  glory 
of  easy  victory — was  wholly  on  the  side  of  Islam.  The  hero  of 
the  story  is  the  gallant  Taric,1  whose  name,  less  celebrated  than 
that  of  his  contemptible  antagonist,  lives,  and  will  ever  live 
embedded  in  that  of  the  great  rock  on  whose  shore  he  first 
landed  in  Spain,2  and  which  has,  for  nigh  on  two  hundred  years, 
formed  one  of  the  most  cherished  possessions  of  Spain's  greatest 
and  only  rival  for  the  empire  of  the  world. 

Nothing  could  have  been  less  ambitious  than  the  first  steps 
of  the  Arabs  towards  the  conquest  of  Spain.  Invited  or  not  by 
Count  Julian,  a  little  band  of  some  five  hundred  marauders, 
under  the  Arab  Tarif,  crossed  the  straits  from  Africa  in  four 
small  vessels,  and  landed  at  the  spot  where  the  delightful  town 
of  Tarifa  perpetuates  the  name  and  the  memory  of  the  leader 
of  the  band.  Tarif  plundered  Carteia,  or  Algeciras,  and  having 

1  A  Tuerto,  like  Hannibal,  and  Sertorius,  and  the  first  Abdur  Rahman. 
«  Gcbcl  Taric— -the  hill  of  Taric = Gibraltar. 


122  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

explored,  without  opposition,  and  with  much  success  in  the  way 
of  plunder,  the  surrounding  country,  he  returned  to  Africa, 
bringing  with  him  welcome  news  of  the  riches  and  the  defence- 
less condition  of  the  land  to  the  north  of  the  straits.  Thus 
informed  and  encouraged,  Musa,  the  Vali  or  governor  of  Arab 
Tingitana,  gave  his  consent  to  another  foray,  greedy  of  further 
spoils.  And  so  it  came  to  pass  that  in  the  ever  memorable  year 
711,  a  little  army  of  Berbers  and  Arabs,  led  by  a  subordinate 
general,  Taric,  who  had  been  entrusted  with  the  conduct  of  the 
expedition,  landed  at  the  foot  of  the  rock  of  Calpe.  King 
Roderic  was  in  the  north  of  the  Peninsula,  but  he  hastened  to 
the  defence  of  his  kingdom.  The  result  we  all  know.  An 
army  of  sixty  thousand  men,  headed  by  the  sovereign  in  person, 
and  with  every  advantage  of  locality,  of  supply,  of  means  of 
transport,  was  promptly  routed  by  a  band  of  Moslem  marauders. 
Taric  saw  the  greatness  of  his  opportunity.1  He  divided  his 
little  army  into  three  bands,  and  pressed  forward  to  overrun 
the  entire  Peninsula  of  Spain. 

The  invasion  was  crowned  with  the  most  astonishing  success. 
City  after  city  opened  its  gates  at  the  summons  of  the  Moor, 
and  in  a  few  months  from  his  victory  on  the  banks  of  the 
Guadalete,2  the  kingdom  of  the  Visigoths  had  ceased  to  exist. 

1  For  an  exhaustive  review  of  the  various  dates  assigned  to  the  landing  of 
Taric,  see  Gayangos,  vol.  i. ,   pp.   521-2,  and  notes.     Don  Pascual  sums  up  as 
follows  :  "  I  may,  therefore,  advance  without  fear  of  contradiction,  that  the  landing 
of  Taric  on  the  rock  of  Gibraltar,  took  place  on  Thursday,  3oth  of  April,  A.D. 
711  (8th  Rejeb,  A.H.  92)". 

2  The  Guadalete — the  Chrysos  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans — is  a  little  river  that 
flows  near  the  modern  town  of  Xerez.     The  etymology  of  Guadalete  is  very  uncer- 
tain :  Guada,  or  Wady,  is  simple  enough  :  but  whether  lete  is  the  Greek  Lethe,  as 
Lope  de  Vega  and  Southey  would  suggest,  or  an  extraordinary  development  of 
Beker,  by  which  name,  according  to  Makkari,  the  river  was  known  to  the  Arabs, 
and  which  survives  in  the  modern  Beger  de  la  Frontera,  a  village  near  the  Laguna 
de  Janda,  or  whether  it  is  simply  /«aferf=  delight,  the  critics  are  unable  to  determine. 
See  Gayangos,  i. ,  524-6,  and  notes  63,  66,  and  67  ;  Dozy,  Recherches,  i.,  314-316 ; 
Casiri,  ii.,  183  ;  Espana  Sagrada,  ix. ,  53  ;  Lope  de  Vega,  Jerusalem  Conquistada, 
lib.  vi. ,  136;  Southey,  Don  Roderic,  note  ad  hoc  ;  Ford  (1878),  330.    Don  Pascual 
Gayangos  considers  that  the  engagement  took  place  nearer  Medina  Sidonia  than 
Xerez,  i.e.,  nearer  the  landing-place  of  the  invader. 

Since  this  chapter  and  note  were  written,  my  attention  has  been  called  to  a 
notice  of  a  work  Estudios  sobre  la  invasion  de  los  Arabes  en  Espana,  by  D.  Eduardo 
Saavedra  (Madrid,  1893),  in  which  it  is  maintained— and  according  to  Senor  Riano, 
with  complete  success — that  the  battle  which  decided  the  fate  of  Spain  was  fought, 
not  in  711,  but  in  714,  not  on  the  banks  of  the  Guadalete,  but  on  the  Barbate,  near 
Medina  Sidonia.  I  have  not,  unfortunately,  been  able  to  procure  the  book  up  to 
the  moment  of  going  to  press.  Anything  that  Senor  Riano  writes  is  worthy  of 
respect,  and  I  must  only  refer  to  his  review  in  The  Athenaeum  (No.  3427),  of  July, 
1893. 

Taric  had  been  reinforced  shortly  before  the  battle  by  some  5000  Berbers, 


711.]  THE  MOSLEM  CONQUEST.  123 

A  Moorish  captain,  at  the  head  of  but  700  Berbers, 
surprised  and  occupied  Cordova.  Archidona,  Malaga,  Elvira, 
all  surrendered  to  the  Arab.  Taric  pressed  on  to  Toledo.  The 
Gothic  nobility  fled  at  his  approach,  and  the  royal  city 
opened  her  gates  to  the  invader.  Such  was  the  eagerness  of 
submission  and  treaty,  that  the  governor  of  Cordova  is  recorded 
as  the  only  chief  who  fell,  without  conditions,  a  prisoner  into 
the  hands  of  the  Saracens.1 

The  bishops  disappeared.  The  people  were  indifferent. 
Spain  was  abandoned  to  the  Arab.  It  was  something  more 
than  a  conquest.  It  was  a  social  revolution.  The  Jews  were 
avenged  of  their  persecutors.  The  slave  was  set  free.  The  old 
things  indeed  had  passed  away.  All  things  had  as  in  a  moment 
become  new.  What  was  the  long  struggle  of  the  barbarian 
hosts  three  centuries  before  to  the  lightning  success  of  this 
handful  of  invaders  ? 

In  the  early  summer  of  712,  Musa,  jealous  of  the  splendid 
and  all  unexpected  success  of  his  lieutenant,  crossed  the  straits 
with  an  army  of  18,000  or  20,000  men,  and  marched  northwards 
to  join  Taric  at  Toledo.  Carmona,  Seville  and  many  other 
cities  promptly  submitted  at  his  summons.  The  reduction  of 
Merida  alone  delayed  for  a  moment  the  progress  of  his  arms. 
But  honourable  terms  of  capitulation  were  soon  accepted,  and 
Merida  enjoyed  the  clemency  of  the  victors. 

The  meeting  between  Musa  and  Taric  is  said  to  have  been 
stormy  and  acrimonious.  But  no  military  jealousy  induced  the 
Arab  to  check  in  any  way  the  career  of  conquest  upon  which 
his  Moorish  lieutenant  had  already  entered.  Invested  with  a 
more  ample  authority,  Taric  was  suffered  to  continue  his  noi-th- 
ward  march,  and  he  hastened  to  the  siege  and  capture  of  Sara- 
gossa,  no  longer  to  be  Ccesarea  Augusta,  but  Medina  Saracusla,  at 
all  times  a  brave  and  noble  city.  Thus  the  wave  of  Moslem 
conquest  spread  unchecked  over  the  country.  Not  even  at 
remote  Astorga  did  the  fugitive  Visigoths  stand  against  the 
invader.  The  province  retained  its  independence,  but  the 
capital  submitted  at  the  approach  of  Taric,  in  the  early  spring 
of  713  ;  while  Musa,  taking  an  easterly  course,  reduced  Huesca, 
Lerida,  Tarragona,  Barcelona  and  Gerona.  Nor  would  the 
Pyrenees  have  been  the  limit  of  Musa's  victorious  career,  had 

but  his  entire  force  did  not  exceed  12,000  men.      The  army  under  Roderic  is 
variously  estimated  at  60,000  or  90,000  men.     Taric,  like  so  many  other  invaders, 
is  said  to  have  burned  his  ships  as  soon  as  he  had  landed  on  the  shores  of  Spain, 
1  Gibbon,  chapter  li. 


124  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

not  a  messenger  from  the  Caliph  met  him  at  Lugo  in  Gallicia, 
with  orders  to  repair  at  once  to  Damascus.  He  heard  but  to 
obey  ;  and  leaving  his  eldest  son,  Abdul  Aziz,  to  administer 
Spain  in  his  absence,  the  Amir  turned  his  horse's  head  sadly  to 
the  southward,  and  submitted  himself  to  the  will  of  the  Com- 
mander of  the  Faithful. 

Abdul  Aziz,  on  the  departure  of  his  father,  was  opposed 
with  but  little  success  in  southern  Spain  by  Theodemir,  a 
Christian  noble,  who  had  assumed,  on  the  death  of  Roderic,  the 
title  of  king  of  the  Visigoths.  Completely  defeated  and  driven 
from  his  vantage  ground  among  the  hills  of  Murcia,  Theodemir 
fled  for  refuge  to  the  fortified  town  of  Orihuela.  Fortifications 
he  found — but  no  garrison  ;  walls — but  no  defenders.  None  but 
the  women  were  left  in  the  city,  and  boldly  did  these  Murcian 
ladies  play  their  part.  Dressed  and  armed  like  soldiers,  these 
gallant  dames  took  their  places  on  the  battlements ;  and  the 
advancing  Moors,  deceived  by  the  brave  show  of  defenders, 
accorded  to  Theodemir  honourable  terms  of  capitulation.  So 
pleased  indeed  was  Abdul  Aziz  with  the  boldness  of  the 
stratagem,  and  at  the  confidence  displayed  by  Theodemir,  who 
had  entered  his  camp,  attended  only  by  a  single  page,  to  seek 
favourable  conditions  of  peace,  that  he  recognised  the  Gothic 
chieftain  as  titular  king  or  governor  of  all  Murcia,  a  province 
ever  after  known  to  the  Arabs  as  Theodemir's  land,  or  the 
country  of  Tadmir.1 

Abdul  Aziz  held  his  court  at  Seville  :  and  his  marriage  with 
the  beautiful  Egilona,  who  was  certainly  a  Christian,  and  who 
is  said  to  have  been  the  widow  of  Roderic,  gave  striking  proof 
of  the  liberality  of  his  feelings  towards  the  subject  race. 
Egilona  was  permitted  to  retain  her  own  religion ;  and  the 
unaccustomed  honour  in  which  she  was  held  by  her  husband 
and  his  courtiers  is  said  to  have  aroused  the  indignation  of 
many  true  believers. 

But  if  the  conquerors  were  considerate  to  the  conquered, 
the  Commander  of  the  Faithful  was  merciless  to  the  conquerors. 

1  Four  hundred  years  after  the  death  of  Theodemir,  his  territories  of  Murcia 
and  Carthagena  are  called  by  Al  Edrisi  (154-6)  by  the  name  of  Tadmir.  Bour- 
guignon  d'Anville,  Etats  forme's  en  Europe,  etc.  (1771),  torn,  iii.,  p.  174;  Gibbon, 
chap.  li. ;  Gayangos,  ii.,  30,  31.  Casiri  causes  some  confusion  by  translating 
Tadmir  as  if  it  were  the  Arabic  word  Palmir,  and  making  Murcia  not  the  land  of 
Theodemir,  but  the  land  of  palms.  The  treaty  was  signed  4  Rajab,  A.H.  94— 
equivalent  to  I3th  April,  713.  The  boundaries  of  the  Gothic  province  would  seem 
to  have  included  not  only  Alicante  and  Valencia,  but  Orihuela.  See  Gayangos, 
ii.,  30,  31  ;  Lafuente,  iii.,  33,  34. 


721.]  THE  MOSLEM  CONQUEST.  125 

Fortune  has  ever  been  most  fickle  in  the  East.  Taric  the 
Berber  was  the  hero  of  the  conquest  of  Spain  ;  and  he  deserved 
the  gratitude  and  support  of  the  Caliph ;  and  Taric,  though 
recalled,  was  not  unjustly  treated.  But  Musa  the  Arab  found 
scant  justice  and  no  mercy  at  the  hands  of  his  sovereign. 
Within  a  few  days  of  his  arrival  at  Damascus,  he  was  deprived 
of  his  command,  stripped  of  his  wealth,  reviled,  beaten,  dis- 
graced. Nay,  more,  the  sins  of  the  father  were  visited  upon 
the  innocent  son,  and  the  amiable  Abdul  Aziz  met  his  death  in 
his  palace  at  Seville,  at  the  hands  of  a  dark  messenger  from 
Damascus.1 

In  the  place  of  the  unhappy  Musa,  and  on  the  death  of  his 
yet  more  unhappy  son,  the  Caliph  appointed  Abdur  Rahman,2 
the  Arab,  to  be  Amir  or  governor  of  Spain  in  721 .  This  able  and 
vigorous  ruler  distinguished  himself  from  the  first,  not  only  by 
his  strict  justice,  but  by  the  indulgence  that  he  showed  to  the 
conquered  Christians.  He  replaced  certain  venal  and  oppressive 
Cadis  by  judges  of  probity  and  honour,  and  showed  himself,  we 
are  told,  more  particularly  scrupulous  in  confirming  the  Christians 
in  the  peaceful  possession  of  their  old  places  of  worship.  In 
every  department  of  the  state  he  proved  himself  honest,  vigor- 
ous and  enlightened.  At  length  having  established  his  govern- 
ment, not  without  having  had  to  overcome  much  factious 
opposition  at  home,  he  sought  to  win  greater  glory  abroad ; 
and  he  carried  his  victorious  forces  across  the  Pyrenees,  and 
overran  the  fertile  plains  of  Gaul.  A  defeat  under  the  walls  of 
Toulouse  did  not  check  the  onward  course  of  the  Moslems,  who 
occupied  successively  Narbonne,  Carcassonne,  Beziers,  Maga- 
lona,  Nismes,  Lyons ;  and  penetrated  even  as  far  as  Autun  in 
Burgundy.  But  the  ever  famous  victory  of  Charles  Martel 
between  Poictiers  and  Tours,  in  732,  over  a  mixed  host  of 
Arabs  and  Berbers,  checked  for  ever  the  career  of  Islam  in 
north-western  Europe.3 

1  Gayangos,  ii. ,  30,  31,  and  Appendix  A. 

8  He  must  not  be  compared  with  the  Ommeyad  Abdur  Rahman,  first  Amir  of 
Cordova,  in  755. 

3  The  vanity  of  the  Gallic  writers  has  magnified  the  success  of  Charles  Martel 
over  a  plundering  expedition  of  the  Spanish  Arabs  (732),  into  a  marvellous  victory 
and  attributed  the  deliverance  of  Europe  from  the  Saracen  yoke  to  the  valour  of 
the  Franks.  But  it  was  the  defeat  of  the  great  army  of  Saracens  before  Constanti- 
nople by  Leo  III.  (718),  which  first  averted  the  torrent  of  Mohammedan  conquest ; 
although  Europe  refuses  her  gratitude  to  the  iconoclastic  hero  who  averted  the 
greatest  religious,  political  and  ethnological  revolution  with  which  she  has  ever 
been  threatened.  Finlay's  Hist,  of  Greece,  ii.,  19.  See  on  the  same  point,  Bury, 
Later  Roman  Empire;  Guizot,  Hist,  of  France,  torn,  i.,  chap.  ix. ,  and  Ranke, 
Hist,  of  the  Reformation  in  Germany,  L,  p.  5. 


126  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

Abdur  Rahman  was  slain  in  battle.  The  Saracens  abandoned 
all  their  conquests  in  Gaul.  Yet  the  victors  did  not  venture  to 
pursue  the  vanquished  across  the  Pyrenees.  Nor  was  the 
defeat  of  the  Moslems  at  Tours  so  disastrous  but  that  in  a  few 
months  they  were  able  to  resume  their  advance ;  and  their  pro- 
gress was  arrested  only  by  renewed  dissensions  among  them- 
selves— not  only  among  the  leaders  of  the  Spanish  army  in 
Europe,  but  among  the  aspirants  for  the  Caliphate  in  Asia. 
Another  Amir  was  promptly  chosen  in  the  place  of  Abdur 
Rahman  ;  and  Spain  at  least  prospered  under  the  genial  govern- 
ment of  the  Arab,  and  continued  to  flourish  in  spite  of  the 
constant  feuds  and  constant  changes  of  the  new  rulers  of  the 
country. 

II. — The  Mozardbs. 

The  greater  part  of  the  Peninsula  had  accepted  the  Moslem 
empire  without  striking  a  blow  ;  and  the  inhabitants,  as  a  rule, 
who  had  peaceably  submitted  to  the  inevitable,  were  suffered  to 
remain  in  full  possession  of  their  lands  and  property  of  every 
description.  In  the  districts  conquered  by  the  invaders  by 
actual  force  of  arms,  one-fifth  part  was  reserved  for  the  royal 
treasury,  and  the  remainder  was  divided  among  the  victorious 
soldiery.  In  the  towns,  as  a  rule,  the  inhabitants l  were  left 
in  possession  of  their  houses,  on  payment  of  the  jizia,  or  the 
tax  that  is  due  by  every  free  non-Moslem  subject  of  a  Moslem 
government,  in  return  for  the  protection  of  the  state.  And  in 
every  case  the  free  exercise  of  their  religion  was  allowed  to 
the  conquered  Christians. 

The  expedition  of  Taric,  it  must  ever  be  remembered,  was 
not  a  national,  nor  even  a  state  enterprise.  It  was  rather  a 
piratical  foray,  not  Arab,  but  African,  hardly  approved  by 
the  Commander  of  the  Faithful,  and  undertaken  without  any 
preconcerted  plan  of  military  operations.  The  conquest  was, 
in  fact,  a  magnificent  accident.  It  was  not  a  victorious 
invasion  by  a  great  power,  but  an  unexpected  occupation  by 

1  Dozy,  Recherches,  \. ,  78-89.  The  Mozarabs  were  Christians  who  lived  under 
the  rule  and  protection  of  the  Moslems.  Various  etymologies  have  been  sug- 
gested, most  of  them  very  far-fetched.  See  Gayangos,  i.,  142  and  420;  Viardpt, 
Essai,  i.,  69-70.  Dozy  and  Erigelmann,  in  their  excellent  Glossaire,  do  not  give 
so  clear  an  explanation  as  that  for  which  I  am  indebted  to  my  friend  Mr.  A.  G. 
Ellis,  of  the  British  Museum,  viz.,  that  the  word  is  a  participial  form  (tenth 
conjugation)  of  the  verb-root,  arb,  signifying  "  One  who  has  become  Arabized" . 
See  also  McGuckin  de  Slane,  Histoire  des  Berblres,  i.,  introduction,  p.  3. 


741.]  THE  MOSLEM  CONQUEST.  127 

an  army  of  independent  tribes  ;  and  the  jealousies  and  rivalries 
of  the  tribesmen  among  themselves,  Arabs,  Berbers,  Africans, 
Syrians  and  Egyptians,  was  one  of  the  necessary  evils  of  the 
situation.  Every  good  Moslem  owed  a  nominal  allegiance  to 
Damascus  ;  but  the  tribes  were  really  independent,  envious  and 
even  hostile  among  themselves,  kept  together  in  their  enter- 
prise only  by  the  vigorous  and  lively  faith  of  each  individual 
soldier  in  God  and  His  prophet,  and  by  the  true  belief  of  each 
individual  Moslem  in  the  brotherhood  of  Islam. 

In  the  first  forty  years  after  the  coming  of  Taric  and  Musa, 
no  less  than  twenty  Amirs  bore  rule  at  different  times  in 
Spain.  The  suzerainty  of  Damascus  was  ineffective.  The  su- 
premacy of  Africa  was  disastrous  ;  for  Africa  was  ever  a  hot-bed 
of  intrigue  and  sedition ;  and  the  Berber  or  Moorish  marabout 
had  come  to  exercise  a  more  potent  influence  over  a  credulous 
people  than  a  tribal  chief  or  even  an  Arab  governor  could  ever 
hope  to  acquire.  The  Berbers  l  in  Andalusia,  always  closely  in 
touch  with  their  kin  across  the  sea,  were  quick  to  feel  the 
influence  of  every  revolution — and  revolutions  were  many  in 
Africa.  The  Berbers  in  Europe,  moreover,  had  good  cause  to 
be  jealous  of  the  share  of  the  spoils  of  Spain  that  had  been 
appropriated  by  their  Arab  allies.  In  741,  accordingly,  the 
Moors  who  were  quartered  in  southern  Gallicia,  at  Merida, 
at  Soria,  and  in  all  the  central  regions  of  Spain,  took  up  arms 
and  set  their  faces  to  go  to  the  southern  coast,  whence  they 
might  take  ship,  and  cross  the  straits,  to  join  their  compatriots 
in  Barbary.  The  situation  was  full  of  peril,  and  it  was  faced 
with  courage  and  skill  by  the  reigning  Amir.  Yet  peace  was 
only  attained  after  a  new  and  general  division  of  the  con- 
quered territories,  by  assigning  to  each  tribe  of  the  contend- 
ing conquerors  the  district  which  most  nearly  resembled  the 
native  land  of  the  tribesmen  ;  an  ingenious  and  most  reason- 
able scheme,  which  the  great  variety  of  soil  and  climate, 
of  mountain  and  valley  and  plain  in  every  part  of  the  Peninsula 
rendered  possible  in  the  new  country  of  the  Moslem.2  In  this 
way  the  Egyptian  contingent  was  settled  in  Murcia,  which 
they  named  Misr  or  Egypt ;  the  men  of  Palestine  found  a  home 
in  the  mountain  regions  near  Ronda  and  Medina  Sidonia, 

1  "The  marabouts — Moslem  saints  or  missionaries — among  the  Berbers,  were 
responsible  for  most  of  the  later  changes  that  took  place  in  north  Africa ;  they  set 
up  the  Fatimiles,  sent  the  Almoravides  victorious  through  Barbary  and  Spain,  and 
then  put  them  down  by  the  Almohades."    S.  Lane  Poole,  Moors  in  Spain,  54. 

2  Gayangos,  ii. ,  46 ;  Dozy,  Recherches,  i. ,  cap.  ii. ;  Lafuente,  in. ,  83-5. 


128  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

which  might  recall  their  home  in  the  Lebanon  ;  those  who  had 
once  pastured  their  flocks  in  the  valley  of  the  Jordan,  were 
established  between  Malaga  and  Archidona,  on  the  banks  of 
the  Guadalhorce ;  the  large  and  important  tribes  from  Yemen 
obtained  grants  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Seville,  Ubeda  and 
Guadix ;  the  Arabs  from  Palmyra  were  settled  in  the  north- 
east of  Murcia  and  the  region  round  about  Almeria,  while  the 
proud  and  cultured  Syrian  of  Damascus  found  a  home  and  an 
abiding  place  on  the  banks  of  the  Xenil,  in  the  rich  and 
beautiful  Vega  of  Elvira,1  which  became  famous,  beyond  all 
the  regions  of  Spain,  as  the  kingdom  or  province  of  Granada. 

Spain  had  been  conquered  by  the  Berber  Taric,  the  dark- 
skinned  freedman  of  the  Arab  Musa,  with  his  12,000  African 
marauders.  Musa,  the  Arab,  had  been  disgraced.  His  son 
had  been  slain  ;  and  for  a  quarter  of  a  century  the  Peninsula 
was  virtually  ruled  by  the  swart  and  savage  Africans,  or 
Berbers,  who  are  known  in  history  by  the  somewhat  un- 
certain name  of  the  Moors.  But  the  supreme  government  of 
the  country  was  in  the  hands  of  a  nobler  race. 

In  spite  of  the  jealousies  of  the  contending  tribesmen  and 
the  intrigues  of  hostile  faction,  in  spite  of  frequent  rebellion 
and  threats  of  civil  war,  the  Arab  ruler  did  not  neglect  the  arts 
of  peace.  The  subject  population  gradually  emerged  from 
slavery,  and  throve  greatly  under  the  just  and  enlightened 
sway  of  the  Amirs.  The  taxes  were  light.  The  laws  were 
simple.  The  noble  oppressors  had  fled  away  to  the  moun- 
tains, where  the  Arab  could  not  or  did  not  pursue  them. 
The  bishops  and  many  of  the  clergy  had  followed  them  in 

1For  the  Basque  etymology  of  Illiberis  (Elvira),  see  W.  Webster,  Spain,  p.  71. 
Elvira  and  Granada  (Garnatha),  appear  to  have  both  been  called  Damascus  by 
the  early  Moslem  settlers,  that  is,  if  they  are  not  one  and  the  same  place.  See 
Abulfeda  (ed.  Paris,  1848),  p.  253.  M.  Dozy,  Recherches,  torn,  i.,  pp.  328-333, 
considers  that  Elvira  and  Castella  are  the  same  place. 

The  etymology  of  Granada  is  doubtful.  Before  the  invasion  of  Spain  by  the 
Arabs,  a  small  town  of  Phoenician  origin,  known  as  Kamattah,  existed  near 
Illiberis  (Elvira)  and  probably  on  the  site  of  the  more  modern  city  of  Granada. 
The  syllable  Kar  would,  in  Phoenician,  signify  a  town.  The  meaning  of  nattah 
is  unknown.  Gayangos,  i. ,  347;  Casiri,  Bib.  Ar.  Hisp.  Esc.,  ii.,  251;  Conde, 
Hist.  Dom.,  i.,  pp.  37-51.  The  supposition  that  the  city  owes  its  name  to  its 
resemblance  to  a  ripe  pomegranate  (granata)  is  clearly  inadmissable.  As  in  the 
case  of  Leon,  the  device  was  adopted  in  consequence  of  its  appropriateness  to  an 
existing  name — although  the  modern  city  of  Granada  is  probably  not  older  than 
1020.  Moreover,  the  Arabic  word  for  a  pomegranate  is  Roman  ;  and  Sofo  de 
Roma,  the  name  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington's  estate  in  Andalusia,  means  the  wood 
of  the  pomegranates,  and  an  Ensalada  romana  is  not  a  Roman  but  a  pomegranate 
salad.  See  Pedaza,  Hist.  Eccl.  de  Granada  (1618),  fol.  21-22 ;  Romey,  Hist.,  i., 
474-5- 


741]  THE  MOSLEM  CONQUEST.  129 

their  retreat.  The  Jews,  the  richest,  the  most  enlightened, 
the  most  learned  of  the  old  inhabitants  of  Spain,  were  not  only 
tolerated,  but  highly  honoured  by  the  new  rulers.  The  Jews, 
indeed,  had  probably  invited  and  had  certainly  welcomed  the 
Arabs  into  Spain.  They  had  assisted  the  invaders  in  their 
early  struggles,  and  had  furnished  garrisons  for  many  southern 
cities  when  the  main  body  of  the  Moslem  army  was  pressing 
forward  to  occupy  the  more  northern  districts.  And  they  were 
not  forgotten  by  the  victors  when  the  Moslem  occupation  was 
complete.1  Yet  cruelly  injured  as  they  had  been  by  the 
kings  and  councils  of  the  Visigoths,  the  Jews  were  generous  in 
the  hour  of  their  victory  ;  and  we  hear  no  word  of  Christians, 
lay  or  ecclesiastic,  being  persecuted  by  Jews  in  the  day  of 
their  power  and  their  influence  at  the  court  of  the  Moslem. 
Nor  did  the  Christians  suffer  in  any  way,  on  account  of  their 
religion,  at  the  hands  of  the  Moors.  Many  Romans  and 
Visigoths  embraced  Islam,  aspiring  to  positions  of  honour  or 
profit  in  the  State.  The  slave  who  pronounced  the  Kalmah 2 
secured  his  immediate  freedom ;  but  those  who  set  their 
Christianity  above  honour  or  profit  were  at  liberty  not  only 
to  maintain  their  ancient  faith,  but  to  profess  and  follow  it  in 
public.  Churches  were  retained  by  the  Christians  in  every 
city  of  the  Peninsula ;  and  Mass  was  celebrated  day  by  day, 
according  to  the  Gothic  ritual,3  under  the  protection  of  the 
Moslem  authorities.  The  only  burden  to  which  the  Christian 
or  Mozarab  was  exposed,  from  which  the  True  Believer  was 
free,  was  that  of  a  small  annual  tribute  or  poll  tax.  In  every 
other  respect  not  only  perfect  toleration  but  nominal  equality 
was  the  rule  of  the  Arab  in  Spain.4  In  the  early  days  of  the 

1  Among  the  public  functionaries  under  the  Ommeyad  Caliphs  of  Cordova,  we 
find  one  who  bore  the  title  of  Kdtib  of  protection,  who  was  charged  with  the 
special  protection  of  the  persons  and  interests  of  Jews  and  Christians,  "and  it 
may  be  said  without  exaggeration  that,  so  long  as  this  office  existed,  no  Christian 
nor  Jew  ever  needed  the  assistance  of  the  great,"  Gayangos,  ii.,  102-111. 

2  In  full  Jfalimatu' sfi  shahadat,  the  creed  of  Islam.     The  entire  sentence  does 
not  occur  in  the  Koran.     But  the  first  clause  known  as  ndfi  wa  isbdt,  the  rejection 
and  the  affirmation,  in  verse  21  of  chapter  xlvii.  ;  and  the  second  clause  in  verse  29 
of  chapter  xlviii.     For  the  somewhat  similar  affirmation  or  declaration  of  the 
Hebrews,  see  Deuteronomy  vi.  4. 

3  The   Romish  Missal  did  not  take  the  place  of  the  Gothic  until  over  four 
hundred  years  later.     See  post,  chapter  xxii. 

4  See  Dozy,  Recherches,  torn.  i. ,  pp.  78-89.     As  to  the  liberty  and  prosperity 
enjoyed  by  the  Spanish  Christians  under  the  Moslem  Caliphs  of  Cordova,  see 
Viardot,  Essai,  i. ,  67-75,  where  it  is  justly  remarked  that  our  admiration  for  the 
tolerance  displayed  by  the  Spanish  Moslems  should  be  the  greater  when  we 

VOL.    I.  9 


130  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

occupation,  even  when  the  invader  was  speeding,  sword  in 
hand,  throughout  the  country,  the  general  order  to  the 
Moslem  soldiery  was  to  spare  at  all  times  those  who  offered 
no  resistance.  And  the  Christian  writers  are  compelled  to 
admit  that  these  instructions  were  almost  invariably  carried 
out.  The  tardy  recognition  of  the  supremacy  of  the  earlier 
invaders,  no  doubt,  had  been  more  than  once  visited  with 
hasty  slaughter.  The  over-demonstrative  profession  of  an 
intolerant  Catholicism  was  to  be  the  signal,  in  later  days,  for 
outbreaks  of  an  enraged  Islam.  But  from  the  time  that  the 
country  was  fairly  settled,  the  Christian  Spaniard  not  only 
enjoyed  personal  and  religious  freedom,  but  he  attended  the 
public  ministrations  of  his  own  priests ;  he  was  governed,  as 
far  as  he  chose,  by  his  own  laws,  interpreted  by  his  own 
judges ;  and  on  the  whole,  the  new  rule  was  one  of  peace,  of 
prosperity  and  of  justice. 

III. — Abdur  Rahman. 

From  661  to  750,  fourteen  Caliphs  of  the  Ommeyad  dynasty 
had  ruled  the  Moslem  world  from  Damascus.  Es  Seffah,  the 
first  of  the  Abbaside  dynasty,  which  supplanted  them,  removed 
his  capital  to  far-famed  Bagdad  ;  and  the  Caliphate  continued 
in  his  family  until  the  breaking  up  of  the  great  Mohammedan 
Empire  by  the  Mongols  in  1258.  The  most  distinguished 
member  of  the  deposed  family  of  the  Ommeyads  in  744  was 
the  youth  Abdur  Rahman,  a  true  hero  of  romance.  A  fugitive 
from  childhood ;  ever  in  danger  from  Abbaside  spies  and 
pursuers,  sheltered  by  wandering  tribes,  concealed  by  villagers, 
he  escaped  death  a  hundred  times  and  in  a  hundred  ways, 
until  at  length  he  found  himself,  not  yet  twenty-one  years  of 
age,  a  guest  rather  than  a  refugee  among  the  Berbers  of 
northern  Africa. 

Abdur  Rahman  was  a  youth  of  noble  stature  and  bearing, 
brave,  energetic,  generous,  marked  out  by  fortune  for  fame. 
Like  Hannibal  and  Sertorius  and  Taric,  he  was  blind  of  an  eye ; 
and  like  Hannibal  and  Taric  and  Sertorius,  he  turned  his 
thoughts  towards  Spain.  The  dissensions  among  the  Arab 
chiefs  in  the  Peninsula,  the  remoteness  of  Bagdad,  his  own 
more  than  royal  birth  and  reputation,  all  were  in  his  favour. 

remember  that  Us  etaient  alors  dans  la  premiere  fureur  ifune  croyance  nouvelle  ; 
dans  le  premier  enthousiasme  de  la  victoire. 


755.]  THE  MOSLEM  CONQUEST.  131 

A  discreet  envoy  from  Barbary  to  Andalusia  made  the  most  of 
his  great  opportunities ;  and  in  September,  755,  the  young 
prince,  not  only  invited,  but  awaited  with  feverish  anxiety,  and 
welcomed  with  national  acclamation,  landed  near  the  mouth  of 
the  great  river,1  and  proceeded  to  set  up  his  new  Government 
at  Seville. 

In  the  early  spring  of  the  next  year,  he  had  established 
himself  at  Cordova,  which  continued  for  400  years  to  be  the 
splendid  capital  of  the  Amirs  and  Caliphs  of  Spain.  Of 
the  various  battles  and  skirmishes  between  the  Ommeyad 
prince  and  his  various  foes — Abbaside  and  Yemenite,  Berber 
and  Christian — no  more  need  be  said  but  that  the  Arab  did  not 
neglect  the  arts  of  war.  A  powerful  and  efficient  navy  was 
constructed  by  his  orders,  and  the  brave  commander  of  the 
fleet,  Taman  ben  Alkama,  took  the  title  of  Amir  el  Mar,  the 
first  admiral  of  Spain.2 

The  uniform  success  that  attended  the  arms  of  Abdur 
Rahman  were  marked  by  a  single  reverse,  the  loss  of  Nar- 
bonne,  which,  after  forty  years  of  Moslem  domination,  succumbed 
in  761  to  the  assaults  of  Pepin,  the  son  of  Charles  Martel,  and 
the  father  of  Charlemagne.  Thus  was  the  last  of  the  possessions 
of  the  Arab  to  the  north  of  the  Pyrenees  re-occupied  by  the 
Christians  in  less  than  forty  years  after  the  first  Berber  had 
landed  his  troops  on  the  southern  coasts  of  Spain. 

Thirty-two  glorious  years  are  included  in  the  reign  of  the 
first  Abdur  Rahman  at  Cordova,  and  in  this  brief  space  of  time 
were  laid  the  foundations  of  the  greatness  of  the  Moorish 
Empire  in  Spain.  When  the  great  Amir  died,  in  788,3  the 
kingdom  of  Cordova  was  already  one  of  the  most  powerful, 
and  certainly  by  far  the  most  enlightened  Commonwealth  in 
Europe. 

Abdur  Rahman  was  an  autocrat,  kind-hearted,  judicious, 
merciful ;  quick  of  perception,  but  never  hasty  in  action ; 
generous  in  his  approbation,  refined  in  his  tastes,  stern  in  his 
anger,  untiring  in  his  labour  for  the  State.  Impatient  of  all 
opposition  to  his  designs,  easy  of  access  to  the  poor  and  humble, 
a  relentless  judge  of  the  rich  and  oppressive,  and  a  munificent 

1  Wady  el  Kebir  =  Guadalquivir. 

2  The  ships  were  built  on  the  lines  of  vessels  procured  as  models  by  Abdur 
Rahman  from  the  Imperial  court  of  Constantinople. 

3  Abdur  Rahman,  though  sometimes  spoken  of  as  King,  as  Caliph,  and  even 
as  Commander  of  the  Faithful  (Amir  al  Mouminin},  never  assumed  any  morr 
important  title  than  that  of  Amir. 


132  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

patron  of  all  arts  and  sciences,  especially  of  agriculture 1 — he 
was  the  patron  of  a  worthy  tyrant ;  and  as  unlike  the  later 
Visigothic  kings  of  Spain  as  it  is  possible  to  conceive  or  record. 
If  in  his  royal  and  autocratic  career  are  found  alternate  exhibi- 
tions of  ferocity  and  of  clemency,  the  noble  assuredly  pre- 
dominates over  the  base.  If  heads  are  treacherously  cut 
off,  lives  are  chivalrously  spared.  If  Moslems  are  massacred, 
Christians  are  protected  by  the  impulsive  Amir.  The  arts  of 
peace  were  his  chief  delight,  the  magnificence  of  Cordova  his 
ruling  passion.  The  foundation  of  the  great  mosque,  which  he 
did  not  live  to  see  completed,  the  building  of  the  palace  of 
Rissafah,  the  gardens  that  he  laid  out,  and  the  aqueducts  that 
he  constructed ;  the  luxury  and  the  liberality  of  his  court,  the 
wit  and  refinement  of  his  courtiers — of  all  these  things  we  may 
read,  and  read  with  pleasure  and  advantage,  in  the  glowing 
annals  of  the  Moslems  in  Spain.  Nay,  more,  the  Christian 
writers  have  not  failed  to  recognise  his  many  virtues ;  and  a 
mediaeval  archbishop  has  not  hesitated  to  speak  of  him  as  The 
Just.2 

1  One  of  his  great  works  was  the  embankment  of  the  Guadalquivir  for  the 
purpose  of  irrigation. 

2  The  greatness  of  his  contemporary  Charlemagne,  is,  says  Lafuente,  perhaps 
inferior  to  that  of  this  less  known  Arab  Amir.     Lafuente,  iii.,  154  ;  Roderic,  Hist. 
Arab.,  18. 


133 


CHAPTER  XIII. 
THE  KINGDOM  OF  ASTURIAS. 

(711—788.) 
I. — Covadonga. 

RODERIC  was  so  far  from  being  "  the  last  of  the  Goths  "  that  with- 
in a  few  years  after  his  death,  we  find  not  one,  but  two  Gothic 
kings,  one  in  the  south-east,  and  the  other  in  the  north-west  of 
Spain.  Theodemir,  who  more  immediately  succeeded  to  the 
battered  crown  of  Roderic,  reigned  by  favour  of  the  Arabs,  as  a 
vassal,  or  tributary  king  of  Murcia,  from  711  or  712  until  743, 
when  he  was  succeeded  by  a  Goth  of  the  name  of  Athanagild, 
by  whom  the  subject  monarchy  was  maintained  until  755,  when 
on  the  arrival  of  the  young  Ommeyad  Amir,  Abdur  Rahman, 
the  petty  and  subject  principality  of  the  last  Visigoth  was 
incorporated  in  that  of  the  first  Arab  king  of  Spain. 

But  the  refuge  and  hiding  place  of  the  Gothic  nobility,  and 
the  cradle  of  the  future  Spanish  race,  was  in  the  unconquered 
Cantabrian  provinces,  where  some  seven  or  eight  years  after 
the  death  of  Roderic,  Pelayo,  one  of  the  early  heroes  of  Spanish 
national  story,  "  the  saga-celebrated  saviour  of  Christianity  in 
the  Peninsula,"  is  found  already  reigning  over  the  refugees,  and 
making  good  his  position  in  his  mountain  retreat.  The  rule  of 
the  Christians  in  the  Asturias,  unlike  that  of  Theodemir  in 
Murcia,  was  not  by  the  favour  of  the  Moslem,  but  in  spite  of 
their  repeated  attacks.  Pelayo  was  the  independent  chieftain, 
not  so  much  of  what  was  left  of  the  Visigoths  on  the  north- 
western coasts,  as  of  that  band  of  refugees,  Gothic,  Roman  and 
Iberian,  who,  "drawing  strength  from  weakness"  and  courage 
from  affliction,  kept  the  faith,  and  laid  the  foundations  of  the 
kingdom  of  Spain. 

The  legend  of  the  heroic  defence  that  was  made  by  Pelayo 
and  his  little  band  in  the  rock-cut  cave  at  Covadonga,  has  at 


134  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

least  the  independent  authority  of  an  Arab  historian 1  to 
support  it ;  and  although  we  may  find  some  difficulty  in  be 
lieving  every  Christian  detail,  such  as  that  the  hero  and  his 
thirty  followers  actually  destroyed  the  entire  Moslem  army  of 
400,000  men,  the  position  of  Covadonga,2  a  natural  fastness, 
no  doubt  enabled  the  small  band  of  refugees  to  inflict  severe 
loss  on  the  unprotected  invaders.  The  good  fortune  of  Pelayo 
did  much  to  kindle  the  national  spirit,  by  which,  and  not  by 
numbers,  either  of  slayers  or  of  the  slain,  Spain  was  conquered 
for  the  Spaniards  :  and  thus  the  legend,  like  many  other  legends 
of  the  past,  if  critically  false,  is  actually  true.  If,  as  we  are  told, 
the  presence  of  a  great  commander  may  be  worth  40,000  men, 
the  prestige  of  a  great  victory  may  well  be  worth  400,000.  What 
actually  took  place  at  Covadonga  was  probably  that  the  tribes- 
men and  refugees,  with  every  advantage  of  an  inaccessible 
position  and  of  local  knowledge,  opposed  the  advance  of  the 
Moslems,  much  as  the  Afghans  resisted  the  British  army  in  the 
Khyber  Pass  ;  and  that  by  hurling  huge  stones  and  trunks  of  trees 
from  their  rocky  vantage  ground  upon  the  confused  ranks  of 
the  Arabs,  these  early  gueritleros  were  able  to  destroy  the  hosts 
of  the  invaders,  and  thus  to  maintain  their  independence  in 
their  mountain  refuge. 

.Nor  do  the  Arabs  seem  to  have  made  any  attempt  to  re- 
trieve or  avenge  the  fortunes  of  the  day.  Well  satisfied,  no 
doubt,  with  their  unopposed  dominion  over  the  rich  plains  of 
the  genial  south  country,  they  were  willing  to  abandon  the 
bleak  and  inhospitable  mountains  to  their  wild  inhabitants  and 
the  emboldened  refugees  whom  they  sheltered.3  Be  the  reason 
what  it  may,  Pelayo  seems  to  have  had  peace  all  the  days  of 
his  life  after  his  victory  at  Covadonga  in  718.  Prudently 
confining  his  attention  to  the  development  of  his  little  kingdom, 
he  reigned,  it  is  said,  for  nineteen  years  at  Cangas,4  and  dying 
in  737,  he  was  peacefully  succeeded  by  his  son  Favila. 

1Ibn  Hayyan ;  See  Gayangos,  ii.,  34;  Mariana,  lib.  vii.,  and  Lafuente,  iii. , 
68.  Esp.  Sag.,  xxxvii. ,  79. 

2  Near  Cangas  de  Onis  in  Asturias.     For  a  graphic  description  of  Covadonga 
and  the   neighbourhood,   see   an   article  by  John   Ormsby,    Cornhill  Magazine, 
1870,  p.  431 ;  and  Ford,  Spain  (ed.  1878),  225-7. 

3  The  Moorish  commander,  Al  Khama,  is  said  to  have  been  accompanied  by 
Oppas,  Bishop  of  Seville  (see  ante,  p.   113),  who  endeavoured  to  persuade  Pelayo 
to  submit  to  the  superior  forces  of  the  invader.     Mariana,  lib.  vii. ,  i.     The  bishop 
is  supposed  to  have  been  slain,  as  well  as  Al  Khama,  in  the  destruction  of  the 
Moslem  army. 

4  Cangas,  the  modern  Cangas  de  Onis.     The  etymology  of  the  word  according 
to  Ford  is  Canicas  =  conchas  =  the  shell-like  valley.     The  town  lies  about  a  mile 


718.]  THE  KINGDOM  OF  ASTURIAS.  135 

Pelayo,  no  doubt,  was  but  a  robber  chieftain,  a  petty 
mountain  prince,  and  the  legends  of  his  royal  descent  are  of 
later  date,  and  of  obviously  spurious  manufacture  ;  but  Pelayo 
needs  no  tinsel  to  adorn  his  crown.  He  was  the  founder  of  the 
Spanish  monarchy.  His  successor  Favila  was  no  hero,  but  a 
royal  sportsman,  whose  hands,  like  those  of  Gratian,  were 
stained  only  with  the  blood  of  animals,1  and  who  was  in- 
gloriously  killed  by  a  bear  when  hunting  near  Covadonga. 
After  his  brief  reign  of  only  two  years,  Favila  was  succeeded 
in  739,  not  by  his  son,  but  by  his  brother-in-law  Alfonso,  who 
had  married  Hermesinda,  a  daughter  of  Pelayo,  and  had  been 
named  by  the  elder  king  as  his  successor  in  case  of  the  death 
of  Favila.2 

Alfonso,  in  742,  felt  himself  already  strong  enough  to 
assume  the  offensive  against  the  Moslems,  and  crossing  over 
the  mountains  that  divide  the  Asturias  from  Gallicia,  he  made 
himself  master  of  Lugo,  Orense,  Tuy,  Braga,  Chaves,  and  other 
cities  of  the  north-west,  now  included  in  the  kingdom  of  Portu- 
gal.3 Emboldened  by  the  success  of  his  arms,  he  further 
extended  his  operations  to  the  south  and  east,  and  ravaged 
many  towns  and  cities,  which  the  weakness  of  his  forces  did  not 
permit  him  to  hold,  and  the  smallness  of  his  population  did  not 
enable  him  to  occupy.  It  would  seem  probable,  moreover,  that 
until  a  national  and  patriotic  spirit  was  aroused  in  new  Spain, 
the  Christians  as  well  as  the  Moslems  preferred,  in  many  cases, 
the  rule  of  the  Moor  to  that  of  the  Asturian.  Constant  forays 
were  the  fashion  of  the  day,  and  Ledesma,  Salamanca,  Zamora, 
Astorga,  Leon,  Simancas,  Avila,  Segovia,  and  many  less  impor- 
tant towns  are  said  to  have  been  harried  and  sacked  by  militant 
Christians.  The  peaceful  inhabitants  of  both  religions  must 
have  slept  more  soundly  to  the  south  of  the  Tagus,  than  within 
striking  distance  of  the  king  at  Cangas. 

from  Villanueva,  on  the  high  road  from  Oviedo  to  Santander,  and  was  adopted  by 
Pelayo  as  his  capital,  and  so  continued,  until  it  was  abandoned  for  the  more 
important  town  of  Oviedo.  Ford  (1878),  p.  224. 

1  There  is  a  quaint  representation  of  the  king's  inglorious  death  over  the 
doorway  of  the  church  of  San  Pedro  at  Villanueva,  said  to  have  been  founded  by 
Alfonso  I.  in  750. 

2Lafuente,  iii. ,  74,  note 

3  It  must  be  remembered  that  the  northern  boundary  of  the  modern  kingdom 
of  Portugal  is  the  Minho ;  while  that  of  the  old  province  of  Lusitania  was  the 
Douro,  sixty  miles  further  to  the  south.  But  if  Lusitania  was  shorter,  it  was  also 
broader  than  modern  Portugal ;  its  eastern  boundary  extended  beyond  the  cities  of 
Salamanca  and  Avila,  and  reached  almost  as  far  as  Segovia. 


136  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

No  man,  indeed,  did  more  to  create  and  foster  the  new 
national  spirit  in  Spain  than  this  Asturian  Alfonso,1  who  would 
be  bound  by  no  treaty  with  the  infidel,  and  who,  first  of  Spanish, 
or  indeed  of  Christian  kings,  earned  for  himself  the  title  of  the 
Catholic.2  It  was  Alfonso,  too,  in  the  course  of  his  eighteen 
years  of  growing  dominion,  who  commenced  the  building  of  the 
long  line  of  castles  on  his  southern  and  eastern  frontier  which 
secured  the  defence  and  suggested  the  name  of  the  greatest  of 
the  new  provinces  of  Christian  Spain.  The  king  died  at  Cangas 
in  756,  and  the  angels,  we  are  told,  sang  celestial  psalms  over 
his  sepulchre.3 

Fruela,  the  eldest  son  of  Alfonso,  succeeded,  on  his  father's 
death  in  757,  to  a  kingdom  extending  by  an  uncertain  tenure 
of  temporary  conquest,  nominal  tribute,  and  constant  encroach- 
ment, over  Gallicia,  the  Asturias,  Biscay,  and  Navarre,  together 
with  some  frontier  towns  and  debatable  districts  on  the  borders 
of  the  plain  country,  which  were  afterwards  included  in  the 
kingdoms  of  Leon  and  Castile.  A  tributary  of  Abdur  Rahman, 
Fruela  did  nothing  to  extend  his  Christian  territories ;  but  his 
harsh  and  savage  disposition  led  to  frequent  rebellions  of  his 
Christian  subjects,  which  were  suppressed  with  conventional 
severity  and  unusual  success. 

Nor  did  he  maintain  friendly  relations  with  the  Church. 
Witiza  had  rendered  himself  obnoxious  to  the  bishops  by  his 
encouragement  of  clerical  matrimony ;  Fruela  incurred  their 
hostility  by  forbidding  it.4  But  by  way  of  compensation,  no 
doubt,  for  this  interference  with  the  ecclesiastical  power,  he 
laid  the  foundation  of  a  magnificent  Christian  temple,  on  a  spot 
where  some  monks  had  set  up  a  shrine  to  St.  Vincent,  around 
whose  sacred  walls  arose  the  town  of  Ovetum,  the  modern  city 

lMThe  Terrible  Alfonso,  the  manslayer,  son  of  the  sword,  slew  tens  of 
thousands  of  Moslems.  He  burned  houses  and  dwellings,  and  no  treaty  could  be 
made  with  him."  El  Lagi,  quoted  by  Lafuente,  iii.,  81. 

Dunham,  quoting  Sebastian  of  Salamanca,  omnes  Arabes  occupatores  civitatum 
interficiens,  says  placidly,  ii.,  125,  "Such  an  extermination  of  the  Mohammedan 
inhabitants  to  make  room  for  his  Christian  colonists  was  a  just  retribution  on  the 
heads  of  the  followers  of  a  sanguinary  Faith  ".  A  strange  nineteenth  century 
Christian  gloss!  If  such  things  can  be  written  in  the  Cabinet  in  1832,  it  is  hardly 
surprising  that  the  retributive  justice  practised  in  the  mountains  should  have  been 
somewhat  one-sided  in  750. 

2  Reccared  was,  of  course,  the  first  Catholic  king  of  Spain  ;  but  the  first  who 
is  known  by  the  distinctive  title  is  this  Alfonso. 

3Sebast.  Salmant. ,  15,  in  Espana  Sagrada,  xiii.  ;  Dunham,  ii.,  126;  Dozy, 
Histoire,  torn,  iii.,  24-25. 

4  Mariana,  vii. ,  4. 


756.]  THE  KINGDOM  OF  ASTURIAS.  137 

of  Oviedo.  Fruela's  church  unhappily  exists  no  more.  Yet 
Oviedo  can  still  boast  of  the  possession  of  one  of  the  oldest  and 
most  interesting  Christian  buildings  in  the  Peninsula.  The 
Camara  Santa  is  probably  the  ancient  church  of  St.  Miguel, 
which  served  as  the  private  chapel  of  the  court  of  Alfonso  the 
Catholic,  and  contains  the  most  precious  relics  in  Spain.  For 
if  Oviedo  is  not  as  holy  a  city  as  Compostella,  it  claims  the 
second  place  in  the  roll  of  sanctity  ;  while  in  the  number,  the 
variety,  and  the  authenticity  of  its  relics 1  it  stands  perhaps 
unrivalled  in  the  Christian  world. 

His  constant  and  edifying  exhibition  of  Christian  zeal  did 
not,  as  Lafuente  somewhat  naively  remarks,  prevent  Fruela 
from  staining  his  memory  with  the  guilt  of  an  odious  fratricide. 
The  blood  of  a  murdered  brother,  however,  cried  not  in  vain 
for  vengeance ;  and  Fruela  met  his  death,  in  the  time-honoured 
Visigothic  fashion,  at  the  hand  of  an  assassin. 

His  son  Alfonso  being  still  of  tender  age,  the  crown  was 
passed  on  to  a  first  cousin,  Aurelius,  who  appears  to  have  lived 
in  peace,  if  not  in  amity,  with  his  neighbours,  to  have  paid  his 
tribute,  respected  his  treaties,  and  to  have  even  permitted  some 
noble  Christian  damsels  to  intermarry  with  the  sons  of  the 
Moslems. 

The  laxity  of  Aurelius  in  the  matter  of  these  mixed  marriages 
is  supposed  to  have  given  rise  to  the  famous  legend  of  an  annual 
tribute  2  of  one  hundred  Christian  virgins  exacted  by  the  Arabs 
of  Cordova,  and  paid  in  kind  by  the  Christian  kings.  That  in 
any  case  his  conduct  was  distasteful  to  the  clergy,  we  can  well 
imagine.  Mixed  marriages  are  not  often  entirely  satisfactory, 
and  the  Moslem  was  a  man  of  a  hostile  race,  as  well  as  of  a 
hostile  religion. 

Aurelius  died  in  his  palace  at  Cangas  in  774 ;  and  was  suc- 
ceeded, not  by  Prince  Alfonso  the  grandson,  but  by  Silus  the 
son-in-law  of  Alfonso  I.  Of  Silus  little  is  known  but  that  he 
removed  his  capital  from  Cangas  to  Pravia,3  and  that  he,  like 

1 A  list  of  these  precious  relics,  including  La  Cruz  de  la  Victoria,  the  cross 
that  is  said  to  have  fallen  down  from  heaven  at  Cangas,  and  to  have  been  carried 
before  Pelayo  at  Covadonga,  will  be  found  in  Ford  (1845),  p.  699. 

2 Mariana,  vii. ,  4,  treats  this  legend  as  sober  history;  and  even  Dunham  is 
content  with  the  modified  criticism  that  it  was  not  Aurelius  but  Mauregato  who 
agreed  to  pay  this  tribute  to  the  Moslem  Minotaur  in  return  for  the  assistance 
which  enabled  him  to  vanquish  his  legitimate  Christian  rival  Alfonso. 

8  Pravia  is  a  little  town  charmingly  situated  in  the  valley  of  the  Nalon,  five  or 
six  miles  from  the  sea  coast,  thirty  from  Oviedo,  and  about  as  far  to  the  south-west 
of  the  port  of  Gijon,  in  the  Asturias. 


138  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

Aurelius,  was  content  to  live  at  peace  with  his  Arab  neighbours,1 
reigning  jointly  with  his  wife  Adosinda,  as  king  and  queen 2  of 
Asturias. 

King  Silus  and  his  more  legitimate  queen  being  both  well 
stricken  in  years,  the  actual  government  was  entrusted  to  Alfonso, 
who  would  have  succeeded  to  the  full  honours  of  the  kingdom 
on  the  death  of  Silus  in  783,  had  not  his  rights  been  once  again 
invaded  by  the  election  of  a  bastard  son  of  his  grandfather 
Alfonso ;  and  he  was  compelled  to  fly  the  country,3  while 
Mauregato  reigned  in  his  stead  at  Pravia. 

There  is  little  to  tell  of  domestic  interest  or  of  military  glory 
in  north-west  Spain  during  the  reign  of  Mauregato.  But  there 
is  one  material  enterprise  of  which  Spain  was  the  theatre,  and 
of  which  the  glory  was  certainly  Spanish,  that  deserves  some- 
thing more  than  a  passing  notice — the  ever  famous  expedition 
of  Charlemagne.4 


II. — Roncesvalles. 

The  invasion  of  Spain  by  Christian  France  in  778,  was  not 
much  more  successful  than  the  invasion  of  France  by  Moslem 
Spain  in  733.  And  it  came  about,  as  far  as  we  can  learn,  in 
this  wise  :  Charlemagne,  engaged  in  the  public  administration 
of  baptism  to  a  multitude  of  Saxons,  at  the  great  assembly  at 
Paderborn  in  777,  was  surprised  and  gratified  by  the  visit  of  a 
Moslem  envoy  from  beyond  the  Pyrenees.  Ibn  al  Arabi  was 
an  Abbaside  of  good  position,  disaffected  to  the  rule  of  Abdur 
Rahman,  and  the  representative  or  envoy  of  other  rebellious 
Moslems  at  Saragossa.  The  visitor  sought  the  assistance  or 
intervention  in  northern  Spain  of  the  Frank  king,  promising 
him  the  support  of  the  entire  Arab  or  Moorish  population  in 
any  attempt  to  overthrow  the  Ommeyad  government  of  the 
Peninsula. 

1  Ob  matris  causam,  pacem  habuit,  says  the  Chronicon  Albidense.     The  phrase 
is  one  of  somewhat  doubtful  signification. 

2  This   tribute   to   the  quasi-legitimate  rights  of  Adosinda,  the  daughter  of 
Alfonso  I.,  is  sufficiently  remarkable. 

3  Mauregato — his  very  name  has  a  AJoorisk  flavour  about  it  (his  mother  was  a 
Moorish  slave,  H.) — is  said  to  have  invoked  the  assistance  of  Abdur  Rahman,  the 
Amir  of  Cordova,  against  his  legitimate  nephew  ;  and  Alfonso  was  only  driven  from 
his  Christian  throne  by  the  alien  forces  of  the  Moslem.     The  Maiden   Tribute 
was  supposed  to  be  the  price  of  intervention. 

4  As  to  my  use  of  this  somewhat  old-fashioned  word,  see  Introduction. 


778.]  THE  KINGDOM  OF  ASTURIAS.  139 

The  suggestions  of  the  Moslem  are  said  to  have  met  with 
the  warm  approval  of  the  Christian  ecclesiastics  at  the  court 
of  Charlemagne,  who  regarded  the  proposed  expedition  as  a 
pious  and  profitable  crusade  against  the  infidel.1  In  any  case, 
the  prospect  was  made  sufficiently  attractive  to  the  king,  who 
eagerly  embraced  the  opportunity  which  thus  so  suddenly 
presented  itself  to  him  of  extending  his  empire,  albeit  as  the 
ally  of  the  infidel  in  Spain.  And  he  satisfied  his  scruples,  no 
doubt,  by  a  pious  resolve  to  turn  his  Christian  forces  against 
both  factions  of  the  unbelievers,  as  soon  as  he  should  be  fairly 
established  within  their  territories. 

Charlemagne  accordingly  convoked  a  great  military  assembly, 
or  champ  de  mat,  in  the  spring  of  778,  at  Chasseneuil  in  the 
Agenois  ;  and  having  there  divided  his  forces  into  two  armies, 
he  dispatched  one  by  way  of  Roussillon  and  the  shores  of  the 
Mediterranean,  under  the  command  of  his  uncle,  Duke  Bernard  ; 
while  he  himself  crossed  the  western  Pyrenees  at  Saint  Jean 
Pied  de  Port,  and  appeared  in  due  time  before  Pamplona.  The 
city,  occupied  entirely  by  Christians,2  submitted  at  once  to  the 
Franks,  and  Charlemagne  continued  his  march  to  Saragossa, 
which  as  promised  by  the  Abbaside  envoy,  was  to  be  placed  in 
his  hands  on  his  arrival. 

Duke  Bernard  meanwhile  had  been  even  more  fortunate 
than  his  master.  He  had  found  abundant  supplies  on  his 
eastward  line  of  march ;  he  had  taken  hostages  for  future 
fidelity  from  the  defenders  of  the  strong  fortress  of  Gerona, 
and  the  richer  city  of  Barcelona ;  and  at  a  short  distance 
from  Saragossa  he  joined  his  victorious  forces  with  those  of  his 
sovereign.  The  expedition  so  far  had  been  entirely  successful. 
But  as  soon  as  the  reunited  Prankish  armies  approached  the 
time-honoured  city  of  Caesar  Augustus,  the  citizens  shut  their 
gates ;  for  Saragossa  was  governed  and  defended  by  the  brave 
Abdul  Melik — the  Marsilio  of  the  Romancists — the  most  loyal 
of  the  lieutenants  of  Abdur  Rahman ;  and  in  spite  of  the 
assurances  of  the  rebel  envoy,  Charlemagne  found  no  treason 
within  the  walls. 

Greatly  vexed  at  this  unexpected  rebuff,  the  Prankish 
king  spent  some  weeks  in  vain  attempts  to  possess  himself  of 
the  city,  and  in  more  successful  forays  into  the  neighbouring 

1  Mombert,  Charles  the  Great  (1888),  p.  i  ;$.     Some  of  the  Spanish  chroniclers 
made  Alfunso  summon  Charlemagne  to  his  aid  against  the  Moslems. 

2  Sebastian  of  Salamanca,  apud  Dunham,  i. ,  254. 


140  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

country ;  and  at  length,  having  secured  no  allies  among  Moors 
or  Christians,  but  finding  on  the  contrary  that  he  was  exposed 
to  harassing  attacks  from  the  forces  of  both  alike,  he  was  com- 
pelled to  retire  disappointed  into  his  own  dominions.  Having 
destroyed  and  pillaged  the  unoffending  town  of  Pamplona, 
the  Franks  pursued  their  northern  course  through  the  defile l 
of  Roncesvalles,  which  lay  almost  due  north  of  Pamplona,  and 
about  forty  miles  to  the  east  of  the  sea  coast  at  Irun.  On  the 
day  of  the  Assumption,  15th  August,  778,  the  king  with  his 
light  troops  marched  first  through  the -pass,  and  had  already 
proceeded  some  distance  on  the  northern  side  of  the  mountains, 
when  the  Basques  or  Navarrese,  naturally  indignant  at  the 
destruction  wrought  by  their  Christian  deliverer  upon  their 
friendly  and  equally  Christian  town,  fell  upon  the  troops — 
heavily  laden  with  the  plunder  of  Spain— and  cut  to  pieces  a 
great  part,  if  not  the  whole  of  the  rear  guard,  and  possibly  of 
the  main  body  of  the  army. 

The  history  of  this  great  destruction  is  very  doubtful.  The 
trustworthy  materials  are  very  slender.  But  it  is  at  least 
certain  that  many  of  the  military  leaders  and  principal  nobles  of 
the  invading  or  retreating  army  perished  at  the  hands  of  the 
sturdy  mountaineers,  and  that  not  only  the  spoils  of  Pamplona, 
but  such  booty  as  had  been  amassed  in  the  entire  expedition, 
fell  into  the  hands  of  the  victors.2  How  far  the  Basque  forces 
were  aided  by  Christians  from  the  Cantabrian  and  Asturian 
provinces,  by  early  Spanish  heroes  of  Leon,  or  by  Moslems 
from  Saragossa,  who  may  have  harassed  the  retreat  of 
Charlemagne's  army,  it  is  impossible  to  say.  The  fact  of  such 
an  alliance  or  alliances — in  itself  sufficiently  probable — is  quite 
unnecessary  to  explain  the  defeat  of  the  Franks,  as  we  now 
understand  it.  Nor  can  we  speak  with  much  greater  con- 
fidence of  the  prowess  or  even  of  the  existence  of  the  ever 
famous  Roland  in  the  ranks  of  the  invading  or  evading  army : 

1  Roncesvalles  is  almost  certainly  a  Basque  word ;  the  last  two  syllables  are 
the  zavat,  which  enters  into  the  composition  of  perhaps  a  hundred  names  of  places 
in  Navarre  and  in  the  Basque  provinces,  always  indicating  a  flat  level  space  which 
exactly  describes  the  field  of  battle.     Roscida  Vallis,  given  without  approbation  by 
Ford,  is  a  fanciful  and  meaningless  etvmology. 

2  The  pass  and  neighbourhood  of  Roncesvalles  have  been  frequently  described. 
One   of  the   best  descriptions   is   that   of  John  Ormsby,  in   Chamber's  Encyclo- 
p&dia,  ed.  1890,  viii.,  765.     All  that  we  know  of  Roland  is  contained  in  one  line  o* 
Eginhard's  Vita  Karoli  (cap.  ix.).     His  name  is  said  to  be  Hrnodlandus,  but  I 
prefer,  as  usual,  in  writing  English  to  call  him  Roland.     See  Lafuente,  iii. ,  137; 
Stappenbeck,  Ueber  die  Rolands  saulen  (Berlin,  1847) ;  and  Schumann,  Rolandus 
Magnus  Variis  fabulis  involutis  Explicates  (Lipsise,  1694). 


778.]  THE  KINGDOM  OF  ASTURIAS.  141 

or  of  that  of  the  no  less  celebrated  Bernardo  l  del  Carpio  in  the 
ranks  of  the  pursuers. 

Taillefer,  who  sang  the  song  of  Roland  upon  the  battle- 
field of  Hastings,  and  the  unknown  author  whose  eleventh 
century  epic,  copied  by  Turoldus,  suggested  the  poems  of  Pulci, 
of  Boiardo,  and  of  greatest  Ariosto,  all  these  have  made 
Roland  one  of  the  favourite  heroes  of  the  Middle  Ages.  But 
in  the  story,  as  it  is  told  in  the  Spanish  ballads,  it  is  Bernardo  2 
del  Carpio,  the  nephew  of  the  chaste  but  pusillanimous  Alfonso, 
who  is  the  true  hero  of  Roncesvalles,  and  who  not  only 
repulsed  the  host  of  Charlemagne,  but  caught  up  the  invulner- 
able Roland  in  his  arms,  and  squeezed  him  to  death  before  his 
army.  No  carpet  knight  nor  courtier  was  Bernardo,  but  a  true 
Cantabrian  mountaineer. 

Legend,  indeed,  has  been  more  busy,  and  possibly  more 
romantic,  on  either  side  of  the  Pyrenees,  with  Roncesvalles 
than  even  with  the  Guadalete.  But  history  merely  tells  us  that 
Charlemagne,  wisely  no  doubt,  made  no  attempt  to  avenge  the 
loss  of  his  chivalry  or  of  his  treasure  :  but  that  he  left  the  bodies 
of  his  dead  Palladins  to  be  buried  by  the  Basques,  made  good 
his  most  inglorious  retreat,  and  scarce  drew  bridle  until  he 
had  reached  Auxerre.3 

1  Even  less  is  known  of  Bernardo  than  of  Roland.     His  name  is  first  mentioned 
in  the  Cronica  General  of  Alfonsos  X.  ;  he  is  said  to  have  been  the  son  of  a  secret 
marriage  or  liaison  of  D.  Sancho  of  Saldana,  with  a  sister  of  Alfonso  II. 

2  The  Chanson  de  Roland  has  twice  been  translated  into  English  verse.     The 
best  Spanish  ballads  of  Bernardo  del  Carpio  are  printed  in  vol.  i.  of  Wolf  and 
Hofmann's  excellent  collection  (Berlin,  1856),  and  some  ballads  of  Roncesvalles  in 
vol.  ii.  of  the  same  work.     A  reference  to  the  Morgante  Maggiore,  to  Orlando 
inamorato,   to   Orlando  furioso,    and   Milton's    Paradise  Lost,   may  be   almost 
superfluous.     The  legend  of  the  magic  horn  of  Roland  is,  of  course,  referred  to 
by  Scott  in  Marmion,  canto  vi. ,  stanza  33  : — 

"  Oh  for  a  blast  of  that  dread  horn 
On  Fontarabian  echoes  borne !  " 
Fontarabia,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  is  forty  good  miles  away  from  Roncesvalles. 

3  Eginhard,  Vita,  etc.,  cap.  xv. ,  and  Annales,  p.  200-5  an<^  240 ;  Cf.  Sismondi, 
Hist,  de  France,  ii.,  257,  265.     Sismondi  considers  that  Roland— if  such  a  person 
ever  existed — was  never  in  the  army  of  Charlemagne  at  all ;  but  may  have  dis- 
tinguished himself  under  Charles  Martel.     Archbishop  Turpin  and  Ariosto  are 
not  of  course  authorities  for  historical  facts.    As  to  the  Spanish  invention  of  a 
second  rout  at  Roncesvalles  in  812,  see  authorities  collected  by  Sismondi,  Hist,  de 
France,  ii. ,  p.  265. 


142 


CHAPTER  XIV. 
ISLAM. 

(787—852.) 
I. — The  Mezqulta. 

ABDUR  RAHMAN  I.  was  succeeded  in  787  by  his  favourite  son, 
Hisham,  surnamed  the  Just,  an  amiable  and  virtuous  sovereign.1 
A  student  rather  than  a  warrior,  Hisham,  in  the  early  part  of 
his  reign,  showed  considerable  vigour  and  even  military  skill. 
He  valiantly  conquered  and  generously  pardoned  his  brothers, 
Abdullah  and  Suleiman,  both  of  whom  had  taken  up  arms 
against  him,  and  he  proclaimed  a  Holy  War  for  the  subjuga- 
tion of  the  Asturias,  which  was  attended,  however,  with  very 
poor  results.  Another  expedition,  against  the  Franks  of 
Septimania,  was  both  directly  and  indirectly  more  successful, 
for  if  it  brought  no  accession  of  territory  to  the  Moslem,  it 
led  to  the  acquisition  of  a  vast  amount  of  Christian  treasure 
which  was  devoted  to  the  completion  of  the  great  mosque  at 
Cordova.  The  captives  taken  at  Narbonne  were  employed  in 
the  actual  work  of  the  building,  and  many  of  the  Roman 
pillars  which  support  the  immense  roof  of  the  Mezquita  were 
brought  at  the  same  time  from  the  Narbonensis.  But  in  spite 
of  these  military  and  architectural  interests,  the  mind  ol 
Hisham  was  so  much  affected,  in  the  sixth  year  of  his  useful 
reign,  by  an  astrological  forecast  of  his  early  death,  that  he 
was  led  to  abandon  the  cares  of  State,  and  to  devote  himself 
entirely  to  good  works  and  religious  exercises.  And  thus  on 
his  death,  some  few  months  before  the  expected  period,  after 
a  reign  of  only  eight  years,  the  kingdom  of  Cordova  was 
almost  as  much  dominated  by  sacerdotal  or  theological  in- 
fluences, as  was  once  the  kingdom  of  Toledo. 

1  Al  Ahdil  the  just :  and  Al  Rahdi  the  affable. 


ISLAM.  143 

Unlike  the  Gothic  kings,  however,  in  peace  or  in  war, 
Hisham  did  much  to  add  to  the  beauties  of  his  capital,  and  to 
develop  the  resources  of  his  country.  The  bridge  that  spans 
the  great  river,  the  Wddy  el  Kebir,  over  which  the  Spanish 
peasant  still  drives  the  produce  of  his  fields  to  the  market  at 
Cordova,  was  constructed  by  his  liberality :  and  if  the  founda- 
tion of  the  mosque,  in  which  the  Christian  of  modern  Cordova 
still  carries  on  his  splendid  worship,  is  due  to  the  magnificence 
of  Abdur  Rahman,  the  completed  work  is  a  monument  of  the 
piety  of  Hisham.  If  the  cry  of  the  Muezzin  is  heard  from  the 
towers  of  Aya  Sofia,  on  the  shores  of  the  Bosphorus,  the  Te 
Deum  is  sung  amid  yet  more  splendid  surroundings  in  the 
Mezquita,  on  the  banks  of  the  Guadalquivir. 

Within  a  few  months  after  the  conquest  in  711,  the  new 
masters  of  Spain,  considerate  as  we  have  seen  in  matters  of 
religion  from  the  very  day  of  their  arrival,  had  entered  into  a 
friendly  arrangement  with  the  conquered  people  by  which  one 
half  of  the  Christian  Basilica  at  Cordova  was  used  for  the 
worship  of  the  Moslem.1  For  some  seventy  years  this  mutual 
toleration  was  continued,  until  the  time  came  when  Abdur 
Rahman  I.  determined  to  build  on  the  site  so  long  hallowed 
by  tradition,  a  mosque  for  Moslem  worshippers,  which  should 
compete  with  the  finest  temples  in  the  East.  He  accordingly 
purchased  from  the  Christians  that  portion  of  the  Basilica  which 
they  had  hitherto  used  for  their  worship,  and  then  pulling 
down  the  whole,  he  commenced  his  new  and  magnificent  edifice 
in  786. 

The  building  as  designed  by  Abdur  Rahman,  and  completed 
by  his  son  Hisham,  was  some  860  feet  long  by  270  feet  in  width. 
The  general  plan  was  that  of  the  mosque  of  most  sacred  Kairwan 
in  Morocco.  The  walls,  of  immense  thickness,  are  low,  and  the 
roof  was  probably  not  raised  more  than  thirty  feet  above  the  floor 
of  the  mosque.  Nor  is  the  height  without  the  building,  even 
where  the  buttressed  towers  break  the  long  line  of  walls,  ever 
greater  than  sixty  feet.  Eleven  aisles  ran  north  and  south  within 
the  building  of  786,  and  were  formed  by  long  rows  of  low  marble 
pillars,  in  number  not  less  than  1200,  the  pride  of  the  contem- 
porary Arab,  and  the  spoil  of  the  more  ancient  Roman.2  The 

1This  arrangement  had  already  been  made  in  the  Basilica  of  St.  John,  after- 
wards converted  into  the  great  mosque  of  Damascus,  which  was  destroyed  by  fire, 
alas,  on  the  ist  of  December,  1893,  long  after  this  note  was  first  written. 

2  The  number  of  pillars  still  standing  are  920,  of  which  834  are  of  a  fine  red 
marble  from  Cabra,  near  Cordova ;  the  remainder  may  have  been  brought,  as 
tradition  relates,  from  Narbonne,  from  Italy,  from  Mauritania,  from  Egypt,  and 


144  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

central  aisle,  an  alley  wider  than  the  rest,  led  to  the  Mihrdb l 
or  Holy  Place,  which  was  rebuilt  by  the  Caliph  Hakam  in  965, 
and  remains  to  this  day  one  of  the  most  beautiful  and  elaborate 
specimens  of  the  best  age  of  Saracenic  architecture  in  Spain. 
The  fine  mosaics  that  still  decorate  the  fagade — admirable 
specimens  of  Roman  Byzantine  art — were  placed  there,  ac- 
cording to  Adzari,  a  contemporary  author,  in  965,  and  were 
sent  by  the  Emperor  Leo,  from  Constantinople,  with  a  Greek 
artist,  who  instructed  and  superintended  the  Moslem  work- 
men employed  by  Hakam.2  Abdur  Rahman  III.  added  a 
Minar  or  tower  which  has  since  been  destroyed,  as  well  as  the 
beautiful  Fountain  of  the  Court  of  Oranges  which  still  remains. 
The  mosque  was  enlarged  by  Almanzor,  seeking  popularity,  at 
the  end  of  the  tenth  century,  by  the  addition  of  eight  new 
aisles  to  the  east  of  the  then  existing  building,  which  was  thus 
increased  to  a  parallelogram  of  420  feet  by  375  feet ;  and  the 
beautiul  Makmrah  or  seat  of  the  Caliph,  now  converted  into  a 
Christian  shrine  known  as  the  chapel  of  Villa  Viciosa3  was 
probably  added  at  the  same  time. 

The   new   choir,    an    immensly  lofty    Gothic    church,    built 
within   the    Mezquita,   and  for  which  no  less  than  200  of  the 


from  the  furthest  eastern  provinces  of  the  Roman  world.  Of  these  columns, 
twenty-one  are  said  by  Ford  to  be  of  "  marine  bigio  (dappled  gray),  ten  of  cippllino, 
ten  of  fluted  or  channelled  white,  probably  Greek,  three  of  plain  white,  eight  of 
gray  Egyptian  granite,  and  over  thirty  of  uncertain,  but  foreign  origin  ".  Ford 
(1888),  pp.  309-10. 

1  The  great  mosques  of  Islam  are  all  built  in  the  form  of  a  parallelogram,  of 
which  the  longer  sides  run  from  north  to  south.  At  the  north  end  is  a  great  court 
or  Patio,  surrounded  by  cloisters  with  a  fountain  in  the  middle,  for  the  purpose  of 
the  prescribed  ablutions.  Within  the  building  itself,  and  at  the  end  furthest  from 
the  Patio,  is  the  Mihrdb,  the  most  sacred  and  the  most  highly-ornamented  part 
of  the  temple,  indicating  also  the  Kiblah  or  direction  of  the  Kaaba  at  Mecca, 
towards  which  every  good  Moslem  must  turn  his  face  in  the  act  of  prayer.  Near 
the  Mihrdb  is  the  Minbar  or  pulpit  from  which  the  Imam  leads  the  prayers  of  the 
assembled  people.  See  Girault  de  Prangey,  Architecture  des  Mores  et  des  Arabes, 
pp.  21-49. 

2 See  Madrazo,  Cordova;  and  Fergusson's  Modern  Architecture,  p.  395. 
During  the  reign  of  Alfonso  the  Learned,  in  1275,  permission  was  granted  to  the 
dean  and  chapter  of  the  cathedral  to  have  at  all  times  free  of  taxes,  four  Moorish 
workmen,  two  of  them  masons,  and  two  carpenters,  who  were  to  be  employed 
exclusively  for  repairs  in  the  cathedral,  with  the  other  artists.  This  circumstance 
has  undoubtedly  contributed  to  the  good  preservation  of  the  Moorish  remains.  See 
Don  J.  F.  Riano,  Discurso,  etc. ,  1869  ;  and  Fergusson,  ubi  supra. 

3  Mr.  Fergusson  places  the  chapel  of  Villa  Viciosa,  circ.  1200.  He  can  hardly 
have  realised  the  character  of  the  Almohades.  Neither  Yaciib  ben  Yussu/(u87- 
1199),  Mohammed  ben  Yaciib  (1199-1213),  nor  Abu  Yacub  (1213-1223),  were  likely 
men  to  have  beautified  a  church,  still  less  to  have  developed  the  chapel  of  Villa 
Viciosa. 


793.]  ISLAM.  145 

ancient  columns  were  swept  away,  is  the  work  of  Bishop 
Alfonso  Manrique  in  1523.  Such  pious  destructiveness  might 
well  fill  us  with  indignation  ;  but  let  us  rather  marvel  that  the 
Inquisition  did  not  consume  the  whole  of  the  Moslem  edifice 
by  fire — and  rejoice  at  their  inconsequent  apathy.  Even  the 
exquisite  carving  of  the  stalls  hardly  assuages  the  wrath  of  the 
artistic  visitor,  shocked  at  the  incongruous  vandalism  which  has 
so  sadly  marred  a  building  unique  among  the  art  treasures  of 
Europe.  Yet  as  it  stands  to-day  in  mouldering  Cordova,  the 
great  cathedral  which  perpetuates  the  glory  of  the  Moslem  in 
Spain,  and  which  is  still  familiarly  known  as  La  Mezquita  or  the 
mosque,  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  of  the  temple  structures 
of  the  world.1 

Covering  nigh  upon  four  acres  of  ground,  it  ranks  second 
as  regards  area  among  the  churches  of  Christendom,  being 
surpassed  only  by  the  vastness  of  St  Peter's  at  Rome,  and  the 
pillars  that  still  remain,  the  glorious  wreck  of  the  12,000 
that  once  supported  the  roof,  are  suggestive  of  an  immense 
forest  of  marble,  in  which  the  visitor  may  wander  in  ever- 
increasing  admiration  and  amazement,  at  once  at  the  variety 
and  the  regularity  of  the  display.2 

But  the  Mezquita  is  far  from  being  remarkable  only  for  its 
vast  size,  or  even  for  its  artistic  beauty.  Built  upon  the  site  of 
the  old  Roman  temple  of  Janus,  pulled  down  centuries  before 
the  birth  of  Mohammed,  to  give  place  to  a  Christian  church, 
the  forerunner  of  that  in  which  the  Moslem  was  first  permitted 
to  worship  God  at  Cordova,  it  perpetuates  the  memory  of  many 
religions  and  varying  traditions  of  sanctity  for  over  2000 
years.  The  only  place  of  worship  in  Europe  that  may  be  com- 
pared with  it,  both  in  antiquity  and  in  similarity  of  interest,  is 
Aya  Sofia  at  Constantinople,  of  which  the  first  stone  was  laid  by 

1  As  a  holy  place  of  devotion,  it  ranked  as  the  third  among  the  temples  of 
Islam,  equal  it  may  be  to  Al  Aksa  at  Jerusalem,  and  inferior  only  to  the  Caaba  of 
Mecca  itself.     The  mosque  was  called  Zeca,  "  the  house  of  purification  " — the  old 
Egyptian  Sekos.     A  pilgrimage  to  it  was  held  to  be  equivalent,  by  the  Spanish 
Moslem,  to  that  of  Mecca.     There  is  a  well-known  Spanish  proverb,  andar  de  Ceca 
en  Mecca,  quoted  by  Cervantes  in  Don  Quixote,  i.,  18,  and  in  Garay's  Collection, 
/o.  399.     To  go  from  Ceca  to  Mecca,  i.e. ,  to  go  from  one  pilgrimage  to  another — 
to  saunter  (a  word  itself  derived  from  Sainte  terre).     The  meaning  of  A  Mint, 
which  is  sometimes  attributable  to  Ceca,  has  caused  me  to  err  on  this  point,  in  a 
note  to  Sancho  Panza's  Proverbs  (ed.  1892),  p.  8. 

2  The  remaining  pillars  are  more  than  900  in  number.     The  church  even  as  it 
now  stands,  is  about  420  feet  long  by  370  feet  broad,  and  covers  157,500  feet  of 
ground.     Seville  Cathedral,  which  most  nearly  approaches  it,  not  only  in  Spain 
but  in  Europe,  encloses  only  125,000  feet.     See  post,  chapter  xxvii. 

VOL.    I.  10 


146  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

Justinian  in  532,  on  the  site  of  the  great  Christian  temple  that 
had  been  erected  by  Constantine  200  years  before. 

Constructed  like  the  Mezquita  of  the  architectual  spoils  of 
a  more  ancient  world,  St.  Sofia  passed  unharmed  by  time  or 
siege  into  the  hands  of  the  Moslem  in  1453,  200  years  after 
the  mosque  on  the  Guadalquivir  had  been  converted  into 
a  Christian  cathedral.  It  is  strange,  indeed,  and  suggestive  of 
much  that  may  not  be  here  set  down,  that  the  oldest  of  all  the 
mosques  of  Islam  was  built  as  a  Christian  church,  and  that  the 
oldest  of  the  great  Christian  churches  of  the  world  was  built  as 
a  mosque  at  Cordova ;  that  500  years  before  St.  Peter's  was 
commenced,  400  years  before  Milan  was  completed,  the  Mezquita 
stood  as  now  it  stands,  consecrated  to  the  worship  of  God. 


II.— The  FaJcihs. 

The  great  body  of  Moslem  devotees  at  Cordova,  at  the  end 
of  the  eighth  century,  was  largely  recruited  by  Christian 
renegades,  who  found  protection  under  the  just  rule  of  Abdur 
Rahman,  and  who  acquired  under  his  son  Hisham  something 
of  the  old  power  and  influence  that  had  been  enjoyed  by  the 
Christian  priesthood  under  the  later  Visigothic  kings.  No  priest, 
indeed,  is  known  to  the  religious  system  of  Islam,  but  the  readers 
of  the  Koran,  the  students  of  divinity,  and  the  doctors  of 
Mohammedan  law,  constituted  a  sacerdotal  class,  that  con- 
gregated in  ever  increasing  numbers  and  ever  increasing  im- 
portance around  the  great  mosque  at  Cordova.1  These  Maulvis 
and  Fakihs,  the  Scribes  and  Pharisees  of  Islam,  were  lodged  in 
the  beautiful  suburb  to  the  south  of  the  city  that  was  known  to 
the  Romans  as  Corduba  Secunda ;  and  they  recognised  as  their 
spiritual  chief  and  leader  the  learned  doctor  Malik  ben  Anas 
of  Medina,  the  founder  of  one  of  the  four  orthodox  schools  of 
Mohammedan  theology.  Students  from  Spain  constantly  re- 
paired to  the  East  to  study  under  this  egregious  doctor  of  Islam. 
And  of  all  his  bold  and  bigoted  disciples,  few  were  more  learned, 
none  was  more  zealous  than  the  Berber,  Tahia  ben  Tahia  of 
Cordova,  a  worthy  successor  of  Leander  and  Julian. 

The  greatest  theologian  and  the  proudest  Moor  of  Spain 
or  Mauretania,  this  extraordinary  man  united  many  of  the 
characteristics  of  a  modern  demagogue  with  those  of  a  mediaeval 
Pontiff;  and  he  was  reverenced  and  obeyed  without  question  as 

1  Gayangos,  i.,  899;  Dozy,  Hisioire,  ii. ,  56-59. 


807.]  ISLAM.  147 

the  leader  of  the  priestly  party  in  Moslem  Cordova.  When 
Hishara,  in  796,  fulfilled  by  his  death  the  predictions  of  the 
prophets,  the  entire  power  of  the  new  theocracy  was  devoted 
to  the  subjection  of  his  son  and  successor  Hakam.  Suleiman 
and  Abdullah,  the  brothers  of  the  late  king,  who  had  been 
pardoned  by  Hisham  after  their  rebellion  at  the  beginning  of 
his  reign,  now  rose  once  more  against  their  nephew ;  nor  did 
they  scruple  to  send  envoys  to  Charlemagne  at  Aix-la-Chapelle, 
entreating  his  assistance  in  their  rebellion,  and  promising  him 
their  support  in  the  destruction  of  the  Moslem  monarchy.  But 
Charles  remembered  Roncesvalles,  and  contented  himself  with 
dispatching  his  son  Louis  to  stir  up  the  Christians  at  a  safe 
distance  in  Septimania.  The  rebel  envoys  returned  dissatisfied 
to  Spain,  where  Abdullah  and  Suleiman  were  soon  afterwards 
defeated  by  their  nephew  Hakam.  Suleiman  was  killed  in 
battle.  Abdullah  was  once  more  magnificently  pardoned. 

But  if  the  rebellion  was  at  an  end,  the  Moslem  ecclesiastics 
were  not  suppressed.  They  were  roused  on  the  contrary  to 
new  and  vigorous  action.  The  success  of  Charlemagne  would 
have,  no  doubt,  justified  the  reconversion  of  the  renegades 
to  Christianity  of  a  peculiarly  intolerant  type.  The  success  of 
the  king's  uncles  would  have  been  a  direct  victory  for  the 
mosque.  Smarting  under  their  double  disappointment,  they 
were  fain  to  take  the  matter  into  their  own  hands,  and  to  stir 
up  a  popular  revolt  in  Toledo.  But  Hakam  was  more  than  a 
match  for  the  militant  clerks.  The  revolt  was  suppressed. 
The  rebels  were  dispersed.  No  mercy  was  shown  to  those  who 
were  taken  in  the  city  (805).  Tahia,  foiled  once  more  in  his 
endeavours,  now  offered  the  throne,  quite  after  the  good  old 
Visigothic  fashion,  to  one  Ben  Shammas,  a  cousin-german  of 
the  king.  But  the  conspiracy  was  betrayed  by  Shammas  him- 
self, and  many  of  the  conspirators  were  taken  and  executed 
(806).  A  still  more  serious  insurrection  l  at  Toledo  in  807  was 
repressed  with  still  greater  severity.  Many  hundreds  of  the 
conspirators  were  slain  by  order  of  the  king  in  the  ditch  or  fosse 
of  the  castle,  and  the  massacre  by  which  the  revolt  was  termi- 
nated was  long  known  and  remembered  as  the  day  of  the  fosse. 

For  seven  years  after  this  dreadful  example  there  was  peace 
at  home  in  southern  Spain.  And  then  the  Cordovans,  undeterred 
by  the  fate  of  the  rebels  at  Toledo,  rose  once  more  at  the 
bidding  of  the  bigots  of  the  day.  Tahia  returned  to  the  capital 

1  Dory,  ubi  supra,  pp.  77-79. 


148  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

in  the  month  of  Ramadan  (May,  814),  and  the  preachers  took 
advantage  of  the  excitement  of  the  populace  at  the  season  of 
the  annual  fast,  to  stir  up  their  passions  against  the  civil 
Government.  Hakam  was  besieged  in  his  palace.  The  city 
was  in  the  hands  of  Tahia  and  the  Fakihs.  The  people,  mad 
with  excitement,  filled  the  streets,  and  demanded  the  life  of 
the  Caliph.  The  coolness  of  Hakam  saved  the  fortunes  of  the 
day.  Assembling  within  the  palace  walls  a  small  force  of 
faithful  horsemen,  he  ordered  them  to  cut  their  way  through 
the  crowd,  press  on  to  the  suburb  of  Secunda,  and  to  set  fire 
to  the  houses  of  the  principal  ecclesiastics.  The  orders  were 
faithfully  executed.  The  rebel  leaders,  hastily  returning  to 
save  their  own  property,  left  the  people  in  confusion,  and 
Hakam,  sallying  out  of  the  palace  gate  with  his  few  remain- 
ing followers,  was  able  to  disperse  the  mutineers,  and  joining 
his  forces  to  those  which  had  done  such  good  service  in  draw- 
ing away  the  leaders  to  the  suburbs,  completely  subdued  the 
insurrection,  which  was  afterwards  called,  from  the  most  striking 
incident  in  the  struggle,  the  day  of  the  suburbs  or  of  the  Arrabal. 
It  was  now  at  least  clear  to  Hakam  that  an  end  must  be  put 
to  this  ecclesiastical  rebelry.  The  suburb  was  razed  to  the 
ground ;  and  an  immense  number  of  the  inhabitants  were 
driven  not  only  out  of  the  city  but  out  of  the  country.  Eight 
thousand  found  a  home  in  the  rising  city  of  Fez  in  Morocco, 
where  their  descendants  were  long  to  be  found  in  the  Anda- 
lusian  quarter  of  the  town  :  while  twice  as  many  more  were  exiled 
to  Egypt,  and  after  a  sojourn  of  some  twelve  years  in  Alexandria, 
found  a  permanent  home  in  the  island  of  Crete,  where  they 
built  the  town  of  Candia.1 

III. — Ziriab. 

Hakam,  the  vigorous,  died  of  fever  in  821,  and  was  suc- 
ceeded by  his  son  Abdur  Rahman  II.  This  amiable  prince, 
without  the  superstition  of  his  grandfather,  had  none  of  the 
severity,  and  little  of  the  independence,  of  his  father.  A  poet, 
a  musician,  a  lover  of  display  ;  generous,  mild,  and  liberal ;  he 

1  In  spite  of  many  attacks  they  maintained  themselves  in  Egypt  until  826, 
when  they  were  forced  to  evacuate  the  country.  They  sailed  for  Crete,  ill  defended 
by  the  Imperial  troops,  and  possessed  themselves  of  the  entire  island ;  and  their 
Spanish  Moslem  leader,  Al  Baluti,  a  native  of  Cordova,  founded  a  dynasty  which 
enjoyed  the  dominion  of  Crete  until  the  year  961,  when  the  island  passed  once 
more  under  the  sway  of  the  Roman  Emperor  at  Constantinople.  Dozy,  ubi  supra, 
pp.  76,  77  ;  Gibbon,  ch.  Hi. 


830.]  ISLAM.  149 

devoted  the  greater  part  of  his  time  and  of  his  revenues  to 
the  embellishment  of  his  capital  ;  and  he  made  Cordova  at 
once  the  most  beautiful  and  the  most  magnificent  city,  the 
most  favoured  home  of  art  and  science  and  liberal  culture,  of 
the  mediaeval  world. 

Tahia,  a  second  Leander,  who  had  fled  from  the  just  wrath 
of  Hakam,  was  welcomed  on  his  return  to  Cordova  by  the 
gentle  Abdur  Rahman,  who  abandoned  to  him  the  entire 
government  of  the  State.  But  in  personal  influence  over  the 
young  king,  Tahia  was  fain  to  accept  a  divided  empire  with 
Ziriab,  a  poet,  musician,  and  a  virtuoso,  who  had  been  driven 
from  the  court  at  Bagdad  by  the  jealousy  of  a  rival  singer,  more 
sure  of  the  favour  of  the  Caliph  Haroun  al  Rashid.  Ziriab 
received  a  magnificent  welcome  at  the  court  of  Cordova,  and 
made  himself  in  a  very  short  time  entirely  indispensable  to 
Abdur  Rahman.1  The  versatility  of  his  genius,  indeed,  was  so 
astounding  that  it  could  only  be  explained  by  the  theory  of 
possession,  for  Ziriab  not  only  wrote  verses  and  sang  them  to  the 
king,  he  planned  palaces,  he  invented  dishes,  he  designed 
costumes.  His  conversation  is  said  to  have  been  brilliant 
beyond  the  possibility  of  description.  In  architecture,  in 
astronomy,  in  geography,  in  literature,  in  science,  in  cookery, 
in  all  things  Ziriab  set  the  fashion,  and  gave  the  tone  to  the 
court  at  Cordova.  The  proportions  of  a  bath,  the  decoration  of 
a  dinner  table,  the  fashion  of  a  head-dress,  the  reception  of 
an  ambassador,  the  beauty  of  a  slave,  the  doubtful  wisdom  of 
a  move  at  chess,  customs  and  costumes,  poems  and  perfumery — 
everything  was  submitted  to  his  judgment,  and  in  all  things 
his  opinion  was  accepted  as  final.  His  royal  pension  or  allow- 
ances amounted  to  a  yearly  income  of  not  less  than  ten  thousand 
pieces  of  gold.  Nor  does  his  genius  as  an  artist  appear  to  have 
been  more  remarkable  than  his  prudence  as  a  favourite.  The 
king  was  never  tired ;  the  ecclesiastics  were  never  offended ; 
the  courtiers  were  never  jealous  ;  the  people  were  never  indig- 
nant. And  by  a  good  fortune,  unique,  perhaps,  in  the  history 
of  courts,  this  intelligent  epicurean  retained  during  his  lifetime 
the  affection  and  respect  of  the  king,  of  the  courtiers,  and  of 
the  people  ;  and  his  name  was  long  held  in  honour  by  succeed- 
ing generations  of  Spanish  Moslems,  among  those  of  the  most 
illustrious  of  the  heroes  of  Cordova. 

1  On  le  conside'rait  comme  un  module  pour  tout  ce  qui  concernait  le  bon  ton  ; 
et  sous  ce  rapport  il  devint  le  l£gislateur  de  1'Espagne  arabe.  Les  innovations 
qu'  il  fit,  furent  hardies  et  innombrables.  Dozy,  Histoire,  ii.,  88  and  95.  See 
also  Gayangos,  ii.,  119-121. 


150  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

Nor  did  he  play  his  part  in  life  to  an  uncritical  or  unap- 
preciative  audience.  Of  the  wonderful  aptitude  of  the  Cor- 
dovans for  science  and  philosophy,  of  their  love  of  books,  and 
their  care  for  education,  of  their  powers  of  memory,  and  of 
their  felicity  in  repartee,  we  may  read  in  every  contemporary 
history.  Yet  their  wit  and  their  erudition,  their  love  of 
science,  and  their  love  of  literature,  were  even  less  remarkable 
than  their  wonderful  aptitude  for  poetry. 

The  mosque  asserted  its  influence  only  by  the  prohibition 
of  the  study  of  astrology  and  natural  philosophy ;  but  in  every 
other  department,  a  wide  and  wise  liberality,  as  well  as  a 
generous  encouragement  of  study,  distinguished  both  the 
Government  and  the  people.  The  richer  citizens,  moreover, 
even  when  they  were  illiterate,  rewarded  poets  and  scholars 
with  the  greatest  munificence,  and  spared  neither  trouble  nor 
expense  in  the  formation  of  large  collections  of  books.1  Of 
such  was  the  court  of  the  second  Abdur  Rahman. 

But  his  personal  devotion  to  the  gentler  arts  of  life,  and 
even  his  political  submission  to  the  authority  of  the  mosque, 
did  not  serve  to  spare  the  king  from  the  miseries  of  internal 
dissension  and  civil  discord.  An  insurrection,  headed  by  the 
irrepressible  Abdullah,  his  great-uncle,  was  quelled  soon 
after  his  accession  to  the  throne,  and  the  old  rebel  was  once 
more  pardoned  after  defeat.2  The  citizens  of  ever  turbulent 
Merida,  intriguing  with  Louis  le  Debonnaire  3  were  constantly 
in  a  state  of  revolt.  Toledo  for  eight  years  maintained  a 
species  of  independence.  For  seven  years  there  was  civil 
war  in  Murcia ;  and  a  powerful  band  of  brigands  ravaged  the 
neighbouring  country.  At  length  even  the  gentleness  of 
Abdur  Rahman  was  roused  to  action.  Toledo  was  taken  by 
storm  on  the  16th  of  June,  837;  the  brigand  chief  was  slain; 
the  city  and  the  country  were  pacified  and  reduced  to  subjec- 
tion. The  Toledans  were  treated  with  a  noble  clemency ;  and 
the  king  was  content  to  receive  the  submission  of  the  citizens, 
who  once  more  owned  his  sovereignty. 

1  The  Caliphs  maintained  in  all  the  great  towns  of  Egypt,  Syria,  Arabia,  North 
Africa,  and   even  far-away  Persia,  Residents  whose  duty  it  was  to  transmit  to 
Cordova  copies  of  all  important  works  either  of  literature  or  of  science  that  were 
to  be  procured  in  the  country  where  they  resided,  as  well  as  to  inform  the  Spanish 
Moslem   Government   of  any   interesting  discoveries,  or   scientific   or   industrial 
progress.     Viardot,  Essais,  pp.  100,  101 ;  Gayangos,  i.,  139-167. 

2  He  had  even  assigned  to  him  the  government  of  Tadmir,  where  he  lived 
peacefully  until  his  death. 

3  Espafla.  Sagrada,  xiii.,  p.  416, 


852.]  ISLAM.  151 

The  Spanish  historians  speak  of  a  second  invasion  of  north- 
west Spain  by  the  Franks  from  Aquitania  in  823,  and  a  second 
rout  of  their  forces  at  Roncesvalles  in  824,  by  the  Basques  of 
Navarre,  assisted  by  some  troops  dispatched  from  Cordova  by 
Abdur  Rahman,  whose  alliance  was  sought  by  the  Christians  to 
the  south  of  the  Pyrenees,  against  their  still  more  hated 
Christian  foes  to  the  north.  But  the  whole  story  is  usually 
considered  to  be  apocryphal.1  What  is  more  certain  is  that  no 
less  than  two  embassies  were  received  by  Abdur  Rahman  from 
the  Emperor  Theophilus  at  Constantinople,  praying  the  aid  of 
the  Ommeyad  Caliph  of  Cordova  against  the  Abbaside  Caliph 
of  Bagdad,  Al  Mutassim  (833-842),  who  was  threatening  the 
Empire  in  the  East. 

In  the  perpetual  conflicts  with  the  Christians  in  the  north 
of  the  Peninsula,  Abdur  Rahman  was  more  successful  than 
his  predecessors.  Neither  Alfonso  nor  Ramiro  gained  any 
advantage  over  the  Moslem  commanders,  and  the  Christian 
kings  were  glad  to  secure  the  possession  of  their  frontier 
provinces  by  the  payment  of  an  annual  tribute  to  Cordova. 

Thrice  in  twenty  years  did  a  Prankish  army  make  its  ap- 
pearance in  north-east  Spain,  and  thrice  was  it  driven  back 
across  the  border,  while  a  Moslem  fleet  assaulted  and  burned 
the  suburbs,  if  not  the  city  of  Marseilles. 

But  a  more  savage  invader  appeared  in  this  reign  off  the 
coast  of  Lusitania.  Some  Scandinavian  Vikings  or  North- 
men, with  over  fifty  ships,  suddenly  descended  upon  the 
Tagus.  They  plundered  Lisbon,  and  ravaging  the  whole  of 
the  south-west  coasts  of  the  Peninsula,  they  pursued  their 
course  as  far  as  Seville,  which  they  captured  and  sacked  ;  and 
then  making  off  with  their  spoils,  they  set  sail,  and  disappeared 
as  suddenly  as  they  had  come. 

1See  Lafuente,  iii.,  273-275. 


152 


CHAPTER  XV. 
SANTIAGO. 

(788—910.) 
I. — Alfonso  the  Chaste. 

MAUREGATO  died,  after  his  uneventful  reign,  in  788  ;  and  for 
the  fourth  time  the  legitimate  claims  of  Alfonso  were  post- 
poned by  the  electors  to  those  of  a  more  favoured  relation  ; 
no  warrior,  but  a  Churchman,  Bermudo,  the  brother  of  Aurelius. 
This  royal  deacon,  for  Bermudo  had  never  attained  the 
dignity  of  the  priesthood,1  was  of  a  kindly  and  even  generous 
disposition,  and  the  patient  Alfonso  was  gratified  with  the 
subordinate,  but  all-important  position  of  commander  of  the 
royal  armies  at  the  hands  of  his  more  successful  rival,  until,  in 
791,  Bermudo  voluntarily  forsook  the  throne  for  the  cloister; 
and  Alfonso,  surnamed  the  Chaste,  at  length  reigned  alone 
and  supreme  over  the  kingdom  of  Asturias. 

The  inactivity  of  the  Christian  kings,  ever  since  the  death 
of  Alfonso  the  Catholic,  had  been  accompanied  by  a  similar 
indisposition  for  raids  and  forays  on  the  part  of  the  cultivated 
Moslem,  Abdur  Rahman.  But  in  794,  Hisham  invaded  the 
Asturias  with  a  considerable  army,  and  the  new  Alfonso 
showed  something  of  the  skill  and  energy  of  his  grandfather 
in  the  field.  By  a  happy  stratagem,  he  drove  the  Arabs  into 
a  mountain  defile,  where  he  fell  upon  them  with  such  vigour 
with  his  little  force,  that  a  considerable  portion  of  their  army 
was  cut  to  pieces.  In  the  north-east,  the  Christian  arms 
were  less  successful ;  and  Narbonne  was  taken  and  plundered 
by  the  Moslems.  But  the  Christian  kingdom  of  the  north- 
west grew  and  prospered,  and  the  seat  of  government  was 

JIt  was  on  this  ground  that  the  objection  to  his  election,  as  unlawful,  under 
the  old  Gothic  law  of  Wamba's  time,  was  overruled  in  the  council.  Ramiro  of 
Aragon  was  afterwards  accepted  under  the  same  extenuating  circumstances. 


SANTIAGO.  153 

removed  by  Alfonso l  from  Pravia  to  Oviedo,  a  city  founded  by 
his  father  Fruela,  and  already  one  of  the  most  important  centres 
of  Christian  power  and  Christian  progress  in  northern  Spain. 

From  Oviedo,  Alfonso  undertook  at  least  one  important 
expedition  to  the  southward,  and  possessing  himself  temporarily, 
after  the  fashion  of  the  day,  of  the  whole  country  as  far  as  to 
the  Tagus,  he  entered  and  plundered  Lisbon,  before  the  advanc- 
ing Moslems  compelled  him  to  retreat  to  his  mountain  home 
in  Gallicia  (797). 

Flushed  with  this  success,  Alfonso  sent  envoys  to  Aix-la- 
Chapelle  to  solicit  the  assistance  of  Charlemagne ;  but  Charles 
did  not  trust  himself  again  to  the  south  of  the  Pyrenees.  The 
dispatch  of  another  embassy,  two  years  later,  to  the  court  of 
the  Frank  at  Toulouse,  was  no  more  successful  as  regards 
Charlemagne,  and  was  attended  with  very  remarkable  results 
as  regards  Alfonso.  For  the  Spanish  nobles,  jealous  of  any 
possible  foreign  interference  with  their  most  independent 
kingdom,  took  a  very  decided  way  of  manifesting  their  political 
feelings,  and  locked  up  their  king  in  a  monastery  at  Abelania, 
until  he  had  announced  his  intention  of  having  nothing  more 
to  do  with  Prankish  alliances.'2  Then,  and  only  then,  was 
Alfonso  released.  The  nobles  went  unpunished,  and  nothing 
more  was  heard  of  Charlemagne  in  the  Asturias. 

II. — Catalonia. 

In  the  north-east,  on  the  other  hand,  the  armies,  if  not  the 
presence  of  the  great  Frank,  played  an  important  part  in  the 
early  history  of  Spain.  In  the  first  year  of  the  ninth  century, 
a  solemn  assembly,  or  Champ  de  Mai,  was  held  by  Louis  of 
Aquitaine  at  Toulouse  ;  and  a  league  of  Christian  lords  was 
founded  for  the  taking  of  Barcelona.  In  the  autumn  of  801, 
accordingly,  an  immense  host  of  Christian  soldiers  in  this  early 
crusade  marched  over  the  slopes  of  the  eastern  Pyrenees.  At 
first  they  met  with  but  little  opposition.  The  Moslem  troops 
were  for  the  most  part  engaged  in  suppressing  revolts  in  the 
south  ;  and  the  Franks  soon  made  themselves  masters  of  Gerona, 
Cardona,  Manresa,  and  many  other  cities  and  fortresses  as  far 
south  as  Lerida,  whose  lofty  citadel  commands  a  rich  district 

1  The  cathedral  at  Oviedo,  founded  by  Fruela,  was  consecrated  in  812,  in  the 
presence  of  Alfonso,  who  appointed  a  noble  Goth,  Adulphus,  to  be  the  first  bishop 
of  the  capital  city  of  the  Asturias. 

*Chron.  Albeld.,  58. 


154  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

in  fertile  Catalonia.  But  the  most  important  town  of  the 
Spanish  Marches,  as  this  newly  conquered  territory  was  called 
by  the  Franks,  refused  to  open  its  gates  to  the  Christian  invaders. 
In  Barcelona,  the  celebrated  Zaid  held  chief  command.  And 
Zai'd  kept  the  town  for  his  master  at  Cordova.  The  siege  was 
long  protracted  ;  but  no  assistance  was  received  from  Hakam. 
From  Lerida,  Duke  William  of  Toulouse  had  made  a  successful 
descent  upon  Tarragona ;  and  a  line  of  Christian  troops  from 
the  sea  to  Lerida  blocked  the  way  of  any  relieving  army  that 
might  be  on  its  way  from  Cordova  to  Barcelona.  Yet  of  a 
relieving  army  no  tidings  was  heard  in  the  beleaguered  city. 
Messenger  after  messenger  had  been  sent  in  vain.  At  length 
the  heroic  Zaid  determined  to  go  himself.  He  would  see 
Hakam ;  and  he  would  return  at  the  head  of  an  army  that 
should  drive  the  Christians  once  more  beyond  the  Pyrenees. 
The  stealthy  departure,  the  midnight  ride,  the  turn  of  evil 
fortune  at  the  very  moment  of  successful  evasion,  the  arrest  of 
Zaid,  his  exhortation  to  the  citizens  to  hold  the  town,  when  his 
life  was  the  price  of  surrender :  the  final  treaty  by  which  the 
hero  was  spared,  and  the  garrison,  abandoned  by  their  sovereign, 
marched  out  of  Barcelona  with  all  the  honours  of  war — these 
are  some  of  the  thousand  romantic  incidents  of  the  early  struggles 
between  Christians  and  Moors  in  north-eastern  Spain. 

The  fall  of  Barcelona  was  the  signal  for  rejoicings  all  over 
Europe,  and  was  especially  agreeable  to  the  new  Emperor. 
King  Louis,  after  a  triumphal  entry  into  the  city  with  great 
military  and  religious  pomp  and  splendour,  invested  Count 
Bera,  a  noble  Goth,  with  the  government  of  the  city  and  of 
the  Spanish  Marches ;  and  leaving  a  strong  garrison  of  Franks 
and  Spaniards  under  his  command,  retraced  his  victorious  steps 
into  Aquitaine.  A  considerable  number  of  Christians  from  all 
parts  of  Spain  now  sought  a  refuge  in  this  new  Marquisate, 
which  was  soon  the  abiding  place  of  a  large  and  thriving 
Christian  population,  the  ancestors  of  the  modern  Catalans,  the 
most  industrious,  and  the  most  turbulent,  the  richest,  and  the 
most  restless  of  all  the  inhabitants  of  Spain. 

Charlemagne  died  in  814,  and  among  the  various  divisions 
of  territory  that  took  place  on  his  death,  Septimania  was  cut 
off  from  the  kingdom  of  Aquitaine,  and  joined  to  the  Spanish 
March,  which  was  raised  to  the  dignity  of  a  quasi-independent 
Duchy  or  county,  with  its  capital  city  at  Barcelona.1 

JThe  Spanish  March  was  at  first  known  as  Gothia,  which,  says  Lafuente. 
became  modified  as  follows:  Gothia,  Gothland,  Gothlandia,  Gothalania,  Catalonia, 
Cataluna.  Lafuente,  Hi. ,  88  and  198,  205-208, 


801.]  SANTIAGO.  155 

In  821,  Duke  Bera,  accused  of  high  treason,  and  vanquished 
in  trial  by  battle,  was  exiled  to  Rouen,  and  Bernard,  a  son  of 
William  of  Toulouse,  was  chosen  by  the  Emperor  Louis  to  be 
his  successor.  The  son  of  the  exile  summoned  the  Moslems  to 
his  assistance,  and  their  united  forces  blockaded  Bernard  in 
Barcelona.  But  on  the  approach  of  an  Imperial  army  from 
Aquitaine,  this  insignificant  revolution  melted  away.  Yet  Chris- 
tian intriguers  were  ever  ready  to  call  in  the  aid  of  the  nearest 
Moslem;  and  the  Moslem  was  ever  near.  Intrigues,  indeed, 
were  rife  at  the  Christian  courts.  Bernard,  the  paramour  of 
the  Empress,  and  the  reputed  father  of  Charles  the  Bald,  was 
alternately  promoted  and  degraded  by  Louis.  And  thus  the 
Christian  power  grew  weaker  in  the  Spanish  Marches,  and  Abdur 
Rahman  II.,  the  son  of  Hakam,  was  able  not  only  to  recover 
Tarragona,  but  to  despatch  from  that  once  Imperial  port  a 
flotilla  which  sacked  and  burned  the  suburbs  of  Marseilles. 

The  history  of  Catalonia  from  the  time  of  Charlemagne  to 
the  time  of  the  excellent  Ramon  Berenguer  I.,  a  period  of  over 
two  hundred  years,  is  not  only  uncertain,  but  is  uninteresting 
to  the  student  of  the  national  history  of  Spain.  Bera,  the 
Gothic  nominee  of  Louis  le  Debonnaire,  who  ruled  from  801  to 
820,  was  succeeded  by  a  number  of  counts  or  dukes  more  or 
less  dependent  upon  the  successors  of  Charlemagne  in  the 
north,  and  exposed  to  the  constant  attacks  of  the  Moslems  on 
their  southern  frontier.  In  852  the  city  of  Barcelona  was 
taken  by  the  Moors,  in  whose  possession  it  remained  for 
twelve  or  thirteen  years  ;  and  a  period  of  special  confusion 
was  closed  by  the  assumption,  in  874,  of  the  supreme  power 
by  Wilfrid  the  Hairy,  who  asserted  his  independence  of  his 
Carlovingian  overlord,  and  made  the  county  of  Catalonia  heredi- 
tary in  his  own  family.  In  984  the  little  State  was  overrun 
by  the  armies  of  Almanzor ;  but  on  the  death  of  that  Moslem 
conqueror  in  1002,  the  southern  invaders  were  finally  driven 
out  of  the  country  ;  and  by  the  year  1035,  on  the  accession  of 
Ramon  Berenguer  I.,  or  El  Viejo,  the  serious  history  of  Cata- 
lonia may  fairly  be  said  to  have  begun.1 

III. — Compostella. 

Turning  our  attention  once  more  to  Leon,  we  find  that  the 
most  remarkable  domestic  event  in  the  annals  of  the  little 

'Romey,  Hist.  <T Espagne,  torn,  iv.,  pp.  311  and  496. 


156  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

kingdom  of  Alfonso  II.  was  the  discovery  or  manifestation  of 
Santiago. 

A  shepherd,  we  are  told,  watching  his  flock  in  a  wild  moun- 
tain district  in  Gallicia,  was  astonished  at  the  appearance  of  a 
supernatural  light.  The  Bishop  of  Ira  Flavia  was  consulted. 
The  spot,  so  divinely  illuminated,  was  carefully  searched  ;  and 
in  a  marble  sarcophagus  the  body  of  St.  James  the  Greater 
was  revealed  to  the  faithful  investigators.  The  king,  overjoyed 
at  the  discovery,  at  once  erected  upon  the  ground  thus  conse- 
crated, a  church  or  chapel  dedicated  to  the  Apostle — the  fore- 
runner of  the  noble  Cathedral  of  Santiago  de  Compostella,1 
and  from  the  first,  the  favourite  resort  of  the  pilgrims  of 
Christian  Europe.  For  it  was  not  only  a  relic,  but  a  legend 
had  been  discovered  by  the  pious  doctors  of  the  Church. 

St.  James,  it  was  said,  had  certainly  preached  and  taught  in 
Spain  during  his  lifetime.  His  body,  after  his  martyrdom 
at  Jerusalem  in  the  year  of  Christ  42,  had  been  placed  by  his 
disciples  on  board  a  ship  by  which  it  was  conveyed  to  the 
coast  of  his  beloved  Spain,  miraculously  landed  in  Gallicia, 
and  forgotten  for  800  years,  until  the  time  was  accomplished 
when  it  should  be  revealed  to  the  devoted  subjects  of  King 
Alfonso  the  Chaste.2  The  date  of  the  discovery  of  these 
precious  remains  is  given  by  Ferreras  as  808,  by  Morales 
as  835.  But  as  it  was  Charlemagne  who  obtained  from 

1  Perhaps  Campo  Stella,  "the  field  of  the  star"  that  guided  the  Gallician 
shepherd  to  the  mysterious  spot.     Lafuente,  however  (iii.,  218),  prefers  Campus 
Apostoli :  and  see  an  article  by  the  Rev.  Wentworth  Webster  in  the  Foreign  Church 
Chronicle,  viii.,  200. 

2  See  Espana  Sagrada,  xix. ,  p.  64.     The  evidence,  if  evidence  it  can  be  called, 
for  any  connection  whatever  of  St.  James  with  Spain,  consists  of  a  few  words  in  a 
treatise,  De  Ortu  et  orbitu  Patrum,  vii.,  9,  said  to  be  the  work  of  Isidore  of  Seville, 
to  the  effect  that  St.  James  preached  the  Gospel  to  the  natives  of  Spain  and  the 
West.     But  the  treatise  is  certainly  not  the  work  of  Isidore,  and  is  absolutely 
without  any  historical  value.     On  the  other  hand,  the  negative  evidence  of  the 
silence  of  St.   Augustine,  St.   Jerome,  St.  Ambrose,   Pope  Innocent,   and   other 
writers,  in  places  where  they  might  have  been  expected  to  refer  to  the  Apostle's 
visit,  is  sufficiently  remarkable  as  regards  any  possible  or  projected  voyage  of  the 
Apostle  during  his  lifetime.     As  to  the  subsequent  miracle  connected  with  his 
death,  his  sepulture,    and  his  epiphany  in  Gallicia,  no  evidence  would  avail  to 
prove,  or  would  be  accepted  to  disprove,  such  matters  of  national  faith  in  Spain. 
See  Tillemont,  Mem.  Ecclisiastiques,  torn.  i. ,  pp.  324-333;  Geddes,  Tracts,  vol. 
ii.  ;  Romey,  iii. ,  416-23.     One  of  the  most  remarkable  phases  or  developments  of 
this  legend  of  St.  James,  is  the  rediscovery  of  the  sacred  body,  which  had  been  lost 
in  the  sixteenth  century,  after,  and  in  some  way  on  account  of,  the  destruction  of 
the  Spanish  Armada  by  the  English  :  and  the  promulgation  of  the  entire  story  as 
an  Article  of  Faith  by  the  present  Pope  Leo  XIII. ,  in  his  Letters  Apostolic  of  ist 
November,  1884,  to  which  the  more  curious  reader  is  very  respectfully  referred. 
See  also  ad  hoc,  Fita,  Viaje  d  Compostella  (Madrid,  1880).     For  the  views  of  Dr. 
Dollinger,  see  Meyrick,  Church  in  Spain,  pp.  12,  13. 


842.]  SANTIAGO.  157 

Leo  III.  the  necessary  permission  or  faculty  to  remove  the 
Episcopal  See  of  Ira  Flavia  to  the  new  town  of  Compostella, 
the  discovery  or  invention  must  have  taken  place  at  least  before 
814,  the  year  of  the  death  of  the  emperor.  Whatever  may 
have  been  the  actual  date  of  its  first  establishment,  the  mean 
church  with  mud  walls  soon  gave  place  to  a  noble  cathedral, 
which  was  finished  by  the  year  874,  consecrated  in  899.  and 
destroyed  by  the  Arabs  under  Almanzor  nigh  upon  a  hundred 
years  afterwards  in  997.1 

Santiago  was  as  much  a  political  as  a  religious  institution. 
When  Cordova  had  been  made  a  second  Mecca  by  the  astute 
and  liberal  policy  of  Abdur  Rahman,  the  Apostle  was  invented, 
not  only  to  lead  Christian  armies  against  the  infidel,  as  a  general, 
but  to  attract  Christian  pilgrims,  as  a  saint.2 

In  later  times  Clement  VIII.  (1603)  jealous  of  the  preten- 
sions of  the  Spaniards  as  regards  the  Apostle,  made  some 
alterations  in  the  words  of  the  Breviary,  casting  doubts  upon 
the  entire  story  of  his  coming  to  Spain.  But  the  vigorous 
remonstrances  of  Philip  III.  induced  the  Pope  to  modify  his 
criticisms,  and  twenty  years  later  the  saint  was  restored  by 
Urban  VIII.  to  his  full  ecclesiastical  honours.3 

Alfonso  II.  having  died  without  issue  in  842,  Ramiro,  son  of 
Bermudo  the  deacon,  was  chosen  to  succeed  him.  A  rebellion, 
as  usual,  immediately  broke  out  against  the  newly-elected 
monarch,  but  it  was  speedily  put  down  ;  and  Nepociano  and 
Aldroito,  the  aspirants  to  the  royal  dignity,  were  deprived  of 
their  eyesight,  and  immured  in  monasteries,  according  to  pre- 
cedent in  such  cases.4 

1  The  first  cathedral  was  built  874-899,  destroyed  in  997,  and  refounded  by 
Gelmirez  (1096-1139).     The  bells,  which  had  been  carried  away  by  Almanzor, 
were  hung  up,  reversed,  as  lamps  in  the  Mezquita  at  Cordova  till  1236,  when  St. 
Ferdinand  sent  them  back  to  Compostella  on  the  shoulders  of  Moorish  prisoners. 
The  present  edifice  was  raised  on  the  old  site  under  Bishop  Pelaez  in  1078. 

Santiago  was  made  an  Archbishopric  some  time  between  noo  and  1130  ;  and 
Diego  Gelmirez  was  the  first  archbishop. 

2  The  number  of  visitors  to  Compostella  from  the  twelfth  to  the  sixteenth 
century  was  enormous.    The  roads  of  Christendom  were  thronged  with  its  pilgrims. 
See  Dante,  Paradiso,  xxv.,  17.     The  myriads  of  stars  that  traverse  the  firmament, 
known  to  us  as  the  Milky  Way,  are  called  in  idiomatic  Castilian  El  Camino  de 
Santiago.     In  the  single  year  1434  no  less  than  2460  licences  are  said  to  have  been 
granted  to  pilgrims  from  England  alone.     Rymer,  O. ,  x. ,  xi. 

:'Ford  (1855),  ii.,  607 ;  Masdeu,  xiii.,  322 ;  Espafla  Sagrada,  xxx.,  57,  58. 

4  The  tearing  out  of  the  eyes,  or  exoculation  seems  to  have  been  a  common 
Asturian  punishment  at  this  time  ;  and  thieves  as  well  as  pretenders  were  sub- 
jected to  it  by  Ramiro ;  but  "  wizards  and  fortune-tellers  "  met  with  a  more  terrible 
fate  at  the  hands  of  the  king,  by  whom  they  were  burned  alive.  For  Political 
offences,  Decalvation,  or  scalping,  was  not  uncommon,  previous  to  seclusion  or 
imprisonment  in  a  religious  bouse. 


158  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

An  invasion  of  the  Northmen,  or  Vikings  from  Scandinavia, 
was  a  more  novel,  and,  perhaps,  a  more  serious  danger.  But 
the  pirates  fared  ill  in  Gallicia.  Repulsed  at  Gijon,  and  after- 
wards at  Corunna,  in  84-3,  they  pursued  their  course  to  Lusitania 
and  Andalusia,  whose  richer  shores  they  ravaged  with  little 
resistance,  and  they  even  made  their  way  up  the  Guadalquivir 
as  far  as  Seville. 

Ramiro  undertook  no  operation  of  importance  against  the 
Moslem ;  and  although  a  tremendous  victory  at  Clavijo  was 
invented  for  him  by  Archbishop  Roderic — whose  most  pious 
and  glorious  details,  amplified  by  the  imagination  of  Mariana, 
were  accepted  as  history  in  Spain  for  close  upon  a  thousand 
years — it  is  now  universally  admitted  that  the  battle  is  purely 
a  thing  of  the  imagination,  and  that  its  popularity  is  due  chiefly 
to  the  glowing  language  of  the  Jesuit  historian,  who  tells  how 
King  Ramiro,  in  the  agony  of  defeat  at  the  hand  of  a  vast  army 
of  opposing  infidels,  fell  into  a  deep  sleep,  in  which  he  became 
aware  of  the  presence  of  the  Apostle  St.  James,  who  assured 
him  of  victory.  The  army  was  quickly  informed  of  this  celestial 
visit,  and  after  the  performance  of  certain  religious  exercises, 
the  whole  host  rushed  anew  upon  the  foe  with  shouts  of 
Santiago  y  cierra  Espana,  which  then  and  there  became  the  war- 
cry  of  the  Spanish  armies.1 

The  Apostle  himself,  mounted  on  a  white  charger,  and 
bearing  in  one  hand  a  snow-white  banner  on  which  was  dis- 
played a  blood-red  cross,  and  in  the  other  a  flashing  sword, 
took  his  place  at  the  head  of  the  Christian  legions,  and  led 
them  on  to  victory.  Over  sixty  thousand  Arabs  were  slain 
by  the  Apostle  and  his  followers,  and  the  remnant  of  the 
Moslems  was  pursued  as  far  as  Calahorra.  The  king  is  further 
said  to  have  made  a  vow,  on  the  field  of  battle,  of  an  annual 
payment  of  a  certain  amount  of  corn  and  wine  per  acre  by  every 
Christian  landholder  in  Spain,  to  be  made  to  St.  James,  "  as 
also  that  when  any  booty  was  divided,  Saint  James  was  to  have 
his  share  as  a  horseman."  2 

The  falsity  of  this  story,  both  as  regards  the  vow  and  the 

1  See  generally  the  Historia  Compostellana,  compiled   under  the  orders  of 
Gelmirez,  first  Archbishop  of  Santiago,  in  the  twelfth  century,  and  printed  in 
Espana  Sagrada,  torn.  xx.     See  also  ibid. ,  torn.  xiv. ,  p.  459. 

2  Roderic  of  Toledo,  De  Rebus  Hisp,,  lib.  iv. ,  13  ;  Mariana,  vii.,  6  ;  Lafuente, 
iii. ,  292-3 ;  Masdeu,  vi. ,  pp.  66-8,  and  p.  166. 

As  to  the  apocryphal  Voto  de  Santiago,  see  D.  Jose'  Perez,  Dissertationes 
Ecclesiastics;  Ortiz,  Discurso  historico — legal  sobre  el  pretentido  diploma  del  voto 
de  Santiago:  Esp.  Sagrada,  xix.  ;  Ferreras,  Sinopsis,  torn.  iv.  ;  Masdeu,  torn,  xii., 
xvi.,  and  a  learned  treatise  in  the  Mem.  of  the  Real  Acad.  de  Hist.,  torn,  iv.,  pp. 


850.]  SANTIAGO.  159 

battle,  has  been  demonstrated  with  much  gravity  by  various 
Spanish  authorities.  Yet  the  tribute  was  duly  paid  to  the  king, 
if  not  to  the  saint,  in  Spain,  for  over  a  thousand  years,  and  the 
corn  rent  of  Santiago  ceased  only  to  be  included  in  the  national 
income  of  the  kingdom  in  the  reign  of  Ferdinand  VII.  King 
Ramiro,  as  was  becoming  in  a  monarch  who  was  honoured  by  the 
special  intervention  of  St.  James,  was  by  no  means  inattentive 
to  his  religious  duties.  He  not  only  burned  the  fortune-tellers 
and  magicians,  but  he  founded  numerous  churches,  among 
which  that  of  St.  Mary  on  Mount  Naranco,  within  a  mile  of 
the  city  of  Oviedo,  remains  to  this  present  day. 

King  Ramiro  died  in  850,  and  was  succeeded  by  his  son 
Ordoiio,  whose  greatest  military  successes  were,  by  a  strange 
chance,  distinctly  favourable,  not  to  the  Christian,  but  to  the 
Mohammedan  power  in  Spain.  One  Musa,  a  renegade  Goth, 
and  a  rebel  Moslem,  had  by  a  series  of  bold  intrigues  and 
successful  skirmishes,  contrived  to  possess  himself  of  a  con- 
siderable amount  of  territory  in  northern  and  central  Spain, 
He  had  defeated  the  Arab  troops  in  many  encounters,  and  had 
actually  founded  a  city  near  Logrono,  to  which  he  gave  the 
name  of  Albaida  or  Albelda,  where  he  established  his  capital, 
and  won  for  himself  the  title  of  the  Third  King  of  Spain. 
Master  of  Tudela,  of  Saragossa,  of  Huesca,  this  bold  and 
indefatigable  warrior  directed  his  forays,  without  respect  of 
creeds  or  of  races,  against  Moslems  and  Christians  like,  against 
the  Count  of  Alava  and  the  Duke  of  Barcelona,  against  Ordono 
of  Asturias,  and  even  against  Charles  of  France.1 

Yet  among  his  many  adversaries  it  was  to  the  king  of  the 
Asturias  that  it  was  given  to  defeat  this  powerful  chieftain, 
and  by  his  most  authentic  victory  at  Clavijo,-  Ordoiio  was 
delivered  from  a  dangerous  neighbour,  and  Mohammed  of 
Cordova  from  a  successful  rebel.  Yet  the  advantage  was 
ultimately  all  on  the  side  of  the  Christians.  For  within  ten 
years  after  the  victory  at  Clavijo,  the  sons  of  Musa  had  con- 
cluded an  intimate  alliance3  with  Alfonso  III.,  and  induced 

1-33.  This  corn  rent  was  actually  paid  until  the  year  1835,  when  it  produced 
about  £200,000  a  year.  See  Ford  (ed.  1855)  ii.,  604.  (It  had  been  peremptorily 
abolished  by  the  Cortes  of  1812,  but  like  other  ancient  abuses  was  restored  by 
Fernando  VII.— H.) 

1  Charles  the  Bald  paid  great  court  to  Musa,  and  sent  envoys  with  magnificent 
presents  to  secure  his  good  will.     See  Dozy,  Recherches,  ii.,  182-3. 

2  This  battle  of  Clavijo  may  have  suggested  the  apocryphal  victory  of  Ramiro. 

3  Alfonso  actually  entrusted  the  education  of  his  son  Ordono  to  these  Beni-Casi. 
Dozy,  Recherches,  etc.,  i. ,  222-226,  and  ii.,  290-300. 


160  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

the  entire  population  that  had  owed  allegiance  to  their  father 
to  submit  themselves  to  the  government  of  the  Christian  king. 

Nor  was  Ordono  less  successful  in  defeating  another  attempt 
that  was  made  by  the  northern  Vikings  to  effect  a  landing  on 
his  coasts  (851).  Repulsed  on  the  shores  of  Gallicia,  these 
terrible  sea  wolves  continued  their  career  to  richer  and  more 
defenceless  coasts,  and  ravaging  the  shores  of  Lusitania  and 
Andalusia,  they  pursued  their  course  of  plunder  as  far  as 
Africa  and  the  eastern  coasts  of  the  Peninsula,  if  not  of  the 
Mediterranean.  Nor  were  the  Lusitanians,  thus  ravaged  from 
the  sea,  exempted  from  attacks  on  their  north-eastem  frontiers. 
Ordouo  in  one  of  his  marauding  expeditions  penetrated  as  far  as 
Lisbon,  and  actually  burned  Cintra ;  and  although  he  was 
speedily  dislodged  by  the  troops  of  Mohammed,  he  was  able  to 
make  good  his  retreat  into  the  mountain  fastnesses  of  Gallicia, 
where,  as  usual,  the  Moslems  were  fain  to  leave  him  un- 
molested. But  Ordouo  was  a  builder  as  well  as  a  destroyer, 
and  in  addition  to  many  new  castles  along  his  southern  and 
eastern  frontiers  1  he  restored  and  largely  rebuilt  the  cities  of 
Astorga,  Tuy  and  Leon,  which  remained  until  the  days  of 
Almanzor  uninterruptedly  in  the  hands  of  the  Christians. 

Alfonso  III.,  the  eldest  son  of  Ordono,  succeeded  his  father 
in  8b'6,  being  at  that  time  just  eighteen  years  of  age.  The 
private  intrigues  of  a  certain  Fruela,  and  the  national  jealousy 
of  the  Basques  of  Alava  drove  the  young  Alfonso  for  a  short 
time  from  the  throne  ;  but  the  timely  assassination  of  Fruela, 
and  the  delegation  of  the  government  of  Alava  to  a  popular 
Count 2  secured  to  Alfonso  the  enjoyment  of  his  hereditary  • 
honours.  The  young  king  gave  early  proof  of  the  vigour  and 
intelligence  which  characterised  his  reign,  and  in  less  than  two 
years  after  his  accession  he  had  already  gained  a  considerable 
advantage  over  the  Arabs  in  southern  Gallicia  (868). 

Up  to  this  time  the  Vasco  Navarrese  had  owed  a  slight 
and  uncertain  allegiance  to  the  king  at  Oviedo  ;  and  Alfonso, 
deeming  it  wiser  to  recognise,  at  least,  the  nominal  independ- 
ence of  this  proud  and  warlike  people,  sought  and  obtained 
the  hand  ot  Jimena,  daughter  of  Don  Garcia  of  Pamplona  in 
marriage,  as  a  bond  of  a  personal  and  political  alliance. 

1  Hence,  Castile =the  land  of  Castles. 

2  Count  Vigilez  or  Velez  Ximenez.     The  difference  between  counts  and  kings 
in  these  early  Christian  States  was  only  in  name.     The  title  of  chief  would  have 
been  more  appropriate  to  all  of  them.     The  dux  or  duke  indeed  was  for  a  long 
time  considered  as  of  inferior  dignity  to  the  comes  or  count. 


901.]  SANTIAGO.  l6l 

The  Moslem  power  was  now  growing  weaker  under  the  in- 
competent Amirs  that  preceded  the  great  Abdur  Rahman  an 
Nasir  ;  and  Alfonso  III.,  taking  advantage  of  every  opportunity 
that  presented  itself,  gradually  extended  and  strengthened 
the  Christian  dominions  in  central  Spain,  and  pushed  his 
victorious  arms  as  far  south  as  Lusitania.  After  an  un- 
successful siege  of  the  celebrated  border  town  of  Zamora,  a 
truce  for  three  years  was  agreed  upon  between  Alfonso  and 
the  Amir  Al  Mondhir,  and  when  the  fighting  was  renewed,  a 
Moslem  victory  at  Aybar  was  balanced  by  a  successful  foray 
of  the  Christians,  who  crossed  the  Guadiana  below  Merida, 
and  penetrated  as  far  south  as  the  Sierra  Morena.  A  second 
treaty  or  truce  agreed  upon  between  the  king  and  the  Amir 
in  883,  is  worthy  of  notice,  if  only  on  the  account  of  the  pro- 
vision that  the  bodies  of  the  Christian  martyr  saints  Eulogius 
and  Leocricia,  should  be  brought  with  due  respect  from  Cor- 
dova to  Oviedo,  a  condition  which  was  faithfully  carried  out. 

The  Christian  kingdom  of  Oviedo  by  this  time  compre- 
hended not  only  the  modern  province  of  Gallicia,  including  a 
part  of  the  modern  kingdom  of  Portugal  as  far  south  as 
the  Douro,  with  Leon  and  the  Asturias,  but  a  part  of  what  is 
now  Old  Castile,  as  far  south  as  the  lines  of  Zamora,  Toro  and 
Simancas.  The  county  of  Alava  was  in  alliance  with,  if  not 
in  subjection  to,  the  king  at  Oviedo,  and  Count  Diego 
Rodriguez  was  encouraged  and  assisted  by  Alfonso  to  build 
the  castle,  and  to  found  the  city,  which  was  afterwards  so 
well  known  in  Spanish  history  as  Burgos,  the  first  town  in 
Castile. 

On  the  frontier,  meanwhile,  the  war  went  on  with  ever 
varying  fortune.  Zamora  was  taken  and  retaken  times  beyond 
number.  Constant  victories  were  claimed  by  Christians  and  by 
Moslems.  But  the  issue  of  one  particular  battle  in  which  the 
Christians  were  undoubtedly  successful  (901) — known  as  El 
dia  de  Zamora — inspired  Alfonso  with  such  confidence,  that  he 
proceeded  to  march  on  Toledo.  The  expedition  was  unsuccess- 
ful :  but  Alfonso  returned  with  no  loss  of  honour  to  Oviedo  in 
902.  To  harry  the  infidel  was  at  once  the  highest  Christian 
duty,  and  the  most  profitable  political  practice  of  the  kings  of 
Leon.  But  it  was  not  always,  even  against  the  infidel,  that  the 
Christians  were  united.  For  not  only  was  Navarre  jealous  of 
Asturias,  and  Alava  impatient  of  Castile ;  but  intrigues  and 
quarrels  were  scarcely  less  common  at  the  sacred  city  of  Oviedo 
than  they  were  among  the  Moors  and  Arabs  at  Cordova.  Alfonso 
VOL.  i.  11 


162  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

gained  almost  as  much  from  the  Moslems  by  judicious  treaties 
as  some  of  his  predecessors  had  done  by  force  of  arms ;  and 
pre-eminent  position  that  he  occupied  as  a  Christian  sovereign 
enabled  him  to  deal,  with  unusual  success,  with  the  ever-ready 
rebels  at  home. 

Thus  he  contrived,  almost  alone  of  all  the  Christian  sovereigns 
of  the  north,  to  live  on  good  terms,  at  once  with  the  bishops 
at  Oviedo,  and  the  Caliph  at  Cordova.1  If  he  sent  his  son  to 
be  educated  at  Saragossa  under  Ismael,  he  replaced  the  modest 
chapel  of  Alfonso  the  Chaste  at  Compostella,  by  the  magnificent 
temple  that  was  the  admiration  of  Christendom,  until  it  was 
destroyed  by  the  mercenaries  of  Almanzor.  If  he  forebore 
from  forays  against  the  Caliph  at  Cordova,  he  richly  endowed 
the  cathedral  and  the  clergy  of  Oviedo.  At  length  in  909,  this 
prudent  king,  wearied  out  rather  by  family  feuds  than  by  foreign 
foes,  abdicated  in  favour  of  his  turbulent  sons 2  among  whom 
his  inheritance  was  divided.  Garcia  took  the  governorship  of 
Leon  ;  Ordono,  of  Gallicia  and  Christian  Lusitania  ;  Fruela,  of 
the  Asturias ;  Gonzalvo,  a  priest,  was  made  bishop  or  archdean 
of  Oviedo  ;  while  Ramiro,  a  child  of  tender  years,  had  no  part  in 
the  division.  For  himself,  Alfonso  kept  only  the  city  of  Zamora, 
where,  after  a  pious  pilgrimage  to  the  tomb  of  Santiago  at 
Compostella,  he  died,  within  twelve  months  of  his  abdication, 
on  the  19th  of  December,  910,  after  a  long  and  worthy  reign 
of  forty-four  years — and  was  succeeded  by  his  son,  Garcia,  as 
first  King  of  Leon. 

1  "  On  good  terms,"  that  is,  after  the  fashion  of  the  day;  which  did  not 
exclude  a  little  bit  of  fighting  from  time  to  time. 

2  His  abdication  was  the  result  of  a  plot  fomented  by  his  wife  and  eldest  son, 
Garcia,    aided   by   Nuno   Fernandez,  the  father-in-law   of  the   latter,   Count  of 
Castile.— H. 


163 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

THE  CALIPHATE  OF  CORDOVA. 

(852—1031.) 

I. — Abdur  Rahman  an  Nasir. 

WE  have  seen  with  how  noble  a  liberality  the  Christian  worship 
was  tolerated  and  even  encouraged  by  the  early  Arab  rulers 
of  the  Peninsula,1  a  liberality  that  was  not  to  be  attained  in 
Christian  Spain  for  1150  years,  and  as  yet  undreamed  of  by  the 
gentlest  of  Roman  or  Gothic  Spaniards.  Yet  the  Christian 
clergy  were  not  content.  The  laity  for  the  most  part  accepted 
the  situation,  with  philosophy  if  not  with  satisfaction.  They 
took  advantage  of  the  admirable  schools  provided  by  the  Arabs. 
They  aspired  to  important  positions  in  the  administration. 
They  copied,  as  well  as  they  could,  the  luxury  of  their  new 
masters.  But  the  priests  had  no  love  of  knowledge  ;  they 
despised  culture,  and  they  alone  of  the  subject  population 
hated  the  Moslem  with  a  bitter  and  deadly  hatred.  Unwilling 
to  accept  with  gratitude  even  the  toleration  of  the  Unbeliever, 
they  spared  no  opportunity  of  reviling  the  great  Prophet  under 
whose  benign  laws  they  were  permitted  to  exist. 

Perfectus,  a  priest  at  Cordova,  having  publicly  insulted  the 
faith  and  founder  of  Islam,  was  condemned,  according  to  the 
Mohammedan  law,  to  death ;  and  his  execution,  in  the  month 
of  Ramadan  852,  was  the  signal  for  new  ecclesiastical  insults. 
Isaac,  a  fanatical  monk,  sought  and  found  martyrdom  by  his 
extravagant  public  abuse  of  Mohammed.  Martyrdom  became 
the  fashion.  In  two  months,  eleven  ecclesiastics  trod  boldly 
in  the  footsteps  of  Perfectus  and  of  Isaac. 

1  By  the  laws  of  Islam,  liberty  of  conscience  and  freedom  of  worship  were 
allowed  to  all  under  Moslem  dominion.  The  passage  in  the  Koran,  "  Let  there 
be  no  compulsion  in  religion,"  testifies  to  the  principle  of  toleration  and  charity 
inculcated  by  Islam.  ' '  What  wilt  thou  force  men  to  believe,  when  belief  can 
come  only  from  God  ?" — Syed  Amir  Ali,  Spirit  of  Islam,  p.  303. 


164  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

Abdur  Rahman  was  infinitely  distressed  at  the  progress  of 
this  fatal  frenzy  ;  and  anxious  to  avoid  further  bloodshed,  he 
determined  to  convoke  a  Christian  Council,  to  stay,  if  possible, 
the  title  of  religious  folly.  The  Council  of  Cordova,  constituted 
for  the  most  part,  like  the  Councils  of  the  Visigoths,  of  Christian 
bishops,  assembled  under  the  presidency  of  Reccafred,  Metro- 
politan of  Seville ;  and  Abdur  Rahman,  who  could  hardly  have 
attended  in  person,  was  formally  represented  by  a  Christian 
Palatine  of  the  name  of  Gomez,  who  laid  before  the  assembled 
pivlatrs  tlu-  riivunist.-uuvs  that  had  loil  to  their  Convocation. 
Saul,  Bishop  of  Cordova,  who  undertook  the  defence  of  the 
martyrs,  was  unable  to  approve  of  any  further  persistence  in 
conduct  which  amounted  to  suicide  ;  and  the  Council  formulated 
a  decree  in  accordance  with  this  prudent  opinion.  But  the 
fanatics  heeded  not  the  monition  of  the  Council ;  and  they 
denounced  their  own  bishops  as  freely  as  they  reviled  the 
Prophet  of  Arabia.  The  leading  spirit  in  all  these  religious 
suicides  was  Kulogius,  an  enthusiastic  young  priest  of  Cordova, 
who,  in  851,  was  found  to  be  implicated  in  the  conversion  and 
flight  of  two  young  Moslem  ladies.  These  fair  proselytes,  after 
the  utmost  bdulgeaCQ  on  the  part  of  the  Cadi,  persisted  in  a 
bold  denunciation  of  the  faith  which  they  had  abjured,  and 
were  condemned  to  death  on  the  scaffold.  Eulogius,  unwilling 
himself  to  come  forward,  was  not  molested  by  the  authorities. 
But  the  mania  reached  its  height  when,  in  September,  852,  two 
monks  forced  their  way  into  the  great  mosque  at  Cordova, 
at  a  time  when  it  was  full  of  worshippers,  and  cried  aloud, 
until  they  were  mercifully  arrested  :  "  The  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
is  reserved  for  the  Christians ;  for  you  miscreants  is  prepared 
the  fire  of  Hell !  "  The  ecclesiastical  madmen  were  saved  by 
the  Cadi  from  the  fury  of  the  populace,  and  after  a  deliberate 
and  regular  trial  they  were  executed  with  many  others  accord- 
ing to  law. 

Abdur  Rahman  died  in  September,  852,  and  was  succeeded 
b\  Mohammed  I.,  a  far  less  liberal  sovereign ;  and  Eulogius, 
who  had  about  the  same  time  been  elected  Metropolitan  Bishop 
of  Toledo,  was  convicted  once  more  of  participation  in  the  flight 
and  conversion  of  a  Moslem  lady,  who  had  adopted  the  name 
of  Leocritia,  under  .which  she  was  afterwards  canonised  ;  and 
he  suffered  death,  together  with  his  proselyte,  in  85.Q.  But  the 
force  of  the  folly  would  seem  at  length  to  have  spent  itself; 
and  the  death  of  Eulogius  put  an  end  to  the  voluntary  martyr- 
doms, although  under  the  cruel  and  narrow-minded  Mohammed, 


875.]  THE  CALIPHATE  OF  CORDOVA.  165 

the  Christians  were  far  from  enjoying  that  complete  toleration 
that  had  distinguished  the  rule  of  the  first  and  of  the  second 
Abdur  Rahman. 

But  if  the  Christians  were  less  favoured  under  the  new 
Amir,  the  Moslems  were  no  whit  more  contented.  For  the 
rule  of  Mohammed  I.  was  as  inglorious  as  it  was  illiberal.  If 
the  Christians  were  ill-treated  in  the  south,  the  Arab  posses- 
sions were  curtailed  in  the  north,  and  the  power  of  Cordova 
was  everywhere  suffered  to  decline.  The  rebellion  of  the 
Moslem  Musa  in  the  central  provinces  was  even  more  disastrous 
than  the  forays  of  the  Christian  Ordono  in  the  north-west ; 
while  throughout  the  south,  rival  chiefs  and  rival  tribes  acquired 
an  authority,  independent  of,  and  even  hostile  to,  that  of  the 
Amir  at  Cordova,  which  reduced  the  power  of  the  central 
government  to  a  phantom.  A  strange  and  terrible  foe  more- 
over added  to  the  general  disorder,  for  the  Vikings  once  more 
descending  upon  the  coasts  from  the  savage  northern  seas, 
plundered  the  rich  and  ill-defended  provinces  of  southern 
Spain. 

But  the  revolt  of  Ibn  Merwan,  in  875,  was,  perhaps,  the 
most  serious  to  which  the  Government  of  the  Amir  was  at  any 
time  exposed.  For  this  Ibn  Merwan,  a  renegade  captain  of 
the  Guards  at  Cordova,  had  fled  into  Gallicia  on  some  palace 
affront,  and  assembling  a  large  band  of  supporters,  he  had 
concluded  an  alliance  with  Alfonso  III.  of  Leon,  and  made 
vigorous  war  against  his  former  sovereign.  Victorious  in  an 
important  battle,  he  took  prisoner  and  held  to  ransom  the 
Amir's  favourite  general,  Hisham,  and  he  inspired  the  feeble 
court  of  Cordova  with  such  terror  of  his  arms  that  he  was 
actually  permitted  to  harry  entire  districts  in  the  south-west 
of  the  Peninsula  without  let  or  hindrance  at  the  hands  of  the 
nominal  rulers1  of  the  country.  Nor  did  some  passing  suc- 
cesses of  the  Amir's  forces  in  the  north-east  of  Spain  make  up 
for  these  serious  reverses. 

But  within  as  well  as  without,  the  condition  of  the  Caliphate 
was  most  critical.  The  old  Arab  aristocracy,  the  descendants 
of  the  heroes  of  the  conquest,  were  by  this  time  greatly  out- 
numbered by  the  other  Moslem  races  in  the  Peninsula,  and 
established  as  they  were,  for  the  most  part,  at  Seville,  they 
owed  a  very  half-hearted  allegiance  to  the  supreme  Govern- 
ment at  Cordova.  The  Berbers  or  Moors — the  wild,  unculti- 

1  My  authority  for  these  pages  is  very  largely  the  second  volume  of  Doxy's, 
Hiitoire  des  Musulmans  cTEtpagne. 


166  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

vated  soldiers  of  Africa — were  more  numerous,  more  intolerant, 
and  even  more  disaffected  than  the  graceful  and  polished 
Arab,  and  their  authority  in  Estremadura  and  southern  Lusi- 
tania  was  well-nigh  independent  of  the  Caliph  at  Cordova. 
The  renegades  or  Spanish  Moslems  who  inhabited  Algarve 
were  no  less  hostile  to  the  Ommeyad  rulers  of  the  country. 
Tadmir  or  Murcia  was  virtually  independent.  Toledo  was 
ever  in  revolt.  The  central  authority  at  Cordova  was  daily 
becoming  weaker  and  less  regarded.  If  the  Moslem  still 
possessed  the  fairest  portion  of  the  Peninsula,  the  Amir  had 
almost  ceased  to  rule.  Yet,  even  in  these  dark  and  troubled 
days,  the  Arab  culture  had  not  quite  died  out ;  the  Arab  re- 
finement had  not  been  entirely  destroyed.1  Excellent  schools 
were  maintained  at  Cordova.  The  judicial  and  financial  ad- 
ministration were  superior,  not  only  to  anything  in  Spain,  but 
probably  to  anything  in  Europe.  Ambassadors  were  welcomed 
from  Emperors  and  Caliphs ;  and  the  art  and  sciences  were 
cultivated  in  the  cities,  even  when  the  country  was  being 
ravaged  by  rebels  and  robbers,  and  the  frontiers  were  harried  by 
Christians  from  the  Asturias,  and  more  savage  pirates  from 
the  Baltic. 

Mohammed  I.  died  after  a  long  and  inglorious  reign,  in 
886,  and  was  succeeded  by  his  son,  Al  Mondhir,  who  gave 
place,  in  888,  to  his  brother  Abdullah,  who  reigned  without 
glory,  if  without  special  shame,  until  912,  when  he  was 
succeeded  by  the  third  and  the  last  Abdur  Rahman,  the 
greatest  of  all  the  Mohammedan  rulers  of  Spain. 

Under  the  master-hand  of  this  blue-eyed,  fair  skinned 
Arab,  the  amiable,  the  gentle,  the  prudent,  the  accomplished 
Abdur  Rahman  an  Nasir — who  first  made  the  title  of  Caliph 
of  Cordova,2  no  less  honourable  and  no  less  honoured  than 
that  of  Caliph  of  Bagdad — was  Moslem  Spain  once  more 
raised  from  insignificance  and  anarchy  to  a  splendour  un- 
dreamed of  by  any  former  sovereign. 

The  Berber,  the  Marabout,  the  renegade,  the  refugee,  all 
these  had  vexed  Spain  for  nearly  one  hundred  years.  And 
Spain  rose  once  more  to  new  and  greater  glory  under  an 
Arab  Caliph  at  Cordova.  The  first  care  of  the  young  monarch 

1  This  was  especially  the  case  in  Seville  at  this  time  under  the  enlightened  Ibn 
Hajjaj,  the  practically  independent  governor,  and  also  in  Murcia. — H. 

2  In  929  he  was  also  called  Amir  al  Momenin,  Commander  of  the  Faithful,  a 
title  as  familiar  to  every  reader  of  the  Arabian  Nights  as  that  of  the  Caliph  of 
Bagdad.     It  has  been  corrupted  by  Spanish  writers  into  Miramamolin. 


93.9.]  THE  CALIPHATE  OF  CORDOVA.  167 

was  to  restore  peace  and  unity  to  the  Moslem  Commonwealth  ; 
and  his  efforts  were  completely  successful.  Distracted  by 
constant  revolts,  and  dissatisfied  with  a  fruitless  independence, 
the  rebel  cities  gradually  submitted  themselves  to  the  arms  of 
one  who  was  bold  enough  to  demand  obedience,  and  strong 
enough  to  enforce  it.  One  by  one  the  leading  rebels  were 
vanquished  and  slain  ;  one  by  one  the  leading  cities  were  sub- 
dued and  pacified.  The  new  Caliph  was  stern,  but  he  was 
not  cruel.  His  work  was  at  once  quietly  and  thoroughly  done. 
Unconquered  in  war,  he  was  essentially  a  man  of  peace  ;  liberal, 
refined,  magnificent,  with  an  iron  will  and  a  generous  heart ; 
and  after  eighteen  years  of  firm  and  resolute  government  he 
found  himself,  not  only  the  master,  but  the  idol  of  a  united 
country.  Nor  was  he  less  successful  in  his  attacks  upon  the 
Christians  in  the  north  ;  and  his  great  victory  at  Val  de 
Junqueras,  in  920,  over  the  combined  forces  of  Leon  and 
Navarre,  was  scarcely  overshadowed  by  the  Moslem  defeat 
at  Alhandega  twenty  years  later,  in  939- l 

Abdur  Rahman  an  Ndsir  died  in  96 1.2  In  the  course  of 
his  long  and  brilliant  reign  he  had  restored  the  rule  of  the 
Moslem  in  Spain  from  a  condition  of  anarchy,  weakness  and 
disgrace  to  the  highest  pitch  of  power,  of  glory,  and  of  pro- 
sperity. Beloved  at  home,  respected  abroad ;  renowned  not 
only  for  his  liberality,  his  good  taste,  and  his  magnificence, 
but  for  his  gentleness,  his  justice,  his  generosity,  his  name  will 
ever  be  associated  with  the  most  glorious  days  of  that  most 
glorious  empire  which  was  well-nigh  the  creation  of  his  youth, 
and  became  the  idol  of  his  maturer  years.3 


II.— The  City  of  Cordova. 

The  most  beautiful,  the  most  magnificent,  the  most  luxur- 
ious, the  most  civilised  city  of  mediaeval  Europe  in  the  tenth 
century  was  Cordova.  Its  markets  were  always  stocked  with 
the  richest  and  most  varied  products  of  every  country.  No 

1  Ramiro  II.  also  defeated  the  Moslems  at  Talavera  in  950. 

2  Abdur  Rahman  an  Ndsir  lidin  illah  ;  Defender  of  the  Religion  of  God,  was 
the  title  assumed  by  the  Caliph  in  929. 

3Viardot,  Essai  sur  C  Histoirc  dej  Mores  (PEspagne  (1833);  Dozy,  Histoire, 
torn.  ii.  and  iii.  ;  Stanley  Lane  Poole,  Moors  in  Spain  ;  Murphy  and  Shakspear, 
Mohammedan  Empire  in  Spain;  Casiri,  ii. ,  39;  Cardonne,  i.,  338;  Gayangos,  i., 
pp.  200,  etc. ,  et  seq. 


168  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

robe,  however  costly,  says  a  contemporary  writer,  no  drug, 
however  scarce,  no  jewel,  however  precious,  no  rarity  of 
distant  and  unknown  lands,  was  wanting  in  its  splendid 
bazaars. 

Even  before  his  arrival,  the  visitor  had  some  foretaste  of  the 
luxury  that  awaited  him,  for  on  all  the  principal  roads  leading 
to  the  city,  the  Caliph  established  Manzils  or  rest-houses — 
something  after  the  fashion  of  the  Dak-Bungalows  maintained 
by  the  modern  Anglo-Indian  Government — for  the  gratuitous 
occupation  of  travellers.1  Within  the  city  the  Caliph  had 
his  Palace  of  Flowers,  his  Palace  of  Contentment,  his  Palace  of 
Lovers,  and  most  beautiful  of  all,  the  Palace  of  Damascus, 
looking  upon  gardens  watered  by  the  noble  Guadalquivir ; 
while  the  humblest  Moslem  took  his  ease  in  the  Golden  Meadow, 
in  the  Garden  of  the  Waterrvheel,  and  the  Meadow  of  Murmuring 
Waters?  Rich  and  poor  met  in  the  Mezquita,  the  noblest 
place  of  worship  then  standing  in  Europe,3  with  its  1200 
marble  columns,  and  its  twenty  brazen  doors ;  the  vast  interior 
resplendent  with  porphyry  and  jasper  and  many-coloured  pre- 
cious stones,  the  walls  glittering  with  harmonious  mosaics, 
the  air  perfumed  with  incense,  the  courtyards  leafy  with 
groves  of  orange  trees — showing  apples  of  gold  in  pictures 
of  silver.  Throughout  the  city,  there  were  fountains,  basins, 
baths/  with  cold  water  brought  from  the  neighbouring  moun- 
tains, already  carried  in  the  leaden  pipes  that  are  the  highest 
triumph  of  the  modern  plumber. 

But  more  wonderful  even  than  Cordova  itself  was  the 
suburb  and  palace  of  Az  Zahra.  For  five-and-twenty  years 
the  third  and  greatest  Abdur  Rahman  devoted  to  the  building 
of  his  royal  fancy  one-third  of  the  revenues  of  the  State ;  and 
the  work,  on  his  death,  was  piously  continued  by  his  son,  who 
devoted  the  first  fifteen  years  of  his  reign  to  its  completion. 
For  forty  years  ten  thousand  workmen  are  said  to  have  toiled 

1  Viardot,  Essai,  p.  101. 

2Gayangos,  i.,  lib.  iii. ,  cap.  i. 

3  The  Parthenon  had  no  worshippers ;  St.  Sophia  alone  could  compare  with 
the  great  temple  at  Cordova. 

4 ' '  The  Arabs  of  Andalusia  are  also  the  cleanest  people  on  earth  in  what  regards 
their  person,  dress,  beds,  and  in  the  interior  of  their  houses ;  indeed,  they  carry 
cleanliness  to  such  an  extreme  that  it  is  not  an  uncommon  thing  for  a  man  of  the 
lower  classes  to  spend  his  last  dirhem  in  soap  instead  of  buying  food  for  his  daily 
consumption,  and  thus  go  without  his  dinner  rather  than  appear  in  public  with 
dirty  clothes."  Of  the  general  rudeness  and  dirt  of  their  Christian  contemporaries 
the  evidence  is  only  too  abundant.  Gayangos,  i.,  pp.  116,  117. 


950.]  THE  CALIPHATE  OF  CORDOVA.  169 

day  by  day,  and  the  record  of  the  refinement  as  well  as  the 
magnificence  of  the  structure,  as  it  approached  completion, 
almost  passes  belief.  It  is  said  that  in  a  moment  of  exaltation 
the  Caliph  gave  orders  for  the  removal  of  the  great  mountain 
at  whose  foot  the  fairy  city  was  built,  as  the  dark  shade  of  the 
forests  that  covered  its  sides  overshadowed  the  gilded  palace 
of  his  creation. 

Convinced  of  the  impossibility  of  his  enterprise,  An  Nasir 
was  content  that  all  the  oaks  and  beech  trees  that  grew  on 
the  mountain  side  should  be  rooted  up ;  and  that  fig  trees, 
and  almonds,  and  pomegranates  should  be  planted  in  their 
place  ;  and  thus  the  very  hills  and  forests  of  Az  Zahra  were 
decked  with  blossom  and  beauty. 

Travellers  from  distant  lands,  men  of  all  ranks  and  pro- 
fessions, princes,  ambassadors,  merchants,  pilgrims,  theolog- 
ians and  poets,  all  agreed  that  they  had  never  seen  in  the 
course  of  their  travels  anything  that  could  be  compared  with 
Az  Zahra,  and  that  no  imagination,  however  fertile,  could 
have  formed  an  idea  of  its  beauties.  Of  this  marvellous 
creation  of  art  and  fancy  not  one  stone  remains  upon  another 
— not  a  vestige  to  mark  the  spot  on  which  it  stood  ;  and  it  is 
hard  to  reconstruct  from  the  dry  records  of  Arab  historians  the 
fairy  edifice  of  which  we  are  told  no  words  could  paint  the 
magnificence.  According  to  these  authors  the  enclosing  wall  of 
the  palace  was  4000  feet  in  length  from  east  to  west,  and 
2200  feet  from  north  to  south.  The  greater  part  of  this  space 
was  occupied  by  gardens,  with  their  marble  fountains,  kiosks 
and  ornaments  of  various  kinds,  not  inferior  in  beauty  to  the 
more  strictly  architectural  parts  of  the  building. 

Four  thousand  three  hundred  columns  of  the  rarest  and 
most  precious  marbles  supported  the  roof  of  the  palace ;  of 
these  some  were  brought  from  Africa,  some  from  Rome,  and 
many  were  presented  by  the  Emperor  at  Constantinople  to 
Abdur  Rahman.  The  halls  were  paved  with  marble,  disposed 
in  a  thousand  varied  patterns.  The  walls  were  of  the  same 
material,  and  ornamented  with  friezes  of  the  most  brilliant 
colours.  The  ceilings,  constructed  of  cedar,  were  enriched 
with  gilding  on  an  azure  ground,  with  damasked  work  and 
interlacing  designs.  Everything,  in  short,  that  the  wealth  and 
resources  of  the  Caliph  could  command  was  lavished  on  this 
favourite  retreat,  and  all  that  the  art  of  Constantinople  and 
Bagdad  could  contribute  to  aid  the  taste  and  executive  skill  of 
the  Spanish  Arabs  was  enlisted  to  make  it  the  most  perfect 


170  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

work  of  its  age.  Did  this  palace  of  Zahra  now  remain  to  us, 
says  Mr.  Fergusson,  we  could  afford  to  despise  the  Alhambra 
and  all  the  other  works  of  the  declining  ages  of  Moorish 
art.1 

It  was  here  that  Abdur  Rahman  an  Nasir  received  Sancho 
the  Fat,  and  Theuda,  Queen  of  Navarre,  the  envoys  from 
Charles  the  Simple  of  France,  and  the  ambassadors  from  the 
Emperor  Constantine  at  Constantinople.'2  The  reception  of 
these  Imperial  visitors  is  said  to  have  been  one  of  the  most 
magnificent  ceremonies  of  that  magnificent  court.  The  orator 
who  had  been  at  first  entrusted  with  the  speech  of  ceremonial 
greeting,  was  actually  struck  dumb  by  the  grandeur  of  the 
scene,  and  his  place  was  taken  by  a  less  impressionable  rhe- 
torician.8 

Nor  was  it  only  material  splendour4  that  was  to  be  found 
at  Cordova.  At  a  time  when  Christian  Europe  was  steeped 
in  ignorance  and  barbarism,  in  superstition  and  prejudice,5 

1  There  was  another  palace  and  city  somewhat  similar  in  name,  Az  Zdhirah, 
bnilt  by  Almanzor  between  978  and  981,  on  the  banks  of  the  Guadalquivir,  not  far 
from  Cordova.     In  riches  and  beauty  Az  Zdhirah.  is  said  to  have  rivalled  even  As 
Zahra,  but  owing  to  its  having  been  destroyed  by  the  Berbers  during  the  civil  wars 
on  the  death  of  Almanzor,  all  trace  of  the  city  has  perished,  and  even  tradition  is 
very  uncertain  as  to  the  details.     Gayangos,  i. ,  232-242. 

2  The  Imperial  embassy  was  sent  by  Constantine  VII.  in  947.     The  Caliph  is 
said  to  have  also  received  embassies  from  the  Duke  of  the  Slavonians,  the  King  of 
the  Alamani,  and  from  Hugo  of  Franconia.     (The  appearance  of  Sancho  the  Fat 
of  Leon,  and  his   grandmother  Theuda,    Queen   of  Navarre,    at   the   Court   of 
Cordova  arose  out  of  the  deposition  of  Sancho  by  Fernan  Gonzalez,  Count  of 
Castile,  in  favour  of  Ardono  IV.  (the  Bad).     Sancho  appealed  to  the  Kalif  of 
Cordova  who  sent  him  a  Jewish  physician  to  cure  him  of  his  corpulency,  and 
invited  him  and  Theuda  with  her  son,  the  King  of  Navarre,  to  visit  Cordova. 
On  their  return  to  Navarre  Abdur  Rahman  gave  Sancho  armed  aid  against  the 
usurper  Ordono  IV.  and  restored  him  to  the  throne  of  Leon. — H.) 

3  Gayangos,  ii.,  143-145. 

4  Respecting  the  state  of  science  among  the  Andalusians,  we  must  own  in 
justice  that  the  people  of  that  country  were  the  most  ardent  lovers  of  knowledge, 
as  well  as  those  who  best  knew  how  to  appreciate  and  distinguish  a  learned  m\n 
and  an  ignorant  one ;  indeed,  science  was  so  much  esteemed  by  them  that  whoever 
had  not  been  endowed  by  God  with  the  necessary  qualifications  to  acquire  it  did 
everything  in  his  power  to  distinguish  himself  and  conceal  from  the  people  his 
want  of  instruction  ;   for  an  ignorant  man  was  at  all  times  looked  upon  as  an 
object  of  the  greatest  contempt ;  while  the  learned  man,  on  the  contrary,  was  not 
only  respected  by  all  nobles  and  plebeians,  but  was  trusted  and  consulted  on  every 
occasion.     His  name  was  in  every  mouth,  his  power  and  influence  had  no  limits, 
and  he  was  preferred  and  distinguished  in  all  the  occasions  of  life.    Gayangos,  vol. 
i. ,  lib.  ii.,  cap.  iii.     And  see  Renan,  Melanges,  p.  15. 

5 Les  Espagnols  (i.e.,  the  Christians  at  this  period,  says  Cond6)  vivent  comme 
des  bStes  sauvages,  entrant  les  uns  chez  les  autres  sans  demander  permission,  et  ne 
lavent  ni  leur  corps,  ni  me'me  leurs  habits,  qu' ils  n'otent  que  lorsque  qu'ils  tombent 
en  lambeaux.  Viardot,  Essais,  i. ,  191-2. 


961.]  THE  CALIPHATE  OF  CORDOVA.  171 

every  branch  of  science  was  studied  under  the  favour  and  pro- 
tection of  the  Ommeyad  Caliphs.  Medicine,  surgery,  botany, 
chemistry,  poetry,  the  arts,  philosophy,  literature,  all  flourished 
at  the  court  and  city  of  Cordova.  Agriculture  was  cultivated 
with  a  perfection,  both  theoretical  and  practical,  which  is 
apparent  from  the  works  of  contemporary  Arab  writers.1  The 
Silo,  so  lately  introduced  into  England  as  a  valuable  agricul- 
tural novelty,  is  not  only  the  invention  of  the  Arabs,  but  the 
very  name  is  Arabic,  as  is  that  of  the  Acequia  and  of  the  Nona 
of  modern  Spain.  Both  the  second  and  the  third  Abdur 
Rahman  were  passionately  fond  of  gardening  and  tree-planting  ; 
and  seeds,  roots  and  cuttings  were  brought  from  all  parts  of 
the  world  and  acclimatised  in  the  gardens  at  Cordova.  A 
pomegranate  of  peculiar  excellence,  the  Safari,  which  was  intro- 
duced by  the  second  Abdur  Rahman  from  Damascus,  still 
maintains  its  superiority,  and  is  known  in  Spain  to  the  present 
day  as  the  Granada  Zafari. 

Thus,  in  small  things  as  in  great,  the  Arabs  of  Cordova  stood 
immeasurably  above  any  other  people  or  any  other  govern- 
ment in  Europe.  Yet  their  influence  unhappily  was  but  small. 
They  surpassed,  but  they  did  not  lead.  The  very  greatness 
of  their  superiority  rendered  their  example  fruitless.  Mediaeval 
chivalry,  indeed,  was  largely  the  result  of  their  influence  in 
Spain.  But  chivalry  as  an  institution  had  itself  decayed  long 
before  a  new-born  Europe  had  attained  to  the  material  and 
moral  perfection  of  the  great  Amirs  of  Cordova.  Their  political 
organisation  was  unadapted  to  the  needs  or  the  aspirations  of 
western  Europe,  and  contained  within  itself  the  elements,  not 
of  development,  but  of  decay.  Their  civilisation  perished,  and 
left  no  heirs  behind  it — and  its  place  knows  it  no  more.2 . 


III. — A  Imanzor. 

The  reign  of  Hakam  II.,  the  son  and  successor  of  the  great 
Caliph,  was  tranquil,  prosperous  and  honourable,  the  golden 
age  of  Arab  literature  in  Spain.  The  king  was  above  all  things 
a  student,  living  the  life  almost  of  a  recluse  in  his  splendid 

1  Particularly  the  work  of  Abu  Zakariah  al  Awdn,  which  has  been  translated 
by  D.  Jos6  Antonio  Banqueri  (Madrid,  1802).    Cf.  Viardot,  Essai,  i. ,  129-131 ;  and 
Wentworth  Webster,  Spain,  p.  45. 

2  L'irr6m6diable  faiblesse  de  la  race  arabe,  says  M.  Renan — Melanges,  p.  283 
— est  dans  son  manque  absolu  d' esprit  politique,  et  dans  son  incapacity  de  toute 
organisation. 


172  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

retreat  at  Az  Zahra,  and  concerning  himself  rather  with  the 
collection  of  books  for  his  celebrated  library  at  Cordova,  than 
with  the  cares  of  State  and  the  excitements  of  war.  He  sent 
agents  to  every  city  in  the  East  to  buy  rare  manuscripts  and 
bring  them  back  to  Cordova.  When  he  could  not  acquire 
originals  he  procured  copies,  and  every  book  was  carefully 
catalogued  and  worthily  lodged.  Hakam  not  only  built  libraries, 
but,  unlike  many  modern  collectors,  he  is  said  to  have  read  and 
even  to  have  annotated  the  books  that  they  contained  ;  but  as 
their  number  exceeded  four  hundred  thousand,  he  must  have 
been  a  remarkably  rapid  student.1 

The  peaceful  disposition  of  the  new  Caliph  emboldened 
his  Christian  neighbours  and  tributaries  to  disregard  the  old 
treaties  and  to  assert  their  independence  of  Cordova.  But  the 
armies  of  Hakam  were  able  to  make  his  rights  respected,  and 
the  treaties  were  reaffirmed  and  observed.  Many  were  the 
embassies  that  were  received  at  Cordova  from  rival  Christian 
chiefs ;  and  Sancho  of  Leon,  Fernan  Gonzalez  of  Castile, 
Garcia  of  Navarre,  Rodrigo  Velasquez  of  Gallicia,  and  finally 
Ordorio  the  Bad,  Pretender  to  the  Crown  of  Leon,  were  all 
represented  at  the  court  of  Az  Zahra.2 

The  reign  of  this  royal  scholar  was  peaceful  and  prosperous  ; 
but  kingly  power  tends  to  decline  in  libraries,  and  when 
Hakam  ceased  to  build  and  to  annotate,  and  his  kingdom 
devolved  upon  his  son,  the  royal  authority  passed  not  into  the 
hands  of  the  young  Hisham,  who  was  only  nine  years  of  age 
at  the  time  of  his  father's  death,  but  into  those  of  the  Sultana 
Sobeyra  and  of  her  favourite,  I bn- Abu- Amir,  who  is  known  to 
later  generations  by  the  proud  title  of  Almanzor.3 

Ibn-Abu-Amir  began  his  career  as  a  poor  student  at  the 
University  of  Cordova.  Of  respectable  birth  and  parentage, 
filled  with  noble  ambition,  born  for  empire  and  command,  the 
youth  became  a  court  scribe,  and,  attracting  the  attention  of 
the  all-powerful  Sobeyra  4  by  the  charm  of  his  manner  and  his 

1  Hakam  sent  1000  dinars  of  gold  to  Ispahan  to  have  the  first  copy  of  the 
celebrated  Anthology  of  Abulfaraj,  and  this  celebrated  work  was  actually  read, 
says  Renan  (Averroes  et  I'Averroisme,  p.  3),  in  Andalusia,  before  it  was  known  in 
Irak. 

2  Ordono  the  Bad  lived  and  died  a  pensioner  at  the  court  of  the  Arab.     Dozy, 
Histoire,  iii. ,  95-108,  and  see  also /a?/,  chap.  xvii.  of  this  work. 

SAI  Manzor  al  Allah;  "The  Victor  of  God  :  or,  Victorious  by  the  Grace  of 
God  ". 

4  More  accurately,  Sobha,  the  Dawn.  M.  Dozy  calls  her  Aurora,  merely,  as 
he  says,  because  it  is  more  euphonious  than  her  own  name.  Dozy,  Histoire,  iii. , 
118.  Cf.  Gayangos,  ii.,  178  and  476. 


976.]  THE  CALIPHATE  OF  CORDOVA.  173 

nobility  of  bearing,  he  soon  rose  to  power  and  distinction  in 
the  palace ;  and  as  Master  of  the  Mint,  and  afterwards  as 
Commander  of  the  City  Guard,1  he  found  means  to  render 
himself  indispensable,  as  he  had  always  been  agreeable,  to  the 
harem.  Nor  was  the  young  courtier  less  acceptable  to  the 
Caliph.  Entrusted  by  him  on  a  critical  occasion  with  the 
supremely  difficult  mission  of  comptrolling  the  expenditure  of 
the  army  in  Africa,  where  the  General-in-Chief  had  proved  over 
prodigal  or  over  rapacious,  Ibn- Abu- Amir  acquitted  himself  with 
such  extraordinary  skill  and  tact,  that  he  won  the  respect  and 
admiration,  not  only  of  the  Caliph  whose  treasury  he  protected, 
but  of  the  general  whose  extravagance  he  checked,  and  even 
of  the  common  soldiers  of  the  army,  who  are  not  usually  drawn 
to  a  civilian  superintendent,  or  to  a  reforming  treasury  official 
from  headquarters.  The  expenses  were  curtailed ;  but  the 
campaign  was  successful,  and  the  victorious  general  and  the  yet 
more  victorious  Cadi,2  shared  on  equal  terms  the  honour  of  a 
triumphal  entry  into  the  capital. 

On  the  death  of  Hakam,,  in  September,  976,  Ibn-Abu-Amir 
showed  no  less  than  his  usual  tact  and  vigour  in  suppressing  a 
palace  intrigue,  and  placing  the  young  Hisham  on  the  throne 
of  his  father.  The  Caliph  was  but  twelve  years  of  age,  and 
his  powerful  guardian,  supported  by  the  harem,  beloved  by  the 
people,  and  feared  by  the  vanquished  conspirators,  took  upon 
himself  the  entire  administration  of  the  kingdom,  repealed 
some  obnoxious  taxes,  reformed  the  organisation  of  the  army 
and  sought  to  confirm  and  establish  his  power  by  a  war  against 
his  neighbours  in  the  north.  The  peace  which  had  so  long 
prevailed  between  Moor  and  Christian  was  thus  rudely  broken, 
and  the  Moslem  once  more  carried  his  arms  across  the  northern 
frontier.  The  campaign  was  eminently  successful.  Ibn-Abu- 
Amir,  who  contrived  not  only  to  vanquish  his  enemies  but  to 
please  his  friends,  became  at  once  the  master  of  the  palace 
and  of  the  army.  The  inevitable  critic  was  found  to  say  that 
the  victor  was  a  diplomatist  and  a  lawyer  rather  than  a  great 
general ;  but  he  was  certainly  a  great  leader  of  men,  and  if  he 
was  at  any  time  unskilled  in  the  conduct  of  a  battle,  he  owned 
from  the  first  that  higher  skill  of  knowing  whom  to  trust  with 
command.  Nor  was  he  less  remarkable  for  his  true  military 
virtue  of  constant  clemency  to  the  vanquished. 

1  Afterwards  vali  al  Medina,  or  the  governor  of  the  city. 
8  The  title  with  which  he  had  been  specially  invested  was  that  of  Cadi  of 
Africa. 


174  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

In  two  years  after  the  death  of  Hakam,  Almanzor  had 
attained  the  position  of  the  greatest  of  the  maires  du  palais  of 
early  France,  and  he  ruled  all  Mohammedan  Spain  in  the 
name  of  young  Hisham,  whose  throne  he  forebore  to  occupy, 
and  whose  person  was  safe  in  his  custody.  But  if  Almanzor 
was  not  a  dilettante  like  Abdur  Rahman  II.,  nor  a  collector  of 
MSS.  like  Hakam,  he  was  no  vulgar  fighter  like  the  early 
kings  of  Leon  or  of  Navarre.  A  library  of  books  accom- 
panied him  in  all  his  campaigns  ;  literature,  science  and  the 
arts  were  munificently  patronised  at  court ;  a  university  or  high 
school  was  established  as  Cordova,  where  the  great  mosque 
was  enlarged  for  the  accommodation  of  an  increasing  number 
of  worshippers.  Yet  in  one  thing  did  he  show  his  weakness. 
He  could  afford  to  have  no  enemies.  The  idol  of  the  army, 
the  lover  of  the  queen,1  the  prefect  of  the  city,  the  guardian  of 
the  person  of  the  Caliph,  Almanzor  yet  found  it  necessary  to 
conciliate  the  theologians ;  and  the  theologians  were  only 
conciliated  by  the  delivery  of  the  great  library  of  Hakam  into 
the  hands  of  the  Ulema.  The  shelves  were  ransacked  for 
works  on  astrology  and  magic,  on  natural  philosophy  and  the 
forbidden  sciences,  and  after  an  inquisition  as  formal  and  as 
thorough,  and  probably  no  more  intelligent  than  that  which 
was  conducted  by  the  curate  and  the  barber  in  the  house  of 
Don  Quixote,  tens  of  thousands  of  priceless  volumes  were 
publicly  committed  to  the  flames. 

Nor  did  Almanzor  neglect  the  more  practical  or  more 
direct  means  of  maintaining  his  power.  The  army  was  filled 
with  bold  recruits  from  Africa,  and  renegades  from  the  Christian 
provinces  of  the  north.  The  organisation  and  equipment  of 
the  regiments  was  constantly  improved ;  and  the  troops  were 
ever  loyal  to  their  civilian  benefactor.  Ghalib,  the  commander- 
in-chief,  having  sought  to  overthrow  the  supreme  administrator 
of  the  kingdom,  was  vanquished  and  slain  in  battle  (981). 
The  Caliph  was  practically  a  prisoner  in  his  own  palace,  and 
was  encouraged  by  his  guardian  and  his  friends,  both  in  the 
harem  and  in  the  mosque,  to  devote  himself  entirely  to  a 
religious  life,  and  abandon  the  administration  of  his  kingdom 
to  the  Hdjib,'2  who  now  feeling  himself  entirely  secure  at  home, 
turned  his  arms  once  more  against  the  Christians  on  the 
northern  frontiers ;  and  it  was  on  his  return  to  Cordova,  after 

lf.e.,  Sobha,  or  Sobeyra,  the  mother  of  the  young  Caliph.     Dozy,  Histoire, 
iii. ,  204-7,  ar>d  P-  *77;  Renan,  Averroes,  etc.,  p.  15. 
2  Great  Chamberlain. 


981.]  THE  CALIPHATE  OF  CORDOVA.  175 

his  victories  at  Simancas  and  Zamora  in  981,  that  he  was 
greeted  with  the  well-known  title  of  Almanzor. 

In  984  he  compelled  Bermudo  II.  of  Leon,  to  become  his 
tributary.  In  985  he  turned  his  attention  to  Catalonia,  and 
after  a  brief  but  brilliant  campaign  he  made  himself  master  of 
Barcelona.  Two  years  later  (987)  Bermudo  having  dismissed 
his  Moslem  guards  and  thrown  off  his  allegiance  to  Cordova, 
Almanzor  marched  into  the  north-west,  and  after  sacking 
Coimbra,  overran  Leon,  entirely  destroyed  the  capital  city,  and 
compelled  the  Christian  king  to  take  refuge  in  the  wild  fastnesses 
of  the  Asturias. 

Meanwhile,  at  Cordova,  the  power  of  Almanzor  became  year 
by  year  more  complete.  Victorious  in  Africa  as  well  as  in  Spain, 
this  heaven-born  general  was  as  skilful  in  the  council-chamber 
as  he  was  in  the  field.  The  iron  hand  was  ever  clad  in  a  silken 
glove.  His  ambition  was  content  with  the  substance  of  power, 
and  with  the  gradual  assumption  of  any  external  show  of 
supreme  authority  in  the  State.  In  991  he  abandoned  the 
office  and  title  of  Hdjib  to  his  son,  Abdulmelik.  In  992  his 
seal  took  the  place  of  that  of  the  monarch  on  all  documents  of 
State.  In  993  he  assumed  the  royal  cognomen  of  Mowayad. 
Two  years  later  he  arrogated  to  himself  alone  the  title  of  Said  ; 
and  in  996  he  ventured  a  step  further,  and  assumed  the  title  of 
Mdlik  Karim,  or  king. 

But  in  996  Almanzor  was  at  length  confronted  by  a  rival. 
Sobeyra,  the  Navarrese  Sultana,  once  his  mistress,  was  now  his 
deadly  enemy,  and  she  had  determined  that  the  queen,  and  not 
the  minister,  should  reign  supreme  in  the  palace.  Almanzor 
was  to  be  destroyed.  Hakam,  a  feeble  and  effeminate  youth, 
was  easily  won  over  by  the  harem,  who  urged  him  to  show  the 
strength  that  he  was  so  far  from  possessing,  by  espousing  the 
cause  of  his  mother  against  his  guardian.  The  queen  was 
assured  of  victory.  The  treasury  was  at  the  disposal  of  the 
conspirators.  A  military  rival  was  secretly  summoned  from 
Africa.  The  minister  was  banished  from  the  royal  presence. 
The  palace  was  already  jubilant. 

But  the  palace  reckoned  without  Almanzor.  No  Wamba 
was  he,  tamely  to  accept  his  deposition ;  no  rude  soldier  to  be 
vanquished  by  the  wiles  of  a  woman.  Making  his  way  into 
Hakam's  chamber,  more  charming,  more  persuasive,  more 
resolute  than  ever,  Almanzor  prevailed  upon  the  Caliph  not 
only  to  restore  him  to  his  confidence,  but  to  empower  him,  by 
a  solemn  instrument  under  the  royal  sign  manual,  to  assume 


176  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

the  government  of  the  kingdom.  Sobeyra,  defeated  but  un- 
harmed by  her  victorious  and  generous  rival,  retired  to  a 
cloister ;  and  Almanzor,  contemptuously  leaving  to  one  of  his 
lieutenants  the  task  of  vanquishing  his  subsidised  rival  in  Africa, 
set  forth  upon  the  most  memorable  of  all  his  many  expeditions 
against  Christian  Spain  (3rd  July,  997). 

Making  his  way,  at  the  head  of  an  army,  through  Lusitania 
into  far  away  Gallicia,  he  took  Corunna,  and  destroyed  the 
great  Christian  Church  and  city  of  Santiago  de  Compostella,1 
the  most  sacred  spot  in  all  Spain,  and  sent  the  famous  bells 
which  had  called  so  many  Christian  pilgrims  to  prayer  and 
praise,  to  be  converted  into  lamps  to  illuminate  the  Moslem 
worshippers  in  the  mosque  at  Cordova. 

Five  years  later,  in  1002,  after  an  uncertain  battle,  Almanzor 
died  in  harness,  if  not  actually  in  the  ranks,  bowed  down  by 
mortal  disease,  unhurt  by  the  arm  of  the  enemy.2 

In  force  of  character,  in  power  of  persuasion,  in  tact,  in 
vigour,  in  that  capacity  for  command  that  is  only  found  in  noble 
natures,  Almanzor  has  no  rival  among  the  regents  of  Spain. 
His  rise  is  a  romance  ;  his  power  a  marvel ;  his  justice  a  proverb. 
He  was  a  brilliant  financier ;  a  successful  favourite ;  a  liberal 
patron ;  a  stern  disciplinarian ;  a  heaven-born  courtier ;  an 
accomplished  general ;  and  no  one  of  the  great  commanders  of 
Spain,  not  Gonsalvo  de  Aguilar  himself,  was  more  uniformly 
successful  in  the  field  than  this  lawyer's  clerk  of  Cordova. 

Hisham,  in  confinement  at  Az  Zahra,  was  still  the  titular 
Caliph  of  the  West,  but  Almanzor  was  succeeded  as  commander- 

1  According  to  the  Moslem  authorities,  he  spared  the  actual  shrine  of  the 
apostle  and  placed  a  guard  over  it  so  that  it  should  suffer  no  injury  at  the  hands 
of  any  of  his  soldiers.      According  to   the  Christian  view  the  holy   place  was 
miraculously  preserved  from  defilement  of  infidel  hands.     See  ante,  chapter  xv. 

2  His  end  was  hastened,  according  to  the  author  of  the  Historia  Compostellana 
and  other  Christian  chroniclers,  by  his  chagrin  at  the  incompleteness  of  a  victory — 
for  Almanzor  never  knew  defeat — at  Calatanazor,  near  Soria,  fourteen  leagues 
from  Medina  Celi,  when  he  was  carried  on  to  the  field  in  a  litter,  being  too  much 
broken  by  illness  to  be  able  to  mount  a  horse.     Pope  Leo  XIII. ,  in  his  Apostolic 
Letter  of  ist  November,  1884,  suggests,  at  least,  that  his  death  was  the  vengeance 
of  heaven,  on  account  of  his  pillage  of  Compostella.     Flprez,   however,   fairly 
points  out  that  Almanzor  lived  certainly  five,  and  perhaps  thirteen  years  after  the 
taking  of  Santiago,  Espana  Sagrada,  xix.,  7.     The  relief  of  the  Christians  at  his 
death  was  unspeakable  ;   and  is  well  expressed,  says  Mr.   Poole,  in  the  simple 
comment  of  the  Monkish  annalist,  ' '  In  1002  died  Almanzor,  and  was  buried  in 
hell,"  Moors  in  Spain,  p.  166. 

Calatanazor  (Dozy,  Recherches,  i. ,  211-221),  is  scarcely  a  more  authentic 
battle  than  Clavijo ;  and  seems  never  to  have  been  mentioned  by  any  Arab 
chronicler.  The  rise  of  the  legend,  as  traced  by  M.  Dozy,  ubi  supra,  is  suffi- 
ciently curious.  But  see  Gayangos,  ii.,  197. 


1008.]  THE  CALIPHATE  OF  CORDOVA.  177 

in-chief  and  virtual  ruler  of  the  country  by  his  favourite  son,  his 
companion-in-arms,  and  the  hero  of  an  African  campaign,  Abdul 
Malik  Almudaffar,  the  Hajib  of  991.  But  the  glory  of  Cordova 
had  departed.  Abdul  Malik  indeed  ruled  in  his  father's  place 
for  six  years.  But  on  his  death  in  1008,1  he  was  succeeded  by 
his  half-brother  Abdur  Rahman,  who,  as  the  son  of  a  Christian 
princess,  was  mistrusted  both  by  the  palace  and  by  the  people ; 
and  the  country  became  a  prey  to  anarchy. 

Cordova  was  sacked.  The  Caliph  was  imprisoned  ;  rebellions, 
poisonings,  crucifixions,  civil  war,  bigotry  and  scepticism,  the 
insolence  of  wealth,  the  insolence  of  power,  a  Mahdi  and  a 
Wahdi,  Christian  alliance,  Berber  domination,  Slav  mutineers, 
African  interference,  puppet  princes,  all  these  things  vexed  the 
Spanish  Moslems  for  thirty  disastrous  years ;  while  a  number  of 
weak  but  independent  sovereignties  arose  on  the  ruins  of  the 
great  Caliphate  of  the  West.2 

The  confused  annals  of  the  last  thirty  years  of  the  rule  of 
the  Ommeyades  are  mere  records  of  blood  and  of  shame,  a 
pitiful  story  of  departed  greatness. 

On  the  death  of  Hisham  II.,  the  Romulus  Augustulus  of 
Imperial  Cordova,  Moslem  Spain  was  divided  into  a  number  of 
petty  kingdoms,  Malaga,  Algeciras,  Cordova,  Seville,  Toledo, 
Badajoz,  Saragossa,  the  Balearic  Islands,  Valencia,  Murcia, 
Almeria,  and  Granada.  And  each  of  these  cities  and  kingdoms 
made  unceasing  war  one  upon  another. 

From  the  death  of  Hisham,  if  not  from  the  death  of 
Almanzor,  the  centre  of  interest  in  the  history  of  Spain  is 
shifted  from  Cordova  to  Castile. 

1  According  to  Dozy — Recherches,  i.,  200-211 — Almanzor  married  no  less  than 
two  royal  princesses  of  Christian  Spain  :  one  a  daughter  of  King  Sancho,  whether 
of  Castile  or  of  Navarre  is  uncertain,  about  985,  and  the  other  Princess  Teresa, 
daughter  of  Bermudo  II.  of  Leon,  in  993.    Abdur  Rahman,  the  successor  of  Abdul 
Malik,  was  probably  the  son  of  the  former  marriage. 

2  The  Caliphate  indeed  is  said  to  have  come  to  an  end  only  on  the  death  of 
Hisham  III.  in  1031 ;  but  the  sovereigns  from  the  death  of  Almanzor  had  little 
authority  and  no  merit. 


VOL.    I.  12 


178 


CHAPTER  XVII. 
THE  KINGDOM  OF  LEON. 

(910—1068.) 

THE  brief  reign  (912-914)  of  Garcia,  the  son  and  successor  of 
Alfonso  the  Great,  is  only  remarkable  for  the  transfer  of  the 
Christian  capital  from  Oviedo  to  Leon  ;  and  his  younger  brother, 
who  succeeded  him  at  his  death  as  Ordono  II.,  reigned  from 
914  to  921  as  king  of  Leon.  This  Ordono  abandoned  the 
peaceful  policy  of  his  greater  father,  and  undertook  many 
expeditions  with  varying  and  uncertain  success  against  the 
Arabs.  He  plundered  Merida,  in  917,  and  routed  the  Berbers 
in  southern  Spain  in  918.  Yet  three  years  later,  at  Val  de 
Junqueras  (921),  near  Pamplona,  the  Christians  suffered  dis- 
astrous defeat.  The  usual  rebellion  at  home  was  appeased  by 
the  treacherous  execution  or  murder  of  no  less  than  four  Counts 
of  Castile  in  922,  and  was  followed  by  the  king's  death  in  923. 

Of  Fruela  II.  (923-925),  Alfonso  IV.1  (925-930),  and  Ramiro 
II.  (930-950),  little  need  be  said,  but  that  they  lived  and  reigned 
as  kings  of  Leon. 

To  Ramiro,  however,  is  due,  at  least,  the  honour  of  an 
authentic  victory  over  the  Moslem  forces  of  the  great  Caliph, 
Abdur  Rahman  an  Nasir  (939),  at  Simancas,2  and  afterwards  in 
the  same  year  at  Alhandega.3 

Ramiro,  after  the  usual  rebellion,  abdicated,  in  950,  in  favour 
of  his  son  Ordono — who  had  married  Urraca,  daughter  of  the 
principal  rebel  of  the  day,  Fernan  Gonzalez,  Count  of  Castile — 
and  who  succeeded  his  father  as  Ordono  III. 

1  Alfonso  IV.  abdicated  in  favour  of  his  brother  Ramiro,  nth  October,  930; 
and  retired,  having  first  been  fraternally  exoculated,  into  the  monastery  of  Sahagun 
(Dozy,  Recherches,  i.,  165). 

2  As  to  the  celebrated  battle  of  Simancas,  see  Lafuente,  iii.  ,437,  and  iv.,  15,  16. 

3  Dozy,  Recherches,  i.,  181-186,  discusses,  with  his  usual  erudition  and  acute- 
ness,  the  situation  of  Alhandega,  the  second  battle   of  this  well-nigh  forgotten 
campaign — victoire  n  Iclatante  qu'on  en  par  la  au  fond  de  FAllemagne  aussi  bien 
que  dans  les  pays  ks  plus  recults  de  F  Orient, 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  LEON.  179 

But  decapitation  was  a  far  more  certain  way  of  suppressing 
rebellion  than  matrimony ;  and  Fernan  Gonzalez  lived  to 
intrigue  against  his  daughter  and  her  royal  husband  in  favour 
of  Sancha,  a  younger  brother  of  the  king.  Ordoao,  however, 
held  his  own  against  his  brother,  and  revenged  himself  on  his 
father-in-law,  by  repudiating  his  wife  ;  who,  with  her  personal 
and  family  grievances,  was  promptly  acquired  by  Sancho,  who 
succeeded,  on  his  brother's  death,  to  the  crown  of  which  he  had 
failed  to  possess  himself  by  force.  But  even  as  a  legitimate 
sovereign,  Sancho,  surnamed  the  Fat,  was  not  allowed  to  reign 
in  peace.  He  was  driven  from  his  kingdom  by  that  most 
versatile  rebel,  Count  Fernan  Gonzalez,  and  sought  refuge  at 
the  court  of  his  uncle  Garcia  of  Navarre  at  Pamplona.  Thence, 
in  company  with  Garcia,  and  his  mother  Theuda,  he  journeyed 
to  the  court  of  the  Caliph  at  Cordova,  where  the  distinguished 
visitors  were  received  with  great  show  of  welcome  by  Abdur 
Rahman  at  Az  Zahra ;  and  where  Hasdai,  the  Jew,  the  most 
celebrated  physician  of  the  day,  succeeded  in  completely  curing 
Sancho  of  the  distressing  malady  —  a  morbid  and  painful 
corpulency — which  incapacitated  him  from  the  active  discharge 
of  his  royal  duties. 

The  study  and  practice  of  medicine  were  alike  disregarded 
by  the  rude  dwellers  in  Leon ;  but  the  Cordovan  doctor,  sur- 
passing in  his  success,  if  not  in  his  skill,  the  most  celebrated 
physicians  of  the  present  day,  contrived  to  reduce  the  king's 
overgrown  bulk  to  normal  proportions,  and  restored  him  to  his 
former  activity  and  vigour,  both  of  body  and  mind.  Nor  was 
the  skill  of  Hasdai  confined  to  the  practice  of  medicine.  An 
accomplished  diplomatist,  he  negotiated  a  treaty  with  his 
Christian  patient,  by  which  Sancho  bound  himself  to  give  up 
ten  frontier  fortresses  to  the  Caliph,  on  his  restoration  to  the 
crown  of  Leon,  while  Don  Garcia  and  Dona  Theuda  undertook 
to  invade  Castile  in  order  to  divert  the  attention  of  the  common 
foe,  the  ever  ready  Fernan  Gonzalez.1 

In  due  time  Sancho,  no  longer  the  fat,  but  the  hale,  returned 
to  Leon  at  the  head  of  a  Moslem  army,  placed  at  his  disposal 
by  his  noble  host  at  Cordova,  drove  out  the  usurper,  Ordono  the 
Bad,  and  reigned  in  peace  in  his  Christian  dominions.  The  visit 
of  this  dispossessed  Ordono  to  the  court  of  the  Caliph  Hakam  at 
Cordova,  in  962,  is  an  interesting  specimen  of  the  international 
politics  or  policy  of  his  age  and  country.2 

1  Dozy,  Histoire,  iii.,  8089. 

3  See  Gayangos,  vol.  ii. ,  lib.  vi.,  cap.  vi. 


180  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

As  Sancho  had  recovered  his  throne  by  the  aid  of  Abdur 
Rahman,  so  Ordono  sought  to  dethrone  him  and  make  good 
his  own  pretensions  by  the  aid  of  Hakam.  The  Caliph,  already 
harassed  by  Fernan  Gonzalez,  and  doubting  the  honesty  of  King 
Sancho,  was  not  ill-pleased  to  have  another  pretender  in  hand, 
and  OrdoSo  the  Bad  l  was  invited  to  Cordova,  and  received  by 
Hakam  in  the  palace  at  Az  Zahra  with  the  utmost  pomp  and 
display.  The  Leonese  prince  craved  in  humble  language  the 
assistance  of  the  Moslem,  and  professed  himself  his  devoted 
friend,  ally  and  vassal ;  and  he  was  permitted  to  remain  at  the 
court  of  Hakam,  to  await  the  issue  of  events  in  the  north. 
Some  few  days  afterwards  a  treaty  was  solemnly  signed  between 
the  Caliph  and  the  Pretender,  and  once  more  the  glories  of  Az 
Zahra  were  displayed  to  the  eyes  of  the  astonished  barbarian 
from  Leon. 

Nor  did  the  fame  of  these  splendid  ceremonies  fail  to  reach 
Sancho  in  the  north-west  ;  and  his  spirit  of  independence  was 
considerably  cooled  by  the  prospect  of  a  Moslem  army,  headed 
by  his  cousin  Ordono,  making  its  appearance  before  his  ill- 
defended  frontiers.  The  manoeuvre  was  sufficiently  familiar ; 
and  the  reigning  monarch  lost  no  time  in  disassociating  him- 
self from  the  hostile  proceedings  of  Fernan  Gonzalez ;  and 
sending  an  important  embassy  to  Hakam  at  Cordova,  to  assure 
him  of  his  unwavering  loyalty,  he  hastened  to  announce  his 
readiness  to  carry  out  to  the  letter  all  the  provisions  of  his 
recent  treaty  with  the  Caliph.  Hakam  was  satisfied.  Ordono 
languished  disregarded  at  Cordova,  despised  alike  by  Moslem 
and  Christian,  but  unharmed  and  in  safety  as  the  guest  of 
the  Arab.  Sancho  reigned  in  peace  until  967,  when  he  was 
poisoned  by  the  rebel  count  of  the  day,  Sanchez  of  Gallicia. 
His  son,  who  was  known  as  Ramiro  III.,  an  unwise  and  incap- 
able monarch,  reigned  at  Leon  from  967  to  982,  without 
extending  the  possessions  or  the  influence  of  the  Christians  in 
Spain ;  and  Bermudo  II.,  who  usurped  the  throne,  was  no 
match  for  the  fiery  Almanzor,  who  ravaged  his  kingdom,  took 
possession  of  his  capital,  and  compelled  the  Christian  court  to 
take  refuge  in  the  wild  mountains  of  the  Asturias,  and  once 
more  to  pay  tribute  to  the  Moslem  at  Cordova. 

Bermudo  died  in  999  ;  and  on  the  death  of  Almanzor, 
three  years  later,  the  Christian  fortunes  under  the  young 

1  Ordono  IV.  was  a  son  of  the  Alfonso  IV.  who  had  abdicated  in  favour  of  his 
brother  Bermudo. — H. 


967.]  THE  KINGDOM  OF  LEON.  181 

Alfonso  V.,  who  had  succeeded  his  father  Bermudo,  at  the 
age  of  only  five,  began  to  mend.1  Cordova  was  given  up  to 
anarchy.  The  Moslem  troops  retired  from  northern  Spain. 
Leon  became  once  more  the  abode  of  the  king  and  his  court, 
and  though  Alfonso  gave  his  sister  in  marriage  to  Mohammed 
an  Amir  or  Vali  of  Toledo,  he  extended  his  Christian  dominion  in 
more  than  one  foray  against  the  declining  power  of  the  Moslem.2 

Alfonso  V.,  who  is  known  in  Spanish  history  as  the  Restorer 
of  Leon,  sought  to  consolidate  his  own  power,  as  he  certainly 
exalted  that  of  his  clergy,  by  the  summoning  of  a  Council, 
after  the  manner  of  the  Visigothic  Councils  of  Toledo.  The 
Council  met  at  the  city  of  Leon  on  the  1st  of  August,  1020,  in 
the  Cathedral  Church  of  St.  Mary.3  The  King  and  his  Queen 
Elvira  presided,  and  all  the  bishops  and  the  principal  abbots 
and  nobles  of  the  kingdom  took  their  seats  in  the  assembly. 
And  if  there  was  no  Leander,  nor  Isidore,  nor  Julian  to  impose 
his  will  upon  King  or  Council,  the  interests  of  the  Church 
were  not  entirely  overlooked.  Of  the  fifty-eight  decrees  and 
canons  of  this  Council,  the  first  seventeen  relate  exclusively  to 
matters  ecclesiastical ;  the  next  twenty  are  laws  for  the  govern- 
ment of  the  kingdom,  the  remaining  thirty-one  are  municipal 
ordinances  for  the  city  of  Leon. 

But  Alfonso  V.  was  not  exempted  from  the  usual  rebellions, 
and  marriages,  and  assassinations,  and  executions,  which  con- 
stituted the  politics  of  the  day.  Garcia,  the  last  Count  of 
Castile,  was  treacherously  slain  in  1026  J  and  Alfonso  was 
himself  more  honourably  killed  in  an  attack  upon  a  Moslem 
town  in  Lusitania  in  1027. 

The  life  of  Fernan  Gonzalez,  the  Warwick  of  mediaeval 
Spain,  is  almost  as  much  overlaid  with  romantic  legends  as 
that  of  Roderic  or  Roland.4  The  lives  and  deeds  of  his 

1  Romey,  Hist.  (CEspagne,  torn,  iv.,  pp.  451-2. 

2  There  was  an  invasion  of  the  Northmen  in  966-971,  and  again  about  the 
year  1008,  when  the  town  of  Tuy,  at  the  mouth  of  the  Minho,  was  destroyed. 

In  1018  Catalonia  was  ravaged  by  the  French  Normans,  under  one  Roger ; 
and  the  taking  of  Barbastro,  in  Sobrarbe,  from  the  Moslems  in  1064,  by  the  same 
bold  adventurer,  was  accompanied  by  the  most  terrible  atrocities.  The  unhappy 
town  was  recovered  in  the  course  of  the  next  year  by  the  Arabs  under  Moctadi, 
of  Saragossa,  the  first  patron  of  the  Cid ;  and  was  once  more  taken  by  Peter  of 
Aragon  in  not,  after  which  it  remained  for  ever  in  the  power  of  the  Christians. 
For  an  account  of  all  these  expeditions,  see  Dozy,  Rccherches,  etc.,  vol.  i.,  300-315, 
and  388-390. 

*  As  to  this  most  interesting  assembly — the  first  of  the  great  Councils  of  Spain 
after  the  fall  of  the  Visigoths — see  post,  chapter  xxxiii.,  Constitutional  History. 

4  The  monumental  tomb  at  Burgos  has  "A  Fernan  Gonzalez,  libertador  de 
Castilla,  el  mas  excelente  General  de  tie  tiemfo".  Cf.  Esfana  Sagrada,  xxvi, ; 


182  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

ancestors,  and  the  origin  of  his  ever-celebrated  County  of 
Castile,  are  involved  in  the  utmost  confusion  and  obscurity ; 
but  Fernan  Gonzalez  himself  is  at  least  a  historical  personage. 
He  married  Sancha,  daughter  of  Sancho  Abarca  of  Navarre, 
and  their  son,  Garcia  Fernandez,  succeeded  him  as  hereditary 
Count  of  Castile. 

As  early  as  the  year  905,  Sancho,  a  Christian  chief  of  whose 
ancestors  and  predecessors  much  has  been  written,  much  sur- 
mised, and  nothing  is  certainly  known,  was  king  or  ruler  of 
the  little  border  state  of  Navarre.  A  prudent,  as  well  as  a 
warlike  sovereign,  he  fortified  his  capital  city  of  Pamplona  ;  and 
when  his  son,  in  alliance  with  Ordono  II.  of  Leon,  was  defeated 
by  the  Moslems  at  Val  de  Junquera,  the  Navarrese  not  only 
made  good  their  retreat  to  that  celebrated  fortress,  but  suc- 
ceeded in  course  of  a  short  time  in  driving  the  Moslem  out  of 
their  country.  The  grandson  of  this  successful  general  was 
Sancho  El  Mayor — or  the  Great — the  most  powerful  of  the 
Christian  princes  in  Spain  (970-1035).  Besides  Navarre  and 
Sobrarbe  he  held  the  lordship  of  Aragon ;  in  1026,  in  right  of 
his  wife,  Muiia  Elvira,  he  became  King  or  Count  of  Castile ; 
while  his  successful  interference  in  the  affairs  of  Leon  made 
him  virtual  master  of  all  Christian  Spain  outside  the  limits  of 
the  quasi-Frankish  County  of  Catalonia. 

Sancho  the  Great  died  in  1035,  when  his  territories  were 
divided  according  to  his  will,1  among  his  four  sons  ;  and  from 
this  time  forth  the  history  of  Navarre  so  far  as  it  is  not  included 
in  the  history  of  Aragon,  of  Castile,  and  of  France,  is  a  confused 
and  dreary  record  of  family  quarrels,  of  plots  and  assassinations, 
of  uncertain  alliances,  of  broken  treaties.  The  marriage  of  the 
Princess  Berengaria  with  Richard  I.  of  England,  in  1191,  failed 
to  secure  for  Sancho  V.  the  influence  that  he  had  hoped  to 
secure  ;  and  with  Sancho  VI.,2  who  died  in  1234,  the  male  line 
of  the  house  of  Sancho  Iniguez  or  Inigo,  the  founder  of  Navarre, 
was  extinct.  A  French  prince  was  chosen  by  the  Navarrese  to 
rule  over  them.  And  from  the  death  of  Sancho  VI.  in  1234, 
to  the  death  of  Charles  the  Bad,  in  1387—150  years— the 
history  of  Navarre  is  that  of  France. 

Lafuente,  iii. ,  494-501,  and  iv. ,  pp.  19,  20.  See  also  a  Disertacion  by  Don  F. 
Benito  Montego,  printed  in  the  Mem.  of  the  Real  Acad,  de  Hist. ,  iii. ,  254-317 ; 
and  a  judicious  summary  in  Romey,  Hist.  d'Espagne,  torn,  iv.,  pp.  286-295. 

1  The  division  was  as  follows  :  Navarre  and  Biscay  to  his  eldest  son  Garcia  ; 
Castile  to  Ferdinand  ;  Ribagorza  to  Gonzalo  ;  Aragon  to  Ramiro. 

2  He  left  the  kingdom  to  James  of  Aragon.     But  the  Navarrese  elected  a 
French  prince  Thibault,  Count  of  Champagne,  to  be  their  ruler  in  his  stead  (1236). 


1058.]  THE  KINGDOM  OF  LEON.  183 

Bermudo  III.,  who  succeeded  on  the  death  of  his  father, 
Alfonso  V.,  in  1027,  as  King  of  Leon,  was  at  once  attacked  by 
his  powerful  neighbours,  and  the  little  states  were  distracted  by 
family  quarrels  and  civil  war  until  the  death  of  Bermudo  in 
battle,  in  1037,  when  the  male  line  of  the  house  of  Leon  became 
extinct.  Ferdinand  I.,  King  of  Castile,  the  second  son  of 
Sancho  the  Great,  then  succeeded  to  the  kingdom  of  Leon,  and 
became,  after  over  twenty  years  of  civil  war  (1058),  the  most 
powerful  monarch  in  all  Spain.  The  Moslems  offered  but  an 
uncertain  and  half-hearted  resistance  to  his  arms.  For  while 
the  Christians  were  growing  strong,  the  Moslem  Empire  was 
already  declining  to  its  fall.  And  the  decay  of  the  Caliphate 
of  Cordova,  and  the  internal  dissensions  of  the  Arabs,  enabled 
Ferdinand  not  only  to  recover  all  the  territory  that  had  been 
conquered  by  Almanzor,  but  to  pursue  the  disheartened  Moslem 
as  far  as  Valencia,  Toledo  and  Coimbra.  Ferdinand  confirmed 
the  Fueros  of  Alfonso  V.,  and  summoned  a  Council  at  Coyanza 
(Valencia  de  Don  Juan),  over  which,  with  his  Queen  Sancha, 
he  presided  in  1050.  All  the  bishops  and  abbots,  together  with 
a  certain  number  of  lay  nobles  thus  assembled  ad  restauralionem 
nostrce  Chrislianitalis,  proceeded  to  make  decrees  or  canons,  after 
the  manner  of  the  Councils  of  Toledo,  of  which  the  first  seven 
were  devoted  to  matters  ecclesiastical,  and  the  remainder  con- 
nected with  the  civil  government  of  the  country.1  With 
territories  thus  recovered  and  augmented,  with  cities  restored 
and  fortified,  Ferdinand  determined  to  excel  all  his  Christian 
predecessors,  and  to  emulate  the  noble  example  of  the  Arab, 
by  enriching  his  dominion,  not  with  treasures  of  art  or  litera- 
ture, with  schools,  with  palaces,  with  manuscripts — but  with 
the  bones  of  as  many  martyrs  as  he  could  collect. 

An  army  was  raised  for  this  sacred  purpose,  and  the  country 
of  the  Moors  was  once  more  invaded  and  harried  by  the  Christian 
arms.  Ibn  Obeid  of  Seville,  learning  the  objects  of  the  invasion, 
offered  Ferdinand  every  facility  for  research  in  his  city ;  and  a 
solemn  Commission  of  bishops  and  nobles  were  admitted  within 
the  walls  to  seek  the  body  of  Justus,  one  of  the  martyrs  of 
Diocletian.  But  in  spite  of  all  the  diligence  of  the  Christians, 
and  all  the  good  will  of  the  Arabs,  the  sacred  remains  could 
nowhere  be  found.  At  length  the  spirit  of  Saint  Isidore 
removed  the  difficulty  by  appearing  miraculously  before  the 
Commission,  and  offering  his  own  bones  in  the  place  of  those  of 

1  The  defeat  and  death  of  the  disloyal  invader,  Garcia  Sancho  of  Navarre,  at 
Atapuerca,  1054,  helped  to  consolidate  the  power  of  Ferdinand. 


184  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

Justus,  which  were  destined,  said  he,  to  remain  untouched  at 
Seville.  The  Commission  was  satisfied.  And  the  body  of  the 
great  metropolitan  "fragrant  with  balsamic  odours"  was  im- 
mediately removed  to  the  Church  of  St.  John  the  Baptist 1  at 
Leon — to  the  great  satisfaction  of  both  Christians  and  Moors, 
in  1063. 

It  was  on  the  occasion  of  the  return  of  these  blessed  relics 
to  the  Christian  capital  that  Ferdinand  proclaimed  the  future 
division  of  his  kingdom.  For  after  all  the  success  that  had 
attended  the  union  of  the  dominions  of  Leon  and  Castile 
under  the  sole  authority  of  Ferdinand,  who  rather  perhaps  for 
his  sanctity  than  for  his  wisdom  had  earned  the  title  of  the 
Great,  the  king  made  the  same  grievous  mistake  that  his 
father  had  done  before  him,  in  dividing  his  united  territories 
at  his  death  (1065)  among  his  sons  and  daughters.  To  Sancho, 
the  eldest  son,  he  left  the  kingdom  of  Castile  ;  to  Alfonso, 
Leon  and  the  Asturias ;  to  Garcia,  Gallicia  ;  to  his  younger 
daughter  Elvira,  the  town  and  district  of  Toro  ;  and  to  her 
elder  sister  Urraca,  the  famous  border  city  of  Zamora,  the  most 
debatable  land  in  all  Spain,  and  a  strange  heritage  for  a  young 
lady.  Thus  Castile  and  Leon  were  once  more  separated  ;  and 
the  usual  civil  wars  and  family  intrigues  naturally  followed. 
Alfonso,  though  not  at  first  the  most  successful,  survived  all 
his  rivals,  and  was  at  length  proclaimed  King  of  Leon  and 
Castile. 

But  the  successes  and  glories  of  Alfonso  VI.,  such  as  they 
were,  are  overshadowed  by  the  prowess  of  a  Castilian  hero, 
whose  exploits  form  one  of  the  most  favourite  chapters  in  the 
national  history  of  Spain — the  Christian  knight  with  the  Moslem 
title — Ruy  Diaz,  THE  CID. 

1  The  church  was  dedicated  of  course  to  Saint  Isidore.     Lafuente,  iii. ,  204-208. 


185 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 
THE  CID. 

(1040—1099.) 
I. 

Two  years  before  William  of  Normandy  landed  at  Hastings,  a 
Castilian  knight,  a  youth  who  had  already  won  for  himself  the 
proud  title  of  The  Challenger,  from  his  reckless  bravery  and  his 
success  in  single  combat,1  is  found  leading  the  royal  armies  of 
Sancho  of  Castile  against  the  enemy.  The  knight  was  Ruy 
Diaz  de  Bivar.'2  The  enemy  was  Alfonso  VI.  of  Leon,  the 
brother  of  Sancho,  who  was  endeavouring  to  re-unite  the  in- 
heritance divided  by  his  father,  in  the  good  old  mediaeval 
fashion  in  Spain. 

Of  noble  birth  and  parentage,  a  Castilian  of  the  Castilians, 
Roderic  or  Ruy  Diaz  was  born  at  Bivar,  near  Burgos,  about  the 
year  1040.  His  position  in  the  army  of  Sancho  was  that  of 
Alferez,  in  title  the  standard-bearer,  in  effect  the  major-general 
or  second  in  command. 

For  seven  years  Alfonso  of  Leon  and  Sancho  of  Castile  had 
been  at  war ;  each  seeking  to  destroy  the  other ;  and  at  length 
at  Golbejara,  near  Carrion,  on  the  eve  of  what  promised  to  be  a 
decisive  battle,  a  solemn  engagement  was  entered  into  by  the 
brothers  that  whichever  of  the  two  were  worsted  in  the  en- 
counter should  resign  his  kingdom  to  the  other  without  further 
bloodshed.  The  Castilians,  in  spite  of  Sancho  and  his  famous 
standard-bearer,  were  defeated  at  Golbejara ;  and  Alfonso  of 

1  In  a  battle  between  Sancho  of  Castile  and  Sancho  of  Navarre.    See  Dozy, 
Recherches,  ii. ,  pp.  in,  112. 

2  According  to  the  ballad,  Ese  buen  Diego  Lainez,  he  was  the  illegitimate  son 
of  Diego  Lainez.     But  he  was  more  probably  of  honourable  birth,  and  seventh  in 
direct  descent  from  the  Castilian  Nuno  Rasura,  who  was  also  the  ancestor  of  the 
royal  house  of  Castile.    The  ballad  in  question  is  judged  by  Mr.  Ormsby  to  be  of 
no  greater  antiquity  than  the  sixteenth  century. 


186  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

Leon,  foolishly  trusting  his  brother's  word,  took  no  heed  to 
improve  his  victory,  and  his  unsuspecting  army  was  overwhelmed 
the  next  day  by  the  Castilian  troops  under  Ruy  Diaz  de  Bivar, 
the  author  of  this  exceedingly  characteristic,  if  not  entirely 
authentic,  piece  of  treachery. 

It  is  scarcely  surprising  that  the  Cid  was  not  trusted  by 
Alfonso  of  Leon,  when  he,  in  his  turn,  succeeded  to  [the  crown 
of  Castile.  But  for  the  moment  Alfonso  was  not  only  deprived 
of  his  throne  and  of  his  liberty  by  his  more  successful  brother, 
but  he  was  compelled  to  purchase  his  life  by  a  promise  to  enter 
the  monastery  of  Sahagun.1  Disregarding  this  vow,  and  making 
good  his  escape  to  Toledo,  the  royal  refugee  was  received  with 
the  usual  Arab  hospitality  by  El  Mamun,  the  Moslem  luler  of 
the  city,  who  sheltered  and  entertained  him,  as  he  himself 
admitted,  "  like  a  son  ". 

Sancho  meanwhile  had  turned  his  arms  against  his  brother 
Garcia,  whom  he  dispossessed  of  his  territories ;  against  his 
sister  Elvira,  who  met  with  a  similar  fate,  and,  lastly,  against 
his  sister  Urraca,  who  withstood  him  boldly  in  her  city  of 
Zamora.  And  not  only  did  this  time-honoured  fortress  resist 
the  attack  of  Sancho  and  his  wily  standard-bearer,  but  the  king 
was  slain  outside  the  walls  of  the  city  by  one  of  his  sister's 
knights.  Alfonso  then  not  only  recovered  his  own  kingdom  of 
Leon,  but,  swearing  perpetual  friendship  with  El  Mamun  of 
Toledo,  he  was  elected  King  of  Castile  by  the  Commons  as- 
sembled at  Burgos  ;  and  the  defeated  refugee  of  1071  found 
himself,  in  less  than  two  years,  the  greatest  prince  in  Christian 
Spain  ;  Alfonso  VI.  of  Leon  and  of  Castile  2 

Yet  the  legend  runs  that  Alfonso  was  compelled  to  undergo 
the  indignity  of  a  public  examination,  and  a  triple  oath  before 
the  knights  and  nobles  assembled  at  Burgos,  to  the  effect  that 
he  had  had  no  share  in  the  murder  of  King  Sancho ;  and  the 
oath  was  administered  by  Ruy  Diaz  of  Bivar,  the  companion  in 
arms  of  the  Castilian  king,  sometime  the  faithless  enemy  of 
Carrion,  but  now  the  acknowledged  leader  of  the  Castilian 
nobility. 

1  According  to  another  story,  it  was  owing  to  the  intercession  of  Urraca  that 
he  was  allowed  to  go  into  banishment  at  Toledo.    (Most  of  the  chronicles  make  him 
escape  to  Moorish  Toledo  from  the  monastery  into  which,  on  the  intercession  of 
Urraca,  he  was  permitted  to  retire. — H.).  «. 

2  There  is  no  evidence,  says  Mr.   Ormsby,  for   this   transaction  except   the 
ballads  and  the  account  in  the  Cronica,  which  is  certainly  taken  from  them.     If 
there  were  any  true  historical  foundation  for  the  story,  it  would  have  been  referred 
to  in  the  Genealogia  and  the  Gesta, 


1071.]  THE  CID.  187 

Alfonso  of  Leon  may  have  forgiven  the  treachery  in  the 
field,  but  he  never  forgot  the  insult  in  the  Council.  He  re- 
strained his  indignation,  however,  and  was  even  induced  by 
reasons  of  State  to  grant  to  the  bold  Castilian  lord  the  hand  of 
his  cousin  Ximena l  in  marriage,  and  to  entrust  him  with  the 
command  of  an  expedition  into  Andalusia.  But  the  royal  favour 
was  of  brief  duration  ;  and  in  1081  we  find  that  Roderic,  partly 
owing  to  the  intrigues  of  Garcia  Ordonez,  and  partly  to  the 
enduring  enmity  of  the  king,  was  banished  from  the  Christian 
dominions. 

Of  all  the  petty  sovereignties  that  came  into  existence  on 
the  breaking  up  of  the  Ommeyad  Caliphate  of  Cordova,  that  of 
Moctadir,  the  chief  of  the  Ben-i-hud  of  Saragossa,  was  the  most 
powerful  in  northern  or  central  Spain ;  and  at  the  Moslem 
court  of  Saragossa,  Ruy  Diaz  with  his  fame  and  his  followers, 
was  warmly  welcomed  (1081)  by  Moctadir  as  a  Said  or  Cid — a 
lord  or  leader  of  the  Arabs.'2  He  had  been  driven  out  of 
Castile  by  Alfonso.  He  found  a  home  and  honourable  command 
at  Saragossa.  So  long  as  he  could  make  war  upon  his  neigh- 
bours, all  countries  were  alike  to  Roderic  of  Bivar.  Nor  was  it 
long  before  his  prowess  brought  honour  and  profit  to  Moctadir, 
or,  rather,  to  his  son  and  successor,  Motamin.3 

Ramon  Berenguer  III.,  Count  of  Barcelona,  was  engaged, 
like  other  Christian  princes  of  his  time,  in  chronic  warfare  with 
his  Moslem  neighbours ;  and  Motamin,  with  his  Castilian  Cid, 
marching  against  the  Catalans,  defeated  the  Christians  with 
great  slaughter  at  Almenara,  near  Lerida,  and  broii^ht  Ramon 
Berenguer  a  prisoner  to  Saragossa  (1081),  where  .MU  victorious 

1  July,  1074.     Ximena  Diaz — I  maintain  the  old  spelling — was  a  daughter  of 
D.  Diego  Rodriguez  of  Oviedo,  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  Leonese  nobility.     The 
story   of  the   marriage  of    Ruy   Diaz   with    Ximena   Gormaz,    the   Chimene    of 
Corneille,  after  having  slain  her  father,  D.  Gomez  de  Gormaz,  "  Lozana,"  as  the 
ballads  call  him,  in  single  combat,  is  generally  admitted  at  the  present  day  to  be 
apocryphal. 

2  Moctadir  died  within  a  few  months  of  the  engagement  of  the  Cid,  1081. 

3  It  is  sufficiently  remarkable  that  while  Ruy  Diaz  has  ever  been  known  to 
Christian  writers  by  his  Arab  title  of  the  Cid  (Said),  he  was  spoken  of  by  his  Mos- 
lem contemporaries  and  chroniclers  under  his  Spanish  surname  of  the  Campeador 
(el  Gdnbitur).     The  title  Campeador,  which  may  be  translated  Challenger,  has 
nothing  to  do  with  the  Latin  Campus  :  but  is  derived  from  the  Teutonic  Champh 
=  a  single  combat.      The  verb  Kamfjan   is  equivalent  to — to  do  battle ;    and 
Kamfjo,  Anglo-Saxon  C&mpa  =  a  gladiator,  athlete  or  combatant.      Hence  the 
mediaeval  Latin  words  campeare,  whence  Latin  campeator,  and  Spanish  Campeador, 
a  challenger ;  as  David  challenged  Goliath  to  single  combat  in  the  face  of  two 
contending  armies,  according  to  a  well-known  oriental  custom.     The  Arabic  word 
for  a  campeador  is  mobdrit.     See  authorities  cited  by  Dozy,  Kecherches,  ii.,  65,  66, 
and  id.,  pp.  254-257. 


188  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

Cid  was  loaded  with  presents  by  the  grateful  Motamin,  and 
invested  with  an  authority  in  the  kingdom  subordinate  only  to 
that  of  the  king  himself.  Two  years  later  (1083)  an  expedition 
was  undertaken  by  the  Moslems  under  Roderic,  against  their 
Christian  neighbours  in  Aragon.  King  Sancho  Ramirez  was 
completely  defeated  by  the  Castilian  champion,  who  returned 
once  more  to  Saragossa  loaded  with  booty  and  renown.  In 
1084  the  Cid  seems  to  have  paid  a  friendly  visit  to  the  court  of 
Alfonso  VI.  But  although  he  was  apparently  well  received,  he 
suspected  treachery,  and,  returning  to  the  court  of  the  Moslem, 
once  more  took  service  under  the  delighted  Motamin.  His 
next  campaign,  undertaken  in  the  following  year,  was  not 
against  any  Christian  power,  but  against  the  hostile  Moslems  of 
northern  Valencia,  and  was  crowned  with  the  usual  success. 
Motamin  died  in  1085,  but  the  Cid  remained  in  the  service  of 
his  son  and  successor,  Mostain,  fighting  against  Christian  and 
Moslem  as  occasion  offered,  partly  for  the  King  of  Saragossa, 
but  chiefly  for  the  personal  advantage  of  Ruy  Diaz  of  Bivar. 
A  stranger  national  hero  it  is  hard  to  imagine !  Nor  were  his 
subsequent  proceedings  in  any  degree  less  strange. 

Al  Mamun,  the  host  and  protector  of  Alfonso  VI.,  had  died 
in  1075,  leaving  his  grandson,  Cadir,  to  succeed  him  as  sovereign 
of  Toledo.  Abdulaziz,  the  viceroy  of  the  subject  city  of  Valencia, 
took  advantage  of  the  weakness  of  the  young  prince  to  declare 
himself  independent,  and  placing  himself  under  the  protection 
of  the  Christians,  undertook  to  pay  a  large  subsidy  to  Alfonso 
VI.  in  return  for  his  recognition  and  support.1  The  subsidy 
was  punctually  paid,  and,  in  spite  of  a  present  of  no  less  than 
100,000  pieces  of  gold  handed  over  by  Moctadir  of  Saragossa 
to  Alfonso  as  the  price  of  Valencia,  Abdulaziz  retained  his  hold 
of  the  city  until  his  death  in  1085.  On  this,  numerous  pre- 
tenders to  the  government  immediately  arose,  including  Moc- 
tadir of  Saragossa,  a  purchaser  for  value,  and  the  two  sons  of 
Abdulaziz  ;  while  Alfonso  took  advantage  of  the  confusion  that 
ensued  to  persuade  Cadir  to  surrender  Toledo,  much  coveted 
by  the  Christian  king,  and  to  accept,  or  more  exactly  to  retain, 
for  himself  the  sovereignty  of  Valencia,  under  the  humiliating 
protection  of  Castile.  Alfonso  cared  nothing  that  Toledo  was 
the  inheritance  of  his  youthful  ally,  the  home  of  his  old  pro- 
tector, when  he  himself  was  a  hunted  refugee.  He  cared 
nothing  that  the  Valencians  were  hostile  to  Cadir,  and  that 

1  Ibn  Bassam,  MS.  Gotha,  fol.  10,  v.  ;  apud,  Dozy,  Recherches,  ii.,  124. 


1085.]  THE  CID.  189 

powerful  neighbours  were  prepared  to  dispute  his  possession. 
He  cared  nothing  that  Moctadir,  who  had  actually  purchased 
the  city  from  Alfonso  himself,  was  on  the  way  to  make  good 
his  claim.  A  treaty  was  forced  upon  Cadir  by  which  Toledo 
was  surrendered  to  Alfonso  VI.  (1085),  and  the  Christian  king 
was  bound  to  place  and  maintain  the  unhappy  prince  in  pos- 
session of  his  own  subordinate  city  of  Valencia. 

Toledo  thus  became  the  capital  of  Christian  Spain  ;  and  the 
evicted  sovereign,  escorted  by  a  large  force  of  Castilian  troops 
under  Alvar  Fanez,1  made  his  sad  and  solemn  entry  into 
Valencia,  despised  at  once  by  the  citizens  of  Toledo,  whom  he 
had  abandoned  to  the  Christian  sovereign,  and  by  the  citizens 
of  Valencia,  where  his  power  was  maintained  by  Christian 
lances.  And  costly  indeed  was  this  Christian  maintenance. 
Six  hundred  pieces  of  gold  are  said  to  have  been  the  daily  allow- 
ance of  the  army  of  Castilian  mercenaries  ;  and  the  taxes  that 
were  necessitated  by  their  presence  only  added  to  the  unpopu- 
larity of  the  Government.  Many  of  Cadir's  Moslem  subjects 
fled  from  the  city  ;  and  their  place  was  taken  by  his  Christian 
supporters  or  pensioners,  whose  rapacity  was,  if  possible,  ex- 
ceeded by  their  cruelty.2  But  the  coming  of  the  Almoravides 
from  Africa  gave  a  new  turn  to  the  fortunes  of  the  city.  Alvar 
Fanez  and  his  knights  were  recalled  by  Alfonso,  and  after  the 
defeat  of  the  Christians  at  Zalaca  near  Badajoz  in  October  1086, 
Cadir  found  himself  threatened  with  immediate  expulsion  by 
his  own  citizens,  supported  by  Mondhir  of  Lerida,  the  uncle  of 
Mostain  of  Saragossa.  In  this  difficulty  he  once  more  sought 
the  protection  of  Christian  lances,  and  applied  for  aid  to  the 
Cid,  who  immediately  advanced  on  Valencia. 

An  intriguer  at  all  times  and  places,  Roderic  promised  his 
support  to  Cadir  in  return  for  admission  within  the  walls.  He 
entered  into  a  formal  treaty  with  Mostain  that  the  city  should 
be  his,  if  all  the  booty  were  handed  over  to  the  Campeador ; 
and  he  sent  envoys  to  Alfonso  to  assure  him  that  in  all  these 

1A  cousin  of  the  Cid;  Fanez  (contracted  from  Fernandez),  not  Faftez,  as 
Duran,  Damas-Hinard,  and  others  write  it.  The  word  is  always  spelt  in  the 
poem  with  a  single  n,  Fanez.  The  comparatively  modern  n,  represents  the  older 
nn  ;  and  senor,  maftana,  etc. ,  were  formerly  written  sennor,  mannana. 

2  Elles  massacraient  les  hommes,  violaient  les  femmes,  et  vendaient  souvent  un 
prisonnier  Musulman  pour  un  pain,  pour  un  pot  de  vin,  on  pour  une  livre  de 
poisson.  Quand  un  prisonnier  ne  voulnit,  ou  ne  pouvait,  payer  ran9on,  elles  lui 
coupaient  la  langue,  lui  crevaient  les  yeux,  et  le  faisaient  d6chirer  par  des  dogues. 
Cronica  General,  folio  315,  col.  2 ;  apud  Dozy,  Recherches,  ii.,  130,  131.  See  also 
pp.  186-7,  an£l  204-214. 


190  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

forays  and  alliances  he  thought  only  of  the  advantage  of 
Christendom  and  the  honour  of  Castile.  Mondhir,  overawed 
by  the  appearance  of  the  allied  army  from  Saragossa,  hastily 
retired  from  before  Valencia,  where  Mostain  and  his  Christian 
Said  were  welcomed  as  deliverers  by  Cadir. 

But  although  the  Cid  imposed  a  tribute  upon  the  unhappy 
Valencians,  he  failed  to  give  over  the  city  to  Mostain,  and 
assuring  Cadir  of  his  constant  support,  as  long  as  a  monthly 
allowance  of  10,000  golden  dinars  was  punctually  paid,1  he 
withdrew  himself  from  the  remonstrances  of  the  disappointed 
Mostain — to  whom  he  continued  to  protest  his  continued  devo- 
tion— on  the  plea  of  a  necessary  visit  to  his  Christian  sovereign 
in  Castile,  to  explain  or  excuse  his  position,  and  to  engage 
some  Castilian  troops  for  his  army.  Mostain  during  his  absence, 
perceiving  that  he  could  not  count  upon  so  versatile  and  so 
ambitious  a  Said  in  the  matter  of  the  handing  over  of  Valencia, 
entered  into  an  alliance  with  his  old  enemy,  Ramon  Berenguer, 
of  Barcelona ;  and  the  Catalans  had  actually  laid  siege  to  the 
city  when  the  return  of  the  Cid  induced  them  to  abandon  their 
trenches,  and  retire  to  Barcelona. 

If  the  Cid  was  a  hero  of  romance,  he  did  not  wield  his 
sword  without  the  most  magnificent  remuneration.  At  this 
period  of  his  career  (1089-92),  in  addition  to  the  80,000  golden 
pieces  received  from  Ramon  Berenguer,  he  is  said  to  have 
drawn  50,000  from  the  son  of  Mondhir,  120,000  from  Cadir  of 
Valencia,  10,000  from  Albarracin,  10,000  from  Alpuente, 
6000  from  Murviedro,  6000  from  Segorbe,  4000  from  J  erica, 
and  .3000  from  Almenara. 

With  such  an  amount  of  personal  tribute,  the  Cid  cannot, 
says  Lafuente,  have  been  greatly  inconvenienced  by  the  action 
of  Alfonso  VI.  in  despoiling  him  of  his  estates.  Supporting 
his  army  of  7000  chosen  followers  on  the  rich  booty  acquired 
in  his  daily  forays  upon  eastern  Spain,  from  Saragossa  to 
Alicante ; 2  regardless  of  Christian  rights,  but  the  special 
scourge  of  the  Moslems ;  no  longer  a  Saragossan  general,  but 
a  private  adventurer,  the  Cid  could  afford  to  quarrel  at  once 
with  Mostain  and  with  Alfonso,  and  to  defy  the  combined 
forces  of  Mondhir  and  Ramon  Berenguer. 

The  rivalry  between  the  Cid  and  the  Catalan  was  ever 
fierce  in  eastern  Spain.  The  opposing  armies  met  at  Tebar 

1  Cron.  Gen.,  fol.  321,  col.  2;  Gesta,  p.  26;  Dozy,  Recherches,  ii.,  132-137. 
1  Dozy,  Recherches,  ii.,  pp.  134-141 ;  Lafuente,  iv.,  402. 


1002.]  THE  CID.  191 

del  Pinar  in  1090,  and  although  the  Cid  was  wounded  in  the 
battle,  his  army  was  completely  successful.  Mondhir  fled 
from  the  field ;  and  Ramon  Berenguer  was  once  more  a 
prisoner  in  the  hands  of  Roderic.  Nor  was  the  Christian 
Count  released  from  a  confinement  more  harsh  than  was 
generous  or  necessary,  until  he  had  given  good  security  for 
the  payment  of  the  enormous  ransom  of  80,000  marcs  of  gold.1 

It  is  not  easy,  nor  would  it  be  fruitful,  to  follow  the  various 
movements  of  the  Cid  at  this  period  of  his  career.  His 
quarrels  and  his  intrigues  with  Alfonso  of  Castile,  with  Cadir 
of  Valencia,  with  the  various  parties  at  the  court  of  Sara- 
gossa,  with  Ramon  Berenguer  at  Barcelona,  and  even  with 
the  Genoese  and  Pisans,  are  neither  easy  nor  interesting  to 
follow.  But  his  principal  objective  was  the  rich  city  of  Val- 
encia. Alfonso  of  Leon,  ever  jealous  of  his  great  and  most 
independent  subject,  resolved  to  thwart  him  in  his  design  ;  and 
having  secured  the  co-operation  of  the  Pisans  and  Genoese, 
who  had  arrived  with  a  fleet  of  400  vessels  to  assist  the  Cid, 
the  king  took  advantage  of  the  absence  of  his  rival  on  some 
foray  to  the  north  of  Saragossa,  to  advance  upon  Valencia,  and 
to  push  forward  his  operations  to  the  very  walls  of  the  city. 
Ruy  Diaz  riposted  after  his  fashion. 

Leaving  the  Valencians  to  make  good  the  defence  of  their 
own  city,  he  carried  fire  and  sword  into  Alfonso's  peaceful 
dominions  of  Najera  and  Calahorra,  destroying  all  the  towns, 
burning  all  the  crops,  slaughtering  the  Christian  inhabitants ; 
and  razing  the  important  city  of  Logrouo  to  the  ground. 
This  savagery  was  completely  successful,  and  met  with  no 
reproach.  The  Cid  is  one  of  those  fortunate  heroes  to  whom 
all  things  are  permitted.  His  excesses  are  forgotten;  his  in- 
dependence admired ;  his  boldness  and  his  success  are  alone 
remembered.  Alfonso,  thus  rudely  summoned  to  the  north 
of  the  Peninsula,  abruptly  raised  the  siege  of  Valencia,  and 
left  his  Genoese  and  Pisan  allies  to  make  the  best  of  their  way 
back  to  Italy. 

Nor  was  the  king's  action  at  Valencia  without  a  favour- 
able influence  upon  the  fortunes  of  the  Cid.  Far  from  wrest- 
ing the  city  from  the  grasp  of  Roderic,  Alfonso  had  rather 
precipitated  the  crisis  which  was  ultimately  to  lead  to  his 

1  Yet  when  the  money  was  not  forthcoming,  the  Cid  showed  his  generosity  by 
remitting  the  amount  of  the  ransom  and  allowing  his  noble  prisoner  to  go  free, 
after  a  friendly  meal  in  his  company.  Gesta,  afud  Dozy,  Recherches,  etc.,  ii.,  p. 
144. 


192  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

triumphal  entry  as  the  independent  ruler  of  the  city.  Cadir 
was  murdered  by  a  hostile  faction  within  the  walls :  and  the 
Cid,  advancing  with  his  usual  prudence,  spent  some  time  in 
possessing  himself  of  the  suburbs  and  the  approaches  to  the 
city,  before  the  siege  was  commenced  in  good  earnest,  in  July, 
1093. 

The  operations  were  carried  on  in  the  most  ferocious  fashion 
by  the  attacking  force.  Rod  eric  burned  his  prisoners  alive 
from  day  to  day  within  the  sight  of  the  walls,  or  caused  them 
to  be  torn  in  pieces  by  his  dogs  under  the  very  eyes  of  their 
fellow-townsmen.1 

The  blockaded  city  was  soon  a  prey  to  the  utmost  horrors  of 
famine.  Negotiation  was  fruitless.  Succour  came  not.  Neither 
Christian  nor  Moslem,  neither  Alfonso  the  Castilian,  nor 
Yussuf  the  Almoravide,  nor  Mostain  of  Saragossa,  appearing  to 
defend  or  to  relieve  the  city,  Valencia  capitulated  on  the  15th 
of  June,  1094. 

The  Moslem  commander,  Iban  Jahaf,  was  burnt  alive.  The 
Moslem  inhabitants  were  treated  with  scant  consideration, 
and  the  Cid,  as  might  have  been  supposed,  proclaimed  him- 
self sovereign  of  Valencia,  independent  of  either  Christian 
Alfonso  or  Moorish  Mostain ;  and  at  Valencia  he  lived  and 
reigned  until  the  day  of  his  death,  but  five  years  afterwards, 
in  1099-  His  rule  was  often  threatened  by  the  Almoravides ; 
but  as  long  as  the  champion  lived  they  could  effect  no  entry 
within  the  walls  of  his  city. 

For  full  three  years  after  his  death,  moreover,  his  widow 
Ximena,  and  his  cousin  Alvar  Fanez,  maintained  a  precarious 
sovereignty  at  Valencia.  At  length,  unsupported  by  Alfonso 
of  Leon,  and  unable  to  stand  alone  in  the  midst  of  the 
Moslems,  they  retired  to  Burgos,  carrying  with  them  the  body 
of  the  Cid  embalmed  in  precious  spices,  borne,  as  of  old,  on  his 
faithful  steed  Babieca,  to  its  last  resting  place  in  Castile. 
Valencia  was  immediately  occupied  by  the  Almoravides,  and 
became  once  more  a  Moslem  stronghold ;  nor  did  it  finally 
pass  into  Christian  hands  until  it  was  taken  by  James  I.  of 
Aragon  in  1238.  The  Cid  was  buried  in  the  monastery  of 
Cardena,2  near  Burgos  ;  and  the  body  of  his  heroic  wife,  Dona 
Ximena,  who  died  in  11 04-,  was  laid  by  his  side  in  the  tomb. 

1  Dozy,  Recherches,  ii.,  130,  131,  and  186,  187. 

2  The  bones  of  the  Cid  were  removed  from  San  Pedro  de  Cardena  in  1842  to 
the  Casa  del  Ayuntamiento  or  Town  Hall  of  Burgos,  where  they  may  now  be 
seen. 


1099-]  THE  CID.  193 

The  legend  of  the  marriage  of  the  Cid's  daughters  with  the 
Infantes  of  Carrion,  of  their  desertion,  and  of  the  vengeance  of 
the  Cid  upon  their  unworthy  husbands,  is  undoubtedly  an 
invention  of  the  Castilian  minstrels. 

The  legend  of  the  death  of  the  Cid's  son  at  the  battle  of 
Consuegra  is  also  fallacious.  There  is  no  evidence  that  a 
son  was  ever  born  to  him  at  all.  But  he  had  undoubtedly 
two  daughters,  one  of  whom,  Christina,  married  Ramiro,  Infante 
of  Navarre,  and  the  other,  Maria,  became  the  Countess  of 
Ramon  Berenguer  III.  of  Barcelona.1  The  issue  of  Ramon 

1  Neither  Masdeu  nor  Dunham  are  inclined  to  admit  that  the  Cid  is  in  any 
sense  an  historic  personage,  and  doubt  whether  such  a  man  ever  existed  at  all. 
See  Dozy,  Recherches,  ii. ,  70-81.  Considering  the  faith  that  both  these  authors 
have  shown  in  many  other  directions,  this  scepticism  is  all  the  more  remarkable. 

The  authorities  for  the  life  of  the  Cid  are  the  fourth  book  of  the  Cronica 
General  of  Spain,  the  work  of  Alfonso  X.,  which  follows  partly  the  Latin  chronicles 
of  Lucas  of  Tuy  and  Roderic  of  Toledo  ;  the  Cronica  del  Cid,  a  corrected  and 
slightly  expanded  edition  of  the  fourth  book  of  the  Cronica  General ;  the  Cronica 
Rimada,  which  may  perhaps  hardly  count  as  an  authority,  being  an  inferior 
metrical  composition  of  doubtful  date,  dealing  chiefly  with  the  apocryphal  invasion 
of  France ;  the  Gesta  or  Historia  Roderici  Didaci  campidocti,  certainly  older  than 
1238,  and  published  in  1792  in  Manuel  Risco's  La  Castilla  y  el  mas  famoso 
Castellano  (Madrid,  1792),  together  with  the  Santiago  Genealogia  and  the  original 
marriage  settlement  of  Roderic,  in  Latin,  1074,  the  most  entirely  authentic  docu- 
ment bearing  upon  the  life  of  the  Cid ;  and,  lastly,  an  anonymous  poem  in  3744 
lines,  treating  of  his  life  only  after  his  banishment,  and  entitled  The  Poem  of  the 
Cid,  based  partly  upon  an  Arab  contemporary  original  now  lost.  Dozy,  Recherches, 
ii.,  38-60.  See  also  Cronica  del  famoso  caballero  el  Cid  Ruy  Diaz  Campeador, 
Medina  del  Campo,  1552,  and  a  different  text,  with  a  separate  Genealogia  (Burgos, 
1593).  Also  D.  Malo  de  Molina,  Rodrigo  el  campeador  (Madrid,  1857). 

The  edition  of  the  Poem  of  the  Cid,  with  an  introduction  and  a  translation  by 
M.  Damas-Hinard,  in  1859,  is  a  sumptuous  but  somewhat  inaccurate  publication. 
The  latest  work  of  any  value  on  the  subject  is  John  Ormsby's  scholarly  and 
most  trustworthy  little  volume,  The  Cid  (London,  1879),  to  which,  as  to  the  author 
himself,  I  am  under  many  obligations  as  regards  this  chapter.  See  also  John 
Ormsby's  article,  Cid,  in  vol.  iii.  of  Chamber's  Encyclopedia.  But  the  most 
interesting  modern  discovery,  and  one  that  has  greatly  modified  all  previous, 
conceptions  of  the  character  of  the  Cid,  is  that  made  by  M.  Dozy  at  Gotha  in  1844 
in  the  fragment  of  the  Dhakira  of  Ibn  Bassam,  written  at  Seville,  A.D.  1109  (503 
Hijrah),  that  is  to  say,  ten  years  only  after  the  death  of  the  Cid.  Finally,  M. 
Dozy's  own  work,  Recherches,  torn.  ii.  passim,  a  masterpiece  of  erudite  and 
painstaking  criticism,  has  been  my  constant  and  valued  guide  in  the  preparation 
of  this  chapter,  and  is  frequently  referred  to  in  the  footnotes. 

The  best  collection  of  ancient  Spanish  ballads  is  certainly  the  Primavera  y 
Flor  de  Romances  of  Wolf  and  Hofmann  (Berlin,  1856).  But  the  thirty-nine 
Ballads  of  the  Cid  therein  contained  tell  us  very  little  of  the  life  of  the  hero,  and 
treat  chiefly  of  his  early  life,  his  duel  with  the  insulter  of  his  father,  and  his  marriage 
with  Dona  Ximena,  which  is  the  foundation  of  Corneille's  drama.  Dr.  Dollinger 
speaks  of  him  as  a  "faithless  and  cruel  freebooter".  See  Conversations,  etc.  (ed. 
Miss  Warre),  1890,  pp.  247-8. 

His  career,  perhaps,  cannot  better  be  summed  up  than  in  the  words  of  an 

Arab  contemporary  and  a  foe — Ibn  Bassam  of  Seville — "A  Gallician  dog,  one 

Roderic,  surnamed  the  Canbitur  (Campeador)  the  scourge  of  the  country,  raised 

by  the  Beni  Hud  out  of  obscurity.    They  delivered  over  to  him  divers  provinces  of 

VOL.    I.  13 


194  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

Berenguer  III.  was  a  daughter  who  died  childless,  but  a  grand- 
daughter of  Ramiro  of  Navarre  married  Sancho  III.  of  Castile, 
whose  son  Alfonso  VIII.,  was  the  grandfather  both  of  St. 
Ferdinand  and  of  St.  Louis.  And  thus  in  a  double  stream, 
through  the  royal  houses  of  Spain  and  of  France,  the  blood  of 
the  Cid  is  found  to  flow  in  the  veins  of  His  Majesty  Alfonso 
XIII.,  the  reigning  King  of  Spain. 


II. 

To  understand  or  appreciate  the  position  that  is  occupied 
by  the  Cid  in  Spanish  history  is  at  the  present  day  supremely 
difficult.  A  mediaeval  condottiere  in  the  service  of  the  Moslem, 
after  he  had  fought  with  perfect  impartiality  against  Moor 
or  Christian  to  fill  his  own  coffers :  banished  as  a  traitor 
by  his  Castilian  sovereign,  and  constantly  leading  the  forces 
of  the  infidel,  against  Aragon,  against  Catalonia,  and  even 
against  Castile,  he  has  become  the  national  hero  of  Spain. 
Warring  against  the  Moslem  of  Valencia,  whom  he  pitilessly 
despoiled,  with  the  aid  of  the  Moslem  of  Saragossa,  whose 
cause  he  cynically  betrayed,  while  he  yet  owned  a  nominal 
allegiance  to  Alfonso  of  Castile,  whose  territories  he  was  piti- 
lessly ravaging ;  retaining  conquered  Valencia  for  his  personal 
and  private  advantage,  in  despite  of  Moslem  or  Christian  kings, 
he  has  become  the  type  of  Christian  loyalty  and  Christian 
chivalry  in  Europe.  Avaricious,  faithless,  cruel  and  bold,  a 
true  soldier  of  fortune,  the  Cid  still  maintains  a  reputation 
which  is  one  of  the  enigmas  of  history. 

The  three  favourites  of  mediaeval  Spanish  romance,  says 
Senor  Lafuente,  Bernardo  del  Carpio,  Fernan  Gonzalez,  and 
the  Cid,  have  this  at  least  in  common,  that  they  were  all  at 
war  with  their  lawful  sovereigns,  and  fought  their  battles 
independently  of  the  Crown.  Hence  their  popularity  in  Spain. 
The  Castilians  of  the  Middle  Ages  were  so  devoted  to  their 
independence,  so  proud  of  their  Fueros,  such  admirers  of 
personal  prowess,  that  they  were  disposed  to  welcome  with 
national  admiration  those  heroes  who  sprang  from  the  people, 
and  who  defied  and  were  ill-treated  by  their  kings. 

the  Peninsula,  so  that  he  overran  the  plains  like  a  conqueror,  and  planted  his 
banner  in  the  fairest  cities.  His  power  grew  very  great,  nor  was  there  any  district 
that  he  did  not  ravage.  Nevertheless  this  man,  the  scourge  of  his  time,  was  in  his 
love  of  glory,  strength  of  character,  and  heroic  courage,  one  of  the  marvels  of  the 
Lord."  Apud  John  Ormsby  in  Chamb.  Ency.,  sub.  tit. — CID. 


1099-]  THE  CID.  195 

The  theory  is  both  ingenious  and  just,  yet  it  by  no  means 
solves  the  difficulty,  Ruy  Diaz  of  Bivar,  who  was  one  of  the 
proudest  nobles  of  Castile,  can  scarcely  be  said  to  have  sprung 
from  the  people,  nor  do  we  clearly  perceive  why  his  long 
service  under  Moslem  kings,  even  though  he  was  a  rebel 
against  his  own  sovereign,  should  have  endeared  him  to  the 
Christian  Spaniards,  however  independent  or  however  demo- 
cratic. Yet  we  may  learn  at  least  from  the  character  of  the 
hero,  ideal  though  it  be,  that  the  mediaeval  Castilians  were  no 
bigots,  and  that  they  were  slaves  neither  to  their  kings  nor  to 
their  clergy. 

The  people  of  Aragon  no  doubt  held  their  king  in  a  more 
distinctly  constitutional  subjection.  No  Castilian  chief  justice 
was  found  to  call  the  sovereign  to  order :  no  privilege  of 
union  legalised  a  popular  war  in  defence  of  popular  liberties. 
But  Roderic  took  the  place  of  the  justiciary  in  legend,  if  not  in 
history,  when  he  administered  the  oath  to  Alfonso  at  Burgos ; 
and  he  invested  himself  with  the  privilege  of  warring  against 
an  aggressive  king,  when  he  routed  Alfonso's  forces,  and 
burned  his  cities,  to  requite  him  for  his  attack  upon  Valencia. 

It  is  this  rebellious  boldness  which  contributed  no  doubt 
very  largely  to  endear  the  Cid  to  his  contemporaries.  It  is 
one  of  the  most  constant  characteristics  of  his  career ;  one  of 
the  features  that  is  portrayed  with  equal  clearness  by  the 
chroniclers  and  the  ballad  makers  of  Spain.1  For  the  Cid  is 
essentially  a  popular  hero.  His  legendary  presentment  is  a 
kind  of  poetic  protest  against  arbitrary  regal  power.  The  Cid 
ballads  are  a  paean  of  triumphant  democracy.  The  ideal  Cid  no 
doubt  was  evolved  in  the  course  of  the  twelfth  century ;  and  by 
the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century,  when  the  rule  of  kings  and 
priests  had  become  harder  and  heavier  in  Spain,  an  enslaved 
people  looked  back  with  an  envious  national  pride  to  the 
Castilian  hero  who  personified  the  freedom  of  bygone  days. 

The  Cid  is  the  only  knight- errant  that  has  survived  the 
polished  satire  of  Cervantes.  For  his  fame  was  neither  literary 
nor  aristocratic  ;  but  like  the  early  Spanish  proverbs,  in  which 
it  is  said  he  took  so  great  a  delight,  it  was  embedded  deep  in 
the  hearts  of  the  people.2  And  although  the  memory  of  his 

1  John  Ormsby  ( The  Poem  of  the  Cid,  Introd.,  p.  41),  also  speaks  of  the  anti- 
royalist  spirit  that  pervades  the  Cid  ballads  as  a  whole,  and  of  their  tendency  to 
make  the  Cid  a  mouthpiece  for  democratic  sentiments. 

2 Mas  Mpros  mas  ganancia,  "The  more  the  Moors,  the  greater  the  booty," 
was  one  of  his  sayings,  and  it  has  passed  into  a  wsll-known  national  proverb. 


196  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

religious  indifference  may  not  have  added  to  his  popularity  in 
the  sixteenth  century  in  Spain,  it  is  a  part  of  his  character 
which  must  be  taken  into  account  in  gauging  the  public  opinion 
of  earlier  days. 

From  the  close  of  the  eighth  century  to  the  close  of  the 
fifteenth,  the  Spanish  people,  Castilians  and  Aragonese,  were 
if  anything  less  bigoted  than  the  rest  of  Europe.  The  influ- 
ence of  their  neighbours  the  Moors,  and  of  their  Arab  tolera- 
tion, could  not  be  without  its  effect  upon  a  people  naturally  free, 
independent l  and  self-reliant,  and  the  Cid,  who  was  certainly 
troubled  with  no  religious  scruples  in  the  course  of  his  varied 
career,  and  who,  according  to  a  popular  legend,  affronted  and 
threatened  the  Pope  on  his  throne  in  St.  Peter's,  on  account  of 
some  fancied  slight,2  could  never  have  been  the  hero  of  a 
nation  of  bigots.  The  degenerate  Visigoths  from  the  time  of 
Reccared  the  Catholic,  to  the  time  of  Roderic  the  Vanquished 
could  never  have  produced  a  Cid.  Yet,  even  in  the  dark  days 
of  Erwig  and  Egica,  there  was  found  a  Julian,  who  boldly 
maintained  a  national  independence  against  the  pretensions  of 
the  Pope  of  Rome.  For  1000  years  after  the  landing  of  St. 
Paul — if,  indeed,  he  ever  landed  upon  the  coast — the  Spanish 
Church  was,  perhaps,  the  most  independent  in  Europe.  The 
royal  submission  to  the  Papal  authority,  first  by  Sancho  I.  of 
Aragon,  in  1071,  and  afterwards  by  Alfonso  VI.  of  Leon,  in 
1085,  in  the  matter  of  the  Romish  Ritual,  was  distinctly 
unpopular.  Peter  II.  found  no  lack  of  recruits  for  the  army 
that  he  led  against  the  Papal  troops  in  Languedoc,  and  King 
James  I.,  the  most  popular  of  the  kings  of  Aragon,  cut  out  the 
tongue  of  a  meddlesome  bishop  who  had  presumed  to  interfere 
in  his  private  affairs  (1246).  It  was  not  until  the  Inquisition 
was  forced  upon  United  Spain  by  Isabella  the  Catholic,  and 

1  This  I  take  to  be  the  true  meaning  of  Strabo's  avddSeia,  so  strangely  mis- 
translated moroseness.     See  Strabo  (Bonn's  ed. ),  lib.  iii. ,  4,  5. 

2  Having  kicked  to  pieces  the  splendid  furniture  and  beaten  the  Papal  chamber- 
lain, he  proceeded  to  threaten  to  caparison  his  horse  with  the  rich  hangings  of 
the  chapel,  if  the  Pope  refused  him  instant  Absolution  ! 

Si  no  me  absolveis,  el  Papa, 
Seriaos  mal  contado 
Que  de  vuestras  ricas  ropas 
Cubrire'  yo  mi  caballo  ! 

— Wolf  and  Hofmann,  Cid  Ballads,  viii. 

The  story,  says  Ormsby,  is  in  reality  that  of  the  Count  ofCifuentes,  who 
in  the  time  of  Henry  IV.  at  the  Council  of  Basle  treated  the  English  envoy  in  the 
same  manner.  The  story  was  obviously  transferred  to  the  Cid  at  the  time  when 
ballad-manufacture  became  the  rage,  in  the  time  of  Sepulveda. 


1099-]  THE  CID.  197 

the  national  lust  for  the  plunder  of  strangers  was  aroused  by 
the  destruction  of  Granada,  that  the  Spaniard  became  a  de- 
stroyer of  heretics.  It  was  not  until  the  spoliation  and  the 
banishment  of  Jews  and  Moriscos,  and  the  opening  of  a  new 
world  of  heathen  treasure  on  the  discovery  of  America,  that  the 
Castilian,  who  had  always  been  independent  himself,  became 
intolerant  of  the  independence  of  others.  Then,  indeed,  he 
added  the  cruelty  of  the  priest  to  the  cruelty  of  the  soldier, 
and  wrapping  himself  in  the  cloak  of  a  proud  and  uncom- 
promising national  orthodoxy,  became  the  most  ferocious  bigot 
in  two  unhappy  worlds.1 

But  in  the  beginning  it  was  not  so.  And  if  the  Cid  could 
possibly  have  been  annoyed  by  Torquemada,  his  knights  would 
have  hung  up  the  inquisitor  on  the  nearest  tree.  No  priests' 
man,  in  good  sooth,  was  Roderic  of  Bivar,  nor,  save  in  that  he 
was  a  brave  and  determined  soldier,  had  the  great  Castilian  free 
lance  anything  in  common  with  the  more  conventional  heroes 
of  United  Spain. 

If  history  affords  no  reasonable  explanation  of  his  unrivalled 
renown  beyond  that  which  has  already  been  suggested,  we  find 
but  little  in  the  early  poetry  to  assist  us.  The  Cid  ballads 
impress  us  "more  by  their  number  than  their  light".  They 
are  neither  very  interesting  in  themselves,  nor  are  they  even 
very  suggestive.  Only  thirty-seven  ballads  are  considered  by 
Huber  to  be  older  than  the  sixteenth  century.  La  plupart  de 
ces  romances,  says  M.  Dozy,  accusenl  leur  origine  modenie ;  and 
according  to  John  Ormsby  they  do  but  little  towards  the  illustra- 
tion of  the  Cid,  either  us  a  picturesque  hero  of  romance  or  as  a 
characteristic  feature  of  mediaeval  history.2 

The  great  French  dramatist  scarcely  touches  the  true  history 
of  his  hero.  The  scene  of  the  play  is  laid  at  Seville,  where  no 
Christian  king  set  his  foot  for  1 50  years  after  the  death  of 

1  It  may  be  added  that  however  bigoted  and  intolerant  the  sovereigns  of  Spain 
became  after  Isabella  the  Catholic,  their  motives  in  the  main  were  political  rather 
than  religious,  and  that  full  of  lip  submission  as  they  sometimes  were  to  Rome  for 
their  own  ends,  the  struggle  to  emancipate  the  Spanish  Church  from  the  control  of 
the  Pontiff  went  on  without  interruption.  For  many  instances  of  this  see  "  Spain  : 
its  Greatness  and  Decay,  1479-1788,"  by  the  writer  of  this  note,  and  also  the 
"  Chronica  del  Emperador  Alfonso  VII.,"  by  Prudencio  de  Sandoval. — H. 

JTo  any  one  about  to  write  a  history  of  morals,  the  Poem  of  the  Cid  may  be 
recommended  as  a  curious  study,  illustrating  the  peculiar  ethics  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  The  poet  who  boasts  that  no  perfidy  was  ever  found  in  his  hero,  represents 
him  as  pledging  for  600  marks,  two  chests,  well  weighted  with  sand,  which  he 
declared  to  be  filled  with  gold.  He  lamented,  no  doubt,  the  necessity  which 
drove  him  to  it,  but  he  never  troubles  himself  about  repaying  his  swindled  creditors. 
John  Ormsby,  The  Poem  of  the  Cid,  Introduction,  p.  44. 


198  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

Roderic.  The  title  which  he  accepted  from  his  employer 
Mostain  of  Saragossa,  is  said  to  have  been  granted  by  Alfonso 
of  Leon,  after  the  capture  of  two  imaginary  Moorish  kings, 
unknown  to  history,  in  an  impossible  battle  on  the  banks  of  the 
Guadalquivir,  which  was  never  seen  by  the  Cid.  The  whole 
action  of  the  play  turns  upon  the  moral  and  psychological 
difficulties  arising  from  the  purely  legendary  incident  of  the 
killing  of  Chim&ne's  father  by  her  lover,  avenging  an  insult 
offered  to  his  own  sire,  and  of  the  somewhat  artificial  indignation 
of  the  lady,  until  she  is  appeased  by  a  slaughter  of  Moors. 
Corneille's  drama  abounds  in  noble  sentiments  expressed  in 
most  admirable  verse  ;  but  it  does  not  assist  us  to  understand 
the  character  of  the  Cid,  nor  the  reasons  of  his  popularity  in  his 
own  or  in  any  other  country.  But  certain  at  least  it  is  that 
from  the  earliest  times  the  story  of  his  life  and  his  career  took 
a  strong  hold  upon  the  popular  imagination  in  Spain,  and  his 
virtues  and  his  vices,  little  as  they  may  seem  to  us  to  warrant 
the  popular  admiration,  were  understood  and  appreciated  in  the 
age  in  which  he  lived,  an  age  of  force  and  fraud,  of  domestic 
treason  and  foreign  treachery,  when  religion  preached  little  but 
battle  and  murder,  and  patriotism  was  but  a  pretext  for  plunder 
and  rapine.  Admired  thus,  even  in  his  lifetime,  as  a  gallant 
soldier,  an  independent  chieftain,  and  an  ever  successful  general, 
fearless,  dexterous,  and  strong,  his  free  career  became  a  favourite 
theme  with  the  jongleurs  and  troubadours  of  the  next  generation  ; 
and  from  the  Cid  of  history  was  evolved  a  Cid  of  legendary 
song.1 

It  is  most  difficult  at  the  present  day  to  know  exactly  where 
serious  history  ends  and  where  poetry  and  legend  begin.  Yet 
the  Cid  as  represented  to  us  by  M.  Dozy,  one  of  the  most  acute 
of  modern  investigators  of  historic  truth,  is  not  so  very  different 
from  the  Cid  represented  by  Southey,  or  even  by  earlier  and 
less  critical  poets,  but  that  we  may  form  a  reasonable  estimate, 
from  what  is  common  to  both  history  and  tradition,  of  what 
manner  of  man  he  was.  The  Cid  of  the  twelfth  century  legends, 

JAnd  as  new  ballads  were  ever  demanded  on  the  ever  favourite  theme,  the 
romancers  drew  upon  their  well-trained  imaginations  for  new  facts,  and  they  treated 
the  Cid  precisely  as  they  had  treated  Charlemagne.  As  they  invented  the  journey 
to  Jerusalem,  the  expedition  to  Gallicia,  the  bridge  of  Mantible,  and  the  Emir 
Balan  for  the  greater  glory  of  the  emperor,  so  they  made  Ruy  Diaz  cut  off  the 
head  of  Count  Gormaz,  and  marry  his  daughter  ;  they  devised  an  invasion  of 
France,  and  a  victorious  entry  into  Paris  !  They  made  the  Spanish  champion 
defy  the  Emperor  Henry,  and  beard  the  Pope  at  Rome !  John  Ormsby,  in 
Chamber's  Encyclop&dia,  s.v.,  ClD. 


1099.]  THE  CID.  199 

indeed,  though  he  may  be  more  marvellous,  is  by  no  means 
more  moral  than  the  Cid  of  history.  It  was  reserved  for  the 
superior  refinement  of  succeeding  generations,  and  more  especi- 
ally for  the  anonymous  author  of  the  poem  of  the  thirteenth 
century,  to  evolve  a  hero  of  a  gentler  and  nobler  mould  ;  a 
creature  conforming  to  a  higher  ideal  of  knightly  perfection. 
From  this  time  forward  we  have  a  glorified  Cid,  whose  adven- 
tures are  no  more  historically  false,  perhaps,  than  those  of 
the  unscrupulous  and  magnificent  Paladin  of  the  legends  and 
romances  of  the  twelfth  century,  but  whose  character  possesses 
all  the  dignity  and  all  the  glory  with  which  he  could  be  invested 
by  a  generous  mediaeval  imagination.  And  it  is  this  refined  and 
idealised  hero ;  idealised,  yet  most  real ;  refined,  yet  eminently 
human,  that  has  been  worshipped  by  nineteen  generations  of 
Spaniards  as  the  national  hero  of  Spain. 

Ruy  Diaz — as  he  lived  and  died — was  probably  no  worse  a 
man  than  any  of  his  neighbours.  Far  better  than  many  of  them 
he  was,  and  undoubtedly  bolder  and  stronger,  more  capable, 
more  adroit,  and  more  successful. 

Seven  of  the  Christian  princes  of  Spain  at  this  period  fell 
in  battle  warring  against  their  own  near  relations,  or  were 
assassinated  by  them  in  cold  blood.  Garcia  of  Castile  was 
slain  by  the  sword  of  the  Velas.  Bermudo  III.  of  Leon  and 
Garcia  Sanchez  of  Navarre  died  fighting  against  their  brother, 
Ferdinand  of  Castile.  Sancho  II.  of  Castile  was  assassinated  by 
order  of  his  sister  Urraca,  besieged  by  him  in  her  city  of  Zamora. 
Among  the  Christian  kings  of  the  century  immediately  before 
him,  Garcia  of  Gallicia  was  strangled  in  prison  by  the  hands  of 
his  brothers,  Sancho  and  Alfonso ;  Sancho  Garcia  of  Navarre 
was  assassinated  by  his  brother  Ramon,  at  Pefialva ;  Ramon 
Berenguer  II.  of  Barcelona  died  by  the  dagger  of  his  brother 
Berenguer  Ramon ;  Sancho  the  Fat,  in  967,  was  poisoned  at  a 
friendly  repast  by  Gonzalo  Sanchez ;  Ruy  Velasquez  of  Castile, 
in  986,  murdered  his  seven  nephews,  the  unfortunate  Infantes 
de  Lara;1  Sancho  of  Castile,  in  1010,  poisoned  his  mother,  who 
had  endeavoured  to  poison  him.  At  the  wedding  festivities  at 
Leon,  in  1 026,  Garcia,  Count  of  Castile,  was  assassinated  at  the 
church  door,  and  the  murderers  were  promptly  burned  alive  by 
his  friends;  Garcia  of  Navarre,  in  1030,  as  an  incident  in  a 
family  dispute  about  a  horse,  accused  his  mother  of  adultery. 
Such  was  the  standard  of  the  eleventh  century  in  the  north  of 
the  Peninsula. 

1  Mariana,  viii. ,  4,  6,  9,  10. 


200  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

To  judge  the  Cid,  even  as  we  now  know  him,  according  to 
any  code  of  modern  ethics,  is  supremely  unreasonable.  To 
be  sure,  even  now,  that  we  know  him  as  he  was,  is  supremely 
presumptuous.  But  that  Ruy  Diaz  was  a  great  man,  and  a 
great  leader  of  men,  a  knight  who  would  have  shocked  modern 
poets,  and  a  free  lance  who  would  have  laughed  at  modern 
heroes,  we  can  have  no  manner  of  doubt.  That  he  satisfied  his 
contemporaries  and  himself;  that  he  slew  Moors  and  Christians 
as  occasion  required,  with  equal  vigour  and  absolute  impartiality  ; 
that  he  bearded  the  King  of  Castile  and  Leon  in  his  Christian 
Council,  and  that  he  cozened  the  King  of  Saragossa  at  the  head 
of  his  Moslem  army  ;  that  he  rode  the  best  horse  and  brandished 
the  best  blade  in  Spain ;  that  his  armies  never  wanted  for 
valiant  soldiers,  nor  his  coffers  for  gold  pieces ;  that  he  lived 
my  Lord  the  Challenger,  the  terror  of  every  foe,  and  that  he 
died  rich  and  respected  in  the  noble  city  that  had  fallen  to  his 
knightly  spear — of  all  this  at  least  we  are  certain :  and,  if  the 
tale  is  displeasing  to  our  nineteenth  century  refinement,  we  must 
be  content  to  believe  that  it  satisfied  the  aspirations  of  mediaeval 
Spain. 


201 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

AVERROES. 
I. — TJie  Almoravides. 

(1086—1149-) 

FOR  ninety  years  after  the  death  of  Almanzor,  Andalus  remained 
without  a  master.  The  Cid  was  the  only  national  champion, 
Alfonso  was  the  only  national  sovereign,  in  the  Peninsula,  The 
strong  and  generous  hand  of  the  Arab  ruler  no  longer  held 
together  the  discordant  elements  of  Moslem  Spain. 

The  long  reign  of  the  last  Abdur  Rahman  had  been  one  of 
the  most  brilliant  periods  in  Spanish,  or,  indeed,  in  European 
history.  But  the  very  completeness  of  the  success  of  the 
greatest  of  the  western  Caliphs  had  in  it  the  seeds  of  future 
dissolution.  The  strength  and  the  weakness  of  the  political 
system  of  Islam  was  alike  made  manifest  under  his  government. 
So  beneficial  and  so  enlightened  a  despot — terrible  from  his 
absolute  power,  admirable  from  his  noble  designs,  beloved  from 
his  personal  liberality — could  brook  no  rival  near  his  throne  in 
his  lifetime,  and  could  find  no  successor  to  carry  on  his  splendid 
government  at  his  death.  An  Nasir,  moreover,  who  was  rather 
the  maker  than  the  inheritor  of  the  Caliphate,  had  but  little 
confidence  in  the  loyalty  of  the  old  Arab  aristocracy,  and  he 
preferred,  like  Louis  XI.  of  France,  or  Ferdinand  of  Aragon  in 
later  days,  to  select  his  agents  from  among  men  of  humble 
birth,  whose  advancement  should  depend  upon  his  royal  favour 
alone.  Thus,  at  the  end  of  his  fifty  years  of  government,  he 
had  well-nigh  destroyed  the  power  of  the  old  Saracen  nobility. 
No  great  minister  had  been  permitted  to  share  with  the  sove- 
reign the  burden  or  the  glory  of  the  administration ;  and  the 
Caliph  had  been  served  by  irresponsible  subordinates,  by  those 
Berbers  who  are  usually  spoken  of  as  Moors  from  Africa,  by 
renegades  and  slaves  and  foreigners  of  every  nation,  Franks, 


202  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

Gallicians,  Lombards,  Venetians,  and  even  Greeks,  who  were 
known  by  the  general  name  of  Slavs.1  For  a  commonwealth 
thus  administered,  nothing  was  possible,  on  the  death  of  the 
legitimate  autocrat,  Abdur  Rahman,  but  the  upstart  autocrat, 
Almanzor  :  and  after  Almanzor — anarchy. 

Twenty  independent  and  hostile  dynasties  rose  upon  the 
ruins  of  the  great  Caliphate,  and  each  one  of  them  was  vexed 
by  rivals,  by  rebels  and  by  pretenders.2  Had  the  Cid  been 
born  thirty  years  sooner,  or  had  the  Christian  kings  and  nobles 
been  less  completely  occupied  in  cutting  one  another's  throats, 
the  Arab  might  have  been  driven  out  of  southern  Spain  before 
William  of  Normandy  marched  on  London  from  Hastings. 
Yet  as  it  was,  by  the  year  1086,  the  Cid  Campeador  was  at 
the  gates  of  Valencia  ;  Alfonso  ruled  in  the  citadel  at  Toledo ; 
and  the  Moslem  chiefs  or  kings  of  Andalusia,  fearing  for  their 
common  safety,  were  fain  to  turn  their  eyes  once  more  across 
the  Straits  of  Gibraltar  to  seek  a  common  defender. 

Far  away  in  the  deserts  of  Africa,  on  the  slopes  of  the  Atlas 
Mountains,  the  defender  was  found  in  Yusuf,  the  bold  leader 
of  the  Puritan  soldiers  of  Islam,  the  Berber  chief  of  the  terrible 
Almoravides.3  Invited  by  Motamid  of  Seville  to  assist  him  in 

1  Dozy,  Histoire,  iii. ,  58-60;  S.  Lane-Poole,  op.  cit.,  chap.  vii. 

2  Yet  a  great  deal  of  the  culture  of  Cordova  was  found  at  some  of  these  little 
courts.      C'est  un  spectacle  charmant,  says  M.   Renan  (Melanges,  p.  284),  celui 
de  ces  petites  Cours  d'Espagne  qui  succfklerent  au  d£membrement  du  califat  de 
Cordoue,  vraies  academies  ou  pre'sidait  une  famille  patricienne.     And  according  to 
M.  Dozy  (Essai,  etc.,  ed.    1879,  pp.  357,  358),  le  morcellement  de  1'Espagne  en 
be'aucoup  de  petits  royaumes  apr6s  la  chute  des  Ommiades  fut  tres  favorable  a 
I'e'tude  de  la  philosophic.     La  plupart  des  princes  qui  se  rendirent  maitres  des 
diffeYentes  provinces  £taient  fort  avance's  dans  la  civilisation  :  ils  prote'geaient  les 
arts  et  les  sciences  et  ne  souffraient  point  qu'on  opprimat  la  conscience. 

One  of  the  last  of  the  great  pure-blooded  Arabs  of  Spain  was  Ibn  Abbas,  the 
Grand  Vizier  of  the  accomplished  Zohair  of  Almeria.  At  thirty  years  of  age  he 
is  said  to  have  accumulated  a  library  of  400,000  MSS.  He  was  killed  by  some 
rude  and  envious  Berbers  in  1038.  See  Dozy,  Hist. ,  torn.  iv. ,  35. 

3  Almoravides,  or  religious  soldiers,  is  a  word  of  similar  origin  to  Marabout, 
which  signifies,  according  to  Littr6  (Diet,  s.v.),  one  who  is  bound  to  a  holy  life,  as 
in  the  Latin  religio. 

From  the  Arabic  root  r.b.t.,  to  bind,  we  have  many  words  of  this  character, 
such  as  Rdbit  =  a  hermitage  or  a  convent ;  Rebala  =  monks  ;  Murabit  =  one 
bound  in  a  military  sense.  Thus  the  dual  character  of  these  religious  warriors 
from  Africa  is  fairly  conveyed  or  suggested  in  the  word  Almoravides,  whose  exact 
meaning  and  origin  appears  to  have  puzzled  many  commentators  and  critics.  See 
F.  A.  Miiller,  Der  Islam  im  Morgen  und  Abendland,  torn,  ii.,  p.  614. 

The  traditional  Arab  view  of  the  etymology  may  be  found  in  the  work  (Raudh- 
al-Kartds)  of  the  Arab  historian,  Ibn  Abu  Zar  of  Fez.  See  the  edition  with  Latin 
translation  by  C.  J.  Tornberg  (Annales  regum  Mauritania),  Upsala,  1843,  p.  107 ; 
also  the  French  translation  by  A.  Beaumier  (Paris,  1860),  p.  171.  I  am  indebted 
for  the  reference  to  my  friend,  Mr.  A.  G.  Ellis,  of  the  British  Museum. 


1086.]  AVERROES.  203 

his  struggle  against  the  Christians,  Yusuf  crossed  over  into 
Spain,  and  meeting  Alfonso  VI.  at  Zalaca  near  Badajoz,  on  the 
23rd  of  October,  1086,  he  routed  him  with  great  and  historic 
slaughter.  Alfonso  escaped  with  his  life,1  but  his  army  was 
destroyed  ;  and  the  victorious  Berbers  entered  and  garrisoned 
Cordova. 

Yusuf  had  come  as  a  Moslem  defender,  but  he  remained 
as  a  Moslem  master.  And  once  more  in  Spanish  history,  the 
over-powerful  ally  turned  his  victorious  arms  against  those  who 
had  welcomed  him  to  their  shores.  Yet  Yusuf  was  no  vulgar 
traitor.  He  had  sworn  to  the  envoys  of  the  Spanish  Moslems 
that  he  would  return  to  Africa,  in  the  event  of  victory,  without 
the  annexation  to  his  African  empire  of  a  field  or  a  city  to  the 
north  of  the  Straits.  And  his  vow  was  religiously  kept.  Retir- 
ing empty-handed  to  Mauretania,  after  the  great  battle  at 
Zalaca,  he  returned  once  more  to  Spain,  unfettered  on  this  new 
expedition  by  any  vow,  and  set  to  work  with  his  usual  vigour 
to  make  himself  master  of  the  Peninsula.2  Tarifa  fell  in 
December.  The  next  year  saw  the  capture  of  Seville,  and  of 
all  of  the  principal  cities  of  Andalusia.  An  army  sent  by 
Alfonso  VI.,  under  his  famous  captain,  Alvar  Fanez,  was  com- 
pletely defeated,  and  all  southern  Spain  lay  at  the  feet  of  the 
Berber,  save  only  Valencia,  which  remained  impregnable  so 
long  as  the  Cid  lived  to  direct  the  defence.  In  1 102,  after  the 
hero's  death,  Valencia  succumbed,  and  all  Spain  to  the  south  8 
of  the  Tagus  became  a  province  of  the  great  African  empire  of 
the  Almoravides. 

The  rule  of  these  hardy  bigots  was  entirely  unlike  that  of 
the  Ommeyad  Caliphs  of  the  West.  Moslem  Spain  had  no 
longer  even  an  independent  existence.  The  sovereign  resided 
not  at  Cordova,  but  at  Morocco.  The  poets  and  musicians 
were  banished  from  court.  The  beauties  of  Az  Zahra  were 
forgotten.  Jews  and  Christians  were  alike  persecuted.  The 
kingdom  was  governed  with  an  iron  hand.  But  if  the  rule  of 
the  stranger  was  not  generous,  it  was  just,  and  for  the  moment 
it  possessed  the  crowning  merit  that  it  was  efficient.  The  laws 
were  once  more  respected.  The  people  once  more  dreamed  of 
wealth  and  happiness.  But  it  was  little  more  than  a  dream. 

1Gayangos,  vol.  ii. ,  lib.  iii.,  chap.  vi. 

^Ibid.,  ii.,  lib.  vii.  But  see  Lafuente,  iv. ,  373,  and  Stanley  Lane-Poole, 
op.  cit.,  p.  181. 

3  And  in  the  north-east  as  far  as  Saragossa.    Yet  Toledo  defied  their  attacks. 


204  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

On  the  death  of  Yusuf  in  1107,  the  sceptre  passed  into  the 
hands  of  his  son  AH,  a  more  sympathetic  but  a  far  less  powerful 
ruler.  In  1118  the  great  city  of  Saragossa,  the  last  bulwark  of 
Islam  in  the  north  of  the  Peninsula,  was  taken  by  Alfonso  I. 
of  Aragon,  who  carried  his  victorious  arms  into  southern  Spain, 
and  fulfilled  a  rash  vow  by  eating  a  dinner  of  fresh  fish  on  the 
coast  of  Granada. 


II. — The  Almohades. 
(1149—1235.) 

Yet  it  was  by  no  Christian  hand  that  the  Empire  of  the 
Almoravides  was  to  be  overthrown. 

Mohammed  Ibn  Abdullah,  a  lamplighter  in  the  mosque  at 
Cordova,  had  made  his  way  to  remote  Bagdad  to  study  at  the 
feet  of  Abu  Hamid  Algazali,  a  celebrated  doctor  of  Moslem 
law.  The  strange  adventures,  so  characteristic  of  his  age  and 
nation,  by  which  the  lowly  student  became  a  religious  reformer 
— a  Mahdi — and  a  conqueror  in  Africa,  and  at  length  overthrew 
the  Almoravides,  both  to  the  north  and  the  south  of  the  Straits 
of  Gibraltar,  forms  a  most  curious  chapter  in  the  history  of 
Islam  ;  but  in  a  brief  sketch  of  the  fortunes  of  mediaeval  Spain, 
it  must  suffice  to  say  that  having  established  his  religious  and 
military  power  among  the  Berber  tribes  of  Africa,  Ibn  Abdullah,1 
the  Mahdi,  landed  at  Algeciras  in  1145,  and  possessed  himself 
in  less  than  four  years  of  Malaga,  Seville,  Granada  and  Cordova. 
The  Empire  of  the  Almoravides  was  completely  destroyed  ;  and 
before  the  close  of  the  year  1149,  all  Moslem  Spain  acknow- 
ledged the  supremacy  of  the  Almohades.2 

These  more  sturdy  fanatics  were  still  African  rather  than 
Spanish  sovereigns.  Moslem  Spain  was  administered  by  a  Vali 
deputed  from  Morocco ;  and  Cordova,  shorn  of  much  of  its 
former  splendour,  was  the  occasional  abode  of  a  royal  visitor 
from  Barbary.  For  seventy  years  the  Almohades  retained 
their  position  in  Spain.  But  their  rule  was  not  of  glory  but  of 
decay.  One  high  feat  of  arms  indeed  shed  a  dying  lustre  on 
the  name  of  the  Berber  prince  who  reigned  for  fifteen  years 
[1184-1199]  under  the  auspicious  title  of  Almanzor,  and  his 

1Gayangos,  vol.  ii. ,  p.  521. 

2 Almohades  =  Unitarians;  from  Wdhid  =  One,  i.e.,  the  people  of  the  One 
(God). 


1238.]  AVERROES.  205 

great  Moslem  victory  over  Alfonso  III.  at  Alarcon  in  1195, 
revived  for  the  time  the  drooping  fortunes  of  the  Almohades. 
But  their  empire  was  already  doomed,  decaying,  disintegrated, 
wasting  away.  And  at  length  the  terrible  defeat  of  the  Moslem 
forces  by  the  united  armies  of  the  three  Christian  kings x  at  the 
Navas  de  Tolosa  in  1212,  at  once  the  most  crushing  and  the 
most  authentic  of  all  the  Christian  victories  of  mediaeval  Spain, 
gave  a  final  and  deadly  blow  to  the  Mohammedan  dominion  in 
the  Peninsula.  Within  a  few  years  of  that  celebrated  battle, 
one  province  alone  was  subject  to  the  rule  of  Islam.  And  the 
history  of  the  kingdom  of  GRANADA,  the  noble  remnant  of  a  yet 
more  noble  empire,  is  all  that  remains  to  be  written  of  the 
glorious  and  romantic  annals  of  the  Moslem  in  Spain. 

The  Almohades  were  not  actually  driven  out  of  the 
Peninsula  until  1235,  and  then  not  by  the  Christians,  but  by 
the  Moslem  rulers  of  the  various  cities  and  districts  of  southern 
Spain.  From  1235  to  1238  an  Arab  leader,  Ibn  Hud  by  name, 
maintained  a  doubtful  empire  in  the  Peninsula ;  but  in  the 
latter  year  he  too  was  driven  out,  to  join  the  Almohades  in 
their  native  Africa ;  and  the  most  important  Moslem  chief  left 
in  Andalusia  was  Mohammed  al  Ahmar  of  Granada.  Between 
1238  and  1260,  Ferdinand  III.  of  Castile,  and  James  I.  of 
Aragon,  conquered  the  cities  and  districts  of  Valencia,  Murcia, 
Seville  and  Cordova,  as  is  more  particularly  set  forth  in  the 
history  of  those  Christian  kings ;  and  Granada  was  content  to 
purchase  peace  and  independence  at  the  price  of  an  annual 
tribute. 


III. — The  Learning  of  Cordova. 
(820—1200.) 

If  the  annals  of  the  Spanish  Almohades  are  undistinguished 
by  territorial  acquisitions,  or  noble  feats  of  arms,  they  are  illu- 
mined by  one  great  name,  the  last  and  the  most  celebrated 
of  the  Arab  philosophers  of  the  West.  From  the  time  of 
Archimedes  to  the  time  of  Roger  Bacon,  full  1 500  years,  science 
slumbered  in  Europe.  And  if  the  English  friar  was,  perhaps, 
the  greatest  and  boldest  speculator  among  the  scientific  pioneers 
of  the  thirteenth  century,  the  names  of  Raymond  Lull  in 

1  Alfonso  of  Castile ;  Sancho  of  Navarre  ;  and  boldest  perhaps  of  all,  Peter  II. 
of  Aragon. 


206  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

Aragon,  and  Alfonso  the  Learned  in  Castile,  show  Spain  in  the 
van  of  European  progress  and  modern  discovery.  But  long 
years  before  the  coming  of  Alfonso  or  of  Raymond,  Spain  was 
already  preparing  the  way  for  the  great  revival. 

The  encouragement  that  was  given  by  the  Caliphs  at 
Cordova  to  men  of  science,  and  learning  of  every  kind,  the 
studies  of  Hisham,  the  liberality  of  Abdur  Rahman,  the  richly 
endowed  colleges  and  universities  of  Moslem  Spain  ;  all  these 
things  made  Cordova  the  home  of  the  philosophers,  the  students, 
and  the  experimentalists  of  mediaeval  Europe.  Almanzor,  batal- 
lador  as  he  was,  and  conquistador,  was  a  collector  of  books  and 
a  patron  of  bookmen ;  and  even  the  political  anarchy  that 
followed  on  his  death,  did  not  immediately  drive  away  the 
philosophers  from  Cordova.  It  was  chiefly,  if  not  entirely  by 
the  great  Moslem  doctors  of  Arab  Spain — even  when  the  poli- 
tical glory  of  the  Caliphate  had  wholly  departed — that  after 
twelve  centuries  of  darkness,  the  ancient  learning  was  once 
more  brought  before  the  Christian  world,  and  speculation  was 
awakened  in  mediaeval  Europe ;  until  at  length  knowledge  was 
triumphant  at  the  Renaissance,  and  thought  was  made  free  at 
the  Reformation. 

And  thus  it  was  that  in  Spain,  whose  history  is  associated 
in  men's  minds  rather  with  a  narrow  and  intolerant  ecclesi- 
asticism,1  the  lamp  of  learning  was  kept  alight,  even  in  the 
darkest  ages  of  Papal  oppression  and  Italian  ignorance.  For 
within  less  than  half  a  century  from  the  day  that  Hildehand 
triumphed  at  Canossa,  Averroes  was  born  at  Cordova. 

The  immediate  successor  of  Avempace 2  of  Saragossa,  the 
friend  of  Abenzoar  of  Seville,  the  disciple  of  Abubacer  of 
Cordova,  Averroes  is  accounted  the  greatest  doctor  of  science 
and  philosophy  of  Moslem  Spain — in  that  he  has  had  the  greatest 
influence  upon  the  world  at  large ;  yet  he  was  but  prince  among 
many  learned  peers  in  the  Arab  schools  at  Cordova. 

1  Yet  the  honour  of  first  seeking  to  diffuse  the  superior  learning  of  the  Arabs 
among  their  Christian  contemporaries  is  due  to  a  Spanish  archbishop,  Raymond, 
Archbishop  of  Toledo  and  Grand  Chancellor  of  Castile,  1130  to  1150.  Renan, 
Averroes  et  L'  Averroistne,  p.  201.  (As  the  author  has  pointed  out  in  a  previous 
page,  this  narrow  and  intolerant  ecclesiasticism,  which  was  adopted  for  purely 
political  ends,  did  not  become  characteristic  of  Spain  until  centuries  after  the  period 
at  present  under  discussion. — H.) 

3  Avempace  is  the  conventional  name  for  Abu  Bekr  Ibn  Yahya,  surnamed  Ibn 
Baja  (1080-1138),  Abenzoar  is  Ibn  Zohr  (1072-1162),  Abubacer  is  Ibn  Tufail,  who 
died  in  A.H.  581  (A.D.  1185-86). 

The  studies  of  Averroes  were,  no  doubt,  largely  influenced  by  the  writings  of 
Abu  Ali  Ibn  Sind  (Avicenna)  who  preceded  him  by  a  century  and  a  half  (980-1037). 


1126.]  AVERROES.  207 

High  among  those  forgotten  worthies,  stands  the  name  of 
Hasan  Ibn  Haithem,  more  commonly  known  in  the  West  as 
Al  Hazen,  a  man  who  was  probably  born  in  Spain,  and  who 
certainly  lived  and  studied  at  Cordova  in  the  early  years  of 
the  eleventh  century.1  Over  two  hundred  years  before  the 
time  of  Roger  Bacon,  the  Christian  student  who  suffered 
persecution  and  actual  imprisonment  for  the  novelty  of  his 
scientific  discoveries  (1280-1290),  Al  Hazen  lived  too  late  for  the 
patronage  of  Abdur  Rahman  or  of  Almanzor,  yet  too  early  for 
the  appreciation  of  Christian  Europe.  But  his  works  remained, 
and  his  discoveries  smoothed  the  path  of  future  students, 
ungrateful,  without  doubt,  to  the  Moslem  who  went  before 
them ;  ignorant,  perhaps,  of  the  great  debt  that  science  owed 
to  the  liberality  of  Islam.  His  explanation  of  the  physical 
marvels  of  the  human  vision  are  no  less  remarkable  than  his 
discoveries  with  regard  to  the  properties  of  light ;  his  demon- 
stration of  the  nature  of  the  atmosphere,  and  his  bold  but 
accurate  theories  of  optics,2  of  astronomy,  and  of  physical  science 
generally  ;  while  his  theory  of  gravitation  was  only  modified 
after  a  lapse  of  nearly  five  hundred  years  by  the  more  splendid 
genius  of  Newton. 

Abu  Bekr  Mohammed  Ibn  Jahya,  surnamed  Ibn  Badja,  or 
the  son  of  the  goldsmith,  corrupted  by  the  Christians  into 
Avempace,  was  born  at  Saragossa  about  the  time  of  the  invasion 

1See  Casiri,  Bibl.  Arab.  Hisp.,  and  Bailley,  Astronomie  Moderne,  torn,  vi.,  p. 
20.  Al  Hazen's  Optics  and  his  Treatise  on  Twilight,  were  published  in  a  Latin 
translation  by  Frederic  Risner  in  1572.  The  De  Crepusculis  was  translated  by 
Gerardus  of  Cremona.  The  translator  of  the  Optica  is  uncertain.  (There  were 
two  contemporary  Arab  writers  of  the  same  name  at  this  time,  between  whom 
much  confusion  exists,  namely  Ibn  al  Haithem  of  Cordova  who  died  in  1063,  and 
Ibn  al  Haithem  of  Basrah  who  died  at  Cairo  in  1038.  The  writings  above 
mentioned  were  in  all  probability  the  work  of  the  latter,  who  had  apparently  no 
connection  with  Spain. — H.) 

2  In  a  book  called  the  Balance  of  Wisdom,  sometimes  attributed  to  Al  Hazen, 
the  writer  discusses  those  general  dynamical  principles — supposed  to  be  the  mono- 
poly of  modern  science.  He  describes  minutely  the  connection  between  the 
weight  and  density  of  the  atmosphere,  and  how  material  objects  vary  in  weight  in 
a  rare  and  in  a  dense  atmosphere.  He  discusses  the  submergence  of  floating 
bodies,  and  the  force  with  which  they  rise  to  the  surface  when  immersed  in  light  or 
heavy  media.  He  recognises  at  least  the  principle  of  gravitation.  He  recognises 
gravity  as  a  force.  He  knows  correctly  the  relation  between  the  velocities,  spaces 
and  times  of  falling  bodies,  and  has  very  distinct  ideas  of  capillary  attraction. 
Syed  Amir  AH,  The  Spirit  of  Islam  (1890),  p.  556.  See  also  Draper,  Intellectual 
Development  of  Europe,  vol.  ii. ,  pp.  44-48.  The  Balance  of  Wisdom  is  the  work 
of  a  certain  Al  Khazinl,  about  whom  very  little  is  known.  The  book  cannot 
possibly  be  by  Ibn  Haithem,  as  it  is  dedicated  to  Abul  Harith  Sanjar,  the  Seljuk 
ruler  of  Persia,  who  reigned  A.D.  1117-1157,  whereas  Ibn  Haithem  (of  Basrah)  died 
in  A.D.  1038.— A.  G.  E. 


208  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

of  the  Almoravides.  By  profession  a  doctor  of  medicine,  but 
a  poet,  a  musician,  a  mathematician,  an  astronomer ;  his  reputa- 
tion as  a  metaphysician  extended  not  only  into  Christian  Spain, 
but  into  all  parts  of  Christian  Europe.  Yet  the  fame  of  Avem- 
pace  might  have  perished  like  that  of  so  many  of  his  fellow- 
students,  had  it  not  been  for  the  criticisms  upon  his  philosophy 
in  general,  and  more  especially  upon  his  work  entitled  The 
Conduct  of  the  Solitary,  that  were  published  by  his  greater 
successor,  Averroes.1 


IV. — The  Grandson. 
(1126—1198.) 

Abu  '1  Walid  Mohammed  Ibn  Ahmad  Ibn  Mohammed  Ibn 
Rosht,  whose  Arab  patronymic  is  hardly  distinguishable  in 
the  conventional  name  by  which  he  is  known  to  Christian 
writers,  was  born  at  Cordova  in  the  dark  days  of  the  last  Almora- 
vides, in  1 126.  His  father,  and  more  especially  his  grandfather, 
were  both  distinguished  members  of  the  family  of  Ibn  Rosht, 
and  had  occupied  important  and  honourable  positions  in  the 
State. 

A  student  from  his  earliest  childhood,  of  theology,  of  law, 
of  medicine,  of  philosophy,  Ibn  Rosht — the  Grandson,  as  he  is 
styled  in  Arabian  literature,  has  left  but  the  scantiest  records 
of  his  way  of  life.  He  was  commissioned  before  he  was  thirty 
years  of  age  by  the  celebrated  Ibn  Tufail  to  undertake  the 
establishment  of  certain  colleges  in  Africa,  where  he  probably 
passed  a  considerable  time.  Ten  years  later  we  find  him  occupy- 
ing the  position  of  Cadi  of  Seville  ;  and  he  was  afterwards 
appointed  Chief  Cadi  of  Cordova,  an  office  which  had  been 
worthily  filled  by  his  father  and  his  grandfather. 

Meanwhile  his  writings  had  already  begun  to  excite  atten- 
tion. He  was  accused  of  theological  heterodoxy ;  and  after  a 
solemn  inquisition,  undertaken  by  order  of  Almanzor,  his 
heretical  doctrines  were  condemned,  and  his  books  were  publicly 

1  It  would  be  unjust  to  omit  all  mention  of  the  Jewish  influence  in  keeping 
alive  and  reviving  learning  in  Moslem  Spain.  The  Jew,  Ibn  Gebirol  or  Avinbron, 
at  the  end  of  the  eleventh  century  was  acknowledged  by  Duns  Scotus  as  his  master, 
and  Judah  ben  Samuel  the  Levite,  the  famous  Spanish- Hebrew  poet  of  the  same 
period,  became  famous  throughout  Europe  ;  whilst  Maimonides  (Saladin's  physi- 
cian), born  a  Cordovese  Jew  (1135)  was  the  first,  and  perhaps  the  greatest,  to 
European  theological  philosophers. — H. 


1126.]  AVERROES.  20.9 

burnt  at  Cordova,  while  their  author  suffered  the  minor  penalty 
of  banishment  from  the  court  and  from  the  city.  But  his  exile 
was  of  no  very  long  duration.  The  favour  and  the  disfavour 
of  the  Berber  princes  were  alike  uncertain,  and  he  was  per- 
mitted to  return  to  Cordova  by  the  generous  Almanzor,1  ere 
he  passed  of  his  own  free  will  into  Africa,  and  died  at  Morocco 
in  December,  1198. 

It  is  a  small  record  of  a  great  life.  But  Ibn  Rosht  enjoyed 
little  reputation  among  his  Arab  contemporaries,  save  as  a 
physician.  He  founded  no  school  in  Islam.  His  philosophical 
successors  in  the  east  are  not  Moslems,  but  the  Jewish  disciples 
of  Moses  Maimonides.  His  fame  is  due  entirely  to  the  Christian 
doctors,  who  admired,  misunderstood,  discussed  2  and  quarrelled 
over  his  commentaries.  And  thus  the  great  Moslem  whose 
translations  and  speculations  were  as  the  seed  whose  fruit  was 
the  reformation  of  Christendom,  was  almost  without  influence 
in  Islam ;  the  great  Spaniard  was  nowhere  less  honoured  than 
in  Spain.  The  light  shone  out  of  Cordova  ;  and  Cordova  was 
soon  afterwards  enveloped  in  the  blackness  of  darkest  night.3 

It  is  sufficiently  remarkable  that  Averroes,  the  translator  and 
preserver  of  Aristotle,  was  not  even  acquainted  with  the  language 
of  the  original,  and  that  the  Latin  translation  of  his  Arabic 
version  which  served  the  Christian  doctors  of  the  twelfth  century 
was  the  translation  of  his  translation  of  a  Hebrew  translation  of 
a  commentary  on  an  Arab  translation  of  a  Syriac4  translation 
of  the  original  Greek  text !  But  although  Ibn  Rosht  was 
ignorant  of  Greek,  and  although  he  was  far  from  being  the  first 
translator  of  Aristotle,  he  had  so  great  an  appreciation  of  the 
works  of  the  Stagyrite,  that  to  him  is  certainly  due  the  credit 
of  introducing  the  Greek  philosopher  to  western  Europe.  His 
own  views  no  doubt  were  largely  affected  by  the  Neo-platonism 
of  the  Alexandrian  School ;  yet  Aristotle  was  his  master,  his 

1  Dozy,  pp.  224-25.     The  sovereign  was,  of  course,  the  Almohade  Almanzor — 
Jacub  ben  Yusuf  (1186-1197). 

2  The  celebrity  at  Cordova  of  the  father  and  grandfather  of  Averroes,  as  well 
as  the  comparatively  small  honour  in  which  the  philosophical  prophet  was  held 
in  his  own  country — Renan,  Averroes,  etc.,  p.  37 — has  led  to  the  curious  freak  of 
nomenclature  by  which  the  most  widely  celebrated  of  all  the  philosophers  of  Islam 
was  known  to  his  Moslem  contemporaries  only  by  his  modest  family  sobriquet  of 
"  the  Grandson  "  (el  Hand). 

8 The  great  struggle  between  Mohammedan  learning  and  morals,  and  Italian 
ignorance  and  crime,  may  be  said  to  have  commenced  on  the  return  of  Gerbert, 
afterwards  Pope  Sylvester  II.,  from  Cordova,  at  the  close  of  the  tenth  century. 
Draper,  op.  cit. ,  vol.  ii. ,  pp.  5-7. 

4  Renan,  op.  cit. ,  p.  52 
VOL.  I.  14 


210  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

model,  the  inspirer  of  all  his  works.  Even  in  his  medical 
writings,  more  celebrated  by  far  among  his  contemporaries  than 
his  philosophical  commentaries,  Averroes  is  ever  the  champion 
of  Aristotle  against  the  more  popular  theories  of  Galen,  especially 
in  what  is  probably  his  first  work,  the  celebrated  treatise  on 
medical  science,  which  was  entitled  Kalliyalh  or  general  survey, 
written  about  the  year  11 62,  and  translated  into  Latin  under 
the  canting  title  of  Colliget,  and  was  repeatedly  printed  in 
Europe.1  His  abridgement  of  the  Almegist  or  MeyaA.7/  Swra^ts 
of  Ptolemy,  preceded  by  nearly  half  a  century  the  earliest 
Latin  translation  of  that  work,  which  was  made  by  the  order  of 
the  Emperor  Frederic  II. 

The  total  number  of  his  works  that  can  now  be  identified  is 
sixty-seven ;  but  the  destruction  of  Arabic  MSS.  by  Ximenez 
after  the  fall  of  Granada  has  rendered  copies  of  the  original 
works  of  Averroes,  as  of  every  other  Spanish  Moslem  writer, 
extremely  rare. 

The  first  printed  edition  of  any  of  the  works  of  Averroes  in 
the  original  was  that  by  Miiller,  published  at  Munich  in  1 859, 
containing  three  treatises  on  religious  and  philosophical  ques- 
tions.2 But  the  Latin  editions  may  be  counted  by  hundreds ; 
more  than  fifty  having  appeared  at  Venice  alone;  and  Padua, 
as  may  be  supposed,  lags  not  far  behind  her  great  neighbour. 
The  philosophical  writings  may  be  roughly  divided  into  three 
classes  : — The  Greater  Commentaries,  The  Minor  Commentaries, 
and  the  Paraphrases  or  Analyses ;  yet  they  are  all  of  them 
presentments  of  the  views  of  Aristotle  :  and  of  the  acknowledged 
writings  of  the  Greek  master,  only  the  Politics  and  the  History 
of  Animals  remain  untranslated  by  his  Moslem  disciple.3  To 
a  Scotsman,  Michael  Scot,  who  resided  and  studied  at  Toledo 
in  the  early  days  of  the  thirteenth  century,  is  due  the  honour  of 
first  introducing  the  works  of  Averroes  to  the  scholars  of 
Christian  Europe.4  William  of  Auvergne,  in  the  thirteenth 
century,  was  the  first  of  the  schoolmen  to  criticise  his  doctrines, 
and  Albertus  Magnus  and  St.  Thomas  Aquinas  devoted  special 
treatises  to  his  theories.  At  Oxford,  Averroes  was  soon  read 
and  admired,  and  already,  in  the  days  of  Roger  Bacon,  at  the 

1  Renan  devotes  many  erudite  pages  (op.  cit..  pp.  58-79)  to  an  enumeration  of 
the  works  of  Averroes,  which  include,  beyond  the  Aristotelian  commentaries  and 
translations,    original    treatises   on   philosophical   and    theological   and   physical 
subjects,  especially  on  medicine,  astronomy,  and  even  on  grammar  and  juris- 
prudence. 

2  Renan,  p.  85.  3/6id.,  p.  62.  *  Ibid.,  pp.  205-208. 


1162.]  AVERROES.  211 

end  of  the  thirteenth  century,  he  had  become  so  great  an 
authority  in  England,  that  the  great  Franciscan  advised  his 
disciples  to  acquire  so  strange  and  difficult  a  language  as  the 
Arabic l  for  the  special  purpose  of  studying  in  the  original 
the  works  of  the  great  commentator.  Duns  Scotus,  John  of 
Baconthorpe,  and  Walter  Burley,  were  all  among  his  admirers 
and  disciples  in  England.  But  it  was  chiefly  in  the  universities 
of  northern  Italy,  and  more  especially  at  Padua,  that  the  works 
of  Averroes  were  most  ardently  studied,  and  that  their  influence 
was  most  chiefly  felt,  although  the  Italian  students  were  led  by 
their  new  enthusiasm  into  philosophical  excesses  which  the  great 
Cordovan  would  have  been  the  first  to  condemn  and  to  deplore. 

Before  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century,  Averroism  had 
incurred  the  deadly  hatred  of  the  Church,  and  the  followers  of 
the  Spanish  Dominic  distinguished  themselves  among  all  other 
Christian  orders  by  their  attacks  upon  the  studies  and  students 
of  the  Spanish  philosopher.2  And  with  the  view  of  horrifying 
the  faithful  at  his  philosophy  in  general,  the  famous  speech  was 
invented  for  him  by  some  fourteenth  century  Churchman  that 
"  Moses,  Christ,  and  Mahomet  were  the  three  great  impostors 
who  had  deluded  the  human  race". 

Strangely  enough  this  famous  phrase  de  tribus  impostorihus, 
in  spite  of  its  inherent  absurdity,  has  been  attributed  not  only 
to  Averroes  but  to  at  least  a  dozen  eminent  Christian  writers, 
including  Milton,  Servetus,  Rabelais,  Macchiavelli,  Boccaccio, 
and  the  Emperor  Frederic  II.3  Queen  Christiana  of  Sweden 
caused  all  the  great  libraries  of  Europe  to  be  searched  in  the 
seventeenth  century  for  any  authentic  record  of  the  phrase,  its 
authorship,  or  its  origin ;  but  the  researches  were  conducted  in 
vain. 

In  spite  of  the  enormous  influence  that  is  attributable  to  the 
publications  of  Averroes,  and  the  philosophical  revolution  that 
was  brought  about  by  the  study  of  his  works,4  it  cannot  be  said 
that  there  was  much  originality  in  the  philosophy  of  Arab 
Spain.  Nor  was  Ibn  Rosht  more  original,  though  he  was 
possibly  more  daring  than  his  predecessors.  It  is  by  a  freak  of 

1  Greek  was,  of  course,  as  yet  almost  unknown  in  England,  or,  indeed,  in  any 
part  of  western  Europe. 

3  According  to  Mr.  Lea,  Hist,  of  the  Inquisition  in  the  Middle  Atfes,  vol.  Hi., 
pp.  565-578,  the  inquisitors  were  somewhat  chary  of  interfering  with  the  specula- 
tions of  the  school  of  Averroes. 

3  See  Menendez  Pelayo,  Heterodoxos  Espanolei,  i.,  pp.  507  and  782. 

4  Kenan,  88-90. 


212  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

fortune  that  his  commentaries  on  the  works  of  his  Greek  master 
were  taken  by  an  ignorant  and  uncritical  age  for  masterpieces 
of  original  thought,  and  were  themselves  the  subject  of  com- 
mentaries, discussions  and  disputations,  as  foreign  to  the  Arab, 
as  to  the  Greek,  philosophy.  Disregarded  in  the  language  in 
which  they  were  written,  and  by  the  people  to  whom  they  were 
addressed,  the  works  of  Ibn  Rosht,  the  Grandson,  found  a  wider 
field  than  that  of  the  Peninsula.  It  was  upon  European 
Christendom,  yet  slumbering,  in  the  twelfth  century,  that  the 
light  of  reason  "  flashed  forth  from  Cordova,"  l  and  the  form  of 
Averroes  began  to  assume  those  giant  proportions  which,  at  a 
later  period,  overshadowed  the  whole  intellect  of  Europe.2 

1  Lecky,  Rationalism  in  Europe,  vol.  i.,  p.  48. 

2  See  in  addition  to  Renan,  Averroes  est  I'Averroisme,  so  often  referred  to  ; 
Mehren,  Etudes  sur  la  Philosophie  d1  Averroes  (Louvain,  1888) ;  and  Lea,  Hist,  of 
the  Inquisition,  vol.  iii. 


213 


CHAFPER  XX. 
THE  RISE  OF  ARAGON. 

(1027—1213.) 
I. — The  Inheritance  of  Ramiro. 

ARAGON,  in  the  days  of  Sancho  the  Great  of  Navarre,  was  but  a 
small  tract  of  country  on  the  southern  slopes  of  the  Pyrenees, 
lying  to  the  west  of  the  little  river  which  gives  its  name  to  the 
modern  province,  as  it  did  to  the  mediaeval  kingdom  of  Aragon.1 
The  eastern  portion  of  the  old  territory  of  the  Vascones,  it  was 
but  a  poor  mountainous  district  of  some  twenty-four  leagues  in 
length  by  ten  or  twelve  in  breadth,  without  a  single  town  of 
importance  within  its  boundaries. 

Ramiro,  who  succeeded,  as  we  have  seen,  on  the  death  of 
Sancho  the  Great,  to  this  slender  inheritance,  is  usually  reckoned 
as  the  first  independent  King  of  Aragon  ;  and  by  his  fortunate 
forays  and  bold  encroachments  upon  the  territories  of  his  neigh- 
bours, Christian  and  Moslem,  he  increased  both  the  area  and 
the  importance  of  his  little  kingdom.  His  son  Sancho  was  no 
less  enterprising  and  no  less  fortunate ;  and  at  the  time  of  his 
death  in  battle  2  in  1 094,  he  had  extended  his  dominions  as  far 

1  For  an  exhaustive  treatise  on  the  history  and  geography  of  the  north-eastern 
districts  of  Spain  at  this  time,  see  D.  Jose  Pella  y  Forgas  Historia  de  Ampurdan 
(Barcelona,  1883),  with  an  excellent  map,  and  many  illustrations.    Gerona  is  partly 
in  this  district ;  Figueras  entirely  so  ;  and  Tossa  on  the  coast  is  the  most  southerly 
village. 

2  At  this  most  important  battle,  St.  George  is  said  to  have  appeared  at  the 
head  of  the  Christian  chivalry,  and  his  cross  was  adopted  as  the  arms  of  Aragon, 
on  a  field  Argent,  with  four  bloody  heads  of  Moorish  chiefs  in  the  four  cantons. 
(It  was  not  at  the  battle  at  Huesca  where  Sancho  of  Aragon  was  slain  in  1094  that 
St.  George  aided  the  Aragonese  host ;  but  at  the  great  fight  on  the  plain  of  Al- 
coraz  two  years  afterwards,  where  Peter  of  Aragon  was  pitted  against  the  Moors 
of  Saragossa  and  a  contingent  of  Castilians  under  Count  de  Najera. — H.). 

See  Appendix  V. ,  St.  George. 

After  the  taking  of  Huesca,  the  Aragonese  assisted  the  Cid  in  his  expedition 
against  Valencia, 


214  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

as  the  Ebro ;  and  had  even  threatened  the  important  town  of 
Huesca,  which  within  two  years  was  captured  by  his  eldest  son 
and  successor  Peter.  This  Peter  the  First  of  Aragon  died  after 
an  uneventful  reign  in  1104,  and  was  succeeded  by  his  younger 
brother,  Alfonso,  who  married  Urraca,  Queen  of  Castile  and 
Leon,  widow  of  Raymond  of  Burgundy,1  and  who  may  be 
distinguished  by  his  appropriate  title  of  El  Batallador. 

The  number  of  royal  Alfonsos  that  flourished  in  Christian 
Spain  at  this  time  is  perplexing  to  the  last  degree  ;  and  a 
double  or  doubtful  numeration  renders  their  identity  still  more 
difficult  to  ascertain.  Alfonsos  there  were  on  the  thrones  of 
Aragon,  of  Leon,  of  Castile,  and  even  of  Barcelona.  Alfonso 
the  Sixth  of  Leon  was  at  the  same  time  Alfonso  the  First  of 
Castile.  Alfonso  the  First  of  Aragon  is  sometimes  spoken  of 
as  Alfonso  the  Seventh  of  Leon  in  right  of  his  wife  Urraca, 
while  their  son  Alfonso  is  usually  reckoned  as  the  Eighth, 
though  he  was  really  but  the  Seventh  of  Leon,  and  only  the 
Second  of  Castile. 

Finally  Ramon  Berenguer,  the  son  of  Petronilla,  who  is 
sometimes  called  the  Fourth  and  sometimes  the  Fifth  of  the 
Ramons  of  Catalonia,  changed  his  name  to  Alfonso,  out  of 
compliment  to  his  Aragonese  subjects,  and  to  the  despair  of 
future  students  of  history. 

Of  all  these  early  Alfonsos  none  was  more  unhappy  in  his 
domestic  relations,  none  was  more  enterprising  in  his  military 
policy  than  Alfonso  El  Batallador,  first  of  his  name  in  Aragon. 
He  not  only  drove  the  Moslems  out  of  the  northern  provinces 
of  the  Peninsula,  but  he  invaded  Lerida  and  Valencia,  and 
even  carried  his  Christian  arms  into  Andalusia.2  Nor  for  the 
most  part,  were  these  mere  plundering  expeditions,  such  as 
were  too  often  undertaken  by  his  neighbours  in  the  west. 
Before  he  had  sat  for  more  than  a  dozen  years  upon  his  insig- 
nificant throne,  he  had  actually  driven  the  Moslems  out  of  the 
important  neighbouring  city  of  Saragossa,  which  became  the 
capital  of  his  dominions  (1118).  But  his  disputes  with  his 
Christian  neighbours  ;  his  quarrels  with  his  wife  ;  his  wars  with 
her  subjects  in  Castile  and  Leon,  distracted  his  attention 
from  more  fruitful  undertakings,  and  in  spite  of  his  military 

1  She  was  the  eldest  daughter  of  Alfonso  VI.  of  Castile  and  Leon,  who  died 
without  male  issue  in  nog.     See  ante,  chapter  xvii. 

2  Alfonso  is  said  to  have  traversed  Spain,  to  have  approached  Cordova,  and 
actually  to  have  reached  the  sea  near  the  strong  Moslem  city  of  Almeria,  ibid.,  pp. 


1128.]  THE  RISE  OF  ARAGON.  215 

capacity  and  his  many  opportunities,  he  made  a  few  permanent 
conquests  to  the  south  of  the  Ebro.  He  occupied  Calatayud,1 
but  he  failed  to  reduce  Lerida.  Victorious  outside  the  walls 
of  Valencia  (1128)  he  did  not  enter  the  city.  Successful  at 
Bayonne,  which  he  besieged  and  took  in  1132,  he  left  his 
southern  frontiers  to  be  harassed  by  the  Moslems ;  and  hasten- 
ing back  to  defend  his  territory  in  Aragon  from  many  invaders, 
he  was  unable  to  retain  any  part  of  all  that  he  had  conquered 
to  the  north  of  the  Pyrenees.  His  death  without  issue'2  shortly 
after  the  disastrous  battle  of  Fraga,  when  he  was  defeated  by 
Ibn  Ghamah  in  July  1134,  put  an  end  to  his  Imperial  preten- 
sions, after  a  reign  of  eight-and-thirty  years  in  Aragon. 

This  childless  and  defeated  batallador  bequeathed  his  king- 
dom by  will  to  the  two  great  orders  of  religious  knighthood, 
the  Templars,  and  the  Knights  of  St.  John  of  Jerusalem  ;  but 
his  testamentary  disposition  was  wholly  disregarded  by  the 
Aragonese.  Not  one  but  two  kings  were  elected  by  hostile 
factions,  in  the  place  of  the  deceased  monarch  ;  and  it  was  not 
until  their  rival  claims  had  been  more  or  less  amicably  adjusted 
by  the  elevation  of  Ramiro  the  Monk  3  from  the  cloister  to  the 
throne,  that  the  Grand  Master  of  the  Templars  arrived  (1140) 
in  Spain  to  take  possession  of  his  inheritance.  But  the  foreigner 
found  neither  subjects  nor  soldiers,  and  was  glad  to  content 
himself  with  the  establishment  of  some  commanderies  in 
Aragon,  and  the  grant  of  certain  legal  privileges  to  his  dis- 
appointed Order,  in  the  kingdom  which  he  had  come  to 
acquire. 

The  royal  monk,  having  married  a  princess  of  the  House 
of  Aquitane,  was  blessed  with  a  daughter,  Petronilla,4  who 
was  destined  not  only  to  continue  the  direct  line  of  the  House 
of  Aragon,  but  to  bring  honour  and  happiness  to  two  nations. 
Her  infant  hand  was  granted  to  Ramon  Berenguer  the  Fourth 
or  the  Fifth 5  count  of  neighbouring  Catalonia,  and  Ramiro, 

1  After  the  battle  of  Daroca  in  1120. 

2  Don  Pascual  de  Gayangos,  in  his  most  admirable  edition  of  the  Chronicle  of 
James  I.  of  Aragon,  says  (Introduction,  p.  xiii.)  that  he  left  "  no  heir  to  his  crown 
but  a  daughter '  .     I  find  no  mention  of  the  lady  in  any  other  authority. 

8  He  is  said  to  have  been  only  in  deacon's  orders.  A  similar  excuse,  it  may 
be  remembered,  was  made  for  the  election  of  Bermudo  in  788. 

*  Petronilla  was  but  two  years  old  at  the  time  of  her  marriage,  an  early  entry 
into  the  field  of  politics.  She  is  called  by  Don  Pascual  de  Gayangos,  op.  cit.,  p. 
15,  the  niece  of  Ramiro  the  monk  ;  the  word  is  perhaps  a  euphemism  for  the 
daughter  of  an  ecclesiastic. 

8  The  name  and  numeration  of  the  Ramon  Berenguers  of  Catalonia  is  even 
more  uncertain  than  that  of  the  Alfonsos  of  Castile  and  Leon.  Fortunately  they 
were  not  by  any  means  as  numerous  ! 


216  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

having  resigned  his  sovereign  rights  in  a  solemn  assembly  of 
the  Estates  of  Aragon  at  Balbastro,  in  1137,  to  this  most 
worthy  son  in-law,  retired  once  more  to  the  cloister,  having 
contributed  not  a  little,  by  his  modest  patriotism,  to  the 
advancement  of  the  true  interests  of  his  country.1 

Ramon  and  Petronilla  reigned  happily  and  successfully 
for  five-and-twenty  years.  In  war  and  in  politics  they  were 
equally  fortunate.  The  important  cities  of  Lerida  and  Fraga 
were  added  to  the  Christian  possessions  ;  and  when  Ramon 
died,  in  1162,  on  his  way  to  meet  the  Emperor  Frederic  and 
do  homage  for  the  County  of  Provence,  the  Moslem  had  no 
possessions  within  the  limits  of  Aragon  or  Catalonia. 

The  virtuous  Petronilla  survived  her  husband  eleven  years, 
till  1173,  but  she  gave  up  her  regal  title  and  authority  in  her 
own  dominions  after  her  husband's  death,  to  her  son,  who 
is  known  in  history  as  Alfonso  the  Second,  of  the  united  king- 
dom of  Aragon  2  and  County  of  Barcelona. 


II. — Catalonia. 

The  little  County  of  Barcelona  or  Catalonia,  which  came 
into  existence,  as  we  have  seen,  after  the  victories  of  Louis 
of  Aquitaine  in  the  early  years  of  the  ninth  century,  has  no 
history,  certain,  or  worthy  of  our  attention,  until  the  days  of 
Ramon  Berenguer  I.,  el  viejo  (1035-1076),  whose  victories  over 
the  Arabs  were  even  less  remarkable  than  the  vigour  and 
success  of  his  domestic  policy.  The  first  undisputed  master 
of  all  Catalonia,  he  introduced  a  modified  form  of  the  feudal 
system  among  the  barons  and  knights,  and  as  a  supplement 
or  complement  to  the  old  Gothic  laws  of  the  Fuero  Juzgo  3  he 
formulated  the  celebrated  Usages  of  Catalonia,  which  were 

1  During  the  war  which  Ramon  Berenguer  waged  against  Raymond  V.   of 
Toulouse,  he  sought  and  obtained,  in  1153,  the  alliance  of  Henry  II.  of  England, 
who  claimed  the  Duchy  of  Aquitaine  as  the  inheritance  of  his  wife  Eleanor,  the 
repudiated  Queen  of  Louis  VII.  of  France.     And  Ramon  Berenguer  dying  when 
his  son  Alfonso  was  still  of  tender  years,  constituted  Henry  II.  guardian  of  his 
kingdom,  and  of  his  successor.     (Ramon  Berenguer  modestly  called  himself  Prince 
— not  King— of  his  wife's  realm  of  Aragon. — H.) 

2  His  father  left  by  will  to  his  younger  brother  Peter,  Cerdagne,  Carcassonne, 
and  Beziers. 

3  The  Fuero  Juzgo  was  not,  as  is  sometimes  stated,  abolished  by  this  early 
Parliament.     Its  authority  was  fully  maintained,  except  in  such  particulars  as  it 
was  modified  by  the  newer  code. 


1161.]  THE  RISE  OF  ARAGON.  217 

promulgated  at  the  Council  of  Gerona,  and  confirmed,  in  1068, 
by  the  Cortes  of  Barcelona,  one  of  the  earliest  Councils,  at 
which  no  bishop  was  present,  and  which  was  a  true  popular 
and  political  assembly.  This  Ramon  Berenguer  acquired,  more- 
over, by  marriage  and  treaty,  considerable  possessions  beyond 
the  Pyrenees,  and,  at  the  instance  of  Pope  Alexander  II.,  he 
restored  or  rebuilt  the  cathedral  at  Barcelona.  The  wisdom  ot 
Ramon  Berenguer  the  elder  was  not  perpetuated  in  his  chil- 
dren, nor  did  he  himself  display  it  in  the  disposition  of  his 
dominions  at  his  death ;  for  he  divided  his  kingdom  between 
his  two  sons,  Ramon  Berenguer  II.,  surnamed  cap  d'eslopa,  or 
the  flaxen-headed,  and  his  younger  brother,  Berenguer  Ramon ; 
and  the  succession  was  only  settled,  after  five  years  of  domestic 
strife,  by  the  assassination  of  the  elder  of  those  princes  by  the 
younger  in  1081.  The  fratricide  found  no  favour  with  the 
Catalans,  and  after  a  brief  period  of  sovereignty  the  new 
monarch  fled  to  the  Holy  Land,  and  was  succeeded  by  his 
infant  nephew,  the  son  of  his  flaxen-haired  brother,  who 
reigned  for  nearly  fifty  years  as  Ramon  Berenguer  III.  (1082- 
1131).  By  his  marriage  with  Douce,  Countess  of  Provence,  by 
treaty,  and  by  inheritance,  this  prudent  sovereign  extended 
his  dominions  on  either  side  of  the  Pyrenees,  and  making 
head  against  the  Arabs  on  his  southern  frontier,  he  actually 
carried  his  victorious  arms  across  the  sea  to  Majorca,  which  was 
taken  and  occupied  by  the  Catalans  in  1100.1 

This  Ramon  Berenguer  III.  is  known  in  history  by  the 
honourable  title  of  the  Consolidalor  of  the  Realm.  He  reigned 
over  both  Barcelona  and  Aragon  with  infinite  advantage  to 
the  Commonwealth  ;  and  was  succeeded  by  his  son,  Ramon 
Berenguer  IV.,  a  still  greater  consolidator,  for  whom  was 
reserved  the  happy  honour  of  uniting  the  sovereignties  of 
Aragon  and  Catalonia  by  his  marriage  with  Petronilla,  the 
daughter  of  Ramiro  the  Monk,  as  has  been  already  related. 

With  dominions  thus  extended,  and  at  peace  with  all  his 
neighbours,  Ramon  Berenguer  was  able  to  offer  substantial 
assistance  to  his  Christian  neighbours  in  their  wars  against 
the  Moslems.  His  son,  Ramon,  who  assumed,  in  1161,  the 
name  of  Alfonso — surnamed  The  Chaste — and  who  peacefully 
inherited  the  double  crown  of  Catalonia  and  Aragon,  was  un- 
distinguished in  history;  and,  dying  in  1196,  was  succeeded 
by  his  son,  Peter,  who  played  a  more  conspicuous  part,  not 

1  The  occupation  did  not  long  endure,  and  the  Balearic  islands  soon  afterwards 
fell  again  into  the  hands  of  the  Moslems. 


218  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

only  in  Aragon  and  in  southern  Spain,  but  in  Languedoc,  and 
even  in  Italy. 

His  first  public  step  of  interest  or  importance  was  a  journey 
to  Rome  in  1203,  undertaken  at  the  instance  of  Innocent  III., 
that  he  might  receive  his  crown  at  the  hands  of  the  Pope,  and 
submit  to  the  issue  of  a  Papal  Rescript  constituting  Aragon  a 
Fief  of  the  Holy  See,  and  the  "  perpetual  property  "  of  the  suc- 
cessors of  St.  Peter ;  and  he  at  the  same  time  undertook  for 
himself  and  all  future  kings  of  Aragon,  to  pay  tribute,  as  well 
as  to  do  homage,  to  the  Pope,  for  his  dominions.  This  whole- 
sale political  surrender  was,  however,  a  more  practical  admis- 
sion of  the  supreme  power  of  the  Vicar  of  Christ  on  earth  than 
was  agreeable  to  the  Aragonese ; l  and  while  it  raised  the 
indignation  of  the  king's  subjects  at  Barcelona  and  Saragossa, 
it  does  not  seem  to  have  procured  for  him  any  special  favour, 
spiritual  or  temporal,  at  Rome.  An  assembly  of  the  States' 
Council  at  Saragossa,  in  1205,  protested  against  the  king's 
action  as  derogatory  to  the  honour  of  the  nation,  and  pro- 
nounced his  surrender  null  and  of  no  effect.  Nor  was  the 
stipulated  tribute  ever  paid.a 

But  a  greater  figure  than  that  of  Peter  the  Catholic  of 
Aragon  was  now  looming  darkly  on  the  northern  frontiers  of 
Spain. 

1  Zurita,  Anales  de  Aragon,  t.  i.,  f.  91.     The  king  was  gratified  with  the  title 
of  The  Catholic,  for  having  placed  his  kingdom  under  the  patronage  of  the  Holy 
See.     Menendez  Pelayo,  Heterodoxos  Espanoles  (1880),  torn.  i. ,  p.  421. 

2  Lafuente,  v.  191. 


219 


CHAPTER  XXI. 
DOMINIC. 

(1170—1221.) 

DOMINIC  DE  GUZMAN  was  born  at  Calaroga,1  near  Osma,  in  Old 
Castile,  in  1170.  His  birth  and  childhood  were  attended  with 
the  usual  miraculous  portents  common  to  all  mediaeval  saints, 
and  at  the  age  of  fifteen  he  proceeded  to  the  University  or 
High  School  of  Palencia,  an  institution  which  afterwards 
attained  so  great  a  reputation  in  the  more  famous  city  of 
Salamanca.  After  an  uneventful  academic  career  of  nearly 
ten  years,  Dominic  returned  to  Osma,  where  he  enjoyed  the 
protection  of  the  bishop  of  the  diocese ;  and,  having  entered 
into  religion  under  the  rule  of  St.  Augustine,  he  was  soon  raised 
to  the  dignity  of  sub-prior. 

At  length,  after  ten  years  more  of  earnest  work  at  Osma, 
Dominic  was  introduced  to  the  great  world  beyond  the  frontiers 
of  Spain,  having  been  chosen  by  his  patron  the  bishop  to 
accompany  him  as  his  secretary  on  a  diplomatic  mission  to 
Limoges,  to  negotiate  the  marriage  of  Alfonso  VIII.  of  Castile 
with  a  princess  of  the  House  of  Hugues  de  Lusignan,  Count  de 
la  Marched  And  it  was  on  his  way  through  Languedoc,  struck, 
it  is  said,  by  the  very  scant  respect  that  was  paid  to  the  clergy, 
compared  with  the  homage  to  which  he  was  accustomed  in 
Castile,  that  the  young  ecclesiastic  found  his  true  mission,  which 

1  Not  at  Calahorra,  in  Aragon,  as  is  sometimes  said.  Calaroga  was  only  a 
village,  some  sixty  miles  due  north  of  Madrid,  in  an  out  of  the  way  part  of  Castile. 
Calahorra,  the  Roman  Calagurris,  the  birth-place  ol  Quintilian  and  Prudentius, 
has  always  been  a  busy  and  important  little  town. 

8  It  is  sometimes  said,  but  on  very  doubtful  authority,  that  this  mission  was  to 
Copenhagen.  It  would  have  been  hard  to  have  accomplished  the  three  journeys 
which  the  envoys  undertook,  had  their  road  extended  from  Castile  to  Denmark,  in 
less  than  a  year.  Pere  Jean  de  Rechaac,  Baillet,  Fleury,  Touron,  and  Miss  Drane, 
are  all  in  favour  of  the  more  manageable  journey  to  Limoges,  in  the  Marches  of 
the  Limousin.  The  double  or  doubtful  signification  of  the  word  Marches  has  no 
doubt  puzzled  the  chroniclers. 


220  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

was  not  that  of  negotiating  foreign  marriages,  but  of  preaching 
to  foreign  heretics. 

Up  to  the  time  of  the  election  of  Innocent  III.,  in  1198, 
the  suppression  and  persecution  of  ecclesiastical  heresy  had 
occupied  but  a  small  share  of  the  attention  of  the  leaders  of 
the  Catholic  world.  For  as  yet  ecclesiastical  heresy  can  hardly 
be  said  to  have  existed.  A  Council,  indeed,  had  been  convoked 
at  Lerida,  in  1194,  by  Cardinal  Gregory  of  Saint  Angelo,  as 
legate  of  Pope  Celestine  III.  ;  and  Alfonso  II.  of  Aragon,  yield- 
ing to  the  solicitations  of  the  ecclesiastics,  had  given  orders  for 
the  banishment  of  heretics  from  his  kingdom,  for  the  confiscation 
of  their  goods,  and  the  infliction  of  severe  penalties  upon  all 
who  should  shelter  them.1  Three  years  later  Peter  II.,  at  the 
Council  of  Gerona,  confirmed  and  reiterated  the  decrees  of 
Lerida ;  yet  no  serious  steps  seem  to  have  been  taken  to  put 
them  into  execution  in  Spain. 

But  with  the  accession  of  Innocent,  the  policy  and  temper 
of  the  Papacy  became  aggressive  and  uncompromising  in  the 
highest  degree  ;  and  the  commission  that  was  granted  by  this 
most  vigorous  of  Pontiffs  on  the  29th  of  May,  1204,  to  Arnold  of 
Citeaux,  with  Pierre  and  Raoul  de  Castelnau,  is  generally  con- 
sidered to  be  the  origin  of  the  Inquisition  in  Europe.  These 
apostolic  legates  were  to  take  measures  for  the  restoration  of 
heretics  to  the  Catholic  faith.  They  were  to  hand  over  to  the 
secular  power — after  preliminary  excommunication — those  who 
failed  to  submit  themselves ;  and  they  were  to  enter  into  pos- 
session of  all  the  worldly  goods  of  such  obstinate  heretics,  in 
the  name  of  the  Church.  Their  authority  was  made  independent 
of  the  local  bishops.  They  were  to  take  their  instructions 
direct  from  Rome.  The  King  of  France,  moreover,  and  all  the 
princes  and  barons  of  the  realm  were  ordered  to  render  active 
assistance  to  the  three  legates  or  Inquisitors  of  the  Faith,  when- 
ever and  howsoever  it  should  be  demanded.2 

But  in  spite  of  these  tremendous  powers,  the  legates  met 
with  but  little  success.  The  heretics  were  obstinate.  The 
bishops  were  unfriendly.  The  princes  were  indifferent.  Yet 
one  stranger  was  found  to  attach  himself  devotedly  to  the 
cause  of  the  disappointed  Abbot  of  Citeaux.  The  young  en- 
thusiast from  Osma  became  at  once  his  disciple  and  his  critic, 
his  friend,  his  champion  and  his  supercessor.  Aroused,  not 

1  Llorente,  Hist,  de  la  Inquisition,  etc.,  i. ,  ch.  ii. 

2  Manrique,  Annales  de  Citeaux  (1204),  liv.  ii.,  No.  6,  and  (1205,  chaps,  i.,  ii.). 


1206.]  DOMINIC.  221 

only  to  thought,  but  to  action,  by  the  storm  that  he  saw  brewing 
around  him,  the  sub-prior  of  the  quiet  monastery  in  Castile 
perceived  the  gravity  of  the  situation,  while  bishops  and  legates 
were  too  blind  or  too  careless  to  see  the  danger  that  was  looming 
in  the  distance.  To  bring  the  World  back  again  within  the 
pale  of  the  Church  ;  this  was  the  dream  of  Dominic.  And  his 
zealous  indignation  was  stirred  up  at  the  sight  of  the  lordly 
prelates  and  the  luxurious  Legati  pro  Pontifice,  too  proud  to 
approach  the  common  people  save  with  fire  and  sword,  no  less 
than  at  the  contemplation  of  the  idle  and  useless  monks  hidden 
in  the  seclusion  of  their  cloisters.  The  work  of  Dominic  was 
to  be  done  by  a  complete  reversal  of  the  practice  of  the  older 
monasticism,  by  the  enlisting  of  an  army  of  spiritual  soldiers 
who  should  sally  forth  to  meet  the  foe  on  his  own  ground. 
Least  of  all  were  the  heretics  to  be  converted  by  legates  in  silk 
attire,  rich,  luxurious,  epicurean,  faithless.  Their  splendid 
retinues,  their  pomp  of  priestly  power  were  indeed  most  dis- 
tasteful to  the  Spanish  ascetic,  who,  in  the  humble  guise  of  a 
poor  brother  in  Christ,  addressed  himself  at  once  to  the  work 
of  his  life,  observing  at  least  the  letter,  if  he  failed  to  perceive 
the  true  spirit,  of  the  Gospel  injunctions  to  the  first  missionaries 
of  Christianity. 

Nothing  could  be  more  unlike  the  splendour  of  a  Pontifical 
legate  than  the  conversation  of  the  bare-footed  apostle  who 
begged  his  daily  bread  as  he  preached  his  religion  from  door 
to  door.  But  even  thus,  devoted,  earnest,  self-denying,  sincere, 
enthusiastic,  Dominic  failed  to  convert  the  early  Protestants 
of  Languedoc.  The  people  were  as  heedless  of  the  strange 
sub-prior  as  they  had  been  of  the  teaching  of  their  own  clergy. 
They  had  become  impatient,  not  only  of  their  local  priests, 
but  of  the  control  of  Innocent  at  Rome.  A  tempest  was, 
indeed,  brewing  over  religious  Europe  ;  and  the  first  mutter- 
ings  of  the  storm  were  heard  in  Languedoc.  But  if  Dominic 
was  unable  to  shake  the  faith  of  the  Albigensian  heretics,  his 
visit  to  Languedoc  had  results  which  shook  the  world.  Before 
the  Sub-Prior  of  Osma  had  been  a  year  in  the  south  of  France 
he  had  established  at  Prouille,  between  Fanjeaux  and  Montreal, 
near  Carcassonne,  a  convent  for  nuns  (1206)  ;  and  shortly  after- 
wards, a  brotherhood  or  company  of  preaching  friars,  who  were 
spoken  of  as  "  the  companions  of  Dominic."1 

1  The  first  religious  house  actually  founded  by  Dominic  was  in  1214  at  Tou- 
louse. The  building  was  presented  by  Pierre  Cellain,  a  citizen  of  the  town. 


222  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

Yet  were  the  results  not  immediately  felt ;  and  the  assas- 
sination of  Pierre  de  Castelnau  by  the  over-zealous  Proven9als, 
resenting  his  denunciations  of  their  sovereign  Raymond  VI. 
of  Toulouse,  brought  the  earliest  stage  of  the  Papal  interven- 
tion to  a  disastrous  conclusion.  But  Rome  had  not  said  its 
last  word.  The  dead  legate  was  beatified  as  a  martyr.1  Ray- 
mond of  Toulouse  was  excommunicated  as  a  heretic.  His 
subjects  and  his  territories  were  given  over  to  the  secular  arm. 
In  March,  1208,  Pope  Innocent  called  upon  the  faithful  in 
Europe  to  undertake  a  crusade,  for  the  conversion,  by  fire  and 
sword,  of  those  unhappy  dwellers  in  Languedoc,  whose  subse- 
quent fate  has  made  their  name  famous  in  history  as  that  of 
the  Albigenses.2 

Peter  of  Aragon,  as  the  nearest  neighbour  of  the  unfortunate 
Raymond  of  Toulouse,  was  called  upon  at  once  by  Simon  de 
Montfort,  the  commander  of  the  Papal  troops,  and  by  the 
unhappy  heretics  whom  he  threatened  with  destruction,  to  carry 
his  forces  across  the  Pyrenees.3  But  Peter  maintained  a  timid 
neutrality  which  pleased  neither  the  persecutor  nor  the  perse- 
cuted. He  had,  indeed,  affianced  his  more  distinguished  son, 
James  of  Aragon,  to  a  daughter  of  Simon  de  Montfort.  But 
he  had  himself  married  (in  1204)  Maria,  the  daughter  and 
heiress  of  the  Count  of  Montpellier ;  and  wishing,  perhaps,  like 
the  Scottish  nobles  of  the  eighteenth  century,  to  have  a  relation 
in  either  camp,  he  had  also  given  his  sisters,  Dona  Lenora  and 
Dona  Sancha,  in  marriage  to  two  Counts  of  Toulouse,  Raymond 
VI.,  and  his  son,  who  succeeded  him  in  1222,  as  Raymond  VII. 
Desirous,  no  doubt,  of  [Withdrawing  from  the  neighbourhood  of 
so  embarrassing  a  contest,  he  offered  his  services  to  Alfonso  of 
Castile  in  his  expedition  against  the  infidel,  and  turned  his  steps 
towards  Andalusia,  while  his  more  distinguished  countryman 4 
took  his  place  in  the  van  of  the  Crusaders  as  the  spiritual 
delegate  of  Arnold  of  Citeaux. 

1  Manrique,  torn.  iii.  (1208),  chap.  ii. 

2  Inhabitants  of  the  district  of  Albigeois,  south  of  the  Cevennes,  and  con- 
demned at  the  Council  of  Lombes  or  Albi,  in  Languedoc,  in  1176.    Albi  is  capital 
of  the  modern  department  of  the  Tarn. 

3  Simon  de  Montfort  was  not  chosen  leader  of  the  Papalini  until  i8th  June, 
1209,  after  the  massacre  of  Beziers  and  Carcassonne.     The  Duke  of  Burgundy 
must  share  with  the  Papal  Legate,  Milo,  the  honours  of  those  memorable  acts  of 
faith.     It  is  uncertain  whether  Dominic  was  present  on  either  occasion.     But  he 
certainly  approved  of  what  was  done.     Drane's  Life  of  St.  Dominic  (1891),  78,  79. 

4  Manrique,   Annales  de  Citeaux,   torn.  iii.   (1210),   ch.  iv.     It  is   true  that 
Calaroga  is  many  miles  from  the  frontier  of  Aragon.     But  Peter  and  Dominic 
were,  at  least,  both  of  them  Spaniards. 


1208.]  DOMINIC.  223 

Disappointed  at  the  failure  of  his  personal  efforts  for  the 
conversion  of  the  heretics,  Dominic  was  content  to  hand  over 
to  the  material  sword  of  Simon  de  Montfort l  and  his  pitiless 
Papal  troops,  the  unhappy  people  who  were  unconvinced  by 
the  moral  sword  of  his  preaching.  But  not  even  then  did  he 
relax  his  own  personal  efforts.  The  cross  and  the  sword  moved 
side  by  side.  The  tongue  and  the  lance  should  each  be  in  the 
service  of  the  Faith.  If  Dominic  was  merciless,  he  was  sincere  ; 
if  he  was  bigoted,  he  was  enthusiastic ;  if  his  methods  were 
odious,  his  aims  were  noble  ;  if  his  religion  was  inhuman,  he 
was  yet  a  true  man.  Of  such  are  the  rulers  of  the  world. 

Lacordaire  and  other  admirers  of  the  great  founder  of  the 
Dominicans  are  much  concerned  to  prove  that  the  saint  was 
not  present  at,  and  had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with,  the  whole- 
sale slaughterings  that  were  ordered  or  approved  by  Innocent. 
The  preacher  it  is  said,  was  never  an  executioner.  This 
tenderness  for  the  bodies  of  heretics  is  very  modern ;  this 
indirect  censure  of  a  Pope  is  hardly  orthodox  ;  nor  is  it  possible 
to  acquit  Dominic  of  active  participation  in  the  Papal  work  of 
what  he  believed  to  be  praiseworthy  destruction.  His  hands, 
no  doubt,  were  stained  with  no  Christian  blood.  He  may  not 
even  like  Arnold  of  Citeaux 2  have  shouted  to  the  massacre. 
But  his  chosen  work  was  the  "  examination  and  conviction  "  of 
the  heretics,  in  cold  blood,  before  they  were  handed  over  to 
the  executioner.  And  his  parting  words  to  the  people  among 
whom  he  had  so  long  laboured  for  the  Faith,  tell,  at  least,  of 
no  tenderness  for  the  bodies  of  the  obstinate  heretics.  "  For 
many  years,"  said  he  to  the  unconverted  Albigenses,  "  I  have 
spoken  to  you  with  gentleness,  with  prayers,  with  tears,  but 
according  to  the  proverb  of  my  country,  where  the  benediction 
has  no  effect,  the  rod  may  have  much.  Behold  now  I  rouse 
up  against  you  princes  and  prelates,  nations  and  kingdoms, 
and  many  shall  preach  by  the  sword." 3  And  by  the  sword 
assuredly  did  many  preach,  aye,  and  by  the  faggot  too,  under 
the  patronage  of  Santo  Domingo,  in  the  days  that  were  yet  to 
come. 


^  Le  glaive  mattriel  .  .  .  le  glaive  moral.     Lacordaire,  Vie  de  St.  Dominique, 
p.  122. 

2  Fertur  dixisse,  "  Ceedite  Cadite,  novit  Dominus  qui  sunt  ejus  /"     See  an 
article  by  Lord  Acton  in  Eng.  Hist.  Review  (1888),  p.  738.     Such  sayings  are 
rarely  authentic,  and  can  never,  of  course,  be  proved. 

3  MSS,  de  Prouille  Monuments  du  Couvent  de  Toulouse,  par.   P.  Percin,  p. 
ao,  No.  47,  and  Drane,  Life,  etc.,  p.  181. 


224  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

Peter  of  Aragon,  in  the  south  of  Spain,  was  at  once  bolder 
and  more  fortunate  than  he  had  been  in  his  own  dominions  ; 
and  in  the  great  Christian  victory  at  las  Navas  de  Tolosa,  he 
may  claim  an  honourable  share.  Inspired  apparently  by  this 
great  success,  he  returned  to  Aragon,  and  abandoning  his 
neutral  attitude  as  regards  his  persecuted  neighbours  in  Lan- 
guedoc,  he  boldly  took  the  field  against  Simon  de  Montfort,1 
and  fell,  sword  in  hand,  outside  the  blood-stained  walls  of  Muret. 
Thus  it  was  that  the  king  who  began  his  reign  with  a  most 
servile  self-abasement  before  the  ecclesiastical  power,  for  which 
his  memory  even  in  Spain  has  justly  been  held  in  contempt, 
gave  his  life  for  the  unhappy  victims  of  ecclesiastical  tyranny, 
slain  by  the  emissaries  of  the  self-same  Pope  who  had  received 
his  homage,  and  had  even  honoured  him  with  the  title  of  The 
Catholic,  less  than  ten  years  before. 

If  Dominic  was  not  present  at  Beziers,  he  was  certainly 
found  on  the  field  of  blood  at  Muret,2  holding  aloft  a  gigantic 
crucifix  to  animate  the  courage  of  the  soldiers.  And  if  the 
Spanish  king  drew  the  sword  on  the  side  of  liberty  within 
sight  of  his  own  Pyrenean  mountains,  the  Spanish  priest 
marched  with  uplifted  cross  in  the  ranks  of  the  persecutors, 
and  shared  with  de  Montfort  and  Bishop  Pulques  of  Tou- 
louse,3 the  honour  of  participation  in  that  sacred  massacre, 
which  is  characterised  by  Lacordaire  as  one  of  the  finest  acts 
of  faith  that  man  has  accomplished  on  this  earth.4  One  of  the 
greatest,  no  doubt,  it  may  have  been ;  but  it  was  very  far  from 
being  the  last  of  those  Acts  of  Faith  with  which  the  name  of 
the  Dominican  is  so  dreadfully  associated  in  Spain ;  for  Peter 
of  Aragon  was  but  the  first  of  the  many  tens  of  thousands  of 
Spaniards  who  have  died,  innocent  of  any  earthly  crime,  under 
the  uplifted  cross  of  the  Brothers  of  the  Inquisition.5 

Two  years  after  Muret,  Dominic  took  the  great  resolution 

1  Simon  de  Montfort  was  killed  at  the  siege  of  Toulouse  in  1218. 

2  This   crucifix   is   still  preserved  in  the  Church  of  St.  Sermin  at  Toulouse 
(whither  it  was  removed  from  the  house  of  the  Inquisition  in  1791).     Three  or  four 
holes  are  pointed  out  as  made  by  the  heretic  arrows. 

3  The  Bishop  of  Toulouse  had  armed  himself  with  a  fragment  of  the  True 
Cross,  which  he  brandished  aloft  to  cheer  on  the  Papal  soldiers  to  the  massacre. 
Drane,  Life  of  St.  Dominic,  p.  144. 

4  Cette  bataille  memorable  comptera  tojours  parmi  les  beaux  actes  defoi  qu'ont 
fait  les  hommes  sur  la  terre.     Lacordaire,  Vie  de  St.  Dominique,  p.  89. 

8  Twenty  thousand  heretics  are  said  to  have  been  killed  in  the  massacre  at 
Muret,  while  only  one  Catholic  knight  and  eight  common  soldiers  were  slain. 
Drane,  p.  145. 


1215.]  DOMINIC.  225 

of  his  life.  He  would  establish  a  new  Order ;  an  Order  of 
preachers,  not  of  ascetics ;  of  brothers,  not  of  monks ;  of 
men  of  action  in  the  world,  not  of  hermits  in  the  desert. 
The  sanction  of  Rome  was  required  for  so  revolutionary  a 
scheme ;  and  Dominic  made  his  way  from  Provence  to  the 
Vatican. 

The  great  Council  of  Lateran  had  just  assembled.  Five  hun- 
dred bishops  and  eight  hundred  priors  and  abbots  were  collected 
in  Imperial  Rome.1  Innocent,  the  most  powerful  Pontiff  since 
the  death  of  Hildebrand,  if  not  since  the  death  of  Diocletian, 
presided  over  the  august  assembly.  Yet  was  there  one  among 
them,  but  not  of  them,  whose  greatness  was  as  yet  unknown  to 
the  Church  or  to  the  world,  a  man  whose  name  and  whose 
work  would  endure  when  they  and  theirs  were  long  forgotten 
— the  bare-footed  Spanish  friar  from  Toulouse. 

Before  the  formal  opening  of  the  Council  (1215)  the  Pope 
had  issued  to  Dominic  an  apostolic  brief,  by  which  the  convent 
of  Prouille  was  placed  under  the  protection  of  the  Holy  See, 
and  all  former  grants  that  had  been  made  to  it  were  fully 
confirmed.  But  when  the  plan  for  the  foundation  of  the  new 
Order  was  laid  before  Innocent,  the  novelty  and  vastness  of  its 
design  induced  him  to  hesitate.  The  Church  still  possessed 
only  the  more  ancient  forms  of  monasticism,  for  the  Franciscans 
were  not  as  yet  fully  established  as  a  religious  order ;  and  the 
scheme  of  Dominic  included  a  much  wider  field  than  had 
opened  itself  to  any  earlier  Christian  founder. 

The  Church  was  somewhat  jealous  of  innovation,  and  the 
Council,  moreover,  had  formally  decreed  that  no  new  Orders 
should  be  established  or  permitted.  The  language  of  the 
canon  was  at  once  so  precise  and  so  recent  that  it  was  im- 
possible entirely  to  disregard  it.  But  Dominic  was  not  a 
reformer  to  be  baffled  by  Councils.  Innocent  was  not  a  ruler 
to  be  tied  by  decrees.  The  importance  of  the  scheme  was 
made  apparent  to  the  clear-sighted  Pontiff,  and  on  the  strength 
of  a  celestial  vision  the  canon  was  happily  evaded. 

Dominic  was  permitted  to  establish  his  new  Order — but  it 
was  to  be  considered  as  a  mere  offshoot  of  an  old  one  ;  and 
he  was  authorised  to  select  any  one  of  the  ancient  rules  that 
should  appear  best  fitted 2  for  his  purpose.  He  selected  the 

JSee  Manrique,  op.  cif.,  torn,  iii.,  chap.  iii.  ;  Monteirp,  Historia  de  la  Santa 
Inquisifao  de  Portugal,  torn,  i.,  par.  i.,  liv.  i.,  chap.  Ivii.  ;  Llprente.  ubi  supra, 
chap,  ii.,  art.  4,  and  the  Collection  royale  des  Concilles,  torn,  xxviii.,  3. 

2  Drane,  pp.  156-164. 
VOL.    I.  15 


226  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

rule  of  the  Augustinians.  But  he  made  it  entirely  his  own.1 
And  the  order  of  Dominic  has  played  a  part  in  the  history  of 
the  Church  and  of  the  world  greater  by  far  than  that  which 
has  fallen  to  the  share  of  all  the  other  followers  of  Augustine. 

In  the  autumn  of  1217  the  great  friar  turned  his  back 
upon  Languedoc  for  ever,  and  took  up  his  abode  in  the  Imperial 
city.  Innocent  had  died  in  121 6,  and  Dominic,  recognised  by 
his  successor  Honorius  as  the  master  spirit  of  the  Catholic 
Church,  found  his  place  at  the  capital  of  the  world.2 

If  the  Spanish  friar  was  the  most  powerful  man  in  Rome, 
the  influence  of  the  Spanish  philosopher  Averroes,  who  had 
died  but  ten  years  before  the  massacre  at  Beziers,  was  begin- 
ning to  make  itself  felt  throughout  Christendom.  From  Spain 
had  come  at  once  the  man  of  dogma  that  was  confirming  the 
Church,  and  the  man  of  liberty  that  was  disturbing  the  world. 
And  the  speculations  of  the  Cordovan  doctor  found  no  bolder, 
no  more  determined,  no  more  powerful  opponent  than  the 
priest  of  Osma.  Yet  if  in  later  days  Averroes  would  have 
been  astounded  at  the  theories  of  the  Italian  Christian  Aver- 
roists,  Dominic  might  have  been  shocked  at  the  practices  of 
the  Spanish  Dominican  inquisitors. 

The  progress  of  human  thought  is  no  more  certain  than 
the  progress  of  fleets  or  of  armies.  Yet  when  the  wretched 
strife  of  petty  chieftains,  the  wholesale  slaughter  of  Moslems 
or  of  Christians  shall  cease  to  interest  the  world ;  when  the 
bandits  and  cutthroats  of  the  growing  north,  and  the  poets 
and  castle  builders  of  the  dying  south ;  when  the  Ferdi- 
nands and  the  Alfonsos,  the  Hakams  and  the  Hishams,  and 
the  greatest  An  Nasir  himself  are  all  forgotten,  as  the  extinct 
and  uninteresting  forces  of  a  dead  past ;  the  ever-enduring 
struggle  between  the  spirit  of  persecution  and  the  spirit  of 
religious  liberty,  between  the  spirit  of  Dominic  3  and  the  spirit 

xAs  to  the  addition  of  certain  rules  of  the  Premonstratensians,  see  Pere 
Denifle,  in  the  Athencsum,  3Oth  April,  1892,  p.  559. 

2  The  last  branch  of  his  Order  was  founded  by  Dominic  in  1219,  as  the  Third 
Order  of  Penitence,  or  The  Militia  of  Christ,  whose  members  were  specially 
charged  with  the  duty  of  assisting  in  the  work  of  the  Inquisition,  and  who  came  in 
time  to  be  known  by  the  hated  name  of  Familiars  of  the  Holy  Office.  See 
Llorente,  torn,  i.,  chap,  ii.,  art.  4;  Castillo,  Hist,  de  St.  Dominic,  pt.  i.,  chap, 
xlix.  ;  Monteiro,  op.  cit.,  pt.  i.,  chap,  xxxvi.  ;  Paraino,  Origine  de  I' Inquisition, 
lib.  ii.,  tit.  i.,  chap.  iii. 

8  Dominic  died  at  Rome  in  1221,  and  was  canonised  by  Pope  Gregory  IX.  in 
1233.  As  to  whether  the  institution  of  the  Rosary  is  due  to  Dominic,  as  is  gener- 
ally asserted,  the  curious  in  such  matters  may  consult  Drane,  op.  cit.,  pp.  120,138, 
where  an  entire  chapter  is  devoted  to  the  subject,  and  many  appropriate  references 
collected. 


1221.]  DOMINIC.  227 

of  Averroes,  will  compel  every  student  of  human  progress  to 
turn  to  the  history  of  Spain,  and  to  read  of  the  Cadi  annotating 
his  Aristotle  on  the  banks  of  the  Guadalquivir,  of  the  friar 
from  Osma  bearing  aloft  the  crucifix  at  Muret,  and  dictating  to 
Innocent  at  Rome.1 

1  See  generally  Molimir,  Histoire  de  f  Inquisition  dans  le  midi  de  la  Franct 
dans  le  xiii.  and  xiv.  Sticks.     Paris,  1881. 


228 


CHAPTER  XXII. 
IMPERIUM  ROMANUM. 

The  Gothic  Missal. 
(1064—1252.) 

UNTIL  the  twelfth  century  the  Christian  principalities  of  Spain 
had  been  less  subject  to  the  control  or  intervention  of  the  Pope 
at  Rome  than  any  of  the  other  kingdoms  of  western  Europe.1 
Isidore  and  Julian  had  manfully  asserted  the  independence 
of  their  Church  in  the  days  of  Visigothic  Christianity ;  and 
the  petty  and  distant  kingdoms  of  Leon  and  Navarre,  of 
Gallicia  and  the  Asturias,  perpetually  exposed  to  the  inroads 
of  the  Moslem,  had  scarcely  attracted  the  attention,  and  could 
never  have  aroused  the  jealousy,  of  the  Holy  See.  The  kings 
who  fought  for  the  extension  of  their  own  territories  were 
engaged  in  a  crusade  against  the  infidel  which  was  pronounced 
on  Papal  authority  to  be  as  meritorious  as  the  weary  and 
dangerous  pilgrimage  to  fight  the  Saracen  in  Syria.  And  as 
long  as  the  Moslem  was  practically  supreme  in  the  Peninsula, 
the  Popes  interfered  very  little  in  the  spiritual  or  temporal 
affairs  of  the  struggling  Christians  of  Spain. 

But  towards  the  end  of  the  twelfth  century,  the  condition 
of  affairs  both  at  the  capital  and  in  the  Spanish  provinces  had 
entirely  changed.  And  in  1064,  Alexander  II.  despatched  a 
cardinal  legate  to  the  court  of  Aragon,  with  orders  to  denounce 
the  ancient  Gothic  Ritual  and  Breviary — the  Mozarabic,  as  it 
was  familiarly  called — which  had  been  in  use  in  Spain  since 
the  time  of  Reccared,  and  which  had  been  revised  both  by 
Isidore  and  Julian ; 2  and  to  prescribe  the  use  of  the  Italian 

1  As  to  the  tardy  and  unwilling  acceptance  of  Papal  supremacy  by  the  Church 
in  Spain,  see  an  interesting  Dissertation  by  Geddes,  printed  in  vol.  ii.  of  his 
Tracts. 

2  Masdeu,  torn,  xiii.,  p.  280. 


IMPERIUM  ROMANUM.  22.Q 

Mass  Book J  and  Formularies  in  its  stead.  Great  opposition 
on  the  part  of  the  king,  the  people,  and  even  the  clergy  was 
offered  to  the  change;  but  by  the  year  1071  Rome  had  pre- 
vailed and  the  old  ritual  of  Christian  Spain  was  supplanted 
by  that  of  Italy.  Alexander  was  the  first  Pope  since  the 
Moslem  conquest  who  had  interfered  in  the  affairs  of  the  Pen- 
insula. The  Pope  who  succeeded  him  was  not  a  man  to 
abandon  any  of  the  pretensions  of  his  predecessors.  Gregory 
VII.  had  assumed2  the  tiara  in  1073;  and  Caesar  once  more 
ruled  the  world  from  Rome.  Alexander  had  required  the 
change  of  Breviary.  Hildebrand  laid  claim  to  the  absolute, 
property  of  the  whole  of  Spain.3  In  his  brief  addressed  To 
the  Princes  of  Spain,  he  says  "  You  are  aware,  I  believe,  that 
from  the  earliest  times  the  kingdom  of  Spain  was  the  special 
patrimony  of  St.  Peter,  and  although  Pagans  have  occupied 
it,  yet  the  right  remains,  and  it  belongs  to  the  same  master. 
Therefore,  Count  Eboli  de  Rocayo,  whose  fame  is  known  to 
you,  goes  forth  to  conquer  the  land  in  the  name  of  St.  Peter, 
under  the  conditions  that  we  have  stipulated.  And  if  any 
one  of  you  should  undertake  a  similar  task,  he  shall  take  care 
in  the  same  manner  and  in  no  other,  to  pay  to  St.  Peter  that 
which  is  due."  4  These  were  bold  pretensions,  and  Alfonso 
VI.  was  not  the  man  to  resist  them.  But  Hildebrand,  con- 
tent with  his  prompt  acquiescence,  made  no  further  demand 
upon  the  king's  obedience  than  that  of  his  acceptance  of  the 
Italian  in  place  of  the  Mozarabic  ritual  in  the  churches 5  of 

1  See  Meyrick,  The  Church  in  Spain  (1892),  pp.  342-350.     The  Gothic  Ritual 
of  Spain  had  been  solemnly  approved  by  Pope  John  X.  at  Rome  in  923.     Esp.  Sag., 
iii.,  117.     It  was  largely  at  the  instigation  of  the  French  monks  of  Cluny  that  the 
change  was  ultimately  insisted  upon.     But  seeMasdeu,  xv. ,  252-266.    The  Gallican 
Church,  having  lost  its  own  ritual,  was  jealous  of  the  greater  independence  of 
Spain.     From  the  earliest  times  the  influence  of  the  Cluniac  monks  in  Spain  was 
very  great.     Hildebrand,  it  must  not  be  forgotten,  was  himself  a  monk  of  Cluny. 

2  It  was  Damasus  II.  that  first  caused  himself  to  be  crowned  with  a  tiara,  in 
1048.     Boniface  VIII.  encompassed  the  tiara  with  a  crown  in  1294  ;  Benedict  XII. 
added  a  second  in  1334,  and  John  XXIII.  a  third  in  1410. 

3  Lafuente,  iv.,  333-4.     Not  only  was  the  Roman  substituted  for  the  Gothic 
liturgy,  but  the  whole  system  of  Roman  canon  law  as  contrasted  with  that  of  the 
old  codes  and  councils  was  imposed  upon  the  Spanish  Church,  Hist.  Compostell., 
i. ,  2-12.     It  is  remarkable,  says  Mr.  Meyrick  on  this  point,  that  the  False  Decretals 
which  were  brought  into  the  Church  in  the  ninth  century,  under  the  name  of  the 
Spanish  Bishop  Isidore,  were  not  recognised  or  acknowledged  in  Spain  until  the 
middle  of  the  eleventh  century.     This  is  proved  by  the  Coleccion  Escurialense  de 
Sagrados  Canones  y  Decretales  drawn  up  about  1050.     Meyrick,  ubi  supra,  pp. 
303,4- 

*Esp.  Sag.,  xxv.,  132;  Masdeu,  xiii.,  280. 

6  It  was  in  the  Capilla  dt  San  Victorian,  in  the  Benedictine  Convent  of  La 
Pena,  near  Jaca— once  the  capital  of  Aragon— that  on  the  i3th  of  March,  1071, 


230  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

Leon  and  Castile.  Alfonso,  at  the  request  of  his  French  wife, 
Constance  of  Burgundy,  and  her  ecclesiastical  protege,  Bernard, 
afterwards  Archbishop  of  Toledo,  was  quite  ready  to  give  his 
consent ;  but  the  Castilians,  ever  jealous  of  Papal  aggression, 
were  even  less  disposed  than  their  neighbours  to  accept  the 
change  ;  and  the  king  was  unable  or  unwilling,  in  the  first 
instance,  to  do  more  than  submit  the  question  to  the  ordeal  of 
trial  by  battle — a  strange  method  of  deciding  a  theological 
controversy.1  Two  champions  accordingly  appeared  and  fought 
in  public  ;  and  the  Knight  of  the  Gothic  Missal,  Don  Juan 
Ruiz  de  Matanzas,  slew  the  champion  of  the  Italian,  and  re- 
mained unhurt 2  and  victorious.  A  pair  of  bulls,  not  of  the 
sealed  but  of  the  horned  variety,  were  next  entrusted  with  the 
solution  of  the  difficulty ; 3  and  the  national  toro  slew  the 
Roman  loro  in  the  arena  at  Toledo,  to  the  joy  of  religious  and 
tauromachian  Castile.  But  the  Pope  was  not  satisfied.  The 
queen  was  not  convinced.  Yet  delay  is  ever  acceptable  in 
Spain ;  and  for  seven  years  nothing  further  was  done  in  the 
matter. 

But  Hildebrand  was  not  to  be  baulked  by  push  of  horn, 
lance,  nor  even  by  Castilian  procrastination.  And  at  length 
by  the  Pope's  orders  a  Council  was  held  at  Burgos  under  the 
presidency  of  his  legate,  Cardinal  Ricardo,  which  formally 
decreed  the  abolition  of  the  Spanish  Service  Book  in  Castile. 
Nevertheless  the  Castilians  were  not  satisfied ;  and  before  the 
Italian  Ritual  was  introduced  into  the  Metropolitan  Cathedral 
of  Spain,  it  was  thought  fit  once  more  to  appeal  to  the  verdict 
of  Heaven.  Once  more  the  lists  were  set  outside  the  city  of 
Toledo,  and  in  the  sight  of  an  immense  concourse  of  people,  a 
copy  of  the  Gothic  and  a  copy  of  the  Roman  Missal  were  cast 
together  into  a  fire.  The  book  that  remained  unconsumed  was 
to  be  pronounced  acceptable  to  the  Almighty.  The  pious 
experiment  was  once  more  unfavourable  to  the  foreigner.  For 
the  Roman  Mass  Book  was  burnt  to  ashes,  while  the  Gothic 
resisted  the  flames.  But  Alfonso  tossed  the  victorious  volume 

says  Richard  Ford,  Spain  (ed.  1878),  p.  524,  ihzjirst  Roman  Mass  was  celebrated 
in  the  Peninsula.  Cardinal  Hugo  de  Candido,  legate  of  Pope  Alexander  II.  was 
the  celebrant,  and  King  Sancho  Ramirez  was  present  in  person.  See  Hist,  de  San 
Juan  de  la  Pena,  by  Juan  Briz  Martinez  (Zaragoza,  1620). 

1  On  the  wager  of  battle  generally,  see  H.  C.  Lea,  Superstition  and  Force, 
(1886),  especially  p.  244. 

2 Esp.  Sag.,  Hi.,  173  ;  Masdeu,  xiii.,  279-287. 
3  Watts,  Spain,  p.  159. 


1109.]  IMPERIUM  ROMANUM.  231 

back  into  the  fire,1  and  the  will  of  the  Pope  was  done.  The 
people  made  no  resistance.  And  Spain  became  once  more, 
after  the  lapse  of  nearly  seven  centuries,  the  obedient  Province 
of  ROME. 


II. — The  Emperor. 

Alfonso  VI.  of  Castile  and  Leon  finding  himself,  in  1095, 
for  the  fourth  time  a  widower,  espoused  the  beautiful  Zaida,  a 
daughter  of  Ibn  Obeid,  the  Arab  king  of  Seville  ;  and  in  less 
than  a  year  the  young  queen  abjured  the  religion  of  her 
fathers,  and  was  baptised  under  the  Christian  name  of  Maria 
Isabella.  Of  this  union  was  born  Sancho,  a  young  prince  of 
great  promise,  who  was  slain  while  yet  only  eleven  years  of 
age,  fighting  against  the  Moslems  outside  the  walls  of  Ucles, 
where  the  Christians  were  completely  defeated,  in  1108.  King 
Alfonso  never  rallied  after  this  double  disaster ;  and  he  died  in 
June,  1 109,  at  the  good  old  age  of  seventy-nine,  after  an  event- 
ful reign  of  forty-three  years. 

His  wives  were  almost  as  numerous  as  those  of  our  own 
Henry  VIII. ;  but  although  the  exact  number  is  uncertain,  he 
is  not  usually  supposed  to  have  exceeded  five.  Yet  he  left  no 
man  child  to  take  his  place ;  and  he  was  succeeded  on  the 
thrones  of  Castile  and  Leon  by  his  unworthy  daughter  Urraca, 
who  was  not  only  a  faithless  wife,  but  a  false  and  incapable 
sovereign.2 

Her  marriage  with  Alfonso  I.  of  Aragon,  surnamed  El 
Batallador,  should  have  brought  peace  and  harmony  to  two 
kingdoms ;  but  the  husband  was  a  savage  ;  the  wife  was  a 
wanton ;  and  Castile  suffered  even  more  severely  than  Aragon 
for  the  vices  and  the  crimes  of  their  sovereigns.  Alfonso 
harried  his  wife's  subjects  in  Leon  more  remorselessly  than 
their  Moslem  enemies ;  Urraca  intrigued  with  her  various 
lovers  in  Castile  against  her  husband  in  Aragon ;  and  the  usual 


1  The  old  proverb  A  lid  van  leyes  dS  quieren  Reyes,  is  said  to  have  had  its 
origin  on  this  interesting  occasion.     See  the  Cronicci  de  Espafla  of  Alfonso  X. 

2  At  this  time,  says  Lafuente  (v. ,  26)  the  kingdom  of  Castile  affords  the  sad 
spectacle  of  husband  and  wife,  mother  and  son,  brother  and  brother,  in  open  war 
one  against  the  other  ;    now  the  mother  and  son  against  the  husband  and  the 
father  ;  now  the  sister  against  the  sister  and  the  nephew  ;  now  nephew  and  uncle 
against  mother  and  sister.     Urraca  is  said  to  have  at  least  had  for  excuse  that  she 
was  brutally  treated  by  her  husband  .  .  .  faciam  meant  suis  manibus  sordidis 
multoties  turbatam  esse,  pede  suo  me  percussisse.     See  Hist.  Compostel.,  lib.  i. ,  cap. 
64,  apud  Lafuente,  iv.,  475. 


232  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

civil  wars  were  only  varied  by  the  addition  of  a  woman's  frailty 
to  a  sovereign's  faithlessness.  Aragon  and  Castile,  Portugal 
and  Leon  were  all  at  war  ;  Diego  Gomez  and  Pedro  de  Lara,  the 
queen's  lovers,  Alfonso,  the  queen's  husband,  and  Alfonso,  the 
queen's  son,  were  one  and  all  involved  in  perpetual  strife  ; 
nor  did  the  dissolution  of  Urraca's  marriage  by  the  Pope  in 
any  way  tend  to  abate  the  stress  of  warfare,  which  was  main- 
tained until  her  unregretted  death  in  1 1 26. 

Her  son  Alfonso  VII.  by  her  first  husband,  Raymond  of 
Burgundy,  who  succeeded  her  at  her  death  as  King  of  Leon 
and  of  Castile,  assumed  the  title  of  Emperor  of  Spain,1  and 
from  1126  to  1134  one  of  these  Alfonsos — the  step-father — is 
found  still  occupying  the  throne  of  Aragon,  while  another — 
the  son — sat  upon  the  throne  of  united  Leon  and  Castile.'2 
But  the  formal  homage  of  Navarre  and  of  Toulouse,  which  led 
to  the  assumption  of  the  Imperial  title  by  the  son  of  Urraca, 
were  merely  moves  in  the  political  game  of  the  period  ;  and 
the  so-called  emperor  of  all  Spain  soon  found  himself  at  war 
with  Aragon  and  with  Navarre  in  the  north  ;  with  the  new 
kingdom  of  Portugal  in  the  west ;  and  with  the  new  empire 
of  the  Almohades  in  southern  Spain.  But  the  Moslem  power 
was  rapidly  decaying ;  and  Alfonso,  in  spite  of  civil  wars,  was 
able  to  push  forward  the  Christian  frontier  from  the  line  of  the 
Tagus  to  the  line  of  the  Sierra  Morena ;  and  in  1147,  during  a 
brief  interval  of  Christian  amity,  the  united  forces  of  Castile, 
of  Aragon,  of  Leon  and  of  Navarre,  with  the  fleets  of  Bar- 
celona, of  Genoa  and  of  Pisa,  possessed  themselves  of  the  rich 
and  important  Moslem  city  of  Almeria,  on  the  far  away  south- 
eastern coast  of  what  had  for  400  years  been  exclusively 
Moslem  Spain.  An  immense  booty  was  divided  among  the 
adventurers,  but  the  city  of  Almeria  was  suffered  to  remain  as 
the  Imperial  portion  of  Alfonso  of  Castile  el  Emperador.3 

1  Imperator  totius  Hispanice,  in  1135.     (For  particulars  of  the  life  of  Alfonso 
VII.  the  Emperor,  see  the  Chronica  de  Alfonso  VII.,  Sandoval. — H.). 

2  As  to  the  comparison  between  or  among  all  the  various  Alfonsos  at  this 
period,  see  ante,  p.  214,  and   Table  at  the  end  of  this  volume.     One  of  the  most 
Imperial  acts  of  Alfonso  VII.,  el  Emperador,  was  the  coining  of  money  with 
Arabic  inscriptions  or  legends  for  the  use  of  his  Arab-speaking  subjects  in  the 
Peninsula.     A  number  of  these  inscriptions  are  given  in  Romey,  vi. ,  306-308. 

3  The  title  of  emperor  had  occasionally  been  used  in  documents  by  Alfonso  the 
Battler  and  his  wife,  as  well  as  by  most  sovereigns  of  Castile,  but  Alfonso  VII. 
assumed  the  dignity  with  all  formality  at  the  Cortes  of  Leon  in  1135,  and  in  the 
same  year  summoned  the  Cortes  of  Castile  at  Toledo  to  confirm  the  assump- 
tion.— H. 


1197.]  IMPERIUM  ROMANUM.  233 

III. — Berengaria. 

Alfonso  the  Emperor  died  in  1157,  and  the  kingdoms  were 
once  more  divided.  Castile  was  the  appointed  portion  of  his  eldest 
son,  Sancho,  while  his  younger  brother,  Ferdinand,  inherited 
the  kingdom  of  Leon.  For  one  entire  year  the  royal  brothers 
lived,  strangely  enough,  in  harmony,  in  their  several  dominions  ; 
but  the  death  of  Sancho,  in  1 158,  and  the  accession  of  his  infant 
son,  Alfonso  III.  of  Castile  (usually  called  Alfonso  VIII.)  led  to 
an  outbreak  of  strife  in  that  kingdom,  between  the  Castros  and 
the  Laras,  rival  aspirants  to  the  guardianship  of  the  royal  minor, 
as  well  as  to  more  regular  warfare  with  Ferdinand  of  Leon, 
which  was  conducted  with  the  usual  savagery  and  fruitlessness. 

Arriving  at  man's  estate,  Alfonso  III.  (or  VIII.)  of  Castile 
entered  into  a  treaty  of  peace  and  amity  at  Sahagun  (1170) 
with  Alfonso  Ramon  of  Aragon,  the  son  of  Petronilla  and  the 
last  Ramon  Berenguer ;  and  in  the  same  auspicious  year  he 
married  the  Princess  Eleanor,  ^daughter  of  our  English  king, 
Henry  II.  Up  to  the  time  of  this  happy  union  the  reign  of 
Alfonso  III.  in  Castile  had  been  nothing  but  a  succession  of 
intrigues  and  civil  wars  of  the  accustomed  character ;  but  from 
the  day  of  his  marriage,  in  1170,  to  the  day  of  his  death,  in 
1214,  after  a  reign  of  no  less  than  fifty-six  years,  he  exercised 
the  sovereign  power  without  hindrance,  if  not  entirely  without 
opposition,  within  his  dominions.  If  the  domestic  tranquillity 
of  Castile  during  four-and-forty  years  may  not  be  attributed  ex- 
clusively to  the  influence  of  the  English  queen,  yet  the  marriage 
bore  fruits,  in  a  second  generation,  of  which  it  would  be  difficult 
to  exaggerate  the  importance  ;  for  it  was  the  blood  of  the  Planta- 
genets  that  flowed  in  the  veins  of  their  daughter,  Berenguela, 
or  Berengaria,  one  of  the  true  heroines  of  Spain. 

Yet  if  Alfonso  enjoyed  peace  at  home,  it  was  not  to  be 
supposed  that  war  should  be  absent  from  his  borders.  United 
for  a  brief  season  against  the  Moslem,  Alfonso  III.  of  Castile 
and  the  young  monarch  who  had  succeeded  to  the  neighbour- 
ing throne  as  Alfonso  IX.  of  Leon,  were  defeated  by  Yusuf  the 
Almohade,  with  great  slaughter,  near  the  little  town  of  Alarcon, 
on  the  Jucar,  in  the  modern  province  of  Cuenca — July,  11 95. 

Nor  could  these  discomfited  kings  find  any  better  or  wiser 
way  of  restoring  the  Christian  fortunes  than  by  making  war 
upon  one  another  after  their  defeat ;  and  the  wretched  strife  was 
only  composed  by  the  politic  marriage  of  Berengaria  of  Castile 
with  the  rival  Alfonso  of  Leon  (1197).  The  young  princess 


234  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

had  been  previously  betrothed  to  Conrad  of  Suabia,  the  son  of 
the  Emperor  Frederick  Barbarrossa ;  but  she  had  refused  to 
ratify  the  engagement  made  without  her  consent;  she  had 
maintained  her  independence  against  the  will  of  kings  and 
emperors,  and  her  independence  brought  union  and  happiness, 
not  to  herself,  but  to  Spain.  Upon  the  marriage  of  Berengaria, 
peace  was  at  once  proclaimed  between  the  Christian  sovereigns  ; 
and  the  birth  of  a  son  to  the  royal  pair  foreshadowed  the 
absolute  union  of  Leon  and  Castile.  But  kings  and  queens 
reckoned  all  in  vain  without  the  sanction  of  the  masterful 
ecclesiastic  who  at  that  time  ruled  the  world  from  Rome. 

Innocent  III.  had  not  only  excommunicated,  but  he  had 
deposed,  the  so-called  Roman  emperor,  and  he  had  imposed  a 
successor  upon  the  electors  and  people  of  Germany.  He  had 
not  only  excommunicated  Philip  Augustus  of  France,  but  he 
laid  his  kingdom  under  an  interdict.  He  had  denounced  and 
dissolved  a  marriage  between  Alfonso  IX.  of  Leon  and  Teresa 
of  Portugal.1  He  had  humiliated  King  John  of  England. 

The  sack  of  Christian  Constantinople  by  his  Eastern  Cru- 
saders, the  massacre  of  Christian  heretics  by  his  western  troops, 
and  the  establishment  of  the  inquisition  in  southern  France — all 
this  made  it  known  to  the  world  that  Caesar  still  reigned  at 
Rome.  And  Caesar  was  at  once  surprised  and  offended  by 
the  marriage  between  King  Alfonso  IX.  of  Leon  and  the 
Princess  of  Castile.  Such  marriages  were  solemnised  every 
day  with  the  fullest  approbation  of  the  Church.  Alliances  less 
regular  by  far  were  constantly  authorised  between  royal  suitors. 
The  domestic  peace  of  Christian  Spain  was  directly  due  to  this 
union  of  the  rival  houses  of  Leon  and  Castile.  To  all  these 
considerations  Innocent  turned  a  deaf  ear.  Alfonso  and  Beren- 
garia were  first  cousins.  They  had  married  without  the  Papal 
licence.  The  marriage  was  declared  void.  The  king  and 
queen  were  excommunicated.  Leon  was  placed  under  an 
interdict.  It  is  difficult  in  the  nineteenth  century  to  realise 
the  full  signification  of  the  words.  For  nearly  six  years  the 
husband  and  wife  stood  firm.  Yet  the  nations  were  once  again 
distracted  ;  and  Leon  was  further  divided  into  two  parties  ;  the 
more  powerful  faction  reproaching  their  sovereign  for  the 

1  He  had  excommunicated  the  parties,  and  laid  both  kingdoms  under  an 
interdict  until  they  separated.  (Alfonso  IX.,  however,  had  two  daughters,  Sancha 
and  Dulce,  by  Teresa  of  Portugal,  before  he  left  her  and  married  Berengaria  of 
Castile.  Not  only  did  the  Pope  dissolve  both  marriages  of  Alfonso  IX.,  but  he 
acted  similarly  towards  Alfonso's  father,  Ferdinand  II.,  on  his  marriage  to  Princess 
Urraca  of  Portugal,  his  cousin. — H.) 


1212.]  IMPERIUM  ROMANUM.  235 

assertion  of  his  independence  of  a  foreign  priest,  while  a 
minority  only  were  indignant  at  the  pretensions  of  Rome. 

The  Pope,  as  usual,  gained  the  victory ;  if  somewhat  less 
completely  than  was  his  wont.  For  although  after  a  noble 
resistance  of  nearly  seven  years,  Alfonso  and  Berengaria  were 
forcibly  put  asunder,  yet  were  their  five  children,  born  of 
unwedded  parents,  pronounced  legitimate,  and  Ferdinand,  their 
eldest  love  child,  the  hope  of  Leon  and  Castile,  was  recognised 
by  the  highest  ecclesiastical  authority  in  western  Christendom, 
as  the  lawful  heir  to  the  crown  of  his  father.  Yet  in  spite  of 
this  most  illogical  concession,  the  royal  separation  was  followed 
by  a  renewed  outbreak  of  domestic  strife  in  Leon  and  Castile. 
The  civil  war,  indeed,  was  prosecuted  without  vigour  on  either 
side,  but  when  Alfonso  of  Castile  was  able,  in  the  ever  famous 
valley  of  Tolosa  (1212),  to  avenge  the  Christian  defeat  at 
Alarcon,  his  cousin  of  Leon  was  not  found  fighting  against  the 
infidel,  but  taking  advantage  of  the  forward  movement  of  the 
victorious  army  to  plunder  some  of  the  border  cities  of 
Christian  Castile. 

The  great  and  most  authentic  Christian  victory  at  Navas 
de  Tolosa  *  was  largely  due  to  the  diplomatic  skill  of  Alfonso  of 
Castile,  who,  with  the  assistance  of  Innocent  III.,  now  happily 
in  favour  of  union,  brought  about  a  great  coalition  of  the 
Christian  forces  in  the  Peninsula.  Sancho  of  Navarre,  Alfonso 
of  Leon,  Alfonso  of  Portugal,  and,  most  valued  of  allies,  Peter 
II.  of  Aragon,  were  thus  united  in  the  supreme  effort ;  and 
with  them  were  associated,  it  is  said,  no  less  than  100,000 
Crusaders,11  lords,  knights  and  common  soldiers  from  every 
country  in  western  Europe.  Navarre  and  Aragon  alone  of 
the  Peninsula  sovereigns  were  loyal  to  their  engagements  to 
Castile  and  to  Christendom.  The  Crusaders  turned  back  ere 
they  had  crossed  swords  with  the  Moslem ;  but  the  three 
kings,  with  their  united  armies,  were  able  to  carry  the  war 
with  such  unaccustomed  vigour  into  the  enemy's  country  that 
the  fate  of  the  Almohades  was  sealed  in  a  single  battle,  in  that 
ever  celebrated  valley  of  the  Sierra  Morena — hard  by  the 
modern  mining  town  of  Linares — which  is  known  as  the 
Navas  de  Tolosa. 

1  His  son  James  the  Conqueror  and  Chronicler  of  Aragon,  speaks  of  this 
battle  as  the  battle  of  Ubeda,  Comm.,  cap.  369. 

8  Of  these  the  greater  number  turned  back  as  soon  as  the  army  had  got  as  far 
south  as  Calatrava.  Among  those  who  accompanied  the  allied  Christians  to  the 
end  was  Arnault,  Archbishop  of  Narbonne. 


236  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

Bishop  Roderic  of  Toledo,  the  most  renowned  chronicler 
of  thirteenth  century  Spain,  was  not  only  present  at  the  en- 
gagement;  but  he  carried  his  red  cross  into  the  thickest  of  the 
fight ;  and  wielding  the  pen  as  well  as  the  sword,  after  the 
best  Castilian  fashion  of  the  day,  he  has  left  us  a  description  of 
the  battle,  written  with  all  the  vigour  of  an  eye-witness.  Had 
the  Alfonsos  of  Portugal  and  Leon  been  truer  knights  or  better 
Christians,  the  victorious  march  of  St.  Ferdinand  upon  Cordova 
and  Seville  might  have  been  anticipated  by  nearly  half  a 
century. 

Alfonso  III.  (or  VIII.)  of  Castile  did  not  long  survive  his 
great  triumph.  He  died  in  1214;  his  crown  passed  to  his 
eldest  son  Henry,  a  child  of  ten  years  old  ;  and  the  regency  of 
the  kingdom  was  entrusted  to  the  prudent  hands  of  the  un 
wedded  Berengaria,1  by  common  consent  the  fittest  ruler  in  all 
Spain,  the  most  prudent  princess  in  all  Christendom.  Yet  did 
her  prudence  avail  but  little  against  the  force  and  fraud  of 
Alvaro  Nuno,  the  chief  of  the  turbulent  house  of  Lara;  and 
after  an  ineffectual  struggle  of  over  a  year's  duration,  she  was 
forced  to  surrender  the  person  of  the  young  king  into  the 
hands  of  Alvaro,  who  assumed  at  once  almost  absolute  power  in 
the  kingdom.  An  accident  frustrated  all  the  schemes  of  the 
ambitious  intriguer.  The  boy  king  was  killed  by  a  falling  tile 
as  he  was  playing  in  the  courtyard  of  the  bishop's  palace  at 
Palencia ;  and  Berengaria  herself  became  the  lawful  Queen  of 
Castile. 

And  right  nobly  did  she  use  her  queenly  power.  Without 
a  moment's  delay  she  sent  messengers  to  Alfonso  IX.  of  Leon, 
sometime  her  husband,  with  the  request  that  their  eldest  son 
Ferdinand  might  be  permitted  to  visit  his  mother  at  Valla- 
dolid.  The  request  was  prudently  granted.  Berengaria,  ever 
striving  after  union  in  Christian  Spain,  immediately  sum- 
moned the  States- General  of  the  kindgom,  and  abdicated  her 
own  regal  authority  in  Castile  in  favour  of  her  son,  the  heir  to 
the  kingdom  of  Leon ;  and  having  further  induced  most  of 
the  partisans  of  the  rebellious  House  of  Lara  to  submit  them- 
selves peaceably  to  Ferdinand,  as  sovereign  of  Castile,  she 
caused  him  to  be  formally  recognised  by  the  assembled  Cortes, 
and  proclaimed  king  in  her  room  (31st  of  August,  1217). 

Yet  peace  was  not  assured.     The  contemptible  Alfonso  of 

1  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  administration  was  at  first  entrusted  to  Queen 
Eleanor,  but  she  died  in  less  than  a  month  after  her  nomination ;  and  the 
Regency  at  once  passed  to  her  daughter  (1214). 


1219.]  IMPERIUM  ROMANUM.  237 

Leon  was  jealous  of  his  son's  honours,  and  envious  of  his  wife's 
renown.  Alvaro  Nuno  de  Lara  was  still  at  large.  And  Leon 
once  more  made  war  upon  Castile.  The  father  once  more 
warred  against  the  son  ;  the  husband  against  the  wife ;  the 
subject  against  the  sovereign.  But  the  struggle  was  of  short 
duration.  Ferdinand,  who  was  but  eighteen  years  of  age,  was 
content  to  be  advised  by  his  mother  Berengaria,  who  having 
already  despoiled  herself  of  her  kingdom  in  favour  of  union  and 
peace,  did  not  hesitate  to  despoil  herself  of  her  personal  jewels, 
to  provide  pay  for  the  royal  troops,  when  it  became  necessary 
to  prepare  for  war.  Her  efforts  were  completely  successful. 
Enthusiasm  filled  the  ranks  of  her  defenders.  Alvaro  Nufio 
was  taken  prisoner.  Alfonso  was  but  feebly  supported.  An 
age  which  knew  no  shame  was  yet  unable  to  sympathise  with 
the  father  who  sought  the  life  of  his  own  son,  the  legitimate 
monarch  of  a  neighbouring  kingdom.  At  length,  rather  by  the 
prudent  conduct  of  the  queen  than  by  any  force  of  arms,  the 
hostile  coalition  was  dissolved  ;  the  horrors  of  civil  war  were 
averted ;  and  the  united  armies  of  Castile  and  Leon  were 
despatched  against  the  decaying  power  of  the  Moslem  in 
southern  Spain. 

Unwilling  to  seek  alliances  and  troubles  in  any  of  the 
Christian  courts  of  the  Peninsula,  Berengaria  found  a  wife 
for  her  son  in  the  Princess  Beatrice  of  Suabia,  cousin-german 
of  the  emperor ;  and  the  marriage  ceremony  was  performed 
with  great  pomp  at  Burgos,  after  the  young  king  had  received 
the  honour  of  knighthood  (30th  November,  1219),  and  had 
been  invested  with  the  insignia  of  a  royal  cavalier  in  the 
chapel  of  the  monastery  at  Las  Huelgas l  at  the  royal  and 
right  worthy  hands  of  his  own  mother.  It  was  before  the  same 
altar,  some  five-and-thirty  years  later,  that  another  royal  Plan- 
tagenet  watched  his  arms  ere  he  was  girt  with  the  sword  of 
Castilian  chivalry,  when  King  Edward  I.  of  England,  betrothed 
to  a  grand-daughter  of  Henry  Plantagenet,  was  knighted  by 
the  hands  of  her  brother,  Alfonso  the  Learned  of  Castile. 

Ferdinand,  relieved  from  all  opposition  on  the  part  of  his 
Christian  neighbours  in  the  north,  was  now  able  to  turn  his 
attention  to  the  Moslems,  whose  power  was  still  dominant, 
though  ever  decaying,  in  the  south.2  For  over  two  centuries 
after  the  death  of  Almanzor  nothing  but  the  constant  warfare 

1  See  Ford  (1878),  pp.  15,  16. 

2  In  1326  Ferdinand  laid  the  first  stone  of  the  existing  Cathedral  of  Toledo. 


238  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

among  the  Christian  sovereigns  had  suffered  the  Moslem  domina- 
tion to  continue  to  exist  in  Spain.  Aragon,  in  the  vigorous 
and  unfettered  hands  of  James  L,  had  already  extended  the 
Christian  power  to  the  furthest  south-east  coasts ;  and  now 
Ferdinand  of  Castile  and  Leon  possessed  himself  in  successive 
campaigns  of  many  important  cities  and  districts  in  the  south 
and  south-west.  It  was  while  besieging  Jaen  that  the  king 
received  the  letter  from  his  mother  which  told  him  of  the  death 
of  his  father,  Alfonso  IX.,  at  Leon  and  the  final  union  in  his 
proper  person  of  the  kingdoms  of  Leon  and  Castile.  Yet  was 
his  legitimate  succession  not  undisturbed  by  the  dead  hand  of 
his  most  unworthy  father,  who  had  left  his  kingdom  by  will  to 
his  illegitimate  daughters,  Sancha  and  Dulce l  to  the  specific 
exclusion  of  his  son  and  legitimate  successor  on  the  throne. 
The  queen-mother  not  only  urged  Ferdinand  to  return  with 
all  speed  to  his  paternal  dominions ;  but  she  herself  repaired  to 
Leon,  and  by  her  promptitude  and  prudence  she  was  enabled 
to  enter  the  city,  where  she  caused  her  son  to  be  proclaimed 
king,  without  the  shedding  of  one  drop  of  Christian  blood. 
Ferdinand,  arriving  in  all  haste  from  the  south,  found  no  foes 
to  conquer,  no  rivals  to  bar  the  path  of  the  king  of  the  United 
Monarchy  of  Leon  and  Castile. 

It  remained,  indeed,  to  reckon  with  the  Infantas,  his  half- 
sisters,  unwilling  pretenders  to  the  throne.  But  the  queen 
sought  and  found  means  to  conciliate  their  claims,  and  to 
remove  their  pretensions ;  and  at  Valencia  de  Alcantara,  on 
the  Minho,  in  Gallicia,  Berengaria  of  Castile,  the  mother  of 
the  king,  and  Teresa  of  Portugal,  the  mother  of  the  princesses, 
both  of  them  the  unwedded  wives  of  the  same  man,  met  to 
discuss  the  claims  of  their  children  to  the  throne  of  their  dead 
husband.  A  stranger  interview  is  not  perhaps  recorded  in 
history. 

Berengaria,  as  usual,  was  successful  ;  and  with  the  full 
approbation  of  their  mother,  and  to  their  own  personal  satis- 
faction, the  Infantas  accepted  from  Ferdinand  a  pension  of 
15,000  gold  doubloons,  which  was  secured  to  each  one  of  them 
on  her  abandonment  of  her  claim  to  the  kingdom  of  Leon  (llth 
December,  1230) ;  and  the  engagement,  both  as  regards  the 

1  The  question  of  their  illegitimacy  is  a  somewhat  open  one.  The  princesses 
were  born  in  wedlock,  the  daughters  of  Alfonso  IX.  and  Teresa  of  Portugal.  It  is 
true  that  the  Pope  dissolved  the  marriage  for  reasons  already  stated  ;  but  he  also 
dissolved  for  the  same  reasons  the  subsequent  marriage  of  Alfonso  and  Berengaria 
the  mother  of  Ferdinand. — H. 


1219.]  IMPERIUM  ROMANUM.  239 

pretensions  and  the  payment,  was  faithfully  and  honourably 
carried  out.  Thus  was  King  Ferdinand  once  more  free  to  do 
battle  against  the  Moslem  in  southern  Spain.  Six  years  he 
fought  with  ever  increasing  success,  and  at  length,  on  the  26th 
June,  1236,  the  banner  of  Castile  and  Leon  floated  over  the 
great  mosque  at  Cordova,  and  the  proud  capital  of  the  once 
glorious  Arab  Empire  remained  in  the  hands  of  the  Christians. 
Murcia  was  invaded  and  occupied  to  the  confines  of  Aragon ; 
and  a  great  part  of  Andalusia,  to  the  very  borders  of  Granada, 
acknowledged  the  rule  of  Ferdinand.  Seville  only  remained ; 
but  before  La  Giralda  was  converted  from  a  Moslem  observa- 
tory into  a  Christian  belfry 1  the  true  glory  of  Ferdinand's  reign 
had  passed  away.  On  the  8th  of  November,  1246,  Queen 
Berengaria  died,  and  was  laid  in  the  ground  at  Burgos,  as  she 
herself  had  directed,  "in  plain  and  humble  fashion." 

Berengaria  was  one  of  those  rare  beings  who  seem  to  have 
been  born  to  do  right,  and  to  have  done  it.  From  her  earliest 
youth  she  was  a  leading  figure,  a  happy  and  noble  influence 
in  one  of  the  most  contemptible  and  detestable  societies  of 
mediaeval  Christendom.  Married  of  her  own  free  will  to  a 
stranger  and  an  enemy,  that  she  might  bring  peace  to  two 
kingdoms,  she  was  ever  a  true  and  loyal  wife  ;  unwedded  by 
ecclesiastical  tyranny  in  the  very  flower  of  her  young  woman- 
hood, she  was  ever  a  faithful  daughter  of  the  Church  ;  inheriting 
a  crown  when  she  had  proved  her  own  capacity  for  royal 
dominion,  she  bestowed  it  on  a  strange  and  absent  son,  with  no 
thought  but  for  the  good  of  her  country  and  of  Christendom  ; 
and,  finally,  as  queen-mother  and  ever  faithful  counsellor,  she 
accepted  all  the  difficulties  of  government,  while  the  glory  of 
royalty  was  reserved  for  the  king  whom  she  had  created. 
Berengaria  was  ever  present  in  the  right  place  and  at  the  proper 
time,  and  her  name  is  associated  only  with  what  is  good,  and 
worthy,  and  noble,  in  an  age  of  violence,  and  wrong,  and 
robbery ;  when  good  faith  was  well-nigh  unknown,  when  bad 
men  were  all  powerful,  when  murder  was  but  an  incident  in 
family  life,  and  treason  the  chief  feature  in  politics. 

Two  years  after  her  death  her  son  determined  to  complete 
his  conquests  from  the  Moslem  by  the  taking  of  Seville.  And 
Ferdinand,  after  immense  preparations,  sat  down  before  the  city 
of  the  Guadalquivir.  Invested  on  three  sides  by  the  royal 
forces  and  those  of  his  Moslem  ally  and  vassal,  Al  Ahmar,  King 

1  See  chap.  xxvi. 


240  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

of  Granada,  with  the  river  blockaded  by  a  fleet  brought  by 
Raymond  Boniface,  Admiral  of  Castile,  from  the  far  away  coasts 
of  Biscay,  Seville a  was  forced  to  capitulate ;  and  after  the 
triumphal  entry  of  the  Christians  into  the  city  of  Isidore  (23rd 
November,  1248),  nothing  remained  to  the  Moors  in  Spain  but 
the  little  kingdom  of  Granada.2 

Yet  did  Granada,  unmolested,  according  to  honourable 
treaty,  by  Ferdinand,  resist  all  the  attacks  of  his  successors,  and 
continued  to  defy  Spanish  chivalry  and  Spanish  Christendom  for 
250  years. 

Four  years  after  the  capitulation,  King  Ferdinand  died  in 
his  palace  at  Seville,  one  of  the  most  fortunate  of  all  the  kings 
of  Spain.  Fortunate  in  the  presence  during  a  great  part  of  his 
reign  of  a  princess  of  extraordinary  prudence,  most  loving  of 
mothers,  most  discreet  of  counsellors,  most  loyal  of  subjects ; 
Ferdinand  was  no  less  fortunate  in  his  peaceful  inheritance  of  a 
double  crown,  in  the  unusual  fidelity  of  his  nobles,  and  in  his 
easy  victories  over  the  decaying  Moslem ;  fortunate  alike  in  his 
relations,  in  his  friends,  in  his  enemies,  he  is  known  to  posterity 
as  a  saint  as  well  as  a  conquerer,  and  is  fairly  reckoned  among 
the  great  kings  of  Spain.3 

1  The   capitulation  was  honourable  to  both  Moor  and  Christian,   and   was 
faithfully  observed  on  both  sides.     A  large  number  of  the  Moslems  retired  un- 
molested to  Africa.     Ferdinand  granted  to  the  city  for  arms,  himself,  seated  on  his 
throne,  with  his  brother  saints,  Leander  and  Isidore,  as  his  supporters. 

For  the  life  of  Ferdinand  generally,  see  Lucas  de  Tuy,  Memorias  para  la  Vida 
del  $anto  Rey  D.  Ferdinando. 

2  Some   time  after  the   taking  of  Seville,  early  in  the  reign  of  Alfonso  the 
Learned,  the  towns  of  Jerez,  Cadiz,  San  Lucar,  Medina,  Arcos,  and  the  southern 
and  south-western  coasts  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Christians. 

3  He  was  canonised  in  1668  by  Clement  IX. 


241 


CHAPTER  XXIII. 

THE  GREAT  MILITARY  ORDERS. 

(1164—1500.) 

I. — Calatrava. 

"  WHETHER  the  military  orders  of  Castile,"  says  Prescott,  "  were 
suggested  by  those  of  Palestine,  or  whether  they  go  back  to  a 
remoter  period,  as  contended  by  their  chroniclers,  or  whether 
they  are  survivals  or  imitations  of  similar  associations  that  are 
known  to  have  existed  among  the  Spanish  Arabs,1  there  can 
be  no  doubt  that  the  forms  under  which  they  were  actually 
organised  in  the  latter  part  of  the  twelfth  century  were  derived 
from  the  monastic  orders  established  during  the  early  crusades 
for  the  protection  of  the  Holy  Land."  2 

The  Hospitallers,  and  especially  the  Templars,  had  obtained 
greater  possessions  in  Spain  than  in  any  other  part  of  Europe, 
and  it  was  partly  upon  the  ruins  of  their  rich  commanderies — 
sequestrated  by  order  of  Clement  V.,  in  the  early  days  of  the 
fourteenth  century — that  arose  the  three-fold  glory  of  the  great 
Spanish  Orders.3  Yet,  long  before  the  destruction  of  the 
magnificent  Confraternity  of  the  Knights  Templars  4  in  Spain, 

1  The  Moors  had  established  Rabitos  or  soldier  monks  (see  note  on  the  Almora- 
vides,  ante.,  p.   202),  to  guard  their  frontier  and  protect  their  pilgrims.     So  the 
imitating  Spaniards  founded  their  military  religious  Orders.     Ford  (1845),  "•>  66- 

2  The  following  pages  are  based  chiefly  upon  information  collected  in  Tratado 
historico-legal  .  .  .  de  los  quatro  ordenes  .  .  .  Santiago,   Calatrava,   Alcantara, 
y  Montesa  .  .  .  compueslo  de  orden  de  S.  M.  Fernando  el  sexto  par  Pedro  de  Cantos 
Benites,  Alcalde  de  su  casa  y  corte.     Egerton  MS. ,  British  Museum,  No.  486.     See 
also  Capitulo  general  de  los  ordenes  Militares,  Toledo,  1560,  Egerton  MS.,  485, 
D.  xviii.     There  is  a  very  good  catalogue  of  wcrks  on  Monastic,  Religious,  and 
Military  Orders  at  the  end  of  vol.  iii.  of  Helyot,  Diclionnaire  Historique  des  ordres 
Monastiques  (Guingamp,  1838). 

8  Prescott,  Ferd.  and  Isabel.,  i.,  231. 

4  As  to  the  destruction  of  the  Templars  by  Philip  le  Bel  and  Clement  V. ,  and 
the  attitude  of  the  Spanish  kings  of  that  time  with  regard  to  the  Order,  see  Mr.  H. 
VOL.    I.  16 


242  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

the  great  military  and  religious  Orders  of  Calatrava,1  of  Santi- 
ago, and  of  Alcantara,  associated  as  they  are  with  so  much  that 
is  noblest  in  Spanish  history — were  already  flourishing  in  the 
Peninsula. 

The  origin  of  the  eldest  born,  if  not  the  most  famous  of  the 
three,  was  entirely  accidental.  King  Alfonso  2  VII.  el  Emperador 
of  Leon  and  Castile,  advancing  the  southern  outposts  of  Christian 
Spain  on  his  way  to  the  capture  of  Almeria,  possessed  himself, 
in  1147,  of  the  fortress  of  Calatrava,  which  commanded  the 
frontier  of  Andalusia,  and  which  was  confided  by  him,  on  its 
capture,  to  the  keeping  of  the  Knights  Templars,  who  had 
accompanied  him  on  his  most  adventurous  march.  For  ten 
years  the  Templars  maintained  their  position  in  this  advanced 
post  at  Calatrava,  until,  on  the  death  of  King  Alfonso  and  the 
advance  of  the  Almohades  in  1157,  the  Christians  were  com- 
pelled to  retire.  The  fortress,  thus  abandoned,  reverted  as  of 
right  to  Sancho  III.,  the  successor  of  Alfonso  VII.  in  Castile  ; 
and  it  was  offered  by  that  king,  in  1158,  to  whomsoever  would 
undertake  to  occupy  and  defend  it  against  the  Moors. 

The  honour  was  sought  and  found  by  two  Cistercian  monks, 
Raymond  Abbot  of  Fitero,  in  Navarre,  and  Fray  Diego  Velas- 
quez, who  received  at  the  king's  hands,  in  addition  to  the 
castle  of  Calatrava,  some  twenty-eight  square  leagues  of  country 
surrounding  the  fortress.  The  Church  was  no  less  encouraging 
than  the  Crown ;  and  the  Archbishop  of  Toledo  not  only 
supplied  the  bold  clerical  adventurers  with  the  needful  funds, 
but  he  assisted  their  enterprise  by  preaching  a  local  crusade 
against  the  infidel.  The  monks  and  their  retainers,  in  fine, 
acquitted  themselves  so  bravely,  that  within  a  short  time  the 
Moslems  were  expelled,  not  only  from  the  castle,  but  even  from 
the  neighbourhood  of  Calatrava. 

On  the  death  of  the  bold  Raymond,  the  knights,  preferring 
a  soldier  to  a  priest  for  their  captain,  elected  Don  Garcia  de 

C.  Lea,  Eng.  Hist.  Review,  April,  1894,  as  well  as  that  author's  History  of  the 
Inquisition,  vol.  iii.  The  first  association  of  knights  at  Jerusalem  which  developed 
into  the  great  Order  of  the  Temple,  took  place  in  1119;  and  nine  years  later,  at 
the  Council  of  Troyes  (1128)  St.  Bernard  of  Clairvaux  drew  up  the  statutes  of  the 
Order. 

1  Calatrava  is  an  Arabic  word,  Kaldt  =  Fort  ;  Rabah  =  the  name  of  one  of  the 
companions  of  the  prophet.     See  Abulfeda,  Geographic  (Paris,  1848),  vol.  ii.,  p. 
239;  Gayangos,  i. ,  356.     The  original  name  of  the  city  before  the  Arab  invasion 
is  said  to  have  been  Oreto.     Helyot,  viii. ,  5. 

2  Son  of  Queen  Urraca  and  Raymond  of  Burgundy.     See  chapters  xx.  and 
xxii. 


1210.]  THE  GREAT  MILITARY  ORDERS.  243 

Redon,  under  whom  the  Order  was  formally  established,  in 
conformity  with  the  rule  of  St.  Benedict,  with  Fray  Rodrigo 
as  their  abbot  or  chaplain.  Under  the  new  master  the  religious 
military  Order  was  recognised  by  Pope  Alexander  III.  in  a  Bull 
of  11 64;  and  the  powers  and  privileges  of  the  knights  were 
afterwards  confirmed  and  augmented  by  Gregory  VIII.  and 
Innocent  III. 

The  aid  of  these  Calatravan  companions  being  sought  soon 
after  their  incorporation  by  the  king  of  Portugal,  the  knights 
responded  to  his  appeal,  and  commanderies  or  convents  were 
established  at  Evora,1  at  Santarem,  and  other  places  in 
Portugal ;  while  in  Aragon,  Alfonso  II.  endowed  the  new  Order 
with  the  city  of  Alcafiiz  in  1179.  After  the  battle  of  Alarcon 
in  1195j  Calatrava  was  retaken  by  the  Almohades,  and  the 
knights,  transferring  their  headquarters  to  the  castle  of 
Salvatierra,  were  known  for  some  time  by  the  name  of  that 
fortress.2  In  1210  Calatrava  was  once  more  conquered  and 
occupied  by  the  knights"  under  Don  Martin  Fernandez. 

Their  heroic  defence  of  Salvatierra,3  in  the  following  year, 
against  all  the  attacks  of  the  Almohades,  was  but  the  prelude 
to  their  prowess  at  the  battle  of  the  Navas  de  Tolosa  in  1212. 
The  Christians  having  obtained  a  firm  footing  in  Andalusia 
after  this  memorable  engagement,  a  new  Calatrava  was  built, 
under  the  supervision  of  Don  Martin  Fernandez,  at  a  distance 
of  some  thirty-five  miles  from  the  old  one,  which  had  been 
destroyed  by  the  Moors ;  and  the  headquarters  of  the  Order 
was  transferred  to  this  new  and  no  less  dignified  fortress.4  A 
century  later,  Pope  John  XXII.,  by  his  Bull  of  1317,  recognised 

1  The  military  Order  of  Avis  was  founded  in  1162  in  Portugal,  under  the  name 
of  the  New  Militia,  and  was  affiliated  to  the  Cistercian  Order  of  Monks,  and 
dependent  to  some  extent  upon  the  more  distinguished  Order  of  Calatrava  in 
Spain.    They  took  the  name,  in  1166,  of  Knights  of  Evora  ;  but  this  was  again 
changed  soon  after  for  that  of  Avis.     It  is  said  that  two  eagles  or  birds  (Aves) 
pointed  out  the  spot  where  the  fortress  was  to  be  built  in  which  they  first  established 
themselves,  and  whose  name  they  took  (1187).     Angel,   Manriquez,  An.   Ord. 
Cisterc.,  torn.  ii. ;  Helyot,  ubi  supra,  viii.,  39-45. 

2  A  convent  of  nuns  was  attached  to  the  Order  in  1219,  and  a  second  in  1479. 
Lawrence-Archer,  Orders  of  Chivalry  (1887),  p.  226. 

There  was  a  schism  in  the  Order  of  Calatrava  in  1296  ;  and  a  grand  master 
and  an  anti-grand  master,  after  the  manner  of  the  Popes ;  Lopez  de  Padilla  versus 
Gutierrez  Perez.  There  was  another  schism  in  1404,  which  was  put  an  end  to  by 
the  confirmation  of  the  celebrated  Henry  de  Villena  in  his  office  as  Grand  Master. 
Benitez,  i.,  16. 

3  Romey,  vi. ,  257.     The  old  Calatrava  was  retaken  by  the  knights,  but  the 
fortifications  do  not  seem  to  have  been  worth  restoring.     Benitez,  i. ,  16. 

4  Lawrence- Archer  (1887),  p.  226. 


244  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

the  new  establishment,  which  was  to  be  governed  by  the  same 
rules  as  the  old  Order  of  Calatrava. 

The  subordinate  Order  of  Montesa l  was  established  by 
James  II.  of  Aragon  in  1317,  and  chartered  in  accordance  with 
a  Bull  granted  by  John  XXII.  in  the  previous  year,  endowing 
the  new  Order  with  all  the  estates  of  the  Templars  and  of 
the  Knights  of  St.  John  in  the  province  of  Valencia.2  But 
practically  the  new  Order  was  little  more  than  a  branch  of  that 
of  Calatrava,  by  whose  statutes  it  was  governed,  although  the 
administration  was  in  the  hands  of  the  masters  of  Montesa, 
invested  with  separate  jurisdiction  over  their  own  knights.  In 
1399,  a  third  Order  of  knighthood  was  united  with  that  of 
Calatrava,  in  accordance  with  a  Bull  of  Benedict  XIII. — the 
Spaniard  Pedro  de  Luna — the  Order  of  St.  George  of  Alfama, 
which  had  been  founded  in  1201  by  Peter  II.  of  Aragon.  To 
confirm  and  complete  this  union,  another  Bull  was  obtained 
from  Benedict  XIII.  in  1400,  and  the  Red  Cross  of  St.  George3 
took  the  place  of  the  sable  insignia  of  earlier  days  as  the  badge 
or  cognisance  of  Calatrava.4 

The  United  Order  remained  independent,  but  unimportant, 
for  nearly  two  hundred  years,  until  the  death  of  Pedro  de 
Borja,  the  last  grand  master,  in  1587,  when  the  revenues  were 
finally  appropriated  by  Philip  II.,  and  the  independence5  of 
the  confraternity  extinguished,  although  royal  lieutenants- 

1Benitez,  i.,  19. 

8  Of  the  history  of  Montesa,  and  incidentally  of  the  parent  Order  of  Calatrava, 
there  is  a  most  excellent  and  trustworthy  history  in  two  vols. ,  410  (Valencia,  1669), 
by  Hippolyto  de  Samper,  prior  of  the  Order,  well  arranged,  with  references  to 
many  authorities,  a  good  table  of  contents,  and  a  full  and  admirable  index.  The 
title  takes  up  thirty-five  lines ;  but  the  headline  is  Montesa  Illustrada,  which  may 
suffice  as  a  reference.  See  also  Helyot,  Diet.,  viii.,  34-37. 

3  As  to  the  foundation  of  the  Order  of  St.  George — so  spelt  in  the  old  docu- 
ments, and  not  Jorge,  as  the  name  is  now  written,  see  Samper,  i.,  fols.  378-383, 
where  all  the  original   documents,   bulls  and  charters  are  given.     For  a  fuller 
account  of  the  legend  of  St.  George,  and  the  rise  of  the  various  military  orders  in 
Christendom  under  his  protection,  including  that  of  the  Garter,  see  Appendix  V. 

4  The  old  black  cross  of  the  Order  survived  for  some  time  in  the  bordure  sable 
to  the  cross  gules  borne  by  the  knights  of  Calatrava. 

At  the  present  day  the  insignia  consists  of  a  red  cross  "cut  in  the  form  of 
lilies"  (Sir  B.  Burke,  Orders  of  Knighthood,  p.  305)  on  a  silver  ground. 

A  black  hood,  or  headpiece,  closed  under  the  chin  and  round  the  neck,  was 
a  part  of  the  early  habit.  The  frock  was  white.  Helyot,  op.  cit.,  viii.,  5.  In  1540 
the  statutes  were  so  far  modified  that  the  knights,  like  those  of  the  other  Orders, 
were  permitted  to  marry. 

BBenitez,  i. ,  21;  Zurita,  Anales  de  Aragon,  II.,  vi. ,  24,  fol.  30;  Samper,  i., 
fols.  54-59  and  fol.  201 ;  and  ii. ,  fol.  937  et  seq.  At  the  accession  of  Isabella  the 
Order  of  Calatrava  possessed  sixteen  priories  and  fifty-six  commanderies,  with  a 
total  revenue  of  about  half  a  million  of  ducats.  Sir  Bernard  Burke,  ubi  supra. 


1172.]  THE  GREAT  MILITARY  ORDERS.  245 

general    were    appointed    as    pro    or    vice-grand    masters    by 
successive    kings    of  Spain.1 

II. — Santiago. 

The  origin  of  the  more  distinguished  Order  of  Santiago 2 
was  no  less  accidental,  and  no  less  curious,  than  that  of  Calatrava. 
The  Order  is  traditionally  supposed  to  have  been  instituted  by 
Ramiro  after  the  battle  of  Clavijo  in  846,  and  is  referred  to  at 
times  as  the  Order  of  the  sword,  which  was  wielded  by  St. 
James  himself  at  that  apocryphal  battle.3  According  to  the 
more  serious  authorities,  the  Order  of  Santiago  came  into 
existence  in  or  about  the  year  Il6l,  on  the  conversion  from 
their  lawless  ways  of  certain  outlaws  (foragidos),  who  infested 
the  territories  of  Leon,  by  Pedro  Hernandez  de  Fuente,  whom 
the  converts  accepted  as  their  first  chief  or  master. 

United  under  his  leadership,  they  turned  their  arms  against 
the  Moors,  and  became  faithful  subjects  of  King  Ferdinand, 
who  granted  to  them  lands  at  Valdeverna  and  Villafafilla, 
and  recognised  their  company  as  a  loyal  and  knightly  corpora- 
tion of  defenders  of  the  faith  and  destroyers  of  the  infidel. 
To  ensure  the  practice  of  a  Christian  life  in  the  midst  of  the 
dangers  of  war,  this  band  of  reformed  robbers  associated  with 
themselves  certain  monks  of  St.  Logo  or  Eloy,  of  the  rule  of 
St.  Augustine,  as  canons  or  chaplains,  whose  spiritual  minis- 
trations, adapted  to  their  military  life,  they  required  and 
enjoyed,  until  the  appointment  of  regular  chaplains  as  clerical 
members  of  their  Order.  So  successful  was  this  band  of 
warriors  in  harrying  the  infidel,  that  in  1172,  the  Archbishop 
of  Santiago  accorded  to  their  leader  or  Maestre,  "  the  honour  of 

1  The  first  of  these  subordinate  masters  was  D.  Jayme  Juan  Falco,  appointed 
in  1593.     The  second  was  a  Ferrer.     The  fourth  general  was  a  Borgia  (1603-1610, 
Crespi   de   Borja).     The  ninth  was  another  Crespi,  appointed  by  Philip  IV.  in 
1646,  who  was  still  in  office  in  1669  (es,  y  sea  por  largos  aftos,  Samper,  ii. ,  foL 
59i  h.). 

2  The  best  early  account  of  the  history  of  the  Order  of  Santiago  is  a  small  folio 
published,  without  author's  name,  by  Francisco  Sanchez,  Madrid,  1577 ;   called 
La  Kegla  y  establimentos  de  la  Cavalleria  de  Santiago  del  Espada. — H. 

3Benitez,  i.,  3.  The  sword  is  said  to  have  been  the  noble  charge  on  the  coat 
of  arms  then  granted  to  the  Order,  with  the  motto : — 

"  Rubet  ensis  sanguine  Arabvm  ". 

Heraldic  charges,  or  coat  armour,  were  of  course  unknown  in  Europe  for  more 
than  200  years  after  the  death  of  Ramiro. 

See  D.  Vincente  de  la  Fuente,  Historia  Ecclesiastica  de  Espana,  torn,  iv.,  p. 
163  and  Espana  Sagrada,  xxvii. 


246  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

his  presence  "  as  spiritual  chief  of  the  company,  which  then 
and  there  became  formally  incorporated  under  the  "  Banner, 
Insignia  and  Invocation "  of  St.  James.1 

The  knights  of  Santiago  were  distinguished  by  a  white 
mantle,  embroidered  with  the  escallop  shell — the  special  badge 
of  St.  James — under  a  cross  in  the  fashion  of  a  sword  with  its 
hilt  "  carved  like  a  lily,"  not  white,  like  that  suggestive  flower, 
but  red  with  the  blood  of  the  infidel ;  and  this  ancient  insignia 
and  costume  remain  the  same  to  the  present  day. 

Two  years  after  the  formal  incorporation,  the  progress  of 
the  Order  was  recognised,  and  its  status  assured  by  a  Bull  of 
Pope  Alexander  III.,  granted  at  the  instigation  of  the  Cardinal 
Legate  Jacinto,  and  dated  5th  July,  1175,  by  which  Pedro 
Hernandez  de  Fuente  was  appointed  master,  with  whom  was 
associated  a  chapter  or  council  of  thirteen  knights,  entrusted 
with  the  general  government  of  the  Order,  which  was  as 
constituted  entirely  independent  of  the  local  bishops.  The 
knights  were  to  be  of  pure  Christian  blood,  untainted  by  any 
Jewish  or  Moorish  ancestry  ;  and  were  to  assert  their  belief  in 
the  Immaculate  Conception  of  the  Blessed  Virgin.  The  ecclesias- 
tical members  of  the  Order  were  subject  to  the  rule  of  St. 
Augustine,  and  were  to  be  of  noble  or,  at  least,  of  gentle  birth. 

At  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century  Santiago  possessed  no 
less  than  two  hundred  commanderies,  with  as  many  priories, 
and  an  immense  number  of  castles  and  villages,  together  with 
movable  and  immovable  property  of  every  description.2 

III. — Alcantara. 

The  Order  of  Alcantara — originally  called  the  Order  of 
Pereyro,  from  the  wild  pear  tree  or  peral  silvestre  which  grew  at 

1  Alfonso  I.  of  Portugal  and  his  son  Sancho,  in  1171,  gave  them  the  castles  of 
Montesanto  and  Abrantes,  and  the  knights  were  largely  instrumental  in  the 
recovery  of  Algarve  in  the  next  century. 

2 Sir  Bernard  Burke,  ubi  supra,  299. 

For  an  account  of  the  early  history  of  the  Order,  the  names  of  the  grand 
masters,  etc.,  see  Helyot,  op.  cit.,  vii.,  79-99,  and  Hades  y  Andrada,  Las  Tres 
Ordenes,  etc.  There  are  also  canonesses  of  the  Order  of  Santiago ;  the  first 
convent  having  been  founded  at  Salamanca  in  1312  by  Pelayo  Perez,  a  knight  of 
the  Order,  and  Maria  Mendez,  his  wife.  The  convents  are  at  Salamanca,  Toledo, 
Barcelona,  Valladolid,  Merida  and  Granada.  The  rules  of  the  different  institutions 
vary  in  every  case  :  the  Barcelona  ladies  are  not  considered  as  Religieuses.  (Until 
the  revolution  of  1868  there  was  a  convent  of  canonesses  of  Calatrava  at  Madrid, 
adjoining  the  still  existing  church  of  the  Order. — H. ) 

It  is  amusing  to  note  that  a  new  military  Order  of  Spanish  knights  was  founded 
in  the  nineteenth  century — the  Order  of  St.  Hermenegildo — founded  on  the  28th 
Nov.,  1814,  by  Ferd.  VII.  Such  knights  must  have  been  apt  pronunciamientistas  ! 


1156.]  THE  GREAT  MILITARY  ORDERS.  247 

the  door  of  the  hermitage  of  St.  Julian  near  Salamanca — owed 
its  foundation,  in  the  year  1 156,  to  Don  Suero  Gomez  and  others, 
who,  with  the  approbation  of  a  local  hermit  of  the  name  of 
Armando,  established  a  fort  on  the  banks  of  the  river  Coa 
which  divides  the  kingdom  of  Leon  from  that  of  Castile.  The 
valour  and  success  of  Don  Suero  and  his  comrades  attracted  a 
great  company  of  the  hardiest  warriors  of  the  neighbourhood, 
who  undertook  many  forays  against  the  Moors  on  the  frontier. 
Their  valour  was  rewarded  by  success.  The  marauders  were 
confirmed  in  their  conquests  by  King  Ferdinand  II.  of  Leon. 
Ordono,  Bishop  of  Salamanca,  permitted  certain  Cistercian 
monks  to  take  service  in  the  band ;  and  these  reverend  fathers 
or  brothers,  we  are  told,  devoted  to  religious  and  pious  exer- 
cises in  the  hermitage  of  St.  Julian  l  as  "  much  time  as  they 
could  spare  from  their  principal  duty,  su  primera  obligation,  of 
war  !  " 

On  the  death  of  Don  Suero  in  11 74-,  Don  Gomez  succeeded 
to  his  captaincy,  and  it  is  he  that  is  considered  to  be  the  first 
regular  master 2  of  the  Order,  which  was  formally  constituted 
by  Ferdinand  of  Leon  after  the  battle  of  Arganam  3  or  Arganal 
on  the  frontiers  of  Portugal,  in  1177. 

The  Confraternity  further  received  the  approbation  of  the 
Holy  See  in  the  form  of  a  Bull  of  Alexander  III.  (1178)  which, 
however,  did  not,  as  in  the  case  of  Santiago,  exempt  the  members 
of  the  new  Order  from  the  local  authority  of  the  diocesan.  And 
it  was  not  until  1183  that  their  inferior  status  in  this  respect 
was  altered  by  another  Bull  which  placed  the  Order  of  Pereyro 
under  the  rule  of  St.  Benedict,  and  granted  to  its  members 
authority  and  privileges  not  inferior  to  those  possessed  by  the 
great  company  of  Santiago. 

Their  bravery  at  the  taking  of  Truxillo  in  1188  induced 
Alfonso  IX.  to  grant  to  them  the  castle  of  Ronda  in  the  diocese 
of  Toledo.  And  the  same  king,  having  received  from  the 
Knights  of  Calatrava  the  town  of  Alcantara  on  the  Tagus, 
which  he  had  previously  given  to  them,  regranted  it  in  1213, 
after  the  battle  of  Las  Navas,  to  the  companions  of  Percyro,  who 
had  greatly  distinguished  themselves  under  the  mastership  of 
the  illustrious  Nino  Fernandez.  From  this  date  the  Order  was 

1  The  Order  was  sometime  known  as  the  Order  of  Si.  Julian.  Sir  B.  Burke, 
306. 

'*  He  is  called  Prior  in  one  of  the  MSS. 

3 This  battle  was  fought  against  Henry,  King  of  Portugal,  when  large  grants 
of  castles  and  lands  were  made  to  the  Order  by  the  king. 


248  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

known  by  the  name  of  that  of  Alcantara,  and  to  the  Peral  on 
their  knightly  shield  was  added  by  royal  order  the  Trabas  y 
Cruz  of  Calatrava. 

The  Knights  of  Alcantara  wore  a  white  mantle  with  a 
capoch  and  black  scapulary  three  inches  wide,  reaching  down 
to  the  girdle.  In  1441  the  present  white  mantle,  embroidered 
with  a  green  cross,  in  form  and  shape  precisely  similar  to  that 
of  Calatrava,  was  substituted  for  the  former  black  insignia,  but 
the  pear  tree  of  St.  Julian  is  still  the  time-honoured  crest  of  the 
Order. 

From  the  time  of  Nifio  Fernandez,  the  Order  of  Alcantara 
continued  to  be  ruled  by  masters  elected  by  the  company,  until 
the  time  of  Juan  de  Zuniga,  when  the  administration  was  as- 
sumed, and  the  grand  mastership,  with  its  noble  revenues, 
usurped  by  Ferdinand  the  Catholic. 


IV. — The  Grand  Masters. 

The  constitution,  the  duties,  and  the  privileges  of  each  of 
the  three  great  knightly  orders,  Santiago,  Calatrava,  and  Alcan- 
tara, were  essentially  similar  ;  while  in  minor  matters  of  disci- 
pline and  of  conduct,  their  government  was  regulated  by  their 
various  charters  of  incorporation.  The  first  duty  of  every  member 
of  every  Order  was  to  make  war  against  the  Moslem.1  But  the 
king,  and  the  king  alone,  could  authorise  the  knights  to  engage 
in  any  operation  of  war  ;  and  as  a  matter  of  history,  they  took 
their  place  in  battle  against  Christian  sovereigns  and  Christian 
neighbours  at  least  as  often  during  the  thirteenth  and  four- 
teenth centuries  as  against  the  Moors  who  remained  in  the 
Peninsula.2  Within  the  Order  the  knights  owed  absolute 
obedience  to  the  master,  who,  although  nominally  subject  to 
the  king,  was  in  many  cases  a  semi-independent  military  prince.3 
Each  knight  furnished  himself  with  his  horse  and  his  arms,  and 
was  chosen  or  accepted  only  by  the  master,  after  full  examina- 

1  Benitez,  cap.  ix. ,  s.  6,  7. 

2  John  II.  of  Castile,  for  example,  ordered  Gutierrez  de  Sotomayor  to  make 
war  upon  the  kings  of  Aragon  and  Navarre.     And  the  knights  of  Santiago  had 
previously  played  an  important  part  in  the  battle  of  Arganam  between  Ferdinand 
of  Leon  and  Alfonso  Henrique  of  Portugal  in  1177. 

3  The  subordination  of  every  knight,  and  even  of  the  purely  ecclesiastical 
members,  to  the  master  of  the  Order,  the  more  complicated  relation  of  the  master 
to  the  king,  and  all  such  questions,  are  treated  with  the  greatest  fulness  by  Benitez, 
ubi  supra.     See  also  Rohrbacher,  Histoire  Universelle  de  V Eglise  Catholique,  torn, 
viii.,  p.  421 ;  and  torn.  ix. ,  p.  818. 


1200.]          THE  GREAT  MILITARY  ORDERS.  249 

tion  and  consideration.1  The  aspirant  was  admitted  with  due 
ceremony  ;  and  was  solemnly  invested  with  the  habit  of  his 
Order  by  the  master  himself.  At  first  no  stipulation  was  made 
as  to  the  nobility  of  the  knights,  although  it  was  in  course  of 
time  insisted  upon  as  a  condition  precedent  to  admission.2  In 
the  case  of  the  clerical  members,  noble  birth  was  not  essential. 

The  homage  that  was  due  from  every  master  to  the  sove- 
reign, the  manner  of  recruiting,  the  obligations  of  the  knights 
to  the  master,  to  the  king,  and  to  one  another,  with  numerous 
minute  directions  as  to  the  acquisition  and  disposal  of  plunder, 
and  the  administration  of  the  property  of  the  Orders,  are  the 
subject  of  various  charters  and  bulls  of  incorporation  ;  and  the 
absolute  power  of  each  master  was  tempered  rather  by  these 
organic  statutes  than  by  any  respect  for  royal  authority  or 
municipal  law.  The  vows  of  the  military  knights  in  each  of 
the  three  Orders  were  (1)  of  Obedience,  which  was  rigorously 
enforced  ;  (2)  of  Poverty,  which  did  not  import  the  giving  up 
of  worldly  goods,  as  in  the  case  of  purely  religious  confraterni- 
ties, but  was  simply  taken  to  mean  that  no  property  granted  to 
the  Order  should  be  used  for  the  individual  advantage  of  any 
individual  knight.  But  the  masters  were  permitted  to  dispose 
by  will  of  one-half  of  all  such  property  as  they  might  have 
acquired  from  the  Order.  The  vows  (3)  of  Chastity  did  not 
prohibit  lawful  marriage,  but  enjoined  only  conjugal  fidelity.8 

From  the  first  institution  of  the  Orders,  the  masters  en- 
joyed the  fullest  powers  for  the  political  and  military  govern- 
ment of  their  subordinate  knights  and  dependents,  and  to  this 
was  soon  added  an  authority  over  the  ecclesiastical  associates 
of  the  Orders.  No  sooner  had  the  masters  of  Santiago  acquired 
the  special  patronage  and  protection  of  the  Holy  See,  than 
they  sought,  in  the  words  of  Benitez,  fraudar  la  jur'tsdiccion  of 
their  founder  Ferdinand  II.,  by  a  pretended  cession  of  Castro- 
Tarafto  the  Papal  Legate  Jacinto.  And  so  independent  and 
presumptuous  did  these  masters  become,4  that  instead  of  the 
modest  title  of  Alferez,  with  which  in  the  early  days  they  con- 
tented themselves,  they  assumed  the  style  of  Maestre,  par  la 
gracia  de  Dios. 

The  relations  of  these  powerful  captains  with  Papal  Rome 


1  Benitez,  5,  7,  and  14.  ^Ibid.,  14,  15,  ai. 

8  Except  in  the  case  of  the  more  distinctly  religious  Order  of  Culatrava. 
Benitez,  cap.  x. 

4  Se  vid  d  los  Mtustres  levantar  y  def&ner  loi  Reyes,  as  being  sure  of  the 
support  of  the  Popes  ! 


250  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

are  worthy  of  careful  study.  A  king  in  Spain  was,  until  the 
time  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  rather  primus  inter  pares  than  a 
monarch  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  term.  The  Popes,  who  in 
thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries  regarded  the  independence 
of  the  Spanish  kings  and  of  the  Spanish  people  with  a  by  no 
means  favourable  eye,  were  glad  to  support  an  adventurous 
grand  master  in  any  judicious  attack  upon  the  privilege  of  a 
king  less  devoted  to  the  Church  and  to  the  Vatican.  Thus 
Pope  Sixtus  IV.  assisted  the  rebellion  of  the  master  Juan  de 
Zuniga  against  Henry  IV.  Innocent  III.  declared  that  the 
masters  were  not  obliged  to  observe  the  treaties  made  with  the 
Moors  by  Alfonso  VIII.  ;  and  his  successor  Honorius  III.,  gave 
orders  to  the  kings  of  Spain  that  they  should  not  forbid  the 
masters  to  make  war  against  the  Moors  whenever  they  chose, 
with  or  without  their  royal  authorisation.1 

Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  we  read  of  the  constant  attempts 
of  the  Pontifical  legates  to  abate  the  privileges  of  the  Orders, 
to  exercise  alleged  rights  of  supervision,  and  generally  to  prevent 
the  masters  from  becoming  too  independent  of  the  Church. 
The  Popes  claimed  the  right  of  revoking  what  they  had  granted. 


1  Benitez,  vii.,  31. 

See  generally  Fernandez-Guerra  y  Orbe,  Historia  de  las  Ordenes  de  Cabal- 
leriay  de  las  Condecoracion.es  Espanolas  (Madrid,  1864)  ;  and  Quarterly  Review, 
vol.  Ixii.,  89. 

A  list  of  the  grand  masters  of  the  three  Orders,  from  the  earliest  times,  is 
given  in  Vicente  de  la  Fuente,  Historia  Ecclesiastica  de  Espafta,  iv. ,  583-4. 

The  number  of  commanderies  of  the  Orders  even  as  late  as  1570,  was  con- 
siderable. Santiago  included  eighty-three  ;  Calatrava  included  seventy  ;  Alcantara 
included  thirty-nine.  The  names  of  each  one  of  these  commanderies,  as  well  as 
a  catalogue  of  the  grand  masters  of  the  three  Orders,  is  given  In  the  Cronica  de  las 
tres  ordenes  y  Cavallerias,  etc.,  by  Rades  y  Andrada,  one  vol.  (Toledo,  1572). 
This  chronicle  contains  not  only  a  full  account  of  the  origin  and  constitution  of 
the  three  Orders,  their  habits,  arms,  seals,  etc.,  but  lists  of  the  names  of  the  grand 
masters,  priors,  and  even  the  commanders  of  the  Order,  down  to  the  year  1570. 

I  have  also  found  a  good  deal  of  general  information  of  a  most  interesting 
character  as  regards  their  revenues,  with  numerous  statistics  as  to  the  Spanish 
nobility  in  the  Middle  Ages,  in  an  MS.  in  the  British  Museum  collection,  Sir 
Julius  Caesar  MS.,  Lans,  171. 

The  following  list  of  all  the  great  Orders  of  knighthood  still  in  existence  in 
Europe,  arranged  in  the  order  of  their  foundation  down  to  1450,  may  be 
interesting  : — 

Calatrava  ...  1158. 


Santiago 

Alcantara 

Christ  (Portugal)    .. 

Seraphim  (Sweden) 

Garter 

Golden  Fleece 


1170. 

1179  (1213). 

1320. 

I336- 

1349- 

1429. 


1494.]  THE  GREAT  MILITARY  ORDERS.  251 

The  knights  maintained  that  their  sovereign  rights  must  be 
paramount. 

The  masters,  or  grand  masters  as  they  came  to  be  called, 
were  thus  not  only  the  most  important,  but  the  most  powerful 
subjects  in  Spain  ;  and  the  absorption  of  their  great  offices  in 
the  royal  prerogative  by  Ferdinand  the  Catholic,  as  we  shall  see 
in  the  course  of  this  history,  was  a  most  politic  abuse  or  exercise 
of  his  royal  power. 


252 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 
JAMES  THE  FIRST  OF  ARAGON.i 

(1213-1276.) 
I. — Catalonia  and  Aragon. 

THE  union  of  Catalonia  with  Aragon,  by  the  marriage  of  Queen 
Petronilla  with  Ramon  Berenguer  of  Barcelona,  in  1150,  was  the 
foundation  of  the  greatness  of  Spain.  Barcelona  was  not  only 
then,  as  it  is  now,  the  greatest  and  most  prosperous  seaport 
town  in  the  Peninsula,  but  it  was,  as  it  is,  inhabited  by  the 
sturdiest,  the  most  energetic,  and  the  busiest  population  in 
Spain.  And  the  happy  union2  between  the  hardy  mountaineers 
of  Aragon,  and  the  no  less  hardy  mariners  of  the  coast,  gave 
rise  to  a  people  who  were  not  only  able  to  drive  out  the  Moslems 
from  their  borders,  and  to  possess  themselves  of  fairest  Valencia, 
but  who  covered  the  great  sea  with  their  merchant  ships,  and 
filled  the  warehouses  of  Barcelona  with  the  choicest  goods  of 
the  Mediterranean  and  the  Levant. 

Barcelona  was  the  only  town  in  Spain  where  trade  was  not 
considered  a  disgrace.  Yet  no  mere  tradesmen  were  the  sturdy 
Catalonian  inhabitants.  They  established  the  first  bank  of 
exchange  and  deposit  in  Europe — in  1401.  They  compiled  the 
most  ancient  code  of  maritime  law  in  the  western  world — a  code 
that  embodied  the  commercial  usages  of  all  civilised  nations, 
and  formed  the  basis  of  the  mercantile  jurisprudence  of  Europe 

1  The  standard  English  authority  for  the  reign  of  James  I.  of  Aragon  is  now 
Mr.  Darwin  Swift's  Life  and  Times  of  James  the  First,  etc.,  one  vol.  (1894),  a  work 
which,  to  my  great  regret  and  loss,  only  came  into  my  hands  as  I  was  actually 
revising  the  sheets  of  this  chapter,  but  which  I  have  read  with   pleasure  and 
admiration. 

2  It  should  be  mentioned  that  the  County  of  Barcelona  or  Principality  of 
Catalonia,  as  it  came  to  be  called,  was  not  merged  into  the  kingdom  of  Aragon, 
though  the  same  sovereign  ruled  both.     The  privileges  of  the  two  dominions  were 
kept  rigidly  sepnrate,  and  the  monarchs  were  obliged  to  appeal  to  two  distinct 
Cortes  for  recognition  and  supplies. — H, 


JAMES  THE  FIRST  OF  ARAGON.  253 

during  the  Middle  Ages.  Energetic  alike  in  the  pursuits  of 
peace  and  the  arts  of  war,  they  not  only  drove  out  the  pirates 
of  Majorca  and  the  nobler  Moslems  of  Valencia,  but  they  made 
their  prowess  felt  in  Greece  and  Asia  Minor,  and  won  for  their 
sovereign  the  splendid,  if  somewhat  unprofitable  title  of  Duke 
of  Athens.  Thus,  while  the  nobles  of  Leon  and  Castile  were 
slaughtering  their  Moslem  neighbours,  and  quarrelling  with  their 
Christian  friends,  the  burghers  of  Barcelona  were  sailing  the 
seas  in  quest  of  commerce  and  of  adventure,  and  emulating  the 
civilisation  of  the  East.  More  than  this,  consuls  and  commercial 
factories  were  established,  and  resident  consuls  appointed,  by 
these  early  Catalans,  to  watch  over  their  interests  in  every  con- 
siderable port  in  the  Mediterranean,1  and  even  in  the  north  of 
Europe. 

But  the  peculiar  glory  of  Barcelona  was  the  freedom  of  her 
municipal  institutions.  The  government,2  at  least  as  early  as 
the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century,  consisted  of  a  Senate  or 
deliberative  assembly  of  100  members,  and  a  council  of  regidores 
not  exceeding  six  in  number  ;  the  larger  body  entrusted  with 
the  legislative,  the  smaller  with  the  executive  functions  of 
government.  A  considerable  proportion  of  the  members  of  these 
august  bodies  were  selected  from  the  merchants,  tradesmen  and 
mechanics  of  the  city.  They  were  invested  not  merely  with 
municipal  authority,  but  with  many  of  the  rights  of  sovereignty. 
They  entered  into  commercial  treaties  with  foreign  powers. 
They  superintended  the  defence  of  the  city  in  time  of  war. 
They  provided  for  the  security  of  trade,  granted  letters  of 
reprisal  against  any  nation  who  might  violate  it ;  and  they  raised 
and  appropriated  the  public  monies  for  the  construction  of 
useful  works,  or  the  encouragement  of  such  commercial  ventures 
as  were  too  hazardous  or  too  expensive  for  individual  enterprise. 
The  councillors  who  presided  over  the  municipality  were  invested 
with  certain  honorary  privileges  not  even  accorded  to  the 
nobility.  They  were  addressed  by  the  title  of  Magnificos. 
They  remained  covered  in  the  presence  of  royalty.  They  were 
preceded  by  mace-bearers,  or  lictors,  in  their  progress  through 
the  country  ; 3  and  their  deputies  claimed  and  received  at  the 

1Capmany,  A/em,  de  Barcelona,  i.,  2,  3.  Fine  wool  was  imported  into 
Barcelona  from  England  in  large  quantities,  and  manufactured  into  cloth,  which 
was  afterwards  sent  back  to  London.  Macpherson,  Annals  cf  Commerce,  i. ,  655. 

2  The  most  important  royal  charters  are  those  of  1249  and  1258. 

3 These,  it  will  be  remembered,  were  plebeians,  merchants  and  mechanics  ;  for 
trade  never  was  considered  a  degradation  in  Catalonia,  as  it  came  to  be  in  Castile. 
They  were  the  professors  of  the  different  arts,  as  they  were  called,  organised  into 


254  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

king's  court  the  honours  that  were  accorded  to  foreign  am- 
bassadors. 

The  political  institutions  of  Aragon  in  the  fourteenth  century 
were,  without  doubt,  the  most  liberal  that  existed  in  any  country 
of  mediaeval  Europe.  The  king,  escorted  by  twelve  peers  of  the 
realm,  knelt  down  before  the  chief  justice  or  justiciary  as  he  swore 
to  maintain  the  laws  which  were  made  by  the  representatives  of 
burghers  and  nobles,  assembled  in  annual  or  special  councils.1 
This  Aragonese  Parliament  consisted  of  four  branches  or  brazos 
— (l)the  RICH-HOMES  or  great  lords  of  the  State;2  (2)  the  CABAL- 
LEROS,  including  the  Infanzones  or  knights  of  lesser  degree,  and 
the  Mesnaderos,  or  descendants  of  a  Rich-home  ;  (3)  the  CLERGY  ; 
(4)  the  COMMONS,  who,  as  may  be  supposed  in  so  democratic  a 
constitution,  enjoyed  higher  consideration  and  greater  civil 
privileges  than  in  any  other  country  of  mediaeval  Europe.  The 
veto  of  a  single  member,  as  in  the  Diet  of  Poland,  sufficed  to 
defeat  or  postpone  any  measure  introduced  and  supported  by 
the  most  powerful  majority  in  the  chamber. 

The  first  General  Assembly  of  the  Estates  of  Aragon  and 
Catalonia  was  held  in  1 1 62,  while  similar  Cortes,  in  1 1 63  and 
1 1 64,  were  certainly  attended  by  representatives  of  the  three, 
or,  rather,  four  estates  of  the  realm,  six  years  before  the  first 
burgher  was  summoned  to  a  National  Assembly  in  Castile,  and 
more  than  a  century  before  the  towns  were  admitted  to  full 
rights  of  representation  in  the  Parliament  of  England. 

The  Cortes  of  Aragon  was  not  only  a  legislative  and  deli- 
berative assembly  ;  it  was  the  High  Court  or  Parliament  of  the 
realm.  The  General  Privilege,  which  has  been  called  the  Magna 
Charia  of  Aragon,  and  which  was  granted  by  Peter  III.  in  1283 
to  the  Cortes  of  Saragossa,  is  a  noble  monument  of  the  prudence 
and  liberality  of  the  sovereign,  and  of  the  courage  and  indepen- 
dence of  the  people.  It  contains  a  series  of  provisions  against 
arbitrary  taxation,  royal  spoliation,  and  secret  tribunals,  against 
sentences  even  of  the  justiciary,  without  the  assent  of  the  Cortes, 

guilds  or  companies,  constituted  as  so  many  independent  associations,  whose 
members  alone  were  eligible  to  the  highest  municipal  offices.  And  such  was  the 
honour  attached  to  civic  positions,  that  the  nobles  in  many  instances  resigned  their 
hereditary  rank,  in  order  that  they  might  become  candidates  for  civic  employment. 
Prescott,  Ferd.  and  Isabella,  i. ,  66,  67. 

1  No  king  of  Aragon  was  qualified  even  to  assume  the  royal  title  until  he  had 
taken  this  coronation  oath.     Zurita,  Anales  de  Aragon,  torn,  i.,  f.  104;  and  torn. 
ii.,  f.  76. 

2  The  word  has  nothing  in  common  with  rico,  or  rich  ;  but  is  from  a  root  akin 
to  Reich  =  empire. 


1348.]  JAMES  THE  FIRST  OF  ARAGON.  255 

against  the  appointment  of  unlit  persons  as  judges,  against  the 
use  of  torture,  and  against  trials  beyond  the  sea.  It  declares,  in 
plain  language,  that  absolute  power  never  was,  nor  shall  be,  the 
Constitution  of  Aragon  ;  and  that  men  shall  only  be  judged  ac- 
cording to  the  laws,  customs  and  privileges  which  have  been 
anciently  used  in  the  kingdom.1 

The  General  Privilege  was  confirmed  in  the  Cortes  of  Sara- 
gossa  in  1325,  when,  among  many  other  admirable  enactments, 
the  use  of  the  Question  or  torture,  applied  to  witnesses  in  judicial 
proceedings,  was  formally  abolished.  This  odious  and  absurd 
practice  remained  part  of  the  procedure  of  most  other  European 
countries  for  long  years  after  1325.2 

The  Great  Charter  of  England  was  wrung  from  a  distressed 
and  contemptible  monarch  ;  the  Great  Privilege  of  Aragon  was 
granted  by  a  bold  and  successful  king.  Both  John  and  Peter, 
indeed,  were  so  far  in  the  same  position  that  each  one  had  been 
excommunicated  by  the  Pope.  But  Peter,  who  defied  the 
thunders  of  the  Vatican,  was  no  less  liberal  in  his  grant  of 
popular  rights  than  our  own  Lac/eland. 

But  from  the  necessities  of  the  King  of  Aragon,  some  five 
years  later,  a  still  more  remarkable  charter  was  obtained  in  the 
Privilege  of  Union,3  which  appears  to  have  authorised  any  mem- 
bers of  a  great  confederation  of  subjects  to  combine  or  unite  in 
making  war  upon  the  king,  in  case  of  a  denial  of  justice,  or  any 
attempt  on  the  part  of  the  sovereign  to  act  independently  of  the 
Justiciary.  How  far  this  legalisation  of  the  highest  form  of 
treason  may  have  extended  we  cannot  now  be  certain,  for 
every  copy  or  record  of  the  dangerous  charter  was  destroyed  by 
order  of  Peter  IV.  at  the  time  of  its  abrogation  in  1 348  ;  and 
the  destruction  was  so  complete  that  even  the  words  of  the 
instrument  are  not  remembered.  The  year  before  the  abolition 
of  this  strange  privilege,  the  independence  of  the  Aragonese 
nobles  had  become  so  complete  that  they  had  caused  a  seal  to  be 
prepared,  representing  the  king  sitting  on  his  throne,  with  the 
confederates  kneeling,  indeed,  before  their  sovereign,  but  backed 
by  a  long  line  of  tents  and  lances,  denoting  their  ability  or 
resolution  to  defend  themselves  if  needful.3  But  the  confeder- 

'•  fueros  de  Aragon,  9;  Zurita,  fol.  265. 

2  The  application  of  torture  in  judicial  proceedings  had  been  an  exclusively 
royal  privilege  in  Aragon.     Swift,  of.  cit.,  p.  152.     See  also  Hallam,  Middle  Ages, 
vol.  ii. ,  chap.  i. ,  and  Documentos  ineditos,  torn.  xl. ,  pp.  434-573. 

3  See  Castelar,  Estudios  Historicos  (1875),  pp.  40,  41. 

3  The  legend  on  this  most  remarkable  seal  is  Sigillum  Unionis  Aragonum. 


256  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

ates  were  defeated  by  the  king  at  the  battle  of  Epila,  and  the 
original  charter  of  the  Privilege  of  Union  was  cut  in  pieces  by 
Peter  with  his  own  dagger.  Yet  did  not  the  king  abuse  the 
victory.  All  good  laws  and  reasonable  privileges  were  confirmed, 
and  Aragon  enjoyed  a  greater  and  more  legitimate  liberty  under 
more  ancient  and  more  constitutional  safeguards. 

But  the  great  glory  of  the  kingdom  of  Aragon,  greater  by  far 
than  the  most  liberal  of  her  laws  or  the  most  extensive  of  her 
privileges,  was  the  loyal  attachment  of  the  people  to  monarchical 
institutions,  and  to  the  principle  of  hereditary  succession,  joined 
to  a  noble  determination  to  resist  all  arbitrary  power — a  love  of 
law,  and  a  love  of  liberty.1 

The  popular  revolutions  aimed  not  at  dethroning  the  king, 
after  the  manner  of  Leon  and  Castile,  still  less  at  his  assassina- 
tion, but  at  the  maintenance  of  the  popular  rights,  and  the 
subjection  of  the  sovereign  to  well  ascertained  national  laws. 
The  greatest  code  of  laws  in  mediaeval  Europe  was  the  work  of 
Castile  ;  but  the  great  principle  of  legitimacy — of  a  free  and 
law-abiding  people,  ruled  by  a  free  and  law-abiding  king — lived 
in  the  heart  of  Aragon.  With  their  personal  liberties  secured, 
not  only  by  the  general  privilege,  but  by  many  earlier  and  later 
laws,  with  a  Cortes  endowed  not  only  with  legislative  but  with 
judicial  powers,  and  distinguished  by  an  uncommon  boldness 
and  independence  of  action,  with  the  Justiciary  ever  at  the 
king's  side,  to  maintain,  if  need  were,  the  rights  of  the  humblest 
subject,  the  people  enjoyed  an  amount  of  personal  and  political 
liberty,  superior,  without  doubt  or  question,  to  that  of  any  other 
people  of  mediaeval  Europe.2 

Two  special  powers  call  forth  the  admiration  of  a  distinguished 
English  historian,  that  of  Jurisfirma  or  Firma  del  derecho,  by 
which  causes  were  transferred  from  the  cognisance  of  any  court 
in  the  realm  to  that  of  the  Justiciary  himself — being  in  fact  an 
extended  form  of  our  writ  of  Certiorari,  and  that  of  Manifestation, 
by  which  the  person  of  any  applicant  was  at  once  wrested  from 
the  hands  of  the  royal  officers — answering  to  some  extent  to  our 
writ  of  habeas  corpus?  But  good  laws  are  worthless  without 
good  administrators.  And  one  of  the  happiest  accidents  of 

1See  Prescott,  Ferd.  and  I  sab.,  i. ,  63,  note  65. 

2  The  powers  of  this  justiciary  did  not  exceed,  according  to  Hallam,  those  of 
the  Chief  Justice  of  England.     But  he  admits  that  these  powers  were  exercised  in 
Aragon  in  a  way  that  English  judges,  "  more  timid  or  more  pliant,"  never  presumed 
to  act. 

3  Hallam,  Middle  Ages,  ii. ,  50,  51. 


1216.]          JAMES  THE  FIRST  OF  ARAGON.  257 

Constitutional  Government  in  Aragon  was  that  the  Justicias 
were  almost  without  exception  men  of  virtue  and  probity,  who 
did  not  hesitate  to  use,  but  who  scrupled  to  abuse,  their  enormous 
powers. 

II. — James  the  C&nquerer. 

James  the  Conqueror,  in  Catalan  En  Jacine  lo  Conqueridor,  the 
most  celebrated  of  all  the  sovereigns  of  Aragon,1  was  but  six 
years  of  age  when  his  father  met  his  death  under  the  walls  of 
Muret  (1213).  In  spite  of  the  vigorous  opposition  of  Simon  de 
Montfort,  who  would  have  kept  him  under  his  own  control,  the 
education  of  the  young  king  was  entrusted  by  the  States  of 
Lerida  to  the  grand  master  of  the  Templars  at  Monzon  ;  and  the 
government  of  the  country  during  his  minority  was  committed 
to  his  uncle  Sancho,  who  took  advantage,  as  might  have  been 
expected,  of  this  favourable  position  to  endeavour  to  possess 
himself  of  his  kingdom. 

For  fifteen  years  civil  war  raged  with  varying  fortune ; 
intrigue  followed  intrigue  ;  and  the  condition  of  Aragon  differed 
but  little  from  that  of  neighbouring  states,  save  that  the  king 
from  his  earliest  childhood  gave  proof  of  a  sagacity,  a  determina- 
tion, and  a  patience  under  adverse  fortune,  that  marked  him  as 
a  true  leader  and  ruler  of  men.  The  bad  faith  of  Simon  de 
Montfort,  the  intrigues  of  the  Regent  Sancho,  the  interference 
of  the  Papal  Legate,  the  rebellion  of  the  nobles,  the  flight  of 
the  young  king,  the  armed  pursuit  of  his  uncle  Ferdinand,  the 
varying  fortunes  of  civil  war  ;  in  all  this  there  was  nothing  new. 
Yet  from  the  day  on  which  the  child  of  nine  years  old  made  his 
escape  from  the  castle  of  Monzon  (12 16),  and  took  his  place  at 
the  head  of  the  loyal  barons,  James  of  Aragon  was  ever  a  force 
to  be  reckoned  with  in  Spain. 

Crafty,  no  doubt,  and  cruel  by  the  force  of  his  early  educa- 
tion, he  was  bold,  enduring,  strong,  a  king  and  a  conqueror, 
licentious  beyond  the  common  licentiousness  of  the  times,  but 
above  all  things  a  man.  His  marriage  in  February,  1221.  with 
the  Princess  Eleanor  of  Castile,  a  daughter  of  Alfonso  III.  (or 

1  The  title  of  Don  Jayme  of  Aragon,  by  which  this  king  is  usually  known,  is 
attractive  and  picturesque,  but  decidedly  inaccurate.  Jayme  is  rather  a  modern  or 
foreign  modification  of  the  Catalan  Jacme,  as  the  king  himself  wrote  his  name. 
See  Chronicle,  cap.  v.  Nor  was  he  ever  by  himself  or  any  of  his  contemporaries 
spoken  of  as  Don,  which  was  the  Castilian  prefix  of  nobility,  representing  the 
Aragonese  En,  of  which  the  feminine  was  Na,  or  lady. 
VOL.  I.  17 


258  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

VIIL),  and  sister  of  the  celebrated  Berengaria,  is  perhaps  the 
first  bright  spot  in  the  dark  and  dreary  record  of  the  earlier 
years  of  his  reign.  The  marriage,  indeed,  was  afterwards 
pronounced  null  and  void  by  the  Pope,  nominally  on  account  of 
the  blood  relationship  between  the  contracting  parties,  but 
really  to  enable  the  king  to  marry  a  Princess  Violante  or  Yolande 
of  Hungary  ;  and  the  offspring  of  the  intercourse  pronounced  by 
the  highest  spiritual  power  to  be  illicit,  was  recognised  by  the 
same  authority  as  legitimate. 

By  the  year  1228,  James  was  at  length  able  to  feel  himself 
master  of  his  kingdom.  The  most  powerful  nobles  were  van- 
quished ;  the  most  turbulent  rebels  were  pacified ;  the  royal 
authority  was  at  last  supreme  ;  and  an  adventurous  and  capable 
king  was  free  to  turn  his  attention  to  the  great  work  of  the 
destruction  of  the  Moslem  by  land  and  by  sea. 

At  one-and-twenty,  James,  already  a  conqueror,  had  van- 
quished all  his  domestic  enemies ;  and  he  turned  his  attention 
to  the  Balearic  Islands,  a  nest  of  Moorish  pirates  which  seriously 
hampered  the  growing  trade  of  Barcelona.  His  proposal  to 
invade  (1229)  that  neighbouring  stronghold  of  Moslems  and 
Corsairs  was  welcomed  at  once  by  the  nobles,  the  merchants, 
and  the  clergy  of  the  kingdom  ;  and  although  the  Archbishop 
of  Tarragona  was,  we  are  told,  unable  on  account  of  his  great 
age  to  take  a  personal  part  in  the  operations  of  war,  Berenguer, 
Bishop  of  Barcelona,  took  his  place  at  the  head  of  100  knights 
and  1000  foot  soldiers.  Nor  were  the  Bishops  of  Gerona  and 
the  Provost  of  Tarragona,  the  abbots  and  canons,  and  even  the 
humbler  members  of  the  regular  and  secular  clergy  behindhand 
with  offers  of  personal  co-operation  in  the  adventure,  which  was 
at  length,  by  the  king's  good  generalship  and  good  fortune, 
carried  to  a  most  successful  conclusion.  The  taking  of  Majorca 
was  not  only  a  brilliant  feat  of  arms  and  a  profitable  commercial 
enterprise ;  it  was  an  important  political  event,  and  tended 
greatly  to  confirm  the  power  of  the  young  king  and  commander. 
Minorca  was  soon  after  (1232),  subjugated  and  occupied  by  the 
Aragonese ;  and  the  conquest  of  Iviza  in  1235  secured  the 
Catalan  merchants  from  all  danger  of  molestation  in  the  neigh- 
bouring seas. 

As  early  as  1232,  a  still  more  important  enterprise  had  been 
planned  by  the  king ;  and  the  expedition  against  Valencia  was 
the  worthy  and  legitimate  sequel  to  the  conquest  of  Majorca. 

For  six  years  the  war  continued,  and  by  the  spring  of  1238 
King  James  had  pushed  forward  his  victorious  armies  to  the 


1228.]  JAMES  THE  FIRST  OF  ARAGON.  259 

walls  of  Valencia,  where  at  length,  in  the  autumn  of  the  same 
year,  a  treaty  was  concluded,  by  which  the  Moors  marched  out 
of  the  city  with  all  the  honours  of  war,  and  the  royal  standard 
of  En  Jacme  floated  over  the  last  stronghold  of  the  Arab  in 
Aragon.  Thus  did  James  the  Conqueror,  before  his  Castilian 
neighbours  had  even  pushed  forward  their  southern  outposts  to 
the  banks  of  the  Guadalquivir,  free  his  country  from  the  Moslem  ; 
and  thus,  260  years  before  the  fall  of  Granada,  the  Christians  of 
Aragon  remained  undisturbed  by  Moor  or  Arab  within  their 
borders — supreme  from  Montpellier  to  the  Sierra  Morena. 

The  quarrels  of  James  with  the  Castilians  about  the  town  of 
Xativa,  his  quarrels  with  the  Aragonese  about  the  royal  succes- 
sion, his  intrigues  in  the  domestic  affairs  of  Navarre,  and  his 
schemes  for  the  division  of  Aragon  among  his  sons,  make  but 
weary  and  unprofitable  reading.  But  one  incident  among  many 
less  remarkable  is  deserving  of  appreciative  record.  At  the 
urgent  request  of  Alfonso  X.,  in  1264,  the  king  raised  an  army 
to  assist  his  Christian  neighbour.  And,  in  spite  of  the  opposition 
of  most  of  his  nobles,  he  led  his  troops  in  person  against  the 
Murcians  (1265)  who  had  risen  in  rebellion  against  Castile.  And 
so  successful  was  his  intervention  that  the  Moslems  were  glad  to 
purchase  immunity  from  further  attack  by  the  delivery  into  his 
hands  of  the  important  city  and  fortress  of  Murcia  (1266),  which 
was  with  great  and  almost  unprecedented  loyalty  handed  over 
by  King  James  to  King  Alfonso  at  the  end  of  the  campaign. 

An  expedition  to  the  Holy  Land,  at  the  suggestion  of  the 
converted  Khan  of  Tartary,  in  1269,  bade  fair  at  one  time  to 
become  a  highly  romantic  incident  in  the  king's  reign.  The 
most  complete  and  elaborate  preparations  were  made  for  the 
crusade.  Thirty  ships,  with  a  small  army,  which  included  two 
bishops,  the  master  of  the  Templars  and  of  the  Hospitallers, 
with  many  royal  and  noble  personages,  actually  sailed  from 
Barcelona,  but  a  sudden  storm  had  so  disastrous  an  effect  at 
once  upon  the  ships  and  upon  the  courage  of  the  crusaders, 
that  they  turned  back  before  the  fleet  had  got  any  further  east 
than  Aigues  Mortes,  in  Provence,  whence  the  king  returned 
by  way  of  Montpellier  to  Barcelona.1  A  journey  to  Lyons, 
on  the  occasion  of  the  great  Christian  Council  in  1274,  was 
carried  to  a  more  successful  termination ;  and  the  king  took 
his  seat  among  the  thousand  ecclesiastics  that  recognised  the 

1  Fernan  Sanchez,  a  son  of  King  James,  continued  his  course  and  arrived  at 
Acre  in  the  Holy  Land. 


260  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

Catholic  supremacy  of  Pope  Gregory  X.,  who  presided  in  person 
at  the  council.  James  I.  of  Aragon  was,  as  he  is  ever  styled, 
a  conquistador.  And  he  had  all  the  defects  of  the  character. 
Conquerors  in  the  thirteenth  century  were  not  distinguished 
for  mercy  or  good  faith.  Yet  James,  though  unfortunate  in 
his  domestic  relations,  and  most  irregular  in  his  domestic  life, 
was  less  cruel  to  his  enemies  and  far  more  faithful  to  his  friends 
than  most  of  his  contemporaries  and  predecessors.  Towering, 
like  Saul,  a  head  and  shoulders  above  all  his  subjects,  he  was, 
like  the  greater  son  of  Jesse,  ruddy  and  of  a  fair  countenance  ; 
and  he  was  a  king  of  a  thoroughly  masculine  type.  Fiery,  cruel, 
inexorable  in  warfare,  until  his  enemies  were  vanquished  and 
submissive,  his  harshness  turned  to  gentleness  as  soon  as  victory 
had  converted  his  former  foes  into  subjects  and  vassals ;  and  it 
was  with  difficulty  that  he  could  be  induced  in  times  of  peace 
to  sign  an  ordinary  death  warrant.1 

To  protect  himself  from  a  suspicion  of  heresy  James  was 
obliged  to  prohibit  the  use  by  the  laity  in  Aragon  of  the  trans- 
lation of  the  Bible  into  Limousin,  which  was  made  in  his  reign.2 
Yet  he  did  not  hesitate  to  cut  out  the  tongue  of  an  indiscreet 
Bishop  of  Gerona  in  124-6 — a  piece  of  sacrilege  which  cost  him 
the  building  of  the  Monastery  of  St.  Boniface,  near  Morella ; 
and  he  was  certainly  immoderately  licentious.  But  with  all  his 
faults,  he  was  anything  but  a  mere  conquistador.  His  Commentari 3 
or  Chronicles  of  Aragon,  written  in  the  language  of  the  Catalans, 
in  a  style  at  once  simple,  vigorous  and  picturesque,  is  though  far 
less  celebrated,  an  older  and,  in  some  ways,  even  a  more  interesting 
work  than  the  Castilian  History  of  his  contemporary,  Alfonso 
the  Learned  of  Castile.  The  one  is  the  work  of  a  conqueror, 
the  other  is  that  of  a  student.  The  one  is  written  in  a  merely 
local  language,4  the  other  in  the  noblest  of  the  romance  tongues. 
Yet  though  the  Chronicle  of  Aragon  is  by  no  means  worthy  to  be 

1Lafuente,  vi.,  326. 

2Ticknor,  History  of  Spanish  Literature,  i.,  294;  Castro,  Bibl.  Espan.,\., 
411 ;  and  Menendez  Pelayo,  Heterodoxos,  torn,  i.,  pp.  434,  435,  where  we  are 
tantalised  with  the  following  note  :  Sobre  las  traducciones  y  fragmentos  de  traduc- 
ciones  Catalanes  de  la  Biblia,  Vease  mi  Bibliografta  critica  de  traductores,  TODAVIA 

NO  TERMINADA  ! 

3  The  king's  other  work,  the  Libre  de  Saviesa,  or  Book  of  Wisdom,  a  collection 
of  proverbs  and  sententious  sayings,  was  also  written  in  Catalan  ;  a  language  which 
must  be  carefully  distinguished  from  the  Limousin  of  the  troubadours. 

4  Since  the  publication,  in  1814,  by  Senor  Ballot  y  Flores  of  his  Gramaticay 
Apologia  de  la  Llengua  Cathalana,  the  study  of  Catalan  has  been  revived  and 
prosecuted  with  much  enthusiasm  by  many  good  Catalans  (and  an  important 
literary  movement  has  taken  place  in  the  ancient  and  copious  language. — H.). 


1266.]  JAMES  THE  FIRST  OF  ARAGON.  261 

compared,  as  it  often  is,  with  the  Commentaries  of  the  greatest 
of  the  Caesars,  it  is  a  work  which  honourably  distinguishes  King 
James  from  the  rude  and  uncultivated  manslayers  who  for  over 
five  hundred  years  bore  the  title  of  kings  in  Christian  Spain.1 

III.— The  Troubadours. 

Under  the  twelve  princes  of  the  House  of  Burgundy  who 
successively  ruled  over  the  fair  and  romantic  district  bordering 
on  the  northern  and  eastern  Pyrenees,  a  new  language  and  a 
new  literature  took  their  rise.  And  when  in  11 13  the  crown 
was  transferred,  by  the  marriage  of  the  Princess  Douce  to  Ramon 
Berenguer  III.  of  Barcelona,  the  knightly  poets  and  noble 
troubadours  naturally  followed  their  liege  lady  from  Aries  to 
Barcelona,  which  thus  became  the  chosen  seat  of  the  language 
and  literature  known  as  the  Limousin.  In  due  time,  as  we  have 
seen,  the  counts  of  Barcelona  became  kings  of  Aragon,  and 
when  they  had  further  acquired  the  rich  districts  to  the  south- 
ward from  the  vanquished  Moslem,  the  soft  language  of  Provence 
was  spoken  by  kings  and  courtiers  in  the  palace  at  Valencia. 

In  the  twelfth  century  the  Catalans  had  distinguished  their 
own  speech  from  that  of  their  Provencal  neighbours  by  calling 
the  latter  Lemosina,  but  from  the  thirteenth  century,  the  name 
given  to  the  vulgar  tongue  of  eastern  Spain  was  that  of  the 
Catalan  ;  while  the  language  of  poetry  was  known  as  the  Limousin 
or  Lemosi,  a  word  which  was  afterwards  adopted  as  the  generic 
name  for  the  language  of  the  troubadours ;  and  which  at  the 
present  day  is  used  to  distinguish  the  old  literary  language, 
whether  of  prose  or  verse,  from  the  spoken  dialects  of  modern 
north-east  Spain  of  which  the  Catald  is  that  in  common  use  in 
Catalonia. 

The  oldest  composition  in  any  of  these  languages  or  dialects, 
whose  author  is  known  to  posterity,  is  a  little  poem  of  some 
few  stanzas  or  coplas  (coblas),  from  the  royal  hand  of  Alfonso 
II.  of  Aragon — a  troubadour  and  a  patron  of  troubadours  at  his 
court  at  Barcelona  (1162-1196).  His  son,  Peter  II.,  was  no  less 
a  friend  to  the  gay  science,  and  when,  after  his  death  at  Muret, 

1One  of  the  chief  authorities  for  the  events  in  this  reign  is  naturally  the 
Chronicle  of  King  James  himself.  As  I  do  not  read  Catalan,  I  have  used,  with 
great  satisfaction,  the  English  translation  so  ably  edited  by  Don  Pascual  de 
Gayangos,  two  vols.  (London,  1883). 

Mr.  Swift,  I  find,  devoted  an  Appendix,  pp.  277-383,  to  a  consideration  of  the 
king's  work,  which  he  pronounces  untrustworthy,  but  undoubtedly  genuine.  The 
royal  authorship  has,  of  course,  been  doubted  by  various  critics. 


262  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

Languedoc  was  given  over  to  priests  and  inquisitors,  the  trouba- 
dours sought  an  asylum  in  free  and  independent  Aragon,  and 
sang  of  the  dead  hero  in  the  long  poem  of  "  The  War  of  the 
Albigenses  ".* 

At  the  court  of  James  I.  of  Aragon  many  celebrated  trouba- 
dours lived  and  sang  ; 2  and  the  young  king  has  sometimes  been 
reckoned  among  the  poets,  as  well  as  among  the  conquerors  of 
his  age.3  Another  Aragonese  writer,  good  old  Ramon  Muntaner, 
wrote  a  continuation  of  the  Chronicles  of  En  Jacme,  beginning 
with  a  sketch  of  the  life  of  the  conqueror,  whom  he  ardently 
loved  and  admired ;  and  he  continued  the  history  of  Aragon 
down  to  the  coronation  of  Alfonso  IV.  at  Saragossa,  in  1327. 

1  Histoire  de  la  Croisade  contre  les  hdrltiq-ues  albigeois,  £crite  en  vers  Proven- 
caux  par  un  poe'te  contemporain.  Paris,  1837,  p.  738. 

2Zurita,  Anales,  x. ,  42 ;  N.  Balaguer,  Historia  de  los  Trovadores,  i.,  329. 

3  For  an  account  of  the  endeavours  to  restore  or  maintain  the  Provencal  spirit, 
in  the  floral  games  at  Toulouse,  and  the  consistory  of  the  Gaya  sciencia  at 
Barcelona  ;  of  the  Catalan  and  Valencia  poetry  as  distinguished  from  the  Limousin 
of  Jordi  and  Roig;  and  of  the  decline  of  this  special  poetry  under  the  larger 
influences  of  Italy  and  Castile,  the  reader  is  referred  to  Ticknor,  i.,  296-321,  and 
the  excellent  article  on  Catalan  language  and  literature  in  the  ninth  edition  of  the 
Encyclopedia  Britannica,  by  Senor  A.  Morel-Fatio  (and  also  to  Mr.  Fitzmaurice 
Kelly's  History  of  Spanish  Literature, — H.) 


263 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

ALFONSO  X.  OF  CASTILE. 

(1252-1284.) 

I.— El  Sabio. 

FOR  nigh  on  five  centuries  all  that  was  learned  and  all  that  was 
refined  in  Spain  was  found  among  the  Arabs  of  Andalus.  But 
on  the  taking  of  Seville  by  St.  Ferdinand,  the  centre  of  gravity 
was  completely  changed ;  and  SPAIN  came  into  existence — 
civilised  if  not  yet  united — as  a  Christian  kingdom.  Aragon 
and  Castile,  it  is  true,  were  not  yet  one.  The  Moslem  ruled, 
and  ruled  gloriously,  in  Granada.  Yet  these  were  but  accidents 
by  which  the  general  position  was  scarcely  affected.  The 
Catalans  ruled  in  Sicily  under  Peter  III.  of  Aragon,  and  stretched 
out  their  hands  to  the  Bosphorus  and  the  JEgean.  The  most 
skilful  artificers  of  the  West  had  yet  to  construct  the  most 
beautiful  palace  that  still  remains  to  tell  of  Arab  culture  and 
Moorish  magnificence  in  Spain.  But  Castile  was  the  great 
power  in  the  Peninsula,  and  the  Castilian  was  the  new  language 
of  a  new  and  a  noble  kingdom. 

The  first  man  in  Castile  in  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth 
century  was  Alfonso,  the  eldest  son  of  St.  Ferdinand,  who  is 
known  and  honoured  in  European  history  as  Alfonso  X.  From 
the  death  of  Averroes,  and  the  dispersal  of  his  student  com- 
panions at  Cordova,  science  had  been  well  nigh  dead  among 
the  Moslems.  Among  the  Christians  it  had  not  yet  come  into 
existence.  Their  mathematical  attainments  did  not  go  beyond 
the  multiplication  table.  Their  medical  skill l  did  not  go  beyond 

1  Pope  John  XXI..  indeed,  is  said  to  have  been  a  Spanish  physician,  who 
afterwards  took  Holy  Orders,  and  was  raised  to  the  Papacy  ;  but  the  identity 
of  the  Pope  and  the  obscure  writer  of  the  thirteenth  century,  known  as  Petrus 
Hispanus,  is  doubtful ;  and  the  works  of  Petrus  Hispanus  are  certainly  worthless. 
Dunham,  iv. ,  359,  260. 


264  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

the  exhibition  of  relics.  Their  historical  criticism  did  not  go 
beyond  a  belief  in  the  prowess  of  St.  James  at  the  battle  of 
Clavijo,  and  the  destruction  of  Paris  by  the  Cid.  Of  astronomy, 
of  physics,  of  natural  philosophy,  they  knew  nothing ;  and  for 
science,  moreover,  of  any  kind,  they  cared  nothing.  They  had 
no  aspirations  beyond  the  slaughter  of  Moors  ;  no  amusements 
but  fighting  ;  no  occupation  but  intrigue.  The  Spanish  chivalry, 
unlike  that  of  every  other  country  in  western  Europe,  had 
never  joined  in  the  crusades ;  they  had  their  own  unbelievers 
close  at  hand ;  and  thus,  while  the  knights  and  lords  of  France 
and  of  England,  of  Italy  and  of  Germany,  were  ever  bringing 
back  to  their  feudal  castles  some  of  the  refinement  and  some 
of  the  science  and  some  of  the  luxury  of  Oriental  civilisation, 
and  recognised  at  least  the  greatness  of  the  world  beyond  the 
frontiers  of  their  Fatherland,  the  Castilian  nobles,  as  a  rule, 
had  never  left  Spain.  They  knew  nothing  of  the  Imperial 
traditions  of  Byzantium,  of  the  material  glories  of  Damascus, 
of  the  wisdom,  of  the  splendour,  and  of  the  greatness  of  the 
East.  Thus  the  Castilian  knight  differed  from  his  fellows  in 
France  or  England  much  as  a  Somersetshire  squire  in  the 
eighteenth  century  may  have  differed  from  his  brother  who  had 
fought  under  Clive  at  Plassey,  or  his  cousin  who  had  visited 
half  a  dozen  European  cities  as  the  envoy  of  His  Most  Gracious 
Majesty  King  George.  The  Castilian  nobleman,  like  the  English 
squire,  may  have  had  all  the  sturdy  good  qualities  of  a  home- 
keeping  hero,  but  he  scorned  to  learn  anything  from  the  hated 
Moslem,  whom  he  regarded,  not  as  a  more  civilised  neighbour, 
but  as  an  odious  and  contemptible  pagan. 

But  from  the  time  of  St.  Ferdinand,  Moors  in  Castile  became 
as  scarce  as  foxes  in  Middlesex.  Christian  castles  became 
dwelling-places  rather  than  fortresses ;  and,  worn  out  with  the 
weariness  of  unaccustomed  peace,  the  knights  and  nobles  were 
glad  to  welcome  the  minstrels  and  the  ballad-singers  to  their 
halls.  They  may  have  even  themselves  learned  to  read.  They 
had  at  least  time  to  look  around  them,  to  cast  their  eyes  abroad  ; 
and  they  woke  up  to  new  interests  in  life,  to  notions,  at  least, 
of  refinement,  of  comfort  and  of  civilisation.  Their  king  in 
Castile  was  aspiring  to  Imperial  dominion  in  Germany.  Their 
neighbours  in  Aragon  had  actually  acquired  a  new  kingdom 
across  the  great  sea.  The  occupation  of  Cordova  and  of  Seville 
displayed  new  wonders  of  art  and  architecture,  of  skill  and  of 
science  to  their  astonished  gaze.  The  world,  indeed,  contained 
greater  things  than  the  cave  at  Covadonga. 


1252.]  ALFONSO  X.  OF  CASTILE.  265 

In  the  thirteenth  century,  Spain  was  passing  through  a 
great  social  and  intellectual  revolution ;  and  the  first  man  of 
intellectual  Spain  was  Alfonso  of  Castile,  who,  at  the  death  of 
his  father  St.  Ferdinand,  in  June  1252,  succeeded,  at  the  mature 
age  of  thirty-one,  without  opposition,  to  his  crown.  Gallicia 
and  the  Asturias,  Leon  and  Castile,  Murcia  and  the  the  greater 
part  of  Andalusia,  cheerfully  accepted  his  sway  ;  and  Al  Ahmar, 
the  sovereign  of  the  last  remaining  Moslem  kingdom  in  the 
Peninsula,  sent  envoys  to  assure  the  new  monarch  of  the  respect- 
ful alliance  of  Granada.  Nor  were  these  assurances  a  mere 
empty  ceremonial.  Less  than  twelve  months  after  the  Christian 
king's  accession,  the  Moslem  fortresses  of  Jerez,  Arcos  and 
Medina  Sidonia  opened  their  gates  to  the  united  forces  of 
Granada  and  Castile. 

Within  two  years  another  and  a  more  splendid  alliance  was 
cemented  by  the  marriage  of  Eleanor,  the  king's  sister — great 
grand-daughter  of  Henry  II.  of  England — to  Prince  Edward, 
the  eldest  son  of  Henry  III.,  lord  of  the  neighbouring  province 
of  Gascony,  and  heir  to  the  crown  of  England.  The  marriage 
was  celebrated  with  great  pomp  at  Burgos,  in  October,  1254, 
after  the  young  prince  had  received  the  honour  of  knighthood 
at  the  hands  of  the  King  of  Castile.  But  the  domestic  enemy 
was  ever  at  the  gate.  Don  Diego  Lopez  de  Haro,  intriguing 
against  his  sovereign,  was  welcomed  and  encouraged  in  his 
rebellion  at  the  court  of  his  sovereign's  son-in-law,  James  of 
Aragon,  at  the  very  moment  when  that  prince  was  renewing 
his  protestations  of  friendship  to  Alfonso  of  Castile.  Alfonso, 
meanwhile,  was  looking  further  afield.  A  claimant,  in  right  of 
his  mother  Beatrix,  to  the  vacant  Duchy  of  Suabia,  he  aspired 
to  the  greater  dignity  of  the  Imperial  crown ;  and  he  divided 
the  suffrages  of  the  electors  at  the  Diet  of  Frankfort  (in  1257) 
with  Richard,  Earl  of  Cornwall,  brother  of  Henry  III.  of  Eng- 
land. Neither  candidate  was  duly  elected,  and  the  fruitless 
endeavours  of  Alfonso  to  secure  his  final  elevation,  his  embassies 
to  Germany  and  to  Rome,  his  largess  to  the  electors,  his  solici- 
tation of  the  Popes,  drew  his  attention  overmuch  from  the  affairs 
of  Spain,  and  offended  his  Spanish  subjects.  Nor  was  his  ad- 
ministration by  any  means  successful  at  home.  An  attempt  to 
increase  his  revenues  by  the  debasing  of  the  coinage,  and  to 
cheapen  produce  by  the  fixing  of  arbitrary  prices,  was  neither 
very  wise  nor  very  learned,  and  brought  nothing  but  distress 
and  dishonour.  An  outbreak  of  the  Moors  of  southern  Spain 
proved  too  strong  for  the  fidelity  of  Al  Ahmar  of  Granada,  who 


266  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

consented  to  accept  the  leadership  of  the  revolt,  and  who,  in 
more  than  one  important  battle  in  the  course  of  the  year  1262, 
remained  victorious  over  the  Christians.  The  happy  interven- 
tion of  James  of  Aragon  in  Murcia,  and  the  jealousy  of  some  of 
the  subordinate  Moslem  leaders,  broke  up  the  confederacy  ;  but 
the  treaty  of  peace  in  1265,  which  left  the  contending  parties 
much  in  the  same  position  as  they  had  occupied  before  the  war, 
brought  no  honour  to  Castile.1 

A  Christian  rebellion  in  1270  against  the  authority  of 
Alfonso  X.,  if  not  more  serious  at  the  time,  is  at  least  more 
interesting  to  the  historian.2  Philip,  the  king's  brother,  and 
Nunez  Gonzalez  de  Lara,  the  actual  chief  of  his  ever  turbulent 
house,  at  the  head  of  a  number  of  disaffected  nobles,  assembled 
at  Palencia,  and  formulated  demands  for  certain  administrative 
reforms,  and  for  the  redress  of  a  long  list  of  grievances,  under 
which  they  alleged  that  they  suffered.  The  king  consented  to 
hear  them.3  The  chroniclers  are  unanimous  in  considering  that 
he  would  have  done  better  if  he  had  cut  their  throats.  And 
the  rebels,  as  much  surprised  as  the  chroniclers,  increased  their 
demands,  ever  more  and  more,  even  as  their  demands  were 
granted.  They  required,  in  fine,  remission  of  taxation ;  com- 
pensation for  their  losses  in  war ;  the  maintenance  of  their 
special  Jueros,  or  privileges  of  nobility ;  an  abatement  of  their 
burden  of  military  service,  and  exemption  from  the  jurisdic- 
tion of  the  royal  courts.  It  was  a  formidable  list ;  but  on 
every  point  the  king  gave  way ;  and  a  Cortes  was  summoned 
at  Burgos  to  confirm  the  new  privileges.  Alfonso  presided. 
The  armed  petitioners  took  their  places  in  the  peaceful  assembly, 
and  the  royal  concessions  were  incorporated  in  the  law  of  the 
land.  Astounded  rather  than  gratified  at  the  success  of  their 
remonstrance,  and  possibly  suspecting  some  treachery  in  this 
new  and  strange  mode  of  dealing  with  aggrieved  subjects,  the 
rebels  fled  to  Granada,  where  they  were  hospitably  received 
(1272)  by  Al  Ahmar,  and  on  his  death  by  his  son  Mohammed 
II.,  until  after  two  years'  residence  on  the  banks  of  the  Xenil, 
they  returned  unmolested  to  their  homes  in  Christian  Spain. 

During    the   absence    of   Alfonso    on    a    fruitless    visit    to 

1  The  conspirators  of  course  secured  the  assistance  of  Al  Ahmar,  the  Moslem 
King  of  Granada. 

2  Rosseeuw  St.  Hilaire,  Hist  d'Espagne,  torn.  v. ,  p.  448. 

3  The  first  cause  of  their  discontent  was  the  King's  surrender  to  Portugal  of  his 
feudatory  rights  over  the  kingdom  of  Algarve,  on  the  occasion  of  the  marriage  of 
his  daughter  Beatrice  with  the  King  of  Portugal. — H. 


1276.]  ALFONSO  X.  OF  CASTILE.  267 

Beaucaire,  in  Languedoc,  to  solicit  the  intervention  of  Pope 
Gregory  in  the  vexed  question  of  the  election  of  an  emperor, 
the  Infante  Ferdinand,  Alfonso's  eldest  son,  died  at  Ciudad 
Real  (25th  July,  1275).  .  Whether  his  son,  according  to  the 
Roman  law,  or  his  younger  brother,  according  to  the  Visigothic 
code,  should  be  treated  as  his  successor  and  heir  to  the  crown 
of  Castile,  was  a  question  hotly  debated,  and  was  finally  re- 
ferred by  Alfonso  to  the  Cortes  at  Segovia  in  1276.  By  the 
king's  own  code  of  the  Siete  Partidas,  the  claims  of  his  grandson 
were  paramount.  Yet  the  assembly  decided  according  to  the 
Visigothic  law,  in  favour  of  his  son  Sancho ;  and  Sancho  was 
immediately  proclaimed  heir  to  the  throne  of  Spain. 

Philip  IV.  of  France,  however,  whose  sister  Blanche,  the 
widow  of  Ferdinand,  was  the  mother  of  the  disinherited 
Infantes,  took  umbrage  at  this  legislative  decision,  and  promptly 
declared  war  against  Castile.  No  invasion  actually  took  place  ; 
but  the  threatened  appearance  of  the  foe  on  the  frontier  was 
the  signal  for  domestic  trouble.  The  young  princes  with  their 
mother,  and  Alfonso's  own  queen,  Violante,  fled  to  Aragon, 
where  they  were  kindly  received  at  the  court  of  Peter  III. 
Don  Fadrique,  a  younger  brother  of  the  king,  who  was  supposed 
to  have  connived  at  the  escape,  was  executed  or  assassinated 
in  his  own  palace  at  Burgos.  Pope  Nicholas  III.  menaced 
Philip  of  France  with  excommunication  if  he  interfered  in  the 
family  quarrel.  But  while  Sancho,  the  recognised  heir  to 
Castile,  with  the  assistance  of  his  own  mother,  a  refugee  at 
Saragossa,  was  making  a  treaty  with  Peter  of  Aragon  (1281), 
for  the  conquest  and  division  of  French  Navarre,  Alfonso  was 
at  Bayonne  making  a  treaty  with  Philip  of  France  for  the 
partial  disinheritance  of  the  same  Sancho  in  favour  of  the 
Infantes,  his  grandsons.  And  the  result  of  the  several  negotia- 
tions was  war  between  the  father  and  son,  between  Alfonso  the 
King,  and  Sancho  the  Prince  Royal  of  Castile,  quite  after  the 
good  old  fashion  of  their  royal  ancestors. 

The  nobles,  of  course,  took  the  part  of  the  rebel  son,  who 
allied  himself  with  Peter  of  Aragon  and  Dionysius  of  Portugal, 
and  having  obtained  the  support  of  the  grand  masters  of 
Santiago  and  Calatrava,  was  able  to  treat  the  king  his  father 
with  becoming  insolence  and  contempt.  He  assumed  the 
royal  style  and  title,  and  even  summoned  a  Cortes  to  meet  at 
Valladolid,  which  pronounced  Alfonso  deposed,  even  while 
Alfonso  was  presiding  over  a  Cortes  at  Seville,  where  the  rebel 
prince  was  formally  disinherited ;  and  the  French  Pope,  Martin 


268  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

IV.,  supported  the  cause  of  the  legitimate  monarch  in  a  Brief, 
declaratory,  mandatory  and  minatory  (1283).  Sancho  at  first 
defied  the  Pope,  married  his  first  cousin,  Dofia  Maria  of  Leon, 
and  decreed  the  penalty  of  death  against  any  one  who  should 
be  found  to  possess  a  copy  of  the  Papal  Brief.  But  this 
"spirited  conduct"  was  not  long  maintained. 

Alfonso,  though  abandoned  by  his  family  and  his  nobles, 
was  generously  assisted  by  the  Moslem  emperor  of  Morocco, 
to  whom  he  applied  in  the  hour  of  his  distress,  with  money 
and  troops.  Thus  reinforced  and  encouraged,  he  was  able  to 
inflict  a  crushing  defeat  upon  the  forces  of  his  son  at  Cordova ; 
and  Sancho,  finding  his  declining  cause  deserted  by  all  his 
allies,  was  glad  to  make  peace  with  his  father,  to  submit  him- 
self to  the  Church,  and  to  allow  the  Moslem  troops  to  return  to 
Africa.  Alfonso  died  soon  afterwards,  on  5th  April,  1284,  and  his 
most  unworthy  son  was  at  once  acknowledged  king  in  his  room.1 

Few  kings  have  suffered  more  severely  in  their  reputation 
from  an  inappropriate  title  of  honour  than  Alfonso  X.  of 
Castile.  The  most  learned  man  in  his  kingdom,  at  a  time 
when  learning  was  despised,  and  the  glory  of  kings  was  to 
slaughter  their  enemies,  to  murder  their  relations,  and  to  harry 
and  spoil  the  infidel,  Alfonso  was  no  hero  to  his  contemporaries  ; 
and  every  scribbler  in  more  modern  times  is  at  the  pains  to 
point  out  that  El  Sabio,  though  learned,  was  certainly  not  wise  ; 
and  to  illustrate  the  statement  with  the  profound  reflection  that 
learning  and  wisdom  are  unfortunately  not  synonymous.  Eru- 
dition and  folly  may,  it  is  true,  sometimes  go  hand  in  hand, 
but  ignorance  and  folly  is  surely  a  less  honourable  combination. 

Alfonso  X.  was  not  only  a  lover  of  letters  and  a  lover 
of  science,  but  he  was  himself  an  accomplished  mathema- 
tician, an  astronomer,  a  poet,  a  musician  and  a  linguist.  He 
was  the  author 2  of  the  first  history,  and  possibly  the  first 
prose  composition  in  that  noble  language,  which  grew  into 
greatness  under  his  master  hand  ;  and  he  was  the  compiler  of 
a  national  code  of  laws,  which  forms  the  basis  of  the  common 
law  of  Spain,  and  is  still  quoted  with  respect  before  the 
tribunals  of  two  worlds.  He  may  not  have  been  as  bold  as 
his  grandfather  James  of  Aragon,  nor  as  fortunate  as  his 
father  St.  Ferdinand,  nor  as  crafty  as  Ruy  Diaz  of  Bivar ;  but 
Alfonso  X.  was  assuredly  a  great  king.  The  weakness  and  poor 

1  The  death  of  Alfonso  X.  is  said  to  have  been  hastened  by  a  false  rumour  of 
the  death  of  his  graceless  son. 

2  Or  at  least  the  promotor  and  editor. — H. 


1284.]  ALFONSO  X.  OF  CASTILE.  269 

success  of  his  domestic  policy  is  usually  attributed  to  his  want 
of  kingly  spirit ;  but  in  ambition,  at  least,  the  royal  student 
soared  far  above  any  of  his  predecessors,  and  aspired  to  that 
Empire  which  was  afterwards  the  greater  glory  of  Spain  under 
Charles  V.  of  Germany.  His  own  father  was  born  but  the 
doubtful  heir  to  a  petty  kingdom  in  the  far  north-west  of 
Spain ;  yet  he  himself  stretched  out  his  hand  to  grasp  the 
Imperial  crown  of  European  supremacy.  It  was  a  far  cry,  in 
the  thirteenth  century,  from  Leon  to  Aix-la-Chapelle.  And 
if  Alfonso  failed  to  sit  on  the  throne  of  Barbarossa,  he  was  at 
least  the  first  Spaniard  from  the  time  of  Theodosius  the  Great 
who  aspired  to  the  Imperial  purple.  It  was  two  centuries 
and  a  half  before  the  greatest  of  his  successors  was  called 
to  wield  the  sceptre  of  Charlemagne  ;  but  it  was  under  Alfonso 
the  Learned  that  Spain  first  asserted  her  right — forgotten  for 
nearly  nine  hundred  years — to  take  her  place  among  the  great 
powers  of  Europe.1 

The  character  of  Alfonso  X.  is  one  somewhat  hard  to  unravel, 
for  it  displays,  to  an  uncommon  degree,  a  strange  mixture 
of  the  great  and  the  little.  His  many  misfortunes  may  possibly 
be  attributable  to  adminstrative  incompetence.  A  philosopher 
is  rarely  gifted  with  the  firm  and  fortunate  hand  of  a  success- 
ful statesman ;  and  Alfonso  was  probably  a  poor  ruler.  But 
of  his  transcendent  learning,  of  his  intellectual  pre-eminence  in 
the  age  in  which  he  lived,  it  is  almost  impossible  to  form  too 
high  an  estimate ;  for  here,  at  least,  record  takes  the  place  of 
rumour.  If  His  Royal  Highness,  the  present  heir-apparent  to 
the  crown  of  England,  were  a  senior  wrangler,  and  a  double 
first-class  man  at  our  English  Universities ;  if  he  were  called 
upon  to  fill  the  post  of  astronomer-royal  of  England,  in  default 
of  any  other  man  in  the  kingdom  worthy  even  to  be  compared 
with  him  in  that  department  of  science ;  if  he  had  written  a 
more  brilliant  history  than  Macaulay,  and  a  finer  poem  than 
Tennyson ;  if  he  were  fit  to  teach  Wagner  music,  and  Cay  ley 
mathematics ;  and  if,  in  the  intervals  of  his  studies,  he  had  found 
time  to  codify  the  entire  laws  of  England  into  a  digest  which 
might  endure  for  six  hundred  years  to  come — then,  and  only 
then,  would  the  practical  pre-eminence  of  his  intellectual 
attainments,  in  modern  England,  represent  the  practical  pre- 
eminence of  the  sabiduria  of  Alfonso  X.  in  mediaeval  Spain. 

1  Of  the  king's  place  in  the  history  of  his  country  as  a  poet,  and  a  man  of 
letters,  as  a  maker  of  laws,  and  a  maker  of  languages,  I  shall  speak  in  the  following 
chapter. 


270  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

No  Spaniard  but  Isidore  of  Seville,  and  no  sovereign  of  any 
age  or  nation,  not  even  Alfred  the  Great,  so  much  surpassed 
all  his  contemporaries  in  learning  as  the  King  of  Leon  and 
Castile  ;  and  the  Sieie  Partidas  is  a  work  which  as  great  a 
scholar  as  Isidore,  and  as  great  a  statesman  as  Alfred,  might 
well  have  been  proud  to  own.  But  learning,  or  even  law- 
giving,  is  not  wisdom,  and  many  a  wiser  and  better  king  than 
Alfonso  has  performed  his  most  elaborate  calculations  on  his 
ten  fingers,  and  signed  his  name  with  the  pommel  of  his  sword. 

II. — The  Alfonsine  Tables. 

From  the  days  of  Ptolemy,  1 50  years  after  the  birth  of 
Christ,  to  the  days  of  Roger  Bacon,  at  the  end  of  the  thirteenth 
century,  there  are  no  greater  names  in  the  annals  of  European 
science,  than  those  of  Al  Hazen,  the  Spanish  student  at 
Cordova,  and  Alfonso  the  Christian  king  at  Seville. 

For  1 300  years  science  had  slumbered  in  Christian  Europe ; 
and  of  all  branches  of  knowledge  or  of  speculation,  that  which 
would  seem  to  have  been  the  most  completely  disregarded 
was  the  study  of  the  starry  universe  in  which  we  move.  Nor 
do  we  meet  with  the  name  of  any  astronomer  in  the  Christian 
world,  whether  as  a  discoverer  or  a  student,  before  the  time  of 
Copernicus,1  in  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century  of  our 
era,  with  the  single  exception  of  Alfonso  X.  of  Castile.  In 
no  city  or  country  of  the  Roman  Empire,  after  the  death  of 
Hadrian,  not  in  Athens  nor  at  Rome,  nor  at  Byzantium,  by  no 
Pope,  nor  doctor,  nor  monk,  had  anything  been  added  to  the  dis- 
coveries of  the  old  Greek  astronomers.  Nor  did  any  Christian 
man  concern  himself  with  the  study  of  their  works.  The 
encyclopaedic  Isidore,  indeed,  may  have  speculated  upon  the 
"  motions  of  the  spheres "  ;  but  the  great  metropolitan  was 
assuredly  no  astronomer. 

The  most  tremendous  of  those  scientific  pursuits  in  which 
man  demands  the  secrets  of  nature  had  absolutely  no  interest 
for  the  guardians  of  human  and  Divine  knowledge  who  looked 
upon  an  eclipse  of  the  sun  as  a  display  of  the  Divine  anger,  or  a 

1  George  of  Purbach  and  Miiller  of  Konigsberg,  indeed,  obscure  astronomers 
of  the  fifteenth  century,  preceded  Copernicus  by  a  few  years.  The  great  work 
De  orbium  c&lestium  revolutionibus  was  not  published  until  1543,  when  the  author 
was  actually  on  his  death-bed,  although  written  many  years  before ;  as  Copernicus 
dreaded  the  outcry  that  would  be  caused  by  the  appearance  of  so  heterodox  a 
work. 


1284.]  ALFONSO  X.  OF  CASTILE.  271 

shooting  star  as  a  mark  of  the  Divine  approval ;  and  who  would 
have  deemed  the  study  of  astronomy  nearly  as  impious  as  the 
study  of  therapeutics. 

With  the  followers  of  Mohammed  however,  it  was  far  dif- 
ferent. Islam  had  no  priesthood  and  no  prejudices.  The  MeyaA^ 
o-iWa£is,  after  lying  unnoticed  for  700  years  by  Christendom, 
was  translated  into  Arabic  as  early  as  the  ninth  century  under 
the  suggestive  title  of  the  Almagest ; l  and  more  than  one  Arab 
student  distinguished  himself  as  a  practical  astronomer  not 
only  at  Bagdad  but  at  Cordova.  The  Caliph  Harun  al  Rashid 
was  a  munificent  patron  of  the  science,  and  many  were  the 
professors  and  students  in  the  Moslem  world  from  the  eighth 
to  the  thirteenth  century.2 

But  the  first  name  in  Christian  Europe,  as  a  man  of  science 
and  a  lover  of  knowledge,  a  man  of  letters  in  the  best  sense 
of  the  word,  a  mathematician  and  a  natural  philosopher,  and 
above  all  as  an  astronomer,  is  that  of  Alfonso  X.  of  Castile. 
A  marvel  in  mediaeval  Christendom,  a  king  and  a  student, 
Alfonso  was  not  content  with  the  study  of  the  works  of  the 
ancient  astronomers.  He  set  himself  to  criticise  and  to  correct 
them.  The  tables  of  Ptolemy  were  defective  and  misleading. 
He  determined  to  prepare  new  ones.  He  accordingly  as- 
sembled, during  his  father's  life-time,  all  the  Arab  and  Jewish 
men  of  science  that  he  could  bring  together,  and  presiding 
himself  over  this  scientific  council,  set  himself  to  perform  the 
interesting  and  most  original  task  which  he  had  given  himself 
to  do,  in  the  royal  palace  at  Toledo.  New  calculations  were 
made  of  times  and  distances.  The  position  of  the  planets  was 
reascertained.  Their  movements  were  recomputed.  Old  errors 

1Al  (Arabic),  the;  niyiirrot  (Greek),  greatest.  A  suggestive  hybrid.  The 
Almagest  was  translated  into  Latin  by  order  of  the  Emperor  Frederick  II.  in  1230, 
say  eleven  hundred  years  after  its  first  publication  in  the  original. 

2  The  tables  of  Al  Batani,  who  studied  at  Antioch,  were  celebrated  until  the 
thirteenth  century,  when  their  place  was  taken  by  those  of  Alfonso  X. 

Astronomy  was  studied  with  peculiar  diligence  in  Moslem  Spain,  and  the 
tables  of  Arzachel  and  the  observations  of  Al  Hazen  are  only  overshadowed  by  the 
greatness  of  Averroes,  who  himself  wrote  a  commentary  on  the  Almagest. 

Pope  Sylvester  II.  (Gerbert)  studied  mathematics,  if  he  did  not  teach  astronomy 
at  Cordova  (fire.  980) ;  and  our  own  John  Holywood  dog-Latinised,  after  the 
fashion  of  his  time,  as  Sacro  Bosco,  and  sometimes  known  as  John  of  Halifax  (from 
the  place  of  his  birth,  circ.  1200),  after  much  study  in  Spain,  made  an  abridgment 
of  the  Almagest,  which  was  long  famous  under  the  title  of  Treatise  on  the  Spheres. 
The  Caliph  Al  Mamun  had  also  ascertained  the  size  of  the  earth  from  the  measure- 
ment of  a  degree  in  the  plain  of  Mesopotamia — an  operation  implying  true  ideas  of 
its  form,  and  in  singular  contrast  with  the  doctrines  and  doctors  of  Constantinople 
and  Rome. 

See  Draper's  Intellectual  Development  of  Europe,  voL  ii.,  p.  41. 


272  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

were  corrected.  New  truths  were  established.  At  length, 
after  years  of  study  and  labour,  the  great  work  which  has  ever 
since  been  known  by  the  name  of  the  Alfonsine  Tables  was 
completed,  and  published  on  the  very  day  of  the  accession 
of  Alfonso  to  the  throne  of  Castile.1 

But  this  was  by  no  means  the  sum  of  the  king's  contribu- 
tions to  astronomical  science.  He  discovered  the  true  theory 
of  the  progression  of  the  stars,  explained  by  all  previous 
astronomers  upon  the  most  extravagant  suppositions,  and,  as 
Bailly  says,  on  the  publication  of  his  treatise,  il  y  cut  une  erreur 
de  mains  dans  les  hypotheses  celestes.2 

The  Christian  world  in  the  thirteenth  century  was  already 
beginning  to  awake  from  its  long  sleep  in  the  dai-kness  of 
ignorance  and  sacerdotalism.  Roger  Bacon,  indeed,  the  great 
light  of  the  age,  was  imprisoned  by  the  Franciscans  in  Paris, 
jealous  of  his  fame  and  distrustful  of  his  discoveries ;  but  he 
was  not  effectually  silenced.  Frederick  II.,3  though  excom- 
municated, was  not  cowed,  nor  hindered  from  opening  the 
doors  of  knowledge  in  Germany,  by  all  the  efforts  of  the 
ecclesiastical  power ;  and  although  successive  Popes  prevented 
Alfonso  of  Spain  from  taking  the  place  of  the  great  Suabian 
on  the  throne  of  Charlemagne,  they  were  unable  to  interfere 
with  his  speculations  and  his  discoveries,  with  his  patronage  of 
Jewish  doctors,  or  with  his  dissemination  of  Moslem  science. 
The  pen  was  superseding  the  lance  in  the  new  conquest  of  the 
world ;  and  Spain  had  an  honourable  place  in  the  van  of  the 
army  of  knowledge. 

It  was  not,  indeed,  given  to  Alfonso  or  to  any  of  his  contem- 
poraries to  see  the  learning  of  Cordova  prevail  over  the  rude 
valour  of  Covadonga,  the  certainties  of  science  over  the  traditions 
of  Santiago.  The  seed  may  have  been  sown  in  sunny  Andalusia. 
The  harvest  was  to  be  reaped  in  yet  more  favoured  lands.  But 

1The  work  is  said  to  have  cost  400,000  gold  ducats.  Bailly,  Astronomic 
moderne,  i.,  torn,  i.,  pp.  299-301.  See  also  Reinand's  Tr.  of  Abulfeda,  Intr.,  p.  44. 

The  chief  assistant  of  the  prince  in  the  preparation  of  these  tables  was  a  Jew 
of  the  name  of  Isaac  Ibn  Said  Hassan.  See  Riccius,  de  motn  oct.  Sph.,  p.  25. 

The  tables  are  based,  of  course,  upon  the  same  hypothesis  as  those  of  Ptolemy. 
Copernicus  did  not  enlighten  the  world  for  another  two  and  a  half  centuries. 

The  epoch  of  the  Alfonsine  Tables  was  fixed  at  ist  June,  1252,  the  day  of  the 
king's  accession  to  his  throne.  The  tables  were  printed  for  the  first  time  at  Venice 
(1492).  Cf.  Mondejar,  Memorias  Historicas  del  Key  Alfonso  X. 

2  Bailly,  op.  cit.,  i. ,  300.     See  also  F.  Wustenfeld,  Die  Ubersetzungen  Ara- 
bischen  Werke  in  das  Lateinische  sett  dem  XI.  Jahrhundert,  printed  in  the  Abhand- 
lungen  des  K.  Ges.  der  Wiss.,  zu  Gottingen  (Hist.  Phil.  Classe),  xxii.,  2. 

3  Bryce,  Holy  Roman  Empire ',  pp.  208-210. 


ALFONSO  X.  OF  CASTILE.  273 

if  in  modern  Spain,  Ermengild  is  more  honoured  than  Alfonso, 
and  Dominic  more  respected  than  Averroes,  the  Castilian 
may  yet  proudly  remember  that  one  of  the  first  blows  that 
was  struck  against  the  old  forces  of  ignorance  and  savagry 
was  dealt  by  a  Spanish  knight ;  and  that  the  bright  standard 
of  knowledge  was  first  displayed  upon  the  walls  of  the  ancient 
city  of  superstition  by  the  most  Christian  hand  of  a  king  of 
Castile. 

III. — Language  and  Literature  of  Castile. 

Alfonso  X.  was  no  favourite  of  fortune.  His  studies,  and 
even  his  publications,  have  been  almost  forgotten  by  posterity ; 
his  learning  was  in  no  way  appreciated  by  his  contemporaries ; 
and  even  his  great  code  of  laws,  the  most  practical  and  the  most 
enduring  work  of  his  life,  was  not  promulgated  for  nearly  three- 
quarters  of  a  century  after  his  death.  His  ruder  subjects  mis- 
understood, even  as  they  took  advantage  of,  his  refined  and 
peaceful  nature  ;  and  a  nation  of  soldiers  has  always  held  it  as  a 
reproach  to  his  memory  that  he  did  not  disregard  his  father's 
solemn  treaty  with  Al  Ahmar,  and  drive  the  Moors  of  Granada 
off  the  sacred  soil  of  Spain.  To  great  commanders,  great  deeds 
are  never  impossible ;  yet  the  conquest  of  Granada  was  no  easy 
task  even  in  1492,  and  the  enterprise  was  assuredly  far  more 
difficult  in  1254.  Alfonso  himself  was  no  general.  No  Great 
Captain  was  found  among  his  knights  and  nobles.  The  king, 
after  all,  may  have  done  wisely,  as  well  as  honestly,  in  observing 
his  father's  treaties,  and  maintaining  the  existing  peace  with  the 
friendly  Moslem. 

But  although  Alfonso  was  no  warrior,  he  had  perhaps  more 
to  do  with  the  making  of  Spain  than  was  admitted  by  his  con- 
temporaries, or  has  ever  been  recognised  by  their  successors. 
For  no  man  had  so  large  a  share  in  the  making  of  the  noble 
language  of  Castile.  He  developed  it  by  his  studies.  He 
popularised  it  by  his  laws.  He  fixed  it  by  his  writings.  In  his 
hands  an  unknown  patois  became  the  language  of  poetry  and  of 
history,  of  science  and  of  legislation ;  and  the  debased  Latin 
which  had  hitherto  been  the  only  medium  of  communication  for 
rich  and  poor,  gave  place  to  a  new  national  tongue — the  language 
of  the  king  and  of  the  subject,  of  the  priest  and  of  the  people, 
of  the  knight  and  of  the  lawyer,  of  the  judges  and  councillors, 
of  the  great  assemblies  of  the  nation.  In  none  of  the  states  of 
modern  Europe  has  one  man  done  so  much  to  make  the  language 
VOL.  i.  18 


274  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

of  a  country — not  Bede,  nor  Alfred,  nor  Chaucer ;  not  Luther, 
nor  Dante,  nor  Froissart.  To  find  a  rival  we  must  turn  to  a 
distant  Continent,  and  to  a  more  ancient  people,  where  a  greater 
lawgiver  than  Alfonso,  in  a  greater  work  than  the  Partidas,  fixed 
if  he  did  not  found  the  noble  language  of  the  Koran. 

To  discover  the  origin,  and  to  trace  the  gradual  development 
of  one  of  the  most  interesting  of  modern  European  languages, 
would  be  a  task  at  once  difficult  and  delightful.  It  must  suffice, 
in  a  brief  sketch  like  the  present,  to  say  that  the  Castilian  was 
evolved  out  of  the  Latin,  as  the  nation  itself  grew  into  national 
life,1  and  that  from  the  middle  of  the  twelfth  to  the  middle  of 
the  thirteenth  century  it  assumed  a  form  not  very  unlike  the 
Spanish  of  the  present  day,  differentiated  from  the  other 
languages  of  romance  origin  by  the  influence  of  the  ancient 
Iberian  or  Basque  upon  the  spoken  language  of  the  refugees  in 
the  Asturias,  and  that  of  the  Arabic  upon  the  more  numerous 
sojourners  in  the  southern  provinces.  The  little  band  of  patriots 
of  the  north  drove  out,  indeed,  the  foreigner  of  the  south.  Yet 
in  the  world  of  letters,  culture  prevailed  over  the  sword.2  The 
Arabs  have  enriched  the  modern  Spanish  with  a  wealth  of  words, 
artistic,  scientific  and  literary ;  while  the  more  ancient  Celt- 
iberian,  although  it  may  and  must  have  modified  the  national 
language,  has  scarcely  affected  the  national  vocabulary.3 

Spain,  we  must  remember,  had  been  conquered  but  not 
colonised  by  Taric  and  Musa.  Moslems  of  various  races  and 
nations,  indeed,  accompanied  or  followed  the  Arab  armies  of 
occupation ;  but  the  Christian  Spaniards  were  neither  slain  nor 
banished  ;  and  they  continued,  under  the  liberal  sway  of  the 
Arab  rulers,  to  constitute  the  great  mass  of  the  population  of 
Moslem  Spain. 

Those  who  embraced  Islam,  and  they  were  many,  became, 
after  two  or  three  generations,  undistinguishable  from  their 
Moslem  neighbours,  and  spoke,  no  doubt,  a  debased  form  of 

1  Hovelacque,  La  Linguistique,  p.  256 ;  Renan,  Origines  de  la  Langue  Fran- 
fdise,  p.  203. 

2  On  the  frontiers  of  Andalusia  a  species  of  patois  or  lingua  franca,  half- 
Spanish,  half-Arabic — the  Algarabia — was  familiarly  spoken  and  understood  by 
both  Moor  and  Christian  as  late  as  the  time  of  Peter  the  Cruel. 

3Quand  le  latin  cut  d^finitivement  efface1  les  idiomes  indigenes  de  1'Italie,  de 
1'Espagne  et  de  la  Gaule,  la  langue  litteVaire  devint  une  pour  ces  trois  grands  pays  ; 
mais  le  parler  vulgaire — le  parler  Latin — y  fut  respectivement  different  .  .  .  ces 
peuples,  conduits  par  le  concours  des  circonstances  a  parler  tous  le  latin,  le 
parlaient  chacun  avec  une  mode  d'articulation  et  d'euphonie  qui  leur  etait  propre, 
les  grandes  localites  mirent  leur  empreinte  sur  la  langue,  comme  la  mirent  les 
localit^s  plus  petites  qu'on  nomme  provinces.  Littr6,  Diet,  de  la  Langue  Franfaise, 
Introd.,  p.  47  (1863). 


1050.]  ALFONSO  X.  OF  CASTILE.  275 

Arabic.  But  the  immense  mass  of  Christians  who  maintained 
their  old  religion,  and  who  were  known,  as  we  have  seen,  as 
Mozarabs,  spoke  a  low  Latin  language,  differing  from  that 
spoken  by  their  cousins  in  the  north  only  in  having  a  larger 
admixture  of  Arabic  influence. 

But  as  the  supremacy  of  the  Arab  decayed  in  Spain  after 
the  death  of  Almanzor,  the  great  mass  of  the  Spanish  Moslems 
came  themselves  to  speak  a  patois,  commonly  known  as  the 
Aljamia,  which  was  to  a  great  extent  the  language  of  their 
Christian  fellow-countrymen,  with  a  still  larger  admixture  of 
Arabic  words  and  forms,  and  which  was  written  in  the  Arabic 
character.1  A  linguistic  curiosity  at  the  present  day,  almost 
exactly  analogous  to  this  Spanish  Aljamia,  is  the  Yiddish- Deutsch, 
spoken  by  the  Jews  in  our  own  Whitechapel  and  written  by 
them  in  the  Hebrew  character. 

Thus  in  Spain  there  were  two  linguistic  movements  between 
the  eighth  and  the  thirteenth  centuries — the  one,  as  the  Arab 
waxed  strong,  in  the  direction  of  a  bastard  Arabic,  spoken  by 
Christian  as  well  as  Moslem — the  other,  as  the  Arab  supremacy 
waned,  in  the  direction  of  a  bastard  romance  or  Spanish,  spoken 
by  Arab  as  well  as  Christian. 

Both  of  these  vulgar  tongues  were  written,  when  occasion 
required,  in  the  Arabic  character  ;  and  the  later  and  more  Latin 
development  was  carried  by  the  Moors  and  Moriscos  into  Africa, 
and  used  by  them  as  their  familiar  speech  for  over  a  century 
after  their  expulsion  from  Spain. 

1See  Silvestre  de  Sacy  (in  Notices  et  Extraits,  etc.,  torn.  iv. ,  p.  626);  and 
Journal  of  the  Royal  Afiatic  Society  of  London ,  New  Series,  iii.,  81  and  379,  where 
Lord  Stanley  of  Alderley  gives  a  long;  poem  in  the  Aljamiado  text,  of  1603,  by 
Mohammed  Rabadan,  a  Morisco  of  Aragon.  The  poem  is  continued  in  vols.  iv., 
v.  and  vi.  of  the  same  journal. 

Of  the  works  originally  written  in  this  strange  fashion,  some  few  have  been 
lately  reprinted,  such  as  : — 

1 i )  Leyendas  Moriscas  sacadas  de  varios  manuscritos  existentes  en  las  Bibliotecas 
Nacional,  Real,  y  de  D.  P.  de  Gayangos.    Por  F.  Guillen  Robles  ;  3  torn.    Madrid, 
1885-86.     8vo. 

(2)  Collection  de  textos  aljamiados.     Publicada  por  P.  Gil,  J.   Ribera  y  M. 
Sanchez  ;  pp.  xix. ,  167.     Zaragoza,  1888.     8vo. 

(3)  Leyendas  de  Jost  hijo  de  Jacob  y  de  Alejandro  Magno,  sacadas  de  dos 
manuscritos   moriscos  de   la   Biblioteca   Nacional   de  Madrid.     Por   F.   Guillen 
Robles  ;  pp.  Ixxxviii. ,  283.     Zaragoza,  1888.     8vo. 

(4)  El  Hadits  de  la  Princesa  Zoraida,  del  Emir  Abulhasan  y  del  Caballero 
Aceja.     Relaci6n  romancesca  del  Siglo  XV.  6  principios  del  XVI.  en  que  se  declara 
el  origen  de  las  Pinturas  de  la  Alhambra.     Sacala  a  luz  D.  Leopoldo  de  Eguilaz 
Yanguas,  pp.  8,  374-7.     Granada,  1892.     8vo. 

I  am  indebted  for  this  list  to  the  kindness  of  my  friend,  Mr.  A.  G.  Ellis,  of  the 
British  Museum.  (To  these  may  be  added  the  Poema  de  Jost  or  Historia  de  Yusuf, 
telling  the  story  of  Joseph  in  Egypt  in  good  Spanish,  written  in  Arabic  letters  in 
fourteen  syllable  rhyming  lines. — H.) 


276  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

IV.— The  Ballads. 

If,  as  is  almost  certainly  the  case,  the  oldest  compositions  in 
Spanish  literature  are  the  ballads  or  Romances,  many  of  which 
have  been  preserved  to  our  day,  it  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  the 
language  in  which  we  now  may  read  them  is  the  same  as  that 
in  which  they  were  originally  composed.  Handed  down  from 
minstrel  to  minstrel,  and  rarely,  no  doubt,  committed  to  writing, 
the  language  and  even  the  phraseology  of  the  early  ballads  may 
have  changed  almost  from  year  to  year.  And  thus  as  the  rustic 
Latin,  in  which  the  oldest  ballads  were  first  sung  in  castle  and 
at  watch-fire,  was  gradually  assuming  the  form  of  the  national 
language  of  modern  Spain,  the  popular  songs  kept  conforming 
to  the  popular  speech,  as  it  developed,  almost  from  day  to  day, 
down  to  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century.1 

It  is  probable  that  the  earliest  ballads  now  existing  in 
Castilian  are  those  included  in  the  edition  of  the  Cancionero 
General,  by  Hernando  de  Castillo,  which  was  published  at 
Valencia  in  1511.  Thirty-seven  ballads  are  included  in  this 
ancient  collection,  of  which  eighteen  are  attributable  to  an 
earlier  date  than  1450. 

The  Silva  de  Romances,  a  collection  made  by  Esteban  de 
Najera,  and  printed  at  Saragossa  in  1550,  contains  the  whole  of 
the  Conde  de  Claras,  which  is  certainly  one  of  the  oldest  existing 
ballads,  and  of  which  a  fragment  only  is  given  in  the  Cancionero 
General  of  1511. 

The  influence  of  the  Arab  poetry  upon  that  of  the  Christians 
in  Spain  has  usually  been  greatly  exaggerated.2  There  is,  in- 
deed, as  a  rule,  but  little  originality  in  the  Arab  poems,  and 
nothing  whatever  that  in  the  smallest  degree  resembles  either  the 
Spanish  ballads  of  chivalry,  the  national  ballad  poetry  of  Castile, 
or  the  more  artificial  compositions  of  Provence  and  Languedoc. 

1  On  the  question  of  the  development  of  the  Spanish  ballad  and  cantar  there 
still  remains  much  difference  of  opinion.  It  may  be  seriously  doubted  whether  the 
author's  theory  of  the  gradual  evolution  of  Spanish  is  correct.  The  earliest  form 
of  separate  speech  in  which  ballads  were  written  or  sung  in  Spain  was  Gallician, 
and  from  the  twelfth  century  onward  also  in  the  Limousi  of  the  troubadours  ;  and 
yet  side  by  side  with  such  verse  we  have  the  almost  full-fledged  Spanish  of  the 
poem  of  the  Cid,  written  certainly  not  later  than  the  twelfth  century  ;  and  in  the 
time  of  Alfonso  X.  Gallician  verse,  the  songs  of  the  French  troubadours  and 
Castilian  poems  were  all  equally  fashionable. — H. 

2The  Spirit  of  Islam,  Syed  Ameer  Ali,  p.  560-561.  See  also  Conde,  Dom.  de 
los  Arabes  en  Espana,  Prologue,  xviii. ,  xix. ,  and  i.,  p.  169;  Argote  de  Molina, 
Discvrso,  fol.  93 ;  Bruce- Whyte,  Histoire  des  langues  romanes  (Paris,  1841),  torn. 
i.,  p.  15,  and  torn,  ii.,  p.  43. 


1150.]  ALFONSO  X.  OF  CASTILE.  277 

The  influence  of  the  Spanish  Arabs  upon  Castilian  poetry,  great 
as  it  was,  was  rather  indirect  than  immediate.  The  influence 
of  Mohammedan  Andalusia  on  the  neighbouring  Christian  pro- 
vinces may  possibly,  as  Syed  Amir  Ali  considers,  have  led  to  the 
introduction  of  chivalry  into  Europe.  But  it  is  at  least  certain 
that  the  ballads  on  Moorish  subjects,  far  from  being  the  oldest, 
are  among  the  most  recent l  of  the  true  ballads  of  Spain.  They 
date,  as  a  rule,  from  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century,  and 
are  concerned  chiefly  with  the  last  wars  of  Granada. 

The  early  Spanish  ballads  have  been  somewhat  magnilo- 
quently  spoken  of  as  "Iliads  without  a  Homer".  But  they 
recall  no  author  however  legendary.  They  are  of  a  people 
rather  than  of  a  poet ;  spontaneous  rather  than  artistic,  and  in 
themselves  essentially  national.  At  one  time  they  were  con- 
sidered to  be  necessarily  a  Moorish  form  of  poetry.  But  the 
most  persistent  endeavours  of  modern  critics  have  failed  to  find 
a  source  whence  they  can  have  had  their  origin,  other  than  in 
the  peculiar  genius  of  the  Spanish  people  ;  and  their  special 
form  of  rhyme — the  assonant  or  vowel  harmony,  as  opposed  to  the 
consonant  or  full  syllable  rhyme  of  other  literatures,  is  like  the 
ballads  themselves,  entirely  racy  of  the  soil. 

Hand  in  hand  with  the  national  ballads,  of  which  so  large  a 
proportion  are  warlike  and  patriotic,  as  opposed  to  amatory  or 
sentimental,  we  have  the  ancient  chronicles  of  Spain.2  The 
connection  between  the  early  ballad  and  the  early  chronicle  was 
indeed  most  intimate.  The  knights  of  the  thirteenth  century 
were  directed  by  King  Alfonso 3  X.  to  listen  at  their  meals 
to  the  reading  of  histories  of  the  great  feats  of  arms  done 
by  their  ancestors,  histories  which  were  no  doubt  both  said  and 
sung.  And  such  tales  and  records,  in  prose  and  verse,  were 
collected  by  the  same  king  in  the  preparation  of  his  Cronica 
General  of  Spain — first  of  Castilian  classics. 

The  authenticity  of  the  Charter  of  Aviles,  or  its  confirmation 
by  Alfonso  the  Emperor,  in  1155,  which  was  long  considered  to 

1  Ticknor,  i.,  136-141 ;  Syed  Amir  Ali,  op.  cit.,  p.  361. 

The  pastoral  romance,  which  afterwards  became  so  popular  in  Spain,  was 
not  introduced  inta  Spanish  literature  until  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century. 
Ticknor,  according  to  Dr.  Rennert,  assigns  far  too  early  a  date. 

See  The  Spanish  Pastoral  Romances,  by  Hugo  Rennert.     Baltimore,  1892. 

2  A  writer  in  the  sixteeth  century  actually  converted  large  portions  of  the  old 
chronicles  into  ballads  of  the  ordinary  metre  and  assonance  with  but  little  change 
of  their  original  phraseology,  so  largely  did  the  prose  of  the  chronicles  unconsciously 
frame  itself  in  eight-syllabled  verse.     Ticknor,  i. ,  103,  104. 

•Partidas,  ii.,  lib.  xxi.,  ley.  20. 


278  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

be  the  oldest  existing  document  in  the  Spanish  language,  has  in 
recent  times  been  completely  discredited.1 

The  earliest  metrical  composition  that  has  been  handed 
down  to  us  is  the  anonymous  Poem  of  the  Cid,  which  can  hardly 
have  been  written  later  than  the  end  of  the  twelfth  century.2 
The  language  of  this  celebrated  poem  is  as  yet  hardly  fully 
developed  from  the  more  ancient  Latin  ;  imperfect  in  form,  yet 
full  of  life  and  vigour,  the  worthy  medium  of  a  great  national 
tale  of  knightly  prowess  and  romantic  valour,  noble,  bold, 
original,  struggling  for  that  world-wide  success  which  awaited 
the  Castilian  at  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century.  The  subject- 
matter  has  already  been  spoken  of  in  the  chapter  on  the  Cid. 
The  metre  is  rude  and  irregular  ;  the  lines,  as  a  rule,  are  of 
fourteen  syllables,  but  are  often  reduced  to  twelve,  or  extended 
to  sixteen  or  even  twenty. 

In  inspiration  somewhat  similar  to  that  of  the  Poem  of  the 
Cid,  in  language  somewhat  more  developed,  but  evidently  a 
work  of  the  same  period,  is  the  Book  of  Apollonius,  a  poem  of 
2600  lines,  divided  into  stanzas  of  four  rhyming  verses.  It  is  a 
translation  or  adaptation  of  the  well-known  story  used  by 
Gower  in  his  Confessio  Amantis,  and  by  Shakespeare  in  Pericles.3 
The  Life  of  Our  Lady  St.  Mary  of  Egypt,  of  which  the  MS.  was 
discovered  in  the  present  century,  bound  up  with  that  of  the 
Poem  of  the  Cid  and  the  Book  of  Apollonius,  is  also  in  Spanish  of 
the  thirteenth  century,  though  the  language  is  more  akin  to 
old  French  or  Provencal  than  either  of  the  other  works.  Written 
in  octosyllabic  rhyming  couplets,  in  its  general  character  and 
supposed  antiquity  it  is  not  unlike  the  Adoration  of  the  Three  Holy 
Kings,  a  religious  or  legendary  composition  of  250  lines,  which 
has  also  survived  to  our  day.  But  the  authors  of  all  these  early 
poems  are  now  unknown  or  forgotten. 

The  works  of  the  priest  Gonzalo  of  San  Milan — known  from 
the  place  of  his  birth  as  Berceo — who  flourished  from  1220  to 
1250,  are  the  first  metrical  compositions  in  the  Spanish  language 
by  a  known  author  ;  and  they  consist  of  some  13,000  lines  of 
religious  poetry  or  verse  in  the  quaderna  via  or  four  rhymed 
stanzas  that  was  adopted  in  the  Apollonius  of  Tyre.  The  Life  of 
Santa  Domingo  of  Silos,  the  Miracles  of  the  Virgin,  and  the  Mourn- 
ing of  the  Madonna  at  the  Cross  are  also  the  works  of  Berceo. 

1  By  Senor  Fernandez-Guerra  y  Orbe.     Madrid,  1865. 

2Between  1150  and  1200.  See  Ticknor,  i.,  n,  12,  and  notes,  for  the  various 
theories  and  conjectures  as  to  the  date  of  their  composition. 

3  It  is  the  one  hundred  and  fifty-third  tale  of  the  Gesta  Romanorum, 


1265.]  ALFONSO  X.  OF  CASTILE.  279 

But  save  by  students  and  commentators  they  are  all  deservedly 
forgotten.  In  Spanish  poetry,  as  in  Spanish  literature  gener- 
ally, in  science,  in  legislation,  and  in  history,  the  first  name  is 
that  of  Alfonso  X. 

The  Cantigas  or  hymns  of  the  virgin  are  not  only  true 
poetry,  but  they  are  undoubtedly  the  work  of  the  King  of 
Castile.  Nor  are  there  many  of  the  ballads  whose  antiquity 
can  certainly  be  traced  to  an  earlier  date  than  the  thirteenth 
century,  that  are  superior  to  King  Alfonso's  verses,  although 
from  their  essentially  national  character  they  may  be  more 
interesting  to  modern  readers.  Yet  the  Cantigas  may  hardly 
be  reckoned  among  the  early  masterpieces  of  Castilian  litera- 
ture ;  and  they  contributed  in  no  way  to  fix  or  to  develop  the 
Castilian  language.  For  they  are  written,  strange  to  say,  not 
in  Castilian,  nor  in  Latin,  but  in  Gallician,  an  idiom  or  dialect 
which  bears  more  resemblance  to  the  modern  Portuguese  than 
to  the  noble  language  of  Spain.1 

But  the  greatest  literary  triumphs  of  the  learned  king 
were  not  in  verse  but  in  prose.  No  reader  of  Don  Quixote 
in  the  original  Spanish  can  fail  to  have  been  struck  by  the 
great  number  of  quotations  from  the  Bible  that  are  put  by 
Cervantes  into  the  mouth  of  Sancho  as  well  as  of  the  knight 
of  La  Mancha.  Many  of  them  had  apparently  become  so 
common  in  men's  speech  in  their  native  Castilian,  that  they 
are  actually  classed  as  refranes,  or  proverbs ;  and  it  is  obvious 
that  translations  of  the  Bible  into  the  vernacular  must  have 
been  widely  spread  in  Christian  Spain,  until  on  the  arrival 

1  They  were  composed  between  1263  and  1284  under  the  title  of  Cantigas  de 
Santa  Maria :  or,  Loores  y  milagos  de  Nuestra  Se flora  ;  and  consist  of  a  collection 
of  401  poems,  in  the  Gallician  dialect,  in  various  metres,  upon  miracles,  sanctuaries, 
images,  and  other  subjects  connected  with  the  life  of  the  Blessed  Virgin.  (Gallician, 
as  has  already  been  pointed  out,  was  the  earliest,  and  still  remained  the  most 
cultivated  language  for  verse  in  the  time  of  Alfonso  the  Learned.  But  it  is 
especially  to  be  noted  in  these  Cantigas  how  strong  had  already  been  the  influence 
of  the  French  troubadours  on  the  native  Gallician  verse.  Alfonso  the  Learned 
thus  taunts  his  father's  old  bard,  Pedro  da  Ponte,  for  being  so  old-fashioned  as  to 
adhere  to  the  antiquated  Spanish-Gallician  forms  of  verse  : — 
"  Vos  non  trovades  coino  Proven  fai". 

Mr.  Fitzmaurice  Kelly's  admirable  History  of  Spanish  Literature  should  be  con- 
sulted on  this  subject. — H.) 

This  interesting  work  has  lately  been  published,  in  a  deservedly  magnificent 
edition,  at  the  instance  of  the  Royal  Academy  of  Madrid,  by  the  Marquis  de 
Valmar.  For  further  particulars  see/tor/,  chap.  xli. 

The  king  is  said  to  have  founded  and  endowed  a  military  and  religious  order 
in  honour  of  Our  Lady,  and  to  have  further  provided  that  these  Cantigas  should  be 
sung  in  perpetuam  over  his  tomb  in  the  Church  of  Santa  Maria  de  Murcia.  Mon- 
dejar,  .\.emorias  Hlstoricas,  438;  Ticknor,  i.  40;  and  Dozy,  Kecherches,  ii.,  34. 


280  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

of  Ferdinand  of  Aragon  and  the  Inquisition,1  se  hizo  necesaria 
la  prohibition.  The  earliest  translation  of  the  Bible  into  the 
vulgar  tongue  of  Castile,  of  which  we  have  any  note  or  record, 
is  one  that  was  made  under  the  superintendence  of  Alfonso  X., 
although  the  work  itself  has  apparently  perished.2 

In  addition  to  this  uncertain  translation  of  the  Bible  into 
the  vulgar  tongue,  the  History  of  the  Great  Conquests  beyond 
the  Sea  was  compiled  rather  under  his  direction  than  by  his 
own  royal  hand ; 3  and  the  work  has  been  preserved  to  the 
present  day.  The  Gran  Conquista  de  Ultramar  can  never,  like 
the  Bible  in  the  vulgar  tongue,  have  excited  the  persecuting 
and  destroying  zeal  of  the  Holy  Office.  It  is  an  historical, 
geographical  and  romantic  history  of  the  wars  of  the  Crusaders 
in  Palestine,  beginning  with  the  life  and  death  of  Mohammed, 
and  continued  down  to  the  year  1270,  and  the  great  and  special 
interest  that  attaches  to  the  work  at  the  present  day  is  that 
it  is  the  first  work  of  any  importance  composed  in  the  language 
of  Castile.  For  the  language  of  the  grants  and  charters, 
technical  as  a  rule,  or  legal  in  form,  beginning,  if  it  may  be, 
with  the  doubtful  grant  to  Aviles  in  1155,  is  rather  deformed 

1  Menettdez  y  Pelayo,  Heterodoxos  Espanoles,  vol.  ii.,  p.  700. 

2  This  translation  of  the  Bible  is  so  casually  referred  to  by  the  authorities  that 
I  had — after  much  search — well-nigh  abandoned  all  hope  of  knowing  anything 
more  about  it,  than  the  somewhat  doubtful  fact  that  it  had  been  made,  when  I 
became  possessed  of  a  copy  of  Munoz,  Diccionario-historico  de  los  antiguos  Reinos 
y  Provincias  de  Espana  (Madrid,  1858),  and  at  p.  27  of  part.  ii.  of  that  admirable 
work,  I  found  a  reference  to  an  MS.  existing  in  the  monastery  of  the  Escurial,  of 
"  the  Castilian  translation  [of  the  Bible]  made  by  order  of  Alfonso  the  Learned, 
following  the  Hebrew  text,"  with  a  quotation  from  the  first  Psalm. 

There  is  no  hint  as  to  whether  the  New  Testament  as  well  as  the  Old  is 
included  ;  probably  not,  as  the  translation  is  expressly  said  to  be  kecha  siguiendo 
el  texto  hebreo.  I  give  the  first  two  verses  of  the  quotation  as  a  specimen  of  the 
style  :— 

"  Bien  auenturado  es  el  uaron  que  non  andudo  enel  conseio  delos  malos  syn 
ley  nin  estudo  enla  carrera  de  los  pecadores  nin  enla  sylla  de  nuzimiento  se  assento, 
mas  fue  la  voluntad  del  enla  ley  del  sennor  et  enla  ley  del  mesura  dia  et  noche. " 

I  can  find  no  further  reference  to  this  early  and  most  interesting  translation 
even  in  Munoz.  But  he  says  (p.  5),  that  translations  of  the  Holy  Scriptures  into 
Castilian  were  multiplied  in  the  thirteenth,  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries,  and 
habiendo  ocasionado  graves  inconvenientes  el  abuso  que  ya  se  hacia  de  los  traducciones 
de  la  Biblia  al  lenguage  vulgar  se  hizo  necesaria  la  prohibition. 

These  early  translations  were  apparently  taken  not  from  the  Vulgate  but  from 
the  version  of  St.  Jerome. 

As  to  translations  of  the  Bible  intc  the  Catalan  or  Limousin  language  of 
Aragon,  see  Menendez  Pelayo,  Heterodoxos  Espanoles,  torn.  i. ,  p.  435. 

3  It  is  more  probable  that  the  Gran  Conquista  de  Ultramar  was  compiled  in 
the  time  of  Alfonso's  son,  Sancho  IV.     The  work  is  unquestionably  very  fine  but 
it  is  not  original,  being  largely  a  translation  of  William  of  Tyre's  history,  written  a 
century  previously,  with  many  additions  and  adornments. — H. 


1265.]  ALFONSO  X.  OF  CASTILE.  281 

Latin  or  unformed  Spanish,  and  may  in  no  wise  be  compared 
with  the  finished  Castilian  of  Alfonso  X.1 

The  General  Chronicle  of  Spain,  a  work  which,  if  perhaps 
less  ambitious,  is  scarcely  less  interesting  than  the  Stele  Partidas, 
occupied  the  attention  of  Alfonso  X.  during  the  greater  part  of 
his  reign.  It  is  divided  into  four  books,  the  Jirsl  extending 
from  the  creation  of  the  world  to  the  death  of  Alaric,  the 
second  comprising  the  Visigothic  occupation,  the  third  bringing 
down  the  history  to  the  reign  of  Ferdinand  the  Great,  and  the 
fourth  closes  in  1252  with  the  accession  of  Alfonso  himself. 
The  first  and  second  books  are  merely  compilations  from  the 
ecclesiastical  writers,  and  are  dull  and  uninteresting.  But  the 
third  book  is  founded,  to  a  very  large  extent,  on  the  ancient 
national  ballads  ;  and  the  stories  are  told  with  great  vigour  and 
spirit,  of  Bernardo  del  Carpi o,  of  Pelayo,  of  Fernan  Gonzalez 
and  the  seven  children  of  Lara,  of  Santiago  fighting  at  Clavijo, 
and  of  Charlemagne  flying  from  Roncesvalles.  The  fourth  book 
is  largely  taken  up  with  the  legendary  Chronicle  of  the  Cidt 
after  which,  in  soberer  and  more  serious  style,  the  annals  of 
Spain  are  brought  down  to  the  days  of  authentic  history. 

The  independent  Chronicle  of  the  Cid  is  in  itself  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  and  interesting  records  of  the  ancient  litera- 
ture of  Castile.  It  differs  but  slightly  in  style  and  general 
treatment  from  that  contained  in  the  fourth  book  of  Alfonso's 
history  ;  and  it  is  probable  that  it  is  taken  direct  from  the 
king's  General  Chronicle  of  Spain.2 

\.-The  Siete  Partidas. 

But  it  is  not  as  a  chronicler,  nor  yet  as  a  linguist,  not 
as  a  poet,  nor  even  as  an  astronomer,  that  Alfonso  is  best 
remembered  in  nineteenth-century  Spain.  It  is  as  a  law- 
giver 3  that  he  takes  rank  with  the  emperor  on  the  Bosphorus 

i  Alfonso  X.  ...  a  cr6£  la  prose  Castillane ;  non  pas  cette  pale  prose 
d'aujourdhui  .  .  .  mais  la  vrai  prose  castillane,  celle  du  bon  vieux  temps,  cette 
prose  qui  exprimesi  fidelement  lecaractereEspagnol,  cette  prose  vigoureuse,  large, 
riche,  grave,  noble,  et  naive  tout  a  la  fois ;  et  cela  dans  ce  temps  ou  tous  les  autres 
peuples  de  1'Europe,  sans  en  excepter  les  Italiens,  £taient  bien  loin  encore  d'avoir 
produit  un  ouvrage  en  prose  qui  se  recommendat  par  le  style.  Dozy,  Recherches, 
li. ,  34.  See  also  Ticknor,  op.  cit.,  i. ,  40-43. 

2Ticknor,  vol.  i.,  chap.  viii. 

3  Alfonso  not  only  made  good  laws;  he  endeavoured  to  improve  the  adminis- 
tration of  justice.  He  named  twenty  four  Alcaldes — nine  for  Castile,  eight  for 
Leon,  and  seven  for  Estremadura.  From  the  decisions  of  the  judges  an  appeal 


282  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

and  the  emperor  on  the  Seine ;  and  his  great  code  still  finds 
a  place  in  the  library  of  every  Spanish  lawyer,  from  Barcelona 
to  Valparaiso. 

The  first  translation  of  the  Fuero  Juzgo,  or  Visigothic  code, 
from  the  Latin  into  Castilian,  was  planned,  if  not  actually 
undertaken,  in  the  reign  of  St.  Ferdinand.  But  whether  as 
prince  or  as  king,  it  was  his  more  studious  son  who  took  the 
principal  share  in  the  execution  of  the  work.  Not  content, 
however,  with  translating  old  laws  into  a  new  language,  Alfonso 
aspired  to  be  a  legislator  as  well  as  a  linguist,  and  his  Espejo, 
or  Mirror  of  Rights,  comprising  five  books  of  laws  written  by 
him  some  time  before  125.5 — was  followed  in  that  year  by  his 
Fuero  Real,  a  shorter  code,  divided  into  four  books ;  and  at 
length,  after  ten  years  of  unremitting  labour,  his  greatest  work 
was  given  to  Spain,  in  1265. 

Las  Siete  Partidas  (the  Seven  Sets,  or  Divisions)  is  the 
modest  title  of  a  comprehensive  digest  of  the  code  of  Justinian 
and  of  that  of  the  Visigoths,  of  the  national  and  local  Fueros,  of 
the  canon  law,  and  of  the  decrees  of  the  great  councils  of 
Spain.  The  code  of  Alfonso  would  at  any  time  have  been  a 
noble  monument  of  wisdom  and  prudence,  of  patient  study,  of 
intelligent  research,  and  of  an  enlightened  understanding.  At 
the  time  of  its  compilation  it  was  not  only  superior  to  anything 
of  the  kind  that  had  ever  been  attempted  since  the  times  of 
Justinian ;  it  stood  alone  and  unrivalled  in  the  mediaeval  world ; 
and  for  over  six  hundred  years  it  remained  not  only  the  great 
text-book  of  Spanish  jurisprudence,  but  the  greatest  exclusively 
national  code  of  laws  in  Europe.1 

Yet  the  Siete  Partidas  did  not  at  once  become  the  law  of 

lay  to  the  royal  Alcaldes  at  the  capital ;  and  from  them  to  the  king  himself,  who 
sat  three  days  a  week  for  this  purpose.  He  also  appointed  corregidores ,  not 
correctors,  but  co-rulers,  who  superintended,  and  in  some  cases  superseded,  the 
provincial  judges,  as  will  more  fully  be  shown  in  a  subsequent  chapter  on  the 
constitutional  and  judicial  development  of  Castile. 

1  The  code  Napoleon,  which  is  nearly  650  years  later,  is  necessarily  somewhat 
more  modern  and  more  complete,  and  is  itself  the  parent  of  most  of  the  later  codes 
of  the  nations  of  Europe  and  America.  Justinian's  great  work  was  not  national ; 
it  was  Imperial,  and  will  ever  be  a  text-book  for  the  world.  In  England  we  have 
not  yet  attained  to  any  code  whatever. 

As  to  the  adoption,  to  some  extent,  of  the  code  of  the  Siete  Partidas  in  the 
United  States  of  America,  see  Ticknor,  i.,  46. 

"If  all  other  codes  were  banished,"  says  Mr.  Dunham,  "Spain  would  still 
have  a  respectable  body  of  jurisprudence  in  the  Siete  Partidas  "  ;  and  an  eminent 
Spanish  advocate  is  said  to  have  told  the  historian  in  1832  that  during  an  extensive 
practice  of  twenty-nine  years  scarcely  a  case  occurred  which  could  not  be  virtually 
or  expressly  decided  by  the  code  of  Alfonso  X.  Dunham,  iv.,  121. 


1265.]  ALFONSO  X.  OF  CASTILE.  283 

the  land ;  and  it  was  not  until  1348,  the  year  of  the  abrogation 
of  the  Privilege  of  Union  in  Aragon,  that  it  was  promulgated, 
in  a  somewhat  uncertain  manner,  as  a  text-book  of  the  great 
common  law  of  Castile.1 

The  first  book  or  partida  of  the  code  treats  of  natural  law, 
the  law  of  nations,  and  law  ecclesiastical,  mainly  taken  from 
the  Roman  codes  and  decretals.  The  second  lays  down  the 
power  and  duties  of  the  king.  The  third  prescribes  judicial 
procedure.  The  fourth  treats  of  personal  and  social  rights. 
The  fifth  is  the  law  of  contract ;  the  sixth  of  wills,  inheritance, 
and  succession.  The  seventh  contains  the  penal  code,  and  the 
code  of  criminal  procedure.  The  modern  reader  who  would 
intelligently  and  fruitfully  study  this  celebrated  code,  whether 
as  an  historian  or  as  a  jurist,  will  not  fail  to  take  advantage  of 
the  well-known  historical  and  critical  commentary,  modestly 
styled  an  Ensayo,  or  essay,  of  Don  Francisco  Martinez  Marina, 
which  was  first  published  at  Madrid 2  at  the  beginning  of  the 
present  century,  and  which  is  itself  a  work  of  great  value  and 
interest  to  the  student  of  comparative  legislation. 

^This  was  accomplished  by  the  ever-celebrated  Ordenamiento  de  Alcala,  pro- 
mulgated by  Alfonso  XI.,  in  which  it  was  provided  that  all  cases  that  could  not  be 
decided  by  the  application  of  the  local  Fueros,  should  be  decided  according  to  the 
laws  of  the  Partidas.  The  spirit  of  the  Fueros  was,  no  doubt,  more  liberal  than 
that  of  the  Partidas ;  and  it  might  have  been  unjust  to  impose  the  new  code  upon 
Castile  immediately,  or  without  some  preliminary  mitigation.  It  was  thus  gradu- 
ally introduced. 

2 1  have  used  the  second  edition  (two  vols.,  Madrid,  1834);  as  well  as  Don 
Marcelo  Martinez  Alcabilla,  Cddigos  de  Espafla  (two  vols.,  Madrid,  1886). 


284 


CHAPTER  XXVI. 

THE  UNIVERSITIES.1 

I. — Education  at  Cordova. 

THE  first  college  that  was  established  in  the  Peninsula  was,  no 
doubt,  that  of  Sertorius  at  Huesca.  But  the  institution  was 
in  advance  of  the  times.  It  perished  on  the  death  of  its 
noble  founder  and  patron ;  and  for  half  a  dozen  centuries 
nothing  like  public  instruction  was  found  or  imagined  in 
Spain. 

With  the  development  of  Christianity  the  clergy  arrogated 
to  themselves  the  exclusive  power  of  teaching.2  Clerical  semi- 
naries were  established  at  least  as  early  as  527  by  the  Visigothic 
bishops  in  the  second  Council  of  Toledo  ; 3  and  Isidore  is  said, 
on  somewhat  doubtful  authority,  to  have  founded  a  school  at 
Seville.  But  after  the  coming  of  the  Arabs,  and  more  especially 
in  the  ninth  and  tenth  centuries  of  our  era,  schools  and 
colleges  were  established  in  most  of  the  Spanish  cities ;  and  at 

1  The  materials  for  a  sketch,  however  brief,  of  the  universities  of  Spain,  can 
hardly  be  found  outside  the  Peninsula.    Don  Vicente  de  la  Fuente's  Historia  at  las 
Universidades  is  the  best  general  authority ;  and  a  good  deal  of  miscellaneous 
information  is  to  be  found  in  the  EspaHa  Sagrada  and  the  Documentos  ineditos. 
With  regard  to  special  institutions,  Maestro  Pedro  Chacon's  Historia  de  la  Uni- 
versidad  de  Salamanca  (Salmantica,  13  Januar.  Ann.  Salut,  1709),  is  undoubtedly 
the  most  interesting.     The  copy  which  I  consulted  in  the  National  Library  at 
Madrid,  where  this  chapter  was  actually  written,  was  in  MS.,  and  it  was  not  until 
I  returned  to  Bloomsbury  that  I  learned  that  Chacon's  work  was  printed  in  the 
Semanario  Erudito,  torn,  xviii.,  Madrid,  1788,  with  a  continuation  of  the  original 
work  in  1726  by  D.  Antonio  Valladares.     The  Boletin  de  la  Real  A  cad.  de  Hist., 
torn,  xv.,  p.  \jget  seq.,  contains  some  interesting  information.     But  the  Spanish 
universities  do  not  seem,  as  a  rule,  to  have  engaged  the  attention  of  English 
writers.     Of  Ticknor's  carelessness  I  have  spoken  in  the  text.     In  Laurie's  Early 
Rise  and  Constitution  of  Universities,  A.D.  200-1350,  there  is  not  a  word  about 
Spain  !     But  see  P.  H.  Denifle,  Die  Entstehung  der  Universitaten  bis  1400  (1886), 
especially  pp.  470,  515. 

2  One  of  the  most  offensive  heresies  of  the  Priscillianists  was  the  claim  to  call 
themselves  doctors.     V.  de  la  Fuente,  i. ,  22. 

3  Cone.  Caes.  Aug.  (380),  7. 


THE  UNIVERSITIES.  285 

Cordova  especially  an  admirable  system  of  public  instruction 
anticipated  much  that  was  excellent  in  the  Christian  universities 
of  modern  Europe  ;  for  in  these  early  establishments  general 
culture  and  special  knowledge  were  alike  aimed  at,  while 
liberality  dominated  the  whole.1 

Of  the  scientific  attainments  of  the  great  doctors  of  Cordova, 
a  few  words  have  already  been  said  in  relation  to  the  philosophy 
of  Averroes.  But  the  Spanish  Arabs  were  not  merely  philo- 
sophers or  even  physicians.  The  numeral  figures  that  are  in 
daily  use  throughout  modern  Christendom  are  of  their  invention 
or  introduction,  and  are  still  called  by  their  name.2  Algebra, 
unknown  even  to  the  great  Greek  mathematicians,  was  similarly 
introduced  by  the  Arabs,  and  the  English  word  represents  the 
original  al  jeber,  or  "the  reduction  of  numbers".  The  Arabs 
more  punctiliously  called,  and  still  call,  the  science  al  jeber  o  al 
makabella,  as  that  of  "  reduction  and  comparison  ". 

Having  thus  rendered  possible  the  arithmetical  operations, 
which  under  the  Roman  system  of  numeration  could  not  even 
have  been  attempted,  they  proceeded  to  develop  the  theory  of 
quadratic  equations  and  the  binomial  theorem.  They  invented 
spherical  trigonometry.  They  were  the  first  to  apply  algebra  to 
geometry,  to  introduce  the  tangent,  and  to  substitute  the  sine 
for  the  arc  in  trigonometrical  calculations.3  At  a  time  when 
Europe  firmly  believed  in  the  flatness  of  the  earth,  and  was 
making  ready  to  burn  any  foolhardy  person  who  thought  other- 
wise, the  Moslems  at  Cordova  were  teaching  geography  by 
globes. 

In  the  practical  department  of  medicine,  no  less  than  in  the 
speculative  fields  of  philosophy,  the  Spanish  Arabs  offered  to 
their  students,  without  distinction  of  creed  or  nationality,  the 

1  See  Littre,  Etudes  sur  Us  Barbares,  pp.  4403. 

2  It  was  through  the  Hindus  that  the  Arabs  learned  arithmetic,  especially  that 
valuable  invention  termed  by  us  the  Arabic  numerals,  but  honourably  ascribed  by 
the  Arabs  to  its  proper  source,  under  the  designation  of  "  Indian  numerals  ".    Our 
word  cipher  recalls  the  Arabic  word  tsaphara  or  ciphra,  that  which  is  blank  or 
void.      Murphy  and  Shakespear,  Mahometan  Empire  in  Spain,  pp.  351-3;    and 
Draper,  Intellectual  Development  of  Europe,  vol.  ii.,  p.  40.     Algebra  was   also 
known  to  the  Hindus. 

3  En  science  and  en  philosophic,  les  Arabes  pendant  deux  siecles  furent  bien 
nos  maitres,  mais — le  fond  de  cette  science  Arabe  est  Grec ;  .   .  .  C'etait  des 
Espagnols  ecrivant  en  Arabe.     Renan,  Mtlanges,  13. 

La  Giralda  at  Seville,  the  first  astronomical  observatory  in  Europe,  was  built 
by  the  Spanish  Arabs,  under  the  superintendence  of  Jabir  ibn  Aflah  (Geber)  in 
1190.  Murphy  and  Shakespear,  op.  fit.,  256.  See  Draper,  Intell.  Dev.  of  Europe, 
ii.,  40-43 ;  Syed  Amir  Ali,  Life  and  Teachings  of  Mohammed,  361,  422,  425,  548, 
S.S6,  577.  578. 


286  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

highest  education  that  was  known  or  dreamed  of  in  Europe.1 
Avenzoar  or  Ibn  Zoar,  a  chemist  and  a  botanist,  published  an 
elaborate  Pharmacopoeia  for  the  use  of  his  students  at  Cordova. 
Arabic  became  the  language  of  science,  and  Andalusia  the  home 
of  study.  Surgery,  too,  which  was  lightly  esteemed  by  Christian 
nations  until  comparatively  modern  times,  had  its  professors  and 
its  practitioners  in  Moslem  Spain.  Albucasis  or  Abu  al  Kasim, 
of  Cordova,  was  not  only  a  bold  and  a  skilful  operator,  but  his 
treatise  on  surgical  instruments  may  be  read  with  interest  at 
the  present  day.2 

Nor  were  the  students  either  of  medicine  or  of  arts  confined 
to  the  sterner  sex  ;  and  we  may  possibly  plume  ourselves  less 
upon  the  liberality  and  extent  of  our  progress  in  modern 
England,  when  we  read  of  the  fair  scholars  and  doctors  who 
graduated  in  the  schools  of  Cordova,  and  brought  their  skill 
and  their  science  to  the  bedsides  of  their  Moslem  sisters  in  the 
day  of  sickness. 

In  the  schools  of  Moslem  Spain,  not  only  at  the  capital,  but 
at  Seville,  at  Saragossa,  at  Toledo,  at  Granada,  arithmetic, 
algebra,  trigonometry,  astronomy,  the  entire  circle  of  the 
sciences  occupied  the  attention  of  the  students.  The  pro- 
fessors gave  lectures  also  on  philosophy,  on  natural  history,  on 
literature,  on  rhetoric  and  composition.3  The  language  which, 
it  was  their  boast,  was  the  most  perfect  ever  spoken  by  man, 
was  studied  with  peculiar  care.  But  others  were  by  no  means 
excluded  from  the  course.  Grammars  and  lexicons,  not  only 
of  the  Arabic,  but  of  Greek,  of  Latin,  of  Hebrew,  were  prepared 
and  re-edited.  The  works  of  the  great  master  of  science,  Lisan 
ud-din  of  Granada,  constitute  one  of  the  earliest  encyclopaedias 
in  the  world  of  letters.  The  commentaries  of  Ibn  Roshd 
(Averroes)  of  Cordova  opened  the  treasure-house  of  Greek 
learning  to  the  students  of  mediaeval  Europe.4 

1  The  mediaeval  physicians,  not  only  in  Spain  but  even  in  France,  were  actually 
known  by  the  name  of  the  Emir  or  Mir.     See  the  old  French  proverb  :  //  nefaut 
pas  choisir  son  Mir  pour  son  hdritier. 

2  Murphy  and  Shakespear,  p.  249  ;  Draper,  ii.,  39,  40;  S.  Lane  Poole,  Moors 
in  Spain,  p.  144. 

3  The  more  cultivated  Christian  Spaniards  in  the  Moslem  provinces  from  the 
eighth  to  perhaps  the  eleventh  century,  spoke  Arabic  more  largely  than  their  own 
Latin.     Romey,  vi.,  310. 

4  The  learning  and  culture  of  the  Spanish  Arabs  is  simply  denied  by  many 
modern  Spaniards,  as,  for  instance,  by  Father  Camara,  the  author  of  the  orthodox 
Contestation  or  refutation  of  Draper's  Intellectual  Development  (Valladolid,  1885). 
See  especially  chap.  iv.  ;  "  De  la  ciencia  en  el  Mediodia  de  Europa,"  p.  183.    The 
mere  denial,  uncritical,  rhetorical,  and  unsupported  by  any  authorities,  is  in  itself, 


990.]  THE  UNIVERSITIES.  287 

To  do  more  than  allude  to  the  numerous  and  admirable 
schools  that  existed  in  Moslem  Spain,  almost  from  the  time  of 
the  conquest,  would  be  at  once  outside  the  scope  and  beyond 
the  limits  of  this  work.  Yet  they  were  the  resort  of  students, 
from  the  tenth  to  the  twelfth  centuries,  from  every  part  of 
Europe.  The  celebrated  Gerbert,  afterwards  Sylvester  II.,  most 
liberal  of  mediaeval  Popes  (993-1003),  is  said  to  have  been  a 
student  at  Cordova  towards  the  end  of  the  tenth  century.1 
Peter  the  Venerable,  the  friend  and  protector  of  Abelard,  who 
spent  much  of  his  time  in  Cordova,  and  not  only  spoke  Arabic 
fluently,  but  actually  had  the  Koran  translated  into  Latin, 
mentions  that,  on  his  first  arrival  in  Spain,  he  found  several 
learned  men,  even  from  England,  studying  astronomy  and  other 
less  recondite  branches  of  science.2  It  was  from  Toledo  that 
Michael  Scot  brought  his  translation  of  Aristotle  and  Averroes 
at  the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth  century  (1194-1250)  to  the 
strangely  enlightened  court  of  the  Emperor  Frederick  II. 

Hermann  the  German,  or  Alemannus,  continued  Michael 
Scot's  work  at  Toledo,3  and  carried  his  versions  of  other  works 
into  Naples  and  Sicily,  where  Manfred  had  inherited  his  father's 
tastes,  if  not  his  father's  power. 

"When  the  narrow  principles  of  Islam  are  considered,"  says 
a  Spanish  writer,  "  the  liberality  of  the  Arabs  towards  the  pro- 
fessors of  literature  justly  demands  our  admiration  ".  The  Eastern 
Caliphs  employed  foreigners  in  the  superintendence  of  their 
schools,  and  in  Spain  we  find  that  Christians  and  even  Jews  were 

of  course,  worthless  ;  but  it  is  highly  interesting  as  showing  the  temper  of  Spanish 
Churchmen  as  regards  history  and  science  at  the  present  day,  and  more  particularly 
as  regards  the  bitterness  of  their  bigotry  towards  Islam,  with  which  Christian 
Spain  has  not  been  brought  into  serious  conflict  for  400  years. 

A  modern  Spanish  apologist  of  the  great  Cardinal  Ximenez,  Simonet,  Ximenes 
de  Cisneros  (Granada,  1885),  p.  6,  speaks  of  "  Lo  Atrasado  y  grosero  de  su 
civilisation  "  of  the  Spanish  Arabs,  "  que  .  .  .  nuncapasdde  la  barbarie!"  This 
from  Granada ! 

'This,  indeed,  is  denied,  as  far  as  I  know,  for  the  first  time,  by  Don  Vicente 
de  Lafuente,  who  asserts  that  Gerbert  studied,  not  at  Cordova,  but  at  Vich  in  the 
County  of  Barcelona,  and  that  he  attained  his  high  mathematical  excellence  under 
a  Christian  bishop — name  unknown — at  a  time  long  anterior  to  the  study  of  exact 
sciences  at  Cordova.  Hist,  de  las  Universidades,  torn,  i.,  45-49.  There  is  an 
interesting  sketch  of  the  Life  of  Gerbert  in  the  English  Historical  Review,  October, 
1892,  p.  625.  by  Mr.  R.  Allen. 

2  Draper,  Intellectual  Development  of  Europe,  vol.  ii.,  p.  12;  Murphy  and 
Shakespear,  op.  cit.,  part  ii. ,  sect,  ii.,  especially  p.  217.  Peter  the  Venerable  was 
not  the  translntor  but  the  patron.  The  Englishman  who  did  the  work  was  Robertus 
Retenensis.  See  the  edition  of  this  celebrated  translation,  Basle,  1543. 

*Siete  Partidas,  p.  vii.,  tit.  xxvi.,  lev.  i. ;  Renan,  Averroes,  pp.  205-216  ;  Lea, 
Hist,  of  the  Inquisition,  vol.  iii. ,  561. 


288  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

appointed  to  direct  the  studies  in  the  Academies  of  Cordova. 
Real  learning  was,  in  the  estimation  of  these  Moslems,  of 
greater  value  than  the  religious  opinions  of  the  learners.1 

Yet  all  this  liberality  and  all  this  erudition  did  not  save  the 
Spanish  Arabs.  The  patronage  of  the  Abdur  Rahmans  and 
the  Hakams,  the  studies  of  Abenzoar  and  Averroes,  the  library  at 
Az  Zahra,  the  scholars  who  flocked  to  Cordova  from  every  part 
of  Europe  and  the  East,2  the  learning  of  the  professors,  the 
intelligence  of  the  students,  the  skill  of  the  operators,  the 
refinement  of  the  men  and  women  who  graduated  in  the  great 
schools  of  Moslem  Spain,  all  this  availed  nothing  against  the 
Almoravides,  and  the  Almohades,  and  the  greater  forces  of 
disintegration  and  decay.  For  the  schoolmaster  can  never 
supply  the  place  of  the  statesman.  The  highest  education 
may  not  atone  for  a  long  course  of  political  ineptitude.  The 
pen,  alas,  is  powerless,  as  the  world  is  constituted,  without  the 
ruder  protection  of  the  sword.  The  institutions  that  had 
flourished  under  the  Moslem,  died  when  the  Moslem  departed ; 
and  after  four  centuries  of  light  and  leading,  Andalusia  fell 
back,  under  the  Christian  rule,  into  a  condition  of  ignorance 
and  barbarism,  nearly,  if  not  quite,  equal  to  that  of  the  north- 
western provinces  of  the  Peninsula. 


II. — The  Maestrescuelas. 

For  more  than  a  hundred  years  after  the  death  of  Abdur 
Rahman  an  Nasir,  scarcely  anything  that  can  be  called  a 
school  existed  in  Christian  Spain.3  From  the  eleventh  century, 

1  Rodriguez  de  Castro,  apud  Murphy  and  Shakespear,  Hist. ,  p.  217. 

2  See  Renan,  Averroes  et  VAverroisme,  p.  4;  Syed  Amir  Ali,  Spirit  of  Islam, 
pp.  557-8. 

3  As  to  the  ignorance  of  the  Christian  Spaniards,  even  in  the  case  of  the  clergy, 
see  Lafuente,  iv. ,  342  ;  Syed  Amir  Ali,  Spirit  of  Islam,  pp.  548  and  584. 

Masdeu,  xiii.,  205,  206,  in  accounting  for  the  fact  that  we  have  no  record  of 
any  intellectual  activity  in  Christian  Spain  during  the  palmy  days  of  the  Moslems 
at  Cordova,  maintains  that  there  certainly  -was  an  abundance  of  learning  and 
scholarship  among  the  Christians,  but  that  no  vestige  remains  of  their  work.  Del 
descuido  que  habran  tenidos  los  obispos  y  abades  de  conservar  sus  obras — par  haberlas 
considerado  como  obras  profanas  I  This  is  at  once  very  naif  and  very  instructive. 
As  an  instance  of  the  condition  of  learning  and  the  prodigious  rarity  of  books  at 
the  Christian  courts  long  after  the  time  when  the  catalogue  of  Hakam's  library 
was  hardly  contained  in  forty-four  large  volumes,  we  read  that  in  1044  the  purchase 
of  two  books  on  grammar  in  civilised  Catalonia  was  an  event  necessitating  the 
intervention  of  notaries  and  bishops,  and  that  the  price  of  the  strange  fancy  articles 


1050.]  THE  UNIVERSITIES.  289 

indeed,  it  would  seem  that  the  ecclesiastics  attached  to  the 
various  cathedral  churches  were  in  the  habit  of  giving  instruc- 
tion of  some  sort  to  candidates  for  Holy  Orders ;  and  it  was 
decreed  by  the  Council  of  Coyanza,1  in  1050,  that  the  clergy  of 
Leon  should  teach  the  children  the  Creed  and  the  Paler  nosier, 
while  every  ordained  priest  was  supposed  to  know  the  Psalter, 
Epistles  and  Gospels  in  the  Latin  of  the  period.  Nor  does 
monastic  instruction  appear  to  have  proceeded  any  further  than 
these  ecclesiastical  rudiments. 

A  royal  donation  in  1086  to  the  clergy  of  Coimbra  is  said 
to  have  been  the  origin  of  the  celebrated  university  at  that 
place.  But  it  is  certain  that  in  the  eleventh  century  Coimbra 
was  the  home  of  studies  exclusively  ecclesiastical,  and  that 
the  schools  were  the  resort  only  of  theological  students. 
Fifty  years  earlier,  in  Castile,  some  kind  of  superior  scholastic 
instruction  seems  to  have  been  provided  by  Bishop  Poncio  in 
the  diocese  of  Palencia,2  under  the  patronage  of  Sancho  the 
Great ;  and  at  the  end  of  the  next  century  we  find  no  less 
a  personage  than  Dominic  de  Guzman  enrolled  among  the 
students.  But  the  Maestrescuela,  as  it  was  called,  was  not 
formally  incorporated  as  a  university,  if,  indeed,  it  ever  acquired 
that  exalted  status,  until  the  year  1212;  and  from  that  time, 
overshadowed  by  the  rising  glory  of  Valladolid  and  Salamanca, 
its  prosperity  seemed  to  have  steadily  declined,  and  within  a 
very  few  years  the  institution  had  practically  ceased  to  exist 

was  a  site  in  the  city  of  Barcelona.  Pergamino,  No.  75,  del  Archivo general  de  la 
corona  de  Aragon,  apud  Lafuente,  iv. ,  340. 

The  rarity  and  high  price  of  books,  even  as  late  as  the  time  of  Henry  III., 
is  incidentally  referred  to  in  a  curious  work  on  the  coinage  of  that  reign,  Saez, 
Demonstration  de  Monedas,  etc.  (ed.  1796),  p.  368  and  sec.  ix.  A  curious  and 
interesting  catalogue  of  the  books  in  certain  libraries  of  the  same  period  will  be 
found  in  the  same  work,  pp.  368-379.  In  Senor  Menendez  Pelayo's  Ciencia 
Espanola,  vol.  iii. ,  pp.  125-478,  will  be  found  a  very  interesting  list  of  Spanish 
books  on  scientific,  artistic,  philosophic  and  other  subjects,  from  the  earliest  times 
to  the  present  day.  The  author  admits  the  incompleteness  of  the  catalogue,  which 
he  calls  Inventario  Bibliogrqfico,  which,  unfortunately,  having  no  index,  and  being 
generally  ill-arranged,  is  almost  useless  for  reference. 

1  Now  Valencia  de  Don  Juan. 

8  As  to  the  foundation  and  extinction  of  Palencia,  its  chequered  and  uncertain 
history,  and  the  extent  to  which  the  foundation  can  be  said  to  have  been  transferred 
to  Salamanca,  see  Documentos  Inedifos,  vol.  xx. ,  pp.  1-279.  Yet,  as  the  treatise  in 
question,  by  Senor  Floranes,  is  written  avowedly  (p.  57)  to  prove  a  higher  antiquity 
for  the  Castilian  universities  than  that  usually  admitted  in  Spain  (engrave  detri- 
mento  al  credito  literario  de  la  nation,  y  de  su  honor},  the  statements  and  surmises 
of  the  author  must  be  taken  with  a  great  deal  of  caution.  He  asserts,  indeed,  that 
there  was  an  estudio,  or  high  school,  at  Palencia  from  the  year  607  to  the  year 
1212,  when  it  was  constituted  a  University. 
VOL.  I.  19 


290  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

(1246).  The  name  indeed  lingered  for  some  time  longer;  and 
a  Bull  of  Urban  IV.,  of  14th  May,  1263,  gave  certain  privi- 
leges to  the  masters  and  students  of  Palencia.  But  Palencia  in 
1263  had  no  students;  its  masters,  if  they  existed,  had  no 
income ;  the  university  itself  was  no  more. 

At  Salamanca,  the  greatest  name  in  the  history  of  the 
Spanish  foundations,  uncertain  studies  in  connection  with  the 
cathedral  were  carried  on  from  the  middle  of  the  eleventh 
century  (1179  is  the  date  usually  assigned),  and  a  Maeslrescuela1 
or  Esttidio  was  established  in  1215.  But  the  first  charter  or 
privilege  of  incorporation  is  dated  in  the  Era  1280 — i.e.,  A.D. 
1242  ;  and  certain  Privilegios  granted  by  Alfonso  X.  in  1252 
laid  the  foundation  of  the  future  greatness  of  the  university. 

From  the  earliest  times  Salamanca  seems  to  have  found 
favour  with  Church  and  State.  The  first  Bull  relating  to  the 
foundation  is  one  of  Alexander  IV.  in  1245.  In  1254  the 
privilegios  of  Alfonso  were  confirmed  by  the  same  Pope  in  a 
more  formal  Bull  of  Incorporation;  and  in  the  course  of  1255 
no  less  than  four  Bulls  relating  to  the  studies  and  students 
at  Salamanca  were  sealed  in  the  Papal  Chancery.  St.  Ferdi- 
nand, shortly  before  his  death,  had  exempted  the  students  of 
Salamanca  from  the  payment  of  certain  taxes ;  and  Alfonso  X. 
not  only  endowed  the  university  in  a  more  direct  and  positive 
manner,  but  he  personally  revised  the  curriculum  of  studies, 
and  took  the  warmest  interest  in  the  progress  of  the  students.2 

The  University  of  Alcala  was  founded  by  a  formal  charter 
or  ordinance  of  Sancho  the  Brave  in  1293.  Valladolid  3  was  first 
endowed,  if  not  first  established,4  by  Ferdinand  IV.  in  1304, 

1The  Council  of  Leon,  in  1245,  rnakes  honourable  mention  of  Salamanca, 
which  was  already  one  of  the  four  great  universities  of  the  world — Oxford,  Sala- 
manca, Bologna,  Paris.  Clementinas,  lib.  v. ,  cap.  i.,  tit.  i.  (1311).  Vide  Don  V. 
de  Lafuente,  Hist,  de  las  Universidades,  pp.  290-296.  As  to  the  foundation  of 
Salamanca,  and  the  reason  for  the  choice  of  that  city  for  the  university,  see  Partida., 
ii.,  ley.  ii.,  tit.  31. 

2  For  the  Bull  of  Boniface  VIII.  (1298)  as  to  the  Decretas,  see  V.  de  Lafuente, 
Hist.  Univers. ,  299,  300. 

3  The  Christian  city  of  Valladolid  was  only  founded  in  1058;  the  university, 
according  to  Floranes,  must  have  been  founded  in  1095.     No  evidence  is  offered  in 
the  Documentos  Ineditos,  xx. ,  115,  but  es  muy  rational  el  presumirlo  I  The  students, 
bachelors  and   doctors  of  Valladolid  were   freed  de  todo  pecho  y  tribute,  by  an 
ordinance  of  Henry  II.  in  1367,  and  the  exemption  was  ratified  by  later  kings. 
The  establishment  was  reformed  in  1771,  in  1807,  in  1824  and  in  1845.     Anuario 
de  la  Instrucion  Publica  en  Espana,  sub  tit.  Valladolid. 

4  It  is  said  to  have  been  established  in  1260  with  chairs  of  Hebrew,  Greek 
and  mathematics.     The  college,  and  subsequently  established  University  of  Alcala, 
will  be  spoken  of  with  greater  fulness  in  dealing  with  the  life  of  Ximenez,  in  vol.  ii. 
of  this  work. 


1346.]  THE  UNIVERSITIES.  291 

and  the  institution  was  gratified  with  Papal  sanction  by  a  Bull 
of  Clement  VI.  in  134-6.  These  high  schools,  or  Maeslrescuelas — 
for  the  word  university  was  not  as  yet  applied  to  them — are 
mentioned  repeatedly  in  the  laws  of  the  Siete  Parlidas,1  which 
contain  the  first  legal  or  public  provisions  for  the  foundation  or 
government  of  the  new  institutions.2 

The  earliest  and  most  celebrated  of  the  Universities  of 
Aragon  was  that  established  in  the  territory  to  the  north  of 
the  Pyrenees,  which  still  survives  at  Montpellier.  Founded, 
it  would  seem,  in  the  first  instance,  as  a  school  of  medicine, 
and  recognised  by  Papal  authority  in  1220  as  an  institution 
already  respectable,  it  was  not  formally  constituted  a  univer- 
sity until  1289,  in  the  reign  of  Alfonso  III.,  by  Bull  of  Nicholas 
IV.  From  this  time  it  continued  to  enjoy  the  special  protec- 
tion of  the  bishop,  as  distinct  from  that  of  the  crown,3  until 
Montpellier  ceased  to  be  ruled  by  an  Aragonese  monarch  in 
1392. 

The  origin  of  the  University  of  Lerida,  in  Catalonia,  was 
somewhat  different  from  that  of  Montpellier  or  any  of  the 
seminaries  of  Castile.  For  without  any  previous  ecclesiastical 
Estudio  or  cathedral  school  of  any  kind,  King  James  II.  of 
Aragon  obtained  from  Boniface  VIII.,  in  1300,  a  Bull  estab- 
lishing an  Estudio  General  at  Lerida,  which  was  invested  by 
the  king  with  very  large  privileges  and  powers,  under  the 
government  of  its  Bedel,  Rector,  and  Caricellarius.  But  the 
monopoly  of  teaching  in  the  entire  kingdom  of  Aragon  to 
the  south  of  the  Pyrenees,  which  had  been  conceded  to  Lerida, 
was  soon  invaded  by  the  establishment,  in  1354,  of  a  rival 
school  at  Huesca,  which,  after  a  temporary  extinction  in  1450, 


1  The  whole  of  titulo  xxxi.  of  Partida  ii.  of  the  great  code  is  devoted  to  edu- 
cation. It  is  headed  :  "  De  los  estudios  en  que  se  aprenden  los  saberes,  et  de  los 
maestres  y  de  los  scolares"  and  consists  of  eleven  laws  preceded  by  an  introduction 
— surely  the  earliest  law  of  public  instruction  in  Europe.  The  estudio  general  (or 
university  course)  included  grammar,  logic  and  rhetoric,  arithmetic,  geometry 
and  astrology.  But  private  tuition  in  special  subjects  was  also  contemplated,  to 
be  authorised  by  the  bishop  or  municipal  council  (concejo  de  algun  logar).  The 
duties  of  the  headmaster,  or,  as  he  was  called  in  some  cathedral  schools,  the 
chancellor,  of  these  early  high  schools,  are  laid  down  by  Alfonso  X.,  Partida,  i. , 
tit.  vi.,  ley.  7.  The  following  laws  scattered  throughout  the  Partidas  have  also 
reference  to  public  instruction:  P.  i.,  tit.  vi. ,  7;  P.  vi.,  tit.  xvii.,  3;  P.  vii. ,  tit. 

vi.,  3. 

Jr>.  Vicente  de  Lafuente,  c.  x.,  Partida,  ii.,  tit.  xxxi.,  and  i.,  ley.  vii.,  tit.  vi. 

3  King  James  the  Conqueror  appointed,  or  sought  to  appoint,  a  Regius 
professor  of  civil  law  in  1268,  for  which  act  of  patronage  he  was  rewarded  by 
excommunication.  Swift,  James  the  First,  p.  259. 


292  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

was  restored  by  Peter  IV.,  and  fully  constituted  as  a  university 
in  1461.1 

When  Ticknor 2  states  that  "  in  the  year  1 300,  although 
there  were  five  universities  established  in  Italy,  Spain  pos- 
sessed not  one,  except  Salamanca,  which  was  in  a  very  unsettled 
state,"  he  might  fairly  have  added  that  in  that  year,  the 
foundations  at  least  of  no  less  than  four  other  universities  had 
already  been  laid — that  is  to  say,  at  Alcala  (1293),  at  Palma 
(1280),  at  Seville  (1256),  and  at  Valencia  (1245)  ;  and  that  the 
Universities  of  Montpellier  and  of  Lerida3  were  fully  estab- 
lished, making,  together  with  Salamanca,  not  one  but  seven  in 
all  Spain. 

But  at  the  very  time  when  so  much  activity  was  being 
manifested  in  these  new  institutions,  Salamanca  itself  had 
fallen  on  evil  days.  Clement  V.,  the  French  Pope  at  Avignon, 
jealous  of  the  fame  of  the  great  Spanish  foundation,  and 
desirous  only  to  favour  the  University  of  Paris,  gave  orders, 
in  1305,  that  the  Tercias,  which  had  been  granted  by  the 
Castilian  kings  to  the  Castilian  University,  should  be  diverted 
from  that  purpose,  and  devoted  to  the  building  of  churches ; 
and  Salamanca  was  menaced  with  ruin.4  In  consequence,  how- 
ever, of  the  earnest  remonstrances  of  the  masters  and  students, 
a  new  Pontifical  grant  of  one  ninth  of  the  ecclesiastical  tenths 
of  Salamanca  was  made  by  Clement  in  1312,  and  this  slender 
Papal  benefaction  took  the  place  of  the  more  substantial  royal 
bounty.  It  was  the  Spanish  anti-Pope,  Benedict  XIIL,  that 
restored  Salamanca  to  life  and  vigour.  He  reformed  the  studies, 
increased  the  income,  and  encouraged  the  development  of  the 
university  to  which  he  owed  his  own  early  instruction. 

Pedro  de  Luna,  a  member  of  the  same  celebrated  family  of 
which  the  magnificent  Alvaro  in  the  next  century  was  no  less 
distinguished  a  member  was  born  near  Calatayud  in  1324. 
After  studying  first  at  Salamanca  and  afterwards  at  Montpellier, 

1  And  by  Bull  of  Paul  II.,  1464.     It  was  suppressed  in  1845. 
''•Hist,  of  Sp.  Lit.,  vol.  i.,  chap,  xviii. 

3  The  University  of  Lerida,  like  that  of  Gerona,  Barcelona,  and  all  the  other 
universities  of  Aragon,  was  extinguished  and  merged  in  the  new  foundation  of 
Cervera  by  Philip  V.  in  1714.     The  ugly  buildings,  which  were  abandoned  in 
1837,  when  the  professors  and  students  migrated  or  remigrated  to  Barcelona,  are 
now  fast  falling  into  decay,  and  Cervera  is  chiefly  interesting  as  being  the  place, 
where  the  contract  of  marriage  between  Ferdinand  and  Isabella  was  signed  in 
March,  1469. 

4  The  Tercias  were  two-ninths  of  the  ecclesiastical  tithe  which  were  granted  to 
the  king.— H. 


1394.]  THE  UNIVERSITIES.  293 

he  was  made  a  Cardinal  by  Gregory  IX.  in  1375;  and,  acting 
as  Papal  Legate  in  Aragon  at  the  time  of  the  Great  Schism,  he 
referred  the  question,  of  the  legitimacy  of  the  rival  claimants 
to  the  Papacy,  to  the  University  of  Salamanca.  The  Council 
decided  in  favour  of  Clement  VII.  (1387),  and  he  was  not 
unnaturally  inclined  to  favour  so  judicious  an  institution. 
Pedro  de  Luna  himself,  who  succeeded  Clement  as  anti-Pope 
in  1394,  at  once  restored  the  Tercias  (1413-1416),  augmented 
the  professoriate,  and  established  the  university  1  on  so  solid  a 
basis  that  it  had  no  further  need  of  either  royal  or  ecclesiastical 
protection. 

Nor  was  it  only  by  the  great  anti-Pope  that  Salamanca  was 
protected  and  encouraged.  Henry  III.  gave  substantial  proofs 
of  his  favour  by  grants,  endowments  and  privileges,  and  this 
royal  patronage  was  continued  by  John  II.  It  is  only  indeed 
from  the  time  of  the  royal  grant  of  revenues  of  1397,  that  the 
income  and  independent  existence  of  Salamanca  can  be  said  to 
have  been  assured.2  By  the  statutes,  as  reformed  by  Pope 
Martin  V.  in  1422,3  the  chief  authority  of  the  university,  as 
regards  students  and  studies,  corresponding  more  nearly  to  the 
Master  or  Provost  of  an  English  College,  was  the  Rector,  elected 
by  the  students  voting  in  four  "  nations "  or  Turnos.  The 
Primicerio,  whose  position  was  not  unlike  that  of  the  Chancellor 
of  an  English  university,  was  elected  by  the  Clauslra-general 
or  Senate,  over  which  he  presided.  The  Bedel  was  an  officer 
de  probada  hidalguia,  who  seems  to  have  had  proctorial  powers 
and  a  general  superintendence  over  the  conduct  of  the 
students  ;  and  the  Maestrescuelas,  who  was  afterwards  called  the 
Chancellor,  was  the  chief  teaching  authority.  Of  the  faculty  of 
theology  only  was  there  a  titular  Dean,  and  the  academic 
hierarchy  was  composed  of  rector,  doctors,  masters,  licentiates, 
bachelors  and  students. 

After  a  brief  course  of  attendance  at  lectures  and  in  chapel, 
and  a  certificate  of  good  conduct  from  the  Bedel,  the  student 
delivered  a  set  oration,  and  was  admitted  a  bachelor.  After 

1  Vicente  de  Lafuente,  Hist.  Univ.,  i.,  chap.  xx.  ;  Chacon,  Hist,  de  la  Uni- 
versidad  de  Salamanca,  in   MS.     No   less  than   eight   Bulls  were  directed   by 
Benedict  XIII.  in  favour  of  the  University  of  Salamanca.    V.  de  Lafuente,  op.  cit., 
»••  193- 

2  Vicente  de  Lafuente,  i.,   181.     See  generally    Tabla  de  los  privilegios  y 
confirmaciones  que  el  estudio  y  Universidad  de  Salamanca  ha  tenido  de  los  Reyes  de 
Castillo.     Parchment  MS.,  p.  57  ;  Brit.  Mus.  Eg.,  1933  ;  Press,  523,  H. 

3  Given  in    Lafuente,  Hist,  de  las  Universidades,  Appendix   ix.,  pp.  323-6. 
Modified  by  Eugenius  IV.  in  1431. 


294  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

five  years'  further  study  and  various  academic  exercises,  he 
became  a  licentiate.  No  distinctive  academic  costume  was 
prescribed  at  the  time  of  Benedict  XIII.,  but  the  doctors  ap- 
parently were  accustomed  to  wear  a  Muceta  or  cape  on  their 
shoulders — which  was  afterwards  distinguished  as  green  for 
canon  lawyers,  red  for  civilians,  white  for  theologians,  and 
yellow  for  doctors  of  medicine — and  to  cover  their  head  with  a 
hood  or  capirote.  The  students  were  enjoined  only  to  abstain 
from  garments  of  silk,  or  fur,  or  of  bright  colours.1 

Turning  again  to  the  kingdom  of  Aragon,  we  find  that  a 
school  was  established  at  Valencia  by  James  I.  as  early  as  1245, 
and  the  charter  was  approved  by  Innocent  IV.  The  university 
does  not  appear  to  have  been  founded  until  1411  ;  the  status 
of  nobility  was  conferred  on  the  doctors  of  law  by  Alfonso  V.  of 
Aragon  in  1426,  and  confirmed  by  two  Bulls  of  Alexander  VI. — 
the  constant  patron  of  his  native  Valencia — both  dated  in  1 500, 
and  approved  by  Ferdinand  the  Catholic,  16th  February,  1502. 

A  college  or  university  at  Gerona  was  endowed  in  1446  by 
John  II.  of  Aragon,  and  the  more  celebrated  institution  at 
Barcelona  was  recognised  rather  than  founded  by  a  royal  grant 
in  1450,  and  confirmed  by  Bull  of  Nicholas  V.  in  the  same  year. 
The  origin  of  the  teaching  school  at  Barcelona  is  somewhat 
obscure,  but  it  is  at  least  certain  that  an  academy,  already 
prosperous  long  before  1450,  was  in  that  year  invested  by 
Nicholas  V.  with  the  power  of  conferring  degrees,  and — as  is 
expressed  in  the  Bull  of  formal  incorporation — with  all  the 
privileges  of  the  University  of  Toulouse.2  The  University  of 
Saragossa  stands  on  a  somewhat  similar  footing,  having  been 
recognised  as  existing  in  1474  by  a  Bull  of  Sixtus  IV. 

The  establishment  of  the  great  triple  institution  at  Sigiienza 
on  the  noble  plan  of  a  combined  hospital,  convent  and  colegio 
mayor,  in  1476,  is  due  to  the  friend  of  Ximenez  de  Cisneros, 
Juan  Lopez  de  Medina.  The  institution  was  approved  as  a 
university  and  recognised  by  Bull  of  Sixtus  IV.,  in  1483,  con- 

1  At  the  present  day  the  coloured  tassel  on  the  cap  is  the  peculiar  distinction 
of  doctors  and  masters.     White  denotes  Divinity;    green,  Canon  law;    crimson, 
Civil  law  ;  yellow,  Medicine ;  and  blue,  Arts  or  Philosophy.     These  caps  are  worn 
only  on  public  occasions  at  the  universities.     Doblado  (Blanco  White)  Letters  from 
Spain,  p.  115. 

2  Alfonso  V.  contributed  greatly  to  the  establishment   of  the  university  of 
Barcelona  in  1430.     It  was  endowed  with  thirty-two  chairs :  Six  of  theology,  six 
of  philosophy,  six  of  jurisprudence,  five  of  medicine,  four  of  grammar,  one  each 
of  rhetoric,    Hebrew,  Greek  and  anatomy.      Capmany,  Coleccion   Diplomatica, 
Appendix  xvi. 


1476.]  THE  UNIVERSITIES.  295 

firmed  by  another  Bull  of  Innocent  VIII.  in  1489-  The  collegi- 
ate students,  who  must  all  have  been  admitted  to  the  tonsure, 
were  clothed,  fed  and  lodged  within  the  walls  ;  and  it  was 
only  on  the  removal  of  the  university  from  the  suburbs  to  the 
city  of  Sigiienza  that  it  somewhat  lost  its  monastic  character. 
Yet  Sigiienza  was  the  home  of  the  first  of  the  great  colleges,  or 
colegios  mayores,  as  distinguished  from  the  universities  of  Christian 
Spain.  The  second  in  importance  was  that  of  Santa  Cruz,  at 
Valladolid — founded  in  1484-  by  Cardinal  Gonzalez  de  Mendoza, 
and  approved  by  Bull  of  Sixtus  IV.  in  1 479  —which  was  designed 
as  a  rival  to  the  College  of  St.  Bartholomew  at  Salamanca,  and 
was  opened  for  study  in  1484. 

That  all  these  institutions,  as  well  in  Aragon  as  in  Castile, 
were  in  their  origin  rather  royal  than  papal,  in  spite  of  the  Bulls 
of  establishment  obtained  by  the  Spanish  kings  from  Rome,  is 
now  generally  admitted.1  The  endowments  in  the  Castilian 
establishments,  however,  were  at  once  limited  and  uncertain 
until  the  time  of  Henry  III.  and  of  John  II.  King  John 
especially,  feeble  though  he  may  have  been  as  a  monarch,  was  a 
student  and  a  friend  of  study,  and  a  man  of  some  culture  and 
learning. 

Upon  Salamanca,2  indeed,  the  protection  of  John  II.,  follow- 
ing in  the  footsteps  of  his  most  excellent  guardian,  the  Regent 
Ferdinand,  was  most  especially  extended  ;  and  it  was  only  by 
his  somewhat  unusual  liberality  between  1400  and  1430  that 
were  erected  the  university  buildings,  of  which  the  remnant, 
dignified  even  in  decay,  may  yet  be  seen  on  the  banks  of  the 
Tormes.  Thus  the  influence  of  the  court  was  paramount  in 
the  Spanish  universities  at  the  commencement  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  and  so  remained  during  the  long  reign  of  John  II. 
Henry  IV.  was  not  a  man  to  concern  himself  with  seminaries  of 
sound  learning  and  religious  education  ;  and  it  was  not  strange 
that  the  royal  power  and  the  royal  interest  alike  began  to  wane 
at  Salamanca,  as  they  were  waning  throughout  Spain,  during  his 
dreary  and  disastrous  reign.3  But  in  the  succeeding  generation, 
thanks  to  the  enlightened  patronage  of  Isabella,  the  universities 
grew  and  flourished ;  while  under  the  magnificent  rule  of 

1See  V.  de  Lafuente,  op.  «'/.,  i.,  chap,  xviii. 

11  By  royal  charters,  1391,  1401,  1409,  1411,  1413,  1420,  1421,  1432.  The 
early  charters  were  granted  by  the  Regent  Ferdinand  before  his  election  as  King 
of  Aragon. 

3  Chacon,  Hist,  de  la  Univerndad  de  Salamanca,  MS.  189,  Com.  25,  Bib. 
Nat.,  Madrid. 


296  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

Ximenez,  the  ecclesiastical  authority  became  gradually  more  and 
more  powerful,  until  at  length  it  became  supreme  over  public 
and  private  instruction  throughout  the  country. 

Yet,  as  regards  the  privileges  enjoyed  by  residents  in  the 
university  towns,  Ferdinand  asserted  the  power  of  the  Crown 
without  hesitation  or  hindrance.  By  the  year  1492  numerous 
abuses  had  crept  into  the  Spanish  universities,  and  notably  into 
the  great  establishment  at  Salamanca.  The  degrees  of  doctor 
and  master  were  given  to  those  who  were  unworthy  of  the  distinc- 
tion, and  even  to  those  who  had  never  studied  at  all  ;  while  an 
immense  number  of  the  tradesmen  and  townspeople  fraudulently 
matriculated  as  students  in  order  that  they  might  find  themselves 
removed  from  the  jurisdiction  of  the  king's  court,  and  subject 
only  to  the  milder  rule  of  the  university  tribunals.  Ferdinand 
the  Catholic  was  not  a  man  to  endure  such  assaults  upon  the 
supreme  power,  and  a  royal  ordinance  with  the  euphemistic 
name  of  a  Concordia  was  promulgated  in  1492,  confirmed  by 
Bull  of  Alexander  VI.  in  1493,  and  followed  up  by  still  more 
trenchant  rescripts  of  Fez-dinand  in  1494  (Medino  del  Campo) 
and  1497  (Alcala  de  Henares),1  by  which  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
university  courts  was  grievously  curtailed,  and  the  matriculation 
of  any  but  bondjide  students  condemned  and  prohibited.2 

1  As  to  the  development  of  Spanish  Universities  generally,  under  the  Catholic 
sovereigns,  and  more  especially  as  to  the  establishment  of  Alcala  by  Ximenez 
(1498-1508),  see  post,  volume  ii. 

2  The  following  notes  as  to  universities  or  colleges  established  in  Spain  before 
the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century,   but  which  have  now  ceased  to  exist,  may  be 
possibly  interesting: — 

(1)  Alcala. — Founded  by  Ximenez,  1510.     Re-formed  at  Madrid,  1836. 

(2)  Avila. — Founded  by  Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  1482  ;  and  endowed  out  of  the 

proceeds  of  Jewish  confiscations.     Suppressed,  1807. 

(3)  Gerona. — Founded  in  1446  by  Alfonso  IV.  of  Aragon.     Merged  in  the  more 

modern  foundation  (1714)  of  Cervera,  which  was  itself  suppressed  in  1837. 

(4)  Huesca. — Founded,  1461  ;  suppressed,  1848. 

(5)  Lerida. — Founded,  1300;  suppressed,  1714. 

(6)  Palma. — A  college  was  founded  here  in  1280  by  the  celebrated  Raymond  Lull, 

more  especially  for  the  study  of  Oriental  languages.  In  1483  an  academic 
status,  equal  to  that  possessed  by  Lerida,  was  granted  to  the  institution, 
which  thus  and  then  first  became  a  university.  But  the  Papal  sanction  was 
not  obtained  until  1673,  when  Clement  X.  was  with  difficulty  induced  to 
issue  a  Bull  approving  the  charter.  In  1830,  after  having  enjoyed  a  precari- 
ous existence  from  1816,  the  university  was  merged  in  that  of  Cervera. 

(7)  Sahagun. — Established  as  an  Estudio  General  by  Alfonso  VI.,  circ.  1121,  in 

the  monastery  of  St.  Benedict,  at  Sahagun,  which  had  itself  been  founded 
by  Alfonso  III.  in  905.  The  school  was  raised  to  the  position  of  a  uni- 
versity by  Clement  VII.  in  1534,  and  suppressed  in  1807.  See  Morales, 
Viaje,  34 ;  Josefe  Perez,  Hist,  de  Sahagun,  ed.  Fr.  Romualdo  Escalona, 
Madrid,  1782. 

(8)  Sigiienza. — Founded  in  1472;  reduced  in  1770;  suppressed  in  1807. 


1497.] 


THE  UNIVERSITIES. 


297 


Of  the  truly  magnificent  foundation  in  the  reign  of  the 
Catholic  kings,  which  perpetuated  the  munificence,  not  of 
Ferdinand  nor  of  Isabella,  but  of  Ximenez  de  Cisneros,  it  will 
be  more  appropriate  to  speak  when  we  are  considering  the  life 
and  the  works  of  the  great  Cardinal  of  Spain. 

The  universities  now  existing  in  Spain  are  as  follows : — 

(i)  Barcelona,  said  to  have  been  founded  in  1430  or  1459. 

!2J  Granada,  1526  or  1537. 

3)  Madrid,  1836. 

4)  Oviedo,  1557  or  1604. 

5)  Salamanca,  iJ79- 

6)  Santiago,  1501. 

7)  Saragossa,  1474- 

!8)  Seville,  1256  or  1502. 

9)  Valencia,  1245. 

(10)  Valladolid  1260. 

"The  universities  of  Spain  are  now  ten — Madrid,  with  6672  students  ;  Barce- 
lona, with  2459 ;  Valencia,  2118  ;  Seville,  1382  ;  Granada,  1225  ;  Valladolid,  880  ; 
Santiago  de  Compostella,  779  ;  Saragossa,  771 ;  Salamanca,  372  ;  and  Oviedo,  with 
216 ;  making  a  total  of  16,874  university  students.  The  number  of  regular  pro- 
fessors is  415,  with  240  supernumeraries  and  assistants,  making  a  total  of  655 — 
that  is,  one  professor  to  every  twenty-six  students."  Went  worth  Webster,  Spain, 
p.  182. 


298 


CHAPTER  XXVII. 
FOREIGN  POLICY  OF  ARAGON. 

(1276-1327.) 
I. — Peter  the  Great. 

PETER  THE  THIRD  OF  ARAGON,  the  eldest  son  of  James  the  Con- 
queror, succeeded  to  the  crown  of  his  father  in  1276.  Yet  he 
prudently  refused  to  assume  the  style  and  title  of  King  of 
Aragon  until  he  was  acknowledged  by  the  States-General,  and 
solemnly  crowned  at  Saragossa ;  and  when  the  ceremony  was 
performed  by  the  Archbishop  of  Tarragona  he  gave  further  proof 
of  his  prudence  by  a  formal  and  public  protest  to  the  effect  that 
he  received  the  crown  from  the  hands  of  the  archbishop  in 
nowise  as  the  gift  of  the  Romish  Church,  and  that  he  neither 
directly  nor  indirectly  accepted  the  shameful  submission  that 
had  been  made  by  his  namesake  and  ancestor,  Peter  II.,  to 
Pope  Innocent  at  Rome.1  He  would  reign,  he  said,  as  the  inde- 
pendent king  of  an  independent  people.  Yet,  in  spite  of  all  his 
prudence,  the  Catalans  were  found  to  complain  that  he  did  not, 
after  his  coronation  as  King  of  Aragon  at  Saragossa,  immediately 
proceed  to  Barcelona  to  confirm  the  laws  and  customs  of  Cata- 
lonia, and  they  actually  rose  in  rebellion  against  their  acknow- 
ledged sovereign  on  account  of  this  constitutional  slight.  But 
this  local  petulance  was  of  no  long  duration,  and  the  Catalans 
were  soon  numbered  among  the  most  loyal  subjects,  as  they 
were  ever  the  boldest  soldiers,  of  the  King  of  Aragon. 

The  difference  between  the  political  condition  of  Castile  and 

1  The  order  for  the  coronation  and  consecration  of  a  king  of  Aragon,  as  laid 
down  and  prescribed  by  Peter  III.,  is  exceedingly  interesting.  It  is  reprinted  in 
the  Documentos  Ineditos,  torn,  xiv.,  p.  555  et  seq.  The  king  was  to  put  the  crown 
upon  his  own  head  :  Y  que  no  le  ayude  niuguna  persuna,  ni  el  arzobispo  ni 
ninguna persona  de  cualquiera  condition  que  sea,  ni  adobar,  ni  tocar  la  font.  Ibid., 
P-  563- 


FOREIGN  POLICY  OF  ARAGON.  299 

Aragon  at  the  close  of  the  thirteenth  century  is  very  remarkable, 
and  must  never  be  lost  sight  of  by  the  student  of  Spanish  history ; 
for  in  Aragon  and  Valencia  from  the  death  of  King  James  I. 
there  were  no  more  Moors  to  conquer,  and  the  fighting 
men  of  Aragon  were  compelled  to  turn  their  eyes  and  their 
arms  abroad — to  Sicily,  Naples,  Rome  and  even  Constantinople — 
while  the  ecclesiastics  sought  to  combat  rather  the  heretic  than 
the  infidel,  and  the  lawyers  of  every  degree  had  leisure  to  criti- 
cise the  constitutional  shortcomings  of  their  kings.  Thus, 
throughout  the  whole  of  the  fourteenth  century,  while  Castile 
was  the  land  of  civil  war  and  domestic  intrigue,  Aragon  was  the 
country  of  foreign  adventure  and  constitutional  purism.  The 
kings  of  Castile  had  the  virtues  and  the  vices  of  the  warrior  ; 
the  kings  of  Aragon  those  of  the  politician.  It  was  not  until 
these  complementary  characteristics  were  fairly  united  by 
Ferdinand  and  Isabella  that  the  true  greatness  of  Spain  became 
apparent. 

The  troubles  and  the  glories  of  the  life  of  Peter  III.  came 
alike  from  across  the  sea. 

One  of  the  most  romantic  and  complicated  chapters  in  the 
history  of  mediaeval  Italy — when  popes  strove  with  emperors, 
and  Frenchmen  with  Italians,  and  Guelphs  with  Ghibellines ; 
when  crowns  were  flung  about  like  tennis  balls,  and  excom- 
munications flew  as  thick  as  javelins — was  the  great  struggle 
of  the  thirteenth  century  for  the  possession  of  the  ancient  and 
famous  island  of  Sicily.1  Of  the  origin  of  the  historic  dispute  ; 
of  the  excommunication  of  the  Emperor  Frederick  II.,  of  his 
elder  son,  Conrad,  Duke  of  Suabia,  and  of  the  younger,  Man- 
fred, King  of  Sicily ;  of  the  donation  of  Sicily  by  the  French 

1  Naples  and  Sicily  were  conquered  by  the  Normans  (1058),  under  Roger,  son 
of  Tancred,  who  took  the  title  of  Count  of  Sicily.     His  son,  Roger,  took  the  title 
of  King  of  the  United  and  Independent  Monarchy  of  the  two  Sicilies,  1129-31. 
Roger,  styled  Roger  II.,  was  succeeded  by: — 

William  I.,  the  Bad  1154-1166. 

William  II.,  the  Good      1166-1189. 

Constance 1189-1189. 

Tancred        ...         ...         ...         1189-1194. 

William  III.,  dethroned  by  the  Emperor  Henry  VI., 

who  was  succeeded  by  his  son     ...        ...        ...        1194-1197. 

Frederick  II.  (Emperor,  1215-1246)       1197-1250. 

Conrad,  Emperor  and  King        1250-1254. 

Conradin,  King,  executed  in  1268          ...         ...         ...         1254-1258. 

Manfred,  King,  killed  in  1266  by  Charles  of  Anjou, 

who  succeeded  him  as  king 1258-1266. 

Note. — For  the  continuation  of  the  succession,  from  the  division  of  Naples 
and  Sicily  in  1282,  see  fast,  vol.  ii. 


300  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

Pope  Urban  IV.,  to  the  French  Prince  Charles  of  Anjou  ;  of  the 
escape  of  John  of  Procida,  and  the  sudden  turn  of  the  wheel  of 
politics  by  the  election  of  the  Italian,  Nicolas  III.,  to  the 
primacy  of  the  Christian  world ;  of  the  confederation  of  Rome 
and  Constantinople  against  Anjou  and  France,  it  is  impossible 
to  speak  here  in  any  detail.  It  must  suffice  to  recall  that  Peter 
of  Aragon  had  married,  in  1 260,  the  Princess  Constance,  daughter 
of  Manfred,  King  of  Sicily,  and  grand-daughter  of  the  great 
Emperor  Frederick  II.  of  Germany.  If  a  German  marriage  had 
led  Alfonso  X.  to  seek  an  Imperial  crown  at  the  hands  of  popes 
and  electors  far  away  beyond  the  frontiers  of  Castile,  Peter  III. 
found  himself,  on  his  accession  to  the  throne  of  Aragon,  a 
claimant  to  the  crown  of  an  island  kingdom  within  easy  reach 
of  his  coasts. 

Manfred,  King  of  Sicily,  had  fallen  in  battle  at  Benevento, 
maintaining  his  rights  against  the  papal  pretender,  Charles  of 
Anjou,  in  1266 ;  and  Charles  of  Anjou  had  taken  possession 
of  Sicily.  Conradin,  the  last  titular  Duke  of  Suabia,  a  grandson 
of  the  Emperor  Frederick  II.,  and  nephew  of  the  fallen  Manfred 
— a  youth  of  sixteen  years  of  age — had  himself  perished  by  the 
hands  of  the  executioner  in  1 268,  a  victim  to  the  tyranny  of  the 
French  usurper.  As  he  stood  on  the  scaffold,  in  the  great 
square  at  Naples,  the  young  prince  had  taken  off  his  right  hand 
glove l  and  flung  it  down  among  the  crowd  below,  a  royal  gage 
or  token,  crying  to  the  world  for  vengeance.  The  precious 
relic  was  picked  up,  and  carefully  preserved  by  an  Aragonese 
knight,  who  found  means  to  convey  it  across  the  sea  to  the 
court  of  his  sovereign,  where  it  was  delivered  to  the  lady 
Constance,  the  wife  of  Peter  of  Aragon,  the  daughter  of 
Manfred,  the  aunt  of  Conradin,  and  the  rightful  Queen  of 
Sicily.  But  Charles  of  Anjou,  supported  by  the  Pope  and 
Philip  of  France,  remained  in  possession  of  that  fair  island,  and 
vexed  the  inhabitants  with  unheard  of  extortions  and  cruelty 
for  sixteen  long  and  dreadful  years  (1266-1282). 

Ever  since  the  execution  of  Conradin,  Peter  had  naturally 
turned  his  eyes  towards  Sicily,  but  neither  he  nor  his  father 
had  made  any  attempt  to  interfere  in  the  affairs  of  that  king- 
dom. Yet  on  his  accession  to  the  crown  of  Aragon  his  first 
care  had  been  the  unobtrusive  preparation  of  a  fleet,  which  was 
constructed  in  the  ports  of  Valencia  and  Barcelona,  not  only 
with  astonishing  despatch,  but  with  no  less  admirable  secrecy. 
The  affairs  of  Sicily  gradually  engrossed  the  attention  of 

1  Quintana  says  it  was  a  ring. 


1282.]  FOREIGN  POLICY  OF  ARAGON.  301 

Europe  ;  and  even  the  Emperor  of  the  East,  Michael  Palaeologus, 
ranged  himself  amongst  the  enemies  of  Anjou.  After  the  death 
of  Nicholas  III.  in  1280,  a  Frenchman  once  more  ruled  the 
Christian  world  as  Martin  IV. ;  and  Peter  of  Aragon  was  excom- 
municated. But  the  signal  for  combat  at  closer  quarters  was 
not  any  change  of  policy  by  popes  or  by  kings,  but  that  uprising 
of  the  people  of  Sicily,  exasperated  beyond  the  limits  of  human 
endurance  by  their  foreign  oppressors — that  wild  and  sudden 
massacre  of  the  hated  French  throughout  the  island — that  is 
known  and  spoken  of  in  history  as  the  Sicilian  Vespers  (1282).1 

Charles  of  Anjou,  as  might  have  been  expected,  was  enraged 
at  this  popular  revolt ;  and  his  not  unreasonable  indignation 
was  intensified  by  his  natural  ferocity.  Deeply  wounded,  at 
once  by  the  loss  of  his  companions,  the  loss  of  his  kingdom,  and 
the  loss  of  his  credit,  he  hastened  to  collect  a  fleet  and  an  army, 
and  with  threats  of  terrible  vengeance  against  his  Sicilian  sub- 
jects, he  proceeded  to  blockade  Messina.  The  citizens  prepared 
for  a  gallant  defence.  The  time  for  intervention  had  at  length 
arrived,  and  Peter  of  Aragon  set  sail  with  his  newly-constructed 
fleet  from  Barcelona. 

Prudent  as  ever,  and  uncertain  how  he  might  be  received, 
even  as  a  deliverer  of  the  Sicilian  people,  the  king  steered, 
not  for  Messina,  but  for  the  coast  of  Barbary  ;  and  it  was  only 
after  a  pretended  campaign  against  the  Moors  in  North  Africa 
that  he  suffered  himself  to  be  persuaded  by  successive  Sicilian 
envoys  to  carry  out  his  own  well-considered  plans,  and  to 
advance  to  the  relief  of  Messina.  He  arrived  off  the  coast  of 
Sicily  in  September,  1282,  and  was  immediately  proclaimed 
king  amid  the  acclamations  of  the  inhabitants. 

His  appearance  before  Messina,  with  his  Aragonese  soldiers 
and  sailors,  and  some  irregular  troops  from  Mauretania,  the 
famous  Almogavares,"  was  the  signal  for  the  immediate  raising 

1  Eight-and-twenty  thousand  Frenchmen  are  said  to  have  been  killed.     The 
story  of  the  Sicilian  Vespers  and  of  the  revolution  that  followed  in  Sicily  is  fully 
told  by  Muratori.     As  to  the  influence  of  John  of  Procida  in  the  national  rising,  see 
Un  periodo  delle  htoria  Siciliane,  by  Michaele  Amasi  (1842). 

2  "These  Almogavares,  of  whom  mention  has  so  frequently  been  made,  lived 
only  for  fighting,"  says  Zurita,  "and  never  inhabited  either  cities  or  populous 
communities,  but  were,  like  wild  beasts,  ready  to  be  let  loose  on  their  prey.     Their 
arms  were— spear,  sword,  dagger,  and  mace,  but  they  had  no  defensive  armour. 
They  fought  generally  on  foot,  but  if  they  killed  a  horseman  and  captured  the 
horse,  they  could  use  it  in  battle.     Their  way  of  fighting,  when  assailed  by  the 
cavalry,  was  to  place  the  handle  of  the  lance  against  their  feet,  to  hold  out  the 
sharp  point  against  the  horse,  to  spit  the  animal,  and  then,  with  the  rapidity  of 
lightning,  fall  on  the  encumbered  horseman  and  despatch  him. "    Dunham,  iv. ,  pp. 
63,  64. 


302  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

of  the  siege,  and  the  relief  of  the  blockaded  city.  Charles  of 
Anjou  fled  into  Calabria.  The  Sicilians,  relieved  from  the 
hourly  approaching  danger  of  famine  or  massacre,  accorded  a 
hearty  and  grateful  welcome  to  their  new  king.  The  destruc- 
tion of  the  French  fleet  by  a  small  squadron  of  Catalonian 
ships,  under  the  command  of  the  gallant  Roger  de  Lauria,1 
completed  the  triumph  of  Aragon ;  and  the  generosity  of  Peter, 
who  refused  to  kill  a  single  prisoner  of  the  4000  that  fell  into 
his  hands,  but  enlisted  the  greater  part  of  them  in  his  own 
army,  and  dismissed  the  malcontents  with  an  abundant  viaticum 
to  their  own  homes,  deservedly  raised  his  reputation  as  a 
soldier,  a  king,  and  a  man. 

Charles,  when  he  was  at  length  driven  out  of  Reggio, 
and  forced  to  abandon  Calabria,  defied  his  successful  rival  to 
knightly  combat  or  wager  of  battle  for  the  possession  of  Sicily ; 
and  proposed  that  100  knights  of  France  should  meet  as  many 
Sicilian  and  Aragonese  champions  in  the  lists,  in  a  solemn 
tourney  at  Bordeaux,  in  the  summer  of  the  following  year, 
when  Edward  I.  of  England  would  keep  the  lists  and  decide 
upon  the  issue  of  the  combat.  This  strange  challenge,  favour- 
able as  it  was  to  the  vanquished  Angevins,  was  accepted  by  the 
victorious  Aragonese  ;  and  the  1st  of  June,  1283,  was  fixed  for 
the  combat.  Peter  at  once  summoned  his  queen  and  her  sons 
to  Sicily,  and  having  provided  for  the  administration  of  the 
island  during  his  absence,2  set  sail  on  his  gallant  errand  for 
France  by  way  of  Spain,  and  arrived,  after  an  adventurous 
journey,  true  to  his  tryst,  on  the  31st  of  May,  at  Bordeaux. 
King  Edward,  the  judge,  was  not  present.  The  combat  had 
been  forbidden  by  the  Pope  ;  but  every  preparation  had  been 
made  for  the  surprise  and  slaughter  of  the  Aragonese.  The 
tourney  had  been  turned  into  a  trap.  Peter,  happily  fore- 
warned, escaped  in  the  disguise  of  a  travelling  merchant  into 
Spain  ;  and  Charles  was  baulked  of  his  prey.  But  if  treachery 
had  failed  to  remove  an  obnoxious  rival,  the  Church  was  ready 

1  Roger  de  Lauria  was  of  Italian  blood,  but  Aragonese  by  adoption.  The 
name  is  spelt  Loria  and  del  Oria.  He  wrote  it  himself  Luria  as  a  Catalan,  but  the 
modern  Castilian  spelling  adopted  by  French  and  English  writers  is  de  Lauria. 

The  command  of  the  fleet  had  been  entrusted,  in  the  first  instance,  to  En 
Jacme  Perez,  a  natural  son  of  the  king.  But  he  had  proved  unequal  to  his  charge, 
even  though  he  was  seconded  by  the  gallant  Catalan,  Pedro  de  Queralt,  who  con- 
tinued to  hold  a  subordinate  command  under  Roger  de  Lauria. 

2 The  administration  included  the  Queen  Constance,  heiress  of  Sicily;  the 
Infante,  James  of  Aragon  ;  Alaymo  di  Lantini,  the  Justiciary  ;  Roger  de  Lauria, 
the  Admiral,  and  the  celebrated  John  of  Procida. 


1284.]  FOREIGN  POLICY  OF  ARAGON.  303 

to  lend  a  helping  hand  to  the  French  claimant.  The  Papal 
excommunication  of  Peter  of  Aragon 1  was  renewed  in  language 
more  vigorous  and  more  precise  than  before.  The  king  was 
formally  deposed.  Every  one  who  obeyed  him  was  ipso  facto 
excommunicated.  His  subjects  in  Spain  and  Sicily  were  alike 
released  from  their  allegiance,  and  all  Christian  princes  were 
urged  to  dispossess  him  of  his  kingdoms,  in  the  name  of  Caesar 
at  Rome. 

But  the  Papal  thunders  were  little  heeded  by  the  sturdy 
and  independent  Aragonese,  and  least  of  all  by  Roger  de 
Lauria,  who  then  commanded  the  king's  fleet  in  the  Sicilian 
waters.  This  gallant  admiral,  so  justly  celebrated  in  the  naval 
annals  of  Aragon  and  of  the  western  Mediterranean,  was  born 
at  Scala,  in  Calabria,  about  the  year  1250.  His  father  had 
fallen  by  the  side  of  Manfred,  King  of  Sicily,  at  the  battle  of 
Benevento.  Adopted  and  brought  to  Spain  by  Queen  Con- 
stance, the  youth  gave  early  proofs  of  his  aptitude  for  naval 
warfare,  and  after  many  feats  of  valour  in  the  Sicilian  campaign, 
he  was  appointed  admiral  of  Aragon  in  1283.  In  June  of  that 
year  he  possessed  himself  of  the  island  of  Malta,  after  a  battle 
celebrated  in  the  history  of  the  two  Sicilies,  when  he  destroyed 
the  Papal  fleet,  and  cut  down  Guillaume  Cornut,  the  Angevin 
commander,  with  his  own  hand.  Another  fleet,  fitted  out  with 
much  pains  and  many  Papal  blessings  and  cursings,  was  totally 
destroyed  the  next  year,  in  the  Bay  of  Naples  (1284),  by  the 
same  gallant  sailor ;  and  Prince  Charles,  the  eldest  son  of  the 
usurper  of  Sicily,  was  taken  prisoner  and  brought  to  Messina. 
The  Sicilians  would  have  slain  the  young  prince  in  return  for 
the  murder  of  Conradin  by  his  father ;  but  Queen  Constance, 
at  the  risk  of  her  personal  popularity,  saved  her  hereditary 
enemy  from  the  fury  of  her  subjects. 

Meanwhile,  Pope  Martin,  finding  that  his  spiritual  thunder 
had  been  attended  with  such  very  poor  results,  took  upon 
himself  to  make  a  definite  donation  of  Aragon,  Catalonia  and 
Valencia  to  Charles  of  Valois,  younger  son  of  Philip  the  Bold 
of  France,  and  to  proclaim  a  crusade  against  the  Aragonese, 
with  plenary  indulgence  to  every  one  who  should  assist  in  any 
way  in  the  Holy  War,  together  with  all  the  spiritual  privileges 

1The  Bull  of  2ist  March,  1283,  launched  against  Peter  of  Aragon,  was 
followed  by  a  much  more  tremendous  denunciation  and  dispossession  on  the  5th  of 
May,  1284.  It  was  exactly  one  month  after  this  last  spiritual  demonstration  that 
Roger  de  Lauria,  boldly  sailing  northwards  from  Messina,  entirely  destroyed  the 
Papal  and  Angevin  fleet  in  the  Bay  of  Naples, 


304  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

that  were  earned  by  those  who  did  battle  against  the  infidel 
in  Palestine.  The  Aragonese  were  filled  with  alarm.  They 
were  already  excommunicated ;  and  they  were  now  delivered 
over  to  the  savage  secular  arms  of  the  military  scum  of 
Europe.  But  they  turned  in  their  indignation,  not  against  the 
tyrant  at  the  Vatican,  but  against  their  lawful  sovereign  in 
Spain  ;  and  they  urged  the  king  to  abandon  Sicily,  and  to  make 
his  peace  with  Rome.  Over  a  year  before,  in  1283,  the  Cortes 
of  Tarragona  had  remonstrated  against  the  king's  wars,  made 
without  the  consent  of  his  nobles  ;  the  Cortes  of  Saragossa  had 
demanded  the  renewal  of  an  immense  number  of  ancient  fueros 
or  popular  customary  laws,  and  they  had  been  gratified  by  the 
grant  of  the  celebrated  General  Privilege,  the  Magna  Charta  of 
Aragon,  at  the  hands  of  their  ever-prudent  sovereign.  Nor 
were  the  merchants  of  Barcelona  behindhand  in  their  constitu- 
tional remonstrances  and  demands. 

But  the  struggle  of  Peter  of  Aragon  was  not  merely  against 
constitutional  assemblies  and  mercantile  guilds  ;  it  was  not  so 
much  domestic  politics,  however  acute,  or  foreign  wars,  however 
unequal,  that  vexed  his  noble  soul ;  it  was  that  well-nigh  alone, 
and  without  the  sympathy  of  his  most  loyal  subjects,  he  was 
wrestling,  not  only  against  principalities  and  powers,  but  against 
spiritual  wickedness  in  high  places. 

Harassed  as  he  was  at  home  and  abroad,  he  had  yet  found 
occasion  to  betroth  his  eldest  son  Alfonso  to  the  Princess 
Eleanor,  a  daughter  of  Edward  I.  of  England — an  honourable 
and  important  alliance.  But  the  Pope  forbade  the  marriage 
(July,  1283).  It  was  hard  in  the  fourteenth  century  to  kick 
against  the  pricks.  The  king's  own  brother,  James  of  Majorca  ; 
his  justiciary,  Alaymo  di  Lantini,  from  Sicily  ;  the  wretched 
Sancho,  miscalled  the  Brave,  of  Castile  ;  all  were  counted 
amongst  his  enemies.  Edward  of  England  remained  neutral. 
The  emperor  sent  no  help.  Many  of  the  Spanish  nobles  refused 
to  fight  against  Rome.  Yet  the  gallant  Peter,  with  a  handful 
of  followers,  not  only  kept  the  passes  of  the  Eastern  Pyrenees, 
but  made  two  successful  forays  across  the  frontier. 

At  length,  in  May,  1285,  the  crusading  army,  under  orders 
from  Rome,  marched  into  Spanish  Roussillon.  This  mixed 
multitude  of  over  a  hundred  thousand  soldiers  of  the  faith  was 
under  the  spiritual  charge  of  a  cardinal  legate,  entrusted  with 
the  banner  of  St.  Peter,  and  was  commanded  by  Philip  the  Bold 
and  two  princes  of  France,  bearing  the  sacred  oriflamme  of  St. 
Denis.  Perpignan  was  surprised,  and  ruthlessly  sacked.  Elne 


1285.]  FOREIGN  POLICY  OF  ARAGON.  305 

was  carried  by  assault,  and  the  entire  population,  men,  women 
and  children,  were  massacred  by  the  Papal  troops.  Not  even 
at  Beziers  was  the  destruction  more  complete.  The  spiritual 
sword  had  ever  a  sharp  edge.  Papal  legates  were  commanders 
who  gave  no  quarter.  Moving  on  southwards,  and  having 
surprised  an  unfrequented  path  by  the  treachery  of  a  Catalonian 
monk,  the  invaders  crossed  the  Pyrenees  and  sat  down  before 
the  strong  fortresses  of  Gerona.  Meanwhile  the  noble  spirit  of 
Peter  had  awakened  the  patriotism  of  many  of  his  subjects. 
The  Union  declared  in  his  favour.  Gerona  held  out  against  the 
French  ;  and  the  courage  of  the  Aragonese  troops  revived  with 
the  appearance  of  the  gallant  Roger  de  Lauria  from  Sicily,  in 
command  of  a  small  squadron,  with  which  he  inflicted  a  crushing 
defeat  upon  the  French  fleet  in  that  historic  bay1  of  Rosas 
where  the  Rhodians  had  first  moored  their  ships  2000  years 
before.  Gerona  nevertheless  capitulated  on  the  13th  September, 
1285  ;  but  the  besiegers  were  so  completely  demoralised,  that 
within  a  week  they  turned  their  steps  once  more  to  the  north- 
ward, and  abandoned  any  further  project  of  a  holy  war  in 
Aragon.  King  Philip,  sick  unto  death,  borne  in  his  uneasy 
litter,  with  his  two  sons,  titular  Kings  of  Aragon  and  of  Navarre, 
the  cardinal  legate  with  the  banner  of  St.  Peter's  from  Rome, 
and  the  French  priests  with  the  oriflamme  of  St.  Denis  from 
Paris,  were  glad  to  make  their  way  across  the  eastern  Pyrenees 
with  all  that  was  left  of  the  100,000  ruffians  that  had  entered 
Elne  not  four  months  before.2 

Gerona,  after  a  three  weeks'  occupation,  was  retaken  by  the 
Spaniards  ;  and  the  son  of  St.  Louis  died,  where  so  many  better 
men  had  been  done  to  death  by  his  orders,  in  the  blood-stained 
city  of  Perpignan.  Nor  did  the  heroic  Peter  long  survive  him. 
Stricken  down  by  fever  in  the  moment  of  victory,  he  lived  at 
least  to  see  the  last  of  the  invaders  driven  beyond  the  frontier. 
He  died  when  his  work  was  done,  a  patriot  king,  a  faithful 
knight,  a  man  brave  and  merciful,  constant  and  true,  one  of  the 
few  mediaeval  sovereigns  whom  we  can  honestly  admire,  and 
who  is  not  undeserving  of  the  surname  of  the  Great.3 

1  All  the  ships  that  were  not  sunk  or  captured  by  De  Lauria  were  burned  by 
the  French  admiral,  who  was  compelled  to  escape  by  land  into  his  own  country, 
almost  within  sight  of  the  harbour  of  Rosas.     Quintana,  Vida  di  Roger  de  I-auria. 

2  25th  May  to  2$th  September. 

3  Pedro  III. ,  el  rey  masgrandey  mas  glorioso  de  toda  nuestra  historia.   Castelar, 
Eitudios  Historicos  sobre  la  edad  media,  p.  32. 

The  year  1285  proved  fatal  to  some  of  the  leading  personages  of  those  stirring 
times.     Charles  of  Anjou  died  in  January ;  Martin  IV.  in  March  ;  Philip  the  Fair 
in  October ;  and  Peter  of  Aragon  in  November. 
VOL.  i.  20 


306  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

II. — Alfonso  III.  of  Ar agon. 

Alfonso,  the  heir  to  the  crown  of  Aragon,  was,  at  the  time 
of  his  father's  death,  on  his  way  with  Admiral  Roger  de  Lauria 
to  reduce  the  Majorcans  to  subjection  ;  nor  did  he  return  to 
the  Continent  until  he  had  accomplished  the  object  of  the 
expedition,  and  was  free  to  despatch  De  Lauria  to  Sicily  to 
maintain  the  rights  of  his  brother  James,  to  whom  that  kingdom 
had  been  assigned  by  their  father. 

The  use  of  the  regal  title  in  the  letter  in  which  Alfonso 
III.  informed  his  subjects  of  the  conquest  of  the  Balearic  Islands, 
offended  the  constitutional  purists,  as  being  an  improper  as- 
sumption of  regal  authority  before  the  usual  oath  had  been 
administered  by  the  justiciary.  The  king  apologised.  But  the 
commons  became  more  bold.  And  their  increasing  demands 
led  to  the  grant  by  Alfonso,  in  December,  1288,  of  that  extra- 
ordinary Privilege  of  Union,  or  recognition  of  the  right  of  the 
subjects  to  combine  and  make  war  on  the  sovereign,  which  was 
perhaps  the  greatest  concession  that  was  ever  made  by  a  reigning 
sovereign  to  his  own  subjects  in  the  history  of  constitutional 
development. 

The  reign  of  Alfonso  was  spent  almost  entirely  in  negotia- 
tions respecting  the  disposal  of  the  crown  of  Sicily,  in  which 
Edward  I.  of  England,  one  of  the  few  men  who  was  trusted 
by  all  parties  concerned,  played  the  part  of  a  patient  and 
indefatigable  mediator.  And  it  was  only  in  1291,  at  the  Con- 
gress of  Tarragona,  that  a  compact  or  treaty  was  formulated 
and  agreed  to,  in  which,  among  other  less  important  articles,  it 
was  provided  that  Alfonso,  making  his  submission  to  the  Pope, 
was  to  be  recognised  as  King  of  Aragon  and  Majorca,  and  should 
marry  his  betrothed  bride,  Princess  Eleanor  of  England,  and 
that  his  brother  James  should  abandon  all  his  claims  to  the 
crown  of  Sicily  to  the  young  Charles  of  Anjou.  But  the  com- 
pact was  rendered  void,  and  everything  was  once  more  thrown 
into  confusion  by  the  death  of  Alfonso  within  a  few  weeks  of 
the  signature  of  the  treaty,  when  his  brother  James,  the  dis- 
possessed King  of  Sicily,  succeeded  him  as  the  lawful  sovereign 
of  Aragon. 

III. — James  III. 

The  negotiations  of  the  last  five  years  were  now  promptly 
renewed.  But  the  conditions  of  the  political  contest  were 


1295.]  FOREIGN  POLICY  OF  ARAGON.  307 

entirely  changed.  There  was  but  one  Spanish  claimant  to  the 
crowns  of  Aragon  and  of  Sicily.  There  was  no  Pope  at  Rome. 
For  two  years  and  three  months  after  the  death  of  Nicholas  IV.1 
the  Christian  world  was  without  a  head.  The  quarrels  and 
intrigues  of  the  cardinals  at  length  permitted  the  election  of 
the  humble  devotee,  Peter  of  Murrone,  as  Celestine  V.  But  in 
August,  1294,  that  truly  honest,  pious  and  honourable  man, 
unable  to  rule  over  Church  and  State  in  such  evil  and  turbulent 
days,  resigned  his  office,  after  a  pontificate  of  but  four  months' 
duration,  into  the  hands  of  the  cardinal  electors.  His  successor 
was  more  promptly  chosen,  and  he  was  a  man  of  a  very  different 
stamp.  For  he  was  that  Cardinal  Cayetani  who,  under  the  title 
of  Boniface  VIII.,  ruled  the  Roman  world  with  the  vigour, 
though  not  with  the  success,  of  Hildebrand  and  of  Innocent. 
His  first  act  was  sufficiently  characteristic  of  the  man :  it  was 
to  cast  Celestine,  his  gentle  predecessor,  into  prison,  lest  under 
any  possible  combination  of  circumstances  he  should  prove  an 
awkward  rival.  Celestine  died  after  a  confinement  of  only  ten 
months  ;  and  twenty  years  later,  the  prisoner  of  Pope  Boniface 
VIII.  was  made  a  saint  by  Pope  Clement  V. 

The  next  care  of  Boniface  was  to  settle  the  affairs  of  Sicily  ; 
and  a  treaty  or  arrangement  was  signed  at  Anarqui,  in  1295,  by 
which  the  King  of  Aragon  abandoned  all  his  rights  over  Sicily 
to  the  Pope,  broke  off  his  marriage  with  Isabella  of  Castile,  and 
was  betrothed  to  Blanche,  daughter  of  Charles  of  Naples  and 
Anjou.  On  these  conditions  Aragon  was  granted  by  the  Pope 
to  King  James  ;  all  excommunications  and  interdicts  were  with- 
drawn, and  by  two  secret  articles,  the  King  of  Aragon  was 
invested  with  the  sovereignty  of  the  islands  of  Corsica  and 
Sardinia ;  while  the  Catalans  were  to  furnish  the  French  King 
with  forty  ships  of  war  for  service  against  the  common  ally, 
Edward  of  England.  The  arrangement  was  confirmed  by  the 
Cortes  of  Barcelona,  with  many  murmurs ;  and  the  marriage  of 
King  James  with  Blanche  of  Anjou  was  celebrated  at  Villa 
Beltran  on  1st  November,  1295.  But  the  day  after  the  arrival 
of  the  French  princess,  strange  visitors  were  seen  on  the  coast 
of  Aragon.  The  Sicilian  ambassadors,  imperfectly  informed  as 
to  the  provisions  of  the  Papal  treaty,  arrived  to  ask  the  assist- 
ance of  the  king  against  their  common  enemies.  When  they 
were  admitted  to  audience,  and  were  at  length  informed  of 
the  royal  renunciation,  "  they  took  it,"  says  the  old  chronicler, 

1  In  May,  1292. 


308  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

"  like  a  sentence  of  death". l  One  of  the  ambassadors,  Cataldo 
Ruffo,  indeed,  delivered  a  passionate  harangue,  and  reproached 
the  king  before  his  court  and  his  bride  with  his  base  desertion 
of  his  faithful  Sicilians.  "  Oft  times  have  we  heard,  Sir  King," 
said  the  bold  envoy,  "of  vassals  who  have  deserted  their  lord, 
but  never  have  we  heard  of  a  lord  who  has  abandoned  his 
vassals".  These  were  the  marriage  greetings  of  James  and 
Blanche  of  Aragon.  And  then  the  ambassadors  rent  their 
clothes  before  the  whole  court,  and  returned  to  Sicily,  where 
the  Parliament  of  Palermo  at  once  proclaimed  Fadrique  of 
Aragon,  younger  brother  of  the  deserter,  as  constitutional  King 
of  Sicily  (15th  January,  1296). 

Fadrique  was  not  unworthy  of  his  descent  from  James  I. 
and  Peter  III.  ;  and  while  his  brother  was  doing  homage  at 
Rome  for  Corsica  and  Sardinia,  which  he  had  no  right  to  govern, 
and  for  Aragon,  which  Boniface  had  no  right  to  grant,  Fadrique 
of  Sicily  was  putting  his  kingdom  into  a  state  of  defence  against 
all  comers ;  and  he  actually  defeated  an  expedition  despatched 
against  him  by  his  brother  of  Aragon,  near  Messina.  Yet 
might  not  one  little  island  resist  the  temporal  and  spiritual 
arms  of  all  Europe.  A  second  fleet,  headed  by  the  invincible 
Roger  de  Lauria,  completely  destroyed  the  Sicilian  navy  at 
Cape  Orlando  in  July,  1299-  But  Don  Fadrique  did  not  sur- 
render. The  French  had  no  mind  to  take  possession  of  so  very 
thorny  a  gift ;  and  Boniface  was  forced  to  reproach  his  vassal, 
the  King  of  Aragon,  for  the  incompleteness  of  his  victoiy  over 
his  own  subjects,  and  his  own  brother  in  Sicily.  But  his  re- 
proaches were  of  no  avail.  The  Catalans  had  had  enough  of 
Papal  service,  and  James  found  some  pretext  for  remaining  in 
Aragon.  It  fell  to  Charles  of  Valois,  a  brother  of  Philip  of 
France,  invested  by  Boniface  with  the  old  Roman  title  of  Vicar 
of  the  Empire,  to  undertake  the  reduction  of  Sicily.  At  the 
head  of  a  large  army  of  French  and  Neapolitans  and  Romans, 
raised  by  His  Holiness,  and  embarked  on  board  a  numerous  fleet, 
Charles  set  out  for  Messina  in  the  spring  of  the  year  1302. 

The  expedition  completely  failed  ;  and  the  adventurers  were 
glad  to  agree  to  a  treaty,  by  which,  in  spite  of  the  continued 
opposition  of  the  Pope,  Sicily  was  secured  to  the  brave  Fadrique 
and  his  sturdy  Sicilian  subjects.2  On  his  death,  indeed,  the 

1  The  speech  will  be  found  in  full  in  Quintana,  Vida  de  Roger  de  Lauria. 

2  The  ever-victorious  Roger  de  Lauria,  who  had  contributed  so  largely  to  the 
ultimate  success  of  the  by  no  means  grateful  Fadrique,  retired  into  Aragon  after 
the  peace  of  1302,  and  died  at  Valencia  in  1305. 


1323.]  FOREIGN  POLICY  OF  ARAGON.  309 

kingdom  was  to  revert  to  Charles  or  his  heirs,  a  very  poor 
exchange  for  an  immediate  crown,  granted,  guaranteed  and 
supported  by  Rome  itself.  But  Rome  was  no  longer  the  Rome 
of  Gregory  or  of  Innocent.  The  masterful  Boniface  was  to  die 
but  a  year  later,  flouted  by  the  King  of  France,  and  insulted  by 
Sciarra  Colonna.  His  immediate  successor  Benedict  XI.  was 
poisoned  at  Rome,  and  within  two  years  a  French  bishop,  the 
servant  and  vassal  of  the  King  of  France,  had  abandoned  the 
ancient  seat  of  empire.1 

King  Fadrique  being  now  in  no  further  need  of  defenders, 
and  King  James  III.  undisturbed  in  Aragon,  the  Catalan  ad- 
venturers and  allies  in  Sicily,  deprived  of  their  occupation  by 
the  peace  of  1302,  set  out  from  Messina  to  conquer  the  Levant. 
Their  successes  and  reverses  in  Asia  Minor  aud  Roumelia,  their 
victories  over  Greek  emperors  and  Turkish  pashas,  the  conquest 
of  Greece  and  the  acquisition  of  the  title  of  Duke  of  Athens  for 
the  King  of  Sicily,  these  things  form  rather  a  part  of  the 
history  of  the  Eastern  Empire  than  of  eastern  Spain.  Yet  the 
expedition  was  made  by  Spanish  adventurers,  and  the  glory  and 
romance  of  their  many  victories  (1302-1313)  is  a  part  of  the 
rich  heritage  of  Spain. 

James  of  Aragon,  after  much  hesitation,  determined  at 
length  in  1323  to  possess  himself  of  his  new  territories  of 
Corsica  and  Sardinia,  which  the  Genoese  and  Pisans,  who  had 
borne  rule  in  those  inhospitable  islands  for  over  three  hundred 
years,  were  forced  to  surrender  to  Aragon.  Sardinia,  after  a 
struggle  of  eight  months,  was  abandoned  in  February  1324. 
Corsica  was  handed  over  to  the  king  only  in  1326 — not  at  the 
bidding  of  a  Pope,  but  at  the  summons  of  a  powerful  fleet. 
Nor  was  it  until  after  the  Slamenlo  or  Estates  of  Sardinia  had 
been  called  together  at  Cagliari  in  1421  by  Alfonso  V.,  that  the 
island  can  be  said  to  have  been  wholly  and  incontestably 
Aragonese.2  Following  the  fortunes  of  that  king,  Sardinia  be- 
came a  part  of  united  Spain  under  Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  and 
afterwards  under  Charles  V.,  and  so  remained  until  1708,  when, 
during  the  war  of  succession,  it  fell  into  the  hands  of  Austria. 
For  ten  years  its  fate  was  uncertain,  and  at  length  by  the  Treaty 
of  London  (9th  August,  1 720)  it  was  formally  ceded  by  Spain 
to  Victor  Amadeo  II.,  Duke  of  Savoy  and  King  of  Sardinia. 

1  Clement  V.  retired  to  Avignon,  5th  July,  1309. 

2  "  The  Spanish  rule  in  the  fourteenth  century  was  not  a  tyranny  ;  and  it  was 
an  enormous  improvement  on  the  government  of  the  Pisans,  the  Genoese  and  the 
Papal  rulers."    Edwards,  Sardinia  and  the  Sards  (1889),  pp.  85,  86. 


310  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

IV. — Raymond  Lull. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  men  of  the  thirteenth  century, 
not  only  in  Spain  but  in  Europe,  was  an  Aragonese  friar  who 
may  challenge  comparison  with  Peter  III.  in  honesty  and 
courage,  with  Alfonso  X.  in  erudition  and  science.  Raymond 
Lull,  by  courtesy  a  saint,  by  accusation  a  rationalist,  the  critic 
at  once  of  Averroes  and  of  Dominic,  was  the  most  learned 
theologian  and  the  most  voluminous  writer  in  Spain  from  the 
death  of  Isidore.  Born  of  a  noble  family  at  Palma  in  the 
island  of  Majorca  in  January,  1235,  the  early  years  of  Raymond 
Lull  were  passed  at  the  gay  court  of  James  I.  of  Aragon. 
About  the  year  1260,  disgusted  with  the  pleasures  of  life,  he 
forsook  the  world,  that  he  might  devote  himself  to  the  con- 
version of  Moslems  and  Jews,  and  more  especially  to  the 
rational  demonstration  of  the  truth  of  Christianity,  and  the 
destruction  of  the  growing  influence  of  Averroism.  Unlike  his 
Aragonese  namesake  and  contemporary,  Saint  Raymond  of  Pena- 
fort,  the  Dominican  lawyer  who  sought  to  combat  heresy  by  the 
inquisition  and  the  stake,  the  Majorcan  student  is  perhaps  the 
first  and  not  the  least  distinguished  of  those  Christian  doctors 
who  preferred  argument  to  persecution,  and  held  that  know- 
ledge and  reason  should  support,  and  not  destroy,  true  religion. 
In  his  first  retirement  near  Palma,  Raymond  studied  Latin  and 
Arabic,  and  wrote  his  Ars  universalis ;  and  at  length,  having 
assumed  the  habit  of  a  tertiary  of  the  Franciscan  order,  he 
sallied  forth  into  the  world,  and  spent  some  forty  years  in 
Spain,  in  France,  in  Italy,  in  Africa,  and  even  on  the  far 
eastern  shores  of  the  Mediterranean,  teaching  rather  than 
preaching,  disputing  rather  than  compelling,  arguing  rather 
than  persecuting,  concerning  himself  rather  with  the  errors  of 
Averroism  than  with  minor  dogmatic  divergencies.  He  lectured 
at  Montpellier,  at  Paris  and  at  Padua.  He  proposed  to  the 
Council  of  Vienne  in  1311,  not  the  burning  of  templars,  but 
the  foundation  of  schools  of  Oriental  languages ;  and  he 
actually  succeeded  in  introducing  the  study  of  Hebrew,  of 
Arabic  and  of  Chaldee,  at  the  Universities  of  Paris,  Oxford, 
Bologna  and  Salamanca.  His  self-imposed  mission  to  the  Moors 
in  Africa  cost  him  his  life  ;  for  after  many  warnings  and  much 
indulgence  on  the  part  of  the  Moslems  at  Bugia,  from  1313  to 
1315,  he  was  stoned  without  the  city,  and  carried  away  in  a 
dying  condition  by  some  pious  Genoese  sailors  to  his  old  home 
in  Majorca. 


1371.]  FOREIGN  POLICY  OF  ARAGON.  311 

Of  the  works l  of  Raymond  Lull,  no  less  than  300  separate 
books  and  treatises  have  actually  come  down  to  our  times. 
As  many  as  3000  have  been  by  some  writers  ascribed  to  him, 
and  Juan  Llobet,  who  taught  Lullism  in  the  University  of 
Palma  in  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century,  boasted  that  he 
had  actually  read  500. 

But  of  all  these,  the  Ars  Brevis  and  the  more  developed 
Ars  Magna  need  alone  claim  our  passing  attention,  for  it  is 
in  them  that  the  Lullian  tradition  is  found  and  preserved — 
the  art  or  system  of  proving  by  rational  and  logical  process  of 
thought,  the  propositions  of  Christian  theology.  These  works 
of  Lull,  moreover,  were  prescribed  from  the  earliest  time  as 
a  text-book  for  the  use  of  the  students  of  the  universities  of 
Aragon.  A  royal  privilege  for  the  teaching  of  Lullism  in 
that  kingdom  was  granted  by  Peter  IV.  in  1369,  and  an  Estudio 
Lii/liano,  which  became  in  time  the  Universidad  Lulliano,  was 
founded  soon  after  his  death  at  his  native  Palma,  where  his 
works  were  studied  down  to  comparatively  modern  times. 

But  the  memory  of  this  martyr  controversialist  was  not 
allowed  to  remain  unassailed  by  the  Holy  Office.  Nicolas 
Eymerick,  Grand  Inquisitor  of  Aragon,  jealous  of  the  influence 
of  an  ecclesiastic  whose  art  was  so  destructive  of  his  own,  was 
able  in  1371  to  obtain  from  Gregory  XL,  himself  a  Dominican, 
at  Avignon,  an  order  for  an  examination  of  the  writings  of 
Raymond  Lull.  Peter  IV.  forbade  the  publication  of  the 
Papal  mandate  ;  but  after  five  years'  pertinacity,  the  Inquisition, 
in  spite  of  the  continued  hostility  of  the  King  of  Aragon, 
procured  a  Bull  (1376)  condemning  the  writings  of  Lull  as 
erroneous  in  no  less  than  500  particulars.2  Two  years  later 
(1378)  Eymerick  was  banished  on  a  charge  of  forging  the  Bull 
of  condemnation,  and  although  he  returned  not  long  afterwards, 
he  was  again  banished  by  John  I.3  in  1393,  at  the  earnest 
entreaty  of  the  citizens  of  Barcelona  and  Valencia,  "on  account 
of  his  enormous  crimes  ". 

JThe  best — indeed  the  only  good  edition  of  his  works — is  Beati  Raymundi 
Lulli  Doctoris  illuminati  et  Martyris  Opera  (Moguntise,  1721-1737)  folio,  six  vols. 
It  is  a  work  of  extreme  rarity.  Vols.  vii.  and  viii.  were  proposed,  but  never  pub- 
lished. Of  this  noble  edition,  vol.  i.  contains  the  Ars  Magna  Seu  ars  Compendiosa 
inveniendi  veritatem,  clavis  et  clausula  omnium  artium  et  scientiarum.  Also  the 
Revelatio  secretorum  artis.  A  Catalogue  raisonni  of  his  works  is  also  given, 
comprising:  Of  speculative  works,  205;  of  practical  works,  77;  and  Librorum 
Desideratorum,  16  ;  in  all  298. 

2 Among  these,  such  dicta  as  "That  it  is  wrong  to  put  men  to  death  for  their 
religious  opinions,  and  that  the  mass  of  mankind  will  be  saved,  even  Jews  and 
Saracens,"  were  obviously  unpalatable  to  a  Grand  Inquisitor. 

a  H.  C.  Lea,  Hist,  of  the  Inquisition,  etc.,  vol.  iii.,  pp.  585-6. 


312  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

The  orthodoxy  of  Lull's  writings  was  not  so  easily  settled. 
Royal  letters  in  favour  of  Lullism  were  issued  by  Alfonso  V. 
in  1415,  and  again  by  Charles  V.  in  1549.  Ten  years  later,  in 
1559,  Pope  Paul  IV.  placed  his  works  in  the  first  Papal  Index 
Expurgatorius.  The  Spanish  Consejo  de  la  suprema  expunged 
the  entry  in  1 5b'0.  Three  years  later,  the  Council  of  Trent 
condemned  the  fraud  of  Eymerick ;  and  expurgated  the  Index 
of  Paul.  In  1578  the  controversy  was  revived,  and,  after 
fruitless  searches  for  the  forged  Bull,  and  many  inclusions  and 
exclusions  of  the  works  of  Lull  from  the  Papal  Index,  his  name 
was  added  to  the  list  of  authors  of  heretical  works,  that  was 
published  by  the  Sorbonne  under  Gabriel  du  Preau  in  1608. 
Three  years  later,  in  l6ll,  Philip  III.  applied  to  the  Pope  for 
the  canonisation  of  Raymond,  a  request  which  led  only  to 
further  controversy  and  further  condemnation.  Nor  can  it  be 
said  that  the  controversy  is  even  yet  concluded.  For  although 
Pius  IX.,  as  lately  as  the  year  1858,  granted  permission  to  the 
Franciscans  to  celebrate  his  feast  on  27th  November;  and 
although  the  Doctor  llluminatus  bears  at  least  a  courtesy  title 
as  Saint,  and  is  included  by  the  Count  de  Mas  La  Trie  in  his 
last  catalogue  in  1890 ;  and  although  his  life  is  narrated  in  100 
pages  folio  *  of  the  great  Acta  Sanctorum  of  the  Bollandists,  it  is 
even  yet  uncertain  whether  Raymond  is  a  true  Catholic  Saint, 
or  a  condemned  and  condemnable  heretic. 

1Tom.  v.,  s.  d.  3oth  June,  pp.  633-736. 


313 


CHAPTER  XXVIII. 
DOMESTIC  DISCORD  IN  CASTILE. 

(1284—1350.) 
I.— The  Bravos. 

AFTER  the  enormous  moral  and  material  change  that  came 
over  Christian  Spain  under  Berengaria,  St.  Ferdinand  and 
Alfonso  X. — a  change  not  merely  in  degree  but  in  kind — it  is 
mournful  to  find  a  recrudescence  of  barbarism  under  their 
immediate  successors.  The  honourable  conquest  and  occupa- 
tion of  Cordova,  so  long  the  glory  of  the  Caliphs,  and  of  Seville, 
the  fairest  city  in  Andalusia,  the  wisdom  of  Berengaria,  the 
learning  of  Alfonso ;  alliances  with  faithful  Moors,  aspirations 
after  Imperial  dominion,  the  pursuits  of  science,  the  respect 
for  law — all  this  came  to  an  end  at  the  death  of  Alfonso  X.,  in 
1284,  with  the  accession  of  his  son  Sancho,  surnamed,  in 
contemptuous  comparison  with  his  gentle  father,  the  Brave,  or, 
rather,  the  Bravo.1 

And  under  this  bravo  and  his  successors,  for  close  on  a 
century,  Castile  reverted  to  the  civil  wars  and  assassinations, 
and  the  ever-changing  and  ever-faithless  alliances  that  dis- 
graced the  annals  of  the  tenth  century.  There  was  plenty 
of  war,  but  there  was  no  accession  of  territory ;  plenty  of 
judgment,  but  no  justice  ;  plenty  of  negotiation,  but  no  peace  ; 
plenty  of  bravery,  but  no  honour.2  According  to  a  modern 

1  La  brava  domada  is  the  classic  Castilian  translation  of  "  The  Taming  of  the 
Shrew  ".     Bravo  would  thus  stand  for^  a  male  shrew  or  bully.    I  have  not  ventured 
to  use  so  homely  a  word.      But  Senor  Vicente  de  Lafuente,  in  his  Historia  de  las 
Sociedades  secretas  en  EspaHa,  p.  42,  says  that  the  word  Bravo  in  this  connection 
is  itself  only  a  copyist's  error  adopted  and  perpetuated  hy  excessive  loyalty,  for 
Pravo,  the  depraved,  Latin  Pravus.     Pravo  is  not  a  word  used  in  modern  Spain, 
but  it  is  given  in  the  Diet,  of  the  Academy. 

2  The  brutality,  the  rapacity,  the  violence  of  this  age,  are  even  exceeded  by 
the  falseness,  the  trickery,  the  treason  and  the  perfidy,  which  at  this  time  are  the 
distinguishing  characteristics  of  Castile.       P.    Me"rim6e,  Pidre  J.,  etc.,  p.  39; 
Lafuente,  vii.,  p.  19. 


314  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

Spanish  writer,  every  man  lived  at  the  mercy  of  the  highway 
robber  and  the  private  assassin.  Bold  depredators  possessed 
the  land,  which  was  abandoned  by  the  peaceful  and  honest 
owners.  The  bravo  was  abroad  in  Castile.  Robbery  and 
rapine  were  publicly  professed  by  gentle  and  simple.  The 
corpses  of  murdered  men  lay  unburied  on  every  highway. 
Travelling  was  impossible  save  in  armed  caravans.  There  was 
no  security  for  life  or  property  outside  the  walls  of  the  fortified 
towns ;  and  not  only  the  isolated  farm-houses,  but  the  hamlets 
and  even  the  villages  remained  absolutely  deserted  throughout 
the  country.  Was  it  for  this  that  Berengaria  had  created 
a  great  kingdom,  and  that  Alfonso  had  endowed  it  with 
wise  laws  ?  Had  it  not  been  for  the  popular  institution  of 
the  Hermandad,  towards  the  close  of  the  thirteenth  century, 
there  would  hardly  have  been  an  honest  man  left  alive  in 
Castile.1 

For  eleven  years  (1284-1295)  after  the  death  of  Alfonso 
the  Learned  did  Sancho,  the  fourth  of  his  name,  reign  over 
Castile  ;  and  from  the  day  of  his  accession  to  the  day  of  his 
death,  there  was  nothing  but  trouble  in  the  kingdom.  Alfonso 
of  Aragon  refused  to  give  up  to  him  the  persons  of  his  nephews, 
the  Infantes  de  Cerda.2  The  Pope  refused  to  sanction  his 
marriage  with  his  cousin,  Dona  Maria  of  Leon ;  Lope  Diaz  de 
Haro,  Lord  of  Biscay,  one  of  his  rebel  companions,  whom  he  had 
raised  to  great  honour,  turned  against  him,  after  the  good  old 
fashion  of  his  kind,  and  was  only  disposed  of  by  assassination  at 
the  Council  of  Alfaro  in  1288.  Wars  and  treaties  between 
Castile  and  Aragon ;  Don  Juan,  the  elder  Infante,  in  arms  in 
Gallicia ;  the  constant  revolts  of  the  Laras ;  the  abandonment 
of  Murcia  at  the  instance  of  Philip  of  France  ; 3  the  continued 
hostility  of  Peter  of  Aragon,  all  these  things  characterise  the 

1  Cronica  de  Don  Alfonso  XI.,  c.  Ixxviii. 

2  So  called  from  their  father,  the  Infante  Ferdinand,  the  eldest  son  of  Alfonso 
the  Learned,  who  gained  his  nickname  of  IM.  Cerda  from  the  bristles  which  grew 
from  a  mole  on  his  face — H. 

3  It  should  be  explained  that  most  of  these  troubles  really  arose  out  of  the 
urgent  need  in  Castile,  as  elsewhere  in  Europe,  for  the  limitation  of  the  abusive 
power  of  the  feudal  nobles.     James  the  Conqueror  had  after  years  of  struggle  only 
partially  succeeded  in  this  in  Aragon,  and  King  John  had  failed  in  England.    The 
complaint  of  the  Castilian  nobles  of  the  king's  favour  to  Haro  was  a  mere  excuse, 
and,  as  is  here  pointed  out,  Haro's  sons  promptly  joined  the  other  members  of 
their  order  to  proclaim  as  king  the  rightful  heir  under  the  Roman  law.     Murcia 
was  ceded  to  the  King  of  France  on  his  promise  not  to  aid  Alfonso  de  la  Cerda, 
and  ?to  use  his  influence  with  the  Pope  to  obtain  a  dispensation  for  Sancho's 
marriage  with  his  cousin  Maria  de  Molina. — H. 


1284.]          DOMESTIC  DISCORD  IN  CASTILE.  315 

disturbed  and  disastrous  reign  of  Sancho  IV.  The  one  great 
deed  of  arms,  in  ten  years  of  wretched  strife,  was  the  taking 
of  Tarifa  in  12.92.  But  the  conquest  of  that  celebrated  town 
and  the  maintenance  within  its  walls  of  the  Castilian  supre- 
macy, is  a  glorious  incident,  not  in  the  life  of  Sancho  the 
Bravo,  but  of  Guzman,  more  happily  styled  the  Good. 

Alonzo  Perez  de  Guzman,  an  illegitimate  son  of  the 
Adelantado  Mayor  of  Andalusia,  was  born  in  Leon  in  1255. 
Distinguished  in  war  and  tourney,  a  brave  and  honourable 
knight,  he  quitted  the  court  to  escape  the  insults  of  his  legiti- 
mate brother,  and  took  service,  after  the  fashion  of  the  day, 
with  Yusuf,  the  king  or  emperor  of  Morocco,  and  fought  under 
the  Moorish  standard  with  much  distinction  in  Africa.  It  was 
by  his  influence  at  the  court  of  Fez  that,  in  1280,  the  emperor 
was  induced  to  send  a  subsidy  and  an  army  to  Alfonso  X.,  and 
this  Berber  contingent  was  commanded  by  Guzman  in  person. 
In  course  of  time  (1290)  Yusuf  of  Morocco  died  ;  and  the 
Christians  finding  no  favour  at  the  court  of  his  bigoted  son  and 
successor  Yacub,  Guzman  passed  over  to  Seville  in  1291,  bring- 
ing back  with  him  a  rich  treasure  acquired  during  his  foreign 
service.  Finding  King  Sancho  meditating  an  expedition  against 
the  Moors  of  Granada,  he  promptly  offered  his  assistance.  The 
royal  treasury  was  empty ;  Guzman  provided  the  necessary 
funds.  A  fleet  was  equipped,  an  army  was  raised,  and  Tai'ifa 
was  invested  by  sea  and  land.  For  six  months  the  siege  was 
prosecuted  with  the  greatest  vigour — Guzman  was  the  most 
indefatigable  of  commanders — and  at  length  the  city  was  taken, 
and  garrisoned  by  the  Christian  forces. 

Among  the  many  bad  men  of  a  bad  age  was  the  Infante 
John,  a  brother  of  Sancho  the  king,  and  it  seemed  good  to 
him  about  this  time,  after  one  of  his  many  unsuccessful 
attempts  at  rebellion,  to  pass  over  to  Tangiers,  and  to  enter 
into  an  alliance  with  Yacub,  the  hostile  sovereign  of  Morocco. 
The  first  care  of  these  new  allies  was  the  recovery  of  Tarifa 
from  the  Christians.  Guzman,  who  had  been  appointed 
governor  of  the  fortress,  upon  its  incorporation  into  the  Castilian 
territories,  held  the  city  for  Castile  ;  and  he  refused  the  bribes 
and  despised  the  attacks  of  the  invaders  (1294).  But  in  the 
hands  of  the  Christian  commander  of  the  allied  forces  was 
unhappily  found  the  only  son  of  the  gallant  defender ;  and 
Prince  John  led  the  young  Guzman  forward  under  the  walls 
of  Tarifa,  threatening  to  murder  the  boy  under  the  eyes  of  his 
father,  if  the  father  remained  true  to  his  trust,  and  refused  to 


316  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

give  up  the  city  to  the  besiegers.  But  love  proved  less  power- 
ful than  honour  in  the  heart  of  the  Castilian  Alcaide.  Guzman 
not  only  defied  the  cowardly  assailants  without  the  battlements, 
but  he  flung  down  his  own  knife  at  the  feet  of  the  tempter. 
Prince  John,  with  a  barbarity  unsurpassed  even  in  those  bar- 
barous days,  slew  the  youth  on  the  spot.  But  Tarifa  remained 
untaken.  The  Moors  returned  to  Africa.  Guzman,  heirless, 
but  full  of  glory,  was  gratified  with  the  admiration  of  his 
country,  and  the  strange  title,  granted  under  the  sign  manual 
of  the  king,  of  El  bueno — the  Good.1 

Sancho  IV.  died  at  Toledo  on  the  25th  of  April,  1295,  and 
was  succeeded  by  his  son  Ferdinand,  a  boy  of  nine  years  of 
age :  and  confusion  became  worse  confounded  in  Castile.  The 
king's  uncle — the  ever  odious  Don  John— his  great  uncle,  Don 
Henry,  who  arrived  from  Italy,  his  neighbours  Dionysius  of 
Portugal  and  Mohammed  of  Granada,  and  his  vassal  Don  Diego 
Lopez  de  Haro,  all  rose  against  Ferdinand  IV.  James  II.  of 
Aragon  took  possession  of  Murcia,  and  Don  Juan  de  Lara, 
entrusted  by  the  bold  but  over-confiding  queen-regent  with 
a  large  sum  of  money  for  the  defence  of  his  sovereign  and  her 
dominions,  appropriated  the  supplies  to  his  own  use,  and  joined 
the  ranks  of  the  enemy.  Yet  was  his  treachery  of  no  avail. 
For  Dona  Maria,  mainly  by  the  assistance  of  the  good  Guzman, 
and  partly  by  her  own  virtue  and  vigour,  was  able  to  prevail 
over  invaders  and  rebels  in  Castile.  The  loyalty  of  this  noble 
Castilian  and  the  heroic  conduct  of  the  queen-regent,  worthy 
at  least  of  comparison  with  the  great  Berengaria,  are  almost 
the  only  bright  features  of  this  dreary  period  of  treachery  and 
disorder.  The  patience  of  Dona  Maria,  her  vigour,  her  discretion, 
her  maternal  devotion,  are  all  admirable.2  She  was  not  only  a 
diplomatist  but  a  politician.  The  Hermandad,  or  association  of 
free  citizens  who  had  bound  themselves  together  in  this  historic 
brotherhood,  in  1295,  to  defend  themselves  from  the  depreda- 

1  Of  the  family  of  this  Guzman  the  Good  was  Leonora,  the  mistress  of  Alfonso 
XL,  and  mother  of  Henry  II.     So  too  was  that  incapable  or  unfortunate  Duke  of 
Medina  Sidonia,  who  assumed  so  unwillingly  the  chief  command  of  the  great 
Empresa  de  Inglaterra  in  1588.     See  MeYimee,  Pedre  /.,  etc.,  1876,  p.  273. 

The  Cronica  de  los  Duques  de  Medina  Sidonia,  compiled  in  the  sixteenth 
century  by  Pedro  de  Medina  is  printed  in  vol.  xxxix.  of  the  Documentos  ineditos, 
pp.  1-397,  and  will  be  found  the  best  authority  for  the  rise  and  progress  of  the 
most  noble  family  of  the  Guzmans. 

2  This  queen  is  the  heroine  of  one  of  Tirso  de  Molina's  dramas,  La  prudencia 
de  la  mujer,  and  of  a  play  by  a  more  modern  author,  Roca  de  Togores,  Marques 
de  Molins,  entitled  Dofla  Maria  de  Molina.     Her  noble  ally,  Guzman  the  Good, 
was  unhappily  killed  in  a  skirmish  in  the  mountains  of  Granada  in  1309. 


1295.]          DOMESTIC  DISCORD  IN  CASTILE.  317 

tions  of  the  nobles,  was  protected  by  her  prudent  policy  ; 1  nor 
was  a  single  year  of  her  regency  suffered  to  pass  without  a 
regular  session  of  the  Cortes.  Thus  she  prevailed  over  the 
enemies  of  Castile  abroad,  and  withstood  traitors  within  the 
realm,  not  by  assassination  and  tyranny,  but  by  encouraging 
the  party  of  order,  and  promoting  good  government  at  home. 


II. — The  Hermandad. 

The  early  Hermandades  or  brotherhoods  must  not  be  con 
founded  with  the  royal  police  that  was  established  by  Isabella 
— under  the  name  of  the  Santa  Hermandad,  or  holy  brotherhood 
— nearly  a  century  later.  The  earlier  institution  had  nothing 
royal  either  in  its  origin  or  in  its  character.  The  brotherhoods 
were  simply  associations  or  Unions  of  cities  or  citizens  to  protect 
themselves  against  the  attacks  of  knights  and  nobles  who, 
unchecked  by  any  semblance  of  royal  or  national  authority, 
plundered  and  burned,  robbed  and  ravished  throughout  the 
length  and  breadth  of  Castile. 

By  the  end  of  the  reign  of  Sancho  IVr.  the  condition  of 
the  kingdom  had  become  so  inconceivably  disastrous  that  the 
ordinary  law  and  the  ordinary  executive  proved  completely 
powerless  to  cope  with  the  general  disorganisation  ;  and  under 
his  youthful  successor  it  became  apparent  that  if  society  was  to 
be  saved,  it  was  to  be  saved,  not  by  the  court,  but  by  the 
commons.  No  privilege  of  union  was  asked  of  the  infant  king. 
A  confederacy  of  classes  would  hardly  have  been  possible  at 
the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century.  A  confederacy  of  burgesses, 
united  among  themselves,  and  of  their  own  free  will,  had  in  it 
nothing  inconsistent  with  the  royal  supremacy.  And  these  free 
Spaniards  spoke  of  their  unwonted  union  as  a  brotherhood  : 
the  Hermandad  or  Brotherhood  of  Castile.  The  formal  act  of 
incorporation — for  if  the  Hermandad  possessed  no  royal  charter, 
it  was  far  from  being  a  secret  society2 — is  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  protests  in  history.  It  recites  in  due  legal  form  the 
hurts  and  harms,  the  deaths  and  dishonours,  e  olras  cosas  sin 

1  Sancho  IV.  in  his  struggle  with  feudalism  had  not  had  the  wit  to  make  use  of 
the  middle  and  trading  classes,  as  James  of  Aragon  and  the  later  Plantagenet 
kings  in  England  did.     Instead  of  strengthening  the  towns,  he  set  them  against 
him  by  a  wholesale  abolition  of  their  privileges.     It  was  not  until  his  death  that 
the  middle  classes  on  their  own  account  entered  actively  into  the  struggle,  and  the 
foundation  of  the  Hermandad  is  the  first  strong  manifestation  of  this. — H. 

2  Yet  see  Don  V.  de  Lafuente,  Sociedades  Secretas  en  Espana,  cap.  i. 


318  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

guisa,  suffered  by  the  people  of  Castile  since  the  last  year  of 
Alfonso  X.  ;  and  it  goes  on  to  say  that  por  mayor  asosiego  de  la 
tierra,  and  for  the  greater  protection  of  the  king's  authority 
Jacemos  hermandad,  we  hereby  constitute  ourselves  a  brotherhood. 

This  strange  document  was  sealed  and  executed,  if  not  by 
authority  of  the  king,  at  least  with  the  approbation  of  the  queen- 
regent,  herself  struggling  with  a  thousand  enemies  to  main- 
tain her  son's  authority  in  the  distracted  enemy  realm  that  he 
had  inherited.  Thirty-four  cities  or  towns  were  parties  to  this 
first  act  of  brotherhood.  Its  affairs  were  conducted  by  deputies, 
who  transacted  their  business — like  the  Unionists  of  Aragon — 
under  a  common  seal,  and  who  not  only  maintained  the  rights 
and  liberties  of  the  members  of  the  brotherhood,  but  who 
actually  promulgated  laws,  which  they  transmitted  to  the  king 
himself.  An  armed  force  made  their  decrees  respected.  Dis- 
obedience was  visited  with  death.  If  a  noble  deprived  an 
Hermano  of  his  property,  his  house  was  razed  to  the  ground, 
and  his  movables  confiscated  to  the  Hermandad.  If  the  king's 
tax-gatherer  demanded  an  unlawful  impost,  he  was  slain.  But 
the  brotherhoods,  though  vigorous,  were  never  tyrannical. 
They  were  obviously  unconstitutional ;  but  they  were  necessary, 
and  they  were  universally  respected ;  and  their  deliberative 
assemblies  were  even  known  by  the  singular  name  of  the  Cortes 
extraordinary. l 

However  successful  Queen  Maria  may  have  been,  and  was,  in 
her  administration  of  the  kingdom,  she  was  certainly  less  skilful  or 
less  fortunate  than  her  greater  predecessor  Berengaria,  in  her 
education  of  her  royal  son.  For  unlike  his  sainted  namesake, 
Ferdinand  IV.  of  Castile,  on  arriving  at  man's  estate,  not  only 
proved  utterly  unfit  to  govern  his  country,  but  he  showed  his 
base  and  contemptible  nature  by  treating  the  prudent  preserver 
of  his  crown  and  of  his  kingdom,  not  only  with  ingratitude,  but 
even  with  insult.  Under  such  circumstances,  his  reign  was  not 
likely  to  be  prosperous  or  honourable.  And  the  period  of  twelve 
years  (1300-1312),  from  the  attainment  of  his  legal  majority,  to 
his  death,  which  took  place  suddenly,  after  a  startling  act  of 
treachery,  is  one  of  the  most  disgraceful  in  the  annals  of  Castile. 
Summoned,  so  runs  the  legend,  to  his  account,  as  he  lay 
sleeping  on  a  September  afternoon,  in  1312,  his  death  would 

1  As  long  as  they  were  needed  they  grew  and  prospered.  In  the  Hermandad 
of  1315  thrice  as  many  towns  and  cities  were  associated  as  had  been  parties  to 
that  of  1295 — one  hundred  instead  of  thirty-four.  Florez,  Esp.  Sagrada,  xxxvi. , 
162.  The  number  of  associated  cities  constantly  varied. 


1312.]          DOMESTIC  DISCORD  IN  CASTILE.  319 

have  been  a  source  of  unmixed  satisfaction  to  his  subjects,  had 
not  the  throne  been  once  more  occupied  by  a  child.1 

III.— Alfonso  XL 

This  royal  infant,  who  had  received  the  name  of  Alfonso,  in 
memory  of  his  ever-famous  ancestor,  succeeded  to  the  crown  of 
his  father,  Ferdinand  IV.,  when  he  was  but  a  few  months  old, 
and  reigned  and  ruled  over  Castile  for  nigh  on  forty  years  as 
Alfonso  XI.  On  the  death  of  Ferdinand  IV.  a  Cortes  was 
promptly  summoned.  The  estates,  assembled  at  Palencia  in 
January,  1313,  were  at  once  called  upon  to  decide  the  all-im- 
portant question  of  a  regency  ;  but  the  rival  claims  of  Queen 
Constance  of  Portugal,  the  king's  mother.  Don  Petro  and  Don 
John,  the  king's  uncles,  and  Dona  Maria,  his  more  illustrious 
grandmother,  proved  so  entirely  irreconcilable,  that  the  novel 
expedient  was  finally  adopted  of  a  division  of  the  kingdom,  or 
rather  of  the  regency,  among  the  contending  candidates  (1315). 
So  strange  a  solution  did  not,  as  may  be  supposed,  tend  to 
strengthen  the  administration  ;  but  the  fall  of  both  the  Infantes 
in  battle  near  Granada  in  1319,  and  the  death  of  both  the  queens 
soon  afterwards,  tended  to  union  and  peace  ;  and  Don  John 
Manuel,  by  far  the  most  distinguished  of  the  king's  relations, 
took  upon  himself  the  regency  of  Castile — a  position  in  which 
he  was  confirmed  by  the  Cortes  of  Burgos,  in  1320. 

The  new  regent  was  capable  and  vigorous.  Yet  the  kingdom 
was  vexed  with  continual  strife.  His  cousin,  Don  Juan  el  Tuerto, 
or  John  the  One-eyed,2  harassed  both  prince  and  people.  Ferdi- 

1This  Ferdinand  bears  the  strange  surname  of  El  Emplazado,  or  the  Sum- 
moned, in  consequence  of  his  having  been  summoned  to  appear  before  the  judgment 
seat  of  heaven  by  the  brothers  Carbazal,  unjustly  condemned  to  death.  This  call 
is  said  to  have  been  followed  by  his  sudden  death  within  thirty  days.  A  somewhat 
similar  tale  is  told  of  King  Philip  the  Fair  of  France  and  his  henchman  Pope 
Clement  V.,  who  were  summoned  by  Jacques  de  Molay,  grand  master  of  the 
plundered  Knights'  Templars,  as  he  was  chained  to  the  stake,  and  who  both 
followed  their  victim  within  the  year  to  another  world.  (It  should  be  mentioned 
that  the  story  of  the  summoning  of  Don  Ferdinand  is  not  told  by  any  contemporary 
writer.  It  is  first  mentioned  fifty  years  after  the  king's  death  by  Ben  al  Hatib  who 
was  probably  influenced  as  others  were  at  the  time  by  the  famous  citation  mentioned 
in  the  latter  lines  of  this  note. — H.) 

2  The  number  of  Tuertos  or  one-eyed  heroes  in  Spanish  history  is  remarkable, 
including  Hannibal,  Viriatus,  Taric,  Abdur  Rahman  I.,  and  many  others.  A 
modern  English  writer  speaks  of  this  John  as  "  Juan  the  Crooked,"  a  signification 
which  may  possibly  be  suggested  by  the  etymology  of  Tuerto,  but  which  is  practic- 
ally misleading.  Tuerto  is  used,  not  only  by  Cervantes  and  the  older  writers,  but 
by  the  Spaniards  of  to-day  to  signify  one-eyed,  a  nickname,  unhappily,  not 
uncommon  in  the  south  of  the  Peninsula. 


320  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

nand,  one  of  the  Infantes  de  la  Cerda,  opposed  both  rebel  and 
regent.  The  Hermandad  alone  preserved  a  semblance  of  order. 
Alfonso  at  length  attained  his  majority  at  fourteeen  years  of 
age,  and  he  determined  to  reign  and  rule  alone.  Don  John 
the  One-eyed  was  assassinated  in  the  king's  palace,  and  Don 
John  Manuel  was  only  preserved  from  a  similar  fate  by  retire- 
ment to  the  hospitable  court  of  Muley  Ismail,  the  Moslem  King 
of  Granada.  Yet  not  even  then  was  there  peace  in  Castile. 

Nor  is  there  much  in  what  may  be  called  the  political  side 
of  the  long  reign  of  the  eleventh  Alfonso  that  is  of  special 
interest  to  posterity,  within  or  without  the  Peninsula.  It  is  at 
least  creditable  to  Alfonso  as  a  ruler  that,  succeeding  as  he  did 
to  the  throne,  in  times  exceedingly  turbulent  even  for  Castile, 
he  skilfully  availed  himself  of  the  assistance  of  the  various 
factions  to  subdue  one  by  one  the  leading  disturbers  of  the  peace 
of  the  kingdom.  Surnamed  as  he  was  el  Jmticiero,  or  the  doer 
of  justice,  the  king  was  not,  perhaps,  very  much  juster  than  his 
neighbours,  but  he  undoubtedly  bore  not  the  sword  in  vain,  and 
rebels  and  enemies  were  at  least  satisfactorily  executed,  whatever 
may  have  been  the  imperfections  of  their  trial. 

In  spite  of  many  shortcomings,  in  spite  of  much  tyranny  on 
the  part  of  the  king,  and  much  turbulence  on  the  part  of  the 
nobles,  the  development  of  free  institutions  was  in  theory  very 
great  in  the  reign  of  Alfonso,  and  even  in  practice  it  was  not 
inconsiderable.  The  Cortes  was  summoned  not  only  with  regu- 
larity, but  with  increasing  pomp  and  ceremony.  The  great  code 
of  Alfonso  X.  was  promulgated  by  the  Ordenamiento  de  Alcala  ; 
and  the  mere  adoption  by  the  king  of  the  surname  of  the  Jus- 
ticiero,1  instead  of  that  of  the  Batallador,  or  the  Bravo,  is  in 
itself  a  sign  of  the  times.  As  a  general  Alfonso  was  no  less 
vigorous  than  as  a  judge  ;  and  at  the  great  battle  of  Salado,  near 
Tarifa,  in  October,  1340,  two  hundred  thousand  Moslems  of 
Granada  are  said  to  have  been  put  to  the  sword  with  a  loss  of 
but  twenty  Christian  soldiers  !  By  what  accident  this  unhappy 
score  of  Castilian  worthies  met  their  death,  we  are  not  told ; 
but  that  the  Moslems  were  defeated  is  at  least  certain. 

Four  years  later  the  neighbouring  town  of  Algeciras  was 
taken  by  Alfonso,  after  a  vigorous  siege  of  twenty  months,  in 
which  knights  and  lords  from  almost  every  part  of  Europe  were 
found  among  the  Christian  armies.2  The  order  for  an  attack 

1  Alfonso's  most  celebrated  collection  of  special  laws  was  known  as  the  Becerro 
de  las  Behetrias,  or  parchment  register  of  tenures.     See  post,  chap,  xxxiii. 

2  Chaucer's  perfect  knight  had  been  at  the  siege  of  Algesir.     See  Canterbury 
Tales,  Prologue,  ver.  57. 


1350.]          DOMESTIC  DISCORD  IN  CASTILE.  321 

upon  Gibraltar  had  actually  been  given,  when,  on  Good  Friday 
of  the  year  1350,  the  king  fell  a  victim  to  the  black  death  that 
had  broken  out  in  the  besieged  city,  and  all  further  operations 
were  abruptly  discontinued.  These  military  glories  cast  a  certain 
lustre  upon  the  concluding  years  of  Alfonso's  life,  and  are  among 
the  few  glorious  episodes  in  the  history  of  Castile  from  the 
conquest  of  Tarifa,  at  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century,  to  the 
taking  of  Antequera  by  the  good  Regent  Ferdinand  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  fifteenth. 


IV  — Literature. 

But  it  was  not  so  much  as  a  warrior,  nor  yet  as  a  lawgiver, 
but  rather  as  a  patron  of  letters  that  Alfonso  has  a  claim  to 
honourable  distinction  among  the  kings  of  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury. That  Sancho  the  Bravo  and  Ferdinand  IV.  should  have 
taken  no  care  to  perpetuate  the  memory  of  their  own  very 
unworthy  lives  is  not  surprising  ;  but  Alfonso  XI.  was  fully 
justified  in  the  orders  that  he  gave  that  the  Cronica  of  his  illus- 
trious namesake  should  be  continued  down  to  his  own  time.1 
In  any  case,  the  post  of  royal  chronicler  was  founded  in  his 
reign  ;  and  successive  holders  of  the  office  have  left  to  posterity 
those  abundant  records,  which  give  such  a  peculiar  interest  to 
the  study  of  Spanish  history. 

Letters  indeed  had  decayed,  and  science  had  died  in  Christian 
Spain  with  Alfonso  X.  ;  but  his  royal  and  most  turbulent 
nephew,  Don  John  Manuel,  maintained  the  honour  of  the  family 
with  the  pen,  while  he  vexed  Castile  with  his  ever  restless  lance. 
Born  in  1282,  the  son  of  Don  Peter  Manuel,  a  brother  of  Alfonso 
X.,  Don  John  Manuel  had  already  done  service  against  the 
Moors  in  1294,  before  he  was  full  twelve  years  of  age.  In  1320, 
as  we  have  seen,  he  became  Regent  of  Castile,  gained  the  great 
victory  of  Guadalahorra  in  1327,  and  then,  disgusted  with  the 
treachery  of  the  palace  and  the  faithlessness  of  the  king,  he 
retired  to  his  estates,  until,  in  1335,  he  once  more  offered  his 
sword  to  Castile  ;  and  after  doing  good  service  to  his  country, 
with  certain  intervals  of  what  might  now  be  called  rebellion, 

1The  name  of  the  chronicler  of  Alfonso  X.  is  unknown,  though  one  Fernan 
Sanchez  de  Tovar  is  supposed  by  some  to  be  the  author.  See  Mem.  Real  Acad. 
de  Hist.,  vi. ,  451  ;  Memorias  de  Alfonso  el  Sabio,  por  el  Marques  de  Mondejar, 
pp.  £59-635.  (The  chronicle  of  Alfonso  XI.  is  attributed  to  Juan  Nunez  de  Villasan, 
justicia  mayor  to  Henry  II.,  son  of  Alfonso.  My  own  copy  (Toledo,  1595)  bears 
his  name  as  author  on  the  title-page. — H.) 
VOL.  I.  21 


322  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

but  what  in  the  fourteenth  century  was  merely  the  usual  form 
of  political  opposition,  he  died  in  harness  in  1347.  In  the 
intervals  of  constant  war  and  tumult,  of  deeds  of  blood  and 
violence,  he  found  time  to  compose  a  number  of  works,1  of 
which  one  at  least  will  ever  form  a  part  of  the  national  literature 
of  Spain. 

El  Conde  Lucanor  is  a  collection  of  forty-nine  tales,  of  some- 
what Oriental  character.  The  count  who  gives  his  name  to 
the  collection — Count  was  a  title  of  supreme  dignity  in  Spain  in 
the  fourteenth  century — was  wont  to  propound  to  his  councillor, 
Patronius,  questions  of  the  most  varied  character ;  and  the 
answers  of  the  wise  Patronius,  who  has  a  certain  resemblance 
both  to  Sherazadeh  and  to  Mr.  Barlow,  took  the  form  of  fables, 
apologues  and  anecdotes,  more  or  less  appropriate  to  the  occasion. 
Tales  of  the  Castilian  hero  Fernan  Gonzalez,  of  Roderic  el  Franco, 
and  of  Richard  Coeur  de  Lion  of  England,  the  fables  of  the  Crow 
and  the  Fox,  the  Old  Man  and  his  Ass,  and  others,  both  Greek 
and  Oriental,  are  to  be  found  in  this  collection.  But  the  most 
curious  is,  perhaps,  the  Casamiento  Morisco  (No.  xlv.  of  the 
collection),  which  is  the  earliest  version  in  European  literature 
of  the  old  Oriental  tale  2  that  was  given  to  England  by  Shake- 
speare in  the  "Taming  of  the  Shrew  ".  The  language  of  Don 
John  Manuel  is  certainly  not  more  highly  developed  than  that  of 
the  Partidas.  At  times  it  is  even  more  antiquated.3  But  the 
tone  of  his  writings  is  far  in  advance  of  his  age.  Essentially 
liberal  in  his  notions  of  men  and  of  things,  gay,  sarcastic  and 
lively,  his  tales  are  pleasantly  told,  in  a  style  ever  clear  and 
graceful,  and  his  passing  comments  are  those  of  a  keen  and 
fearless  man  of  the  world,  whose  pen  was  assuredly  never  blunted 
by  his  lance.  His  cousin,  Alfonso  XL,  was  not  actually  a  literary 
rival  ;  but  a  Libro  de  Monleria,*  or  Treatise  on  the  Chase,  that 
has  come  down  to  our  days,  was  written  under  the  direction  and 
by  the  order  of  the  king. 

But  the  most  remarkable  Castilian  writer  of  the  fourteenth 

1  The  best  of  them  will  be  found  in  Senor  Gayangos'  translation  of  Ticknor's 
Spanish  Literature,  vol.  i.(  pp.  68-75.  His  chronicle,  Chronicon  Dni  Joannis 
Emmanuelis,  1274  to  1329,  is  printed  in  Espana  Sagrada,  torn,  ii.,  pp.  215-222. 

2See  Sir  John  Malcolm,  Hist,  of  Persia  (1827),  ii.,  54. 

3  See  Ticknor,  trans.  Gayangos,  i.,  pp.  79,  80.     Fallar,  for  instance,  always 
stands  for  hallar,  andyf/o  for  hijo,fazer  for  hacer,  and  fablar  for  hablar.     Amos 
stands  for  ambos,  eras  is  used  instead  of  maflana,  and  such  words  as  ca,  ge  and 
ende  are  of  frequent  occurrence. 

4  It  was  published  by  Argote  de  Molina,  Seville,  1582,  folio,  with  notes  by  the 
editor,  and  wood  engravings  relating  to  bull-fighting  and  other  sports. 


1350.]  DOMESTIC  DISCORD  IN  CASTILE.  323 

century  is  Juan  Ruiz,  arch-priest  of  Hita,  a  little  town  not  far 
from  Guadalaxara,  who  flourished  in  the  reign  of  Alfonso  XI. 
His  poems  consist  of  an  immense  variety  of  tales,  fables  and 
apologues,  chiefly  amatory  and  satirical,  in  some  7000  verses  of 
which  about  1700  remain  with  prose  introductions  and  additions. 
The  verses,  as  a  rule,  are  the  rhymed  couplets  of  Berceo ;  but 
no  less  than  seventeen  different  metres  are  used  in  the  course 
of  the  work,  which  is  as  free  and  original  in  matter  as  in 
manner.  The  whole  is  interspersed  with  indecent  episodes  and 
very  immoral  reflections,  in  which  the  Lady  Trotaconventos  figures 
with  the  Lady  Cuaresma  and  the  Lady  Venus.  Don  Amor,  Don 
Carnal,  and  Don  Torino  are  found,  not  unnaturally,  in  the 
company  of  the  Ladies  Corina  and  Merienda,  nor  are  more 
sacred  personages  absent  from  the  party.  The  variety  of  the 
style  is  no  less  remarkable  than  the  diversity  of  the  subjects  ; 
at  one  time,  grave,  tender  and  dignified ;  at  another,  sarcastic, 
jocular,  didactic,  devout  and  indecent,  but  ever  fresh,  lively 
and  natural.  Ruiz  has  been  called  the  Spanish  Chaucer,  and 
his  poems  have  much  in  common  with  the  Canterbury  Tales, 
which  were  written  about  the  same  time.1  The  Libra  del  Rabbi 
Sent  Job,  a  poem  addressed  to  Peter  the  Cruel  on  his  accession 
by  a  learned  and  liberal  Jew,  is  worthy  of  notice  among  the 
writings  of  the  period ;  as  is  a  dance  of  death,  la  Danza  General 
de  la  Muerle,  probably  adapted  from  the  French  of  the  same 
period  ;  and  perhaps  the  Poema  de  Jose,  the  story  of  Joseph  or 
Yusuf,  derived,  strange  to  say,  from  Moslem  and  not  from 
Christian  sources,  and  written  more  probably  in  Aragon  than  in 
Castile. 

But  if  Alfonso  was  a  patron  of  letters,  a  lover  of  law,  and  a 
professed  scourge  of  evil-doers,  he  was  not  in  his  own  domestic 
life  either  as  virtuous  or  as  prudent  as  became  a  reformer  and  a 
judge.  The  court  of  Castile  was  ruled  by  rival  ladies.  Within 
and  without  the  palace  the  kingdom  was  divided.  The  king's 
mistress,  the  beautiful  Leonora  de  Guzman,  had  her  court  and 
her  courtiers,  and  not  only  vied  with  the  legitimate  queen  in 
her  influence  over  her  royal  lover,  but  for  nigh  on  twenty  years 
she  claimed  a  large  share  in  the  administration  of  his  kingdom. 
The  wife,  as  so  frequently  happens  in  such  cases,  was  not  only 
less  powerful  but  less  wise,  less  fit  for  command,  less  favoured 

1  An  enthusiastic  admirer  of  the  arch-priest,  and  no  mean  critic,  has  even  com- 
pared him  with  Cervantes.  Ferdinand  Wolf,  Jabrbuck  der  Literatur  (Vienna, 
1832),  vol.  Iviii.,  pp.  220-22C,  art.  b.  For  a  fair  comparison  between  Chaucer  and 
Ruiz,  see  Ticknor,  vol.  i.,  chap.  v. 


324  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

by  fortune  than  her  rival  the  mistress.  The  only  legitimate 
child  that  Queen  Maria  of  Portugal  bore  to  her  husband  com- 
bined in  his  own  person  the  worst  qualities  of  his  father, 
Alfonso  XI.,  his  grandfather,  Ferdinand  IV.,  and  his  great- 
grandfather, Sancho  the  Bravo ;  and  at  a  time  when  cruelty 
was  the  fashion  among  kings,  earned  a  widespread  and  long- 
enduring  notoriety  as  Peter  the  Cruel. 


325 


CHAPTER  XXIX. 
PETER  THE  CRUEL. 

(1350—1369.) 
I. — A  Royal  Assassin. 

OF  the  nine  children  whom  Leonora  de  Guzman  had  borne  to 
Alfonso  XI.,  Henry,  the  eldest,  was  endowed  with  the  magni- 
ficent domain  and  title  of  Trastamara.1  His  twin  brother, 
Fadrique,  was  elected,  at  ten  years  of  age,  to  the  more  than 
princely  position  of  Grand  Master  of  Santiago.  His  cousin, 
Perez  Ponce,  already  enjoyed  the  scarcely  inferior  honour  of 
the  Grand  Mastership  of  Alcantara.  It  was  but  natural,  upon 
the  sudden  death  of  Alfonso  XL,  that  his  illegitimate  family 
should  seek  to  maintain  their  exceptional  position,  in  spite  of 
the  queen's  son,  Peter,  who  had  lived  up  to  this  time  neglected 
and  almost  forgotten  at  Seville. 

But  the  Guzmans  were  too  prosperous  to  be  popular ;  and 
the  young  king  found  a  powerful  protector  in  his  father's 
palace.  Don  Juan  de  Albuquerque,  a  scion  of  the  royal  house 
of  Portugal,  who  had  accepted  the  friendship  of  the  mistress 
during  the  life-time  of  King  Alfonso  XL,  and  had  thus  risen 
to  the  highest  position  in  the  State,  at  once  turned  upon 
the  Guzmans,  imprisoned  Dona  Leonora — provided  with  a  safe 
conduct  under  his  own  hand — in  the  Alcazar  at  Seville,  drove 
her  many  sons  into  exile,  and  constituted  himself  the  guide,  if 
not  the  master,  of  the  legitimate  sovereign,  who  had  but  just 
attained  the  year  of  his  legal  majority.2 

One  of  the  first  political  incidents  of  his  reign  was  the 
assassination  of  his  step-mother  (1351),  in  which  it  is  possible 

1The  name  is  spelt  by  contemporary  writers  indifferently  as  Trestamera, 
Trastameira,  Trastamena.     The  modern  conventional  Spanish  is  Trastamara. 
2  He  was  born  at  Burgos,  soth  August,  1333. 


326  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

that  he  took  no  personal  part.1  But  if  the  murder  was,  as  is 
suggested,  entirely  the  work  of  Albuquerque,  the  minister  had 
an  apt  pupil,  who  at  least  approved  of  the  act  that  was  done 
under  his  royal  authority.  And  it  was  not  long  before  he  was 
able  to  walk  alone.  Within  the  year  (1351)  Garcilaso  de  la 
Vega,  Adelantado  of  Castile,  the  highest  dignitary  of  the  king- 
dom,2 had  his  brains  beaten  out  in  the  presence  chamber  by 
order  of  his  royal  master,  and  his  body  was  thrown  out  of  the 
window  into  the  great  square  of  Burgos,  among  the  combatants 
and  spectators  of  the  bull-fight  that  was  being  celebrated  in 
honour  of  the  royal  visit. 

But  none  of  the  king's  early  crimes  was  more  characteristic 
of  his  dark  and  dastardly  nature  than  his  treatment  of  the 
young  and  innocent  princess,  Blanche  de  Bourbon,3  whose  hand 
was,  at  his  earnest  solicitation,  bestowed  upon  him  by  the 
King  of  France.  Engaged,  after  his  betrothal  to  that  gentle 
lady,  in  an  intrigue  with  the  notorious  Maria  de  Padilla,  he 
refused  even  to  receive  the  French  princess — a  bride,  a 
stranger  and  a  royal  guest — on  her  arrival  in  his  dominions. 

Degraded  at  length  to  the  wretched  position  of  Queen  of 
Castile  (3rd  June,  1353)  treated  for  two  days  as  a  wife,  and 
for  ten  years  as  a  prisoner,  poisoned  at  last  by  her  royal  gaoler, 
while  yet  in  the  bloom  of  her  innocent  beauty,  the  fate  of  this 
gentle  and  unfortunate  4  lady  excited  but  the  feeble  sympathy 

1  M6rim6e  is  very  positive  upon  this  point,  and  as  to  Peter's  early  subordination 
to  Albuquerque.     Mariana  says  that  the  odium  of  the  murder  fell  upon  the  queen, 
and  the  place  where  Leonora  was  murdered  thus  acquired  the  addition  of  Talavera 
de  la  Reina,  by  which  it  is  known  to  this  day.     Mariana,  lib.  xvi.,  cap.  xvi.  ; 
Ayala,   Cron.,  36.     (Peter  the  Cruel  has  much  cause  to  complain  of  the  verdict 
that  has  been  handed  down  to  posterity  upon  him.     Lopez  de  Ayala,  who  wrote  in 
the   days  when    Peter's  name  was  anathema,  was  conspicuously  unjust   to  him, 
and  he  has  been  followed  by  all  subsequent  historians.     The  king,  who  was  not 
sixteen  when  he  succeeded,  did   not  assume  the  reins  of  government  until  1354 
when  he  was  nineteen,  and  most  of  the  principal  acts  which  have  gained  for  him 
his  murderous  reputation  were  committed  before  then,  when  Albuquerque  was 
practically  regent.     Peter  had  to  deal  with  a  powerful  revolt,  which  drove  him  into 
exile,  and  in  his  suppression  of  it  he  was  no  whit  more  severe  than  his  predecessors 
had  been  under  similar  circumstances.     I  am  indebted  to  my  friend  the  Duke  of 
Wellington  for  an  interesting  manuscript  vindication  of  Peter,  copied  in  the  six- 
teenth century  from  the  testimony  of  contemporaries  of  the  king. — H.) 

2  The  powers  of  the  office  are  fully  set  forth  in  the  laws  of  the  Partidas.     The 
Adelantado  of  Castile  ranked  next  in  dignity  to  the  king,  and  was  commander-in- 
chief  of  the  troops  in  time  of  war,  and  chief  justice  in  time  of  peace. 

3  She  was  the  daughter  of  Pierre,  Duke  of  Bourbon,  who  fell  at  Poictiers,  and 
younger  sister  of  Jeanne  de  Bourbon,  wife  of  Charles  V.  of  France. 

4  Prosper  Merimee.     Histoire  de  Don  Pedre  /.,  Koi  de  Castile  (Paris,  1848),  pp. 
348,  351.     Pedre  is  rather  an  ingenious  compromise  between  Pedro  and  Pierre. 
The  King  of  Aragon  is  always  spoken  of  by  the  author  as  Pierre. 


1.353.]  PETER  THE  CRUEL.  327 

of  the  gallant  men  of  two  nations  ;  and  her  husband's  behaviour, 
which  amounted  not  only  to  a  domestic  outrage,  but  to  almost 
a  national  affront,  did  not  rouse  the  spiritless  Valois  who  lost 
his  kingdom  at  Poictiers  to  strike  one  blow  for  the  protection 
of  a  princess  of  France. 

The  record  of  the  first  fifteen  years  of  the  reign  of  Peter  of 
Castile  is  not  only  odious,  but  it  is  also  supremely  uninterest- 
ing. One  of  the  most  brilliant  of  modern  French  historians 
has  essayed  with  moderate  success  to  invest  the  story  with 
something  of  his  own  romance  ;  but  the  fact  remains  that  if 
Peter  was  not  absolutely  the  most  cruel  of  men,  he  was 
assuredly  one  of  the  greatest  blackguards  that  ever  sat  upon  a 
throne. 

The  one  agreeable  feature  of  his  character  is  that  he  was 
affable  with  his  humbler  subjects,  that  he  took  an  interest  in 
their  everyday  life,  and  that  he  was  wont,  after  the  manner  of 
the  Caliph  Harun  Al  Rashid,  whose  legendary  exploits  were  no 
doubt  familiar  to  him,  to  spend  many  of  his  nights  in  some 
humble  disguise,  seeking  adventures  and  information  in  the 
streets  of  Seville.1  This  was  at  least  human.  But  such  displays 
of  his  humanity  were  rare.  His  sham  reconciliation  with  his 
brother,  in  order  to  rid  himself  of  his  own  too  powerful  friend 
Albuquerque,  who  had  unhappily  raised  him  to  power,  is  only 
surpassed  in  atrocity  by  his  sham  marriage  with  Juana  de 
Castro,  whom  he  dishonoured  and  abandoned  after  the  grati- 
fication of  a  passing  whim,  under  cover  of  a  most  astounding 
sacrilege. 

Peter  indeed  was  married  to  no  less  than  three  wives,  all 
alive  at  the  same  time,  before  he  was  twenty-one.  According 
to  the  solemn  pronouncement  of  the  Archbishop  of  Toledo,  he 
was  lawfully  married  in  1352  to  the  lady  who  passed  during  her 
entire  life  as  his  mistress,  Juana  de  Padilla ;  he  was  certainly 
married  to  Blanche  of  Bourbon  in  1353;  and  his  seduction,  or 
rather  his  violation  of  Juana  de  Castro  was  accomplished  by  a 
third  profanation  of  the  sacrament,  when  the  Bishops  of  Sala- 
manca and  Avila,  both  accessories  to  the  king's  scandalous 
bigamy,  pronounced  the  blessing  of  the  Church  upon  his  brutal 
dishonour  of  a  noble  lady. 

Whether    Peter's  marriage  with    Maria  de  Padilla,2   which 

1  As  to  the  legendary  origin  of  the  name  of  the  Calle  del  Candilejo  at  Seville, 
and  the  king's  interrupted  duel — the  tale  is  too  long  to  be  told  here — see  Merimee, 
op.  cit.,  pp.  135,  136,  and  Zuniga,  Ann.  Eccles.  de  Seville,  torn,  ii.,  p.  136. 

2Ayala,  350.     Zuniga,  Ann.  Eccles.  Sev.t  ii.,  162. 


328  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

was  never  spoken  of  until  after  the  lady's  death,1  was  itself  a 
royal  and  archiepiscopal  figment,  suggested  as  M.  Merimee 
would  have  it,  by  the  famous  rehabilitation  of  Inez  de  Castro 
in  Portugal  about  the  same  time,  is  obviously  uncertain.  But 
if  it  is  true,  it  only  renders  the  king's  treatment  of  Blanche  de 
Bourbon  the  more  odious  and  the  more  flagitious. 

Of  the  league  of  outraged  nobles,  including  the  brother  of 
Juana  de  Castro  and  the  supporters  of  Queen  Blanche ;  of 
the  king's  imprisonment,  and  subsequent  escape  from  the  city 
of  Toro  by  the  skill  and  the  ducats  of  his  Hebrew  treasurer, 
Don  Samuel  Levi,  who  was  afterwards  strangled  by  the  king's 
order  (1362);  of  the  massacre  of  Jewish  merchants  on  the 
taking  of  Toledo  in  1355,  and  the  still  more  dreadful  massacre 
of  Christian  nobles  on  the  taking  of  Toro  in  1356,  when  the 
queen-mother,  with  her  trembling  ladies,  stood  up  to  their 
ankles  in  the  blood  of  her  knights  and  nobles,  as  they  were 
butchered  in  cold  blood  in  the  presence  of  the  king ;  of  the 
constant  schemes  for  the  murder  of  his  relations,  the  tale  is  but 
a  wearisome  and  odious  iteration  of  treachery  and  bloodshed.2 
Nor  have  we  by  any  means  filled  up  the  cup  of  horrors.  For 
the  next  event  in  the  life  of  Peter  that  compels  our  unwilling 
attention  is  the  assassination  in  his  own  presence,  if  not  with 
his  own  hand,  of  his  brother  Fadrique,  Grand  Master  of  Santiago, 
a  guest  under  his  own  royal  safe  conduct  in  his  palace  at 
Seville.  Don  Fadrique  was  knocked  down  by  the  king's  at- 
tendants, but  the  coup  de  grace  was  given  with  the  royal 
dagger,3  and  the  royal  assassin  insisted  on  dining  in  the  room  in 
which  the  bloody  corpse  of  his  brother  yet  lay :  while  he 
'  poignarded  with  his  own  hand  one  of  his  brother's  followers  who 
had  fled  for  protection  into  the  presence  of  his  own  daughter. 
After  the  murder  of  Don  Fadrique,  couriers  were  dispatched 
in  every  direction  bearing  orders  for  the  killing  of  all  his 
friends  and  partisans  throughout  Spain  ;  and  in  due  time  4  these 

1  Maria  de  Padilla  being  found  enceinte  in  1354,  and  no  longer  pleasing  to  her 
royal  lover,  was  appointed  superior  of  a  convent,  specially  founded  in  her  honour 
by  Innocent  VI.  under  the  protection  of  St.  Clare.  Rainaldi,  Ann.  Eccl.  ann., 
1354.  On  the  birth  of  the  child  Constance,  who  was  afterwards  married  to  John 
of  Gaunt,  the  vows  were  forgotten.  Thus  arose  the  English  Lancastrian  claims  to 
the  throne  of  Spain. 

2Ayala,  200-212. 

3  Ibid. ,  pp.  237-243.     M.  Prosper  Me'rime'e  can  find  nothing  better  to  say  in 
extenuation  of  this  dinner  devant  son  ennemi  mart,  but  that  ses  repas  ne  resemblaient 
pas  a  ceux  de  Vitellius  ! 

4  Me'rime'e,  259  et  seq. 


1359.]  PETER  THE  CRUEL.  329 

terrible  messengers  returned,  each  one  bringing,  suspended 
from  his  saddle-bow,  the  heads  of  the  men  who  had  been 
obnoxious  to  the  king.1  This  savage  treachery  is  characteristic- 
ally accentuated  by  the  fact  that  some  few  weeks  before  (29th 
May,  1358)  the  king  had  administered  to  his  kinsman,  Don 
John  of  Aragon,  an  oath  upon  the  Gospels  and  in  the  presence 
of  the  crucifix,  that  he  would  assassinate  his  brother,  receiving 
as  his  reward  the  lordship  of  the  province  of  Biscay.  To 
such  uses  were  devoted  the  emblems  of  religion.  The  king's 
sanguinary  promptitude,  however,  rendered  superfluous  the 
services  of  this  princely  agent ;  and  six  weeks  after  the  murder 
of  Don  Fadrique,  the  royal  principal  anticipated  any  awkward 
claims  upon  Biscay  by  the  murder  of  Don  John. 

Queen  Leonora,  Isabella  de  Lara,  the  widow  of  the  mur- 
dered Don  John  of  Aragon,  and  the  wife  of  Don  Tello,  the 
king's  brother,  honourable  hostages  in  his  hands,  were  the 
next  victims;  and  their  taking  off,  in  1358,  was  followed  by 
the  murder  of  the  king's  youngest  brother,  a  boy  of  but  four- 
teen years  of  age,2  in  1359. 

The  betrayal  of  the  Portuguese  knights,  who  had  sought 
and  found  an  asylum  in  Castile,  to  his  savage  namesake,  at 
Lisbon,  and  the  hideous  tortures  inflicted  by  him  at  Seville,  in 
136l,  on  the  Castilian  nobles  delivered  over  to  him  as  the  price 
of  this  base  surrender ;  the  murder  of  Gutier  Fernandez,  his 
ambassador  to  Rome,3  of  Gomez  Carrillo,  the  governor  of 
Algeciras,  and  of  his  faithful  Hebrew  treasurer,  the  saviour  of 
his  own  life  at  Toro ; 4  the  murder  by  his  own  hand,  almost  at 
his  own  table,  of  his  friend  and  ally,  Abu  Said,  the  King  of 
Granada  ;  all  these  things,  and  many  of  similar  character  may 
be  found  set  forth  in  great  detail  in  the  chronicles  of  Castile.3 
But  they  form  but  sad  and  profitless  reading.  Nor  is  the 

1  Ayala,  247.  (It  must  be  repeated  that  Ayala  is  not  a  fair  witness  against 
Peter  without  confirmation. — H. ) 

2 Ibid.,  292.  By  the  year  1360  Peter  had  taken  to  boiling  his  enemies  in  huge 
earthen  pots,  as  well  as  burning  them  alive.  See  Ayala,  pp.  303-4,  and  note  (4) 
in  ed.  of  Llaguno,  Amirola  (1780).  As  to  the  pots  themselves,  M.  Me'rim^e  says, 
Leur  forme  est  tout  antique.  On  sail  que  le  tonneau  de  Diogene  etait  un  vase 
de  terre.  Me'rim^e,  299. 

*Ibid.,  313-315. 

4  He  died  in  1368,  upon  the  rack,  after  having  been  despoiled  of  all  his  riches 
by  the  king.     Ibid. ,  322. 

5  Not  content  with  the  treacherous  slaughter  of  his  royal  guest,  the  King  of 
Castile  set  him  on  an  ass  and  made  his  body  the  mark  for  his  javelins  (canas)  and 
those  of  his  companions.     Ibid. ,  339  ;  Conde,  Domination  de  los  A  rates,  part.  iv. , 
chap.  xxv. 


330  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

history  of  the  constant  warfare  with  Aragon — warfare  without 
fruit  and  without  honour x — more  interesting  or  more  profitable 
as  a  study.  And  it  is  only  in  so  far  as  these  wars  encouraged 
the  pretensions  of  Henry  of  Trastamara  to  the  throne  of  his 
brother  that  they  had  any  lasting  influence  upon  the  fortunes 
of  Spain. 

It  was  to  the  north  of  the  Pyrenees  that  the  alliances  were 
formed  which  changed  the  succession  in  Castile.  The  French 
and  English  soldiers  on  the  Continent,  set  free  by  the  peace  of 
Bretigny  in  1360,  had  formed  themselves  into  bands  of  military 
marauders,  which,  under  the  name  of  the  Free  Companies,2 
ravaged  and  desolated  France  :  and  to  the  celebrated  Bertrand 
du  Guesclin,  the  new  king,  Charles  V.,  entrusted  the  delicate 
enterprise  of  enlisting  these  unruly  soldiers  in  a  regular  army, 
and  marching  them  into  Spain,  nominally  in  quest  of  plunder 
and  military  glory,  but  really  as  the  only  means  of  ridding 
himself  of  their  presence.  Du  Guesclin  accepted  the  charge ; 
and  the  best  lance  and  the  most  popular  soldier  of  fortune  in 
Europe  had  no  difficulty  in  enrolling,  under  his  free  banner 
every  military  adventurer  in  the  kingdom.  The  Count  de  la 
Marche,  a  prince  of  the  blood  royal,  and  the  Sire  de  Beaujeu, 
both  relations  of  the  unfortunate  Blanche  de  Bourbon,  took 
service  in  du  Guesclin 's  army ;  and,  eager  to  avenge  the  murder 
of  their  queen,  they  proposed  to  chastise  or  dethrone  her  odious 
husband  in  Castile.  The  million  of  gold  pieces  that  the  avarice 
of  her  royal  executioner  was  supposed  to  have  accumulated  at 
Toledo  was  a  sufficient  casus  belli  for  the  general  body  of 
adventurers.  Nor  did  the  alliance  between  Peter  and  Edward 
of  England,3  unhappily  entered  into  at  Bordeaux  in  the  early 

1  Cette  guerre  de  siege  et  de  pillage  qui  semblait  n'avoir  d'autre  but  que  la 
ruine  complete  du  pays.     Merime'e,  415.     That  Peter  devoted  his  entire  attention 
to  the  plunder  of  the  towns,  and  that  he  was  conspicuously  cowardly  in  the  field,  is 
more  than  once  admitted  by  his  French  apologist,  op.  cit.,  411-419. 

2  Or  Compagnies  blanches :  for  what  reason  is  now  uncertain.     In  Spain  they 
are  known  as  the  Grandes  Companias.     Lafuente,  vii.,  264-5.     The  French  name 
may  refer  to  the  plate  armour  of  white  steel  which  was  worn  by  the  men-at-arms 
of  the  companies,  in  contradistinction  to  the  chain  armour  or  coats  of  mail,  which 
were  going  out  of  fashion.     The  adventurers  were  the  best-armed  men  in  Europe. 
Ayala,  399.     Mr.  Conan  Doyle's  spirited  romance  entitled  7 he   White  Company 
has  been  published  since  this  note  was  first  written. 

Du  Guesclin  had  been  taken  prisoner  by  John  of  Chandos  at  the  battle  of 
Auray,  and  released  on  payment  of  100,000  marcs,  paid  jointly  by  the  King  of 
France,  the  Pope,  and  Henry  of  Trastamara.  Longman,  Edward  III.,  vol.  ii., 
p.  109. 

3  This  treaty  was  first  signed  in  London,  in  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  on  the  22nd 
of  June,  1362,  by  William  Lord  Latimer,  and  John  Stretleye,  plenipotentiaries  of 


1366.]  PETER  THE  CRUEL.  331 

part  of  1363,  prohibit,  according  to  the  custom  of  the  times, 
Sir  Hugh  Calverley  from  taking  the  command  of  the  English 
companions,  whose  avowed  destination  was  the  island  of  Cyprus,1 
and  whose  nominal  enemies  were  the  Saracens. 

In  the  early  autumn  of  the  year  1365  the  army  set  out  by 
way  of  Avignon,  where  temporal  and  spiritual  favours  were 
somewhat  rudely  demanded  of  the  Pope  '*  by  the  adventurers, 
who  continued  their  march  over  the  eastern  Pyrenees,  and 
arrived  in  due  time  at  Barcelona. 

Meanwhile  Peter  IV.  of  Aragon  had  welcomed  to  his  court 
Henry  of  Trastamara,  the  eldest  son  of  Alfonso  XI.  and  Leonora 
de  Guzman,  and  the  eldest  step-brother  of  Peter  of  Castile.  A 
large  number  of  knights  and  nobles  espoused  the  cause  of  the 
elder  brother,  bastard  though  he  was,  against  that  of  the  more 
legitimate  monster  who  disgraced  the  throne  of  Castile.  With 
these  men  du  Guesclin  and  his  adventurers  had  gladly  con- 
sented to  act,  and  by  them  he  was  anxiously  awaited  to  the 
south  of  the  Pyrenees. 

On  his  arrival  in  Aragon,  du  Guesclin  was  received  by  Peter 
of  Aragon  and  Henry  of  Trastamara  with  almost  royal  honours. 
His  free  companions  were  treated  not  only  with  consideration 
but  with  liberality.  Gold  pieces  were  the  form  of  welcome 
most  heartily  appreciated  by  every  soldier  in  the  invading 
army.  Persuaded  that  the  safety  of  his  kingdom  depended 
upon  the  destruction  of  his  rival  in  Castile,  Peter  IV.  of  Aragon 
shrank  from  no  sacrifice  to  take  advantage  of  this  great  oppor- 
tunity. His  treasury  was  exhausted,  but  he  pledged  his 
private  property  to  provide  for  the  entertainment  of  the  12,000 
mercenaries  at  his  gates. a  But  du  Guesclin  was  not  in  truth 
so  much  the  ally  of  Peter  of  Aragon  as  of  Henry  of  Trastamara, 
pretender  to  the  crown  of  Castile.  And  after  a  preliminary 
victory  of  Sir  Hugh  Calverley  at  Borja,  in  March,  1366,  had 
opened  the  road  to  fortune,  "  the  Count,"  4  as  Trastamara  was 

the  King  of  England,  on  the  one  part,  and  Diego  Sanchez  Terraza,  Cavallero,  and 
Alvaro  Sanchez  de  Cuellar,  bachelor  of  laws,  ambassadors  of  the  King  of  Castile, 
on  the  other ;  and  was  confirmed  at  the  Palace  ot  Westminster  on  the  3rd  of 
September  following.  Rymer,  iii.,  part  ii. ,  p.  73;  Ayala,  p.  364. 

1  See  Rymer,  sub.  6th  December,  1365  ;  and  Cron.  de  du  Guesclin,  v.,  7549. 
"The  behaviour  of  the  new  crusaders  to  Pope  Urban  V.  at  Avignon  is  told  at 
length  in  the  Chronique  de  du  Guesclin,  and  is  worth  reading. 

3  Arch.  Gen.  de  Aragon,  Reg.  1213,  p.  42  ;  Carbonell,  p.  196. 

4  Don  Enrique,  Conde  de  Trastamara,  is  generally  thus  designated.     He  sub- 
scribes himself  as  "  El  Conde".     He  was  then,  in  fact,  the  only  count  in  Castile; 
the  Kicoi  Hombres  did  not  yet  bear  titles.     They,  however,  greatly  coveted  them ; 


332  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

familiarly  called,  was  escorted  in  triumph  to  Calahorra,  where 
he  was  solemnly  proclaimed  King  of  Castile. 

Peter  the  Cruel  had  assembled  a  considerable  force  at  Burgos  ; 
but  his  craven  heart  did  not  suffer  him  to  await  the  approach  of 
the  invader.  He  found  time,  indeed,  to  put  to  death  Juan  de 
Tovar,  whose  brother  had  been  vanquished  at  Calahorra,  and 
then  he  stole  out  of  Burgos  without  notice  or  instructions  to  his 
supporters  ;  and  accompanied  only  by  a  few  Moslem  horsemen, 
he  turned  and  fled  to  Toledo,  leaving  the  faithful  citizens  at  the 
mercy  of  the  invader.  Within  a  few  days  Henry  was  in  the 
palace,  and  having  sworn  to  maintain  the  liberties  of  Burgos  and 
of  Castile,  he  was  crowned  with  great  pomp  in  the  church  at 
Las  Huelgas. 

The  accession  of  Henry  II.  was  accompanied  by  no  murders 
nor  executions,  but  only  by  honours  and  rewards.  Du  Guesclin 
was  gratified  with  the  rich  lordships  of  Molina  and  Trastamara  ; 
to  Sir  Hugh  Calverley  was  given  the  title  and  rich  appanage  of 
Count  of  Carrion.  Every  relation,  every  friend,  every  man  who 
had  assisted  Henry  of  Trastamara  was  gratefully  and  substantially 
rewarded.  For  himself  the  victor  reserved  not  a  maravedi,  not 
an  acre  of  land,  not  a  castle.  He  was  content,  he  said,  to  be 

King  of  Castile. 

• 

II. — Edzvard  the  Black  Prince. 

Peter,  flying  from  Toledo,  and  thence,  on  rumours  of  pursuit, 
to  Santiago  in  Gallicia,  gratified  himself  by  the  murder  of  the 
archbishop,  Suero  de  Toledo,  in  the  Cathedral  *  of  Compostella, 
and  the  plunder  of  his  private  and  ecclesiastical  property  ;  and 
making  his  way  from  the  sacred  city  to  the  port  of  Coruiina,  he 
set  sail  for  Bayonne,  to  seek  the  assistance  of  his  English  ally, 
Edward  the  Black  Prince,  who  held  his  court  at  Bordeaux. 
Unhappily  both  for  England  and  for  Spain,  the  royal  refugee 

and  the  first  act  of  Don  Enrique  after  his  coronation  at  Burgos,  was  to  create  a 
large  number  of  dukes,  marquises  and  counts.  His  father,  Alfonso  XL,  had 
refused  the  ducal  title  to  Don  Juan  Manuel,  the  grandson  of  Ferdinand  III.,  and 
the  most  powerful  noble  in  the  kingdom. 

The  old  Gothic  ceremonial  customary  on  such  occasions  was  then  revived. 
Three  sops  were  put  into,  a  cup  of  wine  and  set  before  the  king  and  his  favourite, 
and  the  king  said  :  "  Corned  Conde,  eat,  count "  ;  and  the  count  said  :  "  Corned  Rey, 
eat,  king".  This  having  been  said  three  times  by  both,  they  ate  of  those  sops; 
whereupon  the  bystanders  exclaimed  :  "  Evad  el  Conde  !  Evad  el  Conde  !"  .  .  . 
Cronica  del  Rey  Don  Alfonso  XL,  p.  117. 

1  Ayala,  Abr.,  418. 


1366.]  PETER  THE  CRUEL.  333 

was  hospitably  received  ; l  his  wickedness  was  ignored  or  for- 
gotten ;  and  his  misfortunes  excited  the  ready  sympathy  of  his 
generous  but  imprudent  host.  A  parliament  was  held  at  Bor- 
deaux. The  Grand  Master  of  Alcantara  was  sent  to  London  to 
implore  the  favour  and  support  of  Edward  III.  The  king's 
answer  was  favourable.  The  parliament  was  not  unwilling. 
The  Black  Prince  was  eager  to  appear  as  a  supporter  of  a  dis- 
tressed and  legitimate  monarch  ;  and  it  was  decided  to  send  an 
expedition  into  Spain  to  restore  Peter  to  his  sovereign  rights. 

The  gallant  Sir  John  Chandos,  one  of  the  original  knights  of 
the  most  noble  Order  of  the  Garter,  did  his  best  to  dissuade  the 
prince  from  engaging  in  so  disgraceful  an  alliance,  but  his  remon- 
strances proving  of  no  effect,  he  accepted  an  important  command 
in  the  army. 

By  the  Treaty  of  Libourne  (23rd  September,  1366)  between 
Edward,  Peter  and  Charles  the  Bad  of  Navarre,  the  Black 
Prince  advanced  to  the  King  of  Castile  600,000  golden  florins, 
repayable  in  one  year,  and  undertook  to  restore  him  to  his 
throne  by  force  of  arms,  receiving  as  his  reward  the  lordship  of 
Biscay,  or  of  certain  seaports  on  the  coast,  of  great  value  to 
Edward  as  Lord  of  Guyenne  and  Gascony  ;  while  Charles  of 
Navarre,  who  had  already  received  60,000  florins  from  Henry  of 
Trastamara  as  the  price  of  his  oajth  to  close  the  pass  of  Ronces- 
valles  2  against  the  Prince  of  Wales,  accepted  56,000  florins  from 
his  new  allies  as  ths  price  of  his  oath  to  give  them  free  passage.3 
Charles  of  Navarre  observed  all  his  oaths  by  stationing  troops  at 
the  entrance  to  Roncesvalles,  and  giving  private  orders  to  their 
commander  to  run  away  at  the  approach  of  the  enemy  ;  and  by 
procuring  that  he  himself  should  be  taken  prisoner  by  a  friendly 
knight,  and  kept  in  confinement  until  the  issue  of  the  invasion 
was  decided  ! 4 

The  Black  Prince,  the  most  loyal  and  perfect  knight  in 
Europe,  unable  to  raise  the  promised  subsidy  with  sufficient 

1  Don  Pedro  had  been  affianced  when  very  young  to  a  daughter  of  Edward  III. 
The  young  princess,  however,  died  at  Bayonne  on  her  way  from  England  to  Castile. 
The  treaty  for  a  matrimonial  alliance  between  Alfonso  XI.  's  son  and  Edward  III.  "s 
daughter  may  be  seen  in  Rymer's  f-aedera,  iii.,  part  2. 

2  The  only  route  across  the  western   Pyrenees  from   Guyenne  to  Castile. 
Yanguas,  t.  ii.,  p.  203;  Ayala,  Abr. ,  p.  435. 

3 For  all  that  concerns  Navarre,  and  Charles  the  Bad  of  that  kingdom,  at  this 
time,  the  best  modern  authority  is  Secousse,  Mdmoires  pour  servir  a  Ckistoire  de 
Charles  //.  (le  Mauvais)  de  Navarre  (Paris,  1758),  one  vol.  ;  and  the  Receuil  des 
Pieces,  supplementary  to  the  same,  though  published  previously,  Paris,  1755. 

4  Ayala,  436-464 ;  Froissart,  i.,  part  ii.,  cap.  ccxxiv. 


334-  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

despatch,  melted  down  his  plate  to  provide  funds  for  the  expedi- 
tion. Peter  of  Castile  was  no  less  prodigal  of  promises  ;  but  of 
more  current  coin  not  a  maravedi  was  forthcoming.1  Meanwhile, 
Henry,  who  had  been  received  with  enthusiasm  both  at  Toledo 
and  at  Seville,  made  such  preparations  as  were  possible  to  him, 
with  the  resources  at  his  command,  to  defend  his  kingdom 
against  the  invaders. 

Summoned  by  the  Black  Prince  to  return  to  their  allegiance, 
Sir  Hugh  Calverley  of  Carrion  and  his  English  adventurers  2 
were  constrained  to  abandon  the  cause  of  Henry  of  Trastamara 
and  to  range  themselves  in  the  ranks  of  their  countrymen ; 
while  the  French  companions  were  content  to  remain  in  the 
service  of  the  bastard,  not  only  to  fight  against  an  English  prince, 
but  against  the  assassin  of  a  French  princess.  Nor  is  it  .entirely 
impertinent  to  recall  the  fact  that  450  years  later,  a  descendant 
of  the  Calverleys  drew  sword  against  the  French  in  Castile,  in 
defence  of  the  liberties  of  the  Spanish  people,  when  Sir  Staple- 
ton  Cotton  won  for  himself  a  new  title  3  of  honour  on  the  glorious 
field  of  Salamanca. 

The  English  army  at  length  marched  through  Roncesvalles  4 
without  opposition  from  either  Castile  or  Navarre.  Henry 
awaited  the  invaders  at  Salvatierra,  on  the  road  from  Alava  to 
Burgos,  and  the  first  encounter,  if  it  was  honourable  to  English 
valour,  was  disastrous  to  the  English  arms.  For  at  Arinez,  some 
five  miles  from  Vittoria — where  450  years  later  the  defeat  was 
nobly  avenged — the  advanced  guard  of  less  than  500  horse  and 
foot,  under  the  command  of  Sir  Thomas  Fuller,  was  surprised 
and  entirely  cut  to  pieces,  after  a  long  and  heroic  struggle,  by  a 
body  of  over  3000  troops  under  the  experienced  leadership  of 
the  French  Marshal  d'Audeneham.5  The  Black  Prince  was  too 
prudent  a  general  to  give  battle  on  ground  that  had  been  chosen 
by  his  enemy.  He  retreated  as  far  as  Viana  in  Navarre,  and 
then  once  more  advancing,  sought  to  turn  the  enemy's  position 

1  See  John  Talbot  Dillon,  Peter  the  Cruel  (1788),  vol.  ii.,  pp.  21,  22. 

2  Me"rime~e,  484. 

3  Not  of  Carrion,  but  of  Combermere.     The  name  of  Calverley  is  still  main- 
tained in  the  family  of  Cotton.    Sir  Hugh,  Lord  of  Carrion,  is  mentioned  in  Camden 
and  in  Fuller 's  Worthies,  vol.  i. ,  p.  274.     Sir  Stapleton  Cotton  was  not  a  descend- 
ant of  this  Sir  Hugh,  as  he  died  without  issue,  but  probably  of  some  member  of 
his  family.     See  Ormerod's  Cheshire,  ii.,  263,  and  766-9. 

4  During  the  preparations  for  this  expedition,  Richard,  eldest  son  of  the  Black 
Prince,  and  afterwards  Richard  II.  of  England,  was  born  at  Bordeaux. 

"Me'rime'e,  487.  The  fault  would  seem  to  have  lain  with  that  ever  unskilful 
general,  John  of  Gaunt. 


1367.]  PETER  THE  CRUEL.  335 

by  a  march  upon  Logrono.  At  length,  on  the  3rd  of  April, 
1367,  the  two  armies  met  in  a  level  plain  between  Najera  and 
Navarrete,  where  Henry  had  imprudently  or  chivalrously  de- 
scended to  give  formal  battle.  The  issue  was  never  doubtful. 
The  army  that  was  led  by  Henry  consisted  of  not  more  than 
5000  men-at-arms  and  some  20,000  light  troops,  for  the  most 
part  untrained  to  serious  warfare,  and  armed  only  with  slings 
and  javelins.1  The  Black  Prince  commanded  10,000  English 
and  foreign  knights,  as  many  archers,  and  a  large  force  of  the 
best  infantry  in  Europe.  The  Duke  of  Lancaster,  brother  of 
Edward  the  Black  Prince,  John  Chandos,  and  Jacme,  titular 
king  of  Majorca,  all  had  commands  in  the  invading  army.  The 
victory  of  the  English  was  complete.  Don  Sancho,  the  king's 
brother,  Bertrand  du  Guesclin,  Begue  de  Vilaines,  the  Marshal 
d'Audeneham,  the  Grand  Masters  of  Santiago  and  Calatrava 
were  among  the  prisoners  of  war.  "England,"  says  Dunham, 
"  fruitful  as  she  has  been  in  heroes,  can  boast  of  few  such  glorious 
fields.''  To  my  thinking,  the  victory  is  one  of  which  every  decent 
Englishman  should  be  heartily  ashamed.2  If  the  glory  of  war 
consists  not  in  the  cause  in  which  valour  is  displayed,  but  in  the 
mere  amount  of  the  slaughter,  then  the  battles  of  Tamerlane 
and  Genghis,  the  massacres  of  Perpignan  and  Beziers,  are  nobler 
than  Thermopylae  or  Albuera. 

Henry  of  Trastamara,  no  longer  king  in  Spain,  made  good 
his  escape  into  Aragon,  where  he  was  sheltered  by  that  Cardinal 
Pedro  de  Luna,  afterwards  so  celebrated  as  Benedict  XIII.  ;  and 
his  rival  returned  to  his  old  courses  as  Peter  the  Cruel.  Invested 
with  the  honour  of  knighthood  at  the  hands  of  the  Black  Prince, 
Peter  had  sworn  to  do  no  violence  to  any  of  his  prisoners.  He 
had  distinguished  himself  at  Navarrete,  not  in  the  heat  of  the 
battle,  but  in  pursuit  of  the  fugitives.  Mounted  on  a  black 
charger,  when  the  day  was  won,  he  had  galloped  about  the  field, 
crying  out  for  the  death  of  his  brother  ;  and  returning  unsuccess- 
ful to  the  quarters  of  the  victorious  Plantagenet  3  he  slew  with 
his  own  hand  a  Castilian  prisoner  who  had  taken  refuge  under 
the  standard  of  the  Black  Prince. 

This  violation,  not  only  of  the  laws  of  battle,  but  of  his 
knightly  oath,  called  for  a  severe  rebuke  from  his  English 
patron ;  but  Peter,  unabashed,  demanded  the  persons  of  all 

1Ayala,  443. 

2  It  must  not  be  forgotten,  however,  that  Peter  was  the  legitimate  sovereign  of 
Castile,  and  that  Henry  was  a  bastard  and  a  usurper. — H. 
'Froissart,  chap,  ccxxvi.  ;  ibid. ,  238;  Ayala,  471. 


336  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

his  captured  subjects,  that  he  might  deal  with  them  according 
to  his  evil  pleasure.  Having  succeeded,  moreover,  on  some 
pretext  in  securing  three  Castilian  nobles  of  specially  exalted 
position,  he  caused  them  immediately  to  be  killed  in  his 
own  tent.1 

The  victory  at  Navarrete  and  the  presence  of  the  English 
army  opened  the  way  to  Burgos ;  and  Peter,  as  soon  as  he 
was  safe  within  its  walls,  had  no  other  thought  but  to  defraud 
his  English  defenders,  and  to  wreak  his  vengeance  upon  his 
Castilian  subjects.  In  both  respects  he  was  completely  suc- 
cessful. Fraudulent  conveyances  took  the  place  of  the  money 
that  was  due.  False  charters  took  the  place  of  the  territory 
that  had  been  promised.  The  streets  of  Burgos  were  red  with 
the  noblest  blood  of  Castile. 

Having  sworn  before  the  high  altar  in  the  Cathedral  of 
Burgos  to  hand  over  the  city  of  Soria  to  John  Chandos,  and  to 
invest  the  Black  Prince  with  the  lordship  of  Biscay,  the  king 
delivered  charters  or  letters  patent  in  fulfilment  of  his  vow, 
but,  at  the  same  time,  he  sent  word  to  the  Biscayans  and  to 
the  Sorians  forbidding  them  to  suffer  their  new  masters  to  take 
possession  of  their  territories,  or  to  admit  any  of  their  repre- 
sentatives within  their  boundaries. 

The  arrival  of  Peter  at  his  capital  was  the  signal  for  an 
immense  number  of  executions  or  murders ;  among  others, 
the  burning  alive  of  Dona  Urraca  de  Osorio,  a  noble  lady, 
guilty  of  absolutely  no  crime,  real  or  imaginary,  beyond  her 
relationship  to  another  victim. 

At  length  the  royal  miscreant  ran  away  to  Seville,  leaving 
the  Black  Prince  and  his  army,  not  only  without  money,  but 
absolutely  without  food,  on  the  burning  plains  of  Castile.2 
The  greater  part  of  the  English  troops  died  of  famine  and 
disease.  An  attempt  was  made  to  poison  the  prince,  from  the 
effects  of  which  he  never  recovered.3  And  the  gallant  defender 
of  royal  rights  was  fain  to  leave  Spain  (September,  1367),  with 
the  loss  of  his  soldiers,  of  his  money,  and  of  his  health,  befooled 
and  cheated  in  one  of  the  worst  causes  in  which  English  blood 
and  English  treasure  have  ever  been  squandered  on  the 
continent  of  Europe. 

1  D.  Gomez  Carillo,  D.  Sancho  Moscoso,  grand  master  of  Santiago  ;  D.  Garcia 
Tenorio,  son  of  the  admiral  of  Castile.     M.  MeYim^e  speaks  with  admiration  of 
the  conduct  of  the  Prince  of  Wales,  not  only  during,  but  after  the  battle. 

2  Knighton,  c.  2629  ;  Walsingham,  t.  305  ;  Ayala,  500. 

3  Edward  retired  invalided  to  England  in  1368,  though  he  did  not  actually  die 
till  1374. 


1369.]  PETER  THE  CRUEL.  337 

The  French,  moreover,  emboldened  by  the  discomfiture  of 
the  Black  Prince — not  by  his  enemies  but  by  his  ally  in  Spain 
— determined  to  drive  the  English  out  of  Aquitaine.  And 
thus  Edward's  interference  in  the  affairs  of  Spain  directly  led 
to  the  declaration  of  war  against  England  by  Charles  V.  in 
April,  1369,  and  to  all  the  disasters  that  followed.  Nor  did 
the  English  intervention  secure  the  wretched  object  of  the 
expedition.  Peter,  relieved  of  the  presence  of  his  benefactor, 
entered  upon  a  new  career  of  bloodshed  ;  and  within  a  year 
after  the  retirement  of  the  Black  Prince  from  the  deadly  camp 
on  the  plains  of  Valladolid,  Henry  of  Trastamara  once  more 
took  the  field  in  Castile. 

Crossing  the  Pyrenees  from  his  asylum  in  Languedoc,  and 
passing  through  Aragon  and  Navarre  at  the  head  of  a  little 
body  of  400  knights,  the  count  was  joyfully  received  by  his  old 
friends  at  Calahorra  and  Burgos  in  August,  1 369.  Madrid  and 
other  cities  as  far  south  as  Cordova  declared  for  the  deliverer. 
Toledo  alone  held  out  for  Peter,  who,  after  a  fruitless  alliance 
with  Mohammed  V.  of  Granada,  found  himself  closely  invested 
by  his  rival  in  the  castle  of  Montiel  in  La  Mancha.  Seeking, 
as  usual,  to  extricate  himself  from  his  difficulties  by  some 
skilful  treaty,  he  entered  into  negotiations  with  Bertrand  du 
Guesclin,1  who  once  more  commanded  the  French  contingent 
in  the  service  of  Henry  of  Trastamara.  A  bribe  of  200,000 
doubloons,  or  rather,  a  promise  of  that  sum,  was  offered  to  du 
Guesclin  as  the  price  of  his  dishonour.  The  Breton  knight 
affected  to  be  convinced.  Henry  was  to  be  delivered  into  the 
hands  of  his  brother.  Thus  extricated,  as  he  hoped,  from  a 
position  that  had  become  untenable,  Peter,  on  the  night  of  the 
23rd  March,  1369,  stole  from  his  famine-stricken  retreat.  Guided 
by  a  trusty  hand  to  the  tent  of  du  Guesclin,  he  found  no  con- 
federate, but  Henry  of  Trastamara  himself — not  his  victim,  but 
his  executioner.  He  died  unregretted  by  man  or  woman  in 
Castile,  and  his  death  brought  relief  and  prosperity  to  Spain. 2 

JThe  story  of  his  ransom,  fixed  by  himself  at  the  enormous  sum  of  100,000 
gold  florins,  and  faithfully  paid  to  Edward  the  Black  Prince,  is  told  by  both 
Froissart  and  Ayala,  and  is  a  delightful  contrast  to  the  sordid  and  faithless 
barbarism  of  the  contemporary  court  of  Spain.  Froissart,  chap,  ccxlvii.  ;  Ayala, 
466-470. 

2  In  the  hour  of  his  supreme  danger  the  only  men  found  to  strike  a  blow  in 
defence  of  Peter  the  Cruel  were  two  Englishmen,  Sir  Ralph  Holmes  and  Jame 
Rowland,  faithful  to  their  commander,  odious  though  he  was,  as  became  true 
knights  and  soldiers.  But  that  any  Englishman  should  have  been  in  his  service 
after  his  treatment  of  Edward  the  Black  Prince,  is  certainly  strange.  See  Froissart, 
i.,  042. 

VOL.  i.  22 


338  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

Peter  the  Cruel,  according  to  all  authentic  history,  was  a 
man  so  completely  detestable  that  it  would  be  strange  if  he 
had  not  attracted  the  attention  of  apologists.  At  the  despotic 
court  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  it  was  a  species  of  lese  majestb 
to  speak  of  any  King  of  Castile  as  unworthy.  There  was  some- 
thing in  Peter's  destruction  of  his  powerful  nobles  not  entirely 
displeasing  to  the  autocratic  Ferdinand ;  and  it  was  ordained 
that  he  was  no  longer  to  be  known  as  the  Cruel,  but  as  El 
Justiciero,  the  doer  of  justice — the  title  more  worthily  borne  by 
his  father. 

In  the  time  of  Philip  II.  a  courtly  author  and  royal 
herald,  Pedro  de  Gratia  Dei — rather  a  strange  surname,  once 
adopted  by  a  celebrated  Jew  on  his  conversion — published 
another  vindication  of  the  character  of  Peter  the  Cruel,  under 
the  title  of  a  Life  of  the  Worthy  King.1 

Prosper  Merimee's  Life  of  the  King  is  a  brilliant  work,2 

Peter  was  not  struck  down  by  his  brother's  dagger  without  a  struggle,  and  the 
brothers  fighting  hand  to  hand  in  the  midst  of  a  ring  of  French  men-at-arms,  who 
called  for  fair  play  (Franc  jeu),  rolled  over  in  a  deadly  embrace.  Don  Henry, 
according  to  the  most  celebrated  of  the  many  legends,  fell  undermost,  when 
Rocaberti,  r-.n  Aragonese  knight,  caught  hold  of  Don  Peter  and  allowed  his 
assailant  to  get  the  upper  hand,  saying  : — 

Ni  quito  Rey,  ni  pongo  Rey, 
Pero  ayudo  a  mi  Senor. 

According  to  Argote  de  Molina  and  the  Romances  del  Rey  Don  Pedro,  the 
name  of  the  knight  was  Fernando  Perez  de  Andrada,  and  it  is  du  Guesclin  himself 
who  is  sometimes  said  to  have  intervened  at  the  critical  moment.  Froissart,  ch. 
ccliv.  Carbonell,  p.  197.  MeYime'e,  chap,  xxiii.  According  to  another  account, 
Peter  escaped  from  Montiel,  but  was  captured  outside  the  walls  by  a  French 
knight,  Begue  de  Vilaine,  by  whom  he  was  delivered  into  the  hands  of  his  brother. 
The  man  must  have  been  more  or  less  than  human  who  could  have  suffered  Peter 
to  escape  from  his  clutches. 

(The  struggle  in  which  Peter  was  engaged  during  the  whole  of  his  reign 
was  that  initiated  by  his  father  ;  namely  the  power  of  the  crown  against  that  of  the 
nobles.  That  he  was  savage  and  cruel  in  a  savage  age  and  a  cruel  contest  is 
certain  ;  but  his  failure  finally  to  conquer  the  nobles  and  their  puppet  Henry  threw 
Spain  back,  and  prevented  for  at  least  a  century  the  humbling  of  the  feudal  lords. 
James  the  Conqueror  of  Aragon  was  of  course  a  far  greater  man  than  Peter,  and 
he  partially  effected  what  the  latter  tried  to  do.  But  it  was  a  contest  in  which 
neither  of  them  was  over  scrupulous  ;  only,  in  one  case  the  history  of  it  was  written 
by  the  principal  figure  himself,  and  in  the  other  by  an  enemy. — H.) 

1  It  was  printed  (in  1790)  in  the  Semanario  Erudito  of  Valladares,  tit.  27,  28. 
Philip  II.  says  Zuniga  (Anales  de  Sevilla,  ano  1369)  did  precepto  de  clamarle 

Justiciero  ;  mas  nunca  se  le  borrava  el  titulo  de  Cruel. 

More  modern  apologists  are  the  Count  de  la  Roca,  El  Rey  don  Pedro  defen- 
dido  (1648)  and  the  licentiate  Lerdo  del  Pozo,  Apologia,  etc.  (1780). 

A  catalogue  of  the  writers  who  have  attempted  desacreditar  la  Cronica  del  Rey 
Don  Pedro  escrita  por  D.  P.  Lopez  de  Ayala  will  be  found  in  vol.  xx.  of  the  Docu- 
mentos  ineditos,  p.  28  et  seq. 

2  There  is  a  very  good  note  in  which  all  the  biographers  of  Peter  are  passed  in 
review  in  Lafuente  torn.  ix. ,  pp.  308-315.     There  is  also  a  Defensa  de  la  -veracidad 


1369-]  PETER  1HE  CRUEL.  339 

impartial  in  profession,  apologetic  in  tone,  but  full  of  damning 
facts.  The  chronicles  of  Froissart  and  of  Ayala  are  the  chief 
contemporary  authorities. 

No  one  has  succeeded  in  making  him  an  attractive  charac- 
ter ;  and  his  long  reign  of  nearly  twenty  years,  which  began 
in  his  boyhood,  at  the  age  of  sixteen,  and  came  to  a  close  ere 
he  had  passed  the  prime  of  early  manhood,  does  not  include 
one  single  good  deed  in  either  his  private  or  his  public  life,  to 
relieve  the  general  gloom  of  his  wickedness. 

de  Don  Pedro  Lopez  de  Ayala  en  la  cronica  del  Rey  don  Pedro,  by  Rafael  de 
Floranes,  in  vol.  xix.  of  the  Documentos  Ineditos,  pp.  513-575. 

Old  Froissart,  the  Italian  Matteo  Villani,  and  Pedro  Gomez  de  Albornoz  give 
no  uncertain  confirmation  of  the  records  of  Ayala,  whose  temperate  language  when 
chronicling  the  greatest  villainies  of  his  master  is  worthy  of  all  respect. 


340 


CHAPTER  XXX. 
ARAGON  IN  SPAIN. 

(1327—1416). 

JAMES  II.  of  Aragon  died  in  1327,  and  was  succeeded  by  his 
second  son  Alfonso,  who  reigned  from  1327  to  1336  as  Alfonso 
IV.  His  eldest  son,  in  order  the  more  freely  to  indulge  his 
licentious  appetities,  had  renounced  his  rights  of  succession, 
and  embraced  what  is  called  a  religious  life.  That  a  cloister 
should  be  preferred  to  a  palace  by  a  debauched  youth  as 
affording  greater  opportunities  of  self-indulgence,  is  sufficiently 
characteristic  of  the  manners  and  morals  of  the  times.  It  is 
at  least  creditable  to  the  prince  himself,  and  to  the  Order  in 
which  he  sought  his  retirement,  that  he  was  content  to  abide 
by  his  renunciation,  and  that  he  gave  no  trouble  to  his  younger 
brother  during  the  whole  course  of  his  reign.  He  may  possibly 
have  killed  himself  with  riotous  living.  At  all  events  we  hear 
no  more  of  him  in  the  history  of  his  country.  Alfonso  IV. 
was  crowned  with  great  pomp  at  Saragossa,  but  his  reign  is 
neither  glorious  nor  interesting.  Constant  warfare  with  the 
Genoese  maintaining  their  ancient  rights  over  the  unhappy 
island  of  Sardinia,  domestic  quarrels  between  the  king's  eldest 
son  and  his  children  by  a  second  marriage,1  these  were  the 
principal  features  of  his  short  reign.  Alfonso  died  at  Barcelona 
in  1336,  and  his  son  Peter  inherited  not  only  his  kingdom,  but 
his  quarrels. 

Peter,  the  fourth  of  that  name  in  Aragon,  is  conventionally 
known    to    the    Spanish    historians  as   El  Ceremonioso,2  or  the 

1  The  first  wife  of  Alfonso  IV.  was  Teresa  of  Enteza,  a  niece  of  the  Count  de 
Urgel ;  his  second  was  Eleanor  of  Castile. 

2  A  study  of  the  Ordenanzas  de  la  casa  Real  of  Peter  IV.  demonstrates  the 
luxury  and  refinement  of  his  court,  not  perhaps  unnatural,  seeing  that  Aragon  had 
been  in  constant  communication  for  so  many  generations  with  Italy,  with  Provence 
and  with  the  further  and  greater  East. 


ARAGON  IN  SPAIN.  341 

Formalist,  from  his  excessive  attention  to  matters  of  courtly 
etiquette  and  ceremonial,  and  his  formalism  l  in  affairs  of  legal 
and  political  procedure.  But  this  excessive  formalism  did  not 
prevent  him  from  plundering  2  his  neighbours,  nor  even  from 
poisoning  his  friends.  Nor  was  he  prevented  by  his  proverbial 
ceremoniousness,  from  placing,  at  his  coronation  in  the  cathedral 
at  Saragossa,3  his  own  crown  on  his  own  royal  head,  lest  he 
should  be  supposed  to  accept  or  ratify  in  any  way  the  unhappy 
surrender  of  Peter  II.  He  was  not  content,  like  the  prudent 
Peter  III.,  with  a  protest  or  declaration  of  his  royal  independ- 
ence of  Rome  ;  and  the  archbishop  who  presided  at  the  august 
ceremony,  was  compelled  like  Pope  Pius  VII.  in  the  presence 
of  the  first  Napoleon,  to  remain  an  unwilling  spectator  of  the 
act  which  his  sacred  hands  were  ready  and  willing  to  perform. 

The  long  reign  of  Peter  IV.,  thus  rudely  initiated,  was  dis- 
tracted, rather  after  the  fashion  of  Castile — by  civil  wars  and 
troubles  at  home,  or  at  least  within  the  limits  of  the  Peninsula, 
than  after  the  fashion  of  Aragon — by  interference  in  the  wars 
and  politics  of  foreign  countries.  The  king's  persecution  of 
his  stepmother,  as  soon  as  he  was  invested  with  the  power  of 
persecution,  provoked  the  first  war  with  Castile,  and  the  dis- 
honourable peace  which  brought  that  war  to  a  close,4  was 
followed  by  the  unceasing  disaffection  of  a  great  part  of  the 
nobility  of  Aragon. 

In  1 343,  after  some  seven  years  of  troubled  rule  in  Aragon, 
the  king  took  upon  himself,  in  defiance  of  all  existing  treaties, 
both  general  and  special,  to  drive  his  faithful  vassal  and  kins- 
man, James  of  Majorca,  out  of  the  Balearic  Islands,  and  to  unite 
that  little  kingdom  for  ever  to  the  crown  of  Aragon.6  Yet  was 
this  impudent  robbery  justified  or  excused  by  the  ceremonious 
Peter  under  a  false  pretence  of  legality.  The  most  celebrated 

1  Lafuente,  vii.,  144-147. 

2"  No  queria  dar  un  paso  fuera  de  la  ley,  y  interpretandola  a  su  antojo, 
cohenestaba  en  ella  las  mayores  inquidades."  Castelar,  F.  studios  Historicoi,  p.  46. 

3  The  opposition  against  Peter  IV.  on  the  part  of  the  nobles,  especially  in 
Catalonia  and  Valencia,  arose  before  his  coronation,  out  of  the  claim  of  the 
Catalans  that  he  should  take  the  oath  to  observe  the  constitution  of  Catalonia 
before  he  was  crowned  King  of  Aragon.  This  was  an  innovation  that  the 
"Ceremonious"  refused  to  accept;  and  the  Catalans  stayed  away  from  the 
coronation  at  Saragossa.  Pedro  was  subsequently  crowned  as  Prince  of  Catalonia 
and  King  of  Valencia,  and  duly  took  the  respective  oaths  as  such,  but  this  failed 
to  appease  the  nobles  and  Cortes. — H. 

4 The  quarrel  was  submitted  to  arbitration,  and  Peter  was  adjudged  to  allow 
his  half-brothers  to  enjoy  their  inheritance  unmolested. — H. 

6  Jayme,  or  James,  of  Majorca  was  the  husband  of  the  king's  sister. 


342  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

hypocrites  of  fiction  could  never  have  conveyed  their  neighbours' 
property  into  their  own  possession  with  more  punctilious  for- 
mality, or  expelled  the  rightful  owner  with  a  more  meticulous 
regard  for  forms  and  procedure,  than  was  displayed  on  this 
memorable  occasion  by  Peter  of  Aragon. 

An  attempt  to  settle  the  crown  *on  his  daughter  Constance 
rather  than  on  his  brother  James,  led  to  a  popular  outbreak, 
the  last  exercise  in  the  kingdom  of  Aragon  of  the  extraordinary 
Privilege  of  Union.  The  constitutional  rebels  assembled  at 
Saragossa,  and  actually  caused  a  seal  to  be  engraved  for  their 
use,  representing  themselves  kneeling  respectfully  at  the  feet 
of  their  king,  with  a  background  of  tents  and  spears,  denoting 
their  readiness  to  assert  their  power,1  in  case  they  should  be 
driven  to  extremities.  Gentle  and  simple  united  under  the 
banner  of  the  Union,  and  under  the  leadership  of  the  king's 
brother,  James  of  Aragon,  Count  of  Urgel.  The  prince  was 
poisoned  by  royal  command.  But  his  brother  Ferdinand  took 
his  place  ;  the  king  was  subjected  to  restraint,  if  not  actually 
to  imprisonment,  at  Murviedro  ;  and  Ferdinand,  with  a  band  of 
Castilian  allies,  was  received  with  acclamation  at  Valencia. 

But  greater  forces  than  those  of  the  King  of  Aragon  were 
found  to  fight  against  the  Union.  In  May,  1348,  the  plague  broke 
out  in  Valencia.  The  rebels  were  dismayed  ;  their  forces  were 
decimated  ;  their  organisation  was  broken  up ;  and  Ferdinand 
retired  to  the  north,  where  a  King's  Party  had  been  formed 
among  the  more  prudent  spirits  of  Aragon.  League  was  con- 
fronted with  counter  league ;  Union  with  anti-union.  The 
opposing  forces  at  length  met  in  battle  array  at  Epila  near 
Saragossa  in  1348,  when  Ferdinand  and  the  authorised  rebels 
were  defeated  with  great  slaughter.  The  dangerous  Privilege 
of  Union  was  immediately  abrogated ;  the  parchment  on  which 
it  was  engrossed  was  cut  in  pieces  by  the  king  with  his  own 
hand ; 2  and  the  very  words  of  the  charter  were  blotted  out  of 
the  records  of  Aragon.3 

Yet  were  many  excellent  laws  for  the  protection  of  the 
liberties  of  his  subjects  soon  afterwards  promulgated  by  Peter ; 

1  Sigillum  Unionis  Aragonum  in  the  legend. 

2  With  his  dagger  ;  hence  his  surname  of  del  Pufial — of  the  Poniard. 

3  According  to  Senor  Castelar,  it  was  the  aristocracy  of  Aragon  that  perished 
at  Epila ;  and,  as  may  be  supposed,  the  brilliant  Republican  writer  expresses  no 
regret.     (Estudios  Historicos,  142-4.)     But   popular  liberties,  he  thinks,  did  not 
suffer.     La  voluntad  del  pueblo  ,  .  .  que  aterrorisa  al  Key  .  .  ,  era  ,  ,  ,  mas 
grande  que  la  victora,  etc.,  etc.,  etc. 


1343.]  ARAGON  IN  SPAIN.  343 

and  the  pre-eminent  and  undisputed  authority  of  the  Grand 
Justiciary l  of  the  kingdom  may  be  dated  from  this  period. 
But  the  king's  laws  were  better  than  his  manners.  Nearly  as 
cruel  and  quite  as  perverse  as  his  more  notorious  namesake  of 
Castile  ;  restless,  faithless,  absolutely  without  scruples,  he  perse- 
cuted his  nobility,  harassed  his  neighbours,  stirred  up  strife 
among  the  members  of  his  own  family,  and  kept  faith  with  no 
man.  Civil  war  ;  family  intrigue  ;  domestic  dissension  ;  broken 
treaties  ;  these  were  the  features  of  his  reign.  Prince  James 
had  been  poisoned  at  Barcelona,  Queen  Leonora  was  murdered 
in  Castile,  Prince  Ferdinand  was  cut  down  at  the  very  table  of 
the  king  his  brother,  in  pursuance  of  a  secret  treaty  made 
between  Peter  of  Aragon  and  Peter  of  Castile,  and  promoted  by 
the  Papal  legate  2 

The  long  struggle  with  Castile  ;  the  war  against  Peter  the 
Cruel  by  land  and  by  sea ;  the  alliance  of  Henry  of  Trasta- 
mara  ;  the  support  of  France  ;  the  intrigues  with  Navarre,  and 
the  three  invasions  of  Spain  by  the  bold-spirited  pretender, 
who  at  length  reigned  as  Henry  II.  of  Castile,  all  these  things 
would  take  long  to  tell,  and  have  been  already  referred  to  in 
the  chapter  on  Peter  the  Cruel.  An  attempt  that  was  made 
by  the  Aragonese  in  1 349  to  reduce  Sardinia  was  in  every  way 
unfortunate  ;  and  after  negotiations  and  revolutions  extending 
over  the  greater  part  of  forty  years,  after  much  fighting  and 
little  glory,  Peter  of  Aragon  was  fain  to  content  himself,  in 
1386,  with  a  divided  empire  with  the  Pisans  and  Genoese  in 
that  island.  His  still  more  rash  interference  in  the  affairs  of 
Sicily  brought  him  neither  honour  nor  profit.  An  expedition 
to  Greece  secured  him  the  recognition  of  his  barren  title  of 
Duke  of  Athens  ;  and  the  unholy  appropriation  of  Tarragona, 
the  sovereignty  of  which  had  long  rested  with  the  archbishop 
of  that  see,  preceded  by  but  a  few  months  his  death,  in 
January,  1387,  after  a  reign  of  fifty- one  years.3 


1  From  this  time  the  office  of  justiciary  was  held  for  life.     Hallam,  Mid.  Ages, 
»• .  S3- 

2  One  condition  of  this  treaty  was  the  murder  of  Henry  of  Trastamara.     But 
Peter  of  Aragon  evaded  this  clause,  suspecting  bad  faith,  and  wishing  to  preserve 
a  friend  in  Castile,  in  case  of  the  cruel  king's  treachery. 

3  Serior  Castelar,  who  is  certainly  an  admirer  of  Peter  IV. ,  and  who  has  devoted 
four  eloquent  chapters  to  the  story  of  his  victory  over  the  Union  (Estudios  Histori- 
cos  (ed.  1875,  pp.  22-115),  is  compelled  to  admit  that  he  never  spoke  the  truth, 
and  never  abrigaba  recta  intention. 

During  the  reign  of  Peter  IV.  the  Spanish  Era  was  abolished  in  Aragon,  and 
the  Christian  Era  adopted  in  the  national  chronology,  as  from  1350. 


344  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

Small  of  stature,  weak  of  frame,  and  with  a  delicate  con- 
stitution, Peter  was  compact  of  political  ambition,  devoured 
by  lust  of  power.  False  by  nature,  and  a  dissembler  by  system, 
his  cruelty  never  led  him  to  rash  deeds  of  violence,  nor  did  any 
gentler  feelings  deter  him  from  the  most  atrocious  crimes. 
The  most  Machiavelian  prince  in  Europe  before  Machiavel, 
if  Peter  IV.  was  not  the  first  of  Spanish  diplomatists,  he  was 
one  of  the  greatest  of  Spanish  intriguers. 

The  first  act  of  John  I.,  who  succeeded  his  father  Peter 
IV.,  in  1387,  is  sufficiently  characteristic  of  the  times.  It  was 
to  order  his  step-mother,  Queen  Sybilla  of  France,  Peter  IV's 
fourth  wife,  with  whom  he  was  on  bad  terms,  to  be  accused  of 
witchcraft,  and  to  be  immediately  put  to  the  torture  with  a  view  to 
her  condemnation  and  execution.  The  intervention  of  a  humane 
legate,  and  the  abandonment  by  the  queen  of  all  her  posses- 
sions, saved  her  from  a  shameful  death ;  but  twenty-nine  of  her 
companions  were  executed  on  the  charge  of  aiding  and  abetting 
her  in  the  enchantment  of  the  late  king. 

Yet  John  I.  was  far  from  being  either  a  fool  or  a  savage. 
A  lover  of  pleasure  rather  than  of  war  or  of  faction,  and  known 
alike  by  the  title  of  The  Sportsman  and  The  Indolent,  he  was 
especially  devoted  to  music,  an  art  in  which  his  Queen  Violante 
equally  excelled ;  and  the  court  at  Saragossa  became  the  resort 
of  all  that  was  most  excellent  among  the  singers  and  musicians 
of  the  day.1  Poets  and  troubadours  and  lovers  of  the  gay 
science  vied  with  each  other  in  the  floral  games,  and  at  the 
courts  of  love,  which  constituted  the  more  serious  occupation  of 
the  palace  ;  while  concerts  of  vocal  and  instrumental  music 
were  often  thrice  repeated  in  the  course  of  a  single  day. 

It  was  a  gay  and  graceful  life,  but  it  was  not  appreciated 
by  the  graver  subjects  of  King  John.  It  was  more  moral  than 
murder,  and  less  costly  than  foreign  wars.  But  it  did  not 
please  the  commons  of  Aragon.  The  Cortes  of  Monzon  called 
the  king  to  order  in  1388  ;  and  if  the  musicians  were  not  all 
summarily  dismissed,  a  limit  was  placed  upon  the  expenses  of 
the  court. 

In  the  ruder  pastime  of  the  chase,  His  Majesty  was  still 
permitted  to  take  his  pleasure  unrestrained  ;  and  when  hunting 
the  wolf  near  Saragossa  in  May,  1395,  he  was  thrown  from  his 
horse  and  killed,  after  the  manner  of  his  namesake  and  brother 
King  John  of  Castile. 

1Zurita,  Anales,  x. ,  43 


1395.]  ARAGON  IN  SPAIN.  345 

Not  the  least  important  event  of  this  short  and  uninteresting 
reign  was  the  election  of  Pedro  de  Luna,  the  great  scholar, 
and  Cardinal  of  Aragon,  to  the  Popedom,  under  the  title  of 
Benedict  XIII.,  to  the  intense  satisfaction  of  both  Aragon  and 
Castile.  Yet  the  doubtful  honour  was  productive  only  of 
ecclesiastical  and  political  confusion  in  the  Peninsula.  After 
many  disputes  and  discussions,  the  validity  of  the  Papal  election 
was  recognised  only  in  Spain,  and  in  far  away  Scotland  ;  and 
the  intractable  Benedict  was  forced  to  live  shut  up  at 
Avignon,  a  prisoner,  not  in  form,  but  Jin  fact — with  his  palace- 
fortress  defended  by  a  gallant  band  of  Aragonese  soldiers, 
under  the  command  of  sundry  militant  cardinals,  bishops  and 
priests.1 

John  of  Aragon  was  succeeded  by  his  brother  Martin,  sur- 
named  El  Humano,  or  the  humane  ;  and  in  spite  of  the  feeble 
opposition  of  Count  Matthew  de  Foix,  who  had  married  the 
eldest  daughter  of  the  late  king,  he  was  generally  acknowledged 
as  King  of  Aragon,  in  1395. 

A  more  serious  rival  was  found  at  the  Vatican,  where 
Boniface  IX.  stirred  up  civil  war  in  ever-turbulent  Sardinia,  in 
order  to  punish  the  Aragonese  for  their  support  ef  his  rival,  Pope 
Benedict  XIII.  Nor  was  Boniface  content  with  merely  pro- 
moting strife  in  the  king's  dominions.  He  made  a  formal  grant 
not  only  of  Sardinia  but  of  Sicily  to  an  Italian  favourite,  and 
treated  the  king  as  degraded,  dispossessed  and  discrowned. 
But  the  Sicilians  were  loyal  to  Aragon  ;  and  Prince  Martin, 
the  king's  eldest  son,  had  no  difficulty  in  maintaining  his  power 
in  the  island.  He  was  even  enabled  to  undertake  an  expedi- 
tion to  Sardinia  at  the  head  of  a  large  army  of  his  faithful 
subjects,  to  defend  his  father's  rights.  But  though  victorious 
in  battle  over  Brancaleone  Doria,  the  chief  of  the  rebels,  Prince 
Martin  fell  a  victim  to  the  ever-deadly  Sardinian  fever  on  the 
24th  of  July,  1409.  His  father,  King  Martin,  died  in  the  next 
year ;  and  Aragon  was  once  more  distracted  by  rival  pretenders 
to  the  throne. 

Six  of  these  royal  claimants  were  justified  in  different 
degrees  in  asserting  their  rights  of  succession.  Jacme  of 
Urgel ;  the  Duke  of  Calabria  ;  the  Count  of  Luna ;  the  Count 

1  The  progress  of  the  Great  Schism :  the  proceedings  of  the  Council  of  Pisa  in 
1409,  and  the  various  intrigues  and  incidents  of  the  struggle  are  dwelt  on  at  length 
by  the  Spanish  historians,  as  they  certainly  were  not  without  influence  on  the 
history  of  Spain.  Yet  is  the  connection  somewhat  too  indirect  to  be  insisted  upon 
in  a  brief  sketch  like  the  present. 


346  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

of  Prades ;  the  Duke  of  Gandia ;  and  Ferdinand,  Regent  of 
Castile.1 

Further  and  rival  pretenders  sought  to  acquire  the  sove- 
reignty of  Sicily,  of  Corsica  and  of  Sardinia.  The  affairs  of  the 
Papacy  were  still  unsettled.  Alexander  V.,  who  had  succeeded 
Boniface  IX.,  had  just  been  poisoned  at  Rome  ;  and  Benedict 
XIII.  had  passed  over  into  Aragon  to  make  his  Papal  influence 
felt  in  the  selection  of  a  king.  His  unruly  cousin,  Antonio  de 
Luna,  supported  the  pretensions  of  the  Count  of  Urgel  to  the 
crown  of  Aragon ;  and  these  worthies,  having  invited  their 
ecclesiastical  adversary,  the  Archbishop  of  Saragossa,  to  a 
solemn  conference  upon  the  affairs  of  the  kingdom,  waylaid 
him  in  a  secluded  spot  as  he  rode  by  upon  his  mule  to  the 
appointed  place  of  meeting,  and  murdered  him  on  the  high- 
road in  open  day.  Such  were  the  incidents  that  accompanied 
a  change  of  government  in  the  fifteenth  century. 

And  yet  in  Aragon,  if  there  was  civil  war,  there  was  no 
administrative  anarchy.  The  Parliament2  of  Catalonia  con- 
tinued to  sit  after  the  death  of  the  king ;  and  the  Justiciary  of 
Aragon,  whose  administrative  authority  was  even  greater  than 
that  of  the  king  himself,  carried  on  the  civil  government  much 
as  usual.  In  Valencia,  indeed,  there  was  actual  warfare ;  nor 
could  the  States  General  be  brought  together  to  deliberate 
upon  the  critical  condition  of  the  commonwealth.  But  on  the 
whole,  the  absence  of  a  king  like  Peter  IV.,  or  even  like  John 
I.,  was  perhaps  not  very  prejudicial  to  good  government. 

The  character  of  the  rebellion  or  disaffection  in  the  north- 
west was  widely  different  from  what  it  was  in  the  south-east. 
In  Aragon  it  was  purely  aristocratic.  In  Valencia  it  was 
purely  democratic.  The  Catalans  for  once  were  undisturbed, 
and  it  was  their  pacific  patriotism  that  saved  the  kingdom. 
An  Aragonese  Parliament  had  assembled,  indeed,  in  1411,  at 
Calatayud.  But  they  had  separated  without  having  come  to 


1(i)  Jacme  or  James,  Count  of  Urgel,  lieutenant-general  of  the  kingdom  in 
the  time  of  the  late  king,  great-grandson  of  Alfonso  IV. 

(2)  Louis,  Duke  of  Calabria,  great-grandson  of  Peter  III. 

3)  Fadrique,  Count  of  Luna,  grandson  of  Martin,  the  late  King  of  Aragon. 

4)  John,  Count  of  Prades,  grandson  of  King  James  II. 

5)  Alfonso,  Duke  of  Gandia,  great-grandson  of  James  II. 

(6)  Prince  Ferdinand,  Regent  of  Castile,  nephew  of  the  late  king,  and  brother 
of  Henry  of  Castile. 

2  When  the  estates  were  assembled  under  the  presidency  of  the  king,  the 
assembly  was  called  the  Caries ;  when  the  king  was  dead — perhaps  even  when  he 
was  merely  absent — the  august  body  was  known  by  the  name  of  Parliament, 


1412.]  ARAGON  IN  SPAIN.  347 

any  decision  upon  the  merits  of  the  rival  candidates ;  and  the 
helm  of  the  state  was  held  by  the  commons  of  Catalonia. 

At  length,  in  spite  of  the  hostile  forces  that  were  every- 
where present  throughout  the  country,  the  Aragonese  and  even 
the  Valencians  were  persuaded  to  send  delegates  to  a  Parlia- 
ment at  Alcafiiz,  where  they  were  met  by  the  Catalans  ;  and 
a  court  or  council  of  nine  judges,  three  from  each  of  the  great 
provinces,  was  constituted,1  and  invested  with  full  powers  to 
elect  a  sovereign  from  among  the  various  claimants  to  the 
throne,  who  should  be  acknowledged  by  the  nobles  and 
commons  as  King  of  Aragon. 

Five  of  these  novel  functionaries  were  ecclesiastics,  chief 
and  most  noteworthy  of  whom  was  Vincent  Ferrer,  Archbishop 
of  Valencia — who  was  afterwards  canonised  by  his  friend 
Calixtus  III. — and  four  lawyers,  all  honourable  and  respectable 
personages. 

This  august  college  of  electors  met  on  the  29th  of  March, 
1412,  at  Caspe,  a  quiet  town  on  the  banks  of  the  Ebro,  removed 
by  some  sixty  miles  from  the  capital  at  Saragossa.  The  first 
thirty  days  were  devoted  to  a  patient  hearing  of  the  contentions 
of  the  rival  princes,  represented  by  counsel  before  the  assembly. 
Two  months  more  elapsed  before  the  examination  of  the  claims 
and  the  deliberation  upon  the  various  legal  arguments  were 
brought  to  a  conclusion.  At  length,  on  the  24th  of  June,  the 
conclave  proceeded  to  the  actual  selection  or  election  of  a  king. 
Six  voices  out  of  nine  were  given  in  favour  of  Ferdinand  of 
Castile,  but  no  immediate  announcement  was  made  of  the 
result ;  and  we  are  told  that  the  secret  was  kept  for  the  greater 
part  of  four  days. 

On  the  28th  of  June  these  grave  and  memorable  delibera- 
tions were  brought  to  a  fitting  conclusion.  On  rising  ground 
between  the  church  and  the  castle  of  Caspe  a  lofty  dais  was 
erected,  with  a  canopy  of  scarlet  and  gold,  worthy  of  the 
candidates  and  their  judges,  and  flanked  on  either  side  by  less 
imposing  stages  or  platforms  for  the  accommodation  of  the 
advocates  and  representatives  of  the  high  contending  parties. 
And  under  the  early  morning  sun  of  the  28th  of  June,  the 
judges  and  councillors,  with  a  guard  of  knights  and  men-at- 
arms,  marshalled  by  the  Alcaldes  of  the  three  great  provinces, 
filed  in  solemn  procession  before  an  immense  concourse  of 

'These  delegates,  though  approved  by,  and  representative  of,  the  three  estates 
of  Aragon,  Catalonia,  and  Valencia,  were  nominated  by  the  justiciary  of  the  realm. 


348  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

spectators.  They  made  their  way  first  into  the  church,  where 
mass  was  sung,  and  then  to  the  judgment  seat,  where  the  future 
saint :  read  aloud  the  finding  of  the  court.  The  royal  standard 
was  displayed  once  more  over  the  walls  of  the  castle,  and  the 
vast  assembly  shouted  aloud,  "  Long  live  Lord  Ferdinand,  King 
of  Aragon ! " 

Ferdinand  was  at  Cuenca  when  he  received  the  news  of  his 
election ;  and  it  was  at  Cuenca  not  many  days  afterwards  that 
the  commissioners  of  Catalonia  waited  upon  him,  with  dutiful 
demands  that  he  would  respect  their  liberties,  their  usages  and 
their  Fueros,  as  they  had  been  respected  in  days  gone  by. 
Ferdinand  was  ready  to  promise,  and  he  was  no  less  ready  to 
perform.  His  first  act  was  to  summon  the  States  General  of  the 
Aragonese  nation  to  meet  at  Saragossa  on  the  25th  of  August, 
1412,  when  he  took  the  accustomed  oath  of  fidelity  to  the 
constitution,  and  received  the  homage,  not  only  of  his  new 
subjects,  but  of  two  of  the  competitors  for  the  crown  which  he 
had  won.2 

The  king's  oath  was  repeated  within  the  year,  at  the  Cortes 
of  Lerida,  for  the  kingdom  of  Valencia,  and  Barcelona,  where 
the  most  powerful  of  his  late  rivals,  the  Count  of  Urgel,  offered 
the  hand  of  his  daughter  to  the  Infante  Henry,  grand  master  of 
Santiago,  and  second  son  of  King  Ferdinand — an  offer  which  was 
courteously  refused. 

Yet  En  Jacme  of  Urgel  was  far  from  being  reconciled  to 
Ferdinand's  elevation  to  the  throne  of  Aragon ;  and  counting 
upon  foreign  alliances  and  foreign  aid,  he  sought  once  more  to 
plunge  the  kingdom  into  bloodshed  and  confusion.  Encouraged, 
at  least  in  the  first  instance,  by  the  Duke  of  Clarence,  second 
son  of  Henry  IV.  of  England,  and  supported  once  more  by  the 
abandoned  Antonio  de  Luna,  James  of  Urgel  marched  on  Lerida 
at  the  head  of  a  small  army,  composed  of  Gascons  and  English, 
and  renegades  from  every  part  of  France  and  Spain.  But  after 
sustaining  a  severe  defeat  at  Alcolea  (July  10th,  1413)  the 

1  Saint  Vincent  (San  Vicente  Ferrer). 

2  The  Duke  of  Gandia  did  homage  for  the  County  of  Ribagorza ;  and  Don 
Fadrique  of  Aragon  for  the  County  of  Luna.     The  Count  of  Urgel  did  not  dispute 
the  choice  of  the  electors,  but  excused  his  attendance  at  the  king's  court  on  the 
plea  of  illness.     Nothing  can  show  more  clearly  than  these  entire  proceedings  the 
respect  for  law  and  tribunals  that  so  remarkably  characterised  the  people  of  Aragon. 
(This  is  the  more  conspicuous  in  this  case,  because  from  motives  of  policy  the 
candidate  chosen,  Ferdinand  of  Castile,  was  certainly  less  entitled  than  Jacme  to 
succeed  ;  the  custom  of  Aragon  having  been  generally  opposed  to  the  recognition 
of  the  rights  of  the  female  line  to  the  crown. — H.) 


1415.]  ARAGON  IN  SPAIN.  34-9 

pretender's  forces  were  scattered,  and  he  himself  was  forced  to 
take  refuge  in  the  fortified  town  of  Balaguer  on  the  Segre. 
The  Duke  of  Clarence  was  in  England,  and  sent  no  help  to  the 
rebel.  His  cousin,  the  Duke  of  York,  offered  his  friendship  and 
his  alliance  to  Ferdinand.  Balaguer  surrendered  on  the  31st  of 
October,  1413  ;  and  Ferdinand,  displaying  a  noble  clemency  to 
the  rebel,  and  disregarding  even  the  formal  sentence  of  death 
that  was  passed  by  the  tribunal  before  whom  the  Count  of 
Urgel  was  arraigned  on  a  charge  of  high  treason,  contented 
himself  with  the  mitigated  punishment  or  precaution  of  im- 
prisonment in  the  fortress  of  Xativa. 

Relieved  thus  honourably  from  all  rivals  or  rivalry,  Ferdinand 
was  crowned,  together  with  his  good  Queen  Leonora,  with 
unaccustomed  pomp  at  Saragossa  in  January,  1414.  His  eldest 
son  Alfonso  was  invested  at  the  same  time  with  the  new  title  of 
Prince  of  Gerona.1  His  second  son  John,  created  Duke  of 
Penafiel,  was  appointed  governor  of  the  kingdom  of  Sicily  ;  and 
a  marriage  treaty  by  which  the  young  prince  was  engaged  to 
marry  Queen  Joan  of  Naples — providing  for  the  union  of  the 
crowns  of  Naples  and  Sicily  in  the  line  of  Aragon — was  signed 
in  the  course  of  the  same  year.  This  union,  however,  was  not 
destined  to  take  place.  Queen  Joan  suddenly  changed  her 
mind,  and  married  the  Count  de  la  Marche  (Feb.,  1415),  as  her 
affianced  husband  was  actually  on  his  voyage  from  Barcelona  to 
Naples.  Prince  John  made  the  best  of  his  disappointment,  and 
married  Blanche,  daughter  ot  Charles  the  Noble,  through  whom 
he  ultimately  succeeded  to  the  throne  of  Navarre.  The  eldest 
son  of  King  Ferdinand,  Alfonso  Prince  of  Gerona,  married  in 
the  June  of  the  same  year  (1415)  the  Infanta  Maria,  sister  of 
King  John  II.  of  Castile. 

Sardinia  was  pacified  about  the  same  time  by  the  purchase 
of  the  rights  of  the  Viscount  of  Narbonne  to  a  large  part  of  the 
island  ;  and  the  only  great  national  or  international  difficulty 
that  baffled  all  the  efforts  of  Ferdinand  successfully  to  solve, 
was  that  of  the  Great  Schism  perpetuated  by  the  obstinacy  and 
longevity  of  the  gallant  Spaniard,  Pedro  de  Luna — the  anti- 
Pope  Benedict  XIII.2 

1  Intended  to  be  the  hereditary  title  of  the  eldest  son  of  the  King  of  Aragon, 
in  imitation  of  the  newly-created  principality  of  Asturias  in  the  royal  house  of 
Castile,  and  that  of  Wales  in  the  royal  family  of  England. 

2  The  Council  of  Constance  in  1417,  the  formal  deposition  of  Benedict  XIII. 
and  the  election  of  Martin  V.  in  the  same  year,  had  no  influence  upon  the  deter- 
mined Pedro  de  Luna,  who  lived  shut  up  in  his  castle  at  Peniscola,  maintaining  to 


350  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

Unhappily  for  Spain  and  for  Europe,  Ferdinand  fell  ill  at 
Perpignan  in  the  course  of  these  negotiations  l  and  died  soon 
after  (2nd  April,  1416)  at  Igualada,  at  the  early  age  of  thirty- 
seven.  A  just  man,  a  kind  father,  a  loyal  regent,  an  honest 
suitor,  a  devoted  king,  a  gallant  soldier,  a  true  knight ;  Ferdi- 
nand of  Castile,  after  his  brief  reign  of  only  four  years  in  Aragon, 
has  left  behind  him  a  reputation  which  is  gloriously  perpetu- 
ated in  the  unaccustomed  titles  of  The  Honest  and  The  Just. 

the  day  of  his  death,  in  1423,  his  infallibility  as  the  only  legitimate  Pope  of  Rome. 
This  memorable  Spaniard  was  no  less  than  ninety  years  of  age  when  he  died,  in 
the  thirteenth  year  of  his  Pontificate.  And  with  his  death  was  practically  concluded 
the  Great  Schism  that  had  vexed  Christendom  for  nearly  forty  years. 

1  Shortly  before  his  death  he  signed  an  act  by  which  he  withdrew  his  own 
allegiance  and  that  of  all  his  states  from  Benedict  XIII.  ;  whom  he  had  fruitlessly 
urged  to  abdicate  his  assumed  Papacy.  This  important  defection  from  the  anti- 
Pope  practically  settled  the  question,  although  Benedict  personally  continued 
obstinate. — H. 


351 


CHAPTER  XXXI. 
CASTILE  BEYOND  THE  SEA. 

(1369-1407.) 
I. — The  Lancastrian  Claims  to  Castile. 

THE  cheerful  recognition  of  Henry  the  Bastard  as  King  of 
Castile  was  due  less  to  his  own  merits  than  to  the  enormous 
satisfaction  that  every  one  must  have  felt  at  the  death  of  his 
legitimate  brother.  If  the  cause  of  the  Cid's  popularity  was 
his  opposition  to  a  despotic  king,  then  Henry  of  Trastamara 
should  have  been  the  darling  of  Castile.  If  steadfast  perse- 
verance in  spite  of  adverse  fortune,  if  bravery  in  the  field,  if  a 
generous  heart  and  a  liberal  hand  are  ever  appreciated  in  a 
leader  and  a  king,  then  Henry  II.  scarcely  needs  the  dark  foil 
of  his  brother's  wickedness  to  display  his  own  royal  and  knightly 
graces. 

Yet  it  was  but  natural  that  his  assumption  of  the  reins  of 
power  should  not  be  entirely  without  opposition.  The  legiti- 
mate heir  to  his  brother's  throne  was  Ferdinand,  King  of 
Portugal,  a  grandson  of  Beatrix,  the  daughter  of  Sancho  the 
Bravo  of  Castile.  John  of  Lancaster  was  at  least  a  powerful 
claimant.  Logrono,  Vittoria  and  other  cities  on  the  northern 
frontier  were  in  the  power  of  Charles  the  Bad  of  Navarre. 
Molina  Requena  placed  itself  under  the  protection  of  Aragon  ; 
and  Carmona — fortified  and  victualled  as  his  last  stronghold 
by  Peter  the  Cruel — refused  to  open  its  gates  to  his  successor. 
But  within  a  year  Henry  had  defeated  a  Portuguese  fleet  at 
the  mouth  of  the  Guadalquivir,  and  had  possessed  himself 
not  only  of  Carmona  (10th  May,  1371)  but  of  almost  every 
other  city  that  had  at  first  hesitated  to  acknowledge  his  title  to 
the  crown. 

One  of  his  first  acts  was  to  summon  a  Cortes  at  Toro  (1369), 
where,  among  many  excellent  laws  for  the  protection  of  the 


352  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

community,  it  was  ordained  that  punishments  of  special  severity 
should  be  inflicted  upon  assassins,  whether  gentle  or  simple. 
And  at  the  Cortes  that  met  at  Toro  in  1371,  a  very  complete 
system  of  criminal  procedure,  known  as  the  Ordenamiento  sobre 
la  admimstracion  de  justicia,  was  added  to  the  already  excellent 
laws  of  Spain. 

A  projected  alliance  between  one  of  Henry's  daughters — 
the  Infanta  Leonora — with  Ferdinand,  King  of  Portugal,  might 
have  not  only  removed  a  dangerous  rival,  but  in  the  event  of 
surviving  issue,  would  have  united  the  crowns  of  Portugal  and 
Castile.  Ferdinand,  however,  preferred  chicanery  to  honourable 
alliance,  and  having  broken  off  the  match,  and  declared  war 
against  Henry,  was  handsomely  beaten  by  the  Castilians  both 
on  land  and  at  sea.  And  the  king,  thus  relieved  from  all  anxiety 
on  the  side  of  Portugal,  flew  at  higher  game  beyond  his  northern 
frontier. 

John  of  Lancaster,  and  Edmund,  Earl  of  Cambridge,  after- 
wards Duke  of  York,1  two  sons  of  Edward  III.  of  England,  had 
married,  as  we  have  already  seen,  the  ladies  Constance  and 
Isabella,  the  daughters  of  Peter  the  Cruel  and  Maria  de  Padilla ; 
and  Lancaster,  on  the  death  of  his  worthy  father-in-law,  laid 
claim,  in  right  of  his  wife,  to  the  crown  of  Spain.  Had  Peter 
been  really  married  to  his  acknowledged  mistress,  Constance 
was  undoubtedly  Queen  of  Castile  ;  but  the  oath  of  a  trebly- 
perjured  king,  supported  by  the  declaration  of  a  servile  arch- 
bishop, were  not  of  much  account  as  evidence  ;  and,  bastard  for 
bastard,  the  claims  of  Henry,  king  in  possession,  were  surely 
greater  than  those  of  his  niece,  the  wife  of  a  foreign  duke. 

Whatever  may  have  been  their  results  in  Castile,  the  pre- 
tensions of  John  of  Lancaster  were  attended  with  nothing  but 
evil  fortune  for  himself  and  for  England.  The  first  reply  that 
was  given  by  Henry  to  the  Lancastrian  claims  upon  Spain,  which 
were  formulated  in  June,  1372,  was  the  despatch  of  a  fleet  under 
his  admiral,  Ambrosio  Bocanegra,  who  fell  in  with  an  English 
squadron  under  the  Earl  of  Pembroke  off  La  Rochelle,  and 
totally  defeated  it.  Charles  V.  of  France  on  his  side  took  ad- 
vantage of  the  victory,  and  overran  the  whole  of  Guienne  ;  and 
Lancaster,  as  captain-general  of  the  English  forces,  engaged  in 
many  by  no  means  successful  campaigns  in  various  parts  of 

1  The  marriages  took  place  at  Roquefort,  near  Bordeaux,  at  the  end  of  1371 ; 
the  brothers  and  sisters  went  to  England  in  the  spring  of  1372  ;  and  on  25th  June 
John  of  Gaunt  first  styled  himself  King  of  Castile.  See  Diet.  Nat.  Biog.,  sub  tit. 
John  of  Gaunt. 


1380.]  CASTILE  BEYOND  THE  SEA.  353 

France,  forgot,  for  the  time  being,  his  own  claims  to  a  more 
distant  throne.1 

Henry  of  Trastamara  thus  reigned  in  peace  until  his  death 
on  30th  May,  1379,  at  the  early  age  of  forty-six,  when  his  eldest 
son  was  proclaimed  king  in  his  room ;  and  was  soon  afterwards 
crowned  at  Las  Huelgas,  near  Burgos,  as  John  I.  of  Castile. 
His  first  care,  following  his  father's  example,  was  to  summon  a 
Cortes  ;  and  the  Ordinances  of  Burgos,  in  1379,  contained  many 
new  and  interesting  provisions,  including  a  prohibition  of  the 
bestowal  of  ecclesiastical  benefices  upon  strangers,  and  many 
remarkable  sumptuary  laws.2 

But  the  greatest  glory  of  King  John's  reign  was  his  success- 
ful expedition  against  the  coasts  of  England,  to  punish  the 
presumption  of  the  Duke  of  Lancaster,  who  had  taken  advantage 
of  the  death  of  Henry  II.  to  reassert  his  rights  to  the  throne 
of  Castile.  Once  more  the  maintenance  of  the  Lancastrian 
claims  was  the  signal  for  the  destruction  of  a  British  fleet.  Not 
content  with  threatening  the  ports,  the  Castilians,  emboldened 
by  former  successes,  sailed  up  the  Thames,  and  took  or  burned 
the  shipping  in  the  river  almost  within  sight  of  London  (1380). 3 

But  the  English  claims  were  not  thereby  defeated.  At  the 
invitation  of  the  most  unlikely  of  all  allies,  Ferdinand  of  Portu- 
gal, himself  the  legitimate  heir  to  the  crown  of  Castile,  Edmund, 
Earl  of  Cambridge,  was  despatched  to  the  Peninsula  in  1381,  to 
maintain  his  brother's  cause  against  John.  But  after  some 
desultory  fighting,  he  returned  to  England  without  honour  or 
profit,  upon  the  signature  of  the  peace  between  Ferdinand  of 
Portugal  and  John  of  Castile  in  1382. 

An  interrupted  treaty  of  marriage  (March,  1383),  was  the 
signal  for  a  fresh  outbreak  of  the  war  between  the  Peninsular 
kingdoms ;  and  by  the  death  of  Ferdinand  in  the  same  year,  the 
Portuguese  were  involved  in  domestic  discord,  which  was  only 
abated  by  the  election  of  John  of  Avis  4  to  the  vacant  throne 
of  Portugal  (6th  April,  1385). 

The  accession  of  this   ambitious  and   capable  soldier  was 

1  In  the  autumn  of  1378  another  English  fleet  was  defeated  near  Plymouth  by 
the  Castilians.  Diet.  Nat,  Biog.,  ubi  supra. 

2Sempere  y  Guarinos,  Hist,  del  Luxo  (1788),  p.  165  ;  Mariana,  lib.  xviii.,  cap. 
lit. ;  Lafuente,  vii.,  350-352;  Essay,  "A  fight  against  Finery,"  in  the  year  after 
the  Armada,  etc.,  by  Martin  A.  S.  Hume. 

3  As  Ayala  has  it  el  rio  artamisa. 

«John,  grand  master  of  the  Order  of  Avis,  was  the  bastard  son  of  King  Peter 
of  Portugal,  who  died  in  1367,  the  contemporary  of  Peter  the  Cruel  of  Castile.    As 
to  the  Order  of  Avis,  see  ante,  chap,  xxiii. 
VOL.  i.  23 


354  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

for  the  time  disastrous  to  the  Castilian  army  ;  and  on  the 
memorable  field  of  Aljubarrota,  John  of  Castile  was  defeated  by 
John  of  Portugal  with  great  and  long-remembered  slaughter 
(14th  August,  1383).  The  king  was  ill  before  the  battle,  and 
was  carried  to  and  from  the  field  in  a  litter,  while  his  entire 
army  was  suffering  from  some  epidemic  sickness.  The  slain 
amounted,  it  is  said,  to  10,000  of  the  bravest  soldiers  of  Castile. 
The  king  hardly  escaped  with  his  life ;  and  among  the  prisoners 
was  Pedro  Lopez  de  Ayala,  the  chronicler,  to  whose  work  we 
have  so  often  referred. 

But  the  most  immediate  result  of  the  victory  was  the  re- 
appearance of  an  English  claimant  in  Castile.1  In  John  of 
Avis,  at  least,  John  of  Gaunt  had  no  possible  rival.  The  duke, 
moreover,  had  become  obnoxious  to  the  court  of  London ;  and 
his  nephew,  Richard  II.,  glad  of  any  pretext  to  remove  him 
from  England,  prevailed  upon  him  to  assert  his  claims  in  the 
Peninsula.  The  opportunity  was  eagerly  embraced  at  once 
by  the  duke  and  by  his  English  opponents.  An  expedition 
was  fitted  out  in  England  at  the  beginning  of  1386,  and  the 
King  and  Queen  of  Castile,  after  a  solemn  coronation  at  the 
hands  of  Richard  II.,  set  sail  from  Plymouth  on  the  7th  of 
July,  accompanied  .by  a  numerous  fleet,  and  an  army  of  no  less 
than  20,000  men.  Landing  at  Corunna  on  the  9th  of  August, 
Lancaster  occupied  Gallicia,  and  joined  his  forces  with  those  of 
John  of  Portugal,  who  married  the  duke's  daughter,2  Philippa, 
in  pledge  of  closer  alliance  and  support  (1387).  As  a  military 
enterprise  this  magnificent  expedition  was  a  complete  failure. 
John  of  Gaunt  was  ever  unfortunate  in  the  field.  He  was 
indeed  able  to  occupy  the  sacred  city  of  Compostella ;  and 
many  of  the  Gallician  knights  acknowledged  him  as  their  sove- 
reign.3 But  Castile  remained  faithful  to  John  of  Trastamara. 

1  It  was  the  English  who  assisted  John  of  Avis,  and  confirmed  at  once  his  regal 
title  and  the  independence  of  Portugal,  at  Aljubarrota  ;  and  from  the  thirteenth 
to  the  nineteenth  century  this  English  protection  was  ever  a  potent  factor  in  the 
destinies  of  Portugal.     (In  the  previous  treaty  with  Portugal  it  was  arranged  that 
the  bastard  son  of  Henry  II.  of  Castile,  Fadrique,  should  marry  Beatrix,   the 
daughter  of  Fernando  of  Portugal.    At  the  instance  of  her  father  she  was,  however, 
subsequently  betrothed  to  the  legitimate  son  of  Juan  I.  of  Castile,  Don  Fernando. 
The  latter,  however,  dying  soon  afterwards,  the  bride  was  married  to  his  father, 
John  I. ,  and  on  the  death  of  Fernando  of  Portugal  the  King  of  Castile  claimed 
the  Portuguese  crown  for  his  wife. — H.) 

2  Not  a  daughter  of  his  by  Constance  of  Castile,  but  by  his  first  wife,  Blanche 
of  Lancaster.     It  was  this  marriage  which  was  the  foundation  of  Philip  II. 's  claim 
to  the  crown  of  England. 

3  The  claim  of  John  of  Gaunt  was  supported  by  a  Bull  of  Urban  VI.  pro- 
claiming him  "King  of  Castile  and  Leon,  Duke  of  Lancaster".     Lafuente,  vii. , 


1390.]  CASTILE  BEYOND  THE  SEA.  855 

The  war  was  concluded,  however,  not  by  a  victory  on  either 
side,  but  by  a  happy  marriage  which,  if  it  did  not  place  a  crown 
on  the  head  of  the  Duke  of  Lancaster,  and  if  it  failed  to  please 
the  King  of  Portugal,  who  was  not  even  consulted  by  his 
faithful  ally,  put  an  end,  at  least,  to  the  campaign,  and  brought 
peace  to  two  countries.  By  a  treaty,  which  was  signed  at 
Troncoso  in  Portugal  in  the  winter  of  1387,  the  Duke  and 
Duchess  of  Lancaster  gave  up  all  their  rights  or  claims  to  the 
crown  of  Castile  to  their  only  daughter  Katherine,  and  that 
splendid  heiress  was  betrothed  and  shortly  afterwards  married 
to  Henry,  the  eldest  son  of  John  I.,  who,  in  emulation  of  the 
happy  precedent  so  lately  set  by  Edward  of  England,  received 
the  title  of  Prince  of  Asturias,  a  title  which  has  ever  since  been 
borne  by  the  eldest  son  of  the  reigning  king  of  Castile.1 

The  death  of  Charles  the  Bad  of  Navarre  on  New  Year's 
Day,  1387,  and  the  accession  of  his  son  Charles  the  Noble, 
who  was  a  good  friend  to  John  of  Castile,  was  of  considerable 
advantage  to  Spain.  Peter  IV.  of  Aragon  died  only  five  days 
later,  the  last  of  the  three  Peters — Peter  of  Aragon,  Peter  of 
Portugal,  and  Peter  of  Castile,  who  had  reigned  at  the  same 
time  in  the  Peninsula.  But  in  the  year  1387  we  have  no  less 
than  four  royal  Johns — John  of  Avis,  John  of  Aragon,  John  of 
Castile,  and  John  of  Gaunt. 

The  constitutional  history  of  the  reign  of  John  I.  is  not 
unimportant.  The  Cortes  of  Briviesca  (December,  1387)  is 
celebrated  in  the  history  of  Spanish  jurisprudence.  In  the 
Cortes  of  Guadalajara  (1390)  the  power  of  the  third  estate  is 
usually  considered  to  have  reached  the  summit  of  its  power 
in  Castile.  The  Ordenamiento  de  lanzas  revolutionised  the 
military  system.  The  Ordenamiento  de  Perlados  recognised  and 
affirmed  certain  clerical  exemptions,  and  showed  the  rising 
power  of  the  clergy  ;  while  the  Ordenamiento  de  Sacas  forbade, 
according  to  the  economic  theories  of  the  day,  the  export  of 
the  precious  metals  from  the  kingdom. 

The  reign  of  John  I.  is  also  noteworthy  as  being  that  in 
which  the  Spanish  Era  or  Era  of  Caesar  was  abolished  ;  and  the 
Castilian  chronologists  were  content  to  compute  their  dates 

377.     The  anti-Pope,  Clement  VII.,  naturally  supported  John,  the  son  of  Henry. 
Rymer,  vii. ,  507. 

1  The  marriage  of  the  Prince  of  Asturias,  then  only  nine  years  of  age,  took 
place  with  the  utmost  pomp  and  splendour  at  Palencia,  1388  ;  his  bride,  Katharine, 
was  fourteen.  Constance,  Duchess  of  Lancaster,  died  in  June,  1394 ;  and  her 
husband  in  February,  1399. 


356  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

from  the  nativity  of  our  Saviour  Christ,  on  and  after  the  25th 
of  December,  1384. 

John  did  not  long  survive  the  peaceful  settlement  of  the 
affairs  of  his  kingdom.  He  fell  from  his  horse  at  some  Moorish 
sports  at  Alcala  de  Henares,  on  the  9th  of  October,  1390,  and, 
like  his  contemporary,  John  of  Aragon,  was  killed  on  the  spot, 
leaving  his  crown  to  his  son,  a  delicate  boy  of  only  eleven 
years  of  age. 

II. — The  Embassy  to  Tamerlane. 

Henry,  Prince  of  Asturias,  was  but  eleven  years  old  at  the 
time  of  his  father's  death,  and  the  question  of  a  regency  vexed 
the  palace,  without  injuring  the  nation,  for  some  time  after  his 
accession  as  Henry  III.  A  Junta  of  nine  regents — each  one 
jealous  of  all  the  others  in  general,  and  of  the  Archbishop  of 
Toledo  in  particular — was  at  length  accepted  as  a  necessary 
and  temporary  evil.  This  august  council  was  dismissed,  to  the 
general  satisfaction  of  the  nation,  by  the  young  king,  on  his 
attaining  his  legal  majority,  at  fourteen  years  of  age,  in  August, 
1393.  The  son-in-law  of  Lancaster,  and  the  grandson  of 
Henry  of  Trastamara,  he  reigned  over  a  contented  people,  and 
enjoyed  the  respect  both  of  his  subjects  and  of  his  neighbours. 
The  commons  were  independent  but  loyal,  respecting  and 
respected  by  the  king.  The  universities  increased  in  power 
and  in  importance,  and  found  protection  and  abundant  endow- 
ments at  the  hand  of  Henry  III.  A  feeble  attempt  by  the 
Portuguese,  which  was  promptly  defeated,  in  1398,  both  on 
land  and  at  sea,  and  some  intrigues  of  Eleanor  of  Navarre,1 
scarcely  troubled  the  general  tranquillity. 

Yusuf  Ibn  Abdullah,  who  had  succeeded  Mohammed  of 
Granada  in  1391,  Charles  VI.  of  France,  Pope  Clement  VII., 
Charles  the  Noble  of  Navarre,  John  1.  of  Aragon,  and  the  Duke 
of  Lancaster,  all  sent  envoys  with  offers  and  assurances  of 
friendship  and  goodwill.  Castile,  thus  respected,  was  tranquil, 
prosperous  and  contented ;  and  Henry,  at  peace  with  all  his 
neighbours,  sought  to  establish  friendly  relations,  not  only 
with  the  sovereigns  of  Europe,  but  with  the  rulers  of  distant 
countries.  He  sent  an  embassy  to  the  emperor  at  Constan- 

1  Queen  Eleanor  was  a  daughter  of  Henry  of  Trastamara,  and  was  thus  the 
aunt  of  Henry  of  Castile.  She  had  married  Charles  the  Noble  of  Navarre,  and 
was  the  cause  of  strife  between  her  husband  and  her  nephew,  two  excellent  princes. 


1398.]  CASTILE  BEYOND  THE  SEA.  .  357 

tinople,  and,  turning  his  eyes  still  further  to  the  East, 
despatched  a  diplomatic  mission  to  seek  out  Bajazet  and 
Tamerlane,  in  the  unknown  region  of  Central  Asia.1  Pelayo 
Gomez  de  Sotomayor,  and  Hernan  Sanchez  de  Palazuelos,  the 
Castilian  envoys,  arrived  in  Asia  Minor  at  a  critical  moment ; 
and  they  were  actually  present  on  that  tremendous  battle-field 
when  the  two  great  Asiatic  conquerors,  brought  at  length  face 
to  face,  fought  for  the  supremacy  of  the  East. 

The  defeat  of  Bajazet  at  Angora  is  one  of  the  landmarks 
of  history.  The  ambassadors  of  Castile  were  prompt  to  offer 
their  congratulations  to  the  victorious  Tamerlane,  who  received 
the  strangers  with  great  favour,  and  sent  them  back  to  their 
sovereign  with  rich  presents  and  complimentary  messages, 
accompanied  by  a  special  envoy,  Mohammed  el  Cadi,  to  the 
court  of  Toledo. 

The  greatest  of  Asiatic  conquerors  gratified  the  Castilian 
spectators  of  his  triumph,  not  only  with  some  of  the  rich  spoils 
of  battle,  with  jewels  and  costly  stuffs,  but  he  handed  over  to 
them  two  beauteous  Christian  captives,  the  Lady  Angelina  and 
the  Lady  Maria,  to  be  conducted  to  the  farthest  west  of  Europe. 
One  of  these  adventurous  ladies,  Dona  Angelina,  who  is  said 
to  have  been  a  niece  of  the  King  of  Hungary,  returning  to 
Spain  with  the  envoy,  married  Don  Diego  Gonzalez  de  Con- 
treras,  Regidor  of  the  city  of  Segovia.  The  other,  Dona  Maria 
de  Pelayo,  gained  the  affections  of  the  envoy,  Gomez,  who  was 
afterwards  compelled  by  John  II.  to  make  her  his  wife.2 

1  He  is  said  even  to  have  sent  a  mission  to  seek  the  fabled  Prester  John  in 
Abyssinia,  or  further  Hindostan.     Argote  de  Molina,  Itinerant),  etc.  (Madrid, 
1782). 

2  Maria  was  a  Greek,  Angelina  a  Hungarian,  both  probably  taken  prisoners 
after  the  fatal  battle  of  Nicopolis,  fought  between  Turks  and  Hungarians  in  1386. 
They  were  both  taken  by  Tamerlane  at  Angora  from  the  vanquished  Bajazet. 

No  mistake  can  be  greater  than  to  confound  the  ambitious  dreams  of  universal 
sovereignty,  of  the  destruction  of  bad  governments,  and  of  the  spread  of  Islam, 
that  characterised  Timour  the  Lame,  with  the  rude  and  cruel  barbarism  of  Genghis 
Khan,  or  the  more  modern  savagery  of  Nadir  Shah.  The  character  of  Timour, 
the  patron  of  Hafiz,  the  summoner  of  councils,  the  founder  of  empires,  has  suffered 
greatly  from  the  animosity  of  his  biographer,  the  Syrian  Ahmed  Ibn  Arabshah, 
whose  work,  composed  in  1440  under  the  title  of  Ajaib  al  Makdur  (Wonders  of 
Destiny),  was  edited  by  Golius  in  1636,  and  translated  into  Latin  by  Manger  in 
1772.  This  history  is  a  coarse  satire,  little  worthy  of  credit,  devoted  to  blackening 
the  character  of  Timour.  A  just  appreciation  of  his  greatness  and  an  admirable 
sketch  of  his  life  will  be  found  in  Gibbon,  chap.  Ixv.  Sir  John  Malcolm  in  his  History 
of  Persia,  sums  up  his  character  as  "one  of  the  greatest  of  warriors,  and  one  of 
the  worst  of  monarchs.  Able,  brave,  generous,  but  ambitious,  cruel  and  oppres- 
sive." But  with  the  exception  of  Mohammed  he  was  the  most  remarkable  man 
that  Asia  has  produced  from  the  death  of  Christ  to  the  present  day. 


358  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

King  Henry  was  not  ungrateful  for  these  gifts  and  favours, 
and  he  despatched  a  second  embassy  to  the  court  of  Tamerlane, 
under  the  guidance  of  the  returning  Mohammed  el  Cadi, 
consisting  of  a  Doctor  of  Divinity,  Don  Alfonso  de  Santa 
Maria,  a  Chamberlain,  and  an  officer  of  the  Royal  Guards,  who 
set  out  from  Madrid  on  21st  May,  1403. 

These  Ambassadors  extraordinary,  after  traversing  well  nigh 
the  entire  breadth  of  the  known  world,  reached  Timour  at 
Samarcand  ;  and  Gonzalez  de  Clavijo,  who  alone  returned  in 
safety  to  Spain,  has  left  us  an  account  of  the  embassy,  and  of 
his  adventures  from  May,  1403,  to  March,  1406,  which  forms 
by  no  means  the  least  interesting  of  the  early  books  of  travel 
of  mediaeval  Europe. 

Setting  sail  in  their  carack  from  port  St.  Mary,  the  ad- 
venturous envoys  touched  at  Malaga,  Naples,  Messina,  Rhodes, 
Mitylene  and  Constantinople,  of  which  a  very  full  account  is 
given  by  Clavijo — after  various  perils  of  the  sea.  From  the 
Bosphorus  they  set  sail  in  a  new  ship  to  Sinopoli  or  Sinope,  and 
Trebizonde,  where  they  landed ;  and  whence  they  marched  by 
way  of  Arsinga  (Ersingan),  on  the  Euphrates,  Calmarin  (possibly 
Etchmiazin)  which  was  said  to  be  the  first  city  in  the  world 
built  after  the  Deluge,  to  Teheran ;  and  they  continued  their 
strange  journey  across  mountains  and  deserts  by  way  of  Meshed 
and  Merv,  over  the  Murgab  and  the  Oxus,  which  they  crossed 
by  a  bridge  of  boats  a  league  in  length  constructed  by  Timour 
himself,  until  at  length  they  came  up  with  the  conqueror  at 
Samarcand.  They  were  received  by  the  Lord  of  Asia  with  the 
greatest  distinction,  and  welcomed  with  the  most  magnificent 
hospitality ;  and,  after  a  brief  sojourn,  they  set  out  on  their 
return  by  the  way  they  had  come — through  manifold  perils  by 
land  and  by  water — to  their  home  in  western  Spain. 

Clavijo's  story  is  simple  and  graphic,1  and  bears  upon  it 
the  impress  of  truth  and  reality.  It  is  not  only  of  the  utmost 
interest  as  a  record  of  early  and  romantic  travel,  but  it  is  of 
solid  historic  value.  For  Clavijo  is  far  from  content,  like  so 
many  later  travellers,  with  a  mere  record  of  his  own  troubles, 
or  the  relation  of  idle  tales  that  he  has  heard  from  others. 
Constantinople,  Trebizonde,  Teheran  and  far  away  Samarcand 
are  minutely  and  intelligently  described,  together  with  many 

1  Clavijo's  works  were  not  printed  until  1582,  when  the  indefatigable  Argote 
de  Molina  produced  them  under  the  delusive  title  of  Vida  del  Gran  'famerlan. 
The  work  was  subsequently  published  in  1782  at  Madrid.  I  have  consulted  both 
editions.  See  also  Mariana,  xix.,  n. 


1487.]  CASTILE  BEYOND  THE  SEA.  359 

curious  details  of  the  court  life  of  the  greatest  of  Asiatic  sove- 
reigns. 

If  Senor  Clavijo  did  not  travel  as  far,  nor  remain  absent  as 
long,  as  Marco  Polo,  who  preceded  him  by  over  a  hundred 
years  (1272- 1294),  he  greatly  outstripped  our  own  Sir  John 
Mandeville  (1322-1355)  in  the  extent  as  well  as  in  the  interest 
of  his  travels.1 

III. — The  Canary  Islands. 

The  glories  of  the  reign  of  Henry  III.,  whether  in  the 
farthest  east  or  nearer  home,  were  entirely  diplomatic.  He 
added,  indeed,  to  the  territory  of  Castile  ;  but  the  new  posses- 
sions came  not  by  war,  but  by  negotiations,  which  led  to  the 
ultimate  incorporation  of  the  Canary  Islands  into  the  great 
empire  of  Spain. 

Some  eighty  years  before  the  Christian  era,  Sertorius,  flying 
from  his  persecutors  in  Italy,  and  before  he  had  established  his 
dominion  in  Spain,  was  minded  to  pass  on  beyond  the  Straits  of 
Gibraltar,  and  to  seek  an  asylum  and  a  home  in  the  islands  of 
the  blest  which  were  fabled  to  exist  in  the  far  western  sea. 
But  his  ambition  prevailed  over  his  dream  of  African  repose. 
He  accepted  the  flattering  invitation  of  the  Spaniards,  and 
turned  aside  to  earn  undying  honour  and  fame  in  Europe.  And 
for  nigh  on  fourteen  centuries  nothing  was  heard  of  the  Fortun- 
ate Isles — lying  as  they  did  within  a  few  days'  sail  of  Cadiz  or 
Lisbon — by  any  of  the  princes  or  people  of  the  civilised  world. 
Then  at  length  a  banished  Spaniard  turned  his  attention  to  the 
happy  land  that  had  so  long  before  attracted  a  banished  Roman.2 

Alfonso,  Infante  de  la  Cerda,  the  grandson  of  Alfonso  X., 
retiring,  disinherited,  as  has  been  already  related,  to  the  court 
of  his  uncle,  Philip  the  Fair,  married  a  French  lady,  who  bore 

1  It  was  strange  indeed  that  their  first  visit  saw  the  defeat  of  Bajazet,  who 
died  soon  after  the  battle  of  Angora,  and  that  their  second  visit,  but  three  years 
later,  should  have  been  brought  to  a  close  by  the  death  of  his  victorious  rival, 
Tamerlane. 

Anything  like  a  detailed  account  of  the  travels  and  adventures  of  the  Castilian 
envoys  would  be  out  of  place  here  ;  but  the  story  may  be  read  in  English,  and 
very  entertaining  reading  it  is,  in  one  of  the  volumes  of  the  Hakluyt  Society,  pub- 
lished in  1859  by  Mr.  Clements  Markham,  with  an  excellent  map. 

2  Pliny  the  elder  (Nat.  Hist,,  vi.,  37),  refers  to  them  by  name,  and  more  especi- 
ally tells  us  that  Canaria  (Grand  Canary)  was  so  called  from  the  number  and  size 
of  the  dogs  (vocari  a  multitudine  canium  ingentis  magnitudinis). 

Niv'iria  (Teneriffe)  was  so  called  from  the  snow  with  which  its  great  mountain 
is  covered. 


360  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

him  a  son  well-known  in  contemporary  history  as  Don  Luis  de 
la  Cerda,  Admiral  of  France.  Moved  by  the  accounts  of  a  new 
and  beautiful  country  within  easy  reach  of  the  south  of  Spain, 
the  exile  obtained  a  grant,  dated  15th  June,  1343,  from  Clement 
VI.  at  Avignon,  of  the  lordship  of  the  Canary  Islands,  with  the 
title  of  Prince  of  Fortune. 

But  Luis  de  la  Cerda  was  unworthy  either  of  his  fortune  or 
of  his  title.  The  King  of  Portugal  objected  to  the  grant,  on  the 
ground  of  prior  discovery  in  1341  ;  and  neither  the  Spanish 
prince  nor  the  Portuguese  king  did  anything  further  in  the 
matter.  It  was  reserved  for  a  Norman  adventurer,  one  Jean  de 
Bethencourt,  after  the  lapse  of  over  half  a  century,  to  undertake 
the  conquest  of  the  islands,  in  the  first  place,  no  doubt,  for  him- 
self, but  ultimately  for  the  King  of  Spain. 

De  Bethencourt,  after  some  preliminary  negotiations,  set  sail 
from  La  Rochelle  in  May,  1402,  and  after  touching  at  Corunna 
and  Cadiz,  arid  having  received  supplies  and  reinforcements  from 
Henry  III.,  took  possession  of  some,  if  not  all  the  islands,  with- 
out serious  opposition  ;  and  having  induced  the  native  king  to 
accept  not  only  the  dominion  but  the  religion  of  Spain,  he 
caused  him  to  be  baptised  a  Christian,  under  the  name,  strangely 
enough,  of  Luis,  in  1404.1  The  adventurous  Norman  was  ac- 
companied by  a  monk  or  priest,  who  not  only  assisted  in  the 
conversion  of  the  inhabitants,  but  was  ready,  no  doubt,  like  the 
other  adventurous  ecclesiastics  of  the  day,  to  lend  a  hand  with 
a  spear  in  time  of  need,  and  who  wrote  an  account  of  the  ex- 
peditions— a  story,  in  many  respects,  of  great  value  and  interest. 
De  Bethencourt,  after  some  negotiations  in  Spain,  obtained  for 
himself  the  lordship  of  the  Canary  Islands,  under  the  crown  of 
Castile,  with  the  right  to  impose  taxes,  to  coin  money,  and 
generally  to  exercise  such  very  independent  powers  that  he  is 
frequently  spoken  of  as  king.  But  he  never,  apparently,  claimed 
any  formal  or  titular  sovereignty.  The  lordship  passed  at  his 
death  to  one  Diego  Herrera,  and  was  afterwards  granted  to 
three  Spanish  adventurers  of  no  importance  or  capacity.  But 
after  much  trouble  and  misery,  arising  from  the  uncertain  and 
unstable  conquests  of  the  private  administrators  and  invaders, 
the  Catholic  kings  took  the  matter  into  their  own  hands,2  and 

1  See  Le  Canarien,  livre  de  la  conqueste  et  conversion  faicte  des  Canariens  .  .  . 
en  Tan,  1402,  par  Messire  Jehan  de  Bethencourt  .  .  .  by  Pierre  Bontier,  Moyne, 
et  Jean  le  Verrier,  prestre,  serviteurs  dudit  de  Bethencourt.     Translated  by  R.  H. 
Major,  for  the  Hakluyt  Society,  London,  1872. 

2  From  1476  to  1495.     An  account  of  the  final  conquest  of  the  islands  will  be 
found  in  George  Glas,  Hist,  of  the  Canary  Islands,  etc. ,  etc.     Lond. ,  1764,  pp. 
82-125. 


1487.]  CASTILE  BEYOND  THE  SEA.  36l 

on  the  20th  of  February,  1487,  at  Salamanca,  the  islands  were, 
with  great  solemnity,  incorporated  into  the  dominions  of  Castile, 
with  the  title  of  kingdom,  while  the  inhabitants  were  declared 
free  from  all  pechos  and  alcavalas,  and  other  taxes  paid  in  Spain. 
In  the  same  year,  Pope  Innocent  VIII.  gave  the  patronage  of 
the  bishopric  of  Canaria,  with  its  benefices,  to  the  King  of  Spain 
and  his  successors  for  ever. 

It  is  supposed  that  the  islands,  previous  to  de  Bethencourt's 
conquest  and  occupation,  were  peopled  by  a  race  akin  to  the 
aborigines  of  the  nearest  part  of  northern  Africa ;  and  it  is 
sufficiently  curious  that,  as  we  learn  from  all  the  early  adven- 
turers and  settlers,  entirely  different  manners,  customs  and  laws 
were  observed  in  each  one  of  the  seven  islands,1  Raima,  Hierro, 
Gomera,  Teneriffe,  Gran  Canaria,  Feurteventura  and  Lanzarote. 
It  is  even  more  strange  that  the  Spanish  Arabs  and  the  Spanish 
Moors,  constant  and  intimate  as  were  their  relations  with  the 
African  coast,  should  have  apparently  known  nothing,  and 
should  certainly  have  cared  nothing,  about  the  Fortunate  Islands 
in  the  possession  of  their  fellows.2 

The  single  misfortune  of  the  honourable  and  prosperous  reign 
of  Henry  III.  of  Castile  was  its  sudden  and  unhappy  termination. 
For  within  less  than  two  years  after  the  nation  had  been  gratified 
by  the  appearance  of  a  Prince  of  Asturias  (March,  1405)  the  king 
sickened  and  died  at  Toledo  on  Christmas  Day,  1406,  leaving 
the  crown  once  more  on  the  head  of  an  infant,  who  reigned  over 
Castile  for  nearly  fifty  years  as  John  II. 

1  The  names  are  given  in  order,  as  the  islands  lie  from  west  to  east. 

The  modern  administrative  capital  of  the  group  is  Las  Palmas  in  Grand 
Canary.  Santa  Cruz  in  Teneriffe  is  also  an  important  town. 

See  Major,  Trans,  of  Bontierand  Le  Verrier,  Introd. ,  xxxix.-li. 

2  There  is  a  very  complete  account  of  the  conquest  of  Grand  Canary,  with  a  less 
detailed   record  of  that   of  Teneriffe  and   the  other  islands  in  La  Conquista  y 
antiguedades  de  las  islas  de  Gran  Canaria  (written  by  the  licentiate  Juan  de  la 
Pena,  1676),  being  the  first  volume  of  a  work  published  at  Santa  Cruz  de  Teneriffe 
in  1847.     There  is  a  copy  in  the  British  Museum  Library.     [12,231-6.] 

The  topography  and  an  historical  description  of  all  the  islands  by  D.  Pedro 
de  Castillo  ( 1848)  constitutes  the  second  volume,  and  there  is  a  most  interesting 
treatise  on  the  local  ethnography,  with  notes  on  the  various  dialects  spoken  in  the 
islands,  and  a  comparison  between  their  vocabularies  and  that  of  the  language  of 
the  mainland  of  Africa,  as  a  third  volume,  by  Malibran  and  Berthelot.  The  entire 
series  is  called  the  Biblioteca  Islena,  and  should  be  studied  by  all  who  take  any 
interest  in  the  islands.  See  also  Jos6  de  Viera  y  Clavijo,  Noticia  de  la  historia  de 
las  islas  de  Canaria  ;  Bontier  et  I^everrier,  Trad.  Ramirez,  Historia  del  primer 
descubrimiento,  etc.  (Santa  Cruz,  1847).  Don  J.  M.  Bremont  y  Cabello,  Bosquejo 
historico  de  las  islas  Canarias  (Madrid,  1847),  and  Pulgar,  Cron.,  iii.,  xviii.  See 
also  Webb  and  Berthelot,  Histoire  naturelle  des  lies  Canaris  (Paris,  1835) ;  Chil 
y  Naranyo,  /•  studios  historicos  climatologicos  y  patologicos  de  las  islas  Canarias 
(Las  Palmas,  1876),  with  maps  and  plans  ;  and  Augustm  Millares,  Historia  general 
de  las  islas  Canarias  (Las  Palmas,  1881). 


362  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

IV. — Pedro  Lopez  de  Ayala. 

Within  a  few  months  after  the  death  of  Henry,  died  the  old 
courtier  and  chronicler  to  whose  powers  of  observation  and 
fidelity  of  narrative  we  owe  the  greater  part  of  our  knowledge 
of  the  affairs  and  the  life  of  Peter  the  Cruel,  and  of  his  immediate 
successor  on  the  throne  of  Castile. 

Pedro  Lopez  de  Ayala  was  the  son  of  Fernan  Perez  de  Ayala, 
Adelantado  of  Murcia  in  the  time  of  Peter  the  Cruel.  He  was 
attached  at  a  very  early  age  to  the  Duke  of  Albuquerque,  and 
remaining  at  court  after  that  minister's  murder,  he  served  his 
dangerous  sovereign  until  1366,  accompanying  him  even  in  his 
retreat  to  Burgos.  But  on  the  appeal  to  foreign  intervention, 
Ayala  held  for  Castile,  and  transferred  his  services  to  "  the 
Count ".  He  fought  at  Navarrete  against  the  invaders,  was 
taken  prisoner,  and  ransomed  by  Henry  of  Trastamara.  Re- 
stored to  Spain,  he  remained  at  court  until  the  death  of  Henry 
II.,  and  afterwards  under  John  I.,  as  Chancellor  of  Castile.  He 
served  as  Alferez  mayor,  or  major-general  at  the  disastrous  battle 
of  Albujarrota,  where  he  was  once  more  taken  prisoner  by  the 
enemy.  But  he  once  more  regained  his  liberty,  and  lived  to  serve 
a  fourth  king  of  Castile,  Henry  III.,  and  to  die  in  the  reign  of  a 
fifth  sovereign,  John  II.,  in  1407,  at  the  ripe  age  of  seventy-nine. 

His  Chronicle  x  is  of  peculiar  interest  and  value,  not  only  as 
that  of  an  eye-witness,  but  of  an  actor  in  many  of  the  scenes 
which  he  records.  His  style  is  simple  and  dignified,  and  the 
worst  horrors  of  the  king  his  master  are  related  with  a  candour 
that  is  never  malevolent,  and  with  a  sobriety  that  compels  belief. 
Nor  in  spite  of  much  hostile  criticism  in  modern  times  has  the 
accuracy  of  his  history  ever  been  seriously  impeached. 

Ayala  was  a  writer  of  verse  as  well  as  of  prose.  A  courtier 
at  all  times,  his  poem,  entitled  the  Rimado  de  Palacio,  treats  of 
the  duties  of  kings  and  grandees,  and  is  illustrated  with  many 
interesting  allusions,  presenting  on  the  whole  a  most  vivid 
picture  of  court  life  in  Castile  in  the  fourteenth  century,  abund- 
antly worthy  of  study  by  every  reader  of  the  author's  more 
serious  Chronicles.  The  Rimado,  moreover,  marks  an  epoch  in 
the  progress  of  Castilian  letters  ;  and  the  chancellor  is  frequently 
spoken  of  as  the  restorer  of  Castilian  poetry.2 

1  Cronicas  de  los  Reyes  de  Castillo.  D.  Pedro,  D.  Enrique  //.,  D.  Juan  I. ,  D. 
Enrique  III.,  por  D.  Pedro  Lopez  de  Ayala.     The  best  edition  is  that  with  the 
notes  of  Zurita  and  Llaguno  Amirola;  Madrid,  1779. 

2  See  Documentos  ineditos,  vol.  xix. ,  pp.  184  et  seq.     Ticknor,  ed.  Gayangos, 
i. ,  105-107. 


1407.]  CASTILE  BEYOND  THE  SEA.  363 

The  Rimado  at  times  recalls  the  freedom  and  variety  of 
treatment  of  the  arch-priest  of  Hita,  though  the  Muse  of  Ayala 
is  essentially  more  serious  than  that  of  Ruiz.  Nor  was  Don 
Pedro  content  only  with  his  verses  and  his  Chronicle.  He  was 
also  the  author  of  a  practical  treatise  on  falconry,  and  the  care 
and  management  of  hawks ;  and  his  work,  one  of  the  most  com- 
plete that  has  ever  been  published  on  the  subject,  was  annotated 
by  no  less  distinguished  a  successor  than  Beltran  de  la  Cueva, 
Duke  of  Albuquerque.1 

A  statesman  and  a  chronicler,  a  poet  and  a  sportsman,  a 
soldier  and  a  politician,  Pedro  Lopez  de  Ayala  is  very  far  from 
being  a  mere  court  scribe  ;  and,  if  he  is  best  known  to  posterity 
by  his  admirable  history  of  his  own  times,  it  must  not  be  for- 
gotten that  he  was  one  of  the  most  admired  and  one  of  the  most 
admirable  among  the  Castilian  gentlemen  of  his  day.2 

1  The  best  edition  of  Rl  Libra  de  los  Aves  de  Cafa  del  Canciller,  Pedro  Lopez 
de  Ayala,  is  that  published  in  Madrid,  1869,  with  an  introduction  by  Don  Pascual 
de  Gayangos.  See  also  Casiri,  Biblioteca  Arab.  Hist,  Escurial.,  i.,  231. 

The  noble  and  knightly  pastime  of  falconry  was  introduced  into  Spain  by  the 
Arabs,  having  been  in  all  probability  adopted  by  their  ancestors  from  their  neigh- 
bours the  Persians.  Falconry  is  constantly  referred  to  in  the  Shah  Namah  of 
Firdusi.  The  number  of  Arabic  MSS.  treating  of  falconry  in  the  Escurial  would 
abundantly  suffice  to  prove  the  oriental  origin  of  Spanish  falconry,  even  if  it  were 
not  that  the  vocabulary  or  technical  language  of  the  sport  is  so  largely  Arabic  that 
any  doubt  upon  the  question  is  impossible.  Cetreria,  indeed,  is  from  the  Latin 
accipiter ;  but  most  of  the  special  or  technical  words  connected  with  Spanish 
falconry  speak  plainly  of  their  Arab  origin,  such  as:  Azor,  a  hawk;  Alcahaz, 
bird-cage ;  Alcaravzn,  a  buzzard  or  marsh  harrier ;  Alcotan,  sparrow  hawk  ; 
Alfaneque,  Tunis  hawk,  white  with  brown  spots ;  Bahari,  gentle  falcon ;  Sucre, 
lanner  or  hen  harrier;  Alcandara,  perch  for  hawks;  Alcatras,  water  fowl; 
Alcadera,  water  fowl ;  Alcasubor,  a  kind  of  drum  to  startle  water  fowl.  Many 
other  similar  words  are  given  by  Don  Pascual  de  Gayangos  in  his  edition  (1869)  of 
Ayala's  work,  above  referred  to. 

8 The  whole  of  vol.  xix.  of  the  Documentos  Ineditos,  575  pp.,  is  taken  up  with 
a  biographical  memoir  and  essay,  concluded  only  in  vol.  xx. ,  of  Ayala,  by  Rafael 
de  Floranes,  to  which  the  student  is  referred,  not  only  for  all  that  can  be  said  or 
written  about  the  old  chronicler,  but  for  a  very  interesting  treatise  upon  the  rise  or 
restoration  of  polite  letters  in  Christian  Spain,  a  restoration  in  which  Ayala  no 
doubt  played  a  very  important  part. 


364 


CHAPTER  XXXII. 
CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY.1 

THE  Feudal  System,  which  has  left  so  deep  and  lasting  an 
impression  upon  social  and  political  life  in  a  great  part  of 
Europe,  can  hardly  be  said  even  to  have  existed  in  mediaeval 
Spain.  The  magnates  of  Castile  and  Leon,  ever  warring 
against  their  Moslem  rivals  as  a  constant  duty,  and  against 
their  Christian  neighbours  as  a  no  less  constant  pleasure,  did 
not  and  could  not  remain  in  dignified  seclusion  in  their  baronial 
halls,  ruling  over  their  vassals,  and  administering  their  estates 
by  undisputed  law  and  custom,  after  the  manner  of  the  great 
lords  of  France  and  England.  Engaged  in  a  perpetual  crusade 
against  the  Infidel  on  the  frontier,  the  Spanish  nobles  lived 
rather  in  the  field  than  in  the  castle,  ever  pushing  forward  the 
Christian  possessions  to  the  south.  Soldiers  rather  than  seigneurs 
for  over  five  hundred  years  (711-1252),  they  had  neither  taste 
nor  leisure  for  the  development  of  their  territorial,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  their  military  power.  The  castle  was  rather  an 
opportune  fortress  than  a  permanent  home.  The  plantation  of 
forests,  the  great  pride  of  a  landed  aristocracy,  was  almost 
unknown.  The  Spanish  nobles  learned  all  too  little  from  their 
Arab  neighbours.  Yet  as  regards  forestry,  there  was  but  little 
to  be  learned.  Tree-planting  is  not  an  oriental  virtue.  It  was 
a  feudal  aristocracy  alone  that  in  western  Europe  preserved  the 

1 A  very  interesting  account  of  the  Cortes  of  Madrid  (1390)  is  to  be  found  in 
Geddes'  Tracts,  vol.  i.  (See  also  Danvila  y  Collado's  Poder  Civil  en  Espa.no., 
Histoire  des  Cortes  d' Espagne,  Sampere.  and  Historia  de  la  Legislatura  espanola, 
Antiquera.  Cardenas  Ensayo  sobre  la  Historia  de  la  propriedad  territorial  en 
Espana  should  also  be  consulted. — H.) 

One  hundred  and  twenty-four  members  or  deputies  attended,  as  the  representa- 
tives of  forty-eight  cities  or  burghs.  Two  members  seem  to  have  been  usually 
returned  by  each  town,  while  Burgos  and  Salamanca  each  sent  no  less  than  eight, 
Leon  five,  Toledo  and  Soria  each  four,  and  some  few  cities  only  one.  The  lord 
sometimes  possessed  rights  of  independent  jurisdiction,  not  only  as  under  the 
feudal  system,  as  incident  to  his  own  territorial  authority,  but  by  special  grant  from 
the  crown,  as  in  the  case  of  municipal  towns.  Viardot,  Essei,  ii.,  112. 


CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY.  365 

forests  from  the  ravages  of  woodmen  and  waste,  of  wandering 
shepherds  and  fitful  cultivation.  It  was  a  feudal  aristocracy 
alone  that  cared  for  existing  timber,  and  planted  trees  in  every 
direction,  with  a  view  to  sport,  to  profit,  and  to  personal  dignity. 
A  manor-house  would  be  but  a  grange  without  its  surrounding 
woods ;  a  park  would  be  but  a  field  without  its  stately  trees. 
And  many  a  mere  field  in  England  possesses  finer  timber  than 
is  to  be  found  in  tens  of  leagues  of  the  plain  country  of  Castile. 
The  Arab  and  the  Moor  in  their  best  days  were  gallant  warriors 
and  honourable  foes.  But  their  social  system  admitted  of 
nothing  resembling  a  Christian  landed  aristocracy,  nor  a  society 
of  hereditary  classes  and  orders  of  men.  Under  the  Commander 
of  the  Faithful  all  good  Moslems  were  socially  equal.  Official 
position,  indeed,  conferred  temporary  rank,  but  the  Grand 
Vizier  was  as  liable  to  the  bowstring  as  the  door-keeper  of  the 
palace,  and  a  still  humbler  official  might  find  himself  Prime 
Minister  or  Commander-in-Chief.  Hereditary  rank  was  un- 
known. Family  succession,  as  it  is  understood  in  the  West,  was 
rendered  impossible,  alike  by  the  manners  and  customs  of  the 
people,  and  by  the  operation  of  the  Mohammedan  law ;  at  this 
very  day  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  surname  in  the  whole  of 
Islam. 

When  Moor  and  Christian  stood  face  to  face,  and  strove 
for  mastery  in  the  south-west  of  Europe,  it  was  not  merely 
a  contest  between  two  religions,  but  between  two  social  systems. 
The  Moslem  was  a  dweller  in  towns — a  builder  of  palaces,  a 
layer-out  of  gardens,  a  director  of  water-courses.  The  trees  he 
planted  were  the  olive  and  the  pomegranate,  the  fig  and  the 
almond ;  orchards  rather  than  forests  grew  round  his  dwelling- 
places.  His  castles  were  designed  only  for  war,  as  impregnable 
fortresses,  and  not  as  noble  residences.  And  the  Christian 
lords,  if  they  did  not  embellish  their  cities,  established  their 
casas  solaiiegas  or  family  mansions  by  preference  within  the 
walls  of  a  town,  and  disregarded  the  comfort  and  material 
beauty  of  their  country  seats,  which  for  long  years  were  never 
safe  from  attack,  and  even  from  occupation  by  the  Infidel. 

For  nearly  four  centuries  after  the  victorious  march  of  Taric 
and  Musa  there  was  a  constant  ebb  and  flow  in  the  tide  of 
conquest  in  mediaeval  Spain.  What  was  Moorish  territory  to-day 
became  Christian  to-morrow ;  and  when  a  knight  from  Leon  or 
Castile  had  fixed  his  banner  on  the  battlements  of  a  conquered 
castle,  some  new  wave  from  Andalusia  or  from  Africa  would 
sweep  over  the  country  and  leave  him  without  sod  or  stone. 


366  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

In  the  middle  of  the  tenth  century  the  Christian  frontiers 
had  been  pushed  forward  as  far  south  as  Simancas.  Before  the 
opening  of  the  eleventh  century  the  Moorish  arms  were  carried 
northward  to  the  Atlantic  and  the  mountains  of  Biscay.  But 
the  tide  of  victory  set  strongly  towards  the  south  ;  and  the 
territory  conquered,  or  recovered  as  it  was  called,  from  year  to 
year  from  the  Arabs,  was  treated  as  waste  land,  and  became  the 
property,  not  of  the  king,  but  of  the  conquerors. 

The  power  of  the  common  soldier  who  himself  acquired  the 
land  of  the  Infidel,  and  of  the  municipality  who  early  enjoyed 
independent  government,  were  also  much  greater  than  in  any 
other  part  of  Europe.  The  Moslems  were  either  slaughtered, 
or  found  safety  in  flight.  But  the  number  of  the  exiles  was  not 
usually  excessive.  The  Mozarabic  or  Christian  population,  who 
formed  a  large  share  of  the  commonalty  of  the  Moslem  empire, 
were  ready  no  doubt  to  welcome  their  new  and  Christian 
masters ;  and  while  religious  bitterness  as  yet  lay  dormant  in 
Spain,  not  a  few  renegades  were  easily  permitted  to  return  to 
their  ancient  fold.  Towns  sprang  up  or  increased  in  importance 
in  the  newly  acquired  territories,  as  they  were  colonised  by 
Christians  both  old  and  new,1  and  endowed  with  charters  by 
successive  kings,  long  before  municipal  privileges  were  known 
in  England  or  France.2  The  earliest  instance  is  said  to  be  in 
1020,  when  Alfonso  V.,  in  the  Cortes  of  Leon,  established  the 
privileges  of  that  city. 

In  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries  the  only  hope  for 
the  future,  whether  as  regards  art  or  science  or  religion,  or 
even  humanity  itself,  lay  in  the  steady  growth  of  the  towns.3 
And  it  was  in  the  number  and  growing  importance  of  free 
municipalities  that  Spain  was  then,  and  had  ever  been,  pre- 
eminently distinguished.  Municipal  institutions  of  what  may 
be  called  the  modern  type,  are  of  greater  antiquity  in  Spain 
than  in  any  other  country  in  Europe — Italy,  perhaps,  excepted ; 

1  An  old  Christian  was  one  who  had  no  tinge  nor  taint  of  Moslem  or  Jewish 
blood  in  his  ancestry.     Such  a  lineage  was  rare  and  highly  prized.     "  Yo  Chris- 
tiana viejo  soy,"  says  Sancho  Panza  in  Don  Quixote  .  .  .  "and  that  is  as  good  as 
if  I  were  a  count".     This  was  in  1610.     In  1210  the  line  of  demarcation  between 
the   Moslem,  the  Mozarab  and  the  Christian  was  very  uncertain  in  any  of  the 
districts  south  of  the  Tagus.     The  Moslem  and  the  Mozarab  conversed  in  a  kind 
of  patois,  known  as  Aljamia,  a  word  said  by  Engelmann  in  his  Glossaire  to  be 
derived  from  the  Arabic  ajam  =  barbarous. 

2  Hallam,  Middle  Ages,  ii. ,  6  ;  Marina,  Ensayo,  i.,  180-182  ;  Castelar,  Estudios 
Historicos,  183. 

3Jessop,  The  Coming  of  the  Friars,  v. 


1012.]  CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY.  367 

and  charters  of  privilege  were  common  from  the  twelfth  to 
the  fifteenth  centuries.  Communities  were  of  four  classes : 
Realettgo,  holding  of  the  king ;  Abadengo,  holding  of  some 
religious  magnate  ;  Solariego,  holding  of  some  nobleman  ;  and 
Behetria,  a  tenure  peculiar  to  Castile,  by  which  the  community, 
holding  under  some  noble  and  ancient  family,  was  entitled  to 
choose  the  individual  lord  to  whom,  for  the  time  being,  the 
community  should  be  subject ;  or,  in  some  cases,  to  select  an 
administrator  or  chief  at  their  own  absolute  pleasure,  without 
regard  to  family  or  foundation.  Thus  the  Behetrias  were  little 
semi-independent  republics  within  the  kingdom,  changing  their 
lord-president,  within  defined  limits,  at  their  good  pleasure. 
Yet  such  changes  depended  also  largely  upon  the  good  pleasure 
of  the  lord,  and  were,  in  practice,  not  infrequently,  accompanied 
by  armed  resistance  and  armed  intervention.  The  superior 
nobility,  moreover,  were  jealous  of  these  Behetrias,  and  con- 
stantly sought  to  have  them  suppressed,  that  their  territories 
might  be  added  to  the  possessions  of  the  nearest  local  magnate.1 
Rich  and  influential,  bound  to  a  limited  and  honourable 
service,  but  ever  ready  to  harry  the  Moslem,  and  to  extend 
their  individual  or  corporate  property,  the  burgesses  of  Spain 
were  free  men,  inferior  only  in  rank,  but  not  in  personal  dignity, 
to  the  nobles  and  knights  with  whom  they  stood  shoulder  to 
shoulder  in  the  field  of  battle :  and  as  such  it  was  but  natural 
that  they  should  be  independent,  bold  and  haughty  to  an  extent 
undreamed  of  by  the  timid  shopkeepers  of  less  favoured  lands. 
Instead  of  a  population  of  villeins,  of  artizans,  and  of  tradesmen, 
the  division  of  classes  in  town  or  country  was  not  into  noble 
and  base-born,  but  into  Cavalleros,  or  citizens  who  owned  a  war 
horse,  and  Pecheros,  or  those  who  fought  on  foot 2 :  and  the 
difference  at  first  was  rather  one  of  fortune  than  of  birth.  The 
towns  as  a  rule  were  fortified.  The  townsmen  were  in  all  cases 
well  trained  in  the  use  of  arms  for  its  defence.  A  large  tract 
of  country  in  the  immediate  neighbourhood  belonged  to  them. 

1  The  celebrated  Becerro  de  las  Behetrias,  a  collection  of  the  rights  and  privi- 
leges of  every  Castilian  town  that  enjoyed  the  benefits  of  Behetria,  was  commenced 
by  order  of  Alfonso  XI.  There  is  an  interesting  treatise  on  the  Behetrias  of  Castile 
in  vol.  xx.  of  the  Dotvmentos  Ineditos,  pp.  406-475,  with  a  number  of  lists  of  all 
the  Behetrias,  with  other  catalogues,  and  full  extracts  from  various  ordinances  and 
decrees  of  councils.  Amongst  other  curious  facts,  it  seems  that  the  Behetrias  had 
their  capital  or  political  centre  in  the  town  of  Santa  Maria  del  Camfo  near  Burgos, 
where  the  Juntas  were  held,  with  a  chapter  house  and  chancery  where  the  archives 
were  deposited,  p.  407.  The  treatise  is  by  D.  Rafael  Floranes  and  was  written 
about  1790,  and  published  in  1852. 

2 Or  literally  those  who  offered  their  breasts  to  the  foe.— H. 


368  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

They  appointed  their  own  magistrates,  whose  jurisdiction  ex- 
cluded that  of  the  king's  judges,  and  whose  decrees  were 
executed  by  their  own  local  authority.1  Appeals  from  the 
municipal  alcaldes  or  judges  lay  to  the  alcaldes  of  the  chief  towns 
of  the  district,  and  from  them  only  as  a  last  resort  to  the  royal 
judges  or  governors. 

In  the  Cortes  of  Ocana,  in  1422,  the  Commons  presented  a 
petition  that  every  town  and  commune  should  be  entrusted  with 
the  entire  civil  and  criminal  jurisdiction  within  the  limits  of  the 
municipality,  and  that  the  king  should  not  send  a  corregidor 
without  the  positive  request  of  the  inhabitants  or  local  authority. 
Their  petition  was  granted  as  of  right :  but  as  it  was  repeated 
in  1442,  we  may  suppose  that  the  king's  judges  were  already 
beginning  to  encroach  upon  the  jurisdiction  of  the  local  courts, 
although  the  local  rights  were  acknowledged  both  by  king  and 
council.2  From  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries  the 
kings  began  to  appoint  corregidores — not  corregidor,  but  cor- 
regidores,  officers  with  a  jurisdiction  concurrent  with  that  of 
the  regidores  or  municipal  magistrates.  It  is  uncertain  whether 
Saint  Ferdinand  or  Alfonso  X.  first  appointed  these  judges. 
But  in  all  cases  an  appeal  lay  first  to  the  Adelantado  or  governor 
of  the  province,  and  from  him  en  dernier  ressort  to  the  tribunal 
or  Supreme  Court  of  Royal  Alcaldes.3 

Besides  the  ordinary  and  provincial  courts,  there  were  many 
others  in  the  district  of  each  Adelantado,  presided  over  by  a  class 
of  magistrates  whose  functions  are  not  clearly  defined.  They 
were  called  Merinos,  and  the  territory  over  which  their  juris- 
diction extended,  a  Merindad.  Sometimes  it  was  confined  to  a 
single  village  or  town  ;  sometimes  it  extended  over  many.  The 
Merinos  were  entrusted  with  twofold  powers — with  the  execution 
of  the  sentences  pronounced  by  the  provincial  tribunals,  and 
with  the  cognisance  of  certain  offences,  such  as  rape,  highway 
robbery,  insurrection,  notorious  violence,  or  high  treason.  The 
Merino  mayor  was  a  highly  distinguished  personage,  who  some- 
times presided  over  a  province,  with  the  same  judicial  authority 
as  the  Adelantado,  but,  unlike  that  personage,  who  was  both  civil 
and  military  chief,  he  had  no  soldiers  at  his  call.4 

1  As  to  the  Cortes  of  Zamora,  1274,  see  Marina,  Teoria  de  las  Cortes,  i. ,  iv. 

2  As  to  the  theoretical  and  practical  independence  of  the  ordinary  judges,  see 
Marina,  Teoria  de  las  Cortes,  i. ,  iv. 

3  Lafuente,  ix.,  p.  n. 

4 See  Dunham,  Spain  and  Portugal  iv. ,  p.  70,  1832.  As  to  the  Merinos  in 
Navarre,  and  their  provincial  districts  or  Merindades,  see  post,  chapter  xxxviii. 


974.]  CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY.  369 

The  germ  of  all  this  remarkable  independence  of  the  royal 
authority  is,  no  doubt,  to  be  found  in  the  policy  of  Imperial 
Rome ;  but  in  no  country  in  Europe  was  the  principle  more 
fully  developed  than  in  Castile.1  The  Spanish  citizen  is  the 
descendant  at  once  of  the  unconquerable  Cantabrians  of  the 
Asturias,  and  of  the  unconquered  Romans  of  the  Empire.  After 
centuries  of  oppression  and  misgovernment,2  he  is  at  the  present 
day  at  once  the  poorest  and  the  proudest  man  in  Europe — the 
most  courtly,  the  most  conservative,  and  the  most  silent  of  the 
champions  of  equality  and  the  rights  of  man.  The  Spanish 
people,  take  it  for  all  in  all,  is  perhaps  the  best  in  the  world. 
Idleness  is  entirely  a  modern  vice  in  the  Peninsula.  Too  much 
gold,  unwise  fiscal  policy,  and  too  little  liberty  in  the  sixteenth 
century  demoralised  the  race  ;  but  throughout  the  Middle  Ages 
the  Spanish  handicrafts-men  were  recognised  as  pecularily  skil- 
ful, especially  in  cloth  weaving  and  working  in  metals.  They 
were  associated  in  all  the  cities  and  towns  in  guilds,3  and  usually 
inhabited  separate  quarters  according  to  their  trade  or  craft. 

But  if  municipal  institutions  sprang  from  Roman  seed,  repre- 
sentative government  was  a  plant  of  later  growth,  introduced 
from  more  northern  regions  by  the  ruder  hands  of  the  Visigoth. 
However  imperfectly  the  representative  principle  was  found  in 
the  early  councils  under  the  Gothic  kings  of  Spain,  however 
unfortunate  may  have  been  their  actual  influence  upon  the 
fortunes  of  the  sovereign  and  of  the  people,  it  is  at  least  certain 
that  the  ancient  Councils  were  Cortes  for  civil  as  well  as  for 
ecclesiastical  business ;  and  the  preponderating  number  of 
Churchmen,  which  is  said  by  Marina  to  have  been  due  only  to 
the  desire  of  the  kings  to  have  the  most  enlightened  citizens 
for  their  councillors,4  was  in  any  case  only  the  assumption  of 
power  in  a  deliberative  assembly  by  those  who  are  most  quali- 
fied to  exercise  it,  that  is  to  be  seen  in  every  ancient  and 
modern  Parliament.  Yet  the  mediaeval  Cortes  is  the  child  of 
free  Cantabria.  Ramiro  II.  in  930,  and  Ramiro  III.  in  974,  are 
said  to  have  assembled  the  magnates  of  the  kingdom  to  consult 
upon  affairs  of  State,  but  the  first  Council  or  Cortes  of  which 
the  acts  have  been  preserved  was  that  held  at  Leon  by  Alfonso 

1  Lafuente,  ii.,  259-261. 

2  Domiciliary  visits  were  expressly  forbidden  to  the  royal  officers  as  being 
"  contrary  to  the  law  and  custom  of  Castile,"  by  Ferdinand  IV.  as  early  as  1300. 
Marina,   Teoria  de  las  Cortes,  \. ,  iv. 

3Zuniga,  Ann.  Eccl.  de  Sevilla,  pp.  74-78 ;  Sempere,  Hist,  del  Luxo,  \.,  80. 
4  Marina.  Teoria  de  las  Cortes,  i. .  iv. 
VOL.  i.  24 


370  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

V.  in  1020.  The  Council  of  Coyanza,  in  1050,  was  more  dis- 
tinctly a  legislative  assembly,  but  the  elective  principle  had  not 
even  then  asserted  itself  in  its  composition. 

These  early  councils  may  have,  no  doubt,  fairly  reflected  the 
feelings  of  the  nation.  But  by  the  end  of  the  twelfth  century 
representation  was  more  direct ;  and  deputies  from  the  towns 
were  included,  who  asserted  the  importance,  and  vindicated 
the  independence  of  the  municipal  system.  The  earliest  re- 
corded instance  of  direct  popular  representation  in  Castile  is  at 
the  Cortes  of  Burgos,  in  11695  when,  nearly  a  century  before 
the  more  celebrated  English  Parliament  of  Leicester,  the  cities 
of  Castile  were  represented  by  burgesses  elected  by  the  free 
votes  of  the  citizens.1 

In  the  first  instance,  these  early  members  of  Parliament  were 
elected  by  the  householders  of  their  cities ;  in  later  times,  the 
elective  franchise  was  restricted  to  the  municipalities  ;  and  from 
that  day  the  corrupt  influence  of  the  crown  became  paramount.2 
Within  a  few  years,  certainly  by  1188,  the  presence  of  the 
burgesses  or  their  "  deputies  chosen  by  lot,"3  had  become  quite 
a  matter  of  course.  Every  corporation  would  seem  to  have 
been,  at  least  theoretically,  entitled  to  send  a  deputy  to  the 
great  Council  of  the  nation,  but  the  practice  was  by  no  means 
uniform.  To  the  Cortes  of  Burgos,  in  1315,  ninety  towns  sent 
192  representatives;  to  that  of  Madrid,  in  1391,  126  deputies 
represented  fifty  towns.  And  in  the  important  Council  of  1348, 
when  the  Siete  Partidas  was  first  published,  no  single  deputy 
was  present  from  the  whole  of  the  province  or  kingdom  of 
Leon.4  In  the  reign  of  Ferdinand  IV.  (1295-1312)  great  pro- 
gress was  made  in  the  power  and  influence  of  the  Cortes.  Not 
a  year  passed  without  a  session.  Not  a  maravedi  was  paid 
without  popular  sanction.  A  standing  Privy  Council,  composed 
of  members  of  the  assembly,  accompanied  the  king  when  Parlia- 
ment was  not  actually  sitting.5  The  Commons  were  ever  on  the 
alert.6 

1  Marina,  lib.  xi. ,  cap.  ii. 

2  Capmany,  Practica  y  Estilo  de  Celebrar  Cortes,  p.  230. 

3  Dunham,  iv. ,  154. 

4  See  generally  F.  Martinez  Marina,  Ensayo. 

5  This  was  more  in  the  sense  of  a  permanent  Recess  Committee,  whose  duty  it 
was  to  watch  over  the  expenditure  and  the  rights  of  Parliament  generally.    In  cases 
of  emergency  it  had  the  power  of  calling  special  meetings  to  receive  reports,  or  for 
the  purpose  of  deliberation.     In  later  years  this  Recess  Committee  was  greatly 
abused  by  the  sovereigns,  who  made  use  of  it  to  confirm  customary  supply  from 
year  to  year  for  long  periods,  without  any  formal  meetings  of  Parliament. — H. 

6  In  the  Cortes  of  Valladolid,  1295,  and  Cuellar,  1297,  a  permanent  Council 
of  State  (Supreme  Council)  was  imposed  upon  the  king,  Ferdinand  IV.,  by  the 


1351.]  CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY.  371 

A  still  more  important  Council,  that  met  at  the  same  city l 
in  1351,  formulated  important  laws  against  the  sturdy  beggars, 
who  were  dealt  with  in  England  some  200  years  later  ;  fixed  the 
wages  of  labourers  ;  reformed  the  abuses  of  the  Behetrias  or  Free 
Communities,  and  confirmed  and  amended  the  Ordenamiento  de 
Alcala.  Throughout  the  whole  of  the  fourteenth  century,  until 
the  time  of  John  I.  of  Castile  (1379-1391),  when  the  power  of 
the  Cortes  is  usually  considered  to  have  reached  the  culminating 
point  of  its  power  and  influence,  the  progress  was  constant,  al- 
though it  was  by  no  means  uniform.  An  immense  number  of 
important  laws  were  enacted  under  John  during  his  short  reign 
of  eleven  years ;  and  even  more  significant  than  the  laws,  are 
the  debates  upon  Treaties  and  Alliances,  on  Peace  and  War,  on 
Policies  and  Principalities,  that  regularly  took  place  in  the  Coun- 
cil Chamber.  Absolute  monarchy  was  introduced  into  Spain 
only  by  Ferdinand  and  Isabella. 

The  absence  of  a  Senate  or  Second  Chamber  was  a  distinguish- 
ing feature  of  the  political  system  of  Castile.  The  privileged  orders, 
the  Ricos2  fiombres  or  statesmen,  the  Hidalgos  or  lesser  nobility, 
the  Caballeros  or  knights,  and  the  clergy,  were  all  exempt  from 
taxation.  Whatever  may  have  been  the  right  of  the  nobility  in 
earlier  days  to  attend  the  meetings  of  the  Cortes,  it  is  clear  that 
their  sanction  was  not  deemed  essential  to  the  validity  of  any 
legislative  act,  inasmuch  as  their  presence  was  not  required  in 
many  of  the  most  important  assemblies  of  the  nation  during  the 
fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries.3  That  the  Commons,  who 
alone  contributed  to  the  national  exchequer,  should  alone  be 
called  upon  to  collect  the  national  revenue  and  to  supervise  the 
national  expenditure,  may  not  have  appeared  unreasonable.  Yet 
the  absence  of  the  hereditary  and  landed  aristocracy  from  the 
early  Council  Chambers  was  productive  of  that  unhappy  want  of 

Cortes,  tired  of  the  favourites  chosen  by  his  father  Sancho.  This  was  confirmed  and 
developed  by  John  I.  at  Bibiesca,  1387,  and  Segovia,  1390  ;  by  Henry  III.  in  1406, 
and  John  II.  in  1443.  Marina,  Teoria  de  las  Cortes,  i. ,  iv. 

1  Merimee,  op.  cit.,  pp.  77-90. 

2  Prescott,  Ferd.  and  /sad.,  i.,  28.     Not  Ricos  =  rich  ;  but  Reichs  (Gothic)  =  of 
the  realm. 

8  It  must  be  remembered  that  in  the  thirteenth,  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  cen- 
turies the  Cortes  was  composed  only  of  deputies  from  the  towns  and  the  members 
of  the  King's  Council.  The  bishops  and  the  grandees  always  sat  in  the  Councils 
as  public  functionaries,  not  as  bishops  or  territorial  lords.  Marina,  Teoria  de  las 
Cortes,  ubi  supra.  (It  must  be  understood  that  the  author  here  is  only  referring  to 
the  Cortes  of  Castile.  His  remarks  with  regard  to  the  attendance  of  the  nobles 
and  Churchmen  in  Cortes  do  not  apply  to  Aragon,  Catalonia  or  Valencia,  where 
the  "three  arms"  were  always  recognised. — H.) 


372  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

union  between  noble  and  simple  that  proved  ultimately  so  fatal 
to  the  liberties  of  Spain.1 

But  from  the  death  of  John  I.  the  powers  of  the  Commons 
in  Cortes  assembled  began  to  decline  in  Castile.  In  the  reign  of 
John  II.  the  number  of  enfranchised  cities  came  to  be  limited, 
not  by  precedent,  but  by  arbitrary  power.  Alvaro  de  Luna  was 
not  a  man  to  encourage  popular  representation ;  and  his  sub- 
missive sovereign  fixed  the  number  of  privileged  cities  at  seven- 
teen— Burgos,  Toledo,  Leon,  Granada,  Cordova,  Murcia,  Jaen, 
Zamora,  Toro,  Soria,  Valladolid,  Salamanca,  Segovia,  Avila, 
Madrid,  Guadalajara  and  Cuenca.  This  was  the  beginning  of 
dissolution.  But  paradoxical  as  it  may  appear,  the  final  cause  of 
the  ultimate  destruction  of  the  power  of  the  burgesses  was  not 
that  they  had  become  too  weak,  but  that  they  had  become 
too  strong.  They  perished  from  excess  of  independence.  In 
the  day  of  their  power  they  despised  the  territorial  aristocracy. 
They  stood  by  while  the  nobles  were  decimated  by  the  king, 
and  rejoiced  at  their  exclusion  from  the  Cortes.  Nor  did  they 
even  enjoy  the  political  sympathy  of  the  clergy.  The  priest 
indeed  had  little  popular  influence  in  Spain  before  the  time  of 
Ferdinand  and  Isabella.2  Thus  to  the  Commons  of  mediaeval 
Castile,  as  to  their  ancestors  in  the  days  of  Strabo,  friendship  and 
union  were  less  dear  than  independence.  And  their  indepen- 
dence was  selfishly  enjoyed.3 

The  parliamentary  powers  and  political  importance  of  the 
nobles,  and  the  older  legislative  power  of  the  ecclesiastics  thus 
became  gradually  less  and  less,  until  by  the  time  of  Charles  V. 
neither  nobles  nor  clerics  were  even  summoned  to  attend  the 
meetings  of  the  Cortes  of  Castile.4 

But  even  before  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century  the  power 

1  Nothing  is  said  about  the  Commons  at  the  Council  of  Toledo,  1135,  when 
Alfonso  VII.  was  recognised  as  emperor.     Where  affairs  of  great  magnitude  were 
to  be  treated,  says  an  Edinburgh  Reviewer,  in  1813  (vol.  xxii.,  p.  607),  it  is  probable 
that  every  one  was  summoned  to  the  Cortes  whose  concurrence  could  add  weight 
to  their  deliberations  or  give  effect  to  the  laws  and  decisions  which  they  adopted. 
To  obtain  additional  authority  for  his  government  was  the  object  of  the  king  in 
calling  for  the  advice  of  his  subjects,  and  it  was,  therefore,  his  interest  to  make  his 
Cortes  numerous  and  respectable.     The  National  Assemblies  were  always  con- 
voked at  the  spot  where  the  king  was  at  the  time  holding  his  court,  and  not  at  any 
fixed  capital. 

2  Lafuente,  torn,  ix.,  pp.  22-24. 

3  See  ante,  chap.  Hi.,  pp.  29,  30. 

4  None  of  the  prelates  were  summoned  to  the  Cortes  of  1299  and  1301 ;  neither 
prelates  nor  nobles  to  those  of  1370  and  1373,  of  1480  and  1505.     Hallam,  Mid. 
Ages,  ii.,  23.     As  to  the  powerlessness  of  the  king  to  legislate  without  consent  of 
the  Cortes,  Id. ,  23,  26,  28. 


1258.]  CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY.  373 

and  the  independence  of  the  Commons  had  alike  declined.  Al- 
ready in  the  reign  of  Henry  IV.,  the  king  was  able  to  send  in- 
structions to  Seville  that  the  citizens  should  elect  certain  persons 
named  by  him  to  be  their  representatives  in  the  Cortes.  In  the 
last  year  of  the  reign  of  Henry  III.  the  Cortes  authorised  the 
king,  who  so  well  deserved  the  confidence  of  the  people,  to  levy 
such  a  subsidy  as  he  might  require  in  the  future  ;  a  bad  precedent, 
which  paved  the  way  for  the  gradual  loss  of  power  and  authority 
by  the  Commons,  under  kings  less  virtuous  than  the  third  Henry 
of  Castile.  By  such  encroachments  and  by  such  surrenders,  and 
above  all  by  such  selfishness,  the  king's  authority  became  para- 
mount. And  the  Commons,  without  allies  or  sympathisers  among 
the  other  orders  in  the  nation,  the  burgesses  who  had  looked  on 
with  jealous  satisfaction  at  the  destruction  of  the  nobility  by 
Peter  and  by  Ferdinand,  were  in  their  turn  reduced  to  insignifi- 
cance and  to  impotence  by  Charles  and  Philip  II.  The  Cortes 
became  a  byword  for  all  that  was  powerless  and  contemptible. 
Nor  did  the  boasted  freedom  of  Castile  survive  the  wreck  of  its 
most  cherished  institution.1 

But  in  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries  the  Commons 
were  free  and  powerful.  No  tax  could  be  imposed  without  their 
consent  in  the  Cortes,  and  they  watched,  not  only  over  the 
granting,  and  the  collection,  but  over  the  expenditure  of  the 
revenue  that  was  raised  by  their  authority.  The  judges  and 
officers  of  the  realm,  and  even  the  private  affairs  of  the  king 
himself,  were  subjected  to  their  scrutiny  and  their  interference, 
and  that  to  an  extent  which  would  not  be  endured  even  in  modern 
democratic  England.2 

In  the  Cortes  of  Valladolid,  in  1258,  for  example,  the  Commons 
went  so  far  as  to  take  upon  themselves  the  control  of  the  ex- 
penditure of  the  king's  household,  and  limited  the  expenses  of 
the  royal  table  to  150  maravedis  a  day.3 

1  The  process  of  the  decadence  of  parliamentary  institutions  in  Castile  followed 
the  usual  course.    The  constituent  Town  Councils  were  packed  with  nominated  and 
hereditary  members,  and  the  members  of  Cortes  were  bribed  enormously  by  direct 
grants  and  by  the  gift  of  offices.     The  rule  of  payment  of  members  by  the  towns 
and  the  delegation  of  resident  townsmen  to  the  Cortes,  fell  into  desuetude  until, 
by  the  end  of  the  reign  of  Philip  II.,  the  Cortes  of  Castile  had  lost  all  vigour  and 
independence.     So  much  was  this  the  case  that  Philip  II.  insisted  upon  the  regular 
supply  being  considered  as  a  tribute  which  Cortes  was  bound  to  vote  without  con- 
ditions.— H. 

2  The  Cortes  of  Valladolid,  in  1351,  fixed  the  price  of  a  day's  labour  and  the 
wages  of  husbandmen  and  artisans  (Ordenamiento  de  Menestrales).     The  sixth 
article  of  the  Ordenamiento  de  Prelados  has  been  interpreted  as  a  prohibition  to  the 
labourer  to  change  his  master.     Merimee,  Don  Pedre,  i.,  p.  32. 

3As  to  the  supervision  exercised  by  the  Cortes  over  the  persons  and  morals  of 
the  kings  as  well  as  their  marriages,  treaties,  etc.,  from  the  time  of  Ramiro  III.  of 


374  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

Nor  were  the  affairs  of  the  humbler  classes  disregarded  by 
these  parliamentary  administrators.  No  law  could  be  made  or 
repealed  save  in  the  great  Council  of  the  nation.1  Nor  was  any 
serious  attempt  made  to  evade  these  constitutional  principles 
until  the  reign  of  John  II.,  whose  royal  proclamation,  dictated 
by  Alvaro  de  Luna,  sought  to  over-ride  the  authority  of  the 
Cortes. 

The  deputies  were  elected  by  the  Municipal  Councils  or  Con- 
cejos,'2  and  were  not  permitted  to  receive  any  "  favour  or  gratifi- 
cation "  from  the  king  or  his  ministers  during  the  period  of  their 
deputation.  The  Municipal  Councils  furnished  their  deputy 
with  instructions  not  only  verbal,  but  in  writing ;  and  he  was 
thus  the  mandatory  or  representative,  not  of  the  nation,  but  of 
his  own  municipality. 

The  members  of  the  Cortes  were  summoned  by  writ,  almost 
exactly  coincident  in  expression  with  that  in  use  in  England.8 
The  persons  of  the  deputies  were  inviolable.  By  the  beginning 
of  the  fifteenth  century  a  smaller  or  Privy  Council  obtained  some 
of  the  authority  which  resided  in  the  Cortes.  But  sitting  in 
permanence,  and  at  the  king's  court,  the  members  were  exposed 
to  powerful  influences  unfavourable  to  freedom  ;  and  when  soon 
afterwards  they  came  to  be  chosen  by  the  king  himself,  they  can 
have  exercised  but  a  very  slender  check  upon  any  arbitrary  acts 
of  royal  power. 

In  the  reign  of  Henry  III.  four  delegates  of  the  Cortes, 
selected  by  that  body,  were  added  to  the  Privy  Council,  and 
their  presence  was  judged  to  be  of  the  utmost  value  to  the 
commonwealth. 

This  royal  or  administrative  Council  was  reorganised  by  Fer- 
dinand and  Isabella,  and  although* the  nominal  right  of  the  great 
nobles  and  ecclesiastics  to  a  seat  was  still  recognised,  the  pro- 
fessional jurists  or  Law  Lords  were  practically  invested  with  both 
the  judicial  and  the  consultative  functions  of  the  whole  Privy 
Council.4 

The  constitution  of  Aragon  was  at  once  less  popular  and 
more  liberal  than  that  of  Castile.  The  institutions  of  the 

Leon  (967),  see  Marina,  Teoria  de  las  Cortes,  ii.,  4.  (See  also  in  this  respect  the 
essay  "A  fight  against  finery"  in  The  year  after  the  Armada,  by  the  present 
editor.— H.) 

1  See  protest  of  Cortes  of  1506.  apud  Hallam,  Mid.  Ages,  ii.,  30. 

2  Marina,  Teoria,  ii. ,  i. 

3 Marina,  Teoria,  ii.,  3;  Hallam,  ii.,  28. 

4  Ordenanzas  Reales  de  Castilla  (Burgos,  1528). 


CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY.  375 

former  was  rather  aristocratic ;  those  of  the  latter  tended  to 
absolute  monarchy.  The  arbitrary  power  of  the  king  was  more 
effectually  checked  by  the  nobles  of  Aragon  than  by  the  Com- 
mons of  Castile.  For  in  Aragon,  gentle  and  simple,  the  classes 
and  the  masses,  stood  shoulder  to  shoulder  in  defence  of  their 
common  liberties.  And  even  the  great  royal  victory  at  Epila  in 
1 348,  which  crippled  the  power  of  the  aristocracy,  and  abolished 
the  formal  privilege  of  union,  did  not  sever  the  bonds  that  held 
together  the  knight  and  the  burgess,  the  priest  and  the  landed 
proprietor,  who  still  maintained  their  liberties  against  Peter  IV. 
"The  aristocracy  of  Aragon,"1  says  Sefior  Castelar,  who  is  cer- 
tainly no  friend  to  aristocracies,  "fought  at  all  times,  not  for 
power,  but  for  popular  liberty." 

In  Castile  it  was  far  otherwise.  For  there  the  Commons 
and  the  king  were  ever  united  against  the  nobility ;  and  the 
nobles  fought,  not  for  liberty,  but  for  personal  aggrandisement. 
Thus,  on  the  whole,  political  life  was  freer  and  larger ;  the 
people  of  all  conditions  were  far  more  united  in  Aragon  than 
in  Castile. 

Neither  state  enjoyed  the  priceless  boon  of  trial  by  jury ; 
but  in  Castile  there  was  no  Justiciary,  as  in  Aragon,  no  Habeas 
Corpus,'2'  no  writ  of  Certiorari.3  To  the  Castilians  was  given  no 
General  Privilege,  such  as  was  accorded  to  their  neighbours  by 
Peter  III.  Yet  the  Privilege  of  Union,  the  most  tremendous 
power  ever  conceded  by  a  king  to  his  subjects,  had  its  milder, 
and  indeed  its  far  more  practical  counterpart  in  Castile,4  in  the 
Hermandades,  or  brotherhoods  of  citizens,  which  have  already  been 
spoken  of  in  treating  of  the  turbulent  reign  of  Ferdinand  IV.5 

Throughout  the  long  and  distracted  reigns  of  John  II.  and 
Henry  IV.  the  Hermandad  was  a  necessity.  With  the  return 
of  good  government  and  civil  order  it  became  superfluous  ;  until 
at  length  the  orderly  and  autocratic  Isabella  reduced  turbulent 
Spain  to  complete  submission,  and  replaced  the  old  popular 
brotherhoods  of  a  harassed  and  distracted  country  by  the  "  Holy 
Brotherhood,"  the  well-organised  constabulary  of  a  united  king- 
dom. 

1  Castelar,  Estudios  Historicos,  49,  50. 

2  Manifestation.  3  Jurisfirma  or  Firma  del  derecho. 

4  The  Cortes  of  Castile  became  a  Congress  of  Deputies  from  a  few  cities,  too 
limited  in  number  and  too  unconnected  with  the  territorial  aristocracy  to  maintain 
a  just  balance  against  the  crown.  Hallam,  Mid.  Ages,  ii.,  38. 

*  The  Hermandad  is  considered  by  Seftor  Vicente  de  Lafuente  as  among  the 
secret  societies  of  Spain,  partaking  of  the  nature  of  freemasonry.  Hist,  de  las 
Sofiedadcs  Secreta*  (Lugo,  1870),  p.  44. 


376 


CHAPTER  XXXIII. 
ALFONSO  OF  ARAGON  AND  NAPLES. 

(1416—1453.) 

THE  early  death  of  Ferdinand  I.,  after  his  brief  but  worthy  reign 
of  only  four  years,  was  in  every  way  disastrous  to  Aragon.  For 
Ferdinand,  who  had  been  one  of  the  best  regents  of  Castile, 
and  one  of  the  best  kings  of  Aragon,  was  not  a  man  to  be  easily 
replaced.  And  his  son  and  successor,  partly  from  his  adventur- 
ous disposition,  and  partly  from  the  force  of  circumstances,  was 
led  to  embark  once  more  upon  the  stormy  sea  of  Italian  politics, 
and  to  waste  the  blood  and  treasure  of  Aragon  and  Catalonia  in 
enterprises  without  interest  or  advantage  to  Spain.  The  record 
of  the  reign  of  Alfonso  V.  is  Italian  rather  than  Spanish  ;  and 
Aragon,  ably  administered  by  Queen  Maria  during  the  king's 
absence  beyond  the  sea,  prospered  as  a  country  that  has  no 
history. 

King  Alfonso's  surname  of  The  Magnanimous  is  said  to  have 
been  earned  by  a  refusal  to  investigate  an  alleged  conspiracy 
against  his  succession,  when  he  found  himself  firmly  seated  upon 
the  throne ;  but  the  first  act  of  his  reign  was  unworthy  of  so 
noble  a  title.  Jealous  of  the  influence  and  popularity  of  his 
brother  John  in  Sicily,  where  he  resided  as  viceroy  of  the  king- 
dom, Alfonso  recalled  him  to  Spain.  And  the  prince,  deprived 
of  his  honourable  occupation  in  the  peaceable  administration  of 
an  important  province,  was  led,  most  unhappily,  to  engage  in 
intrigues  and  armed  interference,  in  company  with  his  brothers 
Henry  and  Peter,  in  the  troubled  affairs  of  neighbouring  Castile. 
It  was  in  Italy,  in  his  maturer  years,  that  Alfonso  was  at  once 
more  magnanimous  and  more  successful  in  his  dealings  with  his 
fellow-men ;  and  well  deserved  the  proud  title  by  which  he  is 
known  in  the  history  of  two  countries.  The  years  of  his  personal 
rule  in  Aragon  were  neither  many  nor  glorious ;  and  if  it  could 
be  asserted,  with  any  show  of  truth,  that  he  was  "  the  most  ex- 


ALFONSO  OF  ARAGON  AND  NAPLES.           377 

cellent  prince  that  had  been  seen  in  Italy  from  the  time  of 
Charlemagne,"  l  the  best  that  may  be  said  of  his  rule  in  Aragon 
is  that  it  was  superior  to  that  of  his  cousin  in  Castile.  In  1420 
he  turned  his  attention  to  his  eastern  possessions,  and  undertook 
an  expedition  against  Corsica  and  Sardinia,  whence  he  retired 
the  next  year  without  having  materially  advanced  the  interests 
of  Aragon.  A  dispute  with  the  justiciary  of  the  kingdom  in 
the  same  year  was  less  honourable  to  the  king  than  to  the 
judge.  And  it  is  chiefly  interesting  in  that  the  Cortes  of 
Alcaniz  took  advantage  of  the  opportunity  to  formulate  a  decree 
that  the  justiciary  should  in  future  hold  his  office  independent 
of  the  king's  pleasure.2  But  it  was  in  1421  that  Alfonso  under- 
took the  expedition  which  determined  the  course  of  his  future 
life,  and  had  a  far-reaching  influence  on  the  future  history  of 
United  Spain. 

Joanna  of  Naples,  sometime  the  affianced  bride  of  John  of 
Sicily  —  the  self-willed  queen  who  had  so  hastily  married  his 
rival,  the  French  Count  de  la  Marche  —  had  soon  grown  tired  of 
her  chosen  husband,  and  had  relieved  herself  of  his  distasteful 
presence  by  throwing  him  into  prison  ;  and  then  turning  her 
eyes  once  more  to  Aragon,  she  proposed  to  Alfonso,  who  had  so 
narrowly  escaped  being  her  brother-in-law,  that  he  should  become 
her  adopted  son,  with  a  right  of  succession  to  the  crown  of 
Naples.  Alfonso  accepted  the  tempting  offer,  which  was  con- 
firmed by  a  formal  treaty,  sanctioned  by  a  Bull  of  Martin  V.  ; 
and  despite  the  expected  opposition  of  the  Angevin,  he  proceeded 
to  establish  himself  at  Naples.  His  adopted  mother,  as  a  matter 
of  course,  soon  changed  her  mind  ;  and  disinheriting  Alfonso  as 
formally  as  she  had  previously  accepted  him  as  her  chosen  suc- 
cessor, she  adopted  as  her  son  and  heir  his  rival  and  hereditary 
enemy,  Louis  of  Anjou.  Alfonso  had  already  taken  possession 
of  Naples  (June,  1423),  but  his  position  was  uncertain  and 
embarrassing  ;  new  intrigues  were  set  on  foot  in  Italy  ;  and 
after  war  and  siege  with  varying  fortune,  the  king  of  Aragon 
was  glad  to  return  to  Spain.  Sailing  near  Marseilles  with  his 
well-equipped  fleet,  he  took  advantage  of  the  opportunity  to 
attack  and  plunder  the  city.  The  town  was  burned.  The 
inhabitants  were  massacred.  But  we  are  told  that  the  relics 
of  St.  Louis  of  Toulouse  were  piously  rescued  by  the  assailants 
from  the  general  destruction,  and  were  welcomed  on  board  the 


,  lib.  xvi.,  cap.  42. 
8  Like  our  own  judges,  qvamdiu  se  bene  gaserint, 


378  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

king's  ship  with  the  utmost  consideration  and  reverence. 
(November,  1423).1 

The  Infante  Peter,  left  by  his  brother  to  maintain  the 
authority  of  Aragon  at  Naples,  found  himself  soon  reduced  to 
the  possession  of  the  two  notable  forts — the  Castel  Nuovo  and 
the  Castel  D'Uovo — so  celebrated  in  the  subsequent  history  of 
Central  Italy  ;  and  for  twelve  years  the  war  was  continued  with 
varying  fortunes  and  ever  changing  policies,  leagues  and  counter- 
leagues,  excommunications,  disappointments,  lies  and  intrigues 
of  every  kind,  Papal,  royal,  noble,  Italian,  Spanish  and  French. 

At  length,  in  November,  1434,  Louis  of  Anjou  died;  and 
his  adoptive  mother,  who  had  been  faithful  to  him  for  nearly 
twelve  years,  did  not  long  survive  him.'-2  Rene  of  Anjou,  the 
brother  and  legitimate  successor  of  Louis,  was  a  prisoner  in  the 
hands  of  the  Duke  of  Burgundy ;  and  Alfonso  was  free  to  assert 
his  claim  to  the  vacant  throne.  But  the  Pope  was  hostile,  and 
the  Duke  of  Milan  was  chosen  to  oppose  the  Aragonese,  who 
had  invested  Gaeta  by  land  and  by  sea.3  The  king  was  an 
unskilful  admiral ;  the  Italian  leaguers  were  favoured  by  fortune ; 
and  the  Spaniards  were  defeated  off  the  coast  near  Terracina4 
with  the  loss  of  their  entire  fleet.  The  king  and  his  two  brothers, 
with  the  flower  of  the  nobility  of  Aragon,  were  taken  prisoners 
on  that  fatal  day  (August,  1435),  and  the  generous  treatment5 
accorded  to  the  captives  by  the  Duke  of  Milan,  is  one  of  the 
pleasantest  features  in  the  story  of  the  long  and  ignoble  struggle 
for  the  supreme  power  in  Italy. 

As  soon  as  the  news  of  the  defeat  at  Terracina  reached 
Spain,  Queen  Maria,  who  was  acting  as  regent  of  Aragon 
during  the  absence  of  her  husband,  summoned  a  Cortes  at 
Monzon,  and  prepared  an  army  and  a  fleet  to  restore  the 
fortunes  of  her  country.  But,  after  a  few  months  captivity, 
Alfonso  and  his  brother  were  set  at  liberty ;  and  the  king  was 
able  once  more  to  take  the  field  in  person.  For  so  rapid  were 

1  El  rey  ordend  que  con  toda  reverencia  fuese  llevada  y  depositada  en  su  galera 
tan  preciosa  joya.     Lafuente,  viii.,  291. 

2  Queen  Joanna  died  in  November,  1435. 

3  Some  accounts  and  papers,  with  lists  of  ships  and  names  of  officers  and  nobles, 
with  the  number  of  men-at-arms  provided  by  each,  for  Alfonso's  second  Neapolitan 
expedition  in  1432,  will  be  found  in  vol  xiii.  of  Documentos  Ineditos  (1848),  p.  477. 
Libre  ordinari  de  dates,  Fetes  per  en  Bernat  Sirvent,  tesorer  general,  desde  maig  de 
•L^zfins  le  derrer  die  de  Decembre  apres  seguent. 

4  The  Isla  de  Ponza.     This  battle  is  the  subject  of  the  celebrated  dramatic 
poem  of  the  Marquis  de  Santillana. 

5  They  were  treated  no  como  prisioneros  sino  como  principes. 


1439.]      ALFONSO  OF  ARAGON  AND  NAPLES.          379 

the  changes  in  Italian  politics  that  the  Duke  of  Milan,  his 
captor,  had  already  changed  sides  on  the  question  of  the 
sovereignty  of  Naples,  and  was  soon  ( 1 439)  an  ardent  supporter 
of  his  opponent  of  two  years  before.  Gaeta  was  given  up  to 
the  king  of  Aragon.  Ren6  of  Anjou,  who  had  been  ransomed 
in  1438  from  the  hands  of  the  Duke  of  Burgundy,  was  now  to 
be  opposed  at  all  hazards.  Alfonso  threw  himself  heart  and 
soul  into  the  struggle.  He  purchased  the  support  of  the  new 
Pope  by  a  promise  of  his  assistance  in  the  recovery  of  certain 
territory,  and  by  a  money  payment  of  200,000  ducats  ;  he  con- 
ciliated many  of  the  Italian  princes  by  diplomatic  concessions  ; 
and,  if  ill  fortune  at  first  attended  his  arms,  he  was  in  the  end 
completely  successful.  On  the  2nd  of  June,  1442,  Naples  was 
taken  and  sacked,  and  Rene  of  Anjou  driven  into  the  accustomed 
refuge  of  the  Castel  Nuovo.  Escaping  thence,  he  made  his  way 
to  Florence,  where  Pope  Eugenius  was  bold  enough  to  embrace 
the  opportunity  of  formally  investing  him  with  the  sovereignty 
of  Naples,  while  his  rival  of  Aragon  made  his  triumphant  entry 
into  the  city  in  February,  1443.  A  Parliament  was  summoned 
after  the  good  old  Aragonese  fashion.  The  victor  granted  an 
amnesty  to  all  his  vanquished  enemies,  a  fashion  no  less  good, 
and  by  no  means  so  old,  in  either  Aragon  or  Italy ;  and  he 
reigned  over  Naples,  in  spite  of  Popes  and  leaguers,  to  the  day 
of  his  death  in  1458,  as  Alfonso  the  Magnanimous,  King  of 
Aragon  and  of  the  Two  SICILIES. 

Within  six  months  of  the  conquest,  Pope  Eugenius  had 
invested  him  (July,  1443),  with  the  sovereign  rights  that  he 
had  already  acquired,  and  had  recognised  his  bastard  son, 
Ferdinand,  as  his  legitimate  child  and  successor  on  the  throne 
of  Naples.  Alfonso,  in  return  for  these  favours,  assisted  the 
Pope  in  his  struggles  against  his  old  allies  the  Sforzas ;  and  he 
was  at  once  so  discreet  and  so  successful  that  he  was  soon 
recognised  as  the  "pacificator-general  of  Italy"  (1446).  Every 
State  and  every  signor  sought  his  alliance  or  his  protection. 
The  Duke  of  Milan,  dying  in  August,  1447,  bequeathed  to  him 
the  whole  of  his  dominions ;  and  Alfonso's  noble  and  prudent 
conduct  with  regard  to  his  succession,  raised  his  reputation  still 
higher  in  the  eyes  of  all  his  contemporaries.  He  not  only 
abandoned  the  Duchy  to  Franciso  Sforza  and  his  wife,  the 
daughter  of  the  late  duke,  but  he  actually  assisted  them  by  force 
of  arms  against  the  attacks  of  the  Florentines  and  the  Venetians. 
Occupied  thus  worthily  in  the  affairs  of  Italy,  Alfonso  turned 
his  back,  unhappily,  upon  Spain.  His  rule  over  Aragon  was  the 


380  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

rule  of  the  absentee ;  and  far  from  seeking,  even  after  his 
renunciation  of  Milan,  to  turn  his  steps  to  the  west,  he  was 
actually  projecting  an  expedition  to  succour  the  Christians  in 
the  extreme  east  of  Europe,1  when  the  taking  of  Constantinople 
by  Mohammed  II.  (29th  May,  1453),  put  an  end  to  all  further 
schemes  of  protection. 

For  1100  years  no  Spaniard  had  ruled  the  world  from  Rome. 
Pope  Damasus,  celebrated  for  his  share  in  the  persecution  of 
Priscillian,  had  died  in  367.  An  obscure  scholar  known  as 
Peter  of  Lisbon,  Bishop  of  Braga,  who  took  the  title  of  John 
XXI.  in  1 276,  may  possibly  have  been  a  native  of  the  Peninsula. 
But  his  tenure  of  office  did  not  extend  beyond  a  few  months, 
and  his  identity  is  supremely  uncertain.  Pedro  de  Luna  (Bene- 
dict XIII.)  himself  never  entered  the  Vatican,  and  was  never 
recognised  as  Pope  by  more  than  a  portion  of  Christendom. 
But  on  the  death  of  Nicholas  V.,  Alfonso  de  Borja,  a  poor  priest 
of  Xativa,  who  had  been  consecrated  Bishop  of  Valencia,  was 
elevated  to  the  Papal  throne,  and  assumed  the  title  of  Calixtus 
III.  His  name,  in  the  Italian  form  of  Borgia,  descended  to  his 
nephew,  who  had  been  created  a  cardinal  within  a  year  of  the 
elevation  of  his  uncle  Calixtus  to  the  Papacy  ;  and  Roderic 
Borgia,  succeeding  after  a  lapse  of  some  thirty  years  to  his 
uncle's  tiara,  earned  for  himself  and  his  family  an  imperishable 
notoriety  under  the  name  of  Alexander  VI.  The  earlier  Borgia 
has  no  such  title  to  fame.  But  he  took  good  care  of  all 
nephews,2  Borgias  and  Valencians  at  Rome.  Nor  were  the 
interests  of  his  native  province  forgotten  in  his  canonisation  of 
the  last  but  one  of  the  titular  Saints  Vincent — Saint  Vincent 
Ferrer,  the  most  worthy  of  the  nine  arbitrators  of  1412. 

One  of  the  twenty-seven  saints  of  the  Romish  Church  who 
bear  the  name  of  Vincent,  of  whom  nine  are  natives  of  Spain, 
Vincent  Ferrer  is  one  of  the  last  of  his  countrymen  who  has 


1  Alfonso,  in  1456,  proposed  to  Calixtus  III.,  the  Spaniard,  Alfonso  Borgia, 
that  he  should  be  intrusted  with  the  command  of  a  crusade  against  the  Turks. 
But  Calixtus  viewed  the  scheme  with  little  favour. 

sjThe  following  list  of  the  members  of  the  family  of  Calixtus,  invested  with  the 
scarlet  hat  in  half  a  century,  is  interesting  and  instructive  : — 

i.  Cardinal  Alfonso  Borgia        1444 

Roderic  1456 


Juan 

Caesar 

Juan 

Luis 

Francisco 


1492 

1493 
1496 
1500 
155° 


1419.]      ALFONSO  OF  ARAGON  AND  NAPLES.           381 

attained  the  honour  of  canonisation.1  He  was  born  at  Valencia 
in  1357,  and  assumed  the  habit  of  a  Dominican  in  1374.  At 
the  age  of  twenty-four  he  proceeded  to  the  University  of 
Barcelona,  and  afterwards  to  Lerida,  where  he  studied  with 
uncommon  diligence  and  success.  Invested  by  Pedro  de  Luna 
with  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Divinity,  he  continued  the  friend 
of  that  distinguished  ecclesiastic  for  many  years.  On  the  death 
of  Clement  VII.,  in  1394,  and  the  election  of  his  patron  to  the 
anti- Papacy,  Vincent  repaired  to  Avignon,  and  was  appointed 
master  of  the  Sacred  Palace  by  Benedict  XIII.  He  refused  a 
Cardinal's  hat,  however,  at  the  hands  of  the  anti-Pope  ;  and  in 
1398  he  returned  to  his  native  Valencia.  Thence  he  travelled 
through  a  considerable  portion  of  Europe,  and  accepting  an 
invitation  from  Henry  IV.  to  go  over  to  England,  he  visited 
many  of  the  principal  towns  in  Great  Britain,  and  even,  it  is 
said,  in  Ireland,  preaching  and  working  miracles,  everywhere 
distinguished  by  his  sanctity,  his  simplicity  and  his  zeal.  In 
1406  he  endeavoured,  though  without  success,  to  induce  Bene- 
dict XIII.  to  lay  aside  the  Papal  tiara,  and  so  to  put  an  end  to 
the  great  schism  in  the  Church  ;  and  travelling  all  over  southern 
Europe  until  1412,  he  returned  to  Aragon  in  time  to  be 
appointed,  with  general  approbation,  to  act  as  one  of  the 
arbitrators,  or  electors  of  the  kingdom ;  and  the  admirable 
choice  of  Ferdinand  of  Castile  to  fill  the  vacant  throne,  is  said 
to  be  mainly  due  to  his  personal  influence  with  his  colleagues.2 
After  this  good  work  at  home,  though  appointed  by  King 
Ferdinand  to  be  his  confessor  and  chaplain,  Vincent  continued 
his  travels  abroad,  preaching  to  the  poor,  corresponding  with 
popes  and  kings,  and  working  innumerable  well-authenticated 
miracles  of  healing  the  sick.  He  died  at  Vannes  in  Brittany 
in  April,  1419;  and  his  claims  to  titular  sanctity,  although 
rejected  by  the  Italian  Popes,  Martin  V.,  Eugenius  IV.,  and 
Nicholas  V.,  were  admitted  by  his  fellow-countryman  Calixtus.3 
But  although  the  first  of  the  Papal  or  Roman  Borgias 
canonised  a  Spanish  saint,  he  did  not  favour  the  Spanish 

1  The  most  celebrated  of  the  various  Saints  Vincent  was  a  Frenchman,  Bishop 
of  the  Islands  of  the  Lerins,  opposite  the  little  fishing  village  so  well  known  to  the 
modern  frequenter  of  the  French  Riviera  as  Cannes.  For  a  further  account  of 
Spanish  saints,  see  post,  vol.  ii.,  chap,  xlii.,  and  Appendix  on  THE  SPANISH  POPES 
AND  CARDINALS,  and  M.  le  Comte  de  Mas  Latrie,  Tresor  de  Chronologie  (Paris, 
1889),  pp.  893-4. 

2Zurita,  t.  Hi.,  f.  71. 

3  The  last  of  the  Saints  Vincent,  moreover,  is  said  to  have  foretold  the  elevation 
of  the  first  of  the  Borgias  to  the  Papal  throne. 


382  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

sovereign.  He  refused  to  grant  him  the  investiture  of  the 
kingdom  of  Naples.  An  offer  made  by  Alfonso  to  lead  a 
crusade  against  the  Turks  was  treated  with  scant  courtesy.  Nor 
did  a  proposal  that  Calixtus  should  assist  him  in  his  peaceful 
negotiations  with  Navarre  and  Castile  find  any  favour  at  Rome. 
The  King  and  the  Pope — the  Spaniard  at  Naples,  and  the 
Spaniard  at  Rome — died  in  the  same  year  (1458),  and  a  great 
change  came  over  the  affairs  of  Rome,  of  Naples,  and  above  all 
of  Aragon.  Calixtus  was  succeeded  by  the  learned  ^Eneas 
Silvius  Piccolomini ;  and  Alfonso  by  his  astute  brother  John, 
King  of  Navarre,  who  is  known  in  history  as  John  II.  of  Aragon, 
the  father  of  Ferdinand  the  Catholic. 


383 


CHAPTER  XXXIV. 
JOHN  II.  OF  CASTILE. 

(1407—1454.) 
I. — The  Good  Regent  Ferdinand. 

JOHN  II.  of  Castile  was  but  two  years  of  age  at  the  time  of 
his  father's  death.  Castile  was  once  more  in  the  hands  of  a 
Council  of  Regency.  Yet,  among  the  regents  of  Spain,  few, 
if  any,  may  be  compared  in  excellence  with  Ferdinand,  the 
brother  of  the  late  king,  who  was  associated  with  the  widowed 
queen  in  the  administration  of  the  affairs  of  the  realm.  There 
was  but  one  fault  in  his  government  of  the  king  and  of  the 
kingdom — it  was  all  too  brief  in  its  duration.  Many  were  the 
counsellors,  and  they  were  not  necessarily  traitors  to  Castile, 
who  urged  the  popular  and  capable  uncle  to  mount  the  throne 
of  the  infant  nephew.  Could  they  but  have  foretold  that  the 
infant  would  live  for  fifty  years  without  attaining  the  wisdom  of 
a  man,  their  demands  might  have  been  more  strongly  insisted 
upon.  But  Ferdinand  refused  to  hear  them.  He  acted  with 
the  most  perfect  loyalty  to  his  brother's  son,  until  the  day  when, 
unhappily  for  his  own  country,  he  was  called  to  wear  the  crown, 
not  of  Castile,  but  of  Aragon — the  fruit  of  no  intrigue,1  the  spoil 
of  no  civil  war,  but  the  free  gift  of  a  free  people. 

To  find  another  Prince  Regent  with  the  conduct  and  qualities 
of  Ferdinand  of  Castile,  says  Sefior  Modesto  Lafuente,2  we  must 

1  In  July,  1412.  See  ante,  chapter  xxxii.  The  administration  of  the  kingdom 
of  Castile  was  divided  between  the  queen  and  her  brother-in-law ;  the  northern 
provinces  being  the  share  of  the  former,  and  the  southern  that  of  the  latter.  The 
war  with  Granada  (1407-1410),  ending  with  the  conquest  of  An  tequera,  will  be  more 
particularly  noticed  in  the  chapter  on  the  wars  of  Granada.  See  .also  Marina, 
xix.,  22. 

2  Lafuente,  ix.,  p.  16.  It  is  agreeable  to  note  and  quote  such  liberal  and  just 
appreciation  of  the  hereditary  enemy.  Sefior  Lafuente  has  now  been  my  constant 
companion  in  study  during  nine  volumes  of  his  monumental  work,  and  if  I  have 


384  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

go  back  over  five  centuries,  and  find  him  in  the  distinguished 
stock  of  the  Ommeyades  of  Cordova,  in  the  noble  and  generous 
Prince  Almudafar,  the  uncle  and  the  protector  of  the  child  who 
lived  to  reign  so  gloriously  as  Abdurahman  the  Great. 

The  ^Council  of  Regency  that  was  nominated  in  Castile  on 
the  departure  of  Ferdinand  was  not  much  more  harmonious  nor 
much  more  efficient  than  such  associations  usually  were  in 
mediaeval  Spain.  But  Castile  continued  at  peace  for  four 
years  under  the  effective  if  distant  protection  of  Ferdinand  of 
Aragon.  That  most  worthy  prince  unhappily  died  in  1416. 
Queen  Katherine,  who,  though  far  from  being  a  second  Beren- 
garia,  was  at  least  an  honest  and  affectionate  guardian,  died  two 
years  afterwards,  in  1418  ;  and  a  foolish  boy  of  twelve  years  old 
was  left  to  the  society  of  dissolute  favourites  and  the  control  of 
jealous  regents.  At  the  end  of  1418  he  was  married  to  a 
daughter  of  the  lamented  Ferdinand.  In  1419  he  took  into 
his  feeble  hands  the  reins  of  government,  on  attaining  his 
fourteenth  year.  But  from  the  death  of  Ferdinand,  the  real 
sovereign  of  Castile  was  the  celebrated  Alvaro  de  Luna,  a  rela- 
tion of  the  indomitable  anti-Pope  Benedict  XIII.,  and,  like  that 
stubborn  ecclesiastic,  a  bold  and  masterful  Spaniard. 


II. — Alvaro  de  Luna. 

The  boldest  knight,  the  ablest  intriguer,  the  most  fascinating 
companion  at  the  king's  court  was  Alvaro  de  Luna,  by  common 
consent  the  strongest  head  and  the  bravest  heart  in  Castile. 
More  skilful  in  the  use  of  arms,  more  dexterous  in  every  game 
and  sport  than  any  of  his  compeers,  he  was  the  best  horseman, 
the  most  graceful  dancer,  the  most  accomplished  troubadour, 
eloquent,  magnificent,  courageous,  refined,  the  most  brilliant 
cavalier  in  all  Spain.1  And  the  Castilian  historians,  partly,  no 
doubt,  to  palliate  the  contemptible  submissiveness  of  King  John 
II.,  are  never  weary  of  insisting  upon  his  almost  supernatural 
vigour,  both  of  mind  and  body.  But  a  man  far  less  bold,  whether 
in  the  field  or  in  the  closet,  than  the  far-famed  Constable  of 

not  always  been  able  to  agree  with  him,  I  have  consulted  his  pages  with  much 
sympathy,  and  with  unvarying  respect. 

1  Alvaro  de  Luna  era  el  hombre  mas  politico,  disintulado,  y  astuio  de  su  tiempo. 
Quintana,  Vida  de  Espa Holes  celebres,  supplementary  vol.  (Madrid,  1833),  pp.  1-253; 
and  Lafuente,  ix.,  24-30.  Yet  he  was  short  of  stature,  the  victim  ot  premature 
baldness,  and  disfigured  by  small  eyes  and  bad  teeth. 


1420.]  JOHN  II.  OF  CASTILE.  385 

Castile,  would  have  had  little  difficulty  in  mastering  the  weak 
and  docile  John. 

Magnificent  in  an  age  of  magnificence,  Don  Alvaro  de  Luna 
made  display  at  once  his  pleasure  and  his  business.  The  mere 
enumeration  of  his  titles,  as  he  grew  in  power  and  dignity,  would 
fill  a  page  of  this  history.  As  Constable  of  the  Kingdom  and 
Grand  Master  of  Santiago,  he  would  already  have  been  the  first 
man  in  Spain,  yet  he  did  not  disdain  the  minor  honours  of  the 
Dukedom  of  Truxillo,  the  Counties  of  Gormaz,  San  Esteban  and 
Ledesma,  and  the  lordships  of  no  less  than  seventy  towns  or 
castles. 

His  brother  was  made  Archbishop  of  Toledo  and  Primate 
of  all  Spain.  His  daughter  was  married  to  Inigo  Lopez  de 
Mendoza,  second  Duke  of  Infantado,  of  the  bluest  blood  in 
Castile.  His  retinue  was  more  magnificent  than  that  of  the 
king.  His  revenues  exceeded  those  of  the  kingdom.  Yet  if 
he  was  permitted  for  well-nigh  forty  years  to  rule  the  king  and 
the  kingdom  of  Castile,  it  does  not  follow  that  John  II.  who 
obeyed  so  masterful  a  favourite,  was  either  a  fool  or  a  simpleton. 
The  king,  indeed,  was  at  once  unwarlike  and  weak.  And  these 
were  just  the  qualities  which  contemporary  Castilians  neither 
understood  nor  endured  in  their  sovereigns. 

Alfonso  X.,  who  was  one  of  the  greatest  intellects  of  the 
thirteenth  century,  was  despised  by  his  subjects  for  his  peaceful 
policy  ;  and  it  was  not  likely  that  John,  who  lived  in  still  more 
troubled  times,  under  the  shadow  of  a  masterful  regent,  and 
who  showed  his  intelligence  chiefly  by  dabbling  in  poetry  and 
patronising  university  professors,  should  have  commanded  the 
respect  of  his  subjects,  or  even  of  their  patriotic  posterity.  John, 
indeed,  never  had  what  may  be  called  a  fair  chance  as  king. 
The  ocean  of  political  intrigue  was  deep  and  stormy  from  the 
very  day  when  the  loss  of  his  uncle  left  the  ship  of  State, 
already  labouring  in  the  growing  tempest,  to  his  feeble  and 
uncertain  command.  For  ere  he  had  enjoyed  his  nominal  in- 
dependence for  twelve  months,  his  cousin  and  brother-in-law, 
Henry,  Infante  of  Aragon,  surprised  him  (July,  1420),  at  Torde- 
sillas,  possessed  himself,  apparently  without  let  or  hindrance,  of 
his  royal  person,  and  kept  him  a  close  prisoner  in  his  own  palace 
until  he  had  been  brought  to  consent  to  the  marriage  of  this 
princely  adventurer  with  his  sister,  the  Infanta  Katharine  of 
Castile. 

The  insolence  of  the  successful  adventurer,  the  pusillanimity 
of  the  king,  the  indifference  of  Alvaro  de  Luna,  are  equally 
VOL.  i.  25 


386  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN.  [A.D. 

strange  and  equally  contemptible.  Henry  was  rewarded  not 
only  with  a  royal  wife  but  with  honours  and  estates.  The  king 
was  released  from  captivity.  Alvaro  de  Luna  was  restored  to 
favour,  and  appointed  Constable  of  Castile  (1425). 

The  tale  of  the  long  reign  of  John  II.  is  scarcely  worth 
telling  in  any  detail.  Castile,  in  spite  of  aristocratic  intrigues 
and  unmeaning  civil  war,  grew  gradually  richer  and  stronger, 
and  more  civilised — in  spite  of  king  or  constable,  rather  than  on 
account  of  any  political  intelligence  on  the  part  of  any  leader  in 
Castile.  Literature,  indeed,  was  encouraged,  and  men  of  letters 
were  protected  by  the  court.  The  life  of  no  man  is  entirely 
contemptible.  The  king,  who  could  not  go  to  bed  without  the 
permission  of  his  favourite,  extended  a  generous  and  not  un- 
intelligent patronage  to  literature  and  the  arts.  A  student,  if 
not  a  scholar,  and  a  respecter  not  only  of  Alvaro  de  Luna  but  of 
men  of  learning  and  science,  an  appreciative  musician,  a  mild 
poet,  a  man  fond  of  good  manners  and  graceful  diction,  it  must 
ever  be  remembered  to  the  honour  of  John  II.  that  he  en- 
couraged the  Universities  of  Castile  as  they  had  not  been 
encouraged  since  the  days  of  Alfonso  the  Learned,  and  that  he 
endowed  them  as  they  had  never  been  endowed  before.1 

But  politically  the  king's  life  was  contemptible  in  the  ex- 
treme. Such  an  episode  as  that  known  as  the  Seguro  de  Torde- 
sillas,  more  particularly  referred  to  in  a  subsequent  chapter  upon 
contemporary  literature,  would  seem  to  mark  the  nadir  of  royal 
influence  and  national  honour  in  Castile.  Plots  for  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  over-powerful  favourite  were  ever  encouraged  by  the 
king's  weakness,  and  brought  to  nought  by  his  timidity.  The 
rebellion  of  Henry,  Prince  of  Asturias,  and  the  attack  on  the 
king  at  Medina  del  Campo  in  1441  ;  the  long  civil  war  which 
culminated  on  the  battle-field  of  Olmedo  in  May,  1445,  and  the 
defeat  and  banishment  of  Henry  of  Aragon  and  John  of  Navarre  ; 
the  lamentable  death  of  the  constable  ;  the  constant  vacillation 
of  the  king — all  these  things  are  neither  interesting  nor  profit- 
able to  recall. 

Amid  all  the  unimportant  and  inglorious  disputes  with 
Navarre  and  Aragon,  troubles  and  disturbances  in  every  part 
of  Castile,  and  the  leagues  and  counter-leagues  that  characterise 
this  long  and  dreary  reign,  one  single  feat  of  arms  which  Spanish 
historians  recall  with  satisfaction  was  the  victory  over  the  Moors 

1  Cronica  de  D.  Juan  II.  (ano  1454),  cap.  2  ;  Gencraeiones  y  Semblanzas,  cap. 
33.  There  is  a  chapter  in  vol.  xix.  of  the  Documentos  fneditos,  pp.  435-454,  on  the 
Erudition  del Rey  Juan  If.,  which  is  worth  looking  at. 


1451.]  JOHN  II.  OF  CASTILE.  387 

at  Sierra  Elvira,  or  Higueruela,  in  July,  1431.  Yet  the  Christian 
action  or  intervention  had  been  suggested  only  by  civil  war  in 
Granada ;  and  for  many  years  after  the  bootless  victory,  the 
Moslems  ravaged  the  Castilian  frontiers  with  an  impunity  un- 
known for  over  200  years. 

John  II.  of  Castile,  indeed,  did  one  thing,  and  one  thing 
only  for  posterity,  and  that  was  to  leave  behind  him  a  daughter 
who  in  no  way  resembled  her  father.  By  his  first  wife,  Mary 
of  Aragon,  the  king  had  but  one  son,  born  in  1425,  who  suc- 
ceeded him  as  Henry  IV.  The  queen  died  in  1445,  and  John, 
it  is  said,  desired  to  take  for  a  second  wife  a  princess  of  the 
royal  house  of  France.  His  master,1  however,  willed  otherwise  ; 
and  by  order  of  Alvaro  de  Luna,  the  submissive  monarch  es- 
poused Isabella  of  Portugal,  a  grand-daughter  of  King  John  I. 
The  marriage  took  place  in  1450,  and  a  son,  Alfonso,  Prince  of 
Asturias,  was  born  in  1453.  But  two  years  previously,  in  1451, 
a  daughter  had  been  given  to  the  royal  pair,  who  was  destined 
to  change  the  fortunes  of  Spain,  and  who  received  in  honour  of 
her  high -spirited  mother  the  ever  famous  name  of  ISABELLA. 

If  this  Portuguese  marriage  thus  brought  everlasting  honour 
to  Spain,  it  sealed  the  fate  of  Alvaro  de  Luna.  For  the  queen 
of  his  choice,  far  from  becoming  either  his  agent  or  his  ally, 
emboldened  the  king,  her  lord,  to  assert  his  independence  of 
his  favourite  ;  and  Alvaro  de  Luna,  like  many  greater  and  better 
men,  fell  by  the  hand  of  a  woman. 

If  the  great  Hajib  at  Cordova  was  too  strong  for  Sobeyra  the 
queen-mother,  the  Constable  was  no  match  for  the  superior  attrac- 
tions of  Isabella  the  wife.  And  at  length,  delivered  by  the 
king,  in  a  fit  of  momentary  vigour,  into  the  hands  of  the  execu- 
tioner, the  favourite  died,  before  his  ever-vacillating  sovereign 
could  summon  up  resolution  to  remit  the  sentence,  on  the  2nd 
of  June,  1453.  One  year  only  did  the  king  survive  the  Con- 
stable ;  and  on  the  21st  of  July,  1454,  was  John  II.  gathered  to 
his  fathers. 

The  one  person  who  stands  out  in  bold  relief  among  his  rest- 

1  The  subjection  of  the  king  to  the  favourite  was  so  complete  that  it  extended 
to  the  most  personal  and  private  acts  of  his  daily  life.  Aun  en.  Los  autos  naturales 
se  did  asi  a  la  ordenanta  del  condestable,  que  seyendo  tl  mozo  y  bien  complexionado, 
y  teniendo  a  la  reyna  su  mujer  mota  yfermosa,  si  el  condestable  se  lo  contradixiese, 
no  ilia,  a  dormir  d  su  cama  della.  Perez  de  Guzman,  Cronica  de  D.  Juan,  ii. 
(Ed.  1779),  p.  602,  col.  i.  (A  similar  control  over  the  marital  conduct  of  young 
Philip  on  his  first  marriage  was  established  by  his  father  Charles  V.  in  favour  of 
the  prince's  governor,  Don  Juan  de  Zuniga,  though  Philip,  unlike  John  II.,  soon 
evaded  it.  — H.) 


388  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

less  contemporaries  is,  of  course,  Alvaro  de  Luna.  Yet,  superior 
as  he  no  doubt  was  to  his  contemporaries,  and  to  his  inevitable 
successor,  to  the  ungrateful  Villena  and  to  the  scandalous  Bel- 
tran  de  la  Cueva,  his  renown  is  due  rather  to  his  domination  of 
the  feeble  monarch  who  abandoned  to  him  for  forty  years  the 
absolute  government  of  Castile,  than  to  any  enormous  merits  of 
his  own.  In  spite  of  much  historical  glorification,  Alvaro  de 
Luna  must  be  considered  as  a  somewhat  commonplace  favourite, 
of  the  more  magnificent  order;  a  strong  and  unscrupulous 
minister,  who  ruled  a  weak  and  submissive  king  by  the  accus- 
tomed methods,  and  who  perished  in  the  accustomed  manner. 
His  success,  great  as  it  was,  was  purely  personal.  With  almost 
unlimited  power,  his  administration  of  Castile  was  to  the  last 
degree  disastrous :  and  his  strength  of  character  was  never  for 
forty  years  displayed  in  the  good  government  of  Spain.  Mag- 
nificent he  certainly  was,  a  commanding  and  an  attractive  figure 
in  Spanish  history,  admired  by  his  contemporaries,  celebrated  in 
a  fascinating  Chronicle,  and  ennobled  by  a  tragic  and  dignified 
death,  he  may  rank  higher  among  the  rulers  of  his  country  than 
Lerma  or  Godoy,  but  he  is  unworthy  of  a  moment's  comparison 
with  Almanzor.1 

1 1  have  derived  much  information  from  the  Cronica  de  D.  Alvaro  de  Luna, 
etc.,  etc.,  etc.,  ed.  convarios  apendices  by  D.  Josef  Miguel  de  Flores,  Secretario  de 
la  Real  Academia  de  Historia  (Madrid,  1784).  Among  the  apendices,  printed  at 
pp.  i-ii2,  is  The  SEGURO  DE  TORDESILLAS,  by  Don  Pedro  Hernandez  deVelasco, 
Conde  de  Haro,  referred  to  in  the  text,  and  also  the  Libra  del  Passo  Honroso 
defendidopor  el  Excelente  Caballero  Suero  de  Quitlones,  compiled  by  Pero  Rodriguez 
Velena  and  edited  by  Juan  de  Pineda,  pp.  1-68.  The  whole  is  preceded  by  a  good 
Prologo,  and  makes  a  most  interesting  volume.  (The  archives  of  the  present  Count 
de  Haro  (the  Duke  of  Frias)  contain  a  great  quantity  of  documents  referring  to 
the  curious  affair  of  the  "  Seguro  de  Tordesillas  "  by  which  the  "  good"  Count  de 
Haro  guaranteed  the  safety  of  all  parties  to  the  conference.  I  am  indebted  to  the 
Duke  of  Frias  for  the  abstracts  of  these  documents,  of  which  also  a  full  catalogue 
has  just  (1899)  been  printed  in  Madrid. — H.) 


TABLES  AND  APPENDICES. 


TABLES. 

TABLE  I. 

VISIGOTHIC  KINGS. 

FROM  THE  DBA  TH  OF  ALARIC. 

Seat  of. 

NAME.                                                                Date  of  Death.  Government. 

*ATAWULF „ 415  ...„.  Barcelona. 

*SlOERIC      ...             415  „ 

WALLIA _         ......  420  Toulouse. 

*THEODORIC  (THEODORED)             ......  451  ....„  „ 

*THORISMUND        ..._ „         . 452  „ 

*THEODORIC           —         ......         466  „ 

EURIC       ......         483 

*ALARIC  II.                         ......         507  „ 

GESALIC    _         —         —  511  ....„  Narbonne. 

*  AMALARIC  ......         ......         —         531  —  „ 

*THEUDIS    ......         ......         —  548  „ 

*THEUDISEL            ......         550  „ 

*AoiLA       ~         ..  554  ......  Merida  ? 

ATHANAOILD         „.         ......  567  Toledo. 

LIUVA        „         —          ......  572  —  Narbonne. 

LEOVGILD  ......         —         ......  586  Toledo. 

RECCARED             601  —  „ 

*LiuvAlI -         - 603 

*WlTERIC    ......  6lO  „ 

GUNDEMAR 6'12  „ 

SlSEBUT  (SlSEBERT)               ...             620  .....  „ 

RECCARED  II.       —         .  621  ..._.  „ 

SwiNTHILA                 ......  631  „ 

SlSENAND -             636  „ 

CHINDILA  (KINTILA)         —         640  „ 

TULOA      -         ...._         ......  642  „ 

CHINDASWIND  (KINDASVINTH)      653  „ 

RECCESWIND         ™ „         ....-  672  „ 

WAMBA     .....         ......         680  „ 

ERWIO  (ERVIOIUS) 687  „ 

EOICA       .....         701  „ 

WITIZA  (WmcA) ......                    ......  710?  

*RODERIC  711?  „ 

THEODEMIR _         743  Tadmir  ? 

ATHANAOILO  II _         755  „ 

Those  kings  whose  names  are  marked  *  died  a  violent  death.     Tulga, 

Wamba  and  Envig  died  in  confinement. 


392  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 


TABLE  II. 
KINGS  OF  THE  ASTURIAS  AND  LEON. 

NAME.  Date  of  Accession. 

PELAYO            718  ? 

FAVILA             737 

ALFONSO  1 739 

FRUELA  1 757 

AURELIO          768 

MAUREGATO    774 

BERMUDO  I 788 

ALFONSO  II 791 

RAMIRO  1 842 

ORDONO  1 850 

ALFONSO  III 866 

GARCIA            910 

ORDONO  II 914 

FRUELA  II 923 

ALFONSO  IV 925 

RAMIRO  II 930 

ORDONO  III 950 

SANCHO            955 

RAMIRO  III 967 

BERMUDO  II 982 

ALFONSO  V 999 

BERMUDO  III.              1027 

On  the  death  of  Bermudo  III.  in  1037.,  the  kingdom  of  Leon 
fell  to  Ferdinand  I.  of  Castile,  who  had  married  Sancha,  a 
daughter  of  Sancho  the  Great. 

Their  second  son  Alfonso  succeeded,  in  1065,  to  the  crown  of 
Leon,  and  in  1072  to  that  of  Castile,  as  ALFONSO  VI. 


TABLES. 


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394 


HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 
TABLE  IV. 


THE  UNIONS  AND  SEPARATIONS  OF  THE  CROWNS 
OF  LEON  AND  CASTILE  IN  THE  XI.,  XII.  AND 
XIII.  CENTURIES. 


LEON. 

CASTILE. 

UNITED 
KINGDOM. 

BERMUDO  III.,  ob.  s.  p  

1027-1037 

FERDINAND  I  

1033-1037 

99                                             ••••••                   ...... 

1037-1065 

SANCHO  II  ..  . 

1065-1072 

ALFONSO  VI. 

1065-1072 





99                                     ••••..                  ...... 

URRACA     ..  . 

...... 

1072-1109 
1109-1126 

ALFONSO,  el  Emperador     

— 

1126-1157 

SANCHO  III.           

1157-1158 



FERDINAND  II. 

1157-1188 

...... 

ALFONSO  III.  (VIII.) 

™~ 

1158-1214 

ALFONSO  IX. 

1188-1230 

...... 

HENRY  I.  .  ...         

1214-1217 

BERENGARIA           



1217 

Saint  FERDINAND  

-- 

1217 

...„. 

„           „ 

1230 

TABLES. 


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396 


HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 


TABLE  VI. 
THE  KINGS  OF  CASTILE  AND  ARAGON. 


FROM  THE  UNION  OF  LEON  AND  CASTILE. 


Saint  FERDINAND  III. 

1230-1252. 
ALFONSO  X.,  the  Learned, 

1252-1284. 
SANCHO  IV.,  the  Bravo, 

1284-1295. 
FERDINAND  IV.,  the  Summoned, 

1295-1312. 
ALFONSO  XL,  the  Judge, 

1312-1350. 
PETER,  the  Cruel, 

1350-1369. 
HENRY  II.,  of  Trastamara, 

1369-1379. 
JOHN  I., 

1379-1391. 
HENRY  III.,  the  Invalid, 

1391-1407. 
JOHN  II., 

1407-1454. 
HENRY  IV.,  the  Impotent, 

1454-1474. 
ISABELLA,  the  Catholic,  = 

1474-1504. 


JAMES  I.,  the  Conqueror, 

1213-1270. 
PETER  III.,  the  Great, 

1270-1285. 
ALFONSO  III., 

1285-1291. 
JAMES  II., 

1291-1327. 
ALFONSO  IV., 

1327-1336. 
PETER  IV.,  the  Ceremonious, 

1336-1387. 
JOHN  I.,  the  Hunter, 

1387-1395. 
MARTIN,  the  Humane, 

1395-1412. 
FERDINAND  I.,  the  Honest, 

1412-1416. 
ALFONSO  V.,  the  Magnanimous, 

1416-1458. 
JOHN  II., 

1458-1479- 
FERDINAND  II.,  the  Catholic, 

1479-1516. 


JOANNA,  the  Crazy, 
QUEEN  OF  SPAIN. 


TABLES.  397 

TABLE  VII. 
THE  AMIRS  AND  CALIPHS  OF  CORDOVA. 

ABDUR  RAHMAN  1 755-787 

HISHAM       ..„ 787-796 

HAKAM         796-821 

ABDUR  RAHMAN  II.  821-852 

MOHAMMED 852-886 

At  MONDHIR  „         886-888 

ABDULLAH    888-912 

ABDUR  RAHMAN  III.  an  Nasir        912-961 

HAKAM  II 961-976 

HISHAM  II _ 976-1012 

ANARCHY     1012-1094 

Seventy-nine  Moslem  Sovereigns  are  given  in  M.  de  Mas  la  Trie's 
"  Tr&sor  de  Chronologic,"  as  having  reigned  in  Spain  between  1012  and 
1094-. 

THE  ALMORAVIDES. 

YUSUF  IBN  TASHFIN 1094-1107 

ALI  IBN  YUSUF         1107-1144 

TASHFIN  IBN  ALI      1144-1147 

IBRAHIM  IBN  ALI  IBN  YUSUF  1147-1149 

THE  ALMOHADES. 

ABDUL  MUMIN         1149-1163 

YUSUF  IBN  YACUB    1163-1199 

MOHAMMED  AN  NASIR          1199-1214 

YUSUF - 1214-1224 

ABDUL  WAHID         ......         ~ -  1224-1225 

AL  MAMUN „ 1225-1232 

ABDUL  WAHID  II.  1232-1238 


398  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

TABLE  VIII. 
THE  MOSLEM  KINGS  OF  GRANADA. 

MOHAMMED  I.,  al  Ahmar          1238 

MOHAMMED  II.,  al  Amir           1273 

MOHAMMED  III.            1302 

AN  NASIR           1309 

ISMAIL  I.            1314 

MOHAMMED  IV.             1325 

YUSUF  I.            1333 

MOHAMMED  V 1354 

ISMAIL  II 1359 

ABU  SAID          1360 

MOHAMMED  V.  (second  time)     1362 

YUSUF  II 1391 

MOHAMMED  VI.             1396 

YUSUF  III 1408 

MOHAMMED  VII 1423 

MOHAMMED  VIII 1427 

MOHAMMED  VII.  (second  lime) 1429 

YUSUF  IV 1431 

MOHAMMED  VII.  (third  time)   1432 

MOHAMMED  IX.             1445 

ISMAIL  III 1454 

ALI,  Muley  abul  Hasan             1466 

MOHAMMED  X.,  abu  Abdullah  (BOABDIL)         1482 

MOHAMMED  XI.         \           .1                 1484 

ABDULLAH  el  Zagal  I      °                      1487 

MOHAMMED  X.  (BOADBIL)  alone           1491 


399 


APPENDICES. 

APPENDIX  I. 
THE  BASQUES. 

THE  modern  Basques,  who  call  themselves  Escualdunac,  a  word 
which  is  usually  taken  to  signify  either  "eaters  of  acorns"  (cf. 
Don  Quixote,  part  i.,  chap,  xi.),  or  "dwellers  in  oak  forests," 
number  at  the  present  day,  in  the  French  and  Spanish  Basque 
Provinces,  some  630,000  souls ;  in  Guipizcoa,  180,000;  in  Biscaya, 
150,000;  in  Alava,  10,000;  in  Navarre,  150,000;  and  in  various 
parts  of  south-western  France  nearly  150,000.  In  addition  to 
these,  no  less  than  200,000  Basques  are  said  to  have  emigrated 
during  the  last  fifty  years  to  South  America,  more  especially  to 
the  Argentine  Republic,  where,  from  their  great  bodily  strength, 
good  conduct  and  industry,  they  are  ever  highly  appreciated  as 
colonists. 

Among  the  many  curious  books  that  have  been  published 
about  the  Basques  may  be  mentioned  L'Histoire  des  Caniabres, 
par  tAbbi  d'Ikarce  de  Bidassouet  (Paris,  1825).  The  Abb6, 
whose  sense  of  humour  is  on  a  par  with  his  critical  faculty, 
proves,  quite  to  his  own  satisfaction,  that  the  Basque  was  the 
language  of  Noah,  if  not  of  Adam ;  that  Europe  was  entirely 
colonised  by  Basques,  whose  language — "  la  premiere  langue  de 
toute  I' Europe  " — has  influenced  the  geographical  nomenclature 
of  every  European  country ;  but  whose  descendants  are  now 
only  to  be  found  in  the  Basque  Provinces  of  France  and  Spain. 
"  Je  sarais  tente  de  croire,"  says  the  Abb6  "  que  les  Pheniciens 
seraient  une  Colonie  basque."  After  such  temptations,  it  is 
impossible  to  attach  very  much  importance  to  the  Abba's 
etymologies,  though  he  is  evidently  a  good  Basque  scholar,  and 
appends  an  elaborate  Escualdunac  grammar  to  his  work. 

"  Escualdunac"  signifies,  according  to  him,  not  "acorn- eating," 
but  " arabi-dextrous ".  The  word  "Celts,"  says  this  author,  is 


400  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

but  a  curruption  of  the  Basque  Zelaites,  the  people  of  the  plain. 
"Iberians,"  is  from  Ibayens,ihe  people  of  the  rivers  (us  to  which 
see  Lafuente,  i.,  Introduction,  p.  15)  ;  and  the  Celtiberians,  as 
M.  d'lharce  would  have  it,  have  nothing  to  do  with  either  the 
Celts  or  the  Iberians,  but  are  the  Zaldiberians,  "the  people  of 
the  fine  horses  ".  At  one  time  I  thought  that  the  entire  book 
was  an  elaborate  jeu  d' esprit,  a  satire  upon  the  extravagance  of 
etymologists,  as  for  instance,  when  Noah  is  said  to  be  the  Basque 
for  wine,  and  is  connected  with  the  patriarch's  unhappy  inebriety  ; 
but  the  dedication  to  the  king  of  France  renders  such  a  theory 
untenable. 

Yet,  among,  the  vast  number  of  books  about  the  Basques 
which  have  come  into  my  hands,  some,  it  must  be  admitted,  are 
very  nearly  as  absurd  as  that  of  M.  de  Bidassouet. 

A  work  of  a  very  different  character  is  L'Histoire  des  Basques, 
par  A.  Baudrimont  (Paris,  1867) — a  methodical  treatise,  dealing 
chiefly  with  matters  linguistic.  But  even  M.  Baudrimont  is  not 
free  from  extravagance.  La  langue  Basque,  says  he,  est,  d  n'en 
plus  douter,  la  langue  la  plus  ancienne  qui  soil  parl&e  sur  le  globe, 
p.  179;  and  he  further  maintains  that  the  Basques  are  the 
common  stock  whence  the  Semitic  and  Indo-European  families 
of  language  have  their  origin  (p.  1 57) — and  finds  distinct  traces 
of  Basque  influence  in  the  language  of  the  Polar  regions  !  (164), 
and  in  the  ancient  languages  of  South  America  (pp.  154  and 
176). 

As  to  the  etymology  and  signification  of  the  word  Basque  = 
belonging  to  the  forest?  and  Escualdunac,  see  a  very  learned 
disquisition  in  Marrast's  edition  of  W.  von  Humboldt's  Recherches 
sur  les  habitants  primitifs  de  I'Espagne  (51-55).  In  the  same  work 
(pp.  148-155)  may  be  read  an  examination  of  the  near  relation- 
ship of  the  Basque  language  with  the  languages  of  America,  a 
subject  of  much  interest,  but  obviously  beyond  the  limits  of  this 
work.  Humboldt  and  Marrast  may,  however,  be  taken  to 
have  established  the  following  propositions :  (1)  The  ancient 
Iberian  names  of  places  are  derived  from  the  Basque  ;  (2)  the 
Basque  was  the  language  spoken  by  the  primitive  inhabitants  of 
the  entire  Peninsula  of  Spain  ;  (3)  the  Iberians,  a  great  people, 
spoke  Basque,  or  some  language  akin  to  it. 

There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  (special)  Basque  alphabet. 
Basque  is  written  in  ordinary  Roman  characters.  The  special 
Iberian  or  Keltiberian  alphabet  is  akin  to  the  Phosnician  and 
other  Levant  alphabets ;  it  is  evidently  derived  from  them,  but 
still  awaits  an  interpreter.  See  Professor  E.  Hiibner's  Monu- 


APPENDICES.  401 

menla  Linguce  Ibericce  (Berolini,  1893).     For  a  short  notice  see 
The  Classical  Review,  Oct.,   1894,  p.   357  ;  and  ante,  p.  3. 

The  word  Escualdun,  says  Mr.  Wentworth  Webster,  is  evi- 
dently connected  with  the  name  of  the  language,  Escuara, 
Euscara,  which  may  mean  "  way  of  speaking,"  so  that  Escualdun 
would  mean  something  like  "men  of  the  Escuara,  men  who. 
use  the  Escuara "  ;  other  peoples  would  be  to  them  like  the 
"  Barbaria  "  to  Greeks  or  Romans.  The  oak  and  acorn-eating 
etymologies  are  absurd. 

There  are  very  few  Celtic  roots  surviving,  according  to 
Humboldt,  in  Spanish  names  of  places.  What  is  far  more 
remarkable  is  that  no  certain  traces  of  Celtic  are  to  be  found  in 
Basque.1  But  the  word  Gallicia  is  Celtic  ;  and  so  are  the  two 
rivers  Deva  on  the  north  coast  with  the  same  root  as  the  English 
Dee;  and  the  Tambre  on  the  north-west  akin  to  our  English 
Tamar ;  and  Brigantium,  or  Finisterre,  embodies  the  Celtic 
Briga,  so  common  in  Gaul.  But  the  equally  common  Celtic 
forms  Dunum,  Magus,  Vices  are  not  found  in  Spain.  As  to  Ebro 
and  its  possible  derivation  from  some  such  Celtic  root  as  Aber, 
see  ante,  p.  2  note  4. 

The  following  purely  Iberian  or  Basque  roots  in  Spanish  local 
names  are  given  by  Humboldt : — 

(1)  Uria  a  town;   e.g.,  Beturia,  Vittoria;   Graccuris,  town,  of 
Gracchus. 

(2)  Hi,  a  town,  seen  in  composition  with  berri,  new,  in  Iliberis 
or  Elvira ;  also  in  Bilbilis,  -the  town  at  the  foot  of  the  mountain, 
and  Bilbao  ? 

(3)  Mendi,  a  mountain ;  in  Monda,  Mendiculeia  and  Mendi- 
gorri. 

(4)  Navarra,  Navarre ;  Nava — plain  near  a  mountain  (as  las 

1  It  must  be  observed  that  this  point  is  involved  in  considerable  obscurity.  I 
have  identified  a  large  number  of  words  in  Basque  which  are  clearly  traceable  in 
the  Irish  form  of  Celtic ;  and  the  language  also  positively  abounds  with  words  of 
evidently  direct  Sanscrit  origin.  The  latter  set  of  words  usually  express  primitive 
ideas,  the  former  set  more  often  indicating  some  amount  of  civilisation.  It  is 
possible,  therefore,  that  the  words  that  have  reached  Basque  from  a  Sanscrit  root 
through  Celtic  were  grafted  upon  the  language  by  their  Celtic  neighbours ;  or  in 
some  cases  even  by  the  Romans  who  had  incorporated  similar  words  in  Latin. 
The  words,  however,  reaching  Basque  apparently  direct  from  Sanscrit  may  more 
probably  have  been  introduced  by  the  Iberians,  who  were  conceivably  a  people 
speaking  a  Sanscrit  tongue.  I  account  for  the  rarity  of  Celtic  place-names  and 
the  frequency,  all  over  Spain,  of  Basque  place-names,  by  the  presumption  that  the 
Basques,  being  the  primitive  inhabitants  of  the  Peninsula — perhaps  from  the  stone 
age,  had  given  names  to  the  localities  before  the  arrival  of  the  Celtic-speaking 
races.  Although  there  are  many  Celtic  and  Sanscrit  words  in  Basque  the  construc- 
tion of  the  latter  language  is  quite  distinct. — H. 
VOL.  I.  26 


402  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

novas  de  Tolosa) ;  Arra  is  a  very  common  Basque  termination  ; 
Nav-arra  is  thus,  the  plain  near  the  mountains.  Humboldt,  op. 
cit.,  pp.  17,  27,  29,  41,  47,  and  W.  Webster,  Spain,  p.  72. 

As  to  the  area  inhabited  now  or  in  historic  times  by  a 
Basque-speaking  people,  and  the  difference  between  French 
and  Spanish  Basques,  see  Revue  d' Anthropologie,  iv.  29  (Paris, 
1875),  where  there  is  also  a  valuable  map  by  M.  Broca.  See 
also  the  excellent  map  of  Prince  L.  L.  Bonaparte ;  and  A. 
Hovelacque,  La  Linguistique  (Paris,  1876),  pp.  87-89-  Some 
very  interesting  notes  on  the  origin  of  the  Basques  and  their 
language  will  be  found  in  La  Navarre  Frangaise,  par  M.  Bascle 
de  la  Greze  (Paris,  1881),  vol.  i.,  chaps,  ii.  and  iii. 

It  may  be  mentioned  in  passing  that  many  great  Spaniards 
have  been  undoubted  Basques,  as  for  instance,  Ignatius  Loyola 
and  St.  Francis  Xavier ;  and  among  the  moderns,  Senor 
Sarasate. 

On  the  Basques,  their  country,  their  language,  and  their 
origin,  an  immense  number  of  books  have  been  published.  In 
addition  to  those  already  cited  the  following  may  be  consulted 
with  advantage  : — 

Hisloria  de  las  Naciones  Bascas,  J.  A.  Zamacola,  3  vols.,  8vo 
(Auch,  1818);  Humboldt,  Priifung  der  Untersuchungen  uber  di6 
Urbewohner  Hispaniens  (Berlin,  1821),  and  the  French  translation, 
which  notes  by  A.  Marrast  (Paris,  1866)  ;  Le  pays  Basque,  sa 
population,  sa  langue,  pas  M.  Francisque  Michel  (Paris,  1857); 
Dissertation  sur  les  Chants  Heroiques  des  Basques,  J.  F.  Blade 
(1866) ;  The  Alphabet,  Antiquity  and  Civilisation  of  the  Basques, 
by  Erro  y  Aspiroz,  translated  by  E.  Erving  (Boston,  1829); 
Basque  Legends,  by  Rev.  W.  Webster  (London,  1877) ;  Chants 
Populaires  du  pays  Basque,  Salaberry  (Bayonne,  1870);  Cenac- 
Moncaut,  Histoire  des  peuples  Pyren&ens  (Paris,  1874)  ;  La  Langue 
Iberienne  et  la  Langue  Basque,  W.  J.  Van  Eys,  in  the  Revue  de 
Linguistique  (vii.,  1874);  Jose  Manterola,  Cancionero  Vasco 
(3  vols.,  San  Sebastian,  1877-80);  Vinson,  Les  Basques  et  le 
pays  Basque  (Paris,  1882) ;  and  Campion,  Grammatica,  etc.,  1886. 

Larramendi,  El  Imposible  Vencido  (1729)  ;  De  la  Anliguedad 
y  Universalidad  del  Bazcuence  en  Espana  (1728),  and  Diccionario 
trilingue  del  Castellano,  Bazcuence  y  Latin  (1745). 

A  very  interesting  chapter  on  Basque  proverbs,  referring  to 
various  collections,  will  be  found  in  Francisque  Michel's  Pays 
Basque  (Paris,  1 857)  ;  M.  Michel  being  himself  the  editor  of  the 
most  ancient  and  most  remarkable  collection,  that  of  Oihenart 
(1657).  See  also  Notice  sur  les  Proverbes  Basques  receuillis  par 


APPENDICES.  403 

Arnauld  d'Oihenart,  et  sur  quelques  aulres  travaux  r&latifs  dans  la 
langue  euskarienne,  par  M.  G.  Brunet  (Paris,  1859). 

See  in  fine,  the  excellent  articles  sub  lit.  BASQUE,  in  Chambers' 
Encyclopaedia,  and  in  the  Grande  Encyclopedic  recently  published 
in  Paris  by  L'Amirault. 

My  best  thanks  are  due  to  the  Rev.  Wentworth  Webster 
for  most  kindly  looking  over  the  proofs  of  this  little  Appendix, 
and  thus  giving  to  it  a  value  which  it  would  not  otherwise  have 
possessed. 


404 


APPENDIX  II. 
ON  CUSTOMARY  CONCUBINAGE,  OR  BARRAGANERIA. 

THE  absence  of  any  social  stigma  attaching  to  illegitimate  birth 
in  Spain  is  a  remarkable  feature  in  the  domestic  life  throughout 
the  Middle  Ages,  and  has  left  an  impress  upon  the  national 
laws,  which  may  be  seen  at  the  present  day. 

As  the  increase  of  the  Christian  population  was  a  matter  of 
prime  necessity  in  the  kingdom  of  northern  Spain,  and  as  the 
destruction  of  able-bodied  men  in  battle  was  constant  and 
excessive,  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  marriage  laws  or  customs 
should  have  been  favourable  to  a  modified  form  of  polygamy, 
under  the  name  of  Barraganeria,  by  which  every  man,  whether 
married  or  single,  might  entertain  a  barragana,1  or  lawful  con- 
cubine, without  scandal  or  reproach. 

The  children  of  the  barragana  shared  in  the  division  of  the 
family  estate  with  those  of  the  more  formally  wedded  wife  ;  and, 
in  the  absence  of  more  legitimate  children,  they  succeeded  to 
their  father's  inheritance  in  preference  to  any  of  his  collateral 
heirs.  And  thus  it  came  to  pass  that  birth  out  of  wedlock  was 
for  long  accounted  no  disgrace  in  Castile  ;  and  even  the  children 
of  celibate  priests,  by  the  customary  barragana,  succeeded  to  the 
inheritance  of  their  fathers  as  a  matter  of  right. 

See  Edinburgh  Review,  vol.  xxii.,  p.  66. 

The  legal  recognition  of  the  concubine  is,  no  doubt,  of 
Moslem  suggestion.  Four  wives  were  lawfully  maintained  by 
the  Moor.  It  would  have  been  hard  if  the  Christian  should 
have  been  less  favoured,  in  this  or  any  other  respect,  than  his 
hated  rival  in  Spain. 

Even  in  the  last  edition  of  the  Civil  Code  of  Spain  (as 
amended  by  the  law  of  1889,  tit.  v.,  arts.  108,  141)  the  question 
of  legitimacy  and  illegitimacy  is  treated  in  a  spirit  very  different 

1  The  Barragana  was  defined  in  *he  early  Spanish  law  as  "  Uxor  inferioris 
conditionis  et  sine  jure  dotali  ". — H 


APPENDICES.  406 

from  that  to  be  found  in  the  laws  of  most  other  European 
countries  at  the  present  day. 

Thus  (I)  a  child  is  presumed  to  be  legitimate  whose  father 
has  expressly  or  tacitly  recognised  him  as  such,  as  soon  as  the 
parents  are  actually  married.  (2)  The  children  of  unmarried 
parents  are  divided  into  two  classes  :  First,  natural  children, 
and,  second,  illegitimate  children,  of  which  the  former,  being  the 
offspring  of  persons  who,  at  the  time  of  the  conception  of  the 
child,  were  free  to  marry,  may  at  any  time  be  recognised  and 
declared  legitimate  by  either  father  or  mother,  even  by  will, 
and  take  their  place  by  the  side  of  their  brothers  and  sisters 
actually  born  in  wedlock,  (3)  The  marriage  of  father  and 
mother,  moreover,  of  itself  legitimises  all  their  natural  children, 
recognised  at  the  time  as  such. 

A  most  interesting  treatise  on  the  meaning,  origin,  nature 
and  legality  of  Barraganeria  in  Spain  and  in  Navarre  will  be 
found  in  La  Greze,  Hist,  de  Navarre,  vol.  ii.,  chap.  iii.  The 
author  gives  the  following  definition  (pp.  189,  190)  of  the 
institution  :  "  Union  sans  solemnite-,  mats  licite,  autoris6e,  r6glement&e 
par  ce  droit  du  moyen  age  ".  The  barragana,  according  to  him, 
was  not  a  concubine,  but  a  wife  infra  dignilale  uxoris. 

As  to  clerical  barraganeria,  see  H.  C.  Lea,  History  of  Sacer- 
dotal Celibacy  (1867),  more  especially  pp.  204,  299,  324. 

"  Illegitimacy,"  says  Richard  Ford — Quarterly  Review,  vol. 
Ixi.,  pp.  119,  120 — "  was  no  bar  to  the  throne  of  Spain."  .  .  . 
John  of  Gaunt  claimed  the  crown  of  Castile,  jure  optima,  as  was 
inscribed  on  his  epitaph  in  Old  St.  Paul's — see  Dugdale,  St.  Paul's, 
91 — in  right  of  his  wife  Constance,  the  natural  daughter  of  Peter 
the  Cruel — nor  was  that  plea  ever  demurred  to.  The  same 
system  ran  through  private  families.  To  cite  the  two  most 
powerful  and  celebrated  of  Andalusia  ;  the  dukedom  of  Medina 
Sidonia  was  first  conferred  on  the  descendant  of  Guzman  el  Bueno, 
himself  a  bastard,  and  extended  by  Henry  IV.  in  1460  to  the 
illegitimate  branches  in  default  of  legitimate. 

Rodrigo  Ponce  de  Leon,  first  Marquis  of  Cadiz  and  rival  of 
the  Guzman,  was  in  the  same  predicament. 

Natural  children  indeed  were  considered  no  loss  to  a  family 
— rather  a  gain,  hence  the  old  Spanish  term  hijos  de  ganarcia. 

See  in  fine,  Las  Siete  Partidas,  Partida  iv.,  Titulos  xiii.,  xiv., 
xv. 


406 


APPENDIX  III. 
THE  LAWS  OF  THE  VISIGOTHS. 

I  HAVE  already  spoken  in  the  text  (pp.  90,  94)  of  the  introduc- 
tion and  promulgation  of  the  Visigothic  Law  in  Spain,  and 
referred  in  a  note  on  p.  94  to  some  of  the  authorities  from 
which  I  have  derived  my  information.  I  would  now  add  to 
them  the  Ensayo  of  D.  Francisco  Martinez  Marina  (Madrid, 
1834),  and  Masdeu,  Hist.,  etc.,  torn,  xi.,  pp.  78-142.  There  are 
a  few  words  upon  the  subject  in  Guizot's  History  of  Civilisation, 
in  lectures  3,  6,  10  and  11  ;  and  Ed.  Review,  Ixviii.,  382. 

Upon  the  question  of  slavery  under  the  Visigoths,  a  good 
deal  that  is  valuable  will  be  found  in  Milman,  Latin  Christianity, 
vols  i.  and  ii.  ;  and  in  Ponthier,  de  Slat.  Servorum. 

I  have  also,  in  speaking  of  the  Siele  Partidas  and  the  legisla- 
tion of  Alfonso  X.  (p.  270)  referred  to  the  Fuero  Juzgo,  the 
name  by  which  the  laws  of  the  Visigothic  code  had  come  to  be 
spoken  of  in  mediaeval  Spain. 

Alone  of  modern  nations  (says  Mr.  H.  C.  Lea  in  Historical  Re- 
view, ii.,  567)  Spain  can  trace  her  laws  back  to  Rome  in  almost 
unbroken  descent.  The  Visigoths  established  their  domination  at 
a  time  when  Roman  civilisation  was  still  an  object  of  reverence; 
they  adopted  to  a  great  extent  its  legal  formulas,  and  their  code 
in  its  comparative  completeness  and  orderliness,  offers  the 
strongest  contrast  to  the  contemporary  and  subsequent  Leges 
Barbarorum  with  which  it  is  commonly  classed.  Elsewhere, 
the  Franks,  the  Burgundians,  the  Saxons,  the  Bavarians,  and  the 
other  founders  of  the  European  Commonwealths  treated  the 
Roman  institutions  with  contempt,  and  regarded  their  own  crude 
and  barbarous  customs  as  alone  worthy  of  obedience  by  free- 
born  warriors.  Even  in  Italy  the  Lombards  imposed  their 
legislation  on  their  subjects  to  the  virtual  extinction  of  the 
Imperial  jurisprudence. 

In  Spain,  even  the  Arab  conquest  did  not  overthrow  the 
Visigothic  code.  Preserved  by  the  Christian  refugees  in  the 


APPENDICES.  407 

mountains  of  Asturias,  when  its  language  grew  obsolete,  it  was 
translated  into  romance,  and  as  the  Fuero  Juzgo  it  continued  to 
be  the  law  of  the  reconquered  Peninsula.  The  code  of  the 
Visigoths  was  the  first  collection  of  laws  published  in  Europe 
after  the  fall  of  the  Roman  Empire  ;  and  as  such,  if  not  for  its 
own  intrinsic  merits,  it  is  worthy  of  the  study  at  once  of  the 
jurist  and  the  historian.  The  reader  who  would  most  fully  and 
fruitfully  study  its  provisions  is  referred  to  the  works  of  Dahn 
and  Daroud  Oghlou,  described  on  p.  Q4>.  But  a  few  notes  upon 
the  character  of  the  early  Visigothic  laws  may  be  allowed  in 
this  place. 

The  social  conditions  revealed  by  the  Leges  Visigothorum 
are  in  the  highest  degree  remarkable. 

The  Goths  alone  were  classed  as  Nobiles,  divided  into 
primates  and  seniores,  or  lords  and  gentlemen  ;  the  entire  native 
or  Hispano-Roman  community  were  Viliores,  who  were  further 
divided  into  Ingenui  or  free  men,  Liberi  or  freed  men,  and  slaves, 
the  depth  of  whose  degradation  was  differentiated  by  the  titles 
of  boni  and  viles. 

The  condition  of  these  last,  as  I  have  already  pointed  out 
on  p.  116,  was  supremely  wretched.  Even  manumission  was 
not  irrevocable  ;  death  alone  released  the  slave  of  the  Visigoths 
from  the  hard  hands  of  his  oppressors. 

The  slave  of  any  degree  who  presumed  to  marry  a  free 
woman  was  burnt  alive,  and  his  accomplice  shared  his  doom. 
For  seduction  or  even  for  rape,  no  more  dreadful  punishment 
could  be  found. 

The  great  twofold  division  into  Nobiles  and  Viliores,  easy 
enough,  however  impolitic,  for  some  time  after  the  Gothic 
invasion,  became,  of  course,  increasingly  difficult  to  maintain. 
Yet  it  was  not  until  the  time  of  Recceswindth,  less  than  fifty 
years  before  the  route  of  the  Guadalete,  that  marriage  between 
Roman  and  Goth  was  made  lawful  in  Spain. 

But  long  before  that  time,  no  doubt,  the  social  divisions 
had  become,  not  by  any  means  effaced,  but  very  greatly 
confused ;  and  there  would  seem  to  have  been  low  class  as 
well  as  high  class  Goths,  and  high  class  Hispano- Romans,  all 
valued,  so  to  speak,  according  to  different  scales,  for  the  purpose 
of  paying  or  receiving  pecuniary  compensation  for  crime.  For 
among  free  men  of  every  degree,  Goths  or  niiores,  the  punish- 
ment for  every  crime  was  graduated,  not  by  the  importance  of 
the  offence,  but  by  the  importance  of  the  criminal.  An  injury 
committed  by  an  honeslior  upon  an  fumestior  was  atoned  for  by  a 


408  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

payment  of  ten  gold  pieces ;  for  a  similar  injury  to  an  inferior 
he  would  pay  four.  For  a  common  assault  upon  a  freeman  a 
slave  received  200  stripes ;  a  freeman  paid  five  sous. 

From  her  birth  to  the  age  of  fifteen  a  woman  was,  for  the 
purpose  of  compensation,  valued  at  only  one-half  the  price  of 
a  man ;  from  fifteen  to  twenty  at  the  same  as  a  man ;  from 
twenty  to  forty  at  one-sixth  less  than  a  man ;  and  after  forty 
at  even  less  than  half.  Yet  the  rights  of  women  were  by  no 
means  disregarded.  A  lady  could  not  marry  without  a  dower, 
but  it  was  paid  not  by,  but  to  her  parents,  and  by  her  future 
husband. 

The  Visigothic  code  contains  various  provisions  of  a  sanitary 
character  of  the  highest  interest,  and  what  is  called  in  France 
the  Police  de  maeurs  existed  in  a  modified  form  in  seventh 
century  Spain. 

But  the  doctors  were  apparently  the  most  hardly  treated  of 
any  class  of  the  community.  It  is  not  surprising  that  medical 
studies  were,  as  we  have  remarked,  by  no  means  popular  in 
Christian  Spain. 

Not  only  were  the  fees  for  special  and  general  services  of 
the  most  modest  proportions — the  specified  reward  for  the 
successful  couching  a  cataract  would  astonish  Mr.  Nettleship 
or  even  Dr.  Pagenstecker — but  the  doctor  who  failed  to  cure 
his  patient  was  entitled  to  no  remuneration  whatever,  and 
was  liable  to  an  action  at  law  by  the  next-of-kin  if  the  case 
terminated  fatally.  In  case  of  blood-letting,  especially,  if  the 
early  Sangrado  withdrew  so  much  that  the  patient  died,  he 
became  the  slave  of  the  heir-at-law  of  the  patient ! 

As  regards  the  judiciary  and  officials  of  the  law,  the  Spanish 
Visigoths  are  said  to  have  been  more  influenced  by  the  Roman 
system  than  any  of  the  other  German  peoples. 

The  supreme  jurisdiction  in  matters  civil  and  criminal 
resided  in  the  dux  or  comes,  who  was  at  once  Commander-in- 
Chief  and  Chief  Justice  within  his  district.  The  regular  judges 
were  considered  to  be  his  deputies ;  but  there  were  also  royal 
judges  invested  with  a  special  jurisdiction,  with  the  title  of 
pacts  assertores. 

The  administration  of  justice  was  at  once  free  and  public. 
False  testimony  was  severely  punished.  Torture  was  freely 
administered  to  servile  witnesses,  but  its  abuse  was  condemned. 
The  unjust  judge  was  both  whipped  and  compelled  to  make 
restitution.  Inferior  to  the  death  penalty,  Decalvation,  or 
judicial  scalping,  and  exoculation  were  regularly  prescribed. 


APPENDICES.  409 

Imprisonment  was  rare,  and  was  usually  in  a  monastery  or 
religious  house.  But  the  rod  was  the  universal  remedy,  the 
prescription  and  the  cure  for  all  evil-doing. 

No  hay  tal  razon,  says  the  Spanish  proverb,  que  la  del  boston, 
a  rule  of  life  or  of  law,  as  Sancho  Panza  has  it,  "as  old  as  King 
Wamba  ".  Yet  even  stripes  could  be  avoided  by  a  money  pay- 
ment, and  the  law  prescribed  with  the  utmost  nicety  the 
pecuniary  importance  of  every  blow,  according  to  the  rank  of 
the  condemned  person,  and  that  of  the  injured  party.  The 
honestior  or  the  Goth  paid  for  his  peccadilloes  in  cash,  the  vilior 
persona  offended  only  at  the  expense  of  his  back. 

One  law  for  the  rich  and  another  for  the  poor  is  taken  at 
the  present  day  as  the  greatest  possible  denial  of  justice,  but 
in  Visigothic  Spain  there  was  not  only  a  different  law  for  every 
purse,  but  almost  for  every  person. 


410 


APPENDIX  IV. 
ETYMOLOGY  OF  ANDALUSIA. 

THE  word  Andalusia  has  been  derived  from  Vandalusia,  or  country 
of  the  Vandals,  by  Danville,  Elat  de  I' Europe,  etc.,  pp.  146-7. 
But  Casiri's  derivation  from  Handalusia,  which  signifies  in  Arabic  : 
The  region  of  the  evening  or  of  the  West,  the  Hespena  of  the 
Greeks,  enjoys  the  honour  of  the  approval  of  Gibbon  (cap.  li). 
Cf.  Biblioteca  Arabico-Hispana,  torn,  ii.,  327. 

The  etymology  of  Andalusia,  says  my  friend  Mr.  John 
Ormsby,  is  no  doubt  somewhat  of  a  crux,  but  it  seems  that  on 
the  whole,  the  balance  of  evidence  is  on  the  Vandal  side.  The 
name  is  now  unquestionably  Arabic.  The  question  is  how  and 
whence  it  got  into  that  language.  There  is  no  doubt  that  the 
Vandals  under  Gaiseric  crossed  over  from  southern  Spain  into 
Barbary ;  and  Spain  would  therefore  be  for  many  generations 
the  "  Land  of  the  Fandals  "  to  the  Berbers  of  North  Africa,  and 
would  be  spoken  of  by  them  as  such  to  the  next  conquerors,  the 
Arabs.  We  cannot  tell  into  what  shape  Wandal  or  Vandal  may 
have  been  twisted  by  six  or  seven  generations  of  Berbers  ;  but 
it  was  from  them  that  the  Arabs,  in  all  probability,  got  the  name, 
and,  having  got  it,  fixed  it  in  their  literature. 

Conde  in  his  translation  of  Sharif  al  Edrisi's  Geography  of 
Spain,  is  distinctly  in  favour  of  Vandal ;  though,  with  his  usual 
candour,  he  admits  that  it  is  quite  open  to  any  one  who  prefers 
it  to  adopt  Casiri's  views. 

But,  according  to  Conde,  "  Andalus  "  does  not  mean  "  region 
of  the  evening"  but  " pais  obscuro  y  tenebroso" .  Conde,  how- 
ever, was  not  a  very  profound  scholar. 

Ibn  Hayyan,  Ibn  Khaldun,  and  others  derive  Andalusia  from 
Andalosh,  a  nation  of  barbarians — i.e.,  the  Vandals — who  settled 
there,  a  derivation  adopted  by  Don  Pascual  de  Gayangos  in  his 
Mohammedan  Dynasties  in  Spain,  i.,  1. 

Ibn  Said,  however,  derives  the  word  from  Andalus,  son  of 
Tubal,  son  of  Yafeth,  son  of  Nuh,  who  settled  in  Spain,  and  gave 


APPENDICES.  411 

his  name  to  the  country,  in  like  manner  as  his  brother  Sebt, 
son  of  Yafeth,  peopled  the  opposite  land,  and  gave  his  name  to 
the  city  of  Sebtah  (Ceuta).  Ibn  Ghalib  is  of  the  same  opinion, 
but  makes  Andalus  to  be  the  son  of  Yafeth. 

Don  Pascual's  note  (44),  vol.  i.,  p.  322,  is  the  last  authority 
I  shall  permit  myself  to  quote  on  this  etymological  question : 
"The  Arabs,  more  than  any  other  nation,  corrupted  proper 
names  by  accommodating  them  to  the  genius  of  their  language ; 
whenever  a  letter  was  of  difficult  pronunciation  they  suppressed 
it,  especially  if  commencing  the  word.  The  V  of  Vandalucia 
was,  therefore,  omitted  as  well  as  the  last  two  letters,  which 
made  the  word  too  long.  Furthermore,  as  a  proof  that  the  word 
Andalus  is  only  a  corruption  of  Vandalucia,  it  is  not  uncommon 
to  find  in  Spanish  MSS.,  even  of  the  fifteenth  century,  the  word 
Vandalucia  employed  to  designate  that  portion  of  Spain  which 
was  still  in  the  hands  of  the  Moors,"  and  see  Abulfeda,  ed.  Paris, 
1848,  ii.,  236. 

Andres  Bernaldez,  who  flourished  towards  the  end  of  the 
fifteenth  and  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century,  and  who  wrote 
a  chronicle  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  long  in  edited  (MS.  Bib. 
Eg.  in  Brit.  Mus.,  No.  306,  fol.  784),  but  printed  at  Granada, 
1850,  and  again  at  Madrid,  1870,  says:  "Y  el  adelantado  de 
Vandalucia,  con  gran  caballeria  salio  a  recibir  &  los  Reyes  ;\  la 
peria  de  los  enamorados  ". 

As  to  the  name  of  Al  Jezirah — the  island — by  which  Anda- 
lusia was  frequently  spoken  of  by  the  Arabs,  see  Gayangos,  op. 
cit.,  vol.  i.,  pp.  1 9,  20.  The  modern  town  of  Algeciras,  opposite 
Gibraltar  on  the  mainland  of  Spain  contains  a  similar  etymology, 
as  to  which  see  Gayangos,  vol.  i.,  p.  317. 


412 


APPENDIX  V. 
SAINT  GEORGE. 

THE  development  of  George  of  Cappadocia  into  a  Christian  martyr 
and  champion,  and  the  patron  of  England,  is  one  of  the  enigmas  of 
history.  An  infamous  and  an  extortionate  tax-collector,  a  fraud- 
ulent food  contractor,  a  fugitive  from  justice,  he  amused  his  exile 
by  the  accumulation  of  a  library,  and  ' '  embracing,  with  a  real  or 
affected  zeal,  the  profession  of  Arianism,"  he  was  raised  by  a 
faction  to  the  episcopal  throne  of  Athanasius  (A.D.  356).  His 
cruelty,  his  avarice,  his  insolence  were  no  less  remarkable  in  the 
Arian  Primate  of  Egypt  than  in  the  peculating  bacon  contractor 
of  Syria ;  and  George  met  his  death  by  the  fury,  or  rather  by 
the  justice,  of  the  outraged  population  of  Alexandria,  a  few  days 
after  the  death  of  Constantine. 

See  Gibbon,  chapter  xxiii.  Dr.  Peter  Heylin,  History  of  St. 
George  (1633),  a  most  interesting  book  in  many  ways,  and  well 
worth  reading ;  and  the  Rev.  J.  Milner's  Critical  Enquiry  into  the 
Existence  and  Character  of  St.  George  (1792),  a  thin  tract  of  fifty- 
nine  pages,  is  also  worth  consulting. 

The  rival  of  Athanasius,  says  Gibbon,  was  dear  and  sacred  to 
the  Arians ;  and  the  seeming  conversion  of  these  sectaries 
introduced  his  worship  into  the  bosom  of  the  Catholic  Church ; 
while  the  ignorant  Crusaders  no  doubt  brought  back  his  name 
and  his  fame  to  England.  See  Ammianus,  xxii.,  11;  Gregory 
Nazianzen,  orat.  xxi.,  382-390;  Epiphanius,  Hceres,  Ixxvi.,  912; 
Tillemont,  Mem.  Ecclesiastiques,  vi.,  713. 

Yet  even  this  hardly  explains  the  fame  and  sanctity  of  St. 
George.  The  story,  in  the  Acta  Sanctorum,  of  another  St.  George, 
a  soldier  and  a  good  Catholic,  is  only  stranger  than  that  of  the 
Arian  Archbishop,  in  that  the  George  who  is  said  to  have  been 
put  to  death  by  order  of  Decius  in  303,  at  Nicomedia,  is  a 
personage  absolutely  unknown  to  history.  For  a  full  account  of 
the  legend,  see  Rohrbacher,  Eglise  Calholique,  v.,  643,  and 
Socrates,  Eccl.  Hist.,  liii.,  2-4, 


APPENDICES.  413 

The  dragon  is  first  heard  of  in  connection  with  the  legend  of 
St.  George  in  Voragines'  Legenda  A  urea.  See  Dr.  Peter  Heylin, 
op.  cit.,  cap.  ii.  See  also  S.  Baring  Gould,  Curious  Myths  of  the 
Middle  Ages  (1869),  where,  in  the  course  of  a  long  disquisition,  pp. 
266-316,  the  learned  author  speaks  of  George  as  a  Christianised 
Tammuz  =  the  Sun  =  the  Phoenician  Adonis.  Cf.  Ezekiel  viii.  14. 

No  less  an  authority  than  Dr.  Dollinger  (Von  Kobel,  Con- 
versations of  Dr.  Dollinger,  trans.  Gould,  ed.  1892,  pp.  130-132), 
considers  the  accepted  legend  or  history  of  St.  George  as  purely 
fanciful. 

It  was  in  1222  that  the  Parliament  of  Oxford  prescribed  the 
commemoration  day  of  St.  George  as  a  national  holiday  for  all 
England,  in  recognition  of  the  services  rendered  by  the  saint  to 
the  English  Crusaders  in  Palestine. 

But  long  before  St.  George  was  chosen  as  the  patron  saint 
of  the  Order  of  the  Garter,  long  even  before  the  institution 
of  the  Order  sacred  to  his  military  prowess  and  his  Christian 
martyrdom  in  Aragon,  an  Imperial  Order  of  St.  George  is 
traditionally  said  to  have  been  founded  by  no  less  ancient  and 
no  less  distinguished  a  personage  than  Constantine  the  Great,  in 
313,  and  the  Emperor  himself  is  counted  as  the  first  grand 
master ! 

However  little  Constantine  may  have  understood  of  the 
Orders  of  chivalry,  and  however  fanciful  may  be  his  institution 
of  this  military  confraternity,  it  is  at  least  certain  that  this 
Imperial  Order  of  St.  George  existed  until  the  death  in  1 699  of 
Guy  Comnenus,  Duke  of  Durazzo,  the  last  survivor  of  the  House 
of  Comnenus,  and  titular  Prince  of  Macedon,  when  the  Order 
was  reformed  by  Innocent  XII.,  and  practically  ceased  to  exist. 

See  Histoire  des  ordres  militaires,  ou  des  Chevaliers,  par 
Basnage,  vol.  L,  66-72  (Amsterdam,  1721),  vol.  ii.,  61-70. 

The  knights  of  this  Order  of  St.  George  are  also  known  as 
Angeliques  or  Dor&s ;  and  the  grand  mastership  is,  since  1699, 
hereditary  in  the  family  of  the  Farnese  Dukes  of  Parma. 

See  Giustiniani,  Isloria  (Venice,  1692);  and  Helyot,  Hist, 
des  Ordres  Monastiques,  etc.,  vii.,  13-23. 

Thus  the  uncertain  saint  has  at  all  times  and  in  all  countries 
been  a  most  popular  patron  for  orders  of  chivalry.  A  Bur- 
gundian  Order  of  St.  George  was  founded  as  early  as  1390 
(Helyot,  Ordres  Monastiques,  torn,  vii.,  p.  154). 

The  Emperor  Frederick  III.  founded  the  military  religious 
Order  of  St.  George  in  1468,  and  obtained  from  Paul  II.  a  Bull 
of  incorporation  ;  and  Alexander  VI.  approved  and  confirmed 


414  HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 

the  foundation  in  1494  at  the  instance  of  Maximilian:  Julius  II. 
and  Leo  X.  also  patronised  this  Order,  which  was  raised  to  the 
highest  pitch  of  honour  and  dignity  in  the  sixteenth  century ; 
but  it  decayed  and  perished  among  the  religious  wars  of 
Germany.  This  Order  was  known  as  that  of  St.  George  of 
Carinthia. 

Paul  III.  established  a  military  religious  Order  of  St.  George 
of  Ravenna,  which  was  abolished  by  Gregory  XIII.  As  to  the 
supposed  Order  of  St.  George  of  Genoa,  see  Helyot,  Ordres 
Monasliques.  The  Russian  Order  of  St.  George  was  founded  by 
Catherine  II.,  1769,  as  a  purely  military  Order. 

There  is  also  a  Bavarian  Order  of  St.  George,  referred  to  by 
Helyot  in  his  Ordres  Monastiques,  vii.,  358. 


415 


APPENDIX  VI. 

THE  curious  confusion  arising  from  a  two-fold  or  three-fold 
system  of  numeration  of  the  Alfonsos  of  Castile  and  Leon  in 
the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries  (see  ante,  pp.  232,  233) 
seems  to  me  to  call  for  some  special  notice. 

Dunham,  Romey,  and  other  foreign  historians  and  chrono- 
logists,  among  whom  the  Comte  de  Mas  La  Trie  must  ever  be 
spoken  of  with  the  greatest  respect,  calls  Alfonso  el  Batallador, 
of  Aragon,  Alfonso  VII.  of  Leon  and  Castile,  as  in  right  of  his 
wife  Urraca ;  and  thus  numbers  Alfonso  el  Emperador  as  VIII. 
as  his  successor ;  and  keeps  Alfonso  III.  of  Castile  out  of  the 
Leonese  or  Junto  numeration  altogether. 

Thus  and  in  other  ways  confusion  has  been  introduced,  and 
by  imperfect  explanation  still  worse  confounded. 

The  following,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  is  plain  : — 

Alfonso  VI.  of  Leon  was  the  Jirst  of  the  name  to  reign  in 
Castile ;  and,  as  in  the  course  of  the  next  1 50  years,  the  two 
kingdoms  were  sometimes  under  the  same  king,  though  not 
formally  united,  and  sometimes  each  with  a  king  of  its  own,  the 
plan  has  been  generally  adopted  by  modern  Spanish  writers  of 
numbering  the  Alfonsos  of  Leon  and  of  Castile  consecutively, 
without  regard  to  the  kingdoms  over  which  they  reigned,  taking 
no  account  of  the  Alfonsos  of  Aragon.  Thus  Alfonso  el  Sabio, 
was  Alfonso  IV.  of  Castile,  and  Alfonso  IX.  of  Leon,  but  Alfonso 
X.  of  the  consecutive  Alfonsos,  by  which  title  he  is  always  known. 

And  it  is  by  this  numeration  that  the  late  King  of  Spain 
was  Alfonso  XII.,  and  his  present  Majesty  q.  D.  g.  is  Alfonso 
XIII. 

The  Genealogical  Table  on  the  next  page  will,  I  trust,  make 
everything  clear. 


416 


HISTORY  OF  SPAIN. 


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