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 rgulierement 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. 
 
 PAE 
 
 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. 3 o6 
 
 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 ........ 37 6 
 
 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- 
 
 1 The 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. 
 
 J See 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 ! 
 
 2 Lafuente, 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. 
 
 2 Masdeu, 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. 
 
 4 SeeDiodorus 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, an d 
 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. 
 
 J See 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 Barca 3 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 
 
 J See 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 
 
 J Two 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 
 
 1 lt 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. 2 Polyb., 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. 
 4 Ticknor, 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 philosopher 3 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. 180411.) 
 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 
 
 l As 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 
 
 1 See 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. 60600.) 
 
 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 
 
 1 The 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, 
 
 1 Scx;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. 
 
 (411569.) 
 
 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). 
 
 J The 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. 
 
 (567586.) 
 
 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 Merida 3 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's 4 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. 
 
 (587672.) 
 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 bishops 2 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. 672701). 
 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 Gardingus 3 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. 
 
 3 Ervigius 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 craving 1 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 
 
 1 See 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 
 
 1 In 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 
 
 J The 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. 
 
 3 Hallam, 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. 2 Conc. , Ccesar Aug. , can. 8. 
 
 3 Masdeu, 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. 
 
 2 S. 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 
 
 1 St. 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." 
 
 (701711). 
 
 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 frontier 2 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 
 
 1 For 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. 
 
 (711788.) 
 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. 
 
 1 Ibn 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. 
 
 2 Lafuente, 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 
 
 lM The 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. 
 
 3 Sebast. 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. 
 
 (787852.) 
 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 
 
 1 This 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 Viciosa 3 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 lgislateur 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. 
 
 1 See Lafuente, iii., 273-275.
 
 152 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 SANTIAGO. 
 
 (788910.) 
 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 
 
 J It 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 
 
 J The 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 alliance 3 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. 
 
 (8521031.) 
 
 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 rulers 1 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. 
 
 3 Viardot, 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. 
 
 2 Gayangos, 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 splendour 4 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. 
 
 S AI 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 
 
 l f.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. 
 
 (9101068.) 
 
 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 1387150 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. 
 
 (10401099.) 
 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 
 
 1 A 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. 
 
 J To 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, 
 
 J And 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. 
 
 (10861149-) 
 
 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 dmembrement 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. 
 
 1 Gayangos, 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. 
 (11491235.) 
 
 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 
 
 1 Gayangos, 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. 
 (8201200.) 
 
 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 
 
 1 See 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. 
 (11261198.) 
 
 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 Syriac 4 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 d 1 Averroes (Louvain, 1888) ; and Lea, Hist, of 
 the Inquisition, vol. iii.
 
 213 
 
 CHAFPER XX. 
 THE RISE OF ARAGON. 
 
 (10271213.) 
 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. 
 
 (11701221.) 
 
 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 
 
 J See 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 
 
 x As 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. 
 (10641252.) 
 
 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 assumed 2 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. 
 
 (11641500.) 
 
 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. George 3 
 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 independence 5 of 
 the confraternity extinguished, although royal lieutenants- 
 
 1 Benitez, 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. 
 
 B Benitez, 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. 
 
 3 Benitez, 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 union 2 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 
 
 1 Capmany, 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 
 
 1 See 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 
 
 1 Lafuente, vi., 326. 
 
 2 Ticknor, 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, 
 
 1 One 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. 
 
 2 Zurita, 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-iWais, 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 
 
 1 Al (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 
 
 1 The 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. 
 
 3 Quand le latin cut d^finitivement efface 1 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. 
 
 1 See 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. 
 
 2 The 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. 
 
 2 Between 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 Cid t 
 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. 
 
 2 Ticknor, 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 Maeslrescuela 1 
 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, 
 
 1 The 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. 
 
 J r>. 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 Lerida 3 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 
 
 1 See 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, i J 79- 
 
 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 
 
 1 The 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 bay 1 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 ". 
 
 J The 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. 
 
 1 Tom. v., s. d. 3oth June, pp. 633-736.
 
 313 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 DOMESTIC DISCORD IN CASTILE. 
 
 (12841350.) 
 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 IV r . 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 society 2 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- 
 
 1 This 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, 
 
 1 The 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. 
 
 2 See 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. 
 
 (13501369.) 
 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 
 
 1 The 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. 
 
 2 Ayala, 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. 
 
 2 Ayala, 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 
 
 1 Ayala, 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 
 
 J The 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. 
 
 (13271416). 
 
 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. 
 
 1 Zurita, 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 Parliament 2 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. 
 
 2 Sempere 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. 
 
 3 Jessop, 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. 
 
 3 Zuniga, 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 1169 5 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 Ricos 2 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. 
 
 3 As 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. 
 
 (14161453.) 
 
 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 Terracina 4 
 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 treatment 5 
 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. 
 
 2 Zurita, 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. 
 
 (14071454.) 
 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. 
 
 393 
 
 c 
 
 CC 
 
 o 
 
 X, 
 
 00 
 Oi 
 00 
 
 t~ W5 CO <N CO i <N 
 *"H CO !> 00 Oi CO CO 
 
 O O O O O ~ ^ 
 
 Oi O O O O O -i 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 1 ' ' '| ' ' ' 
 
 
 O 
 
 
 
 
 
 : 
 
 ! 1 ^ ! : : 
 
 B ' a, 
 
 4J ^^ 
 
 
 9 
 
 Ul 
 
 
 {*> 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 - 
 
 
 K 
 
 < 
 
 "c 
 
 S ;__;-_ 
 
 h2 g a a g s a 
 -- < o o < o o 
 
 
 2 
 
 n 
 
 -p 
 
 ftj ' PH PH g 
 
 
 m 
 
 
 
 a tf OS g 
 
 
 p 
 z 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 
 ^n.. 
 
 < 
 
 Q -^ a "m ~ 
 
 KSn.. glgglgg 
 
 &.O l w 'ss H i 
 
 
 1 J 
 
 K 
 
 * 
 o 
 
 
 B 
 
 m 
 
 1 1 
 
 i ( Oi 
 
 - 
 
 o 
 
 
 
 II 
 
 to "T* 
 *& e\t 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 
 CO 
 
 
 2 
 
 C?^ ^^ ^0 ^0 ^O 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 ~ i-i ^ -i 
 
 7^ 
 
 pH 
 
 to 
 
 
 , 1 
 
 i' V i i i 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 00 00 
 
 CO Oi CO 00 00 
 
 
 
 a 
 
 
 O 
 
 O O > ' '~ l '-' 
 
 
 
 
 
 CO 
 
 
 "o 
 
 
 
 
 O 
 
 B 
 
 
 
 1 i i 1 
 
 
 i 
 
 1 ' i : 
 
 
 H 
 
 
 > 
 
 | ; 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 ii 
 
 
 
 
 z 
 
 H 
 
 ^*** C 
 .S : 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 "5 >S 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 N fin ^ 
 
 W ^^ &i 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 O 
 
 Ed 
 
 s *t, % ^ 
 
 
 
 
 < 
 
 H "-" 
 
 /S ' 1 < NH J 
 O '"' d 
 
 
 
 
 
 X = 
 
 B (I i I 
 
 
 
 
 
 > ? 
 
 g P 2 S S 
 
 
 
 
 < 2 
 
 9 B 3 4 u
 
 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. 
 
 395 
 
 
 Q - 
 
 
 3 
 
 1 *' 1 
 
 
 
 j5 
 
 
 v^ 
 
 "1 t5 |o 
 
 
 
 ^* 
 
 
 yt 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Q S^. (a 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 "^ 
 
 ? S, 
 
 
 
 O 
 
 
 
 Q 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 |~l~i 
 
 
 
 Q 
 
 
 
 
 < 1 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 
 
 M 
 
 " a fe 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 a - o 
 
 
 
 (4 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 08 
 
 
 n 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 
 CO 
 
 8 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 en 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 s 
 
 ~s 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 _^ 
 
 c 
 
 Qi 
 
 * 
 
 
 
 
 
 00 
 
 
 
 < 
 
 .fl 
 
 
 
 tn 
 O 
 
 1 ( 
 
 o 
 
 J 
 
 U 
 
 u 
 
 CO 
 
 o^o 
 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 <! 
 
 
 
 
 en 
 
 
 j^ 
 
 00 
 
 
 
 M 
 
 
 
 - 
 en 
 
 Q" 
 
 U 
 
 
 tf$ 
 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 ROYAL HOU 
 
 ! 
 
 
 2 
 U 
 
 b 
 O 
 
 M 
 
 PETER THE 
 
 1 
 
 K 
 
 H. 
 
 1 
 
 ISABELLA the Cat 
 
 
 
 D 
 
 a 
 
 -'i 3 
 
 H * 
 
 
 W 
 
 as 
 
 H 
 
 1-4 
 
 8 
 
 
 1 
 
 II 
 
 ^J" i>o -~d 
 
 O O '^3 
 
 Sp -. 
 
 
 
 
 < 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 S5 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 1 *J |o ~^ 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 Q 
 U) 
 
 
 
 
 . fti "^ 
 
 
 
 o 1 
 
 
 H 
 
 
 I 
 
 ^" ^ ^ 
 
 
 
 CM 
 
 
 >} 
 
 o PO o 
 
 
 
 en 
 
 
 II 
 
 II ^ II 
 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 
 1 
 
 -gi 
 
 
 M 
 
 
 V 
 
 
 H 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 H 
 
 
 PQ
 
 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; an d 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. 
 
 
 
 C IH 
 
 
 pq 
 
 
 J; ^ < ^ 
 
 
 - 
 
 . 
 
 "S *"* 'S 
 
 F. Q CM 
 
 
 I-H 
 
 1 
 
 o 
 
 M 
 M 
 
 ^ s"" 8 - 5 
 
 HH 5* / J S ^v 
 
 
 u 
 
 icS 
 
 o 
 
 S* "S *** 01 
 M B * 
 
 S 6 
 
 Q 
 
 3" 
 
 bO 
 
 | 
 
 "-H e c oj "e o 
 "i O s 2 ^ oo 
 o v. O 1 o* - 1 
 
 X ( 
 
 
 
 ^M 
 
 a 5 s ^ >o 
 
 
 
 ^^ 
 
 o 
 
 ^^ 
 
 O <! O _ 
 
 - "S 
 
 55 
 
 & 
 
 II 
 
 ^ a _2 * j t 
 
 ^ & g ^rg S - r- 
 
 >_ r 
 
 ? 
 
 > < 
 
 o 
 
 5 
 
 TO 
 
 1 
 | 
 
 P S S J 
 
 ^- S S oO 
 
 M < 1 
 m II S f 
 
 HH 
 
 O 
 
 a 
 
 D 
 
 RDINAND 
 ,FONSO X 
 
 O 
 
 * 
 
 ^j 
 
 Q 8 X 
 O OS 
 
 cc 
 
 ti) j-j 
 
 cc 
 
 O 
 
 * 
 
 3^ 
 
 00 S 00 H ^ S 
 00 J <N PH^ S 
 
 *; ^ ^ -e o 
 
 
 
 ALFONS 
 
 .FONSO v: 
 
 ?ii 
 
 Q *f 
 
 o c5 ,s <3 
 
 ^ ^ 
 
 ^ * 
 
 M ^^ ^ 
 
 
 4 
 
 -^ 
 
 "a 
 
 _% 
 
 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 < 
 
 ^ ^"* 
 
 3 W ^ 
 LJ * ~~ 
 H ** HH 
 
 - HH 
 
 . * 
 
 ~7 b 
 
 I 
 
 I* 
 
 c 3 
 'S 
 
 
 
 \^^ . 
 
 t 11 B 
 
 J 
 
 8 
 
 PH 
 
 
 
 a O * IM o ~ 
 
 So <* % 2 
 
 fr i-} & & * 'o 
 
 * 
 
 
 
 S <J ^ H O C 
 
 -2j 
 
 
 
 BQ K^ fe fe g 
 
 
 
 
 ^ r < ? 
 
 V*i 
 
 
 
 T3 I-H <u 
 
 "< *j 
 
 
 
 C3 ^"^ P^ 
 
 _T*\^ 
 
 
 
 > 
 
 i 
 
 CO S 
 
 g-3 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 1
 
 UC SOUTHERN REOONAl &*""*% 
 
 A 000 694 628 9