The City Under the Visigoth
During the fifth century the Toledans may well have listened with attention to spiritual discussions, for looking forth from their rocky perch, they beheld the kingdoms of the earth passing away, and all that had seemed stable and eternal fading like the morning mist. The final breaking-up of the great world-controlling power was evident. Nations, the very names of which the men of the south had never heard, loomed from out the darkness of the north, and swept like a cloud of locusts over the land. The whole of Spain was desolate. Toledo, ever grim and stubborn, stood prepared to die hard. The tide of Vandal invasion surged in vain round her walls; then spent its fury in the south. The Visigoths established themselves in southern France. Under Walya they had overrun Spain, but had exchanged it, willingly enough, for Aquitania. Euric the Balthing, who succeeded his brother Theodoric as king in 466, seems to have repented of the bargain. He reconquered all Spain, except Galicia, which was held by the Suevi, and took Toledo. Where the Vandal had failed, the Visigoth succeeded. In the first years of the sixth century the Franks stripped Euric’s grandson, Amalaric, of practically all his possessions north of the Pyrenees, and the kingdom of the Visigoths became synonymous with Spain. Its capital was Narbonne during the troubled reigns of Theudis and Theudigisel. But in 553 Athanagild was elected king. His wife was the sister of the Bishop of Toledo, and partly on that account, perhaps, but more probably because of its central position, he made that city his capital. That rank it retained during the continuance of the Visigothic monarchy, with the brief interval of the reign of Liuba, who succeeded Athanagild in 567 and removed his Court to Narbonne.
The history of Toledo for the next century and a half becomes, in some sort, the history of Spain. Under Liuba’s brother and successor Leovigild (more correctly Liobagilths) the monarchy was consolidated. The Suevi in the north-west were subdued, and the nominal suzerainty of the Eastern Emperor was disavowed. Despite the difference in religion between the Visigoths, who were Arians, and the Romanised Iberians, who were Catholics, the two races began to intermingle, and the fusion of both into a single nation commenced. Leovigild was the first of his line to assume the insignia and appurtenances of royalty, and struck coins with his own likeness and the description, “King in Toledo.” The title is significant of the increased importance of the city. The prosperity of the kingdom was temporarily interrupted by the celebrated insurrection of the monarch’s son Ermenegild. This was the outcome of the marriage of that prince with Ingunthis, the daughter of the Prankish and Catholic king Sisebert. The wedding was solemnised in Toledo with great pomp, but the city shortly after became the scene of violent quarrels between Queen Goiswintha and her daughter-in-law. Ermenegild embraced his wife’s religion, and headed a revolt against his father. He was defeated, and paid the penalty with his life at Tarragona, after refusing to accept the sacrament at the hands of an Arian bishop. Unedifying though his conduct may appear to us, he was regarded as a martyr for the faith, and is enrolled among the saints of the Catholic Church.
Nor does his example seem to have been without its effect upon his brother, Reccared, who succeeded Leovigild in 587. In the month of May 589, Toledo was thronged with Catholic bishops and priests—many lately returned from exile—and with nobles from all parts of Spain, making their way to the Basilica of Santa Maria de la Sede Real, to assist at the solemn profession of the Catholic faith by the king and his queen, Baddo. Sixty-two prelates took part in this, the third Council of Toledo, the most eminent being Massona, Bishop of Merida, Leandro of Baetica, Santardus of Braga, Ugno of Barcelona, Megecias of Narbonne, and Eufemio of Toledo. It was a memorable day for Spain. The king’s example was soon followed by his subjects of his own race, and the unification of the two peoples was greatly accelerated.
During the hundred and ten years that elapsed between the death of Reccared (601) and the rout of the Guadelete (711), no fewer than fifteen sovereigns sat on the throne of Spain. Toledo was the theatre of their barbaric triumphings, their violent entrances and tragic exits. Now the city would resound with the savage, exultant yells of the townsmen, as they dragged the body of the usurper Witeric up and down the steep, uneven streets—to cast the bleeding, shapeless thing that had so lately been a king, upon a dunghill. Now, the people would be acclaiming Wamba, greatest of the Visigoths—after the strange scene at Gerticos, where the crown was forced upon him at the sword’s point; another time, a long procession of captives would file through the gates, to witness to the old king’s triumph in Narbonnese Gaul. Not a “demise of the crown” but there would be angry mutterings among the townsfolk, and whispers of murder, compulsion, and fraud. And while the kings raved and the people wept, the Church grew every day stronger—so strong that usurper and legitimate sovereign alike had perforce to obtain her sanction to his election and accession. And as the years went on, the spark of religious zeal in the breast of Spain was fanned into flame, and we read of fierce onslaughts on the Jewish citizens, and of merciless edicts, condemning them to penalties painful and humiliating. Dark days were these for the Children of Israel whose home Toledo so long had been; but darker still were impending for their persecutors and for the royal line of the Visigoths.
An exact picture of society in Spain at this period has been preserved in the Etymologies of Isidore Pacense. The Visigoths were a primitive, barbarous people, who had imposed upon themselves the outward appearances of Roman, or rather of Byzantine, civilisation. The contemptuous reference of Hallam to this “obscure race” is undeserved. Even in their earlier stages of development the Goths manifested many noble qualities—notably, a clemency towards their enemies—which were not conspicuous in the more polished nations of the South. And though they never properly assimilated the culture of the Latins, they attained to a degree of refinement and civilisation which compares favourably with that reached by contemporaries. “Spain,” remarks the author of “Toledo” in the “Monumentos Arquitectónicos de España,” “may then fairly and proudly claim that, while in Central Europe art had acquired no distinctive form—in the midst of the bitterness of slavery, when, before the abjuration of Reccared, the fusion of the races was not legally recognised—the Iberian Peninsula had developed a definite and evident artistic and literary individuality. That individuality must have been the result of the fortuitous conjunction and union of Latin traditions, more or less degenerate, with influences originally Byzantine and with those other transformed elements introduced by the Germanic hosts of Atawulf; but, even then, it remains an individuality, which asserts itself in the surviving examples of Visigothic culture, and which was transmitted to the generations succeeding the Moslem conquest.”
According to the standpoint of the critic, the Gothic kings’ taste for pomp and luxury may be interpreted as proof of their civilised instincts or of their native barbarism. For of the splendour of the Court of Toledo we have abundant testimony. From the writings of Isidore, we learn that the nobles used only goblets and basins of the precious metals, that their garments were of superfine silk, and their ornaments of the richest jewels. The elaborate ceremonial of the royal household may be inferred from the list of functionaries—the First Count, or Chief Butler, the Escancias; the Count Chamberlain, or Cubiculario; the Master of the Horse, Estabulario; the Major Domo, or Numerario; the Steward, or Silonario; the Master of the Pages, or Espartarius; the Count of the Sagrarios, or Sacred Things; and the Treasurer, or Argentarios. These offices were only held by the highest nobles. In the Cluny Museum at Paris and the Royal Armoury at Madrid are preserved the superb Votive Crowns discovered at Guarrazar in 1858. These priceless objects proclaim the wealth and munificence of the Visigothic monarchs. They are composed of double hoops of gold, decorated on the outside by three bands in relief. The outer bands are set with pearls and sapphires, and the middle band with the same stones in a setting of a red vitreous substance. The crown is suspended by four chains from a double gold rosette, which encloses a piece of rock crystal set in facets. Each chain consists of four links, shaped like the leaf of the pear-tree, and percées à jour. In its original state the crown of King Swinthila, now in the Madrid Armoury, had, hanging from its lower rim, a cross and twenty-two letters, making up the inscription, SVINTHILANUS REX OFFERET. All and each of these letters were actual jewels, set in the red glassy paste already mentioned, to them being attached large single pearls and pear-shaped sapphires. Though only twelve letters were remaining when the crown was discovered, the dedication was skilfully reconstructed by Señores de Madrazo and Amador de los Rios. The crown of Recceswinth in the Cluny Museum and the crown of the Abbot Theodosius at Madrid do not differ greatly from that of Swinthila in style and material. Though the workmanship is rude compared with modern specimens of the goldsmith’s art, these crowns still excite admiration by their beauty and richness. Inquiring into the origin of their style, Señor de Riaño arrives at the conclusion that it “must be looked for in the East; their manufacture was most probably Spanish. We cannot imagine the extraordinary magnificence of the Visigothic court, so similar to that of Constantinople and other contemporary ones, without the presence at each of a group of artists whose task was to satisfy these demands.” Not only the applied arts, but letters and learning were cultivated at Toledo. Swinthila and Recceswinth delighted in the composition of epistles and verses, in which, unfortunately, the taste, acquired from the Byzantines, for long-winded, flowery and involved phrases is painfully apparent. Recceswinth interested himself in the collection and revision of ancient manuscripts. In his reign flourished the learned and saintly Ildefonso, who was publicly thanked for his work on the perpetual virginity of Mary by the martyr Saint Leocadia, who came expressly from Heaven for the purpose. One of Ildefonso’s successors in the see of Toledo, Julian, was a Jew by birth, or at least descent. He was renowned for his erudition and especially as a polemical writer. Though he narrowly escaped excommunication as a heretic, he is now venerated as a saint, and was buried beside St. Ildefonso.
As the seat of a Court which did something more than ape the culture of the Latins (pace Mr. Leonard Williams), Toledo rose from an obscure Roman colony into a city of dignity and importance. It is supposed to have reached its highest stage of development in the reign of King Wamba (672-680), whose mutilated statue confronts the traveller on approaching the town from the railway-station. Most of the buildings ascribed by the chroniclers, however, to that king were in all probability only restored by his orders, and were originally constructed by his predecessors. Isidore Pacense enumerates among the edifices existing in his time in Spain, basilicas, monasteries, oratories, and hermitages; the Aula Regia, or royal residence, “distinguished before all other buildings by the richness of the four porticos which encircled it”; the Atrii of the nobility, which were allowed only three porticos; hospitals, guest-houses, and Repositaria, or treasure-houses. It is reasonable to assume that the capital of Spain would have possessed buildings of all the kinds specified during the hundred years that elapsed between the death of Athanagild and the accession of Wamba.
To the former king is attributed the foundation of the sanctuary converted later into the Hermitage of Cristo de la Luz, and the Church of Santa Justa, reconstructed in the sixteenth century. From an inscription on marble found in 1581, near the Convent of San Juan de la Penitencia, it would appear that Reccared built a church consecrated to the Virgin in the year 587. The text runs: IN NOMINE DNI CONSECRA | TA ECCLESIA SCTE MARIE | IN CATHOLICO DIE PRIMO | IDUS APRILIS ANNO FELI | CITER PRIMO REGNI D-NI | NOSTRI GLORIOSISSIMI H | RECCAREDI REGIS ERA | DCXXV. To Liuba II. is ascribed the erection of the Church of San Sebastian, where some capitals and shafts, discovered in 1899, exist to attest its Visigothic origin. The Basilica of Santa Leocadia dated from the days of Sisebut (612-621): and though the chroniclers assign no date to the dedication of the Church of San Ginés there can be no doubt that it took place in the seventh century. Wamba adorned with statuary and partially restored the city walls, but it is an error, based on a corrupt text of Isidore Pacense’s, to suppose that he built them.
The site of the Aula Regia, or Palace of the Visigothic kings, has long been a matter of dispute among archæologists. The author of the article on Toledo in the “Monumentos Arquitectónicos” decides in favour of the plot of ground covered by the Convents of the Concepcion and the Comendadores de Santiago, the ruined Hospital of Santa Cruz, and the new extension of the Paseo del Miradero—close to the Zocodover, in the north-east angle of the city. Adjacent to the palace was the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, “which seems,” says Señor Menendez y Pidal, “to have been the royal pantheon, opened only for the entombment of the sovereign and the taking the oath of allegiance to his successor.” Here were suspended the votive crowns, afterwards buried at Guarrazar; here probably were interred Athanagild, Leovigild, Reccared I., Liuba II., Gundemar, Sisebut, Reccared II., Tulga, Erwig, Egica, and Witica. Their very dust has long since been scattered by the wind—who shall say where? In a hall attached to that Basilica, in similar annexes to the Basilicas of Santa Leocadia and Santa Maria de la Sede Real, were held those ecclesiastical synods which so powerfully contributed to the shaping of the destinies of Spain. Santa Leocadia’s church is now known as the Cristo de la Vega; the Basilica de Santa Maria faced the Bridge of Alcantara and was in after years known as Santa Maria de Alficem. Here Recceswinth is said to have been crowned, the temple being afterwards restored by Erwig, Wamba’s successor.
Not a single building erected by the Visigothic kings exists to-day. “Destroyed by man’s fury and by the vicissitudes of time,” regretfully observes Señor Amador de los Rios, “or altered till all trace of their original form has been lost, by the pious care which intended to preserve them, you may seek in vain in the city of Wamba for an intact monument of that age; not even the walls ascribed to that prince have remained entire. Fragments of friezes; isolated capitals, which have adorned later edifices, oddly out of place in the scheme of decorations, or cut and defaced; broken shafts, perhaps bearing some inscriptions; pieces of a hinge, a metope, a lintel, or an impost, perhaps some dedicatory tablet—this is all that has escaped at Toledo the devastating scythe of time.”
These relics, however, are fortunately numerous. For a detailed description of the more important, the reader is referred to the “Monumentos Arquitectónicos de España.” Some we shall notice more particularly in dealing with the edifices of which they now form part.
Under Wamba the Visigothic monarchy reached the apex of its greatness. Under his four successors, Erwig, Egica, Witica, and Roderic, State and people are said to have become hopelessly enervated. The old Gothic vigour blazed up now and again in some individual ruler or statesman, but failed to communicate itself to the nation. The kingdom was tottering to its fall. The taste for display and the amenities of existence grew stronger in this period of decline. Never was there such wealth and splendour in Toledo as when it fell a prey to the hosts of Islam. The rapid decay of this once great and martial race is without a parallel in history. It is difficult to assign to it a cause. Luxury was the privilege only of the nobility and clergy, and could hardly have corrupted the whole people. Modern writers lamely attribute the final catastrophe to ecclesiastical influence and domination. Perhaps when all has been said, the state of Spain under Witica and Roderic was not much worse than under subsequent rulers of other dynasties; and the downfall may have been due, not so much to the effeminacy of the vanquished, as to the extraordinary military genius of the conquerors. Historians would have said little about the degeneracy of the Visigoths if the battle of the Guadalete had had a different issue.
The Hispano-Goths, as Catholics, evinced a fanatical and intolerant temper which had been conspicuously lacking in them as Arians. Harsh edicts continued to be promulgated against the Jews—then, as till a much later date, a most important element in the population of Toledo. The unlucky Children of Israel may have derived in the intervals of persecution some malicious consolation from the bitter quarrels between the king and the Catholic clergy. Witica was an enemy, or what was probably regarded as the same thing, a would-be reformer of the Church. To his impiety, indeed, monkish writers are fond of ascribing the destruction of the Gothic kingdom. His predecessor, Egica, did not hesitate to condemn to excommunication, exile, and confiscation of property, Sisebert, the powerful Archbishop of Toledo. Perhaps some clerkly chronicler, by way of retaliation for this outrage upon his order, invented the following discreditable story, to be found in the pages of Lozano.
King Egica had conceived an ardent passion for the beautiful Doña Luz, who is described as the grand-daughter of Kindaswinth, and the sister of Roderic, afterwards king. Her love, however, was given to her uncle, Don Favila, Duke or Governor of Cantabria. The lovers, wearied at last by the king’s opposition to their union, went through a secret and simplified form of marriage in the lady’s bedchamber before a statue of the Virgin. In the course of time. Doña Luz became a mother. Egica’s suspicions had already been enkindled, and fearing his wrath, she placed the new-born infant in a little ark and set it afloat on the bosom of the Tagus. As her maids pushed out the tiny craft from the foot of the steep path that leads down from Toledo, a radiance diffused itself around the sleeping child and for long marked his passage down the broad stream. The irate monarch, divining that Doña Luz must in some way have disposed of her child, caused a census to be taken of all the children born in and around the city within the past three months with the names of the respective fathers. The number of births was recorded at 35,428—a very surprising total for Toledo! And, which is still more remarkable and highly creditable to the city, the parentage of these numerous infants was in every case authenticated. What then had become of Doña Luz’s baby? Baffled in his quest, the king suborned one of his minions, Melias by name, to accuse the unfortunate lady of incontinency. The penalty for this offence, we are told, was nothing less than death by fire; and for that fate Egica bade Doña Luz prepare, unless she could secure a defender or otherwise clear her reputation. At the eleventh hour, the valorous champion appeared in the person of Don Favila, who disproved the charge made against his lady-love to the satisfaction of mediæval intelligences, by the simple method of running her accuser through the body. This, however, did not satisfy the sceptical monarch, who insisted on a further ordeal by combat. A knight named Bristes, cousin of the recreant Melias, was challenger and accuser on this occasion, and was quickly despatched by the doughty Favila.
In the meantime the ark containing Pelayo, the infant child of Doña Luz and her champion, had reached Alcantara, where the little passenger almost miraculously fell into the hands of his mother’s other uncle, Grafeses. This benevolent prince took every care of the child, unsuspicious, of course, of his origin. Attracted to Court by the noise of these scandals and combats, he found a handkerchief in his niece’s room, the counterpart of one which he had discovered in the little ark. Doña Luz soon confessed to him the whole story, and he endeavoured to intercede for her with the king. Egica, probably more exasperated than ever, insisted on a third duel between Favila and a knight called Longaris. Both combatants had been wounded when a holy hermit appeared on the scene, and admonished the king as to his wickedness and hardness of heart. Egica repented and consented to the public celebration of the marriage of Favila and Doña Luz. Here we have a fine romantic account of the origin of the heroic Pelayo, the restorer of the monarchy and the saviour of the Spanish nation.
Wilder, more romantic still, and better known are the legends clustering round the last king of the Goths. The scene of most of these is laid in Toledo. Here was held that wonderful tournament, to which resorted all the crowned heads of Europe—aye, even such potentates as the Emperor of Constantinople and the King of Poland. A new city of palaces was reared in the Vega by the hospitable Roderic to accommodate his fifty thousand noble guests. This splendid function may have taken place before or after the king’s strange marriage with the bewitching Moorish princess Elyata (re-baptized Exilona), who had been washed ashore by the sea on the coast of Valencia. Lovely as was his consort, Roderic did not, as we all know, remain faithful to her. Here enters the mournful and very shadowy figure of Florinda, otherwise known as La Cava. This peerless damsel was confided to the care of the king by her father, the trusty Julian (or Illán), governor of Ceuta. Alas for the maiden! while bathing in the Tagus, her charms were only too well revealed to Roderic, gazing from his palace windows on the cliff above. A glimpse of a shapely leg scarce concealed by a diaphanous mantle decided the fate of Florinda—and of Spain. What he could not effect by persuasion, the king effected by violence. Perhaps he hoped that the proud Julian’s daughter would keep silence as to her own dishonour. He was mistaken. A trusty page, spurring night and day, quickly bore the fatal tidings to the father at distant Ceuta, and the missive in which the wronged Florinda implored vengeance on her betrayer.
To the no doubt conscience-stricken Roderic, seated in good old kingly fashion upon his throne, appeared two venerable strangers with a message of mysterious import. When Hercules had founded (as some men say) Toledo, not far from the city, among the mountains, he had reared a tower, of which these uncouth brethren were the guardians, as their ancestors, in an unbroken line, had been before them. On this tower and on its unknown and fearful contents, the demigod had laid a necromantic spell. It had been the custom of each of the Kings of Spain to affix to the massive doors a new lock, and now Roderic was summoned to fulfil this duty, for failing this and if any rash mortal should discover the secret of the tower, ruin, absolute and immediate, must overtake his kingdom. Agog with curiosity, with a brilliant cavalcade, the king clattered through the streets of his capital, and found the wondrous tower in the recesses of the hills. The aged custodians besought him to hasten and to affix his seal to the enchanted doors. In vain! it was with another intention the impetuous sovereign had come hither. He burst open the doors and rushed in, where never man since Hercules had dared to tread. Before him stood a gigantic statue in bronze, which dealt blows with a great mace unceasingly to right and left. On its breast were inscribed the words, I do my duty. Roderic sternly adjured the creature of enchantment to let him pass. It obeyed. In the interior of the tower the King found a casket of rich workmanship. A legend thereon warned him of the doom that would overtake him who should open it. Roderic forced open the lid. He beheld a fold of linen on which were painted the figures of Moorish warriors in battle-array. As he gazed the figures seemed to move, to grow larger, to assume the proportions of men. He beheld a battlefield where Goths and Moors contended for the mastery. Breathless, he awaited the issue. The Goths were flying, and he saw his own white steed, Orelia, galloping through the fray—riderless. Affrighted, the king and his attendants rushed to the door. There lay the two ancient custodians, dead. Thunder rolled, a storm burst over the land, and Roderic and his cavaliers drew not rein till they reached the palace of Toledo. Next day the stout-hearted Goths reascended to the hills. But as they approached, behold a great eagle swooped down from the sky holding in its talons a flaming brand! The tower blazed up like matchwood. Then arose a great wind which carried the ashes to every part of Spain; and every man on whom a portion of the ashes fell was afterwards slain in battle by the Moors.
These direful portents must surely have prepared Roderic for treachery, conspiracies, and unpleasantness of all kinds. But when Count Julian arrived, smiling and deferential, to take his daughter home to Ceuta, he seems to have suspected nothing, feared nothing. The rest of the story—Julian’s invitation to the Moors, the rout of Guadalete, the disappearance of Roderic—relates to the history of Spain generally, not to that of Toledo. Dozy believes that Julian actually existed, but he seems to have been a Byzantine governor of Ceuta, not a Spaniard. It is hardly necessary to say that Florinda is as much a figment of the imagination as the enchanted tower. Yet near the Puente de San Martin (above which never king’s palace stood) some fragments of masonry are pointed out as the Baños de la Cava (Florinda’s Bath). They are, in reality, but the remains of a Moorish tomb.
In July 711, King Roderic set out from Toledo, never to return. Upon the news of the rout of Guadalete, all the magnates and prelates abandoned the city. Its surrender to the Moorish host of the one-eyed Tarik was the work of the Jews, who had not forgotten the persecutions of Sisebert and Egica. There were Jews in the invading army under the command of Kaula-al-Yahudi. When Tarik appeared before the walls, a venerable Israelite was let down in a basket, and, approaching him, offered to admit him to the city if liberty and the free exercise of their religion were guaranteed to his race. The Berber joyfully accepted these terms, and on the following day proud Toledo—deserted by its Christian inhabitants—was annexed to the Saracen Khalifate.