Spain, or Iberia, as it was called in ancient
days, has been a country harassed from the
earliest times, by the invader. The Celts, the
Greeks, the Phenecians, the Carthagenians, by
turns, or simultaneously, infringed its territories; [1]

[figure description] Page 012.[end figure description]

drove the native Iberians from their rightful
homes, and established colonies and founded
cities in the land. It subsequently fell into the
all grasping power of Rome, remaining for some
time a subjugated province; and when that gigantic
empire crumbled into pieces, the Suevi,
the Alani, and the Vandals, those barbarians of
the north, overran and ravaged this devoted
country, and portioned out the soil among them.

Their sway was not of long duration. In
the fifth century the Goths, who were then the
allies of Rome, undertook the reconquest of Iberia,
and succeeded, after a desperate struggle of three
years duration. They drove before them the
barbarous hordes, their predecessors, intermarried,
and incorporated themselves with the original
inhabitants, and founded a powerful and
splendid empire, comprising the Iberian peninsula,
the ancient Narbonnaise, afterwards called
Gallia Gotica, or Gothic Gaul, and a part of the
African coast called Tingitania. A new nation
was, in a manner, produced by this mixture of
the Goths and Iberians. Sprang from a union
of warrior races, reared and nurtured amidst the
din of arms, the Gothic Spaniards, if they may
so be termed, were a warlike, unquiet, yet high
minded and heroic people. Their simple and
abstemious habits, their contempt for toil and
suffering, and their love of daring enterprise,

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fitted them for a soldier's life. So addicted were
they to war that, when they had no external foes
to contend with, they fought with one another;
and, when engaged in battle, says an old chronicler,
the very thunders and lightnings of
heaven could not separate them.[2]

For two centuries and a half the Gothic power
remained unshaken, and the sceptre was wielded
by twenty-five successive kings. The crown
was elective, in a council of palatines, composed
of the bishops and nobles, who, while they swore
allegiance to the newly made sovereign, bound
him by a reciprocal oath to be faithful to his
trust. Their choice was made from among the
people, subject only to one condition, that the
king should be of pure Gothic blood. But though
the crown was elective in principle, it gradually
became hereditary from usage, and the power of
the sovereign grew to be almost absolute. The
king was commander in chief of the armies; the
whole patronage of the kingdom was in his
hands; he summoned and dissolved the national
councils; he made and revoked laws according
to his pleasure; and, having ecclesiastical supremacy,
he exercised a sway even over the consciences
of his subjects.

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The Goths, at the time of their inroad, were
stout adherents to the Arian doctrines; but after
a time they embraced the Catholic faith, which
was maintained by the native Spaniards free
from many of the gross superstitions of the
church at Rome, and this unity of faith contributed
more than any thing else to blend and
harmonize the two races into one. The bishops
and other clergy were exemplary in their lives,
and aided to promote the influence of the laws
and maintain the authority of the state. The
fruits of regular and secure government were
manifest in the advancement of agriculture, commerce
and the peaceful arts; and in the increase
of wealth, of luxury, and refinement; but there
was a gradual decline of the simple, hardy, and
warlike habits that had distinguished the nation
in its semi barbarous days.

Such was the state of Spain when, in the year
of Redemption 701, Witiza was elected to the
Gothic throne. The beginning of his reign gave
promise of happy days to Spain. He redressed
grievances, moderated the tributes of his subjects,
and conducted himself with mingled mildness
and energy in the administration of the
laws. In a little while, however, he threw off
the mask, and showed himself in his true nature,
cruel and luxurious.

Two of his relatives, sons of a preceding king,

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awakened his jealousy for the security of his
throne. One of them, named Favila, duke of
Cantabria, he put to death, and would have inflicted
the same fate upon his son Pelayo, but
that the youth was beyond his reach, being preserved
by Providence for the future salvation of
Spain. The other object of his suspicion was
Theodofredo, who lived retired from court. The
violence of Witiza reached him even in his retirement.
His eyes were put out, and he was
immured within a castle at Cordova. Roderick,
the youthful son of Theodofredo, escaped to
Italy, where he received protection from the
Romans.

Witiza now considering himself secure upon
the throne, gave the reins to his licentious passions,
and soon, by his tyranny and sensuality,
acquired the appellation of Witiza the Wicked.
Despising the old Gothic continence, and yielding
to the example of the sect of Mahomet,
which suited his lascivious temperament, he indulged
in a plurality of wives and concubines,
encouraging his subjects to do the same. Nay,
he even sought to gain the sanction of the church
to his excesses, promulgating a law by which
the clergy were released from their vows of celibacy,
and permitted to marry and to entertain
paramours.

The sovereign Pontiff Constantine threatened

[figure description] Page 016.[end figure description]

to depose and excommunicate him, unless he
abrogated this licentious law; but Witiza set him
at defiance, threatening, like his Gothic predecessor
Alaric, to assail the eternal city with his
troops, and make spoil of her accumulated treasures.
[3] “We will adorn our damsels,” said he,
“with the jewels of Rome, and replenish our
coffers from the mint of St. Peter.”

Some of the clergy opposed themselves to the
innovating spirit of the monarch, and endeavoured
from the pulpits to rally the people to
the pure doctrines of their faith; but they were
deposed from their sacred office, and banished
as seditious mischief makers. The church of
Toledo continued refractory; the archbishop
Sindaredo, it is true, was disposed to accommodate
himself to the corruptions of the times,
but the prebendaries battled intrepidly against
the new laws of the monarch, and stood manfully
in defence of their vows of chastity. “Since
the church of Toledo will not yield itself to our
will,” said Witiza, “it shall have two husbands.”
So saying, he appointed his own brother Oppas,
at that time archbishop of Seville, to take a
seat with Sindaredo in the episcopal chair of
Toledo, and made him primate of Spain. He

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was a priest after his own heart, and seconded
him in all his profligate abuses.

It was in vain the denunciations of the church
were fulminated from the chair of St. Peter;
Witiza threw off all allegiance to the Roman
Pontiff, threatening with pain of death those who
should obey the papal mandates. “We will
suffer no foreign ecclesiastic, with triple crown,”
said he, “to domineer over our dominions.”

The Jews had been banished from the country
during the preceding reign, but Witiza permitted
them to return, and even bestowed upon their
synagogues privileges of which he had despoiled
the churches. The children of Israel, when
scattered throughout the earth by the fall of Jerusalem,
had carried with them into other lands
the gainful arcana of traffic, and were especially
noted as opulent money changers and curious
dealers in gold and silver and precious stones;
on this occasion, therefore, they were enabled, it
is said, to repay the monarch for his protection
by bags of money, and caskets of sparkling gems,
the rich product of their oriental commerce.

The kingdom at this time enjoyed external
peace, but there were symptoms of internal
discontent. Witiza took the alarm; he remembered
the ancient turbulence of the nation, and
its proneness to internal feuds. Issuing secret
orders, therefore, in all directions, he dismantled

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most of the cities, and demolished the castles
and fortresses that might serve as rallying
points for the factious. He disarmed the
people also, and converted the weapons of war
into the implements of peace. It seemed, in
fact, as if the millenium were dawning upon the
land, for the sword was beaten into a ploughshare,
and the spear into a pruning-hook.

While thus the ancient martial fire of the nation
was extinguished, its morals likewise were
corrupted. The altars were abandoned, the
churches closed, wide disorder and sensuality
prevailed throughout the land, so that, according
to the old chroniclers, within the compass of a
few short years, “Witiza the Wicked taught all
Spain to sin.”

eaf221v3.n1

[1] Many of the facts in this legend are taken from an old
chronicle, written in quaint and antiquated Spanish, and
professing to be a translation from the Arabian chronicle of
the Moor Rasis, by Mohammed, a Moslem writer, and Gil
Perez, a Spanish priest. It is supposed to be a piece of literary
mosaic work, made up from both Spanish and Arabian
chronicles: yet, from this work most of the Spanish historians
have drawn their particulars relative to the fortunes of
Don Roderick.

eaf221v3.n2

[2] Florian de Ocampo, lib. 3. c. 12. Justin Abrev. Trog.
Pomp. L44 Bleda. Cronica L2. c. 3.

eaf221v3.n3

[3] Chron. de Luitprando 709. Abarca Anales de Aragon
(el Mahometismo, Fol. 5.)

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