of his times; a man of deeds even more than a man of words, he changed the religion of Spain.

Eighteen months after the Council of Toledo, Leander presided 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 1 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 Frankish invasion, almost immediately after the meeting of the Council in 589. The Frank was no less covetous of the territories of the Catholic than of of the Arian neighbour; and after some fruitless negotiations, in the course of which Reccared secured the neutrality of Childebert 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 Frankish power for many years. Against the

1 Montalembert, op. cit., ii., 132.

2 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." Ct. Romey, ii., 157.

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 601.1

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 occupation 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. The youngest brother of the masterful 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 Metropolitan of Seville, where he reigned with a not unkindly rule till his death in 636.

Very different were the characters and dispositions of Leander was these two almost equally famous brothers. 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 complete library of works on almost every subject of study, human or divine-an encyclopædia of

1 Isidore, Hist. de Reg. Goth.

2 Lucas Tudensis, Vit. S. Isidor. Bolland; tom. i., April, p. 331.

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 unquestionably the most valuable is his History of the Goths, Historia de regibus Gothorum Wandalorum et 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, Witeric, who was in his turn assassinated in 610. 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 Cæsarius, and to have made an honourable treaty of peace with the Emperor Heraclius, securing to the Visigoths a considerable accession of territory. 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 the Second 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

Arts, sciences, grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, metaphysics, arithmetic, politics, geometry, music, astronomy, physics, natural history, architecture, painting, military and naval tactics, ship building, and all things on earth, in the sea and in the Heaven, 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, Civilization Chrétienne chez les Francs, chapter ix. Baillet: Jugement des Savants, ii. 202. S. de Sacy Notices et Extraits, &c., An. vii., tom. iv. 158-183.

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

Mariana, lib. vi., cap. ii.

F

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 626.1

Swinthila was somewhat too independent to please the new Roman 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 marched back into their own country,2 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

3

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 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 succession, 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

1 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 Spania (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.

A golden font which had been given by Aëtius to Thorismund after the battle of Châlons 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.

3 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.

It took

with the exercise of its new power of king-making. 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 dictation 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, to make way for a new king of more vigorous mould. Chindaswinth, a successful conspirator at the age of seventynine, 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 506.1 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 accompanied 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

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, Reccared, the honour of being considered the Visigothic Justinian.-Eng. Hist. Review, vol. ii., p. 212.