and Caliabra. In the province of Gallicia there were eleven, Braga, [Bracara Augusta], Dumio, Porto, Chaves, Tuy, El Padron, [Iria Flavia] Orense, [Aqua Urientes], Britoña 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.1

The parochial system2 was not introduced into Spain until much later times: the parish was for long hardly distinguished from the diocese ;3 and the tithes, which in imitation of the Jewish law were instituted about the fourth century, were payable for a long time, not to the parson, but to the bishop, who was subsequently directed by Charlemagne, in a Capitulary 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.5

Although monasteries were probably unknown in the Peninsula until the middle of the sixth century, the celibacy

1 In the compilation of this list, I have chiefly followed Masdeu, tom. xi., pp. 183-7. But the greater part of tom. iv. of the España 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 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 España Sagrada, tom. li

2 See Masdeu, xiii., 315-16.

3 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 Restauracion de España, 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 vineyards, 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.

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

Hallam, Mid. Ages, ii., 141, 142. Milman, Latin Christianity, ix., 5–10. 6 See authorities collected in Montalembert, ii., 185, 186.

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 y tremendous dogma, rejected a dozen years later by the greater Council of Nicæa (325), was finally promulgated in Spain by the very first Canon of the first Council of Toledo in 400. The judgment of Elvira and Toledo was adopted at Arles and at Mâcon, 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,1 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. 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.3

Monasteries are first spoken of in the decrees of the Council of Tarragona, in 516; and until the middle of the sixth century hermits or solitary devotees seem to have been far more common than cœnobites 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 middle of the sixth century.5 And after the time of St. Emilianus (ob. 570) and St. Martin of Dumium (ob. 580), some fifty 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

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.

2 Conc. Ill., can. 13.

3 Conc. Cæsar Aug., can 8.

4 Masdeu, tom. xiii., pp. 158-161.

5 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 contributor 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."

II

in the mountainous districts between Burgos and Logroño,1 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 Metropolitan of Braga [580], is said on somewhat doubtful authority to have been a Benedictine,2 and to have founded a monastery at Dumium towards the end of the sixth century.

But the true glory of early Spanish monasticism is undoubtedly St. Fructuosus, a Goth of royal or noble birth,3 who attained great celebrity in the early part of the seventh century for his holiness as an anchorite, in the mountainous district of El Vierzo, between Astorga and Lugo, where he founded, at the foot of Mount Trago or Foncebadon, and at the confluence (complutum) 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 Monastery of Compludo.1

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.5

1 The exact locality has given rise to fierce conflicts.-España Sagrada, tom i., s. 2.

2 See Mabillon, Acta Sanctorum, O. S. B., tom 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 1100 the rule of St. Augustine found its way into Castile. Ferreras, Hist. d'Espagñe, tom iii.

8 S. Isidore, De Viris illustribus, capp. 35, 41, and 45.

La seule, charte authentique qui nous soit restée de l'époque Visigothique est une donation faite en 646 par le roi Chindaswinde au Monastère de Compludo. Montalembert, op. cit. ii., 205.

España Sagrada, tom 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 cele

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 Monasterium Rufianense, afterwards the famous San Pedro de Montes near Ponferrada; and yet a third in the immediate neighbourhood-the Visuniense (650?). He soon afterwards undertook a 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

brated monastery has long since disappeared. There is a church, well preserved to the present day, at Santiago de Peñalva, 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 Gentleman's Magazine, 1865, pp. 150-156.

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 summo 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.

G

CHAPTER X.

"THE LAST OF THE GOTHS."

(701-711).

I.-The Jews.

IT does not appear that many colonists or exiles of the Hebrew race had settled in Spain before the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus; but from that time the Jews were to be found in great numbers throughout the Peninsula, and they are said to have adopted to a very large extent the Latin language of the country.1 Their rights and liberties were liberally recognized 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 Empire. 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, and before the fourth century was yet ten years old, a Canon of the Council of Elvira forbade all communication between Jews and Christians in the Peninsula. But more active persecution was neither preached nor practised.3 When the Roman gave place to the Barbarian, the Jews

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, kúpios, as a mode of address. Lindo, History of the Jews in Spain and Portugal, p. 7. Cf. also Los Rios, Les Juifs d'Espagne, (Paris, 1861); and a Discurso, by F. Martinez Mariana in the Mem. de la Real Acad., de Hist. de Madrid, tom. iii., pp. 317-469. Döllinger, Studies, trans. by Miss Warre (1890), Essay on Jews in Europe; and Vicente de Lafuente, Sociedades Secretas de España, 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 España, ii.. 8.

3 See Codex Theodos, lib. xvi., titt. 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.