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 Visigothorum, 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 distinguished posterity.'

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 iii, 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 Pelagius, whom he succeeded in the Papacy in 590.

VOL. I.

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6

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. perpetuated 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 northernmost towns in the dominion of the Visigoths. Reccared, dispatched by his father at the head of an army, acquitted himself with skill as well as valour, drove off Gunthram and his nephew Childebert, the leaders of the Franks, secured the northern frontier, and returned in triumph to Toledo.

His father, in the meantime, had undertaken a most successful 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, 13th 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, España 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 für Hist. Theolog., 1873. St. Ermengild's Day is 13th 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.

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 Frankish 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 presided 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 endeavoured to conciliate the Hispano-Roman part of his subjects from whom he differed in religion.-H.

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 administered 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.

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CHAPTER VIII.

THE GREAT METROPOLITANS.

(587-672.)

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 themselves 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 Arianism 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 forbidden 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 pureblooded 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.