Witeric, who was in his turn assassinated in 610.1 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.2 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 II. 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 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 626.3

Swinthila was somewhat too independent to please the ecclesiastical 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

1 Witeric was one of the Arian Gothic nobles, and the movement which resulted in the death of Liuva II. and the elevation of Witeric was mainly Arian. Witeric was deposed and killed by a Catholic reaction under Gundemar.-H.

2 Mariana, lib. vi., cap. ii. The two facts stated are really connected. Sisebut took the field against Imperial encroachment, which nearly reached the banks of the Guadalquivir. After gaining several successes, he made a treaty with Heraclitus, by which the Imperial power was confined in Spain to the Algarves, on condition that Sisebut persecuted the Jews; who it had been foretold would overthrow Heraclitus.-H.

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.

marched back into their own country,1 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 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 2 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 with the exercise of its new power of king-making. It took 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,

1A 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.

2 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, iì., 223.

to make way for a new king of more vigorous mould, Chindaswinth, a successful conspirator at the age of seventy-nine, 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 until the promulgation of the Lex Visigothorum, within half a century of the final destruction of the monarchy in Spain.2

If the Breviarium is due to Alaric, and the Antiqua to Reccared, the Lex Visigothorum was mainly the work of Chindaswinth, who put an end at length to the conflict of laws which still existed in his dominions by a fusion of the Roman and the Visigothic systems of jurisprudence, and the publication of the legal unity of the two nations who dwelt on the soil of Spain.3

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, Recceswinth, the honour of being considered the Visigothic Justinian, (although Egica with the aid of the Fourteenth Council of Toledo drew up and promulgated the great code the Fuero Guzgo.-H). Eng. Hist. Review, vol. ii., p. 212.

2 It is sometimes referred to as the Breviarium Anianium, from the name of the Latin secretary who prepared it.

3 A brief account of some of the more salient features of their laws and of those who administered them will be found in the Appendix, The Laws of the

The use of the Breviarium of Alaric was abolished, and the Lex Visigothorum, containing a larger infusion of the Roman elements into the old Gothic code, was pronounced the only code of laws for the united population of Spain. But Chindaswinth,

vigorous and clear-sighted as he was, lived too late in the history of his race. Within little over half a century, the Visigoth had ceased to rule in the Peninsula, and the Lex Visigothorum had given place to the simpler legislation of the Koran.

Recceswinth, who was associated by his father with him in the administration of the kingdom, succeeded him at his death, and devoted a great part of his attention during his peaceful reign of over twenty years to the promulgation and maintenance of his laws. But Recceswinth was but a poor successor1 to the bold and masterful Chindaswinth; and the best that can be said of him, perhaps, is that he gave practical effect to his father's declaration of legislative union, by his celebrated decree permitting the lawful marriage of the Roman with the Visigoth in Spain.

Saint Ildefonso, who was raised to the Metropolitan throne of Toledo in 658, was probably more powerful, and is certainly more famous than any of his royal contemporaries. For not only did Ildefonso, the most distinguished of the pupils of Isidore, rule over Spain for ten years, after the manner of his episcopal predecessors, but he is said to have enjoyed the more extraordinary favour of a personal visit from the Blessed Virgin; and he is still venerated, second only in honour to Saint James of Compostella, amongst the patron saints of Spain.

2

Visigoths, printed at the end of the present volume. For the few lines that I have added to the present chapter upon the preparation and promulgation of the code, I have consulted Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, lib. xxviii.; Daroud-Oghlou, Histoire de la Legislation des anciens Germains (Berlin, 1845), tom. i., pp. 1-216; Savigny, Geschichte des romischen Rechts, vol. ii.; Dahn, Könige der Germanen, vol. vi., and Westgothische Studien, and finally a most interesting article in the English Historical Review, vol. ii., pp. 212-234, by Mr. Hodgkin, to which I am indebted for many valuable suggestions about the Visigothic period generally.

1 Recceswinth was devout if not moral, licet flagitiosus, tamen bene monitus, Isidore of Beja, c. 15.

2 A legend, says Dunham, received with the fullest assurance of faith, not by the vulgar, but by the most learned and critical, not by the stupid Garibay and the credulous Morales, but by the sceptical Ferreras and the able Masdeu. Dunham, i., 219. The story may be found in the fullest detail in Morales, tom. iii., folio 158 et seq.

That Ildefonso should have written a treatise De Virginitate S. Maria was only becoming; and his De Viris illustribus, a continuation of the work of Isidore, is of considerable interest and value.

935

CHAPTER IX.

CHURCH AND STATE.

(A.D. 672-701).

I.-Wamba.

On the death of Recceswinth in September, 672, the choice of the nobles1 fell upon one of their number, a Goth of gentle, but not of princely birth, well advanced in years, renowned for his prudence, his faithfulness, his military skill-Wamba, perhaps the best known though not the greatest of all the Visigothic kings who reigned in the Peninsula. When the result of the free election was conveyed to Wamba, he declined the honour, and long withstood the entreaties of his electors; and it is said that nothing but threats of personal violence induced him to waive his objections to wear a crown.

The Gothic nobility, "who had acquired the execrable habit of killing their kings," seem to have been equally ready to adopt heroic measures with those who refused to reign! But as soon as Wamba was fairly crowned at Toledo--no ecclesiastical council was summoned to affirm his election by his peers-he showed that he bore not in vain the sword with which he had been so forcibly girt.

Gothic Gaul, or Septimania,2 the only territory beyond the geographical limits of Spain that at all times acknowledged the rule of the Visigothic kings, was the weak spot in their dominion. The tribes that inhabited the mountains of Cantabria indeed were ever unsubdued; but they were not to be feared at any great distance from their own boundaries. They were,

1 Or of the prelates assembled with the Palatines in the village of Gerticos near Valladolid, where Recceswinth had died; in accordance with the decrees of the Eighth Council of Toledo, which Recceswinth had summoned.-H.

2 The old colony of the Septimani or soldiers of the Seventh Legion. See Mommsen, Hist. of Rome, iv., 542.