Under the wings of the Roman eagle, the material prosperity of Toledo steadily increased. From a collection of wretched huts, it had become a colonia, the capital of Carpetania. As such it would have had its arx, or citadel, prætorium, forum, temples, baths, and vici, or long suburbs straggling into the country. Of all these practically no traces remain. But in the Vega, outside the town, may be traced a semicircular enclosure, formed by masses of stones and mortar, about a metre in thickness, but of varying height. This space has been dignified with the name of Circus Maximum, and is undoubtedly a Roman work. But Señor Amador de los Rios has demonstrated almost conclusively that the Circus never advanced much beyond the foundations, which we now see before us probably in no very different state from that in which they were left some two thousand years ago. But though no Celtiberian captives or Christian martyrs here were “butchered to make a Roman holiday,” the consecration of the spot to the practice of cruelty bore fruit in after years. For the fires lit by the Inquisition were kindled here, and the Christian put the incompleted amphitheatre to the use for which it had been designed by the Pagan. To-day the men of Toledo play at pelota in the enclosure, and their cheery shouts may well scare away the ghosts of torturer and victim.
This may be regarded as the most important Roman remains in the neighbourhood of the city. The famous Cave of Hercules, which figures so largely in legendary lore, was probably the crypt or substructure of a Temple of Jupiter; and on the cliff-side below the Alcazar are a few fragments of a once-important aqueduct.
It has been conjectured from the dimensions of the projected Circus that the Romans had at one time thought of elevating Toledo to the rank of chief city of Spain. The design, if it ever was formed, was never carried into execution. Of what passed in the town under Latin rule we have but the vaguest notion. Toledo, like almost every other place in Europe, has its traditions of fierce persecution productive of local martyrs. Almost as many Christians were massacred in Spain, if we credit these stories, as Gibbon thinks perished in the whole Roman Empire. Among the martyrs of Toletum, it is perhaps superfluous to say, was a young and lovely virgin, in this instance called Leocadia. She was done to death by the truculent Dacian. St. Eugenius, the first bishop of Toledo, is said to have been a disciple of St. Paul. He was martyred at Paris, and his alleged remains were obtained from Charles IX. of France and presented to the city by Philip II.
In early ecclesiastical annals Toledo has less shadowy claims on remembrance as the seat of several councils, the most celebrated being those of 396, 400, 589. The minutes of the second council are preserved in the local archives. Miss Hannah Lynch makes merry over the fathers’ spirited denunciations of her sex. In truth, the irreverent reader is reminded of those other fulminations launched in the diocese of Rheims against certain persons unknown, and of the poet’s surprised comment on their want of effect. The sex fared better at the hands of the Council, however, than vegetarians and mathematicians, both of whom were excommunicated downright. Neither class is numerous in Spain at the present day, so the labours of the fathers may not have been altogether ineffectual.
THE CITY UNDER THE VISIGOTH
During the fifth century the Toledans may well have listened with attention to spiritual discussions, for looking forth from their rocky perch, they beheld the kingdoms of the earth passing away, and all that had seemed stable and eternal fading like the morning mist. The final breaking-up of the great world-controlling power was evident. Nations, the very names of which the men of the south had never heard, loomed from out the darkness of the north, and swept like a cloud of locusts over the land. The whole of Spain was desolate. Toledo, ever grim and stubborn, stood prepared to die hard. The tide of Vandal invasion surged in vain round her walls; then spent its fury in the south. The Visigoths established themselves in southern France. Under Walya they had overrun Spain, but had exchanged it, willingly enough, for Aquitania. Euric the Balthing, who succeeded his brother Theodoric as king in 466, seems to have repented of the bargain. He reconquered all Spain, except Galicia, which was held by the Suevi, and took Toledo. Where the Vandal had failed, the Visigoth succeeded. In the first years of the sixth century the Franks stripped Euric’s grandson, Amalaric, of practically all his possessions north of the Pyrenees, and the kingdom of the Visigoths became synonymous with Spain. Its capital was Narbonne during the troubled reigns of Theudis and Theudigisel. But in 553 Athanagild was elected king. His wife was the sister of the Bishop of Toledo, and partly on that account, perhaps, but more probably because of its central position, he made that city his capital. That rank it retained during the continuance of the Visigothic monarchy, with the brief interval of the reign of Liuba, who succeeded Athanagild in 567 and removed his Court to Narbonne.
The history of Toledo for the next century and a half becomes, in some sort, the history of Spain. Under Liuba’s brother and successor Leovigild (more correctly Liobagilths) the monarchy was consolidated. The Suevi in the north-west were subdued, and the nominal suzerainty of the Eastern Emperor was disavowed. Despite the difference in religion between the Visigoths, who were Arians, and the Romanised Iberians, who were Catholics, the two races began to intermingle, and the fusion of both into a single nation commenced. Leovigild was the first of his line to assume the insignia and appurtenances of royalty, and struck coins with his own likeness and the description, “King in Toledo.” The title is significant of the increased importance of the city. The prosperity of the kingdom was temporarily interrupted by the celebrated insurrection of the monarch’s son Ermenegild. This was the outcome of the marriage of that prince with Ingunthis, the daughter of the Prankish and Catholic king Sisebert. The wedding was solemnised in Toledo with great pomp, but the city shortly after became the scene of violent quarrels between Queen Goiswintha and her daughter-in-law. Ermenegild embraced his wife’s religion, and headed a revolt against his father. He was defeated, and paid the penalty with his life at Tarragona, after refusing to accept the sacrament at the hands of an Arian bishop. Unedifying though his conduct may appear to us, he was regarded as a martyr for the faith, and is enrolled among the saints of the Catholic Church.
Nor does his example seem to have been without its effect upon his brother, Reccared, who succeeded Leovigild in 587. In the month of May 589, Toledo was thronged with Catholic bishops and priests—many lately returned from exile—and with nobles from all parts of Spain, making their way to the Basilica of Santa Maria de la Sede Real, to assist at the solemn profession of the Catholic faith by the king and his queen, Baddo. Sixty-two prelates took part in this, the third Council of Toledo, the most eminent being Massona, Bishop of Merida, Leandro of Baetica, Santardus of Braga, Ugno of Barcelona, Megecias of Narbonne, and Eufemio of Toledo. It was a memorable day for Spain. The king’s example was soon followed by his subjects of his own race, and the unification of the two peoples was greatly accelerated.
During the hundred and ten years that elapsed between the death of Reccared (601) and the rout of the Guadelete (711), no fewer than fifteen sovereigns sat on the throne of Spain. Toledo was the theatre of their barbaric triumphings, their violent entrances and tragic exits. Now the city would resound with the savage, exultant yells of the townsmen, as they dragged the body of the usurper Witeric up and down the steep, uneven streets—to cast the bleeding, shapeless thing that had so lately been a king, upon a dunghill. Now, the people would be acclaiming Wamba, greatest of the Visigoths—after the strange scene at Gerticos, where the crown was forced upon him at the sword’s point; another time, a long procession of captives would file through the gates, to witness to the old king’s triumph in Narbonnese Gaul. Not a “demise of the crown” but there would be angry mutterings among the townsfolk, and whispers of murder, compulsion, and fraud. And while the kings raved and the people wept, the Church grew every day stronger—so strong that usurper and legitimate sovereign alike had perforce to obtain her sanction to his election and accession. And as the years went on, the spark of religious zeal in the breast of Spain was fanned into flame, and we read of fierce onslaughts on the Jewish citizens, and of merciless edicts, condemning them to penalties painful and humiliating. Dark days were these for the Children of Israel whose home Toledo so long had been; but darker still were impending for their persecutors and for the royal line of the Visigoths.
An exact picture of society in Spain at this period has been preserved in the Etymologies of Isidore Pacense. The Visigoths were a primitive, barbarous people, who had imposed upon themselves the outward appearances of Roman, or rather of Byzantine, civilisation. The contemptuous reference of Hallam to this “obscure race” is undeserved. Even in their earlier stages of development the Goths manifested many noble qualities—notably, a clemency towards their enemies—which were not conspicuous in the more polished nations of the South. And though they never properly assimilated the culture of the Latins, they attained to a degree of refinement and civilisation which compares favourably with that reached by contemporaries. “Spain,” remarks the author of “Toledo” in the “Monumentos Arquitectónicos de España,” “may then fairly and proudly claim that, while in Central Europe art had acquired no distinctive form—in the midst of the bitterness of slavery, when, before the abjuration of Reccared, the fusion of the races was not legally recognised—the Iberian Peninsula had developed a definite and evident artistic and literary individuality. That individuality must have been the result of the fortuitous conjunction and union of Latin traditions, more or less degenerate, with influences originally Byzantine and with those other transformed elements introduced by the Germanic hosts of Atawulf; but, even then, it remains an individuality, which asserts itself in the surviving examples of Visigothic culture, and which was transmitted to the generations succeeding the Moslem conquest.”