Reccesvinthus Rex Offeret.

Each of these letters ends with a pendant of gold and fine pearls holding a pear of rose sapphire. The king’s crown is suspended by a quadruple chain of beautiful workmanship which attaches it to a double gem of massive gold enriched with twelve pendants in sapphire, and this gem, whose branches are open, is surmounted by a capital in rock-crystal, finely wrought; then comes a ball of the same material, and then a golden stem which forms the starting point of the suspension.

The cross which occupies the centre of the crown and is attached to the gem by a long golden chain, is not less remarkable for its elegance of form and richness of material. It is in massive gold relieved by six lovely sapphires and eight big fine pearls, each jewel is set in relief in open claws, and behind is still the fibula that hooked it to the royal mantle.

The diadem is of plain gold within, but the exterior, which the sapphires and fine pearls set in relief ornament, has another particular decoration, which consists in a set of palm leaves in open cutting whose leaves are filled with blades of the same red material which looks like cornelian stone at first sight, of which we have already spoken.

The sapphires which decorate the band, and whose setting is largely treated, are, we have said, thirty, all of the finest water, and many of them show traces of a natural crystallisation by facets; the two principal ones, which are placed in the centre of each face, are not in diameter less than thirty millimetres. The pearls are also of an exceptional size, and only a few have been affected by time. The suspension chains are composed each of five fine gems cut in open work, and the stem that supports the whole is of massive gold.

The number of sapphires that ornament this crown, the cross and the gem are not less than seventy, of which thirty are of matchless size, the pearls the same. The pendants which terminate the letters of the diadem are, as well, decorated with enamel enchased in golden borders.

So much to prove that the charge of luxury against the Toledan Goths is not unfounded. A people so enamoured of gold and jewels and embroidered silks as they at this time were, would naturally be disposed to forget the rude lessons of war and camp. Wamba had improved their town and made it a fair and comfortable place to dwell in, and the barbarians without the gates were quieted now by frequent defeat. And so, the wise and virtuous Wamba once deposed by trickery and smuggled off the throne in a cataleptic fit, garbed in the monk’s gown of renouncement, the period of Gothic decadence set in. Its day of triumph and ordered rule had been a brief if brilliant one, and it had by patient effort evolved its own rude and unstable civilisation out of rough-shod conquest. From Ataulfo and his horde of barbarians, pouring, famished and athirst, across the Pyrenees, to lettered Recesvinthus and austere Wamba, who would make an effective figure even in our own times, the range in humanity is long, the dividing sea is wide and deep. But if swift had been the triumph, swifter still and more inexplicable was the decline. A more unhappy and reckless descent to oblivion history does not record. Towards the end of the seventh century, the glory of Toledo had so sensibly diminished that a haze lies upon its subsequent history to the lurid fame of the doomed day of Guadalete. We hear dimly of deplorable vices, of a demoralised clergy, of effaced and degraded sovereigns, of a people given up to every shameful pleasure and wrapped in effeminacy and indolence.

The private story of King Egica is a curious and an unedifying one, told at length by Lozana in his Reyes Nuevos and by the Conde de Mora in his History of Toledo. Egica fell violently in love with his niece, Doña Luz, who, on her side, loved more passionately than wisely her other uncle, Don Favila. Favila seems a disreputable enough fellow, since he took the last advantage of his niece’s passion, and left her to face the most atrocious troubles that might have ceased by manly behaviour on his part. It is one of those complicated and incomprehensible episodes in history that leave us aghast. Favila is elsewhere supposed to have murdered his brother by a blow on the head for the sake of that brother’s wife. At any-rate he pursued Doña Luz and, as Lozana naïvely asserts, with her permission entered her bedroom one night, and there kneeling before the statue of the Virgin (exquisite absence of all sense of the ludicrous revealed even in modern Spanish plays where the same sort of thing happens), they proclaim themselves man and wife with the usual results. In a little while the watchful and suspicious king perceives that his niece, Doña Luz, is enceinte. The lady understands her own and the coming infant’s danger, so she has an ark made, and after a secret delivery, places the infant in it like another Moses, with quantities of linen, jewellery and money, and her women float it down the Tagus, where, by a miracle, it is found by her uncle, Grafeses, who lives at Alcántara. Not knowing whose is the child, Grafeses takes it home. At Toledo the king suspects what has happened, but can find out nothing definite, so, still true to biblical tradition, he decides to tackle the new-born infants. He sends for a list of all the children born in and without Toledo during the past three months, with the name of each father, hoping thus to discover an unfathered babe with which to charge Doña Luz. The number of babies born during the three months in the city of Toledo reached 10,428, and in the suburbs surpassed 25,000. What a different story from that of to-day! One wonders where there was room for the immense population of olden times. Alas for the vindictive king! All the babies had authentic fathers and mothers, and there was no reaching Doña Luz by this device. There remained another and less primitive vengeance. He ordered one of his gentlemen, Melias, to attack her publicly as “a lost woman.” Because she refused to become his mistress, and became somebody else’s (his brother’s), he decided she should be burnt for impurity. Excellent logic of man! On Doña Luz’s first appearance at Court Melias charged her with impropriety, and the king fiercely ordered her to reply to the accusation. “My Lord,” said Luz, with much dignity, “how would you have me reply to such a charge? God knows, and you, my lord, see that I cannot give him the reply he merits, since he is a cavalier and yet accuses me, a woman, of evil.” The king, base churl, not touched by this admirable reply, mockingly assures her that he is uncertain whether to address her as dame or maid, and defies her to find a defender, having previously forbidden his courtiers to take up her cause. At all times the picture of a disappointed lover vindictively pursuing the woman who has refused to listen to him is particularly hideous, but never more than here, where the insulted lady is so noble and patient and he such a ruffian. Without a defender, he adds, she is destined to burn for her lack of chastity. She asks for a delay, and this is surlily granted. Just as the fire is being prepared for the unfortunate Doña Luz, Don Favila arrives from the Asturias. It is not made clear to us why he did not remain and provoke a duel with Melias at once, but the historians unctuously assure us that he kissed his wife (in the eyes of God) wept over her, told her to hold her soul in patience, and returned to the Asturias in search of money. The delay must have been unendurably long, and one wonders at Egica’s unnatural command of temper, when even now, as I, alas! too well know, it takes a long time, even with the aid of steam, to get from Toledo to the Asturias. In hot haste, however, Don Favila returned to Toledo, challenged Melias, and all the court assembled in the Vega beneath the archbishop’s palace, to watch the fight. Doña Luz remained in her chamber, full of sorrow and fear for Favila. The king ordered the Duke of Cabra and Count of Merida with three hundred cavaliers to guard the Vega, and, under pain of death, prevent anyone from assisting the combatants. His fierce desire, not even concealed, was that Favila should be killed, and Doña Luz thus placed more utterly at his mercy. The knights met with a terrible shock of steel, so that both were unhorsed and nearly killed. This report reached Doña Luz and prostrated her. She hurried out to see for herself; and Favila, recovered from his faint, looked up and gave her a glance of reassurance and love. He was only dizzy as was proved by his alert spring to his feet and quick rush upon his lady’s enemy, through whose slanderous mouth he thrust his sword inflicting thus a death wound. He coolly drew out his sword, wiped it, and advancing to the royal seat, he bowed before the king and queen, and haughtily hoped that Doña Luz’s reputation now was cleared. Not satisfied, Egica sent another knight, Bristes, (what unutterable cads those Gothic knights were!), to challenge the lady’s innocence, and Bristes went gaily forth on his base sovereign’s behalf to meet Favila to whom he shouted: “I will kill you and have Doña Luz burnt.” Favila wisely replied: “deeds not words weigh” and ran his sword through the braggart’s body. Much to his grief and disappointment Egica was forced to admit the lady’s vindication, but demanded her lover’s sword, which provoked a fresh onslaught. Grafeses stayed the clash of steel by coming to court to learn the meaning of all these wild doings, and, on passing through his niece’s room, on his way to the queen’s chamber, recognised a handkerchief which resembled those folded round the infant of the ark he had picked up on the banks of the Tagus at Alcantara. Questioning his niece, he discovered the nature of her relations with Favila, and instantly insisted on their marriage. The king was still bent on another duel, and sent Longaris to fight Favila about the sword, when a hermit comes to court and, in the name of heaven, stops the duel by revealing, as a divine message from above, the secret loves of Doña Luz and Don Favila. Both the cavaliers were wounded, and Doña Luz flung herself on her knees before the king and begged for mercy for her lover. After long hesitation, impelled by the hermit’s command from heaven to accept the inevitable, Egica gives in, signals the end of the third duel against Doña Luz’s happiness, and permits, gracelessly of course, after Favila’s recovery, his public marriage with the thrice unfortunate Doña Luz. He and the queen were witnesses, and Grafeses, a kind of deus ex machina, proclaimed the infante Childe Pelayo, the future hero and victor of Covadonga. Egica’s other feat was to persecute anew the Jews for an imaginary conspiracy to convert Spain into a Hebrew kingdom. He pronounced them slaves, took their children from them, and forebade them to intermarry.

Two figures stand out in this prolonged and monotonous legend in exaggerated, it may even be said, in false relief. Witiza and Rodrigo are charged with the ruin of the Toledan kingdom. No less than four archbishops, in no moderate language, have recorded the tale of Witiza’s iniquities, Sebastian of Salamanca, Isidor Pacense, Lucas of Tuy, and Rodrigo of Toledo. None of these writers were contemporaries of Witiza, and they wrote in days when research was nigh impossible, and when we may doubt if a premium was put upon accuracy. How much even of our own history is a matter of hearsay? and does there exist a man so fortressed by virtue as to live without the range of slander if he be so unfortunate as to excite enmity or jealousy; above all, if he tread on the susceptible toes of prejudice? This is what Witiza precisely did. And the prejudice he wounded was ecclesiastical, and ecclesiastical rancour we know at all times has proved the bitterest man can provoke.

But we also find the notable figure of the Archbishop of Toledo, Julian, a fluent and accomplished writer, and a saint. The anonymous chronicler of Cordova tells us that his origin was Jewish, a fact suppressed by the anti-semitical Spanish historians. He succeeded Quiricus and wrote the history of Wamba’s reign, all in proving himself a model pastor. His accomplishments were varied. He was a historian, an orator, theologian, polemist, poet, and musician. So much genius and sanctity in a Goth was little short of an impertinence. The list of his writings is vast, but only a few remain. Some are in Greek, most are in Latin, and their matter is hardly of general interest. He wrote the Apology of Real Faith in reply to the heresies of Apollinarius, and sent it to Pope Leo II. It reached Rome after the pope’s death. The succeeding pope, Benedict, replied to it, and two years later the reply reached the Archbishop of Toledo. It provoked a learned treatise to prove that the writer was in accord with Isidor of Seville, Fulgence, Ambrose, Augustine and Cyril of Alexandria. Three ecclesiastics were dispatched with the precious document, and it took them fourteen months to reach Rome. Meanwhile three other popes had succeeded Benedict, and the fourth called a council to consider the matter. All Spain hung on the decision; the king was worried and alarmed, not knowing if he should regard his erudite archbishop as a heretic or one of the faithful. At last the messengers from Rome arrived, bringing praise and admiration from a pope to whom the document had not been addressed, while between him and Leo, the original disputer of Julian’s orthodoxy, four popes placidly lay in their tombs. Julian died three years after this triumph, having ruled during ten brilliant years of primacy, 690, and was buried with St Ildefonso in the church of St Leocadia.