Woman's place in the criminal procedure of the time was unique. It appears that the punishment inflicted for any given crime depended not so much upon the importance of the offence as upon the importance of the criminal, and that almost every injury might be atoned for by the payment of a certain sum of money, the amount depending upon the rank of the person making the payment. Such money payments, wherever a woman was involved, were regulated according to the following scale of values: from her birth to the age of fifteen, she was valued at only one-half the price of a man of her own class; from fifteen to twenty, she was considered of equal value; from twenty to forty, she was rated as worth one-sixth less than a man; and after forty, at even less than half. Inasmuch as both men and women were amenable to the same laws with but this difference in the amount of the penalty in any given case, it would appear that women were recognized to possess a smaller money-earning power than the men; and such was undoubtedly the case, in spite of the fact that both men and women seemed to share alike the various daily tasks in the earlier and simpler days of Gothic rule in Spain. Such participation on the part of the women was by no means common among the Romans, and this fact, together with the spread of slavery, did much to put the women in this secondary position, so far as ability to work was concerned.
With all this apparent equality in fact and in the eyes of the law, it is somewhat doubtful whether or not the wives and mothers really enjoyed a high degree of personal liberty. Their legal rights were clearly defined, but it is certain that they were looked upon as inferior beings. The prevalent customs with regard to the marriage dower show in no uncertain fashion that the wife was considered to a certain extent as the chattel and property of her husband; for a woman could not marry without a dower, but it was paid not by but to her parents, and by her future husband. A marriage of that description may be likened to the sale of a bill of goods. In further proof of this dependent position of the women, and to show the care which was taken to protect them from contamination of any kind, one of the statutes regulating the practice of medicine presents certain interesting features. This law prohibited surgeons from bleeding any freewoman except in the presence of her husband, her nearest relative, or at least of some properly appointed witness. A Salic law dating from about the same period imposed a fine of fifteen pieces of gold upon anyone who should improperly press a woman's hand, but there seems to be nothing to show that the Goths considered legislation upon this important point necessary. Even under these conditions the physician's position was somewhat precarious, as it was provided that in case he should withdraw enough of the patient's blood to cause death, he became the slave of the patient's heir at law!
Spain was like the greater part of the rest of Europe at this time with regard to its intellectual atmosphere; Christianity and Roman civilization had not yet succeeded in stamping out the old pagan beliefs of the early inhabitants, and superstition and ignorance were for a long time characteristic traits of the majority of the people. The air was peopled with demons, the devil himself was no infrequent visitor, witches and fortune tellers were not without influence, and stealthily, by night, many mystic rites were celebrated. Many of the Christian beliefs of the time are likewise the result of ignorance and superstition, but at that time, naturally, only the pagan ideas were condemned. Accordingly, while the law of the Goths recognized trial by ordeal, wherein God is summoned to bear miraculous witness in favor of the innocent, the same law condemned belief in witchcraft! The favorite ordeal among the Goths was trial by red-hot iron. The Church took charge of this ceremony, which was accompanied by a most solemn ritual, and all this was legal and religious and approved by the highest authorities! But the poor witches had to go! It was charged that they were able to produce storm and ruin by means of their incantations, that they offered nightly sacrifices to devils, and that in general they were in league with the powers of darkness and productive of much disorder. Furthermore, soothsayers were not to be consulted concerning the death of a king; and any freeman disobeying this edict was soundly flogged, lost his property by confiscation, and was condemned to perpetual servitude. These mysterious and redoubtable old women who gathered simples upon the mountain side and dealt in the black art had formerly been very numerous, and, although they have always continued to exist in Spain, their number was much diminished by means of the enforcement of the new law.
In addition to the various social and political questions which were demanding settlement at this time, there was a matter of ecclesiastical difference which caused great trouble and confusion. The Goths, though Christians, belonged to the Arian branch of the Church, while the Spaniards were firm believers in the Athanasian or Latin form of Christianity, and the struggle for supremacy between the two went on for many years before either side was willing to submit. Near the beginning of the sixth century, Clothilda, daughter of the Frankish king, Clovis, was married to Amalaric, the Gothic king, whose capital was then in the old city of Narbonne. Political advantages were supposed to come from this international alliance, but the results were quite to the contrary. The queen was an Athanasian, and the king an Arian Catholic, and neither was willing to endure the heresy of the other. Amalaric used his most persuasive arts in his attempts to win over his wife to the Gothic point of view, but his endeavor was in vain, and she remained obstinately true to the God of her fathers. Finally, irritated beyond measure, the king ordered that Clothilda should no longer be allowed to make public profession of her religion, and the result was a merry war which led to the defeat and final death of the Arian sovereign. Late in this same sixth century there was in Spain another Frankish queen, who not only held steadfastly to her own faith, but was the indirect means whereby all the country was induced to abandon the Arian creed. The native Catholic clergy, under the leadership of Leander, a most noted churchman, and Bishop of Seville, had long urged the necessity of such a change, but the Goths were unwilling to submit; and so matters stood until Prince Hermenegild, urged on by Leander, and most of all by his wife Ingunda, led a revolt against his father, King Leovgild. The revolt was not a success, but the star of the Athanasian party was rising rapidly, and the open stand of the queen for the Latin doctrines gave great impetus and power to the whole movement. The triumph was complete when Leovgild's son and heir, Recared, saw that further opposition was useless and publicly announced his conversion to the faith of Rome.
In the early history of the Church in Spain there are many interesting references to women which are not generally known, but which reveal, on the whole, a condition of affairs similar to that which was to be found in other parts of Europe at the same time. Monasteries were probably unknown in the peninsula before the middle of the sixth century, but from a very early day it is certain that women as well as men were taking vows of perpetual chastity and devoting themselves to a life of holy works. Early in the fourth century the Council of Elvira prescribed penalties for professed nuns who might desire to reënter the world, and the Council of Saragossa, in 380, declared that no virgin should be allowed to devote herself to a religious life until she had reached the mature age of forty years. That same Council of Elvira was the first in the history of the Church to ordain the celibacy of the secular clergy, and its thirty-third canon forbade the bishops, priests, and deacons of the peninsula to live as husbands with their wives. In the year 591, the first Synod of Toledo, over which Bishop Leander presided, enacted various canons which give some interesting sidelights on the times. It appears that ecclesiastics had already been forbidden to keep women servants in their houses, but the rule was so often disregarded that it was enacted that in the future, as a punishment for such intractable churchmen, their servants should be sold as slaves and the proceeds handed over to some charitable organization. In just what way this punishment was to affect the clergy, beyond causing them temporary annoyance, it is difficult to understand, but there is no doubt as to the fact.
In all of the seven centuries preceding the Moorish conquest of Spain there had been some little progress, so far as the position of women was concerned, but it cannot be said that the advance had been great. The original Gothic ideas on this subject had been far superior to those held by the Romans, but the rigor of the old ideas lost force in time, and, if the accounts of the Church historians be true, the last Goths to wield the sceptre were so corrupt and led such abandoned lives that God, in his vengeance, sent the Mohammedan horde upon them. In all these shifting times the conditions of life were such that few women were able to take any prominent part in public affairs; or if they did, the imperfect records of the epoch fail to make mention of it. At intervals there were queens, like Ingunda, possessed of a strong and decided character and ready to take a part in the control of affairs, but they were the exception and not the rule, as the education of women was so very limited that few of them knew enough to see beyond a very narrow horizon. Probably the most enlightened woman in all this period was the nun Florentina, sister of Bishop Leander of Seville, who was far-famed for her good works. At the time of her death in 603, she had risen to such distinction on account of her character and her ability that she was made the general director of a system of over forty convents, which were under her continual inspection and control. Such, in brief, is her story; further details are wanting, but even this is enough to impress us with the fact that she must have been a great woman and representative of all that was good and noble in her day.
CHAPTER XIII
WOMEN AMONG THE MOORS
The closing years of Gothic rule in Spain, and the various causes which finally led to the Moorish invasion, are somewhat involved in legend and mystery. But in spite of a scepticism which has been openly expressed by some authors, it seems more than probable that the fabled Rodrigo, from his capital at Toledo, actually ruled over Spain in the year 709, and that he was, directly or indirectly, the cause of the invasion of the Moors. According to the commonly accepted story, the moral condition of Spain at the beginning of the eighth century was most deplorable. The Goths had lost that reputation for honesty and chastity which in the earlier days of their power had distinguished them from the Romans. Rodrigo, "the last of the Goths," lived a life of such flagrant profligacy that the coming of the Moors was but just punishment for all his sins. As Miss Yonge has remarked, "the fall of Gothic Spain was one of the disasters that served to justify the saying that all great catastrophes are caused by women." The woman in the present instance was Florinda, often called La Cava, reputed to be the daughter of Count Julian, commander of the south of Spain and in charge of the fortress of Ceuta. Although Rodrigo already possessed a wife, Egilona, who was a brilliant, able, and beautiful woman, he was a man of little moral force and had a roving eye and lusty passions. Seeing Florinda once upon a time, he coveted her, succeeded in winning her affections, and was not content until he had betrayed her confidence and brought dishonor upon her and her father. Count Julian, filled with a righteous anger at this unwarranted act on the part of his liege lord, openly revolted, called in the Moors, and unwittingly opened his country to an invader who would be slow to leave. The story is told in the old ballad, as follows: