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:
"Long had the crimes of Spain cried out to Heaven:
At length the measure of offence was full.
Count Julian called the invader ...
...Mad to wreak
His vengeance for his deeply injured child
On Roderick's head, an evil hour for Spain,
For that unhappy daughter, and himself.
Desperate apostate, on the Moors he called,
And, like a cloud of locusts, whom the wind
Wafts from the plains of wasted Africa,
The Mussulman upon Iberia's shores
Descends. A countless multitude they came:
Syrian, Moor, Saracen, Greek renegade,
Persian, and Copt, and Latin, in one band
Of erring faith conjoined, strong in the youth
And heat of zeal, a dreadful brotherhood."
La Cava, the name by which Florinda has been called ever since by the Spaniards, means "the wicked one," and the general theory has been that, in spite of her betrayed innocence, she has been held in execration for all that followed. Others, however, have pointed out the discrepancy between the generally acknowledged purity of character of Florinda and the meaning of La Cava, and it is their opinion that Count Julian's daughter is merely legendary, and that La Cava refers in some allegorical way to the dissolute and voluptuous life which Rodrigo had been leading and which was in itself a good and sufficient reason for all the misfortunes which were to follow.
While all is not clear as to the reason for the invitation to come to Spain, there is no cause to doubt that it was accepted in a most hearty manner. Modern historians do not hesitate to say that the Catholic churchmen, not realizing the danger, invited the Moslems to aid them in repressing a revolt among the Gothic nobles. However the case may have been, Mousa, the Berber chieftain, sent his bravest sheik, Tarik, with a goodly following, to lead the invasion. The white-turbaned warriors crossed the strait between what had always been called the Pillars of Hercules, and landed upon that great rock which has ever since borne that leader's name, Gebel-al-Tarik—Gibraltar—the "rock of Tarik." Rodrigo, with an army of about eighty thousand men, which he had hastily gathered together, hastened to meet the invaders, and the two armies met on the banks of the Guadelete. Egilona, Roderick's wife, was left with a safe guard in the strongly fortified town of Meriba, while the "last of the Goths," in shining armor and wearing a helmet adorned with horns of gold, such as may be seen upon old Gothic coins, fought vainly against the terrible horsemen of the deserts. La bataille est merveillose e pesant, to quote the words of the Song of Roland, describing that other battle, between the Franks and the Moors, some sixty-five years later in the fatal pass of Roncesvalles; the Goths were overwhelmingly defeated, and Rodrigo disappeared in a most mysterious way, leaving his crown and sceptre upon the river bank. Mousa, with another invading force, had followed close upon the heels of Tarik, and he it was who pushed on to Meriba and laid siege to the town, knowing full well that the queen was within the gates, while Tarik, by a series of easy conquests, made his way to Toledo. When the siege came to a close and the Berbers entered the fortifications, they were amazed at the richness and vast amount of treasure which fell into their hands. The jewel caskets of Egilona in particular excited their wonder and admiration, and so many chains of gold and precious stones did they find among her possessions that she was straightway named "the Mother of Necklaces." When the spoils of battle were divided, the fair captive queen fell to the lot of Mousa's son, Abdul Aziz, who had been made ruler over the newly conquered territory. The young Moorish prince was soon a slave to the charms of Egilona, and so great did his love for her become that he married her, with the promise that he would always regard her as queen and would never marry again; he never broke that promise. Seville was his capital, and there his power was so great that the kalif in Damascus, fearing that he might attempt to rule independently, sent out men to take his life. These assassins found him so beloved by his soldiers that they feared to attack him until they had circulated the rumor that Egilona was about to convert him to the Christian faith and that he would soon wear a crown upon his head, like any Christian king. After this story had been spread abroad, the kalif's men followed Aziz to a small mosque, where he went sometimes to pray, cut off his head, and showed it in the public place, with the order for his death.