In the reign of Egica, Witiza’s father,—plaga inguinalis immisericorditer illabitur. (Isid. Pacensis.) And for two years before the Moorish invasion,—habia habido continua hambre y pestilencia en Espana, con que se habian debilitado mucho los cuerpos, sin lo que el ocio las habia enflaquecido.—Morales, 12. 69. 5.
St. Isidore, in his History of the Goths, distinctly describes the Northern Lights among the signs that announced the wars of Attila. “Multa eodem tempore cœli et terræ signa præcesserunt, quorum prodigiis tam crudele bellum significaretur. Nam, assiduis terræ motibus factis, a parte Orientis Luna fuscata est, a solis occasu stella cometes apparuit, atque ingenti magnitudine aliquandiu fulsit. Ab aquilonis plaga cœlum rubens, sicut ignis aut sanguis, effectus est, permistis perigneum ruborem lineis clarioribus in speciem hastarum rutilantium deformatis. Nec mirum, ut in tam ingenti cæsorum strage, divinitus tam multa signorum demonstraretur ostensio.”—España Sagrada, t. vi. 491.
And worst of enemies, their Sins were arm’d
Against them.—[I. p. 3.]
The following description of the state of the Christian world when the Saracens began their conquests, is taken from a singular manuscript, “wherein the history of the Cruisades and of all the Mahommedan emperors from A. D. 558, to A. D. 1588, is gathered out of the Chronikes of William Archbishop of Tyreus, the protoscribe of Palestine, of Basilius Jhohannes Heraldus, and sundry others, and reduced into a poem epike by Robert Barret, 1610.” The author was an old soldier, whose language is a compound of Josuah Sylvester and King Cambyses, with a strong relish of Ancient Pistol.
Now in this sin-flood age not only in East
Did the impious imps the faithful persecute,
But like affliction them pursued in West,
And in all parts the good trod under foot;