The empire of the Visigoths, during the period of its greatest prosperity, extended from the valleys of the Loire and the Garonne to the Mediterranean. The surrender of a portion of this territory to Clovis consolidated the power of both the kingdoms of France and Spain, by adopting for their common boundary the natural rampart of the Pyrenees. The tastes and traditions of the Teutonic nation, heretofore averse to sedentary occupations, and considering all labor, and especially the cultivation of the soil, as degrading to the character of a freeman, caused such employment to be abandoned to the former subjects of the Roman Empire; nor was it until several centuries had elapsed, and the advantages resulting from industrious tillage had been demonstrated, that this prejudice was in some degree removed. At all times during the sway of the Visigoths, every species of manual labor was largely performed by slaves. The institution of colleges of artificers—a custom inherited from the most polished nation of antiquity—had been adopted by the barbarian conquerors, and the slaves composing these bodies, where the talents of the father were transmitted to the son, were naturally ranked among the most valuable of personal possessions. Large numbers of these artisans were the property of the Crown and of the Church, being respectively under the control of the Royal Treasurer and the Bishop, and the unique specimens of the goldsmith’s skill which the fortunate discovery at Guarrazar has preserved for us, reveal to what proficiency in the mechanical arts these accomplished bondmen had attained.
The greatest luxury and pomp were indulged in by the Visigothic nation, a people which the world still calls barbarian. Their palaces were encrusted with precious marbles. The furniture of their apartments was of the most expensive character. The garments of the nobility were of silken fabrics embroidered with gold. The ladies of the court used for their ablutions basins of silver, and admired their beauty in exquisitely chased mirrors set with jewels. The horses of the royal household were covered with harnesses and trappings blazing with the precious metals. A hundred wagons laden with baggage and all the paraphernalia of boundless extravagance followed in the train of the monarch. Such was the lavish expenditure of even the middle and lower classes, that it became necessary to enact a law prohibiting the bestowal of a dowry of more than one-tenth of the property of a bridegroom upon the bride.
Not only did the Visigoths strive to imitate their Roman subjects in the style and finish of their edifices, but in every public employment, in every department of art and labor, was the potent influence of the subjugated people visible. The organization of the various corps and divisions of the army was modelled after that of the legion. The most popular amusements were, with the exception of gladiatorial combats, identical with those which had excited to frenzied enthusiasm the vast audiences of Rome and Constantinople in the circus and the amphitheatre. The dress of the citizen, the armor of the soldier, were Roman; the ornaments of the ladies, the insignia of royalty, the decorations of the churches, were Byzantine. The language in common use was a barbarous and bastard Latin. The fusion of hostile races, the amalgamation of the conqueror and the conquered, that political problem which has taxed the skill of the wisest statesmen, was almost brought to a successful solution by the broad statesmanship of the Visigothic sovereigns. The adoption and enforcement of a uniform and well-conceived body of laws did much to accomplish this end. But the acceptance of orthodox Christianity as the recognized form of national faith, and the legalizing of intermarriage between the different peoples of the Peninsula, by their tendency to remove the formidable barriers raised by caste, which had hitherto isolated the various classes of society, did far more to promote the union of the discordant elements of society. The Basques—constant types of the primitive Iberian—alone, among the multifarious tribes which acknowledged the supremacy of the court of Toledo, have preserved their nationality, and have obstinately refused to surrender those distinctive racial peculiarities that have made them for centuries the subject of the entertaining speculations of the ethnologist.
In some respects a striking parallel, in others a decided contrast existed between Goth and Arab, representatives of the Aryan and Semitic branches of the human family, who crossed swords in Europe for the first time in history, on the plains of the Spanish Peninsula. Between these two great ethnographical divisions, a spirit of irreconcilable enmity has always prevailed. No fusion between them has ever been effected. Where one has obtained ascendency in any part of the world, the other has either preserved its special traits or gradually become extinct. Considerations of political expediency, the claims of divine revelation, the benefits of trade, the ultimate prospect of national union and social equality, have not been sufficient to counteract the influence of an antagonism which anticipates all human records in its antiquity. The customs of nomadic peoples are proverbially persistent; their occupation frequently survives the change of residence, the accidents of migration, and the influence of new and radically different associations. Both the Goths and the Arabs placed their principal dependence upon their flocks and herds, but neither ever hesitated to exchange the crook of the shepherd for the spear of the robber. The love of war and violence was the predominating characteristic of both. They had a common admiration for courage as the greatest of virtues; a common appreciation of the noble qualities of personal liberty, of private honor, of generous hospitality. Their habits were slothful, their existence precarious. Their jealousy of power forbade their acknowledgment of royal authority. They considered all industrial employments as beneath the dignity of manhood. Their worship was tainted with the most objectionable features of idolatry,—the adoration of stones, the practice of fetichism, the horrors of human sacrifice. Alike were they drunkards and desperate gamesters, who eagerly placed their liberty at stake, whose revels resounded with brawling, and whose disputes were settled with the sword. They recognized no permanent ownership in the soil, possessed little portable wealth, were ignorant of the arts and without the knowledge of letters. Like all barbarians, they believed disease and insanity to be caused by demoniacal possession. With both, love of poetry was a passion, and the personality of the bard the object of almost idolatrous reverence. Such were the traits common to two nations, separated by a distance of eighteen hundred miles, ignorant of each other’s existence, and living under entirely dissimilar climatic conditions. The atmosphere of the Baltic was perpetually cold and damp, that of Arabia dry and torrid almost beyond endurance. Eastern Europe was covered with dense forests, traversed by noble rivers, and dotted with impassable swamps. In the Desert nothing was so rare as a tree or rivulet. The physical conformation of the Goth and the Arab respectively was controlled by his environment to an even greater degree than was the mental constitution of either. The former was of giant stature and strength, and of fair complexion; the latter slender. nervous, and swarthy. With the Goth, female chastity was held in the highest esteem; with the Arab, it was the subject of caustic epigram, of jest, and of satire. The Goth, a monogamist, knew nothing of the pleasures of gallantry; the polygamous Arab placed indulgence in them second only to the excitement of battle. The Goths were among the first and most devout proselytes of Christianity; the Arabs have ever obstinately refused to acknowledge the divinity of Christ or the superior authority of the Gospel.
That invincible prowess which, nurtured by poverty and an abstemious life, was displayed with equal distinction and success amidst the forests of Europe and on the sandy plains of Africa, was the potent weapon which obtained for each of these great nations supremacy over their adversaries; an advantage which, through internal dissension, sectarian prejudice, and social corruption, was eventually lost; but not until the moral and physical peculiarities of both had impressed themselves upon their contemporaries, so deeply as to insure their transmission, with but little modification, to subsequent ages.
The spirit of the Visigoths was, almost from the first, decidedly progressive. This general tendency towards improvement, and a desire for the blessings of civilization, stimulated commercial activity, increased domestic happiness, and opened a field for the development of art, the advancement of science, the strict administration of justice, and the consequent decrease of brutality and crime. The wisdom of the Gothic polity and the equity of its laws afford a pleasing and instructive example of the capacity of a people to raise itself unaided from barbarism—a people which, in addition to the romantic interest attaching to its history, is entitled to the grateful remembrance of mankind for the beneficent influence it has exerted upon the political institutions and the social order of Europe; as well as for the creation of a judicial system whose merits and whose principles, confirmed by the experience of centuries, are still acknowledged by the most august tribunals of the civilized world.
CHAPTER V
THE INVASION AND CONQUEST OF SPAIN
710–713
General Conditions and Physical Features of the Spanish Peninsula—Various Classes of the Population—Supremacy of the Church—Tyranny of the Visigothic Kings—Fatal Policy of Witiza—Accession of Roderick—Count Julian—Invasion of Tarik—Battle of the Guadalete—Its Momentous Results—Progress of the Moslems—Arrival of Musa—His Success—Immense Booty secured by the Victors—Quarrel of Tarik and Musa—Interference of the Khalif—Submission of the Goths—Musa’s Vast Scheme of Conquest—The Two Generals ordered to Damascus—The Triumphal Procession through Africa—Fate of Musa—Causes and Effects of the Moslem Occupation of Spain.
The encroaching spirit of Islam, dominated by the potent motives of avarice, ambition, and fanaticism, was not content with its marvellous achievements and the possession of two continents, it aspired to universal conquest. The submission of Africa was now complete. The sovereignty of the Byzantine Empire had vanished forever from the southern coast of the Mediterranean. The tact and military skill of Musa had won the confidence, and inspired the respect, of the treacherous, warlike, and hitherto intractable, tribes of Mauritania. A large number of the latter had embraced Mohammedanism. A still greater proportion who, either from association, policy, or conviction, professed attachment to the law of Moses, maintained an intimate correspondence with their oppressed brethren of the Spanish Peninsula. The latter in secret brooded over the accumulated wrongs of centuries, and, under an appearance of resignation, harbored designs that boded ill to the temporal and ecclesiastical tyrants of the Visigothic monarchy. The restless glance of the Arabian general had long contemplated with envy, mingled with an insatiable desire for plunder, the rich and splendid cities of ancient Bætica; its teeming mines; its pastures, with their myriads of cattle; its plains, traversed by innumerable canals and rivers; where even a careless and incomplete system of cultivation produced harvests almost rivalling in luxuriance those of the famous valleys of the Euphrates and the Nile. A strait, of less than eight miles in width in its narrowest part, now presented the sole physical impediment to the further progress of the conqueror. It was defended upon the African side by the fortress of Ceuta, whose governor was a vassal or tributary of the Visigothic king, and whose valor had rendered nugatory the efforts of the bravest Moslem captains, who, fully appreciating the strategic importance of this stronghold, had made repeated and desperate attempts to capture it. This promontory, which formed one side of the channel, familiar for ages to the Phœnicians, and supposed by the ignorant to be the end of the world, was protected from foreign intrusion by the portentous fables and prodigies invented by Tyrian artifice. Facing it, on the Spanish shore, stood the Temple of Hercules, with its dome of gilded bronze, its columns of electrum, and its mysterious altars raised to Art, Old Age, and Poverty. Unlike other Pagan shrines—for it contained no visible representation of a divinity—it was always approached by the Phœnician mariner with feelings of gratitude and awe. It was associated with his naval superiority over the other nations of antiquity. It was intimately connected with the increase of his wealth; with the continuance of his prosperity; with the discovery of lands unknown to his contemporaries and rivals; with the preservation of his stores of occult wisdom, whose sources he explored with such acuteness and concealed with such success. Every device of fable and superstition had been employed to clothe this locality with such a character as might effectually check the efforts of an inquiring or aggressive commercial spirit. To the accomplishment of this end, the phenomena of Nature lent their powerful aid. The contracted passage between two of the greatest bodies of water known to the ancients was of unfathomable depth. On both sides, despite the agitation of the waves, its level remained the same. Even during both the ebb and flow of the tide, the current always ran strongly towards the east. Its force was steady, constant, invariable; the waxing and waning of the moon, the most furious tempests, exerted no appreciable influence over the inflexible regularity of its motion. It was not without reason that the apparent suspension of the laws of equilibrium and of the forces of Nature was attributed by the superstitious to the divinity whose temple guarded the famous portals upon which he had imposed his name. It has been maintained by scholars that within this shrine was preserved, as a sacred relic, a fragment of magnetic ore, of great antiquity, known to the Tyrian navigator as a priceless talisman—the precursor of the mariner’s compass—which had guided his course to distant Britain, and assured to his countrymen the empire of the seas. According to popular belief, through this channel the way led to the realm of Chaos. To brave its unknown and dreaded perils was sacrilege, and to none, save those authorized by the priests of Melcareth, was this undertaking permitted. In subsequent times, invested with little less mystery, this region had bequeathed not a few of its reminiscences to the Roman, and awakened the curiosity of the Arab, as he fixed his gaze upon the white-topped waves sparkling in the sunlight between continent and continent and sea and sea, like the facets of a precious gem; or, in the beautiful imagery of the Oriental chronicler, “like a diamond between two emeralds and two sapphires, the master-stone in the ring of empire.”
In the beginning of the eighth century the kingdom of the Visigoths presented every appearance of prosperity and power. Its inherent weakness was imperfectly disguised by the pomp of its hierarchy and the luxury of its court, which veiled the defects of its constitution and the abuses of its government with a false and delusive splendor. Its licentious sovereign retained none of the primitive virtues of his ancestors, whose intrepid spirit and resistless valor had sustained them on a hundred fields of battle, and had borne their arms in a long succession of triumphs from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. The successor of Reccared and Wamba had degenerated into a feeble tyrant, who reigned by a disputed title, and in whose sensual nature neither the rites of hospitality, the obligations of friendship, the dignity of the regal office, nor the infirmities of age, interposed any obstacle to the indulgence of his unbridled passions.