Soon after the establishment of the Visigothic monarchy at Toledo, the power of the crown seems to have been bounded by two restrictions only: (1) The king could not condemn without legal trial, but he had power to soften the rigour of severe justice or entirely absolve the delinquents brought before his tribunals; (2) the second restriction related to the decrees of king, which were received as binding during his life; but which had no force in perpetuity, unless sanctioned at the same time by the signatures of the bishops and barons in council assembled. In other respects he was unshackled. He could make war or peace at pleasure; he could issue proclamations which had the force of law, subject to the restriction just mentioned; he commanded in the field, and presided in the court of justice. The jurisdiction of the king was not confined to affairs purely temporal. He could issue general regulations relating to the maintenance of discipline, or the interests of religion. He could preside in tribunals of appeal, even in affairs purely ecclesiastical. The king nominated to all vacant bishoprics, and even translated from one see to another; but this prerogative was very gradually acquired. The fourth and last ecclesiastical prerogative of the king was that of convoking national councils, and of confirming them by his authority. He was thus, in the widest sense, in a degree unknown among other Catholic nations, the protector of the church. In consequence, the bishops became courtiers, and generally submissive to the royal will; and even the fathers of the Toledan councils were swayed by fear, or by the hope of gaining favour.
In other respects the king was invested by the laws with much outward reverence. Whoever conspired against his life was punished with death; or if the capital penalty was remitted, the delinquent was blinded, shaven, and doomed to perpetual confinement. He who even affronted the king was, if rich, mulcted in half his possessions; if poor, he remained at the monarch’s disposal. Whoever defamed the character of a dead king, was punished with fifty stripes. Yet, with all this studied respect, no monarchs were ever so unfortunate as those of the Visigoths—none whose empire, liberty, or even life, was so insecure. From Atawulf to Roderic, the greater number were assassinated or deposed.
We cannot fail to be struck with the national pride of the Goths: they alone were styled nobiles, while the rest of the community were viliores. Under the latter humiliating term were included not merely servi and liberti, or slaves or freedmen, but even the ingenui, or free-born, whatever might be their wealth or consideration; and, to preserve the privileged caste uncontaminated, marriages were rigorously forbidden between the victors and the vanquished, until Recesuinto abolished the prohibition. Not only was the slave who presumed to marry a free woman put to death, but the free woman, who either married or sinned with a slave, was burned at the stake with him. Again, the relative importance of the three classes, nobles, freemen, and slaves, was carefully graduated by the laws. For the same crime a greater punishment was awarded to the second than the first, and to the third than the second. If from the civil we pass to the military state of the country, we shall find that the Goths were one vast nation of soldiers, the words soldier and man being considered almost as synonymous. The obligation of service was imperative on all freemen; nor were the sons of the king admitted to his table until they had made their essay in arms. Slaves were also admitted to join the levies, since every owner was required to take with him to the field one-tenth of the number he possessed. All Goths capable of bearing arms, whether lay or clerical, were subject to military duty; and heavy were the penalties with which he was visited who absented or hid himself to escape the conscription.
Matrimony, the last of the sacraments mentioned in the Visigothic canons, was considered of unrivalled importance among a people so tenacious of their privileges, and so jealous of the purity of their blood. As before observed, marriages between the victors and the vanquished were rigorously prohibited, until Recesuinto repealed the obnoxious law. The damsel could not give her hand to anyone, unless he were not merely approved, but selected for her, by her parents; or, if an orphan, by her natural guardians; and, if she married contrary to their wishes, she not only forfeited all right to her share of her future prosperity, but both she and her husband became slaves—the slaves of the man for whom her relatives had intended her. The dowry was given by the bridegroom, not by the guardians of the bride, and was carefully preserved by them. The impediments to matrimony were numerous. (1) The male was always to have the advantage of years over the female. (2) He or she who had been betrothed to anyone could not marry another before the expiration of two years; if this prohibition was disregarded, slavery was the doom of both. (3) He who forced a woman could not marry her. (4) If a Christian married a Hebrew, both were banished to different places. (5) The monastic orders, public or devotional penitents, virgins veiled and vowed, were naturally excluded from this sacrament; so also were kindred to the sixth degree.
A married couple could at any time separate by mutual agreement; but they could not return to each other, much less remarry. It was only in case of adultery, or when the husband committed the most abominable of sins, or when he wished his wife to commit adultery, that the vinculum matrimonii was declared forever dissolved, and she was at liberty to marry another man. Adultery was reputed so enormous a crime among the Visigoths, that the person who committed it became the slave of the injured partner. If a husband caught his wife in flagrante delicto, he could, with perfect impunity, destroy both her and her paramour—a permission of which a modern Spaniard would not be slow to avail himself. When the actual guilt was not witnessed, every means, not excepting tortures, were used to arrive at its knowledge.
HARDSHIPS OF THE JEWS
Under the Goths, Spain was no more exempt from heresies than she had been under the Romans. The first is that of Nestorius, respecting the mysterious union of the divine and human natures in Christ; but it was speedily repressed. The Manichæans and Priscillianists were not more successful; both Arians and Catholics united in banishing them: extirpation was reserved for later times. After the accession of Recared, when the Catholic religion became the only one in Spain, severe penalties were decreed against all who presumed to differ from the established faith. In the reign of Chintella, and in a council held at Toledo (the sixth), a decree was made that thenceforth none but Catholics should be allowed to remain in the country; and all succeeding kings were to swear that the Jews, the only misbelievers remaining, should not be tolerated.
By a subsequent law this odious intolerance was more clearly and fatally defined. Under the penalty of confiscation of property and perpetual banishment, it prohibited all men, of whatever condition, whether natives or resident foreigners, ever to call in question, either in public or private, the holy Catholic and apostolic faith, the evangelic institutions, the definitions of the fathers, the decrees of the church, whether ancient or recent, the sacraments, or anything whatever which that church held as holy. After these decrees the poor Jews could expect little mercy; they had never, indeed, enjoyed much security since the Roman domination. Sisibut, Sisenando, Chintella, Cindasuinto, Recesuinto, Wamba, and Ervigius were the most eager rivals in the race of persecution. They decreed that the Jews should be baptised; that such as were baptised should not be allowed to have Christian servants; that they should observe Easter Sunday according to the Christian rite; that they should respect the matrimonial impediments already noticed; that they should eat whatever Christians ate, however solemnly forbidden in their own law; that they should neither read nor receive into their houses any book contrary to the Christian religion; that they should not be admissible to any civil offices; that their evidence should not be received in a court of justice, unless ample testimony were borne to their moral habits; that when travelling they should make their confession of faith, and exhibit an episcopal passport at every town they entered; that they should spend every Sunday in company with Christians, who should then witness their devotions; and that they should always be present whenever the catechism was repeated or expounded.
But as, in spite of all these tyrannical measures, the sincerity, if not the conduct of the forced converts, was naturally suspicious, two successive confessions of faith, expressed in the most awful terms, were framed for them. In these confessions they were compelled to swear, in the most solemn and public manner, by the great Incommunicable Name and Attributes, that they utterly abhorred, and from their souls forever renounced, all the rites, ceremonies, customs, and solemnities they had previously respected and observed; that they would thenceforward live in the most holy faith of Christ, their Creator and Redeemer; that they would observe all the rites of God’s church, and shun even the most distant form of intercourse with Jews. This oppressed nation was, in the sequel, righteously revenged. Who can blame the readiness with which they received the Mohammedans, and the zeal with which they endeavoured to overthrow the most accursed government that ever existed in Europe.[g]