Book Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II The Gothic Kings of Toledo LJERE may be said to begin the real history of Toledo, from this until the fatal battle of Guada- lete, the capital of Spain, since it was the heart of Gothic rule. The backward pages of its story are blurred and insignificant, judged by their traces, though we may imagine, if it were possible to build up the effaced picture of Toledo under Roman power, we should find a very superior civilisation. Instead of a flourishing Roman colony, Atanagildo's choice of this strong place was merely the establishment of a rough barbaric camp. It is doubtful if, until Wamba's time, the Goths had. the art of profiting by such heritage as the decadent vanquished had left them. As a race they inspire even less interest than their brethren east and north. Family love was no strong element in the development of the Royal House, as the quaintly heartless story of San Hermengildo proves. Leovigildo was reigning then, and he, an Arian, committed the imprudence of marrying his eldest son, Hermengildo, to a French Goth, Ingundus, the niece of Saint Leander of Seville. With such powerful interests on the side of Rome, it is not surprising that the Arian prince speedily abjured his heresy, to the anger and dismay of his father. Unfortunately, his conversion did not imply the practice of any of the Christian virtues. Religion accomplishes the very thing we should have thought its mission to forbid: it arms the son against his father. The two sects, oddly enough representing the doctrine of peace and goodwill on earth, meet outside the walls of Seville in armed encounter. Hitherto the spectacle had been war and persecution and their attendant horrors on the side of Pagan against the noble and martyred Christian. From this we were to learn that Christian versus...