Remarks. During this period, Spain presents to us a compact monarchy, concentrated within its na tural limits, whose laws, manners, and religion, have in a great measure remained unaltered for fourteen centuries. The crown was elective in a council of bishops and nobility, styled palatines, who, while they swore allegiance, bound the monarch by a reciprocal oath that he would execute faithfully his important trust. The only indispensable requisite in the king was his being descended from the illustrious blood of the Goths. But though he derived his title from election, his power was almost absolute. He had the sole command of the army, bestowed all places of trust and profit, assembled and dissolved the national councils, exercised an ecclesiastical supremacy, and further had the power of making laws, which were revised, confirmed, and published by the assemblies of the states.
The administration of justice was strictly exercised throughout the kingdom, and the greatest reverence was everywhere paid to the laws. Before the reign of Euric, the Goths had no written jurisprudence; but this prince employed some of the most learned and eminent men in the kingdom in composing a body of laws, called the Theodorictan code, which he im posed upon all his subjects both in Gaul and in Spain. His successor Alaric, however, abrogated these, and restored the Roman laws, which continued in use un til a new code of civil and criminal jurisprudence was examined and ratified by a legislative council at To ledo. This code contained the edicts of a succession of kings from Euric to Ejica, and, uniting a part of the Roman law with the Christian morality, Formed a body of laws superior to all others then in existence. The native Spaniards, who were long separated from the Goths by the irreconcilable difference of religion, were at length raised to a participation of the same privileges with their conquerors; and all insensibly submitted to the restraint of an equitable rule.
The Goths, on their first entrance into Spain, were Arians; and for more than a century continued de votedly attached to that persuasion, till the conver sion of king Recared, who, with the principal nobility, publicly renounced the errors of Arius, and embraced the catholic faith. The Spanish church at this time, though oppressed and persecuted, had retained much or its primitive purity; and even after its doctrines became the established faith of the kingdom, it still maintained its integrity and respectability. It was in a great measure free from those gross superstitions which then prevailed in the church of Rome. The Roman pontiffs were never able to obtain any right of interference in its concerns; and in one of the last councili held at Toledo, his claims of jurisdiction in Spain were rejected with contempt, and treated as an usurpation. The pious and temperate lives of its
bishops were often conducive to the order and sta bility of the state, and the influence of the clergy in general was uniformly directed to the support of the best interests of the king and the people. It was in deed greatly owing to the predominance of episcopal policy in the national councils that the Gothic domin ion in Spain was rendered friendly to the vanquished at home, and formidable to its foreign enemies, main taining the authority and vigour of the laws, securing the privileges of every class of the community, and protecting all in the enjoyment of their property.
In the earlier ages of the Gothic rule in this coun try, industry and the useful arts were greatly neglect ed; and the warlike barbarians regarded with indif ference all those accomplishments which can only be appreciated in a more refined and civilized state of society. But during a long peace, and a succession of wise administrations, agriculture and commerce had rapidly advanced, and had introduced a state of pros perity and refinement, which corrupted both prince and people. The favourite exercise of arms had been long abandoned by the Spanish youth. The flood gates of luxury were opened, and a love of ease and pleasure pervaded all ranks. The walls of their cities were mouldering into dust; and the descendants of those hardy bands who had humbled the pride of Rome were slumbering in security, ready to become a prey to the first invaders. .
The first Moorish invaders under Tarik, consisting of various tribes, asserted, by assuming the name of Spaniards, their original claim of conquest; and though they were afterwards joined by numerous bands of Arabs of different countries, who were allowed to share in the fruits of this important enterprise, they appropriated to themselves the most fertile districts of the country. " The royal legion of Damascus was planted at Cordova; that of Emesa at Seville; that of Kinnisrin or Calchis at Jaen; and that of Palestine at Algezire and Medina Sidonia. The natives of Yemen and Persia were scattered around Toledo and the inland country; those of Egypt were established at Murcia and Lisbon; and the fertile seats of Granada were bestowed on the ten thousand horsemen of Syria and Irak, the children of the purest and most noble of the Arabian tribes." A spirit of emulation and jealousy existed among these different tribes, which gave rise to frequent disputes, and which, being nour ished by a factious and hereditary pride, scattered those seeds of division, which afterwards ripened into a full harvest of intestine broils, and which led to their final expulsion from the peninsula.