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Updated: June 17, 2025
Pass through the outer circle of walls, of the latter part of the thirteenth century, to examine for their architecture is a whole history engraved in stones the ancient walls of the inner enceinte; massive Roman below, patched with striped Visigothic work, with mean and hasty Moorish, with graceful, though heavy, Romanesque of the times of the Troubadours; a whole museum of ancient fortifications, which has been restored, stone by stone, through the learning of M. Viollet le Duc and the public spirit of the late Emperor.
Miscalled the "Spanish Rome," Gautier's description still holds good: Toledo has the character of a convent, a prison, a fortress with something of a seraglio. The enormous cathedral, which dates back to Visigothic Christianity, is, next to Seville's, the most beautiful in Spain. Such a façade, such stained glass, such ceilings! Blanco Ibañez has written pages about this structure.
In the constitution of the Visigothic kingdom of Spain from the time of Rechared, when it became Catholic, we see the first fruits of the Church's beneficent action on the northern invaders.
Beaten and kingless, the Goths retreated in great disorder; and Clovis, pursuing his march, arrived without opposition at Bordeaux, where he settled down with his Franks for the winter. When the war season returned he marched on Toulouse, the capital of the Visigoths, which he likewise occupied without resistance, and where he seized a portion of the treasure of the Visigothic kings.
"The shortness of my letter will show how weak and how occupied I am, who say so little to one whom I love so much." St. Gregory tells us that king Rechared, after the martyrdom of his brother St. Hermenegild, was converted from the Arian heresy, and brought the whole Visigothic nation to the Catholic faith. "The brother of a martyr fitly became a preacher of the faith.
But at the bidding of Ricimer, who had become the most powerful general, the senate deposed Avitus; he fled to his country Auvergne, and was killed on the way in September, 456. All power now lay in the hands of Ricimer. He was by his father a Sueve; by his mother, grandson of Wallia, the Visigothic king at Toulouse.
Literature reflects the inner struggles of the period: the war-song of Brunanburh, the mystic light which hangs upon the verses of Caedmon, the melancholy of Cynewulf's lyrics. Yet what a contrast is the England delineated by Bede with Visigothic Spain, with Lombard Italy, or Frankish Gaul, as delineated by Gregory of Tours!
In Italy, Verona is conspicuous. Spain has its own special script at this time, the Visigothic, as troublesome to read as the Beneventane; its a's are like u's and its t's like a's. England is still overrun by the Danes, and does nothing before the very end of the century, when King Alfred exerts himself to revive education, and starts a vernacular literature.
But Fredegonde's hour had not yet come; for Chilperic espoused Galsuinthe, daughter of the Visigothic king, Athanagild, whose youngest daughter, Brunehaut, had just married Chilperic's brother, Sigebert, king of Austrasia. It has already been said that before long Galsuinthe was found strangled in her bed, and that Chilperic espoused Fredegonde.
At Carcassone, now, M. Viollet-le-Duc, under the auspices of the Emperor of the French, is spending his vast learning, and much money, simply in abolishing the picturesque; in restoring stone for stone, each member of that wonderful museum of Middle Age architecture: Roman, Visigothic, Moslem, Romaine, Early English, later French, all is being reproduced exactly as it must have existed centuries since.
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