Prologue. 1. Of all lands that are from the setting sun even unto the Indies, thou art the most beautiful, O sacred Spain, ever happy mother of princes and of peoples. By right art thou now the queen of all provinces, from whom not only the West but even the East borrows its light. Thou art the glory and ornament of the world, the more illustrious portion of the earth; in which the glorious fecundity of the Getic race greatly rejoices and abundantly flourishes.
2. Deservedly did more indulgent nature enrich thee with the abundance of all things that are brought forth. Thou art rich in berries, overflowing with vines, joyous with harvests; thou art clothed with corn, shadowed with olives, fringed with the vine. Thou art flowery in the plains, leafy on the mountains, teeming with fish along the shores. Thou art set beneath the most pleasant region of the sky, and art neither scorched by the summer heat of the sun, nor dost thou waste away with icy cold, but girded by a temperate zone of heaven, thou art nourished by happy west winds. For whatsoever fertile thing the fields, whatsoever precious thing the mines, whatsoever fair and useful thing living creatures bear, thou bringest forth. Nor art thou to be reckoned inferior to those rivers which the bright fame of splendid flocks ennobles.
3. To thee shall Alpheus yield in horses, Clitumnus in herds, although Alpheus, sacred with Olympic palms, drive his swift four-horse chariots across the courses, and Clitumnus once immolated mighty bullocks as victims on the Capitol. Thou neither seekest the more fertile glades of Etruria for pasturage, nor dost thou marvel at the groves of Molorchus full of palms, nor wilt thou envy the Elean chariots in the racing of thy horses. Thou art fruitful with rivers poured over thee, tawny with gold-flowing torrents. In thee is the fountain that begets the horse. For thee the fleeces dyed with native shellfish glow to Tyrian reds. For thee the stone flashing amid the darkness of the depths of the mountains is kindled with a radiance next to that of the neighboring sun.
4. Rich therefore in offspring and in gems and in purples, fertile alike in rulers and in the endowments of empires, thou art so opulent for adorning princes as thou art blessed for bringing them forth. Justly therefore did golden Rome, head of the nations, long ago desire thee; and although that same Romulean valor, first as victrix, pledged thee to itself, yet afterward the most flourishing race of the Goths, after manifold victories throughout the world, eagerly seized and loved thee, and enjoys thee even now amid royal fillets and ample wealth, secure in the felicity of empire. 1. That the race of the Goths is most ancient is certain: whose origin certain men suppose to be derived from Magog, son of Japheth, from the likeness of the last syllable, and gathering it rather from the prophet Ezekiel.
But of old learning was rather wont to call them Getae than Gog and Magog. They are described as a most valiant race, destined even to lay waste the land of Judea. 2. The interpretation of their name in our tongue is 'roofed' (tecti), by which fortitude is signified; and in very truth, for no race in the world so wore out the Roman empire as these. For these are they whom even Alexander declared must be avoided, whom Pyrrhus dreaded, whom Caesar shuddered at. (From Orosius.) For through many ages long past they used leaders, and afterward kings, whose times it behooves to set forth in order in brief, and to weave together from the histories, culling out by what name and by what deed they reigned. 3. In the year 12 before the founding of the era, when, for seizing the sovereignty of the republic, Gnaeus Pompeius and Gaius
Julius Caesar had stirred up civil arms, the Goths, to render aid to Pompey, came into Thessaly to fight against Caesar. There, while in Pompey's army the Ethiopians, Indians, Persians, Medes, Greeks, Armenians, Scythians, and the remaining nations of the East, summoned forth, had fought against Julius, these more bravely than the rest withstood Caesar. Troubled by their number and valor, Caesar is said to have meditated flight, had not night put an end to the battle. Then Caesar said that neither did Pompey know how to conquer, nor could Caesar be conquered. For if Pompey had known how to conquer, he would this day, with such fierce men, have overcome Caesar. 4. The era 294.
In the first year of the reign of Valerian and Gallienus, the Goths, descending from the Alpine mountains where they dwelt, laid waste Greece, Macedonia, Pontus, Asia, and Illyricum. Of these they held Illyricum and Macedonia for nearly fifteen years. Then, overcome by the Emperor Claudius, they returned to their own seats. But the Romans, honoring Claudius Augustus with signal glory because he had removed so most valiant a race from the borders of the republic, set up for him a golden shield in the forum and a golden statue on the Capitol. 5. The era 369, in the 26th year of the reign of Constantine, the Goths, attacking the region of the Sarmatians, rushed upon the Romans with most numerous columns, laying all things waste with vehement force by the sword and by plundering.
Against them that same Constantine drew up his battle line, and with a mighty struggle, having barely overcome them, drove them beyond the Danube — so that he was renowned for the glory of valor among diverse nations, but yet more glorious for the victory over the Goths. Him the Romans, the senate acclaiming, followed with public praise, because he had conquered so great a race, because he had reformed his native republic. 6. The era 407, in the 5th year of the reign of Valens, Athanaric was the first to take up the administration of the Gothic race, reigning thirteen years; who, having stirred up a most cruel persecution against the faith, wished to exert himself against those Goths who among his own people were held to be Christians, of whom he made martyrs of very many who would not consent to sacrifice to idols;
but the rest, afflicted with many persecutions, since for their multitude he shrank from killing them, he gave leave — nay rather compelled — to depart from his kingdom and to migrate into the provinces of Roman soil. 7. The era 415, in the 13th year of the reign of Valens, the Goths on the Danube were divided against themselves under Athanaric and Fridigern, laying one another waste with mutual slaughters. But Athanaric overcame Fridigern by the support of the Emperor Valens. For the sake of this, he sent envoys with gifts to that same emperor, and asked for teachers for the sake of receiving the rule of the Christian faith.
But Valens, having strayed from the truth of the catholic faith and being held fast by the perversity of the Arian heresy, sent heretical priests and by the wicked persuasion of his own error joined the Goths to his dogma, and poured a pestiferous poison with a pernicious seed into so illustrious a race; and thus the error which their recent credulity drank in, it held and long preserved. 8. Then Ulfilas, the bishop of these Goths, devised Gothic letters and translated the Scriptures of the New and Old Testament into that same tongue.
But the Goths, as soon as they began to have letters and law, built for themselves churches of their own dogma, holding, according to the same Arius, such teachings concerning the divinity itself, that they believed the Son to be less than the Father in majesty and later in eternity; and the Holy Spirit to be neither God, nor to exist as the substance of the Father, but to be created through the Son, given over to the ministry of both, and made subject to the obedience of both. Asserting also that the person of the Father was one, and likewise His nature; another that of the Son, and another finally that of the Holy Spirit; so that now (not according to the tradition of holy Scripture) one God and Lord was worshipped, but, according to the superstition of idolatry, three gods were venerated.
The evil of which blasphemy they held for 213 years through the passing of times and the succession of kings. Who at last, being mindful of their salvation, renounced their inveterate perfidy and through the grace of Christ came to the unity of the catholic faith. 9. The era 416, in the 14th year of the reign of Valens, the Goths, who had first expelled the Christians from their land, were in turn themselves expelled by the Huns together with their king Athanaric; and having crossed the Danube, since they could not bear the force of the Emperor Valens, they surrendered themselves without laying down their arms, and received Thrace to inhabit. But when they saw themselves oppressed by the Romans contrary to the custom of their own liberty, they were compelled to rebel.
They laid Thrace waste with fire and sword, and having destroyed the Roman army, they burned Valens himself, wounded by a javelin and fleeing to a certain villa, so that he was deservedly burned alive by them in temporal fire, who had delivered so many fair souls to the eternal fires. 10. But in that battle the Goths found the earlier Gothic confessors, whom they had formerly expelled from their land on account of the faith, and they wished to join them to themselves for a partnership in plunder. When these would not consent, some were slain. Others, holding the mountainous places and constructing for themselves refuges of whatever sort, not only persevered as catholic Christians, but also remained in concord with the Romans, by whom they had formerly been received.
11. The era 419, in the 3rd year of the reign of Theodosius the Spaniard, Athanaric, arranging a covenant of right and friendship with Theodosius, soon proceeded to Constantinople, and there, on the fifteenth day after he had been honorably received by Theodosius, he died. But the Goths, their own king being dead, beholding the kindness of the Emperor Theodosius, having entered into a treaty, delivered themselves to the Roman empire and were with the Romans for 28 years. 12. The era 420, in the 4th year of the reign of Theodosius, the Goths, refusing the patronage of the Roman treaty, set up Alaric as king for themselves, judging it unworthy to be subject to Roman power and to follow those whose laws and empire they had long since rejected, and from whose alliance, triumphing in battle, they had turned away.
In the era 437, in the fifth year of the reign of Honorius and Arcadius, the Goths, divided under Alaric and Radagaisus, while they were tearing themselves apart in the two portions of their kingdom with mutual slaughter, were made of one mind for the destruction of the Romans, and established a common plan; and with equal purpose they divided the regions of Italy among themselves for plundering. In the era 443, in the eleventh year of Honorius and Arcadius, Radagaisus, king of the Goths, a Scythian by birth, given over to the worship of idolatry, most savage in the ferocity of barbaric monstrousness, assailed the parts of Italy with fierce devastation together with two hundred thousand armed men, promising, in contempt of Christ, to pour out the blood of the Romans to his gods as a libation, if he should conquer.
His army, surrounded by Stilicho, the Roman general, in the mountainous places of Tuscany, was destroyed by famine rather than by the sword. The king himself was at last captured and slain. In the era 447, in the fifteenth year of the reign of Arcadius, when Radagaisus had been destroyed, Alaric, sharer of the kingship — a Christian indeed in name, but a heretic by profession — grieving that so great a multitude of the Goths had been destroyed by the Romans, waged war against Rome in vengeance for the blood of his people; and having besieged it, he broke in by assault, by fire, and by the sword. And thus the City, victress over all nations, was conquered and laid low by Gothic triumphs, and, taken captive and subjugated, became their servant.
Yet the Goths there showed themselves so merciful that they first made a vow that, if they should enter the City, whoever of the Romans should be found in the places of Christ should not be delivered over to the devastation of the City. Therefore, after this vow, when they had entered the City, both life and freedom from captivity were granted to all who fled to the thresholds of the saints. But even those who were outside the places of the martyrs, if they invoked the name of Christ and of the saints, these too they spared with like mercy. In the rest, however, although the plunder of the enemy lay open, nevertheless the monstrousness of the slaying was held in check.
Now while the Goths were rushing about the City in that devastation, when a certain powerful man had come upon a consecrated virgin of advanced age, and had courteously admonished her that, if she had any gold or silver in her keeping, she should produce it, she, with faithful conscience, brought forth what she had; and when he marveled at the shape and beauty of the vessels, from that ancient opulence of the Romans, the virgin said: «These vessels have been entrusted to me from the sanctuary of the apostle Peter; take them, if you dare. I do not dare to hand over the sacred offering.» That Goth, greatly terrified at the name of the apostle, reported this to the king by a messenger; and the king at once ordered that everything be carried back to the sanctuary of Saint Peter by that virgin with the utmost reverence, saying:
«I have waged war with the Romans, not with the apostles of God.» So the virgin returned, honored with most reverent attendants; and there returned with her all who had joined themselves to her, carrying back upon their heads those golden and silver vessels with hymns and canticles, with guards drawn up on every side by the king's command for the protection of the armed men. From every side the throngs of Christians ran together from their hiding places at the voices of the singers. The pagans too ran together and, mingled among them, while they pretended to be servants of Christ, even they escaped the destruction of the calamity. In this storm the Goths captured at Rome Placidia, daughter of the emperor Theodosius, sister of the emperors Arcadius and Honorius, together with a vast treasure of gold and silver;
and having obtained many of the riches of the Romans, on the third day, after the City had been set on fire and overthrown in parts, they departed. Then, having boarded ships, when they were arranging to cross over to Sicily, which is divided from Italy by a narrow strait, imperiled by a hostile sea they lost a great part of their army. Yet so great was their glory at the seizure of the city of Rome that, in comparison with it, they reckoned that they had suffered no evil in that tempest, compensating the losses of the shipwreck with the outcome of victory. The death of Alaric followed at once; he died in Italy in the twenty-eighth year of his reign. In the era 448, in the seventeenth year of the reign of Honorius, and the first of Theodosius the Younger, when Alaric had died after the capture of the City, Athaulf was set over the kingdom of Italy by the Goths for six years.
This man, in the fifth year of his reign, withdrawing from Italy, went to the Gauls, and took as his wife Placidia, daughter of the emperor Theodosius, whom the Goths had captured at Rome. In her some believe that the prophecy of Daniel was fulfilled, who says that the daughter of the king of the South was to be joined to the king of the North, yet with no offspring surviving from his seed. Just as the same prophet adds in what follows, saying: «Nor shall his seed stand.» For no child was born from her womb who might succeed the father in the kingdom. But Athaulf, while, having left the Gauls, he was seeking the Spains, was slain by one of his own men at Barcelona amid familiar conversations. In the era 454, in the year...
of the reign of Honorius the twenty-second, after the death of Athaulf, Sigeric was chosen prince by the Goths; but he, while he was most ready for peace with the Romans, was soon slain by his own people. In the same era and year as above, Wallia, succeeding Sigeric, held the kingdom for three years; he was made prince by the Goths for the sake of war, but by divine providence was appointed for peace. For as soon as he began to reign, he struck a treaty with the emperor Honorius, honorably restored to him his sister Placidia, who had been captured by the Goths at Rome, and promised the emperor that, for the sake of the commonwealth, every conflict should be waged. And so, summoned to the Spains through the patrician Constantius, he inflicted great slaughters upon the barbarians for the cause of the Roman name.
He destroyed all the Silingian Vandals in Baetica by war. The Alans, who held sway over the Vandals and the Sueves, he so cut down that, when their king Attaces had been slain, the few who survived, forgetting the name of a kingdom, submitted themselves to the rule of Gunderic, king of the Vandals, who had settled in Gallaecia. Therefore, when Wallia had finished the war in Spain, while he was preparing, with a naval fleet drawn up, to cross into Africa, he was broken in the strait of the Gaditanian sea by the force of a most severe storm; and mindful also of that shipwreck under Alaric, he abandoned the peril of the voyage, left the Spains, and returned to the Gauls. And there was given to him by the emperor, on account of the merit of his victory, Second Aquitaine, together with certain cities of the neighboring provinces as far as the Ocean.
In the era 457, in the twenty-fifth year of the reign of Honorius, when king Wallia had died, Theuderid succeeded to the kingdom for thirty-three years. He, not content with the kingdom of Aquitaine, refused the treaty of Roman peace, seized very many Roman townships neighboring his own seats, and besieged and assaulted Arles, the most noble town of Gaul, with great force. From the siege of it, at the threatening valor of Aetius, general of the Roman soldiery, he withdrew not unpunished. Therefore, when Aetius had been removed from military power by the order of the emperor Valentinian, while Theuderid was harassing the city of Narbonne with a prolonged siege and famine, he was again put to flight by Litorius, general of the Roman soldiery, with the Huns aiding him.
But Litorius, when at first he had achieved prosperous things against the Goths, again deceived by the signs of demons and the responses of soothsayers, rashly entered into war with the Goths; and having lost the Roman army, he was miserably overcome and perished. And he made it understood how much that multitude which perished with him could have profited, had he preferred to use faith rather than the deceptive portents of the demons. Therefore, when Litorius had been destroyed, and peace had thereupon been made by Theuderid with the Romans, he again fought in open battle, with Aetius the Roman general aiding him, against the Huns who were laying waste the provinces of the Gauls with savage plundering and overthrowing very many cities, on the Catalaunian fields; and there, fighting, he fell as victor.
But the Goths, with Thorismund, son of king Theuderid, fighting, engaged so bravely that between the first battle and the last nearly three hundred thousand men were laid low in that struggle. At that same time many signs of heaven and earth went before, by whose prodigies so cruel a war was foretold. For, with continual earthquakes occurring, from the region of the East the moon was darkened; from the setting of the sun a comet-star appeared, and for some time shone with immense magnitude. From the quarter of the North the sky was made reddening, like fire or blood, with brighter lines mingled through the fiery redness, shaped into the likeness of glowing spears.
Nor is it a wonder that, at so great a slaughter of the slain, so many manifestations of signs should be displayed by divine power. But the Huns, cut down almost to extermination together with their king Attila, left the Gauls and fled to Italy, having broken into several cities. And there too, struck partly by famine, partly by heavenly plagues, they perished. Moreover, when an army had been sent by the emperor Marcian, they were cut down by a mighty blow, and, greatly afflicted and diminished, they sought their own seats again; and to these their king Attila, as soon as he returned, died. After his death the nation of the Huns further devastated itself by its own destruction. And at once great contests arose among his sons over obtaining the kingdom.
And so the Huns, who before had been diminished by so many disasters, again cut one another down with mutual swords. In these people this is a marvel: that, whereas every battle brings the loss of peoples, these on the contrary profit by falling. But this is so because they are set for the discipline of the faithful, just as is the people of the nation of the Persians. For they are the rod of the wrath of God, and as often as His indignation goes forth against the faithful, through them they are scourged, so that, corrected by their afflictions, they may restrain themselves from the desire and sin of the world, and may possess the inheritance of the heavenly kingdom. Moreover, this nation is so horrid that, when it has suffered hunger in war, it opens a vein of a horse, and thus, by the blood drawn, drives out its hunger.
In the era 490, in the first year of the reign of Marcian, Thorismund, son of Theuderid, was advanced to the kingdom for one year. But since, in the very beginnings of his reign, he breathed things savage and harmful and hostile, and did many things too insolently, he was slain by his brothers Theuderic and Frideric. In the era 491, in the second year of the reign of Marcian, Theuderic, succeeding to the kingdom after the slaying of his brother, reigned thirteen years; and because he had furnished aid to the emperor Avitus, together with the Gauls, in taking up the imperial dignity, he entered from Aquitaine into Spain with a vast multitude of an army, and with the permission of the same emperor Avitus, in the fifth year of his reign.
When Recchiarius, king of the Sueves, met him with a great host, at the twelfth milestone from the city of Astorga, by the river which is called Órbigo, battle being at once joined, he was overcome, the ranks of the Sueves being cut down, some captured, and very many put to flight. The king himself at last, wounded by a spear, fled; and lacking the protection of his own men, he was captured at a place called Portucale, and offered up alive to king Theuderic. When he had been slain, and many who had survived the earlier battle had surrendered themselves, and some nonetheless were butchered, the kingdom was almost destroyed, and the kingdom of the Sueves was ended. But the remaining Sueves who had stayed in the far part of Gallaecia set up for themselves as king Maldras, son of Massila: the kingdom of the Sueves was restored.
When Recchiarius had been slain, Theuderic, advancing as victor from Gallaecia into Lusitania, while he was endeavoring to plunder the city of Mérida, was terrified by the portents of the holy martyr Eulalia, and at once departed with his whole army and sought the Gauls again. Soon thereafter he sent one part of his army, under the general Cyrila, to the province of Baetica, and directed the other part, under the generals Sunieric and Nepotian, to Gallaecia; these laid waste the Sueves at Lugo with savage plundering. But in the Gauls the count and citizen Agrippinus, a rival of Aegidius the Roman count, in order to earn the aid of the Goths, handed over Narbonne to Theuderic. After some while, envoys sent by Remismund, son of Maldras, king of the Sueves, came to Theuderic, asking for peace and friendship.
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Likewise Theuderic sent back to Remismund, with an addition of arms and of gifts, and also sent the wife whom he had. Theuderic also again sent Salla as envoy to Remismund. When he had returned to the Gauls, he found Theuderic slain by his brother Euric. In the era 504, in the eighth year of the reign of Leo, Euric succeeded to the kingdom by like crime as his brother, for seventeen years. Advanced to this honor — and to that crime — he at once directed envoys to the emperor Leo. And without delay he plundered the parts of Lusitania with a great onset. From there he sent another army, which, an army having been dispatched, captured Pamplona and Zaragoza which had been taken, and subjected also upper Spain to his power.
He also overthrew by the incursion of his army the nobility of the province of Tarraconensis, which had resisted him. But returning to the Gauls, by warfare he obtained the city of Arles and Marseilles, and added both to his kingdom. This man, on a certain day, having gathered the Goths in a conference, saw for some time that the weapons which they all had in their hands had, on the side of the iron or the blade, changed their natural appearance of iron — some to green, some to rosy, some to saffron, some to a black color. Under this king the Goths began to have the enactments of the laws in writing, for before they were held only by usages and custom. Euric the king died at Arles, deceased by a natural death. In the era 521, in the year...
in the tenth year of the reign of Zeno, when Euric had died, Alaric, his son, was established as prince at the city of Toulouse, reigning twenty-three years. Against him Clovis, prince of the Franks, aspiring to the kingdom of Gaul, with the Burgundians aiding him, stirred up war; and having routed the forces of the Goths, he at last slew the king himself, overcome at Poitiers. But Theuderic, king of Italy, when he had learned of the death of his son-in-law, at once set out from Italy, crushed the Franks, recovered the part of the kingdom which the hand of the enemy had occupied, and restored it to the jurisdiction of the Goths. In the era 545, in the seventeenth year of the reign of Anastasius, Gisaleic, son of the former king, born of a concubine, was made prince at Narbonne, reigning four years;
as he was most base in birth, so was he supreme in wretchedness and cowardice. Finally, when that same city had been plundered by Gundobad, king of the Burgundians, this man, with much disgrace to himself and with a great slaughter of his own, betook himself to Barcelona; and there he lingered until he was even stripped of the fasces of the kingdom by Theuderic, with the ignominy of flight. Departing thence to Africa, he sought the support of the Vandals, by which he might be able to be restored to the kingdom.
But when he had not obtained aid, soon returning from Africa, out of fear of Theuderic he sought Aquitaine, and lurking there for one year, he returned into Spain; and, battle being joined by a general of king Theuderic at the twelfth milestone from the city of Barcelona, he was overcome and turned to flight, and, captured across the river Durance of the Gauls, he perished; and thus he lost first his honor, afterward his life.
In the era 549, in the twenty-first year of the reign of Anastasius, Theuderic the Younger — since he had long since been created consul and king at Rome by the emperor Zeno, and, when Odoacer king of the Ostrogoths had been slain, and his brother Onoulf defeated and put to flight beyond the confines of the Danube, he had reigned in Italy for forty-nine years — now, when Gisaleic king of the Goths had been destroyed, held the kingdom of Spain for fifteen years, which, surviving, he left to his grandson Amalaric. Then returning to Italy, he reigned for some time with all prosperity; through him also no small dignity was restored to the city of Rome. For he restored its walls, for which reason he merited a gilded statue from the Senate. In the era 564, in the year...
the first of the reign of Justinian, when Theuderic had returned to Italy and died there, his grandson Amalaric reigned for five years. He, when he had been overcome in battle at Narbonne by Childebert, king of the Franks, fled trembling to Barcelona; and, made contemptible to all, he was slain by the army and perished at Narbonne in the forum. In the era 569, in the sixth year of the reign of Justinian, after Amalaric, Theudis was created in Spain, in the kingdom for seventeen years and five months; and although he was a heretic, he nonetheless granted peace to the Church — so much so that he gave leave to the catholic bishops to assemble together at the city of Toledo, and freely and lawfully to arrange whatever things had proved necessary for the discipline of the Church.