By this it would seem that, however the nation clung to the memory of the good old king, yet these once brave and manly warriors had sunk into an incredibly superstitious and priest-ridden nation, fit only to be crushed in the hands of the first bold invader, and that all this internal strife was but as an invitation to the Moors across the Straits, and the Basques in the mountains of the north, to take advantage of their weakness. Of Ervig it is said that, after a few years passed in vassalage to Julianus, remorse overcame him, and he took to his bed and died. * * * * * Under Witica the Court of Toledo was stained with blood. He was an ignorant, arrogant tyrant, who only understood present advantage to himself. To prevent possible rebellion--and hostile parties were many and ran high, as in preceding reigns--he dismantled the city walls and fortresses, and in his mad eagerness for the security of the throne murdered every kinsman whose life lay within his hand. Particularly was his insane jealousy directed against his cousin Favila, Dux of Cantabria, who was executed, and Witica had prepared the same fate for his son Pelayo, but he escaped to become later on the saviour of his country in driving out the Moors from the north of Spain. Then his suspicions spent themselves on another kinsman, the Gothic chief Theodofredo. His eyes were put out, and he was imprisoned in the damp vault under the castle of Cordoba. Half Mussulman, and wholly brutal, Witica ingeniously united the vices of both nations--the Iberians and the Goths--and indulged in such a numerous harem as put even the Moors to shame. In vain did the Church thunder against this very peccant son. Julianus was long dead. He laughed at the threats of the Pope, and, like his Gothic ancestor, Alaric, threatened to lay siege to Rome. “Why,” cried he, when presiding in the Chapter at Toledo, clothed in his royal robes, the crown and sceptre beside him, in the midst of the trembling canons, who knew it was at their life’s peril to venture to contradict him--“why shall not our Gothic damsels adorn themselves with the jewels of the Vatican, and our coffers be replenished with the treasury of St. Peter’s?” Incensed at the opposition of the Archbishop Sindaredo, who dared to expostulate with him, he appointed his own brother Opas, at heart as profligate as himself, Archbishop of Seville, to take his seat along with Sindaredo in the episcopal chair of Toledo. (Opas was the most unscrupulous prelate that ever wore the mitre. Even Julianus was his inferior in secular power, for Opas was a prince, born of the old Gothic stock.) “Since the Church of Toledo will not yield to me, her lawful spouse,” said Witica, with savage sarcasm, “she shall, like a harlot, have two husbands--Sindaredo and Opas. No foreign potentate with a triple crown shall preach to _me_.”