WITIZA (702-709 A.D.) Of Witiza we know little that is certain, but much that is apocryphal. Over his character, his actions, and even his death, there rests a cloud of uncertainty which will probably never be removed. It is, however, agreed that in the beginning of his reign he evinced many great qualities; that he redressed many grievances inflicted by his father; that he restored their possessions and liberty to many who had been unjustly deprived of both; and that he remitted the heavy arrears of taxes due at his accession--nay, that, to prevent the possibility of their being collected, he caused the books in which the names of the defaulters were contained to be publicly burned. On the other hand, we are told that he was addicted to the greatest luxury; that he took many concubines, with whom he lived openly, in defiance of church remonstrances; that in the indulgence of his brutal appetite he spared neither the high nor the low, neither wife nor maiden; and that, to stifle complaint, he published an edict by which he allowed all his subjects, ecclesiastics no less than laymen, as many concubines as they could obtain. All this, however startling and improbable, may possibly be true. Though not a word of it is to be found in the continuator of Joannis Biclarensis,[ff] nor in the contemporary historian Isidorus Pacensis,[z] the brevity of those writers, who do no more than chronicle, in the most meagre terms, a few of the more striking facts, may perhaps account for the omission. The vices too of Witiza are mentioned by the monk of Moissiac,[hh] who wrote about one hundred years after the destruction of Spain, and are alluded to by Sebastian of Salamanca,[v] who finished his chronicle towards the close of the ninth century.[g] The history of Witiza’s reputation is a model of the gentle art of blackening a character, especially in the interests of a religious cause, which can command the progressive aid of generations. Paquis[gg] tells the story briefly, noting that “the further the historians are from the time of Witiza, the more detailed become their recitals, and the more severe their reprobation.” A century after his death the foreign and anonymous writer of the _Chronicle of Moissiac_[hh] says that he was addicted to extreme luxury. Nearly a century more, and the Spanish Sebastian of Salamanca[v] broke out more strongly: “Witiza plunged into odious debauches, lived in a cloud of women and concubines, and finally to escape the censures of the priests dissolved the assemblies of the bishops and braved the canons of the church; he even ordered the bishops and priests to marry. His impieties caused the ruin of the Goths.”