The Story of SevilleGallichan, Walter M. (Walter Matthew)
History
The Story of Seville
Gallichan, Walter M. (Walter Matthew)
Seville (Spain)
San Isidore's philosophy was Platonic and Aristotelian. In theology he
followed the teaching of St. Gregory the Great. He was a puritan in his
attitude towards the play.
'What connection,' he writes, 'can a Christian have with the folly of
the circus games, with the indecency of the theatre, with the cruelty of
the amphitheatre, with the wickedness of the arena, or with the
lasciviousness of the plays? They who enjoy such spectacles deny God,
and, as backsliders in the faith, hunger after that which they renounced
at their baptism, enslaving themselves to the devil with his pomps and
vanities.'
The gift of oratory possessed by Saint Isidore was predicted in his
infancy by the issue of a swarm of bees from his mouth. His body was
laid to rest, in 636, in Seville.
When King Fernando decided to collect all the bones of martyrs and
saints that he could find in the cathedrals and burial grounds, he
raised an army and came to Seville, which was then under the Moors. Ibn
Obeid, the chief of the Moriscoes, favoured Fernando's scheme, and
allowed the King to enter the city to search for the remains of Justus.
These bones could not be found; but while the seekers were at their task
the spirit of Saint Isidore appeared to them, and said that the remains
of Justus could not be discovered, as it was ordained that they should
rest at Seville. Saint Isidore then offered his own remains for removal,
and his embalmed corpse was taken to the Church of John the Baptist, in
León, in 1063.
Until the time of Recared I. the Goths in Spain remained Arians. When
they forsook their early faith, they adopted a ritual which differed
from that of the Catholics. It was not until the reign of Alfonso VI.
that the Roman service was used throughout the land. The civil law of
the Goths was founded on the _Forum Judicum_ of the Romans. This lengthy
code became later the _Fuero Juzgo_, and was eventually adapted to the
community by Alfonso X. in 1258, and known as the _Siete Partidas_, or
Seven Sections. Under the Gothic code slavery was permitted, and great
power was vested in the hands of the nobility.
'The old Roman civilisation,' writes Mr. H. E. Watts, in his _Spain_,
'which the Celtiberians had been so quick to adopt, sat awkwardly on
these newer barbarians. It was a heritage to which they had not
succeeded of nature, and a burden too great for them to support? The
Romans had made one nation of Spain. The Visigoths were not much more
than an encampment.' When the Berbers, new converts to Mohammedanism,
began to cast envious eyes upon lovely Andalusia, the Goths were
demoralised through easy living in a southern clime. Spain had become a
nation of lords and serfs, and the slaves, the mass of the people, had
no heart to fight for the land that had been wrested from them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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