Chapter XXXII: Appendix: , A (1)

ON THE ORIGIN OF THE SPANISH LANGUAGE.

(See Vol. I. pp. 11 and 47.)

The country which now passes under the name of Spain has been subjected to a greater number of revolutions, that have left permanent traces in its population, language, and literature, than any other of the principal countries of modern Europe.[394] At different periods, within the reach of authentic record, it has been invaded and occupied by the Phœnicians, the Romans, the Goths, and the Arabs; all distinct races of men with peculiar characteristics, and forming, in their various combinations with each other or with the earlier masters of the soil, still new races hardly less separate and remarkable than themselves. From the intimate union of them all, gradually wrought by the changes and convulsions of nearly three thousand years, has arisen the present Spanish people, whose literature, extending back about seven centuries, has been examined in the preceding volumes.

[394] _Spain_, _Espagne_, _España_, _Hispania_, are evidently
all one word. Its etymology cannot, in the opinion of W. von
Humboldt, (Prüfung der Untersuchungen über die Urbewohner
Hispaniens, 4to, 1821, p. 60,) be determined. The Spanish writers
are full of the most absurd conjectures on the subject. See
Aldrete, Orígen de la Lengua Castellana, ed. 1674, Lib. III. c.
2, f. 68; Mariana, Hist., Lib. I. c. 12; and Mendoza, Guerra de
Granada, ed. 1776, Lib. IV., p. 295.

But it is difficult fully to examine or understand the literature of any country, without understanding something, at least, of the original elements and history of the language in which it is contained, and on which no small portion of its essential character must depend; while, at the same time, a knowledge of the origin of the language necessarily implies some knowledge of the nations that, by successive contributions, have constituted it such as it is found in the final forms of its poetry and elegant prose. As a needful appendix, therefore, to the history of Spanish literature, a very brief account will be here given of the different occupants of the soil of the country, who, in a greater or less degree, have contributed to form the present character both of the Spanish people and of their language and culture.

The oldest of these, and the people who, since we can go back no farther, must be by us regarded as the original inhabitants of the Spanish Peninsula, were the Iberians. They appear, at the remotest period of which tradition affords us any notice, to have been spread over the whole territory, and to have given to its mountains, rivers, and cities most of the names they still bear,--a fierce race, whose power has never been entirely broken by any of the long line of invaders who, at different times, have occupied the rest of the country. Even at this moment, a body of their descendants, less affected than we should have supposed possible by intercourse with the various nations that have successively pressed their borders, is believed, with a good degree of probability, to be recognized under the name of Biscayans, inhabiting the mountains in the northwestern portion of modern Spain. But, whether this be true or not, the Biscayans, down to the present day, have been a singular and a separate race. They have a peculiar language, peculiar local institutions, and a literature which is carried back to a remoter antiquity than that of any other people now possessing, not the soil of the Spanish Peninsula merely, but of any part of Southern Europe. They are, in fact, a people who seem to have been left as a solitary race, hardly connected, even by those ties of language which outlive all others, with any race of men now in existence or on record; some of their present customs and popular fables claiming to have come down from an age, of which history and tradition give only doubtful intimations. The most probable conjecture yet proposed to explain what there is peculiar and remarkable about the Biscayans and their language is that which supposes them to be descended from those ancient and mysterious Iberians, whose language seems to have been, at one period, spread through the whole Peninsula, and to have left traces which are recognized even in the present Spanish.[395]

[395] On the subject of the Biscayans and the descent of their
language from the ancient Iberian, two references are sufficient
for the present purpose. First, “Über die Cantabrische oder
Baskische Sprache,” by Wilhelm von Humboldt, published as an
Appendix to Adelung and Vater’s “Mithridates,” Theil IV., 1817,
8vo, pp. 275-360. And, second, “Prüfung der Untersuchungen über
die Urbewohner Hispaniens vermittelst der Vaskischen Sprache,”
etc., von W. von Humboldt, 4to, Berlin, 1821. The admirable
learning, philosophy, and acuteness which this remarkable man
brought to all his philological discussions are apparent in these
treatises, both of which are rendered singularly satisfactory by
the circumstance, that, being for some time Prussian Minister
at Madrid, he visited Biscay and studied its language on the
spot. The oldest fragment of Basque poetry which he found, and
which is given in the “Mithridates,” (Theil IV. pp. 354-356,)
is held by the learned of Biscay to be nearly or quite as old
as the time of Augustus, to whose Cantabrian war it refers; but
this can hardly be admitted, though it is no doubt earlier than
any thing else we have of the Peninsular literature. It is an
important document, and is examined with his accustomed learning
and acuteness by Fauriel, “Hist. de la Gaule Méridionale,” 1836,
8vo, Tom. II. App. iii. I do not speak of a pleasant treatise,
“De la Antiguedad y Universalidad del Bascuense en España,” which
Larramendi published in 1728, nor of the Preface and Appendix
to his “Arte de la Lengua Bascongada,” 1729; nor of Astarloa’s
“Apologia,” 1803; nor of Erro’s “Lengua Primitiva,” 1806, and his
“Mundo Primitivo,” an unfinished work, 1815; for they all lack
judgment and precision. If, however, any person is anxious to
ascertain their contents, a good abstract of the last two books,
with sufficient reference to the first, was published in Boston,
by Mr. G. Waldo Erving, formerly American Minister at Madrid,
with a preface and notes, under the title of “The Alphabet of
the Primitive Language of Spain,” 1829. But Humboldt is to
be considered the safe and sufficient authority on the whole
subject, for though Astarloa’s work is not without learning and
acuteness, yet, as both he and his follower, Erro, labor chiefly
to prove, as Larramendi had done long before, that the Basque is
the original language of the whole human race, they are led into
a great many whimsical absurdities, and must be considered, on
the whole, any thing but safe guides.

The first intruders upon the Iberians were the Celts, who, according to Doctor Percy’s theory, constituted the foremost wave of the successive emigrations that broke upon Europe from the overflowing multitudes of Asia. At what precise period the Celts reached Spain, or any other of the Western countries they overran, can no longer be determined. But the contest between the invaders of the soil and its possessors was, from the few intimations of it that have come down to us, long and bloody; and, as was generally the case in the early successful invasions of countries by wandering masses of the human race, portions of the ancient inhabitants were driven to the fastnesses of their mountains, and the remainder became gradually incorporated with the conquerors. The new people, thus formed of two races that, in antiquity, had the reputation of being warlike and powerful, was appropriately called the Celtiberian,[396] and constituted the body of the population which, broken into various tribes, but with similar manners and institutions, occupied the Peninsula when it first became known to the civilized nations of Europe. The language of the Celts, as might be expected, is represented in the present Spanish, as it is in the French and even in the Italian, though but slightly, of course, in any of them.[397]

[396] The remarkable passage in Diodorus Siculus, Bib. Hist.,
Lib. V. c. 33, is well known; but the _phraseology_ should
be noted for our purpose when he speaks of the union of the
people as δυοῖν ἐθνῶν ἀλκίμων μιχθέντων. The fortieth section
of Humboldt’s “Prüfung” should also be read; and the beginning
of the Third Book of Strabo, in which he gives, as usual, a
good deal that is curious about history and manners, as well as
geography, and a good deal that is incredible, such as that the
Turdetani had poetry and poetical laws six thousand years old.
Ed. Casaub., 1720, p. 139. C.

[397] In speaking of the two earliest languages of the Spanish
Peninsula, I have confined myself to the known facts of the case,
without entering into the curious speculations to which these
facts have led inquisitive and philosophical minds. But those who
are interested in such inquiries will find abundant materials
for their study in the remarkable “Researches into the Physical
History of Mankind, by Dr. J. C. Prichard,” 5 vols. 8vo, London,
1836-47; and in the acute “Report” of the Chevalier Bunsen to the
Seventeenth Meeting of the British Association, London, 1848, pp.
254-299. If we follow their theories, the Basque may be regarded
as the language of a race that came originally from the northern
parts of Asia and Europe, and to which Prichard gives the name of
Ugro-Tartarian, while the Celtic language is that of the oldest
of the great emigrations from the more southern portions of Asia,
which Bunsen calls the Japhetic.

Thus far, all access to Spain had been by land; for, in the earliest periods of the world’s history, no other mode of emigration or invasion was known. But the Phœnicians, the oldest commercial people of classical antiquity, soon afterwards found their way thither over the waters of the Mediterranean. At what time they arrived in Spain, or where they made their first establishment, is not known. A mystery hangs over this remarkable people, darker than belongs to the age in which they lived, and connected, no doubt, with the wary spirit in which they pursued their commercial adventures. Their position at home made colonization the obvious and almost the only means of commercial wealth among them, and Spain proved the most tempting of the countries to which their power could reach. Their chief Spanish colonies were near the Pillars of Hercules, in the neighbourhood of our present Cadiz, which they probably founded, and about the mouth and on the banks of the Guadalquivir. Their great object was the mines of precious metals with which ancient Spain abounded. For Spain, from the earliest notices of its history till the fall of the Roman Empire, was the El Dorado of the rest of the world, and furnished a large proportion of the materials for its circulating wealth.[398] During a long period, too, these mines seem to have been known only to the Phœnicians, who thus reserved to themselves the secret of a great power and influence over the nations near them, while, at the same time,--establishing colonies, as was their custom, to secure the sources of their wealth,--they carried their language and manners through a considerable part of the South of Spain, and even far round on the shores of the Atlantic.[399]

[398] The general statement may, perhaps, be taken from Mariana,
(Lib. I. c. 15,) who gives the story as it has come down through
tradition, fable, and history, with no more critical acumen than
is common with the Spanish historians. But such separate facts
as are mentioned by Livy (Lib. XXXIV. c. 10, 46, Lib. XL. c. 43,
with the notes in Drakenborch) bring with them a more distinct
impression of the immense wealth obtained anciently from Spain
than any general statements whatever; even more than those of
Strabo, Diodorus, etc. It has been supposed by Heeren, and by
others before and since, (Ideen, 1824, Band I. Theil ii. p. 68,)
that the Tarshish of the Prophets Ezekiel (xxvii. 12) and Isaiah
(lx. 8, 9) was in Spain, and was, in fact, the ancient Tartessus;
but this is denied, (Memorias de la Academia de la Historia, Tom.
III. p. 320,) and, no doubt, if the Tarshish of the Prophets were
in Spain, there must have been another Tarshish in Cilicia, that
is mentioned in other parts of Scripture.

[399] See Heeren’s Ideen, Band I. Theil ii. pp. 24-71, 4th edit.,
1824, where the whole subject is discussed.

But the Phœnicians had still earlier founded a colony on the northern coast of Africa, which, under the name of Carthage, was destined to grow more powerful than the country that sent it forth. Its means were the same; for the Carthaginians became eminently a commercial people, and depended, in no small degree, upon the resources of their colonies. They trod closely and almost constantly in the footsteps of their mother country, and often supplanted her power. It was, in fact, through the Phœnician colonies that the Carthaginians entered Spain, whose tempting territory was divided from them only by the Mediterranean. But for a long period, though they maintained a large military force in Cadiz, and stretched their possessions boldly and successfully along the Spanish shores, they did not seem inclined to penetrate far into the interior, or to do more than occupy enough of the country to overawe its population and control its trade. When, however, the First Punic War had rendered Spain of more consequence to the Carthaginians than it had ever been before, they undertook its entire conquest and occupation. Under Hamilcar, the father of Hannibal, about two hundred and twenty-seven years before the Christian era, they spread themselves at once over nearly the whole country, as far as the Iberus, and, building Carthagena and some other strong places, seemed to have taken final possession of the Peninsula, on which the Romans had not yet set foot.

The Romans, however, were not slow to perceive the advantage their dangerous rivals had gained. By the first treaty of peace made between these great powers, it was stipulated, that the Carthaginians should advance no farther,--should neither molest Saguntum nor cross the Iberus. Hannibal violated these conditions, and the Second Punic War broke out, two hundred and eighteen years before the Christian era. The Scipios entered Spain in consequence of it; and at its conclusion, in the year B. C. 201, the Carthaginians had no longer any possessions in Europe, though, as descendants of the Phœnicians, they left in the population and language of Spain traces which have never been wholly obliterated.[400]

[400] A sufficient account of the Carthaginians in Spain may
be found in Heeren’s Ideen, Band II. Theil i. pp. 85-99, and
172-199. But Mariana contains the more national ideas and
traditions, (Lib. I. c. 19, etc.,) and Depping is more ample
(Hist. Générale de l’Espagne, 1811, Tom. I. pp. 64-96).

But,[401] though, by the Second Punic War, the Carthaginians were thus driven from the Spanish Peninsula, the Romans were far from having obtained unmolested or secure possession of it. The Carthaginians themselves, even when engaged in a commerce whose spirit was, on the whole, peaceful, had never ceased to be in contest with the warlike Celtiberian tribes of the interior; and the Romans were obliged to accept the inheritance of a warfare to which, in their character of intruders, they naturally succeeded. The Roman Senate, indeed, according to their usual policy, chose to regard Spain, from the end of the Second Punic War, both as conquered and as a province; and, in truth, they had really obtained permanent and quiet possession of a considerable part of it. But, from the time when the Roman armies first entered the Peninsula until they became masters of the whole of it,--except the mountains of the Northwest, which never yielded to their power,--two complete centuries elapsed, filled with bloodshed and crime. No province cost the Roman people a price so great. The struggle for Numantia, which lasted fourteen years, the wars against Viriates, and the war of Sertorius,--to say nothing of that between Pompey and Cæsar,--all show the formidable character of the protracted contest by which alone the Roman power could be confirmed in the Peninsula; so that, though Spain was the first portion of the continent out of Italy which the Romans began to occupy as a province, it was the very last of which their possession was peaceful and unquestioned.[402]

[401] Of the Greeks in Spain, it has not been thought necessary
here to speak. Their few establishments were on the southern
coast, and rather on the eastern part of it; but they were of
little consequence, and do not seem to have produced any lasting
effect on the character or language of the country. They were, in
fact, rather a result of the influence of the rich and cultivated
Greek colony in the South of France, whose capital seat was
Marseilles, or of the spirit which in Rhodes and elsewhere sent
out adventurers to the far west. (See Benedictins, Hist. Litt.
de la France, 1733, 4to, Tom. I. pp. 71, etc.) For those who are
curious about the Greeks in Spain, more than they will probably
desire will be found in the elaborate and clumsy work of Masdeu,
Hist. Crit. de España, Tom. I. p. 211, Tom. III. pp. 76, etc.
Aldrete (Orígen de la Lengua Española, 1674, f. 65) has collected
about ninety Spanish words to which he attributes a Greek origin;
but nearly all of them may be easily traced through the Latin, or
else they belong to the Northern invaders or to Italy. Marina, a
good authority on this particular point, says: “I do not deny,
nor can it be doubted, that, in the Spanish language, are found
many words purely Greek, and occasional phrases and turns of
expression that are in Attic taste; but this is because they had
first been adopted by the Latin language, which is the mother
of ours.” Mem. de la Real Acad., Tom. IV., Ensayo, etc., p. 47.
There is a curious inscription in Nunes de Lião, (Origem da
Lingoa Portugesa, Lisboa, 1784, p. 32,) from a temple erected by
Greeks at Ampurias to Diana of Ephesus, which states, that “nec
relicta Græcorum lingua, nec _idiomate_ patriæ Iberæ recepto, in
mores, in _linguam_, in jura, in ditionem cessere _Romanam_, M.
Cathego et L. Apronio Coss.” No doubt, these Greeks came from
Marseilles, or were connected with it; and no doubt they spoke
Latin. But the ancient Iberian language seems to be recognized
as existing, also, among them. Ampurias, however, was generally
in Spain held to be of Greek origin, as we may see in different
ways, and among the rest in the following lines of Espinosa, who,
when Alambron comes there with the Infanta Fenisa, says:--

Juntan á la ciudad, que fué fundada
_De cautos Griegos_, rica y bastecida.
Segunda Parte de Orlando, ed. 1556, Canto xxxi.

[402] Livius, Hist. Rom., Lib. XXVIII. c. 12. The _words_ are
remarkable. “Itaque ergo prima Romanis inita provinciarum, quæ
quidem continentis sint, postrema omnium, nostrâ demum ætate,
ductu auspicioque Augusti Cæsaris, perdomita est.”

From the outset, however, there was a tendency to a union between the two races, wherever the conquerors were able to establish quietness and order; for the vast advantages of Roman civilization could be obtained only by the adoption of Roman manners and the Latin language. This union, from the great importance of the province, the Romans desired no less than the natives. Forty-seven years only after they entered Spain, a colony, consisting of a large body of the descendants from the mingled blood of Romans and natives, was established by a formal decree of the Senate, with privileges beyond the usual policy of their government.[403] A little later, colonies of all kinds were greatly multiplied; and it is impossible to read Cæsar and Livy without feeling that the Roman policy was more generous to Spain, than it was to any other of the countries that successively came within its control. Tarragona, where the Scipios first landed, Carthagena, founded by Asdrubal, and Córdova, always so important, early took the forms and character of the larger municipalities in Italy; and, in the time of Strabo, Cadiz, for numbers, wealth, and activity, was second only to Rome itself.[404] Long, therefore, before Agrippa had broken the power of the mountaineers at the North, the whole South, with its rich and luxuriant valleys, had become like another Italy; a fact, of which the descriptions in the third book of Pliny’s Natural History can leave no reasonable doubt. To this, however, we should add the remarkable circumstance, that the Emperor Vespasian, soon after the pacification of the North, found it for his interest to extend to the whole of Spain the privileges of the municipalities in Latium.[405]

[403] Livius, Hist. Rom., Lib. XLIII. c. 3.

[404] Strabo, Lib. III., especially pp. 168, 169, ed. Casaubon,
fol., 1620; and Plin., Hist. Nat., Lib. III. §§ 2-4, but
particularly Vol. I., ed. Franzii, 1778, p. 547. A striking proof
of the importance of Spain, in antiquity generally, may be found
in the fact incidentally stated by W. von Humboldt, (Prüfung,
etc., § 2, p. 3,) that “ancient writers have left us a great
number of Spanish names of places;--in proportion, a greater
number than of any other country except Greece and Italy.”

[405] Plin., Hist. Nat., Lib. VII. c. 44, where the distinction
is spoken of as something surprising, since Pliny adds, that
it was “an honor which our ancestors refused even to those of
Latium.”

Spaniards, too, earlier than any other strangers, obtained those distinctions of which the Romans themselves were so ambitious, and which they so reluctantly granted to any but native citizens. The first foreigner that ever rose to the consulship was Balbus, from Cadiz, and he, too, was the first foreigner that ever gained the honors of a public triumph. The first foreigner that ever sat on the throne of the world was Trajan, a native of Italica, near Seville;[406] and indeed, if we examine the history of Rome from the time of Hannibal to the fall of the Western Empire, we shall probably find that no part of the world, beyond the limits of Italy, contributed so much to the resources, wealth, and power of the capital, as Spain, and that no province received, in return, so large a share of the honors and dignities of the Roman government.

[406] Plin., Hist. Nat., Lib. V. c. 5, with the note of Hardouin,
and with Antonio, Bibliotheca Hispana Vetus, fol., 1787, Lib. I.
c. ii.

On all accounts, therefore, the connection between Rome and Spain was intimate, and the civilization and refinement of the province took their character early from those of the capital. Sertorius found it a wise policy to cause the children of the principal native families to be taught Latin and Greek, and to become accomplished in the literature and elegant knowledge to be found in those admirable languages;[407] and when, ten years later, Metellus, in his turn, had crushed the power of Sertorius, and came home triumphant to Rome, he brought with him a number of native Cordovan poets, against whose Latinity the fastidious ear of Cicero was able to object only that their accent had _pingue quiddam ... atque peregrinum_,--something thick, or rude, and foreign.[408]

[407] Plutarchus in Sertorium, c. 14.

[408] Pro Archiâ, § 10. It should be noted especially, that
Cicero makes them _natives_ of Córdova,--“Cordubæ _natis_ poetis.”

From this period Latin writers began to be constantly produced in Spain.[409] Portius Latro, a native of Córdova, but a public advocate of the highest reputation at Rome, opened in the metropolis the earliest of those schools for Roman rhetoric, that afterwards became so numerous and so famous, and, among other distinguished men, numbered as his disciples Octavius Cæsar, Mæcenas, Marcus Agrippa, and Ovid. The two Senecas were Spaniards, and so was Lucan; names celebrated enough, certainly, to have conferred lasting glory on any city within the limits of the Empire. Martial came from Bilbilis, and, in his old age, retired there again to die in peace, amidst the scenes which, during his whole life, seem to have been dear to him. Columella, too, the best of the Roman writers on agriculture, was a Spaniard; and so, it is probable, were Quinctilian and Silius Italicus. Many others might be added, whose rights and reputation were fully acknowledged in the capital of the world, during the last days of the Republic, or the best days of the Empire, as orators, poets, and historians; but their works, though famous in their own time, have perished in the general wreck of the larger part of ancient literature. The great lights, however, of Roman letters in Spain are familiar to all, and are at once recognized as constituting an important portion of the body of the Latin classics, and an essential part of the glory of Roman civilization.[410]

[409] Some excellent and closely condensed remarks on this
subject may be found in the Introduction to Amédée Thierry’s
“Histoire de la Gaule sous l’Administration Romaine,” 8vo, 1840,
Tom. I. pp. 211-218; a work which leaves little to be desired, as
far as it goes.

[410] Of Roman writers in Spain, the accounts are abundant.
The first book, however, of Antonio’s “Bibliotheca Vetus” is
sufficient. But, after all that has been written, it has always
seemed singular to me that Horace should have used exactly the
word _peritus_, when intending specifically to characterize the
Spaniards of his time, (II. Od. xx. 19,) unless _peritus_ is used
with reference to its relations with _experior_, rather than in
its usual sense of _learned_. Sir James Mackintosh, speaking of
the Latin writers produced by Spain, says they were “the most
famous of their age.” Hist. Eng., Vol. I. p. 21, London, 1830.

After this period, no considerable change, that needs to be noticed, took place in the Spanish Peninsula, until the final overthrow of the Roman power.[411] Undoubtedly, at the Northwest, and especially among the mountains and valleys of what is now called Biscay, the language and institutions of Rome were never established;[412] but, in all the remainder of the country, whatever there was of public policy or intellectual refinement rested on the basis of the Roman character and of Roman civilization. But the Roman character and civilization decayed there, as they did everywhere, and though, during the last four centuries in which the Imperial authority was acknowledged in Spain, the country enjoyed more of tranquillity than was enjoyed in any other province within the limits of the Empire, still, like the others, it was much disturbed during the whole of this fatal period, and was gradually yielding to the common destiny.

[411] The story told by Aulus Gellius, (NN. AA., Lib. XIX. c.
9,) about Antoninus Julianus, a Spaniard, who exercised the
profession of a rhetorician at Rome, shows pleasantly that there
was no Spanish language at that time (circa A. D. 200) except
the Latin; for when the “Greci plusculi” at table reproached
Antoninus with the poverty of Latin literature, they reproached
him as one who was a party concerned, and he defended himself
just as a Roman would have done, by quotations from the Latin
poets. His patriotism was evidently Roman, and the _patria
lingua_ which he vindicated was the Latin.

[412] In the beautiful fragment of a History of England by Sir
J. Mackintosh, he says, _ut supra_, with that spirit of acute
and philosophical generalization for which he was so remarkable:
“The ordinary policy of Rome was to confine the barbarians within
their mountains.” The striking poem in Basque, given by W. von
Humboldt, (Mithridates, Band IV. p. 354,) shows the same fact in
relation to Biscay.

It was during this troubled interval, that another great cause of change was introduced into Spain, and began to produce its wide effects on whatever of intellectual culture existed in the country. This great cause was Christianity. The precise point of time, or the precise mode, of its first appearance in Spain cannot now be determined. But it was certainly taught there in the second century, and seems to have come in, through the southern coast, from Africa.[413] At first, as elsewhere, it was persecuted, and therefore professed in secret; but, as early as the year 300, churches had been publicly established, and from the time of Constantine and Osius of Córdova, it was the acknowledged and prevalent religion of large parts of the country. What is of consequence to us is, that the language of Christianity in Spain was the Latin. Its instructions were obviously given in Latin, and its early literature, so far as it appeared in Spain, is found wholly in that language.[414] This is very important, not only because it proves the great diffusion of the Latin language there from the third century to the eighth, but because it shows that no other language was left strong enough to contend with it, at least through the middle and southern portions of the country.

[413] Depping, Tom. II. pp. 118, etc. But those who wish to see
how absurdly even grave historians can write on the gravest
subjects may find all sorts of inconsistencies, on the early
history of Christianity in Spain, in the fourth book of Mariana,
as well as in most of the other national writers who have
occasion to touch upon it.

[414] On the subject of early Christianity in Spain, the third
chapter of the fourth book of Depping contains enough for all
but those who wish to make the subject a separate and especial
study. Such persons will naturally look to Florez and Risco,
“España Sagrada,” and their authorities, which, however, must
be consulted with great caution, as they are full of the
inconsistencies alluded to in the last note.

The Christian clergy, however, it must be recollected, did little or nothing to preserve the purity of the Latin language in Spain, or to maintain whatever of an intellectual tone they found in the institutions established by the Romans.[415] How early these institutions, and especially the ancient schools, decayed there, we do not know; but it was earlier than in some other parts of the Empire. In the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries even the ecclesiastics were sunk into the grossest ignorance, so that, when Gregory the Great, who was Pope from 590 to 604, warned Licinian, Bishop of Carthagena, not to give consecration to persons without education, Licinian replied, that, unless it were permitted to consecrate those who knew only that Christ had been crucified, none could be found to fill the priestly office.[416] In fact, Isidore of Seville, the famous Archbishop and saint, who died in 636, is the last of the Spanish ecclesiastics that attempted to write Latin with purity; and even he thought so ill of classical antiquity, that he prohibited the monks under his control from reading books written by heathen of the olden time;[417] thus taking away the only means of preserving from its threatened corruption the language they wrote and spoke.[418] Of course this corruption advanced, in times of confusion and national trouble, at a rapid pace, until the spoken language of the country became, to those out of it, an almost unintelligible jargon; and the offices of the Church, as they were read at mass and on feast days, could no longer be understood by the body of the worshippers. This was the result, partly of the decay of all the Roman institutions, and, indeed, of all the principles on which those institutions had rested, and partly of the invasion and conquest of the country by the Northern barbarians, whose irruption, with the violences that followed it, left for a long time neither the quietness nor the sense of security necessary even to the humblest intellectual culture.[419]

[415] One reason why the clergy did little to preserve the purity
of the Latin, and much to corrupt it, in the South of Europe,
was, that they were obliged to hold their intercourse with the
common people in the _degraded_ Latin. And this intercourse,
which consisted chiefly of instructions given to the common
people, was a large part of all the clergy did in the early ages
of the Church. For the Christian clergy in Spain, as elsewhere,
addressed themselves, for a long period, to the lower and more
ignorant classes of society, because the refined and the powerful
refused to listen to them. But the Latin spoken by those classes
in Spain, whether it were what was called the “lingua rustica”
or not, was undoubtedly different from the purer Latin spoken
by the more cultivated and favored classes, just as it was in
Italy, and even much more than it was there. In addressing the
common people, their Christian teachers in Spain, therefore,
very early found it expedient, and probably necessary, to use
the _degraded_ Latin, which the common people spoke. At last, as
we learn, no other was intelligible to them; for the grammatical
Latin, even of the office of the Mass, ceased to be so. In this
way, Christianity must have contributed directly and materially
to the degradation of the Latin, and to the formation of the new
dialects, just as it contributed to form the modern character,
as distinguished from the ancient. Indeed, without entering
into the much vexed questions concerning the _lingua rustica_
or _quotidiana_, its origin, character and prevalence, I cannot
help saying, that I am persuaded the modern languages and their
dialects in the South of Europe were, so far as the Latin was
concerned, formed out of the popular and vulgar Latin found in
the mouths of the common people; and that Christianity, more than
any other single cause, was the medium and means by which this
change from one to the other was brought about. For the _lingua
rustica_, see Morhof, De Patavinitate Livianâ, capp. vi., vii.,
and ix.; and Du Cange, De Causis Corruptæ Latinitatis, §§ 13-25,
prefixed to his Glossarium.

[416] The passage from Licinian is given in a note to Eichhorn’s
“Allgemeine Geschichte der Cultur,” 1799, 8vo, Band II. p. 467.
See, also, Castro, Biblioteca Española, 1786, folio, Tom. II. p.
275.

[417] Isidore, as cited at length in Eichhorn’s “Cultur,” Band
II. p. 470, note (I).

[418] For Isidorus Hispalensis, see Antonio, Bib. Vet., Lib. V.
capp. iii., iv.; and Castro, Bib. Esp., Tom. II. pp. 293-344. I
judge Isidore’s Latinity chiefly from his “Etymologiarum Libri
XX.,” and his “De Summo Bono, Libri III.,” fol., 1483, lit.
Goth. No doubt, there are many words in Isidore of Seville, that
are not of classical authority, some of which he marks as such,
and others not; but, on the whole, his Latinity is respectable.
Among the corrupt words he uses are a few that are curious,
because they have descended into the modern Castilian; such as,
“_astrosus_, ab astro dictus, quasi malo sidere natus,” (Etymol.,
1483, fol. 50. a,) which appears in the present _astroso_, the
familiar term for _unhappy_, _disastrous_, and permitted by the
Spanish Academy;--_cortina_, of which Isidore says, “Cortinæ
sunt aulæa, id est, vela de pellibus, qualia in Exodo leguntur,”
(Etym., f. 97. b,) which appears in the modern Spanish _cortina_,
for curtain;--”_camisias_ vocamus, quod in his dormimus in
camis,” (Etym., f. 96. b,) which last word, _cama_, is explained
afterwards to be “lectus brevis et circa terram,” (Etym., f. 101.
a,) and both of which are now Spanish, _camisa_ being the proper
word for shirt, and _cama_ for bed;--”_mantum_ Hispani vocant
quod manus tegat tantum, est enim brevis amictus,” (Etym., f. 97.
a,) which is the Spanish _manto_;--and so on with a few others.
They are, however, only curious as corrupted Latin words, which
_happened_ to continue in use, till the modern Spanish arose
several centuries later.

[419] See Eichhorn’s Cultur, Band II. pp. 472, etc.;--or, for
more ample accounts, Antonio, Bib. Vet., Lib. V. and VI.; and
Castro, Bib. Esp., Tom. II.

This great irruption of the Northern barbarians effected another and most important revolution in the language of the Peninsula. It in fact gave to it a new character. For the race of men by whom it was made was entirely different, both in its origin, its language, and, indeed, in all that goes to make up national character, from the four races that had previously occupied the country. The new invaders belonged to those vast multitudes beyond the Rhine, who had been much known to the Romans from the time of Julius Cæsar, and who, at the period of which we speak, had been, for above a century, leaning with a portentous weight upon the failing barriers, which, on the banks of that glorious stream, had long marked the limits of Roman power. Urged forward, not only by the natural disposition of Northern nations to come into a milder climate, and of barbarous nations to obtain the spoils of civilization, but by uneasy movements among the Tartars of Upper Asia, which were communicated through the Sclavonic tribes to those of Germany, their accumulated masses burst, in the beginning of the fifth century, with an irresistible impulse, on the wide and ill-defended borders of the Empire. Without noticing the tumultuous attempts that preceded this final and fatal invasion and were either defeated or turned aside, it is enough to say, that the first hordes of the irruption which succeeded in overthrowing the empire of the world began to pass the Rhine at the end of the year 406, and in the beginning of 407. These hordes, however, were pressed forward, it may be said almost without a figure, by the merely physical weight of the large bodies that followed them. Tribe succeeded tribe, with all the facility and haste of a nomadic life, which knows neither local attachments nor local interests, and with all the eagerness and violence of barbarians seeking the grosser luxuries of civilization; so that when, at the end of that century, the last of the greater warlike emigrations had forced for itself a place within the limits of the Roman empire, it may be truly said, that, from the Rhine and the British Channel on the one side, to Calabria and Gibraltar on the other, there was hardly a spot of that empire over which they had not passed, and few where they were not then to be found possessors of the soil, and masters of the political and military power.[420]

[420] Gibbon, Chap. XXX.

In the particular character of the multitudes that finally established themselves within its territory, Spain was certainly less unfortunate than were most of the countries of Europe, that were in a similar manner invaded. The first tribes that rushed over the Pyrenees--the Franks, who came before the general invasion, and the Vandali, the Alani, and the Suevi, who, as far as Spain was concerned, formed its vanguard--committed, no doubt, atrocious excesses, and produced a state of cruel suffering, which is eloquently and indignantly described in a well-known passage of Mariana;[421] but, after a comparatively short period, these tribes or nations passed over into Africa and never returned. The Goths, who succeeded them as invaders, were, it is true, barbarians, like their predecessors, but they were barbarians of a milder and more generous type. They had already been in Italy, where they had become somewhat acquainted with the Roman laws, manners, and language; and when, in 411, they traversed the South of France and entered the Peninsula, they were received rather as friends than as conquerors.[422] Indeed, at first, their authority was exercised in the name and on behalf of the Empire; but, before the century was ended, the last Emperor of the West had ceased to reign; and, by a sort of inevitable necessity, the Visigoth dynasty was established throughout nearly the whole of Spain, and acknowledged by Odoacer, the earliest of the barbarian kings of Italy.

[421] Lib. V. c. 1.

[422] Mariana, Lib. V. c. 2.

Previously, however, to the entrance of the Visigoths into Spain, they had been converted to Christianity by the venerable Ulfilas; and, as early as 466-484, in a period of great confusion, they had formed for themselves a criminal code of laws, to which, in 506, they added a civil code,--the two being subsequently made to constitute the basis of that important body of laws which, above a century later, was compiled by the fourth Council of Toledo.[423] But, though the Visigoths had thus adopted some of the most important means of civilization, their language, like that of the rest of the Northern invaders, remained essentially barbarous. It was never, at any time, in Spain, a written language. It was of the Teutonic stock, and had nothing, or almost nothing, in common with the Latin. Still, the people who spoke it were so intimately mingled with the conquered people, and each, from its position, had become so dependent on the other, that it was no longer a question whether they should find some medium of communication suited to the daily and hourly intercourse of common life. They were, in fact, compelled to do so. The same consequences, therefore, followed, that followed in the other Roman or Romanized countries which were invaded in the same way. A union of the two languages took place; but not a union on equal terms. This was impossible. For on the side of the Latin were not only the existing, though decayed, institutions of the country, but whatever of civilization and refinement was still to be found in the world, as well as the vast and growing power of the Christian religion, with its organized priesthood, which refused to be heard in any other language. So that, if the Goths, on their part, had the political and military authority, and even a more fresh and vigorous intellectual character, they were obliged, on the whole, to submit to such prevalent influences, and to adopt, in a great degree, the language through which alone they could obtain the benefits of a more advanced state of society. The Latin, therefore, corrupted and degraded as it was, remained in Spain, as it did in the other countries where similar races of men came together, by far the most prominent element in the language that grew out of their union, and was thus made to constitute the grand basis of the modern Spanish.

[423] Gibbon, Chap. XXXVII.; an article in the Edinburgh Review,
Vol. XXXI., on the Gothic Laws of Spain; and Depping, Tom. II.
pp. 217, etc.

The most considerable change effected by the invaders in the language they found established in Spain was a change in its grammatical structure. The Goths, like any uncivilized people, could learn the individual words of the more cultivated language they every day heard, easier than they could comprehend the philosophical spirit of its grammar. While, therefore, they freely adopted the large and convenient vocabulary of the Latin, they compelled its complicated forms and constructions to yield to the simpler constructions and habits of their own native dialects. This may be illustrated by the striking changes they wrought in the established inflections of the Latin nouns and verbs. The Romans, it is well known, had strict declensions to mark the relations of their nouns, and strict conjugations by which they distinguished the times of their verbs. The Goths had neither, but used articles united with prepositions to mark the cases of their nouns, and auxiliaries of different kinds to mark the changes in the meanings of their verbs.[424]

[424] In the earliest Gothic that remains to us, (the Gospels
of Ulfilas, circa A. D. 370,) there is no indefinite article;
and the definite does not always occur where it is used in the
original Greek, from which, it is worthy of notice, the venerable
Bishop made his version, and not from the Latin. But there is no
reason, I think, to suppose that the articles of both sorts were
not used by the Goths, as well as by the other Northern tribes,
in the fifth century, as they have been ever since. See Ulfilas,
Gothische Bibelübersetzung, ed. Zahn, 1805, 4to, and, especially,
Einleitung, pp. 28-37.

When, therefore, in Spain, they received the Latin, where no article existed, they compelled _ille_, as the nearest word they could find, to serve for their definite article, and _unus_ for their indefinite,--so that, in their oldest deeds and other documents, we find such phrases as _ille_ homo, _the_ man; _unus_ homo, _a_ man; _illa_ mulier, _the_ woman; and so on,--from which the modern Spanish derives its articles _el_ and _la_, _uno_, _una_, etc., just as the French, by a similar process, obtained the articles _le_ and _la_, _un_ and _une_, and the Italians _il_ and _la_, _uno_ and _una_.[425] The same sort of compromise took place in relation to the verbs. Instead of _vici_, I have conquered, they said _habeo victus_; instead of saying _amor_, I am loved, they said _sum amatus_; and from such a use of _habere_ and _esse_, they introduced into the modern Spanish the auxiliaries _haber_ and _ser_, as the Italians introduced _avere_ and _essere_, and the French _avoir_ and _être_.[426] This example of the effect produced by the Goths on the nouns and verbs of the Latin is but a specimen of the changes they brought about in the general structure of that language, by which they contributed their full share towards still further corrupting it, as well as towards modelling it into the present Spanish;--a great revolution, which it required above seven centuries fairly to accomplish, and two or three centuries more entirely to carry out into all its final results.[427]

[425] Raynouard, Troubadours, Tom. I. pp. 39, 43, 48, etc., and
Diez, Grammatik der Romanischen Sprachen, 1838, 8vo, Band II. pp.
13, 14, 98-100, 144, 145.

[426] Raynouard, Troubadours, Tom. I. pp. 76-85.

[427] See, on the whole of this subject,--the formation of the
modern dialects of the South of Europe,--the excellent “Grammatik
der Romanischen Sprachen von Fried. Diez,” Bonn, 1836-38, 2 vols.
8vo. For examples of corruptions of the Spanish language, such as
are above referred to, take the following:--_Frates, orate pro
nos_, instead of _Fratres, orate pro nobis_;--_Sedeat segregatus
a corpus et sanguis Domini_, instead of _corpore et sanguine_.
(Marina, Ensayo, p. 22, note, in Memorias de la Academia de la
Hist., Tom. IV.) The changes in spelling are innumerable, but
are less to be trusted as proofs of change in the language,
because they may have arisen from the carelessness or ignorance
of individual copyists. Specimens of every sort of them may be
found in the “Coleccion de Cédulas,” etc., referred to in Vol. I.
p. 47, note, and in the “Coleccion de Fueros Municipales,” by Don
Tomas Muñoz y Romero, Madrid, 1847, fol., Tom. I.

But, in the mean time, another tremendous invasion had burst upon Spain; violent, unforeseen, and for a time threatening to sweep away all the civilization and refinement, that had been preserved from the old institutions of the country, or were springing up under the new. This was the remarkable invasion of the Arabs, which compels us now to seek some of the materials of the Spanish character, language, and literature in the heart of Asia, as we have already been obliged to seek for some of them in the extreme North of Europe.

The Arabs, who, at every period of their history, have been a picturesque and extraordinary people, received, from the passionate religion given to them by the genius and fanaticism of Mohammed, an impulse that, in most respects, is unparalleled. As late as the year of Christ 623, the fortunes and the fate of the Prophet were still uncertain, even within the narrow limits of his own wild and wandering tribe; yet, in less than a century from that time, not only Persia, Syria, and nearly the whole of Western Asia, but Egypt and all the North of Africa had yielded to the power of his military faith. A success so wide and so rapid, founded on religious enthusiasm, and so speedily followed by the refinements of civilization, is unlike any thing else in the history of the world.[428]

[428] See some striking remarks on the adventures of Mohammed, in
Prof. Smyth’s genial Lectures on Modern History, Vol. I. pp. 66,
67, 8vo, London, 1840.

When the Arabs had obtained a tolerably quiet possession of the cities and coasts of Africa, it was natural they should turn next to Spain, from which they were separated only by the straits of the Mediterranean. Their descent was made, in great force, near Gibraltar, in 711; the battle of the Guadalete, as it is called by the Moorish writers, and of Xerez, as it is called by the Christians, followed immediately; and, in the course of three years, they had, with their accustomed celerity, conquered the whole of Spain, except the fated region of the Northwest, behind whose mountains a large body of Christians, under Pelayo, retreated, leaving the rest of their country in the hands of the conquerors.

But while the Christians, who had escaped from the wreck of the Gothic power, were thus either shut up in the mountains of Biscay and Asturias, or engaged in that desperate struggle of nearly eight centuries, which ended in the final expulsion of their invaders, the Moors[429] throughout the centre and especially throughout the South of Spain were enjoying an empire as splendid and intellectual as the elements of their religion and civilization would permit.

[429] They were so called from their African abode, Mauritania,
where they naturally inherited the name of the ancient _Mauri_.

Much has been said concerning the glory of this empire, and the effect it has produced on the literature and manners of modern times. Long ago, a disposition was shown by Huet and Massieu to trace to them the origin both of rhyme and of romantic fiction; but both are now generally admitted to have been, as it were, spontaneous productions of the human mind, which different nations at different periods have invented separately for themselves.[430] Somewhat later, Father Andres, a learned Spaniard, who wrote in Italy and in Italian, anxious to give to his own country the honor of imparting to the rest of Europe the first impulse to refinement after the fall of the Roman empire, conceived the theory, at once broader and more definite than that of Huet, that the poetry and cultivation of the Troubadours of Provence, which are generally admitted to be the oldest of Southern Europe in modern times, were derived entirely and immediately from the Arabs of Spain; a theory which has been adopted by Ginguené, by Sismondi, and by the authors of the “Literary History of France.”[431] But they all go upon the presumption that rhyme and metrical composition, as well as a poetic spirit, were awakened later in Provence than subsequent inquiries show them to have been. For Father Andres and his followers date the communication of the Arabian influences of Spain upon the South of France from the capture of Toledo in 1085, when, no doubt, there was a great increase of intercourse between the two countries.[432] But Raynouard[433] has since published the fragment of a poem, the manuscript of which can hardly be dated so late as the year 1000, and has thus shown that the Provençal literature is to be carried back above a century earlier, and traced to the period of the gradual corruption of the Latin, and the gradual formation of the modern language. The elder Schlegel, too, has entered into the discussion of the theory itself, and left little reason to doubt that Raynouard’s positions on the subject are well founded.[434]

[430] See Huet, “Origine des Romans,” (ed. 1693, p. 24,) but
especially Warton, in his first Dissertation, for the Oriental
and Arabic origin of romantic fiction. The notes to the octavo
edition, by Price, add much to the value of the discussions
on these questions. Warton’s Eng. Poetry, 1824, 8vo, Vol. I.;
Massieu (Hist. de la Poésie Françoise, 1739, p. 82) and Quadrio
(Storia d’ Ogni Poesia, 1749, Tom. IV. pp. 299, 300) follow Huet,
but do it with little skill.

[431] The opinion of Father Andres is boldly stated by him in
the following words: “Quest’ uso degli Spagnuoli di verseggiare
nella lingua, nella misura, e nella rima degli Arabi, può dirsi
con fondamento la prima origine della moderna poesia.” (Storia
d’ Ogni Lett., Lib. I. c. 11, § 161; also pp. 163-272, ed. 1808,
4to.) The same theory will be found yet more strongly expressed
by Ginguené (Hist. Litt. d’Italie, 1811, Tom. I. pp. 187-285);
by Sismondi (Litt. du Midi, 1813, Tom. I. pp. 38-116; and Hist.
des Français, 8vo, Tom. IV., 1824, pp. 482-494); and in the Hist.
Litt. de la France (4to, 1814, Tom. XIII. pp. 42, 43). But these
last authors have added little to the authority of Andres’s
opinion, the very last being, I think, Ginguené.

[432] Andres, Storia, Tom. I. p. 273. Ginguené, Tom. I. pp.
248-250, who says: “C’est à cette époque (1085) que remontent
peut-être les premiers essais poétiques de l’Espagne, _et que
remontent sûrement les premiers chants de nos Troubadours_.”

[433] Fragment d’un Poème en Vers Romans sur Boèce, publié par
M. Raynouard, etc., Paris, 8vo, 1817. Also in his Poésies des
Troubadours, Tom. II. Consult, further, Grammaire de la Langue
Romane, in the same work, Tom. I.

[434] I refer to “Observations sur la Langue et la Littérature
Provençales, par A. W. Schlegel,” Paris, 1818, 8vo, not
published. See, especially, pp. 73, etc., in which he shows how
completely anti-Arabic are the whole tone and spirit of the early
Provençal, and still more those of the early Spanish poetry. And
see, also, Diez, Poesie der Troubadours, 8vo, 1826, pp. 19, etc.;
an excellent book.