Galicia, the Switzerland of Spain. Annette M. B. Meakin

Orense Archæological Society—Dr. Macias, the late Arturo Vazquez, and Señor Benito F. Alonso—started out to fetch them. Although the Abbot of Nocela had assured them that the peasants of the neighbourhood would offer no objection to their taking the stones,—adding that he had continually preached to them on the folly of their superstition,—these gentlemen thought it prudent to be ready for all emergencies, and took along with them some half-dozen policemen from Ginzo. Thanks to this precaution, they did not return home with battered skulls and broken noses, nor were they stoned to death on the road; yet one or the other fate would certainly have befallen them had they ventured on that expedition unprotected, for the men and boys of Nocela, having got wind of their purpose, gathered together before the porch of the little church and protested against the removal of the stones, while their womenfolk set up an outrageous hullabaloo at the corners of the village streets; and one urchin, thinking to get the better of the policemen, climbed the church tower that he might deliver a surprise attack upon the common enemy. No effort on the part of the archæologists to bring the people to reason met with the least success. “As pedras son nosas,” they cried (“The stones are ours”), and even tried to offer bodily resistance. When at length the stones had been taken possession of, there was not a single yoke of oxen to be found in the village, and a cart had to be brought from the neighbouring town of Lodoselo; but even then the peasant driver, terrified by the threats of the people standing round, begged with tears that he might be released from his bargain, and there was nothing for it but to let him go. Finally, the policemen themselves fetched a pair of oxen from the fields and harnessed them to a cart; the stones were put into it, and an old man was persuaded to drive it. Thus, at nightfall the party set out for Ginzo, the wife and daughter of the driver following the cart and tearfully entreat him to return. The rest of the people, who would have thrown stones but for their fear of the police, accompanied their departure with prolonged howls and hisses. Dr. Macias relates this story in order, he explains, to warn future archæologists that the modern citizens of the Forum Limicorum are as superstitious as were the Romans who refused to cross the river Limia at the command of Brutus.

      In the prologue of the chronicle of Idatius we read these words: “Idatius Provinciae Gallaeciae natus in Lemica Civitate,[42] mage divino munerequam proprio merito summi Praesul creatus officii,” etc. “Neither in his prologue nor in the years 431 and 462 of his chronicle,” says Dr. Macias, “where he speaks of himself as a bishop, does he once mention the name of his diocese; neither is it given us by St. Isidore or by Rodrigo, Archbishop of Toledo, when they speak of Idatius.” Dr. Macias reminds his readers that the fact of Idatius’s having been a native of Limica in no way proves that he was ever a bishop of that city. He is generally mentioned as “a bishop of Galicia” simply.

      Idatius gives no clue in his chronicle as to the date of his own birth, but we know that it was towards the close of his life that he sorrowfully wrote, lacrymabile propriae et vita tempus—and ut extremus plagae, ita extremus et vitae. These words were written by him in connection with the events of the year 469, the last year of those included in the chronicle. Dr. Macias adds that if he was about eighty years of age when he finished his chronicle, he must have been born about the year 390. The Portuguese writer Jorge Cardoso states in his Hagiologio that Idatius was of the race of the Sueves; but, as it happens, these people did not invade the Peninsula till twenty years later. Dr. Macias is sure, moreover, that the fact of the name being foreign to the Latin tongue indicates that he was not a Roman but a Limico of the Hispano-Galaic race.

      While still young—adhuc infantulus, or, as he says in another place, et infantulus et pupillus—he was taken to the East, either by his father or some other member of his family, and there he met St. Jerome, St. John, St. Eulogius, and St. Theophilus (bishops respectively of Jerusalem and Alexandria). His pilgrimage, as he calls it, could not have lasted longer than the year 402, when he was about twelve or fourteen years old, for he says he cannot give the dates of the deaths of St. Jerome and the other Fathers—among whom he mentions St. Epiphanius, who, we know, died in 402.

      In his shorter chronicle, Cronicon pequeño, we read that Idatius was converted to Christianity in the year 416,—“Idatii ad Dominum conversio peccatoris,”—and that eleven years afterwards he was elected bishop. Macias, like Florez, explains that the words conversio ad Dominum do not mean that he was converted from heathendom to Christianity, but that, till then a layman, he now entered the Church.

      The stipulated peace between the natives of Galicia and the Sueves[43] having been broken, the former commissioned Idatius to represent their case to the general Aecius. He set out for Gaul upon this errand in the year 431, and returned to Galicia the following year, accompanied by Count Censorius, the ambassador sent by Aecius to try and induce Hermanricus II to make a fresh peace. But Censorius being called to Rome by the Empress Placidia before this had been accomplished, the negotiations were left in the hands of Idatius and several other bishops. “Great,” says Dr. Macias, “were the services which upon this critical occasion Idatius rendered to his country”, but this is not by any means his only title to honour. Galicia was at that juncture not only overrun by barbarians but perturbed by heretics, and Idatius played no mean part in the struggle that was sustained between Arianism[44] and the Sueves, and which was more serious against the doctrines of Priscillian, which had by that time taken such deep root in Galicia, “a struggle obscure but heroic,” said Menendez y Pelayo, “which must have left some records behind it; but the torments endured by human thought and by the conscience are those which are the least reflected in the pages of history. What long accounts of conquests and battles, what innumerable catalogues of dynasties would we not gladly relinquish that we might know when and how the heresy of Priscillian disappeared from among the people of Galicia!”[45] But we will leave the subject of the persecution of the Priscillianists to another volume, and turn our attention at present to the writings of Idatius. The greatness of his name is due to the chronicles he left behind him,[46] and not to his religious zeal. Historians have pronounced them to be a literary production of the greatest importance, not only because they are the oldest historical documents possessed by Spain and because they testify to Spain’s having been one of the earliest among the nations to cultivate history, but also on account of the quality of the facts recorded. Florez calls them “an original source from which we may learn the events connected with the entrance of the Vandals, the Alanes, and the Sueves into Spain.” The fifth century would indeed be, historically, almost blank but for the light that is thrown upon its events by the chronicles of Idatius. St. Jerome, the translator and continuer of the history begun by Eusebius of Cæsarea, did not get farther than the year 378, everything having been thrown into confusion by the invasion of the barbarians. This, says Macias, was the point at which Idatius took up the thread. His chronicles begin with the following year, 379, the first year of the reign of Theodosius, and end in the year 469, thus embracing the events of ninety-one years. Idatius witnessed and took part in many of the events he recorded. Being, as he himself said, cognisant of all the calamities of his unfortunate epoch, he relates with truthfulness the invasion of Galicia by the Sueves, and paints their methods of raiding the country with the most lively colours. But for him the Spaniards would to-day be in ignorance of many of the facts which later historians—St. Isidore, and Rodrigo, Archbishop of Toledo, and others—have handed down, for they constantly copied word for word from the chronicles of Idatius.

      Until the year 1615, historians possessed only fragmentary editions of the chronicle, bearing the title Chronographia ex Idatio collectore quodem Caroli Maequali. But about that date a more complete and a more correct parchment copy was discovered in a monastery at Metz, and from this editions appeared in Rome, Paris, Leyden, Amsterdam, Frankfort, and other places. There is also his second chronicle, called Cronicon pequeño de Idacio, because it is practically an extract, or résumé, of the first. It begins twenty-six years later and terminates a hundred years later. In spite of its brevity, it contains several facts that are not included in the larger one, as, for instance, the conversion of Idatius above alluded to. Another document, Fastos Consulares (from the year 45 B.C. to A.D. 468), has been called, by the Jesuit Sirmondo, Idacianos, though it bears no author’s name; but Florez has proved in his España Sagrada that Idatius was not the author, and that it must have been penned by some Spaniard of the sixth century. “Truth to say,” concludes Dr. Macias, “Idatius can dispense with