53.) Earlier writers had asserted (but without proof), that the Ancients
called it Lethe, and the Moors added to these names their word for river.
Lope de Vega alludes to this opinion:
_Siempre lamentable Guadalete
Que llevo tanta sangre al mar de España,
Si por olvido se llamava el Lete
Trueque este nombre la vitoria estraña,
Y llamase memoria deste dia
En que España perdio la que tenia._
_Que por donde à la mar entrava apenas
Diferenciando el agua, ya se via
Con roxo humor de las sangrientas venas
Por donde le cortava y dividia:
Gran tiempo conservaron sus arenas
(Y pienso que ha llegado a la edad mia)
Reliquias del estrago y piedras echas
Armas, hierros de lanza y de flechas._
Jerusalen Conquistada, l. vi. ff. 136.
The date of the battle is given with grandiloquous circumstantiality by
Miguel de Barrios.
_Salio la tercer alva del tonante
Noviembre, con vestido nebuloso,
sobre el alado bruto que al brillante
carro, saca del pielago espumoso;
y en el frio Escorpion casa rotante
del fiero Marte, el Astro luminoso
al son que compasso sus plantas sueltas
dio setecientas y catorze bueltas._
Coro de las Musas, p. 100.
He states the chronology of Pelayo’s accession in the same taste.
_Era el pontificado del Segundo
Gregorio; Emperador Leon Tercero
del docto Griego; y del Persiano inmundo,
Zuleyman Miramamolin guerrero;
y de Daphne el amante rubicundo
surcava el mar del fulgido Carnero
sietecientas y diez y ocho vezes,
dexando el puerto de los aureos Pesces._
Coro de las Musas p. 102.
* * * * *
_The arrows pass’d him by to right and left._—I. p. 3.
The French jesuits relate of one of their converts in Canada a Huron,
by name Jean Armand Andeouarahen, that once _estant en guerre eschauffé
au combat, il s’enfonça si avant dans les darts et les flêches des
ennemis, qu’il fut abandonné des siens dans le plus fort de la meslée.
Ce fut alors qu’il se recommenda plus particulièrement à Dieu: il sentit
pour lors un secours si présent, que du depuis, appuyé sur cette mesme
confiance, il est toûjours le premier et le plus avant dans les périls,
et jamais ne pâlit, pour quelque danger qu’il envisage. Je voyois,
disoit-il, comme une gresle de flêches venir fondre sur moy; je n’avois
point d’autre bouclier pour les arrester, que la croyance seule que Dieu
disposant de ma vie, il en feroit selon sa volonté._ Chose étrange!
les flêches s’écartoient à mes deux costez, ainsi, disoit-il, que fait
l’eau lors qu’elle rencontre la pointe d’un vaisseau qui va contre
marée.—_Relation de la N. France_, 1642, p. 129.
* * * * *
_He found himself on Ana’s banks,
Fast by the Caulian schools._—I. p. 6.
The site of this monastery, which was one of the most flourishing
seminaries of that age, is believed to have been two leagues from Merida,
upon the Guadiana, where the Ermida, or Chapel of Cubillana, stands at
present, or was standing a few years ago. The legend, from which I have
taken such circumstances as might easily have happened, and as suited my
plan, was invented by a race of men who, in the talent of invention, have
left all poets and romancers far behind them. Florez refers to Brito for
it, and excuses himself from relating it, because it is not necessary to
his[8] subject;—in reality he neither believed the story, nor chose to
express his objections to it. His disbelief was probably founded upon
the suspicious character of Brito, who was not at that time so decidedly
condemned by his countrymen as he is at present. I give the legend from
this veracious Cistercian. Most of his other fabrications have been
exploded, but this has given rise to a popular and fashionable idolatry,
which still maintains its ground.
“The monk did not venture to leave him alone in that disconsolate state,
and taking him apart, besought him by the passion of Jesus Christ to
consent that they twain should go together, and save a venerable image
of the Virgin Mary our Lady, which in that convent flourished with great
miracles, and had been brought from the city of Nazareth by a Greek
monk, called Cyriac, at such time as a heresy in the parts of the East
arose against the use and veneration of images; and with it a relic of
the Apostle St. Bartholomew, and another of St. Bras, which were kept
in an ivory coffer, for it would be a great sacrilege to leave them
exposed to the ill-treatment of barbarians, who, according to public
fame, left neither temple nor sacred place which they did not profane,
casting the images into the fire, and dragging them at their horses’s
tails for a greater opprobrium to the baptized people. The King, seeing
himself thus conjured by the passion of our Redeemer Jesus Christ, in
whom alone he had consolation and hope of remedy, and considering the
piety of the thing in which he was chosen for companion, let himself
be overcome by his entreaties; and taking in his arms the little image
of our Lady, and Romano the coffer with the relics, and some provision
for the journey, they struck into the middle of Portugal, having their
faces alway towards the west, and seeking the coast of the ocean sea,
because in those times it was a land more solitary, and less frequented
by people, where they thought the Moors would not reach so soon, because,
as there were no countries to conquer in those parts, there was no
occasion which should lead them thither. Twenty-and-six days the two
companions travelled without touching at any inhabited place, and after
enduring many difficulties in crossing mountains and fording rivers, they
had sight of the ocean sea on the 22d of November, being the day of the
Virgin Martyr St. Cecilia; and as if in that place they should have an
end of their labours, they took some comfort, and gave thanks to God,
for that he had saved them from the hand of their enemies. The place
which they reached is in the _Coutos_ of Alcobaça, near to where we now
see the town of Pederneira, on the eastern side of which there rises,
in the midst of certain sands, a hill of rock and firm land, somewhat
prolonged from north to south, so lofty and well proportioned that it
seemeth miraculously placed in that site being surrounded on all sides
with plains covered with sand, without height or rock to which it appears
connected. And forasmuch as the manner thereof draws to it the eyes of
whosoever beholds this work of nature, the king and the monk desired
to ascend the height of it, to see whether it would afford a place for
them in which to pass their lives. They found there a little hermitage
with a holy crucifix, and no other signs of man, save only a plain tomb,
without writing or epitaph to declare whose it might be. The situation
of the place, which, ascending to a notable height, gives a prospect by
sea and by land as far as the eyes can reach, and the sudden sight of the
crucifix, caused in the mind of the king such excitement and so great
consolation, that embracing the foot of the cross, he lay there melting
away in rivers of tears, not now of grief for the kingdoms and dominions
which he had lost, but of consolation in seeing that in exchange the
crucified Jesus himself had in this solitary mountain offered himself to
him, in whose company he resolved to pass the remainder of his life; and
this he declared to the monk, who, to content him, and also because he
saw that the place was convenient for contemplation, approved the king’s
resolve, and abode there with him some days; during which perceiving some
inconvenience in living upon the summit of the mountain, from whence it
was necessary to descend with much labour, whenever they would drink,
or seek for herbs and fruits for their food; and moreover understanding
that it was the king’s desire to remain there alone, that he might vent
himself in tears and exclamations, which he made oftentimes before the
image of Christ, he went with his consent to a place little more than a
mile from the mountain, which being on the one side smooth and of easy
approach, hangs on the other over the sea with so huge a precipice that
it is two hundred fathoms in perpendicular height, from the top of the
rock to the water. There, between two great rocks, each of which projects
over the sea, hanging suspended from the height in such a form, that they
seem to threaten destruction to him who sees them from the beach, Romano
found a little cave, made naturally in the cliff, which he enlarged with
some walls of loose stone, built up with his own hands, and having thus
made a sort of hermitage, he placed therein the image of the Virgin
Mary of Nazareth, which he had brought from the Caulinean convent, and
which being small, and of a dark colour, with the infant Jesus in its
arms, hath in the countenance a certain perfection, with a modesty so
remarkable, that at first sight it presents something miraculous; and
having been known and venerated so great a number of years, during many
of which it was in a place which did not protect it from the injuries of
weather, it hath never been painted, neither hath it been found necessary
to renew it. The situation of this hermitage was, and is now, within
sight of the mountain where the king dwelt; and though the memorials from
whence I am deriving the circumstances of these events do not specify
it, it is to be believed that they often saw each other, and held such
divine communion as their mode of life and the holiness of the place
required; especially considering the great temptations of the Devil
which the king suffered at the beginning of his penitence, for which the
counsels and instructions of the monk would be necessary, and the aid of
his prayers, and the presence of the relics of St. Bartholomew, which
miraculously saved him many times from various illusions of the enemy.
And in these our days there are seen upon the top of the mountain, in the
living rock, certain human footsteps, and others of a different form,
which the common people, without knowing the person, affirm to be the
footsteps of St. Bartholomew and the Devil, who was there defeated and
his illusions confounded by the saint, coming in aid of a devout man who
called upon him in the force of his tribulation. This must have been the
king, (though the common people know it not,) whom the saint thus visibly
aided, and he chose that for a memorial of this aid, and of the power
which God has given him over the evil spirits, these marks should remain
impressed upon the living rock. And the ancient name of the mountain
being Seano, it was changed into that of the Apostle, and is called at
present St. Bartholomew’s; and the hermitage which remains upon the top
of it is under the invocation of the same saint and of St. Bras, which
must have arisen from the relics of these two saints that Romano brought
with him and left with the king for his consolation, when he withdrew
with the image of Our Lady to the place of which we have spoken, where he
lived little more than a year; and then knowing the time of his death,
he communicated it to the king, beseeching him that, in requital for
the love with which he had accompanied him, he would remember to pray
to God for his soul, and would give his body to the earth, from which
it had sprung; and that having to depart from that land, he would leave
there the image and the relics, in such manner as he should dispose them
before he died. With that Romano departed to enjoy the reward deserved
by his labours, leaving the king with fresh occasion of grief for want
of so good a companion. Of what more passed in this place, and of the
temptations and tribulations which he endured till the end of his life,
there is no authentic historian, nor memorial which should certify them,
more than some relations mingled with fabulous tales in the ancient
Chronicle of King Don Rodrigo, where, among the truths which are taken
from the Moor Rasis, there are many things notoriously impossible; such
as the journey which the king took, being guided by a white cloud till
he came near Viseo; and the penance in which he ended his life there,
inclosing himself alive in a certain tomb with a serpent which he had
bred for that purpose. But as these are things difficult to believe, we
will pass them over in silence, leaving to the judgement of the curious
the credit which an ancient picture deserves, still existing near
Viseo, in the church of St. Michael, over the tomb of the said King Don
Roderick, in which is seen a serpent painted with two heads; and in the
tomb itself, which is of wrought stone, a round hole, through which they
say that the snake entered. That which is certain of all this is, as our
historians relate, that the king came to this place, and in the hermitage
of St. Michael, which we now see near Visco, ended his days in great
penance, no man knowing the manner thereof; neither was there any other
memorial clearer than that in process of time a writing was found upon
a certain tomb in this church with these words; HIC REQVIESCIT RUDERICUS
ULTIMUS REX GOTHORUM, Here rests Roderick, the last King of the Goths.
I remember to have seen these very words written in black upon an arch
of the wall, which is over the tomb of the king, although the Archbishop
Don Rodrigo, and they who follow him, give a longer inscription, not
observing that all which he has added are his own curses and imprecations
upon Count Don Julian, (as Ambrosio de Morales has properly remarked,
following the Bishop of Salamanca and others,) and not parts of the
same inscription, as they make them. The church in which is the tomb of
the king is at present very small, and of great antiquity, especially
the first chapel, joined to which on either side is a cell of the same
length, but narrow, and dark also, having no more light than what enters
through a little window opening to the east. In one of these cells (that
which is on the south side) it is said that a certain hermit dwelt, by
whose advice the king governed himself in the course of his penance; and
at this time his grave is shown close to the walls of the chapel, on the
Epistle side. In the other cell (which is on the north) the king passed
his life, paying now, in the straitness of that place, for the largeness
of his palaces, and the liberties of his former life, whereby he had
offended his Creator. And in the wall of the chapel which answers to the
Gospel side, there remains a sort of arch, in which the tomb is seen,
wherein are his bones; and it is devoutly visited by the natives, who
believe that through his means the Lord does miracles there upon persons
afflicted with agues and other like maladies. Under the said arch, in
the part answering to it in the inside of the cell, I saw painted on the
wall the hermit and the king, with the serpent with two heads, and I
read the letters which are given above, all defaced by time, and bearing
marks of great antiquity, yet so that they could distinctly be seen.
The tomb is flat and made of a single stone, in which a man’s body can
scarcely find room. When I saw it it was open, the stone which had served
to cover it not being there, neither the bones of the king, which they
told me had been carried into Castille some years before, but in what
manner they knew not, nor by whose order; neither could I discover, by
all the enquiries which I made among the old people of that city, who had
reason to be acquainted with a thing of so much importance, if it were as
certain as some of them affirmed it to be.”—BRITO, _Monarchia Lusitania_,
P. ii. l. 7. c. 3.
“The great venerableness of the Image of our Lady of Nazareth which
the king left hidden in the very place where Romano in his lifetime
had placed it, and the continual miracle which she showed formerly,
and still shows,” induced F. Bernardo de Brito to continue the history
of this Image, which, no doubt, he did the more willingly because he
bears a part in it himself. In the days of Affonso Henriquez, the first
king of Portugal, this part of the country was governed by D. Fuas
Roupinho, a knight famous in the Portugueze chronicles, who resided in
the castle at Porto de Mos. This Dom Fuas “when he saw the land secure
from enemies, used often to go out hunting among the sands and thickets
between the town and the sea, where, in those days, there used to be
great store of game, and even now, though the land is so populous, there
is still some; and as he followed this exercise, the proper pastime of
noble and spirited men, and came sometimes to the seashore, he came upon
that remarkable rock, which being level on the side of the north, and
on a line with the flat country, ends towards the south in a precipice
over the waves of the sea, of a prodigious height, causing the greater
admiration to him who, going over the plain country without finding
any irregularity, finds himself, when least expecting it, suddenly on
the summit of such a height. And as he was curiously regarding this
natural wonder, he perceived between the two biggest cliffs which stand
out from the ground and project over the sea, a sort of house built of
loose stones, which, from its form and antiquity, made him go himself
to examine it; and descending by the chasm between the two rocks, he
entered into a low cavern, where, upon a little altar, he saw the
venerable Image of the Virgin Mary of Nazareth, being of such perfection
and modesty as are found in very few images of that size. The catholic
knight venerated it with all submission, and would have removed it to
his castle of Porto de Mos, to have it held in more veneration, but that
he feared to offend it if he should move it from a habitation where
it had abode for so many years. This consideration made him leave it
for the present in the same place and manner in which he found it; and
although he visited it afterwards when in course of the chase he came
to those parts, nevertheless he never took in hand to improve the poor
hermitage in which it was, nor would he have done it, if the Virgin had
not saved him from a notorious danger of death, which, peradventure, God
permitted, as a punishment for his negligence, and in this manner to make
the virtue of the Holy Image manifest to the world. It was thus, that
going to his ordinary exercise of the chase, in the month of September,
in the year of Christ 1182, and on the 14th of the month, being the day
on which the church celebrates the festival of the Exaltation of the
Cross upon the which Christ redeemed the human race, as the day rose
thick with clouds, which ordinarily arise from the sea, and the country
round about could not be seen by reason of the clouds, save for a little
space, it befell that the dogs put up a stag, (if indeed it were one,)
and Dom Fuas pressing his horse in pursuit, without fear of any danger,
because he thought it was all plain ground, and the mist hindered him
from seeing where he was, found himself upon the very edge of the rock
on the precipice, two hundred fathoms above the sea, at a moment when it
was no longer in his power to turn the reins, nor could he do any thing
more than invoke the succours of the Virgin Mary, whose image was in that
place; and she succoured him in such a manner, that less than two palms
from the edge of the rock, on a long and narrow point thereof, the horse
stopt as if it had been made of stone, the marks of his hoofs remaining
in proof of the miracle imprinted in the living rock, such as at this
day they are seen by all strangers and persons on pilgrimage, who go to
visit the Image of Our Lady; and it is a notable thing, and deserving
of serious consideration, to see that in the midst of this rock, upon
which the miracle happened, and on the side towards the east, and in a
part where, because it is suspended in the air, it is not possible that
any human being could reach, Nature herself has impressed a cross as if
nailed to the hardness of the rock, as though she had sanctified that
cliff therewith, and marked it with that holy sign, to be the theatre in
which the miraculous circumstance was to be celebrated; which, by reason
that it took place on the day of the Exaltation of the Cross, seemed as
if it showed the honour and glory which should from thence redound to the
Lord who redeemed us thereon. Dom Fuas seeing himself delivered from so
great danger, and knowing from whence the grace had come to him, went to
the little hermitage, where, with that great devotion which the presence
of the miracle occasioned, he gave infinite thanks to Our Lady, accusing
himself before her of having neglected to repair the house, and promising
all the amends which his possibility permitted. His huntsmen afterwards
arrived, following the track of the horse, and knowing the marvel which
had occurred, they prostrated themselves before the Image of Our Lady,
adding with their astonishment to the devotion of Dom Fuas, who, hearing
that the stag had not been seen, and that the dogs had found no track
of him in any part, though one had been represented before him to draw
him on, understood that it was an illusion of the Devil, seeking by that
means to make him perish miserably. All these considerations enhanced the
greatness of the miracle, and the obligations of Dom Fuas, who, tarrying
there some days, made workmen come from Leyria and Porto de Mos, to make
another hermitage, in which the Lady should be more venerated; and as
they were demolishing the first, they found placed between the stones of
the altar a little box of ivory, and within it relicks of St. Bras, St.
Bartholomew, and other saints, with a parchment, wherein a relation was
given of how, and at what time those relicks and the image were brought
there, according as has been aforesaid. A vaulted chapel was soon made,
after a good form for times so ancient, over the very place where the
Lady had been; and to the end that it might be seen from all sides, they
left it open with four arches, which in process of time were closed, to
prevent the damage which the rains and storms did within the chapel, and
in this manner it remains in our days. The Lady remained in her place,
being soon known and visited by the faithful, who flocked there upon the
fame of her appearance: the valiant and holy king D. Affonso Henriquez,
being one of the first whom Dom Fuas advised of what had happened, and
he, accompanied with the great persons of his court, and with his son, D.
Sancho, came to visit the Image of the Lady, and see with his own eyes
the marks of so rare a miracle as that which had taken place; and with
his consent, D. Fuas made a donation to the Lady of a certain quantity
of land round about, which was at that time a wild thicket, and for the
greater part is so still, being well nigh all wild sands incapable of
giving fruit, and would produce nothing more than heath and some wild
pine-trees. And because it establishes the truth of all that I have said,
and relates in its own manner the history of the Image of the Lady, I
will place it here in the form in which I saw it in the Record Room
at Alcobaça, preserving throughout the Latin and the barbarism of its
composition; which is as follows:—