[1] The offering of one-third for the Church was refused to
    Hostegesis as being sacrilegious; so he proceeded to extort it,
    “suis codicibus institutis.”—­Samson “Apol.,” ii.  Pref. sec. 2.

    [2] Ibid. The state of the Church in the North was not much
    better.  See Yonge, p. 86.

    [3] Leovigild de habitu Clericorum.  Dozy, ii. 110.

    [4] Samson, Pref. ii. 4.

    [5] Succeeded Saul in 861, and was deposed in 864.

    [6] Mariana, viii. 5.  He went over to the Moslems.  Southey,
    “Chronicle of the Cid,” p. 228.  Yonge, p. 86.

    [7] Mariana (1.1.).

When the kings of Castile gradually drove back the Moors, and when Alfonso took Toledo in 1085, his wife, Constance of Burgundy, and her spiritual adviser, a monk named Bernard, were horrified at the laxity in morals and doctrine of the Muzarabic Christians.  Their addiction to poetry and natural science was regarded with suspicious aversion, and the pork-eating, circumcision, and, not least, the cleanly habits,[1] contracted from an intercourse with Moslems, were looked upon as so many marks of the beast.  In 1209 the Crusaders, who had swarmed to the wars in Spain, even wished to turn their pious arms against these poor Muzarabes, so scandalised were they at the un-Romish rites.  Yet we are told that Alfonso the Great, when building and restoring churches in the territory newly wrested from the Moors, set up again the ordinances of the Goths, as formerly observed at Toledo.[2]

The free church in the North had itself been in great danger of extinction, when the armies of the great Almanzer (977-1002) swept yearly through the Christian kingdoms like some devastating tempest.[3] Fifty-two victorious campaigns did that irresistible warrior lead against the infidels.[4] Barcelona, Pampluna, and Leon fell before his arms, and the sacred city of Compostella was sacked, and for a time left desolate, the bells of St James’ shrine being carried off to Cordova to serve as lamps in the grand mosque.  We are not, therefore, surprised to find that there were many bishops in the North who had lost their sees; and this was the case even before the tenth century, for a bishop named Sabaricus, being driven from his own see by the Arabs, was given that of Mindumetum by Alfonso III. in 867,[5] and twenty years later a bishop named Sebastian received the see of Auria in the same way.[6]

It is natural enough that the Moslems and the clergy of the Christian Church should be hostile to one another, but it is surprising to find—­as we do find in some cases—­the latter making common cause with the Arabs in ill-treating their fellow-countrymen and coreligionists.  Thus, as we have seen, Hostegesis, relying on the support of the secular arm,[7] beat and imprisoned the clergy for withholding from him the Church tithes, dragging them through the city naked, with a crier crying before them:—­“Such