With the fall of Arianism came a large accession of bigotry to the Spanish Church, as is sufficiently shewn by the canon above quoted from the Sixth Council of Toledo.  A subsequent law was even passed forbidding anyone under pain of confiscation of his property and perpetual imprisonment, to call in question the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church; the Evangelical Institutions; the definitions of the Fathers; the decrees of the Church; and the Sacraments.  In the spirit of these enactments, severe measures were taken against the Jews, of whom there were great numbers in Spain.  Sisebert (612-621) seems to have been the first systematic persecutor, whose zeal, as even Isidore confesses, was “not according to knowledge."[1] A cruel choice was given the Jews between baptism on the one hand, and scourging and destitution on the other.  When this proved unavailing, more stringent edicts were enforced against them.  Those who under the pressure of persecution consented to be baptised, were forced to swear by the most solemn of oaths that they had in very truth renounced their Jewish faith and abhorred its rites.  Those who still refused to conform were subjected to every indignity and outrage.  They were obliged to have Christian servants, and to observe Sunday and Easter.  They were denied the s connubii and the ius honorum.  Their testimony was invalid in law courts, unless a Christian vouched for their character.  Some who still held out were even driven into exile.  But this punishment could not have been systematically carried out, for the Saracen invasion found great numbers of Jews still in Spain.  As Dozy[2] well says of the persecutors—­“On le voulut bien, mais on ne le pouvait pas.”

[1] Apud Florez, “Esp.  Sagr.,” vol. vi. p. 502, quoted by Southey, Roderic, p. 255, n.  “Sisebertus, qui in initio regni Judaeos ad fidem Christianam permovens, aemulationem quidem habuit, sed non secundum scientiam:  potestate enim compulit, quos provocare fidei ratione oportuit.  Sed, sicut est scriptum, sive per occasionem sive per veritatem Christus annunciatur, in hoc gaudeo et gaudebo.”

    [2] “History of Mussulmans in Spain,” vol. ii. p. 26.

Naturally enough, under these circumstances the Jews of Spain turned their eyes to their co-religionists in Africa; but, the secret negotiations between them being discovered, the persecution blazed out afresh, and the Seventeenth Council of Toledo[1] decreed that relapsed Jews should be sold as slaves; that their children should be forcibly taken from them; and that they should not be allowed to marry among themselves.[2]

    [1] Canon 8, de damnatione Judaeorum.

    [2] For the further history of the Jews in Spain, see Appendix
    A.

These odious decrees against the Jews must be attributed to the dominant influence of the clergy, who requited the help they thus received from the secular arm by wielding the powers of anathema and excommunication against the political enemies of the king.[1] Moreover the cordial relations which subsisted between the Church and the State, animated as they were by a strong spirit of independence, enabled the Spanish kings to resist the dangerous encroachments of the Papal power, a subject which has been more fully treated in an Appendix.[2]