Christianity and Islam in Spain | Page 6

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]
[1] The councils are full of denunciations aimed at the rebels against
the king's authority. By the Fourth Council (633) the deposed Swintila
was excommunicated.
[2] Appendix B.

CHAPTER II.
THE SARACENS IN SPAIN.
The Gothic domination lasted 300 years, and in that comparatively
short period we are asked by some writers to believe that the invaders
quite lost their national characteristics, and became, like the Spaniards,
luxurious and effeminate.[1] Their haughty exclusiveness, and the fact
of their being Arians, may no doubt have tended to keep them for a
time separate from, and superior to, the subject population, whom they
despised as slaves, and hated as heretics. But when the religious barrier
was removed, the social one soon followed, and so completely did the
conquerors lose their ascendency, that they even surrendered their own
Teutonic tongue for the corrupt Latin of their subjects.
[1] Cardonne's "History of Spain," vol. i. p. 62. "Bien différens des
leurs ancêtres étoient alors énervés par les plaisirs, la douceur du climat;
le luxe et les richesses avoient amolli leur courage et corrompu les
moeurs." Cp. Dunham, vol. i. 157.
But the Goths had certainly not become so degenerate as is generally
supposed. Their Saracen foes did not thus undervalue them. Musa ibn
Nosseyr, the organiser of the expedition into Spain, and the first

governor of that country under Arab rule, when asked by the Khalif
Suleiman for his opinion of the Goths, answered that "they were lords
living in luxury and abundance, but champions who did not turn their
backs to the enemy."[1] There can be no doubt that this praise was well
deserved. Nor is the comparative ease with which the country was
overrun, any proof to the contrary. For that must be attributed to
wholesale treachery from one end of the country to the other. But for
this the Gothic rulers had only themselves to blame. Their treatment of
the Jews and of their slaves made the defection of these two classes of
their subjects inevitable.
The old Spanish chroniclers represent the fall of the Gothic kingdom as
the direct vengeance of Heaven for the sins of successive kings;[2] but
on the heads of the clergy, even more than of the king, rests the guilt of
their iniquitous and suicidal policy towards the Arians[3] and the Jews.
The treachery of Julian,[4] whatever its cause, opened a way for the
Arabs into the country by betraying into their hands Ceuta, the key of
the Straits. Success in their first serious battle was secured to them by
the opportune desertion from the enemy's ranks of the