96
THE DECLINE AND FALL
spiritual dominion than they exhorted the Christian kings to extirpate, without mercy, the remains of Roman or Barbaric superstition. The successors of Clovis inflicted one hundred lashes on the peasants who refused to destroy their idols; the crime of sacrificing to the dæmons was punished by the Anglo-Saxon laws with the heavier penalties of imprisonment and confiscation; and even the wise Alfred adopted, as an indispensable duty, the extreme rigour of the Mosaic institutions.[1] But the punishment, and the crime, were gradually abolished among a Christian people; the theological disputes of the schools were suspended by propitious ignorance; and the intolerant spirit, which could find neither idolaters nor heretics, was reduced to the persecution of the Jews. That exiled nation had founded some synagogues in the cities of Gaul; but Spain, since the time of Hadrian, was filled with their numerous colonies.[2] The wealth which they accumulated by trade, and the management of the finances, invited the pious avarice of their masters; and they might be oppressed without danger, as they had lost the use, and even the remembrance, of arms. Sisebut, a Gothic king, who reigned in the beginning of the seventh century, proceeded at once to the last extremes of persecution.[3] Ninety thousand Jews were compelled to receive the sacrament of baptism; the fortunes of the obstinate infidels were confiscated, their bodies were tortured; and it seems doubtful whether they were permitted to abandon their native country. The excessive zeal of the Catholic king was moderated, even by the clergy of Spain, who solemnly pronounced an inconsistent sentence: that the sacraments should not be forcibly imposed; but that the Jews who had been baptized should be constrained, for the honour of the church, to persevere in the external practice of a religion which they disbelieved and detested. Their frequent relapses provoked one of the successors of Sisebut to banish the
- ↑ See the Historians of France, tom. iv. p. 114; and Wilkins, Leges Anglo-Saxonicæ, p. 11, 31. Siquis sacrificium immolaverit præter Deo soli morte moriatur.
- ↑ The Jews pretend that they were introduced into Spain by the fleets of Soloman and the arms of Nebuchadnezzar; that Hadrian transported forty thousand families of the tribe of Judah, and ten thousand of the tribe of Benjamin, &c. Basnage, Hist. des Juifs, tom. vii. c. 9, p. 240-256.
- ↑ Isidore, at that time archbishop of Seville, mentions, disapproves, and congratulates the zeal of Sisebut (Chron. Goth. p. 728 [c. 61; p. 291, in Chron. Min., vol. ii.]). Baronius (A.D. 614, No. 41) assigns the number on the evidence of Aimoin (l. iv. c. 22); but the evidence is weak, and I have not been able to verify the quotation (Historians of France, tom. iii. p. 127 [p. 110]). [The passage in Aimoin concerns the persecution of Gaul, not of Spain.]
