When King Fernando decided to collect all the bones of martyrs and saints that he could find in the cathedrals and burial grounds, he raised an army and came to Seville, which was then under the Moors. Ibn Obeid, the chief of the Moriscoes, favoured Fernando's scheme, and allowed the King to enter the city to search for the remains of Justus. These bones could not be found; but while the seekers were at their task the spirit of Saint Isidore appeared to them, and said that the remains of Justus could not be discovered, as it was ordained that they should rest at Seville. Saint Isidore then offered his own remains for removal, and his embalmed corpse was taken to the Church of John the Baptist, in León, in 1063.
Until the time of Recared I. the Goths in Spain remained Arians. When they forsook their early faith, they adopted a ritual which differed from that of the Catholics. It was not until the reign of Alfonso VI. that the Roman service was used throughout the land. The civil law of the Goths was founded on the _Forum Judicum_ of the Romans. This lengthy code became later the _Fuero Juzgo_, and was eventually adapted to the community by Alfonso X. in 1258, and known as the _Siete Partidas_, or Seven Sections. Under the Gothic code slavery was permitted, and great power was vested in the hands of the nobility.
'The old Roman civilisation,' writes Mr. H. E. Watts, in his _Spain_, 'which the Celtiberians had been so quick to adopt, sat awkwardly on these newer barbarians. It was a heritage to which they had not succeeded of nature, and a burden too great for them to support? The Romans had made one nation of Spain. The Visigoths were not much more than an encampment.' When the Berbers, new converts to Mohammedanism, began to cast envious eyes upon lovely Andalusia, the Goths were demoralised through easy living in a southern clime. Spain had become a nation of lords and serfs, and the slaves, the mass of the people, had no heart to fight for the land that had been wrested from them.
When Tarik, lieutenant of Musa, came with a force of seven thousand Berbers to battle for the Prophet and to conquer Spain, the Gothic King, Roderic, hastily collected an army of defence and advanced towards Xeres. Theodomir, Governor of Andalusia, had learned that the invaders were marching from Algeciras, where they landed on the 30th of April 711. The Berbers had many horsemen, well-equipped and valiant, while Roderic possessed only a small number of mounted men.