[Sidenote: _THE JEWS UNDER THE WISIGOTHS_]
The greatest churchman of the day, St. Isidor of Seville, whose career of forty years commenced with the Catholic revolution, did what in him lay to stimulate and justify persecution. His treatise against the Jews is not vituperative, as are so many later controversial writings, but he proves that they are condemned for their fathers' sins to dispersion and oppression until, at the end of the world, their eyes are to be opened and they are to believe.[120] That he should have felt called upon to compose such a work was an evil sign, and still more evil were the conclusions which he taught. They could not fail of deplorable results, as was seen when Sisebut ascended the throne in 612 and signalized the commencement of his reign by a forcible conversion of all the Jews of the kingdom. What means he adopted we are not told, but of course they were violent, which St. Isidor mildly reproves, seeing that conversion ought to be sincere, but which yet he holds to be strictly within the competence of the Church.[121] The Church in fact was thus brought face to face with the question whether the forcible propagation of the faith is lawful. This is so repugnant to the teachings of Christ that it could scarce be accepted, but, on the other hand, the sacrament of baptism is indelible, so the convenient doctrine was adopted and became the settled policy that, while Christianity was not to be spread by force, unwilling converts were nevertheless Christians; they were not to be permitted to apostatize and were subject to all the pains and penalties of heresy for any secret inclination to their own religion.[122] This fruitful conception led to infinite misery, as we shall see hereafter, and was the impelling motive which created the Spanish Inquisition.
Whatever may have been the extent and the success of Sisebut's measures, the Jews soon afterwards reappear, and they and the _conversos_ became the subject of an unintermittent series of ecclesiastical and secular legislation which shows that the policy so unfortunately adopted could only have attained its end by virtual extermination. The anvil bade fair to wear out the hammer--the constancy of the persecuted exhausted the ingenuity of the persecutor. With the conversion to Catholicism ecclesiastics became dominant throughout the Wisigothic territories and to their influence is attributable the varied series of measures which occupied the attention of the successive councils of Toledo from 633 until the Saracenic invasion in 711. Every expedient was tried--the seizure of all Jewish children, to be shut up in monasteries or to be given to God-fearing Christians; the alternative of expulsion or conversion, to the enforcement of which all kings at their accession were to take a solemn oath; the gentle persuasives of shaving, scourging, confiscation and exile. That the people at large did not share in the intolerance of their rulers is seen in the prohibitions of social intercourse, mixed marriages, and the holding of office. The spectre of proselytism was evoked in justification of these measures as though the persecuted Jew would seek to incur its dangers even had not the Talmud declared that "a proselyte is as damaging to Israel as an ulcer to a healthy body." The enforced conversions thus obtained were regarded naturally with suspicion and the converts were the subjects of perpetual animadversion.[123]