The imperial edict of toleration was issued in 313, and in 325 was held the first General Council of the Church under the presidency of the emperor, Constantine, himself an avowed Christian. Within a quarter of a century of the time when Diocletian had boasted that he had extirpated the Christian name, it has been computed that nearly one half of the inhabitants of his empire were Christians.
The toleration, so long clamoured for, so lately conceded, was in 341 put an end to by the Christians themselves, and Pagan sacrifices were prohibited. So inconsistent is the conduct of a church militant and a church triumphant! In 388, after a brief eclipse under Julian, Christianity was formally declared by the Senate to be the established religion of the Roman Empire.
But the security, or rather predominance, thus suddenly acquired by the church, resting as it did in part upon royal favour and court intrigue, did not tend to the spiritual advancement of Christianity. Almost coincident with the Edict of Milan was the appearance of Arianism, which, after dividing the Church against itself for upwards of half-a-century, and almost succeeding at one time in imposing itself on the whole Church,[1] finally under the missionary zeal of Ulphilas found a new life among the barbarian nations that were pressing in upon all the northern boundaries of the Empire, ready, like eagles, to swoop down and feast upon her mighty carcase.
[1] At the Council of Rimini in 360. "Ingemuit totus orbis," says Jerome, "et Arianum se esse miratus est."
Most of these barbaric hordes, like the Goths and the Vandals, adopted the semi-Arian Christianity first preached to them by Ulphilas towards the close of the fourth century. Consequently the nations that forced their way into Southern Gaul, and over the Pyrenees into Spain, were, nominally at least, Christians of the Arian persuasion. The extreme importance to Spain of the fact of their being Christians at all will be readily apprehended by contrasting the fate of the Spanish provincials with that which befell the Christian and Romanized Britons at the hands of our own Saxon forefathers only half-a-century later.
Meanwhile the Church in Spain, like the Church elsewhere, freed from the quickening and purifying influences of persecution, had lost much of its ancient fervour. Gladiatorial shows and lascivious dances on the stage began to be tolerated even by Christians, though they were denounced by the more devout as incompatible with the profession of the Christian faith.
Spain also furnishes us with the first melancholy spectacle of Christian blood shed by Christian hands. Priscillian, bishop of Avila, was led into error by his intercourse with an Egyptian gnostic. What his error exactly was is not very clear, but it seems to have comprised some of the erroneous doctrines attributed to Manes and Sabellius. In 380, the new heresy, with which two other bishops besides Priscillian became infected, was condemned at a council held at Saragoza, and by another held five years later at Bordeaux. Priscillian himself and six other persons were executed with tortures at the instigation of Ithacius,[1] bishop of Sossuba, and Idacius, bishop of Merida, in spite of the protests of Martin of Tours and others. The heresy itself, however, was not thus stamped out, and continued in Spain until long after the Gothic conquest.
There is some reason for supposing that at the time of the Gothic invasion Spain was still in great part Pagan, and that it continued to be so during the whole period of Gothic domination.[2] Some Pagans undoubtedly lingered on even as late as the end of the sixth century,[3] but that there were any large numbers of them as late as the eighth century is improbable.
Dr Dunham, who has given a clear and concise account of the Gothic government in Spain, calls it the "most accursed that ever existed in Europe."[4] This is too sweeping a statement, though it must be allowed that the haughty exclusiveness of the Gothic nobles rendered their yoke peculiarly galling, while the position of their slaves was wretched beyond all example. However, it is not to their civil administration that we wish now to draw attention, but rather to the relations of Church and State under a Gothic administration which was at first Arian and subsequently orthodox.
[1] See Milman, "Latin Christianity," vol. iii. p. 60.