Page:1909historyofdec04gibbuoft.djvu/131

 Chap, xxxvii] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 103 hundred years, by the final conversion of the Lombards of Italy. 138 The first missionaries who preached the gospel to thePersecu- Barbarians appealed to the evidence of reason, and claimed the Jews in benefit of toleration. 139 But no sooner had they established a.d. 612-712 their spiritual dominion than they exhorted the Christian kings to extirpate, without mercy, the remains of Eoman 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 daemons was punished by the Anglo- Saxon laws with the heavier penalties of imprisonment and con- fiscation ; and even the wise Alfred adopted, as an indispensable duty, the extreme rigour of the Mosaic institutions. 140 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. 141 The wealth which they accumulated by trade, and the manage- ment 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, pro- ceeded at once to the last extremes of persecution. 142 Ninety 138 Paul Warnefrid (de Gestis Langobard. 1. iv. c. 44, p. 853, edit. Grot.) allows that Arianism still prevailed under the reign of Kotharis (a.d. 636-652). The pious Deacon does not attempt to mark the precise sera of the national conversion, which was accomplished, however, before the end of the seventh century. 139 Quorum fidei et conversioni ita congratulatus esse rex perhibetur, ut nullum tamen cogeret ad Christianismum. . . . Didicerat enim a doctoribus auctoribusque suae salutis, servitium Christi voluntarium non coactitium esse debere. Bedee Hist. Ecclesiastic. 1. i. c. 26, p. 62, edit. Smith. 140 See the Historians of France, torn. iv. p. 114 ; and Wilkins, Leges Anglo- Saxonica, p. 11, 31. Siquis sacrificium immolaverit prater Deo soli morte moriatur. 141 The Jews pretend that they were introduced into Spain by the fleets of Solomon 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, torn. vii. c. 9, p. 240-256. 142 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 (1. iv. c. 22) ; but the evidence is weak, and I have not been able to verify