It was in Spain that the coronation rite first appeared in the West. The actual date at which the rite was first used in Spain is not known, but in the seventh century it was evidently well established. Thus in the Canons of the sixth Council of Toledo (638) reference is made to the oath which the king takes on his accession, in which he swears to persecute the Jews, and in the Canons of the eighth Council this oath is again referred to. Julian, Bishop of Toledo[124], has left us a short description of the coronation of King Wamba in 672, at which ceremony he was himself present. He tells us that the king, standing in his royal robes (_regio iam cultu conspicuus_) before the altar of the Church of St Peter and St Paul in Toledo, ‘according to custom made his oath to the people, and then on bended knees the oil of benediction is poured on his head by the hands of the holy bishop Quiricius and an abundance of benediction is manifested.’ Here we have the oath, the anointing, and the curious expression ‘benedictionis copia,’ which probably means a series of benedictions. There are no early Spanish forms extant, though there are slight traces of the rite and evidence that there was a proper Mass for the occasion in the old Spanish service books[125]. From the time of the Arab conquest until the reigns of Ferdinand and Isabella, Spain was little more than a geographical term. Three small Christian states, Aragon, Castile, and Navarre, maintained their independence against the flourishing Arab kingdom of Granada. The realm of Aragon was in itself a confederation of different states, and therefore in strict theory the king should, to obtain due recognition, be crowned in each state. But, probably owing to the inconvenience of an oft-repeated coronation, the rite seems to have been discarded altogether in Aragon by the fifteenth century. Nevertheless the order used at the coronation of Dom Pedro IV of Aragon in 1336 is still preserved. Castile was even more than Aragon a confederation of different states, and the king of Castile was king also of Léon, Galice, Toledo, Jaen, Murcia, etc. Here again, doubtless from considerations of convenience, the rite seems to have passed out of existence early, being replaced by a series of proclamations, and the taking of the oath by the new king before the Cortes. The third Christian state in Spain was the kingdom of Navarre. In this state, up to the fifteenth century, a coronation rite was used which possessed even more clearly marked characteristics than the rite of Aragon. After the union of the Spanish states into the one Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella, the rite seems to have passed out of existence altogether, the custom of Castile serving for the whole of Spain. The order of the coronation of Dom Pedro IV of Aragon[126] in 1336, while shewing Roman influence, on the other hand exhibits, with the rite of Navarre, more clearly marked national characteristics than any other Western rite.