Until quite recently, even English and French historians fell into the common error of believing that Spain lay buried in uncivilised darkness during the whole dominion of the Visigothic kings.[109] Yet there has existed all the time, from their day to ours, irrefutable documentary evidence to the contrary, the writings of St. Isidore of Seville. This illustrious bishop, to whom we have already alluded in a former chapter, and who died in 636, wrote a treatise on _Etymology, or The Origin of Things_, and _A History of the Gothic Kings_. Montalembert calls him “the last philosopher of the ancient world, and the first Christian who arranged for Christians the knowledge of antiquity.” The Visigothic kings had their seat in Toledo, and the writings of St. Isidore bear incontrovertible testimony to the degree of culture to which Spain attained under their rule. There is also plenty of proof that many beautiful buildings were erected in Toledo under the Visigoth monarchy. The Moors, according to their own historian, looked with admiration on the churches, palaces, and mansions which greeted their eyes on their entrance into Toledo. There they found sumptuous palaces, with magnificent porticoes (St. Isidore calls them _aulas regias_).[110] Not only were these buildings beautiful, but their appointments, and the treasures they contained, were equally dazzling to the eyes of the invaders. One of the palaces had twenty-four strong rooms for storing articles of priceless value, among which were certain mysterious amulets and magic figures upon whose safe custody the safety of Ataulf’s kingdom[111] was superstitiously believed to depend. The palaces, too, of the Metropolitan bishops were most sumptuous. The Visigothic kings showed a strong predisposition to adopt the civilisation of decadent Rome, and to break for ever with their own past; they freely adopted Roman customs and usages, and even their architecture was not pure Visigothic, but Gotho-Roman: it had two distinct sources, one Roman, one Byzantine. Art entered Spain for the first time after the conquests of Julius Cæsar, while Byzantine art was brought from Constantinople in the train of the Christian religion. While characteristics of the real Visigothic art became more and more indistinct, those of Roman and Byzantine art gradually amalgamated and formed a style of architecture which the Spaniards have called Latino-Byzantine. The Visigoths, enchained by the prestige of the ancient civilisation, and dominated by the irresistible force of the Catholic religion, offered no resistance to the development of the new art; their gold work,[112] as well as their architecture and their literature, became Latino-Byzantine. The Courts of Recared and the other Gothic kings were in constant commercial communication with Constantinople. The two streams of Roman and Byzantine influence thus flowed together, and became the channel by which the Renaissance[113] was eventually reached.