In no part of Europe had their influence exhibited such constant, marked, and permanent effects as in the Spanish Peninsula. On its coast, with which their ancestors had long been familiar, and where archæological research has placed the Tarshish of Holy Writ, the establishment of the Hebrew is of such high antiquity that history has failed to record it; and it may not unreasonably be assumed that it antedated the Christian era by at least a thousand years. The turbulent and perfidious character of the Hebrew sectaries caused them to be regarded with apprehension by the Romans. In the time of Hadrian, their old and powerful families were distributed, as a measure of public safety, among the most widely separated provinces of the empire. The fact is well ascertained that the Spanish Jews were rich and numerous in the fifth century, and then practically controlled the commerce and the financial resources of the country. Even at that early period they were renowned for their intellectual accomplishments, their extensive literature, their dexterity in the mechanical employments, the assiduity with which they pursued the most abstruse branches of science, and their proficiency in those practical arts which tend to the amelioration of the condition of the human race and the prolongation of the term of human life. As has been mentioned in a previous chapter, although occasionally pursued by royal avarice and clerical animosity, the Jews did not experience in Spain the full effects of that hatred which seemed to be their unhappy birthright until the accession of Reccared, the first orthodox sovereign of the Visigothic dynasty. From the latter part of the sixth century, the malice accumulated in the church and the cloister through ages of alternate restraint and forbearance was unmercifully wreaked upon them. The Visigothic Code is largely taken up with the statement of their disabilities, the denunciation of their customs, the enumeration of their offences, and the description of the penalties to be inflicted by the avenging magistrate. The paternal character of the ecclesiastical legislation, then and long afterwards in the ascendant in the Councils, scrutinized with jealous vigilance not only the public actions of the offensive sectaries, but invaded with brutal violence the sacred privacy of domestic life. The celebration of all national religious festivals was prohibited. A Jew could not be a witness against a Christian; intermarriage of the two races was declared null and void, and all issue of such unions were subject to seizure by the clergy, to be reared and educated in monastic institutions; circumcision was declared illegal; and the grotesque cruelty of the law which enforced the use of pork as food violated without cause or excuse a rational prejudice of the Jew, established by Divine command and confirmed by the unbroken practice of countless generations of his kinsmen. The