In the Spanish Peninsula, the government of the Church presented a strange and portentous anomaly. As the representative of Islam was a member of the family of the Ommeyades, which had, in the beginning, exerted all the influence of a powerful caste to overwhelm its founder and render his teachings odious, so now the interests of Christianity were delivered over to the tender mercies of its hereditary and most unrelenting foe. The Visigothic sovereigns, chosen by ecclesiastical councils, were, by virtue of their election, clothed with a certain degree of sanctity, and enjoyed an ample measure of spiritual power. The monarch practically controlled the policy of the Church. His decision was final in all matters not important enough to be submitted to the assembled wisdom of the great ecclesiastical dignitaries of the kingdom. He consecrated bishops. He exercised without question the sacerdotal rights of presentation, translation, investiture. He convoked councils. The fate of every member of the hierarchy, from acolyte to archbishop, was in his hands. Even the metropolitan see of Toledo, the primacy of Spain, could not be filled without his sanction. He could appoint the most unworthy candidate to the most exalted station in the priesthood. He could arbitrarily depose ministers whose lives had exhibited the practice of every Christian virtue. He interpreted and dictated the application of intricate points of ecclesiastical law. Notwithstanding the apparent ascendency of the sacerdotal order in the temporal affairs of the government on the one hand, it was largely neutralized on the other by the influence of the Crown over the fortunes of the Church, an influence always weighty and often predominant.