Throughout the seventh century the hapless people experienced all the rigour of Spanish statesmanship, guided by priestly malevolence. Even bribery, the last resource of the oppressed, was provided against by regulations which in their stringency showed that, if the Jews were eager to purchase mercy, their ecclesiastical oppressors were not above selling the commodity. ♦612♦ Under King Sisebut, the treatment of the Jews was a rehearsal of the tragedy acted in the same country eight hundred and sixty years later. They were imprisoned, plundered, or burnt, and finally they were given the choice between apostasy and expatriation. The most “stiff-necked” amongst them preferred the loss of country and property to loss of self-respect. Ninety thousand yielded to force, and saved themselves by apparent conversion. The Church, while disapproving of compulsory proselytism, pronounced a heavy sentence on those who openly renounced the creed which nothing but the fear of banishment had driven them to embrace. Baptism became a mask and a mockery. But even outward conformity could not long be maintained unsupported by internal conviction, and many neophytes seized the first opportunity of throwing off the hateful cloak. Thereupon the Church, sorely scandalized at the sight of proselytes falling back into the slough whence she had rescued them, induced Sisenand, one of Sisebut’s successors, to restrain by force the Jews once baptized from relapsing into Judaism, or from frequenting other Jews, and, furthermore, to order that the children of the former should be torn from their parents and be educated in monasteries and nunneries. Those who were discovered secretly indulging in Hebrew rites were condemned to lose their freedom and to serve the King’s favourites. Side by side with these inhuman measures was carried on a less harmful, though not less stupid, missionary campaign. All the polemical arguments of the early Fathers were now refurbished, but with no greater success than had attended them when brand-new. However, these efforts of the Church notwithstanding, the nobles of Spain continued to extend their protection over the persecuted people until the accession of King Chintilla, who in a General Council wrested from them a confirmation of the anti-Jewish enactments of his predecessors, and, moreover, proclaimed a wholesale expulsion of all Jews who refused to embrace Christianity. Again many Israelites were driven out of the country, and many into hypocrisy.