The church of Spain continued faithful to the general discipline, under the authority of the Roman emperors; the Arian heresy was afterwards established among them under the Goths; but since their princes have embraced the Catholic faith, the laws and councils of Spain inform us of their treatment of heretics. The fourth Council of Toledo, assembled in 633, at which St. Isidore, Archbishop of Seville, assisted, was occupied with the Judaic heresy: it was decreed, with the consent of King Sisinand, that they should be at the disposal of the bishops, to be punished, and compelled by fear to return to Christianity a second time: they were to be deprived of their children, and their slaves set at liberty. In 655, the ninth Council of Toledo decreed, that baptized Jews should be obliged to celebrate the Christian festivals with their bishops, and that those who should refuse to conform to this discipline should be condemned either to the punishment of scourging, or abstinence, according to the age of the offender. We find that greater severity was shown towards those who returned from Christianity to idolatry. King Récarede I. proposed to the third Council of Toledo, in 589, that the priests and civil judges should be commissioned to extirpate that species of heresy, by punishing the culprits in a degree proportioned to the crime, yet without employing capital punishment. These rigorous measures did not appear sufficient, and the twelfth Council of Toledo, in 681, at which King Erbigius assisted, decided that, if the offender was noble, he should be subject to excommunication and exile; if he was a slave, he should be scourged and delivered to his master loaded with chains, and if the proprietor could not answer for him, that he should be placed at the disposal of the king. In 693, the sixteenth Council of Toledo assembled in the presence of King Egica, added, to the measures already established, a law, by which all who opposed the efforts of the bishops and judges to destroy idolatry were condemned, if noble, to be excommunicated and pay a fine of three pounds of gold; and if of a low condition, to receive a hundred strokes of a whip, and have half his property confiscated. Recesuinte, who reigned from 663 to 672, established a particular law against heretics: it deprived them indiscriminately of the wealth and dignities they might possess, if they were priests, and added to these punishments, perpetual banishment for laymen, if they persisted in heresy. THIRD EPOCH.--_From the Eighth Century to the Pontificate of Gregory VII._