It is very possible, too, that the lingering remains of the old Gothic Arianism—of which, indeed, there had been some slight revival in the Spanish Church just before the Arab conquest [399]—may have predisposed men’s minds to accept the new faith whose Christology was in such close agreement with Arian doctrine, [400] and a later age may have witnessed parallels to that change of faith which is the earliest recorded instance of conversion to Islam in western Europe and occurred before the Arab invasion of Spain—namely the conversion of a Greek named Theodisclus, who succeeded St. Isidore (ob. A.D. 636) as Archbishop of Seville; he was accused of heresy, for maintaining that Jesus was not one God in unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit, but was rather Son of God by adoption; he was accordingly condemned by an ecclesiastical synod, deprived of his archbishopric and degraded from the priesthood. Whereupon he went over to the Arabs and embraced Islam among them. [401] Of forced conversion or anything like persecution in the early days of the Arab conquest, we hear nothing. Indeed, it was probably in a great measure their tolerant attitude towards the Christian religion that facilitated their rapid acquisition of the country. The only complaint that the Christians could bring against their new rulers for treating them differently to their non-Christian subjects, was that they had to pay the usual capitation-tax of forty-eight dirhams for the rich, twenty-four for the middle classes, and twelve for those who made their living by manual labour: this, as being in lieu of military service, was levied only on the able-bodied males, for women, children, monks, the halt, and the blind, and the sick, mendicants and slaves were exempted therefrom; [402] it must moreover have appeared the less oppressive as being collected by the Christian officials themselves. [403] Except in the case of offences against the Muslim religious law, the Christians were tried by their own judges and in accordance with their own laws. [404] They were left undisturbed in the exercise of their religion; [405] the sacrifice of the mass was offered, with the swinging of censers, the ringing of the bell, and all the other solemnities of the Catholic ritual; the psalms were chanted in the choir, sermons preached to the people, and the festivals of the Church observed in the usual manner. They do not appear to have been condemned, like their co-religionists in Syria and Egypt, to wear a distinctive dress as sign of their humiliation, and in the ninth century at least, the Christian laity wore the same kind of costume as the Arabs. [406] They were at one time even allowed to build new churches. [407]