During the hundred and ten years that elapsed between the death of Reccared (601) and the rout of the Guadelete (711), no fewer than fifteen sovereigns sat on the throne of Spain. Toledo was the theatre of their barbaric triumphings, their violent entrances and tragic exits. Now the city would resound with the savage, exultant yells of the townsmen, as they dragged the body of the usurper Witeric up and down the steep, uneven streets--to cast the bleeding, shapeless thing that had so lately been a king, upon a dunghill. Now, the people would be acclaiming Wamba, greatest of the Visigoths--after the strange scene at Gerticos, where the crown was forced upon him at the sword’s point; another time, a long procession of captives would file through the gates, to witness to the old king’s triumph in Narbonnese Gaul. Not a “demise of the crown” but there would be angry mutterings among the townsfolk, and whispers of murder, compulsion, and fraud. And while the kings raved and the people wept, the Church grew every day stronger--so strong that usurper and legitimate sovereign alike had perforce to obtain her sanction to his election and accession. And as the years went on, the spark of religious zeal in the breast of Spain was fanned into flame, and we read of fierce onslaughts on the Jewish citizens, and of merciless edicts, condemning them to penalties painful and humiliating. Dark days were these for the Children of Israel whose home Toledo so long had been; but darker still were impending for their persecutors and for the royal line of the Visigoths.