of the Laws. The Lex Romana of Alaric II had only copied those of the Roman laws which were least favourable to the Jews. It therefore preserved the separation of races, counting marriages of Jews and Christians no better than adultery, and forbade the Jews to hold Christian slaves or to fill public offices. But it upheld their religious freedom, the jurisdiction of their judges, and the use of Jewish law. But custom was more favourable to them than law, for mixed marriages took place in spite of the law, the Jews held public offices, and bought and circumcised Christian slaves. Recared put the laws in force, and further commanded to baptise the children of mixed marriages (Third Council of Toledo). Sisebut went further, and began the persecution of the Jews. He made two series of regulations on the subject. One of these, which appears in the Forum Judicum, restores and sharpens the laws of Recared; the other included an order to baptise all the Jews, under penalty of banishment and confiscation of goods.[1]
What was the cause of this intolerance? It has been attributed to the influence of the clergy; but against this opinion we must set the disapproval of Isidore of Seville in his Historia, and of the Fourth Council of Toledo, over which the same prelate presided. Equally untrustworthy is the statement that these measures were forced upon Sisebut by the Emperor Heraclius, in the treaty made between them to which we have already alluded, for there is no text to bear out this statement, and moreover, the analogous case which Fredegar attributes to King Dagobert is equally unproved. All that we know for a fact is that Sisebut adopted the measure without consulting any Council, so that we must attribute the king's resolution either to his own inclination (Sisebut's piety led him to write Lives of the Saints, for instance, the well-known life of St Desiderius), or to the desire of obtaining possession of property by means of confiscation, or of gaining money from the sale of dispensations. Such were certainly his motives on other occasions. Moreover, he claimed religious authority for himself, for he considered that he was the ecclesiastical head of the bishops, and behaved as such. It is possible that he was also indirectly influenced by the fact that the Jews had assisted the Persians and Arabs in their wars against the Christians of the East. The immediate result of the law was that the greater part of the Jews received baptism, and that, according to the Chronicle of Paulus Emilius, only a few thousands (aliquot millia) sought refuge in Gaul. But this effect must have been short-lived, for we know that, nineteen years later, there were in Spain Jews who had not been baptised and others who had reverted to their former religion.
- ↑ The existence of this law is proved by contemporary evidence, though it does not appear in the Forum Judicum. From a passage in Isidore of Seville we are led to suppose that this decree was made during the first year of Sisebut's reign, that is to say, in 612.
