which has been more fully treated in an Appendix.[2]

[1] The councils are full of denunciations aimed at the rebels
against the king's authority. By the Fourth Council (633) the
deposed Swintila was excommunicated.

[2] Appendix B.




CHAPTER II.

THE SARACENS IN SPAIN.


The Gothic domination lasted 300 years, and in that comparatively short
period we are asked by some writers to believe that the invaders quite
lost their national characteristics, and became, like the Spaniards,
luxurious and effeminate.[1] Their haughty exclusiveness, and the fact
of their being Arians, may no doubt have tended to keep them for a time
separate from, and superior to, the subject population, whom they
despised as slaves, and hated as heretics. But when the religious
barrier was removed, the social one soon followed, and so completely did
the conquerors lose their ascendency, that they even surrendered their
own Teutonic tongue for the corrupt Latin of their subjects.

[1] Cardonne's "History of Spain," vol. i. p. 62. "Bien
différens des leurs ancêtres étoient alors énervés par les
plaisirs, la douceur du climat; le luxe et les richesses