[Sidenote: Conquest of Spain by the Moors.]
Before the end of the sixth century, the Visigoths, who had settled in
what is now Spain and Portugal, had been converted from Arianism to the
Catholic Faith. In A.D. 711 the Mahometan Moors crossed over from
Africa to the South of Spain, and in A.D. 713 all the Peninsula, except
the small mountain district of Asturias, had fallen into their hands.
The more independent and hardy amongst the Spanish Christians took
refuge in this inaccessible portion of the country, whilst others dwelt
amongst the Moors, and appear for a time to have been allowed the
exercise of their religion unmolested by any systematic persecution.
[Sidenote: Persecution of the Spanish Church.] About A.D. 830, however,
the policy of the Moorish conquerors underwent a change, and during the
next hundred years multitudes of Christians in Spain suffered martyrdom
for their faith. [Sidenote: The re-conquest of Spain by the
Spaniards.] After the death of Hachem, the last Caliph of Cordova (A.D.
1031), and the subdivision of his dominions, the Christians of Asturias
succeeded in making head against their oppressors, and gradually won
back from them district after district, until Ferdinand III. (A.D.
1214-A.D. 1252) succeeded in reducing the Moorish possessions to the
single province {127} of Grenada. This last remnant of Mahometan
dominion was wrested from the Moors A.D. 1492, and Spain, as well as
the separate kingdom of Portugal, was once more entirely Christian.
[Sidenote: Effect of national circumstances on Spanish Christianity.]
It is perhaps hardly to be wondered at, that the continual state of
religious warfare in which Spain was so long plunged should have given
a somewhat stern character to Spanish Christianity. The Inquisition,
when introduced into Spain by the mistaken zeal of the good Queen
Isabella towards the end of the fifteenth century, found a readier
welcome than elsewhere, and gained an additional tinge of severity in a
country which had been brought into such close contact with one of the
deadliest forms of unbelief.
[Sidenote: The Spanish Liturgy.]
The original Liturgy of Spain was, like the ancient Liturgy of France,
a form of that used at Ephesus. It received the name of Mozarabic,
from having been in use by Christians living _in the midst of Arabs_,
or Moors, and was not discontinued in the Church of Spain until A.D.
1080, when after much resistance on the part of the Spaniards it was
abolished by order of Alphonso VI., King of Castille and Leon, under
the influence of Pope Gregory VII., and the Roman rite substituted
throughout the country.