A Church Triumphant

Abstract

The intellectual vigour of the Spanish Church in the late sixth and seventh centuries must owe much to the challenge presented to it by Arianism in its final development under Leovigild. To combat the arguments of Arians and Catholic apostates, such as Vincent of Zaragoza, and the blandishments offered by the Arian Synod of Toledo of 580, the Catholics had to look for assistance from beyond the confines of Spain. Naturally enough it was to Africa that they turned. The links between the two churches had always been strong. It has been argued that Christianity was first introduced into Spain from Africa, and the African liturgy may have had a formative influence on the development of that of the peninsula; unfortunately all too little of the former has survived for this to be established definitively. In the third century, when the Spanish churches needed advice on matters of doctrine or of discipline, it was to Carthage rather than to Rome that they turned. In the sixth century the ties had been strengthened by the flight of African monks into Spain, escaping either imperial religious persecution over the issue of ‘The Three Chapters’, or the depredations of Berber tribes. Nanctus, who settled near Mérida, and Donatus, who founded the monastery of Servitanum, are but two of those involved in this exodus. Such refugees must have brought some of the considerable learning of the African Church with them.¹