86 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAIN
and tenth centuries, to the existence of earlier monasteries or churches
on sites such as Montserrat, may suggest that monastic institutions
were more numerous in Visigothic Spain than strictly contemporary
evidence can establish. In its monastic life, as in its strong if idiosyn-
cratic intellectual traditions, the Church of the Visigothic period
created a distinctive personality for itself that proved quite capable of
standing up to the challenges of the centuries that followed the Arab
conquest.