116 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINdiscuss. The first of these appears at the beginning of the acts of III
Toledo. No more are known until that issued by Reccesuinth to VIII
Toledo in 653, but from XII Toledo of 681 onwards they become a
standard feature. It is possible that the texts of other tomes have been
lost, but if not, the responsibility for making them a regular part of
conciliar procedure must rest with Bishop Julian and King Ervig. This
may in practice represent greater control over the councils by the
bishops of Toledo, who by their access to the monarchs might influ-
ence the contents of the tomes.
The acts of some of the councils were terminated by a royal decree
confirming the proceedings and giving them force as law. These are
found more frequently than royal tomes, and it has been suggested
that those councils, such as VII or X Toledo, that lack such 'laws in
confirmation' had incurred royal disapproval and that their acts were
possibly thereby invalidated.^48 However, this is unlikely; it is more
sensible to assume that, as with the issue of the tomes, the procedure
became standardised in the later seventh century and that previously
the practice was followed when some special force needed to be given
to the acts, as for those of the sixth Council of Tokdo which consid-
ered the protection of the monarch. Councils that lack such laws may
be found to have concerned themselves exclusively with matters of
internal ecclesiastical order.
Our knowledge of the councils of the Spanish Church, from the
earliest held at Elvira (Granada), around the year 300, up to XVII
Toledo of 694, comes from a series of collections of conciliar acts
compiled at various stages in the seventh and early eighth centuries.
The first of these, it has been argued, was put together by Isidore of
Seville between 619 and 633, who added the Spanish canons to ear-
lier collections of Mrican and Gallic ones. Later in the seventh cen-
tury, the acts of the subsequent Spanish councils, from those of IV
Toledo in 633 to those of XV Toledo in 688, were added to the initial
compilation of Isidore. This second version has been attributed with
some justification to Bishop Julian of Toledo (680-690).49 The whole
corpus, known from its place of origin as the Hispana, passed into
Gaul in the eighth century and became one of the principal sources
of canon law in western Europe in succeeding centuries. In Spain
however, sometime between 694 and 704 a final version of the collec-
tion was prepared incorporating the acts of councils subsequent to
XV Toledo (688) up to those of XVII Toledo (694). These never
became part of the fundamental corpus of the Hispana, and the last