140 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINLooking more widely, the seventh century in general was not a
good time for the scattered communities of the Mediterranean Jews.
It was the period of the greatest Byzantine persecution of its Jewish
citizens, and legal disabilities were also imposed upon them in
Lombard Italy and Merovingian Gaul.^90 For one thing, these were
dramatic and frightening times. The sudden emergence of the new
religion of Islam, and the attendant military conquests of the Arabs,
gave rise to a whole range of Apocalyptic and Messianic speculations
amongst Christians and Jews alike.^91 TheJews, too, had found irresist-
ible the opportunities afforded by the Persian and then Arab cam-
paigns in the eastern provinces of the Byzantine Empire to take local
revenge on their Christian former overlords and tormenters, and as
a result their political loyalty became widely suspect.^92 As the Arab
advance into Byzantine North Mrica developed in the 680s and 690s,
bringing them closer to Spain, this may have become a forceful con-
sideration in the minds of the Visigothic rulers, ever prone to distrust.
Such fears may also lie behind the promulgation of a law by Egica
that prohibited unconverted Jews from engaging in overseas trade.9g
The same king alluded to Jewish opposition to their Christian rulers
in other states in his Tome addressed to XVII Toledo, and was prob-
ably thereby referring to the experiences of Byzantium. Thus, by the
end of the century there were, rightly or wrongly, very material rea-
sons, as well as spiritual ones, for the Visigothic kings to look askance
at their Jewish subjects. With the Arab conquest of 711 the lot of the
Jews in Spain was considerably alleviated and they were relatively little
troubled for the next three centuries. Roman and Visigothic law were
replaced by that of the Qu'ran, and under Arab rule there occurred
one of the most important periods of the literary and intellectual
flourishings of Diaspora Judaism.
The treatment of the Jews in Visigothic Spain, particularly in the
second half of the seventh century, is the clearest and most fully
documented symptom of the changes going on in the society as a
whole. In some respects it looks thoroughly anarchic: conflict can
replace co-operation between king and Church; bishops seem capa-
ble of defying their own rulings, the increase in law-making, both civil
and ecclesiastical, reveals stranger and stranger abuses and malprac-
tices, attacks on the Jews reach quite hysterical proportions.
Obviously personality played a role that we cannot now easily de-
tect and the inner workings of politics are totally obscured. However,
it seems that this was a society with a sense of direction. It was not