206 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINIt was not Muslim rule alone that broke many of the ties that had
once linked the Church in Spain to that in Rome and in other parts
of western Europe and which were not negligible during the Visigothic
period. While the Umayyads clearly sought to monitor the contacts of
their Christian subjects with fellow religionists across the frontiers,
the marked isolation of the Church in Al-Andalus from the ninth
century on, that kept it immune from the influence of virtualIy all of
the developments in ecclesiastical thought and organisation elsewhere
in Europe, may have been a product of the divisions created by the
Adoptionist controversy.
This episode, with briefly brought the Spanish Church to the
notice of its peers in western Europe, began as the accidental con-
sequence of another obscurer dispute. About 780 a certain Egila,
probably by his name of Gothic origin, either arrived in or returned
to Al-Andalus as an itinerant bishop without a fixed see, having a
special commission from his consecrator Archbishop WiIcharius of
Sens and, apparently, papal backing. Such peripatetic bishops had
been employed with much success earlier in the century in the
spreading of Christianity to the Frisians, Saxons and other peoples to
the east of the Rhine. These missionaries, linked to the papacy, had
also fulfilled useful functions in encouraging reform within already
established churches. The papacy, through the agency of WiIcharius,
a noted Frankish reformer, may have been experimenting in the
despatch of Egila with an extension of similar practices into Spain.
However their instrument was to prove a disappointment. Egila
either was or became the follower of a certain Migetius, whom the
Spanish episcopate under the direction of Bishop Elipandus of
Toledo condemned for his unorthodox theological views in 785.
His teachings are said to have included a belief that the divinity
comprised three corporeal persons, manifested as King David, Jesus
and St Paul. Once Pope Hadrian was made aware of his represent-
ative's involvement with Migetius, he was forced to disown him and
warn the Spanish episcopate to have no further dealings with him.
This murky episode is important for a number of reasons. We only
have Migetius's opponents' account of his ideas, preserved in a letter
addressed to him by Bishop Elipandus.^55 It is quite conceivable that
Elipandus distorted Migetius's views in the interests of controversy.
However some of the features of this letter are very revealing when
put in conjunction with the two letters sent by Pope Hadrian I to his
agent Egila in 782. It seems that Migetius and his followers felt that