THE UMAYYAD REGIME 207the Spanish Church was falling into deviations from orthodoxy under
the influence of its new Muslim masters, and that there was too much
dangerous fraternisation taking place between individual Christians
on the one hand, and Jews and Muslims on the other. Mixed mar-
riages were explicitly condemned by the Pope at Egila's urging.
Migetius and his disciples openly looked to Rome as the source of
orthodoxy, and of the authority necessary to correct what they saw as
the imperfections of the Spanish Church and Christians.
The chance survival, although in mutilated form, of the acts of the
council of 839 provide a final glimpse of the fortunes of this sect, for
the similarities in thought and practice between those condemned
by the council under the name of 'Cassianists' and the followers of
Migetius make their identity virtually certain. They were then en-
trenched in the region of Cabra, where they had at least one rural
church, and they maintained a separate clergy. They had detached
themselves from contact with the rest of the Spanish Church and
other Christians, and the only ordinations that they held to be valid
were those conferred by 'Agila of Ementia' (Merida?) .56 This Agila is
probably to be identified with Egila, whose consecration in Gaul and
papal authority gave his sacraments a legitimacy that these sectarians
felt to have been lost to the rest of the Spanish episcopate.
Times of persecution or subordination for the Church often
produced such groups of uncompromising rigorists, such as the
Novatianists and the Donatists had been in the fourth century, who
regarded their more flexible co-religionists as tainted. For the ultra-
orthodox the sacraments administered by such clergy as those who
compromised with non-Christianity would have no validity. The
ordinations performed by their bishops were thus held to be ineffec-
tive. That such a sect, holding itself aloof from contamination by
contact with Muslims and Jews and with those Christians held to have
been tainted by it, should have come into existence in Spain after the
Arab conquest is not surprising. Unfortunately we know little about
it. However its existence does indicate, as do the complaints that its
members made, that other Christians in Al-Andalus and the hierar-
chy of the Church found much less difficulty in associating with the
new Muslim element in the population and with the Jews.
In attempting to resolve the problems created by the Migetians and
the interference of Rome through Egila, the Spanish Church became
embroiled in a new and more wide-ranging conflict. In his letter
condemning Migetius Elipandus of Toledo had written of Christ