138 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINand accept that which their own scriptures had foreseen. The second
book considered the differences between Jews and Christians in a
more general way, and again using the Old Testament Isidore sought
to controvert Jewish beliefs and practices. He argued that the Chris-
tians had become the heirs of the promises made by God because of
the unbelief of the Jews, and that it was the Christians that were 'the
New Israel'. He attributed the ruin of Jerusalem and the dispersal of
the Jews to the same cause. Whilst his arguments are rarely new in
themselves, being mostly the stock ones of earlier patristic anti:Jewish
polemic, their extended treatment and systematic organisation give
his work particular value.
Unfortunately no writings of Spanish Jews of this period have sur-
vived to enable us to determine to what extent Isidore and his felIows
were writing to combat arguments currently being advanced in con-
troversy by their Jewish contemporaries, or whether they were rather
producing set-pieces intended principalIy to display the forensic and
exegetical skills of their Christian authors. The legal prohibitions on
Jews arguing against Christianity and the demands that they surren-
der their books would, however, suggest that the Jews had available
the intelIectual equipment to debate with the Christians, were they
permitted so to do. A further possible indication of the dissemination
of Jewish ideas in Visigothic Spain is the paralIel efforts that were
made by the ecclesiastical and secular rulers to suppress what were
seen asJudaising innovations amongst Christians. The unprecedented
frequency with which these are encountered throughout the Visigothic
period suggests that this was not a trivial problem.
An early example of this tendency comes from Ibiza in the Balearic
Islands, where the bishop Vincent wrote (c. 590) to Licinianus of
Cartagena to solicit his advice on a document then circulating in the
island, which was widely held to have falIen from heaven.s7 This text
enjoined the strictest observance of the Lord's Day, even forbidding
walking or cooking, rules reminiscent of sabbath observance.
Licinianus was rightly sceptical of its divine origin and denounced it
as both a forgery and a piece of Judaising. In the Visigothic kingdom
proper, attacks on similar attempts to introduce Jewish practices into
Christian observances are found incorporated with the laws against
the Jews themselves in both the secular and ecclesiastical collec::tions.
But the most extreme stand was taken by Chindasuinth, who issued
no legislation against the Jews themselves, in decreeing the death
penalty for any Christians convicted of using Jewish rites, a punish-
ment, it was stated, that would be inflicted slowly.88