270 BIBLIOGRAPHIES
made of this material see R Collins, 'Merida and Toledo, 550-585' in V.S., pp. 189-219.
Some features of rural life emerge from Braulio of Zaragoza's Life of St. Aemilian,
translated by e.W. Barlow in The Fathers of the Church, vol. 63 (Washington, 1969), pp.
113-39. One important social class is discussed in D. Claude, 'Freedmen in the Visigothic
Kingdom', V.S., pp. 159-88. The coinage of the kingdom is catalogued and studied in
G.C. Miles, The Coinage of the Visigoths of Spain, Leovigild to Achila II (New York, 1952),
and the fineness of the metal content is assessed and discussed in P. Grierson, 'Visigothic
Metrology', Numismatic Chronicle, 6th series 13 (1953), pp. 74-87. However, by far the
best considerations of the function and circulation of this coinage will be found in D.M.
Metcalf, 'Some geographical aspects of early medieval monetary circulation in the Iberian
peninsula', in M. Gomes Marques and M. Crusafont i Sabater (eds), Problems of Medieval
Coinage in the Iberian Area, vol. 2 (Aviles, 1986), pp. 307-24, and idem, 'For what purposes
were Suevic and Visigothic Tremisses used?', in M. Gomes Marques and D.M. Metcalf
(eds), Problems of Medieval Coinage in the Iberian Area, vol. 3 (Santarem, 1988), pp. 15-34.(c) The Umayyad State
T.F. Glick, Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages (Princeton, 1979) makes
a number of valuable contributions in this area, especially on the eastern Mediterranean
origin of some of the distinctive features of the economy and social organisation of
Umayyad Spain. See also A.M. Watson, 'The Arab Agricultural Revolution and its Dif-
fusion, 711-1100',joumal of Economic History, 34 (1974), pp. 8-35. S.M. Imamuddin, Some
aspects of the Socio-Economic and Cultural History of Muslim Spain (Leiden, 1965) is not entirely
reliable and is less relevant than it sounds. For the coinage of the Spanish Umayyads see
the catalogue and analysis in G.e. Miles, The Coinage of the Umayyads of Spain (2 vols New
York, 1950).(d) The Christian Realms
Several of the articles collected and translated in P. Bonnassie, From Slavery to Feudalism
in South-Westem Europe (Cambridge and Paris, 1991) relate to the Iberian peninsula, and
deal with social change in both the Visigothic period and in tenth century Catalonia.
Stimulating as some of the arguments are, they are not always well founded in a critical
analysis of the sources. Catalonia also features in A.R Lewis, The Development of Southem
French and Catalan Society, 718-1050 (Austin, Texas, 1965), and the opening pages of
P.H. Freedman, The Diocese of Vic (New Brunswick, 1983) relate to this important episcopal
centre in the ninth and tenth centuries. See also RW. Southern, The Making of the
Middle Ages (London, 1953), pp. 115-20.
- CULTURE AND THE CHURCH
(a) Later Roman Empire and the Fifth Century
M.C. Diaz y Diaz, 'Early Christianity in Lugo', Classical Folia, 32 (1978), pp. 243-59 raises
some important questions about the early diffusion of Christianity in northern Spain.
Translations of the works of Prudentius (c. 400) will be found, with the texts, in HJ.
Thompson (ed.), Prudentius (2 vols, Loeb classical Library, 1949). See also for a study
of his Peristephanon: A.-M. Palmer, Prudentius on the Martyrs (Oxford, 1989). There is a
stimulating, if not definitive, assessment of the life and teachings of the early Spanish
church's most notable heretic in H. Chadwick, Priscillian of Avila (Oxford, 1976).
(b) The Visigothic Period
Many of the translated articles of the leading Spanish historian of the culture ofVisigothic
Spain have been collected in M.e. Diaz y Diaz, Vie chretienne et culture dans l'Espagne du
VI' au X' siecles (Aldershot, 1992). Despite the title, this contains five items in English,
including 'Literary a<pccts of thp Vi<i;;0tloic liturgy', 'Eremitical life in Visigothic Spain',