- A Church Triumphant
THE intellectual vigour of the Spanish Church in the late sixth and
seventh centuries must owe much to the challenge presented to it by
Arianism in its final development under Leovigild. To combat the
arguments of Arians and Catholic apostates, such as Vincent of
Zaragoza, and the blandishments offered by the Arian Synod of Toledo
of 580, the Catholics had to look for assistance from beyond the
confines of Spain. Naturally enough it was to Mrica that they turned.
The links between the two churches had always been strong. It has
been argued that Christianity was first introduced into Spain from
Mrica, and the Mrican liturgy may have had a formative influence on
the development of that of the peninsula; unfortunately all too little
of the former has survived for this to be established definitively. In
the third century, when the Spanish churches needed advice on
matters of doctrine or of discipline, it was to Carthage rather than
to Rome that they turned. In the sixth century the ties had been
strengthened by the flight of Mrican monks into Spain, escaping
either imperial religious persecution over the issue of 'The Three
Chapters', or the depredations of Berber tribes. Nanctus, who settled
near Merida, and Donatus, who founded the monastery of Servitanum,
are but two of those involved in this exodus. Such refugees must have
brought some of the considerable learning of the Mrican Church
with them.l
The experience to be gained from Mrica in the late sixth century
was particularly pertinent to the problems facing the Spanish Catho-
lics under Leovigild. The Mrican Church had existed under Arian
rule for just over a century, from the time of the death of Augustine
in 430 to the imperial reconquest by Justinian I in 533. For much of
this time it had suffered active persecution from the Vandal rulers,
and many of its foremost bishops had spent long periods in exile.
The threat posed to the Catholics by the establishment of a rival
Arian clergy throughout the towns of Mrica had been a very real one,
and in contests with their heretical opponents for local dominance,
and in periodic debates held at court before successive kings, the
Catholic bishops acquired considerable fluency in countering the
arguments of Arianism. The most prominent of the Catholic bishops
of the Vandal period was Fulgentius of Ruspe (d. c. 525), who spent
most of his episcopate in exile.^2 However, he was once permitted to
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