the
ceremony of the mass, the opinion being prevalent at Rome that the mass
was incorrectly performed according to the Gothic liturgy, and that
false doctrines were taught. However, Zanclus found that the divergence
was not sufficiently wide to warrant the suppression of the ancient
ritual. It may be that the power of the Roman Church was not established
so securely as to admit of an interference so unpalatable to the ancient
church. She was content to bide her time; for such a standing witness
to the primitive usage[2] of the Church against the innovations of the
Roman See could not long be allowed to continue. Accordingly, we find
that very soon after the fall of Toledo in 1085, the question of the old
Gothic liturgy came up for discussion again. The Gothic and the Roman
books were subjected, after the absurd fashion of the times, to two
ordeals--by water and by fire; but in spite of the fact that the Gothic
liturgy, thanks to its greater solidity and stronger binding, resisted
both those elements incomparably better than its younger rival, and so,
if the ordeal went for anything, should have been hailed victorious, the
old native liturgy was partially suppressed at the bidding of the pope,
and by the consent of the Spanish king Alfonso VI. of Leon,[3] and
Sancho IV. of Aragon. Yet the Muzarabic Christians were loath to give up
their customary liturgy, and it remained in use in several churches of
Toledo till late in the fifteenth century.

[1] Mariana, vi. 9. Pseudo-Luit. gives the legate the name of
Marinus, and says he was sent in 932 to Basilius, Bishop of
Toledo.

[2] Cp. the monstrous way in which the Portuguese Roman
Catholics, under Don Alexis de Menezes, destroyed the sacred
books and memorials of the ancient Syrian Church on the Malabar
coast in India.

[3] And I. of Castile.

But the interference of the pope was not confined to matters relating to
the Spanish Church at large, his heavy hand fell upon the king himself,
and at the end of the twelfth century Alfonso IX. and all his kingdom
were laid under an interdict by Celestine III. because he had married
within forbidden limits, and refused to divorce his wife at the bidding
of the pope. He did in the end divorce her, but only to repeat the same
offence with a second wife, Berengaria, and incur the same penalty at
the hands of Innocent III. Encroachments on the king's power went on
apace, and gradually appeals came to b