Her devout labors still left room for the industry
and success of future missionaries; and many cities of Italy were still
disputed by hostile bishops. But the cause of Arianism was gradually
suppressed by the weight of truth, of interest, and of example; and
the controversy, which Egypt had derived from the Platonic school, was
terminated, after a war of three hundred years, by the final conversion
of the Lombards of Italy.

The first missionaries who preached the gospel to the Barbarians,
appealed to the evidence of reason, and claimed the benefit of
toleration. But no sooner had they established their spiritual dominion,
than they exhorted the Christian kings to extirpate, without mercy,
the remains of Roman or Barbaric superstition. The successors of Clovis
inflicted one hundred lashes on the peasants who refused to destroy
their idols; the crime of sacrificing to the demons was punished by
the Anglo-Saxon laws with the heavier penalties of imprisonment and
confiscation; and even the wise Alfred adopted, as an indispensable
duty, the extreme rigor of the Mosaic institutions. But the punishment
and the crime were gradually abolished among a Christian people;
the theological disputes of the schools were suspended by propitious
ignorance; and the intolerant spirit which could find neither idolaters
nor heretics, was reduced to the persecution of the Jews. That exiled
nation had founded some synagogues in the cities of Gaul; but Spain,
since the time of Hadrian, was filled with their numerous colonies.
The wealth which they accumulated by trade, and the management of the
finances, invited the pious avarice of their masters; and they might
be oppressed without danger, as they had lost the use, and even the
remembrance, of arms. Sisebut, a Gothic king, who reigned in the
beginning of the seventh century, proceeded at once to the last extremes
of persecution. Ninety thousand Jews were compelled to receive the
sacrament of baptism; the fortunes of the obstinate infidels were
confiscated, their bodies were tortured; and it seems doubtful whether
they were permitted to abandon their native country. The excessive zeal
of the Catholic king was moderated, even by the clergy of Spain, who
solemnly pronounced an inconsistent sentence: _that_ the sacraments
should not be forcibly imposed; but _that_ the Jews who had been
baptized should be constrained, for the honor of the church, to
persevere in the external practice of a religio