hristian faith.

"Prisciliano did not believe in the mystery of the Holy Trinity; he
believed that the world had been created by the devil (perhaps he was
not wrong!) and that the devil held it beneath his sway; further, that
the soul is part of the Divine Essence and the body dependent upon the
stars; that this life is a punishment, as only sinful souls descend on
earth to be incarnated in organic bodies. He denied the resurrection of
the flesh and the authenticity of the Old Testament. He defended the
transmigration of souls, the invocation of the dead, and other ideas,
doubtless taken from native Galician mythology. To conclude, he
celebrated the Holy Communion with grape and milk instead of with wine,
and admitted that all true believers (his true believers, I suppose,
for we are all of us true believers of some sort) could celebrate
religious ceremonies without being ordained curates."

Sinfosio, Bishop of Astorga in 400, was converted to the new religion.
But, upon intimation that he might be deprived of his see, he hurriedly
turned Christian again, putting thus a full stop to the spread of
heresy, by his brave and unselfish act.

Toribio in 447 was, however, the bishop who wrought the greatest harm to
Priscilianism. He seems to have been the divine instrument called upon
to prove by marvellous happenings the true religion: he converted the
King of the Suevos in Orense by miraculously curing his son; when
surrounded by flames he emerged unharmed; when he left his diocese, and
until his return, the crops were all lost; upon his return the
church-bells rang without human help, etc., etc. All of which doings
proved the authenticity of the true religion beyond a doubt, and that
Toribio was a saint; the Pope canonized him.

During the Arab invasion, Astorga, being a frontier town, suffered more
than most cities farther north; it was continually being taken and
lost, built up and torn down by the Christians and Moors.

Terrible Almanzor conquered it in his raid in the tenth century, and
utterly destroyed it. It was rebuilt by Veremundo or Bermudo III., but
never regained its lost importance, which reverted to Leon.

When the Christian armies had conquered the peninsula as far south as
Toledo, Astorga was no longer a frontier town, and rapidly fell asleep,
and has slept ever since. It remained a see, however, but only one of
secondary importance.

It would be difficult to state how many cathedral churches the city