Spiritual Duties


 Up we go, along the valley, slowly ascending 100m until we run out of valley and have to cross the hump into the next bit of landscape.  We start off-streetview, so let’s have a pic of the road we came down before hitting the tarmac.




Now, about a month ago I was chided in the comments section and I quote ‘So! Having fulfilled your spiritual obligation by walking to Compostela, you're now playing the wag instead of going home as quickly as possible to get on with some honest toil!’  I think it is accurate to say ‘it’s a fair cop but society is to blame’ - and by that I mean, the society of you fellows who encourage me in this.  I suppose, however, we must turn our attentions to matters ecclesiastical, as we have little else to divert us today.



Spain is not short of bishops, having 70 dioceses and archdiocese but where did it all start?   The first attempts to turn the heathens into God fearing Christian began in the late first century.   The Canons of the Synod of Elvira [305 AD] suggest that the christians remained a bit isolated from the rest of the populace.   Over the 4th century the church established itself, especially in Barcelona, Cordoba, Seville and Toledo.  



In the years following 410 Spain was taken over by the Visigoths who had been converted to Arian Christianity around 419. It is one of those accidents of History that a new Byzantine regime needed a bit of a war to boost its cred and got involved in the west - otherwise Arianism may have been the orthodoxy of Catholicism.  Visigoth rule led to the expansion of Arianism in Spain. In 587, Reccared, the Visigothic king at Toledo, was converted to Catholicism and launched a movement to unify doctrine. 



. The third synod of 589 marked the conversion of King Reccared from Arianism to the Nicene Creed. The fourth, in 633,  was probably under the presidency of the Saint Isidore of Seville,  Isidore is credited with the popularising of the full stop, comma and colon and is up for the patronage of the internet.  The synod ‘regulated’ many matters of discipline and decreed uniformity of liturgy throughout the kingdom. The British Celts of Galicia [remmeber them, I’m sure we mentioned them when were up north] accepted the Latin rite and ‘measures’ were adopted against baptized Jews who had relapsed into their former faith.  The twelfth council in 681 recognised the archbishop of Toledo the primacy of Hispania 



And then 711 happened and the Islamic Conquest began.



Who knows, more of this tomorrow - or later.




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