[1] Prescott, “Ferd. and Isab.,” p. 64, n.

    [2] Romey, “Hist. d’Esp.,” iii. 420.

    [3] Jonas of Orleans, iii., apud Migne, vol. civ. p. 375 ff. 
    Fleury, v. 398.

Being summoned to appear before a council, the bishop proved contumacious, and refused to go, calling the proposed assemblage a congregation of asses.  In spite of his independence of spirit Claudius remained Bishop of Turin till his death in 839.

The pope’s authority being once recognised in Spain, the sphere of his interference rapidly enlarged, and we soon find the king unable even to call a council of bishops without a papal bull.  This became the established practice.[1] In the tenth century Bermudo II. (982-999), in confirming the laws of the Goths, took the opportunity to make the canons and decrees of the pope binding in secular cases.[2]

Meanwhile, even before the free Christians in the North had established their independence, the weakness of the Christian Church under Arab domination seemed to afford a good opportunity for obtaining from them a recognition of the authority of the pope.  We accordingly find that an appeal was made to the pope towards the close of the eighth century to give an authoritative decision with regard to what the appellants deemed to be certain irregularities which had found their way into the practice of those Christians who were under the Arab yoke.  The Pope Adrian readily undertook to define what was, and what was not, in accordance with Christianity.  In a letter addressed to the Bishops of Spain he inveighs against the following errors, countenanced by a certain Migetius, and by Egila, Bishop of Elvira, and sometimes called in consequence the Migetian errors:—­

(a.) The wrong celebration of Easter.  This had already been noticed and condemned by Peter, a deacon of Toledo, in a letter to the people of Seville (750).[3] The error was not the same as that of the Quarto-decimani, but consisted apparently in deferring Easter to the twenty-second day, if the full moon fell on the 14th, and the following day was Sunday.  Curiously enough this very error had been held by the Latin Church itself till the sixth century.[4] The fulminations of the Pope failed in suppressing the error.  As late as 891 it was sufficiently general in Andalusia to cause the date of a battle which took place at the Easter of that year to be placed in the year of the Hegira 278, which only began on April 15th, whereas had Easter been observed according to the usage of the Latin Church, the Paschal feast would have been already past.[5]

(b.) The eating of pork and things strangled.[6] With respect to these innocent articles of food, the pope goes so far as to threaten anathema against those who will not abstain from them.  It is curious to find the Christian Church upholding the eating of pork, when brought into contact with the Moslems, and forbidding it elsewhere.