Note 8 — Chapter V · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG THE CHRISTIANS OF SPAIN.
Reading edition
At the time of the Muhammadan conquest the old Gothic virtues are said by Christian historians to have declined and given place to effeminacy and corruption, so that the Muhammadan rule appeared to them to be a punishment sent from God on those who had gone astray into the paths of vice;8 but such a statement is too frequent a commonplace of the ecclesiastical historian to be accepted in the absence of contemporary evidence.9