Note 14 — Chapter V · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG THE CHRISTIANS OF SPAIN.

It is very possible, too, that the lingering remains of the old Gothic Arianism—of which, indeed, there had been some slight revival in the Spanish Church just before the Arab conquest14—may have predisposed men’s minds to accept the new faith whose Christology was in such close agreement with Arian doctrine,15 and a later age may have witnessed parallels to that change of faith which is the earliest recorded instance of conversion to Islam in western Europe and occurred before the Arab invasion of Spain—namely the conversion of a Greek named Theodisclus, who succeeded St. Isidore (ob. A.D. 636) as Archbishop of Seville; he was accused of heresy, for maintaining that Jesus was not one God in unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit, but was rather Son of God by adoption; he was accordingly condemned by an ecclesiastical synod, deprived of his archbishopric and degraded from the priesthood. Whereupon he went over to the Arabs and embraced Islam among them.16