Note 37 — Chapter V · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM AMONG THE CHRISTIANS OF SPAIN.

While the brilliant literature of the Arabs exercised such a fascination and was so zealously studied, those who desired an education in Christian literature had little more than the materials that had been employed in the training of the barbaric Goths, and could with difficulty find teachers to induct them even into this low level of culture. As time went on this want of Christian education increased more and more. In 1125 the Muzarabes wrote to King Alfonso of Aragon: “We and our fathers have up to this time been brought up among the gentiles, and having been baptised, freely observe the Christian ordinances; but we have never had it in our power to be fully instructed in our divine religion; for, subject as we are to the infidels who have long oppressed us, we have never ventured to ask for teachers from Rome or France; and they have never come to us of their own accord on account of the barbarity of the heathen whom we obey.”37