Most of the Iberian Peninsula first accepted Christianity while still part of the Roman Empire. As Rome declined, Germanic tribes invaded most of the lands of the former empire. In the years following 410 the Visigoths - who had converted to Arian Christianity around 360 - occupied Spain. The Visigothic Kingdom established its capital in Toledo; its kingdom reached its high point during the reign of Leovigild (568-586). Visigothic rule led to a brief expansion of Arianism in Spain, however the native population remained staunchly Catholic.[citation needed] In 587 Reccared, the Visigothic king at Toledo, converted to Catholicism and launched a movement to unify doctrine. The Council of Lerida in 546 constrained the clergy and extended the power of law over them under the blessings of Rome.
In 711 an Arab raiding party led by Tariq ibn-Ziyad crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, then defeated the Visigothic king Roderic at the Battle of Guadalete. Tariq's commander, Musa bin Nusair then landed with substantial reinforcements, and by 718 the Muslims dominated most of the peninsula, establishing Islamic rule as a factor in the peninsula until 1492. During this period the number of Muslims increased greatly through the migration of Arabs and Berbers, and the conversion of Christians to Islam (known as Muladis or Muwalladun) with the latter forming the majority of the Islamic-ruled area by the end of the 10th century. Most Christians who remained adopted Arabic culture, and these Arabized Christians became known as Mozarabs. While under the status of dhimmis the Christian and Jewish subjects had to pay higher taxes than Muslims and could not hold positions of power over Muslims.
The Great Mosque of Córdoba turned church after the Reconquista.
The era of Muslim rule before 1055 is often considered a "Golden Age" for the Jews as Jewish intellectual and spiritual life flourished in Spain.[16] Only in the northern fringes of the peninsula did Christians remain under Christian rule. Here they established the great pilgrimage centre of Santiago de Compostela.
In the Middle Ages, Spain saw a slow Christian re-conquest of Muslim territories. In 1147, when the Almohads took control of Muslim Andalusian territories, they reversed the earlier tolerant attitude and treated Christians harshly. Faced with the choice of death, conversion, or emigration, many Jews and Christians emigrated.[17] Christianity provided the cultural and religious cement that helped bind together those who rose up against the Moors and sought to drive them out. Christianity and the Catholic Church helped shape the re-establishment of European rule over Iberia.
After centuries of the Reconquista, in which Christian Spaniards fought to drive out the Muslims, King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile established the Spanish Inquisition in 1481 to complete the religious purification of the Iberian Peninsula from Muslim and Jewish thought and practice. In the centuries that followed, Spain saw itself as the bulwark of Catholicism and doctrinal purity. Spain carried Catholicism to the New World and to the Philippines, but the Spanish kings insisted on independence from papal "interference" - bishops in the Spanish domains were forbidden to report to the Pope except through the Spanish crown. In the 18th century Spanish rulers drew further from the papacy, banishing the Jesuits from their empire in 1767. The Spanish authorities abolished the Inquisition in the 1830s, but even after that, religious freedom was denied in practice, if not in theory.
Catholicism became the state religion in 1851, when the Spanish government signed a Concordat with the Holy See that committed Madrid to pay the salaries of the clergy and to subsidize other expenses of the Roman Catholic Church as a compensation for the seizure of church property in the Desamortización de Mendizábal of 1835-1837. This pact was renounced in 1931, when the secular constitution of the Second Spanish Republic imposed a series of anticlerical measures that threatened the Church's hegemony in Spain, provoking the Church's support for the Francisco Franco uprising five years later.[18] In the ensuing Civil War, alleged Communists and Anarchists in Republican areas killed about 7,000 priests.