THE MYSTERY OF BELICENA VILLCA / EDITION 2022 2022 / Official English Version | Page 77

The Mistery of Belicena Villca entered to destroy the Suebi , in compliance with the foedus of the year 418 , but they would not leave for the next two hundred and fifty years .
The permanent presence of the Visigoths in Spain did not affect in any determinant way the life of the Hispano-Romans , except in the case of the owners of large estates that were forced by the foedus to distribute their lands with the German " guests ". Such was the case with the Lords of Tharsis , having to host a Visigoth family named Valter and giving them a third of the terra dominicata and two thirds of the terra indominicata . But , after this expropriation , which constituted a fair payment for the tranquility that the Visigoth presence ensured in the face of recent invasions , everything continued the same as in the days of the Roman Empire : only the destination of taxes had changed , which was no longer Rome but the closest Toledo ; the amount and frequency of the levy , and even the tax collectors , were the same as in the Roman Empire .
Three fundamental issues separated the Visigoths and the Hispano-Romans : A law that prohibited marriages between Goths and Hispano-Romans , religious difference , and the numerical disproportion between both peoples . The first question was solved in the year 580 with the annulment of the law , being raised the barrier that prevented the merging of the two peoples : from then on , the Valter family is integrated with several marriages to the House of Tharsis , being restored the primitive patrimony of the Lords of Tharsis .
The second question means that , while the entire Hispano-Roman population professed the Catholic religion , the Visigoth guests held the Arian faith . In fact , both peoples were Christians and ignorant of the theological subtleties that the Priests dogmatically established . And in this case , the difference Arius had pointed out was one of extreme subtlety . The Visigoths were evangelized , when they still inhabited the shores of the Black Sea , by the Gothic Bishop Wulfilas , a supporter of Arius ; when advancing then to The West , pushed by the Huns , they would discover with satisfaction that their Christianity was different from that of the Romans and they would cling tenaciously to that difference , often incomprehensible . They would do so because the Goths had developed national pride to an eminent degree and needed to have a tangible difference , a unifying principle of their own , that would prevent them from being culturally phagocytosed by the Roman Empire : the meaning of the difference in itself was of no great importance ; the concrete thing would be that Arianism would religiously separate them from the Roman population , while , by uniting them together , would allow them to preserve the Gothic culture .
What was this difference with Catholic dogma , which few did understand but that the nationalist Goths would defend to the end ? Specifically , it referred to a definition of the problem of the Divinity of Jesus Christ . The position of Arius , a native of Libya but enrolled in the diocese of Antioch , arose as a reaction against the doctrine of Sabellius : this had asserted that there was no essential distinction between the three Persons of the Christian Trinity ; the Son and the Holy Spirit were actually manifestations of the Father under another Aspect or prosopon : the essence of the One God , presenting himself with one Aspect was the Father , with another was the Son , and with another the Holy Spirit . Against this , Arius began to teach from 318 that “ only the One God is eternal and incommunicable : Jesus Christ was created from nothing and therefore is not eternal ; he is a creature of the One God and therefore something different from Him , something not consubstantial with Him ”.
Sabellius made no distinction between the three Persons of the Trinity while Arius so differentiated the Father and the Son that the latter was no longer God or consubstantial with the Father : both would be condemned as heretics to Catholic Doctrine . And what was the truth then ? As decided at Nicaea , in 325 , by a Council of three hundred Bishops , Jesus Christ responded to the formula consubstantialis Patri , that is , consubstantial with the Father , of the same substance , God equal to Him . So the religious difference that separated Goths and Romans concerned the complex concept of consubstantiality between God and the Word of God , a difference that would not reach to explain
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