Seventeenth Council of Toledo

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The Seventeenth Council of Toledo first met on 9 November 694 under King Egica. It was the king's third council and primarily directed, as was the Sixteenth, against the Jews, of whom Egica seems to have had a profound distrust and dislike.

The king opened the synod by claiming that he had heard news of Jews overthrowing their Christian rulers overseas and that Iberian Jews were conspring with these cousins to end the Christian religion once and for all. The council therefore decreed in its eight canon that all Jews, except those in Narbonensis, were to be deprived of their property, which was to be given to their Christian slaves, and enslaved themselves. Their slavekeepers were chosen by the king and were to be contractually obligated to never allow the practice of the Jewish religion again. It is, however, almost certain that, in at least some parts of Spain, these regulations were not strictly enforced; though in others, they certainly were.

The council tried to protect the life of Egica's queen and children after his death, knowing the harm which could befall the royal family during a succession, and the bishops ordered prayers said for their souls.

The council's minutes remain the best source of information for its period in Spanish history.