Apart from Gothic, there was still a Latin dialect widely spoken in Spain, which later gave birth to the Romance languages spoken on the Iberian Peninsula.a The oldest documents in this Latin dialect are known as Visigothic slates, since they were written on pieces or slabs of slate. They date from the sixth and seventh centuries, and some contain passages from the Psalms and the Gospels. One slate contains the entire 16th Psalm.

The existence of Scriptural texts on humble slates shows that ordinary people both read and copied the Word of God at that time. Apparently, teachers used these Bible texts as exercises for pupils who were learning to read and write. The slates were a cheap writing material, in contrast with the expensive parchment that the medieval monasteries used to produce their illustrated Bibles.