CHAPTER VII.

LEOVGILD.

(567-586.)

ATHANAGILD did not live to hear of the murder of his daughter. He died at Toledo in 567, and was succeeded, after an interval of over five months, by Leova or Liuva, who was duly if tardily elected king in his room.

During this unfortunate interregnum, the ungoverned country had been distracted by serious internal dissensions; and Leova, who never crossed the Pyrenees, but reigned and died at Narbonne, was glad to entrust the government and defence of greater Spain to his younger brother Leovgild, whose reign may be said to have commenced from the day that he received his commission as viceroy. For of Leova no more is heard nor known, but that he died in 572, when his younger brother became de jure, as he already was de facto, king of the Visigoths.

But the first task that fell to Leovgild, as king or viceroy in 569, was to repel the encroachments of the Imperial forces in Andalusia. His operations were uniformly successful. He besieged and took Asido (possibly Jerez) in 570; and he occupied the yet more important city of Corduba in 571, when the Romans were driven beyond the Sierra Nevada, and the Imperial dominion was restricted to a narrow strip of territory along the coast, yet including all the important towns and harbours from Cape St. Vincent to Carthagena. Nor was Leovgild less fortunate in checking, though it was not until the close of his reign that he actually subdued, the wild tribes of Gallicia and the Asturias.

Beset with enemies from the first day he set foot in Spain; with enemies in the court and in the camp, in the palace and in the Church, harassed by Gothic nobles, by Imperial commanders, by Cantabrian mountaineers, by Romish bishops

Leovgild showed himself the ablest of all the Visigothic kings of Spain; and as a general, as a lawgiver, and as an administrator by far the most successful. Hampered as he was by ecclesiastical opposition, by religious dissension, and by domestic treason, he contrived to raise the position and power of the king and of the kingdom to a higher pitch than had ever been reached before. He checked, if he could not destroy, the growing power of the Church, and he at least temporarily crushed the overgrown power of the Visigothic nobility-that intractable order of whom a contemporary writer says that they had learned "the detestable habit of killing their king whenever he displeased them, and putting another in his place!" 1

But the ecclesiastics who wrote the history of the times were far more concerned with points of doctrine, and matters of discipline or ritual, than with any large questions of government or of policy; and Leovgild is unfortunately best known to us in the part of the wicked father in a wretched domestic drama-a tragedy of priests and women, of converts and rebels, of a disloyal bishop and a sanctified traitor.

The beginning of troubles was found, as usual, in a Merovingian marriage, albeit such an alliance with powerful neighbours might fairly have been considered a prudent and judicious measure for strengthening the throne of the Visigoths. Ermengild, the eldest son of Leovgild, had been married to Ingunthis, a daughter of Sigebert of Austrasia and the unfortunate Brunhilda of Spain. But although Brunhilda, on her marriage with the Frank, had been content to be converted to the Catholicism of her husband, Brunhilda's daughter was permitted by the Visigoths to retain her more aggressive rule of faith, heterodox though it was, in the palace of her husband and of her husband's kin in Spain. But neither the theology nor the temper of Ingunthis were found agreeable to her husband's stepmother, Goswintha, the queen consort of Leovgild; and the palace at Toledo was distracted by religious and feminine strife. The daughter of Brunhilda was not likely to submit tamely to the oppression of a mother-in-law, who was also an Arian, still less to embrace a heresy which had become doubly odious to her; and Leovgild, in the interests of domestic peace, contrived to separate the rival ladies by investing Ermen

1 The celebrated maxim of Visigothic law in Spain, Rey seràs si fecieres derecho, y si non fecieres derecho, no seràs Rey, might be of dangerous application in the case of an elective monarchy. The judges of the right were the electors from among whose number the new monarch would be chosen.

gild with the vice-royalty or consortium regni of Bætica,1 and sending him and his wife to reside at Seville.

At the southern capital, unfortunately, was found, not an Arian persecutor, but an Athanasian ally and tempter, in the person of Leander, the celebrated Bishop of Seville, the elder brother of his yet more celebrated successor Isidore, and the most powerful prelate in all Spain. To this wily Churchman the young couple appeared as heaven-sent instruments for dealing a deadly blow at the masterful Arian monarch on the throne. The leading Catholics, and possibly even some of the Arian nobility, may have shared the views and aspirations of Leander, and it was no hard task to convert the vain and unhappy prince into a religious rebel. Thus encompassed by Catholicism within and without, his head turned by his more than princely authority, his heart touched by the tender entreaties of his young wife, and the vehement exhortations of one of the most eloquent Churchmen of the day, it was but natural that Ermengild should have accepted the theology that was agreeable to Ingunthis—and the crown that was offered by Leander.

But the conversion of the prince would have been poor and barren indeed had it been restricted to a change of creed. And when the royal convert was solemnly re-baptised (580), by the triumphant Leander, and made Catholic under the new Christian name of Juan, it was understood that the unorthodox father of the princely consort should no longer be permitted to rule over Spain, and that a heterodox stepmother should give place in the palace of Toledo to an eminently Catholic wife. And thus Ermengild, "the champion of the true faith," proceeded to take up arms against his father, to coin money in his own name, stamped with his own royal effigy, and to proclaim himself the orthodox, and, as such, the only legitimate king of the Visigoths. He solicited the alliance of Mir, King of the ever-ready and now Catholic Suevians, and he called in to his assistance the Roman legions of the Emperor Tiberius (580), already in the occupation of some of the fairest cities in south

1 Two forces, says Dahn, combined to make German kingship; hereditary succession and popular election. The object of these delegations of authority during the lifetime of the reigning sovereign were usually to promote the hereditary at the expense of the elective principle. The consortium regni was one of many expedients for securing the succession of the king's son after the king's death.

2 There is a gold piece of this issue in the collection of the British Museum, where I have seen it.

eastern Spain. Merida and Cordova declared themselves in his favour. Rebellion was once more abroad in the land.1 For some time Leovgild attempted to reason with his rebellious son. But messages and messengers, lay and ecclesiastical, were sent in vain. The king at length determined to submit the matter to a synod; and a council of Arian bishops was summoned to meet at Toledo in 581, which pronounced several decrees in favour of religious unity, and generally of the most liberal character as regards those who professed the Catholic, or, as they expressed it, the Roman religion.2 But the rebels were not convinced.

Juan

At length all this parley gave place to actual war. Ermengild marched his combined forces against his father at Toledo; while Bishop Leander took his departure on a pious embassy to Constantinople, to solicit the active support of the Roman Emperor against the King in Spain. The ever-ready Suevians took advantage of the opportunity to rise once more in revolt, and the Imperial forces reoccupied Cordova. But Leovgild was not unequal to the occasion. He marched first against Mir, the rebel King of the Suevians, and reduced him to complete submission. He further laid the foundations of a frontier town, on whose site now stands the modern city of Vitoria, as a permanent defence against the wild tribes that inhabited the neighbouring mountains of the north-west. The Imperial troops, bribed by Leovgild, abandoned the cause of his rebel son, and the king held his own in the south-east. reduced insurgent Merida to subjection. He reasoned yet more earnestly with his unhappy son; and when all his entreaties proved of no avail, he besieged him in his vice-regal capital of Seville, where he kept him a prisoner with his rebel army for nearly two years.

4

He

The betrothal of Ermengild's younger brother Reccared, to another Frankish princess, Rigunthis, daughter of Chilperic, King of Neustria, was at least diplomatically more successful than the marriage with the unhappy Ingunthis. And embassies from Leovgild on the subject of the coming of the young princess to Spain served to ward off any hostile combinations

1 Ermengild is said to have actually held his court for some time at Merida. 2 De Romana Religione.

3 And struck a medal in honour of the victory. Florez, Medallas, iii., 182. 4 The betrothal of Ermengild and that of Reccared are said (Hist. Franc., iv., 38) to have been negotiated at the same time, about 572. Chilperic, though a Frank, was always a firm ally of Leovgild.

between Chilperic and Childebert, the brother of Ingunthis, or her uncle Gunthram of Burgundy.

Ermengild at length escaped from Seville, and made his way to Cordova, and thence to the neighbouring town of Ossetus,1 where he took refuge in a church, and sought, with many protestations of repentance and amendment, to implore the mercy and forgiveness of his father. Reccared, his younger brother, was the bearer of his message; and he appears to have behaved with remarkable kindness and discretion. Leovgild, with the generosity of greatness, at once promised pardon, received the professing penitent with fatherly affection, and visited his crimes with no further chastisement than the loss of his vice-royalty.

It is not perhaps surprising that Leovgild should now have looked with some disfavour on the persons and offices of the Roman or Catholic clergy in his dominions. And as political rebels rather than as religious dissenters, they were made to feel the weight of his resentment. We hear of priests persecuted, of prelates dispossessed, of churches plundered. But we must remember that the good and the evil deeds of this most Arian king are known to us only through the writings of his most Catholic opponents. To his son, at least, no harshness was displayed, and the vanquished rebel was provided with a befitting establishment in honourable retirement at Valencia.

But the vain and faithless Ermengild was not to be won by kindness. To such natures as are incapable of gratitude, generosity is but weakness. And Ermengild acted after his kind. Within a year of his pardon, he had made use of his freedom to invite the Franks to cross the Pyrenees, and carry their arms into Spain; and he had contracted a new alliance

1 Ossetus is referred to in Masdeu, vol. vi., p. 374: Inscription No. 1094. The town appears to have enjoyed the Roman title of "Julia Constantia ".

2 John of Biclara, whose chronicle is our best authority for the greater part of the reign of Leovgild, was himself an exile for his faith. This most worthy monk, bishop and historian, was born about A.D. 540 at Santarem (Scalabis), in Lusitania, and is said to have passed seventeen years in study at Constantinople, "urbs regia". Returning to Spain about 576, he seems to have suffered persecution from the Arians of Barcelona in the time of Leovgild. After the accession of Reccared, and the triumph of Leander, he founded the Monastery of Biclara, near Tarragona, about 585, composing a special rule for the monks. He was appointed Bishop of Gerona in 591, and died about 620.

His chronicle embraces twenty-three years, 567-589, written probably in 590, and is marked by singular fairness and impartiality, especially as regards the character and acts of Leovgild, under whom he suffered persecution, and who is only mentioned by the Catholic bishop in terms of admiration. See Esp. Sag., vi., 360.