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He had assumed more splendor than any of his predecessors. He had erected a magnificent throne in his palace at Toledo, and his head, wearing the royal diadem, was placed on Spanish coins, which may still be seen. A daughter of the terrible Brunhilde, the Princess Ingunda, came over from France to become the wife of Ermingild, the son of the great King Leovigild, and heir to his throne.
Leovigild, the Gothic monarch of Spain, deserved the respect of his enemies, and the love of his subjects; the Catholics enjoyed a free toleration, and his Arian synods attempted, without much success, to reconcile their scruples by abolishing the unpopular rite of a second baptism.
Toledo, the capital of the Visigoth Kings, is the city about which cluster the richest memories of Spain in her heroic age. When Leovigild removed his capital there from Seville in the sixth century, it was already an ancient Jewish city, about which tradition had long busied itself. To-day, as it sits on the summit of a barren hill, one looks in vain for traces of its ancient Gothic splendor.
He writes, in 594: "We have heard from many who have come from Spain how lately Hermenegild, son of Leovigild, king of the Visigoths, has been converted from the Arian heresy to the Catholic faith by the preaching of Leander, bishop of Seville, long united to me in intimate friendship. His Arian father, by bribes and threats alike, tried to bring him back.
Leovigild was still mindful of that sacred character; and the rebel, despoiled of the regal ornaments, was still permitted, in a decent exile, to profess the Catholic religion. His repeated and unsuccessful treasons at length provoked the indignation of the Gothic king; and the sentence of death, which he pronounced with apparent reluctance, was privately executed in the tower of Seville.
But in 585, Leovigild, the Arian king of the larger Visigoth kingdom, incorporated with his territory the smaller kingdom of the Sueves. Catholicism was still more threatened when Leovigild executed his own son Hermenegild, who had married the Frankish princess Jugundis, for becoming a Catholic. But the martyr's brother, Rechared, was converted by St.
The inflexible constancy with which he refused to accept the Arian communion, as the price of his safety, may excuse the honors that have been paid to the memory of St. Hermenegild. His wife and infant son were detained by the Romans in ignominious captivity; and this domestic misfortune tarnished the glories of Leovigild, and imbittered the last moments of his life.
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