The Family of Saints: Leander

Severianus and Theodora were members of well-to-do Hispano-Roman families in the 6th century who bore four children, all of whom became saints. The family lived in Cartagena, or Carthago Nova ("New Carthage"), on the southeast coast of Spain. The family moved to Seville about 554 CE, but their parents died before the children were all grown up.

Leander (shown), the eldest, became a Benedictine monk about 576, and a few years later was appointed Bishop of Seville. The co-ruler of the Visigoths in Spain, Liuvigild, had arranged for his son Hermenegild to marry the 12-year-old Ingund, sister of the Merovingian Childebert II, who became King of Austrasia. While Ingund traveled through Gaul to Iberia, she met a Catholic bishop who warned her not to accept Arianism, the heresy still practiced by many Visigoths, such as her new husband and his family. Hermenegild's mother, Queen Goiswintha, tried to baptize Ingund into Arianism, but the girl refused. Gregory of Tours tells us what Goiswintha did next:

the Queen lost her temper completely ... seized the girl by her hair and threw her to the ground: then she kicked her until she was covered with blood, had her stripped naked and ordered her to be thrown into the baptismal pool.

Liuvigild sent the two to rule in Seville and get them away from his wife. In Seville, however, Ingund encountered Leander. Leander, like his parents and his siblings, was a powerful voice against Arianism. Seville had a strong catholic population. No doubt from the influence of his wife (no doubt "transitively" from Leander, although from 580-582 Leander was traveling to Constantinople and back), Hermenegild converted to Catholicism in 582.

Hermenegild's father was not pleased: he saw Catholicism as "Roman" and Arianism as part of the Visigothic identity. Liuvigild besieged Seville, capturing it in 584, along with his rebellious and (to Liuvigild) heretical son. Leander fled eastward to Constantinople. Hermenegild was imprisoned and urged to renounce Catholicism, which he steadfastly would not do, refusing the Eucharist from an Arian bishop at Easter. His father had him beheaded on 13 April, 585, making Hermenegild a martyr in the Catholic Church.

Depending on the chronicle, Ingund had one of two different fates. One story from Gregory of Tours is that she fled to Constantinople with their son, Athanagild. She did not survive—at this time, plague was going around the Mediterranean—and was buried in Carthage, but Athanagild was delivered to Constantinople where he was raised by Emperor Maurice II. The other version is that she returned to her family in Gaul where Athanagild was raised by her and her mother, Brunhilda.

Leander remained in the East, preaching and writing against Arianism. After the death of Liuvigild in 589, Leander returned to Seville, where he remained bishop until his death in 600 or 601. In 589 he held the Third Council of Toledo, in which Visigothic Spain (or at least its representatives at the Council) renounced Arianism for good.

His younger brother Isidore said of him "This man of suave eloquence and eminent talent shone as brightly by his virtues as by his doctrine. By his faith and zeal the Gothic people have been converted from Arianism to the Catholic faith."

Two of his writings survive: one is an essay about his triumph of the church on the conversion of the Goths. The other is a monastic rule composed for his sister, Florentina, whom I shall talk about next.

Isidore of Seville

Isidore of Seville was probably born about 560, in Cartagena, Spain. His devout parents were both members of influential families that were involved in the conversion of the Visigoths to Catholicism from Arianism. The upbringing provided by his parents inspired Isidore and his siblings to enter the religious life, all of whom became saints.

He was educated at the liberal arts Cathedral school at Seville, learning the trivium and quadrivium. He mastered classical Latin and learned some Hebrew and Greek. Records are scarce about his early life and whether he ever joined a monastery, but in 619 he declared anathema harassing a monastery or monks. When his brother Leander, bishop of Seville, died in 600 or 601, Isidore was named his successor. He set about to eradicate any remaining traces of Arianism among the Visigoths, and was largely successful. He presided over a couple synods and a Council of Toledo.

His influence on the following centuries came more from his writings than his efforts against heresy. One was the De fide catholica contra Iudaeos, ("On the Catholic Faith against the Jews"). Like Augustine of Hippo, Isidore recognized the importance of the Jews because of their role in the Second Coming of Christ. In the Fourth Council of Toledo, however, he advocated removing children from the parents of "Crypto-Jews": Jews who were hiding their Judaism by acting as Christians. His argument was that the parents had probably had the children baptized as part of their subterfuge, and so educating the children as proper Christians was appropriate. (The Summa Theologica of Aquinas in the 13th century would state "it was never the custom of the Church to baptize the children of Jews against the will of their parents.")

He also wrote Historia de regibus Gothorum, Vandalorum et Suevorum ("History of the Kings of the Goths, Vandals and Suevi"), covering from 265 to 624.

He was the earliest Christian writer to try to summarize the knowledge of the world. His encyclopedic work, the Etymologiae, compiled his own thoughts with pieces from numerous Roman handbooks and miscellanies. It was so extensive (20 volumes with 448 chapters total)—one bishop described it as "practically everything that it is necessary to know"—that some of the works he drew from were no longer thought to be necessary to be copied and preserved.

The Etymologiae deserves its own treatment, which I will give it tomorrow.

Oblates

Becoming a monk was not always a choice. Sometimes it was the default choice for someone with no skills that he could turn into a career, or for someone who had no taste for farming. Sometimes, parents would decide that the church was the best option for their child.

The Venerable Bede was a puer oblatus, a "boy oblate," sent to be raised at a monastery at the age of seven. The word oblate, in fact, means someone who has been offered. Monasteries that adhered to the Rule of St. Benedict accepted oblates that young—it was their chief source of new members—until 656CE, when the Tenth Council of Toledo forbade boys before the age of ten. Orderic Vitalis was given to his monastery at ten or eleven, and could take vows as early as fourteen. Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury suggested that oblates could take vows when the authorities of the monastery decided he was mature enough to understand and handle the obligations involved.

Various monasteries had their own policies regarding oblates. The 11th century About William of Hirschau defined two kinds of oblate:

—fratres barbati ("bearded brethren), also called conversi (converts), who took vows but did not have to be clean-shaven or live cloistered.
—oblati (oblates), workmen who followed religious rules while working at the monastery.

Other terms were used over the centuries: commissioned, donates, confronter, with various distinctions that changed over time. Despite the many approaches to managing and designating those who wished to be involved in the monastic or priestly life, the chief distinction was between those who entered fully and took all vows, and those who were only partially committed.

Which leads me to a new idea about oblates: a third order, for lay members of religious orders. There is a long history of this, which I'll tell you about tomorrow.

Rebellion Among the Visigoths

In the 7th century, the Kingdom of the Visigoths covered much of the Iberian peninsula and a good chunk of what is now southern France. A Germanic tribe whose ruler was approved by all the nobles, there were some rulers who attempted to create a dynastic succession, so that they could hand the kingdom to their sons.

Chindasuinth

One such was Chintila (c.606 - 20 December 639), who took over from Sisenand at a time of unrest. Chintila was not a bad ruler. He held two Councils of Toledo (the 5th and 6th), in which (among other things) it was determined that the king must be chosen by the nobles and the bishops from the nobility: he could not be a foreigner, a peasant, or from the clergy. Chintila tried to leave the throne to his son, Tulga. This did not sit well with too many people, and so a warlord decided to stage a rebellion.

That warlord, Chindasuinth, may have been as old as 79. Commanding the frontier forces—and with much experience of rebellions from quelling them after the forced conversions from Arianism to Roman Christianity, and dealing with hostile Basques—he had himself declared king by his followers (but without the bishops). He marched his forces to Toledo, captured Tulga, and cut his hair. More specifically, he gave him a tonsure and exiled him to a monastery, because Tulga's father had helped establish that clergy could not ascend to the throne.

With his rebellion a success, Chindasuinth proceeded to rule, being properly anointed king on 30 April 642. But to rule successfully, he realized he needed to guard against—you guessed it—rebellion. So he decided to quell a rebellion pre-emptively. He rounded up and executed 200 members of the Gothic nobility and 500 members of the lesser nobility, without any pretense of a trial or even any evidence that a rebellion against his rule was being planned.

In October of 646, the 7th Council of Toledo retroactively ratified all of his decisions to take the throne and execute potential troublemakers. He then proceeded to make a pretty good king, establishing peace, heavily supporting the church, and refining the legal system.

But then he tried what others had tried: he named his son his heir. He declared Reccesuinth a co-king while Chindasuinth was still alive, so that the people would get used to the idea of Reccesuinth ruling. Reccesuinth was the "front man" for years, doing everything "in Chindasuinth's name." When Chindasuinth died in 653, Reccesuinth simply continued making decisions.

Froya, a Visigothic nobleman who had not been executed 10 years earlier, took exception to this and staged (wait for it) a rebellion, reaching as far as the important city of Saragossa with the support of the Basques (who held a grudge against Reccesuinth's father). Reccesuinth managed to put down the rebellion, execute Froya, and send the Basques back into the mountains. Then he reigned for almost 20 years on his own.