Hermenegildo

According to a legend of the city of Seville, San Hermenegildo was detained in this building, which is a tower-door of the wall known as Puerta de Córdoba. On the right is the entrance to the Church of San Hermenegildo.

Saint Hermenegildo (Gothic: 𐌹𐍂𐌼𐌿𐌽𐌰𐌲𐌹𐌻𐌳𐍃, «immense tribute»; Medina del Campo (Valladolid), 564-Tarragona, April 13, 585) was a prince and noble Visigoth, son of King Leovigildo and his first wife, and brother of Recaredo. He was educated in the prevailing Arianism among the Visigoths of the Peninsula at that time (unlike the Hispano-Romans, who were mostly Catholics). His conversion to Catholicism confronted him with his father and caused a military conflict that would end with his capture and death. He was canonized in 1585 as a martyr for the Catholic Church; he is the patron saint of converts and his holiday is celebrated on the anniversary of his death, on April 13.

Biography

At a very early age, Hermenegildo and his younger brother Recaredo were associated with the paternal throne (as before his uncle Liuva I had associated his brother Leovigildo with the throne). Formed under the influence of San Leandro de Sevilla, who some make his mother's brother, since mixed marriages were prohibited,^{[citation required]} at the age of fifteen At that age, he married the Frankish Catholic princess Ingunda, daughter of Sigeberto I and Brunegilda, in an attempt to strengthen the relationship started by his father's first marriage. Sent as governor to the province of Bética after his marriage, the influence of his wife and Leandro led him to conversion quickly.

The political problems that a conversion into the royal succession could cause and Hermenegild's suspicious diplomatic relations with the Byzantine governor of the neighboring province of Spania caused increasing tension in relations with his father. The existing difficulty between Catholics and Arians was hardened by the intransigence of Leovigildo's wife, Goswinta.

The armed conflict began in the year 581, and lasted until 584 (although Leovigildo was led to it with little force at first, since he was occupied in the north). Hermenegildo, who had the support of the Byzantines operating from Cartagena, found himself tactically inferior when the Byzantines agreed to an alliance with Leovigildo for the amount of 30,000 solidi of gold.

Leovigildo wanted to put an end to the rebellions, he subdued the resistance of Mérida and Cáceres and cut off the way to King Miro's Swabians, who wanted to help the Catholics, but later he became friends with Leovigildo and returned home, dying days later. Then Hermenegildo takes refuge in a series of fortresses and castles that, one after another, are conquered by his father's Arian troops. Finally he arrived in Seville, where he settled in his residence with his wife, but when his father's troops approached and having the Osset fortress nearby, he decided to go there to bet. In 583 he was besieged at Osset Castle, which It was located where the current walls of San Juan de Aznalfarache, at the gates of Seville. After a siege of more than a year, the fortress was defeated and Hermenegildo had to escape to Córdoba where he asked for refuge in a church in 584.

His brother Recaredo, in the name of his father Leovigildo, offers Hermenegildo to keep his life in exchange for turning himself in. Once arrested he is transferred to Seville and later to Valencia. The King of the Austrasian Franks Childebert II, brother of his wife, wanted to help him by invading Narbonensis Gaul. Given this, Hermenegildo flees from prison to join the Frankish army but is arrested and will be imprisoned in Tarragona.

Hermenegild's wife, after being used in conflicts between the Byzantine Empire and the Frankish kingdoms, escaped to Africa with her still nursing child, opting to flee to Rome, and asked Emperor Maurice of Byzantium for asylum in Constantinople, but he died at some point on the way to the Byzantine capital, in Sicily, in 584. His son Atanagildo was delivered by order of Mauricio to her mother, with the opposition of Leovigildo himself.

The main specialists in the history of Visigothic Hispania, such as E. A. Thompson, José Orlandis or Luis A. García Moreno, do not consider that Hermenegildo's conversion was the true cause of the revolt, but rather an excuse for it. For this, they rely on the religious tolerance exhibited during the reign of Leovigildo and on the different diplomatic attempts made before the start of the conflict. Furthermore, even after the conversion of the Visigoths to Catholicism with Recaredo, the chroniclers and conciliar acts make no mention of Hermenegildo, his revolt or his heroism, which seems to indicate that the Catholic Visigoths considered him only a rebel and not a martyr.

Although there are no independent testimonies of the fact, the Dialogi of Gregorio I assure that Hermenegildo rejected his father's offer of pardon for faithfulness to the Catholic faith and that he was beheaded by his jailer, Sisberto, after refusing to receive Holy Communion from an Arian bishop on Easter Day 585. Much less favorable to Hermenegildo is the opinion of the Frankish historian Gregorio de Tours, very well informed of the Visigothic world, who considers it a serious fault for a son to rise up against his father, even if he is an Arian.

At the behest of King Philip II of Spain, Sixtus V canonized him on the thousandth anniversary of his death. The following year, at the request of the king and through the mediation of the Bishop of Vich Juan Antonio de Cardona, the nuns of the Monastery of Sijena ceded the head of Saint Hermenegildo, which they had guarded as a relic since the s. XII the founder of the Sancha de Aragón convent delivered it to the recently built Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, where it is still preserved. Together with San Fernando he is the patron saint of the Spanish monarchy.

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Hermenegildo, during his reign in Baetica, had a church erected, in which we find the following inscription, which is preserved in the Archaeological Museum of Seville under the name of Lintel de San Hermenegildo:

In nomine Domini anno feliciter secundo regni domini nostri [H]Ermenegildi regis quem persequitur genetor sus dominus Liuvigildus rex in ci[b]vitate [H]Ispa[lense] indictione tertia decima [... ]

What translates:

In the name of the Lord, in the happily second year of the kingdom of our lord the king [H]Ermenegildo (year 582), to whom his father and lord the king Leovigildo persecutes in the city of Seville [... the text is incomplete and cannot be translated]

Offspring

According to the traditional genealogy, Prince Atanagildo was born from his marriage to the Frankish princess Ingunda, who in turn married Flavia Juliana, paternal niece of the Byzantine emperor Mauricio, the latter would be the parents of Paulo Ardabasto, whose son would be Gothic king Ervigio. Based on this genealogy, the kings of Asturias and León (Asturian-Leonese dynasty), the kings of Pamplona and the first kings of Aragon, as well as the counts of Castile, were considered descendants of San Hermenegildo., this genealogy has been disputed.