Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/677

 commenced the persecuting violence of Persia. Leontius, putting himself at the head of his people, drove the magian party to flight, after which divine service went on in the church unmolested through the day. A general rising followed, and in 451 66,000 Armenian Christians mustered under prince Vartan in the plain of Artass to encounter the Persian army. Joseph and a large body of his clergy, including Leontius, were present to encourage the Christian forces (Lazarus, § 34 in Langl. ii. 296, 297; Elisha, u. inf.). Leontius, who is everywhere mentioned with Joseph, and is usually the orator, as he is the chief inspirer, of the whole movement, delivered a fervent address before the battle (given fully by Langlois), dwelling on the examples of Phineas, Elijah, Gideon, and other famous believers in O.T. (Langl. ii. 218). The battle (June 2, 451, ib. 298 note) was lost and a remnant found refuge in the stronghold of Pag. This too was taken and many clergy were put to death. Joseph, Leontius, and their companions, were taken to the court of Persia, and put on their defence. Finally they and four others were executed on the 25th of the month Hroditz in the 16th year of Isdigerd ( 455), in the province of Abar, near a village of the Mogs named Révan. The account of the martyrdom has every appearance of being a genuine coeval record, simple, natural, unlegendary. Lazarus himself wrote in the following generation, and his position gave him access to the best authorities, which he describes, especially assuring his readers that he faithfully reports the last words of the martyrs. The most severely dealt with was Leontius, he being regarded as the chief instigator of the Armenian resistance. The general history of these events may be read in Saint-Martin's Le Beau, t. vi. pp. 258–318.

[C.H.]

Leovigild, Arian king of the Visigoths in Spain from 569 to Apr. or May 586. His reign and that of his successor, the convert ), represent the crisis of Visigothic history, religious and political.

Upon the death of Athanagild in the winter of 567, the Gothic throne remained unfilled until in 568 Leova, dux of the Septimanian province, was made king by the magnates of Gallia Gothica. In 569 he assigned to his younger brother Leovigild the government of the Spanish portion. In the first year of his reign Leovigild married Goisvintha, the widow of his predecessor Athanagild and a strong Arian (Greg. Tur. H. F. v. 39). By a previous marriage he had two sons, Hermenigild and Reccared. Leovigild faced the situation with success. His first campaign ( 569) was against the Byzantine settlers and garrisons of the Baza and Malaga districts. For 20 years Cordova had refused to acknowledge the lordship of the Goths, and the great town of the Baetis had been the headquarters of the Imperialist and Catholic power in the Peninsula. Its fall (early in 572?) was a heavy blow to the imperial cause in Spain (Joannes Bicl. Esp. Sagr. vi. 377). In 572 (573 according to J. Biel.) Leova died, and Leovigild remained master of both divisions of the kingdom.

Hermenigild's Rebellion.—In 572 (or 573) the king had made both the sons of his first marriage "consortes regni" (J. Bicl. p. 378), and before 580 both were betrothed to Frankish princesses, Hermenigild to his step-niece Ingunthis, granddaughter of Goisvintha, Leovigild's second wife, Reccared to Ingunthis's first cousin, Rigunthis, daughter of Chilperic and Fredegonde. In 580 Hermenigild's bride, a girl of 12 or 13, passed the Pyrenees, "cum magno apparatu" (Greg. Tur. v. 39), having been exhorted on her way by bp. Fronimius of Agde to hold fast her orthodox profession in the midst of the Arian family into which she had married, and who no doubt expected her to become an Arian. She stood firm, and dissension speedily arose with her Arian grandmother. In order to secure family peace Leovigild assigned to Hermenigild and Ingunthis the town of Seville, where the influence of his wife, says Gregory of Tours—of the famous metropolitan of Baetica, Leander, according to Gregory the Great, Dial. iii. 41 converted Hermenigild to Catholicism (Hist. Fr. v. 39; Paul. Diac. W. iii. 21). He was confirmed in the orthodox faith by Leander. The son thus placed himself in opposition to his father and to all the Gothic traditions, and was brought into natural alliance with the forces threatening the Gothic state, with the Byzantines in the S., the Suevi in the N., and the disaffection smouldering among Leovigild's provincial subjects. The young couple may well have appeared to the Catholics convenient instruments for dealing a deadly blow at the heretical Gothic monarchy; while in the case of the Byzantines a strictly political motive would also be present.

The peril was a grave one. Leovigild, with a combination of energy and prudence, assembled a council of Arian bishops (581, mentioned in C. Tol. iii. as occurring in the 12th year of Leovigild), which drew up a formula designed to facilitate the conversion of Catholics to Arianism. Rebaptism was no longer demanded as heretofore. Converts should give glory to the Father "per Filium in Spiritu Sancto." (The Gloria Patri plays an important part in the history of Spanish Arianism. Cf. Greg. of Tours's conversation with Leovigild's envoy, the Arian Oppila—Hist. Franc. vi. 40, and C. Tol. iii.) A libellus containing the decisions of the council was widely circulated (C. Tol. iii. 16; Tejada y Ramiro, ii.) and other temptations were offered to the Catholic bishops and clergy. Isidore and Joannes mournfully confess that many yielded. The king also began to pay scrupulous respect to Catholic feeling and belief and to Catholic saints, and to pray in Catholic churches (Greg. Tur. vi. 18). "I believe," he is reported to have said, "with firmness that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, equal to the Father, but I do not at all believe that the Holy Ghost is God, since in no book of Scripture do we read that He is God." By such means Leovigild endeavoured to secure the Catholic party within the territory outside Hermenigild's influence.

During 581 and 582 Hermenigild had assumed a more and more formidable position, but Leovigild marched S. to the siege of Seville, which lasted through 583 into 584, and after the fall of Seville up the Guadalquivir valley to Cordova. Here the rebellion collapsed.