Above: Europe in 526 Common Era
SAINT HERMENEGILD (DIED 585)
Visigothic Prince and Roman Catholic Martyr
The Visigoths created a kingdom which lasted from 415 to 711. It emerged in the west of the Western Roman Empire and endured until the Muslim conquest. King Leovigild (reigned 568-586), according to the 1962 Encyclopedia Americana, was
the most important Visigothic ruler in Spain,
a man who
effected peninsular unity.
(Volume 25, pge 360i) Leovigild was also an Arian. Indeed, Arianism was the official religion of the Visigothic Kingdom. Arianism was (and is) also a denial of the divinity of Jesus, and therefore a heresy.
St. Hermenegild, son of King Leovigild, began as an Arian. The prince married married Indegundis, daughter of Sigebert I, King of Austrasia (reigned 561-575). Indegundis (died 584) convinced her husband to convert to Roman Catholicism. This conversion prompted Leovigild to disinherit his son. The prince, in return, rebelled against his father from 580 to 584, when Leovigild defeated and imprisoned the prince. The monarch demanded that his son revert to Arianism; the son refused. So Leovigild ordered his son executed, axed to death.
The rest of the story is that Leovigild’s successor, Recared I (reigned 586-601), St. Hermenegild’s brother, converted to Roman Catholicism. Daddy lost.
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
JANUARY 25, 2012 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF THE CONVERSION OF SAINT PAUL THE APOSTLE
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Everliving God,
by your grace and power
your holy martyr St. Hermenegild triumphed over suffering
and was faithful even to death;
strengthen us with your grace
that we may faithfully witness
to Jesus Christ our Saviour. Amen.
2 Chronicles 24:17-21
Psalm 3 or 116
Hebrews 11:32-40
Matthew 10:16-22
–A New Zealand Prayer Book (1989), pages 680-681
