The Visigoths Turn Catholic at Toledo

8 May AD 589, firm dateFirm date

At Toledo in 589 King Reccared and the Gothic bishops and nobles renounce Arianism for the Nicene faith. The king’s profession says that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and the council orders the creed recited at every mass.

The Visigoths who ruled Spain had been Arian Christians since their conversion in the fourth century (Ulfilas Translates the Bible for the Goths) (Isidore, History of the Goths 7–8), beside a Catholic church that held the faith of Nicaea (Council of Toledo (589) tomus of Reccared). Gregory the Great, who knew Bishop Leander of Seville personally, relates that Leander brought the king’s son Hermenegild to the Catholic faith, that the Arian king Leovigild had Hermenegild put to death, and that on his deathbed Leovigild commended his other son, Reccared I, to Leander’s guidance (Gregory the Great, Dialogues 3.31). Reccared became king in 586 and adopted the Catholic faith at the very start of his reign (Isidore, History of the Goths 52–53). Gregory of Tours says that he first made the bishops of both sides debate before him (Gregory of Tours, Histories 9.15).

On 8 May 589 the king met the bishops of Spain and Gaul at Toledo (Council of Toledo (589) opening and royal address). A written statement of his faith was read out. It confesses the Son as equal and coeternal with the Father and says that the Holy Spirit is to be confessed and preached as proceeding from the Father and the Son. The king presented the Goths, and the Sueves now subject to his kingdom, as an offering to God, accepted the four general councils, and set out the creeds of Nicaea and Constantinople and the definition of Chalcedon. He and Queen Baddo signed (Council of Toledo (589) tomus of Reccared). Gothic bishops, clergy and nobles then abjured Arianism in a series of anathemas, the third of which condemns anyone who does not believe that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (Council of Toledo (589) profession of the Gothic bishops, anathemas).

The second canon ordered that in every church of Spain, Gaul and Galicia the creed of Constantinople should be recited aloud at mass before the Lord’s Prayer, after the custom of the Eastern churches (Council of Toledo (589) canon 2). Another canon forbade Jews to have Christian wives or concubines, to buy Christian slaves, or to hold public offices that gave them power to punish Christians (Council of Toledo (589) canon 14). Pope Gregory wrote to Leander of his joy at the king’s conversion (Gregory the Great, Letters 1.43).

The creed of 381 says that the Spirit “proceedeth from the Father” (Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed). The king’s profession adds the Son, and a joint Orthodox and Catholic statement of 2003 calls it the earliest use of such language in a creed-like text; it adds that no clear record exists of how the word Filioque came to be inserted in the creed itself (Orthodox–Catholic Consultation, The Filioque (2003) part 2, Historical Considerations). From Spain, the statement says, the creed with the addition spread through Gaul (Orthodox–Catholic Consultation, The Filioque (2003) part 2, Historical Considerations). The same statement describes the clause as part of the ordinary teaching of the church for Catholics and most Protestants, and as an offence to Eastern Christians both for its theology and because it was added to the creed of an ecumenical council without ecumenical agreement (Orthodox–Catholic Consultation, The Filioque (2003) introduction). The later quarrel is told under the Photian Schism and the Schism of 1054.

How this is dated

Firm date. Fixed by contemporary documentation and not seriously disputed.

The acts date the council to the eighth day before the Ides of May in the fourth year of Reccared and the year 627 of the Spanish era (Council of Toledo (589) opening and royal address). The Spanish era runs 38 years ahead of the Christian era, so the day is 8 May 589. The acts and Isidore’s history are paraphrased here from the Latin.

What is debated is the wording of the creed, not the date. The king’s profession and the third anathema teach that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (Council of Toledo (589) tomus of Reccared) (Council of Toledo (589) profession of the Gothic bishops, anathemas). In the creed of Constantinople as the council recited it, the copies of the acts divide. The copy read here, a ninth-century manuscript from Corbie that holds a Frankish revision of the Spanish collection of canons, transcribed for the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, has “from the Father” only, both times the creed is given (Council of Toledo (589) creed of Constantinople, in the king’s tomus and again in the bishops’ profession). Alberto Ferreiro, “Toletum III / Toledo III”, in the online Lexikon der Konzilien (konziliengeschichte.org, January 2025), reports that the edition of J. Vives prints “from the Father and the Son”, that the critical edition of the Hispana treats those words as a later interpolation in the acts, and that some scholars place their first appearance in the creed at the Eighth Council of Toledo in 653. Ferreiro himself argues that the bishops of 589 had every reason to use them. The same entry notes that the complete acts carry the signature of Leander of Seville, fourth among the bishops, and a sermon he preached for the occasion. The manuscript read here names only the first bishop to sign, Masona of Mérida, and omits the sermon (Council of Toledo (589) signatures after the royal edict).