History of the Kings of the Goths, Vandals and Sueves
A short history of the Goths from their origins to the author’s own day, by the bishop of Seville. Isidore dates each reign by the Spanish era and tells, a generation later, of King Reccared’s conversion and of the council of 589.
Isidore was bishop of Seville and wrote in the Visigothic kingdom a generation after the council of Toledo; the last reign he describes began in the year 659 of the Spanish era, AD 621. He dates Reccared’s accession to the year 624 of the Spanish era, which is AD 586, and gives him a reign of fifteen years.
The work is brief and written in praise of the Goths and their Catholic kings. Its account of Reccared sets him against his Arian father Leovigild at every point. It is close in time and place, and it shows how the Spanish church understood the conversion: Isidore says that the king, at the council, proclaimed that the Holy Spirit proceeds inseparably from the Father and the Son.
Cited in
- 8 May AD 589, firm date