Third Council of Toledo (589): Visigothic Spain Turns Catholic

The Third Council of Toledo, which opened on 8 May 589, was the assembly at which King Reccared I and the Visigothic ruling class formally abandoned Arian Christianity and embraced the Catholic faith. Held in the royal city of Toledo, it ended the religious division between the Gothic elite and the Hispano-Roman majority of the Iberian Peninsula. The council laid the foundations for the close partnership of church and crown that defined Visigothic Spain for more than a century.

Background: two churches in one kingdom

The Visigoths had converted to Christianity in the 4th century in its Arian form, partly through the work of the missionary bishop Wulfila, whose Gothic Bible became a symbol of their church. Arians held that the Son was subordinate to the Father, a view condemned by the First Council of Nicaea in 325.

When the Visigoths settled in Gaul and then Spain, they ruled over a much larger Roman population that followed the Nicene, or Catholic, creed. For generations the two communities had separate bishops, churches and, to some extent, separate laws. Marriage between Goths and Romans had also been restricted until King Leovigild relaxed the ban.

Leovigild (reigned c. 568–586) was a forceful king who conquered the Suevic kingdom in the north-west in 585 and fought the Byzantine enclave in the south. He tried to unify his realm on Arian terms, holding an Arian synod at Toledo in 580 that made conversion to Arianism easier for Catholics.

Hermenegild’s revolt

Religious tension came to a head when Leovigild’s elder son, Hermenegild, rebelled in 579 and, under the influence of his Frankish Catholic wife Ingund and of Leander of Seville, became a Catholic. The revolt was crushed by 584, and Hermenegild was killed in captivity in 585.

Later Catholic writers treated Hermenegild as a martyr, but contemporary Spanish sources describe his rising mainly as a rebellion against his father. Either way, the episode showed that religion could split the dynasty itself.

Reccared’s conversion

Leovigild died in 586 and was succeeded by his younger son Reccared. In early 587, about ten months after his accession, Reccared privately accepted the Catholic faith. He then held meetings with Arian and Catholic bishops and persuaded many Gothic clergy and nobles to follow him.

The change met resistance. Between 587 and 590 there were Arian-led conspiracies, including one involving Sunna, the Arian bishop of Mérida, and another linked to Leovigild’s widow Goiswintha and the Arian bishop Uldila. Reccared suppressed them, and the Catholic bishop Masona of Mérida survived an assassination plot.

What happened at the council

The council opened in Toledo on 8 May 589. Its acts were signed by more than sixty bishops, either in person or through representatives, together with Gothic nobles. Leander of Seville and the abbot Eutropius are credited with organising its business.

Reccared presented a written profession of faith that accepted the doctrine of the Trinity as defined at Nicaea and the later councils of Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon. Queen Baddo signed alongside him. Eight former Arian bishops formally renounced their earlier beliefs, and the assembly approved a long list of anathemas, or condemnations, of Arian teachings.

The council then issued 23 canons on church discipline. One ordered that the creed be recited at Mass, a practice that later spread across the Latin West. Others regulated the clergy, church property, penance and public morals. Several canons placed restrictions on Jews, for example forbidding them to hold Christian slaves or public offices involving punishment of Christians.

The council closed with a homily by Leander celebrating the “triumph of the Church” and the unity of the peoples of Spain in one faith. The creed recorded in the acts includes the filioque, the statement that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father “and the Son”, which later became a major issue between the Latin and Greek churches.

The filioque and the creed

The creed recited at the council stated that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and from the Son. In Latin this is expressed by the word filioque, “and from the Son”. In Spain the phrase served to stress the full equality of the Son with the Father, the very point that Arians had denied.

The wording was not part of the creed as agreed at Constantinople in 381, and the Greek-speaking churches never accepted it. When the phrase spread from Spain to Frankish Gaul and was eventually adopted in Rome in the 11th century, it became one of the main theological disputes behind the split between the Latin and Greek churches. Scholars still discuss whether the phrase stood in the original acts of 589 or was added in later copies, but it was certainly in use in Spain soon afterwards.

Key people

• Reccared I (reigned 586–601): Visigothic king whose conversion made the council possible.
• Leander of Seville (died c. 600): Catholic bishop, friend of Pope Gregory the Great and main religious adviser to the king.
• Queen Baddo: Reccared’s wife, who co-signed the profession of faith.
• Masona of Mérida: leading Catholic bishop who had resisted Leovigild’s pressure.
• John of Biclaro: Gothic Catholic chronicler whose account is a key contemporary source.

Consequences

The council brought the Visigothic monarchy into line with the faith of most of its subjects. Bishops became central partners of royal government, and later councils of Toledo, held regularly through the 7th century, dealt with both religious and political matters, including the rules for choosing kings.

Unity of faith also prepared the way for unity of law. In 654 King Recceswinth issued the Visigothic Code, a single law code for all inhabitants of the kingdom. Pope Gregory the Great wrote to Reccared in 599 to praise his conversion and sent him relics, including what were said to be fragments of the chains of Saint Peter.

The separate Arian church disappeared within a generation, and the Gothic language, probably already in decline, fell out of use. Gothic Arian books were reportedly gathered and destroyed, and former Arian churches were handed to Catholic bishops. By the 7th century, writers such as Isidore of Seville could describe the Goths and Romans of Spain as one people under one king.

The religious settlement had harsher effects for Spain’s Jewish communities. The restrictions of 589 were the first of a series of increasingly severe anti-Jewish measures by later kings and councils.

Legacy

Spanish historians later saw 589 as the birth of a unified Catholic Spain, an idea that became important in national histories of the 19th century, when the event was painted by artists such as José Martí y Monsó and Antonio Muñoz Degrain. Modern scholars stress that the kingdom remained politically unstable, with frequent royal assassinations and revolts.

The kingdom came to an end after the Umayyad conquest of Hispania began in 711. The canons of the Toledan councils, however, survived in church law collections and influenced canon law across medieval Europe.

Timeline

• 580: Leovigild holds an Arian synod at Toledo.
• 579–584: Revolt of Hermenegild, who converts to Catholicism.
• 586: Death of Leovigild; Reccared becomes king.
• 587: Reccared privately converts to the Catholic faith.
• 587–590: Arian conspiracies against Reccared are suppressed.
• 589, 8 May: The Third Council of Toledo opens.
• 599: Pope Gregory the Great writes to Reccared praising his conversion.
• 601: Death of Reccared.
• 654: The Visigothic Code applies one law to Goths and Romans alike.

Why it matters

The Third Council of Toledo ended nearly two centuries of religious division between rulers and ruled in Spain. It tied the Visigothic crown closely to the Catholic church and created the conciliar tradition that shaped the kingdom’s law and politics until 711.