Hermenegild

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Triunfo de San Hermenegildo ( 1654 ), by Francisco de Herrera the Younger

Hermenegild († April 13, 585 in Tarragona ) was a Visigoth king son. In the Catholic Church he is venerated as a martyr (festival on April 13th ).

Life

Hermenegild was the older of the two sons of the Visigoth king Leovigild from his first marriage. 573 raised Leovigild him and his brother Rekkared to kings. This probably happened after the Roman-Byzantine model with the intention of securing the dynasty and eliminating the right to vote for the great. Like all Visigoth kings before him, Leovigild adhered to Arianism , but the majority of his subjects were Catholic. In 579, Leovigild Hermenegild married the Catholic Ingund , a daughter of the Frankish King Sigibert I. Ingund was unwilling to convert to Arianism, despite emphatic requests from Queen Goswintha (Goiswintha). Goswintha was Hermenegild's stepmother and at the same time Ingund's grandmother. To alleviate these tensions, Hermenegild was sent by his father to Seville , from where he was to rule over the southern part of the Visigothic Empire.

Ingund found support from the Catholic Bishop Leander of Seville . Under Leander's influence, Hermenegild publicly converted to the Catholic faith. He also started a revolt against his father in 579. Research has disputed which of these two events happened first and whether one of them was the cause of the other or whether there was no causal relationship between them. It is possible that there were already secession tendencies in southern Hispania. However, Hermenegild found little support. He therefore sought the assistance of the Franks and made pacts with the Suebi (in northwestern Hispania) and with the Byzantines of the province of Spania . He even ceded the city of Cordoba to the Byzantines , but received no effective help from them. Leovigild initially strived for a peaceful solution, although Hermenegild minted its own gold coins, behaved like an independent ruler and appeared as a champion of Catholicism. Eventually, Leovigild took action against his rebellious son with a superior force. From 582 he subjugated the fallen areas in just under two years. In 583 he began the siege of Seville and overcame the Suebi. He won Cordoba back from the Byzantines through a cash payment. At the beginning of 584 Hermenegild capitulated. Ingund found refuge with Hermenegild's son Athanagild in the Byzantine sphere of influence. She died in Africa, Athanagild was brought to Constantinople.

What is striking about the uprising is that Hermenegild was consistently defensive. He made no attempt to disempower his father and extend his rule beyond the territory that Leovigild had originally assigned him. Its intentions are unclear; Apparently, the poorly thought out and inadequate venture aimed at secession.

Hermenegild remained in custody. In 585 he was assassinated, allegedly because he refused to return to Arianism. The background to the crime remains unclear and it is uncertain whether his father gave the order to kill.

Assessment and aftermath

When Rekkared came to power after the death of Leovigild (586) and converted to Catholicism the following year, Hermenegild was not rehabilitated or even celebrated as a religious fighter. Pope Gregory the Great praised him as a martyr, but in the Visigoths this view was not shared. Hermenegild was not mentioned in a positive sense (not even on the part of the bishops), Catholic historians like John of Biclaro and Isidore of Seville viewed him as a rebel and a tyrant. His uprising, the instigating of the civil war and probably also the alliance with hostile powers were frowned upon. The contemporary Gallo-Roman historian Gregory of Tours also sharply condemned Hermenegild's behavior and said that the son owed obedience to the father, although the Arian was a heretic .

It was not until the High Middle Ages that the cult of Hermenegilds spread as a martyr in Spain. The feast day for his cultic veneration was only approved by Pope Sixtus V for Spain in 1586 . This happened at the urging of King Philip II , who was an ardent admirer of Hermenegild and owned some of Hermenegild's relics . In 1636 the Hermenegild cult was officially introduced for the universal Church. In art, Hermenegild is usually shown in stately clothing, wearing a palm and an ax as symbols of his martyrdom. His feast days are April 13th ( Catholic ) and January 1st and November 1st ( Orthodox ).

King Ferdinand VII of Spain created the Order of St. Hermenegild (Real y Militar Orden de San Hermenegildo) in 1815 .

literature

Web links

Commons : Hermenegild  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. A. Linage Conde: Herménégilde . In: Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques . Vol. 24 (1993), Col. 89f.
  2. ^ Peter Linehan: History and the Historians of Medieval Spain . Oxford 1993, p. 2; A. Barbero / MI Loring: The formation of the Sueve and Visigothic kingdoms in Spain . In: The New Cambridge Medieval History . Vol. 1, Cambridge 2005, p. 187; A. Linage Conde: Herménégilde . In: Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques . Vol. 24 (1993), Col. 90f .; Herwig Wolfram: Leovigild . In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde . Vol. 18 (2001), pp. 270f.