THE SEVENTH-CENTURY KINGDOM 95we find the principals of some of the subsidiary cults, such as Saints
Cyprian and Laurence, engaged in performing such homely miracles
as enabling a widow to get her bond for a debt cancelled by the
bishop, whereas the city's main patron St Eulalia only features in
matters of major concern for the community as a whole, as in the
quality of harvests and the avoidance of epidemics.^12
Processions around the city's basilicas, originating in the fifth or
sixth centuries, are recorded in both the accounts of Bishops Fidelis
and Masona, and the description of an Easter procession conducted
by the latter indicates just how magnificent they could be and how
central to the city's self-esteem the bishop had become: 'Not only to
his bretheren and friends but also to the slaves of the Church did he
show himself generous beyond belief. So enriched were these in his
time that on the holy day of Easter, when he went in procession to
the church, many attendants walked before him as before a king,
clothed in silk robes ... a thing no one at that time could do or
presumed to do, (they) went ahead of him giving him the homage
that was his due.'13
The explicit comparison with the king and the unique, indeed
presumptuous, nature of Masona's magnificence is particularly strik-
ing, and testifies to the wealth and social standing of the bishop in his
see. The author's emphasis that such episcopal magnificence was
unique 'at that time' suggests that such ostentation was more com-
mon at the time of his writing (c. 630). Indeed, after some forty years
or so of Visigothic royal and aristocratic adherence to the Catholic
Church, and consequently of ecclesiastical endowment on their part,
this seems probable. However, before the conversion of 589, in
periods of weakness of the royal power, a bishop as well-endowed as
Masona, with local popular support behind him, could prove a formi-
dable rival to the king, at least within his own see. Such indeed Masona
showed himself to be in his encounters with King Leovigild in the
latter's attempts either to win over the bishop to the Arian cause,
or at least secure possession of the prized relic of St Eulalia's tunic
for the Arian congregation in the city. Even exile failed to end the
bishop's resistance or to undermine his popular following in Merida.
Masona's great strength and hold over the mind of his Catholic
congregation lay in the apparent power of his ties to St Eulalia. The
role of the bishop was to act as intermediary on behalf of the city with
the principal patron saint, and the success or failure of his interces-
sion was held to depend upon his own' personal character and