THE SEVENTH-CENTURY KINGDOM 99offering to send in return a book describing those of St Eulalia. This
must be a reference to the Lives of the Fathers of Merida, indeed the
only such reference we have in the literary sources. The difficulty of
tracing the spread of the cult of Eulalia of Merida is complicated by
the existence of devotion to a second saint of the same name in the
peninsula: St Eulalia of Barcelona. Not surprisingly, much scholarly
and partisan controversy has been aroused by this, with some arguing
that the cult of Eulalia of Barcelona was no more than a mistaken
transformation in the north-east of the peninsula of that of Eulalia of
Merida. However, the surviving liturgical evidence does at least
prove that both Eulalias were separately venerated in the Visigothic
period.^20
The account of town life and religion that has been given has
inevitably been centred on bishops and martyr saints, because that is
the central perspective of the author of our principal source of evi-
dence. We have to see Merida through his eyes, not forgetting that
he was writing over half a century after the period with which he was
concerned. The rapid decline of the city after the invasion of 711 and
its subsequent neglect has made of it, unlike most other Spanish
towns that were in existence in the Roman and Visigothic periods, a
potentially rich hunting ground for the archaeologist, with little
modern building to hinder access to the sites. Although no substan-
tial structures dating to the Visigothic period have been discovered,
something can be seen of its impact on an area of earlier Roman
housing in the area of the Alcazaba, and a major survey of the sur-
viving fragments of carved stonework dating to the sixth and seventh
centuries has now been published.^21 All too many questions remain
to be answered and we must for now remain content with the percep-
tions, however idiosyncratic they may be, from our sole literary source,
and in view of the lack of anything comparable for other cities of this
period in Spain, be thankful for the little we have. Also the particular
importance of the cult of Eulalia in the peninsula in the Visigothic
and to some extent Asturian periods makes the information we are
given on its workings in its own place of origin of especial interest,
and again is something that cannot be paralleled in the surviving
evidence before the rise of the cult of Santiago or St James, which will
be treated later.
Before parting from the Lives of the Fathers and the glimpses it has
given of at least some aspects of sixth-century Merida, it is worth
noting the brief aper{:u of another leading figure in the ecclesiastical