118 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINin the 630s and treated them as being symptomatic of the condition
of the kingdom in the 690s or 700s. Obviously such laws were still
valid at the later time but the circumstances, possibly no more than
a single case that required adjudication, that had called them into
being belonged to the past, and there is no justification for assuming
widespread or continuing survival of the offence thus condemned.
Assessments of several apparently prejudicial features of the society of
Visigothic Spain tend to be made without sufficient awareness of the
need for a chronological context for the evidence used.
This can be illustrated by the relationship between the kings and
the Church as mirrored in the legislation of the various councils held
in Toledo in the course of the seventh century. In the conciliar acts
may be found a number of striking gestures made towards the en-
hancement of royal authority. The king was given the power to use
ecclesiastical sanctions on his own initiative, and similarly the threat
of excommunication was wielded by the bishops against any who
might seek to overthrow or conspire against the monarch. The future
security of members of the royal family and the protection of the
king's fideles after his death was also legislated for on more than one
occasion.
Now whilst the overall impression that this gives of the existence
of close ties between monarchy and Church, and the interest of the
latter in maintaining strong and stable kingship is certainly not erro-
neous, the individual enactments make most sense when fitted into
their proper chronological context, which also highlights the fluctua-
tions in the relationship, which tend to be obscured when it is taken
as a generalised whole.
The conciliar enactments relating to the kings and to their families
and followers come from only two periods: the 630s and the 680s,
products of deliberations at IV, V and VI Toledo (633, 636 and 638)
and at XIII and XV Toledo (683 and 688). One or two other royal
references are to be found, such as the third canon of the Council of
Merida of 666 which regulated ecclesiastical observances to be fol-
lowed when the king undertook a military operation, but these were
not enactments issued at the ruler's behest or concerned with his
powers. Both the 630s and the 680s were periods of political instabil-
ity, probably the worst that the kingdom suffered.
In 631 Suinthiia was overthrown by the count Sisenand, with the
assistance of the Frankish king Dagobert I. Although both Sisenand
(631-636) and his successor Chintila (636-639) survived briefreigns