42 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINin the Chronicle of John of Biclar, the most substantial work of its kind
produced in Visigothic Spain.
John, as Isidore tells us in his On the Lives of Famous Men, was of
Gothic origin, born at Scallabis in Lusitania.^23 Whilst still a youth he
went to Constantinople, where he was to spend seventeen years. The
reason for this journey and protracted stay are nowhere explained.
He may have commenced work on his Chronicle during this visit, as
the earliest sections, covering the years 568 to about 577, are remark-
ably well informed on Byzantine events, and his writing is one of the
principal sources for the history of the Empire in those years. The
Chronicle itself was conceived as a continuation of that of the Mrican
bishop Victor of Tunnunna. 24 This latter work was written in Constan-
tinople, where its author was long detained for his opposition to the
religious policies of the emperor Justinian I. John returned to Spain
during the reign of Leovigild, and was subsequently exiled by the
king to Barcelona. It is usually believed that this was due to his being
a Catholic at a time when Arian-Catholic conflict was bitter, and the
king was especially hostile to Goths who had deserted their tradi-
tional Arianism. However, this is nowhere stated explicitly, and chrono-
logically the exile may have occurred before the outbreak of religious
hostilities. John's Byzantine contacts and lengthy sojourn in Constan-
tinople may have more of a part to play in this than his theological
beliefs. Isidore mentions that John suffered from the hostility of the
Arians for ten years, and this gives something of a chronological
starting point for reconstructing his life. Arianism was not finally
suppressed in north-east Spain until 589/90, which suggests thatJohn's
exile in Barcelona began c. 579 and thus the stay in Constantinople
might fall into the years c. 562-c. 579, though there is no indication
as to how long an interval there was between his return and his exile.
Mter the final elimination of Arianism in Tarraconensis,John founded
a monastery at a site called Biclar, probably close to Tarragona, for
which he composed a Rule, now lost. Soon after, at some point be-
tween 589 and 592 he was consecrated Bishop of Gerona. It was
probably in the same period that he completed his Chronicle, which
ends in 590. As bishop, John signed the acts of several councils, II
Zaragoza in 592, the Synod of Toledo in 597 and II Barcelona in 599.
He was probably still living at the time of the Council of Egara in 614,
as the signature of a Bishop John to its acts is probably his.^25 Isidore
records the writing of the Chronicle, which he himself used extensively
in composing his own Chronicle for the years 568-590, and he also