A CHURCH TRIUMPHANT 61his brothers lived a life of self-imposed ascetic discipline in their
family household, along the lines of the aristocratic house-monastery
that had been fashionable in Rome and other parts of the West in the
late fourth and fifth centuries. Isidore comes into view for the first
time upon his ordination to succeed his brother, although it is pos-
sible that at least one of his works, his Differentiae, or Differences, was
composed before 600. IfIsidore also inherited any of Leander's influ-
ence at court with Reccared and his dynasty, it may well have gone
into eclipse with the violent deposition of Liuva II in 603, for it is not
until the reign of Sisebut (611/12-620) that he appears as the re-
gular adviser and confidant of a king in matters concerning the Church
and learning. Thereafter, Isidore appears consistently as the foremost
intellectual figure in the realm, and is usually presented as exercising
possibly the greatest single influence over successive kings right up to
his death in 636. However, in this last respect it is important to bear
in mind that although they have left us no writings, and may have
been in no sense scholars, the bishops of Toledo at this same period
were by no means negligible figures, and as Toledo remained after
the reign of Leovigild the principal formal royal residence, their access
to king and court remained more constant than that of Isidore, with
his responsibilities in Seville. His principal contemporary as Bishop of
Toledo, a see whose metropolitan status was confirmed by a special
synod in 610, was Helladius, a former high court official and then
abbot of the foremost monastery in the capital, that of Agali.1O In the
absence of evidence either way it is idle to speculate, but considering
the standing and career of such a man it is perhaps unwary of mod-
em historians to write as if Isidore enjoyed a monopoly of influence
at court, even just in matters concerning the Church.
At least Isidore's intellectual pre-eminence was real and assured.
He dedicated books to both kings Sisebut and Suinthila, and for
Sisenand he presided over IV Toledo in 633, which first introduced
the use of ecclesiastical penalties in defence of the life and security
of the king.ll As metropolitan of the province of Baetica, Isidore also
directed II Seville, the most substantial of all the Spanish provincial
councils of which the acts are preserved, and which concerned itself
with a wide range of issues of church discipline and of theology. Its
most notable feature was a lengthy discussion of the two natures and
single person of Christ, which in its scriptural and patristic erudition
would seem to show the hand of Isidore. The chronology of his writ-
ings is by no means clear, and further difficulties exist in the form of