66 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINand pupil Braulio of Zaragoza, and passed thence to a series of out-
standing bishops of Toledo. But before reviewing their achievements,
it is worth pausing to consider the career of Isidore's most remark-
able and surprising collaborator.
Of all the Spanish kings before Alfonso X 'the Wise' (1252-1284),
the Visigothic ruler Sisebut (611/12-620) was the most learned and
has rightly been depicted as 'the most sophisticated of all the barbar-
ian kings' .18 Of his origins and education nothing is known, nor how
he came to succeed Gundemar (610-611/12) to the throne, but he
must have been a prominent member of the Gothic aristocracy with
enough of a military reputation to make him an acceptable king. His
reign, like that of most of his successors, was dominated by warfare.
He himself is recorded by Isidore, our sole source for the history of
the kingdom in the years from 589 to 625/6, as having conducted a
series of campaigns against the declining Byzantine outposts in the
southeast, preparing the way for their final elimination by his succes-
sor in 624.19 At the same time successful campaigns were being con-
ducted by his generals against the Asturians who were in rebellion,
and against the mysterious Ruccones, last heard of being defeated by
the Suevic king Miro (570-583). The command of this expedition
was entrusted to the duke Suinthila, who was to succeed Sisebut as
king in 621. Despite this considerable military activity and the neces-
sary administrative tasks that came the way of a king, Sisebut, in a
short reign, still found time to act as a patron of learning and to write
works more substantial than any produced by a monarch before the
time of Alfred of Wessex (871-899).
One ofIsidore's more important works, On the Nature of Things, was
dedicated to the king, and the composition of the monumental Ety-
mologies was instigated by him, although it was not completed during
his reign. Another work of Isidore's produced at this time was his
Chronicle, of which the first version finished in 615/6 may have been
commissioned by the king. Its author subsequently continued it in a
second version about a decade later. In response to the first of these
works, On the Nature of Things, Sisebut produced a composition of his
own, a verse epistle of some sixty-one hexameters' length on the
subject of eclipses. In the poem, Sisebut refers to the military burdens
of his office and the campaigns against the Cantabrians and the
Basques. Technically the king's verses are more than just competent,
and their contents display a considerable breadth of reading on his
part, especially in Lucretius and the astronomical poetry of antiquity.