74 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINsubstantial creed. The early years of Reccesuinth's reign (649-672)
were particularly difficult ones, and however little we may be able to
see of the period due to the lack of narrative historical sources, it is
likely that Eugenius's role at this time was a prominent one. What
part, if any, he played in the creation of Reccesuinth's famous law
book, promulgated in 654, can only be a matter of conjecture.
Like his successors Ildefonsus and Julian, Eugenius was responsible
for the composition of liturgical pieces, that went to swell the grow-
ing corpus of the Visigothic liturgy, the greatest product of the Span-
ish Church of the Early Middle Ages. While it is likely that a surviving
hymn to St Aemilian is the one that he composed while still a deacon
in Zaragoza, at the request of Bishop Braulio, his other contributions
to the liturgy, the existence of which we are assured by the account
in Ildefonsus's On Famous Men, cannot be identified in the vast anony-
mous body of the surviving texts.^35 However, we do know, from the
same source, that he was responsible for a reform of the chant used
in the Visigothic Church. Also, most unusually, Ildefonsus, who as his
contemporary knew St Eugenius well, gives us a terse physical descrip-
tion of this, the most shadowy of the great Fathers of the Spanish
Church: 'He was thin, and weak in body and constitution, but truly
radiant by virtue of his spirit. ,36
Attempts have been made to suggest that a conflict existed within
the Church of Toledo in the seventh century between those bishops
and their supporters who were drawn from the ranks of the clergy
and those who came from the monastery of Agali.37 This institution,
the most important monastic establishment in the vicinity of the capital,
was built in the suburbs of the city in the early seventh century, and
from the ranks of its abbots were drawn a number of the bishops of
Toledo, including Helladius (615-633), Justus (633-636), who had
been Helladius's successor in the abbacy, and Ildefonsus (657-667).
Bishop Sisbert (690-693) may well have been the abbot of that name
who signed the acts of XIV and XV Toledo (684 and 688), and if so
was possibly from Agali too. Also drawn from a monastic environ-
ment, although which one is nowhere specified, and as Ildefonsus
wrote about him it is unlikely to be Agali, was Bishop Eugenius I
(636-646), who was made a member of the city clergy by Helladius.
On the other hand, other bishops - Eugenius II (646-657), Julian
(680-690) and Felix (693-700) - were clerics, members of the secu-
lar clergy, before their elevation to the episcopate. The only other
bishop of note, Quiricus (676-680), is harder to place as he has left