78 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINcommentators.^43 It has been suspected that he deliberately induced
the appearance of fatal illness in the king who, then accepting the
penitential state but subsequently recovering, had to be removed from
office and be replaced by a more pliable successor. Such an interpre-
tation is quite unnecessarily Machiavellian. A serious canonical prob-
lem was created by the recovery of one who had in penance renounced
all secular involvements. It is possible that Julian, with the subsequent
support of the bishops assembled at XII Toledo in 681, was not dis-
pleased to be able to get rid of Wamba by uncompromising adher-
ence to the letter of canon law, but at worst he can be accused of
taking advantage of an unexpected occurrence.
Another affair in which Julian can be seen taking a strong line was
in the controversy with the papacy that arose from the terminology
he used in condemning the Monothelete heresy. This latter had been
troubling the Church in the Byzantine Empire since the early seventh
century, and the emperor Constantine IV (668-685) sought to end
it by a conciliar condemnation. Pope Agatho promised to add those
of the Western Church and sought decrees from Spain amongst oth-
ers. In replying for the Spanish Church, Julian used certain expres-
sions about the nature of Christ that were misunderstood by the new
pope Benedict II (684-685). Julian wrote a vigorous defence of his
ideas in 686 in the Apologeticum de Tribus Capitulis (Defence of the
Three Chapters), and his views were approved by XV Toledo in 688.
Some have gone so far as to see this as a prelude to a schism between
Rome and the Spanish Church, but there is no justification for this.
The whole issue died with its participants and was never referred to
again.44
InJulian the Church of Toledo had its most colourful and vigorous
bishop, who advanced significantly both the claims and the preroga-
tives of the see. Even if some of his writings have made no mark and
others offer little of originality, he could, as in his History of Wamba,
use neglected classical literary genres to break new ground. With his
death in 690 the great age of Toledo in the Visigothic period came
to an end, but the position that he, probably more than any of his
predecessors, had achieved for the Church of the Urbs Regia was to
survive the difficult centuries of Islamic domination.
His successor Sisbert (690-693) appears in our sources only in
retrospect, in the acts of XVI Toledo of 693, where his previous
deposition and excommunication for plotting rebellion against King
Egica are confirmed. He was sentenced to perpetual exile (within a