THE SEVENTH-CENTURY KINGDOM 91the two ranks of the episcopate (the metropolitans - later called
archbishops - and the ordinary bishops, who were subordinate to
them) depended strictly upon date of election. Thus Masona's con-
secration must have preceded that of Leander, therefore at least it
cannot be later than the 570s. This should put his two predecessors
into the 550s or 560s. The first of these, Paul, was a Greek and a
former doctor. As an outsider, coming to the peninsula in the middle
of the sixth century for reasons unknown and acquiring a bishopric,
his case has some points of comparison with that of Martin of Braga,
described in the previous chapter. The author of the Lives of the
Fathers of Merida without naming him, refers to the period of Paul's
predecessor in the see as being disturbed. This may be a reference to
the time of the civil war between Agila and Athanagild and the former's
murder in Merida in 554.
The episcopate of Paul is notable for the considerable increase in
the wealth of the see that was to come from a legacy the bishop
received in rather peculiar circumstances. Paul was able, because of
his medical training, to perform a delicate surgical operation on the
wife of a Lusitanian senator, or local aristocrat, said to be the wealthi-
est in the province, and save her life. The bishop was made this
family's sole heir and inherited an enormous personal legacy from
them. It was probably on the strength of this that the building and
charitable activities of his successors were made possible. The story of
the 'caesarian section' performed upon the senator's wife is also im-
portant as being the sole reference to such a surgical operation in the
literature of the early medieval West, and in addition some evidence
of the high level of skill of Byzantine doctors in this period.^7
Paul's successor, Fidelis, was also a Greek and, what is more, his
predecessor's nephew, apparently brought by chance to Merida when
travelling in the company of a group of eastern merchants. Although
the story sounds suspiciously like something from the Arabian Nights,
the incidental details that such visiting merchants were expected to
call upon the bishop on their arrival to give him gifts, show that
foreign traders were not unknown in Merida and that commercial
contact was being maintained with the eastern Mediterranean. Ear-
lier views that such contacts involved merchants travelling up the
Guadiana by ship have been disproved by recent research that proves
the river was not navigable.s
Fidelis was trained by his uncle and took over his functions as
bishop when the latter was too old to fulfil them. Such hereditary