THE SEVENTH-CENTURY KINGDOM 119to die of natural causes, both may have been challenged by usurpers.
One of these was almost certainly Iudila, known only from a few coins
issued in Cordoba which may be dated stylistically to this decade.^51
Chintilla's son Tulga (639-642) was successfully overthrown by a con-
spiracy in 642 led by Chindasuinth (642-653), with whose accession
some stability was restored.
In the 680s changes of dynasty may have been less violent, but the
strength of royal authority was no more certain. Wamba's deposition
in 680 was distinctly unsettling. His reception of penance when ap-
parently mortally ill prevented him from resuming his secular func-
tions, as theoretically it did for the Frankish emperor Louis the Pious
in 833, and he was forced to abdicate and enter a monastery. To what
extent this was an unplanned coup is uncertain, but the circum-
stances of Wamba's departure and his continued survival clearly did
not leave his successor Ervig (680-687) in a strong position. The first
ecclesiastical council of his reign had to try to justify the steps that
had been taken. 52
The succession of the next king, Egica (687-702), was equally con-
fused. He is reported as having been chosen as his heir by the dying
Ervig in return for marrying that monarch's daughter and promising
to maintain the former ruler's family after his death. However, imme-
diately on taking the throne Egica repudiated both promises, dismiss-
ing his new wife and dispossessing his predecessor's family of their
property. Later chronicles attribute his actions to the advice of the
former king Wamba, who thus avenged himself upon his supplanter.
Whatever the truth of that, Egica's breaking of his oath was justified
for him by the bishops at XV Toledo in 688, despite the existence of
the earlier regulations of V and VI Toledo relating to the protection
of royal widows and their families.^53
Looked at strictly from the point of theory, the behaviour of many
of the councils appears cynical or pusillanimous, in that existing regu-
lations or principles seem to be on occasion ignored or flouted. The
great Isidore of Seville presided over IV Toledo in 633. He had al-
ready formulated his views on the duties of the royal office and upon
the illegitimacy of opposition to a king, however tyrannical, in both
his Sententiae and his Etymologiae. Thus it comes as little of a surprise
to find the last and longest of the canons of this council devoted to
this very subject.^54 It three times reiterates its prohibition, on pain of
excommunication, on anyone conspiring against the king, seeking to
kill him or reduce his power, or seizing the throne tyranically and by