40 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAIN592-613, when she was viciously executed. It is quite likely that many
of the difficulties the Visigothic kingdom faced in dealings with the
Franks in this period were of her devising, and hence perhaps the
apparent denigration of her father Athanagild in seventh-century
Spanish sources. Athanagild himself died in 568 without male heirs,
and so his line in Spain was extinguished with him. Claims that the
subsequent king Leovigild was related to him are based upon spuri-
ous later medieval genealogies.
On the death of Athanagild, a Gothic noble called Liuva (568-571
or 573) was elected king at Narbonne, the first occasion on which we
have a reference to a king in this north-eastern region of the realm
since the death of Amalaric in 531. Mention of the intermediate
kings has placed them all in the south: Theudisclus at Seville, Agila
at Merida and Athanagild at Toledo, his principal residence. The
making of the new king at Narbonne may reflect renewed danger of
Frankish attack. The Franks had been quiescent on the Visigothic
frontier since the 540s, but under a new generation of kings, particu-
larly Guntramn (561-92) the danger was revived. With the consider-
able threat presented by the Franks at many stages throughout the
sixth century to Visigothic Septimania and also to the Ebro valley, it
is likely that the greatest concentration of military strength and with
it of the Gothic nobility will have been found in this region. Certainly
Liuva found it sufficiently important and demanding to delegate royal
authority over the rest of the peninsula to his brother Leovigild (569-
586) a year after his own election, reserving only the provinces of
Narbonnensis and probably Tarraconensis for himself. Subsequently
in about 580 Leovigild gave his second son Reccared responsibility
for this vital frontier zone, though not as an independent kingdom.
When Liuva I died, either in 571 by the implication of Isidore's ac-
count or more probably, following the Chronicle of John of Biclar, in
573, the whole kingdom was reunified under the rule of Leovigild.^20
Despite both the unsettled state of the realm throughout most of
the sixth century and the persistence of its rulers in their Arian be-
liefs until 587, the condition of the Catholic Church in this period
was by no means unhealthy. The limitations of the evidence make it
difficult to assess how serious a challenge Arianism presented before
the reign of Leovigild, as no documents of the Visigothic Arian Church
in Spain have survived. It is not known at what point after the mid
fifth century its liturgy and scriptures ceased to employ the Gothic
language. The nature and extent of its organisation is obscure, and