44 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAIN
recorded, and also the translation of some relics of Martin from Tours
to the Suevic capital of Braga. The principal human agency in this
conversion was a man, also called Martin, from the former Roman
province of Pannonia in the western Balkans. Mter a period of train-
ing as a monk in Egypt, he sailed to Galicia, probably in 556, and was
permitted by King Charraric to establish a monastery at Dumio near
Braga. A considerable account of his life and writings is to be found
in the Histary of Gregory of Tours and also in his On the Miracles of St
Martin, further evidence of the communication between Gaul and
the Suevic kingdomY Under Martin's influence the return of the
Sueves to the Catholicism they had once accepted under their king
Rechiarius (448-456) was completed, certainly by the time of the
holding of the first council of Braga by the Catholic episcopate in
- Such rejection of the religious beliefs of their once dominant
Visigothic neighbours was only possible at a time when the kingdom
of the latter was relatively weak. But such action with the attendant
closening of links by sea to the Frankish realms and possible open-
ness to Byzantine political influence inevitably made the Suevic king-
dom an object of justifiable suspicion to reviving Visigothic power
under Leovigild.
However, the Visigothic king's first attention was devoted to the
Byzantine forces in the south. In 570 he sacked but apparently did
not reoccupy Malaga. The following year he did recover Medina
Sidonia, the most westerly of the Byzantine fortresses, which was
betrayed to him by one of its Gothic inhabitants. In 572 he finally
terminated the independence of Cordoba, twenty-two years after Agila
had lost the city. Mter these opening campaigns, Leovigild turned his
attention to the north, probably as the consequence of his brother
Liuva's death in 573. In that year he invaded a region called 'Sabaria'
by John of Biclar, and devastated the lands of its people, the 'Sabi'.
Unfortunately the exact location of this district is unknown, but it has
been reasonably conjectured that it was an area in the vicinity of
Zamora. Also in the same year Leovigild made his two sons by his first
wife joint rulers with him, perhaps in pursuance of the idea of di-
vided rule that had existed between Liuva I and himself. However the
two princes, Hermenigild and Reccared were not yet given separate
territorial responsibilities. Further campaigns in the north followed,
moving in geographical succession from east to west. Cantabria, which
probably included the Rioja, was invaded and added to the kingdom,
perhaps for the first time in 574. Its former rulers, the 'Senate of
