THE IMPOSITION OF UNITY 47Constantinople in the opening year or two of the decade. Leander
had been in Constantinople when Gregory arrived there as papal
Apocrisiarius or envoy in 579 and returned to Spain after a protracted
stay in the imperial capital, early in the 580s. According to his brother
Isidore, it was the influence of Leander that brought about the con-
version of Hermenigild. This cannot have occurred before Leander
and Gregory first met in 579, as the latter recalled that he heard the
news of the conversion from Spanish travellers whom he encoun-
tered in Rome, so it must be after his return to that city in 585.
Therefore to see Hermenigild's rebellion in 579 as relating to Arian-
Catholic hostility is misguided. It is also possible to question whether
Leovigild's attempts to impose or promote a general acceptance of
Arianism had really got under way at this period.
Now if the rebellion of Hermenigild was effectively an effort on the
part of the southern regions of the peninsula to secede from the
authority of the King in Toledo, under a ruler of their own, how did
the religious element come to play so large a part in it, at least in the
minds of such external commentators as the two Gregorys? For one
thing the conversion of Hermenigild in c. 582, and his subsequent
violent death, did alter his standing. Gregory the Great included
Hermenigild in his Dialogues as an example of one who had suffered
persecution and eventually death at the hands of Arians: he became
a Catholic martyr. Interestingly, for his Spanish contemporaries, even
after the formal establishment of Catholicism in the kingdom in 589,
Hermenigild was never more than a failed usurper and certainly no
martyr. This again argues against the notion of the revolt as a Catho-
lic reaction against Arian tyranny. It was only in the late seventh
century, probably as a result of the popularity of Gregory's Dialogues,
that the cult of Hermenigild was to become established in Spain.34
For Romans and for Goths in the late sixth and early seventh centu-
ries, Hermenigild's attempt to redivide the recently united kingdom
was unwelcome, and his precocious effort to make a Catholic king of
himself was no compensation for the dangers threatened by his
actions.
If a motive beyond that of personal conviction is to be sought for
Hermenigild's conversion, it may lie in the increased possibilities of
rapprochement with the Byzantine Empire that this opened up. It is
not inconceivable that Leander acted as diplomatic intermediary
between Hermenigild and the Emperor Tiberius II (578-582). If
there is a foundation in this, it may explain why, after three years of