52 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINof royal authority that existed in the Visigothic kingdom, and it is
important to bear in mind that the whole episode can be seen as
much in terms of the defining of the limits of royal power over local
autonomy, as in those of religious conflict.
In the matter of the tunic different procedures were employed,
perhaps as a direct consequence of the thwarting of the royal initia-
tive by local power on the previous occasion. This time Masona was
summoned to the king in Toledo, and there commanded to hand
over the tunic of Eulalia, not to the Arians of Merida but to those of
the capital city. The bishop refused the king to his face, and in con-
sequence was exiled. Although the account in the Lives of the Fathers
is often vague and probably overly dramatic, it is important to note
that the king, whatever his personal inclinations might have been,
was unable to act in a totally arbitrary fashion. In the cases of both
the basilica and the tunic, legal processes were involved: a tribunal in
Merida and a trial before the king. Masona is exiled, rightly or wrongly,
for his refusal of a royal command, and not just because he was a
Goth who had converted to Catholicism. He represented a more
serious threat by his challenge to a novel extension of royal authority
at a local level. For what was also at issue in this Arian-Catholic con-
frontation was the extension of the king's power into the ecclesiasti-
cal sphere and his attempt to impose his authority far more directly
than hitherto on the cities and regions of the kingdom by taking an
active part in local struggles for control and influence.^45
None of Leovigild's predecessors had sought to involve themselves
in struggles for dominance at a local level, nor had they sought by
means of their royal power to alter the balance in favour of one side
or the other in the religious disputes. This was the threat the Catho-
lics faced in Leovigild and naturally enough they resisted, although
this could bring them within the range of secular penalties or lead
them to support a usurper such as Hermenigild against the lawfully
constituted authority of the king, his father. The real significance of
the reign of Leovigild in the religious sphere lies not so much in the
fate of individuals or in short-lived political upheavals, as in that it
finally brought the issue of Arian-Catholic differences to a head in
the open and made its final resolution imperative. Mter Leovigild a
return to the modus vivendi that seems to have existed between Arians
and Catholics earlier in the century was impossible. For one thing,
the kind of monarchy that was created in the course of the reign
made such a final settlement necessary in the interests of a unity of