Biography
Hermenegild
About Hermenegild
Hermenegild was a son of the Visigothic king Leovigild in sixth-century Iberia. He embraced the Catholic faith, while his father supported the Arian form of Christianity then associated with the Visigothic court. Hermenegild also took part in a rebellion against his father. The surviving accounts join a real political conflict to a religious division, and historians continue to debate how the two shaped his actions.
Gregory the Great, relying on reports brought from Spain, says that Leovigild imprisoned Hermenegild and that he refused communion from an Arian bishop before he was killed. Gregory calls him a martyr and relates wonders reported at his body. Those are significant early testimonies to his veneration, but Gregory did not witness the prison scene. The Roman Martyrology likewise commemorates Hermenegild as a martyr at Tarragona on April 13.
Later readers have variously emphasized Hermenegild's fidelity to Catholic belief and his challenge to royal authority. A responsible account can preserve both the church's martyr commemoration and the unresolved political history. Sources reviewed here disagree on whether his death belongs to 585 or 586, so the year should not be given as certain until the early Iberian chronology is reconciled.
Wondering how to weigh the stories and sources? Learn how to read a saint biography.