Hermengild, Saint
Hermengild, Saint
Martyr , died 585 . Son of Leovigild the Visigoth king, a follower of the Arian heresy, he married the Catholic princess of the Franks, and was converted to the faith by Saint Leander, Bishop of Seville. He took arms against his father in defense of the Catholics; betrayed by the Byzantines, he was captured in 583 by Leovigild who brought him in chains to Toledo, stripped him of his royal garments, and banished him to Valencia. What his fate was after that is not certain; however, Gregory the Great relates that Leovigild sent an Arian bishop to him on Easter Eve, 585 ; upon refusing to receive communion from the heretic bishop, Hermengild was beheaded. He is invoked against thunderstorms, drought, and inundations. Relics at Seville, Spain. Feast , Roman Calendar, 13 April .
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Hermengild, Saint
Date of birth unknown; d. 13 April, 585. Leovigild, the Arian King of the Visigoths (569-86), had two sons, Hermengild and Reccared, by his first marriage with the Catholic Princess Theodosia. Hermengild married, in 576, Ingundis, a Frankish Catholic princess, the daughter of Sigebert and Brunhilde. Led by his own inclination, and influenced by his wife as well as by the instructions of St. Leander of Seville, he entered the Catholic fold. Leovigild’s second wife, Goswintha, a fanatical Arian, hated her daughter-in-law and sought by ill-treatment to force her to abandon the Catholic Faith. Hermengild had accordingly withdrawn, with his father’s sanction, to Andalusia, and had taken his wife with him. But when Leovigild learned of his son’s conversion he summoned him back to Toledo, which command Hermengild did not obey. The fanatical Arianism of his step-mother, and his father’s severe treatment of Catholics in Spain, stirred him to take up arms in protection of his oppressed co-religionists and in defence of his own rights. At the same time he formed an alliance with the Byzantines. Leovigold took the field against his son in 582, prevailed on the Byzantines to betray Hermengild for a sum of 30,000 gold solidi, besieged the latter in Seville in 583, and captured the city after a siege of nearly two years. Hermengild sought refuge in a church at Cordova, whence he was enticed by the false promises of Leovigild, who stripped him in camp of his royal raiment and banished him to Valencia (584). His wife, Ingundis, fled with her son to Africa, where she died, after which the boy was given, by order of Emperor Mauritius, into the hands of his grandmother Brunhilde. We are not fully informed as to Hermengild’s subsequent fate.
Gregory the Great relates (Dialogi, III, 31, in P.L. LXVII, 289-93) that Leovigild sent an Arian bishop to him in his prison, on Easter Eve of 585, with a promise that he would forgive him all, provided he consented to receive Holy Communion from the hands of this bishop. But Hermengild firmly refused thus to abjure his Catholic belief, and was in consequence beheaded on Easter Day. He was later venerated as a martyr, and Sixtus V (1585), acting on the suggestion of King Philip II, extended the celebration of his feast (13 April) throughout the whole of Spain.
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Acta SS., April, II, 134-138; GAMS, Kirchengeschichte Spaniens, II (Ratisbon, 1864), i, 489 sqq.; II (1874), ii, 1 sqq.; GÖRRES, Hermengild in Zetschrift für historische Theologie, 1873, 1-109; LECLERCQ, L’Espagne chrétienne (Paris, 1906), 254 sqq.
J.P. KIRSCH Transcribed by Gordon and Pat Hermes
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VIICopyright © 1910 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, June 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York