s treatment of his bride; and he was gradually persuaded that
Ingundis suffered for the cause of divine truth. Her tender complaints,
and the weighty arguments of Le ander, archbishop of Seville,
accomplished his conversion and the heir of the Gothic monarchy was
initiated in the Nicene faith by the solemn rites of confirmation. [129]
The rash youth, inflamed by zeal, and perhaps by ambition, was tempted
to violate the duties of a son and a subject; and the Catholics of
Spain, although they could not complain of persecution, applauded
his pious rebellion against an heretical father. The civil war was
protracted by the long and obstinate sieges of Merida, Cordova, and
Seville, which had strenuously espoused the party of Hermenegild He
invited the orthodox Barbarians, the Seuvi, and the Franks, to the
destruction of his native land; he solicited the dangerous aid of the
Romans, who possessed Africa, and a part of the Spanish coast; and
his holy ambassador, the archbishop Leander, effectually negotiated in
person with the Byzantine court. But the hopes of the Catholics were
crushed by the active diligence of the monarch who commanded the troops
and treasures of Spain; and the guilty Hermenegild, after his vain
attempts to resist or to escape, was compelled to surrender himself into
the hands of an incensed father. Leovigild was still mindful of that
sacred character; and the rebel, despoiled of the regal ornaments, was
still permitted, in a decent exile, to profess the Catholic religion.
His repeated and unsuccessful treasons at length provoked the
indignation of the Gothic king; and the sentence of death, which he
pronounced with apparent reluctance, was privately executed in the tower
of Seville. The inflexible constancy with which he refused to accept the
Arian communion, as the price of his safety, may excuse the honors that
have been paid to the memory of St. Hermenegild. His wife and infant son
were detained by the Romans in ignominious captivity; and this domestic
misfortune tarnished the glories of Leovigild, and imbittered the last
moments of his life.

[Footnote 126: See the two general historians of Spain, Mariana (Hist.
de Rebus Hispaniae, tom. i. l. v. c. 12-15, p. 182-194) and Ferreras,
(French translation, tom. ii. p. 206-247.) Mariana almost forgets that
he is a Jesuit, to assume the style and spirit of a Roman classic.
Ferreras, an industrious compiler, reviews his facts, and rectifies his
chronology.]