ABSTRACT
This chapter examines multiple Nicene narratives of the Arian Visigothic king Leovigild (r. 569–586) in order to explore the mutability and limitations of persecutory discourse as applied to inner-Christian conflict. For early Christian communities, the claim to be purveyors of truth unjustly persecuted by evil rulers was tightly interwoven into the Christian imagination. After the emperor Constantine’s legalization of Christianity in 313, persecutory discourse remained a charged resource for Christian groups to characterize “official” state, or even ecclesiastical, action against them. Yet despite its power and pedigree, the collective Christian discourse of persecution could yield diminishing returns, and labeling Christian opponents as morally inferior enemies could be more harmful than helpful. Between the 590s and the 630s, Nicene writers and canonists both within and outside of the Iberian peninsula were forced to evaluate the utility of persecutory discourse as they offered a variety of retrospective portraits of the Arian king Leovigild. The variegated interpretations of Leovigild’s “persecution” of Nicenes, particularly those that deemphasized violent state coercion, were shaped by the immediate historical context surrounding the Visigothic conversion to Nicene Christianity in 589 and by recognitions (or lack thereof) of subtler features of Leovigild’s religious policies.
