Leander, Isidore and their siblings belonged to an elite family of
Hispano-
Roman stock of
Carthago Spartaria (Cartagena). Their father Severianus is claimed to have been a or governor of Carthago Spartaria, according to their
hagiographers, though this seems more of a fanciful interpretation since Isidore simply states that he was a citizen. The family as a matter of course were staunch Catholics, as were most of the Romanized population; the
Visigothic nobles and the kings were
Arians. The family moved to Seville around 554. The children's subsequent public careers reflect their distinguished origin: Leander and Isidore both became bishops of
Hispalis (Seville), and their sister
Florentina was an
abbess who directed forty
convents and one thousand nuns. The third brother,
Fulgentius, was appointed Bishop of
Astigi (Ecjia). All four siblings are considered saints of the
Catholic and
Eastern Orthodox Churches. The Catholic hierarchy were in contact with representatives of the Eastern Roman or
Byzantine emperor, who had maintained a considerable territory in the far south of
Hispania ever since his predecessor had been invited to the peninsula by king
Athanagild several decades before. In the north,
Liuvigild struggled to maintain his possessions on the far side of the
Pyrenees, where his
Merovingian cousins and brothers-in-law cast envious eyes on them. to Leander (Dijon municipal library) Leander, enjoying an elite position in the secure surroundings of tolerated Catholic culture in Seville, became, around 576, a
Benedictine monk, and then in 579 he was appointed bishop of Seville. In the meantime he founded a celebrated school, which soon became a center of Catholic learning. As bishop he had access to the Catholic
Merovingian princess
Ingunthis, who had come as a bride for the kingdom's heir, and he assisted her to convert her husband
Hermenegild, the eldest son of Liuvigild, an act that cannot honestly be divorced from a political context. Leander defended the new
convert even when he went to war with his father "against his father's cruel reprisals". Pierre Suau puts it, "In endeavoring to save his country from Arianism, Leander showed himself an orthodox Christian and a far-sighted patriot." In 585 Liuvigild put to death his intransigent son Hermenegild, a martyr and saint of the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. Liuvigild himself died in 589. In 589, he convoked the
Third Council of Toledo, where Visigothic Hispania abjured Arianism. Leander delivered the triumphant closing sermon which his brother Isidore entitled ("a homily upon the triumph of the Church and the conversion of the Goths"). On his return from this council, Leander convened a synod in his metropolitan city of Seville (Conc. Hisp., I), and never afterwards ceased his efforts to consolidate the work of extirpating the remains of Arianism, in which his brother and successor St. Isidore was to follow him. ==Works==