The King was stern, but he could not act ungenerously towards his foe and son. He offered Ermenigild pardon and favour on condition that he would reject his heretical faith. The rebel refused the terms; he would rather remain in his dungeon than practise hypocrisy. Again the father besought the son, through an Arian priest, to renounce his false doctrine, and again Ermenigild was resolute. In a passion, he cursed the cleric, crying: 'As the minister of the devil, thou canst only guide to hell! Begone, wretch, to the punishments which are prepared for thee!' This was more than Leovigild could bear. He immediately sentenced his son to death. The legend of Ermenigild's last days relates that on the night of his execution a light from Paradise shone in his cell, and that angels watched over the grave, singing hymns in his praise. Ermenigild was sainted, and one of his bones is at Zaragoza.
It was in this time of religious stress and civil discord that Saint Isidore of Seville began his labours. For about thirty-six years he ruled as governor of the church in the city. His hand was open towards the poor, and he preached with fervid eloquence. It is to the industry of Isidore that Spain owes respect, for his writings are the only basis for a history of the chief events during the Gothic epoch. He wrote the _Historia de Regibus Gothorum, Wandalorum et Suevorum_, and one of the celebrated books of study of mediævalism, _The Etymologies or Origins of Things_.
San Isidore's philosophy was Platonic and Aristotelian. In theology he followed the teaching of St. Gregory the Great. He was a puritan in his attitude towards the play.
'What connection,' he writes, 'can a Christian have with the folly of the circus games, with the indecency of the theatre, with the cruelty of the amphitheatre, with the wickedness of the arena, or with the lasciviousness of the plays? They who enjoy such spectacles deny God, and, as backsliders in the faith, hunger after that which they renounced at their baptism, enslaving themselves to the devil with his pomps and vanities.'
The gift of oratory possessed by Saint Isidore was predicted in his infancy by the issue of a swarm of bees from his mouth. His body was laid to rest, in 636, in Seville.