King Sisebut has campaigned successfully against the…

King Sisebut has campaigned successfully against the remains of imperial power in Spania, strengthened Visigothic control over the Basques and Cantabrians, developed friendly relations with the Lombards of Italy, and reinforced the fleet which had been established by his predecessor Leovigild.

Sisebut is closely associated with the scholar and encyclopaedist Isidore, bishop of Seville, and is usually regarded as the author of a Latin poem on astronomy, Carmen de Luna or Praefatio de Libro Rotarum, dedicated to a friend who is identified with Isidore.

He had married firstly to an unknown wife, by whom he has a daughter Theodora, born circa 590, who married Suintila, and secondly to his son in law's illegitimate sister, bastard daughter of Reccared I by Floresinda, by whom he has a son, Reccared II.

After several of his anti-Jewish edicts are ignored, he orders in 616 that those Jews who refuse to convert to Christianity should be punished with the lash.

Children are taken from their parents and put in monasteries where they learn the teaching of evangelism in the Visigothic Kingdom.

This is the first instance of a prohibition of Judaism affecting an entire country.

Those not baptized into the Christian faith flee Visigothic Spain.