Reccared I Visigothic King of Hispania ^{1 2 3}

   Another name for Reccared was Recared King of the Visigoths.

  Research Notes:

From Wikipedia - Reccared I :

Reccared (or Recared) I (586-601) was Visigothic King of Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula ). His reign marked a climactic shift in history, with the king's renunciation of traditional Arianism in favor of Catholic Christianity in 587.

Reccared was the younger son of King Liuvigild by his first wife. Like his father, Reccared had his capital at Toledo . The Visigothic kings and nobles were traditionally Arian Christians , while the Hispano-Roman population were Trinitarian Catholics . The Catholic bishop Leander of Seville was instrumental in converting the elder son and heir of Liuvigild, Hermenegild , to Trinitarian Christianity. Leander supported him in a war of rebellion and was exiled for his role.

When King Liuvigild died, within a few weeks of April 21, 586, St. Leander was swift to return to Toledo. The new king had been associated with his father in ruling the kingdom and was acclaimed king by the Visigothic nobles without opposition. Guided by his Merovingian kinship connections and by his Arian stepmother Goiswinth , he sent ambassadors to greet her grandson Childebert II and to his uncle Guntram , the Frankish king of Burgundy , proposing peace and a defensive alliance. Guntram refused to see them.

In January 587 , Reccared renounced Arianism for Catholicism , the single great event of his reign and the turning point for Visigothic Hispania . Most Arian nobles and ecclesiastics followed his example, certainly those around him at Toledo, but there were Arian uprisings, notably in Septimania , his northernmost province, beyond the Pyrenees , where the leader of opposition was the Arian bishop Athaloc , who had the reputation among his Catholic enemies of being virtually a second Arius . Among the secular leaders of the Septimanian insurrection, the counts Granista and Wildigern appealed to Guntram of Burgundy, who saw his opportunity and sent his dux Desiderius. Reccared's army defeated the Arian insurgents and their Catholic allies with great slaughter, Desiderius himself being slain...

The information for the rest of Reccared's reign is scanty. St. Isidore of Seville , bishop Leander's brother, praises his peaceful government, clemency, and generosity: standard encomia. He returned various properties, even some privates ones, that had been confiscated by his father, and founded many churches and monasteries. St. Gregory the Great , writing to Reccared in Aug. 599 (Epp. ix. 61, 121), extols him for embracing the true faith and inducing his people to do so, and notably for refusing the bribes offered by Jews to procure the repeal of a law against them. He sends him a piece of the True Cross , some fragments of the chains of St. Peter , and some hairs of St. John the Baptist .

Reccared was succeeded by his youthful son Liuva II .

Notes
^ St. Isidore, Historia Gothorum.
^ Aloysius Ziegler, Church and State in Visigothic Spain (Washington) 1930: "Ziegler unhesitatingly characterizes the kings. as 'fanatically zealous'" (Bacharach 1973:11.
^ Notably Bernard S. Bachrach , in Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe (University of Minnesota Press) 1977; see also Bacharach, "A Reassessment of Visigothic Jewish Policy, 589-711", The American Historical Review 78.1 (February 1973), pp. 11-34.
^ Solomon Katz, The Jews in the Visigothic and Frankish Kingdoms of Gaul and Spain (Harvard University Press) 1937 gives the broad background.
^ Bacharach 1973:15.
^ Thompson, The Goths in Spain (Oxford University Press) 1969:112.

Reccared married Chlodosind Princess of Austrasia, daughter of Sigebert I of Austrasia and Brunhilda of Austrasia. (Chlodosind Princess of Austrasia was born about 550 in Austrasia, Frankish Empire, (France or Germany).)