Nicene Visigothic Iberia

The Visigoths ruled Spain as Homoian Christians for over a century, in uneasy coexistence with the Nicene population they governed — until King Reccared announced his own conversion and, at the third council of Toledo in 589, brought the Gothic bishops with him. Nothing quite like it happened anywhere else: a kingdom's own church council formally abandoned its creed and adopted its subjects'. What followed was one of the more remarkable intellectual efforts of the early Middle Ages. Isidore of Seville set out to gather what survived of classical learning into a single encyclopaedia, and his circle — his brother Leander, Braulio of Zaragoza, Ildefonsus of Toledo — produced letters, liturgy, histories and rules around him. The councils of Toledo worked as something between a synod and a parliament, legislating for church and kingdom together, and their record also includes a harsh and escalating body of law against Spain's Jews. All of it ended abruptly with the Muslim conquest of 711.