Sisebut

Golden tremissis of Sisebutus rex

Statue of Sisebut in Toledo.

Sisebut (Latin: Sisebutus,^[1] Spanish: Sisebuto; also Sisebuth, Sisebur, Sisebod or Sigebut) (c. 565 – February 621) was King of the Visigoths and ruler of Hispania and Septimania. from 612 until his death.

He campaigned successfully against the remains of East Roman power in Spania,^[2] 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 was known for his devout piety to Chalcedonian Christianity. In 616, he ordered that those Jews who refused to convert to Christianity should be punished with the lash. He was closely associated and amicable 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,^[3] dedicated to a friend who is identified with Isidore.

He married firstly to an unknown wife, by whom he had a daughter Theodora, born c. 590, who married Suintila, and secondly to his son in law's illegitimate sister, bastard daughter of Reccared I by Floresinda, by whom he had a son Reccared II.^[4]

References

1. https://epistolae.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/letter/44.html
2. Roger Collins, Visigothic Spain 409-711, (Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 75.
3. Roger Collins, Visigothic Spain 409-711, 75.
4. Roger Collins, Visigothic Spain 409-711, 76.