In the year 586 AD, Recaredo accedes to the throne after the death of his father. Ten months later, Recaredo converted to the Catholic Church, ratified at the Third Council of Toledo, in 589. Recaredo was a military king who had victoriously defended the Visigothic kingdom against the northern kingdoms. The conversion of Reccared, after that of Clovis, King of the Franks , was a decisive success for the Catholic Church, and laid the religious foundations for the Visigoth Hispania, as in the case of the Frankish king. It was, in both cases, a victory for Rome, the new Rome, and meant the identification of the Hispanic-Visigothic army with Catholicism, which will continue, even after the Arab invasion, as one of the social and military constants of the Roman Empire. History of Spain.
Shortly after his conversion, Recaredo summons a synod of Arian bishops who go en masse to Catholicism; Pope Saint Gregory the Great wrote him a congratulatory letter for his historic gesture. In the Third Council of Toledo, the conversion was ratified before the sixty-two assistant bishops. All the Visigothic nobility abjured Arianism and embraced Catholicism.
To complete unity, harsh pressure began to be exerted on the many Jews in Spain, many of whom were reluctant to renounce their faith. When these pressures turn into brutal persecutions, the Jews come into contact with the Muslims, who have looked out over the Straits, to agree with them the surrender of the kingdom in exchange for protection and tolerance.
Upon Recaredo's death, the kingdom entered a period of dynastic anarchy. Violence for elective succession becomes the morbus Gothorum , the disease of the Goths. Viteric supplants Recaredo's son and successor, Liuva II, but he too is ousted from the throne by Gundemaro, replaced by Sisebuto after a brief reign. His successor, Suintila, completed the expulsion of the Byzantines, reduced by the previous king to a corner of the Peninsula, the south of present-day Portugal. The Catholic Church is establishing itself in the kingdom and persecution against the Jews spreads.
When Suintila wanted to associate his son Ricimero to the throne, Sisenando, Duke of Septimania, rebelled, who threw them off the throne and convened the IV Council of Toledo, which legitimized the usurpation and formally prohibited, with little success, the violent deposition of kings. . But the discord had become so identified with the politics of the Goths that the kingdom was tragically descending towards its ruin.