Hermengildo is beaten, his forces scattered, and thanks to the intercession of his brother, Recaredo, instead of the expected death sentence, his father sentences him to exile at Valencia. As a Christian, a martyr, and a canonised saint, Hermengildo presents an original figure. Even the harsh wisdom of Moses condemns him, and the worst Pagan would hardly condone his unprovoked assault on his father, by way of converting him to a belief in Christ's divinity; while instead of quietly enduring the consequences of his abortive rebellion and his inappropriate expression of faith, he went about the coast, begging the assistance of the Greeks in another attempt to proselytise by the sword, and seize his father's throne by the same stroke. The Spanish historians, to whom this method of conversion is particularly sympathetic and of unquestionable logic, disregard the side question of revolt, and delight in weighing upon Hermengildo's lofty efforts in behalf of truth. His object they accept as the laudable extirpation of error. Indifferent to his natural relations to the king he desired to dethrone, Gamero says: "Perhaps, like Alaric, within his breast, a secret voice had commanded him to go forth and destroy the power of Arianism in Spain; to establish upon the ruins of paganism and false sects the immortal throne where the god of Sabahot is worshipped, and on which shines with eternal splendour the immaculate purity of Mary." And so he complacently follows the unfilial prince on his bellicose mission through Estremadura, now occupying Merida, again attempting to take Seville and his former court, seeking support in France with the hope of arming his brother-in-law, Sigeric, against his father. All Gamero laments is his unsuccess. The Arian father did precisely what Hermengildo would have done in his place; he seized his son, flung him into a dungeon, first at Toledo, then at Tarragona, where he was beheaded after stoutly refusing to accept communion from the hands of an Arian bishop. His form of refusal is proudly recorded by St Gregory of Tours as an admirable one: "As a minister of the devil, only to hell couldst thou guide me. Away and go, coward, to the punishment prepared for thee, and which thou deservest." We hardly detect the influence of Christian mildness and sweetness in this address. However, all saints cannot resemble St Francis of Assisi, and even St Fernando of Castille boiled his enemies alive in great pots of water over huge fires. This is Gamero's admiring epitaph: "Thus on the 13th April, 584, ended with glorious martyrdom the life of this hero of the Spanish Church, whose blood effaced any faults as a man he may have committed, and was a perennial source of happiness and fortune to our country."