| Summary: | We tend to see late antique and early medieval Christianity through a clerical lens. This is particularly true in the Iberian Peninsula, with its highly episcopal and legalistic source base. The Suevic and Visigothic kingdoms both saw ambitious projects of state formation marked by doctrinal unification and the confluence of ecclesiastical and royal structures of power. In the Visigothic kingdom, the exceptional literary production of Isidore of Seville has been characterized as indicative of a ‘Renaissance’ in Christian culture, clerical organization, and pastoral care. I show, however, that Iberian Christianity should be understood in a much more decentralized and fragmentary manner. Turning away from paradigms of Christian state formation, ‘the church’ appears as a much more complex, and conflictual entity, rooted more in local contexts than top-down structures. I argue that questions of hierarchy within the ecclesia itself—the distinction between the clergy and laity, or between ascetic ideals and the ‘worldly’ elements of Christian organization—were key factors in the emerging structure of post-Roman medieval Christian societies. Subjecting the notion of ‘the church’ itself to historical scrutiny, I render visible the important role of actors outside of the formal clerical hierarchy in matters of religion, and show the persistent fragility of episcopal structures, rooted as they always were in local contexts. Overall, what emerges is a view of Iberian Christianity in which the apparent institutional high point of the Visigothic seventh century is less pronounced, and the long-term significance of persistent tensions within the ecclesia comes to the fore.
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