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SIXTH CENTURY. Visigothic king who ruled in Spain from 586 to 601. The younger of two sons, he succeeded his father Leovigild in 586 and set to work at once in crushing several Arian revolts. The Lusitanian peninsula in Portugal was officially Arian until he converted to Roman Catholicism in 586, although the Arian kings had been extraordinarily tolerant. In 589 the Third Council of Toledo proclaimed Catholicism as the kingdom's official religion. Thereafter little was heard of Arianism*; the king ordered Arian books to be burned, and no Gothic text from Spain has survived. With religious barriers removed, the Visigothic invaders and the native Hispano-Romans, who continued to follow Roman law, could assimilate.