The following year (586) King Leovigild died and was succeeded by Hermenegild’s brother Recaredo, who was also a convert to Catholicism. During the Third Council of Toledo (year 589), the main representatives of the Visigothic people made a solemn profession of the Catholic faith. This gesture would mark the beginning of the definitive bond between Spain and Catholicism, a bond that remains to this day. Saint Gregory the Great attributes to the merits of Saint Hermenegild the conversion of his brother Recaredo and, consequently, of all of Visigothic Spain.
In 1585, one thousand years after the events surrounding the life and death of Hermenegild, King Philip II of Spain asked Pope Sixtus V to authorize the cult of the martyr within his kingdom. The festival of San Hermenegildo was set on the anniversary of his death, April 13.
Saint Hermenegild was canonized by Pope Urban VIII in 1639, being declared “patron of converts.”
…