LEANDRO OF SEVILLE, Saint. — Born in Cartagena, of a Roman family, before 549; died in Seville on 13 March 600 or 601. First a Benedictine monk and later metropolitan archbishop of Seville, his name is closely linked to the principal events of that crucial period. He exercised great influence in the conversion of St Ermenegild and was therefore exiled by the latter’s father, Leovigild (569–86). Around 580–82 LEANDRO was in Constantinople on a diplomatic mission on behalf of the Visigothic Church, where he formed a friendship with the future St Gregory the Great, whom he induced to write the *Moralia*.
Leandro’s great achievement was the evangelization of the Visigoths and the conversion of Recared, followed by that of his people and solemnly ratified at the Third Council of Toledo (589): this “was the work of faith and industry” on the part of LEANDRO, as his brother St Isidore affirms. The solemn sermon preached on that occasion by LEANDRO is one of the rare specimens of oratory among the Visigoths.
Two anti-Arian polemical writings and LEANDRO’s correspondence, mentioned by St Isidore, have been lost. What remains, however, is the short treatise *De institutione virginum et de contemptu mundi*, dedicated to his sister Florentia, followed by 31 chapters of an ascetical and disciplinary character. The work is a gem of ascetical literature, in which, amidst copious reminiscences of the letters of St Jerome, the Rule of St Augustine, Cassian and others, there shines through a personal style full of nobility and permeated with affectionate simplicity.
He is inscribed in the Roman Martyrology on 27 February; in Spain he is venerated as a Doctor.