The monastery of Agali, probably dedicated to

Saints Cosmas and Damian Cosmas and Damian ( – or AD) were two Arabs, Arab physicians and early Christian martyrs. They practised their profession in the seaport of Yumurtalık, Aegeae, then in the Roman province of Cilicia (Roman province), Cilicia. Cosmas and ...

, was founded around 590/600 in the vicinity of Toledo. It probably lay along the important road from

Complutum Complutum was an ancient Rome, ancient Roman city located in the present-day city of Alcalá de Henares, Spain. It has been partially excavated and the impressive remains can be seen today at the Complutum archaeological site south west of the cu ...

Gaul Gaul () was a region of Western Europe first clearly described by the Roman people, Romans, encompassing present-day France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, and Northern Italy. It covered an area of . Ac ...

.García Moreno 1993, 186. Several of its monks became bishops of Toledo during the seventh century. Agali was one of the earliest sites of regular monasticism—"monastic communities following received rules"—in central, southern or western Spain, although such communities did exist prior to the late sixth century on the Mediterranean coast and in the northeast.Collins 2004, 153. In the rest of Spain there was "an older tradition of individual or family asceticism, represented by voluntary

celibacy Celibacy (from Latin ''caelibatus'') is the state of voluntarily being unmarried, sexually abstinent, or both. It is often in association with the role of a religious official or devotee. In its narrow sense, the term ''celibacy'' is applied ...

and the setting up of private monastic households". Regular monasticism seems to have been introduced by exiles from Africa, fleeing the Byzantine government's enforced resolution of the

Three Chapters controversy The Three-Chapter Controversy, a phase in the Chalcedonian controversy, was an attempt to reconcile the non-Chalcedonians of Syria and Egypt with Chalcedonian Christianity, following the failure of the '' Henotikon''. The ''Three Chapters'' ( ...

and the

Berber Berber or Berbers may refer to: Ethnic group * Berbers, an ethnic group native to Northern Africa * Berber languages, a family of Afro-Asiatic languages Places * Berber, Sudan, a town on the Nile People with the surname * Ady Berber (1913–196 ...

raids precipitated by Byzantine military weakness. Agali may have been founded by these African expatriates. Agali's second abbot, Helladius, became bishop of Toledo in 615. He was succeeded as abbot by

Justus Justus (died on 10 November between 627 and 631) was the fourth archbishop of Canterbury. Pope Gregory the Great sent Justus from Italy to England on a mission to Christianise the Anglo-Saxons from their native paganism; he probably a ...

, a monk of Agali from childhood.Collins 2004, 167–68. In 633, Helladius returned to Agali to die. During his final days, he consecrated as a deacon the monk

Ildefonsus Ildefonsus or Ildephonsus (rarely ''Ildephoses'' or ''Ildefonse''; Spanish: San Ildefonso; c. 8 December A.D. 607 – 23 January A.D. 667) was a scholar and theologian who served as the metropolitan (religion), metropolitan Bishop of Toledo fo ...

, who subsequently became abbot and finally bishop in 657. Helladius was succeeded as bishop by Justus, who was succeeded as abbot by Richila. While bishop, Justus sent a now lost treatise to his eventual successor Richila, but its contents are unknown. In 636, Justus was succeeded by Eugenius II, another monk of Agali and student of Helladius, who had followed his teacher to Toledo in 615. Agali constituted a major cluster of ecclesiastical activity for the last century of the existence of Visigothic Spain.

Notes

Sources

Collins, Roger Roger J. H. Collins (born 2 September 1949) is an England, English medievalist, currently an honorary fellow in history at the University of Edinburgh. Collins studied at the University of Oxford (The Queen's College, Oxford, Queen's and Saint ...

. ''Visigothic Spain, 409–711''. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. *García Moreno, Luis A
"Los monjes y monasterios en las ciudades de las Españas tardorromanos y visigodas"
''Habis'' 24 (1993), 179–92. {{coord missing, Spain Christian monasteries established in the 6th century Monasteries in Castilla–La Mancha