Abstract
The four major sources of Hermenegildo’s biography were written by Juan Biclaro, Gregory of Tours, Gregory the Great, and Isidore of Seville, and they each show that the life of this saint was an object of contested truths before and immediately after his martyrdom in 585 A.D. Was he a true Christian or a cunning profiteer? A saint or a criminal? The Society of Jesus’ selection of the story of Hermenegildo 1000 years after he died raises questions about the popularity he acquired on the Jesuit stage. The author argues that the Hermenegildo trope allowed the Society of Jesus to reiterate the necessity of imitating Christ’s sacrifice, promote missionary work, uphold religious orthodoxy, and discuss the dangerous idea of regicide in a nonthreatening way. These reasons are brought up to discuss the artistic exhumation of this saint as a global theatrical character in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
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