The Third Council of Toledo in 589 is a pivotal event that changed the religious allegiance of the Visigothic kingdom. The ruling elites of the Visigothic kingdom of Toulouse (418-507), and later in the Visigothic kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula adhered to the Arian (Homoian) Christianity, whereas the Roman population were dominantly Catholic (though the frontiers between the denominations were not impenetrable, as we know Goths who converted to the Nicene Christianity and Romans who were Homoian). In 587 King Reccared converted to Catholicism. This was followed by the decision to eliminate the religious division in the kingdom. The Third Council of Toledo in 589 assembled in May to confirm the conversion of all the Gothic leaders and Arian clergy to the Catholicism.

The literature on the conversion of the Visigoths and the Third Council in Toledo is voluminous - only a few seminal books and papers are signalised in the bibliography section below.

 

The acts of the Third Council of Toledo are transmitted in the 7th-century canonical collection from Spain, so-called Hispana. Its authorship has been atrributed to Isidore of Seville (it is still accepted by Martinez Diez 1966; other scholars reject this attribution: Munier 1966; Gaudemet 1967: 122-124; Schaferdiek 1967: 144-148; Landau 1968: 406-418). The collection has several recensions: primitive one, so-called Isidoriana, lost today; the Juliana recension edited after 681 and attributed to Julian of Toledo, that adds to the previous recension the acts and canons of the councils from the fifth council of Toledo do the twelfth (in 681); the Vulgata recension edited between 694-702 that adds the acts and canons of the councils from the the thirteenth council of Toledo up to the seventeenth held in 694, this recension was the most widespread during the Middle Ages (more bibliography see Kéry 1999: 61-67). The two recensions Iuliana and Vulgata give different titles to the canons of the Third Council of Toledo (Martinez Diez 1992: 17-20).