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This small collection of Latin verse inscriptions is presented as the work of Ildefonsus of Toledo. It includes a poem on churches and a hospice built by members of his supposed family in Toledo, epitaphs for the Toledan bishops Helladius and Eugenius, verses for Leander of Seville and Masona of Mérida, poems to Fulgentius, to Isidore of Seville, to the virgin Florentina, and to Saint Leocadia, the virgin martyr of Toledo, as well as verses on the translation of Fulgentius. The opening poem claims for the author a father named Stephen and a grandfather, King Athanagild, and lists the churches each relative founded.
The poems are not by Ildefonsus. They include details that do not fit his lifetime, such as a church restored by King Ervig, who reigned after Ildefonsus’s death, and their genealogical claims are unsupported by early sources. They are better understood as later compositions that drew on the glory of the Visigothic church of Toledo and its saints. They are of interest as evidence of how that past was imagined and promoted, but should not be used as a source for Visigothic history.
About this edition. The Latin text comes from Corpus Corporum, the Latin text repository of the University of Zurich (edition: Jacques-Paul Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. 96, Parisiis 1851), reused with attribution for non-commercial purposes (CC BY-NC-SA). Every word has been analyzed with LatinCy, a neural language model for Latin — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from Lewis & Short’s A Latin Dictionary.