These five 7th-century religious texts cast light not only on the development of the Church in Visigothic Spain and its internal politics, but also on its sometimes troubled relationship with the Visigothic state and the history of that state itself, particularly in the period when the Visigoths changed their adherence from Arian to Trinitarian Christianity. As the events they cover are not contemporary, they also show how the Visigothic Church portrayed its own history and heroes. The "Life of St Desiderius", written by the Visigothic King Sisebut, provides an insight into the mind of this complex monarch and also into Visigothic relations with the Frankish kingdoms to their north. The longest of the texts, "The Lives of the Meridan Fathers", is the fullest surviving account of life in an important Visigothic city. The other texts cover the wide range of religious experience available in the kingdom, from hermit to metropolitan bishop, and an equally wide geographic range, from Andalusia and Lusitania in the south to La Rioja and Cantabria in the north.