Masona or Mausona was the Bishop of Mérida and metropolitan

Metropolitan bishop

In Christian churches with episcopal polity, the rank of metropolitan bishop, or simply metropolitan, pertains to the diocesan bishop or archbishop of a metropolis; that is, the chief city of a historical Roman province, ecclesiastical province, or regional capital.Before the establishment of...

 of the province of Lusitania

Lusitania

Lusitania or Hispania Lusitania was an ancient Roman province including approximately all of modern Portugal south of the Douro river and part of modern Spain . It was named after the Lusitani or Lusitanian people...

 from about 570 (certainly by 573) until his death. He is famous for exercising de facto rule of the city of Mérida

Mérida, Spain

Mérida is the capital of the autonomous community of Extremadura, western central Spain. It has a population of 57,127 . The Archaeological Ensemble of Mérida is a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1993.- Climate :...

 during his tenure as bishop and for founding the first confirmed hospital

Hospital

A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment by specialized staff and equipment. Hospitals often, but not always, provide for inpatient care or longer-term patient stays....

 in Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

.

He was a Visigoth and originally an Arian

Arianism

Arianism is the theological teaching attributed to Arius , a Christian presbyter from Alexandria, Egypt, concerning the relationship of the entities of the Trinity and the precise nature of the Son of God as being a subordinate entity to God the Father...

, but converted to Roman Catholicism probably in the middle of the sixth century, though some have supposed as late as 579. His biographer says he "was indeed a Goth, but was wholly devoted to God with very ready heart," ie Catholic. He entered the church young and served from an early period in the Basilica of Saint Eulalia

Saint Eulalia of Mérida

Eulalia of Mérida, according to her hagiography, was a Roman Christian teen martyred in Emerita, the capital of Lusitania during the persecution of Christians in the reign of emperor Diocletian and his co-emperor Maximian. Others place her death at the time of Trajan Decius...

 at Mérida, which had been rebuilt in her honour by Bishop Fidelis about 560. Masona is said to have had such a close relationship with Eulalia that by his prayers and her intercession a plague ravishing all Lusitania was lifted. Though no writings of his survive, Masona was probably educated in a manner similar to men of classical learning, such as the contemporary Leander of Seville

Leander of Seville

Saint Leander of Seville , brother of the encyclopedist St. Isidore of Seville, was the Catholic Bishop of Seville who was instrumental in effecting the conversion to Catholicism of the Visigothic kings Hermengild and Reccared of Hispania .-Family:Leander and Isidore and...

, with whom he shared an exile for a time.

Government and patronage of Mérida

Masona built a xenodochium (580), an inn (hostel

Hostel

Hostels provide budget oriented, sociable accommodation where guests can rent a bed, usually a bunk bed, in a dormitory and share a bathroom, lounge and sometimes a kitchen. Rooms can be mixed or single-sex, although private rooms may also be available...

) for travellers, with a hospital for the sick incorporated. The xenodochium was open to Jews

Jews

The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...

, and Masona is also recorded as showing kindness even to pagans

Paganism

Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....

, facts which his biographer clearly thought commendable. He built many churches and monasteries in and around the city, including one dedicated to the Virgin whose foundation stone still survives and fragments, probably from three distinct churches, which survive as components of the current alcazaba

Alcazaba

An alcazaba , alcáçova or alcassaba is a Moorish fortification in Spain and Portugal. The word derives from the Arabic word القصبة , a walled-fortification in a city....

. The decor preserved on the fragments is an indicator of the splendour of Masona's building projects.

Besides his xenodochium, Masona instituted a system of public healthcare. Physicians visited each section of the city to find the sick and bring them to the hospital. The main source of travellers to Mérida was in the form of pilgrimages to the shrine of Saint Eulalia, the city's patron saint

Patron saint

A patron saint is a saint who is regarded as the intercessor and advocate in heaven of a nation, place, craft, activity, class, clan, family, or person...

. The food of the hospital was derived from farms dedicated to the hospital by the bishop. Masona also initiated a programme for the distribution of free wine

Wine

Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...

, corn

Maize

Maize known in many English-speaking countries as corn or mielie/mealie, is a grain domesticated by indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica in prehistoric times. The leafy stalk produces ears which contain seeds called kernels. Though technically a grain, maize kernels are used in cooking as a vegetable...

, oil

Cooking oil

Cooking oil is purified fat of plant origin, which is usually liquid at room temperature ....

, and honey

Honey

Honey is a sweet food made by bees using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees is the one most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans...

 for the citizens and rustici (rustics, that is, peasants of the countryside, not the city). Masona established a public credit system by depositing 2,000 solidi with the deacon Redemptus at the basilica for the citizens to take out loans. A system of public bonds was probably a function of the diocese before the episcopate of Masona, however.

Conflict with Leovigild and the Arians

In his early years, Masona was not on poor terms with the Arian king Leovigild. According to his early biographer Paul of Mérida, he even preached a sermon to compare Leovigild to God, the true King, in that both are to be feared: Si regem, ecce regem quem timere oportet; nam non talem qualis tu es. Later Leovigild tried by persuasion and argumentation as well as by threats and bribes to convert Masona back to Arianism, but unsuccessfully. Leovigild ordered a commission to examine the rival claims of Arians and Catholics to the Eulalian basilica, but the majority Arian commission found in favour of the Catholics.

Leovigild then threw his support behind the Arian faction in Mérida. In 582 Leovigild entered Mérida, appointing an Arian bishop, Sunna, following the two years from 580 to 582 when the city's Arian community was possibly suppressed by Hermenegild

Hermenegild

Saint Hermenegild or Ermengild , was the son of king Leovigild of Visigothic Spain. He fell out with his father in 579, then revolted the following year. During his rebellion, he converted from Arian Christianity to Roman Catholicism. Hermenegild was defeated in 584, and exiled...

. Sunna and Masona had co-existed peacefully during the 570s. Leovigild ordered certain basilicas held by the Catholic Church be transferred to Sunna's church and when Masona resisted he was called to Toledo

Toledo, Spain

Toledo's Alcázar became renowned in the 19th and 20th centuries as a military academy. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 its garrison was famously besieged by Republican forces.-Economy:...

. Leovigild then increased his demands, ordering Masona to hand over the tunic of Eulalia, the most sacred relic of the city, to the Arian faction in Toledo. Masona successfully tricked the king and kept the tunic.

Masona, for noncompliance with the king's last order, was banished. The reason behind Masona's banishment was probably his power in the city and his association with the revolt of Hermenegild then being suppressed, rather than any desire for racial apartheid (separateness) which considered Masona, as a Catholic Goth, to be the worst heresy of all. The context of the revolt of Hermenegild was a sudden change in the relations between the Arian and Catholic churches, with each denomination vying for supremacy and political power in the cities. Masona, for instance, had preached a series of anti-Arian sermons on the eve of his city's capture, but this was probably unrelated. While in exile, Masona received 2,000 solidi on which to live from his supporters. During his exile he was replaced by another Catholic, Nepopis. Furthermore, he was not deprived of the right of correspondence. Masona returned to his see by permission of the king, who purportedly had a vision of Saint Eulalia, after three years, in 585. This was the same time at which John of Biclarum, the only other known Catholic Visigoth of the reign of Leovigild, returned from exile.

In 588, following the conversion of the king, Reccared I, Sunna and his accomplices plotted the murder of Masona and the setting up of a rival king in the person of Segga

Segga

Segga was a Visigothic usurper who briefly claimed the kingship in 587 before being put down by the legitimate sovereign, Reccared I.Following Reccared's conversion from Arianism to Catholicism, a conspiracy, led by Sunna, the Arian bishop of Mérida, arose to place the Arian Segga on the throne and...

. The plot was betrayed by count Witteric

Witteric

Witteric was Visigothic King of Hispania, Septimania and Galicia from 603 to 610....

 and Sunna undertook a voluntary exile in Mauretania

Mauretania

Mauretania is a part of the historical Ancient Libyan land in North Africa. It corresponds to present day Morocco and a part of western Algeria...

. Since Witteric was later king, it has sometimes been presumed that his rise to power represents an Arian resurgence, but it is more likely that he was a nominally Catholic king who clung to old Arian beliefs and that he redressed the grievances of those who had suffered under Leovigild without reversing any of the religious transformations of Reccared's reign.

Later years, illness, and death

Masona attended the Third Council of Toledo

Third Council of Toledo

The Third Council of Toledo marks the entry of Catholic Christianity into the rule of Visigothic Spain, and the introduction into Western Christianity of the filioque clause...

 in 589, the first Catholic bishop in order of precedence. At a limited synod in Toledo in 597, Masona was still bishop.

During a serious illness, when he thought he lay dying, Masona manumitted some of his church's slaves and granted them property (exiguas possessiunculas) on which to live without, as the law demanded, compensating his church for their loss of services. The archdeacon Eleutherius, whom Masona had commended the diocese to until a successor was chosen, would probably have negated the bishop's actions by forcibly seizing and destroying the documents of emancipation had not he actually (miraculously) predeceased Masona, who survived the illness. The grants of small estates to the slaves was meant to confirm their new liberty.

A letter supposedly from Isidore of Seville

Isidore of Seville

Saint Isidore of Seville served as Archbishop of Seville for more than three decades and is considered, as the historian Montalembert put it in an oft-quoted phrase, "le dernier savant du monde ancien"...

 to Masona and dated to 606 would place the latter's death sometime after that date, but the authenticity of the letter is debatable. The chief source for Masona is the Vitas Sanctorum Patrum Emeretensium, roughly modelled on the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, which devotes more space to Masona than to either of the other "holy fathers of Mérida", Paul

Paul, Bishop of Mérida

Paul was the metropolitan bishop of Mérida in the mid sixth century . He was a Greek physician who had travelled to Mérida, where there may have been a Greek expatriate community...

 and Fidelis. The portion of the work covering Masona alone is sometimes referred to as the Vita Masonae or Life of Masona. Fidelis was Masona's predecessor; he was succeeded by one Renovatus.