Athaloc was the Visigothic Arian Archbishop of Narbonne at the time of the Third Council of Toledo in 589. He was the metropolitan of his province in parallel with the Catholic hierarchy.
Arianism is a nontrinitarian Christological doctrine which asserts the belief that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who was begotten by God the Father at a point in time, a creature distinct from the Father and is therefore subordinate to him, but the Son is also God. Arian teachings were first attributed to Arius, a Christian presbyter in Alexandria of Egypt. The teachings of Arius and his supporters were opposed to the theological views held by Homoousian Christians, regarding the nature of the Trinity and the nature of Christ. The Arian concept of Christ is based on the belief that the Son of God did not always exist but was begotten within time by God the Father.
The Third Council of Toledo (589) marks the entry of Visigothic Spain into the Catholic Church, and known for codifying the filioque clause into Western Christianity. The council also enacted restrictions on Jews, and the conversion of the country to Catholic Christianity led to repeated conflict with the Jews.
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Early in 589, Reccared I sent word of his conversion to Catholicism to Septimania, where it incited a rebellion on behalf of Arianism by two prominent counts, Granista and Wildigern, and the bishop Athaloc. The rebels sought to overthrow Reccared and the Catholic faith and to this end they called in the aid of the Catholic and Frankish king of Burgundy, Guntram. The Frankish army under Boso, however, was destroyed by Claudius, Duke of Lusitania. Many Catholics died in the process of the rebellion. Athaloc, however, was not deposed and died a natural death. He never converted to Catholicism.
Reccared I was Visigothic King of Hispania and Septimania. His reign marked a climactic shift in history, with the king's renunciation of Arianism in favour of Catholicism in 587.
Septimania is a historical region in modern-day south of France. It referred to the western part of the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis that passed to the control of the Visigoths in 462, when Septimania was ceded to their king, Theodoric II. Under the Visigoths it was known as simply Gallia or Narbonensis. Septimania territory roughly corresponds with the former administrative region of Languedoc-Roussillon that merged into the new administrative region of Occitanie. Septimania passed briefly to the Emirate of Córdoba, which had been expanding from the south during the eighth century before its subsequent conquest by the Franks, who by the end of the ninth century termed it Gothia or the Gothic March.
The Franks were a collection of Germanic peoples, whose name was first mentioned in 3rd century Roman sources, associated with tribes on the Lower and Middle Rhine, on the edge of the Roman Empire. Later the term was associated with Romanized Germanic dynasties within the collapsing Roman Empire, who eventually commanded the whole region between the rivers Loire and Rhine. They then imposed power over many other post-Roman kingdoms and Germanic peoples, and still later they were given recognition by the Catholic Church as successors to the old rulers of the Western Roman Empire.
