Papianilla (''floruit'' 455) was an aristocrat of
Roman Gaul
Roman Gaul refers to GaulThe territory of Gaul roughly corresponds to modern-day France, Belgium and Luxembourg, and adjacient parts of the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany. under provincial rule in the Roman Empire from the 1st century ...
.
She was the daughter of
Eparchius Avitus
Eparchius Avitus (c. 390 – 457) was Roman emperor of the West from July 455 to October 456. He was a senator of Gallic extraction and a high-ranking officer both in the civil and military administration, as well as Bishop of Piacenza.
He o ...
, who rose from the Gallo-Roman senatorial aristocracy to become
Western Roman Emperor from 455 to 456. Papianilla had two brothers,
Agricola
Agricola, the Latin word for farmer, may also refer to:
People Cognomen or given name
:''In chronological order''
* Gnaeus Julius Agricola (40–93), Roman governor of Britannia (AD 77–85)
* Sextus Calpurnius Agricola, Roman governor of the mid ...
and
Ecdicius Ecdicius Avitus (c. 420 – after 475) was an Arverni aristocrat, senator, and ''magister militum praesentalis'' from 474 until 475.
As a son of the Emperor Avitus, Ecdicius was educated at ''Arvernis'' (modern Clermont-Ferrand), where he lived an ...
, and possibly some sisters; she was related to another
Papianilla (wife of the prefect
Tonantius Ferreolus).
Before her father's rise to the throne (455), she married
Sidonius Apollinaris
Gaius Sollius Modestus Apollinaris Sidonius, better known as Sidonius Apollinaris (5 November of an unknown year, 430 – 481/490 AD), was a poet, diplomat, and bishop. Sidonius is "the single most important surviving author from 5th-century Gaul ...
, another aristocrat, with whom she had three or four children:
Apollinaris, Severiana, Roscia and Alcima (the latter, mentioned only in Gregory of Tours and not in Sidonius letters, being possibly another name for Severiana or Roscia).
Papianilla brought her husband the estate called ''Avitacum'' in
Auvergne
Auvergne (; ; oc, label=Occitan, Auvèrnhe or ) is a former administrative region in central France, comprising the four departments of Allier, Puy-de-Dôme, Cantal and Haute-Loire. Since 1 January 2016, it has been part of the new region Auverg ...
. Her husband gave away silver
vessels from their home to the poor, but she criticised him so he bought them back.
Gregory of Tours
Gregory of Tours (30 November 538 – 17 November 594 AD) was a Gallo-Roman historian and Bishop of Tours, which made him a leading prelate of the area that had been previously referred to as Gaul by the Romans. He was born Georgius Florenti ...
, ''History of the Franks'', II, 22
Notes
{{Reflist
Sources
* "Papianilla 2", ''
Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire
''Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire'' (abbreviated as ''PLRE'') is a work of Roman prosopography published in a set of three volumes collectively describing many of the people attested to have lived in the Roman Empire from AD 260, the date ...
'', Volume 2, p. 830.
5th-century Roman women
5th-century Romans
Daughters of Roman emperors