Flavius Avitus Marinianus ( 423–448) was a politician of the
Western Roman Empire
The Western Roman Empire comprised the western provinces of the Roman Empire at any time during which they were administered by a separate independent Imperial court; in particular, this term is used in historiography to describe the period ...
during the reign of
Honorius.
Biography
Avitus was praetorian prefect and consul in 423 He is mentioned in the ''Gesta de purgatione Xysti III episcopi in a list of aristocrats involved in the investigations against
Pope Sixtus III
Pope Sixtus III was the bishop of Rome from 31 July 432 to his death on 18 August 440. His ascension to the papacy is associated with a period of increased construction in the city of Rome. His feast day is celebrated by Catholics on 28 March.
...
. Although the ''Gesta'' has been long recognized as a later forgery, B.L. Twyman argued in 1970 that the list of aristocrats was taken from a later papal investigation concerning the deposition of bishop Celidonius by archbishop
Hilarius of Arles
Hilary of Arles, also known by his Latin name Hilarius (c. 403–449), was a bishop of Arles in Southern France. He is recognized as a saint by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, with his feast day celebrated on 5 May.
Life
In h ...
. T.D. Barnes subsequently showed that the list was best explained as the product of "a writer of the sixth century
hohas deliberately mixed genuine and fictitious persons."
He had a wife, Anastasia, and a son,
Rufius Praetextatus Postumianus (consul in 448); it is possible that
Rufius Viventius Gallus was another son. Marinianus and his wife were Christians; at
Pope Leo I
Pope Leo I ( 400 – 10 November 461), also known as Leo the Great, was bishop of Rome from 29 September 440 until his death. Pope Benedict XVI said that Leo's papacy "was undoubtedly one of the most important in the Church's history."
Leo was ...
's request, they restored the mosaic on the façade of the
Old St. Peter's Basilica
Old St. Peter's Basilica was the building that stood, from the 4th to 16th centuries, where the new St. Peter's Basilica stands today in Vatican City. Construction of the basilica, built over the historical site of the Circus of Nero, began dur ...
, as recorded by an inscription on the mosaic itself.
[Louise Ropes Loomis, ''The Book of the Popes (Liber Pontificalis) I-: To the Pontificate of Gregory I'', BiblioBazaar, LLC, 2009, , p. 100.]
Notes
Further reading
*
Jones, Arnold Hugh Martin, John Robert Martindale,
John Morris, ''
The 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, Cambridge University Press, 1992, , pp. 723–724.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Marinianus, Flavius Avitus
5th-century Romans
5th-century Roman consuls
Imperial Roman consuls
Praetorian prefects