St. Avitus
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Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus (c. 450 – February 5, 517/518 or 519) was a Latin poet and bishop of Vienne in Gaul. His fame rests in part on his poetry, but also on the role he played as secretary for the
Burgundian Burgundian can refer to any of the following: *Someone or something from Burgundy. *Burgundians, an East Germanic tribe, who first appear in history in South East Europe. Later Burgundians colonised the area of Gaul that is now known as Burgundy (F ...
kings. Avitus was born of a prominent Gallo-Roman senatorial family related to Emperor Avitus.


Life

His father was Hesychius, bishop of Vienne, where episcopal honors were informally hereditary. His paternal grandfather was a western Roman emperor whose precise identity is not known.
Apollinaris of Valence Saint Apollinaris of Valence (also known as Aplonay) (453–520), born in Vienne, France, was bishop of Valence, France, at the time of the irruption of the barbarians. Valence, which was the central see of the recently founded Kingdom of the ...
was his younger brother; their sister Fuscina became a nun. Avitus was probably born at Vienne, for he was baptized by bishop Mamertus. About 490 he was ordained bishop of Vienne. In 499 Vienne was captured by
Gundobad Gundobad ( la, Flavius Gundobadus; french: Gondebaud, Gondovald; 452 – 516 AD) was King of Burgundy, King of the Burgundians (473 – 516), succeeding his father Gundioc of Burgundy. Previous to this, he had been a Patrician (ancient Rome), ...
, king of the Burgundians, who was at war with Clovis, king of the Franks, where he came to the attention of that king. Avitus, as metropolitan of southern and eastern Gaul, took the lead in a conference between the Catholic and Arian bishops held in presence of Gundobad at Sardiniacum near
Lyons Lyon,, ; Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the third-largest city and second-largest metropolitan area of France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of th ...
. He won the confidence of King Gundobad, and converted his son, King Sigismund to Catholicism. A letter of Pope Hormisdas to Avitus records that he was made vicar apostolic in Gaul by that pontiff; and in 517 he presided in this capacity at the Council of Epaon for restoring ecclesiastical discipline in
Gallia Narbonensis Gallia Narbonensis (Latin for "Gaul of Narbonne", from its chief settlement) was a Roman province located in what is now Languedoc and Provence, in Southern France. It was also known as Provincia Nostra ("Our Province"), because it was the ...
. Avitus appears also to have exerted himself to terminate the dispute between the churches of Rome and Constantinople which arose out of the excommunication of Acacius; we gather from his later letters that this was accomplished before his death. Upon his death, Avitus was buried in the monastery of St. Peter and St. Paul at Vienne.


Writings

The literary fame of Avitus rests on his many surviving letters (his recent editors make them ninety-six in all) and on a long poem, ''Poematum de Mosaicae historiae gestis'' (also known as ''De spiritualis historiae gestis''), in classical hexameters, in five books, dealing with the Biblical themes of
original sin Original sin is the Christian doctrine that holds that humans, through the fact of birth, inherit a tainted nature in need of regeneration and a proclivity to sinful conduct. The biblical basis for the belief is generally found in Genesis 3 (t ...
, expulsion from Paradise, the Deluge, and the
Crossing of the Red Sea The Crossing of the Red Sea ( he, קריעת ים סוף, Kriat Yam Suph, parting of the Sea of Reeds) forms an episode in the biblical narrative of The Exodus. It tells of the escape of the Israelites, led by Moses, from the pursuing Egyptia ...
. The first three books offer a certain dramatic unity; in them are told the preliminaries of the great disaster, the catastrophe itself, and the consequences. The fourth and fifth books deal with the Deluge and the Crossing of the Red Sea as symbols of baptism. Avitus deals freely and familiarly with the Scriptural events, and exhibits well their beauty, sequence, and significance. He is one of the last masters of the art of
rhetoric Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate parti ...
as taught in the schools of Gaul in the 4th and 5th centuries. His poetic diction, though abounding in archaisms and rhythmic redundancy, is pure and select, and the laws of metre are well observed. Writing in the '' Catholic Encyclopedia'', Thomas Joseph Shahan says "that
Milton Milton may refer to: Names * Milton (surname), a surname (and list of people with that surname) ** John Milton (1608–1674), English poet * Milton (given name) ** Milton Friedman (1912–2006), Nobel laureate in Economics, author of '' Free t ...
made use of his paraphrase of Scripture in writing ''
Paradise Lost ''Paradise Lost'' is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton (1608–1674). The first version, published in 1667, consists of ten books with over ten thousand lines of verse (poetry), verse. A second edition fo ...
''." Avitus also wrote a poem for his sister Fuscina, a nun, "De consolatoriâ castitatis laude". A seal of Bishop Avit The letters of Avitus are of considerable importance for the ecclesiastical and political history of the years between 499 and 518. Like his contemporary,
Ennodius of Pavia Magnus Felix Ennodius (473 or 47417 July 521 AD) was Bishop of Pavia in 514, and a Latin rhetorician and poet. He was one of four Gallo-Roman aristocrats of the fifth to sixth-century whose letters survive in quantity: the others are Sidonius Ap ...
, he was strenuous in his assertion of the authority of the Apostolic See as the chief bulwark of religious unity and the incipient Christian civilization. "If the pope," he says, "is rejected, it follows that not one bishop, the whole episcopate threatens to fall" (Si papa urbis vocatur in dubium, episcopatus videbitur, non episcopus, vaccilare. — Ep. xxxiv; ed. Peiper). His letters are also among the important primary sources of early Merovingian political, ecclesiastical, and social history. Among them is a famous letter to
Clovis Clovis may refer to: People * Clovis (given name), the early medieval (Frankish) form of the name Louis ** Clovis I (c. 466 – 511), the first king of the Franks to unite all the Frankish tribes under one ruler ** Clovis II (c. 634 – c. 657), ...
on the occasion of his baptism. Avitus addresses Clovis not as if he was a pagan convert, but as if he was a recent
Arian Arianism ( grc-x-koine, Ἀρειανισμός, ) is a Christological doctrine first attributed to Arius (), a Christian presbyter from Alexandria, Egypt. Arian theology holds that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, who was begotten by God t ...
sympathiser, possibly even a catechumen.Danuta Shanzer, ''Dating the baptism of Clovis: the bishop of Vienne vs the bishop of Tours''. Early Medieval Europe, Volume 7, Issue 1, pages 29–57, March 1998
/ref> The letters document the close relations between the Catholic Bishop of Vienne and the Arian king of the Burgundians, the great Gundobad, and his son, the Catholic convert Sigismund. There was once extant a collection of his homilies and sermons, but they have all perished except for two, and some fragments and excerpts from others.''Catholic Encyclopedia'' The so-called ''Dialogues with King Gundobad'', written to defend the Catholic faith against the Arians and which purports to represent the famous Colloquy of Lyon in 449, was once believed to be his work.
Julien Havet Julien Pierre-Eugène Havet (4 April 1853 – 19 August 1893), French historian, was born at Vitry-sur-Seine, the second son of Ernest Havet. He early showed a remarkable aptitude for learning, but had a pronounced aversion for pure rhetoric. ...
demonstrated in 1885, however, that it is a forgery of the
Oratorian An Oratorian is a member of one of the following religious orders: * Oratory of Saint Philip Neri (Roman Catholic), who use the postnominal letters C.O. * Oratory of Jesus (Roman Catholic) * Oratory of the Good Shepherd (Anglican) * Teologisk Orator ...
,
Jérôme Vignier Jerome (c.347–420) was a priest, confessor, theologian and historian from Dalmatia. Jerome may also refer to: People Given name * Jerome (given name), a masculine name of Greek origin, with a list of people so named * Saint Jerome (disambiguat ...
, who also forged a letter purporting to be from Pope Symmachus to Avitus.


Editions


Letters

*Avitus of Vienne,'' Selected Letters and Prose''. Tr. by Danuta Shanzer and Ian Wood. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2002, 464 pp. (Translated Texts for Historians).


Poems

*Michael Roberts, ed. and trans., ''Biblical and Pastoral Poetry'', Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 74 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2022). *Ulrich C.J. Gebhardt, ed. and trans. (Latin-German), ''De spiritalis historiae gestis. Von den Ereignissen der geistlichen Geschichte'', Sammlung Tusculum (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2021). *Nicole Hecquet-Noti, ed., ''Histoire spirituelle, Tome II: (Chants IV-V)'', Sources Chretiennes 492 (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 2005). *M. Hoffman, ed., ''Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus. De spiritalis historiae gestis Buch 3'' (Munich: K.G. Saur, 2005). *George W. Shea, trans., ''The Poems of Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus'' (Tempe, Ariz.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1997). *Daniel J. Nodes, ed., ''The Fall of Man: De spiritalis historiae gestis libri I-III, Edited from Laon, Bibliothèque Municipale, Ms. 273'', Toronto Medieval Latin Texts 16 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1985). *Abraham Schippers, ed., ''De mundi initi'' (Kampen: Kok, 1945).


Notes


External links


Christian Classics Ethereal Library:
Brief biography of Avitus

{{DEFAULTSORT:Avitus Of Vienne 5th-century Gallo-Roman people 6th-century Gallo-Roman people Archbishops of Vienne 5th-century Frankish bishops Latin letter writers Latin poetry 5th-century Roman poets Gallo-Roman saints Writers from Vienne, Isère 450 births 510s deaths 6th-century Frankish bishops 6th-century Christian saints Year of birth uncertain 6th-century Latin writers 5th-century Latin writers 6th-century poets Medieval Latin poets