Delphi Complete Works of Sidonius Apollinaris, page 17
We may briefly notice a few allusions in the Letters to those ecclesiastical matters with which the second part of Sidonius’ life was so largely concerned. Great as the influence of the bishops had become, it is clear that it was still in some measure controlled both by the general voice of the laymen, and by that of the priesthood, now a body apart, and more definitely severed from the community than in early Christian times. We mark the survival of these two factors, the popular and the priestly, in the interesting accounts of the episcopal elections at Bourges and Châlon (VII. ix; IV. xxv). We there find the popular vote still regarded as an integral part of the proceedings, while some of the diocesan priests give vent to strong opinions of their own, not always coincident with the episcopal point of view. But in both cases the bishops, though recognizing the traditional popular claim, succeed in carrying their point. They hold a private meeting at which they agree upon their candidate and it is this candidate who is elected. The consecration of a new bishop at Châlon is carried out by Patiens and Euphronius in a masterful manner; at Bourges, Sidonius delivers a formal address calling upon the people to accept Simplicius. At Bourges, indeed, the electors seem to have recognized the necessary confusion where ‘two benchfuls’ of unscrupulous men were all urging their claims to a single throne (VII. ix. 2). When one aspirant based his hopes on his kitchen and his dinners, and another on a promise to divide Church property among his supporters, the evils of popular election became apparent to all responsible laymen: they abrogated their claims in favour of the bishops, whose selection they agreed to accept. Such cases probably illustrate as well as any examples could, the evil tendencies which necessitated a change of system. And the people were not alone in the responsibility for undesirable episodes on these occasions. At Bourges the priests openly favoured promotion by seniority rather than by merit, and Sidonius was obliged to administer a sharp rebuke. It is plain that in the late fifth century a tightening of the bonds of discipline was inevitable, and this could only be effected by the bishops. The intense and factious excitement aroused on the occasion of an episcopal vacancy affords yet another proof of the importance attaching to the bishop’s position. A see was worth fighting for; so much so, that the prize attracted candidates whose motives were sometimes entirely base. Perhaps in the years preceding the disasters of A.D. 474 there had been a certain laxity in the religious life of Gaul. Sidonius alludes to public devotions in which the prayers were too much interrupted by refreshments (V. xiv. 2); the dicing and other amusements interspersed between the services at the festival of St.. Just seem in rather too close an alternation with the devotions of the day (V. xvii). There may have been in many places an excessive preoccupation with the material side of life, which affected even those whose office it was to inspire thoughts of the opposite kind. An Agrippinus in holy orders harassing his sister-in-law on money matters is not a pleasant figure (VI. ii). Nor can we approve the apparent toleration of money-lending in the case of priests (IV. xxiv). But against such examples may be set others of a very different kind, which show that there was a strong leaven of piety and devotion both among clerics and among laymen. In the monasteries there was severe self-discipline, and many of the distinguished monks or abbots who were taken from Lerins to fill the sees of Gaul, carried into their new spheres of activity all the monastic rigour to which they had been accustomed. The Syrian monk Abraham, who after being driven from his native country by Sassanian persecution, had finally settled down at Clermont (see below, pp. lxxxiii, civ), afforded another example of renunciation, which produced its effect even upon Victorius, Euric’s Count of Auvergne (VII. xvii. 1). Vectius, the noble who maintained his place in the world while secretly practising a devout life, is, as Dill has observed, a character which might be taken from Law’s Serious Call (IV. ix). The ex-quaestor Domnulus, a friend of Sidonius, goes into retreat in the monasteries of the Jura (IV. xxv). Simplicius, while a young man, straitens his resources by building a church, Elaphius builds a baptistery in Rouergue (IV. xv).
It is natural that we should learn more from Sidonius of the contemporary bishops than of the lower ranks in the Church, since it was with them that he had chiefly to correspond. Many attractive figures pass before us, some already familiar, as having their recognized place in the history of their age. There is the aged Lupus of Troyes (S. Loup), the doyen of Gaulish bishops, who in spite of advanced years and many anxieties, received the news of Sidonius’ election with fatherly satisfaction, and, for all his saintliness, was human enough to take umbrage at a supposed breach of literary etiquette (IX. xi). There is Remigius (S. Remi), the apostle of the Franks, to whose glowing eloquence Sidonius bears his testimony (IX. vii). There is Faustus, the daring theologian of the day, and leader of a semi-Pelagian school in the south of Gaul, whose work on Free Grace was condemned by Pope Gelasius, and whose anonymous treatise on the Materiality of the Soul elicited the De Statu Animae of Claudianus Mamertus. There is the learned Graecus of Marseilles, whose part in ratifying the treaty of surrender drew from Sidonius the bitter reproach of outraged patriotism, but did not ultimately affect the friendly relations between them. There are St. Euphronius of Autun, Leontius of Arles, Perpetuus of Tours, Basilius of Aix, and many others less known to posterity. Finally there is Patiens, for whom Sidonius is the sole authority, the saintly and generous bishop who relieved the distress even of those living far beyond the limits of his own diocese, and rebuilt on a magnificent scale the old church of the Maccabees at Lyons: for him, as bishop of his native town, Sidonius may well have felt an almost filial affection. Of the ‘second order’ in the Church, the priests, we hear comparatively little. The most distinguished among them is the above-mentioned Claudianus Mamertus, the religious philosopher of Gaul, who combined high speculation with orthodox belief, while at the same time aiding his brother Mamertus, Bishop of Vienne, in almost all the practical work of the diocese, from the receipt of the revenues to the training of the choir (IV. xi). Most other priests whose names are mentioned in these pages are names and nothing more; it is a matter for regret that there is no portrait of the parish priest and his activities, such as the most literary bishop of Gaul could so well have drawn for us on his return from one of his extended visitations. Of the inferior orders, one or two deacons (‘Levites’) are briefly introduced. Proculus, a pupil of Euphronius, is praised as reflecting in his manner something of the urbanity of his master Principius (IX. ii); a more unfortunate Lévite, who, driven from home by the barbarian incursion, has sown a crop on church-lands in the diocese of Auxerre, finds a ready advocate in Sidonius, who begs of Bishop Censorius the remission of the payments due (VI. vii). Two Readers (lectures) also find mention in these pages, one, the impudent Amantius, several times, and once at great length; the other, an unnamed person engaged in commerce, whom the influence of Graecus is to convert from a small trader into a ‘splendid merchant’ (splendidus mercator (VI. viii). Of the monks in Gaul Sidonius gives but scanty information. An Abbot Chariobaudus receives a gift of a cowl for winter use (VII. xvi); but though allusions are made to the great houses of Lerins and Grigny, and to the smaller houses of Condat and Lauconne in the Jura, the Letters give us no details of monastic life. We only learn that on the death of the monk Abraham, the founder of St. Cirgues at Clermont, his successor had not the qualities which maintain order, and Sidonius asks his friend Volusianus to act as a kind of Superior without the walls (VII. xvii); perhaps in the founder’s time these monks followed an oriental custom, and Volusianus was now to introduce the stricter rules of Lerins or Grigny. It was at St. Cirgues that some ill-conditioned person removed Sidonius’ book when he was conducting a service, with the vain idea of causing him embarrassment (Gregory, Hist. Franc. II. xxii), a rather curious little episode, which, if really founded on fact, throws an interesting side-light on the maintenance of monastic discipline. The house ultimately became a priory and lasted till the close of the eighteenth century.
Though as a young man Sidonius was familiar with the court of Theodoric II at Toulouse (I. ii), no small part of his experience among the barbarians was gained when he had become a bishop. We have seen that after his imprisonment in the fortress of Livia, he seems to have been compelled to wait the king’s pleasure at Bordeaux; and in the course of his efforts to recover his lost property, he must have been brought into contact with various members of the Visigothic administration. It was at Bordeaux that he saw those representatives of the different barbarian tribes whose personal characteristics he has described, some of them captives like himself, others rendering voluntary service to a dreaded master. At both periods of his life he must have been familiar with the Burgundians, whose territory even in his youth was at no great distance from his native town. But in their case also, the acquaintance which was so distasteful to his fastidious mind was renewed at a later time after they had entered on the possession of Lyons. His female relations continued to reside in that city; and he went there after his entry into the Church, to see not only his family, but also the Burgundian king who stood with Rome against the aggression of Euric. It must have been painful in the extreme for one to whom Roman culture meant so much, to hear the guttural voices of the barbarians in the streets where in his young days he had passed to and fro with his Latin classics; to see ‘skin-clad’ guards at the gate of the praetorium where Rome had displayed the symbols of her power, and, penetrating to the halls built for an imperial magistrate, to be welcomed by the gross good-humoured chieftain whom Patiens conciliated by excellent dinners (VI. xii. 3). Sidonius paid his court, as duty to his people compelled him to do; he took the opportunity of interceding for his kinsman Apollinaris, threatened by the malevolence of the informers who now infested the barbarian capitals; but, all the time, the iron must have entered into his soul. Like his brother-in-law Ecdicius, who in like manner had frequented these same halls, he must have suffered from a keen sense of humiliation. There was but one consolation, that however unrefined the Visigoth and the Burgundian might appear by comparison with the Roman standard, they were humane and civil compared with the pagan Frank and the fierce piratical Saxon of the north.
It was indeed the peculiar good fortune of central and southern Gaul that the two peoples which here succeeded to the Roman inheritance were the best of all the conquering Teutons. The Visigoths belonged to a tribe which had now been in contact with imperial civilization for generations and had adopted much from Roman law and custom; the Burgundians, though outwardly less civilized, were the most genial and good-natured of all the German nations. The great drawback to both lay in their common profession of the Arian heresy, but for which the Gallo-Romans might have acquiesced far more readily in their dominion, and the ultimate triumph of the Frank would hardly have been so rapid. Religious fanaticism apart, and this only flamed fiercely in the ten years of Euric’s reign, the relations between provincial and barbarian were those of mutual tolerance. Neither Visigoth nor Burgundian was animated by any inveterate hostility to Rome. They had been confirmed in possession of their present territory by imperial sanction; it had been their earlier ambition to rank as foederati; the Burgundian king was even now proud to hold rank under the empire. It was impossible even for the most exclusive Roman citizen to forget that the fabric of the empire had been preserved by barbarian arms, and that the great Stilicho was a Vandal. Nor could personal charm be denied to those Teutonic leaders who had learned the arts of Roman life. In Italy itself there had been conspicuous examples; and though the portrait of Theodoric II in I. ii is perhaps overdrawn for a temporary political purpose, his manner of life was tolerably civilized. The Goths and Burgundians were prepared to treat the Gallo-Romans without violence; but they were determined ultimately to dominate the whole of central and southern Gaul. Before the time came for the full satisfaction of that ambition, they were as a rule inclined to live peaceably with their neighbours; meanwhile they were subjected to a continual process of Romanization, their new relation to the land and their inferior knowledge of agriculture alone making them to a great extent dependent on Roman law.
On their side, the Gallo-Romans were used to the presence of the northerner in their midst. The individual Teutonic peasant or slave had been a familiar figure in their households or on their farms since the days when the military emperors had distributed thousands of prisoners over the land. It was recognized, not by the fiery Salvian alone, but by the average inhabitant, that the barbarians had their good qualities, and that in blunt honesty and the sense of justice the Teutonic chief might excel the Roman official. When the imperial system degenerated beyond redemption, when a Seronatus succeeded an Arvandus, and the extortions of the tax-gatherers were hardly to be borne, the perception became general that life might be more tolerable in Septimania, or under Chilperic than under the jurisdiction of Rome. Except in Auvergne, where among a section of the inhabitants loyalty to Rome was a passion, the country was being gradually prepared for the inevitable transference of sovereignty. The poor man often longed for the change; the rich man resigned himself to unavoidable fate. The one felt that his lot could not be worse; the other saw that the civilized life of ease might be led almost as agreeably at Toulouse or Bordeaux, which had been Visigothic for half a century, as in the cities remaining to the empire (cf. above, p. lxv). It may be added that even as fighting men the barbarians did not inspire universal terror. The intruders were in a numerical inferiority which increased with each fresh annexation, and the Gallo-Roman could remember more than one occasion on which, man for man, Roman warriors had proved their equals. Moreover the barbarian tribes were not united against Rome. The Burgundian was jealous of the Visigoth, and even lent troops to Auvergne to assist in opposing his advance. Perhaps the worst feature in the situation was the general suspense; the uncertainty when the blow would fall paralysed such public life as remained. The administration continued to deteriorate; the officials were openly dishonest. The roads were insecure. Fugitives from unjust usage established themselves in fastnesses and seized on all property which could be carried off. They were joined by bankrupts, runaway agents or cultivators from the great estates, in short by every one to whom the lawless life appealed. Rome was ceasing to maintain order; she had to make way for a power which could.
