5th-century Gallic poet, diplomat, bishop, and Catholic saint
Saint
Sidonius Apollinaris
Born
c. 430 Lugdunum, Gaul, Western Roman Empire
Died
c. 485 Clermont-Ferrand, Kingdom of the Visigoths
Venerated in
Catholic Church,Orthodox Church, True Orthodox Church
Feast
21 August
Major works
Carmina; Epistles
Gaius Sollius Modestus Apollinaris Sidonius, better known as Sidonius Apollinaris (5 November,[1] c. 430 – 481/490 AD), was a poet, diplomat, and bishop. Born into the Gallo-Roman aristocracy, he was son-in-law to Emperor Avitus and was appointed Urban prefect of Rome by Emperor Anthemius in 468. In 469 he was appointed Bishop of Clermont and he led the defence of the city from Euric, King of the Visigoths, from 473 to 475. He retained his position as bishop after the city's conquest, until his death in the 480s. He is venerated as a saint in the Catholic church, the Orthodox Church, and the True Orthodox Church, with his feast day on 21 August.
Sidonius is "the single most important surviving author from 5th-century Gaul" according to Eric Goldberg.[2] He is one of four Gallo-Roman aristocrats of the 5th- to 6th-century whose letters survive in quantity; the others are Ruricius, bishop of Limoges (died 507), Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus, bishop of Vienne (died 518) and Magnus Felix Ennodius of Arles, bishop of Ticinum (died 534). All of them were linked in the tightly bound aristocratic Gallo-Roman network that provided the bishops of Catholic Gaul.[3] His writing is characterised by an extremely dense network of classical and biblical allusions, which was central to his self-presentation as a Roman aristocrat.
^Apollinaris alludes to the date of his birthday in a short poem addressed to his brother-in-law Ecdicius, Carmen 20.
^The Fall of the Roman Empire Revisited: Sidonius Apollinaris and His Crisis of Identity Archived September 2, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
^Ralph W. Mathisen, "Epistolography, Literary Circles and Family Ties in Late Roman Gaul" Transactions of the American Philological Association111 (1981), pp. 95-109.
and 23 Related for: Sidonius Apollinaris information
Gaius Sollius Modestus ApollinarisSidonius, better known as SidoniusApollinaris (5 November, c. 430 – 481/490 AD), was a poet, diplomat, and bishop....
apollinaris in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Apollinaris may refer to: Apollinaris, a correspondent of Pliny the Younger (61–c. 112) Apollinaris of...
by a letter which has survived that was written to Riothamus from SidoniusApollinaris, bishop of Clermont, who requested his judgment for "an obscure and...
Euric's death, power passed to his son, Alaric II. According to SidoniusApollinaris (who spent time at Theodoric II's court), Theodoric II was a grandson...
468 by the Gallo-Roman poet SidoniusApollinaris. Gregory of Tours, Historia Francorum Jordanes, Getica SidoniusApollinaris, Epistulae and Carmen Mathisen...
Burgundians and their language were described as Germanic by the poet SidoniusApollinaris. Herwig Wolfram has interpreted this as being because they had entered...
The Loeb Classical Library (LCL; named after James Loeb; /loʊb/, German: [løːp]) is a series of books originally published by Heinemann in London, but...
Hydatius (400-469), Bishop of Chaves. Others useful contemporary are SidoniusApollinaris (430-486) and the unnamed Gallic chronicle of 452. The reasons for...
under Emperor Julius Nepos) and a daughter Papianilla; she married SidoniusApollinaris, whose letters and panegyrics remain an important source for Avitus'...
Sidonius is a Roman cognomen literally meaning "man from Sidon" Later it was used as a given name, after the saint SidoniusApollinaris. Notable people...
receiving support for a year at public expense and then being expelled. SidoniusApollinaris refers to "Arbiter", by which he apparently means Petronius's narrator...
The activity of the brothers is described in one letter of SidoniusApollinaris, (Sidonius, Epist., IV, xi) while another is addressed to Bishop Mamertus...
played a key role in the imperial succession. Avitus's son-in-law SidoniusApollinaris wrote propaganda to present the Visigothic king Theoderic II as a...
learning... and her kindness, fellow-feeling, and lack of cruelty." SidoniusApollinaris, writing in the 5th century, was the first person to identify Julia...
marriage to king Euric (466–484). Ragnagild is known from the work of SidoniusApollinaris to have acted as the patron of poets and artists. She could speak...
surviving writings of contemporary Gallo-Roman authors, such as SidoniusApollinaris, Nepos' accession was enthusiastically accepted in the remaining...
court of Euric in about 475. The raids were reported by Hydatius. SidoniusApollinaris mentions Heruli at the Visigothic court in 476, although this is...
also unknown. In his panegyric to Anthemius, given in 468, the poet SidoniusApollinaris claimed that Ricimer was Suevic on his father's side and Visigothic...
continued as such into the medieval period: in a letter from 468, SidoniusApollinaris describes a shopper negotiating over the price of gems, silk, and...
scholarship, but some original works were created. The writings of SidoniusApollinaris (d. 489), Cassiodorus (d. c. 585), and Boethius (d. c. 525) were...
well as his praenomen (first name) are not known. In the letters of SidoniusApollinaris his name is Gaius, but in the major surviving manuscript of his work...
Global Information