The Church in Fifth-Century Gaul: Evidence from Sidonius Apollinaris
There are several reasons why the study of the works of Sidonius Apollinaris should be of particular interest to ecclesiastical historians. He represents in a peculiar way the end of the old régime, under which Christianity had taken root and had begun to spread, and the beginning of the new period...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
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| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
1970
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| In: |
The journal of ecclesiastical history
Year: 1970, Volume: 21, Issue: 1, Pages: 1-10 |
| Online Access: |
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| Summary: | There are several reasons why the study of the works of Sidonius Apollinaris should be of particular interest to ecclesiastical historians. He represents in a peculiar way the end of the old régime, under which Christianity had taken root and had begun to spread, and the beginning of the new period which we call the Middle Ages. He was a devoted admirer of the Roman imperial system, a devotee of the Muses of Roman poetry and prose, but also, in the second part of his life, a bishop of the Christian Church. He was born about 430, when the emperor Valentinian III, who could be reasonably represented as the scion of a legitimate dynasty, was apparently in secure possession of the imperial throne. He died about 480, bishop of a see in a barbarian kingdom, a few years after the last Roman puppet-emperor had been dethroned. He has left us not only poems and panegyrics but also letters dealing, among other things, with the day-to-day problems of his see. His contribution to our knowledge of the Gallic Church of the mid-fifth-century—a dark period by any standard of measurement—must be of great value, and perhaps a fresh survey of certain aspects of it may not be unfruitful. |
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| ISSN: | 1469-7637 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The journal of ecclesiastical history
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0022046900048417 |