The Latin Life of *Apollinaris (bishop of Valence, ob. c. 525, S00582) recounts his conflict with King Sigismund of the Burgundians, and his visit to Arles and Marseille shortly before his death, with various attendant miracles. Written in southern Gaul, probably in the second quarter of the 6th century.
E06687
Literary - Hagiographical - Lives
Vita Apollinaris episcopi Valentensis (BHL 634)
Summary:
In a Preface, the author says that the virtues of the saintly should be recorded, in order that they might illumine future ages, as well as the times they lived in.
(1.) Apollinaris, bishop of Valence, was born in Vienne to a noble and influential family. His good deeds as bishop will inspire posterity.
(2.) It happened that Stephanus, in charge of the fisc of King Sigismund [of the Burgundians], on the death of his wife, married her sister, ignoring canon law. Apollinaris and *Avitus [bishop of Vienne, ob. 519, S01894], who were brothers both spiritually and by blood, held a church council, together with other bishops, and excommunicated Stephanus.
(3.) The king was enraged by this act, so the bishops withdrew together to a town called Sardinia in the territory of Lyon (in oppido civitatis Lugdunensium, quod nuncupatur Sardinia). The king ordered them to return to their sees; he paid particular attention to Apollinaris, because he persisted in denouncing Stephanus.
(4.) In his place of exile, Apollinaris effected a miracle, by finding a spring of water, when the waters of the Rhône had become undrinkable due to the heat. When he left, this spring dried up, thereby demonstrating that it was through his virtues that it had appeared.
(5.) The king fell ill with a fever; the queen went to Apollinaris to implore his help to heal her husband. She persuaded him to let her have his hooded cloak (cuculla). She returned to the king and covered him with this cloak, and the illness passed.
(6.) After this happened, the king went to Apollinaris, acknowledged his error, and sought forgiveness.
(7.) In the thirty-fourth year of his episcopate, he received divine premonition of his imminent death and set out to visit fellow clerics, his relatives, and the martyr *Genesius [notary and martyr of Arles, S00263]. Travelling down the Rhône, whose ferocity was divinely calmed, he fell asleep.
(8.) When they were in sight of the fortress (arx) of Avignon, the Devil took advantage of this and the ship on which the bishop was sailing began to toss from side to side. The deacon Claudius, who was sitting by the saint’s bed with a book by Hilary [probably of Arles], saw that a slave (puer), called Alifius, had been possessed by a demon and that this was causing the danger. Alifius not only suffered in body, but also suddenly began to neigh like a horse, to moo and to bleat. The deacon urgently woke Apollinaris.
(9.) The latter said that he had been struggling with the demon in his sleep. He arranged the exorcism of the slave, but, in order to avoid personal vainglory, he asked his priest to place his hand on the slave, who was then calmed. Thereby he also helped the priest, who had himself often been troubled by demonic assaults.
(10.) 'We came' (pervenimus) to Arles, where Apollinaris was cordially greeted by Bishop *Caesarius [bishop of Arles, ob. 542, S00491] and the prefect Liberius, as well as by his relatives Parthenius and Ferreolus. After a short stay in Arles, Apollinaris went on to Marseille at the invitation of his relative, the senatrix Arcutamia. As the above-mentioned deacon [Claudius] was hurrying there, he learned from Leo, his companion on the journey, that he had lost the solidi in a cloth bag, which were destined for charitable distribution. Claudius, putting his trust in his bishop that what was destined for the poor would not be lost, turned back and they found all the solidi.
(11.) The following great miracle also was done by him. A couple brought before him their son, rendered deaf and dumb by demonic possession, and asked Apollinaris to cure him by his prayers. Apollinaris had his priest take the boy secretly to church, anointed him with holy oil, and he was immediately cured.
(12.) Some days later, it happened that our bishop fell ill and was unable to rise for matins. As he lay in bed, one of the guardians of his cell, called Paragorius, was demonically driven to try and strike Apollinaris, but on approaching the bed was rendered unable to move. There we saw him when we returned from prayers (Nos vero … nobis redeuntibus … eum … vidimus). Apollinaris absolved him.
(13.) The archdeacon Leubaredus recounts in his own words how, looking into the saint’s cell at night, he saw the saint, 'our patron and bishop' (noster patronus et pontifex), with his arms outstretched to the heavens between two columns of wonderful height, shining with a burning light, on top of which candles were burning.
(14.) The author says that he has told of the deeds which he remembers, done by Apollinaris on earth, before he left it. Valence mourned its bishop but 'rejoices in an assiduous advocate in heaven' (ad superna assiduum nunc gaudet advocatum).
Text: Krusch 1896, 197-203.
Summary: A. Kasparov.
Visiting graves and shrines
Pilgrimage
Saint as patron - of a community
Saint as patron - of an individual
MiraclesMiracle during lifetime
Miracle at martyrdom and death
Miraculous power through intermediary
Power over elements (fire, earthquakes, floods, weather)
Healing diseases and disabilities
Apparition, vision, dream, revelation
Miraculous sound, smell, light
Finding of lost objects, animals, etc.
Miraculous protection - of people and their property
Exorcism
Material support (supply of food, water, drink, money)
RelicsContact relic - saint’s possession and clothes
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - bishops
Ecclesiastics - lesser clergy
Relatives of the saint
Monarchs and their family
Demons
Source
The Life of Apollinaris, which survives in a number of manuscripts (the earliest being of the late 9th century), was ostensibly written by someone present during the journey that Apollinaris took to Arles and Marseille at the end of his life, as shown by the author’s extensive use in his account of the first-person plural (§ 12 and § 13: pervenimus, nos, nobis, vidimus, noster, etc.).Krusch in his edition was characteristically dismissive of an early date, arguing that the author wrote in Carolingian times using scraps of information gleaned from texts by Avitus of Vienne, the Life of Caesarius, and the works of Cassiodorus, for the local colour that is accurately portrayed (such as the contemporary presence in early 6th-century Arles of Bishop Caesarius and the Prefect Liberius). Krusch believed that the place called ‘Sardinia’, to which Apollinaris and his fellow bishops retreated (§ 3), was not an otherwise-unknown settlement in the territory of Lyon, but a confused borrowing by the author from African accounts of bishops exiled by the Vandals to the island of Sardinia. He also argued that the text was late, because of some poor latinisms, and because it did not include several episodes from Apollinaris’ life that are known to us (such as his participation in a Council of 517, etc.), though, for example, in the Life of Caesarius of Arles, compiled in the mid 6th century, the authors do not mention in the text a single one of the councils at which the saint played a prominent role.
There are, however, no obvious anachronisms in the Life, and, as Kinney argues in detail, there is also no reason to date it to Carolingian times on linguistic grounds. Furthermore, the unusually restricted coverage of Apollinaris' life and episcopate – see below – offers an additional reason to believe in an early date. A Carolingian falsifier would surely have 'discovered' something to say about the years that are not covered, those between Apollinaris’ birth and childhood and the last years of his episcopate. It is also very unlikely that a Carolingian author would have included the somewhat negative picture of King Sigismund that the Life of Apollinaris presents, since the king had already acquired the status of a saint and martyr by the time of Gregory of Tours in the late 6th century (E00621) – a status that was firmly in place by the 8th (see, for instance, E08266).
We therefore agree with the now widely held belief that the Life was indeed written fairly soon after Apollinaris’ death (which occurred around 525), by someone who had been present on the saint’s journey at the end of his life (Beck 1950, p. xxxiii; Heinzelmann 1982, 557; Kinney 2015). It is possible that he was the deacon Claudius who features in the story. The unflattering depiction of Sigismund points to a date of composition after the latter’s defeat, capture and death at the hands of the Franks in 523/4, and probably to a date after 534, when the kingdom of the Burgundians was finally dismembered by the Franks.
Discussion
Apollinaris came from a family with the best possible connections, as is clear from his Life and from other sources. He was also well connected in the ecclesiastical sphere, his brother being (as the Life reminds us) Avitus the distinguished bishop of Vienne. The precise dates of Apollinaris’ 33/34-year-long episcopate are uncertain, but it almost certainly began in the 490s; the saint’s visit to Arles, shortly before his death, probably occurred soon after 524, when Valence became part of the Gallic prefecture of the Ostrogothic kingdom under Liberius, and before 530 when the lands to the north of the Durance river were returned to the Burgundian king.All the events described in detail in the Life occurred towards the end, or at the very end of Apollinaris’ episcopate and life – the row with Sigismund over Stephanus’ incestuous marriage (which is also documented in the Life of Avitus) can be dated to 517 and the years that followed. This makes our Life interesting and unusual: it is less a conventional Saint’s Life, and more a memoir, focused on events witnessed in person by an author who only knew Apollinaris at the latter end of his life.
The fact that Apollinaris reportedly included the martyr Genesius of Arles as a reason to visit the city suggests a personal devotion to the saint, but this is not explained in our text.
Bibliography
Edition:Krusch, B., Vita Sancti Apollinaris episcopi, in: Passiones vitaeque sanctorum aevi Merovingici (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum 3; Hannover, 1896), 197-203 (discussion at 194-7).
Further reading:
Aigrain R., "Apollinaire," Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1924), vol. 3, cols 982-986.
Beck, H.G.J., The Pastoral Care of Souls in South-East France (Analecta Gregoriana 51; Rome 1950).
Heinzelmann, M., "Gallische Prosopographie, 260-527," Francia 10 (1982), 531-718.
Kinney, A., "An Appeal Against Editorial Condemnation: A Reevaluation of the Vita Apollinaris Valentinensis," in: V. Zimmerl-Panagl, L.J. Dorfbauer, and C. Weidmann (eds.), Edition und Erforschung lateinischer patristischer Texte: 150 Jahre CSEL (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2015), 157-177.
Pietri, L., and Heijmans, M., Prosopographie chrétienne du Bas-Empire, 4 Prosopographie de la Gaule chrétienne (314-614), 2 vols. (Paris 2013), vol. 1, 167-70, "Apollinaris 6."
Anton Kasparov, Bryan Ward-Perkins
28/10/2023
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S02104 | Apollinaris, bishop of Valence, ob. 520 | Apollinaris | Certain |
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