Epitaph of Dinamius (or Dynamius) of Marseille and his wife Eucheria, buried in a church or chapel dedicated to *Hippolytus (martyr of Rome, S00509). Written in Latin in southern Gaul, c. 605.
Evidence ID
E07862
Type of Evidence
Inscriptions - Funerary inscriptions
Literary - Poems
Epitaph of Dinamius and Eucheria
The opening verses of the epitaph:
Coniugii dulcis hoc est commune sepulchrum,
Quod nec post fatum liquit amicus amor.
Quos pietate pares etiam post funera iunctos
Vnus et affectus et locus unus habet.
5 Dinamius hic nam, pariter Eucheria coniunx
Martyris Yppoliti limina sancta tenent.
This is the common tomb of a sweet marriage,
Which kind love did not leave even after death.
The ones joined equally in love even after death
Are held by both one affection and one place.
For this man Dinamius, and likewise his wife Eucheria,
Possess the sacred place of the martyr Yppolitus.
[6. Hippolyti Peiper]
The epitaph has 22 lines in total. The remainder praises the nobility and piety of Dinamius and his wife, and lists the offices Dinamius held. It states that Dinamius died at the age of fifty and that his wife outlived him by ten years (ll. 13-16), and that the epitaph was composed by his grandson, also called Dinamius (l. 22).
Text: Peiper 1883, 194, modified.
Translation: David Lambert.
Cult Places
Cult building - independent (church)
Non Liturgical ActivityBurial ad sanctos
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesAristocrats
Source
No trace of the tomb of Dinamius and Eucheria survives. The epitaph is preserved in a single manuscript: Paris, BnF, Lat. 2832, 119v-120r, copied in southern Gaul, probably at Lyon, between 848 and 859 (Handley 2000, 48-9). Among numerous other texts, it contains a collection of verse epitaphs, mostly from southern Gaul; all but one of these Gallic epitaphs survive only in this collection. For a full study of the collection, see Handley 2000.R. Peiper provided an edition of the Gallic epitaphs in an appendix to his MGH edition of the works of Avitus of Vienne (note that this is not an edition of the manuscript collection – it omits some items from it and includes items from other sources). They also appear in epigraphic collections such as that of Le Blant.
For a digitised image, see:
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b85722439/f241.image
Discussion
Dinamius or Dynamius (PLRE IIIA, 'Dynamius 1'; PCBE 4, 'Dynamius 3') – the spelling varies between different sources, but both forms would have had the same pronunciation – was a major political figure in Gaul in the late 6th century, notably as governor (patricius or rector) of Provence in the 580s and 590s (for entries in which he appears in this capacity, see E02185 and E06343). He was also a literary figure, active in various genres including hagiography: he was the author of a Life of Maximus, the 5th c. abbot of Lérins and bishop of Riez (E00852), and possibly also of the monk Marius of Bodanum (E06686).Dinamius died in about 595. Since his wife Eucheria outlived him by ten years according to the epitaph itself, their joint epitaph must have been composed about 605. The author was Dinamius' grandson, also called Dinamius. The location of their tomb is now unknown. The city most associated with Dinamius in his lifetime is Marseille, but this is not necessarily where his tomb was located (though it was almost certainly somewhere in south-eastern Gaul).
From the point of view of the cult of saints, the most striking aspect of the epitaph is the statement that the tomb of Dinamius and Eucheria was in a church dedicated to Hippolytus, a martyr associated with the city of Rome whose cult seems otherwise to be completely unknown in Gaul. No church dedicated to Hippolytus is recorded in the relevant volumes of the Topographie chrétienne des cités de la Gaule. It was suggested by Dumézil 2009, 182, that the burial place might not have been a church but a private funerary chapel (though since the epitaph survives through being copied into a manuscript collection, it must have been located somewhere accessible).
Bibliography
Editions and translations:Peiper, R., Alcimii Ecdicii Aviti Viennensis episcopi opera quae supersunt (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores antiquissimi 6.2; Berlin, 1883), 194.
Le Blant, E., Inscriptions chrétiennes de la Gaule antérieures au VIIIe siècle, vol. 2 (Paris, 1865), no. 641.
French translation in Dumézil 2009 (below), 192-3.
Further reading:
Dumézil, B., "Le patrice Dynamius et son réseau: culture aristocratique et transmformations de pouvoirs autour de Lérins dans la seconde moitié du VIe siècle," in: Y. Codou and M. Lauwers (eds.), Lérins, une île sainte de l'Antiquité au Moyen Âge (Turnhout, 2009), 167-194.
Handley, M., "Epitaphs, Models, and Texts: A Carolingian Collection of Late Antique Inscriptions from Burgundy," in: A. Cooley (ed.), The Afterlife of Inscriptions (Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Supplement 75, 2000), 47-56.
Record Created By
David Lambert
Date of Entry
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00509 | Hippolytus, martyr of Rome | Yppolitus | Certain |
|---|
Please quote this record referring to its author, database name, number, and, if possible, stable URL:
David Lambert, Cult of Saints, E07862 - http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E07862