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The saint as envoy: bishops’ Lives

a selective breviarium of western imperial history during two busy decades,
a summary of those major events in which the bishop of the main western
imperial residence participated. The sequential narrative of Vita Germani,
by contrast, is focused exclusively on Germanus himself; the failure of
all attempts to establish a chronology for Germanus’ episcopate proceeds
precisely from the want of reference to datable historical events. Paulinus’
presentation of the aristocratic Ambrose, while not the same as Sulpicius’
portrait of the eremitical Martin, is very different from Constantius’
Germanus. Martin’s meetings with Magnus Maximus present him as an
Old Testament prophet confronting satanic forces; Ambrose, who sought
to cast himself as the prophet Nathan to the emperor Theodosius’ David,
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claimed victoriae over the four emperors whom he confronted. Notsur-
prisingly, there are no verbal echoes of the confrontation scenes of Vita
Ambrosii in Vita Germani.
The narrative structure chosen by Constantius, new to western hagiog-
raphy, was not merely a means to organise his material. Its importance
has been only obliquely recognised in modern scholarship. Vita Germani,
though providing rather little in the way of useful historical data, has been
regarded as an important text for understanding the fifth-century West,
partly because it features two ill-attested regions, post-Roman Britain
and Armorica, as dramatic settings, and important personages, including
the augusta Galla Placidia, as characters. In particular, the Vita holds an
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important place in British historical writing since Bede. Butthe work’s
agreeable narrative sequence is also an important part of the modern ap-
peal of Vita Germani: Constantius’ style creates the illusion of historicity. 42
Constantius, however, does not strive for mimesis. His firm structure is

40 Paulinus, Vita Ambrosii, 24: cuius [sc. Theodosius I] correctionis profectus secundam paravit victoriam.
Berschin, Biographie und Epochenstil i, 218; McLynn, Ambrose, 291–360.
41 Bede, HE i, 17–21;onhis useof Vita Germani: RobertW. Hanning, The Vision of History in Early
Britain: From Gildas to Geoffrey of Monmouth (New York, 1966), 77–8, 83; Goffart, Narrators of
Barbarian History, 302–3; Jacques Elfassi, ‘Germain d’Auxerre, figure d’Augustin de Cantorb´ ery:
la r´ e´ ecriture par B` ede de la Vie de saint Germain d’Auxerre’, Hagiographica 5 (1998), 37–47. Modern
exploitation: e.g. Peter Salway, Roman Britain (Oxford, 1981), 462–9, 479–80.
Limited historical data: Levison, ‘Bischof Germanus’, 118. Most twentieth-century articles on
Vita Germani have been concerned with dating the text, rather than with extracting information
from the work. Cf. Christensen, ‘Germanus and Fifth-Century History’, 224–7.
42
Chadwick, Poetry and Letters, 254: ‘The admirable narrative style of Constantius still today succeeds
in imposing this fantastic story [the ‘Alleluia victory’] on our sober historians.’ Cf. Borius,
Introduction to Vie de Germain, 42–3: ‘il y a un Constance historien qui se manifeste dans la
Vita Germani, etqui ne doitrien aux œuvres de ses pr´ ed´ ecesseurs...son originalit´ e apparaˆ ıtd´ ej` a
dans son souci de composition selon un plan coh´ erent, et dans son goˆ utpour la belle narratio’
(cf. ibid., 63–4, defending the credibility of Constantius’ narrative: ‘le prˆ etre lyonnais ´ etait un
homme estim´ e etrespect´ e, sa culture certaine, son autorit´ e reconnue, etil n’y a pas de raison
majeure de suspecter a priori sa bonne foi’).

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