Page 156 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Envoys and Political Communication,411–533

undertaking an embassy; they are always portrayed as actively prosecuting
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causes under their own initiative. Similarly, Pope Leo’s function in the
embassy to Attila as representative of the emperor Valentinian III and
the senatus populusque Romanus is omitted by sources later than Prosper.
Germanus, however, responds to others’ petitions.
Constantius casts his subject as a legate through a further literary ploy.
The five journeys served differentpurposes, yetthey are assimilated by
Constantius through his selection of vocabulary and narrative technique,
creating an artificial homogeneity. During the two voyages to Britain,
which formed part of the early fifth-century dispute within the church
on Pelagianism, Germanus travelled in order to participate in public dispu-
tationes (by chance, Germanus’ voyage to Britain is the only incident of the
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Vita of which record exists in another source, the Chronicle of Prosper ).
The context is firmly ecclesiastical; though the ‘Alleluia victory’ intro-
duces an important secular element, this is not part of Germanus’ actual
mission. Germanus’ other three missions continued different traditional
patterns of communication. When travelling to Arles to seek tax relief for
his patria from the senior imperial magistrate of Gaul, Germanus fulfilled
a characteristic function of provincial aristocrats in the Roman empire,
part of the administrative structure of imperial government. 61 Pre-
cedents exist,too, for the moredramaticeventsofGermanus’involvement
in Armorican affairs, in which a leading figure soughtto avertim-
perial punishment of a whole community. The rush of various parties in
Antioch to claim responsibility for successfully allaying the wrath of the
emperor Theodosius I after the Riot of the Statues in 387 is an indication
of the social capital to be gained from such an undertaking. 62 Though
the term legatio is not used to describe the journeys to either Arles or
Ravenna – or indeed to Britain, though ecclesiastic representations were
also commonly referred to as legationes – the formal context of the trips
to imperial centres is indicated by other terminology and by allusions

59
E.g. Paulinus, Vita Ambrosii,cc. 19, 31 (embassies to Magnus Maximus and Theodosius I) contain
no reference to Ambrose being approached by the beneficiaries of the embassies, Valentinian II
and Roman senators associated with Eugenius respectively.
60
Prosper, Chron., 1301, usually assumed to refer to Germanus’ first journey to Britain, though it
could as easily refer to the second. On the differences of the two sources: Levison, Introduction
to Vita Germani, 227 n. 5; Borius, Introduction to Vie de Germain, 79–85; Wood, ‘End of Roman
Britain’, 10; Muhlberger, Fifth-Century Chroniclers, 84–5; Christensen, ‘Germanus and Fifth-
Century History’, 228. The only known comparandum for a Gallic bishop travelling to Britain
for ecclesiastical controversy is Victricius of Rouen, De laude sanctorum, 1 (PL 20, 443).
61
On provincial and imperial administration and embassies seeking tax relief: above, chapter 1,
atnn. 67–77.
62
Libanius, Selected Works, trans. A. F. Norman, ii (LCL; London, 1977), 237–43; Brown, Power and
Persuasion, 105–9. The late third-century treatise of Menander Rhetor includes an address to the
emperor on behalf of a city ‘in trouble’ as a standard genre; Menander Rhetor, Treatise ii, 13.
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