Page 157 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

The saint as envoy: bishops’ Lives

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to receptions for the bishop’s adventus into towns along his route. The
three journeys, to Arles, to Goar, and to Ravenna, have little in common
with the two trips to Britain other than travel and oratory. Germanus’
experiences awaiting entry to the imperial presence, only for his request
to be refused, must have been most unlike his participation in public
debate in a provincial synod of bishops in Britain. The journeys differ
both in content, involving affairs of municipal and imperial government
or of the church, and in form: some were embassies carrying out formal
supplications to authorities, others public debates.
None the less, Constantius’ presentation of the scenes diminishes the
differences between these various activities. The generalising terminol-
ogy of labores and haste common to the accounts of each of Germanus’
journeys, and the fast-paced narrative structure of the work, emphasise
the similarities, not differences, of the trips. This assimilation is reminis-
centof Sidonius’ Panegyric on Avitus, in which the differences between
communications of an equally disparate nature are elided to convey the
impression of a series of embassies, following in rapid succession. 64
A final literary ploy used by Constantius to cast Germanus in a heroic
mould is his choice of stories. Germanus leading the British army to
victory, albeit bloodless, against the overwhelming forces of the Picts and
Saxons; seizing the reins of a barbarian leader’s horse to bring a whole
army to halt; carrying a man on his back through a swollen mountain
river: these are not motifs from earlier Christian literature, and strongly
suggestquite differentliterary genres, of romance or epic. The ‘Alleluia
victory’ and the confrontation with Goar, the most dramatic scenes in
the Vita, notably lack miracles. Even if regarded as fabulae, these stories
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are clearly of a piece with Constantius’ image of Germanus. They may
not be Constantius’ creation, for some analogues exist. The motif of a
spurned suppliant grabbing the reins of a general’s horse to stop him and
his army appears also in the early sixth-century Ecclesiastical History of
Theodore Lector. There, the scene involves the emperor Valens, riding
out to his fatal battle with the Goths at Adrianople, and the Constanti-
nopolitan monk Isaac. Theodore’s source is unknown; it is none of the
fifth-century ecclesiastical historians whose parallel accounts he sought

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Legatio is, however, used for the appeals to which Germanus responds, i.e. from the British and
the Armoricans (Constantius, Vita Germani, 12, 28). Formal terminology: i.e. evectio, official travel
warrants, also the actual horses used for transport (cf. Niermeyer, Lexicon, 383 s.v. evectio § 2);
Constantius, Vita Germani, 19, 20, 44. Adventus and receptions: Constantius, Vita Germani, 24:
‘[the praetorian prefect of Gaul Auxilianus] ingrediente [sc. Germano] longissimo praeter consuetudinem
famulatur occursu’; also 21, 23, 30: ‘[populaces of towns en route] advenienti [sc. Germano] occur[unt]’;
31–2: Germanus attempts to avoid recognition in Milan; 35: adventus into Ravenna; see also
chapter 6 below, atnn. 137–43.
64 65
Above, chapter 3,atn. 102. Fabulae: Chadwick, Poetry and Letters, 251.
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