Page 162 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Envoys and Political Communication,411–533

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and some other hagiographical works indicate. From time to time, the
duties of bishops required travel, though the nature of their journeys was
often far from political. Constantius turns these episcopal duties into a
virtue by annexing the status enjoyed by legates in contemporary secu-
lar values. Sidonius had earlier employed a similar device in a different
context in his panegyric on Avitus.
Sidonius’ portrait of Avitus has no known imitators in the genre of
panegyric. Constantius fared rather better, for Germanus was to become
a popular figure in Gallic hagiography. Besides literary borrowings from
the Vita, Germanus appears as a character in several Vitae of fifth- and
sixth-century bishops and ascetics, most famously Genovefa of Paris and
Patrick, but also Lupus of Troyes, Hilary of Arles, Amator of Auxerre,
and Severus of Vienne; St Martin, by contrast, though much imitated
in the narratives of later saints, rarely figured as a character in later
Vitae. 85 Details of Germanus’ episcopate were reworked in later litur-
gical and other documents produced in Auxerre. 86 Germanus’ journeys
are not only recalled in the later texts, but exploited as the opportunity
for the great bishop to meet other saints: Germanus meets the young
Genovefa on both of his journeys to Britain, and encounters Severus,
a devoutpriestand active church-builder in Vienne, en route to Italy. A
late sixth/early seventh-century mass for Germanus recalled his preach-
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ing and miracles in ‘all Gaul, Rome, Italy, and Britain’. But the nature
of Germanus’ voyages changes in these later texts. Germanus’ journeys
to Britain to repress Pelagianism are recalled in the Vitae of Genovefa
of Paris and of Lupus of Troyes, Germanus’ companion on the first
84 Other hagiography: e.g. Eucherius of Lyons, Passio Acaunensium martyrum, ed. B. Krusch, MGH
SRM 3, 20–39 (trans. in The Lives of the Jura Fathers, trans. Tim Vivian, Kim Vivian, and Jeffrey
Burton Russell (Cistercian Studies 178; Kalamazoo, 1999), 187–96); note Eucherius’ comment on
his composition pro honore gestorum stilo, ‘in a style commensurate with their honourable deeds’,
Passio, 1. Eucherius was bishop of Lyons immediately prior to Patiens, who had commissioned
Constantius to write Vita Germani; Duchesne, Fastes ´ episcopaux ii, 163; Patrology iv, 504–7.
85 Levison, ‘Bischof Germanus’, 143–57. St Germanus in later hagiography: Stephanus Africanus,
Vita Amatoris episcopi Autissiodorensi, AASS Mai i, 51–61,atcc. 4–5; Vita Lupi episcopi Trecensis,
ed.B.Krusch,MGH SRM 7,p. 297,c. 4; Honoratus Massiliensis, Vita Hilarii episcopi Arelatensis,
ed. S. Cavallin, Vitae sanctorum Honorati et Hilarii episcoporum Arelatensium; Vita Genovefae virginis
Parisiensis, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SRM 3,cc. 2–6, 11; Vita sancti Severi Viennensis,in AB 5 (1886),
416–24,cc. 4–7; Muirchu’s Vita of Patrick, in St. Patrick: His Writings and Life, ed. and trans. A.
B. E. Hood (Arthurian Period Sources 9; London, 1978), 6–8. Germanus is also mentioned in
Venantius Fortunatus, Vita Radegundae, 16, as an example of ascesis.
StMartin: Vies des P` eres du Jura [Vita Eugendi], 159–60; Vita S. Victurii Cenomanensi Galia
episcopi, AASS Sept. i, 220–3; Vita Amator, AASS Mai i, 56. As model: J. Leclercq, ‘S. Martin dans
l’hagiographie monastique du moyen ˆ age’, in Saint Martin et son temps (Rome, 1961), 175–87,on
medieval monastic hagiography.
86
See Appendix i.
87
Missale gallicanum vetus (Cod. Vat. Palat. lat. 493), ed. L. C. Mohlberg (Rome, 1958), 342.
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