Page 196 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Envoys and Political Communication,411–533

important aspects of the bishops’ careers, assimilating different sorts of
activities as legations. In 456, Sidonius’ Panegyric on Avitus had presented
a similar image of the hero as an eloquent and authoritative mediator,
engaged in a constant series of embassies. Sidonius used this portrait not
only to praise his subject but also to create a highly selective and acceptable
background to Avitus’ current relations with the Goths. In a similar way,
both Vita Germani and Vita Epiphani may have been constructed to give
context to their subjects’ final missions. It is possible that this literary
device descended through fifth-century Gallic narrative literature from
Sidonius via Constantius to his imitators.
Each of these works is a useful source of data for patterns of political
communication throughout the fifth-century West, but their main value
comes through recognition of their literary artifice. These quasi-fictitious
biographies are manifestations of the social credit earned by legates and
the desire of provincial optimates to enjoy it. They are intended not to be
instructive, but to reflect and exploit social values.
The presentation of the bishops need not passively reflect episcopal
assumption of secular duties throughout the western provinces in the
fifth century. The image of the bishop as envoy is a conscious arrogation
of values from secular politics: of the local credit earned by provincial
magnates in undertaking legations to imperial authorities, and of the
social and pecuniary rewards gained by servants to imperial and royal
courts. Just as an earlier generation of clergy appropriated architectural
and sartorial trappings of power from municipal and imperial authority,
so the image of the bishop as envoy was used to graft the approbation of
legatine functions to existing models of sanctity.
The hagiographers, however, also strove to distance their subjects
somewhat from the worldliness of their secular model. Constantius never
portrays Germanus in the act of supplication; the author of Vita Viviani
credits the success of the bishop’s embassy to the saint’s reliance on ‘di-
vine authority rather than supplication’. 231 Ennodius, far more comfort-
able than his Gallic predecessors with the ethos and protocols involved in
palatine embassies, none the less praises Epiphanius’ selfless superiority
to his secular counterparts. In doing so, he creates a silhouette of con-
ventional behaviour and expectations of court servants. After two of his
journeys, Epiphanius declines to report the outcome of his missions in
person to his principals, ‘lest, being present, he should appear to exact
public thanks as if it were owed to him’. 232 Returning from the mission
to Gundobad which Theoderic had enjoined on him,
231
Vita Viviani, 6 fin.
232
Ennodius, Vita Epiphani, 75: ne velut debitas gratiarum actiones praesens videretur exigere. Epiphanius
does notreportto Ricimer or Theoderic. He does, however, reportto Nepos and receive high
170