Page 311 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Chronology of the life of Epiphanius of Pavia

Epiphani does not explicitly attest Nepos’ personal presence in Pavia, either when
Epiphanius is appointed or when he returns, though Ennodius’ wording is perhaps
7
intended to imply this. But Nepos’ consultation with the lumina of Liguria on an
issue of regional defence is likely to be understood as a function of the proximity of
the new ruler. The embassy to Euric will then have been made in summer 474.
Epiphanius undertook the embassy in the eighth year of his episcopate; therefore
his episcopate commenced 466. He was bishop for thirty years, i.e. to winter 496.
His mission to Theoderic in Ravenna to plead for the restoration of civic rights took
place not two years before his final journey to Theoderic and death, i.e. in 494. 8
This places the mission to plead for legal rights not long after Theoderic’s defeat of
Odoacer in 493. 9
Ennodius gives Epiphanius’ age at death (traditionally 21 January) as fifty-eight,
10
which gives 438 as the year of his birth. The Vita specifies Epiphanius’ age atthe
time of his appointment to the offices of lector, subdeacon, deacon, and bishop. 11
The chronology offered by Vogel in his MGH edition of Vita Epiphani uses a letter
of Gelasius, Ep. 15 bis, to bishop Rusticius (or Rusticus) of Lyons, dated 25 January
494, which purports to have been borne by Epiphanius en route to Gundobad. 12
The letter forms part of a dossier of fifth-century documents which J´ erome Vignier
claimed to have found in the seventeenth century, and which was declared a forgery
by J. Havet, coincidently in the same year in which Vogel’s edition was published. 13
The forger interestingly makes Epiphanius a messenger from Gelasius to the bishops
of Gaul, commissioning him to gather support for Gelasius in the Acacian schism
while undertaking his secular embassy.

7
Ennodius, Vita Epiphani, 94 (Epiphanius’ return): Nepoti . . . insinuat. It is noteworthy, however,
that when the Ligurian council nominates Epiphanius as envoy in 471, the bishop is first called
to meet Ricimer before setting out to Rome (58); there is no equivalent meeting between
Epiphanius and Nepos after his nomination in 474. Nepos’ need to protect rear from Goths
before advancing on Rome, cf. Burgundian transalpine raids on Liguria in similar circumstances
c. 491, during Theoderic’s assaults on Odoacer; Moorhead, Theoderic, 24.
8
Ennodius, Vita Epiphani, 81, 182, 195.
9
Cook, Life of St Epiphanius, 9 n. 6, places the embassy for legal rights in 495.
10
Age: Ennodius, Vita Epiphani, 195. Day date: Cook, Life of St Epiphanius, 242–3 n. 6.
11
Ennodius, Vita Epiphani, 8 (lector), 18 (subdeacon), 20, 26, 34 (deacon), 34 (bishop).
12
Vogel, Preface to Ennodius, Opera (MGH AA 7), xviii–xix. Letter: PL 59, 138–40.
13
J. Havet, ‘Questions M´ erovingiennes ii: les d´ ecouvertes de J´ erome Vignier’, Biblioth` eque de
l’Ecole des Chartes 46 (1885), 205–74,at 254–8; cf. Cook, Life of St Epiphanius, 4 n. 19, 222–3;
W. Ullmann, Gelasius I: Das Papsttum an der Wende der Sp¨ atantike zum Mittelalter (P¨ apste und
Papsttum 18; Stuttgart, 1981), 227 n. 36.

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