Saint Sidonius Apollinaris

From the moment he entered political life, Sidonius Apollinaris belonged to that cultured class where, along with the most glorious traditions of the past, projects of independence and national life were preserved. An honorable alliance came to support his hopes at the time when he was thinking of following in the footsteps of his ancestors in some praetorian office or military command. He married Papianilla Papianilla Wife of Sidonius Apollinaris and daughter of the Emperor Avitus. , daughter of the se nator Flavius Eparchius Flavius Eparchius Avitus Western Roman Emperor and father-in-law of Sidonius. Avitus, who rose to the empire through his skill and talents. If this alliance was an honor for him, it was soon recognized that he was worthy of it, for the purity of his morals and the brilliance of his talents.

The spectacle of the revolutions of the West, where emperors succeeded one another in the midst of the most tragic events, gave Sidonius Apollinaris striking lessons on the instability of human greatness: it cost him less to break with his plans for advancement. He retired to the estates that the Apollinarii possessed in Auvergne and the Lyonnaise. He found there a charm hitherto unknown: these places made him forget the reverses of fortune and provided him with the means to escape the blows that the revolutions were striking at the Empire, whose weakness and misfortunes he saw so closely. No retreat smiled upon him more than the villa of Avitacum, which is believed to be the village of Aydat today (Avitac, Avitacus, Avitacum), located a few leagues from Clermont, to the southwest. It is not that this villa had more pleasant prospects, a greater number of tenant farmers, or more extensive acres of land. What gave it value and beauty in the eyes of Sidonius Apollinaris was that it came from his wife, Papianilla. His longest hours were spent there: one can see, from the care he took to describe it, that he spent his sweetest moments there, amidst the joys of family and letters. What especially gave this villa an added charm for Sidonius Apollinaris was the presence of his own: he lived days full of calm with Papianilla, Ecdicius, Agricola, and his young children, Apollinaris, Alcimus, Roscia, and Severiana.

Sidonius Apollinaris also included in his family and his care the tenant farmers and tributaries charged with his estates. The lot of the tenant farmers in the fifth century was somewhat like that of slaves. Attached to the soil in the cultivations of the great lords of Gaul, they were subject to the conditions of the land. Although they had a shadow of freedom, the master could sell them with the soil. In this precarious state, they must have sighed for the manumission that was a true advantage for them and their families. Sidonius did everything to soften the misfortune of the tenant farmers of Avitacum and his other lands: he watched over the security of some and the honor of others. One day, he learned that the slave of one of his friends, named Pudens, had abducted the daughter of one of his tenant farmers: his indignation was extreme. Pudens, who knew his sentiments, presumed to what extent he would be revolted by this injustice: he wrote immediately to assure him that he had not known of the abductor's design; he joined to his excuses prayers to obtain the pardon of his slave. Sidonius granted it only on the condition that he would manumit him, so that the one he had abducted would become his legitimate wife and find in freedom a compensation for her dishonor. Outside of business and family cares, Sidonius Apollinaris remained, for a few years of his retirement, entirely devoted to letters, friendship, and his correspondence. An exquisite sensitivity characterized the social manners of Sidonius: in ages that one might call barbaric, he corrected Greek and Roman politeness with that mixture of kindness and gentleness that Christianity substituted for the stoic pride and guilty liberties of pagan relations. However, in friendships, he did not seek only the delicate pleasures of the heart; he regarded them as not very solid when they did not rest on virtue and mutual esteem. He knew how to choose; his choice always fell on merit. His friendships were not confined to the secrets of the heart. Like a spring that does not keep its waters for itself, they spread out in services and benefits. By himself or through his friends, he protected the weak, appeased divisions, and stopped lawsuits: he multiplied himself to oblige and assist. When one browses through his letters of friendship, literature, politics, and business, one remains convinced that kindness played a large part in his character and in the habits of his moral life. Amidst the varieties of his existence, one care, that of literature, always captivated him. When he thought of Gaul, his homeland, he dreamed of it as learned and polished like Italy and Greece: sometimes he regretted for it the beautiful ages of literature.

Christianity, whose maxims he followed, taught him the nothingness of human things, and when he saw the experience of his time confirm its oracles, he gave himself over to this reflection, so profound and so true that one would think it detached from one of the most beautiful pages of Christian philosophy: "I do not know if it is a happiness to aspire to the condition of the great and of princes, but it is always a misfortune to attain it." However, the employments of high magistracy were united in him with the honors of the laticlave. Prefect of Rome and of the Senate, he was like the first citizen of the eternal city, and of that famous corporation which carefully preserved, along with the debris of the greatest families, the most precious memories of the Consulate, the Republic, and the Empire. A confidant of Anthemius, he was for some time the arbiter of imperial wills, and, as if everything had to contribute to his illustration, eloquence and poetry mingled their laurels with the treason of the senator and the praetorian palm, to surround him with public consideration and recommend him to the esteem of his contemporaries.

His dreams of youth were accomplished. The honors, at least, did not corrupt his virtue; he fulfilled his functions in such a way as to attract the praise of the most virtuous men of his century. Everyone recognized that it was less his pomp than his dignities that raised him above others. One of the most famous bishops of Gaul, Lupus of Troyes, congratulated himself on seeing him reach the highest offices of the court, and, although there was reason to fear that these grandeurs might be a reef for him, he admired how his prudence protected him from the seductions that abound at the foot of thrones. But Sidonius Apollinaris did not run these new kinds of perils for long. Satisfied with the distinctions he had received, he left the court (469), saluted the city of the Caesars that he was never to see again, and hastened to return to the Gauls, which he found infested with Barbarians and under the weight of the terrors spread by Euric Euric King of the Visigoths, persecutor of Catholics and Sidonius. , the new king of the Visigoths.

But what is most striking in Sidonius Apollinaris, at this time, is the transition from a somewhat elegant and worldly life to a life upon which the ideas of faith exert a deeper action. His letters and the poems that escape him reveal to us the intimate work that was taking place in the soul of the patrician and the poet. The high reflections to which Christianity raised the cultivated minds of the time became more familiar to him. The descendant of the praetorian prefects followed with an attentive gaze, in the midst of the social revolutions that were sweeping away the entire past of institutions and public customs, the progress and development of those Christian ideas that were bringing new destinies to the world and more real pledges of salvation. If one sees him on the threshold of patrician villas, one also sees him in the Catholic basilicas, mingled with the crowd that believes and prays. The visit of the holy bishops of Gaul, such as those of Bordeaux, Narbonne, Lyon, and Riez, figures no less in his private relations than that of the great personages of the praetorium and the West. Christ is more often invoked in his prose and his verses.

The young Apollinaris, his son, having reached an age where it was necessary to seriously occupy himself with his mind and his morals, Sidonius wished to initiate him himself into the secret of the humanities. He began to prepare him for the understanding of the writers of Rome and Athens, pointed out to him the beauties of their writings, and inspired in him a particular taste for the masterpieces of these two literatures. This education took place under the auspices of Christ, and under the influence of that evangelical morality whose maxims were penetrating on all sides into the interior of plebeian and consular families. Sidonius, who attached no less importance to the morals of Apollinaris than to the cultivation of his mind, taught him early the principles of a true wisdom, and it is to make them more perceptible to him that he proposed as models the virtuous citizens whose actions could serve as an example, and that he forbade him the company of debauched persons whose discourse could have corrupted him.

Sidonius Apollinaris offered then in his person an image of the influence that Christianity exerted on souls penetrated by its maxims. The world no longer had for him the seductions that tempted his youth, and, satisfied beyond having equaled his ancestors in dignities, he thought only of surpassing them in merits before God. It is not without some admiration that the clergy and the faithful of Auvergne saw the son-in-law of Avitus, the prefect of Rome, the patrician poet, practice with constancy the austerities of the Gospel, so opposed to the habits of softness and elegance of the Roman patriciate. Thus, at the death of Eparchius, in 471, all eyes turned toward him, and with a unanimous voice he was designated as his successor.

Auvergne found itself then in difficult circumstances. The Barbarians were surrounding its borders everywhere, and the Visigoths, exalted by the Arianism of Euric, were threatening it in its faith, which was dearer than its liberties. It could not count on the help of Rome, on the energetic resolutions of the curia, nor on the alliance of the Burgundians, always full of uncertainty. While so many other provinces had found their salvation in the courage and holiness of their bishops, was it not a wise course to place the interests of the faith and the public good in the hands of Sidonius Apollinaris, by calling him to the episcopate? Everything reassured it in such a choice; the virtue and knowledge of Sidonius, the personal consideration he had acquired in Roman Gaul, the ascendancy he had had at intervals over the minds of the Barbarians, and above all his known devotion to the cause of religion and the fatherland.

It is known that the clergy and the faithful then saw without too much repugnance the direction of the churches entrusted sometimes to men until then engaged in the bonds of family and the movement of civil affairs, when moreover they united to a proven virtue the knowledge required for such a high office. These, on the other hand, immediately abandoned the honors of the praetorium or the labors of the forum, to no longer consecrate their existence except to the salvation of the spiritual flock of which they became the leaders and guardians.

Hardly had Sidonius learned of this determination of the clergy and the faithful, than he gave himself over to feelings of profound humility. He could not think of the burden with which he had just been charged without being seized by a holy fear. His alarms transpire in the confidences of that time. "Despite my unworthiness," he writes to his dear Apollinaris of Voroange, "they have imposed upon me the burden of a sublime profession, upon me, a wretch who, forced to teach before having learned, and daring to preach the good before practicing it, am like a barren tree which, not having works for fruit, gives only words for leaves." In a letter to Avitus, his relative and friend, he declares that he did not deserve to be placed at the head of the church of Auvergne. Elsewhere, he recommends himself to Fonteius, bishop of Vaison, who had always been a powerful patron for his family in Christ, and claims the support of his prayers, because they have imposed upon him the title and duties of bishop, although he was unworthy to bear and fulfill them. He groans, in writing to Lupus of Troyes, that his crimes have earned him the episcopate as punishment, and that they constrain him to pray for the sins of the peoples, he for whom the supplications of an innocent people would barely obtain mercy.

Sidonius Apollinaris accepted the spiritual government of the Arvernian church with great humility, and bowed his head under the yoke of the priesthood, full of confidence in Him who had snatched him from the preoccupations of the century, to give him a distinguished part in the inheritance of His pontiffs. If he knew his spiritual indigence, he also knew, with Paulinus of Nola, that God, who gives wisdom to the simplest, would know how to glorify in him the high functions with which He had invested him, and make him worthy of his duties, despite his unworthiness. He was raised to the see of the city of Auvergne in the year 472. The precise date of his election is known, because he says himself that Lupus of Troyes then had forty-five years of episcopate. Now, it is known in a certain manner that Saint Lupus was named bishop of Troyes in 427. But history has transmitted to us nothing particular on the circumstances of this election.

Hardly had the news of his election spread in Christian Gaul, than it caused great joy there. The church of Auvergne expected much from this eminent personage, whose birth and dignities occupied in the century would give one more luster to his spiritual administration, while his riches would come to feed the source of public alms. It could hope, moreover, that his virtue and his courage would preserve it from the misfortunes with which the Barbarians threatened it, and that the high influence he had acquired in the direction of Western affairs would be a strong barrier to oppose to Visigothic Arianism.

The other churches applauded this choice, and the principal bishops of Gaul, who knew Sidonius Apollinaris by himself or by that renown that his qualities had spread far and wide, drew the best auguries from his episcopate. Patiens, Euphronius of Autun, Fonteius of Vaison, Faustus of Riez, Mamertus of Vienne, and all the learned priests he had known, joined the Christian families of the Gallo-Roman patriciate to surround with their prayers and their wishes the first steps of the new Pontiff in this sacred militia where he will henceforth have to defend the holiest of causes, that of God and His Church.

But among the bishops who wrote to him to testify to the joy they had at his promotion, and to exhort him to fulfill worthily the functions to which he had been called, no testimony must have touched him more deeply than that of Lupus of Troyes, regarded then as the father of bishops, less because of his old age than by reason of his virtues which made him so venerable in the eyes of Christian Gaul. A friendship begun in the century united him to Sidonius Apollinaris. He followed him with a father's gaze through the vicissitudes of his political life. When he learned that he had embraced the priesthood, he could not contain his transports, and wrote to him immediately a letter, which is one of the most beautiful monuments of his charity and his eloquence. It breathes the most vivid tenderness and the deepest faith. He saw, in the advent of Sidonius to the episcopate, a motive of consolation for the Church in the midst of its ills, and for Sidonius himself, an occasion to rise through humility to a greatness unknown to men, but the only one that was solid in the eyes of God. He joined to that advice which he confirmed by the authority of his great age, and seemed to designate him as heir to his apostolic labors, in this church of the Gauls, all full of his virtues and his name.

As soon as Sidonius Apollinaris was on the episcopal see of Auvergne, he omitted nothing to rise to the level of his new ministry. Persuaded that the most effective way to edify souls was to sanctify himself, he undertook this arduous and beautiful task without delay. He liked to say, like Paulinus of Nola, in the early days of his priesthood: "Now that we are delivered from the weight of foreign things, we must consecrate to God all that is truly ours, that is to say, offer Him in sacrifice, as it is written, our heart, our soul, our body, and make of ourselves a holy temple. For we do not possess only money, lands, and other external goods: we have other goods which are our habits and the desires of our heart. To sell these goods through mortification is truly to strip oneself." However, the bishop's mission was not limited solely to striving for the summit of Christian perfection. Charged with leading the people in the direction of their moral and religious paths, he had to extend his solicitude to their needs at every moment, enlighten them with his counsel, and pour out from the depths of his heart, as from an inexhaustible spring, the most touching consolations upon the deepest miseries. Thus the Church measured the extent of its duties by the very height of its dignity. It entrusted to him the care of all Christian institutions, abbeys, monasteries, and religious associations of the diocese; and furthermore, in the relations he had to have with the various members of his flock, it constituted him the father of the poor, the support of widows and orphans, the hope of the afflicted, and the refuge of the unfortunate.

Sidonius Apollinaris knew the nature and extent of these obligations when he was called to the government of the Church of Auvergne. It was to fulfilling them that he henceforth devoted all his care. Embracing with a sure and rapid glance the spiritual and civil interests of his dear Arverni, he wished to be their father and their support in the difficult circumstances in which they found themselves. Nothing daunted his zeal and his courage, neither the vast extent of his diocese, nor the efforts that Polytheism and Druidism were making to revive, nor the threatening clamors made by the Visigoths posted behind the Cévennes.

He owed himself first to his Church. As religion began to flourish there, it was necessary to maintain and develop the seeds of faith, to watch over the fervor of the monasteries which were true centers of moral and literary culture, to found new Christian communities, to direct the clergy according to the rules of consummate prudence, and to spread the lights of the Gospel into the corners of the land that remained in idolatry. To know the needs of his people and to better remedy them, he traveled through the different parts of his diocese, winning the people by the charm of his virtues and his benefits, instructing them with solid discourses, and arming them by the exposition of the true doctrine against the seductions of Arianism, which had already perverted many minds, especially in the provinces that were under the Visigoths and the Burgundians. Auvergne counted no less on Sidonius Apollinaris for the defense of its liberty, which was threatened every day by cruel and terrible neighbors.

One could, in fact, expect an attack from the Visigoths every day, or receive the backlash of the most unforeseen events that would take place within the imperial government. Italy no longer enjoyed any rest, and the shadow of civil war did not cease to wander around the ramparts of Rome. Soon Anthemius was massacred by the orders of Ricimer and Rome devastated. Gaul felt the effects of this revolution. Euric, finding the field free for his conquests, listened only to his ambition and his fanaticism, and weighed with all the force of his rigors and threats upon the provinces that had only reluctantly accepted his domination. The situation of southern Gaul was most deplorable under this violent and bloodthirsty prince. He pursued with his hatred all those who remained attached to the Roman cause, and marked his victories and excursions above all by the ravaging of churches. Persuaded that he owed the success of his designs and enterprises to his zeal for Arianism, he relentlessly persecuted the Catholics of his states. In his relentlessness, he attacked bishops by preference as the source of the priesthood, and condemned them to exile or death. Novempopulania and the two Aquitaines were especially the theater of this persecution. The bishops Crocus and Simplicius were violently torn from their sees and cast far from their dioceses. Those of Bordeaux, Périgueux, Rodez, Limoges, Gabale, Eauze, Bazas, Comminges, and Auch were massacred along with many others, among whom must be included Valerius of Antibes, Gratian of Toulon, Deuterius of Nice, and Leontius of Fréjus.

What increased the evil every day was that it was not permitted to fill the void caused by the death of the pontiffs, and to replace them with new bishops who could confer the ministries of the lower orders. Thus desolation and mourning reigned everywhere in the dioceses and parishes. The tops of the temples threatened to collapse; the fury of the Visigoths had been unleashed even upon the doors, which they had removed, so that brambles and thorns grew on the threshold of the basilicas and closed their entrance. The herds themselves came to lie down in the middle of the half-open vestibules, or penetrated into the interior of the sanctuary to graze on the grass that lined the sides of the sacred altars.

Solitude reigned not only in the country parishes, but also in the city churches, where meetings became very rare. A mortal blow was dealt to discipline. The very memory of public prayers tended to fade, and as the clerics who died received no successor from episcopal blessing, the priesthood and religion, the sacraments and the worship of Catholicism, everything in these unhappy churches was confounded in a common ruin. Nothing was as lugubrious as the image of this spiritual desolation. At this sight, the people despaired of the loss of faith, and fell into such desolation that even the heretics themselves would have been moved.

Sidonius Apollinaris, witness to this persecution, felt a profound affliction when he saw the Visigoths establishing themselves amidst the blood of the faithful and upon the ruins of the Catholic faith. The bishop saw only the misfortunes of the Church, and in the blows that Euric dealt to the Church of the Gauls, he feared less those that struck the walls of the Romans than those that reached the Christian laws. The thought that Auvergne would escape these calamities sustained him amidst the terror that had invaded minds. But to what point could the shadow of liberty that still remained reassure one, when it was known that the Visigoths, impatient within the limits of their Septimania, were only waiting for a favorable moment to occupy this corner of land that excited their covetousness?

Upon returning to his Church, Sidonius Apollinaris devoted himself entirely to his duties and the salvation of his flock. If, on the one hand, he worked to preserve the faithful from the contagion of error, on the other, he never ceased to bolster the courage of those often disconcerted by the alarming progress of the Barbarians. Auvergne relied on his vigilance; and he would have ensured its rest and freedom, had holiness and devotion been enough to achieve such a result. A noticeable change took place in his spirit. As much as he had devoted himself to profane sciences, once engaged in the priesthood, he gave himself over to Christian science, to the science of God. He no longer saw in the charms of human eloquence anything but brilliant dreams capable of seducing young minds; it seemed to him that, admitted to the school of true wisdom, he should no longer read or compose anything but serious writings.

Sidonius devoted the first studies of his episcopate to the Holy Scriptures, and owed it to the meditations he made upon them to grasp their meaning and spirit. He did not wish to venture alone into the paths of hermeneutics that he had not yet explored; he took with him Origen and Jerome, who were considered the most esteemed and extensive commentators. He studied their works, and soon acquired such renown himself in the knowledge of the Scriptures that the oldest bishops of Gaul, and persons of high dignity, consulted him on the most difficult passages and begged him to send them commentaries. He was not unaware that the Holy Scriptures contained the true doctrine of heaven, and it was from this source that he drew abundantly the waters of truth and grace, in order to pour them in wider streams upon the hearts of others. Thus, in this type of knowledge, his learning became very extensive; he even passed for one of the most skillful interpreters that Christian Gaul possessed. A great advantage he derived from this was that very science of Christianity with which the Doctors of the Church had filled their writings, and for which he was hardly prepared by his political life and his profane studies. But as dogmatics had to have a large place in the knowledge of a bishop, he perfected himself in it by studying those masterpieces where the Fathers of the first centuries dug that vast furrow from which theology brought forth those magnificent Summas that contain, in an admirable whole, the entire doctrine of Catholicism.

The Gallo-Roman churches, most of them evangelized by Eastern bishops, such as Irenaeus, Photinus, Saturninus, Crescentius, and Trophimus, had adopted the liturgies of the East, but no doubt not without some alterations. The need for greater unity was felt as early as the 5th century: it was understood, at least, that there was a necessity to gather all the prayers of the liturgy into one single body, in order to fix them more securely by means of writing; and, in many dioceses, the most learned men were charged with this task. In Vienne, Claudianus Mamertus often stole away from his philosophical labors to occupy himself with regulating the divine office and marking the lessons that were to be said on the principal feasts of the year. In Marseille, Musaeus, one of the most distinguished priests of that city, devoted himself to the same studies. For the Church of Auvergne, it was Sidonius Apollinaris himself who undertook this work. He collected all the monuments of the liturgy, arranged with order the lessons of the Prophets, the Gospels, and the Apostles, and, joining them to the apostolic canon with the prayers he had composed, he made, for the use of his Church, a Missal or Sacramentary which Gregor y of Tours used and whi Missel ou Sacramentaire Liturgical collection composed by Sidonius for the church of Auvergne. ch he enriched with a preface.

As for the profane poetry that so often occupied his leisure time, he renounced it from the beginning of his new ministry. His profession as a bishop seemed to him too grave for him to still permit himself those exercises of the imagination where the fire, movement, and lightness of poetry do not always reconcile with the serious occupations of the priesthood. The glory of verse touched him less than the thought of eternity, and, although he recognized that poetry could be, in the secular world, a useful and pleasant diversion, he no longer believed it worthy of occupying his mind. It was time, according to him, to think of eternal life rather than a lasting fame, and to remember that after death, it will not be our works, but our deeds that will be weighed. Thus, he only thought of some of the productions of his youth to express his regret for having composed them. But while abandoning profane poetry, he reserved the right to take up his songs again to celebrate the Saints and the Martyrs.

Sidonius Apollinaris would have liked to reach a land where, far from the Barbarians, he could enjoy full freedom in the exercise of his ministry. His character, the circumstances, the sorrow of the Arverni, and the fear of seeing them fall into the traps of Arianism, all imposed another course of action upon him. Duty required him to be in the midst of his people: he remained there to share their privations, and resolved not to leave them unless torn away by violence. His presence in Auvergne cast a shadow over his new masters. Euric viewed with concern the influence he held over the Catholic populations, and thinking that he would be an obstacle to his designs, he resolved, in the interest of his policy, to tear from his people the one who was their support and father.

The faithful of Auvergne, upon learning of the cruel order that removed from his diocese the one who was its support, and in circumstances where they would have had the greatest need of his guidance, felt deep sorrow. They were therefore to be delivered to the violence of the Visigoths and exposed to the seductions of Arianism, without finding from their bishop the support and enlightenment that such pressing dangers demanded. His departure indeed moved every heart, and the tears of his people told him, in a painful farewell, how much attachment there was for him in the depths of this city of Auvergne. He could not leave it without bitter regrets, thinking of its misfortunes and perils.

He was led out of his diocese and relegated to a fortress located on the borders of Narbonensis, twelve miles from Carcassonne; it was called Livia and later bore the name of Campendu. The days of exile were bitter for Sidonius Apollinaris. Locked in a dark dungeon, watched by guards whose mission was to observe his every move, he felt all the evils of adversity. The sun, while illuminating the walls of his house, made the memory of that adoptive homeland, which constantly occupied his thoughts, more sensitive and cruel. The nights were spent in long sighs, torn from him by the fear of the evils with which his people might perhaps be burdened. Faith and resignation made them less harsh: they were softened by the belles-lettres, whose company follows those who cultivate them everywhere.

Whether Euric consulted the interests of his glory, which could suffer from the persecution exercised against Sidonius, or whether he regarded it as a more suitable means to win over the peoples of Auvergne to return to them a bishop whose deliverance they called for with all their wishes, he had the doors of the tower of Livia opened. His return was greeted with unanimous transports: by the joy they felt, the Arverni understood that they had found again a savior and a father. His first care was to ensure for himself whether his people had not suffered too much, in his absence, from the rigors of a barbarian domination, and whether their faith had not been shaken by the attacks of some false teachers who worked to undermine the Catholic faith in souls. His bishop's heart expanded when he saw that these errors had made no progress in his diocese, and that the zeal of the innovators had failed before the attachment of the faithful to their beliefs. He understood, however, that the religious situation of Auvergne was full of uncertainties, and that the duty of a bishop, in such circumstances, was to contribute, by all possible means, to the calming of minds and the strengthening of the truth. To fulfill such a mission, there were battles to be fought, difficulties to be overcome, and trials to be endured. Sidonius had a heart great enough not to bend under the weight of this task; he did not have it firm or hard enough not to feel the pains that came to him from such a delicate position.

Thus he devoted the latter age of his life to prayer; and, to render the judgments of God more favorable to him, he erased in tears and repentance the faults whose memory troubled his conscience. It seems that after an administration as gentle and prudent as his, he should have ended his days in rest. God, who loves to test his servants in order to make them more worthy of his rewards, permitted him to endure contradictions whose bitterness saddened the end of his episcopate.

Two priests of his clergy, supported no doubt by the Arian party that he had so vigorously fought, rose up against him and subjected him to the most unworthy treatment. They were named Honorius and Hermanchius. Not content with having taken fr Honorius Western Roman Emperor who abolished the gladiatorial games after the death of Telemachus. om him the government of his Church, in contempt of discipline and canonical laws, they squandered his goods and left him only resources of extreme modesty to subsist. Sidonius Apollinaris accepted this injury with resignation and showed that if, in the holiest of states, there are men unhappy enough to dishonor it by their vices, there are always those worthy enough to raise it up by their merits. The injustice of which he was the victim was not of long duration; divine clemency shortened its course. A punishment, which could only come from heaven, struck one of the guilty and avenged Sidonius, who thought only of suffering and forgiving. Honorius, little satisfied with having despoiled his bishop, pushed his audacity to the point of wanting to drive him from the church: his design, once decided, he communicated to some of his partisans on the eve of the day he intended to accomplish it.

Now, the next day having come, and the signal for Matins having been given, people were going to the church of Saint Mary in order to celebrate the divine praises in choir. Honorius had risen, gall in his soul, and determined to accomplish the sacrilegious plot he had hatched the previous day. God stopped him at the moment when, while going to the church, he was rolling these dark thoughts. As he had entered a secret place, he there breathed his last. His servant was waiting, a light in his hand, for him to come out: the day was beginning to dawn, and Hermanchius, his accomplice, had, in his impatience, sent a messenger with orders to tell him: "Come without further delay, so that we may execute what we agreed upon yesterday." The inanimate body gave no answer. The servant opened the door and found his master lifeless. The news of such a strange death spread immediately; and, as it had taken place under the same circumstances as that of Arius, one did not hesitate to say that God had wished to punish the same crime with the same punishment. One cannot, in fact, doubt, says Gregory of Tours, that there is no crime of heresy where, in the Church, one does not obey the priest of God, to whom the conduct of the flock has been entrusted, and where one interferes in a power that one has received neither from God nor from men.

The persecution from which Sidonius had suffered ceased, and the schismatic priest who remained, Hermanchius, was forced to hide his crime and his shame in the face of the great number of those who proclaimed the innocence of their bishop. Sidonius resumed the course of his administration in peace, amidst the general satisfaction of his diocese, where all the faithful, without distinction, wished him a long and happy old age.

Auvergne, so long agitated by continual fears, had found a little calm in the final years of his pontificate. The Church pursued its civilizing mission there without hindrance; basilicas were being built in greater numbers in the cities and municipalities; monasteries received a greater number of cenobites within their peaceful cloisters, and Arianism, troubled in its zeal for propaganda by the vigilance of the pastor, cast only pale glimmers beside the Gallic Druidism and Roman Polytheism, which presaged its coming decadence. People loved religion, seeing it honored by the brilliant qualities of Sidonius, and his paternal authority, by imposing it, made its practice sweeter and easier. His activity, despite the weight of years that began to make itself felt, met the needs of his vast diocese. If sometimes illness or the multiplicity of affairs checked the ardor of his zeal, he unburdened himself of a portion of his cares upon Aprunculus who, brought to Auvergne by persecution and exile, generously pa id his de Apruncule Successor of Sidonius Apollinaris to the see of Clermont. bt of hospitality there by devoting himself to it.

One could therefore still expect better days: it was not an illusion to believe that, thanks to the lights and wisdom of Sidonius, religion would continue to spread and flourish. But God reserved a cruel trial for the church of Auvergne, by shortening this life upon which such dear hopes rested. Sidonius Apollinaris was seized by a grave illness, and the fever, redoubling in violence, soon put his days in peril. He did not hide from himself the gravity of his malady, and fearing the consequences more than the horrors of death, he employed the last moments of his life to die well. His faith reawakened with new ardor, and the fear of eternal judgments seizing his soul with a salutary dread, he resolved to forestall them by a new expiation. Prepared for this departure from life by those Christian ideas which so often showed him its brevity and nothingness, he rejoiced, like the Saints, in seeing that his chains were about to break and his exile to end. The desire to enter soon into the heavenly homeland made him conceive that of dying at the foot of the holy altars, where the thought of God, rendered more familiar, would tear him sooner from the earth, and would make more sensible to him the glory and the rewards he hoped to enjoy.

According to the wishes he had expressed to his own who surrounded him with their care and devotion, Sidonius Apollinaris was transported to the church of Saint Mary. Scarcely had he been placed there on a bed that had been prepared near the altar, than a multitude of men, women, and children came there to render to the venerable sick man the duties of their piety and their gratitude. Seeing stretched out on the parvis of the temple the one who had been the support of the weak and the poor, and seeing those gazes fade from which had sprung upon them flashes of love and truth, they could not contain the emotion that pressed upon them. Sobs betrayed their grief, and they interrupted them only to make heart-rending farewells heard. There, in that enclosure where, after fourteen centuries, we still believe we see and hear them, they said: "Why do you abandon us, good pastor? To whom do you leave us like orphans? What will our life be after your passing? Will there henceforth be someone to dispense to us with as much care the salt of wisdom? Who will lead us back with the same prudence to the fear of the name of the Lord?"

These words and others summarized this edifying and useful life which knew, in the episcopate, only how to devote itself to the happiness of others. It was already a funeral oration, pronounced in the midst of the tears of a dismayed people over a tomb that was about to open; but stronger and more eloquent than a studied speech, it also made better known the loss that the city and the Church of Auvergne would soon have to deplore.

Touched by the regrets that the sight of his coming death drew from his flock, Sidonius Apollinaris wished, even in his final moments, to provide for its salvation, by leaving it a pastor capable of continuing his work. He had noticed in Aprunculus a mixture of firmness and prudence, such as was needed to govern the Church of Auvergne in these difficult times that Christian Gaul was traversing. Now, while, all moved by the sobs and farewells of his people, he searched in his mind who could administer his spiritual interests with more advantage, he turned toward the crowd that surrounded him; and, as if the Holy Spirit had touched his heart and his lips, he interrupted the sobs, saying: "Fear nothing, O my peoples; my brother Aprunculus still lives, he will be your bishop." The people, who had held back their cries and their tears in order to better gather the supreme words of a father so tenderly loved, did not at first know what he was saying, and believed he was speaking in ecstasy. This prophecy was nevertheless to be fulfilled, since after the death of Sidonius, Aprunculus was chosen to succeed him.

The church remained invaded by the multitude, without one being able to tear it away from this funeral bed beside which it had come to exhale its plaints and its grief. So much love should have held to life the one who was its object. Sidonius Apollinaris could not resist the violence of his malady. He mingled a supreme prayer with his last sigh, and he exhaled in the midst of his people and his family, for a better life, this earthly life, which he had filled with merits and devotion. He died under the reign of Zeno, around the year 489, the 23rd of the month of August, the day on which his feast is celebrated, and on which he appears in the Roman Martyrology.

The news of this death was scarcely spread in the city of Auvergne, than everyone ran to the basilica of Saint Mary, to see and kiss one last time the remains of the holy bishop. Already, under the sway of a veneration as legitimate as it was general, they ranked them among those precious remains of Saint Lawrence, of Saint Austremonius, of the saints Agricol and Vital which composed the sacred wealth of the altars and the temple. The tears did not dry up, at the memory of this recollection consecrated by so many virtues whose account passed from mouth to mouth, in the midst of the consternation of the faithful. If some wept for a friend, others regretted a father, the afflicted lost a support, the poor groaned over the death of a benefactor.

In the entire city, one recalled with a common voice the virtues of the bishop and the qualities of the citizen. All retold what there had been of wisdom in his conduct, of sweetness and vigilance in his administration, of intelligence and devotion in the spiritual and civil direction of the country. In counting his years, one found his life too short: in thinking of his merits, one found it long and holily filled.

CULT AND RELICS. — HIS WRITINGS.

The church of Saint-Saturnin, where the remains of Sidonius Apollinaris were preserved, was in the environs of Clermont, to the south of that city, beyond the gardens of Rabonesse and the hospital cemetery, to the left of the path that leads to Renonnoot, in the middle of the territory of the Piats, and near the rocks known under the name of Saint-Amandin. The church of Saint-Saturnin still existed in the tenth century. When, later, it had been destroyed by the misfortune of wars, the relics of Sidonius Apollinaris were transferred to the basilica of Saint-Genès. The memory of this translation was kept on July 11. His bones were enclosed in a shrine that one saw to the right of the main altar. Several other churches disputed with it the honor of possessing some remains of Sidonius Apollinaris. The cathedral church kept some preciously in its rich and sacred jewels, where it venerated the immortal dust of its first pontiffs. His cult has been perpetuated so constantly in the parish of Aydat, that certain historians have believed that he had been buried there. The churches of Orcival and Vertaizon had the same advantage.

Time and revolutions have not respected the remains of Sidonius Apollinaris. The churches that protected his cult and were in turn the depositories of his ashes have disappeared from the soil. For many centuries, the church of Saint-Saturnin has no longer existed: only the rocks of Saint-Amandin perpetuate its memory. The basilica of Saint-Genès no longer exists; one sees only a square that has kept its name. At the Revolution, the shrine of Saint Sidonius disappeared. The church of Auvergne can no longer, without doubt, venerate the relics of the holy Pontiff, but it has not ceased to include them in the public homages it renders to its martyrs and its saints. For a long time it celebrated his feast on August 23, under the minor double rite: today it celebrates it on July 11, under the double rite.

We have from Saint Sidonius Apollinaris a collection of poetry containing twenty-four poems on different subjects, and nine books of letters. The principal of his poems are the panegyrics of the emperors Avitus, Majorian, and Anthemius. His verses announce that he had facility and talent for poetry. He applied himself less to polishing them when he had become bishop. His thoughts are ingenious and delicate; his style is tight, lively, and pleasant; but one remarks there sometimes affectation and bombast. He employs expressions that show that in his time the Latin language had degenerated from its primitive purity. His imagination is brilliant, and he excels in descriptions.

In 1609, Savaron published his works with learned commentaries, in an in-4° volume, in Paris. In 1622, Father Sirmond gave another edition much more complete, which he enriched with new notes, in an in-4° volume; this edition was inserted in the collection of the works of Father Sirmond, printed in 1696.

We have drawn this biography from the History of Saint Sidonius Apollinaris and his Century, by the Abbé Chaix; from the Literary History of France, by Dom Rivet. — Cf. Tillemont; Godescard; the History of the Church, by the Abbé Darras; Dom Ceillier.