Abstract:
SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS DID not usually emphasise religion in his self-presentation. He wanted those who read his collected poems and letters to think of him as a man of culture, learning, wit, power, and infl uence. This is also how most modern scholars have thought of him: the last gasp of aristocratic Romanitas in a Gaul increasingly beset by barbarians. Sidonius’ contemporaries and successors, however, sometimes presented him quite differently. The passage quoted above comes from the only letter in Sidonius’ collection which was written by someone other than himself: Ep. 4.2, from Claudianus Mamertus – a letter of complaint against Sidonius for various violations of friendship which emphasised, strikingly, his eminence as a religious fi gure. It referred to a number of activities which we might expect of a late antique bishop but which do not otherwise receive great emphasis in Sidonius’ writings: prayers of intercession, charity to the poor, scriptural study and exegesis. The letter from Claudianus might have been primarily included in the collection to explain an awkward episode, but it also gave Sidonius a chance to show another face to his audience: the conventionally virtuous and dutiful bishop.