Avitus of Vienne

Avitus of Vienne, whose full name was Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus, was a Gallo-Roman aristocrat, bishop, theologian, and Latin poet of the late fifth and early sixth centuries. He came from a prominent senatorial family of southern Gaul. His father, Hesychius (also called Isicius), became bishop of Vienne, and Avitus later succeeded him in that see. His brother Apollinaris was bishop of Valence, and his sister Fuscina lived as a consecrated virgin; Avitus addressed a poem on chastity to her. The family belonged to the educated Gallo-Roman elite of the Rhône valley and the Auvergne and was possibly related to the short-reigned Western emperor Eparchius Avitus, though that kinship is not established with certainty. Avitus received a classical education in rhetoric and a thorough grounding in Scripture, which shaped both his verse and his episcopal correspondence.

He became bishop of Vienne toward the end of the fifth century and served as metropolitan of the province while the city lay under Burgundian rule. The Burgundian kings were Arians, and Avitus devoted much of his episcopate to defending Nicene orthodoxy and to drawing the royal house toward Catholic Christianity. He engaged King Gundobad in theological discussion and is associated with the conversion of Gundobad's son Sigismund to the Catholic faith. His surviving letters show him active in the politics of Gaul: he wrote to Clovis, king of the Franks, in connection with that king's baptism, and he maintained contact with the bishops of Gaul and with the bishops of Rome. He took part in the Council of Epaon in 517, which legislated for church discipline in the Burgundian kingdom. Throughout the Acacian schism he supported the Roman see and urged Eastern and Western churches toward unity on Roman terms.

Avitus was one of the last major Latin poets of late antique Gaul. His chief poem, De spiritalis historiae gestis, is a five-book hexameter epic on episodes from Genesis and Exodus, including the Creation, the Fall, the Flood, and the crossing of the Red Sea. A second poem, De consolatoria castitatis laude, praises consecrated virginity. About eighty letters are extant; they are primary sources for Burgundian court life, for episcopal networks in Gaul, and for papal relations in the early sixth century. Homilies and other prose works survive only in part. His style combines classical literary models with biblical and patristic learning.

He died in the early sixth century, most often dated to 5 February 518, although some older catalogues suggested a date a few years later. He was honoured as a saint in the churches of Gaul. His feast day is 5 February. Later writers, including Gregory of Tours, remembered him as an eloquent Catholic bishop at a barbarian court. He was not a pope or an Eastern patriarch, and no contemporary source records a wife or children. His cult remained primarily local and liturgical and did not develop a wide set of specialized patronages; he is remembered chiefly as the bishop-poet of Vienne and as a witness to the Catholic turn of the Burgundian kingdom.