Avitus

Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus, known as Saint Avitus of Vienne, was a Gallo-Roman bishop, theologian, and Latin poet of the late fifth and early sixth centuries. He came from the senatorial aristocracy of Auvergne in Roman Gaul; his father Hesychius (also spelled Isychius) later held the see of Vienne, and his brother Apollinaris became bishop of Valence. The family was related to the short-reigned Western Roman emperor Eparchius Avitus. Raised in that Christian elite, Avitus received a classical Latin education together with a thorough grounding in Scripture, which is evident in both his verse and his letters. An exact year and place of birth are not securely recorded; sources place his origins in Auvergne or the Viennoise in the mid-fifth century.

He succeeded his father as bishop of Vienne, then a metropolitan see inside the Burgundian kingdom, toward the end of the fifth century (commonly dated around 490). In a realm whose royal house was largely Arian, Avitus became one of the principal Catholic voices of southeastern Gaul. He worked for the conversion of King Sigismund from Arianism to Nicene Christianity, corresponded with bishops in Gaul, Italy, and the East, and supported the authority of the Roman see during the Acacian schism. In 517 he was a leading figure at the Council of Epaone, which issued disciplinary canons for the Burgundian church. His surviving letters are a major source for the political and ecclesiastical history of Gaul and the Burgundian court in this period.

Avitus is also remembered as a Christian Latin poet. His chief work is the biblical epic De spiritalis historiae gestis, in five books, treating Creation, the Fall, the Flood, and the crossing of the Red Sea. A related poem, De consolatoria castitatis laude, is addressed to his sister Fuscina, a consecrated virgin. The poems combine classical epic technique with pastoral and doctrinal aims and were read in the Middle Ages as models of Christian verse. He should not be confused with the emperor Avitus, nor with other early medieval saints of the same name, such as Avitus of Micy.

He died in the early sixth century; 5 February 518 is the date most often given in later calendars and is kept as his feast. Precise details of his burial are not firmly established in the early sources. Later tradition venerated him as a saint of the church of Vienne. He was never Bishop of Rome or a patriarch of an Eastern see, and there is no reliable evidence that he belonged to a religious order, as distinct from the secular episcopate of late antique Gaul.