Hesychius II

Hesychius II, also known in the Latin sources as Isicius or Isychius (French: Isice or Hésychius), was bishop of Vienne in the Rhône valley of Gaul in the later fifth century. Historians distinguish him from an earlier bishop of the same see, Hesychius I, who held office in the early fifth century. Vienne was then one of the principal cities of southeastern Gaul and the seat of a metropolitan bishop. Hesychius II occupied the see after Saint Mamertus, the bishop remembered for instituting the Rogation processions, and before his own son Avitus. His episcopate therefore falls in the period when the Burgundian kingdom was consolidating its power in the region after the effective end of Western Roman imperial administration in Gaul.

He belonged to a prominent Gallo-Roman senatorial family. Before becoming bishop he appears to have followed the traditional aristocratic path of civil office; some scholars identify him with a Hesychius who served as praetorian prefect of Gaul, though that identification is not certain. He was married to a woman named Audentia. The couple had children who themselves became leading churchmen: Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus, who succeeded his father as bishop of Vienne and whose letters, poems, and theological works are among the most important Latin sources for Burgundian Gaul; and Apollinaris, who became bishop of Valence. A sister of Avitus named Fuscina is also mentioned in the family circle as having taken up the religious life. This pattern—an aristocratic household in which the father moved from secular office into the episcopate and sons followed him into the church—was characteristic of the Gallic episcopate in the fifth century.

As bishop, Hesychius would have been responsible for the Christian community of Vienne and for metropolitan functions in the surrounding region at a time of political and religious complexity. The Burgundian rulers were in this period generally Homoian (Arian) in confession, while the Gallo-Roman population and its bishops were Nicene. Direct evidence for Hesychius’s own acts, sermons, or correspondence does not survive in the way that the writings of Mamertus’s brother Claudianus Mamertus or of Avitus himself have survived. Episcopal catalogues and the biographical notices attached to Avitus are the principal means by which his tenure is reconstructed. He is generally placed in the last quarter of the fifth century, with his death and the accession of Avitus dated by modern historians to around 490.

Little is recorded of the circumstances of his death or of his burial. He is presumed to have died at Vienne, the city of his see. Later tradition has sometimes numbered him among the holy bishops of Vienne, but he is less firmly established in the martyrological record than the earlier Hesychius of Vienne, and no universally recognized feast day or patronage is securely attached to him. His historical importance rests less on a documented cult than on his place in a remarkable episcopal dynasty and on the light his family throws on how senatorial elites in late antique Gaul assumed leadership of the church during the transition from Roman to Burgundian rule.