Sidonius Apollinaris

Lupus’ congratulation letter to Sidonius on his consecration as a bishop (Migne PL 58, cols 63-65) has been thought to be a forgery ever since Julien Havet (‘Questions mérovingiennes II, Les découvertes de Jérôme Vignier’, Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes 46 (1885) 205-71) adduced proofs for the inauthenticity of a group of fifth-century documents to which it belongs, which were published from the legacy of Father Jérôme Vignier (1606-1661), possibly inspired by (and rivalling with) recent publications by Duchesne and Sirmond, among others, and aimed to enhance papal authority and post-Tridentine orthodoxy. See, e.g., Ralph Mathisen, ‘PLRE II: Suggested Addenda and Corrigenda’, Historia 31 (1982) 377-78; Frank-Michael Kaufmann, Studien zu Sidonius Apollinaris, Frankfurt am Main 1995, 321-22; Jean-Louis Quantin, ‘Jérôme Vignier (1606-1661), critique et faussaire janséniste?’, Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes 156 (1998) 451-79. These letters were translated in 1706 by Canon Breyer of Troyes, probably unwittingly of their unauthenticity, and are the first translation of any part of Sidonius’ work. See the Translations page on this site, section French.

For the widespread practice in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modernity (1400-1700) of freely inventing the past in order to legitimize the present, see the KNAW research project The Quest for an Appropriate Past, organised by Karl Enenkel and Koen Ottenheym, and its future publication in Brill’s Intersections series. For a Dutch-language audience, they already published Oudheid als ambitie: De zoektocht naar een passend verleden 1400-1700, Nijmegen: Vantilt, 2017.

Jean Anglade (1915-2017), Sidoine Apollinaire, with a preface by Rector Pierre Louis, Clermont-Ferrand: Volcans, 1963 (repr. in Auvergne encore, Paris: Omnibus, 2000).

Jean Anglade and Alain Vivier, L’Auvergnat et son histoire, 2 vols, ‘Des Crocodiles à Sidoine Apollinaire’ and ‘Du VIe siècle aux croisades’, Roanne: Horvath, 1979.

Elisabeth Szwarc (text), Jean-Michel Payet (illustrations), Sidoine Apollinaire. Un Gaulois contre les barbares, Paris: Épigones, 1993.

Guy Azaïs (1942-2021), Sidoine Apollinaire, mémoires imaginaires. Récit, Paris: Thélès, 2008. Second edition entitled Que le jour recommence. Mémoires, Paris: Société des écrivains, 2010.

Denis Montebello (1951-), Au dernier des Romains, Paris: Fayard, 1999.

Philippe Jamet (1961-), Le coucher du Tibre, Paris: Cylibris, 2000.
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Christophe Grégoire, Avitus, l’empereur oublié, Clermont-Ferrand: De Borée, 2024.

Daniel Aranjo, ‘Le latin de la vingt-cinquième heure (Sidoine Apollinaire 1930)’, in: Georges Cesbron and Laurence Richer (eds), La réception du latin du XIXe siècle à nos jours. Actes du colloque d‘Angers des 23 et 24 septembre 1994, Angers 1996, 365-84.
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Poems by Tristan Derème (1889-1941)

Daniel Aranjo, ‘Quatre poèmes modernes sur Sidoine Apollinaire, ses barbares, son époque (1931, 1994, 2004, 2005)’, 2014 (inedit.).
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Poems by Tristan Derème (1889-1941) and Georges Saint-Clair (pseud. of Jean Bégarie, 1921-2016)

For this and further poetry (Laurent Tailhade, Pierre Louÿs), see Filomena Giannotti, Scrinia Arverna. Studi su Sidonio Apollinare, Pisa 2021, 172-76.

Sidonius is among the poets quoted by Mico of Saint-Riquier (d. c. 853) in his Opus prosodiacum, a poetic florilegium to help learning words of difficult prosody. See David Butterfield, ‘Unidentified and misattributed verses in the Opus prosodiacum Miconis’, Museum Helveticum 66 (2009) 155-62.
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He is also present in Pierre d’Ailly (Petrus de Alliaco, 1351-1420), in the introductory lecture to his biblical course (Principium in Cursum Bibliae) at the University of Paris. Sidonius’ Letters are listed among the assets of the sermocinalium scientiarum, grammaticae videlicet et logicae, rhetoricae, et poeticae artis doctores, who have on offer a variety of authors:

‘Alii grammaticalia Prisciani rudimenta, alii logicalia Aristotelis argumenta, alii Rhetoricae Tullii blandimenta, alii poetica integumenta Virgilli; nec solum ista, quin immo Ovidii praesentant fabulas, Fulgentii mythologias, Odas Horatii, O <…> Orosii, Juvenalis Satyras, Senecae Tragoedias, Comoedias Terentiii, Invectivas Salustii, Sidonii Epistolas, Cassiodori Formulas, Declamationes Quintiliani, Decades Titi Livii, Valerii Epitomata, Martialis Epigrammata, Centones Homeri, Saturnalia Macrobii et generaliter singula quae vel suavis lyram Rhetoricae vel gravis Poeticae Musam resonant.’ (col. 612CD)

Further on, when attacking unreliable and selfish lawyers, d’Ailly freely cites Sidonius Ep. 5.7.2 in support:

‘Nam ut Sidonii verbis utar: “Hi sunt qui causas protendunt adhibiti, impediunt praetermissi, fastidiunt admoniti, obliviscuntur locupletati; hi sunt qui emunt lites, vendunt intercessiones, judicanda dictant, dictata convellunt, attrahunt litigaturos, protrahunt audiendos.”‘ (col. 614D)

| Text in Joannis Gersonii Opera Omnia, ed. Louis Ellies du Pin, Antwerp 1706, reprinted Hildesheim 1987, vol. 1, 610-17 | For explanation, see Louis Salembier, Petrus de Alliaco, Lille 1886, 197-99, in Gallica

I am grateful to Helga Köhler for pointing out this source.

In 1533, the copy of Pio’s Sidonius currently in the Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon (Rés Inc 158 (1)) figured in the library of the Lyonese lawyer Benoît Court as he was publishing a commented edition of Martial d’Auvergne’s Cinquante-et-un arrêts d’Amours. This is evidenced by underlined quotations in the text that return in the commentary.
| see Hélène Lannier, ‘Benoît Court en sa bibliothèque: Quelques indices du travail préparatoire à la rédaction des commentaires aux Arrêts d’Amours de Martial d’Auvergne’, Arts et Savoirs 10, ‘Bibliothèques des humanistes français’, 2018, online

André Thevet, Vrais Pourtraits et Vies des Hommes Illustres, Paris, 1584, vol. 3, book 6, chap. 85, pp. 486v-487v. Praises Sidonius for his subventions to impoverished intellectuals (’Sidoine amoureux des gens doctes’) and prefers to remain neutral in the stylistic debate on Cicero’s presumed normativity (’Langage de Sidoine, dequoy taxé’).
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Quotes in Michel de Montaigne‘s (1533-1592) Essais (4th edn 1588):

1.49 Des coutumes anciennes: ‘Les anciens Gaulois, dit Sidoine Apollinaire, portaient le poil long par le devant, et le derrière de la tête tondu, qui est cette façon qui vient à être renouvelée par l’usage efféminé et lâche de ce siècle’
3.5 Sur des vers de Virgile: tetrica sunt amoenanda iocularibus (Ep. 1.9.8)
3.9 De la vanité: laudandis pretiosior ruinis (Carm. 23.62).

The humanist legal expert Jacques Cujas (1522-1590) sought to better understand the Corpus iuris from late Latin poets, among them notably Sidonius. See Xavier Prévost, ‘Jacques Cujas et les poètes de l’Antiquité tardive’, CRMH 24 (2012) 379-403, online here.

Sidonius’ editor Jacques Sirmond (1559-1651), when still a young man, was summoned to Rome by the general of the Jesuit order to serve as his secretary. He describes his arduous voyage from Paris to Rome (August-December 1590) in a Hodoeporicum that is clearly reminiscent of Rutilius’ De reditu suo and, above all, Sidonius’ letter 1.5 with the description of his voyage from Lyon to Rome.

Download here (text and introduction in Luigi Monga, ‘L’Hodoeporicum de Jacques Sirmond, S.J.: Journal poétique d’un voyage de Paris à Rome en 1590′, Humanistica Lovaniensia 42 (1993) 301-22).

The Dukes of Polignac boasted a lineage which went all the way back to Sidonius. The first known history of the Polignac family is L’Histoire généalogique de la Maison de Polignac, by Gaspard Chabron (1570-after 1638), written towards 1625 (discussion and download here). It frames Sidonius’ grandfather as ‘le premier de la lignée de Messieurs de Polignac’ (p. 12), ‘le grand St Sidoine Apollinaire’ as the first to bear the title of count (p. 11), and the Castle of Polignac at Le Puy-en-Velay as their ancestral domain (p. 10). To support his claim, Chabron adduces Savaron’s authority in his comment on Ep. 4.6.2 solidae domus ad hoc aevi inconcussa securitas, ‘the security of the solid house, unshaken up to the present’ (which Sidonius is afraid might be disturbed by the enemy raids), Savaron says that this is the ancient home of the Apollinaris family in Velay, safely perched on the hill, and still visible in his day in all its age-old splendour. (Sirmond, however, saw the correct interpretation of domus: ‘family’.) Legend has it that there is a Temple of Apollo under its ruins.

Sons could be baptized ‘Sidoine-Apollinaire’ or ‘Apollinaire’, for instance Sidoine-Apollinaire-Gaspard-Scipion-Armand de Polignac (1660-1739), who made a military career, and Camille-Louis-Apollinaire de Polignac (1745-1821), bishop of Meaux. The family’s fairy-tale past made it to the gossip columns of the New York Times, 3 Dec. 1882.

See Christian Settipani, ‘Apollinaires et Polignac: état actuel d’une légende’, Héraldique et Genéalogie 106 (1988) 32-35, and ‘Les Polignac: quelques orientations pour la recherche historique et généalogique’, in Studies in Genealogy and Family History in Tribute to Charles Evans on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday, London: Lindsay Brook, 1989, 327-53. For the castle, see Mélinda Bizri, ‘Polignac en Velay, relecture de l’origine et de l’évolution du site. Entre tradition, célébrité et réalité archéologique’, in: Anne-Marie Cocula and Michel Combet (eds), Château, naissance et métamorphoses, Bordeaux, 2011, 93-107 (download here).

Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), freethinking Huguenot, whose Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697, 2nd ed. 1702, 5th ed. 1740, English translation 2nd ed. 1734) was among the most popular works of the eighteenth century, repeatedly resorted to his Savaron copy of Sidonius to cite, and, if needs, criticize him. In volume 1 alone (A-Bi, in the English edition), Sidonius is referred to in the lemmata on Achilles, Anaxagoras, Apollonius, Apuleius, Arcesilas, Athenaeum, and Balbus. Sidonius is criticized for his sloppy treatment of philosophy concerning Anaxagoras and Arcesilas in Carm. 15.79-98, and Savaron for not noticing these errors. The figure of Apollonius of Tyana is attractive to Bayle for his unconventionality and being a challenge to authorities. Here Sidonius’ opinion of Apollonius comes in, with a quotation from Ep. 8.3. Bayle comments: ‘Sidonius Apollinaris has given us a description of Apollonius, which represents him as the greatest of heroes in philosophy. The author of this description does not forget to make his excuses to the Catholic church’ (p. 383). (Bayle thought that Sidonius had written Apollonius’ Life.)

Jean-Baptiste Du Bos (1670-1742), Histoire critique de l’établissement de la monarchie française dans les Gaules, vol. 1 (1734, 2 1742), is a sustained reading, cum extensive translations, of Sidonius’ Panegyrics and Letters, guided by Duchesne and Sirmond.

For an assessment of the abbé Du Bos and his Histoire critique, see Ian Wood, The Modern Origins of the Early Middle Ages, Oxford, 2013, 29-36.

Another sign of the importance Du Bos attached to Sidonius is the link he sees between Sidonius’ picture of a gallery of philosopher portraits and Raphael’s School of Athens. The passage in question is from the Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture, published in Paris in 1709, and repeatedly reprinted and enlarged (transl. Thomas Nugent, 1748):

We find by the epistles of Sidonius Apollinaris [the passage from Ep. 9.9 is quoted in a footnote], that the illustrious philosophers of antiquity had each of them their particular air, figure, and gesture, which were peculiarly appropriated to them in painting. Raphael has made a good use of this piece of erudition from Apollinaris, in his picture of the school of Athens.

This observation is adopted in Diderot & d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, vol. 17 (1765) 484. It belongs in the tradition of the classisizing, philosophical interpretation of the School of Athens which originated in Paris and Rome during the seventeenth century (Fréart and Bellori) as against Vasari’s theological reading. For this debate, see Bram Kempers, ‘Words, Images and All the Pope’s Men. Raphael’s Stanza della Segnatura and the Synthesis of Divine Wisdom’, in: I. Hampsher-Monk et al. (eds), History of Concepts. Comparative Perspectives, Amsterdam, 1998, 131-65. (See the Reception Germany page, for a similar observation by Herman Grimm.)

Alexandre Dumas père (1802-1870), Impressions de voyage. Le Midi de la France, vol. 2, Bruxelles: Hauman, 1841, p. 132. Dumas writes in his chapter on Arles:

La puissance romaine s’éteignit à Arles avec Jules Valère Majorien. Il traversa les Alpes en 438, s’empara de Lyon, et, trouvant, comme Constantin, Arles merveilleusement située, il résolut d’y établir sa cour impériale. Ce fut pendant son séjour en cette ville et dans le palais de Constantin, qu’il invita Sidoine Apollinaire à s’asseoir à sa table ; et c’est à cette circonstance que nous devons la lettre du poëte à Montius son ami, lettre dans laquelle il consigne les détails de ce grand festin, où sept grands seigneurs avaient assisté, et où il fait la description du palais, orné, dit-il, de magnifiques statues placées entre des colonnes de marbre.

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Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907), À rebours, Paris: Charpentier, 1884. Jean Des Esseintes admires Sidonius’ luscious style. See David Amherdt, ‘Sidonius in Francophone Countries’, in: J.A. van Waarden and G. Kelly (eds), New Approaches to Sidonius Apollinaris, Leuven (2013) 23. See also R. Chevallier, ‘La bibliothèque de Des Esseintes ou le latin “décadent”: une question toujours d’actualité’, Latomus 61 (2002) 163-77.

See above at Remy de Gourmont.

Roland Barthes, The Preparation of the Novel: Lecture Courses and Seminars at the Collège de France, 1978-1979 and 1979-1980 (transl. Kate Briggs), New York: Columbia UP, 2011; see p. 8:

Barthes was so delighted to have found an exception among languages in Sidonius’ unique verb scripturire (Ep. 7.18.1) that he always applied it as the word par excellence for the attitude of ‘wanting-to-write’ (’vouloir-écrire’).

Laurent Nunez, Il nous faudrait des mots nouveaux, Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2018, pp. 169-82 chapter ‘Taciturire’.

‘Taciturio: … Je n’ai plus très envie de m’exprimer sur tout ce qui arrive.’ Among other foreign words, Nunez is struck by taciturire and scripturire, cites Deleuze’s ‘Écrire, c’est propre. Parler, c’est sale’, and, after a reading of Carm. 12, concludes that, by introducing barbarisms into the language, Sidonius became a sort of barbarian poet himself. – Look up in catalogue