Introduction

In 475, Gaius Sollius Apollinaris Sidonius, a Gallo-Roman aristocrat and bishop of Clermont, wrote a letter to his colleague Basilius of Aix, who was part of an imperial embassy sent to the Visigothic king Euric (466–484) by the Roman emperor Julius Nepos (474–475). The embassy’s mission was to negotiate a peace treaty with Euric. In his letter, Sidonius paints a bleak picture of the Catholic Church in the Visigothic kingdom, which at this time stretched from the banks of the Loire and the Rhone to the Atlantic Ocean and across the Pyrenees. Sidonius writes that the bishoprics of various civitates – he mentions Bordeaux, Périgueux, Rodez, Limoges, Javols, Eauze, Bazas, Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges, and Auch – were vacant because their bishops had passed away and no successors had been appointed. Sidonius mentions a ban on the consecration of new bishops that had been introduced by King Euric. Furthermore, he states that a number of bishops – Sidonius mentions Crocus and Simplicius – had been exiled. As Sidonius points out, these sanctions had a disastrous effect on the Catholic Church: Since so many bishoprics were vacant, lower clergymen could not be ordained. Consequently, the aforementioned cities fell prey to a spiritual devastation (‘spiritalis ruinae’), particularly because more clergymen were dying every day and their positions could not be filled. The Catholic parishes had thus been cut off from faith; desperation was taking hold.