Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

family and friendship in the west 423
Apart from the letters addressed to Sidonius’ son, the now fragmentary
letter collection of Avitus also includes letters to his own brother, another
Apollinaris. 62 Clearly the two brothers were extremely close. Equally close
was the relationship between the two brothers and at least one of their two
sisters, even though no correspondence of Avitus to any one of his female
kin survives. In a remarkable letter Apollinaris describes to his brother a
nightmare, in which a blood-red dove appeared to him, something he experienced
after he had forgotten to commemorate the death-date of one of
their sisters. 63 It is a letter which is paralleled by an equally arresting letter
of Ennodius of Pavia, who saw a ghost of his relative Cynegia, which reprimanded
him for not composing an epitaph for her tomb, an omission he
instantly remedied. 64 The vision and the ghostly visitation suggest that,
among the senatorial aristocracy, the relationship between the family and
its members drew on much that lay beyond the terms of reference of the
New Testament. Two Christian bishops of the early sixth century were
overcome with guilt in the face of manifestations of their dead relatives.
Their reactions seem to draw on pagan assumptions about ancestral spirits;
Sidonius’ anger at the desecration of his grandfather’s grave might reasonably
be placed in the same context. 65
The absence or near-absence of letters addressed to women in the letter
collections of Sidonius, Avitus and to a lesser extent Ruricius is worth noting
– though its significance is by no means apparent: letters, after all, are only
likely to cast light on the relationships of those living some distance apart.
Clearly, women were not insignificant to Sidonius, Avitus or Ruricius.
Ruricius’ circle of female correspondents is slightly wider than those of the
other two, though not greatly so. Ceraunia he wrote to jointly with her
husband Namatius 66 and separately as a would-be ascetic. 67 He wrote to two
other husband-and-wife teams, Eudomius and Melanthia, 68 and Parthenius
and Papianilla. 69 By contrast, Ennodius corresponded with a number of
women, as well as his sisters. This comparative absence of female correspondents
in the collections of Sidonius, Avitus and Ruricius is highlighted not
only by the greater number of female recipients of the writings of Ennodius,
but also by the clear importance of women among the recipients of the
poems of Venantius Fortunatus. In Avitus’ works the absence is, however,
compensated for by one of the great expressions of family piety, the epic
poem the Consolatoria de castitatis laude, which is nothing more nor less that an
exploration of the history of virginity among the bishop’s female relatives. 70
Moreover, these virgins were, in the eyes of the bishop, the outstanding
saints of the family, easily eclipsing the virtues of their male counterparts.
62 Avitus, Epp. 13, 14, 27, 61, 71, 72, 87, 88. 63 Avitus, Ep. 13; see also 14; Wood (1996).
64 Ennodius ccclxi, ccclxii; Wood (1996). 65 Sid. Ap. Ep. 3.12. 66 Ruricius, Epp. 2.1, 2, 3, 4.
67 Ruricius, Epp. 2.15, 50. 68 Ruricius, Ep. 2.39. 69 Ruricius, Ep. 2.37.
70 Avitus, Carm. vi.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008