UC Riverside

Although a recognizably Christian man, Sidonius adhered to explicitly traditional Roman cultural practices within his extant writings and encouraged the members of his epistolary network to do the same. Identifying Sidonius as a “man of culture” and a particularly strident version of Roman culture that has largely overshadowed Sidonius as a man of God. Viewing these two aspects of Sidonius’s identity as separate is a false dichotomy that, unfortunately, has been pervasive in understanding Sidonius’s life. Sidonius’s understanding and execution of episcopal office serves as the foundation of the epistolary persona he constructs within the epistolary corpus. A reading of his epistolary collection, which centers religion and Sidonius’s clerical self-awareness, helps us not only understand Sidonius’s construction of an epistolary persona but also how Sidonius viewed his episcopacy. Sidonius’s project of memory – his epistolary collection – is bound up in his role as bishop of Clermont. Sidonius’s episcopal acts are examined by applying seven aspects that make up late antique pastoral care: administration of the church, education of the laity, direction for daily life, social welfare, furthering the mission of the Church, holy intercession, and the application of ritualized forms of care, which can be better understood as the development and use of liturgy. The application of these aspects allows us to see that Sidonius, while undeniably a man of Roman culture, was also a man of God who was concerned with the welfare of his community.