426 Gaul and the Church 



serf, bound to the soil on which his lord places him, nominally free, but 

 unable to stir from the spot 1 to which his labour gives a value. If he 

 runs away, the hue and cry follows him, and he is brought ignominiously 

 back to the servile punishment that awaits him unless he can make his 

 way to some barbarian tribe. Whether he would find himself so much 

 better off in those surroundings as Salvian seems to imply, must be 

 left doubtful. Any family that he might leave behind would remain in 

 serfage under conditions hardly improved by his desertion. 



LX. APOLLINARIS SIDONIUS. 



The last of our array of witnesses is Apollinaris Sidonius 2 (about 

 430-480), a writer whose life is singularly illustrative of the confused 

 period in which the Roman empire was tottering and the series of 

 luckless emperors was ended in the West. Britain had been finally 

 lost in the time of Honorius. The Armorican provinces had rebelled, 

 and even now the hold of Rome on them was slight and precarious. 

 The rest of Gaul and much of Spain and Africa had been subject to 

 barbarian inroads, and numbers of the invaders were settled in the 

 country : for instance, the Western Goths were fully established in 

 Aquitania. But the Roman civilization was by no means wiped out 

 Roman landlords still owned large estates : Romans of culture still 

 peddled with a degenerate rhetoric and exchanged their compositions 

 for mutual admiration. Panegyrics on shadowy emperors were still 

 produced in verse and prose, and the modern reader may often be 

 amazed to note the way in which the troubles of the time could be 

 complacently ignored. Above all, there was the Church, closely con- 

 nected with Rome, claiming to be Catholic and Orthodox, a stable 

 organization, able to make itself respected by the barbarians. That 

 the latter were Arian heretics was indeed a cause of friction, though 

 the Arians were destined to go under. The conversion of the Franks 

 under the Catholic form did not give Roman Christianity the upper 

 hand till 496. But the power of bishops, ever growing 3 since the days 

 of Constantine, was throughout a powerful influence holding the various 

 communities together, maintaining law and order, and doing much for 

 the protection of their own people. A native of Lugudunum, the chief 

 city of Gaul, Sidonius came of a noble and wealthy family, and his 

 social position evidently helped him in his remarkable career. In 468 

 he was city prefect at Rome, barely eight years before Odovacar re- 



1 Cod Th XI i 26 [399] refers especially to Gaul. He is sei-vus terrae in fact, as Weber 

 Agrargeschichte p 258 remarks. 



2 In Esmein's Melanges [1886] there is an excellent essay on some of the letters of Sidonius 

 discussed here, forestalling a number of my conclusions. 



8 See Seeck II 175 foil. 



