1.1 Locating Barbatianus in the Fifth Century
Many of the monks, holy healers and bishops of the fifth century who attained the status of saint had contemporary or near-contemporary biographies written by acolytes in order to herald their sanctity and promote their writings, works, shines and relics. For example, Germanus , the bishop of Auxerre who is discussed at length later in this chapter, was worthy of a biography by his follower Constantius of Lyon 30 years after his death in 480; his cult was first connected to a shrine outside of Auxerre, and in the sixth century became the spiritual nucleus of a monastery and church under the control of the city’s bishop, which later came to prominence for its school during the Carolingian renaissance. 1 In fifth-century Italy, with the political turmoil accompanying the waning power of the Western Roman Emperors and incursion by various waves of invaders, the main foci of contemporary hagiography were popes, bishops and clerics, or at the very least, references to their sanctity.
For Pope Leo I , who served during the last years of the Western Roman Empire from 440 to 461, and forged a new identity for Rome as a spiritual, religious and political capital, his legacy was built on many levels. Beyond the physical improvements he left in Rome, he was remembered through a collection of his letters and sermons, the chronicle of Prosper of Aquitaine, who served in his administration, as well as the work of a later hagiographer, who described in miraculous terms how he repelled the forces of Attila. 2 Further still, the bishops Petronius of Bologna and Paulinus of Nola, contemporaries of Leo I, are described not only for their writings but also for their holy lifestyles in Gennadius’s continuation of Jerome’s On the Lives of Illustrious Men, a text which appeared at the end of the fifth century. 3
Unlike these examples, whatever remains of the historical fifth-century Barbatianus is only visible through substantially later sources, primarily the limited mention of the saint in the ninth-century Liber pontificalis ecclesiae Ravennatis (LPR) and the core biographical material of the tenth-century Vita Barbatiani, which positioned the saint in Rome and Ravenna during the first half of the fifth century. In his vita, he was described as a holy man and wonderworker (faciens mirabilia) originally from Antioch, Syria, who arrived in Rome with a colleague just after the installation of Boniface as pope and the end of the schism with Eulalius (an event included in the vita and derived from the Liber pontificalis [ LP ]), around the year 418. Once he was established in Rome, his miraculous capabilities were discovered by Galla Placidia , who solicited him to heal one of her household servants, after which the vita lists a number of his miracles (taken from Sophronius’s miracula of Cyrus and John); only after many wonders were performed did Galla Placidia return to Ravenna with Barbatianus in tow. After helping the empress obtain a relic of John the Evangelist in Ravenna, Barbatianus continued his miracle working (reflecting those originally described by Sophronius), only to eventually pass away: his body taken by the Bishop Peter Chrysologus , embalmed with spices as the relics of saints were treated, and placed in a tomb next to the altar of St. John the Baptist, placing the date of his death at some point between 431 and 450.
The veracity of this biographical account cannot be ascertained; the fifth-century life of Barbatianus is shrouded by his parallels with Ravenna’s patron saint, the first-century Apollinaris , and many aspects of the tenth-century vita were borrowings from other texts used to establish and confirm his sanctity, not to “render a chronological record … but rather to facilitate the growth of the cult.” 4 Yet the context of the fifth century remained essential for the value of the vita in the tenth century as well as the history of Ravenna; in exploring the world in which he was placed by his initial anonymous hagiographers, the later refashioning of the city’s imperial past becomes clearer. It was a period in which the entire Italian peninsula was strained by the arrival of foreign armies, most notably the Visigoths; with Roman forces led by foreign soldiers, like the general Stilicho; and a diminished and itinerant imperial household, pulled between Rome , Milan and Ravenna, a fact also noted in the vita itself. 5 While a number of different non-Latin identities emerged in Italy during this period, there was no mention of non-Romans in the vita outside of Timothy, the Syrian holy man with whom Barbatianus traveled to Rome, the healing of “Graecus, a Gaul by birth,” and Barbatianus himself. 6
The arrival of Barbatianus to Rome from Antioch described in the opening of his vita would not have been especially unusual, as Ravenna and Rome were focal points for traveling bishops and holy men from the East, as well as for bureaucrats and émigrés. For Ravenna especially, which counted all of the early bishops from Apollinaris through Peter Chrysologus as “Syrians ” either by birth or by family origin, the origins of Barbatianus would have seemed perfectly in place. 7 Like the city’s first bishop, who is introduced in the LPR of Agnellus as “Antiochene by birth” and “educated in Greek and Latin letters,” we can assume that Barbatianus would have fit the same mold given the similarities of his background. 8 This stereotype had been long established, and even since the time of the Roman principate, central Italy had been a focal point of immigration from Syria to such an extent that Juvenal mockingly observed that “the Syrian Orontes has flowed into the Tiber.” 9 The attraction of Italy would have remained strong throughout the fifth century, especially given the tumult among various factions and devotions inflaming the city of Antioch. 10
One of the major aspects of life for Barbatianus in the fifth century was his connection to Galla Placidia, who after being freed from her involuntary first marriage to Ataulf, king of the Visigoths, established her court in Italy with her imperial kin: her son Valentinian III and her half-brother Honorius , along with her second husband, Constantius III , who died shortly after the birth of Valentinian in 421. As empress and regent, Placidia became surrounded by holy men and powerful spiritual leaders from across Italy and beyond. These include Pope Leo I, with whom she restored the churc h of San Paolo fuori le mura in Rome and dedicated their work together in a mosaic inscription on the triumphal arch (destroyed in 1823 and subsequently recreated); Peter Chrysologus, the bishop of Ravenna and a doctor of the Church known for his sermons, some of which he offered in the presence of the empress; and Germanus of Auxerre, the well-traveled bishop and revered ascetic who eventually died in Ravenna having traveled from Gaul, and in whose vita Galla appears as sponsor and supplicant.
Beyond the holy man and confessor of Placidia, the name of Barbatianus would not have been out of place. While the name Barbatianus was exceptionally rare during the ninth and tenth centuries when the cult was developing in Ravenna, the name as a diminutive for Barbatius appeared regularly in Italy during Late Antiquity, and a number of men named “Barbatianus” are known from a variety of sources as bishops and heretics, lending further legitimation for Ravenna’s saint in the context of the fifth century.
1.2 “Foreign” Saints in the Late Roman Capital
Evidence, predominantly in the form of inscriptions detailing family origins, suggests a strong link between Syria, and its capital of Antioch, with Italy in the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries. Greek-speaking easterners served as sailors in the Navy, became farmers, and as suggested by the papyri records from Ravenna, by the sixth century, held key positions in the mercantile and banking sectors of the city. 11 In addition to this epigraphic and documentary evidence, the traditional trope of the “holy Syrian” going back to St. Peter and his disciples, including the patron saint of Ravenna, the martyr Apollinaris, suggests the strength of the connection between Ravenna and the East, and it is clear that eastern monks, clergy and holy men would have been welcome in the city.
Writing in the second half of the fifth century, a generation after Barbatianus, the bishop of Clermont and poet Sidonius Apollinaris criticized the influence of Syrians in Ravenna in a letter written in 468. In his long and satirical attack on the city, he stated that “the clergy lend money and the Syrians chant psalms,” creating an inversion of what Apollinaris and his late antique audience expected: Syrian bankers and singing priests. 12 While this is not conclusive evidence as to the depth of the integration of easterners into local practices, it suggests that at many levels, Ravenna differed from other cities in the Western Mediterranean with respect to the size and conspicuousness of its immigrant populations. 13
Another important group in Ravenna with eastern roots (besides bankers and clergy) would have been the military bureaucrats installed by the Byzantine Emperors to govern Italy after the conquest of the Ostrogothic Kingdom in the middle of the sixth century. While this would have little effect on the cult of Barbatianus directly, the core legend of an eastern holy man who becomes a trusted imperial confidant might have resonated with these military governors. Despite their prevalence in epigraphic and literary evidence, it is crucial to note that while there may have been a greater concentration of easterners in Ravenna than in many other Italian cities, the population overall was never very large. 14
Beyond the foothold of Apollinaris and Barbatianus, eastern saints and their lives continued to hold a great deal of interest in Italy; for example, in the ninth century, a movement began in Naples and Rome to translate many of the major (and some of the lesser) eastern vitae and other hagiographic texts, primarily under ...