Friendship in the Works of Venantius Fortunatus Hope Deejune Williard Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of History September 2016 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. The right of Hope Deejune Williard to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. © 2016 The University of Leeds and Hope Deejune Williard - iii - Acknowledgements The help and friendship of many people has shaped the research and writing of this thesis and it is a great pleasure to acknowledge these debts here. Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisors, Professor Ian Wood and Dr William Flynn, for their intellectual generosity and encouragement. Their advice and suggestions have been not only extraordinarily helpful but also most enjoyable to pursue; I have learned more than I can possibly say from them. Individually, I would like to thank Ian for organising weekly early medieval history seminars which were one of the highlights of my time at Leeds and for fostering a community of early medieval historians. I would like to thank Bill for coming on board as a supervisor during the last year of my thesis, for four years of help with Latin translations, and for giving me the opportunity to teach Medieval Latin in my final semester. Various parts of this thesis have been presented at conferences in the UK and overseas, and I would like to thank Dr Conrad Leyser, for the invitation to speak about patronage and friendship in Oxford in 2014; Dr Bruno Dumézil, for inviting me to attend and give a paper at the colloquium on Austrasia in St-Dizier/Rheims in 2015, and Dr Charles Mériaux, for the invitation to attend and speak at a colloquium on the hagiography of Venantius Fortunatus in Rome in 2016. I am also very grateful to the wonderful participants, session chairs, respondents, and attendees at the conference panels, ‘New Approaches to Venantius Fortunatus’, at Kalamazoo and Leeds in 2015. Among them I would like to single out Professor Joseph Pucci, who first introduced me to Fortunatus’ poetry as an undergraduate, and whose friendship I am glad to have. I would like to thank the University of Leeds for the International Research Scholarship which funded my doctorate, and the German History Society, for a fourth-year bursary which supported me during my writing up year. Colleagues and friends in the School of History and Institute for Medieval Studies have proven a source of scholarly inspiration and fellowship; in particular, my deepest thanks to everyone who attended Ian’s seminars. Lastly, I would like to thank Kristin Bergman, Catherine Cooper, Hazel Freestone, Malka Key, Daniel Milstein, Bogdan Smarandache, Nathaniel Stetson and Anna Waymack, for years of friendship and marvellous letters. Above all, my love and gratitude to Graham Barrett, for more than I can say. My gratefulness for the love, encouragement, and support of my parents is immeasurable—they have been a large part of why I love and study history. I would like to thank my twin sister, Anne, the best of friends and walking companions, for her presence in even in absence. It is to her that I dedicate this work. - iv - Abstract This thesis investigates the reception and transformation of Roman ideas of friendship in the Merovingian kingdoms of sixth-century Gaul. The barbarian invasions of Late Antiquity were once seen as the cause of a cataclysmic rupture in Roman culture but I argue that Merovingian elites drew widely from Classical traditions of friendship in their culture and social organisation. Using the poems, letters, and saints’ lives of Venantius Fortunatus (c. 530/540-609?), an Italian-born aristocrat who made his career writing for and about members of Gaul’s elite, I show that the Classical relationship of patronage was subsumed into friendship. Fortunatus has more often been relegated to scholarly footnotes than studied in his own right, but when his works are taken seriously as sources for the mentality of his age our picture of Merovingian society and its debt to Classical culture comes into sharper focus. Fortunatus expressed the relationship between himself and his addressees in terms of parity and equality, as well as dependence and deference, which changes how we understand the structure of the early medieval elite: alongside the patronal language of vertical hierarchy, these linguistic friendships facilitated the creation of horizontal networks through ties of mutual benefit, obligation, and affection. I argue that elite men and women used the hyper-literate conventions of epistolary culture to organise themselves into networks. Such networks were made and maintained to help their members navigate a post-imperial world which remained culturally Roman. The major contribution of my thesis is thus to provide a model for using letters and poems, literary sources medieval historians rarely exploit in full, to chart the social and cultural transition between the later Roman world and the early Middle Ages. - v - Table of Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................... iii Abstract ..................................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents ...................................................................................................... v List of Abbreviations ............................................................................................. viii List of Tables ............................................................................................................. x Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 Life and Career ................................................................................................... 3 The Works of Venantius Fortunatus ................................................................ 10 Previous Studies of Venantius Fortunatus ....................................................... 13 The Blending of Friendship and Patronage in Fortunatus' Works ................... 18 Chapter 1 The Friendly Patron and his Client ......................................................... Introduction ...................................................................................................... 29 Eufronius of Tours ........................................................................................... 31 Martin of Braga ................................................................................................ 35 Felix of Nantes ................................................................................................. 38 Gregory of Tours .............................................................................................. 43 The Duty of Regular Greeting: Commendations and Replies to Invitations ................................................................................................ 48 Offering Thanks for Gifts................................................................................. 53 Advocating on Behalf of Others: Fortunatus’ Appeal to his Patrons............... 58 Doing Favours for his Patrons? Fortunatus and Gregory at Court .................. 62 Writing for a Patron: Gregory’s Familial Commissions .................................. 66 Writing for a Patron: the Commissioning of Prose and Verse Hagiography ............................................................................................ 69 Writing for a Patron: Contemporary Events .................................................... 75 Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 77 Chapter 2 Episcopal and Lay Building Projects ...................................................... Introduction ...................................................................................................... 80 Episcopal Building Projects in Merovingian Gaul .......................................... 82 A Church Dedication as a Social Occasion: the cathedral of Nantes .............. 86 The Churches of Bishop Leontius of Bordeaux ............................................... 89 The Episcopal Panegyric and the Secular Building Projects of Leontius of Bordeaux ........................................................................................... 100 Royal Building Projects ................................................................................. 106 1. Childebert I........................................................................................ 108 - vi - 2. Berthoara ........................................................................................... 109 3. Ultrogotha ......................................................................................... 111 4. Sigibert I ............................................................................................ 113 Aristocratic Building Projects ........................................................................ 116 Conclusion ....................................................................................................