Saint Magnus Felix Ennodius | |
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Born | 473 or 474 Arles |
Died | 17 July 521 |
Venerated in | Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church |
Feast | 17 July |
Magnus Felix Ennodius (473 or 474 – 17 July 521) was Bishop of Pavia in 514, and a Latin rhetorician and poet.
He was one of four Gallo-Roman aristocrats of the fifth to sixth-century whose letters survive in quantity: the others are Sidonius Apollinaris, prefect of Rome in 468 and bishop of Clermont (died 485), Ruricius bishop of Limoges (died 507) and Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus, bishop of Vienne (died 518). All of them were linked in the tightly bound aristocratic Gallo-Roman network that provided the bishops of Catholic Gaul. He is regarded as a saint, with a feast day of 17 July.
Ennodius was born at Arelate (Arles) and belonged to a distinguished but impecunious family. As T.S. Mommaerts and D.H. Kelley observe, "Ennodius claimed in his letters to them to be related to a large number of individuals. Unfortunately, he seldom specified the nature of the relationship." Because his sister Euprepia (b. 465 or 470) is known to have had a son named Flavius Licerius Firminus Lupicinus, who was named for his grandfather, Vogel argued that Ennodius' father was named Firminus. Jacques Sirmond suggested that Ennodius was the son of one Camillus of Arles, whose father was a proconsular and the brother of Magnus, the consul of 460; but Mommaerts and Kelley dismiss Sirmond's identification as untenable. They also agree with Vogel that Ennodius' grandfather could not be either Ennodius or Felix Ennodius, both of whom were proconsuls of Africa.