ENNODIO. – He was born of a noble family, although it is not known with certainty whether in Milan, Pavia, or Acles, between 473 and 474. Having been orphaned at an early age, he was taken in by an aunt; upon her death he found himself alone in facing the difficulties of life, which were alleviated for him by an engagement to a noble and wealthy girl (Speciosa?), whom he never came to marry. Indeed, he entered the ecclesiastical career, which he embraced as expiation for the life he had led during his engagement. As a cleric, he devoted himself to the rhetorical education of young men, among whom was Arator.
Having become a deacon, he took the side of Pope Simmachus in his struggle with the antipope Laurentius, and wrote against the latter’s supporters, perhaps in 503, the Libellus pro synodo, in response to a publication that sought to report the decisions of the Synodus Palmaris (23 October 502). In 506–507 he was commissioned, perhaps by Pope Simmachus, to deliver a panegyric for Theodoric. He was elected bishop in 515 and in 517 was sent by Pope Hormisdas to the East to induce the Emperor Anastasius to restore the union of the Churches of East and West; on both occasions, however, the mission ended unsuccessfully. After this embassy, no further certain information is available concerning the life of E.; only an epitaph in the basilica of S. Michele in Pavia informs us of his death, which occurred on 17 July 521.
The chronological arrangement of his writings was completed by one of his disciples or friends, who omitted all the epistles from 514 to 521 and several writings of which we have information from E. himself.
Grouped by genre according to the edition of Sirmond, the works are: 1) 207 Epistulae; 2) 10 Opuscula (Panegyric of Theodoric; Libellus pro Synodo; Vita Epiphanii; Vita Antonii; Eucharisticum; Paracensis didæcolica; Praeceptum de cellulosis; Peritorium quo absolutus est Gerontus; Benedictio cersi I–II); 3) 28 dictiones, divided by Sirmond into sacred and profane; 4) Carmina, divided into two books, the first of which contains 21 and the second 151.
Imbued with rhetoric, E. knows neither how to open his soul sincerely in his letters, which he makes the object of attentive care even when addressing friends, nor in the Eucharisticum, written in imitation of Augustine’s Confessions, in which he nevertheless vows to S. Vittore to set aside the rhetorical artifices whose incompatibility with his Christian faith he perceives. His poems, irreproachable in form, of which the author—intolerant of his friends’ criticisms—is proud, are for the most part exercises in which lubricious subjects drawn from mythology and treated in a paganizing tone are found alongside poetry of purely Christian inspiration. His production has above all the value of a document for knowledge of the literary tendencies
and tastes of the period, and is a precious source for the literary and political history of the age of Theodoric.