ENNODIUS. - Born into a noble family, it is not known with certainty whether at Milan, Pavia or Acles, between 473 and 474. Left an orphan at a tender age, he was taken in by an aunt, at whose death he found himself alone to face the difficulties of life, which were alleviated for him by an engagement to a noble and wealthy young woman (Speciosa?) whom he did not live to marry. He in fact 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.
Made deacon, he took the side of Pope Symmachus in his struggle with the antipope Lawrence, against whose supporters he wrote, perhaps in 503, the Libellus pro synodo in reply to a publication that sought to discredit the decisions of the Synodus Palmaris (23 Oct. 502). In 506-507 he was charged, perhaps by Pope Symmachus, with delivering a panegyric for Theodoric. Elected bishop, he was sent in 515 and in 517 by Pope Hormisdas to the East to induce the emperor Anastasius to restore the union of the Churches of East and West, both times however with a negative outcome. After this rebuff there is no further reliable information about E.'s life; only an epitaph from the basilica of St. Michael in Pavia informs us of his death, which occurred on 17 July 521.
The chronological arrangement of his writings was carried out by some disciple or friend of his, who neglected all the epistles from 514 to 521 and several writings of which we have notice 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, of which the first comprises 21 and the second 151.
Steeped in rhetoric, E. does not know how to open his soul with sincerity either in the letters, which he makes the object of careful attention even when he addresses friends, or in the Eucharisticum written along the lines of Augustine's Confessions, in which he even vows to St. Victor to set aside the rhetorical artifices, whose incompatibility with his faith as a Christian he feels. The poems, faultless in form, of which the author, impatient of his friends' criticisms, is proud, are for the most part exercises in which there is no lack of lubricious subjects drawn from mythology and treated in a paganizing tone alongside poetry of purely Christian inspiration. His output has above all the value of a document for knowledge of the tendencies and literary tastes of the time and of a precious source for the literary and political history of the period of Theodoric.
Bibliography3 works
Rosario Anastasi