ENNODIUS. - Born into a noble family, it is uncertain whether at Milan, Pavia, or Arles, between 473 and 474. Having been orphaned at an early age, he was taken in by an aunt, and upon her death found himself alone to face the hardships of life, which were alleviated by an engagement to a noble and wealthy family (Speciosa?), whom he did not ultimately marry. 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 rural education of young men, among whom was Arator.
Having become a deacon, he took the side of Pope Symmachus in his struggle against the antipope Lawrence, against whose supporters he wrote, perhaps in 503, the *Libellus pro synodo* in response to a publication that sought to undermine the decisions of the *Synodus Palmaris* (23 Oct. 502). In 506–507, he was commissioned—perhaps by Pope Symmachus—to deliver a panegyric for Theodoric. Elected bishop in 515, he was sent in 517 by Pope Hormisdas to the East to induce Emperor Anastasius to restore the union of the Eastern and Western Churches, but both missions ended in failure. After these embassies, no further certain details of his life are known; only an epitaph from the basilica of St. Michael in Pavia informs us of his death on 17 July 527.
The chronological ordering of his writings was completed by one of his disciples or friends, who omitted all the epistles from 514 to 521 and several other works, of which we have knowledge only from E. himself.
Grouped by genre according to the edition of Symmachus, his works are: 1) 297 *Epistulae*; 2) 10 *Opuscula* (*Panegyricus Theodorici*; *Libellus pro Synodo*; *Vita Epiphanii*; *Vita Antonii*; *Enchiridion*; *Paracenesis didascalica*; *Praeceptum de cellulanis*; *Petitio qua absolutus est Gerontius*; *Benedicti cerei* I–II); 3) 28 *dictiones*, divided by Symmachus into sacred and profane; 4) *Carmina*, divided into two books, the first containing 21 and the second 151.
Imbued with rhetoric, E. never opens his soul with sincerity, whether in his letters—objects of careful attention even when addressed to friends—or in the *Enchiridion*, written under the false pretense of the *Confessions* of Augustine, in which he nonetheless vows to St. Victor to set aside rhetorical artifices, whose incompatibility with his Christian faith he sensed. His impeccable poems, of which the author, impatient of his friends’ criticisms, is proud, are mostly exercises in which themes of drunkenness drawn from mythology and treated in a pagan tone are not lacking, alongside poems of genuine Christian inspiration. His output is chiefly valuable as a document for understanding the literary trends and tastes of the time and as a precious source for the literary and political history of the period of Theodoric.