SIGISMONDO, king of the BURGUNDIANS, saint, martyr. - He succeeded his father Gundobald in 516. Converted by St. Avitus, bishop of Vienne, he convened in 517 the Council of Epaone (Yenne, Savoy) to extirpate Arianism from his kingdom.
The glory brought to him by the title of patrician, conferred upon him by the "basileus", did not, however, compensate for his real weakness. Indeed, he made the mistake of breaking relations, on account of a foolish crime, with Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, whose daughter he had married as his first wife: his second wife drove him to kill his firstborn son Sigeric, falsely accused of conspiracy. Although S. repented and did penance in the monastery of St-Maurice-d'Agaune (Canton of Valais, Switzerland), founded by him in 515, Theodoric's hatred did not disarm. The latter allied himself with the sons of Clovis to conquer and divide the Burgundian kingdom; and S., taken prisoner by Chlodomer, was thrown in 523 along with his wife and children into a well at St-Péravy-la-Colombe, near Or-
léans (Loiret). Compassion and popular piety made him a martyr and spread his cult in Gaul. The Martyrologium Hieronymianum and also the Roman Martyrology commemorate him on May 1st. His body is preserved in a splendid reliquary in the Abbey of Agaune. - See plate XXXVII.
BIBL.: essential source: S. Gregorio di Tours, Historia Francorum, ed. by R. Poupardin, Paris 1913; G. Kurth, Ste Clotilde, Paris 1905; Hefele-Leclercq, II, pp. 1031-42; P. Martin, Etudes critiques sur la Suisse à l'époque mérovingienne, Geneva-Paris 1910 (v. index); Martyr. Hieronymianum, pp. 222, 224; Martyr. Romanum, pp. 166-67. Guglielmo Mollat
Cite this article
“SIGILLO SACRAMENTALE.” Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. XI (1953), p. 350. Azione Romana digital edition, https://azioneromana.com/article/sigillo-sacramentale.
