Chapter Raccontarsi nei Carmina minora: Sidonio e il tempo della ‘tenera giovinezza’

Overview & Synopsis

From the nugae of Sidonius, numerous and important pieces of information about the author's biography emerge. He recounts events from his daily life (stays with friends, dinner invitations, financial difficulties, impatience with living alongside the barbarians, night fishing...) and also, in carm. 16, the circumstances under which Faustus, the bishop of Riez, administered baptism to him. To ‘construct’ the account of the overwhelming emotions he felt upon first entering the community of the faithful, Sidonius does not hesitate to reuse well-known topoi of love poetry and portrays himself as a deeply disturbed ‘lover’, who approaches the mother goddess of the church, blending, in the most refined way, classical tradition with the sensitivity of a believer.