Avitus Marinianus

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Flavius Avitus Marinianus (fl. 423–448) was a politician of the Western Roman Empire during the reign of Honorius.

Biography[edit]

Avitus was praetorian prefect[1] and consul in 423[2] He is mentioned in the Gesta de purgatione Xysti III episcopi' in a list of aristocrats involved in the investigations against Pope Sixtus III. Although the Gesta has been long recognized as a later forgery, B.L. Twyman argued in 1970 that the list of aristocrats was taken from a later papal investigation concerning the deposition of bishop Celidonius by archbishop Hilarius of Arles.[3] T.D. Barnes subsequently showed that the list was best explained as the product of "a writer of the sixth century [who] has deliberately mixed genuine and fictitious persons."[4]

He had a wife, Anastasia, and a son, Rufius Praetextatus Postumianus (consul in 448);[5] it is possible that Rufius Viventius Gallus was another son. Marinianus and his wife were Christians; at Pope Leo I's request, they restored the mosaic on the façade of the Old St. Peter's Basilica, as recorded by an inscription on the mosaic itself.[6]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ Codex Theodosianus, 3.5.12.
  2. ^ CIL III, 3104.
  3. ^ Twyman, "Aetius and the Aristocracy", Historia 19 (1970), pp. 494ff
  4. ^ Barnes, "'Patricii' under Valentinian III", Phoenix, 29 (1975), pp. 163ff
  5. ^ CIL VI, 1761, dated 448, when Marinianus was probably still alive.
  6. ^ Louise Ropes Loomis, The Book of the Popes (Liber Pontificalis) I-: To the Pontificate of Gregory I, BiblioBazaar, LLC, 2009, ISBN 1-103-32336-9, p. 100.

Further reading[edit]

Political offices
Preceded by Roman consul
423
with Asclepiodotus
Succeeded by
Castinus
Victor