Hydatius

Hydatius ( † after 468 ) was Bishop of Aquae Flaviae ( Chaves in today's Portugal ), and a late antique chronicler.

Hydatius was probably born in the last years of the 4th century. He came from Lemica, a town near the present-day Xinzo de Limia ( Ourense) in the Roman province of Gallaecia, and was in its infancy ( as he himself says ) during a pilgrimage to Palestine about the year 406, the church father Jerome met. Following the Chronicle wrote Hydatius, who was bishop since 427, and later its own factory, which retold the events, especially those with a view of Gallaecia by the year 468. The work in which he dated after cesarean years and Olympiads and is also linguistically well managed, is of great importance for the history of the late antique Hispania. Particularly for the period after 428, it is our main source for the events on the Iberian Peninsula and in southern Gaul; next to it Hydatius but tried also about the extent possible information about the rest of the Roman Empire included in the Chronicle.

Hydatius cherished as a Roman Catholic and little sympathy for the Germans, who were almost all taken at this time in possession of Hispania and were mostly Arians. Hydatius remembered with pride the fact that the Emperor Theodosius I came from Gallaecia; However, now the life of oppression and defeats the Romans was coined. In fact, the Western Roman government in Ravenna had control of Hispania with the collapse of the Vandals, Alans and Suevi at the beginning of the 5th century (still later came the Visigoths added ) largely lost and could only time -and area- wise recover. In his chronicles Hydatius thundered sharply against the Visigothic missionary Ajax, under King draw mouth who converted the Suevi to Arian place for Catholic Christianity.

Expenditure

• Hydatius: Continuatio Chronicorum Hieronymianorum. In: Theodor Mommsen (ed.): Auctores antiquissimi 11: Chronica minora SAEC. IV V VI. VII (II). Berlin 1894 ( Monumenta Historica Germaniae, digitized ).