EPIPHANIUS OF TICINUM: Bishop of Ticinum (Pavia); b. at Ticinum 438 or 439; d. there Jan. 21, 496. He was elected bishop in 466 and was consecrated at Milan. He is described as of gracious personality and bearing and of great popularity. In the troublous times that preceded the downfall of the Western empire, Epiphanius became the advocate and protector of his flock against the barbarian leaders in whose hands lay the fate of Italy. In 471 he went to Rome as delegate of the nobles and populace of Liguria to act as mediator between the emperor Anthemius and his son-in-law the king-maker Ricimer and succeeded in preventing war, though he could not save Anthemius from death by the orders of Ricimer in the following year. In 474 he was the ambassador of the emperor Julius Nepos at the court of the Visigothic king Euric, whom he persuaded to abstain from hostilities against the empire. In the same year the Heruli under Odoacer attacked Pavia and destroyed the cathedral; but Epiphanius obtained from the conqueror the remission of five years' taxes for the city and devoted himself to its restoration. He stood in the good graces of Theodoric, who sent him on a mission to Lyons in 494 to obtain from the Burgundian king Gundobad the release of his Ligurian prisoners. Epiphanius was the means of bringing back more than 6,000 men to the depopulated fields of northern Italy. There is a tradition that his body was brought to Hildesheim in 962.

(T. FÖRSTER †.)

 

Bibliography: The Vita by Magnus Felix Ennodius is in MGH., Auct. ant., vii (1885), 84-109, and in MPL, lxiii. 207-240.