IN MEROVINGIAN GAUL, networks of friendship and patronage were essential for the exchange of mutual favours, protection, and goodwill. To find an audience and commissioners for future work, a poet needed a patron. In the fragmented world of Merovingian Gaul, it was necessary to have more than one patron. Throughout his career, Fortunatus sought to make and maintain connections with kings, queens, nuns, bishops and other elite men and women. This chapter addresses how a patronage relationship was made and maintained by examining the language Fortunatus used to address his episcopal patrons, especially Gregory of Tours.

Merovingian friends operated within the parameters and precedents set by earlier Gallic writers, who blended conventions of patronage and friendship, addressing each other as a patron in the salutations of their letters, and expressing admiration of each other’s literary skills. In a letter to Sidonius’ Apollinaris’ son, the early sixth-century bishop Avitus of Vienne mentions how he looked up to Sidonius as a master; Ruricius of Limoges expresses similar feelings of polite deference. However, neither Avitus nor Sidonius address their aristocratic correspondents as patron. Ruricius was a senatorial aristocrat like Avitus and Sidonius, but he used the word patronus with extraordinary frequency—fourteen times, exclusively in addressing fellow bishops. This should not be taken as a sign that Ruricius felt only bishops could be patroni, nor does it necessarily indicate distant deference, as is made clear in a playful exchange between Ruricius and Bishop Sedatus of Nimes about a horse. These letters show that the language of patronage could be used in the context of friendship.

Venantius Fortunatus, like Ruricius, often wrote to bishops and called them patroni. This chapter explores when and why the poet addresses Eufronius of Tours (r. 557–573), Martin of Braga (r. 556–579), and Felix of Nantes (r. 549–582) as patrons. These writings reveal the reciprocal chain of patronage relationships that stretched between heaven and earth. Fortunatus’ single prose letter to Martin of Braga provides further evidence of how Fortunatus saw his episcopal correspondents as his advocates before the even more august patrons of heaven. This letter also enables us to consider the route letters travelled between correspondents, and the people who carried them.