military · 474–475 · Arvernis
Sidonius was a Gallo-Roman aristocrat of the highest sort — prefect of Rome, son-in-law of an emperor, a poet who wrote panegyrics for three of them — and he became bishop of Clermont in about 470 without having been a priest, which was normal for his class and his moment. Then Euric's Visigoths came for the Auvergne. He organised the defence through four campaigning seasons, kept the population fed and the walls manned, and set his brother-in-law Ecdicius to the fighting. In 475 the emperor Julius Nepos ceded the whole province to Euric by treaty, in exchange for Provence, and everything Sidonius had held was signed away in a document. He was arrested and exiled, allowed back after two years, and spent the rest of his life as bishop of a city under a king he had fought. His letters are the reason the last decades of Roman Gaul can be described at all — and he wrote them for publication, in the manner of Pliny, which is why they survive and why they are as guarded as they are.
Rome cannot defend the Auvergne. What does its bishop do?
Holds it for four years, and is then handed over by the government he held it for.