What is "agroecius"

Agroecius or Agroetius was an ancient Gaul who was bishop of Sens. He was also a grammarian, and the author of an extant work in Latin, De Orthographia et Differentia Sermonis, intended as a supplement to a work on the same subject by Flavius Caper. It was composed around 450, and dedicated to the bishop Eucherius of Lyon, who apparently had earlier given Agroecius a copy of Caper's work. He is supposed to have lived in the middle of the 5th century. His work is reprinted in Putschius' Grammaticae Latinae Auctores Antiqui, pp. 2266—2275.

He was the addressee of one extant letter from Sidonius Apollinaris, who sought Agroecius' aid in the dispute over who would inherit the vacant bishop's see in Bourges in 470 (Agroecius indeed traveled to Bourges to render his assistance); and he is probably alluded to (although not named) in another of Apollinaris' letters, which speaks of a bishop of great eloquence and learning. There was also at that time a bishop "Agrycius", the addressee of a letter of Salvian apologizing for his disrespectful behavior, who is generally taken to be this Agroecius.

He was possibly a descendant of the rhetorician Censorius Atticus.

Agroecius (or Agroetius) was the name of a number of men from Roman history, most of them distinguished Gauls:

• Agroecius, an Armenian student of the Roman rhetorician Libanius in the 4th century, who was apparently very close to the teacher, who wrote that Agroecius was "no different from a son to me." He was quite poor, and had five sisters in need of husbands, and was possibly the brother of another student of Libanius named Eusebius.
• Agroecius, captured and executed with Decimus Rusticus in 413 by the forces of the Roman emperor Honorius.
• Agroecius, a wealthy man, probably not clergy, who contributed money for a new church at Narbo when Rusticus of Narbonne was bishop there. He is known only from an inscription on the building dated to 445 (the building itself was started in 441), although he may be the same person as the grammarian Agroecius below.
• Agroecius, bishop of Sens, a grammarian who was the author of an extant grammatical work, De Orthographia et Differentia Sermonis.
• Agroecius, bishop of Antibes, was the addressee of one of the letters of Caesarius of Arles.
• Agroecius Domesticus, a man of uncertain date who died at the age of 33, and was buried in Vienne.

Agroecius was a 6th-century bishop of Antibes, and the addressee of one of the extant letters of the ecclesiastic Caesarius of Arles. As one of the most senior bishops in the province, he was the subject of some discussion at the Council of Carpentras in 527, as it was said he had ordained a cleric named Protadius who had not first undergone the required year of probation ( conversus) as dictated by the Council of Arles in 524. Agroecius did not attend the council, but was defended by the priest Catafronius in his stead. Nevertheless, it was determined that he should be censured, and he was forbidden from saying mass for one year. Although Catafronius agreed to the terms of this punishment, Agroecius apparently ignored them, and continued to say mass. As he felt his authority flouted, Caesarius appealed to Pope Felix IV, who issued an edict reconfirming the requirement of the probationary period. Whether Agroecius paid any attention to this is unknown, although he did not appear at any of the subsequent church councils, and by the Fourth Council of Orléans in 541, Agroecius was no longer bishop of Antibes.