Reparatus (praetorian prefect)

Reparatus (died 539) was a Roman aristocrat, and politician under Ostrogothic rule. He held the offices of Urban prefect (527) and Praetorian prefect of Italy.

Life

Reparatus was the brother of Pope Vigilius; according to the Liber pontificalis, their father was Johannes and identified as a consul having received that title from the emperor.[1] He was one of the senators taken hostage by Witigis, but managed to escape along with Vergentius before the Ostrogoths ordered their slaughter, only to be trapped in Milan during the siege of that city in 539. While Reparatus was killed when the city fell, Vergentius managed to escape with his life and left Italy for Constantinople.[2]

Responsibility for Reparatus' fatherless children fell to Pope Vigilius. He married his niece, Vigilia, to Flavius Turcius Rufius Apronianus Asterius, the consul of 494, and ordained his nephew Rusticus as a deacon in the Roman church.[3]

References

  1. ^ Raymond Davis, translator, The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis) (Liverpool: University Press, 1989), p. 56
  2. ^ Jeffrey Richards, The Popes and the Papacy in the Early Middle Ages (London:Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979), p. 247
  3. ^ Richards, Popes and the Papacy, p. 241