La écfrasis de la catedral de Lyon como híbrido intersistémico. Sidonio Apolinar y el Gesamtkunstwerk tardoantiguo

This paper aims to analyse the only extant literary testimony of the first Lyons cathedral, a remarkable early Christian building, whose exiguous remains still lie under today’s Cathédrale Saint-Jean-Baptiste-et-Saint-Étienne. The text is a detailed poetic ekphrasis of the temple, composed around 469 A.D. by the sophisticate Gallo-Roman writer Sidonius Apollinaris. These verses were commissioned, moreover, to be visually displayed on the apse of the church, as part of an extensive decorative programme carefully designed by Patiens (the bishop of Lyons). This paper undertakes an exhaustive literary analysis of the piece, which is seen as a perfect exponent of late antique aesthetic hybridization. To do so, it introduces some interesting theoretical considerations, such us the distinction between intra- and inter-systemic hybridizations — based to a great extent on Even-Zohar’s influential polysystem theory. As for the results, on the one hand, this work contributes to the precarious archaeological evidence of the lost temple a deep study of the sole literary source describing it, providing an essential help for the reconstruction of its shape, history and purpose. On the other hand, it essays a new approach to one of the most outstanding aesthetic features of Late Antiquity: the ekphrasis, which is now interestingly contextualized within the broader cultural pattern of hybridization.