The literary self-consciousness of sixth-century Christian poets is immediately evident in the ‘‘genealogy’’ with which Venantius Fortunatus introduced his epic celebrating Martin of Tours (Ven. Fort. VM 1.15-25):
Primus enim, docili distinguens ordine carmen, maiestatis opus metri canit arte Juvencus.
Hinc quoque conspicui radiavit lingua Seduli paucaque perstrinxit florente Orientius ore martyribusque piis sacra haec donaria mittens, prudens prudenter Prudentius immolat actus.
Stemmate, corde, fide pollens Paulinus et arte versibus explicuit Martini dogma magistri.
Sortis apostolicae quae gesta vocantur et actus, facundo eloquio sulcavit vates Arator.
Quod sacra explicuit serie genealogus olim,
Alcimus egregio digessit acumine praesul.
First of all, marking off his poem in skillful measure,
Juvencus sang of the work of the Divine Majesty with metrical art.
Then too the speech of illustrious Sedulius shone forth
And Orientius touched briefly upon a few matters in ornate words.
And sending his sacred gifts to the holy martyrs,
Prudent Prudentius prudently offered accounts of their deeds.
Paulinus, mighty in family, heart, faith, and skill, unfurled in verses the doctrines of Martin the teacher.
What are called the deeds and acts of the apostolic community Arator the poet ploughed through with effortless eloquence.
That which the genealogist [Moses] once unfolded in sacred order,
Alcimus the bishop disposed with distinguished subtlety.
To this lineage of holy poet-prophets (sanctorum culmina vatum) Fortunatus, conventionally proclaiming his inadequacy, added his own work, an account of the deeds (gesta) of the blessed Martin (1.45). Born in northern Italy about 540 and educated at Ravenna, Fortunatus made his career as poet, courtier, and bishop within the aristocratic and ecclesiastic circles of Merovingian Gaul (Brennan 1985; George 1992). Therein Fortunatus compiled the extensive corpus of occasional verse, panegyrics, and vitae that included his hexametrical Vita Sancti Martini, composed between 573 and 576 and presented to Tours’ (now famous) bishop, Gregory. In this opening section Fortunatus tactfully proclaimed himself the heir of the biblical epicists, of Prudentius (here as author of the Peristephanon), and of Paulinus of Perigueux (Petrocorium), who a century earlier had already composed a six-book Vita Martini based, like Fortunatus’, upon Sulpicius Se-verus’ late-fourth-century prose Life of Martin and Dialogues. With less overt fanfare Fortunatus also displayed throughout his four-book poem adroit command of the classical epicists, especially Virgil and Ovid, as well as Claudian (Labarre 1998: 161-210; Roberts 2001: 267-75). By the 570s, as Fortunatus knew, a diverse body of Christian and classical prose and poetry loomed up like a mountain behind any poet who would fashion a Christian holy man into an ‘‘epic hero.’’
Hagiographic epic, like biblical epic, was rooted in the fourth century. Paulinus of Nola’s epyllion on John the Baptist had already blurred the boundaries between Gospel paraphrase and hagiography while two of his annual ‘‘birthday’’ poems ( natalicia) honoring St Felix blended panegyric, hagiography, and epic overtones to represent the ‘‘life’’ of Nola’s guardian saint (Trout 1999: 166-9). It is hardly surprising that holy men should join Christ, the patriarchs, and the apostles to become heroes in epic verse. Hagiography was deeply rooted in Christian literary practice and Sulpicius Severus’ Vita Martini, composed in the final years of the fourth century while Martin was still living (and supplemented after Martin’s death by the Dialogues), was the first Latin classic of the field. When Severus wrote it was still necessary to defend Martin, Tours’ controversial bishop, for asceticism was socially suspect and monasticism not yet assimilated. By the time Paulinus and Fortunatus wrote, however, the cult of St Martin was prominent well beyond Gaul.
But the Martinian epics of Paulinus of Perigueux and Venantius Fortunatus are not easily qualified. They are at once expressions in poetry of the popularity of saints’ lives in late Roman and Merovingian Gaul; of the continuing demand for sophisticated verse that, like the biblical epics, echoed classical poetry while expounding Christian themes; and a further example of the art of rhetorical paraphrase. Yet a century of change as well as individual aims and dispositions separate Paulinus and Fortunatus (Van Dam 1993). Both poets may have drawn upon the same textual resources (though Paulinus’ sixth book did adapt a miracle ledger not used by Fortunatus, and Fortunatus had the example of Paulinus before him) and carefully preserved the order of the Severan narrative, but their choices for omission, abbreviation, and rhetorical amplification, their manipulation of individual episodes, and the aesthetic values they signaled by their stylistic choices conspired to yield two distinct poetic projects and two different images of the heroic Martin. Paulinus expanded and commented upon episodes, often sententiously, in a quest for the moral and spiritual meaning behind Martin’s actions, while his emphasis upon divine love gives his poem an overarching unity. Moreover, his Martin’s heroic qualities most immediately serve the saint’s image as an ideal patronal bishop. Fortunatus’ hero is, by contrast, the celestial guardian of the developed sixth-century cult center at Tours; his poem is a series of discreet medallions; and his elaborately descriptive verse a premier representative of the jeweled style (Roberts 1994 and 1995; Labarre 1998). That neither Paulinus nor Fortunatus grants their hero psychological complexity or moral growth should, perhaps, be credited to the conventions of contemporary panegyric. But, as Fortunatus revealed in his opening credits, the epigrammatic and exegetical qualities of his ‘‘last epic of antiquity’’ owe just as much to the manner in which the earlier biblical epicists had already transformed generic expectations (Roberts 2001).
From Juvencus, who heads Fortunatus’ list of vates who set out God’s work in poetic measure, to Fortunatus himself, the range of Christian epic defies most generalizations. Christian epicists engaged with their classical predecessors, especially Virgil, with admiration and rivalry. They deployed the conventions of epic poetry in different degree but, as time passed, they also had at their disposal an ever-deepening reservoir of Christian models. Christian epics, too, celebrated deeds, those of God, Christ, the Patriarchs, the apostles, and the saints, and to do so they drew not only upon Christian scripture and prose hagiography, but also upon the rhetorical principles of panegyric and the exegetical modes of scriptural commentary. Tending towards the discursive and episodic, Christian epic more often found its momentum in epigrammatic reflection, reversal, and antithesis than in narrative integrity or psychological complexity. Simply put, the aesthetics and the aims of Christian epicists reflect and express the dynamic evolution of late ancient culture and its literature over a period of three remarkable centuries.
World History
