CHAPTER VI.

PRUDENTIUS THE FIRST CHRISTIAN POET.

Aurelius Prudentius Clemens has received rather more than his due share of renown. His works have been edited by the most careful scholars. There is a beautiful little “Elzevir” upon which Heinsius expended his labor and which was printed at Amsterdam in 1667. There is an “Aldine,” 4to, Venice, 1501. But the most elegant is that of Parma (1788, 2 vols., 4to), edited by Teoli; and the best is regarded as that of Faustinus Arevalus, the Spaniard, Rome 1788-89, also in 2 vols. 4to. If to these we add the most _accessible_ collection of his writings, we shall find it in the fifty-ninth and sixtieth volumes of Migne’s _Patrologia_. The text of these various editions is derived from what is called the Codex Puteanus, now in the Paris Library—a manuscript dating into the fifth or sixth century. In all, there have been nearly a dozen of them, of which that of R. Langius (1490, 4to) is the true _princeps_—the very earliest. And in the matter of editorship, it is worthy of note that Erasmus did not disdain to expend his fine classical skill upon the hymns for Christmas and the Epiphany.

If we ask Bentley his opinion of Prudentius he tells us that he is “the Horace and Virgil of the Christians.” Milman declares that he was “the great popular author of the Middle Ages,” and that “no work but the Bible appears with so many glosses [commentaries] in High German.” “T. D.,” away back in 1821, when dear old Kit North was editing _Blackwood_, furnished that periodical with some poetical translations and remarked that Prudentius was “the Latin Dr. Watts.” In La Rousse he obtains the credit of being “the first Christian poet.” Among the earlier contemporaneous, or slightly subsequent references his name is preceded by the magic letters, “V. C.,” standing not, as some have thought, for _Vir Consularis_, a man who had enjoyed the consulship, but for _Vir Clarissimus_, a person of high distinction. It is reserved for the “worthy and impartial” Du Pin to formulate a judgment more in accord with the true facts of the case. “Prudentius,” saith Du Pin, “is no very good poet, he often useth expressions not reconcilable to the purity of Augustus’s Age.”

The value of his poetry turns largely upon its theological and historical merits—both of which are considerable. It is not structurally perfect by any means, and yet it has furnished several very lovely hymns to the Church—graceful and delicate, rather than strong or inspiring.

In giving him his name it is safe to take that which is usually adopted: _Aurelius Prudentius_, surnamed _Clemens_ or the Merciful. To this has occasionally been prefixed _Quintus_ or _Marcus_, but neither has sufficient authority in its favor. He was a Spaniard, and the main facts concerning his life are learned from his own metrical preface to his poems. Probably few questions have been more closely discussed by the learned than this of his birthplace. The internal evidence is heaped up on either side until it is seen that Calahorra [Calagurris] is probably where he was born, while Saragossa [Caesarea-Augusta] was “his city” and the place with which he was most identified.

He was doubtless of good family. Those industrious and microscopic editors who have devoted themselves to his fame have laid great stress upon the names _Aurelius_ and _Clemens_. The _Aurelii_, they say, were distinguished and well-born people. The _Clementes_ were also of notable memory. And there were two _Prudentii_ beside himself who obtained rather more than ordinary distinction. Indeed, there were some five _Prudentii_, early and late, and one of them, _Prudentius Amoenus_, tried, indifferently badly, to climb to fame by an abridgment of his predecessor’s history of the Old and New Testaments. In this he was so successful that the original is now lost, the condensation alone remains, and our Prudentius is often known as _Prudentius Major_, to differentiate him from this troublesome _Minor_, who was a preceptor of Walafrid Strabo. In regard to two other hymns—the _Corde natus_ and the _Vidit anguis_—an element of doubt has been introduced by this same person. Faustinus Arevalus was nothing if not a hymn-tinker (see _Christian Remembrancer_, vol. xlvi., p. 125 _ff._), and it is possible that these by such careless editorship have been incorporated into the text of the true Prudentius from the pages of his namesake and imitator. The hymn _Virgo Dei genitrix_ (of the fifteenth century) is ascribed to another of the five Prudentii.

This sort of blunder is by no means unusual. We have an instance in point with reference to the very Consul Salia in whose consulship our poet tells us that he was born. A similarity between _Coss. Salia_ and _Massalia_ misled the learned. They saw in this a proof that Massilia (Marseilles) was his birthplace, and Prudentius was at once claimed for France. But we have now unravelled and disentangled the greater part of this obscure coil. Flavius Philippus and Flavius _Salia_ are known to have served conjointly in the year 348, and hence the industry of Aldus Manutius and Labbeus (Labbèe) has been thrown away and their false conjecture has been abandoned.

Prudentius himself tells us nothing about his family, beyond what we derive by inference. The deeper that we plunge into this labyrinth of guesses the further we are from being settled in opinion. The exhaustive—and, let us add, the exhausting—editor of the latest edition finally calls a halt in the middle of his complicated Latin sentences and avows himself utterly at a loss about the truth. There is then some comfort left to us in cutting and untying these knots; for whatever view we may advance has found distinguished and earnest championship already! On the whole, Teoli appears a reliable leader, and him we have mostly followed, as later authors, such as Professors Fiske and Teuffel, seem to have done before us.

Let us say, then, that he was born in 348, Philippus and Salia being consuls, at Calahorra, which lies up the Ebro and to the northwest of Saragossa. To-day Calahorra is a small place of a few thousand inhabitants, but it furnishes two other notable facts to history in addition to its claim to be the birthplace of Prudentius. It was this little fighting town which resisted Afranius, whom Pompey sent to take it in 78 B.C., and it was then that the citizens ate their wives and children sooner than surrender. Besides this somewhat doubtful glory it produced Quinctilian; while Tudela, which is between it and Saragossa, gave a name to the learned Jew, Benjamin of Tudela, whose ideas about the Tower of Babel have become as classic as Prudentius’s hymns or as the Maid of Saragossa herself. It may be added that paganism was very early abandoned in all this region.

The parents of Prudentius gave him a good education. He possessed, says Teoli, _ingenium acre, disertum, ferax_—talent that was keen, eloquent, and fruitful. But at the rhetoricians’ schools, which he attended about the age of seventeen, he found little that was commendable in manners or morals. It would appear that he gave the rein to his vices and that his life was not very rapidly turned into the ways of Christianity.

He was at first called to the bar and made judge in two towns of considerable size, which may perhaps have been Toledo and Cordova. About the year 400 he is supposed to have gone to Rome and to have been favorably received by Honorius the Emperor, who then promoted him to some sort of honorable office in his native country. At fifty-seven years of age, as he himself tells us, he began to cultivate literature. He had retired from active life, much as Chaucer did in later days. From this period onward he lived in quiet; he “fled fro’ the presse and dwelt in soothfastnesse,” like the father of English verse. He gave himself to sacred things—to hymns in honor of God and of the saints, and to poems against paganism and in favor of Christian duty.

His poems have Greek titles. First comes the _Psychomachia_ (the Battles of the Soul)—in hexameter—treating of the conflict in a Christian soul between virtue and vice. The contrasts are arranged somewhat like those of Plutarch between the Greek and Roman leaders, only, of course, the antithesis is decidedly against the vices. Here stand Faith opposed to Idolatry, and Chastity facing Impurity, and Patience resisting Anger, and Humility contrasted with Pride, and Sobriety pre-eminent over Excess, and Liberality vanquishing Covetousness, and Concord healing the wounds caused by Dissension. There are nine hundred and fifteen lines in the poem.

The _Peristephanon_ (Concerning Crowns) has twelve hymns in honor of various martyrs. Mr. Simcox notes that these are almost idyllic in form, and that there is much made of the white dove which flies from the burning pile about St. Eulalia and of the violets which the girls should bring to the tombs of the virgin martyrs. It may be interesting to name the martyrs thus celebrated. There were two from Calahorra; then Laurentius and Eulalia; eighteen who suffered at Saragossa; Vincentius, and finally Fructuosus and Quirinus, bishops both.

Then comes a poem on the Baptistery at Calahorra (translated in _Blackwood_, vol. ix., p. 192), with a description of the deaths of Cassian, Romanus, Hippolytus, Peter and Paul the apostles, Cyprian and Agnes. These poems, it should be said, are various in metre and some are quite long.

The _Cathemerinon_ (a Book of Hours) is the real mine whence the most of the hymns which were composed by Prudentius are taken. In this we have hymns for cock-crowing and morning; before and after food; at the lighting of the lamp; and before retiring to rest. With these are joined others for the use of those who are fasting, and at the conclusion of the fast; for all hours and at the burial of the dead; the work ending with hymns for Christmas and Epiphany.

The _Apotheosis_ consists of poems relating to the errors of all the heretics that can be named—Patripassians, Arians, Sabellians, Manichaeans, Docetae, etc. The value of this to ecclesiastical history is easily perceived. It has more than a thousand hexameters and it treats additionally of the nature of the soul and of sin and of the resurrection.

The _Hamartigenia_ (the Origin of Evil) takes up original sin as against Marcion; and the _Dittochaeon_ (which possibly means Double Food) is the abridgment of Old and New Testaments. This last is a sort of religious picture gallery ranging from Adam to the Apocalypse in hexametrical epigrams. There is reason to doubt whether it be what Prudentius originally composed. If he followed his usual vein of abundant verse, there is no question but that these half a hundred epigrams would be more popular than his very extensive poetical treatment of such subjects.

It is left us to mention the two books against Symmachus, the Roman senator, whom Ambrose so earnestly and successfully opposed. Symmachus had purposed to restore the idols, revive the revenues of the pagan temples, and generally to cast out Christianity from Rome. The poetry of Prudentius is again valuable here, for it plunges into the origin and baseness of idolatry, describing the conversion of Rome, and presenting a picture of the times which is invaluable to the historian. It is from the pages of Prudentius that we learn the cruelty of the purest of the Roman women, when

“The modest vestal, with her down-turned thumb Urges the gladiator to his stroke Lest life may lurk in any vital place!”

One line in our author’s hymn in honor of St. Lawrence preserves an historical fact which was not appreciated in its full significance until our own times. He says, _Aedemque Laurenti tuam Vestalis intrat Claudia_—“Claudia, the Vestal Virgin, enters Thy House.” In 1883 there was discovered in the _Atrium_ of the Vestals a pedestal of a statue dedicated to one of the heads of the order, from which her name had been effaced purposely. Nothing of it was left except the initial C., while there still remained the praise of “her chastity and her profound knowledge in religious matters” (_Ob meritvm Castitatis Pvdicitiae adq. in Sacris Religionibusqve Doctrinae Mirabilis_). The statue was erected in the year 364, and the order was abolished by the younger Theodosius in 394, so that her conversion must have taken place between those two dates. The conversion of a person filling a place of such high honor in pagan eyes, of a _Vestalis maxima_, must have been a severe blow to the pagan party, which in Rome was making a fierce but hopeless fight for the old worship. Yet we find no other reference to it in literature, unless the letter of Symmachus to a Vestal, of whom he had heard that she meant to withdraw from her order, was addressed to Claudia. See Professor Lanciani’s _Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries_, pp. 170-72 (Boston, 1888).

It is uncertain in what year or in what part of Spain Prudentius died. Conjecture varies between 410 and 424 A.D. This infinitude of filmy particulars causes one to feel as if he were walking through spider-webs of a morning in the country. This hard, practical nineteenth century only experiences a sense of annoyance as it encounters the elaborate nothings of that strangely laborious, all-gathering scholarship which prevailed in the sixteenth and seventeenth. To create any intensity of interest to-day requires an imagination which would sacrifice truth to attractiveness.

But certainly, from what we can see of the man in his works, we can have no hesitation in pronouncing a verdict highly favorable both to his poetry and his piety. As governor of important towns he merited—or he would scarcely have received—his title of “the Merciful.” As a close observer of his time and a student of its thought, he has preserved for us what we cannot spare. It is he who in the _Jam moesta quiesce querela_ struck the first notes which were to vibrate in the _Dies irae_. It is he again who in the _Ales die nuntius_ anticipated Henry Vaughan and his

“Father of lights, what sunny seed, What glance of day hast thou confined Into this bird!”

The hymn is as follows:

“The bird, the messenger of day, Cries the approaching light; And thus doth Christ, who calleth us Our minds to life excite.

“Bear off, he cries, these beds of ease Where lie the sick and dumb; And let the chaste and pure and true Watch, for I quickly come.

“We haste to Jesus at his word, Earnest to pray and weep, Such fervent supplication still Forbids pure hearts to sleep.

“Disturb our dream, thou holy Christ, Break off the night’s dark chain; Forgive us all our sin of old, And grant us light again.”

And so it is still he who casts the ray of his fancy upon Bethlehem and upon the Transfigured Christ. Here is the _Quicumque Christum quaeritis_ in proof of his real genius:

“O ye who seek your Lord to-day, Lift up your eyes on high, And view him there, as now ye may, Whose brightness cannot die.

“How gloriously it shineth on As though it knew no dearth: Sublime and lofty, never done, Older than heaven and earth.

“Thou art the very King of men, Thy people Israel’s King, Promised unto our fathers when From Abraham all should spring.

“To thee the prophets testified, In thee their hearts rejoice— Our Father bids us seek thy side To hear and heed thy voice.”

I have changed the two last stanzas into the second person instead of the third. Otherwise the rendering is a faithful and literal version of the hymn. This, then, is a good proof of the genuine ring of true metal to be found in Prudentius.

The variety and flexibility of his measures, in spite of archaic or post-classical words and phrases, deserves our highest praise. He is a writer of the “Brazen Age,” but he has not sunk far from the “Silver,” nor exactly into the falchion sweep of the more brutal “Iron” time.

Here is another of his hymns, the _Nox et tenebrae et nubila_, which has obtained a place in the Roman Breviary:

“Night, clouds and darkness, get you gone! Depart, confusions of the earth! Light comes; the sky so dark and wan Brightens—it is the Saviour’s birth!

“The gloom of earth is cleft in twain Struck by that sudden, solar ray; Color and life return again Before the shining face of day.

“Thee, Christ, alone we seek to know, Thee, pure in mind, and plain in speech; We seek thee in our worship, so That thou canst through our senses teach.

“How many are the dreams of dread Which by thy light are swept apart! Thou, Saviour of the sainted dead, Shine with calm lustre in the heart!”

The same leading idea of the analogy of the natural light with the spiritual runs through the following:

“Lo the golden light appears, Lo the darkness pales away Which has plunged us long in fears, Wandering in a devious way.

“Now the light brings peace at last, Holds us purely as its own; All our doubts aside are cast, And we speak with holy tone.

“So may all the day run on Free from sin of hand or tongue, And our very glances shun Every form and shape of wrong.

“High above us One is set All our days to know and mark, And our acts he watches yet From the dawning to the dark.”

Prudentius undoubtedly exhibits the early traces of observances which are peculiar to the Roman Catholic Church. In one of his hymns (the _Cultor Dei memento_) he advises that the sign of the cross be made upon the forehead and above the heart:

“Frontem locumque cordis Crucis figura signet.”

But we have not the space, nor is this the proper occasion, to follow him through those matters which belong to the church historian more than to the hymnologist. We must leave him to end his days in undisturbed quiet, a good deal after the manner of Chaucer, as indeed we have already hinted. He is said to have died in the neighborhood of the year 405 in Spain. Our information is largely conjectural and affords us no certainty about his closing years.

That a poet who still dwelt amid the sculptured coldness of the pagan past should have written such hymns, is a proof of what Christianity was then achieving. She had banished from the chilly apartments of literature the ancient _focus_ with its feeble charcoal and its mephitic smoke. Instead of this she had created the cheerful _hearth_, on which a pure fire of devotion was kindled and whose ascending flame swept off the immoral vapors of the time. Prudentius, in a word, made scholarship and religion companions instead of enemies; and brightened classic prosody by the presence of a living faith.

To Prudentius also more hymns have been ascribed than he ever wrote, but after these have been weeded out, there are left:

_Ales diei nuntius_, _Nox et tenebrae et nubila_, _Sol ecce surgit igneus_, _Intende nostris sensibus_, _O crucifer bone, lucisator_, _Pastis visceribus, ciboque sumpto_, _Inventor rutili dux bone luminis_, _Ades pater supreme_, _Cultor Dei memento_, _O Nazarene lux Bethlem verbum Patris_, _In Ninivitas se coactus percito_, _Christe servorum regimen tuorum_, _Da puer plectrum_, _Corde natus ex parentis_, _Deus ignee fons animarum_, _Jam moesta quiesce querela_, _Quid est quod arctum circulum_, _Quicumque Christum quaeritis_, _O sola magnarum urbium_, _Audit tyrannus anxius_, _Salvete flores martyrum_, _Qui ter quaternus denique_, _Felix terra quae Fructuoso vestiris_, _Lux ecce surgit aurea_, _En martyris Laurentii_, _Beate martyr prospera_, _Noctis terrae primordia_, _Obsidionis obvias_, _Hymnum Mariae Virginis_, _Germine nobilis Eulalia_, _Scripta sunt coelo duorum_, _Innumeros cineres sanctorum_.