Cento Vergilianus de laudibus Christi (; A Virgilian Cento Concerning the Glory of Christ) is a Latin poem arranged by Faltonia Betitia Proba ( AD 352384) after her conversion to Christianity. A cento is a poetic work composed of verses or passages taken from other authors and re-arranged in a new order. This poem reworks verses extracted from the work of Virgil to tell stories from the Old and New Testament of the Christian Bible. Much of the work focuses on the story of Jesus Christ.

While scholars have proposed a number of hypotheses to explain why the poem was written, a definitive answer to this question remains elusive. Regardless of Proba's intent, the poem would go on to be widely circulated, and it eventually was used in schools to teach the tenets of Christianity, often alongside Augustine of Hippo's De doctrina Christiana. But while the poem was popular, critical reception was more mixed. A pseudonymous work purportedly by Pope Gelasius I disparaged the poem, deeming it apocryphal, and many also believe that St. Jerome wrote negatively of Proba and her poem. Other thinkers like Isidore of Seville, Petrarch, and Giovanni Boccaccio wrote highly of Proba, and many praised her ingenuity. During the 19th and 20th centuries the poem was criticized as being of poor quality, but recent scholars have held the work in higher regard.

Origin and style

The author of the poem, Faltonia Betitia Proba, was born AD 322. A member of an influential, aristocratic family, she eventually married a prefect of Rome named Clodius Celsinus Adelphius.Kaczynski (2013), pp. 13132. Proba wrote poetry, and according to contemporary accounts, her first work was titled Constantini bellum adversus Magnentium; this poem, which is now lost, recounted the war between Roman Emperor Constantius II and the usurper Magnentius that occurred between AD 35053.Cullhed (2015), p. 24. At some point, Proba converted from paganism to Christianity, and De laudibus Christi, which was probably written AD 352384, was her attempt to "turn away from battle and slayings in order to write holy things".Kaczynski (2013), p. 132.

With the exception of the proem and invocation of the poem, the entirety of De laudibus Christi is a cento (i.e. a patchwork poem) made up of rearranged lines and half-lines extracted from the works of the Roman poet Virgil.Kaczynski (2013), p. 131.Cullhed (2015), p. 1. Proba's choice of Virgil seems to have been made for two reasons: First, Virgil was an influential poet who had been commissioned by Caesar Augustus, the first Roman emperor, to write the mytho-historical epic Aeneid.Comparetti (1895), pp. 114. Arguably the most influential Roman poet, Virgil's artistic clout was immense, being felt well into late antiquity, and he was imitated by Late Latin poets like Juvencus and Prudentius.Ziolkowski & Putnam (2008), p. 475.Comparetti (1895), p. 159. The respect given to Virgil often manifested in the form of centos, which reached peak popularity in the fourth century AD.Ziolkowski & Putnam (2008), p. 469.Comparetti (1895), p. 53. Second, Virgil was often seen as a proto-Christian prophet due to a popular interpretation of his fourth Eclogue, which many believed foretold the birth of Jesus.Ziolkowski & Putnam (2008), p. 470.Comparetti (1895), p. 99.

Hardly any names are present in De laudibus Christi. This is because Virgil never used Hebrew names like "Jesus" and "Mary", and thus Proba was limited in terms of what she was able to work with. To compensate, Proba used vague words like mater ("mother"), pater ("father"), deus ("god"), and vates ("poet" or "priest") to refer to key Judeo-Christian figures. In places, this handicap interferes with readability (according to G. Ronald Kastner and Ann Millin, "Necessary passives and circumlocutions brought about by the ... absences in [Virgil] of appropriate terminology render the text impassable at times").Kastner & Millin (1981), p. 39. An exception to the poem's lack of names is found in a reference to Moses, whom Proba refers to by invoking the name "Musaeus". According to the classicist Sigrid Schottenius Cullhed, "Proba [probably] used the name Musaeus for the Judeo-Christian prophet, since it was often believed from the Hellenistic era onward that Mousaios was the Greek name for Moses".Cullhed (2015), p. 128.

Contents

Summary

The cento's 694 lines are divided into a proem and invocation (lines 155), select stories from the Old Testament books of Genesis (lines 56318) and Exodus (lines 31932), select stories from the New Testament Gospels (lines 333686), and an epilogue (lines 68794).Cullhed (2015), pp. 190231. At the beginning of the poem, Proba references her earlier foray into poetry before rejecting it in the name of Christ. This section also serves as an inversion and thus rejection of the Virgilian tradition: whereas Virgil opened the Aeneid by proclaiming that he will "sing of weapons and a man" (arma virumque cano), Proba rejects warfare as a subject worthy of Christian poetry.Stevenson (2005), pp. 6566. Proba then describes herself as a prophet (vatis Proba) and calls upon God and the Holy Spirit (eschewing the traditional invocation of the Muses) to aid her in her work.Stevenson (2005), p. 66. At the end of the invocation, Proba states her poem's main purpose: to "tell how Virgil sang the offices of Christ."

The passages focusing on the Old Testament concern the creation of the world, the Fall of Man, the Great Flood, and the Exodus from Egypt. Proba's presentation of the Creationlargely based on rewordings of Virgil's Georgicsreorganizes the Genesis narrative to better align it with contemporary Greco-Roman beliefs about the origin of the world.Cullhed (2015), pp. 13840. Cullhed argues that certain aspects of the creation story are "abbreviated ... amplified or even transposed" so that Proba can avoid repetitive passages, such as the double creation of man (Genesis 1:25–27 and Genesis 2:18–19).Cullhed (2015), p. 138.Cullhed (2015), pp. 14142. In the events leading to the Fall of Man, Eve's actions are largely based on the story of Dido from Book IV of the Aeneid, thereby "repeatedly foreshadowing ... the imminent disaster of the Fall".Cullhed (2015), p. 142.Cullhed (2015), p. 145. The Serpent is described with lines that detail Laocoön's death (from Book II, Aeneid) and the snake sent by the fury Alecto to enrage Amata (from Book VII, Aeneid).Cullhed (2015), p. 151. Proba relies on the first two books of the Georgics (specifically, the sections that discuss the Iron Age of Man) to describe human life after Adam and Eve eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil;Cullhed (2015), pp. 15455. in this way, she connects the Greco-Roman concept of the Ages of Man with the Judeo-Christian concept of the Fall of Man.Cullhed (2015), p. 157.

After the story of Creation, Proba briefly references the Great Flood by making use of lines from the fourth book of the Georgics that originally discussed the death of a beehive and the necessity of laws after the end of the Golden Age, respectively. According to the classicist Karla Pollmann, by using lines that concern destruction and the establishment of law, Proba is able to convey the traditional idea that Noah's survival represents the dawning of a "second creation and a new order" (that is, the Patriarchal age).Pollmann (2017), p. 113. Proba dedicates only a few lines to Exodus before moving onto the New Testament. Cullhed reasons that this is because the Book of Exodus and the remaining Old Testament is replete with violence and warfare that is stylistically too close to the tradition of pagan epic poetrya tradition that Proba expressly rejects in the proem of De laudibus Christi.Cullhed (2015), p. 121. In the transitional section between the Old and New Testaments, Proba appropriates the invocation of the Muses of war that immediately precedes the Catalogue of Italians (from Book VII, Aeneid) and verses that originally described Aeneas's prophetic shield (from Book VIII, Aeneid). According to Culhed, these verses originally functioned as poetic devices, enabling Virgil to move from the "Odyssean" first half of the poem to the "Iliadic" latter half. Proba likewise has re-purposed these verses to aid in her transition from the Old Testament into the New.Cullhed (2015), pp. 12223.

The portion of De laudibus Christi that focuses on the New Testament recounts the birth of Jesus, his life and deeds, his crucifixion, and the advent of the Holy Spirit. Although Jesus and Mary are featured, Joseph is omitted.Cullhed (2015), p. 164. Jesus is often described by language befitting a Virgilian hero,Cullhed (2015), pp. 158, 17683. and Mary is depicted by lines originally relating to Venus and Dido. Proba's Sermon on the Mount begins by borrowing the Sibyl of Cumae's description of punishment for the unrighteous (from Book VI, Aeneid), and some scholars contend that this portion of De laudibus Christi is the first description of hell in Christian poetry.Cullhed (2015), pp. 16970. Christ's deeds are reduced to three events: calming the sea, walking on water, and the call of the disciples.Cullhed (2015), p. 176. To describe Christ's crucifixion, Proba uses several lines that originally related to warfare, destruction, and death, such as the battle between Aeneas and the Rutuli (from Book XII, Aeneid), the Sack of Troy (from Book II), and the suffocation of Laocoön by giant serpents (from Book II).Cullhed (2015), p. 18182. Notably, Christ is crucified not on a cross, but an oak tree, which Cullhed argues "synthesizes Jewish, Roman and Christian religious codes", as the species of tree was associated in the Greco-Roman world with Jupiter, and in the Judeo-Christian tradition with the Binding of Isaac.Cullhed (2015), p. 182. After covering Christ's death, Proba borrows lines referring to the erotic love between Dido and Aeneas to represent the decidedly more spiritual love that Christ shares with his disciples.Cullhed (2015), p. 184. The end of the poem focuses on Christ describing the world to come and his ascension into Heaven; Proba conveys the former via the prophecy made by both Celaeno and the Oracle of Delos (both from Book III, Aeneid), and the latter with language that originally described the god Mercury.Cullhed (2015), p. 185.Cullhed (2015), p. 186.

Characterization of Jesus

Due to her borrowing from Virgil, Proba's Christ is very similar to the Virgilian epic hero.Cullhed (2015), p. 158. Parallels between the two include both seeking a goal greater than their own happiness, initiating realms "without end", and projecting auras of divinity.Clark & Hatch (1981), p. 31. According to the early Christian specialist Elizabeth A. Clark and the classicist Diane Hatch, Proba's purpose was to "imbue the Christ with heroic virtues" akin to the Virgilian hero.Clark & Hatch (1981), p. 36. The poet does this in three major ways: First, she describes Jesus as remarkably beautiful,Clark & Hatch (1981), pp. 3334. with "a magnificent and commanding presence" similar to that of Aeneas.Clark & Hatch (1981), p. 33. Second, during the Crucifixion, Jesus does not go meekly to his death, but aggressively lashes out at his persecutors.Clark & Hatch (1981), p. 34. Her reconfiguration of Jesus's crucifixion is thus in line with Aeneas' vindictive slaying of Turnus described at the very end of the Aeneid. Finally, Proba transfers to Jesus portions of prophecies scattered throughout the Aeneid that detail Rome's glorious future, thus recasting pagan oracles in a Christian light.Clark & Hatch (1981), p. 35.

Characterization of Mary