AURELIUS PRUDENTIUS CLEMENS (to give his full title) was born, probably
at Saragossa (Caesaraugusta), in Spain, in the year of our Lord 348. The
fourth century exercised a profound influence alike on the destiny of
the Roman Empire and of the Christian Church. After a long discipline,
strangely alternating between fiery persecution and contemptuous
toleration, the Church entered upon a new era, when in 323 Constantine,
the first Christian emperor, became master of the Roman world. Two
years later the Council of Nicaea met to utter its verdict on the
Arian controversy and to establish the terms of the orthodox symbol. A
generation later Julian took up the reins of empire and commenced his
quixotic and fruitless attempt to revive the glories of Paganism.
Athanasius died in 373: but fourteen years later Augustine, his successor
in the championship of the faith, was baptized, and in 395, at the death
of Theodosius, when the Empire was divided between Honorius and Arcadius,
he became Bishop of Hippo, and was marked out by his saintliness and
learning as the leader of the Western Church, which he shaped by his
splendid ideal of the _Civitas Dei_ into unity and stability, when
the secular empire was falling into decay.
We know little more of the life of Prudentius than he himself has
disclosed. The _Preface_, which stands as an introduction to his poems,
is a miniature autobiography of great interest. M. Boissier in his _Fin du
Paganisme_ calls it _mélancolique_: though it is rather the retrospect
of a serious and awakened, but not morbid, conscience. Prudentius views
his past years in the light of that new spiritual truth to which he has
opened his soul. We gather that he received a liberal education and was
called to the bar. We need not misunderstand the allusion to the
deceitfulness of the barrister life, seeing that the ordinary arts of
rhetoric stand condemned by his recently adopted ethical standard. He held
two important judicial posts and was promoted to a high position, probably
in the civil service and not outside the limits of his native province, the
_provincia Tarraconensis_.
He speaks of himself as having reached the age of fifty-seven, which
brings us down to 405, and as intending to consecrate his remaining years
to the poetic treatment of religious subjects. When and how he became a
Christian we do not know, and it were vain to guess, although the
suggestion that he may have owed his conversion to the influence of some
Christian family of his acquaintance is at least interesting. It is
unlikely that he took up poetry for the first time in his old age. His
mastery of all kinds of metre--heroic and lyric--prove the practised hand.
The probability is that in the years of repose after a busy career his
desire to redeem an unspiritual past suggested for the exercise of his
natural gifts a field hitherto unoccupied by any of the writers of his
age. Why not consecrate his powers to the task of interesting the literary
circles of the Empire in the evangel of Christ? Why not present the truths
of Christianity in a poetic guise, wrought into forms of beauty and set
forth in the classical metres of Roman literature? This became the passion
of his life, and however we may view the results of his toil, the spirit
in which he went to work, as described in the touching _Epilogue_,
cannot but evoke our profound admiration. He is but a vessel of earth, but
whatever the issue may be, it will be a lasting joy to have sounded forth
the praise of Christ in song.
This then is how Prudentius becomes the first poet of the Christian Church,
or, as Bentley called him, "the Virgil and Horace of the Christians."
Doubtless there were other influences at work to determine the sphere to
which he was naturally attract. Ambrose, who was Bishop of Milan when
Prudentius was twenty-six years of age, had written the first Latin hymns
to be sung in church. Augustine in a familiar passage of the _Confessions_
(ix. 7.) describes how "the custom arose of singing hymns and psalms, after
the use of the Eastern provinces, to save the people from being utterly
worn out by their long and sorrowful vigils." "From that day to this," he
adds, "it has been retained and, many might say, all Thy flocks throughout
the rest of the world now follow our example." To Ambrose and Augustine the
Church of Christ is for ever indebted: to the latter for a devotional
treatise which is the most familiar of all the writings of the fourth
century: to the former for the hymns of praise which he composed and the
practice of singing which he thus inaugurated in the worship of the
Western Church. But the Church owes something also to Prudentius, a much
more gifted poet than Ambrose. The collection of hymns known as the
_Cathemerinon_ or _Hymns for the day_ is as little adapted for
ecclesiastical worship as Keble's _Christian Year_, although excerpts
from these poems have passed into the hymnology of the Church, just as
portions of Keble's work have passed into most hymn books. For example,
seven of these excerpts in the form of hymns are to be found in the Roman
Breviary, and thus for centuries the lyrics of Prudentius have been sung in
the daily services of the Church.
Seeing that Prudentius must address himself to most English readers through
the imperfect medium of a translation, it may be well to remind those who
make their first acquaintance with him that a historical imagination is an
indispensable condition of interest and sympathy. If Prudentius has a habit
of leaving the main issue and making lengthy and tedious _détours_ into
the picturesque parables and miraculous incidents of the Old Testament,
there is method in his digressiveness. He knows that one of the charms of
Paganism lies in its rich and variegated mythology. Yet Christianity
also can point to an even nobler inheritance of the supernatural and the
wonderful in the mysterious evolutions of its history. Hence the stories
of the early patriarchs, of the Israelites and Moses, of Daniel and Jonah,
are imported by the poet as pictorial illustrations of his theme. If
occasionally the details border on the grotesque, he certainly reveals a
striking knowledge of the Old Testament.
The New Testament is also adequately represented. In one poem (ix.) the
miracles of Christ in His earthly ministry and His descent into Hades are
narrated with considerable spirit and eloquence. Besides being a student
of the Bible, Prudentius is a theologian. His theology is that of the
Nicene Creed. The Fall of man, the personality of the Tempter, the mystery
of the Trinity and of the Incarnation, the Virgin-birth, the Death and
Resurrection of Christ, the pains of the lost and the bliss of the saints,
the resurrection of the Body and the life everlasting--these are the themes
of his pen, the themes too of the theology of his age. If the poet's
treatment of these truths occasionally appears antiquated and crude to
modern ideas, it is at least dignified and intelligent. His mind has
absorbed the Christian religion and the Christian theology, and he not
unfrequently rises to noble heights in the interpretation of their
mysteries. His didactic poems, the _Hamartigenia_ or the _Origin of Evil_
and the _Apotheosis_, a treatise on the Person of Christ, prove him to be
a theologian of no mean calibre. He is also an allegorist, as is proved by
the _Psychomachia_ or the _Battle of the Soul_, a kind of _Holy War_
which was very popular in the Middle Ages. He is a martyrologist: as
witness the _Peristephanon_, a series of poems on Christian, principally
Spanish, martyrs. Moreover, he is an undoubted patriot, and in the _Contra
Symmachum_, which he wrote on the famous affair of the Altar of Victory,
he proves that, while a Christian, he is also _civis Romanus_, loyal to
the Empire and the powers that be. He is a skilful versifier, and in this
connection the quatrains of the _Dittochaeon_, verses on themes of the Old
and New Testaments, may be mentioned in order to complete the list of his
works. His mastery of his very varied metres--hexameter, iambic, trochaic
and sapphic--is undoubted: everywhere we note the influence of Virgil and
Horace, even when these poets are not recalled by echoes of their diction
which are constantly greeting the reader of his poems.
Reference has already been made to the influence of Ambrose of Milan upon
the thought and style of Prudentius. But there is a second and even more
powerful influence that deserves at least briefly to be noted--namely, the
Christian art of the Catacombs. Apart from such definite statements as
_e.g._ are found in _Peristephanon_ xi., it is obvious that Prudentius
had a first-hand knowledge of Rome and particularly of the Catacombs.
Everywhere in his poems we find evidences of the deep impression made upon
his imagination by the paintings and sculptures of subterranean Rome. The
now familiar representations which decorate the remains of the Catacombs
suggested to him many of the allusions, the picturesque vignettes and
glowing descriptions to be found in his poetry. Thus, the story of Jonah--a
common theme typifying the Resurrection--the story of Daniel with its
obvious consolations for an age of martyrs, the Good Shepherd and the
denial of Peter may be mentioned among the numerous subjects which were
reproduced in early Christian art and transferred by the poet to his verse.
The symbolism of the Cock, the Dove, and the Lamb borne on the shoulders
of the Good Shepherd is a perpetually recurring feature in the lyrics and
martyr-hymns of Prudentius, who thus becomes one of our most valuable
authorities on the Christian art of the fourth century.
The poems, of which a new English rendering is presented in this volume,
are acknowledged by most critics to illustrate some of his best qualities,
his brightness and dignity, his touches of nature-painting and his capacity
for sustained and well-wrought narrative. As we study these lyrics of the
early Church, we feel anew the mighty change that Christianity wrought in
Roman life by its doctrine of immortality, and we note the curious
fascination which the circumstances of the Nativity and especially the
Adoration of the Magi had for the Western world. Prudentius had a
great vogue in the Middle Ages, and the modern renewal of interest in
mediaevalism invests with fresh dignity a poet whose works at the Revival
of learning provoked the admiration of Erasmus[1] and the researches of
numerous scholars and editors. But it is undoubtedly to the student of
ecclesiastical history and dogma and to the lovers of Christian art and
antiquities that Prudentius most truly appeals. He claims our interest,
not merely because he reflects the Christian environment of his days, but
because his poetry represents an attempt to preach Christ to a world still
fascinated by Paganism, while conscious that the old order was changing
and yielding place to new.
[1] _Prudentium, unum inter Christianos vere facundum poetam._