Venantius Fortunatus
Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus (* around 540 in Valdobbiadene near Treviso , † on December 14 between 600 and 610 in Poitiers ) was a poet and hagiographer of the Merovingian period and bishop of Poitiers.
Life
Venantius is known as the last Roman poet of late antiquity ( Friedrich Leo ), but also as the first poet of the Middle Ages ( Franz Brunhölzl ). Both are justified, because the poet belongs to a transition period. He received a solid classical education in Ravenna , the seat of the Eastern Roman governor in Italy, and was well acquainted with the ancient models, including Virgil , Horace , Martial , Paulinus von Nola and Prudentius . In 565, the last year of the reign of Emperor Justinian , he went on a pilgrimage to Tours in Gaul to the tomb of St. Martin , whom he wanted to thank for healing an eye disease. He moved first across the Alps to Raetien , then to Mainz, Cologne and Trier, and finally to Tours via Metz, Verdun and Paris. On the way he found hospitable reception from bishops and aristocrats, whom he thanked with occasional poems.
In Metz, on the occasion of the wedding of the Austrasian King Sigibert I with the Visigoth princess Brunichild, he wrote a wedding poem based on the example of the ancient epithalamies , which opened up access to the secular and spiritual Franconian upper class. He managed to find numerous sponsors, including Euphronius of Tours , who came from a Gallo-Roman senatorial family. Through his recommendation, Venantius reached Poitiers in 567. There he entered into a personal relationship with the Thuringian king's daughter Radegundis , the widow of King Chlothar I , and her foster daughter Agnes , who had retired to a monastery. Venantius became a priest and pastor of the monastery. On behalf of Radegundis, Venantius, who by now enjoyed an excellent reputation as a Latin poet, undertook several trips. He was also literary active for her. He was still in contact with numerous important contemporaries, in particular Bishop Gregory of Tours , who was also one of his patrons. Towards the end of his life, probably around the year 600, Venantius became Bishop of Poitiers.
In later centuries Venantius was venerated as a saint . His feast day is the day of his death, December 14th ; the year of death is unknown.
Works
His works represent an important source for the outgoing Gallo-Roman culture at the turn of late antiquity to the early Middle Ages .
Venantius wrote an epic verse in four books on Saint Martin of Tours ( De virtutibus Martini Turonensis ), starting from the Vita sancti Martini of Sulpicius Severus and also using its epic arrangement by Paulinus of Périgueux . It is dedicated to Gregor von Tours , the production was suggested by Radegunde. He also wrote seven saints' lives in prose, including one about Hilary of Poitiers and one about Radegundis, whom he portrayed as saints after her death.
Of outstanding importance are his eleven books Carmina Miscellanea , which contain liturgical hymns , elegies , enkomia , epigrams , epitaphs and various occasional poems . The latter includes De navigio suo ( About his boat trip ) from the year 588, which is about a trip with the young Merovingian king Childebert II (570-595) down the Moselle to Koblenz and further down the Rhine to Andernach and Leutesdorf and a counterpart to the famous poem Mosella by Ausonius . The hymns include the passion songs Pange lingua and Vexilla regis , which are included in the Roman breviary and are still among the most famous hymns of the Latin liturgy . The Pange lingua also served Thomas Aquinas as the basis for his eponymous Eucharistic hymn Pange lingua . The figure poems (II, 4; II 5; V, 6), which are of central importance for the further development of the genre, form a special group .
Outside of the collection of poems, the Marian song Quem terra, pontus, aethera , a longer poem in praise of Mary ( In laudem sanctae Mariae ) and a lament about the fall of the Thuringian royal family from which Radegunde came from ( De excidio Thoringiae ) have been handed down to us. .
Mixed with the Carmina are various letters and two prose tracts: an exposition of the Our Father and an exposition of the Creed, which is linked to Rufinus of Aquileia .
Editions and translations
- Fortvnati Episcopi Pictaviensis De Resvrrectionis Dominicae The Carmen . Mameranus, Coloniae 1550 ( digitized version )
- Poems: Friedrich Leo (Ed.): Auctores antiquissimi 4.1: Venanti Honori Clementiani Fortunati presbyteri Italici Opera poetica. Berlin 1881 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version ).
- Venance Fortunat, Poèmes . Edited and translated into French by Marc Reydellet, 3 volumes, Paris 1994–2004.
- Holy life in prose: Bruno Krusch (ed.): Auctores antiquissimi 4.2: Venanti Honori Clementiani Fortunati presbyteri Italici Opera pedestria. Berlin 1885 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version ), and Bruno Krusch (ed.): Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 2: Fredegarii et aliorum Chronica. Vitae sanctorum. Hanover 1888, pp. 364-377 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version ), Bruno Krusch , Wilhelm Levison (eds.): Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 7: Passiones vitaeque sanctorum aevi Merovingici (V). Hanover 1919, pp. 219-224 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version ) and Bruno Krusch , Wilhelm Levison (ed.): Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 7: Passiones vitaeque sanctorum aevi Merovingici (V). Hanover 1919, pp. 372-418 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version )
- Judith W. George (Ed.): Venantius Fortunatus: Personal and Political Poems . Translated Texts for Historians . Liverpool 1996.
- S. di Brazzano: Venanzio Fortunato. Opere / 1 (poems, appendix) . Rome 2001 (text and Italian translation).
- Wolfgang Fels: Venantius Fortunatus. Occasionally poetry. The lyric work. The Vita of St. Martin . Introduced, translated and commented. Hiersemann, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 978-3-7772-0603-5 .
- Venantius Fortunatus: Vita sanctae Radegundis. The life of St. Radegunde, Reclam, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-15-018559-9
- Michael John Roberts : The Humblest Sparrow. The Poetry of Venantius Fortunatus . Ann Arbor 2009, ISBN 0-472-11683-5 .
- Michael John Roberts (Ed.): Venantius Fortunatus: Poems (= Dumbarton Oaks medieval library. Volume 46). Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) / London 2017, ISBN 978-0-674-97492-0 .
literature
- Reinhard Düchting : Venantius Fortunatus . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 8, LexMA-Verlag, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-89659-908-9 , Sp. 1453 f.
- Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz : Fortunatus, Venantius. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 2, Bautz, Hamm 1990, ISBN 3-88309-032-8 , Sp. 73.
- Wolfgang Fels: Studies on Venantius Fortunatus with a German translation of his metrical poems. Heidelberg 2006 ( online faculty version of the dissertation ).
- Judith W. George: Venantius Fortunatus. In: Theological Real Encyclopedia . 34: 565-568 (2002).
- Judith W. George: Venantius Fortunatus. A Latin Poet in Merovingian Gaul. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1992, ISBN 0-19-814898-4 .
- Richard Koebner : Venantius Fortunatus. Teubner, Leipzig et al. 1915 ( contributions to the cultural history of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance 22; reprint: Gerstenberg, Hildesheim 1973, ISBN 3-8067-0120-2 ; online )
- Wilhelm Meyer : The occasional poet Venantius Fortunatus (= treatises of the Royal Society of Sciences in Göttingen, Philosophical-Historical Class. New Series Volume IV No. 5). Weidmann, Berlin 1901.
- Michael Roberts: The Last Epic of Antiquity: Generic Continuity and Innovation in the "Vita Sancti Martini" of Venantius Fortunatus. In: Transactions of the American Philological Association 131 (2001), pp. 257-285.
Web links
Texts
- MGH Auctores antiquissimi IV.1 and IV.2 : digitized version of the editions of Leo and Krusch's works (Latin)
- Poems Latin Library (Latin)
- Pange, Lingua, gloriosi proelium certaminis (Latin; the meter is given too imprecisely there)
literature
- Literature by and about Venantius Fortunatus in the catalog of the German National Library
- Venantius Fortunatus in the Catholic Encyclopedia (1914)
Remarks
- ^ Venantius Fortunatus, Carmen X 9 (ed. Friedrich Leo , MGH Auctores Antiquissimi 4.1, Berlin 1881, pp. 242-244 ); German translation and extensive commentary by Paul Dräger : Venantius Fortunatus' two Moselle trips (carmina 6.8 and 10.9). In: Kurtrierisches Jahrbuch, Volume 39, Trier 1999, pp. 67–88, especially pp. 76–86.
predecessor | Office | successor |
---|---|---|
Plato of Poitiers |
Bishop of Poitiers around 600 |
Caregisile |
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Venantius Fortunatus |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus (full name) |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Poet and hagiographer of the Merovingian period and Bishop of Poitiers |
DATE OF BIRTH | at 540 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Valdobbiadene near Treviso , Italy |
DATE OF DEATH | between 600 and 610 |
Place of death | Poitiers , France |