Prudentius writes Crowns of the Martyrs IX, a poem on the martyrdom of *Cassianus (teacher and martyr of Imola, ob. 361/363, S00309); the poem mentions the author's visit to the martyr's tomb in northern Italy, an image depicting the martyrdom, and Prudentius' prayer to the saint. Written in Latin in Calahorra (northern Hispania), c. 400. Overview of Peristephanon IX.
Evidence ID
E00938
Type of Evidence
Literary - Poems
Literary - Hagiographical - Other saint-related texts
Major author/Major anonymous work
Prudentius
Liber Peristephanon, Poem IX
Summary:
Prudentius says that he visited the tomb of Cassianus in Forum Cornelii [Imola in Italy] on his way to Rome and admired there an image depicting Cassianus' martyrdom – see E00942.
A custodian told him the story of Cassianus:
Cassianus is a teacher of boys, trained in shorthand; he is disliked by his pupils. Being a Christian, during the persecutions he refuses to venerate pagan gods, and his persecutor decides to hand him over him to his class, for the children to stab him with their styluses. The boys beat him with their tablets and stab and cut him with their styluses. Cassianus tries to tame them with his words, but he doesn't succeed; the boys claim that with their styluses they write on their teacher's body. Finally, Cassianus dies.
The custodian asks Prudentius to pray to Cassianus and Prudentius does so – see E00945.
Text: Cunningham 1966: 326-329.
Translation: Thomson 1953, 220-229.
Summary: M. Tycner.
Cult PlacesComposing and translating saint-related texts
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesOther lay individuals/ people
Burial site of a saint - tomb/grave
Use of ImagesPublic display of an image
Non Liturgical ActivityComposing and translating saint-related texts
Prayer/supplication/invocation
Visiting graves and shrines
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesOther lay individuals/ people
Children
Source
Aurelius Prudentius Clemens (348–after 405) was a Christian aristocrat from Calahorra in the Spanish province of Tarraconensis. He was a high official in the imperial bureaucracy in Rome, but withdrew from public life, returned to Calahorra, and dedicated himself to the service and celebration of God. Most of what we know about his biography comes from the preface to the ensemble of his works, which can be reliably dated to 404 (Cunningham 1966, 1-2), and other autobiographical remarks scattered throughout his works (for a detailed discussion, see Palmer 1989, 6-31). He composed several poetical works, amongst them the Peristephanon (literally, On the Crowns [of the Martyrs]), a collection of fourteen poems of different length describing martyrdoms of saints. We do not know exactly at which point in his literary career Prudentius wrote the preface (possibly at the very end, just before publication); for attempts at a precise dating of the Peristephanon, see Fux 2013, 9, n. 1.The poems in the Peristephanon, written in elegant classical metres, deal mainly with martyrs from Spain, but some of them are dedicated to saints of Rome, Africa and the East. The poems were widely read in the late antique and medieval West, and had a considerable influence on the diffusion of cult of the saints included. In later periods they were sometimes used as hymns in liturgical celebrations and had an impact on the development of the Spanish hymnody. Some indications in the poems suggest that they were written to commemorate the saints on their feast days, but Prudentius probably did not compose them for the liturgy of his time. Rather, they probably provided 'devotional reading matter for a cultured audience outside a church context' (Palmer 1989, 3; see also Chapter 3 in her book).
Discussion
The poem is written in the distichs formed from a dactylic hexameter and a iambic trimeter.Bibliography
Editions of the Peristephanon:Cunningham, M.P., Prudentii Carmina (Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 126; Turnhout: Brepols, 1966), 251-389.
Bergman, J., Prudentius, Carmina (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 61; Vienna, 1926), 291-431.
Translations of the Peristephanon:
Eagan, C., Prudentius, Poems (Fathers of the Church 43; Washington D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1962), 95-280. English translation.
Thomson, H.J., Prudentius, vol. 2 (Loeb Classical Library; London Cambridge, Mass: W. Heinemann; Harvard University Press, 1953), 98-345. Edition and English translation.
Further reading:
Fux, P.-Y., Prudence et les martyrs: hymnes et tragédie. Peristephanon 1. 3-4. 6-8. 10. Commentaire, (Fribourg: Academic Press, 2013).
Malamud, M.A., A Poetics of Transformation: Prudentius and Classical Mythology (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).
Palmer, A.-M., Prudentius on the Martyrs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989).
Roberts, M., Poetry and the Cult of the Martyrs: The "Liber Peristephanon" of Prudentius (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993).
Record Created By
Marta Tycner, Marta Szada
Date of Entry
07/12/2015
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00309 | Cassianus, teacher and martyr of Imola | Cassianus | Certain |
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