Venantius Fortunatus writes a poem (9.14) recounting how a beam for the roof of a church of *Laurence/Laurentius (deacon and martyr of Rome, 0037) was miraculously lengthened, and how people were cured by wood cut from this beam. Written in Latin in Gaul, 576/c. 591.
E05755
Literary - Poems
Venantius Fortunatus
Venantius Fortunatus, Poems 9.14 (De basilicae sancti Laurenti trabe, 'On a beam from the church of Saint Laurence'), 9-18
The poem opens with generalised praise of Laurence.
Addita nunc etiam populis miracula praestas.
Ut fidei tribuas indubitanter opem. 10
Dum tua templa novant breviori robore plebes,
Creveruntque trabes crevit et alma fides:
stipite contracto tua se mercede tetendit:
quantum parva prius, postea caesa fuit.
Crescere plus meruit succisa securibus arbor 15
et didicit sicca longior esse coma.
Unde recisa fuit, populis fert inde salutem:
si venit intrepidus, lumina caecus habet.
'Now too you offer up a further miracle for the populace to grant them without hesitating the blessing of faith. When the people were rebuilding your church, the timber was too short, but a beam grew in length, and along with it their loving faith. The wood was shrunken, but by your bounty it lengthened; a piece was cut off as small as had been its whole length before. A tree that was cut down by axes was able to increase in size and learned to become longer, though its foliage was withered and dry. From what was cut off he brought healing to the people; a blind man who approaches without fear regains sight.'
Text: Leo 1881, 218.
Translation: Roberts 2017, 599.
Cult building - independent (church)
Other (mountain, wood, tree, pillar)
Non Liturgical ActivityRenovation and embellishment of cult buildings
MiraclesMiracle after death
Power over objects
Healing diseases and disabilities
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesOther lay individuals/ people
Source
Venantius Fortunatus was born in northern Italy, near Treviso, and educated at Ravenna. In the early 560s he crossed the Alps into Merovingian Gaul, where he spent the rest of his life, making his living primarily through writing Latin poetry for the aristocracy of northern Gaul, both secular and ecclesiastical. His first datable commission in Gaul is a poem to celebrate the wedding in 566 of the Austrasian royal couple, Sigibert and Brunhild. His principal patrons were Radegund and Agnes, the royal founder and the first abbess of the monastery of the Holy Cross at Poitiers, as well as Gregory, the historian and bishop of Tours, Leontius, bishop of Bordeaux, and Felix, bishop of Nantes, but he also wrote poems for several kings and for many other members of the aristocracy. In addition to occasional poems for his patrons, Fortunatus wrote a four-book epic poem about Martin of Tours, and several works of prose and verse hagiography. The latter part of his life was spent in Poitiers, and in the 590s he became bishop of the city; he is presumed to have died early in the 7th century. For Fortunatus' life, see Brennan 1985; George 1992, 18-34; Reydellet 1994-2004, vol. 1, vii-xxviii; Pietri and Heijmans 2013, 801-22, 'Fortunatus'.The eleven books of Poems (Carmina) by Fortunatus were almost certainly collected and published at three different times: Books 1 to 7, which are dedicated to Gregory of Tours, in 576; Books 8 and 9 after 584, probably in 590/591; and Books 10-11 only after their author's death. A further group of poems, outside the structure of the books, and known from only one manuscript, has been published in modern editions as an Appendix to the eleven books. For further discussion, see Reydellet 1994-2004, vol. 1, lxviii-lxxi; George 1992, 208-211.
Almost all of Fortunatus' poems are in elegiac couplets: one hexameter line followed by one pentameter line.
For the cult of saints, Fortunatus' poems are primarily interesting for the evidence they provide of the saints venerated in western Gaul (where most of his patrons were based), since many were written to celebrate the completion of new churches and oratories, and some to celebrate collections of relics. For an overview of his treatment of the cult of saints, see Roberts 2009, 165-243.
Discussion
Gregory of Tours recounts this miracle in his Glory of the Martyrs 41 (see E00540), quoting this poem by Fortunatus. Gregory tells us that it occurred at 'Brionae', an unidentified place in Italy (apud Brionas Italiae castrum) – castrum indicates a small fortified town or village).Bibliography
Editions and translations:Leo, F., Venanti Honori Clementiani Fortunati presbyteri Italici opera poetica (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi 4.1; Berlin: Apud Weidmannos, 1881).
Roberts, M., Poems: Venantius Fortunatus (Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 46; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017).
George, J., Venantius Fortunatus, Personal and Political Poems (Translated Texts for Historians 23; Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995).
Reydellet, M., Venance Fortunat, Poèmes, 3 vols. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1994-2004).
Further reading:
Brennan, B., "The Career of Venantius Fortunatus," Traditio 41 (1985), 49-78.
George, J., Venantius Fortunatus: A Latin Poet in Merovingian Gaul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
Pietri, L. and Heijmans, M., Prosopographie chrétienne du Bas-Empire, 4 Prosopographie de la Gaule chrétienne (314-614), 2 vols. (Paris 2013).
Roberts, M., The Humblest Sparrow: The Poetry of Venantius Fortunatus (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009).
Katarzyna Wojtalik
17/06/2018
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00037 | Laurence/Laurentius, deacon and martyr of Rome | Laurentius | Certain |
|---|
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