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<I>Venantius Fortunatus, Poems</I>, Edited and Translated by Michael

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<I>Venantius Fortunatus, Poems</I>, Edited and Translated by Michael 390 Mediaevistik 31 . 2018 victory over Scots and Dublin Vikings at mended. It is about real issues in a com- Brunanburh in 937 as “almost certain- plex and dramatic period where lack of ly fought in the Wirral” (p. 189) in mod- written records brings archaeology to the ern Merseyside. But he is quite wrong. It fore. One would like more volumes on was surely won and lost near Durham, at the same lines. A combination of papers Lanchester, where there is a Roman fort dedicated to a single subject, and careful or burh by the River Browney or Brune. attention within those papers to primary Hence Brunanburh. See Eilert Ekwall, material, is a program for progress. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Andrew Breeze.University of Navarre. Place-Names, 4th ed. (Oxford: Clarendon [email protected] Press, 1960), pp. 70, 285. On the same page he is also mistaken in describing Edgar at Chester in 973 as staging a “submissive pageant of his being rowed on the river” Venantius Fortunatus, Poems, edited with Viking and Celtic rulers at the oars. and translated by Michael Roberts. Hines misses the point. Edgar’s conference Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 46. was not about imperial power, but interna- Cambridge, MA: Harvard University tional co-operation against aggressors. It Press, 2017, pp. 944. was even attended by two Breton counts, It doesn’t pay to sing about the poor! Lit- on whom one may dismiss the doubts ex- erary patronage in the Middle Ages is as pressed in T. M. Charles-Edwards, Wales old as poetry itself. The aristocratic con- and the Britons (Oxford: Oxford Univer- text guaranteed a rich intellectual focus, sity Press, 2013), p. 544. If Edgar wanted whether we consider the poetry of praise an agreement on collective security from or blame, and whether fulsome or just those at Chester, he would hardly get it simple. Authorized compositions offered by lording it over them, although this in- to a patron implied a hope for favorable terpretation was the natural (and crass) compensation, and with his (or her) audi- one of later English writers. Hines’s belief ence assured, the ceremonial promotion elsewhere that Irish cúarán as an epithet of the kingdom by the poet brought glory for Olaf Sihtricson (king of York and Dub- to the sponsor. Following a benefactor’s lin) means “rawhide sandal” and relates tastes within a cultural climate of liberal- to “footwear in inauguration rites for Irish ity and magnanimity might bring unim- kings” (p. 205) is likewise baseless. The aginable rewards to a court poet. A quick sense is not “the Shoe” but “little hunch- example from the life of Fortunatus: the back” and nothing else, as with “Crouch- renowned Gregory of Tours rewarded back” for England’s Richard III. Olaf Si- the poet with gifts, such as an estate on htricson, for all his wiliness, was a lesser the Vienne River. figure than his cousin Olaf Guthfrithson, as In 2009 Wesleyan professor Michael noted in F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon Eng- Roberts published an illuminating mono- land, 3rd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, graph on the poetry of Fortunatus in which 1971), p. 358. His disability may explain he argued cogently for the sixth-century that, as well as his moderation (and surviv- Fortunatus as a bridge from the late classi- al). He was unsuited for battle-combat. cal to earlier medieval periods (one might Despite these flaws, or even because say the same as well about the gifted Si- of them, the book can be warmly recom- donius Appolinaris, dating from a century Mediaevistik 31 . 2018 391 before). The hefty volume to hand with should mention as well another that has eleven books of poetry includes well- become part of the Roman Catholic lit- loved hymns as well as figure poems, urgy, Pange Lingua, “Sing, O tongue…,” epigrams on miracles, and elegies in the as later adapted by St. Thomas Aquinas. voices of abandoned or exiled women, We should mention as well Fortunatus’s epitaphs, georgics, consolations, and re- other types of verse, including person- ligious poems. A major genre of Fortu- al poems to bishops and friends alike, natus’s poetry is the panegyric, four of consolations and poems in support of which are in praise of Merovingian kings political issues, particularly those pre- and queens: Sigibert and Brunhild, Char- sented by his friends Gregory of Tours ibert, Chilperic, and Childebert II. With and Radegunde (occasionally referred the first in this collection, a fanciful epi- to as his mater). All the poems are or- thalamium, Fortunatus made his debut at dered chronologically and by importance the Merovingian Court in Gaul, at Metz, of subject. For instance, a poem about to honor the marriage of Sigibert and God will come before the panegyric to Brunhild. Clearly a court poem in the ep- a king, which will come before a eulo- ideictic mode, it tells the story of how the gy to a bishop. Creative and ingenious bride and groom were brought together by metaphors and wry, self-mocking humor, Cupid, recalling the style of the classical with wordplay and allegory too, have Latin poets, Ovid’s Heroides in particular. doubtless meant Fortunatus’s place in Born sometime in the 530s, the poet the canon of Christian Latin poets was began his career in northern Italy (Ra- assured. Moreover, a crucial dimension venna area, training there in the Classics) of the poet’s importance as the bearer before moving to Gaul, which became of a Christianized Romanitas was em- his adopted homeland. His latest datable braced by Franks and Gallo-Romans, as poems is from 591. Court poet for rival were secular traditions of epithalamium, elements of the Merovingian royal fam- consolation, and panegyric. With the ex- ily, his body of verse in praise of kings ception of several prose saints’ lives and and elites of the dynasty describe as well a life of St. Martin, this volume presents the natural scenery and society of his for the first time in English translation all new home. The corpus reveals his lively of his poetry—270 poems herewith. and inventive style, wherein he also ad- Fortunatus, able to correct a wayward dressed verses to religious figures such king by emphasizing the traits of the ideal as his patron Gregory of Tours and to ruler (a kind of reverse encomium), was holy women such as Radegund, founder admired and widely supported; favored of the Convent of the Holy Cross in Poi- not only for his gifted Latin poetry, but tiers, and Agnes, the Convent’s first ab- also for his accurate renderings of po- bess. To celebrate the relic itself and its litical events, without embellishment. installation into the religious foundation Whether ecclesiastical or secular in fo- of Sainte-Croix, Fortunatus composed a cus, his poems contrast strikingly with series of hymns, including the famous the gory depictions of Gregory. Commis- Vexilla regis (“The royal banners…”), sions from influential patrons flowed his considered to be one of the most signif- way, assuring prominence and, of course, icant Christian hymns ever written (it is ultimate survival of his work. In the end, still sung for Good Friday services). We one might call him the poet laureate of 392 Mediaevistik 31 . 2018 the Merovingian era. Drawing on ante- of it, once the wider audience discovers cedent editions by Reydellet and Di Braz- the court poet was “possibly gay,” we zano, et al., this nearly faultless edition may expect to hear of him tomorrow in and translation of Fortunatus by Rob- the media. erts will doubtless stand the test of time, Raymond J. Cormier, Longwood Universi- bringing on a new wave of interest in the ty-VA, 7531 High Ridge Rd. Boynton Be- poet. While the editor makes no mention ach, FL 33426; [email protected].
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