THE BAPTIZED MUSE The Baptized Muse Early Christian Poetry as Cultural Authority KARLA POLLMANN 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Karla Pollmann 2017 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2017 Impression: 1 Some rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, for commercial purposes, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. 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Acknowledgements My interest in early Christian poetry began with my PhD work on the anonymous Carmen adversus Marcionitas (published Göttingen 1991), supervised and exam- ined by the classicist Siegmar Döpp and the historical theologian Wilhelm Geerlings, both then at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany. It is a Christian didactic poem which is as intricate as it is unknown. Its author cannot be determined and its controversially debated time of origin was located by me into the early fifth century at the very earliest. From then onwards this area of research has never ceased to fascinate me. This volume presents a collection of articles containing some of the ensuing fruits of my further studies in the field of early Christian poetry over the last two decades in a revised and updated form. The Principal’s Fund of the University of St Andrews, Scotland, gave a generous award to allow for the translation of six of the contributions in this volume from German into English. I am much indebted to Alastair Matthews and Madeleine Brook for their hard and diligent work with translating the sometimes very technical German. Their astute and critical minds not only helped to clarify some of the original statements but also removed a few factual infelicities. I am very grateful to Professor Irmgard Männlein-Robert and to the SFB 923 ‘Threatened Orders’ who invited me to spend the summer of 2014 as a visiting professor at the University of Tübingen, and generously funded two research assistants, Therese Hellmich and Sarah Blessing. I owe deep-felt thanks to both of them, as well as to Thomas G. Duncan, University of St Andrews, and my PhD student Lorenzo Livorsi, Universities of Kent, and then Reading, for helping me with various stages of finalizing this manuscript. Natur- ally all remaining errors are my own. Some of these chapters have in the meantime become ‘classics’ (such as Chapter 4), while others are more the coveted gems of connoisseurs (like Chapter 6 and 9). By offering these and selected other studies, all of them now in English, updated in line with recent scholarship, and with a few corrections—partly also following suggestions made by reviewers—added where necessary, this volume will make these chapters more widely and easily accessible to the academic community. As this research interest has accompanied me throughout my entire aca- demic career, it seems appropriate to acknowledge some of the people that have supported and inspired me on this academic journey. Professor Siegmar Döpp was the first to introduce me to the exciting and intricate field of early Christian poetry. He taught me to ask critical, imaginative, and unbiased questions and discover intellectually valid and exciting connections in vi Acknowledgements unexpected areas. For this I am most grateful, as for his kindness, good sense of humour, contagious enthusiasm, and high academic ethics. This is also true of the late Professor Wilhelm Geerlings whose wit and creative imagination were unparalleled. Further important academic influences were the late Profes- sors Manfred Fuhrmann (Classics, formerly Konstanz) and Reinhart Herzog (Classics, formerly Konstanz) to whose ground-breaking works in this field all my contributions owe more than can be made explicit. Among the many marvellous colleagues by whom I have been inspired and with whom I have shared thoughts, I wish to highlight Angelo di Berardino (Rome), Jan den Boeft (Leiden), Jean-Louis Charlet (Aix-en-Provence), Catherine Conybeare (Bryn Mawr), Jacques Fontaine (Paris), Roger Green (Glasgow), Hildegund Müller (Notre Dame), Willemien Otten (Chicago), Roberto Palla (Urbino), Kurt Smolak (Vienna), the late Basil Studer (San Anselmo, Rome), Mark Vessey (University of British Columbia), Dorothea Weber (Salzburg), Klaus Zelzer, and the late Michaela Zelzer (both Vienna). I am aware that there are numerous others who remain unnamed. I am grateful for permission from the publishers to reprint, partly in translated form, the articles that were originally published by other presses: 1. ‘Tradition and Innovation. The Transformation of Classical Literary Genres in Christian Late Antiquity’ (= in: J. Ulrich et al. (eds), Invention, Rewriting, Usurpation. Discursive Fights over Religious Traditions in Antiquity (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang Verlag, 2012), 103–20). 2. ‘The Test Case of Epic Poetry in Late Antiquity’ (= ‘Das Epos in der Spätantike’, in: J. Rüpke (ed.), Von Göttern und Menschen erzählen (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2001), 93–129). 3. ‘Reappropriation and Disavowal: Pagan and Christian Authorities in Cassiodorus and Venantius Fortunatus’ (= in: J. Frishman/W. Otten/ G. Rouwhorst (eds), Religious Identity and the Problem of Historical Foundation (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 289–316). 4. Sex and Salvation in the Vergilian Cento of the Fourth Century (= in: R. Rees (ed.), Memento Romane: Vergil in the Fourth Century (London: Bristol Classical Press, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2004), 79–96). 5. ‘Versifying Authoritative Prose: Poetical Paraphrases of Eucherius of Lyon by Venantius Fortunatus, Walafrid Strabo, and Sigebert of Gembloux’ (= ‘Poetry and Suffering: Metrical Paraphrases of Eucherius of Lyons’ Passio Acaunensium Martyrum’,inW.OttenandK.Pollmann(eds),Poetry and Exegesis in Premodern Latin Christianity (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 293–313). 6. ‘Jesus Christ and Dionysus: Rewriting Euripides in the Byzantine Cento Christus Patiens’ (= ‘Jesus Christus und Bacchus. Überlegungen zu dem griechischen Cento Christus patiens’, Jahrbuch für Österreichische Acknowledgements vii Byzantinistik 47 (1997), 87–106; Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften). 7. ‘Culture as Curse or Blessing? Prudentius and Avitus on the Origin of Culture’ (= ‘Varia rerum novitate (Prud. C. Symm. 2,329): Zwei frühchristliche Kulturentstehungslehren bei Prudentius und Avitus’,in V. Panagl (ed.), La poesia tardoantica e medioevale (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2007), 53–71). 8. ‘Christianity as Decadence or Progress in Pseudo-Hilary’s Paraphrastic Verse Summary of the History of Salvation’ (= ‘Populus surgit melior? Dekadenz und Fortschritt im pseudo-hilarianischen Doppelgedicht Metrum in Genesin-Carmen de Evangelio’, in: H. Harich- Schwarzbauer/P. Schierl (eds), Lateinische Poesie der Spätantike (Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2009), 179–95). 9. ‘How Far Can Sainthood Go? St Martin of Tours in Two Hagiograph- ical Epics of Late Antiquity’ (= ‘Kontiguität und Eklipse: Zwei Auffas- sungen von Heiligkeit im hagiographischen Epos der lateinischen Spätantike’, in: Th. Kobusch/M. Erler (eds), Metaphysik und Religion (Munich/Leipzig: K. G. Saur, 2002; later taken over by Walter de Gruyter Verlag), 611–38). 10. ‘Conclusion: Authority as a Key to Understanding Early Christian Poetry’ (= ‘Authority and Arguments in Christian Poetry of Latin Late Antiquity’, Hermes 141 (2013), 309–33; Franz Steiner Verlag). Karla Pollmann Reading December 2016 Contents Introduction: How to Approach Early Christian Poetry 1 PART I. THE POETICS OF AUTHORITY IN EARLY CHRISTIAN POETRY 1. Tradition and Innovation: The Transformation of Classical Literary Genres in Christian Late Antiquity 19 2. The Test Case of Epic Poetry in Late Antiquity 37 3. Reappropriation and Disavowal: Pagan and Christian Authorities in Cassiodorus and Venantius Fortunatus 76 PART II. CHRISTIAN AUTHORITY AND POETIC SUCCESSION 4. Sex and Salvation in the Vergilian Cento of the Fourth Century 101 5. Versifying Authoritative Prose: Poetical Paraphrases of Eucherius of Lyon by Venantius Fortunatus, Walafrid Strabo, and Sigebert of Gembloux 120 6. Jesus Christ and Dionysus: Rewriting Euripides in the Byzantine Cento Christus