Notes on Fortunatus

Ingenio clarus, sensu celer, ore suavis
cuius dulce melos pagina multa canit.

Paul the Deacon on Fortunatus


A.S. Walpole, Early Latin Hymns

Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus, 'the last of the Roman poets,' as Leo well describes him, was born about A.D. 530 not far from Ravenna. In or about his 35th year he suffered from ophthalmia and rubbed the ailing eye with some oil from a lamp that hung before a picture of St Martin of Tours in one of the churches of Ravenna. This healed the eye, whereupon he resolved to shew his gratitude by making a pilgrimage to the saint's grave-at Tours. He travelled through Germany and Austrasia, making friends wherever he went and paying his hosts by poetical compliments, for he was before everything a minstrel. At last he 'reached his destination, but soon set forth once more, again as a minstrel 'courted and caressed, high placed in hall a welcome guest,' going from place to place through the greater part of Gaul. Among other cities he visited Poitiers, where queen Radegundis.-wife of the brutal Frankish king Clotaire I, from whom she had separated,- had established a convent in company with her adopted daughter Agnes. Here Fortunatus settled down, became the intimate friend of the two ladies, and was ordained priest. A year or two before the close of the century he became bishop of Poitiers, where he lived until his death, which befel him soon after A.D. 600.

Of his great poetical gift there can be no question, in spite of the fact that again and again he shews traces of the decadent taste of his times. And between his best and his worst work there is a very wide gulf. Some of his shorter occasional pieces,-and most of his poems are of an occasional character,-are almost frivolous, while his praises of barbaric kings and nobles indulge in exaggeration and flattery. But his hymns . . . rise to supreme excellence. They combine a deep sincerity and a fervor of poetic feeling and religious thought with high dignity, strength and skill of expression. They are indeed models of what Christian hymns should be. . .  

F.J.E. Raby, A History of Christian-Latin Poetry

In estimating the poetical achievement of Fortunatus, those critics, who have refused to see in him anything more than ‘the last and feeble representative of classical poetry’, have naturally arrived at an unfavorable  conclusion. To such critics Fortunatus is merely the unworthy successor of those poets of the fifth century, who, with all their faults, were steeped in the classical tradition, and had caught something of the manner of their great models. These were, at any rate, men of education, trained in the Imperial Schools, while Fortunatus, who, on his own confession, knew little 'grammar' and less rhetoric," was hardly less than a barbarian among barbarians.  But when, in the true historical spirit and laying classical prejudice aside, we are content to regard Fortunatus as a poet to be judged in the setting of his own age, we recognize at once that he draws his inspiration from the material of his own experience, and refuses to remain a mere versifier of worn-out themes.' And so it is that his verses, tedious as many of them doubtless are, reflect the real man, his lively interest in the common things of life, his delight in nature, his good humor, and most of all,  his relation to what was deepest and best in the religious life. This' occasional' poet, who wrote about trifles-a supper, a gift of flowers, a garden, a journey along the Moselle-could also celebrate in noble verse the passion of Christ, or the world's resurrection in the spring. It is far truer, therefore, to regard Fortunatus, not as the last of the Roman, but as the first of medieval poets. His hymns are steeped in the Catholic spirit, in Catholic symbolism and mysticism. The form may be classical at bottom, but in his use of rime and even more in the quality of his inspiration, he is in the great line of liturgical poets who were the creators of a new tradition, a tradition out of which was to issue the lyrical poetry of the modern world. Further, in his secular verses, he expresses the spirit of a new civilization, which was being raised on the ruins of the Gallo-Roman past.

Helen Waddell, The Wandering Scholars

Fortunatus had his name out of a fairy tale.

Hellen Waddell, Medieval Latin Lyrics

Venantius Fortunatus, 'who is so charming" says Professor Saintsbury, "that they ought to have called him A-venantius" is a kind of halycon on the danerous Frankish seas. 

Criticism has been hard on Fortunatus. " Le poete epicurien, l'abbe gastronome' says Ampere, a little unkindly, and undoubtedly a good deal of his life did consist in eating and drinking. Radegunde indulged him, with the tolerance that sometimes accompanies great personal austerity. Fortunatus writes little verses about a tablecloth of roses and ivy, thanks for eggs and plums: he is to eat two eggs a day, and he has eaten four: may all the days of his life obey her as did his greed this day. But there was no grossness in him, and there were times when fire was laid upon his lips. Vexilla regis prodeunt was written for the coming of a fragment of the Holy Rood to Poitiers : five hundred years later it was the marching song of the men who fought for the Sepulchre. If he loved good cheer, he loved goodness more: and he had as absolute a vision as that older materialist and mystic of the ladder between earth and heaven.

I might add how utterly boring - as the hymns they sing -  are the ecclesiastics we have now, when compared with the likes of Fortunatus.