Gaius Vettius Aquilinus Juvencus (fl. c. 330) was a

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...

Christian poet from

Hispania Hispania ( la, Hispānia , ; nearly identically pronounced in Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, and Italian) was the Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula and its provinces. Under the Roman Republic, Hispania was divided into two provinces: Hispani ...

who wrote in

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

Life

Of his life we know only what

St. Jerome Jerome (; la, Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus; grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος Σωφρόνιος Ἱερώνυμος; – 30 September 420), also known as Jerome of Stridon, was a Christian priest, confessor, theologian, and historian; he is comm ...

tells us. De viris, chapter 84; Chron., ad an. 2345; Epist. lxx, 5; In Matt., I, ii, 11. He was a Spaniard of very good birth, became a priest, and wrote in the time of

Constantine I Constantine I ( , ; la, Flavius Valerius Constantinus, ; ; 27 February 22 May 337), also known as Constantine the Great, was Roman emperor from AD 306 to 337, the first one to convert to Christianity. Born in Naissus, Dacia Mediterrane ...

. From one passage in his work (II, 806, sq.) and from St. Jerome's Chronicle it must be inferred that he wrote about the year 330.

Works

His poem, in

dactylic hexameter Dactylic hexameter (also known as heroic hexameter and the meter of epic) is a form of meter or rhythmic scheme frequently used in Ancient Greek and Latin poetry. The scheme of the hexameter is usually as follows (writing – for a long syllable, ...

s, is entitled ''Evangeliorum libri'' (The Gospels). It is a history of Christ according to

the Gospels Gospel originally meant the Christian message ("the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words an ...

, particularly that of St. Matthew. He goes to the other Evangelists for what he does not find in St. Matthew — as the story of the Infancy, which he takes from St. Luke. He follows his model very closely, "almost literally", as St. Jerome says. The whole problem for him is to render the Gospel text into easy language conformable to the tradition of the Latin poets, and borrowed especially from

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...

. His task permits of little originality beyond that exhibited in new words composed, or derived, according to familiar types (''auricolor'', ''flammiuomus'', ''flammicomans'', ''sinuamen''), elegant synonyms to express the Christian realities (''tonans'' for "God", ''genitor'' for the Father, ''spiramen'' for the

Holy Ghost For the majority of Christian denominations, the Holy Spirit, or Holy Ghost, is believed to be the third person of the Trinity, a Triune God manifested as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, each entity itself being God.Grudem ...

, ''uersutia'' for

the Devil Satan,, ; grc, ὁ σατανᾶς or , ; ar, شيطانالخَنَّاس , also known as the Devil, and sometimes also called Lucifer in Christianity, is an entity in the Abrahamic religions that seduces humans into sin or falsehood ...

), or, lastly, archaic expressions. The language is correct and the verses well constructed, but there is little colour or movement. A few obscurities of prosody betray the period in which the work was written. The whole effect is carefully wrought out. In the

prologue A prologue or prolog (from Greek πρόλογος ''prólogos'', from πρό ''pró'', "before" and λόγος ''lógos'', "word") is an opening to a story that establishes the context and gives background details, often some earlier story that ...

, Juvencus announces that he wishes to meet the lying tales of the pagan poets,

Homer Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the '' Iliad'' and the '' Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of ...

and Virgil, with the glories of the true Faith. He hopes that his poem will survive the destruction of the world by fire, and will deliver him, the poet, from hell. He invokes the Holy Spirit as the pagans invoked

the Muses In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Muses ( grc, Μοῦσαι, Moûsai, el, Μούσες, Múses) are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the ...

Apollo Apollo, grc, Ἀπόλλωνος, Apóllōnos, label=genitive , ; , grc-dor, Ἀπέλλων, Apéllōn, ; grc, Ἀπείλων, Apeílōn, label=Arcadocypriot Greek, ; grc-aeo, Ἄπλουν, Áploun, la, Apollō, la, Apollinis, label= ...

. The work is divided into four books, which make arbitrary divisions of the life of

Christ Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other Names and titles of Jesus in the New Testament, names and titles), was ...

. The number four seems to be symbolical, corresponding to the number of the Evangelists. Other traces of symbolism have been found in Juvencus, the most notable being the significance attached to the gifts of the Magi — the incense offered to the God, the gold to the King, the myrrh to the Man. This interpretation, of which he, certainly, was not the inventor, was to have the greatest success, as we know. Lastly, eight preliminary verses, Juvencus's authorship of which is disputed, characterize the Evangelists and assign emblems to them; but they assign the eagle to St. Mark and the lion to St. John. The Bible text which Juvencus paraphrased was of course an ancient one. He appears, too, to have had recourse at times to the Greek text. The source of his poetical phraseology and his technic is, first, Virgil, then

Lucretius Titus Lucretius Carus ( , ; – ) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the philosophical poem ''De rerum natura'', a didactic work about the tenets and philosophy of Epicureanism, and which usually is translated into E ...

Propertius Sextus Propertius was a Latin elegiac poet of the Augustan age. He was born around 50–45 BC in Assisium and died shortly after 15 BC. Propertius' surviving work comprises four books of '' Elegies'' ('). He was a friend of the poets Gallu ...

Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his ' ...

Ovid Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the t ...

Silius Italicus Tiberius Catius Asconius Silius Italicus (, c. 26 – c. 101 AD) was a Roman senator, orator and epic poet of the Silver Age of Latin literature. His only surviving work is the 17-book ''Punica'', an epic poem about the Second Punic War and the l ...

, and

Statius Publius Papinius Statius (Greek: Πόπλιος Παπίνιος Στάτιος; ; ) was a Greco-Roman poet of the 1st century CE. His surviving Latin poetry includes an epic in twelve books, the ''Thebaid''; a collection of occasional poetry, ...

. The cold correctness of the work recommended it to the taste of the Middle Ages, when it was frequently quoted, imitated, and copied. St. Jerome tells us that Juvencus composed another, shorter, Christian poem on "the order of the mysteries" (''Sacramentorum ordinem''). This work is lost. Modern writers have incorrectly attributed to him the ''Heptateuchus'', a work of

Cyprianus Gallus Cyprianus Gallus (fl. c. 397–430) was a fifth-century poet who wrote a Late Latin epic versification of the historical books of the ''Vetus Latina'', though only the Heptateuch (''Heptateuchos'') has survived to the present day. He, along wi ...

, and the ''De Laudibus Domini'', a work of Juvencus's time, but to be credited to some pupil of the rhetoricians of

Augustodunum Autun () is a subprefecture of the Saône-et-Loire department in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region of central-eastern France. It was founded during the Principate era of the early Roman Empire by Emperor Augustus as Augustodunum to give a R ...

(Autun).

Editions and translations

Reginald Oliver Reginald is a masculine given name in the English language. Etymology and history The meaning of Reginald is “King". The name is derived from the Latin ''Reginaldus'', which has been influenced by the Latin word ''regina'', meaning " queen". T ...

published an edition of ''Historia Evangelica'' in

Ipswich Ipswich () is a port town and borough in Suffolk, England, of which it is the county town. The town is located in East Anglia about away from the mouth of the River Orwell and the North Sea. Ipswich is both on the Great Eastern Main Line rai ...

in 1534. * C. Marold (Leipzig, 1886) in the "Bibliotheca Teubneriana" * J. Hümer (Vienna, 1891) in the "Corpus script. ecclesiast. latinorum" *

Notes

References

* This work in turn cites: ** W. S. Teuffel, ''Geschichte der römischen Literatur'' (Leipzig, 1890), 1016 **

Martin Schanz Martin Schanz (12 June 1842 – 15 December 1914) was a German classicist and Plato scholar. He was a Dozent and Professor at the University of Würzburg from 1867 to 1912, and is especially known for his history of Roman literature and his gro ...

, ''Geschichte der röm. Literatur'', IV (Munich, 1904), 1, 190 **

Otto Bardenhewer Bertram Otto Bardenhewer (Mönchengladbach, 16 March 1851 – Munich, 23 March 1935) was a German Catholic patrologist. His ''Geschichte der altkirchlichen Literatur'' is a standard work, re-issued in 2008. For Bardenhewer, a patrologist was n ...

, tr. Thomas J Shanan, ''Patrology'' (St. Louis, 1908) * Cornel Heinsdorff, ''Christus, Nikodemus und die Samaritanerin bei Juvencus. Mit einem Anhang zur lateinischen Evangelienvorlage'', Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte 67 (Berlin/New York 2003) . * Cornel Heinsdorff, ''Der interpolierte Juvencus des Codex Augiensis 112 und Severus von Malaga'', Vigiliae Christianae 60 (2006), 148–170. * R. P.H. Green, "The Evangeliorum Libri of Juvencus: Exegesis by Stealth," in ''Poetry and Exegesis in Premodern Latin Christianity: The Encounter between Classical and Christian Strategies of Interpretation''. Eds. Willemien Otten and Karla Pollmann (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007) (Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, 87), * Roger P H Green, ''Latin Epics of the New Testament: Juvencus, Sedulius, Arator'', Oxford UP 2008 (reviewed by Teresa Morgan in the article "Poets for Jesus", ''Times Literary Supplement'', 4 April 2008, p 31).

External links

*
Opera Omnia
by Migne Patrologia Latina
Preface in English
translation by Patrick McBrine

at ''Bibliotheca Augustana'' {{Authority control

Juvencus Gaius Vettius Aquilinus Juvencus (fl. c. 330) was a Roman Christian poet from Hispania who wrote in Latin. Life Of his life we know only what St. Jerome tells us. De viris, chapter 84; Chron., ad an. 2345; Epist. lxx, 5; In Matt., I, ii, 11. He ...

4th-century Roman poets 4th-century Christians 4th-century Christian clergy 4th-century Romans Christian poets 4th-century Latin writers Romans from Hispania Italian Roman Catholic priests Vettii