Venantius Fortunatus, commentary, poetry and music of Radegund of Thuringia

[Steven Avery]

Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus (c.530–c.600/609)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venantius_Fortunatus

... His later work shows familiarity with not only classical Latin poets such as Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Statius, and Martial, but also Christian poets, including Arator, Claudian, and Coelius Sedulius, and bears their influence. In addition, Fortunatus likely had some knowledge of the Greek language and the classical Greek writers and philosophers, as he makes reference to them and Greek words at times throughout his poetry and prose.

FORTUNATUS, VENANTIUS HONORIUS CLEMENTIANUS (530-609),
1911 Encyclopaedia Brittanica
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911...a/Fortunatus,_Venantius_Honorius_Clementianus

=======================================

[Expositio Fidei Catholicae]

Texts and Studies: Contributions to Biblical and Patristic Literature Volume 2 Part 2 (1896 originally)
The Fortunatus Commentary
Joseph Armitage Robinson
https://books.google.com/books?id=iWYuAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA29

The Athanasian creed and its early commentaries (1896)
Andrew Ewbank Burn
https://archive.org/details/athanasiancreedi00burn/page/28/mode/2up

The Nicene and Apostles' Creeds: Their Literary History ; Together with an Account of the Growth and Reception of the Sermon on the Faith, Commonly Called "the Creed of St. Athanasius" (1875)
Charles Anthony Swainson
https://books.google.com/books?id=s75viscc3GEC&pg=PA317

============================================

Erasmus and the Middle Ages: The Historical Consciousness of a Christian Humanist (2001)
István Pieter Bejczy
https://books.google.com/books?id=MxLV1yVyT7sC&pg=PA43
The sixth-ccntury poet Vcnandus Fortunatus does not seem to have met with his approval either,33
33 Cf. Allen Ep. 2178:13 8.

CCEL
https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc3.iii.xii.xvi.html

 

[Steven Avery]

The Witness of God is Greater

Radegund of Thuringia (520-587 AD)
Radegund (Latin: Radegunda; also spelled Rhadegund, Radegonde, or Radigund; c. 520 – 13 August 587)
was a Thuringian princess and Frankish queen, who founded the Abbey of the Holy Cross at Poitiers. She is
the patron saint of several churches in France and England and of Jesus College, Cambridge (whose full name
is "The College of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist and the glorious Virgin Saint Radegund,
near Cambridge").

Radegund was born about 520 to Bertachar, one of the three kings of the German land Thuringia.[1]
Radegund's uncle, Hermanfrid, killed Bertachar in battle, and took Radegund into his household. After allying
with the Frankish King Theuderic, Hermanfrid defeated his other brother Baderic. However, having crushed his
brothers and seized control of Thuringia, Hermanfrid reneged on his agreement with Theuderic to share
sovereignty. In 531, Theuderic returned to Thuringia with his brother Clotaire I (also known as Chlothar).
Together they defeated Hermanfrid and conquered his kingdom. Clotaire I also took charge of Radegund,
taking her back to Merovingian Gaul[1] with him. He sent the child to his villa of Athies in Picardy for
several years, before marrying her in 540. Radegund was one of Clotaire I’s six wives or concubines
(the other five being Guntheuca who was the widow of his brother Chlodomer, Chunsina, Ingund,
Ingund’s sister Aregund and Wuldetrada the widow of Clotaire's grand-nephew Theudebald). She bore
him no children. Radegund was noted for her almsgiving. By 550 Radegund's brother was the last surviving
male member of the Thuringian royal family. Clotaire had him murdered. Radegund fled the court and
sought the protection of the Church, persuading the bishop of Noyon to ordain her as a deaconess;[1]
founding the monastery of Sainte-Croix in Poitiers circa 560, where she cared for the infirm. Radegund
was widely believed to have the gift of healing.[3]

Living under the Rule for Virgins of Caesarius of Arles, the nuns were required to be able to read and
write, and to devote several hours of the day to reading the scriptures and copying manuscripts, as
well as traditional tasks such as weaving and needlework.[4] This Rule strictly enclosed women, to the
point that nuns of Sainte-Croix were unable to attend Radegund's funeral. Radegund was known for her
ascetic behaviour and has been described as an "extreme ascetic".[6][7] She refused all animal products. She
ate nothing but legumes and green vegetables: neither fruit nor fish nor eggs.[6] Radegund also abstained
from wine, mead and beer. During Lent she abstained from bread, oil, and salt, and only drank a little water.[6]
She acted against the advice of others who warned her that her extreme asceticism might make her ill.[6] She
bound her neck and arms with three iron circlets; her flesh was badly cut because of this. On one occasion she
heated a brass cross and pressed it on her body.

The poet Venantius Fortunatus and the bishop, hagiographer, and historian, Gregory of Tours, were close
friends with Radegund and wrote extensively about her. She wrote Latin poems to Fortunatus on tablets that
have been lost. The three of them seem to have been close and Fortunatus' relations with Radegund seem to
have been based on friendship. There are two poems written in the voice of Radegund, De Excidio Thoringiae
and Ad Artachin. While it has been proposed that Venantius wrote them, recent historians see her as the
author. Another biography was written by the nun Baudovinia following a rebellion at the abbey described by
Gregory of Tours. Her abbey was named for the relic of the True Cross that Radegund obtained from the
Byzantine Emperor Justin II. Although the bishop of Poitiers Maroveus refused to install it in the abbey, at
Radegund's request king Sigebert sent Eufronius of Tours to Poitiers to perform the ceremony. To celebrate
the relic and its installation into Sainte-Croix, Venantius Fortunatus composed a series of hymns, including the
famous Vexilla Regis, considered to be one of the most significant Christian hymns ever written, which is still
sung for services on Good Friday, Palm Sunday, as well as the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.

Radegund's funeral, which Venantius Fortunatus and Gregory of Tours attended, was three days after her
death. She was buried in what was to become the Church of St. Radegonde in Poitiers. Her tomb can still be
found in the crypt of that church, which remains the center of devotion to her. In the 1260s a church decoration
program included stained-glass windows depicting Radegund's life. These were later largely destroyed by
Huguenots. Radegund was a close friend of Junian of Maire; Junian and Radegund are said to have died on
the same day, 13 August 587.[5]
Radegund. Wikipedia. <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radegund>

HITS:
To the August Justin and Sophia
The highest glory of the father, son, and nourishing spirit,
one god to be adored in this trinity,
majesty, triple person, simple substance,
equal consort and coeval with itself,
one force remaining the same, one power in three
(which the father begetting , the spirit enables),
indeed distinct in persons, joined in vigor,
of one nature, equal in strength, light, throne,
the trinity was always with him, ruling without time,
lacking no use nor capable of seizing.

Joan Ferrante, Medieval Women's Latin Letters. <epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu/letter/916.html>

Latin: Ad Iustinum et Sophiam Augustos
Gloria summa patris natique ac spiritus almi,
unus adorandus hac trinitate deus,
maiestas, persona triplex, substantia simplex,
aequalis consors atque coaeva sibi,
virtus una manens idem, tribus una potestas
(quae pater haec genitus, spiritus ipsa potest),
personis distincta quidem, coniuncta vigore,
naturae unius, par ope luce throno,
secum semper erat trinitas, sine tempore regnans,
nullius usus egens nec capiendo capax.
Venanti Fortunati Opera Poetica, ed. Fridericus Leo (Berlin: Weidmann, 1881), Appendix, 275-78
.
Comments:
[Ferrante] Radegund asked the imperial couple to send her a relic from the cross, in a letter which was
carried by an official of King Sigebert along with letters from the king. The relics they sent were installed in her
monastery in 569, in honor of which Fortunatus composed the hymns "Vexilla regis prodeunt" and "Pange
lingua gloriosi" (JoAnn McNamara, Sainted Women of the Middle Ages (Durham: Duke University, 1984), 63.
This poem, along with the two other extant poems of Radegund, has been attributed to Fortunatus and is
published in an appendix to his works, but since Fortunatus himself talks about the poems Radegund wrote
and she inscribes her name in these, I see no good reason to deny her authorship of these.

(Joan Ferrante, Medieval Women's Latin Letters. <epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu/letter/916.html>)

 

[Steven Avery]

HIT:
● [Expositio Fidei Catholicae] Nor let us confuse the Persons, as Sabellius errs, who says that the Father Himself is the Person that is also the Son Himself and the Holy Spirit; therefore let’s not confuse the Persons, because the Three are altogether complete Persons. For here is a Begetter, a Begotten and a Proceeder. The Begetter is the Father, who begot the Son; the Begotten is the Son, whom the Father begot; the Proceeder is the Holy Spirit, because He proceeds from the Father and Son. The Father and Son are both co-eternal, of equal age, and cooperators, as it is written: "By the Word of the Lord were the heavens established," i.e. created by the Son of God; "by the Spirit of His mouth all their host" (Ps. 33:6). When in singular number it is said His Spirit, the Trinity of the Persons is clearly described, because the Three are One, and the One is Three.
(Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus. Exposition on the Catholic Faith)

[Athanasius Creed]. Translated by Jeroen Beekhuizen, correspondence, 2019.)

○ Latin: Neque confundentes personas, ut Sabellius errat, qui ipsum dicit esse Patrem in persona, quem et
Filium ipsum, et Spiritum sanctum; non ergo confundentes personas, quia tres personae omnino sunt. Est
enim gignens, genitus et procedens. Gignens est Pater, qui genuit Filium; Filius est genitus, quem genuit
Pater; Spiritus sanctus est procedens, quia a Patre et Filio procedit. (0587C) Pater et Filius coaeterni sibi
sunt, et coaequales, et cooperatores, sicut scriptum est: Verbo Domini coeli firmati sunt, id est a Filio Dei
creati; Spiritu oris eius omnis virtus eorum (Psal. XXXII, 6) . Ubi sub singulari numero Spiritus eius dicitur,
Trinitatem personarum aperte demonstrat, quia tres unum sunt, et unum tres.
(Expositio Fidei Catholicae [Athanasius creed] Fortunati; Migne Latina, PL 88.587)

The Nicene and Apostles' Creeds: Their Literary History; Together with an ...
By Charles Anthony Swainson
https://books.google.com/books?id=6uRVAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA437

http://www.mlat.uzh.ch/MLS/xfromcc....ebnis&hide_apparatus=1&inframe=1&jumpto=14#14

Comment:
[Translator] Especially noteworthy (which gets lost in translation) is the double use of unum and tres. This is a
deliberate play of grammatical gender. Unum as a neuter refers to One essence. Tres as feminine refers to Three
Persons (in Latin personas is feminine). That this is left implicit even for the Latin reader supports in my eyes the
idea that the author quotes Scripture here. The whole weight of his argument lies in the grammatical gender of the
scriptural phrase 'tres unum sunt', similar to the argumentation of Tertullian and Cyprian.

(Jeroen Beekhuizen, correspondence, December 2019)