BMCR 2004.10.28, Reydellet, Venance Fortunat, Poe\mes

Marc Reydellet, Venance Fortunat, Poe\mes, Tome III: Livres IX-XI,
Appendice, In laudem sanctae Mariae.  Paris:  Les belles lettres, 2004.
Pp. 215.  ISBN 2-251-01434-9.  EUR 48.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Raymond Van Dam, University of Michigan (rvandam@xxxxxxxxx)
Word count:  935 words
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This volume now completes Marc Reydellet's outstanding Bude/ edition
and translation of Fortunatus' poems. Fortunatus has long been
comparatively neglected by scholars of late Roman and Merovingian Gaul.
One reason is the wide shadow of his friend Gregory of Tours, whose
history of the early Frankish kings has provided both the basic
narrative framework and an influential interpretive perspective for
sixth-century Gaul. Another factor contributing to the disregard of
Fortunatus is the frequent difficulty of reading and translating his
poems. Although Fortunatus was deeply familiar with classical poets and
often imitated lines from their poems, his own classicizing style
verged on the obscure. Although he delivered several verse panegyrics
to Frankish kings, his flattery was frequently excessive and even
incorrect. And although he hobnobbed with important bishops, his
topical allusions were too often vague and merely suggestive.
Fortunatus has hence paid a price for challenging the patience and
linguistic competence of his modern readers, and his mannered style and
presentation have repeatedly left him vulnerable to a misleading
characterization as an exemplar of literary decadence.

Gregory himself deeply admired Fortunatus' poems, and he even seems to
have hoped that his friend might versify his own collection of stories
about the contemporary miracles of St. Martin of Tours. Instead,
Fortunatus transformed the earlier writings of Sulpicius Severus about
Martin's career as a monk and bishop into an epic poem. As a complement
to Reydellet's volumes, Solange Quesnel has recently provided an
excellent Bude/ edition and translation of Fortunatus' extensive "Life
of St. Martin" (published in 1996). But Fortunatus did accept Gregory's
suggestion to publish several books of his occasional poems. Gregory
apparently claimed that he had been "seduced by admiration of these
trifling poems" and thought that others should also have the
opportunity to read them. Since he was an expert in the art of
flattery, Fortunatus was likewise a connoisseur of false modesty. Even
though he thought that his poems were still "paltry and rough," he
would trust Gregory's judgment.

The first volume of Reydellet's trilogy, containing Books 1-4 of
Fortunatus' poems, was published in 1994, the second volume in 1998.
These three volumes are apparently designed to be used together. Only
the first volume includes an introduction and a bibliography. As a
result, short references to modern authors and their publications in
the second and third volumes require the bibliography in the first
volume for decoding. Only the third volume has indexes, which are
limited to the proper names of people, peoples, and places. These
volumes hence mark a significant advance in terms of editing and
translating Fortunatus' Latin text but a step sideways in terms of
providing the fundamental tools for studying his poems. The previous
standard edition of Fortunatus' poems was by Frederic Leo, published in
Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi vol. 4, part 1
(1881). Readers (and future translators) of Fortunatus' poems will
still want to consult Leo's edition for its wonderful indexes of
grammar and metrics.

This third volume contains Book 9 of the poems, published apparently
with Book 8 in 590-591, and Books 10-11, published posthumously. Along
with the poems these books included a few letters and exegetical
treatises in prose. According to Reydellet, Fortunatus himself prepared
these books for publication, even the last two published after his
death. His anthology of eleven books was apparently not complete,
however, since an admirer was able to gather more poems into a small
supplementary collection now known as the Appendix. Reydellet
furthermore accepts Fortunatus as the author of the poem in honor of
the Virgin Mary.

The poems in this volume include several of Fortunatus' most important.
Some concerned rulers. In the later 560s he composed a verse panegyric
for the emperor Justin II, who had sent a relic of the True Cross to
Poitiers (Appendix 2). In 580 he delivered a verse panegyric in honor
of Chilperic which extolled both the king's military success and his
moderation (9.1). Other poems concerned bishops. After Gregory restored
the cathedral at Tours, for instance, Fortunatus composed a series of
inscriptions to be used as captions to describe the scenes from St.
Martin's career which were memorialized in the frescoes on the walls of
the church (10.6). Many of the poems in Book 11 illustrated Fortunatus'
affectionate relationship with Radegund, a former queen who had become
a nun and was now his patron at Poitiers. For all of the poems
Reydellet has added footnotes and complementary notes at the back of
the volume that comment primarily, and predictably, on problems of
translating the odd grammatical constructions and vocabulary.

The publication of Reydellet's and Quesnel's fine volumes ought to
spark a revival of interest in Fortunatus among both literary critics
and early medieval historians. Older scholarship, even when
unacknowledged, remains uncommonly influential. As the introductions
and annotation in these Bude/ volumes make quite clear, the foundation
for research on Fortunatus is still Leo's edition and the impressive
books of Wilhelm Meyer (1901) and Richard Koebner (1915) which
established much of the basic chronology and identified the historical
allusions. On the other hand, newer scholarship is not always fully
appreciated, and the bibliographies and notes in both Reydellet's and
Quesnel's volumes seem curiously unaware of important recent
publications, most notably the influential work on saints' cults by
English-language scholars and the meticulous literary appreciations of
Fortunatus' poems by Michael Roberts. In order to facilitate that
ongoing research, Fortunatus deserves at least two more extensive
projects. One is another Bude/ volume that edits and translates his
prose lives of saints. The other is a complete and thoroughly annotated
English translation of all of Fortunatus' works, verse and prose.