Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus (c.530-c.600) was a Latin poet and hymnodist. Events September 22 - Pope Boniface II is elected to succeed Pope Felix IV December 15 - Justinian selects a second commission to excerpt and codify the writings of the jurists on Roman Law. ... For other uses, see number 600. ... It has been suggested that History of the Latin language be merged into this article or section. ... Poetry (from Ancient Greek: (poiéo/poió) = I create) is traditionally a written art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. ... A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a god or other religiously significant figure. ...

Venantius Fortunatus was born in northern Italy somewhere between Treviso (Valdobbiadene) [1] and Ceneda, and grew up during the Byzantine reconquest of Italy; he was educated at Ravenna. His later work shows familiarity not only with classical poets such as Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Statius, and Martial, but also with Christian poets, including Arator, Claudian, and Sedulius. Fortunatus migrated to Gaul in the mid-560s, probably with the specific intention of becoming a poet in the Merovingian court. After political circumstances impeded his court career, Fortunatus received patronage from various religious figures, including St Gregory of Tours. He became bishop of Poitiers sometime before the year 600. Treviso is a town in the Veneto region of Italy. ... Ravenna is a city in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. ... Gregory of Tours (c. ... A bishop is an ordained member of the Christian clergy who, in certain Christian churches, holds a position of authority. ... Location within France Poitiers (population 85,000) is a small city located in west central France. ... For other uses, see number 600. ...

He is best known for two poems that have become part of the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church, the Pange lingua gloriosi proelium certaminis ("Sing, O tongue, of the glorious struggle"), a hymn that later inspired St Thomas Aquinas's Pange Lingua. He also wrote Vexilla Regis prodeunt ("The banners of the King are lifted"), which is a sequence sung at vespers during Holy Week. This poem was written in honour of a large piece of the "True Cross" that had been sent from the Byzantine Emperor Justin II to Queen Radegunde of the Franks, who after her husband Chlotar I's death had founded a monastery in Aquitaine. From the Greek word λειτουργια, which can be transliterated as leitourgia, meaning the work of the people, a liturgy comprises a prescribed religious ceremony, according to the traditions of a particular religion; it may refer to, or include, an elaborate formal ritual (such as the Catholic Mass), a daily activity such... Catholic Church redirects here. ... Saint Thomas Aquinas [Thomas of Aquin, or Aquino] (c. ... Pange Lingua is a hymn written by St. ... The Vexilla Regis is a Latin hymn by the Christian poet Venantius Fortunatus. ... In Latin poetry, a sequence (Latin sequentia) is a poem written in a non-classical metre, often on a sacred Christian subject. ... Vespers is the evening prayer service in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox liturgies of the canonical hours. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Holy Week procession. ... According to Christian tradition, the True Cross is the cross upon which Jesus was crucified. ... Byzantine Empire (Greek: ), is the term conventionally used since the 19th century to describe the Greek-speaking Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered at its capital in Constantinople. ... Flavius Iustinus Iunior Augustus Flavius Iustinus Iunior Augustus or Justin II (c. ... Radegund was born to King Berthar, one of the three kings of Thuringia (a kingdom located in present day Germany), some time in the first half of the sixth century. ... For other uses, see Franks (disambiguation). ... Clotaire I (or Chlothar or Chloderic) (497-561), a king of the Franks, was one of the four sons of Clovis. ... The Tikse monastery in Ladakh, India A monastery is the habitation of monks, derived from the Greek word for a hermits cell. ... Capital Bordeaux Land area¹ 41,309 km² Regional President Alain Rousset (PS) (since 1998) Population  - Jan. ...

All in all, Venantius Fortunatus wrote eleven surviving books of poetry in Latin in a diverse group of genres including epitaphs, panegyrics, georgics, consolations, and religious poems. His verse is important in the development of later Latin literature, largely because he wrote at a time when Latin prosody was moving away from the quantitative verse of classical Latin towards the accentual meters of medieval Latin. His style sometimes suggests the influence of Hiberno-Latin, in learned Greek coinages that occasionally appear in his poems. He also wrote a verse hagiography of St Martin of Tours which is often considered the last epic of antiquity, and a hagiographic life of his patron Queen Radegunde. Latin literature, the body of written works in the Latin language, remains an enduring legacy of the culture of ancient Rome. ... Meter (non-American spelling: metre) describes the linguistic sound patterns of verse. ... Classical Latin is the language used by the principal exponents of that language in what is usually regarded as classical Latin literature. ... Medieval Latin refers to the Latin used in the Middle Ages, primarily as a medium of scholarly exchange and as the liturgical language of the medieval Roman Catholic Church. ... Hiberno-Latin, also called Hisperic Latin, was a playful and learned sort of Latin literature created and spread by Irish monks during the period from the sixth century to the tenth century. ... Hagiography is the study of saints. ... St Martin as a bishop: modern icon in the chapel of the Eastern Orthodox Monastery of the Theotokos and St Martin, Cantauque, Provence. ... Radegund was born to King Berthar, one of the three kings of Thuringia (a kingdom located in present day Germany), some time in the first half of the sixth century. ...

Further reading

• Brennan, B. “The career of Venantius Fortunatus” Traditio, Vol 41 (1985), 49-78.
• George, J. Venantius Fortunatus: Personal and Political Poems. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995.
• George, J. Venantius Fortunatus: A Latin Poet in Merovingian Gaul. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.

External links

• Venantius Fortunatus entry in the 1914 Catholic Encyclopedia
• Poems at The Latin Library (Latin)
• Pange, Lingua, gloriosi proelium certaminis (Latin)