Primary source · Latin verse

The Crowns of Martyrdom (Peristephanon)

Prudentius · c. AD 400–405

Patrologia Latina, vol. 60 (Migne) — manuscript witness to The Crowns of Martyrdom (Peristephanon)
Patrologia Latina, vol. 60 (Migne) — 1847diverse authors · Public domain · Commons
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Patrologia Latina, vol. 60 (Migne) — manuscript witness to The Crowns of Martyrdom (Peristephanon)

Patrologia Latina, vol. 60 (Migne) — 1847diverse authors · Public domain · Commons

What this text is

Fourteen hymns crowning the martyrs — Lawrence, Vincent, Agnes, Fructuosus, the Calagurritani — Rome's poetry redirected from emperors to the executed.

Profile of Prudentius →

Public-domain translations

Literal gloss of the Latin (II, on Lawrence)

These are the church's treasures, he said, and showed the poor… O Christ, grant to thy Rome that the city which has bound the world in one may be Christian: what her arms joined, let faith join.

Manuscript witnesses

Paris, BnF lat. 8084 (Codex Puteanus)

6th c.

One of the oldest surviving books of Latin poetry — Prudentius copied within a century of his death, with a subscription of AD 527.

EARLIEST WITNESS

Patrologia Latina, vol. 60 (Migne)

1847

Standard pre-critical text of the corpus.

PRINTED PROXY

Provenance

Calahorra, Hispania, c. AD 400 — the Crowns of the Martyrs

Editions & scholarship

Critical editions and standard translations behind the text above.

Figures named in this text (17)