CLAUDIANUS MAMERTUS. - He was a priest at Vienne in the Dauphiné, where he died in 473 or 474.
Around 470 he wrote *De statu animae* in three books. The first two contain philosophical and theological proofs of the spirituality of the soul, while the third is devoted to refuting part of a letter (the third: ed. A. Engelbrecht, in CSEL, XXI [1891], p. 168 sq.) by Faustus of Riez. In this letter, the influential bishop, adopting a thesis of Tertullian (*De anima*) and John Cassian (*Collationes patrum*, VII, 13), argued that everything that exists in the world, and therefore the soul as well, is corporeal. Faustus’s writing had gained wide circulation because it had been published as a pamphlet under the title *Adversus eos qui dicunt in creaturis esse aliquid incorporeum*.
Two letters by C. M. survive: one to the rhetorician Sapaudus, the other to Sidonius Apollinaris. Yet, despite the extravagant praise bestowed upon him by Sidonius and Gennadius—praise that seems, in any case, exaggerated—this Viennese priest must have written extensively, for he was learned in sacred and profane matters and well versed in Greek and Latin literature. He composed not only prose but also verse. Yet nothing else of his survives. In a manuscript of Gennadius’s *De viris illustribus* (Vat. 2077), we read: “Claudianus Viennensis wrote other things as well, among them a hymn on the Passion of the Lord, beginning with the words *Pange lingua gloriosi*.” This notice is missing from the other manuscripts. Sidonius, in a letter (IV, 3, 8: ed. Luetjohann-Leo-Mommsen in MGH, *Auctores antiquissimi*, VIII, Berlin 1887, p. 55), enthusiastically praises one of his hymns. Yet to attribute to him the hymn that begins with the same words and is found among the poems of Venantius Fortunatus is pure fantasy. Other Latin and Greek poems have been falsely attributed to him, including some by Claudian, which seemed, wrongly, unsuited to that pagan poet.
The language of this writer, with its peculiar *δραζα σιγουλάνα*, its neologisms, lexical distortions, and arbitrary constructions, provides ample grounds for judging the validity of such attributions.