GIOVENCO (Gaius Vettius Aquilinus Iuvencus). — He is the first Christian Latin poet whom we encounter after the Edict of Milan (513 A.D.). A native of the Vettones, an ancient people of Lusitania, he seems to have been born at Cesarobriga, later called Oliva (modern Talavera de la Reina), on the right bank of the Tagus. To deepen his education, G. went to nearby Salamanca, an archiepiscopal and university center: consequently, a center that influenced both the poet’s literary studies and his religious vocation. It also appears that he was bishop of Salamanca and that he died there in 337.
The title of G.’s work is Evangeliorum libri quattuor. It was composed around 330, according to the testimony of s. Girolamo and the indication of the poet himself, which is found at the end of the poem. It consists of 3211 hexameters divided into four books of approximately 800 verses each.
As Homer sang of the Greek world and Virgilio of the Latin world, so too G. wished to exalt the Christian world epically in hexameter. The difficulty of such a task must have been considerable, since the poet, although devoting himself to the composition of a literary work, wished to remain as faithful as possible to the biblical account. He had to restrain his poetic impulses in order to reproduce «paene ad verbum» the earthly deeds of Christ; nevertheless, in the composition, in which the imitation of the classics is always precise and scrupulous attention is also paid to language and metrical laws, he aimed to make the Gospels a purely poetic work. He thus succeeded in shaping a distinctive genre of his own, in which the language, verse, style, and conception of the classical world are compelled to ma-
nifest completely new concepts, wholly different from those of the ancient classical world. And the poet fully achieved his aim, to the point, one may say, that we must agree with Hatfield that G. deserves a notable place not only in Christian poetry but also in Latin literature. Nor, on the other hand, should one think that the imitation of the classical poets is lifeless, still less that it is reduced to the mere transcription of verses, phrases, or individual words, since in G. it is determined by a profound assimilation of classical literature, so that the author’s thought finds its most genuine and natural expression in the words of the pagan poets, which, having by then become part of the poet’s innermost patrimony, flow almost unconsciously from him in the composition of the work. Among the authors whom G. imitated in his poem, the one who more than any other evidently influenced his poetic formation, both formal and spiritual, was Virgilio; following, but at a distance, were: Lucrezio, Ovidio, Lucano, Orazio, Silio, Stazio.
The text to which the poet adhered most closely is that of the Itala of the Gospel of Matthew; the contents of the other Gospels occupy only one-fifth of the work. G. nevertheless succeeds in giving his poem a universal character, aiming to lead the Romans, to whom he dedicates his work, to accept Christ as the founder of the Christian religion. And the Christ of G.’s poem, even if he appears somewhat deficient in certain episodes, does not fall short of the sublimity of the evangelical conception: indeed, by bringing together in himself all the qualities and attributes that the Evangelists had recognized in the Son of God, he appears complete and perfect, more profoundly human and, at the same time, more supremely divine.