PROBA. - Poetess, daughter of the consul Petronius Probianus (322) and wife of the praefectus urbi Adelius (351), she introduced into Christianity the fashion (v. Tertullian, De praeser. haer., 39: PL 4, 191-240) of Virgilian centos.

Her work, composed between 360 and 370, describes the content of the Old and New Testaments with Virgilian phrases. Previously she had composed a poem on the conspiracy of Magnentius. In the meantime she had converted to the Christian religion. The Decree of the Pseudo-Gelasius condemned the use of expressing divine subjects with Virgilian verses (v. E. v. Dobschütz, Das decretim Gelasianum, Leipzig 1912, pp. 120, 299), which, however, hindered neither the reading of P.'s verses in the cloistral schools of the Middle Ages, nor the admiration for the poetess herself (G. Boccaccio, De claris mulieribus, 95).

Bibliography4 works

BIBL.: edd.: C. Schenkl, Poetae christiani minori, I, in CSEL, XVI, p. 511 sq.; F. Ermini, Il centone di P. e la poesia centonaria latina, Rome 1909; Moricca, II, II, p. 851 sq.; E. R. Curtiss, Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter, Bern 1948, p. 456.

@incollection{ec10_proba, author = {Peterson, Erik}, title = {Proba}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {X}, pages = {56}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1953}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/proba} }

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