Sedulius

SEDULIUS. - The place of birth and the period in which St. Sedulius (Caelius or Coelius Sedulius) lived are uncertain.

From the "subscriptiones" to the ancient Pitean and Lirense codices, the most reliable document of the Sedulian biography, we learn that he lived in the time of the emperors Theodosius II and Valentinian III; he is said to have been born in Italy, but to have spent part of his life in Greece. He was a priest and perhaps also a bishop. He died in all likelihood around 440-50 A.D.

S.'s major work is the Paschale carmen, or Mirabilium divinorum libri (a subtitle that sometimes, in the later codices, serves as the title) in 5 books (ancient scholars also speak of four and of three, but these will have been mere oversights), a rather free reworking (much more so than in Juvencus) of the four Gospels (books II-V), to which the first book serves as an introduction of an apologetic-formative character with ample exemplification of miraculous episodes drawn from the Old Testament. Allegories, symbolisms, an overabundance of rhetorical ornaments often compress the poetic inspiration, but episodes and passages of a certain interest are not lacking (Invocation to Mary, II, 63-69; Storm Calmed, III, 46-69; Miraculous Catch, IV, 109-24). The Paschale Carmen is in hexameters, except for vv. 1-16 of book I, the Praefatio to the work, rich in all the "topoi" of Christian rhetoric. Of scant poetic importance is the Collatio Veteris et Novi Testamenti, in 55 distichs of epanalectic structure; ancient scholars and editors were in fact reluctant to attribute it to S.; modern ones, on the other hand, although judging it a very poor thing, have nonetheless opted for the attribution. The Ambrosian hymn A solis ortus cardine is instead, despite its brevity, S.'s masterpiece. The Church has recognized its merits by introducing into the liturgy two significant passages from it (stanzas I-VII and stanzas VIII, IX, XI, XIII). The attribution to S. of a Carmen de Verbi Incarnatione, attempted on historical evidence that is indeed rather weak, clashes decisively with strident divergences of language and style. S.'s only prose work, the Paschale opus, arose from the need to defend the orthodoxy of the poet, severely tested by the detractors of his poetic work. Artistically it is a very poor thing, rich as it is in all the defects and in very few of the merits of the author.

S., being a "scholasticus" as he was, drew largely on the classical world: Virgil was his preferred model; much imitated were Lucan and Persius, the one for his taste for the horrible, the other for his didactic interests; there follow in order Ovid, Horace, Tibullus; among the Christians only Prudentius and Juvencus left a distinct echo in Sedulian poetry.

The Paschale Carmen aroused scant approval at its first appearance. But time overturned the early judgment of criticism. In this now favorable climate S. was preparing to republish his work, when he was overtaken by death. The Paschale Carmen nonetheless came out, edited, in this second edition, by the consul Asterius. S.'s fortune then went on growing through the centuries, and today there is a tendency to judge him the most representative of the 5th-century paraphrasts of the Gospel.

Francesco Corsaro