Vita sancti Martini (Prologue and four books)
· Venantius Fortunatus
· later 6th century
· hagiography
Latin · domain: latin-poetry-late-antique · researched 2026-11-14
partial / older only. An English translation exists but is partial or older than the critical edition. The gap is a modern, complete translation from the original. A rendering of a daughter version does not count here: it is recorded on the dossier of the text it actually translates.
Why this is in the register
Fortunatus turned Sulpicius Severus's prose Life of Martin into epic verse in four books, and only the first half has been translated. The Cambridge edition by N. M. Kay (2020) gives the Prologue and Books I-II with what its own description calls 'the first English translation of and the first full commentary on that part of Venantius' poem' (https://hollis.harvard.edu/permalink/f/1s5nto6/alma99154208604303941). The complete translation of Fortunatus's poetry, Joseph Pucci's Poems in the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library (2017), explicitly excludes this work: its description states that it is 'the first English translation of all twelve books ... The only poem omitted is the hexameter Vita Sancti Martini' (https://hollis.harvard.edu/permalink/f/1s5nto6/alma990148660090203941). Books III and IV therefore remain untranslated in English (https://hollis.harvard.edu/discovery/search?query=any,contains,Venantius%20Fortunatus%20poems%20Dumbarton%20Oaks%20Medieval%20Library&tab=Everything&search_scope=MyInst_and_CI&vid=01HVD_INST:HVD2&offset=0
Four books of hexameters retelling the Martin narrative for a Merovingian audience, and the model for Paulinus of Perigueux's earlier verse Life; it is the largest single poem by the most important poet of sixth-century Gaul. Half of it is unavailable in English, so the comparison between prose Vorlage, Paulinus and Fortunatus that the Cambridge commentary sets up cannot be followed past Book II.
Livorsi, Lorenzo. "Venantius Fortunatus's Life of St Martin : verse hagiography between epic and panegyric." Bari : Edipuglia, 2023. https://hollis.harvard.edu/permalink/f/1s5nto6/99156744658503941
"The Dynamics of Paratextuality in Late Antique Literature : Stumbling Texts." London : Bloomsbury Academic, 2024. https://hollis.harvard.edu/permalink/f/1s5nto6/99158297242903941