page_title: Cento Vergilianus de laudibus Christi
section_title: Authorship controversy
hierarchical_section_title: Cento Vergilianus de laudibus Christi / Authorship controversy
caption_attribution_description: bishop, a 7th century Doctor of the Church, with a book, common iconographical object for a doctor
context_page_description: Cento Vergilianus de laudibus Christi is a Latin poem arranged by Faltonia Betitia Proba after her conversion to Christianity. A cento is a poetic work composed of verses or passages taken from other authors and re-arranged in a new order. This poem reworks verses extracted from the work of Virgil to tell stories from the Old and New Testament of the Christian Bible. Much of the work focuses on the story of Jesus Christ.
  While scholars have proposed a number of hypotheses to explain why the poem was written, a definitive answer to this question remains elusive. Regardless of Proba's intent, the poem would go on to be widely circulated, and it eventually was used in schools to teach the tenets of Christianity, often alongside Augustine of Hippo's De doctrina Christiana. But while the poem was popular, critical reception was more mixed. A pseudonymous work purportedly by Pope Gelasius I disparaged the poem, deeming it apocryphal, and many also believe that St. Jerome wrote negatively of Proba and her poem. Other thinkers like Isidore of Seville, Petrarch, and Giovanni Boccaccio wrote highly of Proba, and many praised her ingenuity.
context_section_description: The poem is traditionally attributed to Faltonia Betitia Proba largely on the assertion of Isidore, who wrote in his Etymologiae that De laudibus Christi was the product of a woman named Proba who was the wife of a man named Adelphus (Proba, uxor Adelphi, centonem ex Vergilio ... expressit). But the classicist and medievalist Danuta Shanzer has argued that the poem was not the work of Faltonia Betitia Proba, but rather her granddaughter, Anicia Faltonia Proba, who lived in the late-fourth and early-fifth centuries. Shanzer—who is of the opinion that Faltonia Betitia Proba likely died in AD 351—bases much of her assertion on supposed date inconsistencies and anachronisms within the text. For instance, Shanzer points out that lines 13–17 of De laudibus Christi strongly resemble lines 20–24 of the poem Carmen contra paganos, which was written sometime after Faltonia Betitia Proba's death. Shanzer also claims that De laudibus Christi alludes to a notable debate about the date of Easter that took place in AD 387, thereby suggesting that the poem must date from the latter part of the fourth century. Finally, Shanzer argues that the reference to the war between Magnentius and Constantius in the work's proem precludes the possibility that Faltonia Betitia Proba arranged De laudibus Christi, due to the fact that the war took place in the same year as her supposed death. Shanzer rounds out her hypothesis by also invoking a textual argument, noting that the author of De laudibus Christi is often referred to in later manuscripts by titles that only Anicia Proba would have received, such as "mother of the Anicians" or the "eminent Roman Mistress".
  In her 2015 book Proba the Prophet, Cullhed counters Shanzer's claims, first by noting that there is no definitive evidence that Faltonia Betitia Proba died in AD 351 and that such an assertion remains speculative at best. Cullhed also argues that "there are no 'grounds for determining priority'" of the poem's opening lines, and that the supposed reference to the AD 387 debate about Easter could have likely referred to an earlier, perhaps less famous dispute. As to the titles found in later manuscripts, Cullhed writes that it is likely that they were erroneously inserted during the Middle Ages by scribes who had understandably confused the two Probas. Cullhed also reasons that if Anicia Proba had written De laudibus Christi, the Latin poet Claudian would have almost certainly praised her poetic abilities in his AD 395 panegyric celebrating the joint consulship of her sons Anicius Hermogenianus Olybrius and Anicius Probinus. Cullhed concludes: "The evidence for discrediting Isidore's attribution [of Faltonia Betitia Proba as the author of the cento] is not sufficient, and so, I will assume that the cento was written in the mid-fourth century by Faltonia Betitia Proba." Today, the general consensus among classicists and scholars of Latin is that De laudibus Christi was indeed written by Faltonia Betitia Proba.
caption: Isidore of Seville (pictured) identified Faltonia Betitia Proba as the poem's author in his 7th-century work Etymologiae.
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