Prudentius, Spain, and Late Antique Christianity
Poetry, Visual Culture, and the Cult of Martyrs

This book sets Prudentius' martyr poetry within the religious, social, and visual contexts of late antique Spain.

Paula Hershkowitz (Author)

9781107149601, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 January 2017

266 pages, 29 b/w illus. 1 map
25.4 x 18 x 1.8 cm, 0.7 kg

'… welcome scholarly monography by Paula Hershkowitz … has a firm grasp of the archaeological literature in Spanish and English and introduces English-speaking readers to a range of materials that they would otherwise be unlikely to know. The Spanish bibliography is extraordinarily rich and extensive, and Hershkowitz elegantly negotiates the two different scholarly worlds. Her work merits a place next to the useful volumes of Michael Kulikowski and Kim Bowes that will be well known to readers.' Plekos

This book provides an innovative approach to the Hispano-Roman Christian poet Prudentius and his poetry. It is a breakthrough in Prudentian scholarship which unifies the differing disciplines of history, archaeology, literature and art history in arguing that Prudentius and his envisaged Spanish audience cannot be fully understood in isolation from their environment in late fourth- and early fifth-century Spain. Paula Hershkowitz focuses on Prudentius' Peristephanon, his collection of verses celebrating the deaths of martyrs, and places these poems within the context of Prudentius' world, uniquely employing material, visual and textual remains as evidence for its religious, social and cultural affiliations. It also draws on this material evidence to contextualise Prudentius' awareness of the significance of the visual as a means of promoting beliefs against the background of this crucial formative period in religious history when many of his Spanish audience were not yet fully committed to the Christian faith.

1. An introduction to Prudentius: a Spanish poet for the martyrs
2. Prudentius' audience: society and religious belief in late antique Hispania
3. The Peristephanon and the martyr cults in Roman Spain
4. Visual culture and martyrs: Prudentius, painter of pictures in words
5. Prudentius' poetry in the context of the late antique culture of Hispania
6. An epilogue for a Christian poet.

Subject Areas: Christianity [HRC], Archaeology by period / region [HDD], European history [HBJD], Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]