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THE PERSECUTOR'S ENVY AND THE RISE OF THE MARTYR CULT: PERISTEPHANON HYMNS 1 AND 41 BY J. PETRUCCIONE Amico amantissimo Tom Lane, invidiae experti The first and fourth hymns of Prudentius' Peristephanon have never been the object of a comparative analysis, yet the two share many points of similarity. Both describe an attempt by the pagan persecutor to limit the glory of his Christian victims. In Peristephanon 1, the Roman judge takes careful steps to destroy all memory of the sufferings of the soldier martyrs, Emeterius and Chelidonius, and in Peristephanon 4, the bar- barus tortor (121) restrains his blood lust and denies the coup de grâce to the savagely tortured virgin confessor, Encratis. In both, Prudentius attributes the persecutor's cunning precautions to envy. Though brief, these references to envy would have aroused in the poet's audience a chain of associations established in earlier martyr literature and popular ethical treatises and thus adumbrated the theological depths of the sim- ple poetic narratives. I believe that modern critics have failed to explicate important dramatic, ethical, and theological themes shared by these poems and to show how the different parts of each hymn con- tribute to a coherent vision precisely
Vigiliae Christianae – Brill
Published: Jan 1, 1991
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