Language Selection mobile
Top Menu

WINTNER Viktor - Acta PATRISTICA, volume 13, issue 26/2022

VIGILATE TIMENTES OR THE PARABLE OF THE TEN VIRGINS IN JUVENCUS' EPIC EVANGELIORUM LIBRI QUATTUOR
 

Viktor WINTNER

doctorand, Department of Classical Studies, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University in Brno, Arne Nováka 1, 602 00 Brno-střed, Czech Republic. 475669@mail.muni.cz, 00420549491111, ORCID: 0000-0001-6677-6571

Abstract

Until the reign of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great, Christian literature had not produced a poem qualitatively comparable to Homer's Iliad or Vergil's Aeneid. A Christian of Hispanian origin, Gaius Vettius Aquilinus Juvencus, had, however, decided to match the most famous of the pagan poets at their own genre which resulted in his versification of the New Testament Gospels known as Evangeliorum libri quattuor, the first biblical epic of ancient times. Our paper tries to show what the exact versificational procedures of the poet were, including his modifications to the biblical vocabulary, stylistics, narrative and theology. It shows Juvencus' aim was not only to paraphrase the original word-to-word but to transform it to such an extent that even Matthean stylistic figures were systematically replaced by their classical equivalents to accommodate the form of the Gospel story to the contemporary esthetic requirements of educated Romans. The most significant modification of the original is, however, the inconspicuous apologetic character of Juvencus' version of the parable through which the author might have tried to justify the (apparently cruel) actions of the wise virgins and the bridegroom in order to forestall its misrepresentation among his pagan or neophytic readers. At the end of the paper, our free translation of the parable tries to demostrate the qualities of the juvencinian poetic style in English hexameter.

Keywords

Biblical epic, Juvencus, the Parable of the Ten Virgins, versification, dactylic hexameter

SUMMARY

  In order to summarize the results of our analysis we have decided to present this categorization of Juvencus’ versificational modifications believing, that it might (in outline, at least) offer some organizational help to the future researchers of the other parts of the Evangeliorum libri.

Basically, we recognize three kinds of such modifications:

     A) The lexical variations

     B) The changes of stylistic devices

     C) The changes of narrative

A) By lexical variations we understand Juvencus’ inclination towards recasting the wording of the original for mere periphrastic purposes. They may be further divided either I.) according to the number of words they apply to or II.) according to, whether the variation takes place in relation to the original text of the Gospel or within the poem itself.

   I.) The first group contains the variations applying to:

   a) Single words – aestimabitur/conferri (197), virginibus/puellis (197) or stolidae/fatuae (212)

   b) Phrases – venerunt obviam/occurrere (200), sponso et sponsae/ votis sponsalibus (200) or nobissime/sero post tempore (220)

   c) Clauses – moram sponso faciente/cumque moraretur (205), dum eunt emere/dum pergunt (218) or the whole sentence in 214‒216

   II.) The second group contains lexical variations:

   a) Between Matthean and Juvencinian text – quinque/pars (198), oleum/olivum (203) or lampades/taedarum (201)  

   b) Within Juvencus’ poem itself – olivum (203) / oleum (211) / nutrimina flammae (215), pars (198) / chorus (214) / factio (219) or puellae (197) / virginibus (210) / omnes (201) /cunctae (216)

B) By changes of stylistic devices will be understood the interaction between the stylistic figures of Matthew and Juvencus which may result in three different situations:

  a) Absence of a biblical figure vs. presence of the epic one – the Juvencinian epithets coruscus, laetus and pinguis (208‒211) with no biblical counterpart

  b) Presence of a biblical figure vs. absence of the epic on – the hendiadys of diem neque horam with no counterpart in Juvencus (226)

  c) Presence of the biblical figure/s in both texts – parallelismus membrorum in Mt. 25, 2 vs. inconcinnitas and enallage in 198‒199; the hyperbaton of clausa est ianua in Mt. 25, 10 vs. the hendiadys of fores et limina (218), the repetitio of sponsus in 218‒225 and the contrast of the limina clausa to the limina laeta in 218 and 220 or the geminatio of domine, domine vs. the double contrast of the miseris – limina laeta and the aforementioned limina clausa.

   As we can see in group c) there are many passages where Juvencus literally doubles or even triples the amount of the stylistic devices used in the original. Nevertheless, the situation when Matthew offers one whereas Juvencus has none at hand is possible too. Of much greater importance, however, is the fact that the aim of Juvencus is obviously not to transfer the devices of the biblical stylistics into his poem but to replace them with the figures of his own. Though this tendency may be explained sometimes by metrical reasons (domine, domine aperi nobis), other figures are not so incompatible with the requirements of metric (sponso et sponsae, for instance, make two spondees). Literary taste, then, could be another reason for this figural reconstruction. In general, it is possible to say that New Testament authors tend to use the figures associated with the repetition of words, sounds or syntactical structures whereas Juvencus prefers those connected with differentiation, but even here we may find some exceptions such as the repetition of the word sponsus (219‒225) or the alliteration of limina laeta (223). The last reason would be, then, the fact that Juvencus regards it as his authorial duty (or privilege) to change the form of every figure he encounters simply because this is the very thing which the technique of periphrasis expects him to do ‒ to change the words while retaining their meaning.  Even though it is clear that it would be possible to find many more examples for all the aforementioned explanations, we believe that (considering the modification even of the figures metrically applicable and the inclusion of those which are ‘unbiblically’ repetitive in their nature) the third one is the most probable, which would confirm the proposition of Michael Roberts’ that the biblical epic poets are to be regarded as paraphrasers of the Holy Scripture.

C) ‘The changes of narrative’ is an umbrella term for all the modifications by which Juvencus might have attempted to improve the quality of the Matthew’s narrative on the level of content  including:

   I.) The changes of order – in the verses 197‒201 Juvencus defines the virgins before speaking about their role as a wedding procession while changing the order in which the unwise and wise virgins are mentioned in the original; the opposite interchange takes place in the following verses 202‒204 

   II.) The replacements – instead of saying that the wise have brought some oil in vases, Juvencus emphasizes the importance of the oil for the lighting of the ceremonial torches (202‒204)

 - in place of versifying the clause about the dying lamps of the unwise, he focuses the narrative upon the fact that the wise virgins have brought the oil they have missed (212‒213)                                 

- in order to make narrative more fluent and free of repetition, Juvencus eliminates all the direct speech sentences of the original parable

   III.) The supplements – may be further divided into those which:

    a) make the narrative more realistic – the description of the place where the girls are waiting for the groom as per compita lata viarum (206) or the process of waking up and lighting the torches (210‒211)

    b) make it theologically more understandable and persuasive – the omnipresent negativisation of the unwise virgins, the dramatisation of their fate in 220‒223, the addition of the words such as comitum, adventus and timentes (224‒226) explained above

      Although every word added to Matthew’s text might be comfortably interpreted as a natural intensification of the tendencies already present in the evangelist’s original text with no other than poetic intentions, we contend that, if anything, the harshly negative portrayal of the unwise virgins should be taken as an apologetic attempt to advocate the wise virgins’s and groom’s dismissive behaviour towards their sinnful companions, the purpose of which was to prevent possible invectives upon the apparent discrepancies of the Christian theology such as those (as mentioned by Štefan Pružinský), which were written throughout the Late antiquity by the pagan intellectuals like Celsus, Julian the Apostate or Porphyry and opposed by Origen, Eusebius and Cyril of Alexandria. It is well-known that such attacks were of a sophisticated nature including not only criticism of biblical stylistics but also detailed analyses of its theology and, as the behaviour of the wise virgins towards the unwise could be, in fact, also understood as the indirect cause of the latters’ damnation, Juvencus might have made the aforementioned modifications of the Matthean text in order to prevent such a misinterpretation. His younger contemporaries Hillary and Jerome, after all, also found it necessary to emphasize that the prudent virgins had had, in fact, no other choice than to refuse their mates given that one´s virtues (i.e. oil) cannot be transferred to someone else in order to remove his vices. ‘Lightning strikes the peaks’ says Horace and no one can doubt that the influence of early Christianity was rising during the reign of emperor Constantine as never before. The higher its renown, however, the higher the probability of the collision with its polytheistic counterparts. This could have made Juvencus recast the parable of the ten virgins in the way which, while remaining faithful to the original, would have exposed it to lesser danger of criticism than Matthew’s text itself.

   If the summary should be summarized one could say that it is a bit surprising how many authorial changes may be found in the small portion of the work which is said to versify the Gospel almost word to word. It may seem even more surprising that the work has managed to stay in touch with the text it obliged itself to follow to the extent that none of the contemporary Christian theologists ever ventured to disparage its merits. Maybe this is the greatest of Juvencus’ achievements: the fact that he did not change the things he was modifying entirely so those who had already known them could have recognized them as easily as before while those who had not known them at all were not given any reason to doubt their truthfulness.

 

(Language: english)

full text

 

Back on content

Aktualizoval(a): Pavol Kochan, 27.03.2023