The Church Fathers · c. 360–370
The Virgilian Cento on the Glory of Christ
Cento Vergilianus de Laudibus Christi
Faltonia Betitia Proba · c. 322 – c. 370
What it is
Creation, fall, and the life of Christ told in six hundred and ninety-four lines assembled entirely out of Virgil — every half-line lifted from the Aeneid, Georgics, or Eclogues and refitted, so that the poem says what Virgil never wrote using only words he did.
Why it lasted
The most widely read work by a woman in the Latin Middle Ages, a standard school text for a thousand years, and a technical feat nobody has matched. Jerome despised it and it outlasted his opinion.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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