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The Church Fathers · c. 573–576
The Life of Saint Martin
Vita Sancti Martini
Venantius Fortunatus · c. 530 – c. 609
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What it is
Sulpicius Severus's prose life turned into two thousand two hundred lines of hexameter by an Italian poet who had come to Gaul after his own eyes were cured at Martin's shrine, and stayed.
Why it lasted
The last classical Latin epic and the first medieval one, and the book that carried the cult of Martin across Europe. Fortunatus is the bridge between Virgil and the hymnody of the Middle Ages.
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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