Liber epigrammatum

This volume of the CSEL presents the first critical edition of Prosper of Aquitaine’s Liber epigrammatum, edited by A. Horsting. From his position at the side of Pope Leo, Prosper composed a poetical synthesis of Augustine’s vast œuvre, writing poems inspired by maxims he had excerpted from his works. The epigrams were a guide to Augustine that was both authoritative and pleasant to read. His synthesis became an essential part of the school curriculum from the days of Charlemagne to those of Louis XIV, serving as the first and most universal interpretative scheme for Augustine’s theology for generations of students. The poems, though little known and studied today, were widely read throughout the Middle Ages, in the debates of the Reformation over the nature of predestination and grace, and again in the controversies over the teachings of Port Royal.This popular text is preserved in more than 180 manuscripts. In order to establish the text, those manuscripts fragments copied before the twelfth century have been used, a group amounting to around forty textual witnesses. This volume fills a major desideratum in the field of Christian Latin poetry and will be of interest to philologists, theologians, and historians of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.