Annemarie Pilarski: Poeta theologus – theologus poeta. Theologisch informierte Dichterrezeption bei Eugenius II. von Toledo (am Beispiel des carm. 3)
Recent scholarship on late antique Christian poetry has stressed the unique challenges faced by Christian poets of this era. One of them, according to Marc Mastrangelo, is the overall loss of significance ascribed to poetry, especially in relation to biblical and theological writings. It is to be expected that these writings – through their pervasiveness – exert at least as much influence on Christian poetry as classical and late antique poetical texts do. However, tracing their influence demands a broader intertextual methodology that not only focuses on intertextual references stricto sensu (which are of course rare since metrical and non-metrical texts differ greatly in style and structure), but also takes into account the shared cultural, theological and philosophical background constituted by and reflected in both prose writings and poetry. This methodology is applied in this paper to Eugenius of Toledo, carm. 3, which focuses on the mutability of the human mind, a topic vibrantly discussed in the theological writings of his time. A close examination of the intertextual techniques applied in this poem reveals the unique ways in which this theological background informs the carmen. It is argued that, here, the reception of theological thinking not only directly affects the presentation of arguments (and also choice of rhetorical figures) in the poem, but also interacts with and guides the reception of other kinds of writings, such as Christian poetical texts. Furthermore, examining the poem’s intertextuality provides valuable insight into the poetic characteristics of Eugenius, “a distinctly liminal figure between late antiquity and the Middle Ages” (Pucci/McGill 2016b, 15 Anm. 5).
Keywords: Eugenius of Toledo – Christian poetry – late antiquity – intertextuality