Coelius Sedulius

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Coelius (or Caelius, both styles of praenomen of doubtful authenticity) Sedulius, was a Christian poet of the first half of the 5th century.

He is termed a presbyter by Isidore of Seville and in the Gelasian decree. He must not be confused with Sedulius Scotus (Sedulius the Gael), a grammarian of the 9th century.

His fame rests mainly upon a long poem, Carmen paschale, based on the four gospels. In style a bombastic imitator of Virgil, he shows, nevertheless, a certain freedom in the handling of the Biblical story, and the poem soon became a quarry for the minor poets. A hymn by Sedulius in honour of Christ, consisting of twenty-three quatrains of iambic dimeters, has partly passed into the liturgy, the first seven quatrains forming the Christmas hymn "A soils onus cardine", and some later ones the Epiphany hymn, "Hostis Herodes impie." A "Vetenis et novi Testamenti collatio" in elegiac couplets has also come down, but we have no grounds for ascribing to him the Virgilian cento, "De verbi incarnatione."

[edit] References

Editions:

• F. Arevalo (Rome, 1794)
• reprinted in Jacques Paul Migne's Patrologia Latina vol. xix.
• Johann Huemer (Vienna, 1885).

See also

• J. Huemer, De Sedulii poetae vita et scriptis commentatio (Vienna, 1878)
• Max Manitius, Geschichte der christlich-lateinischen Poesie (Stuttgart, 1891)
• Teuffel-Schwabe, History of Roman Literature (Eng. trans.), 473
• Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie, xviii. (Leipzig, 1906)
• Smith and Wace, Dictionary of Christian Biography (1887).

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.