Prosper of Aquitaine

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For the bishop of Reggio, see Prosper of Reggio.

Saint Prosper of Aquitaine (c. 390 – c. 455), a Christian writer and disciple of Saint Augustine of Hippo, was the first continuator of Jerome's Universal Chronicle.

Prosper was a native of Aquitaine,^[1] and seems to have been educated at Marseille. By 429 he was corresponding with Augustine.^[2] In 431 he appeared in Rome to interview Pope Celestine I regarding the teachings of Augustine; there is no further trace of him until 440, the first year of the pontificate of Pope Leo I, who had been in Gaul, where he may have met Prosper. In any case Prosper was soon in Rome, attached to the pope in some secretarial or notarial capacity. Gennadius of Massilia's De viris illustribus (lxxxiv, 89) repeats the tradition that Prosper dictated the famous letters of Leo I against Eutyches. The date of his death is not known, but his chronicle goes as far as 455, and the fact that the chronicler Marcellinus mentions him under the year 463 seems to indicate that his death was shortly after that date.

Prosper was a layman, but he threw himself with ardour into the religious controversies of his day, defending Augustine and propagating orthodoxy. In his De vocatione omnium gentium ("The Call of all Nations"),^[3] in which the issues of the call to the Gentiles is discussed in the light of Augustine's doctrine of Grace, Prosper appears as the first of the medieval Augustinians.

The Pelagians were attacked in a glowing polemical poem of about 1000 lines, Adversus ingratos, written about 430. The theme, dogma quod ... pestifero vomuit coluber sermone Britannus, is relieved by a treatment not lacking in liveliness and in classical measures. After Augustine's death he wrote three series of Augustinian defences, especially against Vincent of Lerins (Pro Augustino responsiones).

His chief work was his De gratia Dei et libero arbitrio (432), written against John Cassian's Collatio. He also induced Pope Celestine to publish an open letter to the bishops of Gaul, Epistola ad episcopos Gallorum against some members of the gallic Church. He had earlier opened a correspondence with Augustine, along with his friend Hilary (not Hilary of Arles), and although he did not meet him personally, his enthusiasm for the great theologian led him to make an abridgment of his commentary on the Psalms, as well as a collection of sentences from his works -- probably the first dogmatic compilation of that class in which Peter Lombard's Liber sententiarum is the best-known example. He also put into elegiac metre, in 106 epigrams, some of Augustine's theological dicta.

Far more important historically than these is Prosper's Epitoma chronicon (covering the period 379-455) which Prosper first composed in 433 and updated several times, finally in 455. It was circulated in numerous manuscripts and was soon continued by other hands, whose beginning dates identify Prosper's various circulated editions. (Muhlberger 1986:240) The Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911 found it a careless compilation from Saint Jerome in the earlier part, and from other writers in the later,^[4] but that the lack of other sources makes it very valuable for the period from 425 to 455, which is drawn from Prosper's personal experience. Compared with his continuators, Prosper gives detailed coverage of political events. He covers Attila's invasions of Gaul (451) and Italy (452) in lengthy entries under their respective years. Though he was a poet himself, the sole secular writer Prosper mentions is Claudian. There were five different editions, the last of them dating from 455, just after the death of Valentinian III. For a long time the Chronicon imperiale was also attributed to "Prosper Tiro", but without the slightest justification. It is entirely independent of the real Prosper, and in parts even shows Pelagian tendencies and sympathies.

[edit] Notes

^ He is called Prosper Tiro in several manuscripts of his Epitoma Chronicon. (Steven Muhlberger, "Prosper's Epitoma Chronicon: was there an edition of 443?" Classical Philology 81.3 (July 1986), pp 240-244).
^ "Tiro Prosper of Aquitaine". Catholic Encyclopedia. (1913). New York: Robert Appleton Company.
^ Seventeenth-century doubts as to its authorship, attributing it to Pope Leo the Great, are not sustained by its most recent editor, De Letter (1952), nor by Joseph J. Young, Studies on the style of De vocatione omnium Gentium ascribed to Prosper of Aquitaine Patristic Studies, 87 (Catholic University of America) 1954.
^ Prosper, born about 390, must have depended on other written sources for his earlier decades of Epitome chronicon but, aside from Augustine's De haeresibus and City of God and possibly Orosius, they continue to be elusive. (Dennis E. Trout, "The years 394 and 395 in the Epitome chronicon: Prosper, Augustine and Claudian" Classical Philology 86.1 (January 1991), pp 43-47).

[edit] References

Alexander Hwang, "Prosper of Aquitaine: A Study of His Life and Works" (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, forthcoming).
Arturo Elberti, "Prospero d'Aquitania: Teologo e Discepolo (Rome, 1999).
Prosper's Epitoma Chronicon was edited by Theodor Mommsen in the Chronica minora of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (1892)
Complete works in Migne's Patrologia Latina. vol. 51
Saint Prosper of Aquitaine, the Call of All Nations, edited and translated by P. De Letter, S.J. (Series Ancient Christian writers 14) 1952.
L. Valentin, St. Prosper d'Aquitaine: Étude sur la littérature écclésiastique au cinqième siècle en Gaule (Paris, 1900), offers a complete list of previous writings on Prosper and is still the main reference.
August Potthast, Bibliotheca historica (1896).
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition article "Prosper of Aquitaine", a publication now in the public domain.
Prosper's Epitoma Chronicon is available in English translation in From Roman to Merovingian Gaul: A Reader ed. & trans. A. C Murray (Ontario, 2003) pp. 62-76.