It is the halo of glory surrounding these martyrs or confessors that especially strikes the historian. We see in these popular poems what a profound, what a lasting impression the sufferings of the martyrs had made on the peoples of the Roman Empire. The saint-sufferers, men or women, became soon an object of something more than reverence.
The heroic personages of Prudentius belong to no one land, to no solitary nationality. Nowhere was the truth of the well-known saying that "the blood of the martyr was the seed of the Church" more conspicuously exemplified than in the songs of Prudentius. It has been remarked with great force and truth that in the burning lilts of this great Spanish poet of the later years of the fourth century, we must perforce recognize something more than the inspiration of a solitary individual. We seem to hear in his impassioned words the echoes of the voice of the people.[1]
- ↑ Prudentius does not stand alone as voicing the opinions of the people. A contemporary of his—Paulinus of Nola—although far behind Prudentius in genius, was a poet of considerable power. This Paulinus, a person of high dignity and of great wealth, when still comparatively young, withdrew from the world and devoted himself to religion; he has left behind him a collection of poems, which he wrote annually on the occasion of the Festival of S. Felix, a martyr in whose honour he erected a basilica. His poems, of which some 5000 lines have been preserved, contain many vivid pictures illustrative of the popular aspect of Christianity in the latter years of the fourth century. He loves to dwell on the intense devotion of the people to the memory of the martyr whom he loved, S. Felix of Nola, and tells us of the crowds of pilgrims visiting his shrine. Damasus, bishop of Rome, A.D. 366-84, whose many and elaborate works of restoration of the Roman catacombs are dwelt on in the section of this work treating of the great City of the Dead, beneath the suburbs of Rome, bears a similar testimony to the widespread devotion of the people to the memory of the martyrs of the days of persecution. His elaborate works in the catacombs were all designed for the convenience of the vast crowds of pilgrims, in the second half of the fourth century, from many lands to the shrines where the remains of the more famous martyrs had been deposited.
