Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VII/Lactantius/Fragments of Lactantius/General Note

by Lactantius

General Note.

There is no ms authority for ascribing the above to Lactantius. “It does not, in the least, come up to the purity and eloquence of his style,” says Dupin; and the same candid author notes the “adoration of the cross” as fatal to any such claim.^[1]  

Of the following poem, on Easter, Dupin says: “It is attributed to Venantius upon the testimony of some mss. in the Vatican Library.” This writer became known to Gregory of Tours, who died about a.d. 595, and seems to have succeeded him as bishop, dying soon after. Bede quotes his verse on St. Alban,^[2]—  

“Albanum egregium fecunda Britannia profert,”

but styles him “presbyter Fortunatus.” He was the author of a poem on St. Martin, and another, In Laude Virginum. His works were edited by Brouverius, a Jesuit.  

 

Footnotes

1. Note 18, p. 327.  
2. The reader will be pleased with a reference, on p. 330, infra, to the (then recent) conversion of our Saxon forefathers in Kent.