Regardless of Proba's intent, the poem would go on to be widely circulated, and it eventually was used in schools to teach the tenets of Christianity, often alongside Augustine of Hippo's De doctrina Christiana.

[1][2] Proba wrote poetry, and according to contemporary accounts, her first work was titled Constantini bellum adversus Magnentium; this poem, which is now lost, recounted the war between Roman Emperor Constantius II and the usurper Magnentius that occurred between AD 350–53.

[2][3] At some point, Proba converted from paganism to Christianity, and De laudibus Christi, which was probably written c. AD 352–384,[1] was her attempt to "turn away from battle and slayings in order to write holy things".

To compensate, Proba used vague words like mater ("mother"), pater ("father"), deus ("god"), and vates ("poet" or "priest") to refer to key Judeo-Christian figures.

[17] In places, this handicap interferes with readability (according to G. Ronald Kastner and Ann Millin, "Necessary passives and circumlocutions brought about by the ... absences in [Virgil] of appropriate terminology render the text impassable at times").

[18] But baptised, like the blest, in the Castalian font— I, who in my thirst have drunk libations of the Light— now begin my song: be at my side, Lord, set my thoughts straight, as I tell how Virgil sang the offices of Christ.

[30] After the story of Creation, Proba briefly references the Great Flood by making use of lines from the fourth book of the Georgics that originally discussed the death of a beehive and the necessity of laws after the end of the Golden Age, respectively.

According to the classicist Karla Pollmann, by using lines that concern destruction and the establishment of law, Proba is able to convey the traditional idea that Noah's survival represents the dawning of a "second creation and a new order" (that is, the Patriarchal age).

[33] The portion of De laudibus Christi that focuses on the New Testament recounts the birth of Jesus, his life and deeds, his crucifixion, and the advent of the Holy Spirit.

[46] According to the early Christian specialist Elizabeth A. Clark and the classicist Diane Hatch, Proba's purpose was to "imbue the Christ with heroic virtues" akin to the Virgilian hero.

[51] Finally, Proba transfers to Jesus portions of prophecies scattered throughout the Aeneid that detail Rome's glorious future, thus recasting pagan oracles in a Christian light.

According to Cullhed, the "negative characterization" of the original verse and its reuse in the Old Testament portion of the cento is transformed into a "positively charged ability" allowing Mary and Jesus to escape Herod's wrath.

According to the classicist Bernice Kaczynski, "Scholars have seen traces of Proba's own character in her emphasis on the beauty of the natural world, readily apparent in her account of the creation.

The Latinist R. P. H. Green argues that the work was a reaction to the Roman emperor Julian's law forbidding Christians from teaching literature that they did not believe to be true (which is to say, classical Greek and Latin mythology).

Many scholars hold that the Church Father Jerome was a critic of the work; in a letter written from Bethlehem to Paulinus of Nola castigating Virgilian centos,[61] he warned against following an "old chatterbox" (garrula anus) and those who think of calling "the Christless Maro [i.e. Virgil] a Christian" (non ... Maronem sine Christo possimus dicere Christianum).

[34][59][62][nb 4] According to the historian James Westfall Thompson, Jerome "strongly inveighed against this method of destroying the sense of a pagan author", and that "his love of the classics and his Christian piety were alike offended" by Proba's actions.

[66][nb 5] Conversely, Roman Emperor Arcadius (who reigned from AD 395–408) received a copy of the poem, and his version has a fifteen-line dedication contending that Proba's work is "Maro changed for the better in sacred meaning" (Maronem mutatum in melius divino ...

[70] During late antiquity, a pseudonymous document known as the Decretum Gelasianum—which was long believed to have been issued by Pope Gelasius I (who held the papacy from AD 492–496)—declared De laudibus Christi to be apocryphal and a "reprehensible work of poetry".

[69] In regards to De laudibus Christi, Isidore wrote that "it is not the work which should be admired, but [Proba's] ingenuity" in compiling the poem (Cuius quidem non miramur studium sed laudamus ingenium).

In a 1385 letter to Anna von Schweidnitz (the wife of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV), the Italian poet and scholar Petrarch referenced Proba and her work while discussing female geniuses,[74][75] and in 1374 the humanist Giovanni Boccaccio included Proba in his biographical collection of historical and mythological women entitled De mulieribus claris.

[75] In 1474, the poem was published by the Swiss printer Michael Wenssler,[76] which likely made Proba the first female author to have had her work reproduced by a printing press.

[nb 6] Cullhed, in particular, considers the work "of considerable historical and cultural importance [for] it belongs to the small number of ancient texts with a female author and stands out as one of our earliest extant Christian Latin poems.

Shanzer rounds out her hypothesis by also invoking a textual argument, noting that the author of De laudibus Christi is often referred to in later manuscripts by titles that only Anicia Proba would have received, such as "mother of the Anicians" or the "eminent Roman Mistress".