Commonitorium (Orientius)

Written in elegiac couplets, the Commonitorium is made up of 1036 verses and has traditionally been divided into two books (although there is reason to believe that the division is arbitrary).

The poem is hortatory and didactic in nature, describing the way for the reader to attain salvation, with warnings about the evils of sin.

The Commonitorium was rediscovered near the turn of the seventeenth century at Anchin Abbey, and the editio princeps of the poem was published in 1600 by Martin Delrio.

Not much is known about Orientius; he is mentioned in passing by Venantius Fortunatus in his Vita S. Martini, and a brief description of his life appears in the Acta Sanctorum.

[4][5] Given the paucity of information concerning Orientius himself, dating his poem has proven difficult, although there are several clues that have helped scholars construct a timeframe in which the Commonitorium was likely written and published.

[7][nb 2] In the fifth section, the poet considers a number of issues, including: sorrow, joy, death, judgement, eternal punishment, and the rewards awaiting in Heaven.

While it is mostly of a "parenetic and protreptic character", the Latinist Johannes Schwind notes that it is also interjected with "occasional elements of diatribe and satire.

"[10] When Orientius was writing, rhetoric was particularly popular, but the Commonitorium largely eschews this style and its associated devices, instead opting to focus on poetics.

[10][5] And being a Christian work, the Commonitorium recalls the Bible both by referencing biblical stories, as well as by directly imitating the wording from the many books therein.

[13] The Commonitorium was lost sometime in the Middle Ages only to be rediscovered near the turn of the seventeenth century at Anchin Abbey in a manuscript known as the Codex Aquicinctensis.

[11] A few years later, A. Hudson-Williams wrote that the poem's "language is in general clear and direct, though tinged here and there with turns of a decidedly late flavour.