WRITTEN ON THE BODY: ANIMATED OBJECTS AND NARRATIVE AGENCY IN PRUDENTIUS’ PERISTEPHANON 9

Abstract

This article combines allegorical, symbolic and metaphorical readings with modern theoretical approaches (primarily, affect theory) to explore the representations of objects and bodies within Peristephanon 9. In Prudentius’ poem, the tortured body of Cassian overlaps with the tormented soul of the poet; the written text is both a co-actor in Cassian’s death and a vehicle for the perpetuation of his extra-textual memory. Figurative language provides words and concepts with new meanings so that a pen can transform into a sword, writing into torture. Through a process of materialization and resemantization, the physical objects become agents in the narrative construction.

INTRODUCTION

This article examines how physical and abstract objects, as well as the figurative notion of the text as a body, both shape and become protagonists of the narrative within Prudentius’ Peristephanon 9. By using Prudentius’ poem as an exemplary case-study, my analysis engages with, and develops, existing scholarship that has explored aesthetic dynamics in late antique Latin literature through postmodern and metapoetic approaches. ¹ In particular, I take as a starting point Cox Miller’s examination of Peristephanon 9, where she establishes a link between Prudentius’ emotions and the objects and bodies within the poem. ² Building upon Cox Miller’s interpretation, this piece reconsiders Prudentius’ poem through a variety of hermeneutical approaches—especially allegorical, metaphorical and symbolic readings—and draws on modern theoretical views that stress the agentic, ‘vibrant’, role of objects. ³ The focus on the intrinsic ‘vitality’ of objects sheds new light on how inanimate entities can reflect, and influence, human feelings and emotions. ⁴ Indeed, objects such as pens, tablets, the ink, a martyr’s tomb and the martyr’s image on the tomb, all participate in the actions of human characters within Peristephanon 9, and affect and shape the subjects’ personal stories—namely, the author’s (and main character’s) autobiographical narrative.

A hymn dedicated to St Cassian, Peristephanon 9 provides a graphic and gruesome description of the saint’s murder, which is perpetrated by his students. The centrality of objects in Prudentius’ text demonstrates not only that ‘non-human bodies’ become active agents within the martyrdom through metaphorical processes, but also that their ‘anthropomorphization’ contributes to the construction of the poem. ⁵ The peak of this agency is articulated by the reconceptualization of the book, either in the form of writing support or in the form of the written literary work, as an animated object. Cassian’s students use their pens (stilis, 14, 44) and their ‘notebooks’, or rather writing tablets (pugillares … ceras, 15), to strike and kill their teacher, thereby endowing these objects with the (co-)responsibility for the saint’s death. ⁶ Along with their literal (that is, material) force, the writing tablets have a metaliterary and metaphoric connotation, making their agency multilayered. The students’ notebooks hypostasize the notion of the book as a literary work, which in this context is represented precisely by Prudentius’ work, the Peristephanon. As both a material object and a literary artefact, the text thus holds a double meaning: its concrete role as a murder weapon intersects with the figurative and narrative agency of the literary work. Not only is the text concretely responsible for the murder of Cassian but it also tells Cassian’s story, thus becoming a proxy of the author––Prudentius––himself. This analysis uncovers new angles of this process of resemantization and reattribution of an agentic role to objects, which originates from figurative dynamics that are intrinsic to Peristephanon 9.

1. (AFFECT) THEORY, CONTEXT AND APPROACHES

Before diving into the text of Peristephanon 9, it is beneficial to provide some indications on my use of modern theory, and how that intersects with Prudentius’ poem as well as with late antique Latin literature more broadly. While drawing from several strands of new materialism, primarily affect theory (but also object-oriented ontology, actor-network theory, posthuman philosophy and ecocriticism), this article also benefits from other approaches, particularly allegorical, symbolic and metaphorical readings of Prudentius’ text. Affect theory and germane theoretical approaches have become increasingly popular in recent decades as fruitful hermeneutical tools to interpret literary texts. Several aspects of affect theory––such as the notion of emotions as biological and quasi-corporeal affections that interact with culture, ideas and objects––have been profitably applied to modern and contemporary literary texts; ⁷ however, affect theory has seldom been employed to explore Classical and late antique Latin literature. ⁸ My analysis of the agency of objects in Peristephanon 9 using a new materialist lens builds upon the concept of the fluidity of boundaries between subject(s) and objects, as well as upon the interconnection between emotions, objects and processes. ⁹

To be sure, conceptions of emotions as embodied experiences, along with a certain notion of the affective and spiritual value of objects, are not new to ancient and late antique culture. Indeed, the influence of Christian ideas made the overlap of the material and the spiritual an intrinsic aspect of late antique Latin literature, where we find a progressive centralization of bodies and material objects as both physical elements and spiritual agents. ¹⁰ During the ‘material turn’ that occurred in Late Antiquity, the physical world is re-evaluated for its religious significance. ¹¹ The body, and especially the body of the martyr, can become a means to discover god: its spiritual resonance is enhanced by the belief that it was alive once and will become alive again through resurrection. Similarly, objects such as relics can be embedded with a spiritual value. This prominence of material objects and the human body (‘a thing among things’, as Merleau-Ponty would put it) ¹² brings about massive use of visuality and pictorialism in late antique literary texts, ¹³ which are increasingly populated by descriptions of objects, ecphrastic digressions. ¹⁴ Ecphrasis leads to ‘aesthetics of hybridization’, ¹⁵ implying a blending of text and objects, a development of metaliterary discourse, as well as an increase in the figurative potential of writing vis-à-vis the Classical period. As objects enclose multiple meanings beyond, and at the same time within, their materiality, figuration becomes dominant in the aesthetics of late antique literary production, with a prominence of allegories and personifications. ¹⁶

As the author of the Psychomachia (notably, a poem that stages a battle between personified virtues and vices), Prudentius is familiar with techniques of allegorization and personification, which he turns ‘into a continuous and self-coherent narrative’. ¹⁷ Alongside articulating the new tendencies featuring in late antique cultural discourse at large (including the centrality of materiality, the blending of the spiritual and the corporeal, and increased use of figuration), Peristephanon 9 complicates the relationship between narrative and figurative discourses, between the human body as sōma, a physical entity, and as sēma, a symbolic object. This complexity originates mainly from two factors: the high degree of autobiographicalism of Peristephanon 9, which gives rise to various narratological levels and layers of interpretations for the reader, and the increased affective value of bodies and objects within the poem; ¹⁸ and the emphasis on material, metapoetic and aesthetic dynamics of writing, which are at the foundation of a figurative representation and personification of the text. ¹⁹

A collection of fourteen hymns dedicated to Christian martyrs, the Liber Peristephanon features, besides Cassian (9), Lawrence (2), Eulalia (3), Hippolytus (11), Peter and Paul (12), among others. Along with the obvious interest in the symbolic and religious meaning of the martyrdom, the Peristephanon is characterized by a remarkable emphasis on gruesome descriptions of the martyrs’ tortures, which are often unrealistically amplified. ²⁰ The martyrs die and are finally welcomed into heaven only after lengthy tortures and agonies, thereby demonstrating an exceptional degree of physical resistance. This insistence on torture and corporeal pain aims to underscore the martyrs’ devotion to the Christian faith, which implies endurance and self-abnegation.

Despite its prominent religious focus, the Peristephanon is significantly informed by classical Latin poetry, particularly Virgil, Horace, Ovid and Seneca. This relation has been widely investigated and acknowledged based on intertextual and thematic analyses, as well as on broader studies regarding the circulation of classical texts in Late Antiquity and postmodern readings. ²¹ Developing these approaches through a multilevel interpretation, in the next pages I show how affects—the intensity of feelings, perceptions and actions that arise from the human subject ²² —are transferred to material objects, and vice versa. The figurative language contributes to recasting Cassian’s martyrdom as a violence perpetrated by both animate (human) and inanimate agents. The connection between mind, body and physical objects in Peristephanon 9 is exemplary in shedding light on the dynamics of co-participation and co-experience of humans and objects, textuality and narrative, which can be found in late antique Latin literature.

2. POETRY AND (QUASI-)ANIMATED OBJECTS

Peristephanon 9 is one of the poems of the collection where Prudentius’ autobiographical references are most prominent. ²³ This first-person involvement characterizes the beginning and the end of the poem with a ring-composition. ²⁴ However, for the most part of Peristephanon 9, the authorial voice of the poet fades away. This narratological vacuum makes space for the story of the sexton, an internal character within the narrative. ²⁵ The departure of the authorial voice brings the narrative to the forefront, which, through figuration, contributes to making the literary work appear as an autonomous and agentic force. The interaction between narrative and figurative processes, which reveal the ‘vitality’ of non-human bodies and forces, enhances the metaliterary value of Prudentius’ poem. In Peristephanon 9, figuration finds expression in a particular rhetorical trope, aequiuocatio, whereby the meaning of words or expressions that are normally used to indicate a certain concept or activity is expanded through metaphorical language and accordingly readapted to a different context, which, in the case of this poem, mostly pertains to the materiality of the saint’s body and relics, as well as to the physical tortures. The use of other stylistic and syntactic devices, particularly hypallage and hyperbaton, produces further overlap between the literary and the visual, the body and the text, the author and the martyr (Perist. 9.1–12):

Sylla Forum statuit Cornelius; hoc Itali urbem

uocant ab ipso conditoris nomine.

hic mihi, cum peterem te, rerum maxima Roma

spes est oborta prosperum Christum fore.

stratus humi tumulo aduoluebar, quem sacer ornat 5

martyr dicato Cassianus corpore.

dum lacrimans mecum reputo mea uulnera et omnes

uitae labores ac dolorum acumina,

erexi ad caelum faciem, stetit obuia contra

fucis colorum picta imago martyris 10

plagas mille gerens, totos lacerata per artus,

ruptam minutis praeferens punctis cutem.

Cornelius Sulla established a Forum, and so the Italians call the town, after its founder’s name. Here when I was travelling towards you, Rome, the world’s capital, there sprang up in my heart a hope of Christ’s favour. I was bowed to the ground before the tomb which the holy martyr Cassian honours with his consecrated body. While in tears I was thinking of my wounds, all labours of my life and stinging pains, I lifted my face towards heaven, and there stood confronting me a picture of the martyr painted in colours, bearing a thousand wounds, all his parts torn, and showing his skin broken with tiny pricks. ²⁶

Prudentius tells us that, while travelling to Rome, he stopped in a city nearby, Forum Cornelii (Perist. 9.1–2), the present-day Imola. There, he stumbled upon Cassian’s tomb, which was decorated with a portrait of Cassian himself, representing Cassian’s martyrdom. Through the ecphrastic narrative of the sexton, whom Prudentius meets in front of the tomb, the poet gathers the full story of Cassian’s martyrdom. By explaining the content of the portrait (from line 17 onwards), the sexton’s narrative brings to life the representation of the saint, transforming it into a speaking image. Like the figurations of vices and virtues in the Psychomachia, the imago (line 10) on the tomb of the saint becomes a persona and speaks via the sexton, who represents the metamorphosis of the image into its physical and ‘vibrant’ embodiment—a human proxy for Cassian’s portrait. ²⁷ As the catalyst for the narration, Cassian’s tomb and his portrait upon it are thus the first agentic objects within the poem.

The prominence of personified, anthropomorphic and highly symbolic objects, such as Cassian’s portrait and tomb, interacts and coexists with Prudentius’ autobiographical involvement at the beginning of the poem, which is denoted by the personal pronoun mihi, along with the first-person singular subjunctive form peterem (3). Along with emphasizing the authorial voice through first-person narration, lines 3–4 also refer to the poet’s journey to Rome, which he had likely undertaken in truth. ²⁸ As we shall see in more detail later, the authorial persona features again in the last lines of the hymn, in which Prudentius holds the tomb (conplector tumulum, 99), cries and thinks about his troubles. By recounting that he prostrated himself on the ground in an act of veneration, Prudentius makes a concrete and material reference to the tomb of the saint: stratus humi tumulo auoluebar, quem sacer ornat | martyr dicato Cassianus corpore (‘I was bowed to the ground before the tomb which the holy martyr Cassian honours with his consecrated body’, 5–6). ²⁹ The word tumulo, together with the reference to the ground (humi), hypostasizes the materiality of the saint’s body, which is buried beneath the earth. This emphasis on material details (see also corpore, 6) establishes a symbolic link between the authorial voice (Prudentius) and Cassian’s presence, which conflates the physical (his corpse or the envelope of his corpse, the tomb) and the spiritual, the symbolic meaning of Cassian’s martyrdom and his body as a relic. ³⁰ As a blunt object and a lifeless body, respectively, Cassian’s tomb and corpse release affective energy, in so far as they influence Prudentius’ feelings and emotions. Through their spiritual and religious significance, both the tomb and the martyr’s body also prompt Prudentius’ physical actions, thereby simultaneously acting upon his body and soul. Informed by material and pictorial details, the scene produces multiple layers of interaction between physical elements and spiritual meanings, between the autobiographical subject of the poet and the object of the narration, between living and non-living (yet persisting) beings. In other words, these objects are equal partners with the human character(s) in producing meaning. The tomb and the remains of the saint are ‘vibrant’, since they disclose and articulate Prudentius’ feelings, which then translate into the written text. ³¹

In the introduction to their volume on Material Ecocriticism, Iovino and Opperman observe that the interaction between human and non-human agents generate new narratives, which blur the boundaries between the (literary) text and reality. Non-human objects concur in the formation of meanings, thus becoming part of a longer written narrative, which encompasses human and non-human elements, thereby becoming ‘storied matter’. ³² In this passage from Peristephanon 9, two objects, the tomb and Cassian’s lifeless body, hold both agency and emotional force, as they influence and hypostasize Prudentius’ feelings and concrete actions. Moreover, the agency of Cassian’s dead body has also influence at the textual level. The fragmentation of the saint’s body, which becomes the central focus of the poem in the following lines, is anticipated and materialized by the syntactic construction of lines 5–6. By interrupting the syntactic continuity of the two lines, the hyperbata of sacer … martyr … Cassianus and dicato … corpore evoke the tormented and fragmented status of the martyr’s body. Therefore, the body of the saint overcomes its borders in multiple ways: as emotional and spiritual agent, it influences Prudentius’ state of mind (see the references to his troubles at lines 7–8); as physical agent, it shapes Prudentius’ bodily acts (see, for example, Prudentius’ bowing to the ground at line 5, as well as lifting his face at line 9); as textual agent, it determines the syntactic arrangement of the lines.

The fragmented status of Cassian’s body and its overlap with the subjective experience of the poet further develop at lines 7–12. Prudentius states that, while pondering his own spiritual wounds (his sins), labours and stinging pains (uulnera, labores, dolorum acumina), he came across the image of the saint. ³³ Prudentius’ uulnera, ‘wounds’, anticipate, both conceptually and figuratively, Cassian’s wounds. This liminality between Prudentius’ interior or spiritual uulnera and Cassian’s exterior or physical wounds is enhanced by the substantives labores and acumina, which can denote both physical and psychic suffering, thus representing an example of aequiuocatio. ³⁴ Alongside stressing the overlap between interiority and exteriority, these references also emphasize the centrality of visual perception and recognition, which feature prominently throughout the entire hymn. As described by Prudentius’ writing, the image allows us, qua readers, to visualize the body of the saint before it appears in full detail through the narration of the sexton. ³⁵ This interaction between poetry and picture articulates the permeability and intercommunicability of expressive means—image and text. ³⁶ In this passage, the image has become written text through Prudentius’ poetry––whereby Cassian’s portrait is described. In the sexton’s narrative, as we shall see, the text will turn back into the image of the saint through the description of his tormented body.

Peristephanon 9 thus translates the blending of the spiritual and the material that features prominently in late antique Latin literary production into an interchange between emotions and physical sensations. Developing the late antique interest in metaliterary dynamics and material objects, the poem explores the physical effects of the written text on the human body and soul. The poetics of Peristephanon 9, in other words, can physically affect both the readers and the characters within the poem. ³⁷ Prudentius, as character, is visibly moved by the saint’s portrait and tomb, and by the sexton’s narrative at the end of Peristephanon 9 (99–106), which sidelines Prudentius as author. For a moment, the reader forgets about the existence of Prudentius qua author and focusses on the effects of the poem (in which the sexton’s narrative is included) on Prudentius as character, who kneels and embraces the saint’s tomb: pareo, conplector tumulum, lacrimas quoque fundo, | altar tepescit ore, saxum pectore (‘I obeyed, holding the tomb as well as shedding tears, warming the altar with my lips, the stone with my breast’, 99–100). Playing with the knowledgeable reader’s ability to uncover multiple meanings and narratological levels, Prudentius (as poet) implies that he (as character) was emotionally and physically touched by his own poem, which further affirms its agentic and metaliterary force. Meanwhile, another character, Cassian, is physically touched by the text in its most material form—namely, as the text written by his pupils upon their wooden tablets. ³⁸ Thus, Peristephanon 9 overcomes the boundaries of its textual form in two ways, the metaphorical (or metaliterary) and the literal (or material): it touches Prudentius (the character) and the reader for its content, while also touching Cassian by hitting him as the text written on the wax tablets that are thrown by Cassian’s pupils. The poem’s liminality between literary and material dimensions further enhances the ‘aesthetics of hybridization’ that features prominently in ecphrastic digressions from late antique Latin literature, ³⁹ changing the figurative potential of writing into actual materiality.

Before the complete story of the martyrdom is narrated, our first meeting with Cassian has thus already occurred at the figurative and visual levels, through the encounter with his tomb (containing his corpse) and image. At line 9, Prudentius observes that the martyr’s portrait was standing in front of him (stetit obuia contra), after he had lifted his face towards the sky (erexi ad caelum faciem). ⁴⁰ While the image of the saint has clearly always been there from the very start of Prudentius’ narration, the sudden and unexpected encounter between the imago and the poet evokes an epiphany. In the expression stetit obuia contra … picta imago martyris (9–10), the image is the subject of the sentence: as such, the imago actively stands and makes its apparition before the poet (stetit). ⁴¹ Moreover, the material emphasis on the ‘colours’ (fucis colorum, 10), which is an example of enargeia, makes the portrait (the sudden epiphany) more evident and tangible. This syntactic and lexical arrangement suggests that Prudentius personifies the imago and provides it with agency. Through figurative language and rhetorical devices, an object (the image), which usually undergoes an action, holds its own agency and overcomes (or anticipates) human activity, imposing its presence on the viewer (Prudentius) and forecasting Prudentius’ (and the sexton’s) narrative. By standing in front of Prudentius, the image also materializes itself before the reader, penetrating and impregnating the entire poem through its allegorical and narrative force. The image and the sexton’s explanation of the image are the starting point of Cassian’s story.

Upon his encounter with the image of the saint, Prudentius describes Cassian’s wounds through participles, without breaking the syntactic continuum, as we see at lines 11–12: plagas mille gerens, totos lacerata per artus, | ruptam minutis praeferens punctis cutem. ⁴² Therefore, the poet’s spiritual and emotional uulnera (‘wounds’), labores (‘troubles’, ‘labours’) and dolorum acumina (‘stinging pains’) from lines 7–8 transform into Cassian’s concrete and physical wounds. The saint’s wounds are displayed by his portrait; in turn, Cassian’s portrait is described (and will be explained in the following lines) through the sexton’s narrative, which is ultimately included in Prudentius’ poem, Peristephanon 9. The image of the saint endows a certain degree of emotional intensity, in so far as it affects Prudentius’ feelings, along with those of the potential readers of Prudentius’ text. ⁴³ This emotional intensity of the saint’s image is proleptically anticipated by Prudentius’ own metaphorical uulnera, labores and dolorum acumina. Even before the image is introduced—or, to put it better, even before it introduces itself—the portrait’s emotional charge permeates the atmosphere of the poem, influencing and assimilating the words that Prudentius chooses to describe his own spiritual suffering. The ‘wounds’, the ‘troubles’ and the ‘stinging pains’ not only qualify Prudentius’ state of mind metaphorically but are also suitable to describe the saint’s physical torments materially. By anticipating both the semantics and the spiritual meaning of the martyrdom and its narrative content, the image within the text––or, more specifically, the enargeia from the image that is transferred to the words––affects the construction of the text itself.

This combination of image and literary text multiplies the narrative and figurative levels within the poem. The description of Cassian’s portrait features a certain degree of ‘intermediality’, in Fielding’s words—the blending of multiple narrative media. ⁴⁴ Accordingly, the reader is enabled to visualize the image of the saint through different means—the literary text and the image described within it. Concurrently, the text of Prudentius has a prismatic effect on the saint’s portrait. Peristephanon 9 refracts Cassian’s image and depicts it with ‘colours’ (fucis colorum, 10), thereby modifying and amplifying its figurative power and narrative potential.

The coexistence of narrative means, figurative meanings and focalizations (Prudentius as poet; Prudentius as character; the reader), along with the inclusion of the sexton’s narrative within Prudentius’ poem, produces an overlap between the agency of the sexton qua character within the narration and the agency of the portrait, and therefore of Prudentius’ liber as vehicle of that narration. Prudentius’ narrative releases emotional forces, which affect both the readers and Prudentius as character within his own story. ⁴⁵ This emotional force is embodied and materialized by the sexton, who functions as animated proxy for both the image and the narrative, thereby translating the agency of the literary work into lived experience. As we shall see in the next section, through this agency, the saint’s visual and textual narrative overcomes the boundaries of the text and reaches its readers across time and space. ⁴⁶

3. THE BODY OF THE TEXT: AGENCY AND MATERIALITY

The overlap between narrative and figurative levels, along with the blurring of the boundaries between the textual object and the human narrator, brings about fluidity in the relationship between materiality and spirituality, between the described object and the describing medium, between signified and signifier, to put it in semiotic terms. The coexistence of different spheres is not an isolated phenomenon, but rather expresses literary and cultural tendencies that were progressively developing in the late antique period—namely, the emergence of materiality and metapoetic discourse, as well as of allegorization and symbolism. One of the most striking examples of how the symbol is embedded in late antique poetic discourse is Optatian’s poetry, wherein the disposition of words and lines within the poems graphically reproduces Christian symbols or signs. ⁴⁷ With the Psychomachia, Prudentius also questions and reconceptualizes the terms of the distinction between content and representation, concrete and abstract, somatic and semantic, res and signa. In Peristephanon 9, we observe the transformation of res in signa, which is a widespread pattern in Christian literature, and at the same time the materialization of signa, whereby Cassian’s portrait, the written text, and even Prudentius’ poem become bodies. ⁴⁸

At lines 10–12 (… imago … | plagas mille gerens, totos lacerata per artus, | ruptam minutis praeferens punctis cutem; see full text and translation above), through a hypallage, the imago––and not the martyr––bears the wounds (11); the image, rather than Cassian’s body, is perforated (by tiny pricks). This attribution of the wounds to the imago leads to a breach in the distinction between the image and the body of the saint, which articulates the overlap between Cassian’s tortured body and the body of the text. The transformation of the (literary) text into a blunt object fully happens at a later stage of the poem (from lines 13–16 onwards), as the pupils (innumeri … pueri, 13) use their writing tablets to hit Cassian’s body, thereby actualizing the harmful as well as material potential of the text. ⁴⁹ This material agency of the text is anticipated by the visual (and metavisual) role of the saint’s image: since the imago shows some features that would normally pertain to the body of the saint, it temporarily replaces and hypostasizes Cassian’s wounded body. In other words, the image absorbs and incorporates Cassian’s suffering. Accordingly, the imago amplifies and projects the saint’s suffering onto the readers, thereby affecting their feelings. This transmission of sensations from Cassian to the image also forecasts the overlap between Prudentius’ and the reader’s feelings in response to the sexton’s story (Perist. 9.13–20):

innumeri circum pueri, miserabile uisu,

confossa paruis membra figebant stilis,

unde pugillares soliti percurrere ceras 15

scholare murmur adnotantes scripserant.

aedituus consultus ait: ‘quod prospicis, hospes,

non est inanis aut anilis fabula;

historiam pictura refert, quae tradita libris

ueram uetusti temporis monstrat fidem’. 20

Countless boys round about (a pitiful sight!) were stabbing and piercing his body with the little styli with which they used to run over their wax tablets, writing down the droning lesson in school. I appealed to the sexton, and he said: ‘What you are looking at, stranger, is no vain or old wife’s tale. The picture tells the story, which is recorded in books and displays the honest assurance of the olden time.’

While the reference to the innumeri … pueri is certainly emphatic, it also very effectively conveys the idea of Cassian’s defencelessness. Moreover, soliti enhances the discrepancy between the normal use of the pugillares … ceras and their distorted use as weapons. The students were using their wax tablets to annotate Cassian’s words, perhaps without truly understanding them, as the expression scholare murmur suggests. ⁵⁰ These lines present another example of aequiuocatio, whereby the meaning of writing is expanded through figuration, and accordingly recast into a different activity, physical torture. In other hymns, such as Peristephanon 3, which is dedicated to Eulalia, Prudentius points out that the wounds left on the body of the saint by the executors should be taken as signs from Christ (Perist. 3.136–40):

‘scriberis ecce mihi, Domine.

quam iuuat hos apices legere

qui tua, Christe, tropaea notant!

nomen et ipsa sacrum loquitur

purpura sanguinis eliciti.’

‘And now, o Lord, you are written on me. How beneficial to read these letters, which record your victories, o Christ! The scarlet colour itself of the blood that is drawn speaks your holy name.’

If read vis-à-vis this reference from Peristephanon 3, ⁵¹ Perist. 9.13–16 implies that Cassian’s wounds represent the evidence of his faith in Christ, and accordingly of his sanctity. By carving letters upon the saint’s body, the pupils’ styli write a text, which is echoed and re-enacted by an actual literary text, Prudentius’ poem. Peristephanon 9 perpetuates the memory of the pupils’ writing, along with Cassian’s martyrdom, thereby granting him eternal glory. Therefore, the body of the text appears extremely malleable and metamorphic. Through the mediation of the imago, and accordingly of the sexton’s words, the pupils’ writing tablets change into Prudentius’ poem, which extends its boundaries beyond its author. ⁵² Relevant to the metamorphic nature of the text, when discussing The Book of Mandeville, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen underlines the centrality of the book qua material text (and manuscript) that travels across centuries, thus entering human history. ⁵³ Both as material object and as literary artefact, the book becomes the main actor in the formation of the narrative it embeds. In the process of textual transmission, the book is read, copied and reread multiple times, so that its story proliferates through its various versions and interpretations. Interacting with other objects and processes, the book becomes comparable to a ‘body in motion’, which reshapes and determines the reality it belongs to. ⁵⁴ In Peristephanon 9, the agency of the written text amplifies as the book merges with Cassian’s body, both as a concrete blunt object and as an abstract symbolic narrative means, whereby the portrait of the saint is explained.

Just as the portrait suddenly appeared in front of Prudentius at line 9, so the sexton is introduced abruptly in the narration (aedituus consultus ait, 17) as another epiphany, which strengthens the visionary atmosphere within the previous lines. ⁵⁵ Addressed by the ‘foreigner’ (hospes, 17), the sexton remarks that what Prudentius is observing (prospicis) is not an inanis aut anilis fabula (‘a vain, old wife’s, tale’, 18). ⁵⁶ While the verb prospicis further stresses the visual aspect of the image, the word fabula polemically emphasizes the difference between the truth of Cassian’s martyrdom and the fiction of other kinds of fabulae, for example the theatrical. Similar to the narrative of Cassian’s martyrdom, the fabulae from Roman theatrical performances are violent and bloody; distinct from Prudentius’ poem, Roman fabulae are not trustworthy. ⁵⁷ By adding that the ‘picture reports/tells the story’ (historiam pictura refert, 19), the sexton underscores once again the ‘intermediality’ of the poem, whereby a story is told through different representative and narratological means. ⁵⁸

Moreover, the expression historiam pictura refert further articulates the dynamics of figuration and the narrative circularity of Peristephanon 9: the hymn shows the (saint’s) picture; the picture shows the story; and the narrative of the sexton (who is a personification and hypostasis of the saint’s portrait) interprets and explains the picture. The narrative is also handed down in the books (tradita libris, 19), which confirm the ‘true faith’ (ueram … fidem, 20) of the ancient time (uetusti temporis, 20): historiam pictura refert, quae tradita libris | ueram uetusti temporis monstrat fidem. In this passage, the Latin word fides has multiple layers: it can be interpreted literally, as ‘assurance’, with reference to the truthfulness of Prudentius’ poem; it can also be translated more broadly as ‘faith’, with reference to the proper spiritual feeling. ⁵⁹ The Christian faith is confirmed by Peristephanon 9 (and the sexton’s narrative within it), which features Cassian as a witness of Christianity––a martyr, by definition. Accordingly, the ‘books’ (libris) transmitting Cassian’s narrative have generally been interpreted as a reference to other hagiographical writings that are not extant. ⁶⁰ At the same time, ‘the books’ can also function as a proleptic and metapoetic allusion to Prudentius’ liber, which, along with other sources, will preserve the saint’s memory.

Moreover, by referring to other possible sources, Prudentius constructs plausible evidence for the saint’s narrative, thereby aligning himself with the highly programmatic posture of Christian poets and with later hagiographical texts. While the first piece of evidence (the books) is real, the other, the sexton’s narrative, is fictive. This combination of fictional and real (that is, literary and historical) evidence amplifies the narrative potential of Prudentius’ words, as well as their reliability and trustfulness. ⁶¹ The co-responsibility in the perpetuation of the saint’s memory further supports the interpretation of Prudentius’ liber as an agentic force (see tradita libris, 19), which overcomes the boundaries of time, space and authorial agency to keep the memory of Cassian’s martyrdom alive, while emphasizing his sanctity. Therefore, the agency of the literary text is articulated by its ability to perpetuate the saint’s memory throughout the ages, as it is handed down through generations. Concurrently, this agency is expressed by the transformation of the text into a blunt object, whereby Cassian’s students kill their teacher. At lines 47–50, Cassian starts bleeding after being hit by his students, who throw their wax tablets onto him: ‘the page, broken by the blow, becomes red and wet’ (rubetque ab ictu curta et umens pagina, 50)––with a syntactic focus on the pagina, which is the subject of the sentence. ⁶² A metonymy for the writing support (the wax tablet), the pagina represents the text, which is the main agent in the perpetuation of Cassian’s memory and martyrdom.

After being hit by the wax tablets, the body of the saint literally and concretely turns into the body of the text. This concrete transformation of the (human) body into a literary text brings about a distortion of the writing process, and subverts modes and techniques of personification. In normal writing practice, the stilus acts upon the wax tablet, thereby leaving its signs upon it and modifying its material aspect; ⁶³ in a personification, the literary text embodies an abstract or concrete object, thus figuratively becoming a person. By contrast, in the case of Cassian’s martyrdom, it is the writing tablet that leaves its signs on the body of the saint by causing him to bleed, with the saint’s blood functioning as ink; it is the body that produces a text––and not vice versa. Accordingly, the usual dialectic between the agent that accomplishes the action (the pen) and the patient that undergoes the action (the wax tablet) is here entirely subverted: the wax tablets are those which impress the saint’s body. While actively causing Cassian’s death, the wax tablets also bear the evidence and signs of the pupils’ violent attacks, which are hypostasized by the blood that stains them. ⁶⁴

The pagina thus appears as a negative agent, in so far as it pierces the saint’s body. Concurrently, it is also a positive agent, as it perpetuates the memory of Cassian’s martyrdom through the blood that is left on it. Owing to its broader connotation as the material support for the written text, the pagina also articulates the perpetuation of Cassian’s memory through Prudentius’ liber. After the blood poured out of Cassian’s wounds has transformed his body into a macabre writing tool, in the lines that follow (51–4), the saint’s body changes back into a writing support, which is cut by the stili and their tips (acumina, 51) (Perist. 9.51–4):

inde alii stimulos et acumina ferrea uibrant.

qua parte aratis cera sulcis scribitur,

et qua secti apices abolentur et aequoris hirti

rursus nitescens innouatur area.

Others again launch at him the sharp iron pricks, the end with which by scratching strokes the wax is written upon, and the end with which the characters that have been cut are rubbed out and the roughened surface once more made into a smooth, glossy space.

This passage depicts the body of the saint as a writing surface, which is etched by the tips (the same acumina that were causing Prudentius to suffer at line 8) of the stili and is cleared by their bases. Throughout the poem, Cassian’s body maintains this semantic and conceptual liminality between the human body and the writing, or written, body. ⁶⁵ As Bruno Latour would put it, the written text becomes an ‘actant’ in the construction of the narrative, and accordingly in the perpetuation of Cassian’s memory. ⁶⁶ At lines 69–70, one of the students refers to the stilus as ferrum, adding that it was his teacher who provided him and the other students with weapons (armasti manus, 70)—namely, the stili and the tablets. Merging the literal and the metaphorical, the word ferrum creates another aequiuocatio, thus making this passage particularly ambivalent. Given the context, ferrum here indicates the stylus, but in Latin ferrum is also a well-known word to indicate a sword (or, more generically, any piercing weapon). ⁶⁷ Previously, through a similar process, the word agmen (35), which in a military context would indicate an ‘army’, was employed in reference to the class of Cassian’s students. The semantic ambivalence of ferrum underlines once again the break of distinctions between the notion of body/corpus as both a human body and the body of the text. The former is usually pierced by sword; the latter must be impressed upon and etched by the pen (stilus). Both the sword and the pen can be indicated by the Latin word ferrum, which Prudentius has the students use.

The complete overlap between physical violence and the writing process occurs at lines 72–4, where one student ironically observes that Cassian cannot be angry at his pupils for writing (quod scribimus, 73), as this is what he has taught them: non potes irasci, quod scribimus; ipse iubebas | numquam quietum dextera ut ferret stilum (‘You cannot get angry with us for writing; but you were the one who bade us never let our hand carry an idle stylus’, 73–4). ⁶⁸ While the student is practically right, his observation ignores one important detail: ironically, the writing act is not happening on the wax tablet, as during Cassian’s classes; it is now happening on the body of the saint. By developing the overlap between text and body, this comment further articulates the fluidity of the writing support, and the writing process, that features prominently within this poem.

The blending of different forms of texts, figurative meanings and narrative means (picture and text) can also be found at the end of the poem. After speaking of Cassian’s martyrdom, the sexton shifts the focus back to the saint’s portrait: haec sunt, quae liquidis expressa coloribus, hospes, | miraris, ista est Cassiani gloria (‘This is what you wonder to see painted with liquid colours, stranger: this is the glory of Cassian’, 93–4). ⁶⁹ The sexton’s words and story succeeded in explaining and contextualizing the image in terms of contents and symbols. Cassian’s portrait, along with his blood, which is impressed on the wax tablets, represents the glory of his martyrdom (Cassiani gloria, 94). Since Cassian’s glory is perpetuated by Peristephanon 9, Prudentius’ writing is both antithetical and complementary with respect to the students’ writing, which is etched onto Cassian’s body. By writing through their tablets and stili (that is, leaving their marks) on the saint’s body, the students bring about his death along with his eternal glorification. ⁷⁰ Prudentius collects the metaphorical stilus, the legacy, from the hands of Cassian’s students, but he uses it to preserve Cassian’s memory rather than to end his earthly existence. Accordingly, Prudentius’ poem establishes a fracture, but at the same time a continuity, between the students’ writing and his own poetry.

Alongside Cassian’s memory, Peristephanon 9 also perpetuates Prudentius’ fame as a poet. By re-entering the narration as character (see line 99–end), Prudentius creates a ring-composition with the beginning of the poem, which was also characterized by the presence of the poet. After embracing Cassian’s tomb, Prudentius discloses his fears and his hopes of a future good (spem futuri … boni, 104). Convinced that Cassian will listen to his words, Prudentius goes back home and celebrates the saint (Cassianum praedico, 106): this celebration is actualized and hypostasized by Peristephanon 9. ⁷¹ Prudentius’ gesture of embracing the saint’s tomb is another expression of the importance of material objects within the poem. As the place where Cassian rests, the tomb holds an affective value: along with Cassian’s portrait, the tomb contributes to the perpetuation of the saint’s memory through its concrete and material presence. Besides the tomb, the preservation of Cassian’s narrative is guaranteed by the quintessential agentic object within the poem: Prudentius’ poem itself, Peristephanon 9.

CONCLUSION

In this article, I have shown that the text holds material and figurative, as well as literary and metaliterary, agency, and is responsible for the preservation of the signs of Cassian’s martyrdom. While the wax tablets are marked with the saint’s blood within the literary fiction, Peristephanon 9 bears witness to Cassian’s martyrdom in reality, across the centuries. Moreover, the overlap between the text and the human body leads to the progressive humanization of the text, which becomes an agentic force. Together with human characters, the objects are therefore co-actors within Cassian’s narrative, and accordingly contribute to the construction of Prudentius’ poem. In turn, we see the textualization of bodies within Peristephanon 9, where objects have agency precisely because of figuration—namely, their inclusion within a system of meanings. Embedded with semiotic potential, the objects (the tumulus, the image of Cassian’s body, the writing tablets) thus act as signa. In Peristephanon 9, the quintessential Christian paronomasia sēma/sōma acquires a new significance, as the distinction between word and body is overcome. The text has become the body; the text is the body.