Venantius Fortunatus

FORTUNATUS, Venantius Honorius Clementianus. b. ca. 540; d. early 7th century. Born near Aquinum, Fortunatus was well educated in Ravenna in the pagan classics as well as in Christian writings. Probably drawing on contacts from his early years in Aquinum, he traveled north via a network of bishops, arriving in 567 at the Merovingian court in Metz for the high profile wedding of Sigibert, one of four royal brothers, with Brunhild, a Spanish Visigothic princess. From the flying start of an epithalamium and panegyric for this occasion, over the next decades Fortunatus celebrated the Romanitas of the Frankish nobles, and the classical pedigree of the Gallo-Romans, with a substantial volume of...