Physical Ruin and Spiritual Perfection in Fifth-Century Gaul: Orientius and His Contemporaries on the “Landscape of the Soul”

Abstract

Orientius’s Commonitorium contains a well-known passage describing the damage done to the landscape of Gaul following the barbarian invasions of the early fifth century. This article examines the juxtaposition of the ruined physical world and the spiritual world beyond in the Commonitorium and three other poetic texts from this period—the Epigramma Paulini , Ad coniugem , and De prouidentia Dei . Compared to his contemporaries, Orientius is shown to be less absolute in his renunciation of the world around him. Situating these works in the ecclesiastical context of Gaul in the fifth century, I argue that Orientius offers a pastoral perspective on the Christian’s relationship with the wider world, whereas his fellow poets represent the more exclusive views of the emerging ascetic elite.