Prudentius’ Hymns for Hours and Seasons: Liber Cathemerinon by Nicholas Richardson

Abstract

Even Liber cathemerinon, a collection of twelve hymns for some moments of the day and some liturgical feasts, has been well catered for use in English-language scholarship with Gerard O’Daly’s Days Linked by Son: Prudentius’ Cathemerinon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), a work that appeared around the same time that the draft of this translation was completed. The Introduction gives brief outlines of Prudentius’s life, his works, Liber cathemerinon in particular, Prudentius’s historical, literary, and liturgical contexts, the poetical style and meter employed, and something about its later reception. Changes to Latin poetry in the context of late antiquity is something Richardson touches upon and which is a valuable contribution for a series that has late antiquity as its focus. [...]the poetic dimension is well described in terms of style, meter, and prosody, but the liturgical dimension of these poems as hymns is much less developed, although Richardson is more open to the possibility that they were intended for liturgical use than O’Daly, who wants to restrict them to private reading.