Chris D. Synodinos deserves much credit for making accessible a previously understudied treatise that survives in a ninth-century Carolingian manuscript (Tours, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 281), known under the title De consolatione in adversis (DCA), i.e., On Solace During Adversities. Together with a sixteenth-century witness (Caen, BM, MS 34 (373)), Synodinos has produced an edition of the text, an English translation, and an introduction, to an admirable standard. Because the work already appears in Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 102, in an edition by Álvaro Cancela Cilleruelo (2023), the principal value of Synodinos’s publication is his introduction and translation, though certainly the existence of two scholarly editions is a welcomed luxury.
In terms of the translation, Synodinos has applied his expertise in the distinct forms of Latin characteristic of the early medieval West to great effect. Equally admirable is his decision to detail and justify his translation philosophy (57-62), in a section that merits the attention of scholars in its own right. Grounded in Classical thought, and formed with much consideration, Synodinos’s approach is a model for other translators confronted with a text that is difficult to render with precision in English idiom. I can only applaud the result and hope that Synodinos applies his skills to other untranslated works.
Historians will be keenly interested in the arguments put forward in the introduction, which attempt to locate the text beyond its manuscript context. Synodinos provides phonological, syntactical, and morphological indications that the provenance of the text is to be sought in the Vulgar Latin milieu of early medieval Gaul, most likely during the sixth century—an identification that aligns nearly with the preservation of the text in a manuscript from Tours (5-15). Synodinos argues that the extended discussion of lepers in the text also aligns with the interest in leprosy that appeared, somewhat unexpectedly, in works produced in sixth-century Gaul. To that end, he provides an intriguing discussion on leprosy and leprosaria in the region from c. 550 to 600 (19-21). He then assembles evidence that the DCA is “highly likely” to be a work of Radegund of Poitiers (d. 587), an argument that he clearly considers secure enough to credit Radegund with authorship of the DCA within the title of the publication itself: St. Radegunde of Poitiers’ Treatise of Consolation to Lepers. While the attempt to identify a potential author is admirable, there are perhaps sufficient reasons for doubt that give rise to some unease about this choice of title.
In support of the attribution of the DCA to Radegund (21-31), Synodinos points to the former queen’s dedication in caring for the sick, and particularly for people with skin ailments, as well as her investment in hygiene infrastructure within her convent of Holy Cross. The likely geographical and chronological limits of the DCA broadly fit with the details of Radegund’s life. Venantius Fortunatus claimed that Radegund had an interest in poems, and the DCA displayed a “quantitative and accentual rhythmical nature” consistent with such interest. The scriptural quotations in the DCA largely derive from the psalter, which Radegund recited regularly and perhaps even memorised, as an avowed nun living under the Regula ad virgines written by Caesarius of Arles, which enjoined nuns to learn the psalms by heart. The DCA also lauded the value of education, another feature shared with the Regula. Synodinos detects the influence of a Greek original in the Latin biblical quotations of the DCA, and he also thinks it possible, perhaps even likely, that Radegund had learned Greek, either during her childhood education or perhaps from a Hellenophone tutor in Arles or Marseille. He even suggests that she may have read Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa in the original Greek. The false attribution of the DCA to Basil provided in the Carolingian manuscript, Synodinos speculates, might have resulted from a corruption of basilia or basilissa, a reference to Radegund’s status as a former queen that possibly has precedent in some poetic wordplay deployed by Fortunatus.
Synodinos is to be applauded for making the case, even if serious doubts remain about the attribution of the DCA to Radegund. Original ideas, sharply argued, are to be welcomed, and Synodinos clearly admits the speculative nature of his argument. But the evidence is not as direct or robust as might be expected in the event of a declared “highly likely” attribution. Neither is the circumstantial character of the evidence its only problem. The suggestion that Radegund, a laywoman and coenobite, might deliver a public sermon requires greater consideration than what Synodinos provided in a single footnote (26n95) citing Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg’s remarks from 1998 on the authority and prominence of certain early medieval abbesses—a position which Radegund never held. Caesarius had made it a major platform of his tenure as bishop of Arles to convince his colleagues to allow priests and deacons to preach sermons to the laity, if those sermons had been composed by a bishop and read aloud verbatim (e.g. Sermo 1.15; Vita S. Caesarii 1.54; and the Council of Vaison 529, canon 2).
With so much evidence based on assumptions about monastic life under Caesarius’s Regula ad virgines, some discussion of the strict cloistering of nuns was perhaps required. Radegund practised seclusion within Holy Cross, and while she might have exempted herself from certain strictures of the Regula to facilitate personal travel or the reception of high-status guests, the delivery of a sermon to the general population is another matter. Baudonivia recounted how Radegund preached (praedicare) to her fellow nuns (Vita S. Radegundis II, 8), without mentioning any similar address to the general public. This point, of course, only applies if it is thought that Radegund delivered the sermon during her time in Poitiers, while she lived under the Regula (though it was also the source of the injunction to memorise the psalms). Synodinos considered as potential locations not only Poitiers but also Saix, where Radegund had previously resided prior to the foundation of Holy Cross. But it is difficult to accept that a place as small and rural as Saix could be described as a civitas (Baudonivia referred to Saix as a villa in Vita S. Radegundis II, 3), the word used by the DCA to refer to the place on the outskirts of which it had been delivered as a sermon (9.367-368 and 9.373-374).
The one surviving work that seems securely attributed to Radegund, her letter Dominis sanctis, bears no resemblance to the Latin of the DCA, a discrepancy that Synodinos explains by characterising the letter as “a document of the royal chancery” (22-23). Synodinos dedicates surprisingly little time to considering other possible authors of the DCA. He dismisses a certain Agricola, mentioned as the founder of a leprosarium by Gregory of Tours, over doubts about “the extent of his education,” despite his senatorial background (20-21). But a sermon points, by its nature, first and foremost to a bishop, and potential candidates within the episcopate deserve consideration. If any bishop stands out, it is perhaps Fortunatus himself, who became the bishop of Poitiers in the years after Radegund’s death. Previously, he had spent two decades of his life in service to Radegund, which included writing poetic works in her voice and for her convent. It is Fortunatus who claimed (Vita S. Radegundis I, 19) that Radegund had cared for lepers, so he clearly had an interest in the matter himself. And his education in the Byzantine stronghold of Ravenna, prior to his relocation to Gaul, must have exposed him to a certain amount of Greek, including perhaps the memorisation of scriptural passages and particularly the psalter. There is no need to explain why Fortunatus, the author of numerous poetic works, might adopt a poetic approach in a text otherwise written in a form of Vulgar suited to a popular audience and perhaps to the subordinate clergy expected to read it aloud.
Given proverbial wisdom, it is perhaps unwise for a review to critique a book by reference to its cover. But the confident attribution of the DCA to Radegund that features in the title of this work is perhaps the only misstep in what is a masterful study of a previously underutilised text. The more modest arguments in favour of authorship within sixth-century Gaul, rather than Radegund in particular, are strong enough to give historians confidence that the DCA can be included within scholarship on the world of Radegund, and for that Synodinos deserves full credit. Judged as an edition, translation, and linguistic study of a work that deserves to be made accessible to wider scholarship, this book must be considered a triumph of ambitious scholarship and a model for future work.