Cento vergilianus de laudibus Christi

Cento vergilianus de laudibus Christi (Latin: [kɛn.toː wɛr.ɡɪl.ɪ.aː.nʊs deː laʊ̯.dɪ.bʊs kʰrɪs.tiː]; A Virgilian Cento Concerning the Glory of Christ), also known as De laudibus Christi and Cento Probae, is the title of a fourth century AD poem of the Roman Empire. It was arranged by Faltonia Betitia Proba c. AD 350–360 following the author's conversion to Christianity. A cento is a poetical work wholly composed of verses or passages taken from other authors, disposed in a new form or order. This poem reworks verses extracted from the works of the poet Virgil and details several stories from the Old and New Testament of the Christian Bible, with the core of the work focusing on the story of Jesus Christ.

The impetus for its creation is unknown, although several hypotheses have been put forward, namely that Proba was trying to circumvent a law put in place by the Roman Emperor Julian that forbade Christians from teaching classical Greek and Latin literature which they themselves did not believe in, or that Proba was responding to and rebutting the rather unflattering and demonizing descriptions of Jesus put forth by Julian in his works Caesares and Contra Galilaeos. While the work was circulated heavily, Pope Gelasius I deemed it apocryphal, and many also believe that St. Jerome disliked the work. However, the likes of Isidore of Seville, Petrarch, and Giovanni Boccaccio praised Proba. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the work was criticized for being of poor quality, but recently, scholars have taken a renewed interest in it.

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