Claudianus Mamertus

Claudianus Ecdidius Mamertus (died circa 473) was a Gallo-Roman theologian and the brother of Saint Mamertus, Bishop of Vienne.

Descended probably from one of the leading families of the country, Claudianus Mamertus relinquished his worldly goods and embraced the monastic life. He assisted his brother in the discharge of his functions, and Sidonius Apollinaris describes him as directing the psalm-singing of the chanters, who were formed into groups and chanted alternate verses, whilst the bishop was at the altar celebrating the sacred mysteries. This passage is of importance in the history of liturgical chant. In the same epigram, which constitutes the epitaph of Claudianus Mamertus, Sidonius also informs us that this distinguished scholar composed a lectionary, that is, a collection of readings from Sacred Scripture to be made on the occasion of certain celebrations during the year.

According to the same writer, Claudianus "pierced the sects with the power of eloquence", an allusion to a prose treatise entitled "On the State of the Soul" or "On the Substance of the Soul". Written between 468 and 472, this work was destined to combat the ideas of Faustus, Bishop of Reii (modern Riez, in the department of Basses-Alpes), particularly his thesis on the corporeity of the soul. Plato, whom he perhaps read in Greek, Porphyry, and especially Plotinus and Saint Augustine furnished Claudianus with arguments.

But his method was decidedly peripatetic and foretokened Scholasticism. Even his language had the same characteristics as that of some of the medieval philosophers: hence Claudianus used many abstract adverbs in "ter" (essentialiter, accidenter, etc.; forty according to La Broise). On the other hand, he revived obsolete words and, in a letter to Sapaudus of Vienne, a rhetorician, sanctioned the imitation of Nævius, Plautus, Varro and Gracchus. Undoubtedly his only acquaintance with these authors was through the quotations used by grammarians and the adoption of their style by Apuleius, whose works he eagerly studied. Of course this tendency to copy his predecessors led Claudianus to acquire an entirely artificial mode of expression which Sidonius, in wishing to compliment him, called a modern antique (Epist., IV, iii, 3).

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