Fortunatus and the Rhetorical Tradition: Other Poems

Abstract Fortunatus did not restrict his adaptation of the rhetorical tradition to panegyrics of the Merovingian kings. With the same purposeful imagination, the poet also drew upon this tradition to offer praise, advice, and mediation to powerful figures as far afield as Byzantium, to support an individual patron, or to further national and international diplomatic aims. With a rich and invariably apposite use of the tradition, he addressed gratiarum actiones to the emperor and empress in the East, and to Martin, the renowned bishop of Braga; he extended the use of the basilikos logos to praise princes of the Church; and with motifs and topics evocative of Roman grandeur, he flattered Merovingian magnates. The two gratiarum actiones (Appendix 2 and poem 5. 2) were significant works in Fortunatus’ more formal rhetorical writing. Both represented an imaginative and effective use of the tradition; both were poems sent to powerful political figures, in secular and ecclesiastical terms, to further Radegund’s policies for the country and for her community.