Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/293

 jx] EARLY LATIN CHRISTIAN POETRY 275 These poems are perhaps the first true elegies which are Christian in point of view, in sentiment, and in feeling. Devotion and lovingness also constitute the most distinctive Christian elements in Paulinus' Nata- litia, his lengthy series of poems written on the festal days — the birthdays to eternity — of the martyr-saint, Felix. They are poems of a panegyrical character, mostly written in hexameters. We see in them how the popular worship of the saints had supplanted the cult of local pagan deities in Italy and other lands which were becoming Christian. The departed saints are potent through their relics, as local deities had been potent at their shrines. The span of life being short, the omnipoteiis dominus continues the healing powers of the saints in their remains.^ These are effi- cient in the place of their interment, or wherever they may be moved. The period of translationes (removals) is at hand, Constantine being the great inaugurator of the custom, seeking to strengthen his new Constanti- nople with the mighty relics of Christian heroes. In such superstitions there was little that was dis- tinctively Christian. Paulinus' Christian feeling lay in his humility and his love for the martyr-saint, such as no keeper of a pagan shrine had felt. He feels his unworthiness to serve Felix — but let this be punish- ment enough, the many years lived without thee : — . ., tot iam quod te sine viximua anniSj 8ede tuaprocul heut quamvia von nierUe remoti.* 1 Continuans medicoi operosi martyria actus, Carmen XVIII, 290. This poem bears interesting witness to the early worship of saints and their relics. 3 Carmen Xll, 16, 17.