‘Fingitque Premendo’

In her work Cento Vergilianus de Laudibus Christi (CV) Proba tells an abbreviated version of the biblical story using short textual excerpts taken from Vergil and rearranged to form a new poem. I will elucidate how Proba as biblical exegete reshapes her biblical material in three episodes: (1) the six days of Creation, where Proba rearranges material to accommodate Greco-Roman cosmology and Vergilian poetic authority; (2) the Fall scene, reinterpreted as an act of sacrilege against a sacred grove (lucus); and (3) the Preaching scene, which amalgamates material from all four Gospels while implicitly referencing a pagan (rather than Jewish) religious past. All three scenes as retold by Proba further reveal an interest in law (cosmic, religious, and moral) which is ordained by God at Creation, violated at the Fall, and re-established by Jesus as divine Lawgiver. Like God as Creator kneading clay to form a human form in CV 116 (fingitque premendo), Proba extensively reshapes her biblical material into a form at once new and recognizable to an educated 4th-century reader, exegetically interpreting the Christian story within a Vergilian cultural framework.