The Creativity of a Mother

The early church boasted of many who saw the intersection of culture and theology. These early saints believed that all truth was God’s truth and that truth, wherever described, could very well point people to Christ. Augustine, for example, wrote, “For there were also pagan prophets in whom some things are found, which they sang about Christ, just as they had heard them, as it is said of the Sibyl” (Commentary on Romans 1.3). However, not everyone would agree. For instance, Jerome believed such thoughts were “childish, and resembles the sleight-of-hand of a charlatan” (To Paulinus 7).

A Remarkable Woman

In the midst of this theological climate stood a remarkable woman: Faltonia Betitia Proba (ca. 306-353). Proba, as she became known, was born into an aristocratic family in Rome. Later in life she became a Christian and, as mothers often do, influenced her husband and children to become followers of Christ as well.

We know very little about her, but we can assume that she was educated, at least in the common curriculum reserved for women of her day; namely grammar and poetry. Even so, this was no small feat. Among the poets studied by Proba was Virgil. Undoubtedly the most treasured poet of the Roman Empire, Julius Caesar commissioned him to tell the story of the birth of the Roman people. That story became the epic poem, Aeneid.

Indeed, many early Christians believed that Virgil also foretold the birth of Christ. In his Eclogue 4, Virgil writes about the birth of a boy who would become divine and eventually rule over the world. Augustine took him to be a pre-Christian prophet (City of God 10.27).

Exegeting Virgil

Proba became an exceptional exegete of Virgil’s poetry. In her most famous work entitled A Virgilian Cento Concerning the Glory of Christ she utilized lines of Virgil’s poetry to tell the story of the Bible. As the title indicates, her work is a cento, a form of composition where an author extracts verses or sentences from various other writings to construct a new literary work. Proba seems to have mastered this method of composing meaningful texts from Virgil’s poetry. And she did it in such a way as to relate his poetry to Christianity.

In essence, Proba used a well-known and highly regarded Roman poem to connect Christ to culture. Or, in her words “to disclose all mysteries of the poet” (Cento 12). In one remarkable verse about Christ, Proba creates a patchwork from Aeneid with new significance:

“When first the woman who wore a virgin’s face; and garment bore — O marvelous to tell! — A son who was not of our race or blood; And awful prophets sang their oracles: that there should come a man to lord it over; peoples and lands, whose seed comes down from heaven; who with his courage would subdue the world; His empire ending only at the ocean; His fame unbound but by the stars themselves.”

Connecting with Culture

Like Jerome, not everyone appreciated the poetical style in which Proba wrote. The patchwork nature of the cento invited criticism. Even so, there is something to be admired from her effort. For one, Proba knew the works of Virgil exceptionally well. She also knew the Bible exceptionally well.

To relate Virgil to the Bible and see a correspondence between the Roman poet and the divine narrative provides a remarkable example of valuing what God was doing implicitly in culture and making it explicit to culture in a new form. Not only did she see a correspondence, but she was able to communicate it in an artistic manner that connected to the culture in a meaningful way.

Proba, well-studied both in the literary genre of her day as well as to culturally appropriate artistic expressions, exemplifies the creativity of women and mothers in the early church. She connected to culture by sharing the biblical narrative from creation to Christ. It was meaningful and it inspires us with an illustration of how we might understand culturally appropriate expressions to connect Christ to culture.

Happy Mother’s Day!