Commodian

Commodian wrote Christian poetry in Latin for people who were never going to read a theologian.

Two works survive. The Instructions is a set of eighty short poems, each one an acrostic, the first letters of the lines spell out the subject, so a hearer could hold the shape of the poem in his head. The first half attacks the pagan gods one by one, naming them, telling their own myths back at them, and asking the obvious questions. The second half turns to the church and preaches: to catechumens, to the wealthy, to widows, to Christians still hedging their bets by attending the temples. The other surviving work, the Apologetic Poem, argues the faith against Jews and pagans together and ends with the last things.

He wrote in a way that horrified educated readers for centuries. Classical Latin verse was measured by the length of syllables, a system that had to be learned. Commodian ignored it and wrote by stress, by where the beat falls when you say the line out loud. His grammar is common speech, not the schools. He is a serious candidate for the title of the first Christian Latin poet, and he was writing in the language people actually spoke.

He says of himself that he had been a pagan, and that he was converted by reading the Scriptures.

His theology was millenarian: Christ returns, the saints reign a thousand years on a renewed earth, the nations serve them. He expected the end soon, and expected persecution first.

When he lived is genuinely disputed and has been for a long time. Much in the poems points to the third century, the language about those who had sacrificed and those who had bought certificates during a persecution matches the vocabulary of Cyprian's Carthage almost exactly, and there is an allusion that fits the Novatian split of the 250s. On the other hand Gennadius, writing in the fifth century, lists him after Lactantius, and some scholars have argued for fifth-century Gaul. Most place him in the third century, before the peace of the church in 313.

The official Roman church of a later era was uneasy with him; the Gelasian Decree lists his writings among books not to be received, most likely because of the millenarianism.

He was not read by the learned. He was written for everyone else.

Sources: Commodian, Instructions and Apologetic Poem (Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4); Gennadius, On Illustrious Men 15; the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia, article Commodianus; Henry Wace, Dictionary of Christian Biography.