Christliche Hochzeitsdichtung im Zeitalter der Askese : das Epithalamium des Paulinus von Nola

Kurzfassung/Abstract

When, shortly after 400 A.D., an Italian clergyman marries a young woman of the senatorial class, Paulinus of Nola, a Roman Aristocrat, delivers a wedding poem. Celebrating the young couple, he reverts to the old poetical form of the epithalamium in order to use the opportunity to plead for sexual asceticism. The specific way this poem argues for chastity shows that the poetical reasoning, which is based on the traditional educational system, still forms part of a rhetorical discourse that aims at persuasion. Paulinus did not succeed in establishing a new kind of Christian wedding poem, his successors returned to the traditional form of the epithalamium. The experimental transformation of the genre proved to be a dead end.