'Riusi' di Orienzio: saggio di commento a Comm. 1,1-42; 2,1-12 e 407-418

The analysis of three chosen passages of Orientius’ Commonitorium (incipit of the I and II book; explicit of the II book) highlights the ways in which the Gallo-Roman bishop employs the classical tradition. This could either be a perfunctory reuse, almost mechanical, of lexical fragments that have no connection, in terms of meaning, with the new text; or it could be a reuse of the hypotext on a deeper level, to resemble it or, on the contrary, to express something utterly different. The exegesis reveals Orientius’ clever art of “weaving” texts. As a didaskalos, he imparts to the readers monita they must comply with, in order to obtain salvation: the auctores of the past (from Lucretius to Statius, from Cicero and Virgil to Ovid and Seneca) blend with the Scriptures and with Christian authors (from Tertullian to Damasus, from Ambrose to Augustine and Prospe- rus) in order to express the meaning of the new Christian sensibility.