PRUDENTIUS OF TROYES, ST.

Theologian; b. Spain; d. Troyes, 861. He came of a refugee family, was educated at the Palatine School, and served as chaplain at the court of Louis the Pious before becoming bishop of Troyes in 843 or 846. In the predestination controversy he supported gottschalk of orbais against hincmar of reims, defending the doctrine of double predestination in his Epistola ad Hincmarum (c. 849) and again in his treatise De predestinatione contra Joannem Scotum, i.e., against john scotus erigena, whose aid Hincmar had solicited. Prudentius differed with Gottschalk, however, in limiting God's salvific will to believers in Christ. Apparently he subscribed to the anti-Augustinian propositions of the Synod of Quiercy (853), but in 856 in his Epistola Tractoria, addressed to Wenilo of Sens, he challenged these propositions and professed a strictly Augustinian doctrine. Prudentius wrote also a continuation of the Annales Bertiniani for the years 835 to 861, valuable for the history of the Frankish Empire, as well as a scriptural floritegium, a Sermo de vita et morte gloriosae Maurer, and some poetry. A Pontifical erroneously attributed to him (Paris B. N. ms. lat. 818) is in reality an 11th-century Missal-Ritual.

Feast: April 6.

Bibliography: A critical ed. of the continuation of the Annales Bertiniani by g. h. perts, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores 1:429–454; prudentius' complete works (except for poetry) in Patrologia Latina ed. j. p. migne (Paris 1878–90) 115:965–1458; Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Poetae 2:679–680; Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Epistolae 5.1:323–324; 5.2:631–633. j. girgensohn, Prudentius und die bertinianischen Annalen (Göttingen 1872). m. manitius, Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters (Munich 1911–31) 1:344–348. a. wilmart, "Le Vrai pontifical de Prudence de Troyes," Revue Bénédictine 34 (1922) 282–293. f. stegmÜller, Repertorium biblicum medii aevi 4:7015–17. k. vielhaber, Lexicon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. j. hofer and k. rahner (Freiburg 1957–65) 8:846–847.

[a. h. tegels]