Biography and work

He wrote the elegiac

Elegiac

Elegiac refers either to those compositions that are like elegies or to a specific poetic meter used in Classical elegies. The Classical elegiac meter has two lines, making it a couplet: a line of dactylic hexameter, followed by a line of dactylic pentameter...

 poem Commonitorium of 1036 verses (divided into two books) describing the way to heaven, with warnings against its hindrances. He was a Gaul (II, 184), who had been converted after a life of sin (I, 405 sq.), was evidently an experienced pastor, and wrote at a time when his country was being devastated by the invasion of barbarians.

All this points to his identification with Orientius, Bishop of Augusta Ausciorum (Auch

Auch

Auch is a commune in southwestern France. Located in the region of Midi-Pyrénées, it is the capital of the Gers department. Auch is the historical capital of Gascony.-The Ausci:...

), who as a very old man was sent by Theodoric I

Theodoric I

Theodoric I sometimes called Theodorid and in Spanish, Portuguese and Italian Teodorico, was the King of the Visigoths from 418 to 451. An illegitimate son of Alaric, Theodoric is famous for defeating Attila at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains in 451, where he was mortally wounded.-Early...

, King of the Goths

Goths

The Goths were an East Germanic tribe of Scandinavian origin whose two branches, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, played an important role in the fall of the Roman Empire and the emergence of Medieval Europe....

, as ambassador to the Roman generals Flavius Aëtius

Flavius Aëtius

Flavius Aëtius , dux et patricius, was a Roman general of the closing period of the Western Roman Empire. He was an able military commander and the most influential man in the Western Roman Empire for two decades . He managed policy in regard to the attacks of barbarian peoples pressing on the Empire...

 and Litorius in 439 ("Vita S. Orientii" in "Acta SS.", I May, 61).

The Commonitorium quotes classical Roman poets —Virgil

Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...

, Ovid

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...

, Catullus

Catullus

Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Latin poet of the Republican period. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art.-Biography:...

— and is perhaps influenced by Prudentius

Prudentius

Aurelius Prudentius Clemens was a Roman Christian poet, born in the Roman province of Tarraconensis in 348. He probably died in Spain, as well, some time after 405, possibly around 413...

. It exists in only one manuscript (Cod. Ashburnham. sæc. X), and is followed by some shorter anonymous poems not by Orientius, and by two prayers in verse attributed to him.

The first complete edition was published by Martène, Veterum Scriptorum Monumenta, I (Rouen, 1700); then by Andrea Gallandi

Andrea Gallandi

Andrea Gallandi was an Italian Oratorian and patristic scholar. He was descended from an ancient French family.-Life:...

, Bibliotheca veterum Patrum, X (Venice, 1774), 185-96, reprinted by J.-P. Migne in Patrologia Latina 61.977-1006. The best modern edition is by Ellis in the Corpus Scriptorum Eccl. Latinorum XVI (Vienna, 1888): "Poetæ Christiani minores", I, 191-261.