A construção de uma Romanitas cristã como fenômeno de recepção clássica: leituras cristãs de Virgílio nos séculos II a V

Abstract

This dissertation investigates how Christian receptions of Virgil, especially of the fourth eclogue, between the 2nd and 5th centuries, participate in the formation of a Christian Romanitas. Starting from the theoretical framework of Classical Reception Studies, the study describes Christian Romanitas as the result of a dynamic process of acculturation and identity reconfiguration, in which Roman symbolic and literary capital is appropriated and transposed into the Christian imaginary. The study is organized into three parts. First, we present the field of Classical Reception Studies and outline an operational vocabulary, which allows for distinguishing merely scholastic uses of Virgil from deliberate strategies of identity legitimation. Next, we analyze the fourth eclogue on its own literary and historical terms, showing how the eschatological motifs and the indeterminacy of the child described in the poem create an interpretive potential explored by later Christian readers. Finally, we examine Christian receptions of Virgil in Minucius Felix, Lactantius, in the Oratio ad sanctorum coetum attributed to Constantine, in Proba’s Virgilian cento, in Jerome, and in Augustine. In each case, we describe the concrete operations of reception and their discursive functions. The central hypothesis is that such receptions constituted creative interventions of legitimation that positioned Christianity as the qualified heir and consummator of Roman culture, articulating doctrinal ruptures with discursive continuity.