Audradus of Sens: Epistola ad Hincmarum

Audradus, called Modicus, was a monk and chorbishop of Sens in the mid-ninth century and the author of religious poetry and visions. This verse letter to Hincmar, archbishop of Reims, is written in hexameters and followed by a second piece headed as a poetic fiction of Audradus. The poem praises Hincmar’s eloquence and recalls how he urged his friend to hasten towards a shining building where a fountain springs from the centre and gives living water. What follows is an allegory of that fountain of life, its dwelling and its guests, carried on in dialogue between the poet, a host and a young messenger.

The letter shows the learned verse exchanged among churchmen of the Carolingian age, in which classical diction, with its laurel, ivy and olive, is turned to a Christian allegory of salvation. It also documents Audradus’s relationship with Hincmar, one of the most powerful prelates of the West Frankish kingdom. The same imagery of the fountain of life is developed at length in Audradus’s poem Liber de fonte vitae, to which this piece forms a kind of introduction.