Abstract
The book of "Cathemerinon" (literal translation "the Songs For a Day", or "the Daily Round", here translated as "the Little Book of Hours") is probably the most important work of the Roman Christian poetry. Its author, Prudentius (born 348, died after 405), unites two traditions: The lyrical imagination of the Roman classics Vergil and Horace and the epical motives of the Bible.
Also, this collection of twelve Prudentius' hymns brings a unique evidence of how the Christianity does embrace the "pagan" everyday life, accepts many of its patterns, but re-labels them with new symbolical meanings. "Cathemerinon" brings in a poetical form an explanation of dietary and dining customs of the Christians in the period of a Late Antiquity, of the ways of a ritualization of the beginning and the end of a day, and of the reflection of the death. Also, it offers one of the first testimonies about the early theology of the Christmas and about the Easter Vigil.
All together, the book creates a model of a Christian life that is sober and peaceful, distant from all extremes, connected to nature and following the classical Roman praise of an "ambitionless life in privacy". Later on, "Cathemerinon" has had a massive influence on the medieval culture, particularly on the liturgical poetry, since several fragments of it had been included into the Roman Breviary.
In the frame of the Breviary, the parts of Prudentius' work still belong to the living "contemporary" culture, being regularly read by clerics and also of many Christian "laics". "Cathemerinon" was repeatedly translated into modern European languages. In the Czech culture, however, only fragments have been translated so far.
This is the first complete Czech translation. It is accompanied by a contextualizing introduction "The Poetry of Christian Antiquity and Prudentius, Its Classic" and by a commentary (all by Martin C.
Putna).