The Psalm against the Donatists, or the Alphabetical Psalm, by Augustine of Hippo: comments and translation of a popular poem from the 4th century

• Autor(a) principal: Gouvêa Júnior, Márcio Meirelles
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Rónai
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.ufjf.br/index.php/ronai/article/view/41129
• topic: Augustine of Hippo; Donatism; metric; poetic translation; Agostinho de Hipona; donatismo; métrica; tradução poética

Early in his religious life, Augustine of Hippo wrote the Psalm against the sect of Donatus, a sermon against the Donatist schism which, a century ago, had broken the unity of the Catholic Church in Proconsular Africa. In this piece, Augustine innovated the rules of classical poetics, elaborating a poem of popular feature, immediate understanding and memorization. Influenced by North African rhythms, based on isosylabism and on the parallelism of the accentuation of the words, and not on the number of long and short syllables, he produced one of the most innovative works of ancient literature. This article presents the first poetic translation of this Psalm into Portuguese, written in large roundels (septisyllable verses), given the possible rhythmic similarity between the original verses and the translated version. It was intended to provide the reader with a minimum historical overview for a better understanding of the poem. A structural analysis of the work was included in this paper, for the systematisation of its content.