Here’s something sweet. BMCR sizes up a new book on a sixth-century figure, The Humblest Sparrow: The Poetry of Venantius Fortunatus. (We’re still singing VF’s hymns today.) The review begins with a word patristics students will find encouraging: “The extraordinary growth of interest in late antiquity has been among the most significant developments in the humanities over the last few decades.”

In his splendid book The Spirit of Early Christian Thought, Robert Louis Wilken spends a chapter examining the development of a distinctive Christian poetry.