Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Cœlius Sedulius

SEDULIUS, Cœlius, a Christian poet of the 5th century, was the author of an abecedarian Hymnus de Christo in iambic dimeters, portions of which maintain their ground in the offices of the Church of Rome, viz., in the Christmas hymn “A solis ortus cardine," and in that for Epiphany (altered from “Herodes hostis impie”). His other works are Paschale Carmen s. Mirabilium Divinorum Libri V., originally in four or five books in hexameter verse and afterwards enlarged and turned into prose, and Veteris et Novi Testamenti Collatio, in elegiac verse. De Verbi Incarnatione, a Virgilian cento, has also been ascribed to him, but on insufficient grounds. Of his personal history nothing is known, except that he is called a presbyter by Isidore of Seville; by some other writers of less authority he is designated “antistes” or “episcopus.” A Scoto-Irish origin has sometimes been claimed for him; but at all events he must not be confounded with Sedulius the grammarian, an Irish Scot who lived in the 9th century. The best edition of his works is that of Arevalus (4to, Rome, 1794).