Admirabilior in femina quam in viro virtus (Quint. inst. 5,11,10): intersections entre l’hymne Agnes beatae virginis du Pseudo-Ambroise et les Carmina Damasiana

Compared to Ambrose’s De virginibus and Damasus’ epigram, the pseudo-Ambrosian hymn Agnes beatae virginis shows a more significant rhetorical structure and a revival of classical topoi. The value of these poems lies precisely in this osmosis between classical and Christian thought, and in the complementarity of the two ideological horizons. This consideration alone is sufficient to explain why the authorship of the hymn to Ambrose is not so obvious: the presence of elements of convergence with the bishop’s work, in particular with De Virginibus, is explained by retractatio, the compositional technique typical of late antiquity.