FORTUNATUS, the legendary hero of one of the most popular of European chap-books. He was a native, says the story, of Famagosta in Cyprus, and after many strange adventures and vicissitudes fell in with the goddess of Fortune in a wild forest, and received from her a purse which was continually replenished as often as he drew from its stores. With this he wandered through many a city and kingdom, and at last arrived at Cairo as a guest of the sultan. Among the treasures which the sultan showed him was an old napless hat which had the curious power of transporting its wearer to any place where he desired to be. Of this he feloniously possessed himself, and returned home to Cyprus, where he lived in the free gratification of all his fancies and desires. On his death he left his purse and his hat to his sons Ampedo and Andelosia; but instead of harmoniously putting them to use, they were jealous of each other, and by their recklessness and folly soon landed themselves in the depths of misery. The motif of the story is very obvious: in the words of the preface, the reader should learn that all men should desire reason and wisdom before all the treasures of the world. In its full form the history of Fortunatus is a brisk narrative of considerable length, occupying in Simrock’s Die Deutschen Volksbücher, vol. ii£, upwards of 158 pages. The scene is being continually shifted—from Cyprus to Flanders, from Flanders to London, from London to France; and a large number of secondary characters appear from time to time on the stage. The general features of the style and the allusions seem to indicate a comparatively modern date for the authorship; but the nucleus of the legend can be traced back to a much earlier period. The stories of Jonathas and the three jewels in the ...Gesta Romanorum, of the emperor Frederick and the three precious stones in the Cento Novelle Antiche, of the Mazin of Khorassan in the Thousand and One Nights, and the flying scaffold in the Bahar Danush, have all a certain similarity. The earliest known edition of the German text of Fortunatus appeared at Augsburg in 1509, and the modern German investigators are disposed to regard this as the original form. Innumerable rifacimentos have been made in French, Italian, Dutch, English, &c., aud cheap editions are still common enough on the bookstalls. The story was dramatized by Haus Sachs in 1553, and by Thomas Dekker in 1600; and the latter comedy appeared in a German translation in Englische Komödien und Tragödien, 1620. Tieck has utilized the legend in his Phantasus, and Chamisso in his Peter Schlemihl; and Uhland has left an unfinished narrative poem entitled “Fortunatus and his Sons.”
See Dr Fr. W. V. Schmidt’s Fortunatus tend seine Söhne, cine Zauber· Tragödie, von Thomas Decker, mit einem Anhang, &c. Berlin, 1819; Görres, Die deutsche Volksbücher, 1807.
FORTUNATUS, VenantiusHonorius Clementianus, bishop of Poitiers, and the chief Latin poet of his time, was born near Ceneda in Treviso, in 530. He studied at Milan and Ravenna, with the special object of excelling as a rhetorician and poet, and in 565 he journeyed to France, where he was received with much favour at the court of Sigbert, king of Austrasia, whose marriage with Brunhild he celebrated in an epithalamium. After remaining a year or two at the court of Sigbert, he travelled in various parts of France, visiting persons of distinction, and composing short pieces of poetry on any subject that occurred to him. At Poitiers he visited Queen Radegonda, who lived there in retirement, and she induced him to prolong his stay in the city indefinitely. Here he also enjoyed the friendship of the famous Gregory, bishop of Tours, and other eminent ecclesiastics. He was elected bishop of Poitiers in 599, and died about 609. The later poems of Fortunatus were collected in 11 books, and consist of hymns, epitaphs, poetical epistles, and verses in honour of his patroness Radegonda and her sister Agnes, the abbess of a nunnery at Poitiers. He also wrote a large poem in 4 books in honour of St Martin, and several lives of the saints in prose. His prose is stiff and mechanical, but most of his poetry has an easy rhythmical flow.
An edition of the works of Fortunatus was published by Ch. Brower at Fulda in 1603, 2d edition at Mayence in 1617. The best edition is that of Μ. A. Luschi, Rome, 1785, which was afterwards reprinted in Migne’s Patrologioe cursus compictus, vol. 88.
[501 words — estimated reading time: 3 minutes]