FORTUNATUS, VENANTIUS HONORIUS CLE MENTIANUS (530-609), bishop of Poitiers, and the chief Latin poet of his time, was born near Ceneda in Treviso in 53o. 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 cele brated in an e pithalamiusn. After remaining a year or two at the court of Sigbert he travelled in various parts of France, visit ing persons of distinction, and composing verses. At Poitiers he visited Queen Radegunda, and she induced him to prolong his stay in the city indefinitely. Here he enjoyed the friendship of Gregory of Tours and others. He was elected bishop of Poitiers in 599, and died about 6o9. The later poems of Fortunatus were collected in 11 books, and consist of hymns (including the Vexilla regis prodeunt, Englished by J. M. Neale as "The royal banners forward go"), epitaphs, poetical epistles, and verses in honour of his patroness Radegunda 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.
An edition of the works of Fortunatus was published by C. Brower at Fulda in 1603 (2nd ed., Mainz, 1617) . The edition of M. A. Luschi (Rome, 1785) was afterwards reprinted in Migne's Patrologiae curses completes, vol. lxxxviii. See the edition by Leo and Krusch (Berlin, 1881-1885). There are French lives by Nisard (188o) and Leroux (1885).