The Simulacra Avorum in Jesuit Latin Poems by Wallius and Carrara: From Virgilian Imitation to Scholastic Philosophy and Art Theory

In a famous scene in Book 6 of the Aeneid (VI, 756-887), Vergil allowed his readers to visualize, together with Aeneas and his father Anchises, the whole line of Roman rulers down to Marcellus, the nephew of Augustus. This masterpiece of enargeia, underpinned by the ancient (and, from a Christian point of view, problematic) theory of the pre-existence of souls, was adapted in a number of interesting ways by certain Jesuit authors within a very precise generic frame: the genethliac allegorical poem in Latin hexameters. The two poems I present in this article (by the Jesuits Jacobus Wallius and Ubertino Carrara), dating 1652 and 1678, give us striking examples of the way Jesuit classical and poetical imitatio dealt with underlying philosophical and theological points, that also relate to art theory