| Summary: | The article is concerned with the last collection of poetry published by Benito Arias Montano (1527-1598), Hymni et Secula. After a description of the book’s structure, it focusses upon a sequence of four odes based on the biblical episode of Moses receiving the Decalogue at mount Sinai. While the first composition of the series, characterized by a long apostrophe directed to the voice of God, insists on the everlasting actuality of the Ten Commandments, the second one glorifies the Israelite leader as a saint capable of (and willing to) communicate divine messages to all catholic Christians invoking him. The operation of elevating an Old Testament’s patriarch to the rank of a saint is not at all in conflict with the doctrine of Roman Church, but the cases in which elevations of that kind effectively happen are very rare, especially in poetic texts.
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