In this paper, I study the multifaceted nature of Venantius Fortunatus's hagiographic production, through macro-structures and micro-structures, prose and poetry, poems of circumstance as much as epic or panegyric. I'm looking into the literary processes by which he was able to show his contemporaries how to walk a path of light (lucis iter), teaching them the exploits of the saints of old times (sanctorum gesta priorum), to use Paulus Diaconus’ terms. I'm interested in the manufacture of images and the transformation of narrative into metaphor; in the complementarity between the prose of Gregory of Tours and the poetry of Fortunat (some elements of a four-handed opus geminatum: Glory of the Martyrs 41; Poems 9.14), to the writing of a hagiography in the present tense as circumstances dictate (10.7).