The Latin Church has sung many shortened versions, or excerpts from the long poems of Prudentius’s hymn-cycles (Cathemerinon and Peristephanon) since the Middle Ages. One of the most influential of these is the hymn Salvete flores martyrum, for Innocent’s Day. The paper examines the structural and aesthetic principles which lead the — for us — unknown medieval interpretive community in creating this unique centonised latin hymn.