Poems 1 part 6/8

Where, I believe, a harder impiety holds more of evil, there a graver sickness demands greater help; or where a blinder error still drags out the deep night of perfidy, and an ailing faith struggles among a wavering people, there it is fitting that yet greater lights be kindled, that the world's darkness be destroyed by God's illumining, and that minds, astounded with dulled eyes and trembling, be drawn toward those very rays of divine truth, freed from the foul gloom, and anointed with the eye-salve of the healing Christ. This is wrought by the apostolic arts for healing the senses, ground upon the godly whetstone, since Christ's yoke is gentle and his burden light for those now turned to Christ with pure light, their breasts suffused with the gospel's sap.

By this are well purged the mists with which the loves of a deceiving world overcast the inner sight — loves which whirl the wandering senses about through the great void without a steersman, and dull them when seized by the heavy gloom of soft enticements, so that they shatter the strength of life and pursue the wandering pageants amid slippery joys. Therefore the all-healing Lord, desiring to turn these sicknesses away from us, brought forth among the various nations holy physicians for ailing mortals by his health-giving mercy; and that his divine power might exercise its care more illustriously, he set them in the more powerful cities; and although small towns also retain certain martyrs, yet God set the chief ones within ample walls, and divided the departed into few regions — men whom nevertheless, before their death, he gave to the whole world as teachers.

Hence he fixed Peter and Paul in the city of Rome, since the head of the world, mad with many vices and blind with darkness, had need of the chief physicians. But since it accords better with God to restore our salvation than to hold us, his captives, even now in Satan's deceit: the darkness of the world grows thin, and now godliness has nearly prevailed among all, and life has subdued death. As faith grows ever more frequent, conquered error slips away, and with almost none now left over to wickedness and death, all Rome is reckoned by the holy name of Christ, mocking the fictions of Numa and the oracles of the Sibyl. And while the godly throng with its holy shepherds answers 'Amen' joyfully throughout the numerous sheepfolds of the reigning God, a holy shout strikes the heavens with praises of the eternal Lord, and the Capitol totters with its smitten summit.

In the empty temples the squalid idols tremble, struck by godly voices and assailed by the name of Christ. The demons flee in fear from their deserted shrines. In vain the envious serpent rages with bloody maw, mourning man's salvation with starving jaws. And the plunderer, groaning that he is now cheated of the very blood of the herds, flutters in vain about the dry altars. Thus God, bestowing godly gifts upon the rest of the lands as well, scattered his own members, great men, everywhere through the cities. Thus he gave Andrew to Patras and John to Ephesus, that in them he might at once heal Europe and Asia, and dispel the heavy darkness by such great lights. Parthia embraces Matthew, India Thomas, Libya Lebbaeus; the Phrygians received Philip, Crete took Titus, and Boeotia the physician Luke.

Mark was given to you, Alexandria, so that, with the ox banished along with Jove, Egypt should no longer madly worship cattle in Apis, nor Crete wrongly venerate a citizen buried under the name of Jove, nor the Phrygians, having gelded their Galli, perform Cybele's rites, consoling their impure mother with a foul wound, and that Ida might at last grow leaves on its chaste mountains, bringing back untouched pines with an untroubled summit; that vain Greece might no longer consult the mute Delphi, and, scorning, might trample its own Olympus, walking higher upon Sion, where Christ raises the gentle yoke of his foster-hill upon a lofty peak. And Diana fled too from Ephesus, driven out by John, accompanying her brother, whom Paul, commanding in the name of Christ, put to flight when he had cast out the Python.

Satan fled from Egypt, where he had assumed for himself a thousand shapes, a thousand names suited to various monsters; so that he might fashion holy Joseph into Serapis, hiding a venerable name under a deadly one — though the very form of the idol taught the faith: in that a measure (modius) stands above its head, because once, before the famine, when grain had been gathered at the Lord's inspiring, Joseph fed the countless nations from the abundance of Egypt, and satisfied the barren years with rich ones. But lest the holy one be any longer venerated with profane honor, the hidden mind of God sharpened with goads the hearts of his devoted people, and, overthrowing and breaking Serapis, he shut up the worship of that abominable demon.

No longer does wandering Isis seek Osiris in the Pelusiac glades with bald soothsayers, who, beating their breasts, bewail another's laments with their own grief, and soon likewise, their madness lulled, in their joys mock the same vain thing — pretending it found by the same fraud whereby they had sought it wandering, though it had never been lost to them. Alas, in what whirlpool of folly are minds drowned that are empty of the light of God! For what, I ask, is blinder than those who seek one not lost, and never find one who is nowhere abiding, and bewail for another what does not grieve themselves? Choose what you do, wretched error. What do you worship? Or what do you bewail? They do not come together, the things you join: honor does not follow grief; you cherish laments, and believe to be mourned the things you reckon divine. If they are gods, they are not wretched;

or if they are wretched, they are not gods, but are men — and wretched ones at that. Pity them, then, as having suffered mortal things, or venerate them as gods rejoicing: for this is plainly blind madness, either to worship the wretched or to bewail the blessed. Is Isis then a goddess? A woman a goddess? If a goddess, she has no body, and there is no sex without a body, or, without sex, there is no birth. Whence then comes to her the Osiris whom she seeks? And where she should seek him the goddess does not know. But a goddess can never be a mother, nor a woman. For there is one God, God a threefold power, one Father, and one Son in him: from him, together with the Father, comes one Spirit of the Word: these three are ever one God in name. God alone is the nature of God: what the Son is, and what the Spirit, and what the Father is:

but the Son is born of the Father, the Spirit proceeding from the Father. In this nothing has anything common or alike among created things. But mighty Carthage flourishes with the martyr Cyprian, from whose mouth and blood at once poured forth springs that made fertile the sands of thirsting Libya. And not far from there, near Utica, the White Mass (Massa Candida), with its martyrs gathered together, raised on high a great heap of venerable slaughter; for one mound of blessed turf, covering many bodies, lifted its head high over the fields, and by their merits attests them lofty by the mountain of their tomb. Hence Africa, long fruitful to God, multiplies for Christ abundant harvests from so great a seed, and brings forth distinguished teachers in both word and faith. Nor did a lesser grace shine forth upon the western lands.

Ambrose stands forth for Latium, Vincent for the Iberians. Gaul took Martin, Aquitaine Delphinus. And besides, many seeds of the saints, lavishly spread through these same regions in their established tombs, illumine the whole world with heavenly powers, and thrust out from the whole world the ancient dragon — he who claimed for himself the human race through a thousand names of gods (names which nevertheless that serpent took from dead mortals and bestowed both upon himself and his own), by which arts of harming the prince exercises his foul reign in the empty air, and our enemy, the head of demons, wanders about us.

And so this our Nola too, by the love of the pitying Christ, deserved to be fortified by the tomb of Felix, and at the same time to be cleansed; for, mingled with blind ruins, the world itself lay dying in the night, long polluted by stone-worshipping cultivators, in which both the brothel of Venus and the madness of Bacchus were gods to the wretched, and a wicked lust, allied with frenzy, celebrated abominable rites with foul ritual. And what place for living was here, where there was no shame anywhere, nor any fear? For who would be afraid to sin here, where bloody frenzy and incestuous lust were religion, and crime stood in place of a deity for those who had believed that there was any deity in crime? And in the whole throng he was as if the holier worshipper who had grown hot more filthily in the rites of Venus.

And that man was full of his god and more blessed than the rest who, raving more savagely against himself with the demon poured into him, and offering frenzied sacrifices with his own wounds, had deserved to lose his sound mind. O mind worthy of blind souls, and deities worthy to be served by men turned away from God! Let Venus and the grove be their god; let demented drunkenness and impious love sanctify them; let them worship the things they have cut off, and, wretched, let them call the shame of their foul error the Mother's mysteries. A fitting faith for those who, in the kindly light of truth, in chaste laws, and in the great name of Christ, have no faith and no love, and therefore there is for them no price for their unworthy life in the blood of Christ.

Let the belly be their god, or the rest of the joys of the flesh — those for whom God himself is not God, for whom no glory underlies the cross of Christ, because the virtue of the cross does not deign to approach degenerate souls. Hence Felix, like the rest of the martyrs in different parts of the world, was a physician to the blessed people of Nola, and remains so eternally by that power: and not only to the Nolans, but to all by whom he shall likewise be implored, he will give salvation by this right, if the kindly faith of the cross be present in the heart of the suppliant. This faith heals and cleanses the human race: where this medicine is lacking, there every reign of evil will linger, nor in such a one will Venus (Cypris) ever cease to reign by adulteries, nor Bacchus (Lyaeus) by frenzies — in him in whom the modesty of Christ and the ardor of the cross are absent.

For there is a divine fire present where the power of the cross within, with faith burning, torments the guilty hearts, and quickens the soul when the vices in the flesh are slain. Long battered by these foes and corrupted by such great plagues, Nola demanded a mighty remedy. And therefore, with God weighing both the peril and the help, it received Felix as its physician, who would conquer every ruin, however ancient, in the dark hearts of the wretched, and, more powerful by the virtue of his lofty merit, would cut through the callus drawn over the putrid sores by their wounds, so that he might press out the corrupt matter, congealed with its spreading taint, from the burst pockets, and then a scar, drawn over with smooth skin, would fill up the hollow of the wound.

Therefore when Felix, like a star to the darkness, shone forth upon the Nolans, coming from the face of God, and bearing in his mouth the word of healing — just as, when the sun is about to come, the serene morning-star (Phosphorus) thrusts forth its glad radiance at the eastern rising, and, new among the western stars, gleams forth, herald of the coming day, while night must yield — so now, with the Gospel shining over the whole world, and God drawing near as judge soon to all the lands, Christ everywhere displays the banners of his coming, and through his friends flashes forth his own signs.

Of these he willed that Felix should shine before us in this region, that by this star he might drive away our shadows, and from this city too might drive out the ancient demons, so that, with such cultivators expelled from the heart of men, God as inhabitant might enter into pure minds; and that, the order reversed, when we are loosed by godliness, our own chains might now press our own lions, raging in vain against the sheep of Christ, their ferocity conquered. And this grace remains to us even now, which looses us from our sins by the intercessory prayer of the saints, and binds those very ones with the same saints as avengers, and torments the enemies who used to bind us.

These now, like thieves caught by a light brought in upon them and cast into chains, now bear, as they have deserved, the fiery scourges of the godly, or, already thrust down ill into the infernal prisons, they tremble, confessing that the imminent judgment of the Lord presses near, grievous only to themselves and to all their own — to those whom a savage will has turned to Satan's party, and whom a rivalrous life has allied with Satan. There men are the partners of wickedness, here of punishment. Behold, the day acceptable to God: now the true light of salvation gleams: now we see all things well changed for us: the deceits have fled, Bel has fallen, error perishes, and the demons who used to be worshipped as deities in all the temples — these are tormented, defenseless, throughout the temples of God; and those who dared to take to themselves divine honors are now punished, subdued, by the human race.

For these, whom we now see tormented in the crowded hall of Felix, crying out and dragged through the bodies they have seized, are held bound in those very bodies into which they had thrust themselves, and, willing a human punishment, have found their own. Now therefore the persons of the accused shriek with their punishments — they who had been gods by a false deity, and who, by a lying divinity, had given over to themselves men, then alive, who before the worship of God saw nothing heavenly: these now, where, by the light of Christ, the true faith has been laid open, cannot endure the buried saints. But, that it may be the more clearly shown that these demons who are now tortured before the doors or before the tombs of the godly are the very same to whom once the enslaved race of men sacrificed, and to whom, demented, it offered sacred honors, the very character of their voices teaches:

for very often they groan with that voice, so that by their cry you may recognize their accustomed frenzy. Thus for the most part, as if with mouth more loosely relaxed, they snarl with their teeth, foam at their lips, and bristle in their hair. And as they are flung aloft by a hand seizing their hair, and stand hanging from their locks by their feet — meanwhile there, mindful of the old rites in which they used to lick the entrails of slaughtered cattle, or to feed on the libation, and to lead lascivious dances in ivy-wreathed processions, now too attesting that those rites were their own, in which the drunken throng raised its mad uproars — they imitate the cry 'Euhoe Bacchus' with broken, panting voices, and toss their necks with a slow whirling.

But since the lifespan of one mortal man could not suffice for the confessor Felix to wash away in the few years he lived in the body the contagions long drawn out through a long time, Felix — confessor and presbyter, master in speech, martyr by his testimony, priest by his merit and office — the Almighty Lord caused to persist, by a better way, beyond the finished age of his body, continuing the healing acts of the laborious martyr, so that, though buried, he might celebrate those same powers which, while remaining in the flesh, he wrought by the power of Christ; and thus, even dead, he would not be absent in body from the city he had taken up, since so great a healer of the buried was present in spirit; and though for a time the withdrawn face of the dear patron lay hidden from the longings of those who loved him, yet a ready medicine for the health of the sick would always be at hand.

Hence perennial honor and glory encircle the holy Felix with merits forever flourishing: and although, hidden in his tomb from the ancient age, as to what was mortal of him he lies in the covering of the earth, yet a living grace, with God quickening him and outliving his members, glorifies the martyr's bones that breathe divine things, the buried one living on by his merit before the peoples: and an ever-renewed throng, gathered from various lands, continually adores the small throne of the great confessor. But God, as the begetter of all men, granted that this help should go forth to all from the saints' lands: so that now the blessed martyrs might dispense godly gifts from their tombs, and, buried, might heal the living. Nor was this gift enough for the Lord, that the martyrs should illumine only their own places by their name or by their powers:

from those same tombs the merciful one, multiplying the memorials of the godly, bestowed them upon many nations. And I will relate the various causes from their origin, from which this blessing arose for various lands. For because the first faith had not gone forth diffused equally through the whole world at once, the martyrs had been absent from many regions of the world, and on this account, I think, by a great gift it pleased Christ, now inspiring the powerful (as was first done under Constantine Caesar, now revealing it to his servants), that they should transfer martyrs, summoned from their former seat, into new lodgings of the earth:

as we know was done not long ago by the holy bishop Ambrose, who, sustained by such a gift, after he had transferred to himself, into a changed hall, those previously unknown but then revealed with Christ as their pointer, confounded with a ready voice the raging queen. For when Constantine was founding a city of his own name, and as the first among the kings of the Roman name was bearing the title of Christian, he received a divine counsel in his mind: that since he was then building walls rivalling the walls of the Roman city with magnificent undertakings, in these too he should follow the city of Romulus in its endowments, so that, glad, he might fortify his own walls with apostolic bodies: then he brought down Andrew from the Achaeans, and Timothy from Asia:

so with twin towers Constantinople stands forth, the head and rival of great Rome, more truly like the Roman walls in this height — that God compensated her with equal ambition for Peter and Paul, because she deserved to take Paul's disciple together with Peter's brother. Now how great a benefit for the duties of our life has grown along that road, through the long detours of the earth where the saints passed, the very places teach even today, in which that capacious carriage, bearer of its load, rested at its appointed station — at all the stages wherever there was a lodging and a resting-place for the holy bodies of those carrying those sacred ashes, places crying aloud with wondrous signs. For the divine hand is busy there with healing power throughout all the ways by which the holy bodies pressed their living footprints in their sacred passage.

Hence therefore, at faith's persuasion, leave was granted then to the zeal of the faithful companions, that they might wish to pluck for themselves certain pledges from the holy bones, with deserved fruit, so that each might carry home to himself, as a kind of reward of duty and price of labor, safeguards for his own private use. From that time the sacred ashes, like seeds of life, were scattered in diverse places, and wherever, from the small dole of the sacred body, a tiny dew fell upon the nations by a minute bone, there a godly grace begat springs and rivers of life — a drop of that ash. Hence the rich abundance of Christ dripped down even into us, abounding even in the least things:

for here too we received the sacred pledges of apostolic flesh in a little dust, which Felix — our Holy One and Lord and father of our resting-place, and the guardian of our soul, and the protection of our salvation — took into a shrine near to himself, close at hand, which, more recent in age than his other halls, preserves the scanty ashes and great honors, and is itself the more preserved by its patron-guardians. For far be it that they should ever be seen to need preserving: yet those who are wont to preserve, and to care for the advantages of their nurslings, deign by a fatherly love also to direct the safeguards of the places dedicated to them: that this zeal of godliness is in the holy spirits they have given proofs by a marvelous fidelity. Hence I will also tell of a recent deed in a few opening words:

for it is fitting to set forth the gifts of holy Felix on his very birthday with thankful words to those rejoicing. I shall speak of things neither foreign in place nor ancient in time: I shall relate a work accomplished recently within our own bounds and in this very seat, which it will perhaps be easy for you to recognize again, since the matter was done in the midst of the light. I believe that, of this number of yours, almost no one is new to hearing it in this place, since flying fame will have gone forth to distant places far removed.

Surely some of you had been present in this city about the same time when it happened that a thief, driven by unlawful goads in his mind, sent his greedy hands upon the sacred gifts, and, wicked and demented, out of all the splendid things of the venerable hall chose the one form of plunder — a cross — not knowing that it would be for him an evidence, not a spoil; which he swallowed like a hook, as a greedy fish, destined himself to be caught after his catch was seized from the bait. Who, I ask, drove on the robber to so great an enterprise of daring, armed him, blinded him, hurled him headlong, that, with heart unstruck, he fled neither at the watches of the guards, nor at the very altars (which is more) that reverently cover the sacred ashes and breathe forth fragrant the power of the holy dust, and bore away things excelling not only in their deity, but at once in their appearance and their price?

For there were many other ornaments, as you know, in that very place which he might have taken, so as to spare the gold of the cross; for within lay hidden the mystic vessels entrusted for celebrating the sacred rites. But besides, in the space of the hall itself there stood, according to custom, gifts conspicuous in various forms — these which you see there, ready every day, or fixed all around upon all the columns in a different arrangement like candelabra, which bear painted waxen tapers with a projecting point, so that fragrant lights may be rendered by the wicks enclosed within.

But in the middle of the space, fixed to the high panelled ceilings, hollow lamps hung by their bronze fastenings, which, with a tree-like appearance, as if a vine throwing out its arms with supple shoots, and at the topmost crest of the branch bear little glass cups like their own fruit, and as if blossoming with kindled light they flower, and with their many-tressed flames imitate the thick-clustering stars, and mark out the heavy darkness with manifold light, and paint the tender upper air with their flowering little fires: and while they tremble and flash their liquid tresses repeatedly, with their constant flames, amid the scattered gloom of night they mingle a doubtful aspect between light and shadows, and trouble the uncertain air to trembling gazes.

Therefore, though he saw these things laid open to him in the open and safer for him to steal — since there would be less of crime, and they hung lower, far from the altar's edge — and to carry off a lamp light with silver: yet the wretch, ambitious and proud in his very fraud, scorned to take the silver things by theft as a cheap wickedness, and stretched out a bold right hand toward the golden ones, which at once he had seen skillfully picked out with various little gems, and which had inflated his breast with great desires, that he might rejoice, rich at once in gems and in gold. But so great a heaping of mighty crime is piled upon him with iniquitous weight: he remained heavy with sin, and light with money. His own punishment awaits the sacrilegious man, his own plunder deserted the robber. Stripped of his stolen spoil, not of his crime, he lives needy of profit, but abounding in the wound of his fraud.

Although I would think that he came to that crime not without the great power and counsel of Christ: so that, because he had received into his mind the resolve to take anything at all of the sacred things, he was allowed to come to those in which the impiety of the deed committed would be more notable. A few days before, this same man had fled thither, pretending to flee military service, and was received in friendly fashion as a guest by the keepers caring for the sacred hall. Lying hidden there almost a whole month, he had spied out at once the sleeping-places, the slumbers, and the hours of the guards.

And when he had seized upon the quiet hours for his meditated crime, in the silent night he snatched the wicked deed, and with no labor and no noise, shut in with the doors closed like one of the keepers among whom he was a guest — when the watchmen, no longer watchful, began amid the silent shadows to take their first slumbers and to draw forgetfulness over their burdened cares: that man, seizing the place for his crime, where he knew by use that a little contrivance, set out for the lamps to be prepared by night according to custom, offered with its prepared steps a ladder to the rungs, and was then left to him by a guard ill-secured: which contrivance was in the form of a cross, because it is even now an upright pole with a perpetual branch, bearing twin little cups on a crosswise bar: one a little chain, hanging from the foot, sustains: in these three small bowls inserted lights gleam, when the festal day brings them:

but then, without the use of light, they remained suspended only for show. But a little before the ornament of the cross, of the same lamp, there is a continuous silver cup fitted for use. This the plunderer, gleaming with its troublesome light, straightway extinguishes: for he knew that this too was often wont to die, when the very dry tow, having consumed the olive-oil, would store up the light into the long night; nor would the watchman marvel if perchance he should see the summits draw darkness over themselves, the lamp being shrouded, supposing that the night was made by custom, not by crime. Therefore not like a thief, which he was a robber, but like a guard, the plunderer carries off his unlawful pillage securely, and does not flee, and remains unafraid.

One little cell, out of many, covers the hidden man — cells which, set on every side along the great roofs, offer secret lodgings to the buried. In one of these the thief was hidden; and when he sees the bolts lying mostly open, he springs forth from the unbarred hall, and, leaving his hiding-place, carries off his crime: he was preparing to go (as, once captured, he afterward related) to the city of Romulus, there to transact the dealings of his unspeakable fraud. Meanwhile, while our people were unaware, that whole night and day passed away: late, now at the accustomed evening, those caring for the customary service set up the steps: when he began to climb, about to prepare the lamp, he found nothing: the branch of the accustomed cross remained bereft, despoiled of its beautiful necklace. The wretched men are terrified, and dare not betray the loss of the crime, knowing that the guilt rightly belongs even to themselves:

they withdraw in trembling, and flee, pursuing the fugitive robber: nowhere do they pick up any traces of the slipped one: all go off in different directions of the roads, and search the ports situated on a different shore. Eight days flowed away, or ten, as they sought in vain, and all had now returned with their search empty; one of the seekers, a boy, himself frustrated of his labor, was coming back over a long stretch of country, his effort poured out in vain, and, now coming nearly to Nola, he halted on the very causeway, and with a mighty groan and a flood of weeping, crying upon Felix, presumes with a faithful heart not to return home except with the cross: and at once, ready, he retraces the journey accomplished: and behold, there meets him a certain man who knew the thief — not as a thief, but as if a fellow-citizen: our man first asks him whence the traveler came; he replies:

again he is asked about the thief, whether he had seen him: but that man answered that he was active in places nearby, and that region was then near to them while they spoke — joined to Mount Vesuvius, the fifth milestone from the city of Nola. But the rising of evening defers the plan. It is agreed that the next day's light should again join the two together; morning comes, the informer returns; he leads our men, the thief is captured, the plunder is brought back. By chance that consecrated day had dawned bright, bringing the birthday of blessed Priscus, whom Nola too celebrates, although he sat as bishop of Nuceria, another city:

behold, into the very hall of holy Felix, which the people then thronged with solemn honor, after the bishop, the rites now ended, was dismissing the godly assemblies — at the time providentially foreseen, as the people were going out — he is suddenly led in, his thievish hands bound knotted behind his back. The people are filled with gladness, the plunderer with dread, and, as at a new prodigy, there is a rush from the whole city. The crowd, raging with the people's hatred, went against him; joy mingled mournful uproars with anger. I feared, I confess, lest perchance the devil, in that envy with which he is wont, might violate the festal pageant with blood, and might tend the prior wound with a worse wound. He is snatched from the people, and shut up in that very cell (which thus by chance then befell the captured culprit) in which the stolen cross had lain hidden;

And after that very road was found again, it closes upon him, that he might live. Then therefore, his mind recovered, he himself, the guilty man, began to recount his own crime and the obstacles in wondrous ways, confessing that throughout those eighteen days, in which he had set out to go to the city of Romulus, with his feet so entangled he was driven backward, so that, ever preparing to go forward, he ever returned, drawn back by I know not what, and again came round to that shore of Vesuvius, where he had been commanded to be shut up as if in a prison, an angelic hand binding him. Yet the wretch thought he was master of his own will, because he seemed to be bodily free—he whom a hand mightier than any visible chain held fast with hidden bonds.