she, startled at the first sounds, scarcely recognized the familiar words, and received her master into the opened house, trembling in voice and step, fear shaking her aged frame. To her Felix said: "Receive this deposit, which the stars of night, sharing the secret with me, and angelic hands under Christ their Prince, deliver to you as I hand it over; take this gem of the Lord into your faithful bosom, that at the final hour you may render it back to us unharmed, with the Lord as judge, in whose presence you now receive it." Maximus breaks into these words, and calling back his own Felix, he says: "Receive you also, O my son, the recompense of this office, which He bade me render to you—I who was laid as a deposit—He who bade you be present at the deposit." Then thereupon he laid his sacred right hand upon the head of his beloved Felix, asking at once all the gifts of Christ:
just as that venerable man of the fathers, Isaac, blessed his son with the dew of heaven and the fatness of the earth; so Maximus, blessing Felix unto Christ with a fatherly and apostolic mouth, and enriching him, crowned him with the honor of an unfading crown and increased him with everlasting riches, which even now we behold. Times succeed to times; summer departs and comes; each day, by thrusting on the day, flees, and turns the cycle round: all things pass away, but the glory of the saints endures in Christ, who renews all things, while He abides in Himself. At last, then, day born for me, come round again—day longed for the whole year through, you who renew sweet festivals and my vows; you who demand of me solemn gifts, bringing back the birthday on which countless myriads of peoples rejoice;
on which special joys touch me, on which I owe the fixed offerings of my servant tongue to pour out to my Felix, to whom with dedicated mind I am given over in the Lord Christ: and it is right for me to celebrate this saint, in the homage of love, through yearly songs. I shall tell, therefore, his merits and the causes of his merits, by which he obtained the rewards of heavenly praises, the eternal days, and the name of great honor. Already the earlier book set forth for you the first deeds of the martyr—from what home, or of what stock, and in what studies he was reared, by what step thereafter, called through sacred duties, he chose rather to serve Christ the everlasting than to wander the paths of his fathers through the byways of the world:
For his father had lived as a soldier under Caesar, his service complete in arms; and we told too of the punishments endured in a foul prison, which the confessor underwent, ready also to bear death, had not God, anticipating the swords, loosed him sent forth from the unjust chains, and summoned him to other deeds—so that first the bishop Maximus might return to the sacred hall, who in the lonely glades was gasping out the last of his life, sick, put to flight by the raging enemy: whom Felix, being bidden, carried up upon his own body, and laid the one carried in the seat of a poor dwelling; and when his offices had been repaid to him by the holy mouth of the blessed old man, he departed, blessed.
And for a few days he lay hidden, silent, under the roof of his own dwelling, yet wearying the heavenly Lord with no silent mind; whom by direct prayer, piercing above the stars, he assailed with near-at-hand merit, asking that peace might come forth. Meanwhile the days flowed by, and peace seemed to return. Felix left his hiding-place, and at last, trusting the serene sky, he had begun to give himself, glad, back to his glad brethren, and to entrust himself to the now-quiet city. The sheep of Christ rejoiced, their shepherd recovered. He soothed the flock, still fearful from the recent storm, with heavenly counsels, and, guiding the anxious hearts with the word as their leader, he strengthened them in the love of faith; teaching that the bitter things and the sweet things of the world are to be despised; and that no ground must be yielded to terrors; and he warned them to bring forward hearts ready to meet the very fires or swords;
and he himself added weight to his own words, a Confessor who had suffered the things he taught were to be endured; a master to all alike by his eloquence and his example. That Evil One did not long endure this: but he bristled with his black locks, and swelled his neck with raging venoms; and he sent his poison into wicked breasts, that the grace of Felix might inflame their dark minds. He inserted his goads, and in unjust minds blazed the fury of viperous envy; the wicked Wrath assails the first house; with an impious love all burn toward crime. Their impiety thirsts for Felix: but absent by chance from his own dwelling, he had stood secure in the middle of the city, surrounded after his custom by brotherly friends, and sowing godly words into the ears of the believing people. Behold, men come to him, seeking him with drawn swords.
When suddenly, either the hearts of those enemies, or his face to them, were turned: in their fury they did not recognize the well-known man, and they ask for Felix—Felix, who is seen and is not seen; the very man, yet not the man; though he is near, he is far off. The same man becomes both unknown and known to his fellow-citizens: faith distinguishing his face to those who believed, he himself was another to his enemies: and he himself perceived the design of favoring Christ; and laughing, he begins to those who asked: "I know not what Felix it is you seek." Forthwith they pass by him; but he departs by the open street, frustrating, with the Lord deluding them, the gaping hounds.
And no long space being traversed, as they were inquiring in what region Felix might be, someone chides them and gives information—ignorant of the matter, and believing them mad with frenzy, who had not seen him close at hand, to whom they had spoken with words in immediate speech. Struck by the novelty of the deception, and raging more grievously, they soon return, and run along the very footsteps of the man. And now they were drawing near, but with the city's tumult running ahead, and warned by the shouts of the panic-stricken crowd everywhere, Felix turns aside from the imminent wounds by a swerve, and removes himself far away out of the midst, taking another path.
For having reached a place which by chance lay open with a spreading space affording escape, drawn aside from the crowded city, even so he was not far from the dark pursuers, who, withdrawn from the conspicuous sight of those following, had somehow shunned the hostile swords, fearing them; and he was about to be caught, because that place, by the barrier of no enclosure, stood in the way of repelling the wicked. For with no doors, an untrustworthy wall, with the breach of a half-ruined rampart, lay open to the public platforms. But the divine hand set itself between the saint and his enemies, and fenced the place with a marvelous fortification. Not bars given by a heap of stones, nor by iron-bound doors, by which we close our halls through human arts:
but suddenly a filthy mound grew up out of rubble, and at command the spider stretched its swaying webs, and with quivering folds built over the whole opening, and gave to the deserted ruin the look of squalor. And as soon as it met those who were threatening, they were stunned, and with foot fixed fast, said to one another in turn: "Is it not madness to try the entrances, or to believe that anyone, that any man, has entered here, where the tiniest little worm would have left signs? Tiny gnats break these nets—are we so foolish as to think a man has passed through these barriers, and that so delicate a web was not torn by so great a body?"
"That fellow is rather the informer now owed to our hands, who by deceitful cleverness and cunning led us into the wilds, and, having turned elsewhere, lied that Felix lurks in this spot, so that he might turn our weapons aside by his malignant trickery—a friend to the head of the fleeing man. Let us withdraw, then: for to stand here any longer will be the laughingstock of the crowd, and the senseless error will be marked—to direct our steps to hunt the hiding-places of a man here, where the untrodden ground shows, by rotting debris or by spiders spread over it, recesses no man can reach." And without delay they depart quickly in different directions, raging: but God—as Scripture sings—Christ from His heavenly citadel laughed at them as they uttered their senseless threats; and He had veiled His own Felix with sacred wings.
He, safe in the Lord's bosom, exulting, was striking down the gleaming darts with the helmet and the shield of faith, and the confessor bore the sword of the word in his mouth. Armed with piety as to his hands, and full as to his breast, chaste before God, he sheltered himself with the breastplate of distinguished merit. O divine Wisdom, rich in many ways, ever confounding the strong things of the world by the weak! Scarcely do walls defend peoples with their lofty ramparts, and the enemy more often overwhelms those relying on a strong fortification, and storms cities from opposing heights. Now even from armed men the spider protected the saint, with God as defender; the enemy stood driven off by tender webs; the iron force yielded to an airy thread. Vain is the salvation of men; my strength is not strength to me, if I lack the strength of God. Where now the vast might of giants? Where the kings of Pharos? Where mighty Jericho?
For all of them, their own glory, in which they swelled up, was empty unto destruction. Nor truly did divine power break these by their own strengths, but rather by weak things. That giant fell to the sling of a shepherd boy, like a dog; the sound of trumpets dissolved that city; that proud king lay on the shore's sand, weighing the riches of his kingdom in his naked death. So where Christ is present to us, even a spider is a wall: but for him to whom Christ is absent, even a wall will become a spider. When therefore, the crowds having departed, silence was made, and deep night offered faithful darkness to his secret flight, Felix goes forth and changes his hiding-place: singing to the Lord, "If I walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for your right hand is with me; through hell I shall go not without light."
Therefore, by God's leading, he takes in a remote region a rain-court, brief lodgings between cramped buildings with a narrow chamber, where an old cistern dried up beneath a deep roof. Nearby, in adjoining timbered quarters, dwelt a woman holy to God, who, unaware of the hidden confessor, fed Felix unto Christ as though knowing the secret. Wondrous things shall I sing—the device of the Lord feeding His ward, while she fed her own unknowing. Now diligently bread, now other foods as was her custom which she had cooked for herself, in an ecstasy of mind made by divine preparation, she would carry to that place where Felix lay hidden, veiled by the Lord as witness; but neither when she headed there did she know her own entrance; nor when she departed thence was she mindful of her own going in:
and although she had brought in the prepared victuals, even though she served the saint with her own hands by feeding him, yet, unaware of so great a service, she could not know this from her own heart—that she was doing it not by her own mind, but by the power of Christ; and in place of the hiding-spot and the narrow pit closed over his face, having entered, she would leave the food set out, and believing she had placed it at home, she always departed thus, mindful of the food to be placed, but soon unmindful of the food once placed. O woman blessed of God, like one of the birds that once fed the prophet carried off from the world. You too fed a martyr in a secret dwelling, like a bird obeying the Lord, and unaware of the saint, yet conscious of the service:
what you have done, and whom in the end you have served, you shall know with joy in that time, when God Himself, Christ, shall render to you the crown of justice for the sake of His confessor; then your Felix himself shall recount to you, with Christ as judge, the meals which God transferred to the sweet use of His consecrated martyr—as once He sent food cooked for the reapers, by an angelic hand hanging through the void, to the fasting prophet, amid the ravening monsters of the prophet; not wild monsters, for kindly faith had conquered the lions, and holy fastings reined in their greedy jaws. They report that for six whole months in succession he lived apart from the company of men under that hiding-place of an obscure and cramped roof, lacking nothing of human aid, ever abounding in the consolation of Christ:
who in that time is said often to have deigned to visit him with His own discourse: often to have fed him with His own hand, and to have given from heaven cups—not of rain-water, which the clouds pour out everywhere upon all; but the dew which Grace sent specially to Felix alone from the upper air. For when, as happens, the summer was then scorched by excessive suns, and had dried up even the well which had supplied cups to the hidden one, yet, lest a fleshly thirst should burn him—who, by thirsting for Christ, bore even this punishment of his afflicted body—a thin cloud, brought through the serene air and gathered into a globe, through the narrowness of the rain-court, poured a sweet liquor into the mouth of the thirsting man, as though pressed by hand; and refreshed him, soon to be summoned to heaven, with the milky juice of an ethereal fleece.
What wonder, if now Christ feeds him loosed from earthly stain, whom the holy Spirit fed while set in the body; and to whom bread was the Word, God Himself, the bread of heaven, on which every angel feeds? When this time had passed, peace restored sheathed the swords, and God admonished Felix to come forth from his hiding-place—he who had long since stopped his peaceful ears against the clamors of the world, drawing forgetfulness of human affairs. As one new he comes forth into the light, to those now despairing, and is seen in his native city as though restored to life. And many hesitate to recognize him, and asking first, "Is it truly your face?" they say, "are you then, O blessed one, given back to us—alas, Felix, after so long a time? From what region do you come? Are you given from heaven, or from paradise? Restored to earth, do you revisit our dwellings?"
He confirms their faith that he is present before them in body, that he had been preserved and lived for God; he gives joy to all; and with praises and merits he is celebrated by all the people. The bishop Maximus had died, having completed a long age; and the number lacked the leadership of a shepherd. The whole sheepfold bleated the name of Felix, whom the glory of a confessor adorned unto Christ; whom his tongue promised to be a master bringing salvation, and whose life was in harmony with his teaching; but, so that he might win the palm of justice in this matter too, pressing down his lofty merit with a quiet heart, as though unworthy, he dares not grow in honor, and bears witness that it is rather owed to old Quintus; because that one before, a presbyter, had earned the rank of partner in honor: this point delayed the sum for seven days.
Therefore under this prelate too Felix lived as a presbyter, and grew in merits—he who would not grow in his seat: Quintus himself, as though the lesser, observed him in all things, and held Felix as his mouth and tongue. Quintus ruled the flock by office, Felix by speech. The grace of Christ increased the saint, Felix, with many other virtues, nor did it subdue lesser battles in peacetime than the confessor had waged with mighty arms. He had spurned bodily safety under the grim storm, and was likewise a despiser both of riches and of honors, secure under untroubled peace. He was not careless of holding fast his merit, but rather more cautious to guard the good things of life once won, after he had conquered the perils of death, and amid the rocks he feared the calm. We have told how he trod down death and ambition;
now learn another palm of the confessor. He conquered avarice: for as a wealthy heir he had possessed many estates and houses from his fathers' riches; the confessor had been proscribed, but with peace restored, it was lawful for him, if he wished, to reclaim even his own rights: yet he chose rather to heed the word of the Master, "All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable": he prefers the useful to the lawful; and as though it were to contract the contagions of earthly defilement, he shuddered to demand back into his rights the lands he had lost. Many were importunate, before all by her ancient name Archelais, of a faith as holy as her lineage was illustrious, a widow rich in wealth, and venerating the saint Felix with faithful piety, and dear to him in turn.
She, venerating him according to his merit, cherished him, and, as they report, claiming his soul as joined to her own by the right of fellowship, often wearied his godly heart with frequent complaints, asking why he refused to have his due and ready rights restored, which, once received to dispense, he could give to the needy with the interest of a great reward. Often, too, she offered many gifts from her own goods; he, content in everything with a godly sense, with a calm breast smiled at the woman's care, himself sufficiently conscious of the heavenly goods, which he held reckoned to himself in place of earthly ones. Whence, being powerful, when his dear ones pressed him, he would reply thus: "Do you compel me to reclaim earthly things, that I may lose the everlasting? It is better that wealth be lacking while life is safe, than life lacking for the rich man: rich in God I shall be in want, for poor I shall possess Christ."
The grace of Christ shall enrich the man poor in riches. Holding fast to this resolve, three meager acres of land—and not holding them under his own right, but a leased tenant—he himself tilled with his hand, without a servant, the possessor of a poor garden: yet even these riches he, rich, poured out from his meager turf upon the Lord; he always shared the herbs gathered with the poor man, and a single day at one table with the poor consumed for him the care of possessing. A single garment, and often scarcely a single one, clothed him. If he had two, he warmed the naked with the better. Often he turned wretched rags into a new covering. And the poor man, changed in Felix's garb, shone out from his dark one; while on the contrary Felix grew squalid in a beggar's covering, adorning his mind by an unkempt body.
Living in this piety, ripe for God both in age and in full days of merit, he closed his ages—nay, he changed, he did not close, the ages of his godly life. Are you now departing, and hastening to leave us? Whom yet you leave only in region, who shall be forever joined with you, without end, in mind. Are you now departing, while the land you cherish calls you far away? Yet here too you remain, holy Nicetas: since we hold your departure in our heart. Go, mindful of us, and remain as you go, present in spirit, implanted in turn in our souls; draw, and bear with you those whom you carry in yourself. O land and peoples too greatly blessed! Whom now, returning from us, you shall approach; whom Christ shall visit, drawing near with His foot and His mouth.
You shall go far away even to the northern Dacians, you shall go to be seen in twofold Epirus, and through the Aegean swells you shall make your way to Thessalonica. But now the first road in the Apulian lands shall carry you, spacious with a long plain, where the fleeces of Canusium glow, dyed with their pigment. But when the way is somewhat extended, may Christ grant you, I pray, mild heats, and may a light breeze blow without a cloud over the dry Calabrian fields. Just as, by the hands of the ancient prophet, through the sacrament of the cross, the water grew sweet when the wood was cast in, and Marah laid aside its bitter waters; so may the heaven now be tempered for you, and the air, thinned by light fair weather, breathe with pure breaths gently into wholesome airs. The air which, heavy, is wont from the marshy ground, bringing the foul stenches of serpents, to dissolve into diseases bodies swollen by the gross wind.
Whom may the Lord, mighty in all things, bid be put to flight, or be changed: and may He now minister to His own priest the good breezes of health. Just as, when Egypt was perishing of old, covered by the darkness of dense night, where the holy people of the living God dwelt there was light for the world. Which kind is now proved throughout the whole world, when the godly part of the holy faith shines unto Christ; while error overwhelms the rest with darkness. So may the Lord prosper for me all things of Nicetas, wherever his journey shall bear his face: until, glad, he be carried to his fatherland, to the longed-for city. Go on, Nicetas, well on the way by which you hasten back, with prosperous courses, Christ accompanying you, whom your peoples have long wearied with prayer night and day.
Reclaiming you, as a field thirsts for rain to lift its crops, and as tender calves, with their milk withheld, seek again their mothers. Whence we, by the just prayers of your people, who rightly seek back their own parent, are compelled, conquered though brimful, to yield to their wish. And because the hope of holding you is now snatched away, affection urges us to favor their pleasures: now, though we hate those roads which snatch you away; we hate them, yet those same roads we love. We hate them, because they draw you back: we love them, because they brought your face from afar for us to behold. We pray that those roads, formerly drawn tight by overpowering love, may now be strewn easy for you, by land and by sea, with the name of Christ Most High going before.
May He who makes your whole journey level fields, press down the steep mountains for you, and fill the hollow valleys, level the rough places, join the chasms. As you are carried through Hydruntum and Lupiae, throngs of brothers and sisters together, unwed, shall surround you, singing the Lord with one mouth. Who would give me the wings of a dove, that I might swiftly be present at those choirs, who, singing God Christ with you as leader, strike the stars? But though we sick are held by the sluggish bond of the body, yet we fly out in our minds after you, and with you we speak hymns to the Lord. For inwardly entangled together with your senses, even when you sing and pray: when from your prayer and from your voice we too are brought forth concerning you.
Thence now, as the Adriatic sea comes up to the lands, the spread-out bay shall yield obeisance, whence it shall lie flat, and the sails shall swell with a gentle west wind. You shall go gliding over the lying-calm sea, and with a beloved ship marked by the sign of salvation, you shall go a victor, the cross armed upon the yardarm, safe amid waves and south winds. The joyful sailors shall chant their accustomed work-song, the melodies turned into hymns, and with godly voices shall lead the breezes as companions into the deep. Before all, like a resounding trumpet, the tongue of Nicetas, attuned, shall sing Christ; the eternal harpist David shall make psalmody over the whole sea. The whales, made to tremble, shall hear the Amen, and hearing the priest singing to the Lord, the glad monsters shall pass by afar with frolicsome swimming.
On every side the dolphins shall sport, fearful with their gaping mouths, although without voice, yet shall they utter joys rivaling those of human tongues. For what is there that to God does not have taste and life, by whose word all the things of the world were sown? Hence the depths of the sea know the praise of God, and being mute they cry out. The beast of the ancient prophet is witness to us, roused at the Lord's nod from the deep, to seize the sunken man, and then to render back the one it had swallowed. But now the fierce beast itself shall devour with its ears only the godly songs to our prophet: fed by the song, it shall fill its unfed belly. Wherever you please, go your journey, and through the waves, and through the land, it is permitted, and through enemies, you shall go armed with the helmet of salvation, with Christ upon your head. Let Raphael fly, sent, as once to Tobias among the Medes;
so, by accompanying, may the angel himself be present as Nicetas's companion all the way to the Dacians. May that Leader equally guide him as His own servant, He who once led Jacob, a fugitive from the face of his threatening brother, unto salvation. For Nicetas too is likewise a fugitive; what the patriarch did once, this man does always, fleeing the world toward the ramparts of the high heaven: and those steps by which that one saw the angels passing to and fro in alternate turn, this man strives to climb, surmounting the clouds, by his life: hastening into the stars by the ladders of the cross, where God, gleaming, looks down to the earth from His flashing throne upon the varied labors and the battles of the mind.
And you, Nicetas, well named conqueror of the body, like that one called Israel, because with lofty heart he beheld the supreme Sower; whence my Nicetes is approved a true Israelite without guile, who beholds God Christ by the light of solid faith. This our God, our way always, may He be our companion, and also our forerunner: to our paths a light, and to our feet His Word a lamp. By which, through the blind shoals of the dark age, may we be directed by the torch of the true light, until it be granted us to touch the longed-for harbors of salvation, which now we seek across the billowing sea, while we float in the tide of a wavering mind: carried in an earthly body, as in a frail keel.
But with the rudder of the cross governing this raft now, we spread in ourselves the godly sails of the heart, with Christ bringing back the shore with a favorable breeze. May therefore the same Leader now accompany you on the way by which you now hasten, returning, to go, Nicetas, and may He render you safe at your father's threshold. But the strait being traversed, there yet remains of the journeys a labor again on land, that you may be carried all the way to the happy shores for which you have been granted as priest. You shall go through the Philippian fields of the Macedonians, through the city of the Tomitans, and you shall go to Scupi near to your fatherland, a Dardanian guest. O with what joys even then shall that land resound, where you teach stiff peoples to subdue their fierce necks to the gentle Christ!
And where Boreas on the Riphaean shores binds the rivers with dense frosts, here you shall loosen with heavenly fire the minds stiff with cold. For the Bessi, hard at once in lands and in spirits, and harder than their own snow, are now made sheep, and under your leadership are gathered into the hall of peace. And the necks which, ever untamed by war, they refused always to give to servitude, now, subdued under the yoke of the true Lord, they rejoice to bow down. Now more richly the Bessian exults at the price of his labor: for what before he sought on the ground and with the hand, now in his mind he gathers gold from heaven. O the changes of things! O form well turned about! Mountains formerly trackless and bloodstained now shelter robbers turned into monks, nurslings of peace.
What was once a land of blood is now a land of life; by the robbers' godly strength heaven is won, and Christ favors the one who seizes the kingdom of plunder above. Where once was the haunt of wild beasts, now the rite of angels flourishes there; and the righteous man lies hidden in the very caves where the robber once lived. The old plunderer is made spoil for the saints, and the murderer groans at his losses reversed: stripped by right, despoiled of the weapons of his crime by Christ. By Satan's own mischance the envious Cain perishes in turn, and Abel, restored to life, feeds the lambs redeemed by the price of shed blood. Well done, Nicetas, good servant of Christ, to whom He grants to turn stones into stars, and to build holy temples of living stones.
You traverse trackless forests and vast mountain ridges, seeking the way; and overcoming the barren wood of the untilled mind, you turn it into rich fields. The whole region of the North calls you father; at your words the Scythian is softened, and the wild beast, master of itself yet at odds within, under your teaching lays aside its strife. The Getae run to you, and both kinds of Dacians—he who dwells in the heart of the land, and that felt-capped dweller of the rich river-bank. This is to create calves out of wolves, to feed the lion yoked to the ox on straw, and to open the hollow dens of vipers safely to little ones. For you persuade the beasts, their savagery driven off, to come together with the gentle flock—you who steep the wild minds of men with your polished speech. In a dumb region of the world, through you the barbarians learn to make Christ resound with a Roman heart, and to live the calm peace of the chaste.
Thus by your work the wolf is gentle in the sheepfold, the calf grazes in harmony with the lion, the little child plays with the asp drawn out from its fierce caverns. You turn the cunning gatherers of gold into gold itself, and you yourself imitate the Bessi, from whom by the digging word you draw out living gold; storing up these riches for the eternal Lord, heaping up this holy talent with such gains, you shall hear: "Enter joyful into the joys of the eternal Lord." With these, I pray, when the kindly house of the brethren has received you into its holy and numerous company among the choirs, hide us too within the love of your devout heart. For thanks be to God, who has bound us to you with so great a love through hidden bonds, that no power may avail to break the inner chain. Therefore, embracing your dear heart without end, we cling to you by a faithful knot; and wherever you strive, we shall be your companions with a mind that follows.
The love of Christ, richly poured from heaven into our hearts, so binds us within that we are not carried away even when set far apart in a distant world. No age, no other world, nor death shall ever tear you from us; though the life of the body dies, the life of love shall live. While we dwell in these heavy limbs, we shall honor you ever with mindful heart; you will pray that we may be together with you in eternal time. For your precious virtue shall set you, lofty in merits, upon a high summit, and shall add you among the great towers above the city of the living. We, separated by place as much as by merit, lowly and at a distance, shall look up to you from afar, a companion to the holy throngs amid our lofty patrons.