Who will grant us this on that day, that we may stand beneath the shadow of your side, and that the breeze of your rest may temper the fire for us? Then, I pray, remember us greatly, and reclining in the bosom of the holy Father, scatter the raging flame from us with a dew-moistened finger. Now go happily, yet as you depart return ever here to us in spirit; be with us, though you have come to the Father's city. For God has not given you to be the master of one people only, nor the citizen of one land; behold, our homeland takes you for its own. Now divide your affections with equal devotion to both, and by love to us, by your face to your fellow citizens, a citizen on two shores, tarry with us. Perhaps too this is to be held the greater homeland, where you are contained not in dwellings made by hands;
and you dwell among men as your living city. As you are worthy to be the bishop, so are you a worthy guest of kindly Christ, since, a partner to Christian minds, you dwell as an inhabitant in your Master's temple. Now farewell to us, and ever loving us through all our age, good even to the end, lead the good course, and take up the crown laid up for the righteous. The law set down for me by pious right—to celebrate this day every year with attendant speech—demands a solemn duty from my mouth: to speak of Felix in verse, to set my joy to a song of vow, and to sing the great merit of my dear Patron, by which, along a hard journey, by the way passable to few, seeking the heights through narrow straits, he passed through to the towers above. Agree with my songs, I pray, and applaud them, brethren, and pour forth your souls in chaste delight.
Holy joys and chaste songs befit the faithful: for to whom is it lawful among men—to whom Christ is both love and fear—not to rejoice today and to go forth empty of vow? With whatever power he can, of talent and tongue and substance; since on this festal day the very elements display in festal color that the heaven-dwellers rejoice with Christ over His ministers. Behold the gladness of the world shining in the splendor of the day with sacred tokens; a glad brightness holds all things, the dry rain is laid down from the tender clouds, and the earth is veiled in a snowy mantle. Things covered with snow—the ground with snow, the woods, and the heights, the hills: all bear witness to the white honors of the holy old man; and they teach that the blessed one, illustrious in the calm region of the godly, possesses both light and angelic peace—those milky fleeces that glide down from the silent sky.
O Christ, God of Felix, be present; now grant me a word, O Word who art God; O Wisdom, grant me a clear mind. It is not by the eloquence of human power that one can speak your praises: for your joys belong to your holy one. Let others, I yield, bring precious gifts and surpass me in lavish offering—those who bring fair veils to cover the doors, splendid either with pure linen or dyed with a fabric woven in colored figures. Let these polish smooth inscriptions with pliant silver and overlay the holy thresholds with plates fixed before them. But let others kindle lights with painted waxen tapers, and fit many-holed lamps to the hollow paneled ceilings, that the hanging cords may make their tremulous flames flicker. Let these be eager to drench the martyr's tomb with nard, and bring medicated ointments back to the holy sepulchre.
For my part, I yield even in empty wealth to many who are better off, those whose purse, heavy with bronze, is relieved by filling the needy—who with bountiful hand open their rich storehouses, and stand betrothing their souls with various dowries, equal in mind, diverse in means; and not more sluggishly do they dedicate rich feasts—curtains, banquets generous for stags and wild beasts, yet given in turn. I, by the gift of my tongue, bare of riches, serve, paying my own debts from myself, and offer my very self for myself, a worthless victim though I be. Nor shall I fear to be scorned, since the offerings of a poor man's homage are not worthless to Christ, who gladly received the two coins, the praised tribute of the devout widow. At that time too the wealthy were bringing many gifts to God, filling the holy treasuries with great talents.
But Christ was the beholder, who, looking into the hearts of those who brought, gave the palm to the widow; she had cast into the holy chest two coins—the matter of her daily food (which was all her substance)—untroubled for her body. Therefore from the very mouth of the coming Judge she earned, before the day, to pluck the praise of her deed beforehand, and to be preferred to those whose gold she had surpassed in offering—a poor old woman in gift, but lavish in faithful heart. Therefore, good brethren, to whom belong this favor and this consent, turn your ears with peaceful minds, and hear gladly not whom, but of whom I speak. Things to be despised indeed, yet also to be marveled at, I shall declare—to be despised for my own talent, to be marveled at by the merit of blessed Felix; which it is not lawful to speak without the praise of Christ:
for whatever we marvel at in this man comes from Him, from whom is the virtue of the godly and through whom is life for the buried. In past little books I have sung his homeland, lineage, and deeds, and, tracing the holy one from his whole origin, I have spoken of Felix until he closed the time of his perfected life, and, having laid down his body in the deserted earth, stretched toward the merited fellowship of the eternal kingdom. But because the tombs that hide the limbs of the godly are not the same as those that hide their merits, the life of souls surviving their dead bodies perceives the fruits sought through the body, and after the death of the body, not dead itself, perceives—joyful in the good, tormented in the evil—those whom, summoned again into that very body in the time to come, with body re-mingled, it shall reap undivided at the common resurrection. Long, then, is my material;
and however long the age shall be, so much will there be of speech to spare. O if it were granted to tell the deeds of Felix, and to carry through the whole world the names of his merit—O if so great an abundance of mouth were mine as remains of his works and merit! For from that time when this day first laid Felix in his blessed end, and you wear away the flesh while it gave the soul to the stars; from that time nearly every day is seen, with the Confessor of God working, and Christ proves him living without a body, that He may show greater virtue in the death of the godly than the force that remains in the life of the wicked. Behold, you see the tomb covering the martyr's holy bones, and the silent body kept under the spread marble:
no part of him stands forth to the eyes of men, as we perceive in body; the limbs of the laid-down one lie hidden, the flesh rests in peaceful death, buried in no empty hope of a life to be restored. Whence, then, comes so great an awe surrounding the threshold? Who drives such throngs of peoples hither? What hand presses the demons, and drags them unwilling, and, with a rebellious voice protesting in vain, compels them even to the martyr's sepulchre, and sets them as if fixed at the holy threshold? I look back sometimes on that day, how sorrowful it was for the world left behind, how joyful for heaven, when Christ our God, taking up the dear soul, drew it from a chaste mouth! He added an adornment to the heavens, nor did He bereave the earth of its pledge: the heavenly ones enjoy Felix in his mind, we in his body; and the spirit of his mighty soul lives there, and here his merit;
but it delights me to present in full the honor of the kindly funeral which Nola bestowed. For the devout city had lost its priest, its parent by sacred rites and by years, but, about to have him as a godly patron in heaven, it solaced its love with hope. With all the throngs by which the converging crowd is packed, it runs into homage, the faithful peoples pouring forth. Then grief and devotion come together in the hearts of all; faith mingled with devotion both rejoices and grieves. And although it believes that Felix, summoned by Christ, is lifted above the upper air, yet it grieves to be itself left behind by so great a teacher;
and as for the one solace of love that remains in the holy funeral and amid the obsequies—after the bier, laid down in the place of burial, the people, surrounding it in devotion, crowd it from every side with a dense gathering and crown the placed limbs; a religious contest of loving devotion is piously waged: each strives to press upon the other and to stand nearer to the relics, and rejoices to touch the body with his hand. Nor is it enough to have seen it once; it pleases them to linger still, and to fix their eyes—and, where it is granted, their kisses—upon the exposed limbs; the harmonious people give the merited praise to Christ, and labor to build the sacred honor of Felix's seat.
In a region far from walls and roofs that lay empty, there a field spread out and smiled with glad turf, with a place flowering more abundantly—as if already foreknowing then of the sepulchre to be honored forever with the world's veneration, it rejoiced to be blessed by the sacred body, and, with the lovely garb of spring by which it would be more worthy for the burial of the martyr, the earth strewed itself with fragrant grasses. But him, ascending the heights in placid flight and taken up from his chaste body, the glad throng of the godly had received, coming to meet him through the airy clouds; and the angelic choirs, the columns of the sevenfold heaven, meeting him at all the gates wherever heaven lies open, joyfully bore the winged one in starry triumph into the sight of the King and to the face of the supreme Father. They adorned his sacred head with a snowy crown:
yet the Father also added a rosy one at Christ's bidding, and with a purple garb doubled the snowy mantles; for each adornment was according to his merits. For he received shining garlands, as one translated into the upper air by a peaceful death; yet he equally merited the purple, as of a slain martyr, though as a confessor he died. Therefore he holds both the rewards of one who suffered, because he was of ready virtue; nor does he lack the honor and adornment of peace, because he did not die by a contest. Therefore the rightful deeds duly wove the godly funeral for the tomb; but the grace divinely implanted in the holy limbs could not die and be hidden together with the flesh: but at once, behold, from the laid-down bones a light shone forth, which to this day has never ceased, from that time, to give signs of his mighty merit by healing powers.
And throughout every age in which the world shall exist, the same light shall shine, the guardian of the holy ashes through the centuries. This light proves the life of the martyr who has died; and bearing the good things of Christ to Felix's tomb, it spreads the wondrous name of Felix far and wide across the lands. It ennobles Nola alone, deemed worthy above all cities of so great a guest; which the grace of Christ has so enlarged by the merits of Felix that, behold, increased with new citizens and walls, the city here too may be the poor place where at first the tomb was—the tomb which, in a savage time (when religion was a crime), under the menacing threat of the profane, the trembling people of the Lord had built in a narrow space amid swords and fires, as the ancient age handed down to its later descendants, and had enclosed a mighty light beneath a small roof;
and the sacred corner was once the only possessor of so great a deposit, which, conscious of the hidden light, stood forth like some spring amid ample buildings, and remains as it were a gem set in the midst of the roofs, spreading the spacious courts of the sacred sepulchre through five basilicas, whose gables, beheld from afar, give to sight the likeness of a great city. Yet these summits, ample though they be, are overcome by the crowds; for as faith increases, the grace of Christ overflows, which by a healing gift grants Felix to live for the peoples. He, abiding even after the body's age, himself presides, sacred, over his bones; and the bones of his holy body, in the tomb not buried in the dust of death but endowed with the secret seed of eternal life, breathe forth the life-giving fragrance of the victorious soul;
by which a mighty medicine is given to the sick who pray. How great a virtue and glory shall gird those who rise again, one may conjecture, when so great a grace surrounds the buried; and with how great a beauty shall the bodies restored to life shine, when in obscure ashes there is so great a light? What crowns shall suffice to grant us, least of men, of these whose very ashes give benefits to the living? It is often pleasant to behold the wondrous spectacles, in their varied forms, of those who come to greet, and of those who ask each what is fitting to their vows; you may see even farmers from the countryside not only bring their own pledges in a father's embrace, but often lead sick cattle in with them by the hand, and freely entrust them to the Saint as if to one visibly present.
And soon, trusting in their vows, they rejoice to have proved God the giver of healing, and now believe themselves whole, and most often, truly healed within a short time, gladly lead their beasts back to their homes restored under the very threshold. But because it is tedious and idle to run through all the miracles which Felix works in the name of Christ—however great they be—I shall bring forth one admirable work out of many, of which there are countless equals; but from one weigh the rest that I leave aside, which the same virtue performed, though differing in their causes. Open your hearts, I pray; the wrong done you is brief, while in few words I tell a great work in meager beginnings. And mindful of the widow related in the first discourse, whom God, beholding from the value of her mind, not her gift, preferred greatly to those who gave more—she who gave all: bear with me too as I tell great things in a light telling.
For my words too are rivals to those tiny coins, for which golden devotion made a worth out of things most cheap. There was a certain man slight in means, plebeian by origin, rustic in his manner, who fed his narrow poverty from a pair of oxen by the hire of the yoke; now accustomed to put them under wagons, carrying loads to the agreed region, now having the income of his poverty from hiring them out under others' plows; his anxious hope and his whole substance were equal to that—matched to a needy man. No offspring was dearer to him, nor he himself to himself: but he led even his own children and the oxen alike; nor was his care less to feed the bullocks than to bring up his sweet sons—indeed sparer to his sons than to his dear cattle;
not on cheap grass or barren straw did he feed them, but under a sunny shelter, though cold himself, and going hungry of the spelt denied to himself and his sons, needy for himself yet rich in them, whose fruitful labor satiated the needy man. These therefore, so dear, the solaces of his life, the wretched man lost one night, buried in a deeper sleep, driven off by the theft of a silent robber; and rising at the returning day, the unhappy man, intending to yoke them as usual, sought them first within in the empty stalls, and soon outside in vain in the familiar fields:
but at once, weary with vain wanderings this way and that, after he sees no certain tracks by any signs, his hopes baffled and his search undone, he despairs of human help, and, filled with devotion, by God's inspiring raises to heaven the mind that was sunk down in his broken breast; and soon, his heart refreshed, with faith taking the lead he draws up the hope of obtaining his vow, and seeks the holy courts of Felix at a rapid run, and entering the sacred hall with great weeping, he is stretched before the doors, and fixes kisses on the doorposts, and waters all the ground with tears, poured on the earth before the holy threshold, and demands back from godly Felix, as from a guardian, the bullocks snatched away by nocturnal fraud, reproaching him, and mingles pleading words with complaints:
"Felix, holy to God, the substance of the needy, ever happy on behalf of the wretched, and ever rich for the poor, you whom God set as rest for the weary and relief for the afflicted, you whom He placed as a healing for the sad, for wounded hearts—therefore, as if trusting in a father's bosom, poverty rests its head bowed down upon you. Holy Felix, ever pitying my labors, now forgetful of me, why, I ask, or to whom do you forsake me destitute? I have lost my dear bullocks, your gifts, which I was often wont to commend to you as a suppliant; whom your care preserved with perpetual favor, and which you fed for me. For your guardianship kept them safe, and your sufficient right hand made them sleek—those whom this night has taken from me, wretched man. Alas, what shall I do now? Where shall I go, deceived? Whom shall I accuse? Or shall I complain to you of yourself?
And shall I accuse my patron as forgetful of me? You who, while I slept, suffered so deep a sleep to creep over me, that I did not feel the robbers breaking through my barriers? And did you shatter my hard breast with no fear? Nor give light to the darkness and the theft? Or did you take care to betray the fugitives by any signs? In what way shall I run about? Where shall I be carried? All things are built for me with blind hiding-places; now even my own roof seems shut to me, where, desolate with my fosterlings taken away, I have nothing I would wish to have; nothing that, sweet to the beholder, may, by no idle grace, grant sweetness to the laborer, delighting the needy man with the wealth and fruit of his little stock. Where now, pitiable, shall I seek these? When or anywhere shall I find such? Or whence shall I procure them when found—I who as a rustic had those alone as the wealth of my contented poverty?
Therefore give me back those very ones; I want no others. Nor shall I seek them in any region: here they are owed to me; these thresholds shall give them back, in which I, a suppliant, bind you to myself and cling to you; why should I seek—or where—the robbers whom I do not know? This my debtor is here; I shall hold the very guardian in place of the thief: you, holy one, are answerable to me, an accomplice with them; I hold you; you know where they are, you who see all things by the light of Christ, even hidden things, and discern things far off and absent, and grasp—with God enclosing all in whom all things are held. And therefore the hidden thieves, in whatever hiding-place, are not concealed from you, nor can they escape from you, whom even one hand already holds. There is one God everywhere—Christ's right hand kind to the godly, but an avenger to the unrighteous. Give back to me, then, give back my oxen, and seize the thieves.
But I do not seek the guilty; let them go—I am not ignorant of your ways, holy one. You know not how to repay evil deeds; you prefer to amend the wicked by pardon rather than to destroy them by punishment. Let it then be agreed between us: so divide with me what is yours and what is mine; let my advantage stand unharmed through you, and let your clemency justly claim your parts; and let your judgment, balanced by even scales, stand firm: absolve the guilty for yourself, give back the bullocks to me. Behold, you hold the bargain; there is now no cause for you, my servant, to delay; hasten to free me from such great cares. For my fixed resolve remains to yield nowhere until you come to my aid, nor to be unfastened from this doorpost; unless you hurry, I shall lay down my life on this threshold, nor shall you then find one to whom you may give them when too late brought back.
The martyr gladly heard him weeping with such words—plaintive in voice indeed, but faithful in mind—and praying without end the whole day long, an unflattering suppliant; and, playing with the Lord, he smiled at his reproaches; and moved by the faith of the petitioner, not by the freedom of the grieving man, he hastened his help; the delay is drawn out a few hours. Meanwhile, as the day was sinking, evening now drawn on, he set no limit to his prayers, nor to his weeping; one cry there was, of the man fixed to the doors: "I shall not be torn from here; here I shall die, unless I straightway receive here the cause of life." Yet at length, as now the abundant night was compelling secrecy to be made safe in the shrines, and he, forgetful of the time, mindful of his loss, pressing the doors with prostrate face, barred the gates with his whole body. But after it had been struck in vain by many cries, a violent hand assails his ears;
and at last the crowd tears away the struggling man, and drives him far from the holy hall. Driven out by the temple-keepers, he weeps more bitterly, and, lamenting, seeks his own dwelling; the silences of night resound with his lament, and the lonely places far and wide echo back with great complaints: until, even unwilling, he arrives, and entering the black recesses of his silent hut, again from the very entrance of the roof, as he saw the empty stalls of the oxen, and the little bells giving no strokes such as they were wont to clatter when the oxen shook their necks, or more softly to strike the hollow bronze with their slow tongues, while the herd, on returning, chewed the cud of its food in its throat: at these, as if from a re-opened wound, more grievously he renews his lament:
and although care denies rest to the sick man, yet, ever wakeful, he gives this solace to his grief: that he may lie down, his body stretched out, pressing the places stalled for his oxen; nor do his limbs, broken by the hard couch, ache—the very injury delights him; nor does he shudder at the squalor of the dirty stall, because it gives back the familiar smell of his beloved cattle, nor does the stench stink to one who loves. If they had left any footprints in their last step, he looks at them, and, handling with a feeling hand the trodden marks, groans, and chafes again the now-cold prints of the feet over all his limbs; and his mind, though far off in body, he sends to the consecrated hall of Felix, calling on Felix with weeping, Felix by name; nor does he despair of help, nor refrain from pouring out vows.
Night, carried across the mid-pole, had flooded the world with sleep-bringing peace; all things were silent in slumber; him alone his hope and his care kept wakeful. Lo, suddenly he hears a noise before his doorposts, and the struck doors resounding; terrified by which, out of his mind, he cries out, believing again that the thieves are at hand: "Why, cruel ones, do you want to break my empty doors in vain? Now I have no ox; what more do you seek? Others have come before; only my life survives, which remained as an empty prey to your companions." Frightened, he had said these things: but the sound at the threshold remained with no end;
as it grew, and no voice of those knocking answering him, he draws near in suspense with hesitant step, and lends an anxious ear to the doorposts, and, where the white color of the sky shines through amid the darkness, he inserts his gaze through the gaping bars and through the cracks, and explores a long while; nor does he yet believe what he sees: for in the dim light of night there is no pure trust to the eyes, yet through the shadows the very bodies of those knocking began to remove his trembling fears and to promise the hope of good by new shapes. He sees that it is not men who knock; but what he sees to be true he does not dare believe of himself. I shall declare great miracles—though small to God—to whom every animal of things is wise in the sense that the Creator Himself has bidden, the herd of every kind.
Behold, bearing a mind under divine guidance, the noble pair of oxen had come by night, through trackless ways unknown, to the familiar dwelling with no drivers, as if of their own accord—yet not of their own accord, since by the act of the Godhead, Felix, governing with hidden reins, had snatched them by a mightier hand and driven them from the robbers. And after they had reached the thatched roof of the accustomed dwelling, rejoicing at their return, and fearing the hands they had experienced—mindful enough of their terror, as if of their own accord they feared a ravisher pressing upon them—they struck the doors with their joined foreheads, and, as if using their horns like hands, they roused their master with the sound. But he, terrified, again as though by a hostile tumult around his barriers, feared even safe things;
wisdom inspires the brute herd to perceive the reason for the master's delaying, and to unlock the understanding of the fearful master. They utter a lowing, by which, with fear driven off, he might securely open the entrance to his shut-out fosterlings. He, seeing the unexpected tokens of the divine gift, still hesitates, and his very joys trouble the trembling man; he dares not believe; he fears not to believe; he sees them face to face, and thinks his sight grows dim; while he looks back at himself, he distrusts that he alone could have deserved so much: but reckoning otherwise, from whom he had hoped, he dares to believe, recognizing the deeds of his patron Felix. And now the twilight was reddening as the morning broke, and with the stars thinning at the flight of the last of night, in the half-dark light or under the half-shining shadows, it had begun to disclose the doubtful colors of things.
Then at last, the oxen being made clear to him by their known appearance, as soon as the bristles began to grow distinct to his eyes, more certain he exults, and removing the bolts from the bars, he loosens the doors creaking on a slackened hinge. While he does this, the yoked bullocks together rushed in, and forestalled the still-laboring efforts of him who was unbolting.
With the barrier removed, the easy doorposts gave way, and soon, recognizing the king presented to them at the very threshold, cheerful and glad, they recognize him, and lick him in turn as he caresses them, and flood the hands of him who pats them with their lips, and befoul his whole appearance with foaming kisses, while, leaning gently against the dear yokes of their embracing master, with a coaxing exchange they fawn upon his kindly breast. Nor do the horns of the beloved cattle hurt him, and they bring their soft foreheads up against the breasts offered them, and to his hands the tongue seems not rough, which, licking, even scrapes the woodland fodder.
Yet amid these things, with no empty heart, the faithful rustic remembers his duty, and does not care to lead the panting oxen first into the stalls, and, after their toil and hunger, to refresh them with food, sooner than to lead them along with himself there, whence he earned them back. He comes, therefore, leading them brought back, nor does he hide his joys in silent vows: and recounting it he draws dense crowds to his words; and he enters the sacred dwelling with all marveling. Those whom yesterday, wretched, he had wept as lost, the same he leads present today; and he displays to the peoples the triumph of the holy martyr; and they themselves are led through the midst of the gatherings—the bullocks, lately the thieves' prey, and now the spoil of Felix; the huge throng gives place to those passing by, and the glory of Christ is celebrated in the dumb beast.
But that man, who was the cause of so great a gift from the high Lord, standing in the midst of the threshold and weeping again—but with joy—now renders the vows due to the Saint, not with heavy bronze nor with a mute gift, but profuse with the living gift of tongue and mind, the poor man with godly voice attests a lavish honor; and as a debtor he pays Christ enough with this pledge, for whom the spotless victim of his praise suffices. "Behold your captives, holy one; victorious, I lead them to you before all the people, and as a suppliant again I commit them to you to be played upon: preserve them brought back, you who deigned to give back the snatched ones. Yet now look upon me myself, good martyr: for you see that there still remains something for you to do—but in me, who stand close before your thresholds with eyes nearly blinded; for I have steeped my eyes with much weeping;
weeping not only at my loss, but also amid my joys. You have removed the cause of my tears; now take away the wounds arisen from those tears; having pitied, holy one, the losses of my oxen, pity likewise now the losses of my eyes. You have given me back my cattle restored; give back to them in turn my eyes. For what does it profit them to be brought back, if, with my vision failing, present I am absent from things present?" The peoples present laughed at him complaining of such things. But the ears of the secret martyr, moved near, received the godly voices from the artless suppliant, and soon his eyes, restored, felt the sacred right hand.
Thence he returned home rejoicing, his eyes and his oxen restored to him, while the people praised God; and the twofold victory of his fulfilled vow followed him gladly. If stars can be lacking to the sky, or grass to the earth, honey to the combs, water to the springs, milk to the udders: only then can the praises of the godly cease upon men's tongues — the godly in whom is both the power of life and the glory of death: God himself, for whose sake they chose to barter their lives, and by dying to seal the holy faith of the peoples, and to purchase the sacred kingdom with their precious blood — the blood with which the martyrs, sprinkling the whole world, became the heavenly seed for countless nations. Of the number of these princes, Felix, given as a confessor to this city, has shone far and wide throughout the world by the renown of his name.
But Nola rejoices as if over its own star, made the dwelling-place of one who is buried there. For every martyr, wherever he rests committed in any land, is at once the star of that place and the medicine of those who venerate him. For the Creator, taking pity on a world dark with ancient gloom and on the languishing souls throughout the earth, so disposed the holy memorials of the godly upon the lands that he scattered them like lights of stars across the nocturnal sky. And although one faith, equal grace, and rival virtue remain for all the martyrs, yet we see that in all these same ones unlike forms of works stand forth. And in one place we cultivate with remembrance the sublime merit of silent tombs, while in another we marvel at conspicuous riches in signs that cry aloud.