Preface. The faithful old man, the first path of believing, was Abram, the late father of a blessed seed, whose name an added syllable enlarged: called Abram by his parent, Abraham by God. He who dedicated his aged pledge as a victim, teaching, when one wishes to make offering at the altar, that what is sweet to the heart, what is pious, what is one's only treasure, should be gladly offered to the God in whom he trusts — he persuaded that we should war against the profane nations, and as a persuader gave his own example, and not to beget marriage-offspring pleasing to God, brought forth from a mother of virtue, until the warlike spirit should overcome with great slaughter the portents of a heart in bondage. Fierce kings had by chance captured the conquered Lot, dwelling in the criminal cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, which the foreigner cherished, mighty in the honour of his cousin's glory.
Abram, roused by the sinister tidings, hears that his kinsman, captured by the fortune of war, serves in the harsh bonds of the barbarians: he arms three hundred and three times six homeborn slaves, that they may go to cut down the backs of the fleeing foe, whom rich plunder and noble triumph held entangled with captive forces. Nay, he himself draws his sword and, full of God, drives off the proud kings, weighed down by the mass of their spoils, routs them in flight, tramples down the wounded, breaks the chains and frees the booty: gold, girls, little ones, necklaces, herds of mares, vessels, garments, heifers. Lot himself, his fetters broken, set free, lifts up his neck, liberated from the worn collar. Abram, the scatterer of the enemy's triumph, returns renowned, his brother's offspring recovered, lest the violence of the worst of princes should possess any progeny of the faithful blood.
While the man was still fresh from so great a slaughter, a priest presents him with heavenly fare — a priest of God, both king and likewise mighty, whose origin, hidden by an unspeakable source, betrays no author of himself: Melchizedek, of what stock, of what ancestors unknown, known to God alone. Soon too the threefold Trinity of angels revisits the dwellings of its aged host, and now Sarah, fertile in her withered womb, an exhausted mother, marvels at the gift of youth, rejoicing in an heir and repenting of her laughter. This was a line marked beforehand for a figure, which our life may re-engrave with right step: we must keep watch in the armour of faithful breasts, and every part of our body that, captured, serves foul lust, must be freed by forces mustered at home;
we are richly endowed with homeborn slaves, if we recognize in the mystic figure what three hundred with twice nine added can do. Soon Christ himself, who is the true priest, begotten of an unspeakable and single parent, offering food to the blessed victors, will enter the small cottage of a chaste heart, showing the honour of the hospitable Trinity. Then the Spirit will make the soul, wedded by his embraces in piety, long barren of offspring, fertile from perennial seed; then the late mother, possessing her dowry, with a worthy heir will fill the house of the Father.
O Christ, ever pitying the heavy toils of men, you who are renowned by your Father's might and by your own, yet one (for we worship one God under both names, and not yet a solitary one, since you, O Christ, are God from the Father) — declare, our King, by what soldier the mind, armed, may be able to drive faults from the cavern of our breast, whenever, with the senses thrown into turmoil within, sedition arises and the brawl of diseases wearies the soul; what defence then, what battle-line should withstand with better hand for the guarding of our liberty amid the furies mingled within the heart. For not, good leader, have you exposed Christians, destitute of great virtues and lacking sinews, to ravaging vices.
You yourself bid the saving troops do battle in the besieged body; you yourself arm the mind with surpassing arts, by which, mighty to assault the mockeries of the heart, it may fight for you and conquer for you. The means of conquering is at hand, if we may note, hand to hand, the very faces of the virtues and the portents struggling against them with hostile force. First Faith seeks the field, to fight under the doubtful lot of the duel, disordered in rustic garb, her shoulders bare, her hair unshorn, her arms uncovered; for the sudden heat of glory, blazing for new battles, remembers neither to gird herself with weapons nor with covering, but trusting in her strong breast and with limbs uncovered, she challenges the perils of mad war to be broken. Behold, with her forces joined, the Worship of the Old Gods dares first to strike at Faith as she provokes her.
She, rising taller, overthrows the hostile head and the temples decked with fillets, and applies to the ground the mouth glutted with the blood of beasts, and tramples with her foot the eyes squeezed out in death; and the broken commerce of the intercepted throat constricts the malignant soul, and long-drawn sighs make weary its difficult passing. The victorious legion exults, which Faith the queen, mustered a thousand strong of martyrs, had roused against the foe. Now she crowns her brave comrades with flowers for the praise they have won, and bids them be clothed in glowing purple.
Next, ready to engage on the grassy field, the maiden Chastity gleams in splendid arms, whom Lust of Sodom, girded with her native torches, attacks, and thrusts into her face a pitch-pine ablaze with burning sulphur, and assails her modest eyes with flames, and tries to overwhelm her with foul smoke. But the unflinching virgin strikes with a stone the right hand of the blazing fury and the fiery darts of the dread she-wolf, and beats off the brands she has shaken loose from her sacred face. Then she pierces the throat of the disarmed harlot with a thrust of the sword; the other vomits hot vapours, clotted with filthy blood; thence a foul spirit, breathing out, pollutes the neighbouring air.
'This she has earned,' cries the victorious queen; 'this shall be your final end; you shall lie forever prostrate, nor shall you any longer dare to scatter death-bearing flames upon the menservants and maidservants of God, in whom the inmost vein of a chaste spirit alone glows from the lamp of Christ. Could you, O tormentress of men, with strength regained, have grown warm again with the breath of your quenched head, after the neck of Holofernes, severed, washed his Assyrian bridal chamber drenched with amorous blood, and harsh Judith spurned the jewelled couch of the adulterous chief and with the sword restrained his unchaste frenzies, a woman bearing off a famous trophy from the enemy with no trembling hand, my avenger made bold from heaven?
But perhaps, less brave, the matron still fighting under the shadow of the Law, while she prefigures our times, in which true virtue has flowed into earthly bodies, was to cut off the proud head through her weak ministers. Is there now any right left for you even after the inviolate virgin's childbearing? After the virgin's childbearing, since which the pristine origin of human flesh has forsaken its nature, and a lofty power has sown new flesh, and an unwedded woman has conceived God, Christ — a man from a mortal mother, yet deity with the Father. Thence all flesh that conceives him is now divine, and takes on the nature of the partner God by a covenant.
For indeed the Word made flesh did not cease to be what it had been, the Word, while it joins to itself the use of the flesh — its majesty indeed not degenerating through the use of the flesh, but drawing wretched men to nobler things. He remains what he always was, beginning to be what he was not; we are no longer what we were, increased for the better in our birth: he conferred on me, and remained to himself. Nor did God diminish his own from ours, but while he bestowed his own upon ours, he raised us to heavenly gifts. These are the gifts: that you lie conquered, filthy Lust, nor after Mary are you able to break through my rights. You are the prince to the path of death, you the gate of doom; defiling bodies, you plunge souls into hell. Hide your head in the gloomy abyss, now a cold plague; perish, you harlot;
seek the shades, be shut up in Avernus, and be thrust down into the dark depths of night. Let the fiery waters roll you beneath, let black waters and a sulphurous whirlpool wheel you through resounding pools, and no longer, greatest of the furies, tempt the worshippers of Christ, that their bodies, cleansed, may be kept for their King.' She had spoken these words, and Chastity, glad at the death of slain Lust, washed in the waves of the Jordan her sword stained, to which the gore had clung with reddening dew and had defiled the gleaming steel with the wound. So, instructed by the river-laver, the victress cleanses her victorious blade, abolishing by baptism the stain of the enemy's throat;
and not now content to lay the cleansed sword within its scabbard, lest sheltered rust seize with rough filth the brightness she had washed, she consecrates it in a catholic temple at the altar of the divine font, where it may gleam and flash with eternal light. Behold, modest Patience stood with grave countenance, unmoved through the midst of the battle-lines and the varied tumults, and she watched the wounds and the vital parts pierced by the rigid spears, her eyes fixed, and waited, unhurried. Her from afar swelling Anger, hot with foaming jaws, twisting her bloodshot eyes suffused with gall, provokes with weapon and with voice as one outside the war, and, impatient of delay, attacks her with a pole, rails at her with her mouth, shaking the shaggy crests on her helmeted head.
'Lo, here for you, free spectator of our war,' she says, 'receive the death-bearing steel in your untroubled breast, and do not grieve, since it is shameful for you to have groaned at pain.' So she speaks, and the whistling pine-shaft follows her taunts, quivering through the soft breezes, and is borne sure beneath her very stomach, and is dashed against her with a straight stroke; but it rebounds, struck back by the hard repulse of the breastplate. For provident Virtue had clothed her shoulders with a triple-woven cuirass of locked adamant, and had joined on every side scaly textures of iron through the twisted sinews. Thence Patience remains at peace, strong against all the storms of weapons and enduring, impenetrable. Nor is she moved by the javelin of the monster raging beyond all custom, awaiting Anger as one to perish by her own strength.
Indeed, after the barbarian warrioress had spent her untamed arms in her fuming, and with a cloud of javelins had wearied in vain her useless right hand, when the windy weapons had fallen in light flight and the broken shafts lay with empty casts, her wicked hand turns to the hilt, and with the gleaming sword her right arm, straining for the blow, is raised high from her ear, and, balanced, strikes the middle of the brain. But the bronze helmet, formed of tempered metal, when struck rings out and blunts the rebounding edge, hard, and the rebellious blade also breaks its vein, dashed against it, while, not knowing how to yield, it receives the empty assaults of the striker and, safe, resists.
Anger, when she saw the fragments of her broken-off point and the sword shattered into pieces far off, with her hand now holding the hilt without the weight of the blade, out of her mind, casts away the wretched ivory and the perfidious tokens of her shameful adornment, and spurns far off the sad memorials, and, frenzied, is inflamed for her own destruction. From among the many missiles she had scattered in vain, she takes one from the dust of the field for perverse uses: she fixes the smoothed wood in the ground, and with the point turned upward pierces herself through and passes the lung with a hot wound. Patience, standing over her, says: 'We have conquered, exulting over Vice with our wonted virtue, without any peril of blood or life; our law holds this kind of warfare, to extinguish the furies and all the soldiery of evils and their raging forces by enduring.
Madness is its own enemy, and by raging it destroys itself; fiery Anger dies by her own weapons.' Having spoken thus, she cuts unharmed through the midst of the cohorts, accompanied by a noble man; for next to her had clung Job, in the hard wars of the unconquered mistress, his brow still stern and panting with much carnage, but now, his savage ulcers closed, smiling with grim face, and reckoning through the number of his scars the thousands of battles he had sweated, his own rewards, the enemy's disgrace. The goddess bids him at last rest from all the din of arms, and multiply with new wealth all that he had lost, and bring back things now no longer to perish. She herself breaks the masses of the legions and the converging columns, advancing untouched through wound-bearing showers.
She is associated as the one companion to all the virtues, and brave Patience mingles her aid. No virtue enters the doubtful struggle without that virtue, for she is a widow whom Patience does not strengthen. By chance, puffed-up Pride flew about through the scattered squadrons on an unbridled horse, which she had covered with a lion's skin and burdened its strong shoulders with shaggy hair, that, supported on its mane, she might bear herself the more boastfully, looking down with swelling haughtiness upon the throng of beasts. She had heaped her turreted head high with twisted tresses, that the added pile might increase the built-up curls, and her lofty brow might carry a towering crest. From her shoulders a linen mantle, gathered at the top into a fold, came together, knotting a smooth knot from her breast. A fringe flowing from her neck in a thin veil catches the hostile breezes in its swelling weave.
No less does the steed exult in unstable fierceness, impatient to have its mouth bridled with the dripping bit. Gnashing this way and that, it turns its back, freedom of flight denied, and swells under the pressed reins. Displaying herself in this guise, the windy virago towers above between the two battle-lines, and wheels her caparisoned horse about, and with face and voice threatens, gazing toward the opposing wedge which Humble Mind had gathered for war with scanty soldiery and poor arms — a queen indeed, but in need of another's aid, and not sufficiently trusting in her own equipment. She had joined Hope to herself as an ally, whose wealth, brought forth and suspended from the ground, lies in a rich kingdom.
So when frenzied Pride beholds Humility of Mind, armed with mean weapons and making no proud display, she pours herself out in voice with bitter words: 'Are you not ashamed, O wretches, to assail with your plebeian soldiery our illustrious leaders, and to provoke with the sword a race renowned for its titles—a people for whom martial valour has begotten ancient riches and granted, by its dominion, to tread upon the joyous grassy hills? Now a naked newcomer strives, if such a thing be lawful, to drive out the ancient kings! Behold those who would have our sceptres yield as plunder to their right hands! Behold those who strive to plough our fallow fields and to ravage with an alien plough the croplands won by our hand, and to drive out the hardy settlers by force of war!'
Surely, O laughable rabble, in the very hour of birth we embrace the whole man and the warm limbs fresh from the mother, and we scatter the force of our powers through the limbs of the new-born nursling, and we all hold dominion over the tender bones. What place was then granted to you in our seat, when our realms grew up together with the dominions born with us, in equal strength? Born under one and the same light, both house and lords, we came of age in equal years, ever since the new creature, going forth from the enclosed boundary of paradise, fled away into the wide world, and venerable Adam took on garments of skin—still naked, had he but followed our precepts. Who then is this enemy that now arises from unknown shores, troublesome, sluggish, unlucky, degenerate, mad, who claims for himself so late a right, an exile until now?
No doubt the trifles of an empty rumour will be believed, which bids the wretched at some time to long for the hope perhaps of a good to come, that lingering consolations may soothe their soft sloth with idle musing on things. Why should not idle hope soothe those whom in this dust Bellona does not rouse as recruits with her fierce trumpet, and whose unwarlike spirits a lukewarm virtue dissolves? Is the cold liver of Chastity of any use in war? Or is the tender work of Piety made to sweat in arms?
How ashamed I am, O Mars and conscious Valour, to stand against such a battle-line and to provoke trifles with the sword, and to match my right hand against bands of maidens—where ever stand needy Justice and poor Honesty, parched Sobriety, Fasting with pale face, Modesty diffused with scarcely a thin trace of blood, open Simplicity laid bare to every wound without covering, and Humble Mind, prostrate on the ground and not free even before the judgment-seat of her own conscience, whom trembling betrays as degenerate! I shall see to it that this feeble band is trodden underfoot like stubble!
For we do not deign to shatter them with hard swords, nor to stain our steel with chilling blood, nor to defile heroes with a cheap triumph.' Thus crying out, she urges her swift hoofed steed with the spurs and flies headlong with loosened reins, rash, eager to lay low the humble foe with the thrust of her horse's boss and to trample down the overthrown ruin. But she falls headlong into a pit, which by chance crafty Deceit had secretly dug, cutting through the level ground—Deceit, one of the detestable plagues among the Vices, a cunning craftswoman of beguiling, who, foreseeing the battle, had marred the plain with treacherous trenches while lurking on the enemy's side, that the ditch might catch the rushing squadrons and devour the sunken battalions.
And lest a wary band might detect the treacherous pit, she had covered its edges with branches and feigned the field with turf laid over. But the humble queen, though unaware, remained in a farther place, and had not yet come to Deceit's covered snare, nor trodden upon the hidden traps of the malignant ditch. This trick that horsewoman, while she is borne in headlong course, stumbled into, and suddenly laid open the blind chasm. Headlong she is rolled over the neck of the falling horse, and beneath the press of its breast she is whirled, her legs broken between. But Virtue, of calm self-control, when she sees the lightness of the monster crushed and lying beneath its own death, advances her step with moderation, and even raises her face but sparingly, and tempers her joy with a gentle countenance.
To her as she hesitates, faithful Hope, her companion, runs to aid and offers an avenging sword and inspires the love of praise. She, seizing the bloodied foe by the hair, drags her forth, and with her left hand pulling back the face, lays it bare; then, as the bowed neck of the suppliant pleads, she severs the head and snatches it up, and hangs the throat by the dripping hair. With holy mouth Hope rebukes the slain Vice: 'Cease your great boasting; God breaks every proud thing. The mighty fall, the puffed-up burst, the swollen are crushed. Learn to lay aside your haughtiness, learn to beware the pit before your feet, whoever you are that threaten on high. The widely-known judgment of our Christ holds force: that the humble ascend the heights, and the fierce return to the depths. We have seen Goliath, dreadful in limb and spirit, fall by a feeble hand.
a boyish hand hurled against him with a whistle from the sling a little pebble, and pierced his transfixed forehead with a hollow wound. He, threatening, stiff, boastful, savage, bitter—while he swells unsubdued, while he seethes terrible, while he displays himself, while he frightens the breezes with his shield—having found out what the playthings of a tiny boy could do, that turbulent warrior succumbed to tender years. Then that boy, following the youthful bloom of virtue, stretched his flourishing spirit upward into my realms; for a sure dwelling is kept for me beneath the feet of the Almighty Lord, and the victors, with the stain of their faults slain away, lay hold of me as I call them on high.' She spoke, and grazing the air with gilded wings, the maiden snatches herself up into heaven.
The Virtues marvel at her as she goes and lift up their spirits, willing to go together into prayers, did not earthly battles delay the leaders. They clash with the Vices and keep themselves for their own rewards. From the western bounds of the world had come the foe Luxury, long since prodigal of her ruined reputation, her hair perfumed, wandering with her eyes, languid in voice, lost in delights, for whom the cause of life was pleasure—to soften the unmanly soul, wantonly to drain pleasant allurements, and to loosen the unstrung senses. And then, sated, she belched up the all-night banquet, because by chance, lying near the dishes at dawn, she had heard the hoarse trumpets, and thereupon, leaving her warm cups, with steps tottering through wine and balsam, drunk, she went to war over trampled flowers.
Yet she came not on foot, but borne in a graceful chariot, and captured the wounded hearts of the marvelling men. O strange manner of fighting! No winged arrow flies struck from the bowstring, no whizzing lance darts forth from the twisted thong, nor does the right hand threaten with a javelin; but wantonly she casts violets and fights with rose-petals and scatters baskets of flowers among the hostile ranks. Thereupon, as the Virtues are charmed, the enticing breath breathes a tender poison through their weakened bones, and the wickedly sweet odour subdues mouths and breasts and arms, and soothes the iron-clad limbs, their strength shattered.
They cast down their spirits as if conquered and lay aside their darts, shamefully—alas!—their right hands grown limp, stupefied, while they marvel at the chariot glittering with the varied light of gems, while they gaze open-mouthed with fixed eyes at the reins crackling with thin gold-leaf and the axle of precious weight made of solid gold, and the row of spokes whitening with silver, which the outermost curve of the wheels encloses with a rim of pale electrum. And now the whole battle-line, treacherous, was passing of its own accord into love of surrender, the standards turned, willing to serve Luxury and to suffer the laws of their flowing mistress and to be held by the loose rule of gluttony. Sobriety, the most valiant Virtue, groaned at so sad a crime—that her comrades withdrew from the right wing, and that the once-invincible band perished without a blow.
The lofty standard of the Cross, which the good leader had borne in the foremost rank, she plants with its point fixed firm, and rallies the wavering wing with biting words, goading their spirits now with reproaches, now with prayer mingled in: 'What madness drives your senseless minds in darkness? Whither do you rush? To whom do you give your necks? What chains, at last—for shame!—does love delight to endure on warrior arms: lilies gleaming amid yellow garlands and garlands blooming with rust-coloured flower?
Does it please these to hand over to bonds the palms now accustomed to war, to bind their stiff arms in knots, that a gilded turban, confining their manly hair, may soak up the spikenard poured on in a saffron band—after the seals of oil inscribed on the brow, by which the royal unguent was given and the eternal chrism—that the soft gait may sweep the footprints with a trailing robe, and silken cloaks float about their effeminate limbs—after the immortal tunic which with skilled finger nurturing Faith had woven, granting an impenetrable covering to washed breasts, to whom she herself had granted to be born again—and thence on to nocturnal feasts, where the huge goblet spits forth the foaming losses of poured Falernian onto the table with dripping ladles, where the couches are moist with much wine and the embossed cups are wetted with old liquor?
Has the thirst of the desert then fallen from your minds, has that fountain fallen from memory, given to the fathers from the rock, which the mystic rod drew forth leaping from the summit of the cleft stone? Did the angelic food flow into your ancestors' first tents—the manna which now in a later, happier age the evening people eats of the body of Christ? You, steeped in these banquets, foul drunkenness now hurries off, importunate, to the soaking brothel of Luxury—you, whom neither raging Wrath nor idols had compelled to yield in war, a drunken dancing-girl has bent! Stand fast, I pray, mindful of yourselves, mindful also of Christ. It befits you to remember what your tribe is, what your glory, who is your God and King, who your Lord. You came from the noble seed of Judah, by a long line of nobles, even down to the Mother of God, by whom God himself was made man.
Let the most celebrated glory of David rouse your noble minds—glory trained in the unceasing cares of wars; let Samuel too rouse you, who forbids the spoil to be handled taken from a wealthy foe, and does not suffer the conquered king to live uncircumcised, lest the surviving prey summon the gentle victor to renewed battles. He counts it a crime now to spare the captive tyrant, but for you, on the contrary, your wish is to be conquered and to succumb. Repent—if any reverence for the supreme Godhead moves you—of having willed by abominable betrayal to pursue this so sweet evil; if you repent, the error does no harm. Jonathan repented of having violated his sober fast with sweet honeycomb, the taste of sceptre and of honey alas too badly tasted, while the alluring pleasure of kingship delighted the youth and dissolved his sworn vows.
But what though he repented—neither is that lot to be wept over, nor does a savage sentence stain the ancestral axes. Lo, I, Sobriety, if you are prepared to join in spirit, throw open the way to all the Virtues, that ill-counselling Luxury, thronged by her many attendants, may pay the penalty with her whole legion under Christ the Judge.' So having spoken, she presents the Cross of the Lord to the seething four-horse team coming against her, thrusting the venerable wood against the very bridles. And when the fierce steeds took fright at it, gleaming with its outspread horns and at the top of its front, they turn their headlong flight in blind dread, routed over the precipices. The charioteer is carried backward, vainly pulling at the reins, and her dripping hair is fouled with dust. Then too the whirl of the wheels entangles the mistress thrown out;
for she slips face-down beneath the axle and slows the chariot with her torn body acting as a drag. Sobriety adds a deadly wound to her as she lies, hurling a millstone of rock from the cliff-side. And since chance offered this blow to the standard-bearer, who carried no missiles in her hand but the emblem of war, accident drives the stone, so that it shattered the breath of her open mouth and crushed her lips into her hollow palate. With her teeth loosened inward, her tongue, torn and mangled, fills her severed gullet with bloody fragments. Her throat grows raw with the unwonted feast, and devouring her melted bones, she vomits up again the morsels she had swallowed. 'Drink now your own blood after your many cups,' the maiden says in rebuke, 'let these be at last your dishes—grim, in payment for the over-sweet things of your past life.
The last taste roughens the wanton allurements of life with a draught of bitter death and a horrifying drink.' At the slaughter of their leader, the trifling battle-line fled scattered in trembling terror. Jest and Wantonness first throw away their cymbals; for they had been playing at war with such weapons, rehearsing wounds with a resounding rattle. Fleeing, Love turns his back, and pale with fear himself leaves behind in his own tracks his poison-smeared darts and the bow slipped from his shoulders and the falling quiver. Pomp, the displayer of empty splendour, is stripped, laid bare of her vain robe; the garlands of Charm are torn and dragged off, and the gold of her neck and head is loosened, and jarring Discord throws the gems into confusion. It does not grieve Pleasure to go with worn feet through the sharp brambles, since a greater force compels her to endure the bitter flight;
the dread of peril hardens her tender soles for the tormenting road. Wherever the fleeing band carries itself in fearful courses, losses lie strewn: the hair-pin, the bands, the fillets, the brooch, the bridal veil, the breast-band, the diadem, the necklace. From these and from all the spoils of Sobriety the soldier of Sobriety abstains, and tramples down the accursed scandals with chaste feet, nor with brow consenting does he turn his stern eyes toward the joys of plunder. Avarice is borne along, girt with a capacious bosom, snatching up with hooked hand whatever precious thing devouring Luxury had left behind, gaping with vast mouth after the beautiful baubles and gathering up the fragments of falling gold among the heaps of sand. Nor is it enough to have filled her ample folds;
it delights her to cram the base gain into her purses and to stretch the heavy bags with stolen goods, which she hides with concealing left hand and veils with the covering of her left side; for her swift right hand scrapes off the plunder and exercises her brazen nails upon the spoils. Care, Famine, Fear, Anxiety, Perjuries, Pallor, Corruption, Guile, Inventions, Sleeplessness, Squalor—the varied retinue of the monster—the Furies, are driven along. Nor any less meanwhile, in the manner of ravening wolves, do the Crimes leap about, ranging over the whole field, born from the black milk of their mother Avarice. If a brother-in-arms has seen his brother's helmet glitter with tawny thunderbolt-gems, he does not fear to draw his sword and to strike his comrade's head with the blade, about to snatch the gems from his kinsman's brow.
If perhaps a son has caught sight of his father's corpse, slain by the lot of war, he rejoices to have snatched the belt gleaming with bosses and the bloody spoils: Civil Discord drives off the kindred plunder, nor does insatiable Love of Having spare its own pledges, and impious Famine despoils her own children. Such deaths did Avarice, the conqueror of the world, deal out among the peoples, laying low a hundred thousand men with varied wounds: this one, his sight taken away and his eyes gouged out, she allows to wander blind as in the darkness of night and to go through many stumbling-blocks, nor to test the danger before him with a staff. Yet another she takes by his gaze and deceives him as he looks, displaying some splendid thing, which while he seeks it, off his guard he is caught by a weapon, and wounded beneath his very heart he sighs out the steel driven in unseen.
Many she drives headlong and forces into open flames, nor suffers them to avoid the fires by which gold seethes—gold which the greedy spy seeks, about to burn together with it. She seizes every kind of men, occupies all mortal things with destruction, nor is there any Vice of the earth more violent, which involves the age of mankind's people in such great disasters and condemns it to Gehenna. Nay, she dared even to attempt with her hand—if it is worthy of belief—the very priests of the Lord, who as leaders waged the battles by chance before the front line for the praise of the virtues, and filled the trumpets with mighty breath. And perhaps she would have stained her steel with innocent blood, had not Reason, mighty in arms, the ever-faithful companion of the Levite tribe alone, thrown her shield before them and shielded the illustrious nurslings from the assault of the black foe.
They stand safe by Reason's aid, they stand free and strong in spirit from every storm; scarcely grazing the skin's surface does Avarice's spear-point harm a few with a slight wound. The wicked Plague was astonished that her weapons were repelled far from the chaste throats of the heroes; she groans and, blazing, begins with furious words: 'We are conquered, alas, sluggards! Our power does not carry through its accustomed force, the savage violence of harming languishes, which had been wont with unconquered strength to break the hearts of all men everywhere; for no nature so iron has hardened any man whose firmness could spurn my bronze or be impenetrable to my gold. I have given every disposition over to death; tender, harsh, hard, learned, unlearned alike, brutish and wise, and the chaste too, the unchaste—the hearts of all have lain open to my right hand.
I alone, therefore, have plundered whatever Styx hides in its greedy whirlpools. To me the richest Tartarus owes the peoples it holds. What the ages roll on is ours; what the world stirs up, mad dealings, is ours. How comes it that mighty glory deserts the powerful, that fortune mocks their useless arms? The tawny image of gleaming coin is foul in the eyes of Christ's worshippers, the emblems of silver are foul, and every treasure grows cheap to their eyes in its darkening honour. What do their learned disdainings mean for themselves?
Did I not gain a triumph over Iscariot, who, a great one among the disciples and a guest of God, while he deceives the Godhead—by no means unaware—with the covenant of the table and joins his right hand at the dish, fell upon my weapon with flaming desire, purchasing the infamous field from the blood of his friend the deity, doomed to atone for those acres with a crushed neck? Jericho too had seen, amid its own deaths, how much my hand could do, when victorious Achan fell. Renowned for slaughters and proud of the breach in the wall, he succumbed to the gold won from the conquered foes, while gathering the marked offering of the curse from the forbidden ashes, insatiable, he drains the mournful spoils of the ruins. Not his noble tribe, not his Judah, father of the ancestral people, helped him—Judah, noble for being one day near to Christ, and a happy patriarch in such a descendant.
If the example of the kindred pleases, let the manner of their destruction please too: let the punishment be the same for those whose race is one. Why do I delay—whether to deceive by some fraud the kinsmen of Judah, or the kinsmen of the supreme priest (for Aaron is called supreme), being unequal in the encounters of war? It matters not whether the palm be won by arms or by tricks.' She had spoken, and put off her grim face and furious arms, and transforms herself into a respectable guise; she becomes a Virtue in appearance and countenance and severe dress, the one they call Thrift, whose heart it is to live sparingly and to keep what is her own; as though she snatched nothing greedily, she earned, as if diligent, the praise of a counterfeited art. To her likeness lying Bellona fits herself, that she might be thought not a greedy plague, but a thrifty Virtue;
and moreover with the tender covering of Piety she hides her snaky locks, that a white mantle may disguise the lurking madness, and that, spread over her dire fury—the fury which is to seize and steal and greedily hide away her gains—she might, under the sweet name, vaunt the care of her children. Mocking with such images the over-credulous hearts of men, she deceives them, and they follow the deadly monster while they believe it the work of Virtue; the impious Fury seizes them, easy in their consent, and binds them fast with tenacious manacles. The leaders being stunned and the maniples thrown into confusion, the battle-line of the Virtues wavered at the deception of the two-formed portent, not knowing what it should believe friendly in her or what it should mark as hostile:
shifting and double-edged death makes slippery their uncertain glances beneath the doubtful image, when suddenly into the midst of the field gnashing Action leaps forth to the aid of her allies, and takes up the fight in the last rank of the soldiery, but alone destined to lay her hand to the duel, lest anything grievous should yet remain. She had cast off every burden from her shoulders, she went bared of all garments and had lightened herself of a great load—she who once was weighed down with riches and heavy talents—now free by pitying the poor, whom she had bountifully cherished with kindness, pouring out and well-prodigally spending her ancestral wealth. Now, enriched, she looked on her empty coffers with faith, reckoning up the eternal sum with returning interest. Avarice shuddered at the thunderbolt of unconquered Virtue, and out of her mind, stunned in her senses, she clung fast, certain to die:
for what way of fraud remains, that she herself, the trampler of the world, conquered, should grow faint at worldly allurements, and, gold once more being scorned, should entangle herself? The most valiant Virtue assaults the trembling foe with the hard knots of her arms, and crushing her throat she breaks the bloodless and dry gullet; the bonds of her arms, pressed together, are fastened beneath the chin, and from the narrow throat they wring out the life, which, snatched away by no wound, throbs, and with the passage of breath cut off, suffers an enclosed death in the prison of the veins.
She, pressing upon the struggling foe with knees and heels, pierces through and breaks her ribs and her panting flanks, then strips the spoils from the lifeless body—the filthy fragments of gold, the raw material not yet refined again in the furnace, the purses gnawed too by frequent moths and the coins coated with green verdigris. Victorious, she scatters what had long been hoarded, and dissipates it among the needy, and bestows on the poor the captive gift. Then, looking back with exultant face on the crowd thronged around her, joyful amid the thousands she cries: 'Loosen your battle-array, ye just, and depart from arms! The cause of so great an evil lies slain; with the gluttony of gain perishing, the saints may rest.
The highest rest is to wish for nothing beyond what due use demands: that simple nourishment and a single garment may cover the weak and moderately restore the limbs, and not draw the completed measure of nature beyond its bound. About to enter on a journey, take no wallet, nor go provident with the carriage of a second tunic, nor let tomorrow's matter trouble you, lest food fail your belly: the daily meals return with the sun. Do you not see how no bird thinks of tomorrow nor, God providing, believes itself to be fed without anxiety? The cheap fowls trust that their food will not fail, and the sparrows, sold for a small penny, have undoubted faith that the mighty Lord cares that they perish not. You, the care of God, the very face of Christ—do you doubt that your Author will ever desert you? Tremble not, O men;
He is the giver of life and the giver of food. Seek the light-bearing pasture by the heavenly teaching, which, multiplying hope, may nourish toward an inviolable age, unmindful of the body: mindful is He who founded it, to supply food and to cherish the needy limbs.' At these words the cares were removed: Fear and Toil and Force and Crime, and Fraud the denier of pledged faith, being driven off, turned and quitted the ground. Then kindly Peace, the foes being put to flight, drives away war; all terror is ungirded, and with belts torn off unbuckles its flanks. The garment, descending down to the feet, flows to the lowest, and a private modesty restrains the hurried step.
The curved bronze of the horn-blowers falls silent, the appeasable sword fills its sheath, and, the dust of the field being stilled, the bright face of clear day returns without cloud; you might see the purple light of heaven grow bright. The chaste ranks felt the countenance of the Thunderer smiling above them; the cheerful squadrons, the conflict driven off, and Christ rejoicing in his own victors at the citadel of heaven, and opening the ancestral deep to his servants. Happy Concord gives the signal to bring back the victorious eagles to the camp and to gather into the tents. Never was there such splendour, nor equal glory to any soldiery, when, the ranks split in two, Concord led the divided columns far apart in ordered ranks of infantry with the singing throng, and on the other side with the resounding hymns of the cavalry.
Not otherwise did victorious Israel sing, looking back at the gaping rage of the menacing sea behind their backs, when now, going forward, he trod the farther shores with dry foot, and with hissing along the edge of his heel the mountain of hanging water rushed down and, the flood flowing back, caught the dwellers of the Nile on the lowest bottom, and, the gulf flowing back again, the wave now restored its swimming to the fishes and headlong covered the naked sands. The people of God beat the modulating timbrels with resounding quill, celebrating the wondrous and memorable work of the Almighty for the ages—that amid the seas the liquid banks, the waves cut through and the storm halting, could grow and the suspended masses be held up. So, the race of the Vices being stormed and conquered, the mystic songs of the Virtues resound in sweet-toned psalms.
They had come to the throat of the camp gate, where the bars on their double hinge give a narrow entrance to the threshold. Here a lamentable storm of evil, by sudden craft, is born—the envious disturber of peaceful tranquillity—to vex with so sudden a disaster their great triumph. Among the crowded squadrons, while Concord by chance, thronged about, now bears her foot within the safe walls, she receives the hidden sword from the blow of a lurking Vice on her left side, although the rough fabric with its chained weft of iron encircled her body and with stitched hooks rejected the point of the wound, nor did the tenacious threads with their rigid knots allow the driven weapon to penetrate into her vitals.
Yet a thin seam allowed the steel to pass through by a slight puncture, where the outermost scale of the polished tunic binds itself to its fold and joins its edges together. Crafty Discord, fighter of the conquered party, inflicted this wound and lay in ambush for the unwary victors. For Discord, the battle-line of the faults being routed, had entered our squadrons, feigning the form of an ally. Her torn mantle and the scourge built of many serpents lay far off amid the slaughter of the fields. Showing off her hair wreathed with leafy olive, she, joyful, answers the festive dances. But she hides a dagger beneath her garment, seeking you, greatest Virtue, you alone out of so great a number, Concord, with grievous fraud.
But it was not permitted to break the vital parts of her sacred body; the skin, harmed at its very surface by the slightest touch, marked a thin stream with blood. Virtue, suddenly disturbed, cries out: 'What is this? What hostile hand lurks here, which wounds our prosperity and brandishes the steel amid such great joys? What does it profit to have stilled the unsubdued Furies in war, and to have received back every holy thing, the Vices perishing, if Virtue falls beneath peace?' The trembling ranks turned their sorrowful eyes: the blood, the index of the wound, dripped from her iron-clad garment, and soon too fear betrays the foe standing close at hand; for the conscious pallor in her face gives signs of the daring deed of guilt, and, detected, the languid hand trembles and the whitening colour.
Quickly the whole legion of the Virtues stands round with drawn swords, demanding amid the seething tumult both her race and name, her fatherland and sect, and what god she worships and at whose command she had come. She, bloodless from disturbing fear: 'I am called Discord,' she said, 'by surname Heresy. My god is of changing colour: now lesser, or greater, now twofold and now single; when it pleases, aerial and seen as a phantasm, or it is a soul born within, whenever I wish to make sport of the deity; Belial is my teacher, my home and region is the world.' The Queen of the Virtues, Faith, bore no longer the blasphemy of the captive monster, but impedes the words of the speaker and shuts the breathing-passages of her voice with a javelin, transfixing the polluted tongue with rigid spear-point. The deadly beast is torn apart by countless right hands;
each one snatches for himself piece by piece what he may scatter into the air, what he may give to the dogs, what he may offer unbidden to the greedy ravens, what he may thrust into the foul sewers reeking with mire, what he may consign for the sea-monsters to have. The whole carcass, torn apart, is divided among the foul animals; with its members rent, dreadful Heresy perishes. The blessings of things and of manners being then well arranged into a common store, and the senses of the tranquil people being all set in the safe station of the rampart, a tribunal is built in the midst of the camp, on a higher place, a mound which raises it into a watchtower with sharp peak, whence the free gaze beholds all things far around through the unobstructed air.
This summit sincere Faith and Concord together ascend—sisters sworn by a sacred covenant under the love of Christ; soon too the lofty tribunal, holy and dear to itself, overtops them with equal right of power, and they take their stand on the highest mound, conspicuous, and bid the thronging peoples stand by. Eagerly from all the camps all run together; no part of the Mind lies idle, which, intercepted in any fold of the body, might hide itself through its hollows in degenerate sloth; all the tents lie open with sails spread, the canvases are unbarred, lest any inhabitant grow languid, snoring in dark concealment. With attentive ears the assembly waits to hear what Concord the chief, the conqueror after the wars, may summon them to, and what law Faith may wish to add to the Virtues.
Concordia is first to break into speech with these words: 'A heaped-up glory has now fallen to you, O fathers, O lords, most faithful pledges of Christ: the savage barbarism that had hemmed in the citizens of the holy city, pressing men with sword and flame, has been extinguished after a long struggle. But the public peace rests upon the private friendships of countryside and forum: a household rift troubles the affairs of the people, and what is at odds within totters abroad. Therefore beware, O men, lest there be discordant opinion within our minds, lest a foreign sect, forged of hidden hatreds, be born within our dwellings; for a divided will confounds the twofold secrets with its varied fibres. Let love join what we feel; let what we live conspire in one zeal: nothing that can be sundered is firm.'
And as Jesus, midway between man and God, intervenes, who unites the mortal to the Father, lest the fleshly stand apart from the eternal Spirit, and that as one God He may be both, so let one Spirit weave together in single-fashioned joints whatever we do, by act of mind and body. Peace is the full work of Virtue, peace the summit of labours, peace is the reward of war accomplished and the prize of peril. The stars flourish by peace, earthly things stand firm by peace. Nothing is pleasing to God without peace: He does not approve the gift you would offer at the altar, if your troubled mind hate a brother in the den of an unappeased heart; nor, if for Christ's name you, a martyr, should leap into flame-haired fires while keeping an unlovely vow under sidelong rancour, will it profit you to have spent a precious life for Jesus, since the seal of merit is peace.
It is not puffed up with pride, nor does it envy a brother as a rival; patient, it endures all things and believes all things; never resentful when wronged, it forgives every offence, and longs that pardon outrun the setting of the light, anxious lest the sun, aware, leave behind an abiding wrath. Whoever wishes to make offering to God with slaughtered burnt-offerings, let him first of all offer peace: no victim is sweeter to Christ; by this gift alone, turning His face to the holy gifts, He is delighted with the pure fragrance. Yet God Himself entrusts even to snow-white doves the task of distinguishing, with searching skill, the feathered serpent clad in the soft garment of plumage, mingled among harmless birds; and the wolf too lurks with bloody jaws, counterfeiting a milky lamb beneath soft fleece, working raw slaughter with its lamb-like grins.
By this art Photinus and Arrius conceal themselves, monstrous in the savagery of wolves. The wounds we have received and the fresh blood, though from the body's surface, reveal what a stealthy hand can do.' All the people of the Virtues gave a groan, shaken by the bitter mishap. Then noble Faith added these words: 'Nay, in prosperity let the groaning cease. Concordia has been wounded, but Faith has been defended: indeed Concordia too, safe and sound, accompanying her sister Faith, smiles at her own wounds. This alone is my salvation; with this regained, nothing is grievous to me. One task of glorious labour remains after the wars, O nobles, which at last the peace-bringing heir of a war-waging kingdom, the unarmed successor of an armed court, established—Solomon, since the right hand of his panting father had reeked with the warm blood of kings.
For when the blood was wiped away, a temple was founded and an altar set up—the lofty house of Christ with gilded roofs. Then Jerusalem, made illustrious by the temple, received the divine God now at rest, after the ark, once wandering, took its seat established upon marble altars. Let a venerable temple rise also in our camp, whose Holy of Holies the Almighty One of the saints may revisit. For what does it profit to have driven away with the sword the earth-born phalanxes of Faults, if the Son of Man, gliding down from the height of heaven, should enter the city of a cleansed body, finding it unadorned, destitute of a shining temple? Thus far there has been sweat in hand-to-hand combat with alternating arms:
now let the white toga of silent peace ply its duties, and let the youth, ungirded, hasten to the rites.' When she had spoken these words, the queen leaped down from the proud steps, and Concordia, partner in so great a work, to measure out the new temple once the foundation was cast. A golden reed runs over the level ground in measured spaces, so that the four fronts may be squared on every side, lest, with the joinings standing apart, an unequal corner mar the precise rule through ill-matched dimensions. On the side of Dawn the bright tract lies open, lit by three gates; a threefold number of gates is opened to the south; the western door offers three leaves as many times; and as often toward the pole of the north the high house spreads open.
There no stone is built up by masonry, but a gem, hollowed through its solid mass and pierced by much chiselling, encloses the threshold with a glittering arch, and a single stone receives the passable entrance. On the topmost doorposts of the gates the names of the apostolic senate, twice six, shine inscribed in gold. With these titles the Spirit encompasses the hidden mysteries of the mind and calls the chosen senses into the heart; and wherever the nature of man flourishes—man whom a fourfold force animates through the whole body—it approaches by three entrances the altar of the heart, and worships the sanctuary with chaste vows;
whether the early sun stir the boys, or excessive heat inflame the young men, or full light bring to perfection men of mature age, or the chill season of the north wind call decrepit old age to the holy rites—the threefold name meets the fourfold crossways, which the King well disposes among twelve disciples. Indeed just as many gems, set conspicuously into the woven walls, sparkle, and the lofty light spews forth the living souls of colours from a clear depth. The huge chrysolite, overlaid with native gold, had on this side joined to itself the sapphire, on that the beryl, and a midway brightness varied their distant splendours. Here the dull chalcedony is suffused by the neighbouring gleam of the jacinth; for nearby, perchance, the cerulean stone, holding back its purple in watery pools, shone with a liquid glow.
Amethysts adorn the sardonyx, jasper adorns the sardius set beside it, and the beautiful topaz. Among these kinds the emerald meadows grow green with vernal grass, and the herb-like light rolls its wandering waves. You too, glowing chrysoprase, the structure inserts to be seen, and adds your star to the stones that gleam like constellations. The cable-machine creaked with heavy bindings, hauling immense gems aloft to the lofty pinnacles. But the inner house, propped on seven columns cut from a glassy rock of cold crystal, is built—their tops a whitening stone covers, raised on high, cut to a cone, and beneath, drawn back in a curve into the shape of a shell, a pearl which, immense, valued at a thousand talents, with riches and incomes pledged to the auction-spear, spirited Faith had bought and provided.
On this throne sits powerful Wisdom, and from her exalted hall she disposes every counsel of the kingdom, and within her heart she ponders the laws for safeguarding man. In the lady's hands is a sceptre, not polished by art, but living of green wood, which, cut from its stock, although no moisture of earthly turf nourishes it, yet grows green with unimpaired foliage; then with roses dyed in blood it mingles gleaming lilies interwoven, knowing not to droop the flower with a withering neck. The pattern of this sceptre was the flower-bearing rod that Aaron bore, which, thrusting forth shoots from dry bark, unfolded a tender beauty with budding hope, and the parched rod suddenly swelled into new offspring. We render eternal thanks to You, most indulgent Teacher, O Christ, and with pious lips we consecrate the honours You deserve;
for the heart is foul with the dung of vices. You willed that we should recognize the hidden perils of the body's covering and the fortunes of the struggling soul. We have learned that wavering perceptions in the clouded breast sweat under alternating conflicts, and that, with the outcome of the battles varying, now they grow strong with a favourable disposition, now, when the virtues are bowed down, are dragged to the worse yokes of life and devote themselves to base offences and bear the loss of their own salvation. O how often, when the plague of vices was repelled, have we felt the soul grow warm toward God! How often has the heavenly genius, made tepid, after bright joys, given way to a foul gall! Dreadful wars rage, they rage enclosed within the bones, and man's nature, not single, roars with discordant arms;
for the bowels, fashioned from clay, oppress the soul, while it, on the contrary, brought forth by a serene breath, boils within the prison of the blackening heart, and amid its narrow chains refuses the filth. With varied spirits light and darkness contend, and a double substance animates the contrasting forces, until Christ God comes to aid with His protection and sets in order all the gems of the virtues in a cleansed seat, and, where sin had reigned, establishing the golden courts of the temple, weaves the ornaments of the soul with a display of morals, by which, delighted with their comeliness, rich Wisdom may reign forever on her beautiful throne.