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.