Christiad: Index

Between April and September of 2020 I posted daily to this blog consecutive chunks of a line-for-line translation of the neo-Latin epic poem Christiad (1535) by the Italian humanist and bishop Marco Girolamo Vida (1485-1566). I started this project not sure if I would complete it (not sure, indeed, if I'd stick with it at all) as a way of giving structure to my days during the Coronavirus lockdown. Just a small, self-appointed task. Others baked bread, or learned a musical instrument. My wife took up embroidery. I did this: translate a small section of Vida's poem daily, and post it to this blog with some appended comments or thoughts. I worked my effects, poetically, with a mix of deca- and hendecasyllabic lines, trying not to become too stiffly or over-regularly iambic pentameterish as I went. A couple of weeks ago, having worked through each of Vida's six 1000-line books in turn, I finished. Here are links to those books:

Book 1.

Book 2.

Book 3.

Book 4.

Book 5.

Book 6. 

Both during, and since completing, this entirely self-inflicted task there has been a remarkable, one might even say resounding, silence. Nobody is interested, which is entirely what one would expect where a Renaissance retelling of Christ's story in Vergilian hexameters is concerned. A couple of friends (and by couple I mean precisely that) commented, from time to time, on the occasional post; but for most this whole, bizarre undertaking could hardly have been less interesting. That's fair enough. There is such a thing as scholarly Stockholm Syndrome, and though I became increasingly fascinated by and drawn into this poem I can of course see why nobody else is.

It didn't use to be this way, mind you. To quote James Gardner, whose excellent prose version of the poem was my help and walking-stick throughout the process, the Christiad was ‘by far the most popular Christian epic of the Renaissance, appearing in almost forty editions before 1600. It was translated into many languages, including Croatian and Armenian, and was widely imitated by vernacular poets such as Abraham Cowley and John Milton.’ Other critics have said similar things:

Compared with the quasi-Vergilian poems which span the fifteen centuries since Vergil . . . Vida's Christiad is virtually the only attempt at Christian epic that succeeded .... Vida was a giant among the pygmies in his understanding of Vergil's structure and thematic design, in his architectonics, in his transformation of many of the canonical elements, in his sensitive employment of evocative allusion, functional similes, interwoven patterns of imagery, and other devices to embody theme, and in his vast conception nobly executed. The Christiad is a fundamentally Christian epic which manages to remain profoundly true to its classical model. [Mario Di Cesare, Vida’s Christiad and Vergilian Epic (Columbia University Press, 1964), 282]

I found the integral virtues of the poem less evident, to be honest. The bottom line, I think, is that Vida could not find a way, because I'm not sure there is a way, of reconciling his grandly highfalutin, martial and aristocratic mode of Vergilian epic with the radically humble, stylistically plain sublimity of the Gospels: the story of a man whose ethos was set wholly against the notion that a person's worth depended on the elevation of their birth or the accumulation of their martial and worldly glory. This remains an awkward mismatch throughout, and within it are folded a number of other distortions, most notably Vida's decision (perhaps understandable for an Italian and an inhabitant of Rome) to go as far as he could to acquit Pontius Pilate of any actual wrongdoing in ordering Christ's crucifixion. Not that this rigidly hierarchical vision, which extends in the poem beyond Earth and into an elaborately stratified and ormulu heaven, doesn't provide us with a variety of often gloriously kitsch pleasures.

For me, though, the most interesting aspects of this mammoth undertaking lay elsewhere. For one thing it sent me back to Milton's Paradise Lost, which I re-read with pleasure and, indeed, astonishment. Scholars have long known that Milton read, and was influenced by, Vida's epic, although I'm not sure it's quite been registered just to what degree this was true: from Englishing specific images and descriptions out of Vida's Latin, to a larger sense in which Protestant Milton attacks the (as he saw it) problematics of Catholic Vida's epic de facto justification of the ways of God to man. I wrote about this latter, at some length, in this post, actually.

The other thing undertaking this task did was brought me a lot closer to the story the poem is telling: not only re-reading the Gospels (something I hadn't done in a long time, actually) but chasing down scholarship on various matters—it's remarkable what a wealth of often amazing essays and reviews on these matters can be accessed through JSTOR—and pondering my own personal relationship to it all. Again, I wrote about this topic, at length, in this blog-post. 

Indeed: it's a strange thing, or it seems strange to me, how exposed I felt after posting the blog linked-to in that last link. I'm not sure why: nobody cares, I'm very well aware, and there's nothing in the blogpost that would in any conventional sense be thought shaming or exposing. But there you go: I don't much go in for the confessional mode, and though the stuff I talk about surely wouldn't strike the average reader as especially intimate or revealing, it felt that way to me. On the other hand, and as I noted at the start of this post, nobody reads this blog anyway. So my secret, as the phrase goes, is safe.

At the head of this post: an engraving of Christ breaking bread with his disciples from a late-16th-century untitled book currently in the Free Library of Philadelphia [Lewis E 179, fols. 46v–47r]. The online catalogue calls it an ‘Album of Engravings and Devotional Texts by Erasmus, Marco Girolamo Vida, and Prudentius’. It is

a modest book of 109 paper folios written in a non-professional, Northern European humanist hand, adorned with forty-five engravings illustrating the Life of Christ from the Annunciation through to the Last Judgment. The distinctive watermark visible on some of the book’s pages (with the help of transmitted light) was employed only in the 1550s and 1560s, in the Netherlands and Northeastern France.

Fascinating little volume, and one that contains lots of Vida. Enough! Or too much?        

Book 6, lines 973-986

[Previous: lines 898-972]

This is the last portion of The Christiad. The Holy Spirit has descended pentecostally upon the disciples. Now they set-off on their various missions around the world.

Ergo abeunt varias longè lateque per oras
diversi, laudesque canunt, atque inclyta vulgo
facta ducis: iamque, utvates cecinere futurum              [975]
antiqui, illorum vox fines exit in omnes.
Audiit et siquem medio ardens aethere iniquo
sidere desertis plaga dividit invia terris;
quique orbem extremo circumsonat aequore pontus.
Continuò ponunt leges, moremque sacrorum               [980]
urbibus: infectum genti lustralibus undis
eluitur scelus, et veteris contagia culpae;
relligioque novas nova passim exsuscitat aras.
Protinus hine populos Christi de nomine dicunt
Christiadas: toto surgit gens aurea mundo,                   [985]
Seclorumque oritur longe pulcherrimus ordo.

SI QUID FACTUM DICTUMVE CONTRA SANCTORUM PATRUM SCITA, INFECTUM INDICTUMVE ESTO. QUISQUIS ES, AUCTOR TE ADMONITUM VULT SE, NON LAUDIS ERGO, OPUS ADEO PERICULOSUM CUPIDÈ AGGRESSUM. VERUM EI, HONESTIS PROPOSITIS PRÆMIIS, A DUOBUS SUMMIS PONTIFICIBUS DEMANDATUM SCITO, LEONE X. PRIUS, MOX CLEMENTE VII, AMBOBUS EX ETRUSCORUM MEDYCUM CLARISSIMA FAMILIA, CUIUS LIBERALITATI ATQUE INDUSTRIAE HÆC ÆTAS LITTERAS AC BONAS ARTES, QUÆ PLANE EXSTINCTE ERANT, EXCITATAS ATQUE REVIVISCENTES DEBET. ID VOLEBAM NESCIUS NE ESSES. CAUTUM EST, UT IN ALIIS, NE QUIS HOC POEMA AUTORE INSCIO INVITOVE DE CAETERO IMPRIMERE NEVE VENALE HABERE IMPUNE USPIAM AUDEAT.

-------

And so they departed to various
distant lands, singing hymns for all the people
good news about their leader (as the prophets              [975]
had foretold) a voice to all the nations.
They were heard even in the sky-burnt, ill-
starred deserts, dryness cut off from the earth—
heard at the world’s end, at loud ocean’s rim.
Soon they laid down laws, set up rituals                        [980]
in the cities. People infected with sin
were washed with baptism, the old taint cleansed.
A new religion called forth new altars.
and now people were named for following Christ:—
Christians. A golden people filled the world,        [985]
and the finest age of all was just beginning.

IF AUGHT HERE IS DONE CONTRARY TO THE TEACHINGS OF THE HOLY FATHERS, LET IT BE UNDONE AND UNSAID. YOU COULD BE ANYONE—BUT THE AUTHOR HOPES YOU UNDERSTAND THAT HE DID NOT UNDERTAKE SO PERILOUS A WORK OUT OF A DESIRE FOR MERE PRAISE. RATHER, BE AWARE THAT IT WAS COMMISSIONED WITH HONOUR AND THE PROMISE OF REWARD FROM TWO POPES—LEO X FIRST, AND AFTEWARDS, CLEMENT VII, BOTH FROM THE ILLUSTRIOUS TUSCAN FAMILY OF THE MEDICI, TO WHOSE LIBERALITY AND ENERGY OUR ERA OWES THE RENAISSANCE OF (PREVIOUSLY DYING) LITERATURE AND THE HUMANITIES. MOREOVER I WISH YOU TO BE AWARE, WHOEVER YOU MAY BE, THAT NOBODY SHOULD EVER DARE OR THINK THEY CAN WITH IMPUNITY PRINT OR SELL THIS POEM, UNLESS IT BE WITH THE AUTHOR’S KNOWLEDGE AND PERMISSION.

-------

This is the end, beau-oo-ti-ful friend. The end. Vida concludes his six book epic with a straight-up copyright notice. Splendidly jarring finishing touch, I think.

Well, I suppose we could say that he actually concludes his epic with one last Vergilianism: the new golden age, just beginning, a reference to Vergil’s fourth ‘messianic’ Eclogue. There’s another nod to the Roman poet in the previous lines. When Vida says that these new followers of Christ were called Christians (984-85) he is alluding to Aeneid 1: 276-77: Romulus excipiet gentem, Romanosque suo de nomine dicet: Romulus will initiate a new people and to them shall give his own name, “Romans”. The Christiad has been soaked in Vergil all the way through—my blog posts (have I really been at this, daily, for five months?) have picked out many of these specific examples, and have sometimes dilated upon the problematic of the larger project—taking a story written in plain ‘koine’ Greek prose about ordinary folk, fishermen and carpenters and beggars and restating it in elaborately ornate Latin verse, inhabiting a mode characterised by its elevation of idiom and the nobility of its protagonists.

Nor, I think, does Vida really find a way of bringing these two immiscibles into a harmonious solution. Craig Kallendorf [‘From Virgil to Vida: The Poeta Theologus in Italian Renaissance Com mentary,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 56 (1995): 41-62] makes the contrary case: he argues the epic successfully embodies the assumptions of theologia poetica—the notion that ‘pagan poetry contained elements of Christian truth that required interpretation to uncover hidden meanings’—proving that this discourse was ‘alive and well in Italian Renaissance interpretations of Vergil’. Jeffrey Glodzik agrees. He discusses ‘the centrality of Vergilianism in the neo-Latin literature of High Renaissance Rome’, noting that many poets and intellectuals ‘appropriated the themes, language, and episodes of Vergil's texts to articulate a vision for papal Rome in the early sixteenth century … the pervasiveness of Vergilianism illustrates that the Roman humanists were attempting to employ the past as a basis for a transformation of the present that is not as unrealistic as it may first appear.’ On this specific passage, the final one, in Vida’s epic, Glodzik says:

The final lines of the Christiad emphasize the golden age, its appearance, and the Vergilian influence. … By spreading the word of God the disciples will reshape the world and Christianity will flourish everywhere. Notable also is the reference to nations divided by the seas—presumably a reference to the New World—that will be converted. Again, the golden age rises when the entire world accepts the truths of Christianity. [Jeffrey Glodzik, ‘Vergilianism in Early Cinquecento Rome: Egidio Gallo and the Vision of Roman Destiny’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 45:1 (2014), 88]

The success of Vida’s project in these terms is, it seems, taken as axiomatic by most critics:

Compared with the quasi-Vergilian poems which span the fifteen centuries since Vergil . . . Vida's Christiad is virtually the only attempt at Christian epic that succeeded .... Vida was a giant among the pygmies in his understanding of Vergil's structure and thematic design, in his architectonics, in his transformation of many of the canonical elements, in his sensitive employment of evocative allusion, functional similes, interwoven patterns of imagery, and other devices to embody theme, and in his vast conception nobly executed. The Christiad is a fundamentally Christian epic which manages to remain profoundly true to its classical model. [Mario Di Cesare, Vida’s Christiad and Vergilian Epic (Columbia University Press, 1964), 282]

James Gardner, on whose excellent prose translation this blog has greatly relied, agrees. To contemporaries, and to the centuries after his death when Vida was widely read, his name routinely linked in a triad with Homer and Vergil, the Christiad’s powerful appeal was manifest: ‘‘it is almost as if Vida were rewriting Scripture itself, translating it out of what was felt to be the crude and demotic idiom of Saint Jerome’s Vulgate into the more “elevated” language of Vergilian Latin’’ [Gardner, x]. Reworking Jerome’s Vulgate into comparatively older Vergilian Latin, Garnder notes, would have seemed to Vida’s humanistically trained contemporaries—paradoxically—as a ‘modernization’: the reworking of ‘an ancient [i.e., early medieval] and thus somewhat alien expression of Christ’s passion’ into something ‘strikingly, thrillingly contemporary’ [Gardner, x-xi]. I have my doubts about this I must say, but I concede that I’m swimming against the current.

Well: I'm done. Or at least, I'm done with this portion of the process, working daily through little gobbets of Latin and turning them into a pattern of hendecasyllabic and decasyllabic lines. The question is: what do I do now? It'll feel strange, I'm sure, not having my little morning routine (I can of course easily find something else to do). The real question is whether I want to write more about, rather than just translating bits of, Vida's enormous poem.  It was, as Gardner says, ‘by far the most popular Christian epic of the Renaissance, appearing in almost forty editions before 1600. It was translated into many languages, including Croatian and Armenian, and was widely imitated by vernacular poets such as Abraham Cowley and John Milton.’ It might be interesting to explore that a little more, whilst it's still fresh in my mind. We'll see, I suppose.

At the head of this, final post: a painting of Saint Paul writing his Epistles, ascribed to Valentin de Boulogne (17th century). It's not very well chosen for this epic (which ends before Paul's conversion) except that: there he is, scribbling away, like Vida himself. A icon for writers. A good image on which to end.

Book 6, lines 898-972

[Previous: lines 813-897]

The disciples gather in a Jerusalem upper room.

Interea scelus infandum pellacis Iudae
multa exsecrantes socii se adjussa parabant
munera, diversas sortiti protinus oras,                           [900]
quas peterent, moresque novos, nova sacra docerent.
Quove autem patribus bis senis caetera, ut ante,
pareret pubes, numerum, sanctumque senatum,
quod superest, supplent : sociisque ex omnibus unus
sortitu gaudes tanto praelatus honore,                           [905]
Matthia, obscurum genus, et sine luce propago.
Tum cuncti inter se mœsti sic ore precari:
“Si nunc, si nobis auraï cœlitus almae
halitus omnipotens patefacto aspiret Olympo,
quandoquidem toties nobis Deus omnibus illum            [910]
auxilio fore pollicitus: sanè omnia vera
praedixit: defit veris hoc hactenus unum.”
Talia suspensi secum aegra mente serebant.
Ecce autem cœli ruere ardua visa repentè,
et superûm tonat ingenti domus alta fragore                  [915]
suspiciunt; nova lux oculis diffulsit, et ingens
visus ab aethereo descendere vertice nimbus,
lucis inardescens maculis, tectumque per omne
diversi rumpunt radii; tum innoxius ignis
omnibus extemplo supra caput astitit ingens,                 [920]
et circùm rutilis incanduit aura favillis;
stricturis veluti crebrae crepitantibus olim
dissiliunt scintillae, acres dum incudibus ictus
alternant Chalybes, robustaque brachia tollunt,
candentem curva versantes forcipe massam.                  [925]
Nam Pater omnipotens, superaque a quœvus ab arce
Filius aspirant unà omnipotentibus auris,
Infunduntque viris numen: deus ecce repentè,
ecce Deus! cunctis divinitus algida corda
incipiunt afflata calescere, numine tacti                         [930]
implentur propiore viri, sacrumque furorem
concepere, Deumque imis hausere medullis.
Nec mora, nec requies: ter scintillantibus igneis
terrifico radiis fulgore, ter alitis aurae
turbine correpti blando flammantur amore,                   [935]
ignescuntque animis, atque exsultantia cunctis
exercent acres stimulis praecordia motus.
Diffugiunt animis terrores: mira loquuntur,
Mira canunt. Eadem variis (mirabile dictu)
gentibus accipitur vox haud obscura; sibique               [940]
quisque videbatur patrias haurire loquelas,
multi ut tunc ierant variis huc partibus orbis
sacrorum studio, visendaeque urbis amore;
solennem quae, luce illâ, celebrabat honorem,
quinquaginta actis post orgia prima diebus;                 [945]
orgia, cùm mensis epulandum apponimus agnum.
Hic sua verba audit tellure Libystide cretus;
hic Gallisua, Romulidae, Parthique, Scythaeque;
necnon subiecti glaciali sidere Thraces,
Afrique, Cretesque, Phrygumque è gente profecti,         [950]
atque Indi, atque Arabes, et arenivagi Garamantes:
Mirantur cuncti circùm, mirantur et ipsi.
Namque hominem velut exuti, moribundaque membra,
mente domos cœli peragrant, atque aethera apertum,
intenti, et superûm taciti sermone fruuntur.                     [955]
Iamque canunt ventura : animis Deus expulit atram
lustrans corda intus nubem, quœ corpora circum
caligatque, hebetatque humanas humida mentes.
Quosque modò durae mortis formidine turpi
speluncis atris terrebant omnia clausos,                          [960]
liberiùs nunc luce palam, atque licentiùs audent
terrorum expertes; nec iam mortalia curant.
Non ferrum, aut flammas metuunt, morsusve ferarum;
sed regem vulgo testantur, morte peremptum
immeritâ, genus aethereo deducere Olympo.                   [965]
Iamque pudet metuisse omnes, animosaque leti
spes magis atque magis viget acris numinis haustu.
Haud secus ac crebris cùm rimis terra dehiscit,
cùm sitit omnis ager, tum quae morientia languent
gramina, cœruleussi cœlovenerit imber,                           [970]
continuò attollant rursus capita, arvaque ponant
squalorem, redeatque decor suus omnibus agris.

-------

Meanwhile, reviling Judas’ heinous crime,
(that traitor!) the disciples were preparing
for their various new appointed functions,                      [900]
each given a land in which to spread the word.
That their group be twelve again, as before,
and young people would respect them, they filled
the missing space in their holy senate
with a worthy name of the greatest honour—                 [905]
Matthias (though not from a famous bloodline).
Then they all began to pray in sadness:
“If only—now—heaven in its gentleness
would open, breathe breath from Olympus
on us, spreading the godhead to us all                             [910]
as we were promised! All has indeed come true
that was foretold; only this one thing remains.”
These were their grim words, and they were sick at heart.

But then—see!—suddenly, falling out of the air,
with a thunder-crash like a house collapsing—               [915]
they looked up; new light shone in their eyes, a vast
aurora descended from the sky’s height
incandescent spots of light filling the house
beaming in all directions. Then mild fire
stood, huge, over the head of everyone there,                  [920]
and the air ignited into deep red flames:
as when, with thick crowding hissing, sparks
fly out as iron is struck on the anvil,
alternate blows from Chalybe smiths’ strong arms,
working molten metal with red-hot pincers.                    [925]
The Almighty Father and his equal Son
both breathed from heaven an almighty breath
of numinousness—see! Suddenly God
see! God! Divinity warming their cold hearts
inspiration firing inside them—numinous power            [930]
filled these men: a divine madness took them
and they received God into their marrow.

No pause, no rest! Three times a scintillant fire
shot terrifying rays, three times the glow
of suave flames of tornado-ing love that                          [935]
seized their souls in exultant conflagration
penetrating their hearts with sharp joyous prongs.
Terror left their minds. They spoke amazing things,
sang amazingly. Words (amazing to say)
were heard not as obscure but straightforwardly             [940]
and everyone seemed to hear his mother tongue—
for many had come from all over the world
for piety, and to see the city
on this day, celebrating its festival
of the ‘fifty days’ since the ritual                                     [945]
when lamb was set upon the altar table.
Libyans heard words in their native language;
the Gauls, Romans, Parthians and Scythians
likewise; and the wintry-starred Thracians,
Africans, Cretans and Phrygian tribes,                             [950]
Indians, Arabs, and nomad Garamantes:
All were amazed—the disciples marvelled too.
It was as though they left their mortal bodies,
traversed the air, saw heavenly mansions,
and heard, in silence, the secret songs of angels.              [955]

They sang of things to come: God purged their souls
driving from their hearts the dark clouds that surround
and weakens weary bodies in their moistness.
Those who were recently trapped by base dread
entirely hidden away in dark caves,                                   [960]
are now free to enjoy the daylight, to dare
anything, fearless—uncowed by mortal things,
not swords, fire, nor the bite of wild beasts;
but gave testimony—how the king was killed,
guiltless; how he was the son of Olympus.                        [965]
They were ashamed to have ever been afraid:
divinity meant their longing grew greater.
As when the parched earth gapes cracked and split,
the fields are thirsty and the grass languishes
in drought—when the dark blue skies pour rain down       [970]
they immediately raise their heads again,
throw off squalor and return beauty to the fields.

-------

What descends from the highest heaven is a nimbus (line 917), a word that means, say L&S, ‘a rainstorm, rain shower, rain cloud; a thunder cloud; a halo (visible aura of divine power)’. I’ve avoided this last specific word since it’s something of a cliché in its religious context. Of the ‘Chalybes’, I quote Wikipedia, and you can’t stop me:

The Chalybes (Greek: Χάλυβες, Χάλυβοι) or Chaldoi (Greek: Χάλδοι) were a people mentioned by classical authors as living in Pontus and Cappadocia in northern Anatolia during Classical Antiquity. [They] are counted among the first ironsmith nations by classical authors. Χάλυψ, the tribe's name in Greek, means "tempered iron, steel", a term that passed into Latin as chalybs, “steel” … The main sources for the history of the Chaldoi are accounts from classical authors, including Homer, Strabo, and Xenophon.

Vergil talks about how the Chalybes worked their iron naked (at Chalybes nudi ferrum; Georgics 1:58) which seems like a health and safety nightmare to me.

The slightly awkward repetition of ‘almighty’ in lines 926 and 927 is in the original Latin, as is the repetition of ‘numinous’ in lines 928 and 930.

This, then, is how Vida ends his epic: with a prolonged retelling of the Pentecost, sourced from the beginning of Acts of the Apostles and various later Christian-Catholic traditions:

The events of Acts Chapter 2 are set against the backdrop of the celebration of Pentecost in Jerusalem. There are several major features to the Pentecost narrative presented in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles ... There is a ‘mighty rushing wind’ (wind is a common symbol for the Holy Spirit) and ‘tongues as of fire’ appear. The gathered disciples were ‘filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance’. Some scholars have interpreted the passage as a reference to the multitude of languages spoken by the gathered disciples, while others have taken the reference to ‘tongues’ (γλώσσαι) to signify ecstatic speech. In Christian tradition, this event represents fulfillment of the promise that Christ will baptize his followers with the Holy Spirit.(Out of the four New Testament gospels, the distinction between baptism by water and the baptism by Christ with ‘Holy Spirit and fire’ is only found in Matthew and Luke.)

Vida's decision to style this episode as the climax of his epic is interesting, not least because as he was publishing (1535) the figuration of the Pentecost in Italian Catholic culture was about to change. Here's Carolyn Valone:

The image of the Pentecost underwent some significant changes during the Italian Renaissance, particularly during the late sixteenth century in Rome. Traditionally, the scene had shown the descent of the Holy Spirit on the twelve Apostles and sometimes Mary, but in this period the image was expanded to include all the women and men numbered among the disciples after the Ascension: the 120 mentioned in Acts 1:15. This enlarged version of the Pentecost was related to the reform ideas and the missionary imperative of the Counter-Reformation papacy of Gregory XIII Boncompagni (1572-1585). Gregory promoted this new image, which found its most eloquent expression in the church of Santo Spirito in Sassia, particularly in Jacopo Zucchi's apse frescoes commissioned by the Order of Santo Spirito in 1582, and in the chapel of the MarchesaVittoria della Tolfa. Papal rhetoric, the liturgy of the reformed Missal of Pius V, popular preaching, and the writings of Gregory Nazianzus all contributed to the new Pentecost imagery in late Cinquecento Rome. [Carolyn Valone, ‘The Pentecost: Image and Experience in Late Sixteenth-Century Rome’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 24:4 (1993), 801]

Vida's twelve men (line 902; not even Mary) is clearly on the other side of this later development. But ... wait a moment. Having set up this intimate gathering, Vida suddenly expands it prodigiously. It seems we are already on the far side of the divide Valone discusses: everybody heard the words in their native language, from Libyans the Gauls, Romans, Parthians and Scythians to Thracians, Africans, Cretans and Phrygian tribes, not to mention Indians, Arabs, and nomad Garamantes. How on earth did they all squeeze into the upper room of a Jerusalem building?

[Next: lines 973-986]

Book 6, lines 813-897

[Previous: lines 782-812]

Jesus has ascended to heaven where he meets his Father.

Iamque aderat promissa dies, deciesque tenebras
flammifera sol exoriens face ab orbe fugârat;
cùm Pater omnipotens cœli regione serena,                 [815]
sidera purpureo reficit quà purior aether
lumine, cœlicolûm in medio, media arce sederet,
tempora dispensans, secretaque fœdera mundo.
Cui se tum exutus moribundos filius artus,
Diffulgens radiis, ac mira luce coruscus,                     [820]
obtulit, et magno Genitorem affatus amore est:
“O Pater, et sociis tandem succurrere nostris
tempus,” ait, “quos, amisso duce, protinus omnes
acer agit timor huc illuc, atque omnia terrent
imbelles, quoniam mortali corpore creti.                     [825]
Discute terrorem hunc animis, et pectora firma,
ne casus nequeant alacres procurrere in omnes.
Illis, me propter, Solyme, Iudeaque passim
insidias infensa odiis molitur iniquis:
tu tamen hos olim fore, qui praestantibus ausis           [830]
per gentes canerent nostrum indelebile nomen,
quacunque Oceano terrarum clauditur orbis,
et populos nova conversos ad sacra vocarent,
pollicitus, Genitor; tibi nec sententia nutat.
Hos (quando cœli demum non abnuis arcem)              [835]
ipse ego sæpe, tua fretus pietate, labantes
firmavi, implevique animis: siquidem affore Olympi
Promisi auxilium subitò et tutamen ab arce,
quo freti, reges regumque minacia iussa
contemnant, alacresque ruant in funera leti                  [840]
sponte sua, verae pro relligionis amore.”
Sic fatus, palmas serro ostentabat acuto,
traiectosque pedes, et hians in pectore vulnus,
sertaque, et hamatos vepres quos hostia gessit.
Annuit oranti, delibansque oscula, nato                        [845]
reddidit haec Pater, aeterno devinctus amore:
“Iam concessa petis: dabitur tibi, Nate, quod optas.
Promissa, ne tende manus, afflabimus aura
quos vis, atque viros nostro flammabimus igni;
ut pro te, blandae projecto lucis amore,                         [850]
non ferrum, aut flammas metuant, morsusve ferarum,
aut crinita rotis circùm laniantibus haustra.
Quique reformidant nunc omnes aeris auras,
obiicient certis alacres se sponte periclis
pugnando, et claras animas de corpore reddent,           [855]
contemptu necis, et vera virtute superbi.
Non illos aestus, non illos frigora sistent:
letiferum aut campos cùm sidus findit hiulcos;
cœrulea aut glacie cùm nectit flumina bruma.
Verùm ultra Gangem auditi, Bactra ultima supra,        [860]
Ismara, Bistoniasque plagas, Serasque remotos
Gadibus, et virides penetrabunt voce Britannos.
implebunt terras monitis, et cuncta novantes
templa pererrato statuent tibi maxima mundo:
ad tua mutatae properabunt nomina gentes,                  [865]
divisae penitus toto orbe per aequora gentes;
seclaque conversis procedent aurea rebus.
Quae tibi saepe ego pollicitus, scisque omnia mecum.
Nec tantùm tua, Nate, piis haec vulnera Olympum
nunc pandi meruere, nigra quos nocte premebat           [870]
insontes primi scelus exitiale parentis;
verùm alios mox, atque alios per secula cœlo
efficient dignos, sua quos commissa piacla
sidereis procul arcebant à sedibus olim.
Tanta tuae merces, ea yis, ea gratia mortis.                   [875]
Atque adeô quodcunque homines ab origine rerum
Admisere, aliis quidquid peccabitur annis,
Huc coeat; satis illa tui pars parva, superque
Omnia diluere, prorsusque abolere, cruoris.
Quin etiam mox tempus erit, cùm scilicet olim              [880]
ter centum prope lustra peregerit aethereus sol,
tum veri, Graiûm obliti mendacia, vates
funera per gentes referent tua carmine verso;
atque tuis omnes resonabunt laudibus urbes:
praesertim laetam Italiae felicis ad oram,                     [885]
addua ubi vagus, et muscoso Serius amne
purior electro, tortoque simillimus angui,
quà rex fluviorum Eridanus se turbidus infert
mœnia turrigerae stringens malè tuta Cremonae,
ut sibijam tectis vix temperet unda caducis.                  [890]
Illic tum, nivei velut inter nubila cygni,
omnibus in ripis pueri, innuptaeque puellae,
carmina casta canent, mixtique in gramine molli
laudibus incipient certatim assuescere nostris,
et teneri primâ cœtus te voce sonabunt.                         [895]
Haec tibi certa manent, haec vis movet ordine nulla.”
Sic fatus, dulcem Nato inspiravit amorem.

-------

Now the promised time approached. On the tenth day
the fiery rising sun drove darkness away;
the omnipotent Father sat in the serene,                         [815]
where stars burn purple in the purer air,
bright amongst his angels, in his palace,
dispensing the seasons in secret compact.
To him, the shining Son, having shed his
mortality, and wondrous with beaming light,                 [820]
offered love to his great Parent with these words:
“Father: let us aid my disciples on earth;
the time has come,” he said. “Having lost their leader
their timid souls are afraid; dashing here and there
with the uncourage of mortal bodies.                             [825]
Take fear from their minds and firm-up their souls!
Let them run eagerly towards what is coming.
Jerusalem and Judea hate them—for my sake:
They set unjust traps and hostile plot for them.
You said once these would be the daring ones               [830]
singing my undying name to the people
in every land that ocean engirdles,
calling forth new converts from every nation—
you promised, Father; nor has your mind changed.
These (you won’t deny them their starry home)            [835]
were men I often assured of your piety
to strengthen their wavering minds—Olympus,
I promised, would soon send assistance to them,
such that they could hold kings’ threats in contempt
and rush eagerly into the jaws of to death                        [840]
for the love of their own and true religion.”

So speaking, he showed his pierced hands,
and transfixed feet, and the wide wound in his breast,
and the garland of hooked briars he had worn:
this to ramp-down anger. He kissed his son,                    [845]
the Father, with love’s eternal power:
“What you ask has already been granted.
Its promised (no need to raise your hands)
I’ll inspire these men, and inflame them all;
They shall cast aside their love for life for you                [850]
fearing neither unsheathed swords, nor flames
neither wild beasts nor the machines of torture.
Though now they shrink from even the breezes, then
they will go boldly into every peril
winning acclaim for their souls by defying                       [855]
death, pride in the true power of courage.
Neither heat nor cold will stop them, nor the star
of pestilence that cracks open the parched field;
nor winter’s chill that blocks rivers with blue ice.
Truly they’ll reach Ganges and far Bactria,                       [860]
Ismara, the Bistonian fields, China
go past Cadiz to green Britannia—loud
shall be their teachings, filling every country.
Wandering the world they shall found temples
in your honour, hastening all people                                  [865]
to you, though separated by oceans.
A new golden age will dawn over a changed
world—all this I’ve promised to build, you know.
For these wounds, my son, have gained Olympus
not just for the pious—whom black night oppressed         [870]
though innocent, because of original sin—
but for many others, others who come after
rendered worthy, whose sins would otherwise
have kept them from ever reaching the stars.
So you pay them via the grace of death.                             [875]
Whatever men have done since the world began
and what they may commit in after years,
all combined—the smallest drop of your blood
suffices to atone and cleanse for all.
Indeed the time will come in course of years—                 [880]
thrice five hundred passes of the lustrous sun—
when truth will banish old Greek lies, and poets
will use their verse to tell folk of your death
all the cities will resound with your praise:
especially the shores of blessed Italy,                                 [885]
the meandering Adda and mossy Serio
bright with amber, sinuous like a snake.
There runs the turbid Po, monarch of rivers
looping the ill-towered walls of Cremona,
its waters lapping their ruined houses.                              [890]
There like snowy-white swans among clouds pass
chaste boys and girls processing altogether
over soft grass, mixing their voices as one
vying with each other in singing your praises.
This is what awaits you, unchangeable!”                           [895]
So He spoke to His son, breathing sweet love.

-------

With respect to God seated in the highest serene where the stars burn purple (line 816: purpureus—on which colour, a favourite of Vida’s, see here) ‘dispensing the seasons in secret compact’ (line 818) ... what can I tell you. It’s what the Latin says: tempora dispensans, secretaque fœdera mundo, dispensing the tempora, plural of tempus (‘time, period, age; season or quarter of the year’) in a secret foedus (‘treaty, agreement, contract, pact, compact’) with the world. Make of it what you will.

The ‘pestilent star’ of line 858 is Sirius, the dog-star:

Many cultures have historically attached special significance to Sirius, particularly in relation to dogs. It is often colloquially called the ‘Dog Star’ as the brightest star of Canis Major, the ‘Great Dog’ constellation. The Ancient Greeks thought that Sirius's emanations could affect dogs adversely, making them behave abnormally during the ‘dog days’, the hottest days of the summer. The Romans knew these days as dies caniculares, and the star Sirius was called Canicula, "little dog". The excessive panting of dogs in hot weather was thought to place them at risk of desiccation and disease. In extreme cases, a foaming dog might have rabies, which could infect and kill humans they had bitten. Homer, in the Iliad, describes the approach of Achilles toward Troy in these words: ‘Sirius rises late in the dark, liquid sky; on summer nights,/star of stars, Orion's Dog they call it, brightest of all, but an evil portent,/bringing heat and fevers to suffering humanity.’

The other details here are all easily recoverable. In lines 860-862, where God promises his son Christianity will spread to the Ganges (in India, obviously) and ‘Bactria’ (the classical name for the territory roughly covered by modern Afghanistan), as well as to Ismara (a city on the coast of Thrace, in Asia Minor) and Bistonia (also in Thrace)—you’d think it would reach the latter before the former, but OK. Then the tour du monde zips to China, thence past Cadiz, in Spain, and finally to my own ‘green Britannia’—virides Britannos is actually a tag from Ovid (Amores 2.16.39), although when Ovid uses the phrase he means the people themselves, with their blue-green woad-dyed skin, not the island.

But then we get to the money-shot, as it were; by which I mean, the sly insertion of Vida into his own poem by way of celebrating the greatness of ... well, of Vida really. It’s a strikingly (as we would now say) postmodern moment, a nexus of genuine textual irony. So: after quin ter centum—that is, fifteen-hundred years—have passed, a poet will come who will replace the ‘lies’ of the Greek myths with the truth of Christianity as the topic of his poetry. Christ was crucified in 33; in 1532—499 years after this event—Vida dedicated his epic to his patron, Pope Clement VII. In the event it took three more years before the work was finished and ready for publication, in 1535. But it’s close enough for government work, as the phrase goes.

And so the poem shifts from the Holy Land to Italy—fortunate Italy, as Vida calls it: Italia felix (line 885; though felices is in the plural here, because in poetic transposition it’s actually Italy’s shores that are blessed). Various rivers are namechecked including, in a gesture back to the very beginning of Book 1, the Po. This river is described as encircling in one of its meanders the city of Cremona—and Vida’s touches on the troubled recent history of this Lombard city-state. It was conquered and occupied by a Venetian army in 1499, recaptured by the Duke of Milan in 1509, then taken by occupying French forces, and finally (as far as Vida was concerned) assigned to Spanish rule under the Treaty of Noyon of 1513—although the Spaniards had actually to seize their new prize as they signed this treaty, and Cremona only actually became theirs in 1524 when the Castle of Santa Croce surrendered (the French were not expelled from the duchy as a whole until 1526). Cremona remained a Spanish dominion for the rest of Vida’s life, and beyond (it was Spanish until the beginning of the 18th century; then the Austrians took it in 1706 and held it until Napoleon seized it in the 1790s. It was restored to Austria in 1815, managed to wrest city-state independence out of the Revolutions of 1848—though the Austrians soon suppressed this—and finally became part of the unifying Kingdom of Italy in 1859). So there you go.

At the head of this post: an unknown artist's God the Father on his throne (Westphalia, Germany, late 15th century).

[Next: lines 898-972]

Book 6, lines 782-812

[Previous: lines 732-781]

Jesus has ascended. His disciples, below, sing his praises.

“Tu surdis aures, oculos tu lumine captis,
et vocem mutis, et vires sufficis aegris.
Tu revocas in vitam, obitaiam morte, sepultos,
et rursum potes amissos accendere sensus.                 [785]
Non te vis crudi perterruit horrida leti,
non erebi confusa domus, loca fœta timoris.
Te manes tremuere; plagae regnator opacae
umbrarum passim populantem immitia regna
non tulit, atque imis trepidus se condidit antris;         [790]
prostrataeque metu procul Eumenides latitârunt;
dum superas praedâ ingenti vehereris ad arces,
nunc ubi iam victor regnas, superûmque beato
concilio imperitas, provisaque tempora longè
disponens, reparas fugientia secula mundo,                [795]
nec requiêsse sinis solis volventia lustra.
Salve, opifex rerum vastique salutifer orbis,
aspice nos propiùs, propiùs genus aspice nostrum!
Morte tua patet aetherei cui ianua Olympi;
et veteres tandem Pater obliviscitur iras.”                    [800]

Talia littorea laeti sub rupe canebant
undeni proceres, omnisque effusa iuventus.
Non tamen exuerant vanum inter tanta timorem
gaudia, nondum animos firmati numinis aura
aetherea, sed adhuc latebras cavaque antra petebant.    [805]
Sicut, ubi accipiter celsa de sede columbam
sustulit apprensam, quam rostro evisceret unco,
diffugiunt aliae huc illuc; mox turribus imis
condunt se celeres, et inania murmura miscent.
Haud illi secus, attoniti post funera regis,                        [810]
inclusi tecto stabant, promissa magistri
cœlo exspectantes, venturum numen ab alto.

-------

“You give the deaf ears and eyes to the blind
a voice to the dumb, and strength to the weak.
You recall to life those gone and in their tombs,
reilluminating their absent senses.                                [785]
The raw horror of terrifying death
could not affright you, nor Erebus’ house.
Their spirits trembled before you; that dark lord
could not bear to see you empty his kingdom
of souls, and hid himself in his deepest caves;              [790]
the Eumenides abased themselves and hid
until you had ascended heavens with your spoils,
where now you reign in triumph, surveying glad
councils of angels, disposing far futures
with providence until the end of the world,                   [795]
suffering no respite to the revolving sun.
Hail, maker of the lasting health of the world!
Look favourably on us, your people!
Your death has opened the celestial door;
the Father has finally forgotten his wrath.”                   [800]

So, on the seashore, joyfully sang these
eleven men, joined by all the country’s youths.
Yet even in their joy they were scared, heaven’s
breath not in them yet—hiding inside caves.                  [805]
As when a high-perched hawk has seized a dove
eviscerating it with its hooked beak
the other doves scatter—hiding in towers
plunging away at speed, cooing in vain;
even so, stunned after the death of their king,                 [810]
these men shut themselves in, awaiting the masters
promised reward—spirit descending from above.

-------

The ‘Eumenides’ in line 791 are, of course, the Furies. Line 809’s et inania murmura miscent is a direct lift from Aeneid 4:210 (et inania murmura miscent) though in Virgil it’s stormclouds that make the vain murmuring, not doves. Otherwise this strikes me as a strange, rather wrenching shift in Vida’s throughline—after hundreds of lines of Jesus ascending to heaven and a lengthy (lines 732-800) hymn of praise by the disciples—eleven now (line 802), since Judas’s suicide; not until after the Ascension is his place taken by Matthias (Acts 1:26)—the tone shifts again to them as gripped with terror, hiding inside. They are waiting for something, and that something is the coming of the Holy Spirit:

And being assembled together with them, He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, “which,” He said, “you have heard from Me; for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” Therefore, when they had come together, they asked Him, saying, “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” And He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” [Acts 1:4-8]

So it happens, as described in Acts (and by Vida in line 898-986, the concluding episode of the entire epic). We’ll come back to that.

I wonder if the poem is flagging at precisely the moment when it should be raising itself, tonally, to its big thrilling climax. These last few passages by Vida have not been him at his poetic best, I think. Is this because he's trying to write something that passes beyond what words can express? Or is it something else? It's hard to think of great poetry that has been inspired by this particular moment in the passion narrative. Christina Rossetti, who can be do lyrically deft, clangs and clonks through this poem, for instance:

“When Christ went up to Heaven the Apostles stayed”
Gazing at Heaven with souls and wills on fire,
Their hearts on flight along the track He made,
Winged by desire.

Their silence spake: “Lord, why not follow Thee?
Home is not home without Thy Blessed Face,
Life is not life. Remember, Lord, and see,
Look back, embrace.

“Earth is one desert waste of banishment,
Life is one long-drawn anguish of decay.
Where Thou wert wont to go we also went:
Why not today?”

Nevertheless a cloud cut off their gaze:
They tarry to build up Jerusalem,
Watching for Him, while thro' the appointed days
He watches them.

They do His Will, and doing it rejoice,
Patiently glad to spend and to be spent:
Still He speaks to them, still they hear His Voice
And are content.

For as a cloud received Him from their sight,
So with a cloud will He return ere long:
Therefore they stand on guard by day, by night,
Strenuous and strong.

They do, they dare, they beyond seven times seven
Forgive, they cry God's mighty word aloud:
Yet sometimes haply lift tired eyes to Heaven—
“Is that His cloud?”

Ah well.

At the head of this post: ‘The Ascension of Christ’ (c.1510) by Adriaen van Overbeke. At the top: legs eleven!

[Next: lines 813-897]

Book 6 lines 732-781

[Previous: lines 691-731]

Jesus is ascending into heaven. Watching him from below his disciples burst into song.

Nec mora; carminibus cœli domus ardua longè
auditur resonare, modisque per astra canoris.
Contrà etiam plausere, atque alterna canebant
laeta viri, cœlumque oculis animisque petebant:                 [735]
“Omnes ô plausu gentes linguisque favete;
atque Deum canite ascensu supera alta tenentem.
Quadrupedum, volucrumque genus, mutaeque natantes
exultent, tractus terrarum ubicunque patentes:
ipsi dent montes, ipsa et dent flumina vocem                       [740]
laeta suam, et scatebris volventes flumina fontes,
quodque ambit longis terras anfractibus aequor.
Cuncta suum agnoscant auctorem, et carmina dicant.
Semper ut idem ingens regnârit originis expers
cum genitore Deo Deus, omnia numine complens.              [745]
Ut nullis mox principiis, aut semine nullo
omnia condiderit, cœlum, terrasque, fretumque,
quaeque vago passim subsunt animantia cœlo.
Ut terras ponto discluserit, aethera terris,
luciferis coeli lustraverit atria flammis,                              [750]
tellurisque sinum variis appinxerit herbis,
sufficiatque satis fruges, et vitibus almum
humorem. Tu cuncta moves, tibi maximus aether,
quique super latices concrescunt aethere, parent.
Nubila te ventique timent : te vesper et ortus                      [755]
observant, obeuntque tuo sua munera nutu;
et tibi monstriferi obsequitur plaga cœrula ponti.
Tu manibus validis terrarum pondera libras,
atque gravem vacuo suspendis in aere molem,
rerum elementa locans aeterno fœdere, ut omnia                [760]
concordi in medium tendant nitentia motu.
Tu liquidas per inane vias is nubibus actus,
aurarumque sedens veheris pernicibus alis.
Non tibi tempus equis fugit irrevocabile adactis:
semper idem ante tuos oculos, praesensque moratur,          [765]
quodque est, quodque fuit, simulet quod deinde sequetur.
Ipse etiam parens tibi, cœli in vertice fixus
sol stetit: ipsa etiam surgens in cornua luna,
Atque suos penitus requiêrunt sidera cursus.
Te mandante, suam vim saepe innoxius ignis                      [770]
dedidicit: pueri in mediis fornacibus astant
illaesi, iactantque tuas ad sidera laudes.
Tu mare navigerum concreta dividis unda,
et populis medios das ire impunè per aestus:
tu rapidos flectis, ripis mirantibus, amnes.                         [775]
Tu largam tactis è cautibus elicis undam;
idem largifluos fontes et flumina sistens.
Ipsa tuo tremit aspectu conterrita tellus;
quosque procul tangis, fumant ad sidera montes.
Assurgunt reges pavidi, tibi sceptra, tibi arma                  [780]
deponunt, longeque tremunt, et numen adorant.”

-------

Immediately heaven’s lofty homes rang out
with singing, and melody rose to the stars.
In counterpoint, applauding and chanting,
joyful men set eyes and souls on heaven:                       [735]
“Praise him, tongues of all you nations!
Sing the ascent of God to his throned height!
Let the four-footed beasts, the birds, mute fish
and the wide world in all directions exult;
let the mountains and the rivers find a voice                     [740]
of joy, rolling rivers and gushing fountains,
and the sea that encompasses all in its curve.
Let the cosmos recognize its maker in song:
How they have reigned eternal and uncreated
God and the Father of God, all power given.                    [745]
And how He in time made all things, laid the seeds
for everything—heaven, earth, and ocean,
all the souls that dwell beneath the wandering skies.
dividing the lands from sea, the air from land,
lighting courts of heaven with bright flames,                    [750]
spangling the tender grass with coloured flowers,
providing food, nurturing the vines’
sweet drink. You move it all, you rule the sky
and the liquid rains that fall from heaven.
The clouds and winds fear you; dawn and twilight           [755]
dance attend on your pleasure and obey;
so too the sky-blue sea and its creatures.
With your strong hands you balance the whole earth
suspending its ponderous mass in space,
binding all elements in eternal compact                            [760]
concordant motion towards a common centre.
You rise on floating clouds through the clear air
drawn along by swift-winged breezes.
The swift horses of irreversible time
do not flee from eternally-constant you                            [765]
you are what is, what was and what will be.
In obedience to you, the sun itself stood fixed
at its summit, the newborn moon was still,
and the very stars suspended their courses.
You can command fire to become harmless                      [770]
so that youths can stand inside the furnace
unharmed, singing your praises to the stars.
You turned the sea waves into a solid mass
parting them so your people could pass through:
you bend swift rivers whose banks stare in wonder.         [775]
your touch elicits great streams from the rock:
even as you dry-up rivers and fountains.
The earth trembles at the very sight of you;
and at your touch mountains shoot up flames.
Great kings fear you, offering you their sceptres              [780]
and armour, trembling, placating your divinity.”

-------

This earnest if, perhaps, overlong hymn of praise to God includes references (in line 768-9) the sun standing still at Joshua's command (in line 770-72) to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego surviving inside Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace and (lines 773-75) Moses parting the Red Sea. All examples of God intervening into the natural world.

Lines 764-66, on the other hand, lay-out the Christian conception of God as existing outside time, a notion that derives ultimately from the Confessions of Augustine (early 5th century) and Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy (a couple of decades later). Boethius makes a distinction between God’s ‘timeless eternity’ and ‘everlastingness’, which (following Plato) the world itself possesses.

It is the common judgement, then, of all creatures that live by reason that God is eternal. So let us consider the nature of eternity, for this will make clear to us both the nature of God and his manner of knowing. Eternity, then, is the complete, simultaneous and perfect possession of everlasting life; this will be clear from a comparison with creatures that exist in time. …for it is one thing to progress like the world in Plato’s theory through everlasting life, and another thing to have embraced the whole of everlasting life in one simultaneous present. [Boethius Consolation, 5.6, transl. V. E. Watts]

According to Natalja Deng [‘Eternity in Christian Thought’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2018 Edition)] Augustine saw God’s timeless eternity as evident in two divine aspects: that God is the cause of all temporal states, and that God is immutable.

What times existed which were not brought into being by you? Or how could they pass if they never had existence? Since, therefore, you are the cause of all times, if any time existed before you made heaven and earth, how can anyone say that you abstained from working? (Augustine, Confessions, 11.13).

It is not in time that you precede times. Otherwise you would not precede all times. In the sublimity of an eternity which is always in the present, you are before all things past and transcend all things future, because they are still to come. (Augustine, Confessions, 11.13).

In you it is not one thing to be and another to live: the supreme degree of being and the supreme degree of life are one and the same thing. You are being in a supreme degree and are immutable. In you the present day has no ending, and yet in you it has its end: “all these things have their being in you” (Rom.11.36). They would have no way of passing away unless you set a limit to them. Because “your years do not fail” (Ps.101.28), your years are one Today. (Augustine, Confessions, 1.6)

The image at the head of the post is an ascension by Italian artist Dosso Dossi: (c. 1489–1542, real name: Giovanni di Niccolò de Luteri). Like many paintings of this theme it divides its visual field into earthly-below and heavenly-above.

[Next: lines 782-812]

Book 6, lines 691-731

[Previous: lines 629-690]

Jesus ascends to heaven.

Pars pendent speculis, et propugnacula laeti
cœli summa tenent, et mœnia celsa coronant:
obvia pars portis parat ire patentibus, et se
quisque auris credunt, ac pennis aethera obumbrant.
Hi plectro indulgent fidibusque: his tibia cantus             [695]
dat bifores: alii cava cornua flatibus implent,
raucisonasque tubas, et ahenea cymbala iactant.
Atque ubi ter Patris ad solium pernice chorea
indulsere choris, ter ludo lucida regna
lustravere, polique è vertice decurrere;                         [700]
non aliter sunt ingressi volucri agmine contrà
concentu vario, et multisono modulatu,
quàm, prolapsa Remi cum nondum urbs altaiaceret,
tarpeiaeque arces starent, lateque subactis
iura daret populis rerum pulcherrima Roma,                    [705]
consul victor, ovans, pugnatis undique bellis,
intrabat rediens, Capitoliaque alta subibat.
Talis nubivago tendebat ad aethera gressu
vera Dei soboles: ut verò flectere quiret,
iratus quoties Genitor mortale pararet                          [710]
exercere genus meritis ob crimina pœnis,
omnia fert secum caedis monimenta nefandae:
in primis duplicemque trabem; infandamque columnam,
brachia cui vinctus tulit aspera verbera; et acres
virgarum fasces; infectaque sanguine lora;                   [715]
hastamque, et calamo pendentia pocula levi.
Tres deinde ingentes et acuta cuspide vectes
cernere erat, quibus effossus palmasque pedesque;
sertaque nexilibus vepribus conserta rigebant.
illic et longo Romani signa senatûs                                [720]
hastili suspensa; cavoque latentia cornu
lumina, quod superas abies tollebat ad auras;
quamque manu rex pro sceptro gestavit arundo;
omnia quae pueri cœlestes antè gerebant,
singula quisque, polique arcem per inane petebant.        [725]
Suspexere viri attoniti, acieque sequentes
alituum nubem, ac regem videre per auras
tollentemque manus, cœlique serena secantem;
cum subitò rutila haec venit vox reddita ab aethra:
“Ne trepidate: quid haeretis supera alta tuentes?           [730]
Cum genitore Deus regnandum accepit Olympum.”

-------

Some hang from the defensive towers, joyfully
crowning the highest of heaven’s battlements:
others processed through the open gateways
working their wings over a shadowing sky.
Some struck lyres with plectrums; others fluted                 [695]
doubled-pipes, or blew on hollow horns,
and raucous trumpets, shaking bronze cymbals.
They sang three songs before the throne of the Father
dancing in choirs, three times passing brightly
through the lucid kingdom, and swooping down.                [700]
These flying groups came swiftly together
harmonizing many melody-lines—
as in Remus’s city, before it fell,
when the Tarpeian rock stood proud over all,
and Rome, the most beautiful, ruled the world,                [705]
a victorious consul returning from war,
would march in triumph to the high Capitol.
Even so with his airy step came the
the true son of God. Though, to mitigate
his Father's wrath, wont to punish mortals                       [710]
to pay them back for their crimes, he carried
as reminder the instruments of his
shameful death: copies of the beam and pole
to which he had been pinned, the sharp goad which
had beaten him, stained with blood on its straps;             [715]
the spear, and the cup hanging from a reed;
then there were the three large pointed spikes that
had pierced his feet and his hands; and the garland
of intertwining prickly thorns from his head.
A long lance carried banners of Rome’s Senate                   [720]
and lights set inside shells were suspended
from the shafts of pinewood spears raised high. Here
was the reed he, as king, had borne as sceptre—
each carried by a different celestial youth,
as they all rose to the heavenly palace.                             [725]
The disciples watched this procession, amazed,
following their king’s cloudy rise with their eyes
saw him raise his hands aloft in the serene.
Suddenly a voice came from the blushing sky:
“Be not afraid! Why stare up at high heaven?                  [730]
God has returned to his Olympian Father.”

-------

The ‘some’ mentioned at the beginning of this excerpt refers to the angels accompanying and celebrating Jesus's rise through the skies. In lines 703-707 Vida compares Jesus arriving back in heaven to a Roman triumphal processions: successful generals would parade through the streets of Rome, displaying the spoils (including, often, captured prisoners) to the citizens. The successful general ‘was drawn in procession through the city in a four-horse chariot, under the gaze of his peers and an applauding crowd, to the temple of Capitoline Jupiter. The spoils and captives of his victory led the way; his armies followed behind. Once at the Capitoline temple, he sacrificed two white oxen to Jupiter and laid tokens of his victory at Jupiter's feet, dedicating his victory to the Roman Senate, people, and gods.’ The Tarpeian Rock’ is that place, on its southward flank, where the Capitoline hill ends in a steep cliff.

Line 723 arundo means ‘reed’, but also a rod, and the shaft of an arrow. That Jesus was given this in place of a royal sceptre is not a detail in the Gospels: they [Matthew 27:29–30, Mark 15:17–19 and John 19:2–3] records that, his trial by Pilate and flagellation, Christ was mocked by the soldiers guarding him as king by (a) putting a purple robe on him, (b) placing a Crown of Thorns on his head, and (c) affixing a sign to his cross sarcastically calling him the King of the Jews (the whole INRI thing).

I don’t know enough about medieval and Renaissance Catholic dogma to know from where Vida gets the idea that Jesus carries replicas (not the actual items: duplices, ‘duplicates’, line 713) of his cross, nails, thorn-crown and so on up to heaven—to remind God the Father of his sacrifice and so defuse His wrath with respect to humanity (one might thing this reminder more likely to inflame the Father’s wrath, but there you go). Duplicates, presumably, because otherwise the sacred relics worshipped down on earth would all be fakes—the very idea!—although, once you go down this path, you find yourself wondering: why not, though? Why not take the originals to heaven and leave perfect copies on earth for humanity? Would that impair their function as devotional objects? If I take something and make a copy of it, then that's clearly a copy; but if God does it, surely it's another thing, not a copy of a thing? No?

Line 729’s ‘blushing’ is my rendering of Vida’s rutile aethra, which literally means ‘reddening sky’, as at dawn or sunset. With interesting exactness, Lewis and Scott define rutilus as ‘(yellowish) red; strawberry blonde’. Onward and, indeed, upward!

The image at the top of this post is John Singleton Copley's ‘Ascension’ (1775). Copley, born in Boston, Massachusetts, established himself as a portrait painter of the wealthy in colonial New England; but he moved to London in 1774, and never thereafter returned to America, which neatly avoided certain unpleasantnesses that happened on the other side of the Atlantic. In London he was at first successful, and branched out into larger group historical or religious canvases, like this one; although in the nineteenth-century he went out of fashion and died in debt. My favourite bit of this image is the angel's leather shoulder-strap, bottom right hand corner.

[Next: lines 732-781]

Book 6, lines 629-690

[Previous: lines 592-628]

After the miraculous draught of fishes, the disciples sit down to supper with Jesus one last time. He passes on responsibility for his flock to Peter.

Ut compressa fames, surgit rex optimus ipse,
confessusque Deum, sociis ita denique fatur:             [630]
“Pacem optate, viri, pacem laudate quieti;
salvete aeternùm, socii, aeternumque valete;
este meî memores: ego claro poscor Olympo.
Iamque adeô duris animos aptate, ferendo
omnia; nec propiùs saevos adiisse tyrannos                [635]
sittimor, atque duces affari, et vera monere.
Non vos maiestas soliorum, aut sceptra superba
terrificent regum, lucis nil hujus egentes.
Haud longè tum quœrendum, quœ tempora fandi,
Quis modus aptus: ego praesens adero omnibus, ora  [640]
vestra regens: dabitur verborum copia cuique.
Nec cœlo vires vos, et solamen ab alto
deficient: cùm sol decimo iubar aureus ortu
extulerit, Pater afflabit cœlestibus auris,
diffusumque animis numen divinitus addet:               [645]
praeside quo freti, reges rerumque potentes
nil veriti, nostrum vulgabitis undique nomen.
Tum sanctum sese genus aurea tollet ad astra;
densus agens veluti laxis se palmes habenis
luxuriat, foliisque simul fœtuque gravescit.                 [650]
Denique, cùm suprema dies illuxerit orbi,
omniaque eliciam patefactis ossa sepulcris,
atque iterum in lucem emergent, quos terra tegebat;
hanc vallem, densa hos implebunt agmina colles,
matres, atque viri, vixque hausta luce perempti.          [655]
Ipse ego iura dabo, mediaque in valle sedebo
quaesitor, vitas populorum et crimina pendens.
Vos etiam mecum bis senis sedibus ipsi
sublimes mortale genus censebitis unà;
bis senaeque tribus gentis tum vestra subibunt            [660]
arbitria, et vestros mirabitur orbis honores.
Interea, Petre, te (nulli pietate secundum
novi etenim) his, rerum summam clavumque tenentem,
praeficimus cunctis, ultro qui nostra sequuti
imperia: hoc te praecipuo insignimus honore:             [665]
tu regere, et populis parcens dare jura memento.
Summa tibi in gentes iam nunc concessa potestas:
iamque pios tege pace: voca sub signa rebelles.
Quemcunque in terris scelus exitiale perosus
admonitum frustra iusta devoveris ira,                        [670]
colloquio absterrens hominum, cœtuque piorum,
idem erit invisus cœlo; non ille beatis
sedibus aspiret, nisi tu placabilis idem,
dignatus veniâ, meliorem in pristina reddas.
Iamque adeô tibi concessum mortalibus aegris           [675]
claudere siderei portas ac pandere cœli.”

Talia mandabat, terras hominesque relinquens.
Sic natis moriturus oves et ovilia pastor
commendans caris, furta insidiasque luporum
edocet, et pecori contraria pascua monstrat.               [680]
Sic sociis aevo jam fessus nauta biremem
credit, inexpertosque docet varias maris oras,
et brevia, et syrtes, et navifragas Sirenas.
His animadversis, totius lucida circùm
palmiferi nubes collis capita ardua texit;                     [685]
et curva aethereis fulserunt littora flammis.
Interea totum exercent nova gaudia cœlum:
alituum cœlestûm acies sanctique volucres
dant manibus plausus, et multicoloribus alis,
instaurantque choros: fremitu aetheris atria fervent.  [690]

-------

Once they'd eaten, the great king stood up,
manifestly God, speaking to his comrades:               [630]
“Choose peace, men, praise peace's serenity;
hail forever, friends, and forever farewell;
remember me: I return to bright Olympus.
Ready your souls for hardship, by enduring
everything; don't fear going up to tyrants                   [635]
or leaders of men and explaining the truth.
Don't be afraid of thrones or the sceptres of
proud kings: for you are not of this world.
Don't waste time working out the right manner
of apt speaking: I will be with you, guiding                [640]
your words: everyone will be gifted eloquence.
The strength and solace of high heaven won't
desert you: when the sun's gleaming lamp rises
on the tenth day, my Father will breath down
heavenly breezes into all your souls:                            [645]
so you need not fear kings or worldly powers
but can proclaim our name among all peoples.
Then a saintly race will rise to the golden stars;
like a luxuriant vine stalk growing 
untrammelled, laden with leaves and fruit.                    [650]
And when the final day shines upon Earth's disc
I will summon all the bones from their graves,
they'll emerge into the light whom earth concealed;
a multitude to fill the valleys and hills,
women and men, babes who lived but briefly.               [655]
Then in that valley I will law down the law,
judge the lievs and crimes of all the people.
And you, seated on twelves thrones, will join me
looking down on mortal lives and judging them;
mankind's twelve tribes will submit to your                  [660]
arbitration, and the world will marvel at you.

So, Peter, to you (second to none in
piety) here, I give the keys to the kingdom,
I set you above all who follow our teaching
in power: granting you this special honour:                  [665]
rule the people and bring them to the law.
To you is give this supreme position:
give the pious peace: recall rebels to our banner.
Whoever you have admonished on earth
for their crimes, who in your just anger you                [670]
cut-off from the communities of men,
these same will be despised in heaven; no
blessings for him except that you forgive,
and restore him, improved, to his former lot.
For you have the power, for toiling mankind              [675]
to open or shut the starry doors of heaven.”

With this, he relinquished the world and men.
Thus does a shepherd on his deathbed pass his
sheep and fold to his loved sons, warning of theft
and wolves, the pastures harmful to his flock.              [680]
Thus does an ancient mariner give his craft
to his novice friends, telling them which shores,
are safe, of sandbanks and ship-wrecking Sirens.
With all these instructions had been given, a bright
cloud overlaid the palm-rich heights of the hill             [685]
and the curving shore gleamed with fire from above.
As this happened, joy passed through all heaven.
The angelic host rose through holy skies
on muticoloured wings, applauding with their hands,
singing choruses that echoed through heaven’s halls.    [690]

-------

Here Jesus passes on the papal keys: as a good Catholic, of course Vida makes a big deal of this moment (not forgetting that he was commissioned to write this entire epic by two Medici popes, inheritors of Saint Peter: Leo X and Clement VII). Although the actual bit of John's gospel that sanctions all this is brief:

So when they had eaten breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me more than these?”

He said to Him, “Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.”

He said to him, “Feed My lambs.”

He said to him again a second time, “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me?”

He said to Him, “Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.”

He said to him, “Tend My sheep.”

He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me?” Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time, “Do you love Me?”

And he said to Him, “Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You.”

Jesus said to him, “Feed My sheep. Most assuredly, I say to you, when you were younger, you girded yourself and walked where you wished; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish.” [John 21:15-18]

Jesus insisting Peter announce three times that he loved him, after he had previously denied him thrice, is a nice piece of amicable trolling, I think. The other things interesting here is that Vida, for the second time in this epic (here's the first, at the end of Book 1) makes glancing reference to the existence of the ongoing Protestant Reformation: here described in terms of a rebellion (line 668: rebellis [rebellō (“I wage war again, fight back”), from re- (“again, back”) + bellō (“I wage war”]. Jesus urges Peter to bring these people back to the signum, (the sign, mark, emblem, banner, flag).

Then there's a short linking passage moves us from Jesus meeting his disciples on earth to the final ‘episode’ on Vida’s epic—the ascension. First two short epic similes: he is like a dying shepherd (moriturus in line 678 means ‘about to die’, as in the famous Gladiatorial slogan) passing his flocks on to his sons, or like an aged mariner—you'll have to excuse the Coleridgeanism in my translation here—giving his ship to ‘inexperienced’ sailors (inexpertus, line 682) and warning them of dodgy coastlines and dangerous sirens. But then we're into several hundred lines of Jesus floating up into heaven with much gold and spangling. Since this is the climax of the entire epic, we'd expect Vida to make much of it, although, again, he's working with quite slender Gospel accounts:

So then, after the Lord had spoken to them, He was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word through the accompanying signs. Amen. [Mark 16:19-10:]

That's the end of Mark's gospel. Here's Luke:

And He led them out as far as Bethany, and He lifted up His hands and blessed them. Now it came to pass, while He blessed them, that He was parted from them and carried up into heaven. And they worshiped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple praising and blessing God. Amen. [Luke 24:50-53]

Luke specifies this as happening at Bethany, where Vida's account implies it is happening in Galilee somewhere; but that's a small difference I'm sure.

At the head of this post, Giotto's ‘Ascension’ (c.1305).

Book 6, lines 592-628

[Previous: lines 560-591]

Jesus appears to his disciples as they are fishing.

Talibus orantem Deus, et lux ipsa reliquit,
nunc hos, nunc adiens alios, et pectora firmans.
Nec priùs evasit mundi mortalibus oris,
quàm quater exoriens dena sol luce rediret.                    [595]
Fortè igitur Petrus et socii vada salsa secabant
remigiis lembum subigentes, dum sibi victum
arte parant solita, piscesque in gurgite captant.
Et iam per totam vano, quam longa! labore
defessi noctem frustra madefacta legebant                      [600]
retia; cùm iuvenem egregium videre liquentes
fluctifrago tractus è littore prospectantem:
nec primò agnovere Deum, divinaque membra,
quandoquidem se mortali celaverat ore.
Ipse dehinc tali compellans voce natantes:                     [605]
“Dextram, ait, affectate, viri: hùc appellite puppim:
hàc dabitur vanum non effudisse laborem.”
Nec mora, praeceptis parent, dextraque per undas
detorquent alacres cursum, nodosaque lina
proiiciunt : moti sonuit plaga cœrula ponti.                   [610]
Iamque senex tacito sociis Petrus innuit ore,
auxilioque vocat nutuque manuque silentes,
significans praedam innumeram: vix retia cuncti
plena trahunt: capti saliunt per vincula pisces.
Sensit loannes hic numen, et: “Heus,” prior inquit,      [615]
“o socii, non fallor, adest Deus, ille magister,
ille quidem: agnoseo divinos oris honores.
Laetitiam ut iactat vultuque oculisque decoris!”
Quod simul accepit Petrus, haud cunctatus, ab ipo
desiliit rate, et aequoreas se iecit in undas,                   [620]
quò regem, salsos per fluctus, primus adiret,
quamvis multa timens, gliscentibus aequore ventis.
Cetera deinde manus terrae advertuntur, et omnes
remivaga siccum cupidi tenuere carina.
Tum victu ut vires revocent, cerealia mensis                   [625]
dona onerant iussi; vivosque in littore pisces
unà omnes torrere parant, succensaque pruna
suggeritur circùm: teter petit aethera nidor.

-------

After he had spoken, God and the light passed
now to one, now another, firming their souls.
Nor did He depart the world's mortal shores,
until the sun had risen and set forty times.                       [595]
Later, Peter and his crew braved the brine
rowing their boat, providing themselves with food
in their usual manner by fishing in the deep.
Long labour had brought them nothing, through
the night, exhausted and soaking—empty                        [600]
nets. Then they saw a resplendent young man
on the shore, gazing across the clear waves.
At first they did not recognise the god
since he’d hidden his divinity in mortal form.
But his voice came booming across to them:                   [605]
“Steer right,” he said, “take your boat over there:
In that place you will not labour in vain.”
Without delay they obeyed, going right through
the waves briskly, tossing their knotted ropes
with a splash into the sky-blue, restless sea.                    [610]

Now aged Peter nodded to his comrades
in silence, gesturing with his quiet hands
that they should all draw up the nets—hard work!
They were so full, trapped fish wriggling free.
John sensed the numinous: “Listen,” he said,                   [615]
“Comrades! If I’m not wrong, God, our master,
is here, now: I recognize his divinity!
What joy shines from his beautiful face and eyes!”
As soon as Peter heard, without delay
he leapt straight into the ocean waves, wanting                 [620]
to be the first to swim across to the king,
though fearful of the winds that stirred the sea.
The others turned their skiff towards the shore
oaring their boat towards the dry land.
Then they readied their meal by heaping bread                  [625]
onto tables, and preparing the fish they’d caught
to be grilled over burning charcoal—the
strong odour wafted its way up to heaven.

-------

This episode is from John:

After these things Jesus showed Himself again to the disciples at the Sea of Tiberias, and in this way He showed Himself: Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of His disciples were together. Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.”

They said to him, “We are going with you also.” They went out and [a]immediately got into the boat, and that night they caught nothing. But when the morning had now come, Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Then Jesus said to them, “Children, have you any food?”

They answered Him, “No.”

And He said to them, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast, and now they were not able to draw it in because of the multitude of fish.

Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment (for he had removed it), and plunged into the sea. But the other disciples came in the little boat (for they were not far from land, but about two hundred cubits), dragging the net with fish. Then, as soon as they had come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish which you have just caught.”

Simon Peter went up and dragged the net to land, full of large fish, one hundred and fifty-three; and although there were so many, the net was not broken. Jesus said to them, “Come and eat breakfast.” Yet none of the disciples dared ask Him, “Who are You?”—knowing that it was the Lord. 1Jesus then came and took the bread and gave it to them, and likewise the fish. This is now the third time Jesus showed Himself to His disciples after He was raised from the dead. [John 21:1-14]

The unusually specific number of fish caught, 153, goes unmentioned by Vida, although it has excited theologians.

Scholars have long wondered whether the 153 great fishes in John 21:11 are to be taken for just that, 153 good-sized fishes, or whether the number 153 carries some other, special significance. If the latter, perhaps we shall never know with certainty what this special significance is, since the biblical writer cleverly concealed it from outsiders. Un- fortunately, with the passage of time, he has managed to exclude insiders as well. Christians, too, have completely missed 153's meaning, but, undeterred, they have employed great imaginative powers in various exegetical endeavors to rediscover the number's meaning. [Neil J. McEleney ‘153 Great Fishes (John 21,11)’, Biblica 58:3 (1977), 411]

Theories include the observation that 153 is a ‘triangular number’, and that ancient authorities identified 153 distinct types of fish in the rivers and seas of the world (this apparently goes back to Oppian—a poet writing 150 years after the Gospels were composed, so either he was referencing a much older, now lost other authority or else this is mere coincidence).

McEleney thinks the number is a cypher, which is a pleasantly Da Vinci Code/Imitation Game-y way of approaching the matter. He concludes that John is deliberately concealing the divine name of Christ behind the 153—although why the evangelist should feel the need to conceal something that is all over his narrative anyway is something of a puzzle to me.

Click to embiggen. ‘References to aspects of the miracle,’ says Wikipedia, ‘or to the general idea of being "fishers of men," can sometimes be recognised by uses of the number 153. For example, St Paul's School in London was founded in 1512 by John Colet to teach 153 poor men's children: although the school is now considerably larger, it still has 153 Foundation Scholars, who since the 19th century have worn a fish emblem on their watch-chains, or, more recently, in their button-holes.’

At top of the post: Raphael's 1515 painting of the miraculous draught of fishes.

[Next: lines 629-690]