[Previous: lines 436-510]
Having cured Jethro at the Bethesda Pool, Jesus visits the Temple and is not pleased by what he sees.
Parte alia ante fores templi mediaque ministri------------
ingenti strepitu testudine dona sedentes
vendebant, quae plebs aeratae imponeret arae,
lanigeras pecudes, taurosque, paresque columbas,
voti ut quisque reus, rerumque ut copia cuique. [515]
Quos simul atque heros ingressus vidit, et omnem
discursu et clamore locum resonare profano,
haud tulit, et verbis graviter commotus acerbis
reppulit, intortum vibrans per terga flagellum,
verberaque insonuit, sacroque a limine abegit. [520]
Qualis ubi arctoïs Boreas erupit ab antris,
aereos rapido perverrens turbine campos,
it cœlo ferus, et piceas toto aethere nubes
insequitur: dant victa locum, et cava nubila cedunt.
“Sacra deo domus haec,” inquit, “haec numinis aedes: [525]
vos autem versam indignos scelerastis in usus.
Sanguine respersum est aras animaque litatum
hactenus antiquis concesso more sacrorum:
Indultum satis atque ovium iam caedis abunde est.
Nunc pater omnipotens pecudum volucrumque cruori [530]
parcere vos posthac iubet, ac fumantibus extis.
Vos diversa manent mutatis orgia sacris.
Discite iustitiam tantùm, puraque litate
mente, deumque piis precibus placate volentem.
Hi vestri ritus, ea deinde piacula sunto.” [535]
Sic ait, et supplex demisso poplite ad aram
cernuus arcana prece patris numen adorat.
Iamque sacerdotum primis exarserat ingens
tristi in corde dolor, flammaeque iraeque coquebant.
Nec novus hic primùm furor, haec odia aspera surgunt. [540]
Antiquae irarum causae, antiquique dolores
haudquaquam exciderant animis, fixique manebant.
Non tamen hic ausi sunt illum surgere contra;
sed veriti ultricem plebem, turbamque sequentum,
excessere adytis, nequicquam indigna minati. [545]
Quales nocte lupi stabulis cùm forte reclusis
appetiere gregem; verùm custodia pernox
obstitit, et canibus vocalibus inde revulsit:
olli (dira fames stimulis agit intus) abacti
cedunt, et montes nequicquam ululatibus implent. [550]
Elsewhere in the city the temple ministers------------
were sitting in the portico before its doors
selling things, offerings for the bronze altar,
from woolly cattle and bulls to pairs of doves,
for each man’s votive need, fitting his sin and means. [515]
When the hero went in and saw all this hustle
haggling and clamour profaning that holy place,
he was displeased, threw out sharp words, shaking
in revulsion, struck at their backs with a flail,
driving them to the door with his whiplash snap— [520]
just as Boreas bursts from his arctic caves, and
goes whirling swift through the countries of the air
rushing at the sky and pitching fog away
making the cloudscapes hollow-out and vanish.
“This house is sacred to God,” he said, “the Lord’s home: [525]
but you defile it, perverting it to base use.
Blood has been spilled on these altars, you have
worshipped as your ancestors permitted—until now!
Enough! Sufficient sheep’s blood has been shed here.
Now the Father commands you leave the blood of [530]
birds and sheep, spare their smoking entrails.
Your sacred rites will hereafter suffer change.
Now study righteousness, worship with a pure
mind, placate merciful God with devout prayer.
Let these be your rites and atoning sacrifice.” [535]
He spoke, and then bent his knee before the altar
and prayed in silence to his divine father.
At this, a great anger consumed the priesthood
in their aggrieved hearts, burning with fury.
Nor was this the first time they had felt such rage. [540]
Theirs was an old anger, an old grievance
that the passage of time had not diminished.
They could not rise up against him at that moment,
fearing the reprisals of his followers
so they slunk from the temple, muttering revenge. [545]
They were like wolves at night seeing the stable
door left open, hungry, eyeing the livestock within
yet kept at bay by the barking of the dogs
and so (though famine pinches at them) they abate
retreat, and wreathe the hills in their howling. [550]
The gospel narrative of this famous scene occurs near the end of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew 21:12–17, Mark 11:15–19, and Luke 19:45–48) and near the beginnng in the Gospel of John (at John 2:13–16): ‘and making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father's house a house of trade”’ is John's account; or as Matthew puts it, with slightly more bite: ‘and Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and the seats of them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.’
Vida, however, doesn't mention money-changers. Instead the emphasis here is on animal sacrifice as such, and Christ's anger is less that the temple has become a market and more that God no longer wants animals to be sacrificed at all. To focalise the idea that Christ was enraged specifically by money-changers—and by extension, money-lenders—is to suggest that the Christian church ought to distance itself from money as such (there are plenty of sections of gospel that would support such a reading of course), to concentrate on spiritual rather than material wealth, even perhaps to eschew all money altogether. But it's hard to run an actual Church, as an actual organisation in material society, without money; and Vida may be presumed not to have thought money altogether evil (there are other sections of the gospel that support this reading, of course). It's not an impossible hypothesis that he downplays the money angle here so as not to undermine the conspicuous, and often conspicuously displayed, wealth of the church of which he was himself an officer. By the same token, this may be merely me betraying my culturally-Protestant biases. I do wonder, if someone were to write a cultural history of the trope of ‘Jesus cleansing the temple’ in western art, whether there would be a divide between Protestant artists stressing the money-lender side, and Catholics being more interested in cows and chickens. I don't know of any such history, but would be interested to read it.
Talking of which: the image at the head of this post is ‘Christ driving the money changers from the temple’ (1550s) by Jan Sanders van Hemessen. Click to embiggen.
[Next: lines 551-581]
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