Book 3, lines 254-276

[Previous: lines 189-253]

After spending their wedding night in separate rooms, Joseph rejoins Mary in the morning. Now read on!

“Iamque dies, pulsis tenebris, invecta rubebat,
et face sol rosea nigras disjecerat umbras.                      [255]
Corripio è stratis artus sponsamque reviso.
Vix thalami impuleram bipatentes cardine portas,
cum lux ecce oculis ingens offusa repente.
Collucent summi radiis laquearia tecti,
collucentque trabes, visumque ardere cubile.                  [260]
Ipsa autem thalami in medio sedet aurea virgo
attonitae similis: nec enim me multa rogantem
dignatur; nihil illa meo sermone movetur.
Tantùm fixa oculos cœlo palmasque tenebat,
aut stellae similis, aut puniceae aurorae.                        [265]
O illa à solita quantum mutata figura!
Quantus honos oculis, quantus decor additus ori!
Haud aliter, quàm cùm simulacrum excidit acernum
artificis manus è sylvis, in sede locandum
sacrata, quod plebs dehinc supplex omnis adoret,           [270]
si, postquam effigiem poliens trunco extudit arte,
extremum superimposito decus induat auro.
Immotam penitus circumdat lucida nubes
solis inardescens radiis; stellaeque videntur
lucentes capiti circum aurea tempora pasci;                   [275]
sub pedibusque Deae lumen dare candida luna.

------------

“Now day, pulsing the darkness back, glowed red
as the sun’s roseate torch banished black shadow.          [255]
I rose from my bed and went through to my wife.
I had no sooner opened the doors to her room
than my eyes were blasted with a riot of light:
from floor to the fine-panelled ceiling—light
shining everywhere, blazing beams of light.                   [260]
The virgin sat, as if golden, in the midst
a woman amazed! She did not answer my
questions, or appeared at all moved by my words,
but fixed her eyes heavenward and raised her hands—
they looked like stars, or the scarlet of dawn.                  [265]
How changed she was from what she'd been before!
What noble eyes, what new beauty in her face!
She was like a statue carved from maple wood
shaped by the sculptor in woodland and brought
to the temple for ordinary folk to adore:                         [270]
once he has shaped it with skill and polished
it smooth he finishes by adorning it with gold.
She, motionless, was surrounded by a lucid
cloud of ardent sunlight; stars were visible
shining in gold and flocking around her head;                 [275]
her goddess feet stood on a bright white moon.

------------

A few notes on the Latin here, followed by some brief thoughts on this—remarkable, I think—portrait of newly-married, still-virgin Mary as a goddess of light. So: line 268’s ‘she was like a statue carved from maple wood’ is from Vergil, who describes the Trojan horse as trabibus contextus acernis , ‘a structure compacted of maple wood’ [Aeneid 2:112].

Then there are the stars mentioned in lines 274-75: stellaeque videntur/lucentes capiti circum aurea tempora pasci, ‘stars of shining gold could be seen X-ing around her head’. What’s X? The Latin is pasci, and pasco means: ‘I feed, nourish, maintain, support. I pasture, feed, supply, cultivate (of animals).’ It also means ‘I tend to as a shepherd or pastor; cherish, nourish, care for, feed spiritually.’ pasco is the root behind the words pastor, pastoral and all that. The Vulgate version of Psalm 22:1 is Dominus pascit me et nihil mihi dēerit, ‘the Lord is my shepherd and nothing shall I want’ (literally, “The Lord tends me as a shepherd and nothing for me will be lacking.”) Knowing that, you can see why Gardner translates this phrase ‘blazing stars seemed to graze her temples’, but without the linguistic context I fear this makes it sound as though they’re scraping her head with their sharp points, raising blood. My translation goes a different way.

Finally there's line 259’s ‘laquearia’, which is (once again) Vergilian: Dido’s fancy palace has just such a fancy ceiling in Aeneid 1:726. It means, specifically, a coffered ceiling: and it has a special place in my heart because Eliot picked it up and used it in The Waste Land.

l word ‘laquearia’ in the description of the luxurious room at the start of ‘A Game of Chess’, Eliot in his note refers to Virgil's description of Dido's palace and her enraptured reception of Aeneas at the end of Book I: dependent lychni laquearibus aureis I incensi et noctem flammis funalia vincunt (I. 726). Eliot appears to have been preoccupied with the word ‘laquearia’, no doubt because of its musicality, its feeling of languorous suavity, for by the strictest standards the word is redundant: ‘her strange synthetic perfumes . . . Flung their smoke into the laquearia,/Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling’. ‘Laquearia’ is redundant because it means a coffered, or panelled, ceiling. … other parallels between 'A Game of Chess' and the ending of Aeneid I cannot be mere coincidence. The artificial light of Dido's palace, the lighted lamps and the gold and the flaming torches already quoted, gleams and glimmers in the atmosphere of the room occupied by the woman on her ‘burnished throne’: ‘doubled the flames’, ‘reflecting light’, ‘the glitter of her jewels’, ‘the prolonged candle-flames’, and further down the page ‘the firelight’ and the hair ‘spread out in fiery points’. [Gareth Reeves, ‘The Waste Land and the Aeneid’, Modern Language Review 82:3 (1987), 556]

Not that Eliot had ever read Vida, of course. But if we set aside the improbability that this poor Gallilean Jew just happened to live in a house with a ceiling as fine as Dido’s Carthaginian palace, we’re left with a poet working-in words to stress Mary’s beauty, allure, royalty and, by the end, manifest divinity.

So far as that goes, this passage—well-written, I think, with sharply controlled vividness that moves from the mundanity of line 256 (‘I rose from my bed and went through to my wife’) into its kitsch dazzlefield of light and brightness at the end—is an example of what Protestants call ‘Mariolatry’. My understanding, though I’m no expert on Catholicism, is that Catholics tend to find that phrase, with its echoes of ‘idolatry’, offensive. Of course it's hard to deny that practices of Marian veneration and devotion are more prominent in Catholic than Protestant traditions. I’m not sure I understand why that should be (by which I mean: I can't see why Protestants shouldn't be drawn to more prominent veneration of Mary than seems to be the actual case). But here we are.

Mary’s importance grew steadily through the middles ages. The Festival of the Conception, first celebrated at Lyons in 1139, became an increasingly big deal, and by the early 16th-century her cultus was crucial for the church. All the details in Vida’s picture, here, relate to that. Take, for example the moon on which she is standing in the last line of this passage. Here is Father Johann Roten, S.M.:

The so called Luna, half moon, or sickle of the moon, also waning and waxing moon, is a sign of fertility, related to life and death, and thus a popular symbol in many religions. It pinpoints changing seasons, ebb and tide (and related inundations as harbingers of fertility), and the feminine menstrual cycle. The half moon was the attribute of Luna and more specifically of Selene. It was later transferred to Diana (Artemis), offspring of the earth mother, and known not only as virgin but also as protectress of the newborn and symbol of fertility in her own right. Biblical references use the moon symbol to highlight cosmic events, divine epiphanies and the ephemeral nature of human life and history (see, for example, Isaiah 30,26; 60,19; Revelations 21,23). Patristic times saw in the symbol of the moon, or the mysterium lunae, i.e. the three phases of the moon: dying (waning), generating (waxing) and giving birth (full moon) a valid representation of the Church (ecclesia). Ecclesia is virginal and "dying" in the encounter with Christ, the bridegroom; she is maternal and lifegiving in her spousal relation with the redeemer, and resplendent in her grace-filled existence.

By the late middle ages, as Father Roten explains, this moon had acquired a whole patina of theological exegesis: the moon becomes ‘the waning Old Testament which is regarded, simultaneously, as a promise of the New Testament.’ There is also a connection made with the otherwise unnamed woman in Revelation 12 who is described as clothed with the sun and standing on a crescent moon:

There exists, beginning around 1348, a type of Marian sculpture called Madonna standing on the crescent moon (Mondsichel-Madonna) where the reference to the apocalyptic woman is largely dissociated from the use of the moon symbol (for example, wooden sculpture, Trier, 1480) … The crescent appears under Mary's feet in paintings of the Assumption (Meister of the Luzien-Legende, 1485) and signifies her glory and victory over time and space. The most important application of the moon symbol occurred in representations of the Immaculate Conception. The obvious significance of victory over sin is enriched with the ideas of beauty and purity (pulchra ut luna, Litanies of Loreto) (see for example, Francesco Vanni, Altar of the Immaculate Conception, Montalcino, 1588). During baroque times we can observe frequent combinations of the Immaculata motif with that of Our Lady of Victory. In some of these paintings or sculptures Mary stands on a globe combined with the crescent moon.

All fascinating stuff. The image at the head of this post is a case in point: it's from Gradual made in Nuremberg, 1507-1510 (so, around the time Vida began working on his poem), presently in the Morgan Library and Museum. And here, to cap things off, is a rather handsome Murillo:

[Next: lines 277-396]

Book 3, lines 189-253

[Previous: lines 168-188]

Joseph is narrating. A mysterious voice has instructed the reluctant Mary to marry, and many eligible young men assemble at her house, hoping to woo her. Elderly Joseph goes too, but without such hope. Now read on!

“Ecce autem, ut prœsens aderat quoque pronuba, cœtu
in medio Anna parens, subito correpta furore,                 [190]
plena Deo, tota (visu venerabile) in aede
bacchatur, tollitque ingentem cœlo ululatum.
Unum in me conversa oculos, me fertur in unum,
nil minus hoc ducentem animo, nil tale verentem;
corripiensque manu: ‘a Solus tu posceris,’ inquit.            [195]
‘Annuit hoc uni superûm tibi connubium rex.’
Obstupuere omnes: nec tune ex agmine tanto
exsortem quisquam seniori invidit honorem.
Ipse, texi quôd eram seris minùs integer annis,
multa recusabam; multa hue venisse pigebat.                   [200]

Aequales aderant fidi, simul et renuentem
hortari, atque animum mihi blandis addere dictis.
Cedo igitur victus, tandemque uxorius illam
accedo, et lacrymans lacrymantem ad limina duco.

“Et iam nox aderat stellis fulgentibus apta,                      [205]
suffundens umbras mundo nigrantibus alis.
Secretis thalamis pariter succedimus ambo.
Flebat sponsa: solum lacrymis iuxtà omne madebat,
ac veluti, cùm vere subest uberrimus humor
arboribus, lentae vitis si forte cacumen                             [210]
falce putans stirpem feriat malè providus unca
agricola, immeritam et violârit vulnere matrem.
Ipse aderam, et dictis solabar mitibus aegram,
virginis haud cupidus primum decerpere florem.
Cùm sic longa trahens suspiria pectore ab imo est           [215]
orsa loqui: ‘Non relligio mihi vana suasit,
et thalamos odisse, et virginitatis amorem
aeternum colere. Intus agit vis aetheris intus,
longaevam responsa licèt contraria matrem
sollicitent, vatumque minae; sunt et mea contra               [220]
vatum iussa mihi, nulli succumbere labi,
nullis virgineam tedis summittere mentem.
Antè retro primos properet revolutus ad ortus
Jordanis, sistantque suos vaga sidera cursus!’
Haec ait, inque genas stillantes undique honestae             [215]
ex oculis simul incipiunt turgescere gemmae.

“Nec mora; deinde mihi insinuans quatit ima repente
ossa timor; genua aegra labant; nox plurima oborta
ante oculos: ter sum conatus pauca profari;
ter frustrata sono lingua est, nec verba sequuta.                [230]
Tum quoque vox audita: ‘Toro thalamisque paratis
parce; tamen concessa tibi connubia serva.’
Exurgo, atque oculos iam dudum in virgine fixus
horrenda, tali sum tandem voce loquutus:
‘Quis mihi te, virgo, invito conjunxit olympo?                    [235]
Quis tantis (non hos equidem quaesivi hymenaeos)
immeritum implicuit monstris? haud talia quondam
praedixit puero genitor ludibria vates,
iam senior vates idem, templique sacerdos.
Ille quidem aut nullos thalamos, mihi nulla manere           [240]
connubia, aut certèclarum fore me inde canebat.
Verùm age, quae menti surgat sententia pandam:
quandoquidem Superi mihi te iunxere, sed iidem
absterrent monstris; licet, et mox usque licebit
virgineum serves intacto corpore florem.                            [245]
Haud tamen ipse ausim injussus dissolvere sacri
connubii vincla ista: domo degemus eadem,
ipse tibi ut genitor, mihi tu ceu filia semper;
teque adeô casus iam nunc complector in omnes.
Hoc tua relligio velit, hoc mea serior aetas.’                     [250]
Ânnuit his, aliaque domûs in parte puella
secubuit: mitto totam quœ monstra per illam
sum passus, quàm mira horrens insomnia, noctem.”

------------

“But, now—amazing!—the matron of honour,
Anna, started dancing wildly in their midst,                      [190]
moved by God (venerable sight!) through the house
revelling and lifting her voice to heaven.
On me alone she turned her eye—just me—
though I had not expected or hoped for it.
She took my hand: ‘it’s only you,’ she said.                       [195]
‘The king of heaven has chosen you for this.’
Everyone was amazed: though none there begrudged
an old man his honour—more than I deserve!
I tried to withdraw, on account of my age
and poor health; stung that I’d even gone there.                 [200]
But good men of my own age encouraged me
inspiring my soul with kind and faithful words.
Beaten at last, I yielded. Weeping I led
my betrothed, herself weeping, over the threshold.

“Soon the star-glittery night spread its wings                    [205]
pouring out black shadows over the world.
We went together to our secluded bedroom.
My wife wept; the ground was wet with her tears,
as when the abundant sap rises in spring
through the trees, and, pruning a winding vine                 [210]
up top, a farmer cuts the trunk with his scythe
accidentally hurting the mother tree too.
I stood near her and consoled the poor girl:
I had no desire to take her maidenhood!
Eventually, after many long sighs,                                    [215]
she spoke: ‘it is not empty superstition,
that makes me hate marriage and want to remain
virgin forever. Inside, a heavenly
inwardness moves me. Though my mother has her
own prophetic prompts, mine are contrary to hers,           [220]
urging me to abdure any stain and resist
all pressure to sacrifice virginity to marriage.
Sooner I would see flow back to its source
the river Jordan, or stars cease in their arcs!’
She spoke, and to show her sincerity, wept                      [215]
tears like jewels spilling out over her cheeks.

“Suddenly, a great fear took hold of me
bone-deep; my knees grew weak; night swamped
my eyes: three times I tried my best to speak;
three times I could make no sound, not one word.         [230]
Then I heard someone: ‘The bridal bed and couch—
spare it! But preserve your permitted marriage.’
Getting up, I fixed my eyes on this woman:
terrifying! Until finally I spoke:
‘Who has joined us, virgin, against heaven’s will?         [235]
Who (for I never sought this wedding day) has
implicated me in this monstrousness? This
was not what my old father, a seer, prophesied
as a senior priest of the temple when I was a boy:
he said I should never enter into marriage                        [240]
—or else that my marriage would make me famous.
Come then: I will tell you what I’ve decided
since the powers above have joined us, scaring
us with terrible portents; now and always
you shall preserve intact your virginity.                            [245]
But I wouldn’t dare dissolve these sacred wedding
bonds: we will live together in the same house,
me as your father, you as daughter, always.
In that sense that I embrace you, now and always.
Your piety, and my advanced years, require it.’                 [250]
She agreed, and slept elsewhere in the house.
I will say nothing of the monstrous portents
I saw, shaking and insomniac, that night.”

------------

There's something strange, even a little creepy, about this episode. It is doctrinally sound, of course, by the standards early Renaissance Catholicism: Jewish marriage had two phases, a pre-consummation betrothal and a post-consummation actual marriage. The idea is that Joseph contracts the former, and so is properly married to Mary, but doesn't follow-through on the latter; thus was the virginity of Mary preserved. This was considered a very important matter by the Church (and, so far as I understand modern Catholicism, still is today) although for the life of me I can't see why. Nonetheless, Vida has to write a scene in which a horrible old geezer marries a beautiful girl young enough to be his daughter, with her going off with him expecting to have to have sex.

There is no sex, of course; although by the same token sex is hardly purged from this scene. On the contrary, it is rather egregiously present, throughout the rather breathless, claustrophobic intimacy of this scene: the reiterated stress on night, all the weeping—so many fluids! Tears pouring from all the eyes, making the floor wet, and compared in that simile in lines 209-212 to a ‘mother tree’ wounded by a carelessly thrust sickle, and pouring out sticky sap. All very sexual, even as the passage repeatedly repudiates both the specific idea that Joseph feels any sexual desire for Mary, and the compatibility of sex and religion more generally. It's all a bit doth-deny-too-much, and the more hysterical and insistent it becomes the less we believe it.

It’s clearly ‘about’ sex, in that distinctive and surprisingly popular idiom in which artists talk about sex by not talking about sex, or by specifically repudiating sex. The passage starts with Saint Anne’s crazy dance about the house, filled with libidinal bacchanal (quite specifically: bacchatur) ecstasy—Vida’s lines:

Ecce autem, ut prœsens aderat quoque pronuba, cœtu
in medio Anna parens, subito correpta furore,
plena Deo, tota (visu venerabile) in aede
bacchatur, tollitque ingentem cœlo ululatum.

All at once the girl's mother, Anna, who was also present as a matron of honour, was inspired by God to dance madly through the house—a holy sight!—and raise a great noise to heaven. [Gardner's translation]

... draws on Vergil's account of the Sybil's crazy dance in Book 6 of the Aeneid. This moment in Vergil's poem is prophetic (in that Aeneas will go on into the underworld and so see the future), and divinely-inspired, since the Sybil's power comes from Apollo. But Vergil's dance sees the Sybil ridden by the god, in a desperate, quasi-sexual frenzy:

                              Cumaea Sibylla
horrendas canit ambages antroque remugit,
obscuris vera involvens: ea frena furenti
concutit, et stimulos sub pectore vertit Apollo,
... furor et rabida ora. [Aeneid 6:98-102]

The Cumaean Sybil sings from the shrine her dreadful riddles and booms from her cave, hiding truth in darkness; and as she does so, Apollo shakes the reins as she rages, strikes her with the goad under her breast, frenzied and raving.

That's a strange kind of intertext, it seems to me.

And then there are the words applies to Mary herself, after Joseph's night of nonconsummation: in lines 233-34 he calls her virgina horrenda, ‘horrendous virgin’ (horrendus means ‘horrible, horrendous’, from horreō ‘dread, be afraid of’; Gardner goes with ‘awe-inspiring young woman’). A few lines later he calls his wedding a ‘monster’, monstrum: ‘a divine portent, an ill-omen’, something shown to us (from moneo, to show: from this root we get the French montre, and the English demonstrate). But what is shown to us, here, is precisely something not happening, the opposite of a consummation—a dysummation, perhaps.

That said, I have to concede that this is a rather twenty-first century way of reading this passage. Historicising the text is to understand how energetically questions of sexual connection and consent in marriage were being debating across the medieval and early Renaissance period. Irven M. Resnick discusses the growth of what he calls ‘consent theory’ in this era. Ideas of marriage began to change by the early middle ages, partly through pressure from the church. There was an increasing movement to outlaw and prevent clerical marriages, so as to distinguish the spiritual union of churchmen from the physical unions of the laity. As part of this movement, the idea of female consent, in a marital and therefore sexual sense, became more important than it had been before. Prior to this

marriages, at least among the members of the nobility, were usually arranged for economic or political advantage. Great families agreed upon some mutual benefit, and the two parties were brought together. The families exchanged promises, con- cluded a marriage agreement or pact, and provided a dowry or bride-price. Then the couple completed or consummated the marriage by sexual union, for marriage's primary purpose was to provide for the continuation and security of the noble house. The desires of the betrothed couple were almost irrelevant. A bride's mere presence at the desponsatio or betrothal was construed as a form of implied consent. Her explicit consent was useful but, in its absence, authorities simply assumed her obedience to paternal command. [Resnick, ‘Marriage in Medieval Culture: Consent Theory and the Case of Joseph and Mary’, Church History, 69:2 (2000), 352]

Resnick suggests that insisting upon consent as crucial in marriage amounted to a power-grab by the church:

Since marriage was viewed by churchmen as a sacrament and an act of religious significance, it was important to church authorities to gain control of the social institution as well. A way of asserting its control was to substitute for customary forms defining marriage an alternative model ... the proposal of the consent of the parties themselves as an efficient cause of marriage. This ecclesiastical model, rooted in Roman law, would in effect limit the power of heads of families. Since it was the consent of the two parties to marriage that was essential, parental approval might be desirable but not necessary. As a result, the economic and social outcomes for which marriages had been arranged became increasingly uncertain. At the same time, a new or renewed emphasis on consent as the constitutive element in marriage also had the (perhaps unintended) effect of establishing a certain measure of equality between the prospective bride and bridegroom, since each one was required to agree to the union. Further, if consent—an internal disposition of the will—was the efficient cause of marriage, then to the extent that church authorities could reserve determinations of consent for ecclesiastical jurisdiction, they could extend their control over Christian marriage and society.

Gardner shows how the peculiar circumstances of Joseph and Mary's marriage focused these concerns. There was, on the one hand, an increasingly widespread sense that a sexless marriage, a spiritual union between husband and wife, was superior to a carnal marriage (as Jesus is married to his church; as Joseph was married to Mary). ‘Thus Peter Abelard viewed the marriage of Joseph and Mary as a positive model, established by consent alone apart from sexual relations ... Ambrose advanced the idea that marriage consisted in the mutual agreement of the couple, not in their carnal copulation, while Augustine added that the bond of matrimony remained permanent even when the couple had agreed to abstain forever from the carnal enjoyment of the marriage bed.’ On the other hand, encouraging members of the laity to live in such unions would tend to erode the difference between clerics and ordinary people. And that would never do.

One way you could be sure that sex had taken place in a marriage was the birth of a child (‘for a consummation theory, children provided an objective sign of consent—just as their absence might provide grounds to question the consensual basis of the marriage-thereby establishing a convenient harmony between the needs of aristocratic families and theological requirements’, notes Resnick). Well: Joseph and Mary had a child, a miraculous one. A visible embodiment of consent, the sexless act of sex, consummation in its purest form.

Viewed from this angle, Vida's intense focus in this (quite lengthy) passage becomes about consent as such: becomes, that is, about the opacity of consent, given or not-given in the privacy of a secluded marriage bed, and yet absolutely necessary. Becomes about the world-shaking implications of consent being solicited and offered. It's about what is demonstrated, the monstrosity of something shown by being hidden, of being offered by being withheld; and about the terror, the sexual terror, of the man caught in this complicated web of commitment and consent.

The image at the top is one of the stained glass windows at the Church of Saint William in Round Rock: The Betrothal of Mary and Joseph.

[Next: lines 254-276]

Book 3, lines 168-188

[Previous: lines 105-167]

Joseph is narrating. A heavenly voice has commanded Mary to marry. Now read on!

“Dum spes ambiguae, dum turba ignara futuri,
in secreta domûs omnes evasimus altae
tecta, ubi Ioachides numen placare solebat                  [170]
virginis ore pater: fuit ara veterrima, nostrae
quam gentis primi posuere, metuque sacratam
ter centum totos atavi coluere per annos.
Hanc humiles circum, et prostrati fundimur omnes,
orantes pacem superos, superûmque parentem,           [175]
det signum cœlo placidus quem poscat ab alto.
In medio astabat lacrymans pulcherrima virgo,
flaventes effusa comas, demissaque largo
rorantes oculos fletu: pudor ora pererrans
cana rosis veluti miscebat lilia rubris.                          [180]
Qualis virgineos ubi lavit in aequore vultus
luna recens, stellis latè comitantibus, orta,
ingreditur gracili cœli per cœrula cornu:
talis erat virgo, juvenum stipata corona,
multa Deum ver bis testata, Deique ministros               [185]
aligeros, non sponte suâ hœc ad munera flecti.
Hortatur pavidam pater, et lacrymantia tergit
lumina, iussa docens Superûm, simul oscula libat.”

------------

“Whilst their hopes were unclear, their future open,
we all went back to the high-roofed house where
Joachim, the girl's father, offered sacrifices to God       [170]
and prayed. He had an ancient altar, one of
the first ever built in our nation, sanctified
with awe by three centuries of forefathers.
Humbly kneeling around this we poured out
libation and prayed to higher powers                              [175]
for peace, and a sign who the husband should be.
The virgin stood, tearful, in the middle,
her hair dishevelled, her big eyes downcast
and weeping: modesty flushed across her
pale visage like roses mingled among lilies.                   [180]
As when, washing her maiden face in fresh waters,
the new moon, surrounded everywhere by stars
rises through the dark blue crowned with slender horns;
even so did she, surrounded by young men,
swear before God and his two-winged messengers         [185]
that she did not willingly submit to this duty.
Her father wiped the scared girl’s tears away
and commended God’s commandments with a kiss.”

------------

The altar in Joachim’s house in line 172 is metuque sacratama—Gardner translates as ‘an ancient altar, built by remote ancestors and consecrated in fear’, which has an odd vibe; for although metus can mean ‘fear, dread’ is also means ‘awe’ which is surely what’s indicated here.

Mary’s maidenly blush, pudor ora pererrans/cana rosis veluti miscebat lilia rubris, ‘a blush of modesty crossed her pale face, like red roses among the lilies’, is adapted from Vergil’s description of Lavinia’s blush:

Indum sanguineo veluti violaverit ostro
siquis ebur, aut mixta rubent ubi lilia multa
alba rosa: talis virgo dabat ore colores. [Aeneid 12:67-69]

‘As when someone stains Indian ivory with crimson dye, or white lilies blush when mingled with many a rose—such hues her maiden features showed’

Very nice I'm sure, but I’m more struck, personally, by the lovely moon simile that follows:

Qualis virgineos ubi lavit in aequore vultus
luna recens, stellis latè comitantibus, orta,
ingreditur gracili cœli per cœrula cornu. [Christiad, 3:181-83]

Gardner’s prose version of this is: ‘as when the new moon, surrounded by stars, bathes its virginal face in a stream and rises through the deep-blue heavens with delicate horns …’

This simile doesn’t have a direct Vergilian prototype, I think; although there’s certainly a lot of moon imagery in the Aeneid: as when Achaemenides recalls waiting for rescue from the Cyclop’s cave in Book 3 and seeing not once but three times the moon's horns fill with light: tertia iam lunae se cornua lumine complent [3.645]—three months, he means, but it’s a shimmering image. Or else when Aeneas glimpses Dido in the underworld ‘as one sees, or thinks he sees, the new moon through the clouds’ obscuram qualem primo qui surgere mense aut vidět/aut vidisse putat per nubila lunam [6.453-4].

I think this image pays forward into Milton, one of many instances where Paradise Lost draws on Vida.

Queen of Heav'n, with crescent Horns;
To whose bright Image nightly by the Moon
Sidonian Virgins paid thir Vows and Songs, [PL, 1:439-41]

Sidonia is Phoenicia, although Milton in the very next lines adds that this Astartean lunar goddess was ‘in Sion also not unsung’. Then, three books later, there are these luminous lines, drawn like a discrete curtain by Milton to distract us from dwelling too lubriciously on the thought that Adam and Eve have retired to bed for, we assume, some prelapsarian sex:

…. now glow'd the Firmament
With living Saphirs: Hesperus that led
The starrie Host, rode brightest, till the Moon
Rising in clouded Majestie, at length
Apparent Queen unvaild her peerless light,
And o're the dark her Silver Mantle threw. [PL 4:604-9]

I'm sure I'm getting old and soppy, but that really does strike me as very beautiful poetry.

The image at the top is Cristoforo de Predis's Morte del Sole, della Luna e caduta delle stelle, to be found in Miniatura da Storie di San Gioachino, Sant'Anna, di Maria Vergine, di Gesù, del Battista e della fine del mondo (1476). It's presently in the Biblioteca nazionale di Torino.

[Next: lines 189-253]

Book 3, lines 105-167

[Previous: lines 73-104]

Joseph explains his family tree and history to Pilate.

Dixerat: ille igitur missa formidine cœpit:                         [105]
“Dicam equidem; nec, dux, tibi magna arcana silebo.
Sed, quando genus insedit cognoscere nostrum,
id primum; neque te suspensum ambage tenebo.
Quamvis res inopes opera ad fabrilia versum
exercent, tamen est mihi regum a stirpe propago,              [110]
admotumque genus superis, clarique parentes.
Principio innumerae pater Abras gentis, et auctor
maximus ille tuas non, ut reor, effugit aures:
qui generi legesque tulit, moremque sacrorum.
Isacon hic dedit: Isacides Jacobus ab illo;                         [115]
bis senos qui mox proceres genuit, quibus omnis
nostra domos in bis senas gens secta tribusque est.
Hos inter pietate olim quàm major Iudas,
tam sese sobole egregia super extulit omnes;
Iudaeamque suo dixit de nomine terram.                             [120]
Hinc (licèt in medio series longissima patrum)
Davides ortus, regum pater, unde meorum
per bis septem exit genus actum ab origine reges.
Verùm longe aliud juveni genus: ille parentes
quamvis mortales mortalibus editus oris                              [125]
dignatur, tamen est Divo cœlestis origo,
estque Deo genitore satus, gaudetque parente,
Cui mare velivolum, cui tellus paret, et aether.
Illum aut em aereas in luminis edidit auras
nunquam mixta viro mulier; fœtaeque remansit                    [130]
virginitas, olim ut vates cecinere futurum.
Nam pater omnipotens fœcunda desuper aura
afflatam implevit; tuinuit divinitus alvus.
Quôd verô genitor vulgo sum creditus ipse;
haud ita res, mihique alma parens accredita tantùm,           [135]
quicum animi posset curas durumque laborem
partiri; mox me, famae niveoque pudori
permetuens, eadcm dignata est nomine veri
coniugis immeritum, nec tali munere dignum.

“Haec erat, ut revocans rem cunctam ab origine pandam,  [140]
Iudaeas inter virgo pulcherrima nymphas,
centum optata procis, Mariam dixere, parentum
unica progenies, urbe edita Nazaraea.
Ipsa autem, aeterno prœ virginitatis amore,
oderat et thalamos, et se sacraverat aris.                             [145]
Anna tamen grandaevaparens, haudnescia vatum,
plenaque venturi, è nata praeviderat olim
egregiam factis sobolem regemque futurum,
qui populos magnos magna ditione teneret:
id cœlo fixum esse, pios id prodere vates.                             [150]
Saepe illam in somnis monuit vox missa per auras
iungere connubio natam, generosque vocare;
iamque erat apta viro, iam nubilis: hactenus autem
distulerant Superûm monitis parere parentes;
cùm mediâ ecce iterum sublimes luce per auras                   [155]
vox audita: ‘Viro properate ô iungere natam.
Nec generi longé optandi; de sanguine vestro
quaerantur de more: omnis mora segnis abesto.’

“Continuô parvam vulgatur fama per urbem.
Tum consanguinei pulchrae spe conjugis omnes,                 [160]
conveniunt iuvenes: complentur virginis aedes.
Ipse etiam patri consanguinitate propinquus
accessi, quamvis aevi maturus, ut ipsi
aequaevo natae ob thalamos gratarer amico.
Stabant innumeri, forma atque aetatibus aequis                   [165]
florentes, cœlum cui munera tan ta pararet
Incerti; et sortem sibi quisque optabat amicam.”

------------

After these words, he set fear aside and spoke:            [105]
“I’ll tell you, lord, and reveal secrets to you.
And, since you wish to know my origins,
that first; I won’t keep you in any suspense.
Though poverty compels me to work the land
I am actually descended from a line                             [110]
of kings, a high race of famous ancestors.
The first of my line was Abraham, my nation’s
father, whose fame cannot have escaped your ears:
who founded my people, laws and sacred rites.
From him came Isaac: from Isaac, Jacob;                    [115]
from whose twelve sons our entire race descends,
and is divided into its twelve tribes.
The most notable of these was Judas, whose
noble sons lifted his house above the rest;
so it is that this land was called Judea.                         [120]
Then came (after many generations)
David, the father of kings: from his to mine
fourteen royal generations intervene.

“My son’s ancestry is quite other: though he
dignified us with a mortal birth in the                           [125]
lands of mortal men, his origin is celestial,
fathered by God, rejoicing in a parent
who rules the ship-thronged seas, and land and sky.
He was brought forth into the light from a
virgin mother; whose maidenhead remained                 [130]
even after this birth, as the prophets had foreseen.
The omnipotent Father breathed his aura
into her, miraculously filling her womb.
The common folk assume I am the father:
that’s not so. His dear mother was merely,                     [135]
entrusted to me, to help her hard labour
and care for her soul; afterwards though, concerned
for her honour and modesty, she did
honour unworthy me with the name of husband.

“So that you know everything from the beginning:      [140]
She was most beautiful girl in Judea.
A hundred men courted her—Mary—the only
child of parents from the town of Nazareth.
But her true love was for her virginity,
so she despised marriage and loved religion.                [145]
Anna, her elderly mother, knew the prophets,
and had herself foreseen that her daughter
would give birth to a man destined to be king
who would hold the great in his greater sway:
this was heaven’s will, as the prophets said.                 [150]
Often in her dreams she would hear a voice
telling her to call suitors and marry-off
her daughter—who was of marriageable age—
but she delayed obeying the divine command;
until, amazing! in the middle of the day                        [155]
a voice was heard: ‘give your child in marriage now!
A son-in-law is not far; your own bloodline
will provide him: do not delay this task!’

“At once this news ran through the small town.
All the young men of her lineage came to                      [160]
the house of this beautiful girl hoping to win her.
I also went there, as her father’s kin
(though I was old) to congratulate him
as an equal, on his daughter’s marriage.
Innumerable men stood about, young and                      [165]
flourishing, uncertain whom heaven would choose
and each hoping that fortune would smile on him.”

------------

The Bible doesn’t name, or indeed mention, Mary’s mother; but the apocryphal Gospel of James (written perhaps around 150) identifies her as ‘Anna’, known today as ‘Saint Anne’. ‘In the West, the Gospel of James fell under a cloud in the fourth and fifth centuries,’ it seems, ‘when it was accused of “absurdities” by Jerome and condemned as untrustworthy by Pope Damasus I, Pope Innocent I, and Pope Gelasius I.’ But ‘In the Eastern church, the cult of Anne herself may go back as far as c. 550, when Justinian built a church in Constantinople in her honor.’ By the sixteenth-century, when Vida was writing, her place in the pantheon was settled.

One question is whether Anne, in giving birth to Mary, somehow did or did not pass on to her daughter humanity’s ‘original sin’. One theory was that though Anne and her husband conceived their child through sexual intercourse—which is, according to Augustine, how original sin is passed on—God intervened to make this particular conception ‘immaculate’, free from macula (blemish, stain or shame). People sometimes think this Catholic doctrine of ‘immaculate conception’ refers to the birth of sinless Jesus, but it doesn’t: it’s Mary’s birth to which it refers. Wikipedia’s entry on the ‘immaculate conception’ is full of fascinating stuff.

Mary's freedom from personal sin was affirmed in the 4th century, but Augustine's argument that original sin was transmitted through sex raised the question of whether she could also be free of the sin of Adam.[10] The English ecclesiastic and scholar Eadmer (c.1060-c.1126) reasoned that it was possible in view of God's omnipotence and appropriate in view of Mary's role as Mother of God: Potuit, decuit, fecit, “it was possible, it was fitting, therefore it was done;” Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), among others, objected that if Mary were free of original sin at her conception then she would have no need of redemption, making Christ superfluous; they were answered by Duns Scotus (1264-1308), who reasoned that her preservation from original sin was a redemption more perfect than that granted through Christ.

Nevertheless, it was not theological theory that initiated discussion of Mary's freedom from mankind's curse, but the celebration of her liturgy: in the eleventh century the celebration of her liturgy, for the popular feast of her conception brought forth the objection that as normal human conception is sinful, to celebrate Mary's conception was to celebrate a sinful event. Some held that no sin had occurred, for Anne had conceived Mary not through sex but by kissing her husband Joachim, and that Anne's father and mother had likewise been conceived, but St Bridget of Sweden (c.1303-1373) told how Mary herself had revealed to her in a vision that although Anne and Joachim conceived their daughter through sexual union, the act was sinless because free of sexual desire.

‘It’s not sinful if you don’t enjoy it’ seems like a strange position to hold to me, but what do I know. Anyway, the matter was still being discussed during Vida’s lifetime; not dismissed out of hand (it was, it seems, regarded as a ‘pious opinion’ consistent with faith and Scripture) although the Council of Trent didn’t rule on it. It wasn’t until the 19th-century that a Papal Bull made it doctrinal. Vida doesn’t touch on the matter, here.

Apart from all that, what this passage says to me is that Vida's epic has a Thersites problem. What do I mean? Well the Iliad is filled with handsome, tall, powerfully-built aristocratic warriors and princes. Such people (and, of course, the gods) are the poem's entire dramatis personae. The one time somebody not noble, not an aristocrat, turns up the poet mocks him roundly:

Now the others sate them down and were stayed in their places, only there still kept chattering on Thersites of measureless speech, whose mind was full of great store of disorderly words, wherewith to utter revilings against the kings, idly, and in no orderly wise, but whatsoever he deemed would raise a laugh among the Argives. Evil-favoured was he beyond all men that came to Ilios: he was bandy-legged and lame in the one foot, and his two shoulders were rounded, stooping together over his chest, and above them his head was warped, and a scant stubble grew thereon. [Iliad 2:212-19; this is Murray's splendidly fruity 1924 Loeb translation]

Thersites, addressing this conclave of his betters, sneers at Agamemnon and decries the whole war as stupid. Then nobel and aristocratic Odysseus creeps up and shuts him up: ‘and with his staff [he] smote his back and shoulders; and Thersites cowered down, and a big tear fell from him, and a bloody weal rose up on his back. Then he sate him down, and fear came upon him, and stung by pain with helpless looks he wiped away the tear.’ Take that, commoner!

This, though, just is epic. This is its mode: nobel warriors, princes, kings and gods. Iliad, Aeneid, Paradise Lost: all the same. But Vida has a problem. Thersites and the slaves in Odysseus's household in the Odyssey are the only prototypes of commoners in epic, and obviously he can't model Joseph on either of those. He could, perhaps, have tried to reconfigure his mode to make an epic of ordinary people, the humble carpenters and villagers of the Gospel; but he doesn't. Instead he leans hard on the ‘bloodline of David’ angle, and makes Joseph a nobleman, albeit a nobleman who has fallen on hard times and must now labour with his hands. It's awkward, and makes, I'd argue, a hash of something important about the story told by the New Testament: Jesus is not a patriarch, because he has come not to lead one particular tribe but for everyone. But there we are.

The image at the head of this post: a statue of Saint Anne, the Virgin Mary and Jesus in the Cathedral Museum of the Church of Santiago de Compostela.

[Next: lines 168-188]

Book 3, lines 73-104

[Previous: lines 36-72]

Jospeh and John have come to see Pilate to beg for Jesus's life. Now read on!

Talibus orabat; largo simul imbre rigabant
ora senis lacrymae: placido quem Pontius ore
accipit, atque ambos verbis solatur amicis;                           [75]
depositumque senem molli locat ipse sedili.
Atque hœc deinde refert: “Ut vos hic tempore adestis
optati! nec enim forsan venisse pigebit.
Tu modô vera mihi scitanti edissere pauca
nunc, pater, haud veritus: fidei te credere fas est                 [80]
omne meae: cœlum et cœli vaga sidera testor,
sollicito mihi cura tui est nunc maxima nati;
quem tibi mente agito incolumem servare; furoremque
et rabiem, ut potui, compressi gentis iniquae.
Fare age, (namque mihi haud nunc primùm venit ad aures)    [85]
quae fortuna viro, unde domo, quo sanguine cretus.
Ede tuum, matrisque genus: non ille creatus
stirpe humili, mihi si verum mens augurat. Ut se
incessu gerit! ut vultuque et corpore toto est
humanâ major species! ut lumina honorum                             [90]
plena! ut regifici motus! verba inde notavi;
nil mortale sonat: sensi illo in pectore numen:
aut certè Deus ille, aut non mortalibus ortus.
Dicite vos: nam me scitantem avertitur ipse,
et vix responso tacitus dignatur amicum;                                [95]
contemptorque illi est animus lucisque meique.”

His dictis, senior paulisper substitit anceps:
sene ultra tegeret quaerenti; an proderet illi
et Divi genus, et verum sine fraude parentem.
Cùm breviter comes admotus sic fatur ad aurem:                   [100]
“Regia progenies, nymphae dignate superbo
coniugio, quid adhuc haeres? absiste vereri.
Omnia sublatis aperi iam nubibus ultro:
Pone metus, et rumpe moras: video omnia tuta.”

------------

So he prayed; and his broad cheeks were covered
with flowing tears. Calmly Pilate received him
and offered the two men consoling words                           [75]
leading the older to a comfortable chair;
Then he addressed them: “I’m very glad you’ve come
in time! I only hope that I can help.
Tell me everything, truthfully and be brief.
Now, father, the truth: you can trust my good faith              [80]
in all this: I swear by the sky and stars that
your son is now my most pressing concern;
I mean to save him for you from the rage
and fury of those people—in check, for now.
Tell me (this is not the first I’ve heard of him)                    [85]
about his life, his place of origin and
bloodline—and yours, too: and his mother’s: for I
feel he is no common man. How fine his
bearing! There is something more than human
in his face and form. How full of nobility                           [90]
are his eyes! How royally he moves! And his
speech is more than mortal: I sense divinity:
if not god himself, his birth was not mortal.
You must tell me. When I asked him, as a friend,
he turned away from me in silence; as if                            [95]
his soul held me—and life—in contempt.”

He spoke. For a short time the old man pondered
holding back, whether he should conceal his son’s
divine birth, or reveal his parentage.
But John approached and whispered to him:                    [100]
“Son of kings, deemed worthy of marriage to
the maiden, why do you hold back? Don’t fear.
Dispel all the obscurity and reveal
the truth without delay: I’m sure it’s safe.”

------------

Here Vida’s sympathy for Pilate ramps up more than a notch. The governor has seen Jesus with his own eyes, and can tell both that he's innocent and more than mortal. He's not only happy to give audience to Joseph, and to treat him with respect and courtesy, he directly promises that he will do everything to free his son. On the one hand this is a matter of dignifying the Roman connection with Christ's life (and death) and so shoring up the claim of modern-day Rome to be the centre of Christianity. But it runs a very obvious risk: the more hyperbolic the praise and promises Pilate makes, the bigger the let-down when he proves unable to deliver them. How Vida carries this through, without retrosepctively making his Pilate a despicably Trumpian promise-everything-deliver-nothing kind of guy will be interesting to observe.

The medieval illustrated manuscript at the head of this post, showing Christ before Pilate, is from here. That site doesn't give any more precise details about it, but I do like the Gandalf vibe of Pilate in that image.

[Next: lines 105-167]

Book 3, lines 36-72

[Previous: lines 1-35]

Joseph and John have resolved to petition Pilate to release Jesus. Now read on!

Sic memorans gressum Syriae rectoris ad aedes
tendit. Ei senior comitem se iungit, et ambo
incedunt pariter tristes; ceu forte boves quum
agricola amisit pauper, quos hostis abegit
depopulatus agros, quaesitum protinus illos                   [40]
longum iter ingreditur. natorum maximus olli
it comes: hic illic saepe ambo ignota per arva,
siquos forte suis similes videre vagari,
subsistunt flentes, atque avia questibus implent.
Haud illi secus, et jam ventum ad limina tecti,              [45]
quod regum quondam fuit antiquissima sedes,
cum res incolumi regno Iudaea maneret,
sed tum Romulides orae moderator habebat.
Fervere cuncta vident strepitu, patresque sub ipso
vestibulo ante fores dissensu tendere magno,                 [50]
iamque sacerdotes paulatim cedere ab aula
Romano velut infensos, ac dira minantes.
His animum arrecti paullum lenire dolorem
incipiunt, rebusque aliquam sperare salutem.
Atque ita Ioannes: “Mihi se nonnulla aperit spes.            [55]
Solve metum, atque virum pro nato affare, deique
dissimula sobolem, et causas innecte precandi.”
His dictis, pariter succedunt aedibus ambo:
atque ducem senior, qui re suspensus eadem
his super in medio procerum consulta rogabat,                [60]
alloquitur genua amplexans, supplexque precatur:
“Optime Romulidum, quem clari rector Olympi
iustitia voluit Syriam frenare supeibam,
parce piis, saevumque hominum compesce furorem.
Hinc ratio penitus sublata est: vi geritur res.                   [65]
Illi ego sum genitor, quem primi geniis in unum
coniurant omnes, et ficto crimine terrent.
Iamque tibi, ut scelere ante omnes immanior unus,
traditus, immeritas quo pendat sanguine poenas.
Illum autem virtus tantum, et benefacta per orbem        [70]
his mersere malis sua, dum gens effera laudi
invidet eximiae, nec fert surgentis honorem.”

------------

They made their way to the palace of Syria’s
ruler. The older man accompanied the
younger, equal in grief; like a farmer
whose cows have been stolen by an enemy
despoiling the fields—he goes in search of them           [40]
joined by his oldest son, they look all over
hurrying through unknown fields, and if by chance,
they see some familiar-looking cattle, they
stop, filling the countryside with weeping.
So it was with them. And now they reached the             [45]
palace that in antiquity had belonged
to the kings of Judea (when that realm stood)
but now housed the Roman administration.
There was much noise and chaos; city elders
crowded the vestibule, loudly arguing:                           [50]
the priests stormed out, furious with the Roman
authorities and yelling dire threats.
The sight of this eased their pain a little:
raised their hopes that his life might yet be spared.
And John said: “Me, I consider this hopeful.                  [55]
Be strong: go talk to him about your son,
keeping quiet about his divine birth.”
That said they both went into the building.
The older man addressed the governor, who
was himself uncertain how to proceed,                           [60]
harried by the city-elders. He listened.

“Great Roman! who the lord of bright Olympus
chose to rule proud Syria justly, please show
mercy, curb the raging fury of these men.
Their reason has entirely gone: they’ve lost it.                [65]
I am the father of that man, who the crowd
are persecuting with false accusations.
He is yours now, a base criminal they all say,
deserving the death penalty for his crimes.
But he is here only because of his virtue                          [70]
his good deeds throughout the world: they envy him
for the praise he gets and hate to see him loved.”

------------

It seems to me, shall we say, puzzling that these two unimportant Jews manage to walk straight into a personal (and as we find out as we read on, lengthy) interview with the ruler of their entire country. Indeed we might imagine that John, being present at such a remarkable and significant occasion, might have mentioned it in his gospel. But here we are.

The epic simile in lines 38-44 is also a bit of a puzzle. The classic NT pastoral analogy is, of course, that we are sheep and Jesus is the good shepherd. Vida here turns that on its head: we are farmers and Jesus is our … cow? Stolen from us by cattle rustlers? What? Perhaps this reflects the fact that, though the peoples of the middle east were, largely, herders of sheep and goats, the Romans considered cattle the mark of the highest status. Cicero closes book two of the De Officiis with this anecdote about the Elder Cato.

To this class of comparisons belongs that famous saying of old Cato's: when he was asked what was the most profitable feature of an estate, he replied: “Raising cattle successfully.” What next to that? “Raising cattle with fair success.” And next? “Raising cattle with but slight success.” And fourth? “Raising crops.” And when his questioner said, “How about money-lending?” Cato replied: “How about murder?”

Ex quo genere comparationis illud est Catonis senis: a quo cum quaereretur, quid maxime in re familiari expediret, respondit: “Bene pascere”; quid secundum: “Satis bene pascere”; quid tertium: “Male pascere”; quid quartum: “Arare”; et cum ille, qui quaesierat, dixisset: “Quid faenerari?”, tum Cato: “Quid hominem,” inquit, “occidere?” [2:89]

It may be that Vida is thinking of the bit in Aeneid 8, when Evander is feasting the newly arrived Trojans, and tells Aeneas the legend of Cacus, the nasty giant who stole the cattle of Hercules, dragging them backwards by their tails to disguise their tracks, and hiding them in his cave. The parallels between the passages aren’t exact, but perhaps Vida is gesturing towards this bit [Aeneid 8: 214], about how Cacus’s secret stash of cows in his cave is betrayed:

Interea, cum iam stabulis saturata moveret
Amphytrioniades armenta abitumque pararet,
discessu mugire boves atque omne querelis
impleri nemus et colles clamore relinqui.
reddidit una boum vocem vastoque sub antro
mugiit et Caci spem custodita fefellit.

‘Meanwhile the sons of Amphitryon were moving the well-fed herds fron their stalls and making ready to head out, their cattle lowing as they went. One heifer returned the cry, lowed from the high cave’s depths, and from her prison baffled the hopes of Cacus.’

I don’t know, though.

At the head of this post: a Roman bronze figure of a cow, found in Pompeii and dated to 1st century BCE.

[Next: lines 73-104]

Book 3, lines 1-35

[Previous: Book 2 lines 964-1001]

In Book 2 Jesus was arrested, tried by the Sanhedrin and turned over to Pilate. Now read on!

Fama volans iam finitimas impleverat urbes,
exceptum insidiis heroa dolisque suorum:
obscurus tamen, atque incerto auctore vagari
rumor adhuc, necdum matris penetrârat ad aures;
cuncta licet nunquam illa animo secura timeret                 [5]
praesago: nempe audierat, vatumque tremenda
terrebant monita, pro libertate piorum
natum sponte sua subiturum funus acerbum.
Ast ubi Iosephus senior praesensit (ei olim
alma parens fuerat Superûm concredita jussis)                  [10]
Nazaren linquens Solymorum se intulit urbi.
Vix introgressus videt omnia fervere multo
concursu populi, sublustri nocte, per umbras,
mœniaque ingenti misceri tota tumultu.
Ecce autem elapsus manibus telisque cohortis                    [15]
fidus Ioannes pallenti tristior ore
occurrit: sed vix amens agnovit amicum,
dum trepidat, casusque animo ducis haeret acerbus.
Cui senior “Heus! siste gradum, quò te rapis?” inquit.
Quo res nostra loco? Sine te nunc vester ubi dux                [20]
patre deo satus? Aut strepitus quis tantus in urbe!
Hei mihi! non fallunt pavidam praesagia matrem.”

Sic ait; illum autem iuvenis complexus, et haerens
tantùm fundebat lacrymas, gemitusque ciebat.
Tandem pauca refert: “Nostra, heu! spes occidit omnis,     [25]
atque absumpta salus: dux fœdè carcere captus
clauditur: invidia primores urbis in illum
conspirant, pœnasque graves cum sanguine poscunt.
Fidi omnes petiere fugam terrore subacti.
Mater ubi est? miseraene adeò iam nuncius aures               [30]
perculit? Hic utinam tecum nunc afforet ipsa.
Pontius, aspiciens lacrymas gemitusque parentis,
forsitan indigni casus miseresceret ultro.
Ire tamen libet, ac pacem veniamque precari,
et populi invidiam atque odium crudele profari.”                [35]

------------

News spread to all the surrounding towns, that
the hero had been treacherously taken.
The rumour, though, was vague and had no source.
It had not yet reached the ears of his mother
though her soul trembled with prophetic fear                    [5]
nonetheless: she knew the terrible words of
the prophets:—that to liberate the souls
of good men her son would have to meet death.
Sensing this, Old Joseph (with whom the mother
of God had been paired by divine commandment)            [10]
left Nazareth for Jerusalem’s city.
When he got there he found the place in uproar
crowds thronged the streets, an umbral, moonless night
all a tumult of noise within the city walls.
Slipping past the rioters throwing things                           [15]
he found faithful John—looking pale and sad,
and so anxious for the fate of his leader
that he almost didn’t recognise his friend.
The old man said: “Hey! Stay there, don’t run off.”
How are things with us? Why aren’t you with our king       [20]
the son of God? Why’s the city such chaos?
No! Have the Mother’s forebodings come true?”

He spoke; the younger man only hugged him.
For some time he could only weep and sigh.
At last he spoke briefly: “all hope our is dead,                   [25]
our salvation gone: our lord shamefully seized
and thrown in jail. Envious city-elders
are conspiring for harsh and bloody revenge.
The faithful, terrified, have all fled. Where
is his Mother? Has this terrible news reached                       [30]
her ears? I wish she were here with you now.
If Pilate could see her tears, hear her sighs,
perhaps he would be moved to right this wrong.
We have to ask his pardon! To speak against
the cruelty and hatred of the people.”                                  [35]

------------

And so we’re into Book 3. After two books of more straightforward narrative Vida here steps back: all 1000-lines of Book 3 are given over to a lengthy speech Joseph makes before Pilate, explaining how Jesus came to be born—Book 4, following on from this, is Joseph detailing Jesus’s youth. So a flashback, based loosely on Aeneas explaining his backstory to Dido in books 2 and 3 of the Aeneid. But the analogy has one crucial asymmetry. Aeneas, in telling Dido his lifestory, and dwelling on the sufferings he has endured, is courting her—like Othello winning Desdemona (‘She loved me for the dangers I had passed/And I loved her that she did pity them’ and so on). Joseph pleading his case before Pilate of course lacks this specifically erotic subtext, and he dwells not on Jesus’s sufferings but on his special-ness.

Bringing Joseph into his epic, and giving him such a prominent position, is a tricky move by Vida. The strong imputation of the gospel narrative is that he was dead by this point.

The last time Joseph appears in person in any Gospel book is in the story of the Passover visit to the Temple in Jerusalem when Jesus is 12 years old, found only in Luke. No mention is made of him thereafter The story emphasizes Jesus' awareness of his coming mission: here Jesus speaks to his parents (both of them) of "my father," meaning God, but they fail to understand [Luke 2:41–51]. Christian tradition represents Mary as a widow during the adult ministry of her son. Joseph is not mentioned as being present at the Wedding at Cana at the beginning of Jesus' mission, nor at the Passion at the end. If he had been present at the Crucifixion, he would under Jewish custom have been expected to take charge of Jesus' body, but this role is instead performed by Joseph of Arimathea. Nor would Jesus have entrusted his mother to the care of John the Apostle if her husband had been alive.

But he we are: Joseph alive and hale. I suppose the reasoning is: Vida needs an eye-witness of Jesus's conception, birth and youth to be able to relate these events to Pilate without he-said-she-said second-handness. His only options, then, are Joseph or Mary herself. And while obviously it would have been interesting to see Mary telling her own story, it would have been an unusually progressive and genderblind thing for a sixteenth-century Catholic churchman to do in an epic context.

The opening line of this book mimics Vergil (‘extemplo Libyae magnas it Fama per urbes’; news spread quickly through the great Libyan cities; Aeneid 4:172; rumour also spreads through the cities in Aeneid 7:549). There are half a dozen other Vergilian echoes in this opening passage.

At the head of the post: Saint Joseph (c. 1640) by Guido Reni.

[Next: lines 36-72]

Book 2, lines 964-1001

[Previous: lines 918-963]

Jesus, having been condemned by the Sanhedrin, is brought before Pontius Pilate. Now read on!

Et iam tempus erat, cùm nondum Aurora relato
orta die albentes cœli discriminat oras.                          [965]
Iamque Deum vinctis manibus post terga trahebant
praesidis ad sedem, quô crimina quaereret ipse,
quem penes arbitrium, et morti damnaret acerbae.
Illo Iudaeam frenabat tempore, missus
Caesaris imperio Tiberi, Pilatus opimam                          [970]
Pontius, insigni Romanus origine gentis:
quem furibunda manus trepido est aggressa tumultu
vociferans: “Hunc dede neci, trabe fige merentem
infami auctorem scelerum, fraudumque potentem.”
Haec crebra ingeminant, densique ad limen inundant.      [975]
Ille autem iuvenis procero in corpore fixos
intentusque oculos, intentusque ora tenebat;
(nondum illi dulcis flos prorsum evanuit aevi)
insolitam speciem, insolitos miratur honores
oris, et expleri nequit: hunc è stirpe fatetur                     [980]
aut Divûm, aut saltem magnorum è sanguine regum,
et secum sortem capti miseratur iniquam;
iamque favet, tacitusque agitat, siqua potis illum
impune eripere, et ruptis exolvere vinclis.
Quem sic alloquitur: “Quae te commissa fatigant?            [985]
Fare age, qui casus? unde haec effusa repente
tempestas tibi? num tantis scelera impia mersum
implicuere malis? An Divûm tristior ira?
Unde domo? quo te memoras è sanguine cretum?
Aut quibus aspiras sceptris? quae debita regna?”              [990]
Christus ad haec paucis: “Non huc ego criminis ergô
Protrahor. Haud turpi mihi mens obnoxia facto,
sed Patris, immensi cœli cui regia paret,
iussa sequor, nec regna moror mortalia, quamvis
haud equidem clara me regum è stirpe negârim.”              [995]
Haec tantùm. Ille autem admirans decus oris honesti,
nunc hoc, nunc illo sermone affatur, et omnem
explorat. Sed responso non ampliùs heros
dignatur, saevo curarum exercitus aestu.
Tandem illum dux, ut turbam compescat acerbam,           [1000]
servari iubet atque domo interiore recondit.

------------

Now it was time for Aurora, the dawn,
to add distinctiveness to the sky’s expanse.                      [965]
Already God, his hands tied, was being led
to the governor’s throne, where criminals
against Rome’s laws were tried and sometimes condemned.
Here was Judea’s commander, reporting to
Emperor Tiberius Caesar—Pontius                                    [970]
Pilate, from an eminent Roman family.
A furious mob besieged his palace, violent,
vociferous: “put him to death, nail him to that
beam for his infamous crimes and frauds!”
Yelling this, they gathered at his threshold.                    [975]
He, though, fixed his gaze on the tall figure of
the handsome man standing silent before him;
(the flower of youth was still blooming in him)
surprised at his fine appearance, his noble
and dignified form:—certain he must be                           [980]
descended from a god, or the bloodline of kings,
he took pity on the captive’s unjust fate;
tried to help, held back from judgement, and tried
to find some way to release him from his bonds.
Then he asked him: “Of what are you accused?                 [985]
What did you do? Why? Whence comes this sudden
storm against you? Has some wickedness truly
snared you in crime? Did you offend the gods?
Where are you from? What is your family line?
To what sceptres do you aspire? What reign?”                   [990]

Christ replied briefly: “No crime explains why
I’ve been dragged here. My motives are nothing base.
It is my Father, who rules the vast heavens,
that I follow; I seek no mortal power, though
I cannot deny my bloodline is royal.”                               [995]

That was all. Admiring his noble face,
He pressed with many more questions, curious
about everything. But the hero did not
reply, wrought as he was with savage cares.
At last the governor, to appease the mob,                       [1000]
ordered he be detained within his house.

------------

And so Book 2 of the Christiad comes to an end. Vida's portrait of Pilate is highly sympathetic. His reluctance to prosecute Jesus is Biblical, but Vida, as a Roman Catholic, of course has his own reasons for wanting to cast Rome and Romans in as good a light as possible.

Then Pilate entered into the judgment hall again, and called Jesus, and said unto him, Art thou the King of the Jews?

Jesus answered him, Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me?

Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me: what hast thou done?

Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.

Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.

Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all. [John 18: 33-38]

Luke’s account [23:1-7] is much briefer than this, as is Matthew’s [27:1-14], although the latter includes the curious detail of Pilate’s (unnamed) wife’s dream: ‘When he was set down on the judgment seat, his wife sent unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.’

Vida doesn’t include this, nor does he bring-in the amazing, enduring question John puts into Pilate’s mouth: dicit ei Pilatus: Quid est veritas? It almost amounts to suppression, since this question, with its evasive, almost postmodern impertinence in the face of divine Truth itself, hardly reflects well on the questioner. Nietzsche, of course, approved:

Do I still need to say that in the whole of the New Testament there is only one honourable figure? Pilate, the Roman governor. To take Jewish affairs seriously — he could not convince himself to do this. One Jew more or less — what does it matter? ... The noble scorn of a Roman when faced with an unashamed mangling of the word ‘truth’ gave the New Testament its only statement of any value, — its critique, even its annihilation: ‘What is truth!’ [Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ (1888), 46]

Modern historians have mostly been kind to Pilate, who spent ten years governing a distant and unruly territory. That he lasted as long as he did suggests he did a reasonable job, at least by Roman standards. Helen Bond notes that for the first six years of Pilate's tenure the Syrian legate Lamia was in Rome, which meant that Pilate couldn't simply send for troop reinforcements from the north if he had trouble. ‘Pilate would have had great difficulty in contacting [Lamia] if he needed the support of his legions, a situation that would mean that any potential uprising had to be put down quickly before it could escalate.’ [Bond, Pontius Pilate in History and Interpretation (Cambridge University Press, 1998), 15]. We can assume that his default, leadership-wise, was to act swiftly and with some violence in the face of any popular disquiet.

A case in point: around the same time as the events recorded in the NT Pilate had dealt with a different self-proclaimed Messiah, a Samaritan (conceivably a man called Dositheos) who tried to start a movement and possibly a rebellion. Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews [18.4.1-2], records that this messianic sect stormed Mount Gerizim, hoping to find artefacts they believed had been buried there by Moses. As the group was armed, Pilate decided their action was insurrectionary. He brought Roman troops to the scene, dispersing the gathering and killing many, including the ringleader. Executing messiahs was part of his job spec, we might say.

After this event other Samaritans, claiming the group killed had not been armed, complained to Lucius Vitellius the Elder, the governor of Syria. He (either because the complaint had genuine merit, and it was a way of calming the people he had to rule over, or else for reasons of Roman political jockeying-for-power) managed to get Pilate recalled to Rome to be judged by Tiberius. Tiberius however, died before his arrival (this dates the end of Pilate's governorship to AD 36/37). We don't know what happened to him after that. Some historians suggest that the fact he didn't return to Judea as governor suggests he was in some kind of disgrace; but a ten-year stint is a perfectly respectable one, and he might not have wanted to go back.

Paul L. Maier, after making the case for Pilate as a reasonably good governor, dismisses the later more lurid stories that attached to him.

The Pilate legends, of course, became exercises in morbid imagination, particularly in the Middle Ages. Probably the old Latin legend of the ‘Mors Pilati’ stimulated many of them. In this tale, Pilate committed suicide, and his body was thrown into the Tiber. But the demons and storms surrounding it were so terrifying that the corpse was taken out of the Tiber and cast into the Rhone instead, yet with similar results. Thence it was taken for burial to Swiss territories, where the body remained surprisingly active. [Paul L. Maier. ‘The Fate of Pontius Pilate’, Hermes 99:3 (1971), 368]

‘Surprisingly active’ is nice understatement. Medieval legends built on this earlier text, adding stories of his restless corpse, ‘accompanied by squadrons of demons, disrupting localities from Vienne in France to Mt. Pilatus in Switzerland, causing storms, earthquake, and other havoc’. But that’s not the path Vida wishes to go down in this poem.

And so we come to the end of Book 2. Next up: Book 3!

Image at the head of the post: Christ before Pilate, by Hungarian painter Mihály Munkácsy (1881).

[Next: Book 3, lines 1-35]

Book 2, lines 918-963

[Previous: lines 875-917]

As Jesus is being tried by the Sanhedrin, Peter lurks outside. Now read on!

Interea casu Petrus perculsus iniquo
prosequitur moerens, longeque observat Amicum.
Iamque sub ingentis devenerat atria templi,                        [920]
tecta sacerdotis magni , solusque sedebat,
tristis , inops animi ante fores nocturnur apertas.
Olli serva, domus cui curae janua herilis,
id quod erat rata, “Tune etiam fugis,” inquit, “et isti
iunctus eras scelerum consors, ideoque per umbras            [925]
explorator ades, quando omnia nocte quiescunt?”
Diriguit Petrus ad vocem formidine turpi.
Oblitusque sut est, (quae vitae tanta cupido?)
Nec iam scit subita turbatus imagine rerum
quid faciat, quo se vertat, quas advocet artes.                    [930]
Qualis ubi dulci virgo decepta sopore
parvula, quam mater campis ignara reliquit
in solis, abeunte die sub tecta revertens,
confestim rupto circumtulit humida somno
lumina, nec comites, nec matrem conspicit usquam,            [935]
sed loca sola metu videt exanimata, viarumque
immemor, atque horrere nigra circum omnia nocte.

Talis erat miser ille animo confusus, et haerens.
At cari nomen tandem abiuravit amici,
pro quo sponte neci modo se devoverat ardens.                   [940]
Quinetiam, quo se tegeret, succedere tecto
hostili tulit, et famulis se immiscuit amens.
Nec latuit tamen: illum omnes inimica tueri
suspectum, et latebras verbis urgere foventem:
terque adeô obiectum nomen patriamque magistri               [945]
audierat; ficto ter dissimulaverat ore;
cùm matutino mediae iam noctis abactae
edebant cantu cristatae signa volucres,
auroram in tectis solitae acri voce vocare.
Tum monitus verborum, heros quae extrema canebat,          [950]
ingemuit, rupitque imo suspiria corde;
et penitus duris tristi dolor ossibus arsit.
Tum sese miser incusans turpemque timorem,
erepsit furtim foribus, solusque per urbem
totam illam ingemuit, somni sine munere, noctem,               [955]
menti caniciem demissam in pectora vellens.
Quin illum hanc perhibent mox semper flèsse sub horam
admissi memorem, dum vixit: eum aethera pandens
saepe oriens solis saepe ater vesper in antris
invenit luctu indulgentem, eademque querentem,                 [960]
dum nulla admittit mœsto solatia ampri.
Deserti subeunt monita usque novissima regis,
ac se perculsum muliebri voce recursat.

------------

Meanwhile Peter, appalled at such wickedness,
weeping, stood watching his friend from a distance.
He waited by the entrance to the great temple                    [920]
where the high-priest dwelt, sitting alone in his
sorrow, spending a hopeless, desperate night.
A servant girl guarding her masters house
knew what he was: “You’re on the run?” she said.
“Fleeing the punishments of your partner-in-crime?          [925]
Lurking in the shadows while the world sleeps!”
At her voice, Peter went rigid with fear,
terrified (why was he so greedy of life?)
thrown into confusion, without knowing
what to do, where to go, what trick to play.                        [930]
He was like a sleepy little girl, left
in the fields by mistake when her mother
goes home at the end of her working day,
waking-up suddenly and looking around
panicked, seeing neither friends nor her mother,                [935]
but only the deserted fields, the unknown
roads, and all the horrors of encroaching night.

That's how scared he was, his mind wavering.
And soon enough he abandoned his friend’s name
for whom only hours before he’d vowed to die.                [940]
He even tried to hide in his enemy’s house
foolishly mixing with the servants: but
he could not hide. All eyes were on him, everyone
glowered angrily as he passed, spoke harshly:
three times he heard his leader’s name and country          [945]
flung at him; three times he dissimulated;
until half the night was gone and morning coming
as signalled by the songs of the crested birds
calling lustily for the dawn from the rooftops.
Then, remembering the hero’s last words,                         [950]
he groaned, and deep sigh escaped his breast.
He was so saddened his very bones ached.
This miserable man rebuked himself for
his cowardice, left the house and crept out
alone, unsleeping in that night-time city,                           [955]
weeping and wrenching at his long grey beard.
Indeed, it’s said ever after, at that hour
he’d cry in memory of what he’d done:
often dawn, or darkening vespers, found him
indulging his grief, lamenting his actions,                         [960]
and allowing himself no consolation.
He remembered he had deserted his king,
and that he had been laid low by a woman’s voice.

------------

Peter’s cowardice is an interesting business, isn’t it? The gospels here display—once again—the effectively novelistic touch that Frank Kermode is so good on. There's the psychological verisimilitude of it for one thing: that the man quickest with his sword, the man full of bluster and bravado, is the one whose courage crumbles first. Vida’s treatment adds to the specific details of the Gospel account first a rather contrived epic simile, in which beardy old Peter is likened to a tiny girl abandoned in a field; and then an elaborate coda stressing his remorse. We can certainly intuit his remorse from the Biblical account, and both Matthew 26:75 and Luke 22:62 conclude their account of the episode with the same verse: ‘And he went outside and wept bitterly.’ But better, in an Auerbachian sense, is John's version of this incident:

Then saith the damsel that kept the door unto Peter, Art not thou also one of this man's disciples? He saith, I am not.

And the servants and officers stood there, who had made a fire of coals; for it was cold: and they warmed themselves: and Peter stood with them, and warmed himself … And Simon Peter stood and warmed himself. They said therefore unto him, Art not thou also one of his disciples? He denied it, and said, I am not.

One of the servants of the high priest, being his kinsman whose ear Peter cut off, saith, Did not I see thee in the garden with him? Peter then denied again: and immediately the cock crew. [John 18: 17-27]

That leaves us, very effectively, in an ambiguous place with respect to Peter's state of mind at this moment. By referring to Peter’s denial without actually quoting his words, Vida misses the Vulgate’s nicely-judged, repeated non sum: at once ‘I am not the man’ and the theologically performative ‘I negate my being, I un-am myself’. To deny Christ is to choose to cut yourself off from God, which is a kind of radical de-humanising of self. That nothing-ing of a person is captured better by the blank abruptness of John's telling than Matthew or Luke's deictic final line.

Otherwise this very famous episode in the passion narrative crystallises something crucial but, perhaps, not often unpacked, about Christian revelation. Think how much cowardice is woven into these narratives. This is true to a curious degree, really: you might think the early Christians would edit these kinds of episode out, since they don’t portray their founders and holy men in a very good light. Peter, here, is a coward; Thomas doubts; Judas is too much of a coward to live with what he has done; even Christ has his moment in the garden, begging his father to let the cup pass. Then there’s Pontius Pilate, washing his hands of the whole affair: cowardliness wearing its official face. The whole narrative could be taken as variations on the theme of cowardice.

In Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita—I mean, in the Yeshua-Pilate 1st-century Judea portion of the novel, not the modern-day Moscow portion—Arthanius reports back to Pilate on the crucifixion. It is, in many ways, the moral core of the novel. The only words Arthanius reports are Yeshua's insistence that he ‘regarded cowardice as one of the worst human sins’.

Bulgakov understood that, just as individual cowardice corrodes the soul, so a regime like Stalinism could only be erected on the collective cowardice of a people. But then again, isn’t cowardice the most human of reactions? The trembling lamb rather than the lion. It’s what humanises the pet dog, and differentiates him from the fighting mastiff. It is no coincidence that the political ideology that most ostentatiously valorises the courage of the warrior of the ethical foundation of life—fascism—is also the most inhumane, the most murderous and cruel. As against that standard reading of Master and Margarita as a simple condemnation of cowardice, Craig Raine proposes a more nuanced approach:

While the central subject of the novel is indeed cowardice, Bulgakov’s treatment of this theme is more complicated than this summary condemnation might imply. Indubitably, Bulgakov had sympathy for Pilate, whatever his shortcomings. This shines through the narrative … [He] is a man to understand and empathise with the imperfect Procurator of Judea—as well as with the imperfect, flinching, yet finally brave Yeshua, whose remark about cowardice was meant to apply to himself as he underwent the ordeal of crucifixion. In the egotism of his guilt, Pilate annexes it as a reference to himself. [Raine, In Defence of T S Eliot (2000), 199]

In 1934 Bulgakov was so terrified of arrest he was unable to leave his house alone. He stood up to tyranny, not least in writing this novel, and there are plenty of instances of moral and actual courage in his lifestory; but ‘in the end he was drive to write a play Batum, which eulogized the early life of Stalin. Pure cowardice? Hardly.’ Raine’s point is that Bulgakov had to earn a living, but there’s a larger logic that ‘pure cowardice’ is almost a contradiction in terms. In Bulgakov’s novel, Raine notes, ‘references to the Devil, Faust and Mephistopheles abound. Why? Because Bulgakov’s life was one long terrorized pact with the Devil.’

In Russia, in the thirties, it could not have been otherwise, and there is real moral courage in recognizing the true facts of life—just as there is courage in making one’s own cowardice the subject and centre of a novel which, if it survived, Bulgakov must have known, would keep his name alive for ever and also the personal shame encoded there.

We revert, I suppose, to the platitude that real courage is grounded in cowardice. Bravery is not a matter of never being scared—that’s bravado, or indeed psychosis. Bravery is being scared and going ahead anyway. Of the various theological paradoxes in the NT, productive of so much earnest debate and discussion, this of erecting a new religion on a foundation of cowardice seems to me one of the most interesting.

The image at the head of this post is The Denial of St Peter by Gerard van Honthorst (1622-1624)

[Next: lines 964-1001]