Book 4, lines 146-198

[Previous: lines 123-145]

John the Evangelist is narrating, telling Pilate about the appearance of John the Baptist.

“Quos Pater omnipotens, superûm sarcire ruinas
iam meditans, cœli penitus miseratus ab arce est.
Cùm vero aethereas nutu recludere portas
posset, et alitibus potiùs de civibus unum
mittere, qui regnis manes divelleret atris                      [150]
in superûm referens sedes, stellantia templa;
ipse suî ut memores magis, ac maioribus arctos
vinciret meritis homines, qui cuncta piaret,
factum hominem è summo Natum ipsum misit Olympo.
Ne tamen ignaris mortalibus appareret,                        [155]
ignotusque, novusque; suis neve ilicet illum
finibus arcerent pulsum, quòd se ipse deimet
progeniem leges contra memoraret avitas;
praemisit vatem egregium his in finibus ortum,
nomine Ioannem, Elisabe quem numine plenum           [160]
Zacchariae extremâ parit infœcunda senectâ;
gentibus ipse Deum ut natum praenuncius ore
proderet, atque suas spes fesso ostenderet orbi.

“Ille, hominum primis vitans vestigia ab annis,
horridus in solis agitavit montibus aevum,                   [165]
montibus, et sylvis, et littoribus desertis.
Speluncae tectum horrentes, victum aspera nullo
arbuta terra dabat cultu, aut sudantia truncis
mella cavis; liquidi praebebant pocula fontes.
Vestis erat pellis hirsutis horrida villis.                         [170]
Tantum laetificas gaudebat spargere voces,
affatus nemora, et montes, ac littora ponti.
Tanta sed haud latuit virtus tamen: ilicet ingens
fama viri circumfufas penetravit ad urbes.
Iamque ilium cœlo demissum credere gentes,               [175]
qui, tot veridicae ut quondam cecinere Sibyllae,
humanum genus horrificis educeret umbris.
Et iam concursu populi illum accedere magno
scitatum, quisnam, unde domo, quid ferret; an ipse
afforet è cœlo, miseris qui gentibus olim                       [180]
auxilio venturus, eum bis terque rogabant.
Ille sed umbrosis repetebat talia ab antris:
‘Gaudete ô, tenebris iamdudum ac nubibus atris
obductae, gentes: lux, ecce, optata propinquat.
Ne verò, ne me ignari vos credite lucem                        [185]
promissam (immeritos neque enim furamur honores);
tantùm ego, ceu solem nascentem lucifer ante
exoritur, nitidoque diem denunciat astro,
praedico actutum vobis iubar affore vestrum.
Iamiam aderit Deus; ecce, Deus mortalibus oris          [190]
Ceu mortalis adest! Venienti occurrite laeti;
fronde vias festa decorate, tapetibus agros
et numen digno venerati agnoscite honore.
Discite justitiam interea, atque assuescite recto;
et duce me scelus infectum lavite amne liquenti.            [195]
Ipse autem aetherea divinitus eluet aura
omne malum, ac veteris penitus contagia culpae;
seclaque mutato succedent aurea mundo.”

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“The Almighty Father already had plans
to repair this ruin, moved to mercy above.
Truly, he could have opened heaven’s gates
with a nod, and sent down winged angels
to free these souls from their gloomy kingdom,          [150]
lift them up to seats in star-studded temples;
but in order to make men more mindful
and to bind them to him more closely, he
sent his Son, as man, down from high Olympus.
That the mortals seeing him not be ignorant,               [155]
that he, abruptly, be not be a blank to them
or they dismiss him because claiming to be
God’s son contradicted their ancestral laws—
he sent, before his son, a worthy prophet:
His name was John—Elisabeth bore him to                  [160]
Zachariaa in extreme and infertile old age—
sent to declare to the people God’s coming
bringing hope once more to an exhausted world.

“From his youth, he shunned the paths of men:
shaggy in his mountainous solitude,                           [165]
on hills, in woods, and by the empty seashore.
Rough caves were his home. For food he ate harsh
berries from the untilled earth, or honey from
broken tree-trunks. He drank clear spring-water.
For clothes he wore bristly animal skins.                   [170]
His only joy was to raise glad shouts and speak
to the groves and mountains and the seashore.
But his great virtue could not remain secret:
the man’s fame spread to all the cities about.
People believed he’d been sent by heaven                   [175]
to speak great truth like the Sybils of old,
and lift humanity out of the shadows.
So the people went to him in great numbers
to find out who he was and whether he came
from heaven to help the miserable race of men            [180]
asking him twice, three times if help was coming.
From the shadows of his cave he answered:
‘Rejoice o you who dwell under a cloud of
darkness, people: the light—see!—approaches.
Do not, in ignorance, think me the light                        [185]
promised (I do not deserve such honours!)
I am only the morning star, foretelling
the great dawning of the day. Very soon
I promise you, your glorious light will come.
Soon, soon, God is here; see! God-the-mortal-man,    [190]
he is present! Run to him joyously;
Strew his path with petals, cover the fields
with carpets and venerate his divinity.
Meanwhile learn justice and righteousness; and
guided by me wash away you sins in                             [195]
the clear stream. His heavenly breath will cleanse
all evil, purge all taint of original sun;
and a golden age will come to an altered world.’”

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The ‘ruin’ referred to at the top, there, is the fact that basically good people are condemned to Hell simply by virtue of Adam's transgression; and God's plan for repairing it is, of course, Christ.

Vida's account of John the Baptist draws on the gospel of his narrator, here (John the Evangelist, I mean), as well as Matthew 3:1-12, Mark 1:1-8 and Luke 1:5-25 and 3:1-20. Scholars argue that the ‘wilderness’ so closely associated with John is both an actual description of the lands to the south-west of Judea, into the Sinai, but also a spiritual description of a world empty as yet of Christ's grace [cf Robert Funk, ‘The Wildnerness’, Journal of Biblical Literature 78:3 (1959), 205-214]. It is integral to how we take this individual:

The traditions about the birth of St John the Baptist enshrined in St Luke's gospel would appear to have come from a Hebrew source, and they correspond to a literary type, we might almost say a theme, which recurs in the Old Testament. John, or “the Lord gives grace” was a child of divine promise, born of aged parents against all expectation. The scriptures had already told how Isaac was born to Abraham and Sarah, and told too of how an angel appeared to announce the birth of Sam- son. Whereupon Samuel was born in answer to prayer, to put an end to a would-be mother's anguish, and above all to be a prophet in the great designs of God. Jeremiah, we read, was sanctified from his mother's womb. ... We can note in Luke 1. 80: “the child grew and became strong in spirit; and he lived in the deserts until the day he was manifested to Israel”.

Why should the son of Zachary, a true Sadducee of priestly family, who was intent upon temple services and served in his due turn—why should the son of such a man live in the deserts, and seemingly not follow in his father's footsteps, and apparently show no interest in temple worship? These and like questions serve to show that there is something unusual and mysterious about the early days of the Baptist. Besides this, not only did he live “in the deserts” until the day he was manifested to Israel but his very manifestation or outward ministry was mostly in the desert. He was a desert dweller, and his food and clothing were rough and hard and altogether in keeping. He preached and baptized in or very near the desert, and finally came to die, as Josephus tells us, in the desert fortress of Machaerus.

Few men could ever have been more lonely than John the Baptist when he was held as a prisoner in a wholly pagan and alien little world. And he was perplexed too, no doubt, as when he sent a message to our Lord: “Art thou the Coming One, or are we to expect another?” (Luke 7. 18-19). The fortress of Machaerus and the few people gathered round it was something thrust into the desert to flaunt the corrupt and corrupting power of Herod's ambiance. John who had Uved in the desert was of another world, and his love proved to be greater than his loneliness, and so he witnessed to the right order of purity which is required in God's kingdom, and bravely died for it. He had for the greater part of his life lived in the desert, so that in life as in death he was associated with the stony wastes of the Holy Land. [Roland Potter, ‘St John the Baptist and the Desert’, Life of the Spirit (1964), 80]

The ground for this, of course, is Isaiah 40:3

A voice cries in the desert
Prepare the road for the Lord
Make his paths straight

This 1956 lyric by American poet Samuel Menashe, entitled ‘John the Baptist’, provokes a nice one-two-three reaction in the reader, I think: from ‘that's nice, if small’, to ‘actually that's not quite as neat as it thinks it is’, and back again with more force to ‘actually that's quite a bit cleverer than I thought at first’. Or at any rate it did for me:

The water
of the world
is love

the Water
of the World
is Love

At the head of the post is an image of the John the Baptist statue outside the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran, Rome, which Vida presumably knew.

[Next: lines 199-238]