John narrates.
Horresco, quoties stimulis immitibus actus------------
quidam animo subit, idem illo quem tempore vidi, [440]
dum legerem expositos hoc ipso in littore pisces,
obsessum furiis, atque ore immane furentem.
Hunc olim (ut perhibent) vetito genuere parentes
concubitu iuncti, atque inconcessis hymenaeis:
quippe torum ascendere, dei cùm sacra vetarent, [445]
cùm scenis gens indulget nostra omnis opacis:
sed non gavisi scelere illi tempore longo.
Nam subito amplexus interque et gaudia adulter
sacrilegam tenues animam exhalavit in auras
infelix; scelerique eadem nox prima nefando, [450]
et pariter suprema fuit discrimine parvo.
Illam autem aethereis flammis divinitus ignis
corripuit, cùm iam maturi pondera partûs
urgerent; eademque duos leto hora dedisset,
infans ni foret exectae genitricis ab alvo [455]
exemptus: parvum patris eduxere sorores.
Ipse etiam mox immeritus scelerata parentum
facta luit, iucundâ oculorum luce negatâ;
obstructaeque aures penitus mansere; nec illi
aut ullas haurire datum est, aut reddere voces. [460]
Quinetiam simul atque adolevit, protinus aegrum
arripuit furor, infernae vis effera gentis.
Centum illum furiae, centum illum (flebile) pestes
victum exercebant, Erebi legio acta latebris;
horrendasque, hominis singultus ore cientes, [465]
edebant voces, ac terrificos mugitus:
illum omnes exclamantem, atque insueta frementem
horrebant, trepidique fuga se in tecta ferebant,
siquando nodis, ruptisque immane catenis,
incautis liber custodibus evasisset. [470]
Iamque ille oblitus fratres, iamque ille sorores,
ampliùs haud gressum patris intra tecta ferebat;
verùm more ferae sylvis degebat et antris,
sicubi saxa cava, aut aevo consumpta sepulcra,
ater, egens, corpusque abjecto nudus amictu. [475]
Talem igitur, nodo manibus post terga revinctis,
Christi ad conspectum , si fors miseresceret ipse,
vi multa consanguinei carique trahebant.
Ille autem obniti contrà, dum rumpere nodos
tendit, et horrendos clamores tollere ad astra. [480]
Qualis ubi longis pugnator taurus ad aras
funibus arripitur, saevo fremit ore per urbem,
et spumas agit, et cornu ferit aera adunco:
instant hinc famuli, atque illinc, et verbera crebri
ingeminant, quassantque sudes per terga, per armos; [485]
diffugiunt vulgus trepidum, in tutumque recepti
porticibus gaudent longè spectare periclum.
Talis erat juvenis species immane furentis:
quem tandem ante Deum fessi statuere, rogantes
ferret opem, saltem furiis tam tristibus illum [490]
solveret, excuteretque animo crudelia monstra.
Hic heros palmas in cœlum sustulit ambas;
concipiensque preces Genitorem in vota vocavit.
Ecce autem magnum, subitum, et mirabile monstrum:
auditi exululare lupi, latrare canes ceu [495]
tam diras jactat voces lymphatus ab ore.
Non tam immane sonet, sese frangentibus undis,
rupibus ex altis ingens decursus aquarum,
rumpantur claustra alta lacûs si forte Velini,
totaque praecipitent valles stagna ardua in imas [500]
omnis ea ut regio fiat mare, et oppida circùm
mersa natent, metuatque sacris Roma obruta templis.
Nunc cœli crepitus imitantur, cum superûm rex
fulminat, et tonitru quatit aetheris aurea templa;
nunc ferri sonitum, aut ruptarum mole catenarum [505]
ingenti horrificum stridorem, aut murmura ponti:
circùm omnis tellus, circùm cœlum omne remugit.
Instat vi multa Deus, increpitatque morantes.
Iamque illi trepidare intus, pacemque precari:
‘Quid nunc, vera Dei atque indubitata propago, [510]
concesso in pœnas nos ô de corpore trudis?
Egressis saltem pecora haec invadere detur:
(setigeri tum forte sues ea littora propter
pascebant) nos ne horrifero sic merge barathro,
neve iube terrae inferioris operta subire.’ [515]
Annuit. Extemplo videas procul, ecce, nigrantem
mollibus haud stimulis furiarum errare subactum
in diversa gregem, nunc huc, nunc protinus illuc:
nec mora, nec requies; intus vis effera saevit,
donec praecipites sese alta in stagna dedere, [520]
et cunctis pariter vita est erepta sub unda.
At juvenis fessos subitò collabitur artus,
exemptus tandem nodosis brachia vinclis.
Mordicus ora solo impressus çunctatur, adhucque
singultans, pectusque lacessit anhelitus ingens, [525]
expiransque animam pulmonibus aeger agebat:
quem juxta genitore Deo satus astitit, oraque
attingens dextra, atque oculos auresque reclusit:
iamque videt, loquiturque, et corda oblita residunt.
It vulgi clamor super aurea sidera ovantis, [530]
supremique Patris sobolemque Deumque fatentur.
I shudder to recall one man I used to see,------------
a man maddened as by sharp goads who would come [440]
when we were sorting our fish upon the shore—
seized by madness, madness frothing in his mouth.
He’d been born (so they say) to parents who
had sealed a forbidden marriage, illegal love:
consummated against the will of God [445]
when our nation indulges dark enactments.
They did not enjoy their wickedness for long.
The adulterer lost his life suddenly,
giving up his sacrilegious soul to air,
ill-starred: their joyous embraces took him— [450]
their first night of love was also their last.
Then a heaven-sent fever struck her down
as she was ready to give birth to their child:
this hour would have cost two lives, except that
the baby was cut from the mother's womb. [455]
He was raised by his father’s sister; but though
he did no wrong his parents’ crime marked him—
deprived of the light we all joyfully see;
and deaf as well; unable to hear anything
and blocked from expressing himself by voice. [460]
What’s worse, when he reached adolescence
madness seized him, a violent infernal force.
A hundred devils, a hundred plagues snatched at
him, a legion sent up out of Erebus;
possesssing his mouth, spitting horrible, [465]
words and a terrifying bellowing.
His loud raging startled everybody:
they ran and hid whenever he broke out
from the ropes and chains used to restrain him,
escaping his guards and running free. [470]
He forgot his brothers and sisters, and
no longer visited his father’s house.
He lived like a beast in forests and caves,
lurking in hollows, and the tombs of the dead:
blackened and destitute in his nakedness. [475]
This man was dragged, hands tied behind his back,
unfortunate soul, before Christ, with force
by a large group of his friends and relatives.
He was resisting, struggling to break his knots
and howling fit to terrify the stars. [480]
As a violent bull is dragged to the altar
through the town by ropes, bellowing fiercely,
mouth foaming, stabbing the air with its horn,
attendants rush in from all sides, and rain
blows upon it, rods on its backs and shoulders; [485]
alarmed crowds of people back away, watching
the dangerous scenes from their porticos.
Such was the appearance of this young man
when his weary family brought him to the God,
begging him to free this man from his madness [490]
strike out the cruel monsters from his mind.
The hero raised both of his hands to heaven;
and prayed aloud to his great progenitor.
Then, see!—a sudden miracle occurred:
like the baying of wolves, or dogs barking [495]
came new wild voices from his slobbering mouth.
Louder they were than when the waves pour over
the high cliffs in a waterfall’s huge stream,
or if the dams on the mighty Velino broke
drowning steep valley in the plunge of the flood [500]
making land sea, inundating nearby towns
even threatening Rome and her sacred temples.
Now the man roared like the bolt heaven’s King
sends as lightning when thunder shakes the golden
temples of the sky, massive chains breaking [505]
a harsh and dreadful sound, like the ocean’s surge:
the sound filled the air and boomed across the fields.
Forcefully the god bore down upon them
and they, trembling inside him, whimpered for mercy:
‘Why—true son of God—do you evict us [510]
from a body given to us to punish?
At least allow us into those swine, there
(it so happened bristly pigs were grazing
by the shore), so we don’t tumble into horror—
don’t dispatch us to the void below the earth!’ [515]
Agreed. You could see the black beasts, suddenly
jerked to life as if struck with a savage goad
running, now here, now there, galloping
without rest or pause; a wild rage was in them
until they jumped headlong into the deep pools, [520]
and all lost their lives beneath the waters.
Now the young man’s exhausted limbs gave out,
his arms were finally freed from what bound them.
He collapsed face-down on the soil, moaning
gulping and gasping, his breast heaving, the air [525]
exhaling from his lungs shuddering sobs.
The son of God crouched next to him, touching
his face with his right hand, opening eyes and ears.
The man could now see, and speak and hear too.
The people raised a shout of thanks to the stars, [530]
accepting him as god, the great father’s son.
Vida's lines 444-45 seem to be some garbled reference to (what he thought he knew about) some Jewish ritual—that marriages were void, or considered adulterous, if undertaken at certain times, perhaps. That there were nights when Jews abstained from sex because they were ‘indulging in dark (or ‘obscure’) enactments’: cùm scenis gens indulget nostra omnis opacis—scēna, there, means ‘a scene, as of a theatre’ but also ‘the public stage, the public’ and ‘outward show, parade, pretext’. Gardner’s version of these two lines is: ‘they went to bed at a time when sacred ritual forbade it, when all our nation devotes itself to dark re-enactments’. He wonders if Vida might be thinking of Yom Kippur (on the eve and day of which five prohibitions are in place: no eating and drinking; no wearing of leather shoes; no bathing or washing; no anointing oneself with perfumes or lotions; no marital relations). But it’s a stretch to imagine that a child conceived during Yom Kippur would be cursed by God—that’s nowhere part of the Jewish sense of the day of atonement. Also, that's a day that entails private prayer, charitable actions and a service in the synagogue—hardly ‘dark’ or ‘obscure’ enactments. Something else is going on here, I suspect.
At any rate, this bizarre provenance for the man’s madness is not in the Gospel account. This episode of the Gadarene, or Gerasene swine is pretty famous (Mark talks of ‘the region of the Gerasenes’; the towns of Gadara and Gerasa have both been proposed—though neither of them lie close to the sea of Galilee, in which we presume the swine drowned; the King James Version has the location as ‘Gergesenes’ which corresponds to the modern ‘Kursi’, which is at least by the water).
Then they came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gadarenes. And when He had come out of the boat, immediately there met Him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no one could bind him, not even with chains, because he had often been bound with shackles and chains. And the chains had been pulled apart by him, and the shackles broken in pieces; neither could anyone tame him. And always, night and day, he was in the mountains and in the tombs, crying out and cutting himself with stones.The reference to the dam in line 499 shifts the scene (Vida doesn’t do it very often, actually; but he does do it from time to time) from 1stC Judea to 16thC Italy. Concerning the river Velino I quote Gardner:
When he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and worshiped Him. And he cried out with a loud voice and said, “What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I implore You by God that You do not torment me.”
For He said to him, “Come out of the man, unclean spirit!” Then He asked him, “What is your name?”
And he answered, saying, “My name is Legion; for we are many.” Also he begged Him earnestly that He would not send them out of the country.
Now a large herd of swine was feeding there near the mountains. So all the demons begged Him, saying, “Send us to the swine, that we may enter them.” And at once Jesus gave them permission. Then the unclean spirits went out and entered the swine (there were about two thousand); and the herd ran violently down the steep place into the sea, and drowned in the sea.
So those who fed the swine fled, and they told it in the city and in the country. And they went out to see what it was that had happened. Then they came to Jesus, and saw the one who had been demon-possessed and had the legion, sitting and clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. And those who saw it told them how it happened to him who had been demon-possessed, and about the swine. Then they began to plead with Him to depart from their region.
And when He got into the boat, he who had been demon-possessed begged Him that he might be with Him. However, Jesus did not permit him, but said to him, “Go home to your friends, and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He has had compassion on you.” And he departed and began to proclaim in Decapolis all that Jesus had done for him; and all marveled. [Mark 5:1-20]
Vida is alluding to the roar of the Cascata delle Marmore, the famous man-made waterfalls near Terni in Umbria that flow where the Velino runs from the Lago di Piediluco. Flooding from the Velino river was a constant concern of the Renaissance popes, and only ten years after the publication of the Christiad Pope Paul III commissioned the architect Antonio San Gallo to build another channel to contain the waters.The diabolic possession is vividly written by Vida, with occasional lines of Vergilian filler ... line 506 for instance is based on Aeneid 9:504, and Aeneid 6:140, Sed non ante datur telluris operta subire (‘but to none is it given to enter the hidden recesses of the Earth’) is behind Vida’s line 515. What Vida doesn’t include is the celebrated, and rather spooky, reply of the demons to Jesus asking their name: “What is your name?” “My name is Legion; for we are many.” The slip from singular to plural there is wonderfully effective.
Jesus asks the demon his name. However, nowhere else in the Gospels does Jesus proceed in such a manner. It was the practice of ancient exorcists to uncover the name of the demon, since knowledge of the name was tantamount to power over the person. This questioning is a disturbing element within the exorcism format used in Mk 1,23-28. But more disconcerting is the sudden switch to the plural: ‘…Legion, for we are many.’ (Here Luke makes it more indirect: ‘for many demons had entered him’ 8,30.) H. Preisker suggests that the fluctuation of singular and plural is to be explained by considering the legion as a unity and as individuals. More originally J. Jeremias maintains that the Aramaic word for legion may mean a soldier or a legion. The demoniac thus replied that his name was soldier, but “owing to the fact that the translator rendered the word ‘ligyônã’ by the Greek ‘legion’ the mistaken idea arose that the demoniac was possessed by a whole regiment of demons.” [John F. Craghan, ‘The Gerasene Demoniac’, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 30:4 (1968), 525-26]The Vulgate here is Et interrogabat eum: Quod tibi nomen est? Et dicit ei: Legio mihi nomen est, quia multi sumus. I don’t know why Vida omits this; there’s no problem fitting legiō into the metre, after all. Maybe as a good Roman (Catholic) he doesn’t want to dally with the imputation that this madman was possessed by a (Roman) legion of devils.
The presence of so many pigs in a Jewish country has puzzled commentators. Some suggest that there were plenty of gentiles living in this portionof Judea, so the pigs are not remarkable; others argue that this detail implies that a story from another land has been imported, more or less roughly, into the narrative of Jesus’s adventures. Craghan says:
The function of the swine episode is to demonstrate the reality of the exorcism. Josephus relates that a contemporary of his ‘wishing to convince the bystanders and prove to them that he had this power (viz., to drive out demons), . . . placed a cup or footbasin full of water a little way off and commanded the demon, as it went out of the man, to overturn it and make known to the spectators that he had left the man.’ [Jewish Antiquities 8, 2, 5]. Philostratus also offers a similar visible proof of expulsion. [cf Cf. The Life of Apollonius of Tyana 4:20]. But a far closer parallel is a Babylonian incantation text against demons which reads: ‘Give the pig in his stead, and give the flesh as his flesh, the blood as his blood, and let him take it; its heart . . . give as his heart, and let him take it.’ [R. C. Thompson, The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia (London: Luzac, 1904) tablet N, col. 3, 10-15]. According to this tradition the demon who leaves the possessed man at the exorcist's invocation and enters the body of the pig does so visibly, for the pig is forthwith destroyed. Substitution and demonstration are thus combined. There is no reason why this or a similar exorcism ritual should be unknown in first-century Palestine. Such a ritual would then underline the fact that the expulsion of the demon(s) has actually transpired. [Craghan, 531]All very interesting. One last note on this passage: the intriguing inclusion (again, entirely without Gospel provenance) of the insane man having been born by C-section in line 455: infans exectae genitricis ab alvo. In the words of Kristina Killgrove, there is ‘plenty of evidence for C-section delivery’ in the medieval period, ‘but in these cases, the procedure was done as a last-ditch effort to save the baby when a mother was dead or dying. Doctors did not expect mothers to survive the operation until the 16th century, when French physician François Rousset became the first to advocate for the procedure, and it wasn't until the 1940s with advances in antibiotics that C-sections became routine, survivable surgeries.’ Here's a late 15th-c image of a caesaerian delivery, c. 1473-1476. (Image from the British Library, Royal MS 16 G VIII f.32r):
The mother seems to be taking it remarkably calmly, I must say. François Rousset broke ground, a few decades after Vida's poem, with his L'hysterotomotokie ou enfantement caesarien (Paris, 1581) in which he argued that caesaerian sections could be performed without killing the woman. Why does Vida include this detail in his poem? I suppose it prefigures the violent casting-out of multiple beings from a man's body with a violent casting-out of the man himself from his mother's body. Interesting stuff, at any rate.
At the head of this post: a medieval illumination of Jesus exorcizing the Gerasene demoniac from the Ottheinrich Folio.
[Next: lines 532-564]
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