[Previous: lines 401-431]
Christ is hauling his cross to Golgotha. Now read on.
Armati circumsistunt, clypeataque iuxtà------------
agmina densantur: collucent spicula longè,
spiculaque et rubris capitum cava tegmina cristis;
aereaque alterno conspirant cornua cantu. [435]
Pars pedes insequitur; pars sese lucidus altis
fert in equis: resonant colles clamore propinqui.
Multi autem, quorum melior sententia, flebant:
praecipuè matresque piae, mitesque puellae,
cernentes nudis pedibus per scrupea saxa [440]
tendere, et offendi crebrò ad salebrosa viarum,
dum monte adverso protrudit robur iniquum.
ad quas suspirans heros sic ore loquutus:
“Ne verò, ne me matres indigna ferentem
flete piae; vobis potiùs deflete propinquum [445]
exitium, et vestris hinc debita praemia natis.”
Sic fatus, linquit non aequis passibus urbem.
Interea superûm rex, tanto in cardine rerum,
verticis aetherei sublimem evasit ad arcem,
mortalis Nati letum ut crudele videret [450]
ipse sui spectator: eum, gens incola cœli,
aligeri stipant cunei, et comitantur euntem.
Est templum, gemmis interlucentibus, auro
e solido factum sublimi in vertice Olympi,
tectum immane, ingens, superi penetrale parentis, [455]
sidera despiciens subterlabentia mundi.
In medio clivus duro ex adamante tumescit
paulatim exacuens instar fastigia pinûs:
multiplices circùm sedes, subterque supraque
dispositae, gradibusque novem super aethera surgunt. [460]
Conveniunt huc cœlicolae, regemque canendo,
ingressi thiasis lustrant: se sedibus inde
omnes composuere suis, tumulumque corusci
ter latè circum terna cinxere corona
secreti ordinibus certis; neque enim omnibus aequa [465]
conditio, viresque pares, eademque potestas;
verùm aliis alii ut praestant, ita rite locantur
munere quisque suo contenti, ac sorte beati.
In medio Pater omnipotens solio aureus alto
sceptra tenet, lateque acie circum omnia lustrat, [470]
totus collucens, totus circum igne corusco
scintillans, radiisque procul vibrantibus ardens.
Mox autem infaustis Iudaeae lumina tantùm
defixit terris, tristemque ante omnia collem
spectabat; gens mœsta simul spectabat Olympi, [475]
collem infelicem, sacram egredientibus urbem
qui prior occurrit humanis ossibus albus.
Auctores scelerum pœnas ibi morte luebant
informi: circum pendebant corpora passim
arboribus truncis incocto lurida tabo. [480]
Armed men surrounded him, pressing him with shields,------------
their ranks of spears visible from afar,
red-tufts to their helmets and their hollow
brass trumpets blaring forth alternately. [435]
Next came the infantry, and the dazzling
cavalry, making hills echo with their noise.
But many others, with wiser heads, wept,
especially mothers and soft-hearted girls
watching him struggle barefoot over sharp rocks [440]
often cutting his feet on the harsh way,
hauling the treacherous timber up the hill.
Heaving a sigh, the hero addressed them:
“Do not, mothers—though I suffer here—
weep for me; grieve rather for your imminent [445]
deaths, and what will be taken from your children.”
He spoke, and stumbled beyond the city walls.
Meanwhile, the Highest King fled to His pole-star
ethereal castle, His sublime refuge,
from where he could witness His son’s cruel death [450]
as a spectator. Heaven’s inhabitants
winged their high way to accompany him.
There is a temple of gem-studded gold
at the very summit of Olympus' height,
huge of roof and vast, God’s inmost dwelling, [455]
overlooking the flowing stars and world.
Inside an adamantine structure rises
like a pine tree, gradually reaching a point,
encircled with seats both lower and higher
disposed into nine ascending levels. [460]
Here the angels convened to hymn their king,
and dance around Him. Seating themselves
in order, they made the structure dazzle,
thrice three crowns of joyful attendants
in separate ranks—for not all are equal here [465]
in place or worth, or possess the same power;
rather each are arrayed by his status
and all are blessed and content with their lot.
Throned in their midst the Omnipotent Father
shone gold, holding his sceptre, surveying all, [470]
casting a coruscating light all around,
scintillant, quivering and burning with his rays.
Now he gazed upon unlucky Judea’s
sad land, and especially the doleful hill
watchful—the mournful race of angels looked too— [475]
ill-favoured hill, on the city’s outskirts
where travellers stumble upon human bones.
where criminals paid the penalty of ugly
death: all around corpses dangled from
tree-trunks, lurid and blackened by the sun. [480]
That God the Father ‘flees’ to his main celestial citadel (I am reading Vida’s cardo, line 448, as ‘pole star’; the word also means ‘the pole from which a door hangs’ and ‘the north-south street in a city of military camp’, and more generally: ‘the turning point’) is unambiguous in the Latin: that’s what evado (line449) means. As to why the omnipotent cosmic power should feel the need to run-away, or seek sanctuary inside a citadel, just because his son is being crucified, is a little less clear. Sanctuary from what?
The architecture of this heavenly palace is interesting, especially its central holy-of-holies in which is located a conical structure of adamantine stone, shaped like a pine-tree (pinus, line 458, also means ‘spear’; but ‘pine tree’ is its primary signification) on which the nine ranks of angels seat themselves. Whether they leave the structure to dance around God, or whether they dance around the ledges inset in the stone pine-tree isn’t clear to me (thĭăsus, from the Greek θίασος, was originally a dance performed in honour of Bacchus: it is mentioned in Vergils’ Eclogues 5: 30 and in Aeneid 7:581—and lustrant means they go round in circles). Miton read this bit, though, and took it on board:
Then shall thy Saints unmixt, and from th' impureI, there, being Christ.
Farr separate, circling thy holy Mount
Unfeigned Halleluiahs to thee sing,
Hymns of high praise, and I among them chief. [Paradise Lost, 6:742-5]
The grisly final image in Vida's passage here (circum pendebant corpora passim/arboribus truncis incocto lurida tabo, lines 479-80) draws on Vergil's description of the space before the lair of Cacus, that man-eating giant that once terrorised Rome, until Hercules killed it.
semperque recentiBut it's the glimpse of Vida's heaven that is the more compelling thing, here. The most obvious aspect of it, of course, is its stress on rank: as with Dante's rose at the end of Paradiso, everyone in heaven is allotted a place in a strict heirarchy, and is happy with their allotment. For Vida, as for Augustine in the Civitas Dei, heaven is a kind of gold-and-bejewelled city: a common Renaissance idea. For instance, here's Paradise (1420-30), a detail from the Last Judgment fresco at Santa Maria in Piano, Loreto Aprutino, Italy:
caede tepebat humus, foribusque adfixa superbis
ora virum tristi pendebant pallida tabo.
‘Ever the ground reeked with fresh blood and, nailed to its proud doors, faces of men hung pallid in ghastly decay.’ [Aeneid, 8:195-97]
A more foresquare piece of architecture than Vida's, perhaps, but rather fine nonetheless. Colleen McDannell and Bernhard Lang discuss this image:
Nine naked saints in the paradise garden climb the palm trees and joyfully wave palm leaves while looking at the new Jerusalem. The heavenly city is represented by a two-storied square tower with terraces—a fine example of Renaissance architecture. A male figure, who must be St. Peter, stands in the entrance door. On the lower terrace an angel dresses the newcomers in robes. The upper terrace reveals the ecstatic joy of the citizens of the new Jerusalem. All of them wear their new garments. Some dance, lost in their ecstasy. Others look over to the grove of palms and seem to exchange joyful greetings with the denizens of paradise. [McDannell and Lang, Heaven: a History (Yale University Press, 2001), 117-118]McDannell and Lang's larger argument is that the Renaissance actually started to leave behind the more ordered and heirarchical heaven envisaged by medieval theologians and artists: ‘The Renaissance heaven—both the place of light and the paradise—does not display spatial gradation. The rigidity, motionlessness, and hierarchy of the medieval heaven is gone. ... The creators of the Renaissance heaven were not interested in the fine distinctions of the medieval heaven; they looked to Cicero and classical mythology for models of a human-oriented afterlife. If the heaven of the Middle Ages is essentially a cone with God at the top, then the Renaissance heaven is a box with divine worship going on at the top and a paradise garden at the bottom’ [McDannell and Lang, 143]. Vida's heavenly topography rather looks like a compromise: a medieval conical emblem of heirarchy located within a less rigidly spatially-determined paradise.
At the head of the post is ‘The Assumption of the Virgin’ (1475-76), by Francesco Botticini (National Gallery London), shows a glimpse of the hierarchies of heaven.
[Next: lines 481-503]
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