[Previous: lines 481-503]
Christ is on the cross. The angels of heaven are not happy about this.
Audiit has summus voces Pater, audiit omnis------------
cœlestûm chorus: ipse (alta secum omnia mente [505]
versabat Genitor, nutu haud oblitus agi rem
nempe suo) stetit immotus, seseque repressit.
At circumfusos cœtus, gentem aetheris alti
aligeram, iniussos potis est vis sistere nulla.
Omnibus exarsit subitò dolor: omnibus ingens [510]
aestuat ira: volunt Nato succurrere herili,
et prohibere nefas, duroque resistere ferro.
Bella cient: arma ingeminant, arma acriùs omnes.
Hic puer haud volucri extremus de gente, recurvo
aere vocare acies quò mon magis utilis alter, [515]
ascensu superat celeri ardua culmina praepes;
tum super axe sedens, roseique in vertice cœli
signa canit belli: latus dissultat Olympus
undique, et insolito tremuerunt sidera motu.
Audiit et sonitum, siquem procul orbe remoto [520]
distinet incedens humili luna humida gressu:
Audivere, quibus generis custodia nostri
in terris olim sorti data: vastaque tellus
protinus ingenti tremuit concussa fragore.
Tum quos rex superûm varias legârat in oras, [525]
aereos relegunt tractus, mandataque linquunt
imperfecta, fugaque poli super ardua tendunt.
Ac velutin pastus celsa quae sede columbae
exierant varios, cùm tempestate repentè
urgenti caeco misceri murmure cœlum [530]
incipit, et nigrae cinxerunt aethera nubes,
continuò linquunt arva undique, et ardua pennis
tecta petunt, celeresque cavis se turribus abdunt.
The Great Father heard His voice—the angels heard------------
in heavenly choir—(deep in His own thoughts [505]
he knew it was done by the Father’s decree
which was His own) He stood firm, and checked His hand.
But the thronging assembly of high heaven’s
winged angels could not be made to hold back.
Convulsed by sharp pain, all of them swollen [510]
and hot with rage, they wanted to help the Son,
to stop this crime, resist it with the sword.
They cried war: repeating ‘to arms, to arms’, fierce.
One angelic lad, not the host’s least, and skilled
in blowing the trumpet to muster armies, [515]
zipped up through the steep air like a bird;
until, sat at the top of rosy heaven,
he sounded the call to war: Olympus opened
on every side; stars shook with strange motion—
heard even by him trapped in that far orb, [520]
the lowly moon rolling along her moist path:
and heard too by our airy custodians,
assigned to earth—the vast world trembled
a great earthquake shocking with its crash.
These, assigned by the High King to our world’s shores [525]
returned now to the higher fields of air
hastening up the heights, their charge abandoned.
They were like doves, feeding in high nests,
who scatter in all directions when sudden storms
rumble darkly across the heavens, and sky [530]
is swallowed-up by tremulous black clouds:
at once the birds leave the fields on outspread wings,
fly to cover in high eaves and hollow towers.
I’m honestly not sure what Vida means in line 518 by saying Olympus (that is, Heaven) ‘opened on every side’ (dissultat, from dissūtus; ‘was unstitched, ripped open’). This unstitching is occasioned by one young angel—Gabriel, though Vida doesn't name him—flying to the top of heaven and blowing his curved horn (recurvo in line 514). I suppose the sense is: and then all Heaven broke loose! Like Hell breaking loose, but holier.
This passage is the start of a lengthy section in Book 5 describing the furious angels arming for war with the intention of swooping down to Earth and saving Jesus from his terrible sufferings. They don’t, of course. Swoop, that is—God, who has the longer view in mind, prevents them. But I’m intrigued as to whether this (of course, non-Gospel) interlude is Vida’s own invention, or whether it draws on an earlier tradition. I presume the latter but can’t find any actual evidence. Perhaps my Google-fu is insufficient. The nearest I can come is that Vida is here channeling Enoch:
The Holy and Great One will come out from his dwelling, and the Eternal God will tread from there upon mount Sinai, and he will appear with his host, and will appear in the strength of his power from heaven.... And behold! He comes with ten thousand holy ones to execute judgement upon them, and to destroy the impious, and to contend with all flesh concerning everything which the sinners and the impious have done and wrought against him. [1 Enoch 1:3-4, 9]Judith Kovas sees an archetypal pattern underpinning this notion of a cosmic battle:
The story of a conflict between rival superhuman forces is an ancient one, attested in Canaanite, Mesopotamian, and Greco-Roman texts. [We can] isolate the following general pattern of the myth common to Canaanite hymns and early Hebrew poetry:The geezer imprisoned in the moon in line 520 is, according to an old legend, the Israelite mentioned in Numbers 15:32: ‘Now while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath day.’ The Bible doesn’t say that he was then imprisoned in the moon (quite the reverse: the people stone him to death, on Moses’ instructions) but the popular legend grew up of lunar exile, such that he can be seen in the moon to this day, the bundle of sticks on his back. This story is at least as old as medieval culture, and probably quite a bit older. Henryson talks of it:
a. The Divine Warrior goes forth to battle against chaos.In the Second Temple period, the theme of the cosmic battle between God and the forces of evil is especially prominent in apocalyptic texts and in certain Qumran texts that have substantive affinities with them. [Judith L. Kovacs, ‘“Now Shall the Ruler of This World Be Driven Out”: Jesus' Death as Cosmic Battle in John 12:20-36’ Journal of Biblical Literature, 114:2 (1995), 236]
b. Nature convulses at the manifestation of the Warrior's wrath.
c. The warrior-god returns to take up kingship among the gods and is enthroned on his mountain.
d. The Divine Warrior utters his voice from his temple; fertility results.
Hir gyse was gray, and full of spottis blak,Humid, humida, refers to the belief, universal in the Renaissance, that the lunar maria visible to us when we look up at the moon are actual seas. It's a shame that they're not, really.
And on hir breist ane churle paintit full evin,
Beirand ane bunche of thornis on his bak,
Whilk for his thift micht elim na nar the hevin. [Henryson, Testament of Cresseid 260-63]
‘Her [the moon's] face was grey and full of black spots, and on her breast a churl was clearly drawn, bearing a bunch of thorns on his back—for the theft of which he might never go nearer to heaven.’
At the head of this post: ‘Zaraeus Angel Warrior’, from the trading-card game Dragoborn: Rise to Supremacy, testament if nothing else to our continuing fascinating with the idea of armed angels.
[Next: lines 534-588]
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