[Previous: lines 504-534]
Christ is being crucified in Judea. The heavenly hosts, infuriated by this, are mustering to rush down and rescue him.
‘Vagina’ (line 558) is, as every tittering schoolchild knows, the ordinary Roman word for a sword’s sheath, only secondarily used to refer to that part of a woman’s body. For line 570, Gardner has ‘a hundred more [angels] have wings of different hues’, which doesn’t seem to me a correct reading of the Latin (but I could easily be wrong).
Otherwise: the leader of this angelic army—unnamed here, but manifestly Saint Michael—carries the skin of the dragon defeated in the earlier war in heaven as a trophy. Mount Gargano, name-checked in line 579, is a reference to the Sanctuary of Monte Sant'Angelo sul Gargano, a sanctuary on Mount Gargano in northern Apulia (the heel of Italy). ‘It is,’ Wikipedia notes, ‘the oldest shrine in Western Europe dedicated to the archangel Michael and has been an important pilgrimage site since the early Middle Ages.’
Vida is not an innovator here. As I’ve had occasion to note on this blog several times, Medieval and Renaissance angelology was a busy and inventive field. Broadly this passage touches on two main things: one is the question of the corporeality of otherwise of angels—Vida takes the line that angels are insubstantial, beings of pure spirit, until they come into the realms of the mortal earth when they spin-themselves simulacrum-bodies out of air, rather (it seems to me) like candy-floss—the turbo densus of line 547, the ‘dense whirlwind’, is a striking image, but goes back a long way in Christian iconography [‘the early Christian apologist Tertullian (160-220 CE) posited the association of angels [via] wings to their aerial and fast-moving qualities … to their ancient and multifaceted affiliation with the winds. The winds too, like angels, carried souls aloft.’ Meredith J. Gill, Angels and the Order of Heaven in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (Cambridge University Press 2014), 123]. Milton's idea that angels ‘condense’ themselves into ‘limbs’ may owe something to this whirligig corporealising of Vida's ange;s [‘Spirits that live throughout/Vital in every part ... and as they please,/They Limb themselves, and colour, shape or size/Assume, as likes them best, condense or rare’; as Milton says in Paradise Lost].
The other thing this passage does is give us a kind of Audubon’s Guide to the multicoloured plumage of these beings. In Dante the first angels we meet are white, to signify their ineffable purity. The angel that approaches in Purgatory 2: 13, 51) is described as having a brow as pure as the brows of his charges will have after their purification is accomplished, and with garments and wings white beyond any earthly comparison. The angel of Canto 19 is compared to hoar-frost and a swan. Other Dantean angels are red and green, and by the time we get into the higher echelons of the Paradiso Dantes angels are being described as glittering rubies set in a golden river of light and as burning like flames. Dionysius the Areopagite, the source for a lot of medieval angelological beliefs, assigns different meanings to the colours (green is for the youngest angels, for example); Vida stresses scarlets and fiery reds because these angels are massing for war.
But what’s most interesting here, or most interesting to me, is the extent to which this account of angels mustering for war fed-through to Milton’s epic narrative of the war in heaven in Books 5 and 6 of Paradise Lost. Line 547's turbo densus surely feeds into the moment Christ wheels his whirl-wind chariot, and whirl-wind self, into battle:
[Next: lines 589-615]
Iam passim ingentis properatur vertice Olympi,------------
et toto ancipitis ferri cœlo ingruit horror, [535]
aeratique sonant currus, gemitusque rotarum
audiri, sonitusque armorum desuper ingens.
Tam vastos motus axis miratur uterque,
miranturque ignes, cœlique volubilis orbes,
cùm tenues animae, cùm sint sine corpore vitae, [540]
sensibus à nostris quibus est natura remota.
Saepe autem, seu mortales mittuntur ad oras,
sive opus in fratres olim capere arma rebelles,
corporis afficti sibi quisque accomodat alas,
aereosque artus, simulacrumque aptat habendo, [545]
spiritus ut queat humanos admittere visus.
Ergo illi rapido circumdant turbine densa
corpora sub nostros etiam venientia sensus:
circumdantque humeris desueta micantibus arma,
aetheris aerisono subitò de poste refixa, [550]
cœlicolûm exuvias, belli monimenta nefandi,
quod socios olim contra gessere furentes.
Hic bonus armature iaculis, hastamque trabalem
crispat agens; rapit ille faces, rapitille sagittas,
suspenditque humeris lunatum ardentibus arcum: [555]
atque alius palmas insertat caestibus ambas.
pars tereti funda dextram implicat: omnibus ensis
aureus in morem vagina pendet eburna:
Infrenant alii cœli per caerula currus.
cetera pars pictis librare celerrima pennis [560]
corpora: non eadem vis omnibus ipsa volandi:
Mobilitate vigent varia: pars remigat alis
binis alternante humero; pars ordine ad auras
tollunt se triplici pennatis undique plantis,
Haud unam in faciem : sed nec color omnibus idem. [565]
Namque hos punicea cernas effulgere pluma
flammipedes, igni assimiles rutilantia terga;
herbarum hos speciem, viridesque referre smaragdos;
terga illis croceo lucent circumlita luto;
centum aliis alii pinxere coloribus alas. [570]
Qualis ubi, exactos post aestus arbore ab omni
exornat pomis se versicoloribus annus,
et caput Autumnus circumfert pulcher honestum.
Et jam pennipotens liquidis exercitus ibat
tractibus, ac volucri cingebant agmine cœlum, [575]
millia quot nunquam nascentum ab origine rerum
visa hominum in terris coiisse, ter agmina terna,
terque duces terni: toto dux vertice supra est,
nuper Iapygii Gargani è vertice vectus
armipotens, veteris quem quondam gloria pugnae [580]
sublimem, longeque alios super extulit omnes,
In medio ibat ovans, galea cristisque superbis
aureus, et longè gemmis lucentibus ardens.
Nunc etiam spolia edomiti fulvamque draconis
pellem ostentabat spiris ingentibus, ipsumque [585]
innixus tergo pedibusque hastaque premebat.
Arma procul radiant; umbo vomit aureus ignes;
stellantique procul micat ensis jaspide fulgens.
They all rushed the summit of Olympus.------------
The threat of all-out war loomed over heaven, [535]
bronze chariots chimed, their wheels resounding
as they rolled, and armaments clanged overhead.
The celestial poles were astonished
and wonderment seized the stars and planets,
(although the tenuous and disembodied [540]
nature of these things is far from our senses).
When angels are sent to our mortal world,
or if they take up arms against rebel brethren
they put on bodies, each of them assuming wings
and airy limbs, in simulacrum, so as [545]
to become visible to the human spirit.
They surround their forms with a thick whirlwind
and so come within the range of our senses
wrapping their gleaming shoulders with armour
ringing bronze from heaven’s aerial gate, [550]
trophies, spoils of the unspeakable war
they once fought against their frenzied kinsmen.
One virtuous being arms himself with sharp spears,
brandishing them. Another grabs torches. Another
gathers arrows and shoulders a curved bow. [555]
Others again put on pugilists’ gloves
or hold polished slingshots. All have their swords—
a golden blade in hanging ivory sheath.
Some ride chariots through heaven’s blue serene,
others use their wings of many colours [560]
to move—not all are equally skilled fliers:
They move variously: some row with two wings,
and alternating movements; others soar
on three pinions (for their feet are winged too).
Angels are not all the same in form or colour. [565]
Some sport wings of dazzling scarlet colour,
flaming feet, and backs that gleam like fire;
others are as green as emerald grass;
others flash backs of saffron yellowness,
or are marked with hundred brilliant colours— [570]
just as when summer quits the trees, the year
adorns itself with varicoloured apples,
and noble Autumn lifts its lovely head.
The winged army had already passed the liquid
tracts of the air, columns marching through heaven. [575]
So many thousands had not been seen since
the world’s creation: thrice three battalions,
and thrice three captains. Taller than the rest
was the chief lately raised from Gargano’s peak,
strong-armed warrior, renowned for fighting glory [580]
one elevated over all his comrades.
Exulting as he moved through their midst, his
plumed helmet shone with gold and brilliant jewels.
Now he showed-off his rust dragon-skin trophy
the immense coiling body, that he himself [585]
had trampled underfoot and pinned with his spear.
His armour shone, his gold shield vomited fire
and his sword glittered, spangled with jasper.
‘Vagina’ (line 558) is, as every tittering schoolchild knows, the ordinary Roman word for a sword’s sheath, only secondarily used to refer to that part of a woman’s body. For line 570, Gardner has ‘a hundred more [angels] have wings of different hues’, which doesn’t seem to me a correct reading of the Latin (but I could easily be wrong).
Otherwise: the leader of this angelic army—unnamed here, but manifestly Saint Michael—carries the skin of the dragon defeated in the earlier war in heaven as a trophy. Mount Gargano, name-checked in line 579, is a reference to the Sanctuary of Monte Sant'Angelo sul Gargano, a sanctuary on Mount Gargano in northern Apulia (the heel of Italy). ‘It is,’ Wikipedia notes, ‘the oldest shrine in Western Europe dedicated to the archangel Michael and has been an important pilgrimage site since the early Middle Ages.’
Around the year 490 the Archangel Michael appeared several times to the Bishop of Sipontum near a cave in the mountains, instructing that the cave be dedicated to Christian worship and promising protection of the nearby town of Sipontum from pagan invaders. These apparitions are also the first appearances of Saint Michael in western Europe. The second section of the text describes Michael's intercession on behalf of the Sipontans and the Beneventans against invading pagan Neapolitans. On the eve of the battle, Michael appears with flaming sword atop the mountain; the Sipontans and Beneventans are victorious.Very belligerent. Otherwise this rather splendidly colourful and detailed description of the angelic army on the march is full of vivid writing. As the image at the head of this post shows, there’s still a large appetite for this technicolour, hi-res muscly-handsome version of what ‘angel’ means. Michael's shield, or more strictly the boss of his shield (umbo, ‘boss of a shield’; the word also means ‘elbow’, but presumably that's not meant here) does indeed ‘vomit’ (line 587: ‘it vomits, pukes, throws-up; discharges’, from vomo) fire. Cool trick, dude!
Vida is not an innovator here. As I’ve had occasion to note on this blog several times, Medieval and Renaissance angelology was a busy and inventive field. Broadly this passage touches on two main things: one is the question of the corporeality of otherwise of angels—Vida takes the line that angels are insubstantial, beings of pure spirit, until they come into the realms of the mortal earth when they spin-themselves simulacrum-bodies out of air, rather (it seems to me) like candy-floss—the turbo densus of line 547, the ‘dense whirlwind’, is a striking image, but goes back a long way in Christian iconography [‘the early Christian apologist Tertullian (160-220 CE) posited the association of angels [via] wings to their aerial and fast-moving qualities … to their ancient and multifaceted affiliation with the winds. The winds too, like angels, carried souls aloft.’ Meredith J. Gill, Angels and the Order of Heaven in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (Cambridge University Press 2014), 123]. Milton's idea that angels ‘condense’ themselves into ‘limbs’ may owe something to this whirligig corporealising of Vida's ange;s [‘Spirits that live throughout/Vital in every part ... and as they please,/They Limb themselves, and colour, shape or size/Assume, as likes them best, condense or rare’; as Milton says in Paradise Lost].
The other thing this passage does is give us a kind of Audubon’s Guide to the multicoloured plumage of these beings. In Dante the first angels we meet are white, to signify their ineffable purity. The angel that approaches in Purgatory 2: 13, 51) is described as having a brow as pure as the brows of his charges will have after their purification is accomplished, and with garments and wings white beyond any earthly comparison. The angel of Canto 19 is compared to hoar-frost and a swan. Other Dantean angels are red and green, and by the time we get into the higher echelons of the Paradiso Dantes angels are being described as glittering rubies set in a golden river of light and as burning like flames. Dionysius the Areopagite, the source for a lot of medieval angelological beliefs, assigns different meanings to the colours (green is for the youngest angels, for example); Vida stresses scarlets and fiery reds because these angels are massing for war.
But what’s most interesting here, or most interesting to me, is the extent to which this account of angels mustering for war fed-through to Milton’s epic narrative of the war in heaven in Books 5 and 6 of Paradise Lost. Line 547's turbo densus surely feeds into the moment Christ wheels his whirl-wind chariot, and whirl-wind self, into battle:
rush'd with whirl-wind sound‘Wheele within Wheele’ owes something obvious to the fiery chariot of Ezekiel 1: 5-21 and 10: 6-19; but I wonder if Vida's whirwind angels and their fiery chariots (also drawing on the same source) didn't prick Milton's epic imagination more directly. The angel of Vida's line 554-55, picking up arrows of fire and hanging a curved bow over his gleaming shoulders might have some connection with the angel who ‘him hung his Bow/And Quiver with three-bolted Thunder stor'd’ [PL 6:763-4]; or Vida's specifying that the six-winged breed of angels had wings on their feet as well as their torsos gets expanded into Milton's account of Raphael:
The Chariot of Paternal Deitie,
Flashing thick flames, Wheele within Wheele, undrawn,
It self instinct with Spirit, but convoyd
By four Cherubic shapes, four Faces each
Had wondrous, as with Starrs thir bodies all
And Wings were set with Eyes, with Eyes the wheels
Of Beril, and careering Fires between. [Paradise Lost 6:749-56]
A Seraph wingd; six wings he wore, to shadeMore directly, Vida's image of two ranks of perfectly ordered angels marching not over the ground but through the air in lines 574-75 becomes Milton's:
His lineaments Divine; the pair that clad
Each shoulder broad, came mantling o're his brest
With regal Ornament; the middle pair
Girt like a Starrie Zone his waste, and round
Skirted his loines and thighes with downie Gold
And colours dipt in Heav'n; the third his feet
Shaddowd from either heele with featherd maile
Skie-tinctur'd grain. [PL 5:277-85]
On they moveNo sling-shots or boxing gloves for Milton, which is a shame; but lots of other Vida-esque, which is to say Vergilian, gear: ‘In battailous aspect’ which ‘Bristl'd with upright beams innumerable/Of rigid Spears, and Helmets throng'd, and Shields/Various’ [PL 6:84-4].
Indissolubly firm; nor obvious Hill
Nor streit'ning Vale, nor Wood, nor Stream divides
Thir perfet ranks; for high above the ground
Thir march was, and the passive Air upbore
Thir nimble tread. [PL 6:68-73]
[Next: lines 589-615]
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