[Previous: lines 743-757]
Christ is crucified. Meanwhile, back in Jerusalem, his mother Mary is hearing the bad news.
Interea matris, quam magnam nuper ad urbem------------
traxerat incertus rumor, certissimus aures
nuntius implevit, natum extra mœnia duci, [760]
ad mortemque rapi captum, insidiisque subactum.
Palluit infelix, mediisque in vocibus artus
diriguit: licèt hœc Patris sciat omnia certo
consilio fieri, atque ipsius numine Nati,
altius ingenti tamen exuperante dolore, [765]
cuncta oblita ruit: resonant plangoribus aedes
fœmineis: frustra lacrymantem, et acerba gementem
solantur fidae comites : iamque illa per urbem
atque huc, atque illuc errat, tristemque requirit
indefessa locum; nunc hïc, nunc haesitat illic [770]
vestigans oculis, atque auribus omnia captans,
sicubi concursum, voces aut hauriat ullas.
Ac veluti pastu rediens ubi vespere cerva,
montibus ex altis ad nota cubilia, fœtûs
iandudum teneri memor, omnem sanguine circum [775]
sparsam cernit humum, catulos nec conspicit usquam,
continuò lustrans oculis nemus omne peragrat
cum gemitu; tum siqua lupi, siqua illa leonis
raptoris signa in triviis conspexerit, illac
insequitur totâ observans vestigia sylvâ, [780]
perque viam passim linquit pede signa bisulco.
Haud aliter, simul atque jugo prospexit in alto
collis oliviferi, latè qui maximus urbi
incubat, ingentem concursum, et lucida circùm
spiculaque clypeosque concursam et lucida circum [785]
Per medios ruit, et cursum extra mœnia torquet.
Illam porticibus spectant, altisque fenestris
effusae matres, longè et miserantur euntem.
Iamque hos, iamque ruens cursu praevertitur illos,
ungula crebra licèt volucrum proculcet equorum. [790]
Addunt se flenti comites, pariterque sequuntur
fidus Ioannes cum matre, atque innuba Martha,
et soror, et Salome, et coniux aegra Cleophae,
cunctae atro pariter velatae tempora amictu.
Ecce autem videt infando iam proxima monti [795]
erectamque trabem, et scalas, defixaque signa.
Quamvis nescit adhuc, quae sint ea robora porrò,
horruit illa tamen metuens, et pectus honestum
terque, quaterque manu tundens, pectusque caputque,
“Hei mihi! nescio quid moles , atque illa minatur [800]
machina triste, inquit: gentis scio acerba furentis
circumfusa odia, et genus undique Judaeorum
iamdudum nobis infensum exposcere pœnas.
Hoc erat, hoc totâ insomnis quòd nocte videbar
cernere signum, olim Isacidae quo summa notârunt [805]
limina, quisque suum, fuso agni rite per aedes
sanguine, post longa exilia, indignosque labores
niliacis moniti furtim decedere terris.”
Haec memorans simulibat: eam sine more ruentem,
rumpentemque aditus per tela, per agmina densa [810]
reiiciunt clypeorum objectu, et longiùs arcent.
Iam magis atque magis non vani signa timoris
clarescunt, propiusque in vertice conspicitur crux
ingens, infabricata, et iniquis aspera nodis.
Meantime his Mother, who'd come to the city,------------
after certain rumours had reached her ears,
heard her son had been taken beyond the walls, [760]
captured by treachery and condemned to death.
Hearing this made her grow pale, and her limbs
stiffened:—she knew it was the Father’s design
and the unalterable will of His divine Son.
But still, overflowing with great pain, [765]
she forgot all that. The houses echoed wth
female lamentation. In vain her friends tried
to console her grief and tears; she walked the city
this way and that, mournfully searching for
the place of execution; stopping here and there [770]
taking advantage of every sight and sound
wherever she might hear the words of the crowd.
Just as a hind, returning at evening
from the hills to her familiar resting place
to feed her young, finds blood everywhere around [775]
scattered in the ground, and her fawns absent;
she wanders through the groves searching for them,
groaning. Spotting the spoor of wolf or lion
she tracks the predator by following its sign
through the entire forest in her search, [780]
leaving behind her cloven-hoofed footprints.
Just so, as she looked into the distance
she saw the olive-rich hill beyond the city
saw the many people converging there,
the shining spears and shields of the cavalry [785]
she hurried through the middle gate and outside.
Watching from their porches and windows
mothers of sons all pitied her as she passed.
She ran, passing now one group then another,
jostled by the hoofs of the swift horses. [790]
Her companions followed the weeping woman:
faithful John, his mother and the virgin Martha,
Salome (her sister) and Cleophas’ sick wife.
All had covered their faces with black veils.
As she approached the infamous hill she saw, [795]
upright beam and ladders, the sign at the top.
Despite not yet knowing the timbers’ purpose
still shuddered in alarm, struck at her chest
three, four times with her hand, and beat her brow,
“Woe is me! I know this engine portends [800]
nothing good,” she said: “I know the harsh rage
and hatred all these Jews have for my offspring,
relentless in demanding penalties against us.
This, this is what blazed through my sleepless night—
the sign by which each of Isaac’s sons marked [805]
his lintel, after the ritual Lamb shed its
blood, and, after long exile and hard labour,
they could secretly leave the land of the Nile.”
So speaking she went up, not caring for
propriety, shoving past the dense ranks [810]
of shields trying to keep her at a distance.
The truth behind her fears came ever more
clearer into view: at the top was the cross
huge, roughly-hewn and spotted with rough knots.
Mary’s ignorance as to what crucifixion entails might strike us as implausible (although it was a Roman punishment, not a Jewish one, of course). But it’s hard to deny the build-up of pathos in this passage. The reference in line 805 is to Exodus 12:13: ‘Now the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you; and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.’ Otherwise, picking up on the point made in this post from a few days ago:
Gardner translates [Book 5] lines 713 and 718 as ‘Above his head, at the summit of the cross, they wrote ...’ and ‘But his cross, set between theirs, rose far higher ...’ But in fact at no point in this passage does Vida use the word crux. It's actually quite striking how rarely he uses that word in this poem; words like trabs (‘timber beam’), lignum (‘wood’, ‘tree’) and arbor (‘tree’) are consistently preferred. It's not that crux is never used (it crops up at 5:407 for instance); but it is notable mostly by its absence, and this passage doesn't use the word even once. I'm not entirely sure why this should be. There's no metrical reason why crux or any of its grammatical forms can't be fitted into hexameter, after all.I mention this only to point to the fact that here, unusually, Vida does use crux, and in a prominent position at the end of line 813. It's rare for him to do it, but he's using the word, I suppose, climactically here.
Mary Beard, reviewing Mira Rubin’s Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary (Allen Lane 2009), notes that ‘there is little about Mary in the gospels—she is mentioned more often in the Koran.’ Accordingly ‘giving substance to the Mother of God therefore became a great exercise in Christian creativity.’
From the east, the image and worship of Mary spread through the Mediterranean. Black Madonnas were worshipped in the groves once sacred to Roman fertility goddesses. Egyptian Mary borrowed from the cult of Isis, a life-giving beneficent goddess, and was painted with ‘large dark eyes set under strong eyebrows’. Court painters in the 15th century showed Mary as a fashionable beauty, with a high plucked forehead, tight bodice and silk veil. It is dismaying at first sight that a statue at Ely Cathedral, commissioned for the millennium, still shows Mary as a Barbie blonde. No doubt it’s true to how she’s been imagined, the projections she’s carried.Her importance to modern Catholicism is reflected in the relatively large part she plays in Vida’s poem. It was not always thus:
It’s easy to imagine the figure of Mary as ubiquitous and always present, but Rubin shows that the early church preferred martyrs, missionaries, local saints. The monastic orders founded in the 11th and 12th centuries were the cheerleaders for Mary, and pilgrims to sites throughout Europe took home news of cures and miracles and carried her devotion far and wide. Between 1000 and 1200, as the parish structure was set into place throughout the continent, statues of Mary appeared in almost every church. Over the next two centuries she was made “local and vernacular”. A 15th-century commonplace book kept by a Norfolk alderman had the facts of her life all sorted out:We’re into the territory, now, of the ‘stabat mater’, which I’ll discuss in a little more detail in tomorrow’s post. ‘The blithe figure of the mother with babe in arms gives way to Mary at the foot of the Cross.’
The Virgin parent Mary lived 63 years.
She was 14 at the blessed birth,
She lived 33 [years] with her son,
And 16, she suffered alone, like the stars.
Artists portray her ‘fainting, leaning, falling, sometimes pulling at her son’s body’. The image of the Pietà – Mary with Christ’s bleeding body draped across her knees – emerges in the 13th century, the era of plague, war, famine. … Rubin fights shy of psychological exploration. It is a good idea, in dealing with the medieval mind, to be aware of its impenetrability. But it is hard not to think that, during years of vast premature mortality, the worshippers of Mary were sublimating their own grief and loss, finding purpose for short and blighted lives in their belief in redemption through suffering; for did not the Virgin suffer? God placed her in shame and peril; 33 years on, he left her childless, broken with grief. God’s reasons for tormenting us may, after all, be revealed somewhere; if we don’t know why he does it, perhaps Mother Mary knows why.Perhaps.
At the head of this post: Pietro Perugino's depiction of Mary at the foot of the Cross (1482), presently in the National Gallery, Washington.
[Next: lines 815-845]
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