Book 6, lines 813-897

[Previous: lines 782-812]

Jesus has ascended to heaven where he meets his Father.

Iamque aderat promissa dies, deciesque tenebras
flammifera sol exoriens face ab orbe fugârat;
cùm Pater omnipotens cœli regione serena,                 [815]
sidera purpureo reficit quà purior aether
lumine, cœlicolûm in medio, media arce sederet,
tempora dispensans, secretaque fœdera mundo.
Cui se tum exutus moribundos filius artus,
Diffulgens radiis, ac mira luce coruscus,                     [820]
obtulit, et magno Genitorem affatus amore est:
“O Pater, et sociis tandem succurrere nostris
tempus,” ait, “quos, amisso duce, protinus omnes
acer agit timor huc illuc, atque omnia terrent
imbelles, quoniam mortali corpore creti.                     [825]
Discute terrorem hunc animis, et pectora firma,
ne casus nequeant alacres procurrere in omnes.
Illis, me propter, Solyme, Iudeaque passim
insidias infensa odiis molitur iniquis:
tu tamen hos olim fore, qui praestantibus ausis           [830]
per gentes canerent nostrum indelebile nomen,
quacunque Oceano terrarum clauditur orbis,
et populos nova conversos ad sacra vocarent,
pollicitus, Genitor; tibi nec sententia nutat.
Hos (quando cœli demum non abnuis arcem)              [835]
ipse ego sæpe, tua fretus pietate, labantes
firmavi, implevique animis: siquidem affore Olympi
Promisi auxilium subitò et tutamen ab arce,
quo freti, reges regumque minacia iussa
contemnant, alacresque ruant in funera leti                  [840]
sponte sua, verae pro relligionis amore.”
Sic fatus, palmas serro ostentabat acuto,
traiectosque pedes, et hians in pectore vulnus,
sertaque, et hamatos vepres quos hostia gessit.
Annuit oranti, delibansque oscula, nato                        [845]
reddidit haec Pater, aeterno devinctus amore:
“Iam concessa petis: dabitur tibi, Nate, quod optas.
Promissa, ne tende manus, afflabimus aura
quos vis, atque viros nostro flammabimus igni;
ut pro te, blandae projecto lucis amore,                         [850]
non ferrum, aut flammas metuant, morsusve ferarum,
aut crinita rotis circùm laniantibus haustra.
Quique reformidant nunc omnes aeris auras,
obiicient certis alacres se sponte periclis
pugnando, et claras animas de corpore reddent,           [855]
contemptu necis, et vera virtute superbi.
Non illos aestus, non illos frigora sistent:
letiferum aut campos cùm sidus findit hiulcos;
cœrulea aut glacie cùm nectit flumina bruma.
Verùm ultra Gangem auditi, Bactra ultima supra,        [860]
Ismara, Bistoniasque plagas, Serasque remotos
Gadibus, et virides penetrabunt voce Britannos.
implebunt terras monitis, et cuncta novantes
templa pererrato statuent tibi maxima mundo:
ad tua mutatae properabunt nomina gentes,                  [865]
divisae penitus toto orbe per aequora gentes;
seclaque conversis procedent aurea rebus.
Quae tibi saepe ego pollicitus, scisque omnia mecum.
Nec tantùm tua, Nate, piis haec vulnera Olympum
nunc pandi meruere, nigra quos nocte premebat           [870]
insontes primi scelus exitiale parentis;
verùm alios mox, atque alios per secula cœlo
efficient dignos, sua quos commissa piacla
sidereis procul arcebant à sedibus olim.
Tanta tuae merces, ea yis, ea gratia mortis.                   [875]
Atque adeô quodcunque homines ab origine rerum
Admisere, aliis quidquid peccabitur annis,
Huc coeat; satis illa tui pars parva, superque
Omnia diluere, prorsusque abolere, cruoris.
Quin etiam mox tempus erit, cùm scilicet olim              [880]
ter centum prope lustra peregerit aethereus sol,
tum veri, Graiûm obliti mendacia, vates
funera per gentes referent tua carmine verso;
atque tuis omnes resonabunt laudibus urbes:
praesertim laetam Italiae felicis ad oram,                     [885]
addua ubi vagus, et muscoso Serius amne
purior electro, tortoque simillimus angui,
quà rex fluviorum Eridanus se turbidus infert
mœnia turrigerae stringens malè tuta Cremonae,
ut sibijam tectis vix temperet unda caducis.                  [890]
Illic tum, nivei velut inter nubila cygni,
omnibus in ripis pueri, innuptaeque puellae,
carmina casta canent, mixtique in gramine molli
laudibus incipient certatim assuescere nostris,
et teneri primâ cœtus te voce sonabunt.                         [895]
Haec tibi certa manent, haec vis movet ordine nulla.”
Sic fatus, dulcem Nato inspiravit amorem.

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Now the promised time approached. On the tenth day
the fiery rising sun drove darkness away;
the omnipotent Father sat in the serene,                         [815]
where stars burn purple in the purer air,
bright amongst his angels, in his palace,
dispensing the seasons in secret compact.
To him, the shining Son, having shed his
mortality, and wondrous with beaming light,                 [820]
offered love to his great Parent with these words:
“Father: let us aid my disciples on earth;
the time has come,” he said. “Having lost their leader
their timid souls are afraid; dashing here and there
with the uncourage of mortal bodies.                             [825]
Take fear from their minds and firm-up their souls!
Let them run eagerly towards what is coming.
Jerusalem and Judea hate them—for my sake:
They set unjust traps and hostile plot for them.
You said once these would be the daring ones               [830]
singing my undying name to the people
in every land that ocean engirdles,
calling forth new converts from every nation—
you promised, Father; nor has your mind changed.
These (you won’t deny them their starry home)            [835]
were men I often assured of your piety
to strengthen their wavering minds—Olympus,
I promised, would soon send assistance to them,
such that they could hold kings’ threats in contempt
and rush eagerly into the jaws of to death                        [840]
for the love of their own and true religion.”

So speaking, he showed his pierced hands,
and transfixed feet, and the wide wound in his breast,
and the garland of hooked briars he had worn:
this to ramp-down anger. He kissed his son,                    [845]
the Father, with love’s eternal power:
“What you ask has already been granted.
Its promised (no need to raise your hands)
I’ll inspire these men, and inflame them all;
They shall cast aside their love for life for you                [850]
fearing neither unsheathed swords, nor flames
neither wild beasts nor the machines of torture.
Though now they shrink from even the breezes, then
they will go boldly into every peril
winning acclaim for their souls by defying                       [855]
death, pride in the true power of courage.
Neither heat nor cold will stop them, nor the star
of pestilence that cracks open the parched field;
nor winter’s chill that blocks rivers with blue ice.
Truly they’ll reach Ganges and far Bactria,                       [860]
Ismara, the Bistonian fields, China
go past Cadiz to green Britannia—loud
shall be their teachings, filling every country.
Wandering the world they shall found temples
in your honour, hastening all people                                  [865]
to you, though separated by oceans.
A new golden age will dawn over a changed
world—all this I’ve promised to build, you know.
For these wounds, my son, have gained Olympus
not just for the pious—whom black night oppressed         [870]
though innocent, because of original sin—
but for many others, others who come after
rendered worthy, whose sins would otherwise
have kept them from ever reaching the stars.
So you pay them via the grace of death.                             [875]
Whatever men have done since the world began
and what they may commit in after years,
all combined—the smallest drop of your blood
suffices to atone and cleanse for all.
Indeed the time will come in course of years—                 [880]
thrice five hundred passes of the lustrous sun—
when truth will banish old Greek lies, and poets
will use their verse to tell folk of your death
all the cities will resound with your praise:
especially the shores of blessed Italy,                                 [885]
the meandering Adda and mossy Serio
bright with amber, sinuous like a snake.
There runs the turbid Po, monarch of rivers
looping the ill-towered walls of Cremona,
its waters lapping their ruined houses.                              [890]
There like snowy-white swans among clouds pass
chaste boys and girls processing altogether
over soft grass, mixing their voices as one
vying with each other in singing your praises.
This is what awaits you, unchangeable!”                           [895]
So He spoke to His son, breathing sweet love.

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With respect to God seated in the highest serene where the stars burn purple (line 816: purpureus—on which colour, a favourite of Vida’s, see here) ‘dispensing the seasons in secret compact’ (line 818) ... what can I tell you. It’s what the Latin says: tempora dispensans, secretaque fœdera mundo, dispensing the tempora, plural of tempus (‘time, period, age; season or quarter of the year’) in a secret foedus (‘treaty, agreement, contract, pact, compact’) with the world. Make of it what you will.

The ‘pestilent star’ of line 858 is Sirius, the dog-star:

Many cultures have historically attached special significance to Sirius, particularly in relation to dogs. It is often colloquially called the ‘Dog Star’ as the brightest star of Canis Major, the ‘Great Dog’ constellation. The Ancient Greeks thought that Sirius's emanations could affect dogs adversely, making them behave abnormally during the ‘dog days’, the hottest days of the summer. The Romans knew these days as dies caniculares, and the star Sirius was called Canicula, "little dog". The excessive panting of dogs in hot weather was thought to place them at risk of desiccation and disease. In extreme cases, a foaming dog might have rabies, which could infect and kill humans they had bitten. Homer, in the Iliad, describes the approach of Achilles toward Troy in these words: ‘Sirius rises late in the dark, liquid sky; on summer nights,/star of stars, Orion's Dog they call it, brightest of all, but an evil portent,/bringing heat and fevers to suffering humanity.’

The other details here are all easily recoverable. In lines 860-862, where God promises his son Christianity will spread to the Ganges (in India, obviously) and ‘Bactria’ (the classical name for the territory roughly covered by modern Afghanistan), as well as to Ismara (a city on the coast of Thrace, in Asia Minor) and Bistonia (also in Thrace)—you’d think it would reach the latter before the former, but OK. Then the tour du monde zips to China, thence past Cadiz, in Spain, and finally to my own ‘green Britannia’—virides Britannos is actually a tag from Ovid (Amores 2.16.39), although when Ovid uses the phrase he means the people themselves, with their blue-green woad-dyed skin, not the island.

But then we get to the money-shot, as it were; by which I mean, the sly insertion of Vida into his own poem by way of celebrating the greatness of ... well, of Vida really. It’s a strikingly (as we would now say) postmodern moment, a nexus of genuine textual irony. So: after quin ter centum—that is, fifteen-hundred years—have passed, a poet will come who will replace the ‘lies’ of the Greek myths with the truth of Christianity as the topic of his poetry. Christ was crucified in 33; in 1532—499 years after this event—Vida dedicated his epic to his patron, Pope Clement VII. In the event it took three more years before the work was finished and ready for publication, in 1535. But it’s close enough for government work, as the phrase goes.

And so the poem shifts from the Holy Land to Italy—fortunate Italy, as Vida calls it: Italia felix (line 885; though felices is in the plural here, because in poetic transposition it’s actually Italy’s shores that are blessed). Various rivers are namechecked including, in a gesture back to the very beginning of Book 1, the Po. This river is described as encircling in one of its meanders the city of Cremona—and Vida’s touches on the troubled recent history of this Lombard city-state. It was conquered and occupied by a Venetian army in 1499, recaptured by the Duke of Milan in 1509, then taken by occupying French forces, and finally (as far as Vida was concerned) assigned to Spanish rule under the Treaty of Noyon of 1513—although the Spaniards had actually to seize their new prize as they signed this treaty, and Cremona only actually became theirs in 1524 when the Castle of Santa Croce surrendered (the French were not expelled from the duchy as a whole until 1526). Cremona remained a Spanish dominion for the rest of Vida’s life, and beyond (it was Spanish until the beginning of the 18th century; then the Austrians took it in 1706 and held it until Napoleon seized it in the 1790s. It was restored to Austria in 1815, managed to wrest city-state independence out of the Revolutions of 1848—though the Austrians soon suppressed this—and finally became part of the unifying Kingdom of Italy in 1859). So there you go.

At the head of this post: an unknown artist's God the Father on his throne (Westphalia, Germany, late 15th century).

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