{"merobaudes-carmen-de-christo/1":{"o":"Proles vera Dei cunctisque antiquior annis, / Nunc genitus qui semper eras, a lucisque repertor, / Ante tuæ matrisque parens, quem misit ab astris / Æquævus genitor, Verbique in semina fusum / Virgineos habitare sinus, et corporis artus / iussit inire vias, parvaque in sede morari: / Quem sedes non ulla capit, qui lumine primo / Vidisti, quidquid mundo nascente creares, / Ipse opifex, opus ipse tui dignatus iniquas / Etatis sentire vices, et corporis hujus / Dissimiles perferre modos, hominemque subire, / Ut posses monstrare Deum, ne lubricus error / Et decepta diu varii solertia mundi / Pectora tam multis sineret mortalia saeclis. / Auctorem scivere Deum te, conscia partus / Mater, et attoniti pecudum sensere timores : / Te nova sollicito lustrantes sidera visu / In coelo videre prius, lumenque secuti / Invenere magi: tu noxia pectora solvis. / Elapsasque animas in corpora functa reducis, / Mundus et ad manes penetras, mortisque latebras / Immortalis adis : tibi tantum non fuit uni / Principium finisve mori, sed nocte refusa / In coelum ad Patrem scandis, rursusque perenni / Ordine purgatis adimis contagia terris. / Tu solus Patrisque comes, tu Spiritus insons, / Et toties unus, triplicique in lumine simplex. / Quis nisi pro cunctis aliud, quis credere possit, / Te potuisse mori, poteras qui reddere vitam ?","t":"True offspring of God, older than all the years,\nnow born, you who always were, and discoverer of light,\nparent of your own mother before her, whom the coeternal\nFather sent from the stars, poured into the seeds of the Word,\nto dwell in a virgin's womb, and bade you enter the ways\nof a body's limbs and stay in a small dwelling:\nyou whom no dwelling contains, who in the first light\nsaw whatever you would create as the world was born,\nyourself the maker, yourself the work, deigned to feel the harsh\nchanges of age, and to endure the unlike ways\nof this body, and to take on manhood,\nthat you might show God, lest slippery error\nand the long-deceived cleverness of the varied world\nshould leave mortal hearts astray for so many ages.\nYour mother, aware of the birth, knew you as God\nthe Author, and the astonished fears of the cattle sensed you;\nscanning new stars with anxious gaze,\nthe Magi first saw you in heaven and, following the light,\nfound you. You set free guilty hearts,\nand lead back souls that had slipped away into dead bodies;\nyou pierce the world and reach the shades, and the hiding places of death\nyou, the immortal, enter: to you alone dying was\nneither beginning nor end, but when the night had been driven back\nyou climb into heaven to the Father, and again in an everlasting\norder you take away the defilement from the cleansed lands.\nYou alone are both the Father's companion, you the innocent Spirit,\nand so many times one, simple in a threefold light.\nWho, unless it were for all, who could believe\nthat you could die, you who could give back life?","f":"Merobaudes, <i>Carm. Christ.</i> 1 (PL 61:972–973; trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/p/merobaudes-carmen-de-christo/1)."}}