On Jacob and the Happy Life 2.51–2.57

Tortures were applied to the sixth as well. But he said: 'Do not err in vain and ascribe it to your own power that you exercise these things against us. This is the price of our offenses, that we are punished as sinners; and thanks be to the Lord, that here a double penalty is exacted from us for sins, so that there consolation may be granted us. And thanks to you too, that you are so hard and pitiless, so that by such punishments of ours the Lord, against whom we have sinned, may become propitious to our nation. We too lighten the hardship while we delight in the sufferings of faith.' And he too, torn apart by hard and harsh punishments, was gathered to his brothers.

The youngest of the brothers remained, and Antiochus was now ashamed to have been made such a laughingstock by an unripe age. So, wishing to trap him by trickery, he promised honors, riches, his friendship, a share in his secrets. But the devout mother admonished her son, saying to him as to the others: 'I do not know how you came into my womb; I did not give you breath nor form your limbs, but these are gifts of almighty God.' Antiochus, seeing the mother anxious, thought she feared for his safety, and began to urge her too to call her son back from his purpose. But she said to her son in their native tongue: 'You alone, my son, remain, the sum of my prayers; you last closed my childbearing, you last complete my joys. Have pity on me, who carried you in my womb through so many courses of months; do not in one moment put my old age to shame, do not discolor the trophies of so many brothers of yours, do not leave their sacred company, do not desert their fellowship. These triumphs still await you. Look to heaven, from where you drew your breath, to the Father of all; look to the earth, which first supplied you with nourishment; look to your brothers, who seek their colleague; look to your mother, who gave you milk. Repay the reward of devoted blood: do not be torn from your brothers, do not be torn from your mother. Temporal are the riches Antiochus promises, temporal the honors; everlasting is the crown bestowed by almighty God. The Lord gave you to me as the lights of seven days; I have already closed the sixth day, and all their works very good. You owe it to me, my son, that as I labored in those six, I may rest in you in the seventh, as one already on holiday from the works of the world.' So the young man, rushing forward, said: 'What are you waiting for?' And crying out many things — that he could by no means be torn from the fellowship of his brothers, whose deaths were far more blessed than the commands of the king — while he pressed the king with reproaches, he too, tortured by bitter kinds of torments, completed the task of this life.

Last of all the mother was offered to death. Who would deny that she was happy, who, as though walled in by seven walls, <stood> among the bodies of her sons, feeling no assault of death? Who, I say, would doubt her happiness, who, surrounded by seven towers, lifted up her head into the seat of paradise; who, girded by seven sons, brought to the heavenly altars a choir most holy to God, melodious not only with voices but also with sufferings, to sing together the praises of the Lord? How good a birth of faith, how safe this harbor of piety, how splendid a lamp of the church, shining with sevenfold light and from an eighth womb supplying oil to all the lights! Of them it is beautifully said: 'Give a portion to those seven, and also to those eight,' because in both numbers they attain the fellowship of grace, nourished in the law, crowned through grace: seven as in the sabbath, eight as in the gospel, the devout mother being added as the completion of the passion, she who in such sons conceived and brought forth the whole pattern of piety.

The words of the holy woman come back to memory, saying to her sons: 'I bore you, I poured the juice of milk into you: do not lose your nobility.' So other mothers usually call their sons back from martyrdom, not call them to it. But she placed her motherly affection in this: to persuade her sons of an everlasting rather than a temporal life. So the devout mother watched her sons' contests, and though she was shaken by the compassion of a mother's heart, she pressed down her grief with zeal for piety; and when Antiochus offered it, though she could have chosen the safety of her sons, she preferred danger, and, suppressing the groans of nature, she wished the punishment of her sons to be increased, so that death might come more quickly. We see a mother's prayers turned toward her sons, not that she might leave any of them surviving, but gain them all as devout co-heirs of death.

But the sons were not unworthy of such a parent; they exhorted one another and said with one zeal and, as it were, one battle line of souls: 'Let us trample on the assault of hostile death. For then we shall live, when we have died. Let no one desert the ranks of piety, let no one withdraw from the triumphal battle. Not to a man but to almighty God have we vowed our souls; not for a man but for the author of all do we fight. Such is this battle that he has conquered more gloriously who has been more cruelly killed.' So no one feared, no one trembled, none of so many brothers was slower toward death; but all ran to death through bitter punishments as on the road to immortality. And the mother, seeing the harmonious ranks of her sons, offered, like a devout soul, the members of her own body in her sons, and seemed to herself to undergo the tortures she had vowed in her own limbs.

The sons fell, ulcerated by torments; the dead were rolled upon the dead, bodies tumbled upon bodies, heads were cut off upon heads; the place was filled with the corpses of her sons. The mother did not weep, did not lament, did not close the eyes or mouth of any dying son, did not wash their wounds, knowing they were more glorious if they were seen disemboweled and clotted with dust and blood alike, as victors usually return from war, as they bring back trophies from the enemy. She did not think coverings should be thrown over them, or funeral rites performed, except with the company of her own death too. What cithara could give forth sweeter songs than her sons gave forth, admonishing one another amid such grave punishments? For the groan of nature burst forth even from the unwilling. You would have seen the corpses of the slain in order, like the threads of strings; you would have heard a seven-stringed psaltery resounding with triumphal groans. Not so, as they say, would the seductive songs of the Sirens draw a hearer; for they drew to shipwreck, these to the victory of sacrifice. Nor would the songs of swans so soothe the ears and soul; for swans die by the lot of nature, these died for love of piety. Not so do the hoarse murmurs of doves resound in a secret grove as the last words of the dying resounded with the highest sweetness. Nor does the moon so shine among the stars as the mother shone among her sons, both when she led them to martyrdom to illumine them and when she lay embracing the victors in the midst of her sons.

O mother, truly stronger than adamant, sweeter than honey, more fragrant than a flower! O indissoluble bond of piety! O love truly strong as death, zeal of devotion and faith hard as hell! No floods of such great sufferings could shut out your love, no rivers of such bitterness overflow it. Just as the ark in that flood of the world was borne unharmed over the spaces of the whole earth, so you too, immovable in piety, stood firm against the waves of such grievous sufferings, and when you could have chosen your sons' safety, you would not. With what affection shall I follow you, devoted children of a holy mother? With what brush of speech shall I paint the likeness of your form and souls? You stood among the royal armies to which the whole world had been subjected, which even India avoided by fleeing into the secret places of the farthest sea, and you alone carried off victory over a proud king without armed conflict. In you the arms of piety alone conquered; the tyrant paid the penalty both because he could not conquer you and because he perished by a dreadful death.