Poems 16.1–17.313

Times follow times; age goes and comes; each day flees by pushing on the next and turns the world round; all things pass by; the glory of the saints endures in Christ, who makes all things new while he himself abides. At last then, returning day, be born for me, day longed for the whole year, which renews sweet festivities and my vows, which demand of me solemn gifts, bringing back the birthday in which thousands of countless peoples rejoice, in which special joys touch me, in which I owe the ratified gifts of a servant tongue to be offered to my Felix, to whom, with dedicated mind, I am devoted in Christ the Lord; it is right for me to celebrate this saint also with the service of my mouth in yearly songs. I will tell, then, his merits and the causes of his merits, by which he obtained the rewards of heavenly praises, eternal days, and the name of great honour. Already the former book has told you the first acts of the martyr: whence his home, what his family, in what studies he was raised, by what grade then, called through holy duties, he preferred to serve the everlasting Christ rather than wander along his father's ways through the byways of the world; for his father had lived under Caesar, his military service completed. We have told also the punishments he endured in a foul prison, which the confessor underwent, ready to bear death too, had not God, forestalling the swords, released him from his chains and called him to other deeds, so that first Maximus the bishop might return to the sacred hall, who in lonely woods was gasping out the last of his life, sick, driven out by the raging enemy, whom Felix, as bidden, carried on his own body and set down in the dwelling of a poor house;

and, blessed by the holy mouth of the blessed old man in return for his services, he departed, and for a few days hid in silence under the roof of his own house, wearying the heavenly Lord with a mind not silent; piercing above the stars with direct prayer, he knocked on him with his near merit, asking that peace might come forth. Meanwhile the days flowed by; peace seemed to return. Felix left his hiding place, and at last, trusting a serene sky, began to give himself back, glad, to the glad brothers and to entrust himself to the calm city. The sheep of Christ rejoiced that their shepherd was restored. He soothed the flock, frightened by the recent storm, with heavenly admonitions, and, guiding anxious hearts with the Word as leader, strengthened them with the love of faith, teaching that the bitter and the sweet of the world are to be scorned; he warned them not to give way to terrors, but readily to offer their breasts to fires or swords themselves; and he himself added weight to his words, a confessor who had suffered what he taught must be endured, a teacher to all by word and example alike. That evil one did not bear this long; but he bristled his black locks and puffed up his neck with rabid poisons, and sent his venom into wicked breasts, so that the grace of Felix might burn black minds. He planted goads, and the fury of viperous envy blazed in wicked minds; their shameless anger seeks first his house; impious desire for crime burns in all. Impiety thirsts for Felix; but, absent from his house, he happened to be standing, unconcerned, in the middle of the city, surrounded, as was his custom, by brotherly friends, sowing godly words in the ears of the believing people.

Behold, seeking him with drawn swords, they arrive, when suddenly either the hearts of the enemies or his face are changed; raging, they did not recognize the man they knew, and they ask him for Felix. Felix, where he is seen, is not seen; he is himself and not himself; though near, he is far. The same man becomes unknown and known to his fellow citizens, faith distinguishing his face: to believers he was himself, to the enemies another. He himself perceived the plan of a favouring Christ and, smiling, said to those asking: “I do not know the Felix you seek.” Straightway they pass him by; and he leaves the square, having baffled the gaping dogs as the Lord mocked them. They had not gone far, and were asking everyone in what quarter Felix was, when someone rebuked them and gave information, not knowing the reason, and believing them out of their minds with fury, since they had not seen the man himself close by, to whom they had spoken face to face. Struck by the strangeness of the trick and raging more fiercely, they soon return and run along the very tracks of the man. And now they were drawing near, but, warned by the uproar of the city running before them and the shouts of the astonished crowd on every side, Felix by a turn avoids the threatening wounds, and, leaving the way, takes himself far off from the open space, and, finding a place which happened to open as an escape to the frightened man, withdrawn from the crowded city; even so he was not far from the black pursuers, he who, barely withdrawn from the sight of those following, had somehow, fearing them, avoided the hostile swords; and he was about to be caught, because the place, with no barrier of a bolt, could not keep off the wicked men; for with no doors it lay open to the public street, the untrustworthy wall of a half-ruined building, broken.

But the divine hand placed itself between the saint and the enemies and fenced the place with a wondrous defence, not with a pile of stones, nor bars put on iron-bound doors, by which, through human arts, we close our halls, but suddenly a filthy mound of rubble grew together, and a spider, at command, stretched its swaying webs and with trembling folds built a barrier across the unprotected opening, and gave it the squalid look of a deserted ruin. As soon as this met the threatening men, they were amazed, and, stopping in their tracks, said to one another in turn: “Is it not madness to try an entrance here, or to believe that any man has entered where tiny worms have left their signs? Small flies break these nets; do we foolishly think that a man has got in through what is closed and that the delicate web was not broken by so great a body? Rather, that informer now deserves our hands, who cunningly with crafty guile led us into deserted places, and, turned elsewhere, falsely said that Felix lay hidden in this spot, to divert our arms by malicious deceit, a friend to the life of the fugitive. So let us withdraw, for to stand here longer will be the laughter of the crowd, and it will be marked as a mad error to strive to step here searching for a man's hiding place, where, with rotten rubble or spiders' veils drawn over it, the untrodden ground shows its recesses to be unentered.” Without delay they go away hastily in different directions, raging; but God, as Scripture sings, laughed at them in their mad threats, Christ from his heavenly citadel, and had veiled his Felix with sacred wings. He, safe in the bosom of the Lord, struck away the glowing darts, triumphant, with the helmet and shield of faith, and the confessor carried the sword of the Word in his mouth.

Armed in his hands with piety and full in his chaste breast of God, he covered it with the breastplate of distinguished merit. O divine wisdom, rich in many ways, always confounding the strong things of the world by the weak! Walls with high ramparts scarcely defend peoples, and the enemy often overwhelms those who trust in strong defences, and overthrown cities expose them to death. Now a spider protected the saint from armed men, with God defending; the enemy stood, driven back by tender nets; iron force gave way to an airy thread. Vain is the safety of men; my strength is no strength to me, if I lack the strength of God. Where is the vast strength of the giants? Where the kings of Pharos? Where great Jericho? For all of them their own glory, by which they swelled, was the cause of their destruction; nor did the virtues of heroes break them, but rather the divine power broke them by weak things. That giant fell like a dog by the sling of a shepherd boy; the sound of trumpets broke down that city; that proud king lay on the sand of the shore, weighing the riches of his kingdom in a naked death. So when Christ is with us, even a spider is a wall; but for him from whom Christ is absent, even a wall will become a spider's web. So when the crowds had gone away and silence had fallen, and deep night gave darkness trustworthy for secret flight, Felix comes out and changes his hiding place, singing this to the Lord: “If I walk in the midst of the shadow of night, I will fear no evil, since your right hand is with me; through hell I shall go, not without light.” So, with God as guide, he takes, in a remote quarter, a small room among low roofs around an open court, where an old cistern lay dry under a deep shelter.

Nearby, in the adjoining building, lived a woman holy to God, who, not knowing of the hidden confessor, fed Felix for Christ as if she knew. I will sing wonders, the device of the Lord, who fed his nursling through one who unknowingly fed her own. Now diligently loaves, now other food which, as was her custom, she had cooked for herself, in a rapture of mind, by divine arrangement, she would carry there, where Felix lay hidden, with the Lord as witness, veiled by the Lord; but neither when she went there did she know she had gone in, nor when she had left that place was she mindful of her entrance; and though she had busily brought in what she had prepared, though she served the saint with her own hands in feeding him, yet, unaware of so great a service, she could not know this from her own heart, since she did it not by her own mind but by the power of Christ; and, entering the place of the hiding and the pit built above its mouth, she would leave the food set out, and, believing she had put it down at home, so she always went away, mindful of setting the food down and soon unmindful of having set it. O woman blessed by God, like one of those birds which once fed the prophet withdrawn from the world, you too fed a martyr under a secret roof, like a bird obeying the Lord, and, unaware of your holy service yet sharing in it, what you did, and whom you served, you will at last learn with joy in that time, when God himself, Christ, will give you for his confessor's sake the crown of justice; then Felix himself will repay you your meals, with Christ as judge, which God transferred to the sweet use of the consecrated martyr, as once he sent food cooked for the reapers, the prophet hanging in the air by an angel's hand, to a fasting prophet among raging monsters;

no longer a wild ferocity, because their prey and holy fasting reined in the savage lions' greedy jaws. They say that for six whole months on end he lived without the company of men under that hiding place of dark and narrow roof alike, needing no human help, always abounding in the comfort of Christ; who at that time, it is said, often deigned to come to him with his speech, often fed him with his own hand and gave him from heaven drinks, not of rainwater, which the clouds pour out everywhere for all, but a dew which grace poured out from the sky for Felix alone; for at that time, as happens, summer was parched with too many suns and had dried up the well too, which had supplied sparing drinks to the hidden man. But lest bodily thirst should burn him, who, thirsting for Christ, was bearing this penalty of an afflicted body as well, a cloud, brought from a clear sky and gathered into a small ball, through the narrow opening of the roof poured sweet liquid into the mouth of the thirsting man, as if squeezed by a hand, and refreshed him, intent on heaven, with the milky juice of a heavenly fleece. What wonder if Christ feeds now one freed from earthly stain, whom, while he was set in the body, the Holy Spirit fed, and for whom the bread was the Word, God himself, the bread of heaven, on which every angel feeds? When this time had passed, restored peace sheathed the swords, and God warned Felix to come out of his hiding place, he who had long since closed his calm ears to the clamour of the world, drawing forgetfulness over human affairs. As he comes out into the light, new to those already despairing, and is seen as if come back to life in his native city, many hesitate to recognize him and first ask: “Is it truly your face? Are you that blessed one,” they say, “restored to us after so long a time, Felix?

From what region do you come? Were you given to heaven, or, returned from paradise to earth, do you revisit our dwellings?” He confirms their belief that he is present before them in body, that he has lived preserved by God; joy is given to all, and he is celebrated by all the people with praises and for his merits. Maximus the bishop had died, having lived out a long age, and the flock lacked the guidance of a shepherd. The whole fold bleated the name of Felix, whom the confessor's glory crowned for Christ, and whom his tongue and his life in harmony with his teaching promised as a saving teacher; but so that in this also he might bear the palm of justice, pressing down his lofty merit with quiet heart, as if unworthy, he does not dare to grow in honour, and testifies that it is rather due to the old man Quintus, because he had earlier earned the grade of the shared honour as presbyter. The difference amounted to seven days. So under this bishop too Felix lived as presbyter and grew in merits, because he would not grow in see; Quintus himself, as if the lesser, deferred to him in everything, and had Felix as his mouth and tongue. He ruled the flock with his offices, Felix with his speech. The grace of Christ increased holy Felix with many other virtues, nor did he fight lesser battles in peace than the confessor had waged with strong arms. In the sad storm he had scorned bodily safety; likewise he was a scorner of wealth and honours in secure peace. He was not secure in keeping his merit, but more cautious, so as to guard the goods of life won after he had overcome the dangers of death, and among the rocks he feared the calm waters. We have told how he trampled on death and ambition; now learn another palm of the confessor.

He conquered avarice; for as heir he had possessed many estates and houses, rich with his father's wealth. The confessor had been proscribed, but when peace was restored it was allowed him to claim back his rights, if he wished; yet he preferred to heed the word of the master: “All things are lawful, not all things help.” He prefers the useful to the lawful, and shuddered at reclaiming as his rights the lost farms, as though he would contract the contagion of earthly stain. Many pressed him, above all Archelais, of an ancient name, as illustrious in holy faith as in name, a widow rich in wealth, revering holy Felix with faithful piety and dear to him in turn. She honoured him in reverence according to his merit, and, as they say, claiming a companion's right over a mind joined to her own, she often wearied his godly heart with frequent complaints: why did he refuse rights owed and ready to be returned, which, once recovered, he could distribute to the needy with the interest of a great reward? She also often offered very many gifts from her own property. He, content with a godly mind toward all things, smiled with a calm breast at the woman's concern, well aware himself of the heavenly goods that he held as compensation for the earthly. So, firmly, he answered his dear friends as they pressed: “Do you force me to seek earthly things again and lose the everlasting? It is better that wealth be lacking to one saved than life to one rich; rich, I shall lack God; poor, I shall have Christ. The grace of Christ will enrich one poor in riches.” Keeping this mind, he cultivated three acres of modest land, not holding them as his own but renting them as a tenant, with his own hand, without a servant, the occupier of a poor man's garden; but even these riches from the soil he, rich, poured out on the needy for the Lord, always dividing his gathered vegetables with the poor, and his table with the poor. One day used up his care of possessing; one garment covered him, often scarcely even one. If he had two, he clothed a naked man with the better. Often he changed the wretched rags of the poor for a new covering, and the poor man, changed by Felix's clothing, shone out from his black; whereas Felix, in a beggar's covering, was shabby, adorning his mind with an unkempt body. Living with this piety, ripe for God both in age and merit, he closed his age with full days, and changed, not closed, the ages of his godly life.

Are you leaving already, and in haste do you leave us, whom yet you leave only in place, since we shall always be bound to you in mind without end? Are you departing already, as the land where you dwell calls you back far away? But you remain here too, holy Niceta, since even when you have set out we hold you in our heart. Go, mindful of us, and, as you go, remain present in spirit, planted in turn in our souls; draw and carry with you those you bear in … O land and peoples, too blessed, whom, returning from us, you will now visit, whom Christ will visit, coming with your foot and your mouth. You will go far, to the northern Dacians, you will go to be seen by twin Epirus, and through the Aegean tides you will make your way to Thessalonica. But now the first road will carry you through Apulian lands, spacious on a long plain, where the fleeces dyed with Canusian dye glow. But when the road has gone on a little, may Christ, I pray, give you mild heat, and may a light breeze without cloud breathe on the dry Calabrians.

As at the hands of the ancient prophet, by the sacrament of the cross, the water grew sweet when the wood was cast in, and Marah put away its bitter waters, so may the sky now be tempered for you, and the air, thinned by light fair weather, breathe with pure breaths gently into healthful breezes, the air which, heavy with breath from the marshes, bringing back the foul smells of snakes, is wont to dissolve into diseases bodies swollen by the thick wind; may the mighty Lord of things command it to be put to flight or changed, and now supply to his priest good breezes of health. As once, when Egypt was perishing, covered with the darkness of dense night, where the sacred people of the living God dwelt there was light for the world, a pattern now proved in the whole world, when the godly part of the holy faith shines with Christ, and error buries the rest in darkness: so on my Niceta, along whatever shore his journey carries him, may the Lord prosper all things, until he is carried, glad, to his longed-for native city.

Go on, Niceta, along the way you return well, with Christ accompanying your prosperous course, Christ whom your peoples have long been wearying night and day, demanding you back, as a field thirsts for rain to relieve its crops, and as tender calves seek their mothers when their milk has been held back. So we, by the just prayers of your people, who rightly seek back their own parent, are compelled, though unsatisfied, to yield, our wish overcome. And since the hope of keeping you is now snatched away, affection urges us to favour what pleases you; now, though we may hate those roads which snatch you away, we hate them, yet we love the same roads. We hate them because they draw you back, we love them because they brought your face to us from afar to see. For these, bound fast by overwhelming love, we now pray that they may be laid easy for you, by land and sea, with the name of the most high Christ going before. May he, making every road a plain for you, press down the steep mountains and fill the hollow valleys, level the rough places, join the gaps. As you are carried through Hydruntum and Lupiae, unmarried troops of brothers and sisters together will surround you, singing the Lord with one mouth.

Who would give me wings like a dove, that I might swiftly be among those choirs which, singing Christ God with you as leader, strike the stars? But though we are held by the sluggish bond of a sick body, yet we fly out after you in mind, and with you we sing hymns to the Lord. For, entwined within your feelings, whether you sing or pray, we too are brought forth with your prayer and with your voice. Then, as the sea takes the place of land, the smooth gulf of the Adriatic will obey you, the wave will lie down, and with the gentle west wind the sails will swell. You will go gliding over the lying sea, and in a ship armed with the sign of salvation you will go victorious with the yard of the cross, safe from waves and south winds. The glad sailors will sing their usual chant, its measures turned into hymns, and with godly voices will lead the breezes as companions over the sea. Before all, like a resounding trumpet, the tongue of Niceta will lead the singing, setting Christ to music; David, the eternal harper, will sing psalms over the whole sea. The whales, trembling, will hear the Amen, and the glad monsters will swim up from afar with playful swimming to the priest singing to the Lord.

On all sides the dolphins will sport, glistening, with open mouths, and though without voice, they will express joys that rival human tongues. For what does not know and live for God, by whose word all things were sown? Hence the depths of the sea know the praise of God, and the dumb cry out. Witness to us is the beast of the old prophet, roused from the deep at the Lord's nod, to swallow the sunken man and then give back what it had swallowed. But now that wild beast itself, toward our seer, will devour with its ears only godly songs; it will satisfy an unfed belly, fed by song. Wherever you please to go your way, through the waves, through the land, even through enemies, you will go armed with the helmet of salvation, Christ your head. Let Raphael fly to you, sent, as once to Tobias among the Medes; so let the angel himself be present as Niceta's companion, escorting him all the way to the Dacians. Let that leader lead his servant likewise, God, who once led Jacob in safety, a fugitive from the face of his proud brother. For Niceta is likewise a fugitive; what the patriarch did once, this man always does, fleeing the world for the walls of high heaven;

and those steps, on which he saw angels passing up and down in turn, this man strives, with a life that rises above the clouds, to climb, hastening to the stars by the ladder of the cross, from where God, leaning to the ground from flashing thrones, watches the varied labours and wars of the mind. And you, Niceta, well named victor over the body, like him who was called Israel, because he saw the highest Begetter with lofty heart: hence my Niceta is approved a true Israelite without guile, who sees God, Christ, with the light of solid faith. May he, our God, our way always, be our companion and go before us, light for our paths, and for our feet the word a lamp, by which through the blind shallows of this dark age we may be guided by the torch of the true light, until we may touch the longed-for harbours of salvation, which we now seek over the wavy sea, while we float on the tide of a wandering mind, carried as in a fragile hull, the earthly body. But with the cross's helm steering this ship within us, we now spread to Christ the godly sails of the heart, as he brings us back glad with a favourable wind.

So may the same leader now accompany you on the way by which you now hasten back, Niceta, and restore you safe to your native threshold. But when the sea is crossed, there remains again the labour of roads on land, as you are carried all the way to the happy shores for which you have been given as priest. You will walk through the Philippian fields of the Macedonians, through the city of Tomi, and you will go to Scupi, near your homeland, a Dardanian guest. O with what joys that land will then resound, where you teach stiff peoples to bow their wild necks to gentle Christ! And where, in the Riphaean regions, Boreas binds the rivers with thick frosts, here you melt minds stiff with frost with fire from above. For the Bessi, hard both in land and in mind, and harder than their own snow, now made sheep, are gathered, with you as leader, into the hall of peace. And the necks which, always untamed in war, they refused to give to slavery, now they rejoice to bow, subdued to the yoke of the true Lord. Now the Bessian exults, richer for the price of his labour; the gold that before he sought in the earth and with his hand, now he gathers with the mind in heaven.

O changes of things! Form well turned! The mountains, once pathless and bloody, now shelter robbers turned into monks, nurslings of peace. Once a land of blood, now it is a land of life; the godly violence of robbers is turned toward heaven, and Christ favours the plunder that seizes the kingdom above. Where once there had been the way of wild beasts, there now the rite of angels flourishes, and the just man lies hidden in the caves in which the robber himself lived. That old plunderer becomes plunder for the saints, and the murderer groans at his losses turned against him, stripped by right, as Christ despoils him of the weapons of crime. By Satan's fall in turn envious Cain perishes; Abel, alive again, feeds lambs redeemed by the price of blood poured out. Well done, Niceta, good servant of Christ, who grants you to turn stones into stars and to build sacred temples with living stones. You range through pathless forests, vast ridges, while you seek the way, and, overcoming the barren forest of the untilled mind, you turn it into rich fields. The whole region of the North calls you father; at your words the Scythian grows gentle, and, at odds with himself, with you as teacher lays aside his wild heart.

And the Getae run, and both Dacians, the one who lives in the middle of the land, and he, capped, a dweller on the bank rich in many cattle. This is to produce calves from wolves, and to feed the lion with straw, yoked to the ox, and to open the holes of vipers safely to children. For you persuade beasts, their wildness driven out, to join the gentle flock, you who imbue the wild minds of men with polished speech. In the dumb regions of the world, through you, barbarians learn to sound out Christ with a Roman heart, and to live a chaste and peaceful life. So the wolf is gentle in your fold, the calf feeds in harmony with the lion, the little child plays with the asp drawn out of its savage holes. The cunning gold-gatherers you turn into gold, and in them you imitate them, digging out from them living gold with the Word for spade: storing up these riches for the everlasting Lord, heaping up the sacred talent with these gains, you will hear: “Enter, glad, into the joys of your everlasting Lord.” With these, I pray, when the kindly house with its numerous holy company of brothers receives you in its choirs, add us too with the piety of your dear heart.

For thanks be to God, that with so great a love he has bound us to you by hidden bonds, so that no force can avail to break the inner chain. So, embracing your dear heart without end, we cling with a faithful noose, and wherever you go we shall be companions with following mind. The love of Christ, well poured from heaven into our hearts, so knits us within, that we are not carried far off, even when separated in a world apart. No age, no fall of the world, no other world, no death will tear us from you; when the life of the body dies, the life of love will live. While we dwell in these heavy limbs, we shall always cherish you with a remembering mind; you will ask that we may be with you together in everlasting time. For precious virtue will set you, lofty in merits, on the high summit, and will add you to the great towers in the city of the living above. We, as far separated in place as in merits, humble, from afar, toward lofty patrons, shall look up to you far off, a companion of the sacred companies. Who will give us this on that day, that we may stand in the shade of your side, and that the breeze of your rest may temper the fire for us?

Then, I pray, remember us greatly, and, reclining in the bosom of the holy father, with dewy finger scatter for us the raging flame. Now go happily, yet, though departing, always run back here to us in spirit; be with us, though you have come to your father's city. For God has given you to be teacher not of one people, nor yet citizen of one land; see, our homeland takes you to itself. Now divide your affections with equal piety between both: with your love to us, with your face to your citizens; abide, a citizen, on twin shores. Perhaps this homeland is to be held the greater, where you are held in the dwellings of hearts, not made with hands, and you inhabit a living city of men. As you are a bishop, so you are a worthy guest of kindly Christ, because, sharing in Christian minds, you dwell as an inhabitant in the Master's temple. Now farewell to us, and, loving us for all time, good to the end, run the good course and take the crown laid up for the just.