Crowns of the Martyrs

The names of two martyrs are written in heaven, which Christ has noted there in golden letters; the same names he has handed down to earth, written in marks of blood. The happy land of Spain is powerful throughout the world with this lineage. This place seemed to God worthy to hold the bones, to be the chaste host of the blessed bodies. It drank in warm streams, dyed with a double slaughter; now the inhabitants throng the sands smeared with holy blood, beseeching with voice, vows and gifts. Even the dweller of the outside world comes here; for report, the betrayer, has run through all lands that here are patrons of the world whom they may approach with prayers. No one here has heaped up pure prayers in asking in vain; the suppliant returns from here glad, his tears wiped away, feeling that everything he justly asked has been obtained. So great is the care of these intercessors for our dangers! They do not let anyone pour out an empty murmur with his voice: they hear, and at once carry it to the ear of the eternal King. From there generous gifts flow to earth from the very fountain, watering the cases of suppliants with the remedies they seek. Good Christ has never denied anything to his witnesses: witnesses whom neither chains nor hard death frightened from confessing the one God at the cost of their blood; of their blood, but a longer light repays such a loss. This kind of death is fitting, this is worthy of upright men: to give the limbs, which disease would eat away, woven with languid veins, to the enemy’s sword, and to conquer the enemy by death. It is a beautiful thing to suffer the blow beneath the persecutor’s sword! A noble door is opened to the righteous through a broad wound; the mind, washed in a red font, leaps out of the seat of the heart. Nor had these soldiers, whom Christ calls to the everlasting belt, formerly led a life untrained in hard toil;

their courage, used to war and arms, now serves the sanctuary: they leave Caesar’s standards, they choose the sign of the Cross, and instead of the windy cloths of dragons that they carried they bear before them the glorious wood that subdued the dragon. They think it worthless to carry javelins in ready right hands, to strike a wall with engines, to surround a camp with ditches, to stain impious hands with bloody slaughter. At that time, as it happened, the cruel leader of the worldly court had ordered the later descendants of Israel to go to the altar, to sacrifice to black idols, to be deserters of Christ. The plague, girt with the sword, pressed hard on free faith; faith, brave, of its own accord sought rods and axes and the two-pronged claws, undaunted through love of Christ. Prison hampered necks bound with hard chains; the torturer plies his barbarous hands through every forum; truth is thought a crime, a faithful voice is punished. Then courage, cut down by the sword, struck the sad ground, and, thrown onto the grim pyres, swallowed flames with its mouth: then it was sweet for the righteous to be burned, sweet to endure the sword. Here the dear hearts of two brothers grow warm, whom faithful comradeship had joined through all time: they stand ready to bear whatever the final lot brought, whether the neck must be offered to the public axe, after the force of cracking scourges, after fiery gridirons, or the breast offered to leopards or to lions. “Shall we, begotten for Christ, be dedicated to mammon? And, bearing God’s image, shall we serve the world? Far be it that heavenly fire should mix itself with darkness. Let it be enough that our life, taken at first under a written bond, has paid every debt, having performed the things of Caesar: it is time to pay back to God whatever is God’s own. Go, masters of the standards; and you tribunes, stand aside; take away the golden collars, rewards of the wounded:

the glorious pay of the angels now calls us from here. Christ presides there over the white-robed cohorts, and, reigning from his high throne, condemns the infamous gods, and you who fashion for yourselves laughable monsters as gods.” As they say this, the martyrs are overwhelmed with a thousand punishments: a stiff bond binds both their hands in twisted knots, and steel circles their chafed necks with heavy rings. O worn-out forgetfulness of silent antiquity! These things are begrudged us, and even the report itself is extinguished; for long ago a blasphemous guard took away the records, lest the ages, instructed by tenacious little books, should spread with sweet tongues through the ears of posterity the order, time and manner of the passion they had handed down. This alone, however, the silence of antiquity withholds: whether in perpetual chains they let their hair grow long, with what pain the torturer tormented the men, or with what pomp he adorned them. That glory is not hidden, nor does it grow old with time, that gifts sent up flew upward through the air, to show by flashing ahead that the way to heaven lay open. The one’s ring, figuring his faith, is borne up in a cloud; the other gives his handkerchief, as they say, as a pledge of his mouth: these, snatched up by a breath from above, enter the inmost light. The gleam of the gold is hidden in the axis of the clear sky, and the whiteness of the cloth long escapes the eye that follows it: they are carried up to the stars and are seen no more. The assembly standing by saw this, the executioner himself saw it, and held back his hand, hesitating, and grew pale with astonishment; but yet he completed the blow, lest the glory perish. Do you now believe, once brutish heathenism of the Basques, what sacred blood cruel error sacrificed? Do you believe the spirits of the victims were carried back to God? See how openly the fierce demons are tamed here, who in wolfish fashion devour the hearts they have seized, strangle the very minds, and mingle themselves with the senses.

Then the raving man, already full of his enemy, is set before them, blowing out foaming spittle, rolling bloodshot eyes, to be purged by a trial for crimes not his own. You may hear tearful wailings, though no torturer presses; the body is torn by lashes, though no whip is seen; and he is hoisted up himself, hung by hidden chains. In these ways the power of the martyrs shakes the filthy robber: it restrains, it tortures, it burns, it puts on chains; the plunderer, harassed, strips himself out of the marrow he leaves; he leaves his prey unharmed, he flees with dry jaws, he gives everything back safe, from the bottom of the nail to the hair, confessing that he burns; for he is a dweller of Gehenna. Why should I speak of bodies cleansed and made white after long illnesses? When cold shivering shakes the discolored limbs, here the swelling leaves the face, here the true color returns. This good the Savior himself provided for us to enjoy, when he consecrated the limbs of the martyrs in our town, which now keep safe the settlers whom the Ebro washes. Stand now, mothers, and sing hymns for little ones restored; let the glad voice of wives resound for the safety of husbands: let this day be a feast for us, let it be a sacred joy.

Ancient mother of temples, Rome, now given over to Christ, victorious under Lawrence’s leadership, you triumph over barbarous rites. You had conquered proud kings and pressed peoples under your reins; now you put the yoke of your rule upon monstrous idols. This glory alone was lacking to the honors of the toga-clad city, that, having captured the savagery of the nations, it should tame filthy Jupiter, not by the turbulent forces of Cossus, Camillus or Caesar, but by the not-bloodless battle of the martyr Lawrence. Faith fought armed, lavish of its own blood; for by death it destroyed death and spent itself for itself. This the bishop Sixtus had foretold, already fixed to the cross, seeing Lawrence weeping beneath the very trunk of the cross: “Stop pouring out tears in grief at my departure: I go before, brother; you too will follow after these three days.” The bishop’s last words, foretelling glory, were not at all false; for the day foretold gave him the palm.

With what voice, with what praises shall I celebrate the order of his death? With what song shall I worthily unfold and sing his passion? He was first of the seven men who stand nearest the altar, a Levite lofty in rank and more excellent than the rest; he was in charge of the doors of the sacred things, governing with faithful keys the secret of the heavenly house and dispensing the offered wealth. [The prefect] turns over a hunger for money, by what force he may dig out the hidden coins, thinking that talents lay covered beneath the sanctuaries, and that heaped-up piles were concealed. He orders Lawrence to be brought before him; he demands the chest stuffed with rich lumps, and the hidden mountains of gleaming coin. “You are accustomed,” he says, “to complain that we rage more than is just, when we tear Christian bodies more than cruelly. Severity, fervent with harsher emotions, is absent here: I demand mildly and quietly what you ought to carry out of your own accord. That this is the custom and the art in your rites has been reported, this the discipline of your covenant,

that the bishops pour libations from gold. They say that the sacred blood smokes in silver cups, and that at the nocturnal rites wax tapers stand fixed in gold. Then the brothers’ greatest care is, as talkative report bears witness, to offer, when their estates are sold, thousands of sesterces. The heir, disinherited, groans that his ancestors’ estates have been knocked down in shameful auctions, made needy by saintly parents. These things are hidden in the secret corners of the churches, and it is believed the height of piety to strip one’s sweet children bare. Bring out the treasures, which, by persuading with wicked tricks, you hold heaped up, which you shut in a dark cave. Public need demands this, the imperial purse, the treasury demands this, so that the money, given over to pay, may help the commander. This is your doctrine, I hear: Render to each his own; see, Caesar recognizes his own image stamped on the coins. What you know is Caesar’s, give to Caesar: I ask only what is just, surely; unless I am mistaken, your God

stamps no money; nor, when he came, did he bring golden Philips with him, but gave commands in words, empty of purse. Fulfil the faith of his sayings, which you sell throughout the world; give back the coins willingly: be rich in words.” Lawrence replies nothing harsh or turbulent to this, but, as one ready to comply, he nods obediently. “She is rich,” he says, “I do not deny it; our Church has very much wealth and gold; nor is anyone in the world richer. He himself has not so much of silver tokens, Augustus, who holds the citadel, for whom every coin is inscribed. But I do not refuse to bring out the chest of the wealthy Godhead; I will make all public and bring forth the precious things that Christ holds. One thing only I beg and ask: a little respite, so that I may discharge more effectively the duty of my promise, while the whole furniture of Christ is written down for me item by item;

for it must first be reckoned up, then the sum must be noted down.” The prefect swells with joyful gladness, and in hope devours the gold, exulting, as if it were already stored up at his home. They agreed on a period of three days; then Lawrence is praised and released, his own surety, and surety for an immense profit. For three days he runs about through the city, gathering and collecting together the feeble bands and all who ask for alms. There one, holding out hollow orbs in place of both his eyes, guided with a staff going before him his step that strayed in error; and one lame with broken knee, or half-footed with a cut-off leg, or with one sole shorter than the other, dragged an unequal step. There is one with ulcerous limbs, who flows with corrupt decay; there is one whose withered right hand draws its sinews into the elbow. Such people he seeks out in all the streets, used to being fed from the store of mother Church, whom he as steward himself had known. Then he reviews them one by one, writing down their names man by man,

and he bids them stand before the church, arranged in a long line. And now the prescribed day had passed; the greedy judge was raging with fervid spirit, demanding that the promises be paid. Then the martyr: “I would like you to be present and, in their presence, to marvel at the wealth set out, which our very rich God has in his saints. You will see a huge hall gleaming with golden vessels, and through the open porticoes rows built of talents.” He goes, nor is he ashamed to follow. They came to the sacred door: there stood crowds of poor people, swarms unkempt to look at. A din of beggars rises; the prefect shudders, astonished, turning on Lawrence, threatening with troubled eyes. But he: “Why do you threaten,” he says, “gnashing your teeth? Or what displeases you? Are these things squalid or cheap? Do you think them fit to be spat on? The gold for which you burningly thirst is produced by dug-up rubble, and penal labor beats it out of squalid mines;

or a torrent river, rolling it with muddy sands, entangles it, and, earthy and squalid as it is, it must be refined in flames. Chastity is undone through gold, integrity is violated by gold, peace perishes, faith dies, and the laws themselves fall away. Why do you exalt the poison of glory and think it great? If you seek truer gold, it is light, and the human race. These are the nurslings of light, whom a weak body confines, lest through the health of the flesh the mind grow insolent and swollen. When disease breaks up the limbs, the soul thrives the more robust; in turn, when the limbs are strong, the power of the senses is wounded. For blood that grows hot toward guilt supplies less strength if its fervor, exhausted by ills, draws in an enfeebling poison. If perhaps a choice were given, I would rather suffer with sharpest pain the breaking of my limbs, and live beautiful within. Compare the forms of plagues, and set the two diseases side by side: is the disease of the flesh fouler, or the ulcers of the mind and morals?

Our poor, through their weak limbs, whole in their inward beauty, carry a lovely, harmless sense, free of languor; your people, strong in body, are corrupted by an inner leprosy, and error limps maimed, and blind fraud sees nothing. Any one of your rich men, who shine in dress and face, I will prove more feeble than any one of my poor. This man, who is proud in silk, whom a chariot carries puffed up, watery dropsy stretches within with a glistening poison; but this miser draws in his hands curved back, and, folding his palm with hooked nails, cannot loosen his sinews. That one foul lust, dragged through public harlots, pollutes with mud and sewers, while he begs for filthy acts of sexual immorality. What of that one, burning with ambition and seething with thirst for honor? Does he not pant with hidden fevers and rage with the fire of his veins? Whoever, intemperate in keeping silent, itches to betray what should be kept silent is harassed and scratches his liver, and suffers an itch of the heart.

Why should I unravel the swollen tumors of envious hearts? Why the festering and livid wounds of malice? You yourself, who rule Rome, despiser of the eternal God, while you worship the filth of demons, suffer from the ‘royal disease’. These, whom you proudly despise, whom you judge accursed, will shortly put off their ulcerous limbs, and will be whole, when, released at last and free from most corrupt flesh, in the most beautiful state of life they will shine in the Father’s citadel: not filthy or feeble, as they now seem, but bright in purple robes and golden crowns. Then, if the opportunity were at hand, I would like those powerful men of the world to be brought for review before your eyes. You would see them covered in rags, with snotty noses, chin wet with spittle, and bleary with rotting eyelids. Nothing is more hideous than a sinner, nothing so leprous or putrid: the scar of crimes is raw, and it stinks like the cave of Tartarus. By a reversed exchange, on souls

a corrupted form is inflicted, which a beautiful appearance in the body had formerly delighted. See then the golden coins which I promised lately, which neither ruin may bury in ashes nor a thief steal away. Now I add noble gems, lest you think Christ poor: gems of flashing light, with which this temple is adorned. You see consecrated virgins; you may marvel at untouched old women, and those who, after the loss of their first marriage, know nothing of a second flame. This is the necklace of the Church, with these gems she is adorned; so dowered she pleases Christ, so she adorns her lofty head. Here are the talents: take them. You will adorn the city of Romulus, you will enrich the emperor’s estate, and you yourself will become richer.” “We are being laughed at,” cries the prefect, roaring, “and in wondrous ways we are mocked through so many figures! And is the mad fellow still alive? Do you think, you rogue, that you have woven such tricks with a mime’s jesting with impunity, while, buffoon, you dance your play? That elegant wit with laughter

to treat us as a plaything? Have I then been sold to guffaws as a festive entertainment? Is there then no sternness, no severity left in the fasces? Does soft mildness so blunt the public axe? You say: ‘I will gladly meet death; to a martyr, delay is what he prays to be spared.’ This is your empty persuasion, we know it. But I will not grant you your wish that the short way out of a swift death should be provided: I will not let you perish quickly. I will keep you alive, and put it off with continual punishments of delay, and an inextricable death will draw out long pains. Spread out warm coals, lest the fiery heat too quickly seize the stubborn man’s mouth and enter the hidden parts of his heart. Let the vapor grow old and languish, so that, spread with a light breath, it may temper little by little the torments of the half-burned body. It is good that of them all the master of the mysteries himself has fallen in: he alone will give an example of what they ought soon to fear. Climb onto the spread pyre;

lie down on the bed you deserve: then, if you please, argue that my Vulcan is nothing.” As the prefect spoke so, the cruel torturers on this side and that prepare to strip the martyr of his clothing, to bind his limbs and stretch them. His face shone with beauty, and a brightness was poured around him. Such a face the Lawgiver, returning, brought down from the mountain, which the Jewish people, defiled and discolored by the golden calf, dreaded, and turned their faces back, unable to bear God. And such glory of a shining face that Stephen too displayed, looking upon the opened heavens through the rain of stones. This light was seen from afar by the brothers lately cleansed, whom the baptism recently given had made able to receive Christ. But the blindness of the impious, their face smeared with the mould of night, covered under a dark veil, does not see the brightness: like the Egyptian plague, which, when it condemned the barbarians to darkness, showed day to the Hebrews with a clear light. Moreover, the very quality of the smell,

which the burnt skin gives off, affects the two groups differently: to these it is a stench, to those nectar. And the same sense, varied by a different air, either affects the nostrils with avenging horror or soothes them with delight. So God is an eternal fire: for Christ is the true fire; he himself fills the righteous with light, and burns the guilty. After the long-lasting heat had cooked his burnt side, of his own accord, from the gridiron, he addresses the judge with a brief speech: “Turn over the part of my body that has been burned long enough, and make trial of what your burning Vulcan has done.” The prefect orders him turned. Then he: “It is cooked; devour it, and make the experiment whether it is sweeter raw or roasted.” These things he had said in jest; then he looks up to heaven, and, groaning, prays, pitying the city of Romulus: “O Christ, one Godhead, O splendor, O power of the Father, O maker of earth and sky, and author of these walls, who placed the sceptres of Rome on the summit

of things, ordaining that the world should serve the Quirinal toga and yield to its arms, so that the customs and observances, tongues, characters and rites of discordant nations you might tame under one law: see, the whole mortal race has passed under the rule of Remus; those dissonant in rites speak the same, they think the same thing. This was destined so that the more the law of the Christian name might bind with one bond whatever lands lie anywhere. Grant, Christ, to your Romans that the city may be Christian, through which you granted that the rest might have one mind in sacred things. All the members on every side are bound together into the creed; the subject world grows gentle: let the supreme head grow gentle too. Let it note that the separated regions come together into one grace; let Romulus become faithful, and Numa himself now believe. The error of Troy still confounds the senate-house of the Catos, which worships at hidden hearths the exiled household gods of the Phrygians. Two-faced Janus and Sterculus

the Senate worships (I shudder to tell of so many monsters of the fathers), and the festivals of old Saturn. Wipe away, Christ, this disgrace; send forth your Gabriel, that the wandering blindness of Iulus may acknowledge the true God. And already we hold most faithful hostages of this hope; for here already two princes of the apostles reign. The one is the caller of the nations; the other, holding the first chair, opens the entrusted gates of eternity. Depart, adulterous Jupiter, defiled by sexual immorality with your sister; leave Rome free, and flee the people now Christ’s. Paul drives you out from here, the blood of Peter expels you; the deed of Nero, which you yourself had armed, works against you. I see that there will be a Prince some day who, a servant of God, will not allow Rome to serve the foul filth of rites; who will close the temples with bars, block the ivory doors, condemn the unholy thresholds, putting brazen bolts against them. Then, pure from all blood,

the marbles will shine at last; and the bronzes will stand harmless which are now held as idols.” This was the end of his prayer, and the same was the end of his fleshly bond: the spirit burst forth willingly, following his voice. Certain fathers carried the body on their shoulders placed beneath it, whom the wondrous freedom of the man had persuaded to seek Christ. A sudden disposition had breathed into their marrow and had compelled them, through love of the high God, to hate their former trifles. From that day the worship of the foul gods grew cold; the people were fewer in the shrines; they ran to the tribunal of Christ. So Lawrence, fighting, did not gird his side with a sword, but, turning the enemy’s iron back, bore it against its author. While the demon challenges God’s unconquered witness to battle, he himself falls, pierced through, and lies laid low forever. That death of the holy martyr was the true death of the temples; then Vesta felt that her Palladian Lares were deserted with impunity. Whoever of the Quirites had been used to pray at the ladle of Numa,

now thronging the halls of Christ, resounds the martyr in hymns. The very lights of the Senate, once Luperci or Flamens, kiss the thresholds of the apostles and martyrs. We see illustrious houses, nobles of both sexes, offering in vows the pledges of their most distinguished children. The pontiff once wearing the fillet is admitted to the sign of the Cross; and a Vestal, Claudia, enters your shrine, Lawrence. O thrice and four times and seven times blessed the dweller in the City, who honors at close hand you and the seat of your bones; who may kneel down nearby, who sprinkles the place with tears, who presses his breast to the ground, who pours out murmured vows! Us the Basque Ebro divides from you, us, removed beyond two Alps, beyond the ridges of the Cottians, and beyond the snowy Pyrenees. Scarcely is it known by report how full Rome is of hidden saints, how richly the City’s soil flowers with sacred tombs. But we who lack these goods,

nor can see the traces of the blood before our eyes, look upon heaven from afar. So, holy Lawrence, we seek your passion there; for you have a double hall, here of the body, of the mind in heaven. There, enrolled as a citizen in the unspeakable city, in the citadel of the eternal senate you wear the civic crown. I seem to see the man flashing with illustrious gems, whom heavenly Rome has chosen for herself as perpetual consul. What power has been entrusted to you, and how great an office given, the joys of the Quirites prove, to whom, when asked, you nod assent. What each suppliant asks for he carries away, successfully obtained: they ask, they freely declare their needs, and no one returns sad. As if you were always present at hand, embracing your city nurslings in your nursing bosom, you nourish them with a father’s love. Among these, O glory of Christ, hear also a country poet, confessing the sins of his heart and revealing his deeds. I am unworthy, I acknowledge and know it, for Christ himself to hear; but through the martyrs as patrons I can obtain healing. Hear kindly the suppliant, Prudentius, guilty before Christ, and, enslaved as he is to the body, release him from the chains of the world.

Noble by birth, Eulalia, nobler still in the character of her death, the holy virgin adorns with her bones her own Merida, from whose breast she was born, and cherishes it with love. [The place] that bore this outstanding glory, powerful in its city, rich in peoples, but more powerful through the blood of martyrdom and the title of the virgin. She had reached three winters four times, after three and nine courses of the year, when, with the crackling pyre, she in her harshness terrified the trembling executioners, thinking the punishment sweet for herself. She had already given an earlier sign that she was making for the Father’s throne, a little girl who knew not how to play, spurning amber, weeping over roses, rejecting golden necklaces; severe in face, modest in step, and in years very tender [grave as the aged]. But when the maddened plague rose against the servants of the Lord, and bloodily ordered the worshipers of Christ to burn incense, to offer the liver of a beast to the death-bringing gods, the holy spirit of Eulalia roared, and, fierce of character, she prepares to break up the turbulent wars; and, an untaught heart panting for God, a woman challenges the arms of men.

But a parent’s loving care contrives that the spirited virgin should lie hidden at home, concealed in the country and far from the city, lest the fierce girl, for love of death, rush to the price of her blood. She, hating the help of quiet, moves the doors at night without a witness, and from there takes her way through trackless places. She goes on with torn feet through places rough with neglect and brambles, accompanied by an angelic choir; and though the bristling night is silent, yet she has a guide of light. So the noble crowd of the fathers had the column-bearing ray, which, able to cleave the darkness, provided at night a way with a clear torch, as the chaos perished. Not otherwise the holy virgin, following the way by night, deserved the day, nor was she covered by darkness, [as they were not] when fleeing the realm of Canopus. She, with quick and wakeful step, covers many miles before the eastern region opens the sky; in the morning, proud, she goes to the tribunal, and stands in the midst of the fasces, crying out: “I ask, what madness is it to destroy souls headlong, and to throw down hearts wickedly lavish of themselves before polished rocks, and to deny God the Father of all?

Do you seek, O pitiable band, the race of Christ’s worshipers? See, I am one, an enemy of demonic rites: I trample idols under my feet, I confess God with heart and mouth. Isis, Apollo, Venus are nothing, and Maximian himself is nothing: they are nothing because they are made by hand; he, because he worships what hands have made: both are frivolous, and both are nothing. Let Maximian, lord of wealth, prostitute and vow his own head to his deities. Why does he shake noble hearts? The good leader, the excellent judge, feeds on innocent blood; and, gaping for pious bodies, he rejoices to torture faith. Come then, torturer, burn, cut, divide limbs compacted of clay. It is easy to dissolve a fragile thing; the inner soul will not be pierced by the pain that harasses it.” Roused to fury by such words, the praetor says: “Seize her headlong, lictor, and overwhelm her with punishments: let her feel that there are ancestral gods, and that the emperor’s command is not light.

Yet how I would wish, before your death, if you are able, to call back your wickedness, grim little girl: consider what great joys you are cutting off, which the honor of marriage brings you. Your house, shaken with tears, follows you, and the anxious nobility of your family groans that you perish in the tender flower of youth, close to a dowry and a bridal chamber. Does the golden pomp of the marriage bed not move you? Not the venerable devotion of the old, whom, reckless one, you are weakening? See, the instruments are ready of an agonizing end. Either you will be struck on the head with the sword, or your limbs will be torn by wild beasts, or, given to smoking torches and lamented with wailing and weeping by your people, you will flow away, dissolved into ashes. What toil is it, I ask, to escape these things? If a little salt with your fingertips, and a tiny bit of incense, you would kindly be willing, virgin, to touch, the heavy punishment will be far away.” The martyr says nothing to this; but she roars, and spits into the tyrant’s eyes; then she scatters the images, and with her foot tramples down the meal placed on the censers. Without delay two executioners tear her slender breast, and the claw strikes the virgin’s side on both sides and cuts to the bone,

while Eulalia counts the marks. “See, you are being written on me, Lord: how pleasant it is to read these letters, which record your trophies, Christ! The very purple of the blood drawn out speaks your sacred name.” These things she sang, glad and fearless, without tears or groaning: dire pain is absent from her mind, and her limbs, painted with new blood, wash the skin with a warm spring. Then the last butchery: not wounding laceration, nor skin ploughed to the hurdle, but flame from torches on every side rages against her sides and breast. Her fragrant hair had flowed down to her neck, flying about her shoulders, so that her bashful modesty and virgin honor might be hidden, with the covering of her head set against them: the crackling flame flies into her face, and, quickened through her hair, seizes her head and rises above its top; the virgin, desiring a swift death, seeks the pyre and drinks it with her mouth. Then suddenly a dove flashes out, seen to leave the martyr’s mouth, whiter than snow, and to follow the stars. This was the spirit of Eulalia, milk-white, swift, innocent. Her neck droops as the soul departs,

and the fiery pyre dies down: peace is given to the lifeless limbs; the breath, triumphant, claps in the upper air, and flies swiftly to the lofty temples. When the guard himself saw the bird go openly from the woman’s mouth, amazed and thunderstruck he leaps up and flees from his own deeds: the lictor himself flees in fear. See, icy winter heaps up snow and covers the whole forum; it covers likewise the limbs of Eulalia, lying under the cold sky, in place of a little linen shroud. Let the love of weeping men give way, who are accustomed to celebrate the last rites; let the tearful office give way: the very elements, at God’s command, carry out your funeral, Virgin. Now Merida is the place of her tomb, the famous colony of Vettonia, which the memorable river Anas passes by, and, rushing in its green flood, washes the beautiful walls. Here, where with transparent marble a kindly brightness lights the halls for both stranger and native, the venerable earth keeps in its bosom the relics and sacred ashes. Glittering roofs gleam above

from gilded panelled ceilings, and cut stones vary the floor, so that you would think rosy meadows were reddening with many kinds of flowers. Pluck purple violets, gather blood-red crocuses: genial winter does not lack these, and the warming ice loosens the fields so as to heap baskets with flowers. Give these gifts from leafy foliage, girl and boy; but I in the middle of the choir will bring garlands woven in dactylic measure, cheap and withered, but festive. So it is pleasing to venerate the bones, and the altar placed over the bones: she, set beneath the feet of God, looks upon these things and, made favorable by the song, cherishes her peoples.

Our people keep in a single tomb the ashes of twice nine martyrs: we call the city Caesaraugusta, whose treasure is so great. The house full of great angels does not fear the ruin of the fragile world, carrying in its bosom so many gifts to be offered together to Christ. When God, shaking his flashing right hand, comes seated on a red cloud, to set up for the nations a just balance with equal weight, then each city, raising its head from the great world, will go in haste to meet Christ, carrying precious gifts in baskets. African Carthage will bring forth your bones, Cyprian, teacher of eloquent mouth; Cordoba will give Acisclus and Zoellus, and three crowns. You, Tarragona, mother of the pious, will offer Christ a beautiful diadem of three gems, for which Fructuosus wove the sewn band. This is the name of the gem bound into the fillet; twin stones flash beside it; the equal splendor of the two burns with flashing fire. Little Gerona, rich in holy limbs, will display the glory of Felix; our Calahorra will carry both whom we venerate.

Barcelona will rise, relying on famous Cucufas, and Narbonne, beautiful with Paul; and you, mighty Arles, will have you, holy Genesius. The city that is the head of the towns of Lusitania, snatching up the ashes of the adored girl to meet Christ, will hold her out herself to the altar. Alcalá will be glad to bring in its bosom the blood of Justus, to whom Pastor clings, a double burden and a twin gift, the limbs of two. Tangier will bring its Cassian, festive monument of the Massylian kings, whose ashes have forced conquered nations to the yoke of Christ. A few cities will be content with single witnesses, some perhaps with three or two, and some with five witnesses of Christ, having first discharged the pledge of victims. You, Caesaraugusta, devoted to Christ, will bring back ten saints and eight, your head bound with the yellow olive of honored peace. You alone have prepared more numerous crowds of martyrs to meet the Lord; you alone, very rich in devotion, enjoy much light. Scarcely the populous mother of the Punic world, scarcely Rome herself, set upon her throne, is worthy to surpass you, our glory, in this gift.

At all the gates the sacred blood that was sacrificed has shut out the race of envious demons, and driven away black darkness, the city being purified. No horror of shadows lurks within; for the plague, driven out, flees from the people; Christ dwells in all the streets, Christ is everywhere. You would think it the homeland owed to the martyrs for their sacred crowns: from here rises and goes to heaven a snow-white choir of toga-clad nobility. From here, Vincent, your palm was born; this clergy brought forth so great a triumph; here is the bishops’ house, wearing the fillet, of the Valerii. As often as the savage whirlwind with ancient storms has made the harassed world tremble, a grimmer rage has brought its wrath against this temple. No fury has passed by us without praise, or empty of glorious blood: the number of martyrs has always grown under every hailstorm. Did you not, Vincent, martyr who was to be slain away from home, mark these lands with a slight dew of blood, a likeness of what was to come, as your death drew near? The citizens honor this place as if their own turf enclosed his very limbs, and, embracing them in a father’s tomb, kept the bones of the blessed martyr.

He is ours, although far from here, in an unknown city, he suffered and gave the glory of his tomb as victor, near the shore, it may be, of lofty Saguntum. He is ours, and as a boy in our wrestling school, anointed with the art of virtue and the oil of faith, he learned to tame with his strength the dreadful enemy. He knew the palms won eight and ten times famous in this temple, and, trained by his fathers’ laurels, he ran the race with the same praise. Here too, Engratia, lie the bones of your virtues: by them, violent virgin, you put to shame the spirit of the maddened world. To none of the martyrs has it befallen to dwell in our lands with life remaining: you alone, surviving your own death, live on the earth. You live, and unfold the series of your punishment, keeping the spoil of your flesh, [and tell] how bitter the furrows your wounds have. The barbarous torturer tore every side; blood was spent, limbs torn; the breast lay open, the nipple cut off, right under the heart. Less is the price of a death that is completed, which, abolishing poisonous pains, gives swift rest to the limbs with a sleepy end.

A raw scar held you long, and burning pain clung long in your veins, while wasting moisture thinned the rotting marrow. Although the persecutor’s envious sword denied you the final death, yet, martyr, a full punishment crowns you as though slain. We have seen part of the liver torn out and lying far off, squeezed by the claws: pale death has something of yours, even while you live. This new title Christ himself gave to our Caesaraugusta to enjoy, that it should be the dedicated house of an ever-living martyr. So, holy city, rich with the thrice six white-robed ones, with Optatus and Lupercus as well, go on celebrating in psalms the senate enrolled for you. Proclaim Successus; sing Martial; let the death of Urbanus be sung for you; let song resound with Julia, and together let the choir set forth Publius, and recount what the trophy of Fronto was; what good Felix bore, what keen Caecilianus. How much blood stained your battles, Evotius, how much yours, Primitivus; then let lively praise recall your triumphs, Apodemius. After these there remains of four men

the name to be extolled, though the metre refuses, whom ancient antiquity records as called Saturninus. Love of the golden names thinks little of the laws of song, and care in speaking of the saints is not faulty, nor ever rude. The measure is full of art, to recite to Christ the noted forms of the names, which the book of heaven holds, to be unrolled in due time. Then the angel will recall the eight and ten saints before the Father and the Son, who hold the government of one city by right of their tomb. Moreover, to the ancient number will be added the girl who lived after the sample of punishment, and the death of Vincent, whose blood is from here, the source of his honor. Add Caius (for they must not be passed over in silence), and you, Crementius, to whom it befell to bear a bloodless glory from a second contest of praise. Both, confessing the Lord, stood fiercely against the roaring of the robbers; both tasted lightly the savor of martyrdom. This band, placed beneath the eternal altar, prays for pardon for our falls, the band that the mother of purple nobles keeps. Grant that we may wash with loving tears the grooves of the marble under which our hope is covered, that I may loosen the chains of my bonds. Prostrate yourself wholly, noble city, with me at the holy tombs; then soon you will follow, whole, the rising souls and limbs.

Blessed martyr, prosper your day of triumph, on which the crown, the reward of your blood, is given to you, Vincent. This day, the torturer and judge conquered, raised you from the darkness of the world to heaven, and gave you back triumphant to Christ. Now, sharer with the angels, you shine in the glorious robe which, an unconquerable witness, you had washed in streams of blood, when the attendant of the idol, girt with black laws, tried to force you with iron and chains to sacrifice to the gods of the nations. And at first he had poured out soft words, persuading you gently, as the wolf, a decoy, first plays with the calf it means to seize. “The king,” he said, “the greatest of the world, who bears the sceptre of Romulus, has decreed that all should serve the ancient worship of the gods. You Nazarenes, stand by, and spurn your crude rite: appease these stones, which the emperor worships, with smoke and victim.” Here Vincent cries out, a Levite of the sacred tribe,

minister of God’s altar, one of the seven milk-white columns: “Let these deities preside over you; you worship stones, you worship wood; you, dead, be the priest of dead gods. We, Datian, will confess the Father, author of light, and Christ his Son, who are the one true God.” At this he, now more stirred, “Do you dare, unhappy man,” he says, “to violate with harsh words this law of the gods and of the emperors, a law both sacred and public, to which the human race yields? Does not the danger that threatens your fervent youth move you? For take this decree: either the altar must now be entreated by you with incense and turf, or death must be paid with blood.” He answered in turn: “Come then, whatever strength, whatever power you have, put it forth: I resist you openly. Hear what our voice is: Christ and the Father are God; we are his servants and witnesses: wrench away our faith, if you can. Tortures, prison, claws, and the iron plate hissing with flames,

and death itself, the last of punishments, are a game to Christians. O your empty vanity, and the brutish decree of Caesar! You order deities to be worshiped that are worthy of your senses: cut out by the craftsman’s hand, recast with hollow bellows, which lack voice and step, unmoving, blind, tongueless. For these sumptuous shrines rise in splendid marble; for these the necks of lowing bulls fall struck. But there are spirits there too. There are; but they are masters of crimes, fowlers lying in wait for your salvation, roaming, powerless, filthy; who secretly drive you, roused, to every wickedness, to lay waste the righteous with slaughter, to pluck at the people of the pious. They themselves know and feel that Christ is strong and living, and that his kingdom will be at hand any moment, dreadful to the faithless. In the end they cry out, confessing, driven from the hiding places of the inner parts by the power and name of Christ, that they are both gods and demons.” The profane judge could not bear the martyr thundering these things. He shouts: “Beat his mouth,

lest the wicked man boast any more. Shut the voice of the speaker, and bring the lictors at once, those who are fed on the flesh of the accused and trained in handiwork. I will soon see to it that the reviler feels the praetor’s law, lest he mock us with impunity, or the destruction of our gods. Are the Tarpeian rites, then, to be trampled by you alone, stubborn man? Are you alone, besides, to crush Rome, the Senate, Caesar? Stretch him out, bound, with his arms twisted back, up and down, until the framework of his bones cracks, torn apart limb by limb. After that, with gaping blows, lay bare the hidden parts of his ribs, so that through the hollows of the wounds his liver may throb, uncovered.” God’s soldier laughed at this, rebuking the bloody hands because the claw, fixed in, did not enter his limbs more deeply. And now all the strength of the strong men had given out in disemboweling him, and the panting effort had loosened the weary muscles of their arms. But he, all the more glad, lights up his calm brow, free from every cloud,

seeing you, Christ, present. “What is that face, for shame!” Datian said, raging: “he rejoices, he smiles, he challenges, fiercer when tortured than the torturer. That force, practised in the deaths of so many guilty men, achieves nothing in this contest, and the art of pains is defeated. But you, nurslings of the prison, pair ever unconquered for me, hold back your right hands a little, so that tired strength may breathe again. Then, when the ulcers are quite dry, while the scar of the cooled blood draws itself together, your hand, furrowing again, will tear them apart.” To this the Levite replies: “If you now perceive that the strength of your dogs is flagging, come yourself, greater executioner. Show how they can tear the deepest recesses; put in your own hands too, and drink the boiling streams. You are wrong, bloody man, if you think you are taking your penalty from me when you kill limbs liable to death by tearing them to pieces. There is another, there is one within, whom no one can violate, free, quiet, whole,

exempt from sad pains. This which you labor to destroy with such great forces of fury is a vessel, loosened and of clay, to be broken in any way whatever. Rather strive now to cut and punish that one, who stands firm within, who tramples, tyrant, on your madness. Him, him provoke, him shatter, unconquered, insuperable, subject to no storms, subject to God alone.” So he speaks, and with hissing hooks he is torn again. To him the praetor with crafty mouth hisses out snakelike words: “If such obstinacy so hardens the callus of your heart that you abhor touching our sacred couch with your hand, at least uncover the hidden pages and the concealed books, so that the sect that sows depravity may be burned in just fires.” Having heard this, the martyr says: “The fire with which you, malicious one, threaten the mystic writings, you yourself will burn in more justly. For the sword will be the avenger of the heavenly volumes, burning with its lightning the tongue

of the interpreter of such poison. You see the ashes that are evidence of the crimes of Gomorrah; nor is the ash of Sodom hidden, witness of an everlasting funeral. This is your pattern, serpent: soon the soot of sulphur, and bitumen mixed with pitch, will entangle you in deepest Tartarus.” Wounded by this, the persecutor turns pale, reddens, seethes, rolling his maddened eyes, and, gnashing his teeth, pours out foam. Then, after long hesitation, he decrees the last of all: let the inquiry be carried out with fire, the bed and the plates. He hurries himself to these offices with quick step, and, sleepless all night with joy, outruns the very ministers of punishment. They came to the wrestling-ground of glory: hope and cruelty contend; they join a doubtful struggle, the martyr on this side, the executioner on that. A serrated bar roughens the bed with close-set teeth, which a great heap of coals heats with living breath. This pyre the holy man mounts of his own accord, with fearless face, as though, already aware of his crown,

he were climbing to a high tribunal. Beneath, with crackling spray, the salt shaken out sparkles, and, boiling in hissing points, is fixed here and there through his limbs. After that, fat pressed on bathes the fiery brand, whence the force of the smoking dew melts little by little into his limbs. Amid these things he remains unmoved, as if knowing nothing of pain, and stretches his eyes on high; for chains had pressed his palms. Lifted from there, stronger, he is thrust into a mournful cave, lest the free use of light should animate his lofty spirit. There is within, at the bottom of the prison, a place blacker than darkness, which the stones of a sunken vault strangle, narrow and closed. Eternal night lurks there, without the star of day: this horrid prison is said to have its own underworld. Into this pit the savage enemy throws the martyr, and puts his feet into the stocks with legs spread wide apart. Moreover he adds a new punishment, a craftsman skilled in torture, known to no tyrant,

nor learned before by report. He orders fragments of potsherds, rough, with unpolished corners, sharpened, shapeless, to be strewn under the back of the man lying there. Anxious pains arm the whole bed with spikes, to strike his sleepless side from beneath with point set against it. These things the crafty man had built, having planned them with cunning art; but Christ destroys the clever devices of Beelzebul. For the blindness of the prison flashes with the splendor of light, and the double bite of the stocks leaps apart, its holes broken. Here Vincent recognizes that what he had hoped for is present, the reward of so great a labor, Christ, the giver of light. Then he sees the fragments of the potsherds now clothing themselves with soft flowers, as the prison breathes nectar. Moreover, many angels stand and speak face to face, of whom one, more majestic of countenance, addresses the man with these words: “Arise, famous martyr, arise, secure for yourself; arise, and as a companion join

our fellowship. The duties of the threatening punishment have now been run through enough by you, and by a beautiful end of death your whole passion is complete. O most unconquered soldier, braver than the bravest, now the very tortures, savage and harsh, tremble at you, their victor. Christ God, a spectator of these things, repays them with endless age, and crowns with his generous right hand the companion of his own Cross. Lay down this perishable little vessel, woven with an earthy framework, which is loosened and dissolved, and come free to heaven.” So he spoke. And the light within bursts the closed doors, and through the cracks a thin gleam of the hidden light is betrayed. When the guard of the black threshold, whom an all-night duty had kept to watch the deadly house, was astonished and terrified at this, he hears besides the very sweet song of the martyr singing psalms, to which the hollow chamber gives back the likeness of an answering voice. Then, trembling, he looks in, as far as his eye, moved up to the doorposts, can enter through the narrow

joints of the hinges. He sees the strewing of potsherds blooming with many flowers, and the man himself, his bonds torn off, walking about and singing. The ears of the troubled praetor are filled with this miracle: beaten, he weeps, and groaning turns over anger, pain and disgrace. “Let him be taken out of the prison,” he says, “and refreshed a little with kindly comforts, so that, restored, he may provide new food for punishments.” You might see the faithful crowd come together from the whole town, softening the propped couch, drying the raw wounds. This one goes over the double furrows of the claws with kisses; that one is glad to lick the crimsoning blood of the body. Many dip linen garments in the dripping blood, so as to keep at home a sacred protection for their descendants. Then the keeper of the prison himself, and doorkeeper of the chains, as conscious antiquity reports, suddenly believed in Christ. He had seen the cave of thick darkness, its bars barred, shining, closed as it was,

with the splendor of a strange light. But after the martyr reached the rest of the little bed, sick with the weariness of delay and burning with thirst for death — if death of such a kind is to be held death, which releases the mind free from the prison of the body and gives it back to God its author: the mind atoned for with blood, washed in the bath of death, which once and for all offered its life to be sacrificed to Christ — so, as he laid back his head on the soft coverings, the spirit, victorious, leaving the limbs, takes possession of heaven; for it, by a lofty path, the straight way to the Father is opened, which blessed Abel, slain by his impious brother, had climbed. White choirs of saints throng him on this side and that as he goes, and John the Baptist, sent forth from a like prison, calls to him. But the useless poisons of gall were cooking the enemy of the Christian name, and had burned up his livid, savage heart. You would think a disarmed dragon raged with broken teeth: “He has escaped,” he says, exulting,

“the rebel, and carried off the palm? But there remains this last thing: to inflict punishment on the dead man, to hand over the corpse to wild beasts, or give it to dogs to tear. I will now destroy even the bones, so that there may be no tomb of his corpse for the common herd to honor and to fashion a martyr’s title.” So he gnashes, and, profane man (ah, dread wickedness!), exposes the sacred body naked, covering denied, among the sedges. But no dire hunger of beasts or birds dares to defile the trophy of glory with a filthy touch. Rather, if any bird, screeching wickedly, had flown around from afar, driven off by the attack of a fierce bird it turned in flight. For the raven, once given to Elijah as carrier of food, fulfils this duty diligently, and keeps watch close by. This raven, from the nearest thickets, hostile with the sound of its wings, beating his eyes with its feathers, drove off a monstrous wolf. Who of the faithless would dare to believe that a ravenous beast,

ready to fight with bulls, had yielded to soft feathers? It goes off, growling malignantly, terrified by a light flight; and it had fled from the prey it had seen at the threats of an unwarlike guardian. What feeling, then, hearing such things, Datian, did you have? With how many darts did hidden pain strike you as you groaned, when you saw yourself conquered by the power of the slain body, unequal even to the bones, and smaller than limbs now empty? But what end, stubborn tyrant, will set a limit to this uncontrolled spirit? Will no measure break you? “None; nor will I ever stop: for if beastly savagery grows gentle, and mercy softens voracious ravens, I will sink the corpse in the waves: the mad wave never pardons the shipwrecked, and the foaming deep knows not how to spare. Or else it will be carried there forever, moving through uncertain mockeries, by wandering winds, feeding the scaly shoals;

or beneath crashing cliffs the rough spikes of the rocks, among the rugged recesses, will burst the torn entrails. Is there any man, skilled to drive a boat vigorously, who can cut the sea with oar, rope and sail, to snatch from the marshy turf the body that lies untouched, and, carrying it in a light skiff, take it out across the wide sea? But let a sack of broom enclose the folded corpse, and a stone, tied with a rope, drag it headlong into the deep. And you, flash through the waves, swift with your dripping oar-blade, until a longer view hides the land left behind.” One of the soldiers seizes on these orders (Eumorphius was his name), violent, bold, barbarous, boiling with fury. He weaves together a rush basket, which he fills with the body sewn in, and, having traversed much of the strait, throws it out amid the storms. O mighty power of God! Power, creator of all things! which once had laid flat the swollen sea when Christ walked on it,

so that, treading the backs of the sea, he passed with dry steps, and did not wet his feet in the waves, a traveller over the vast deep. This same power had ordered the Red Sea to gape, while the people, safe, chose a dry way over the open bottom. And this same power now bids the sea serve the holy body, sloping with quiet glidings to the curved shores. The stone of millstone weight floats like gleaming foam; and the little basket, guardian of so great a pledge, is carried by the waves. The astonished sailors see it borne back over the marble sea they had measured, gliding gently backward with tide and wind in its favor. They themselves strive with their hurried skiff to cut the sea; but far ahead the limbs fly to the soft bosom of the land. In short, the quiet earth receives them, brought back, before the keel, driven with the utmost efforts, could touch the harbor. Happy that retreat of the pleasant shore, which, cherishing the sacred flesh in its sands, provided the place of a tomb!

while the loving care of the saints, weeping, adorns the mound, and keeps the body entrusted to the tomb for the life to come. But soon, the enemies subdued, and peace now restored to the righteous, an altar gives the due rest to the blessed bones. For, placed beneath the sanctuary and laid at the foot of the altar, they drink in from below, bathed, the breath of the heavenly gift. So the body; but he himself is received and held in the seat of God, with the Maccabean brothers, and next to Isaiah who was sawn. But to them fell a single crown of punishments, for whom the final exit of death brought an end of evils. What such thing did the sawyer dare? Did he throw the cut-off pieces of the body after the saw to beasts, or give them to the waves? Did the tyrant offer the torn-out tongue of the Maccabean martyr, or the skin snatched from his scalp, to bloody birds? You alone, O twice-glorious, alone carried off the palm of a double prize: you prepared two laurels at once.

In death a victor over harsh things, then after death, with equal triumph, a victor, you trample down the robber with your body alone. Be present now, and receive the suppliant voices of those who pray, effective pleader for our guilt before the Father’s throne. By yourself, by that prison, the increase of your honor; by the chains, the flames, the claws, by the prison stocks; by that fragment of earthenware by which your won glory grew; by the little bed which we, your trembling posterity, kiss: have pity on our prayers, so that Christ, appeased, may incline a favorable ear to his own, and not reckon all our sins. If we rightly venerate this solemn day with mouth and heart; if we lie prostrate in joy beneath your footprints, glide down here for a little while, bringing the favor of Christ; let the spirit take back the flesh, which has performed with equal virtue, so that the flesh, which, sharing in the labors, bore the common danger, may also be co-heir of the glory through all ages forever.

Happy Tarragona, Fructuosus, lifts up its head, flashing with your fires, shining far with its twin Levites. God looks kindly on the Spaniards, since the mighty Trinity crowns the Spanish citadel with a threefold martyr. Burning Augurius takes possession of the sky, and Eulogius too, shining, makes for the proud seat of Christ. As leader, forerunner and master to them to so great a glory, Fructuosus went, famous by his episcopal name. For, summoned suddenly at the order of the governor, the bishop had come to the forum with two Levites accompanying him. From there the executioner, fed on blood, was dragging the men to the prison’s chain: Fructuosus is glad to run of his own accord, and, lest any fear should strike his companions, the vehement teacher strengthens them as he goes, and kindles their faith with the warmth of Christ. “Stand with me, men: the bloody serpent calls God’s ministers to punishment; let not death frighten you: the palm is ready. Prison is for Christians a step to the crown; prison carries them up to the heights of heaven; prison wins God for the blessed.” With these words they enter the cave of the accused, and there they perform the mystic washing, and the darkness is astonished at the cleansing of water. Here they lie hidden for six continuous days; at last they stand at the tribunal of the cruel enemy:

the racks tremble at the three brothers. The judge Aemilian loomed over them, turbulent, insolent, profane; he ordered the demonic altars to be worshiped. “You who are a teacher,” he says, “and sow a new kind of invention, so that fickle girls abandon the groves and leave Jupiter, condemn, if you are wise, the old wives’ doctrine. It has been commanded by the mouth of Caesar Gallienus that we all worship what the emperor worships.” To him as he spoke the bishop calmly replies: “I worship the eternal Prince, the maker of days, and the master of Gallienus, and Christ begotten of the everlasting Father, whose servant I am, and shepherd of his flock.” Smiling, the other says: “You have been.” His fury neither delays nor reins in its anger; he destines them to be burned by savage fires. They exult, and forbid the crowd to weep. The bishop sees some of the people offering him a cup to drink: “We are fasting,” he says; “I refuse the drink. The ninth hour has not yet unsealed the day; never will I violate a dedicated law, nor will death itself undo my sacred observance. So Christ, thirsting at the hour of the cross, refusing the cup offered to him, and not willing to taste it, endured his thirst.” Meanwhile they enter a place enclosed by a round arena, wet with much blood of beasts, which fury throngs when bloody spectacles resound, and the cheap gladiator, struck by the hard sword,

falls, and pleasure roars. Here, with a flaming pyre, the black minister, ordered to prepare the burning punishment, built the pyre with final torches, which, while it dissolved the burned bodies, might set free the souls, burning with love of light, from the broken cave of their prison. The loving companions vie in services: one, bending down, was eager to take off the shoes, their laces loosed, from his feet. But holy Fructuosus forbids them to bow down and press their faces: “Stop,” he says, “lest your homage weigh on our death. Rather I will loose my feet myself, lest my footsteps, hampered by bonds, rush into the fire with slow steps. Why do laments water your wet cheeks? Why do you ask me to remember you? I will pray to Christ for all the peoples.” Scarcely had he spoken this, when he himself loosens the coverings of his feet, as Moses had once done when approaching the bush. It was not allowed to tread on the sacred burning, or to stand before God, before pure footsteps were set down. He stood barefoot: see, a spirit resounds from heaven, and sows a speech that made all who heard it tremble: “It is not punishment, believe me, that you see, which passes, hurried in a slight moment; nor does it snatch away life, but reshapes it. Happy the souls to whom through fire

it has befallen to climb the heights of the Thunderer; the everlasting fire will one day flee from them.” Amid this they enter the crackling hearths with rapid steps, and threaten the very furnaces trembling with flames. At last the bonds which had drawn back their hands, tied behind their backs, fall off, burnt, with their skin untouched. The punishment did not dare to hold back the palms, which were to be raised to the Father in the form of the Cross: it loosens the arms, so that they may pray to God. You would think it a likeness of the three of old, whom once, singing through the Babylonian fire, the trembling tyrant wondered at. But then the loving flame spared them, the time of the passion not yet being fit, nor Christ yet beginning the glory of death. When the burning heat shunned these, they pray that the fire may fly swiftly to them and put an end to their anxious dangers. Prevailed upon, the Majesty at last bids his servants die, sent forth from their perishable bodies, and be restored to himself. A guard from the governor’s house saw heaven lying open to the martyrs, and the illustrious men carried through the stars. Moreover he showed it to his master’s little daughter, warning her, as the mark of her father’s crime: those whom the forum slew live in heaven. The maidenhood deserved to see it openly through the clear sky, while her parent was blind, so that the house might fear its master’s crime.

Then the ashes from the sacred bodies, and the bones sprinkled with wine, are gathered, which each one hastily claimed for himself. So great was the brothers’ love, to carry home the dedicated gifts of the holy ashes, or to bear in their bosom a faithful pledge. But lest they should divide into separate tombs the relics that are to be raised again, and afterwards to be with the Lord together, they are seen clothed in snow-white robes, and command that the sacred dust be restored and shut, mixed together, in a hollow marble. O threefold honor, O three-formed summit, by which the head of our city is raised, eminent among all the cities of Spain, it is pleasing to exult in three patrons, by whose protection we are all cherished, peoples of the lands of the Pyrenees. Let a choir of both sexes stand around, hero, virgin, boy, old man, old woman: sing duly the psalm of your Fructuosus. […] matching Eulogius with mingled measures, let us render equal songs to equals. On this side let the gilded roofs on the citadel resound, on that let the gentle murmur of the shore stand out, and let the waves on holiday make song. A time will come, when the world is falling, when Fructuosus will release you, Tarragona, from sharp punishment, protecting you from the fire. Perhaps he will deign to give healing to my torments too, by the favor of Christ, as he turns over these sweet hendecasyllables.

Quirinus, a man of outstanding merit, pleasing to God, the walls of the city of Siscia cherish in a fatherly embrace, the martyr granted to them. Under Galerius’ rule, who then pressed the Illyrian regions with his sway, he is said to have made the catholic faith illustrious by his death. Not the hardness of the sword, not fire, not wild beasts kill him with a cruel death, but a whirlpool washes him in river waters while it carries him off. It makes no difference whether with glassy water or with a river of blood the passion dyes the martyr: glory comes equally, wet with any wave. From the top of a high bridge the bishop of the holy people is thrown headlong into the river, carrying, hung from a noose, the stone of a huge millstone. The river receives him, cast down, on its most gentle eddy, and does not let him sink, holding up the vast weight of the stone with wondrous swimming. From afar, from the ground, the frightened flocks look up at their teacher; for the numerous people of Christ

had surrounded the windings of the banks with a packed throng. But Quirinus, as he looked around, raising his face, sees them, alas, frightened by his example, himself not at all mindful of his own danger amid the waters. He strengthens their loving hearts, asking with gentle words that such things should frighten no one, nor constant faith waver, nor anyone think it a punishment to die. As he speaks, the back of the river carries him on its floating shallows, nor does the depth beneath dare of its own accord to open for the stone and the noose and the man. The martyr bishop felt that the palm of death and departure, already won, was being snatched from him, and the ascent to the throne of the eternal Father denied. “Jesus, almighty,” he says, “this glory is by no means unusual or new for you, to tread on the roaring of the sea, and to stop the down-flowing rivers. We know that the disciple Peter, when he was wetting his footsteps, already sinking with trembling foot, with the help of your right hand found the sea set beneath him as ground.

We know too that the Jordan, wandering with twisted eddies, while it was carried on in rapid rush, fled back to its source with backward-flowing courses. These are miracles of your power, Lord; as now I am held up, floating lightly on the top of the river’s flood, though I drag a rock on my neck. Now the title of your name is full, and its power revealed, which the pagans gaze at in astonishment: release now, I pray, best Lord, the delays of this soul. What you can do the river water proves, which carries the flint; grant now what remains, than which nothing is more precious: to die for you, Christ God.” As he prays, breath and voice and warmth leave him at once; the spirit climbs the heights; the heavy stone goes down, the waters receive the body.

This place is chosen for Christ, where he carries approved hearts to heaven by blood, and cleanses them by water. Here two men, slain for the Lord’s name, bore a purple martyrdom by a beautiful death. Here too pardon flows from a clear fountain and washes away old stains in a new stream. Whoever desires to climb to the eternal kingdom of heaven, let him come here thirsting: see, the way is ready. Before, crowned witnesses climbed to the lofty halls; now washed souls seek the heights. The Spirit, accustomed to descend in heavenly glide, as he had given the palm, so grants pardon. The earth drinks sacred dews either from the font or from blood, and, ever wet, overflows for its God. He himself is lord of the place, from both sides of whose wound blood poured out flowed on this side, and water on that. You will go from here, as each can, through the wounds of Christ, one carried up by swords, the other by waters.

Cornelius Sulla founded a Forum: the Italians call the town by this, from the very name of its founder. Here, when I was making for you, Rome, greatest of things, hope arose in me that Christ would be favorable. Prostrate on the ground I lay at the tomb which the sacred martyr Cassian adorns with his dedicated body. While, weeping, I reflect on my wounds and all the labors of my life and the stings of my pains, I lifted my face to heaven; there stood facing me the image of the martyr, painted in colors, bearing a thousand wounds, torn through all his limbs, showing his skin broken with tiny pricks. Countless boys around him (pitiful to see!) were piercing his limbs with little styluses, with which, used to running over the wax tablets, they had written down the murmur of the school, taking notes. The sacristan, when consulted, said: “What you see, stranger, is not an empty or old wives’ tale. The picture tells a history which, handed down in books, shows the true faith of an ancient time. He had been in charge of boys’ studies, and, surrounded by a large flock, had sat as a teacher of letters, skilled at capturing all words with brief signs, and following swiftly with quick dots what was said. His harsh and seemingly grim precepts sometimes had moved the young crowd to anger and fear. […] the people dedicated to the Christian glory. The guide of the young flock is dragged out from the midst of the gathering, because he had scorned to pray at the altars. When the craftsman of punishments asked what kind of art the man knew who was so rebellious in his lofty spirit, they answer: he governs a tender band of boys,

teaching them to note words by invented signs. “Lead the prisoner,” he shouts, “lead him, and let the flogger be handed over freely to the little ones themselves. Let them mock him as they please, tear him with impunity, and dye in his blood their hands, given holiday from their master. It is a pleasure that the stern teacher himself should provide sport for the pupils whom he restrained too much.” His hands are bound behind his back, he is stripped of his clothing; the band, armed with sharp styluses, is there. As much hatred as each had conceived in silent anger, he pours out, burning, his gall at last set free. Some throw their fragile tablets and break them on his face: the wood leaps apart against his battered brow. The waxed boxwood crackles, struck against his bloody cheeks, and the broken, wet page reddens from the blow. Then others brandish the points and iron tips, with the part by which the wax is written in ploughed furrows, and with the part by which the cut letters are erased, and the surface of the rough plain, shining again, is renewed. From here the confessor of Christ is dug, from there he is cut; part enters the soft flesh, part splits the skin. Two hundred hands at once pierced all his limbs, and as many drops of wounds drip at once. The child who had pricked the surface was a greater torturer than he who had pierced the deep inner parts. That one, since his blow is light and death is denied, knows how to prolong the pain with his points; this one, the deeper he strikes the hidden vital parts, the more relief he gives, as he brings death near. “Be strong, I pray, and conquer your years with strength: what is lacking in age, let cruelty supply.” But the tender band strives poorly and labors weakly: the torments grow while the executioner tires.

“Why do you groan?” cries one; “you yourself, master, gave us this iron and armed our hands. See, we give back to you as many thousands of marks as we took down, standing and weeping, while you taught. You cannot be angry that we write: you yourself bade us never to carry a stylus quiet in our right hand. We are not asking, stingy teacher, for the school holidays so often denied while you were our teacher. We like to make dots, and to weave furrows into furrows, to entangle curved little strokes in chains. You may correct the lines, inspected in long order, if perhaps our faulty hand has made a mistake. Use your authority: you have the right to punish a fault, if any of your pupils has marked you too slowly.” Such games the boys played on the limbs of their master, nor did the long punishment release the weary man. At last Christ, pitying him from heaven as he struggled, orders the bonds of his breast to be loosened; and he relaxes the difficult delays of the soul and the moorings of life, and frees its narrow hiding places. The blood, following the open ways from the inner fountain of the veins, deserts the heart; and through so many holes of the pierced body that vital warmth of the fibers goes out, panting. These are the things, stranger, expressed in clear colors, at which you marvel: this is the glory of Cassian. Put forward, if you have any just or lovable prayer, if you have any hope, if anything seethes within you. The most favorable martyr, believe me, hears all prayers, and ratifies those he sees to be worthy.” I obey; I embrace the tomb, I pour out tears too; the altar grows warm with my mouth, the stone with my breast.

Then I review all the secrets of my labor; then I murmur what I was seeking, what I feared, and the home left behind me under a doubtful lot, and the hope of future good wavering with its lot. I am heard; I go to the City; I enjoy favorable success; I return home; I proclaim Cassian.

Romanus, brave champion of Christ God, favoring one, move the organ of my tongueless mouth; grant a polished song to one most inarticulate; make me sing the wonders of your praises: for you know yourself that the mute can speak. The cruel torturer tore out from you the plectrum of palate and throat; yet he did not impose silence on the mouth with which you confessed God. The voice of truth cannot be extinguished, not even if it throbs with its passages cut off. Here my speech, sticking with a weak tongue, stammers and labors in harsh measures; but if you sprinkle my liver with dew from above, and water my breast with spiritual milk, my hoarse voice will release its hampered sounds. The evangelist wrote that the Messiah himself gave such precepts to the apostles: “Do not, when my Sacrament must be sung, seek out words in advance: to the unprepared I will suggest what they should say.” I am mute myself; but my tongue, mighty in eloquence, Christ, will speak brilliantly: he himself will unfold what tumults the demon stirred with his last breath, while he was being tamed, worse in the frenzy of his plague at the very end. So a serpent wounded by the blow of a dart bites back the iron, and, more savage with pain, is destroyed by shaking it with its pressed teeth; but the fixed shaft remains deeper, nor does it feel the vain dangers of the bites.

[as] that serpent [spoke] with his mouth, who, coming out of the tombs of the dead, cries: “Why before the time, with swift coming, do you dissolve my kingdom? Spare me, Son of the Most High, or bid me possess the hearts of pigs.” The prefect, pressing on with these affairs, […] commands the soldiers to drag the people of the Church from the very sanctuaries, to be bound in chains, unless they reject the Nazarene discipline. Soon he himself, planning to burst into the temple, and eager to scatter the holy of holies, was preparing, profane man, with impious arms to bring the altar down utterly, and to dissolve [the doors] themselves in ruin. When these things were known, Romanus suddenly runs ahead as informer, a hero of keen excellence, and announces that the enemies are coming in arms, preparing the minds of the frightened with exhortations to stand ready and not yield to the whirlwind. The Christian flock conspires, bound together in one spirit, an undaunted band of mothers, men, little ones, virgins; the resolve is fixed and settled for all to defend the faith, or gladly die. The soldier, driven back, reports to the bench that Romanus is the leader of the rebel people, that all are burning with stubborn daring, obstinately setting their bared throats against them, so that they may meet death bravely in glory. Then Romanus is ordered to be seized headlong, and, as sole instigator and torch of all, to plead the case for the stubborn people.

He goes, not resisting, and asks to be bound, and of his own accord twists his bent hands behind his back. Love of the crown almost outstrips the cruel art of the lictor, offering of its own will the bare ribs, to be cut by two-pronged claws. He bursts through the high threshold, and, while the heralds are dumb with astonishment, he himself drags the torturer. As he stands before his face, the tyrant begins thus: “You who fan the city, storm of the fickle crowd, stirring restless minds, so that the ignorant mob will not give itself up to the laws! Something popular, under the color of glory, the unlettered multitude has believed, so that they think they will be consecrated forever if, like the giants, they make war on the gods and, conquered, are buried in the flames of mountains. This spectacle you have prepared, lost man, of the bloody sword cutting down citizens, who, as profane, impious, sacrilegious offenders, must be killed under your teaching: you are the cause of their death, you the standard-bearer of evils. Unless I am mistaken, it is just that what you, their wicked author, compelled many to endure, executioner, should return upon you; and that for such great slaughters as will soon come, you should be the first to pay with destruction, and bear yourself what you had persuaded them to bear.” To this he answers with free mouth: “I embrace it, Prefect, nor do I withdraw myself, so that I alone may be sacrificed for the faithful people, worthy to undergo all things, if you consult me, whatever your cruelty has ordered.

It is not lawful for servants of idols and demons to enter the holy house of our salvation, lest the pure place of prayer be polluted: I trust in the Holy Spirit that it will never be granted you to touch the blessed threshold with your foot — unless perhaps, made one of us, you deserve to be taken into our flock: may God the Father bring it about.” Inflamed by this, Asclepiades had ordered the body to be hung high on the rack to be disemboweled, and stretched by hooks and chains. But the attendants suggest to the raging man that he is noble by ancient lineage, and first among the citizens for his many merits. He orders the guilty stake to be removed, lest a plebeian punishment condemn a famous man. “Let his back be beaten,” he says, “with frequent blows, and let his neck, flogged with lead, swell: each person is punished appropriately, and it matters much whether one is low or noble: the form of the tortures is given by the rank of the accused.” So the martyr, beaten by that hail, after he had sung many hymns between the blows, stood up and began: “Far be it that the blood of my parents or the law of the senate-house should make me noble: the noble sect of Christ ennobles men. If you review what the first origin is of our woven lineage in its cradle, we began from the mouth of God our parent: whoever serves him, he is truly noble; rebellious to the Father, he is found degenerate. Then a new honor is added to the lineage, and immense splendor, when a magistracy comes:

if the wounds of iron and fire, though unjust, prove and mark me a witness confessing the name, and a glorious death follows the force of the pains. Beware of wishing to be perversely kind, nor, now relaxed, spare me gently: press on my limbs, torturer, that I may be noble; if, enlarged by these successes, I enjoy them, I shall think nothing of my father’s and mother’s family. These very summits of your dignities, what do you think they are? Do they not pass by swiftly: fasces, axes, chair, bordered toga and robe, lictor, tribunal, and three hundred badges, with which you swell, and soon go down again? When you enter on the consulship, as household slaves do, (I am ashamed to say it!) you feed chickens with meal; the bearer of an ivory eagle takes on arrogance from it, and is proud, puffed up by the bone of a beast that has the shape of a bird. Now if you lie under the altars at the feet of little images, placed below a carved oak, what can I think more abject than you? I know that toga-clad nobles bare their feet before the carriage, for the rites of the Idaean mother. A little black stone, to be carried in a chariot, sits shut in silver with a woman’s face; leading it to its bath, going before it, wearing down your feet with shoes removed, you come right to the stream of the Almo. What is that shameful procession? Surely it shows that you are base, when you run as Luperci. Whom would I not think the lowest of slaves, if, running naked through all the streets,

should strike girls with a playful lash? I pity your rites and your leaders, and your morals, Rome, highest head of the world. Come, let us unfold, if you please, your mysteries, Prefect: now you must hear, whether you will or not, what filth you worship. Nor does that madness with which you swell frighten me, in that, grim-faced, haughty, rigid, you threaten the tortures of a harsh death; if you are trying to move me by any means, fight me with reason, not fury. You bid me, abandoning the rites of the Father and of Christ, to adore with you a thousand females and males, gods and goddesses, and, from the double sex, sons, grandsons, great-great-grandsons born, like a filthy lineage of so many acts of sexual immorality. Girls marry; often they are deceived by tricks, overpowered by the frauds of lovers: incests seethe, the thefts of adulterers burn hot. The husband deceives, the wife hates the concubine: chains bind together adulterous gods. Show me, I pray, at which altars you command that my turf should smoke with a slain wether? Am I to go to Delphi? But the corrupt reputation of the athletic youth forbids it, whom your god made effeminate by the licence of the gymnasium. Soon, defiled, he wept for him killed by a heavy discus, and consecrated his concubine as a flower. The same god, hired, pastured another’s flock; then, suffering the theft of the lost herd, the lazy cowherd lost even his arrows. Or shall I go to the pine grove of Cybele?

But the boy, the Gallus, stands in the way, for lust, through a sad wound and a cut-away disgrace safe from the embrace of the unchaste goddess, a eunuch to be lamented in many rites of the Mother. But, I suppose, I shall embrace the threshold of great Jupiter: who, if he were summoned as a defendant under your laws, entangled in the snares of the threatening Julian law, would, in chains, pay the penalty of the severe Scantinian law too, and, with you as judge, deserve to go to prison. Why do you think the founder of the golden ages should be worshiped? You do not deny that he, a fugitive, hid secretly while he dreaded harm; if Jupiter hears that he is living happily, he must punish those privy to his hiding. What do you think should be done among the altars of quarrelling gods? The offended might of Mars will be indignant if the Lemnian is worshiped. Whoever consecrates Hercules as a god with statue or shrine will feel Juno’s anger. You say that the poets invent these things licentiously. But they themselves too are dedicated with you to such mysteries, and what they describe they worship. Why do you read a sacrilege so gladly? Why is it applauded in the theaters while you watch? The swan, the seducer, sins on the stage; the actor dances the bull-horned Thunderer; you, the supreme pontiff, sit as spectator of these things, and laugh yourself, nor do you wash it away by denying, though the reputation of so great a deity is polluted. Why, consecrated one, do you dissolve in guffaws when the god pretends to be Alcmena’s husband? The stage harlot laments wounded Adonis

openly, with lustful feeling. Does not the brothel of holy Cypris move you? What of this: the truth lies open in the very statues, shaped in bronze with the traces of crimes? What does the image of the bird always fixed beside Jupiter mean, his servant? Surely the swift armor-bearer is a pimp, who carried the catamite to the tyrant. Ceres shows the thing with her ungirt robe. Why, if none of the gods carried off the maiden, does her mother wander sleepless, seeking her by night? We see the Tirynthian twirling spindles: why, if he was not the plaything of Neaera? Why should I loathe the monsters of the rustic gods, Fauns, Priapi, presidents of the pipes, nymphs swimming, and water-dwellers placed under the deep lake, like frogs: a right of divinity among cheap seaweeds? Do you call me to worship these, good censor? Can you think anything of the kind holy, if you have sound sense? Does not laughter shake your lungs as you look at those follies which drunken old women invent in their dreams? But if any mystic vanity anywhere must be worshiped by us, you begin first; and, bowed down, adore whatever is sacred on earth, the Latin gods and the Egyptian gods, to whom Rome pours libations, to whom Canopus prays. Do you pray to Venus? Pray to the ape too. Does the sacred asp of Aesculapius please you? Why do the crocodile, the ibis and the dog displease you? Set little altars of religion by the leeks, venerate the bitter onion, the biting garlic.

Smoky Lares are appeased with incense, and are the consecrated vegetables rejected? Or whence is greater majesty believed to be in hearths than in what is born in hoed gardens, if there is divinity in pots, divinity too in leeks? But a form sculpted in bronze is a beautiful thing. What shall I wish upon the workshops of Greece, which founded gods for foolish nations? The tongs of Myron, the hammer of Polyclitus, are the nature and origin of your heavenly ones. Art, effective in sowing errors, while it curls round Jupiter’s stiff beard, while, gently bending the flowing hair, it files the locks and ivy clusters of Liber, and while it roughens Minerva’s breast with serpents, has struck black dread into the terrified, so that they shudder at the bronze thunderbolt as if it were the Thunderer’s, tremble at the venom of the hissing Gorgon, think that the Youth after his Indian triumphs can strike with the thyrsus when he is drunk. Then, because they see Diana softly girt, they greatly fear the bow of the hunting virgin; if perhaps the molten mass has tinged with curling liquid the face of a grimmer Hercules, the club is believed to threaten unless he is worshiped. Now what terror seizes the hearts of the fearful, if Juno’s anger has been neatly expressed? As if, looking with eyes turned back, she turned her face from the victim of the sacrificer, the stone feigns threats with its stern brow. I wonder that you have not consecrated Mentor himself, and that Phidias himself has no temple and altars, makers of gods, or parents of deities:

who, if they had stood at the furnaces more lazily, there would be no cast Jupiter at all. Do you not blush, fool, devoted to your village rites, that you have always wasted so many viands, which you foolishly offered to such gods, whom a ladle, a basin, a tankard, frying pans, little vessels broken and melted, have put together? I forgive these things, however, in the foolish common people, whom wool of mixed colors on a post frightens, whom a salty mountebank often deceives, to whom everything is sacred that the songs of rancid toothless old women have persuaded them to fear. [But that learned men should] not know by what law things divine or mortal stand; how great a majesty rules whatever is created, which created all things! God everlasting, a reality beyond estimation, is not enclosed by thinking, nor by seeing: he exceeds every measure of the human mind, nor can he be grasped by our sight; outside and within he fills and overflows. Timeless before the first day, he alone always holds being and having been; he is himself the true light, and author of true light: since he was light, he poured forth his light: from the light this radiance was born, the Son. One is the power of the Father, and one the power of the Son; and the one splendor, begotten from the one light, shone out with the full light of brightness. The single nature of the one God is mighty; and whatever exists anywhere, one power founded: sky and ground, the force of the sea’s flood, the globes that preside over days and nights, winds, storms, lightnings, rains, clouds, the northern stars, evening stars, heats, snows,

springs, frosts, and metals, and rivers; steep places, plains, valleys of mountains, beasts, birds, creeping things, swimming things, draught animals, cattle, beasts of burden, flowers, shrubs, shoots, herbs, trees, those that are for fragrance, and those that bloom for food. These things God did not build with toil and art, but by a command, which his power brought forth, he ordered to be: things were made which were not. By the Word he created the fabric of all forms: the Father’s power was always in the Word. You have come to know him. Now learn the rite and manner of worship, what kind of temple it is, what offerings he has ordained to be dedicated, what vows he demands, what priests he wants, what nectar he commands to be sacrificed there. He himself founded a temple for himself in the mind of man, living, serene, sentient, breathing, incapable of being dissolved, not destructible, beautiful, lovely, preeminent in its summit, painted with varied colors. There a priest stands on the consecrated threshold, and the virgin Faith guards the first doors, her hair bound with royal fillets; she asks that victims be offered to Christ and the Father, which she knows to please, white and simple: modesty of brow, innocence of heart, the quiet of peace, chastity of body, the fear of God, the rule of knowledge, the sober sparingness of fasts, a hope that does not lie low, and an ever generous hand. From these victims a pleasant vapor rises,

surpassing the scent of balsam, incense, saffron, breezes moist with Persian spices; lifted from there, it is raised right up to heaven, and sweetly delights God, made favorable. Whoever, hostile, forbids this discipline — O blindness of the pagans, sunk in mud! O muddy hearts of the nations! O gross error! O dark race, friendly to the earth, given over to the corpse, always looking at what lies below, never above! Is it not the height of madness and the last insanity to think those gods who are created by marriages, to seek a spiritual thing in an earthy way, to consecrate the elements of the world on altars, and to believe that what is created is the creator? to pray to a hewn stake, to sprinkle inscribed stones with the blood of boars, to entreat altars with morsels of beef, when you know that those you consecrate were men? Stop, judge of the world, commanding so great a wickedness to brave and free men: nothing is loftier than the love of truth. To those who assert the divine power of the everlasting God nothing is a cause of fear: death itself lies beneath them.” For a long time, while the martyr was speaking, Asclepiades had been cooking a crafty anger within, irritated in his deep gall, while he was long silent, and conceiving bile in his hidden breast; at last he vomits out the force of his hidden fury: “By Jupiter! What is it that I hear from this man? He stands among the altars and the images of the gods

and — I am forced to confess it — in the middle of the forum, while I am silent, the lost wretch makes his speech, befouling with impious mouth whatever is sacred. O law of our forefathers! O state of ancient custom! The institutions of the Pompilian kings, devised for the public safety, our ages pick to pieces. What new error has brought in these sophists, who argue that the gods are not to be worshiped? Now a Christian doctrine is born for us, after a thousand consuls have at last rolled by since the founding of Rome, not to recount the Nestors. Whatever rises as a novelty did not exist of old. Do you wish to know the sum of things? Consult Pyrrha. Where was that supreme God of yours then, when by the favor of the gods the boy son of Mars, Romulus, was founding the seven-hilled citadel? That Rome is powerful, founded under good auspices, it owes to Jupiter Stator and the other gods. This is sacred from the beginning of time, this handed down from our ancestors: the shrines must be appeased by us for the emperor’s triumphs, so that his campaign may favor him with glory, and so that, with enemies subdued, the leader may curb a quiet world with laws. Make ready, then, whoever you are, most wicked man, to pray duly to the gods with us for the emperor’s life; or, since a public enemy must suffer, pay the penalty with your blood: to have spurned the temples is to have rejected the emperor.” Then he: “Never for the safety of the emperor and his greatest and bravest cohorts will I pray otherwise than that they may serve as faithful men, and be reborn to the Father in the waters of Christ, and receive from heaven the Paraclete himself.

that they may reject the darkness of idols, that they may see that light of eternal hope, not flowing into the juicy eyes, nor flashing through bodily windows, but shining within in pure minds. The thick pupil of the flesh sees the thick, and, a perishable thing, sees what is to be dissolved; the clear substance of the soul is fit for seeing clear things: the fervent nature alone grasps the flashing force of the most fervent Divinity. This I wish: that your emperor and mine may know the light, if he wishes to become mine; for if he resists the Christian name, such an emperor will not be mine: believe me, I will never serve one who commands a crime.” “Do you stand still, attendants,” cries the judge, “do you stand still, and hold back avenging hands? Do you not cut up the entrails, broken with furrows? Do you not search out the soul hidden within, from which the profane voice bursts out against the emperor?” The foulest soldiers tear both sides of the hanging man with gaping point, they plough long wounds in a line through his limbs, they cut slanting lines across straight ones, straight across transverse, and now his breast is white with the bones laid bare. They pant with effort, they stream with sweat, while the hero on whom they rage is quiet.

Amid these things Romanus of his own accord goes on to speak: “If you seek, Prefect, to know the truth, it grieves me that error has settled in your breast, that you drag these peoples with you to perdition; the fickle crowd runs in numbers from every side to the spectacle, alas, bodies to be groaned over, and they tremble at the raw example of our lot. Hear, all: I cry far and wide and proclaim, I send forth my voice higher from the rack: Christ, the splendor of the Father’s glory, God, creator of things, and likewise sharer of our nature, promises everlasting salvation to those who believe: salvation of the soul, which alone does not die, but, enduring forever, undergoes unequal fates: either it shines in light, or it is plunged in darkness. Following Christ, it enters the Father’s glory; separated from Christ, it is handed over to Tartarus. I must care for the quality of the wares, which of everlasting substance may one day fall to me; for I care little how my limbs fall, which will certainly fall by the law of their nature. Ruin is at hand: let what is to be dissolved fall. Nor does it make a difference whether fire and cords rage, or a harsh sickness tortures the ailing body, since a greater savagery often arms diseases. The force of the claws does not dig the side with its point so much as dire pleurisy strikes it. Nor does the skin burnt by the plates burn so much as fever eats away the veins with black bile;

or fire drawn over the top of the skin cooks it, and seething heat raises pustules: you would think it burned by hissing cauteries. You think it wretched that I hang stretched with my arms twisted back, that my feet are wrenched, that my frame sounds with cracking sinews: so those whom knotty gout and arthritis torture cry out, wailing, that their bones are being divided. You all shudder at these hands of the executioners. Are the hands of physicians gentler, when Hippocratic butchery rages? Living flesh is cut, and fresh blood dyes the scalpels while the rot is scraped away. Think that surgeons are bringing grim iron to my ribs, which cuts for health. That by which health is restored is not bitter: these men seem to pluck at wasted limbs, but they give healing to the things that live within. Who does not know how great is the corruption of the defiled and dissoluble flesh? It is filthy, it swells, it melts, it stinks, it aches, it is puffed up with anger, it is dissolved by lust; often, tinged with gall, it takes on livid marks. Is not heaped-up gold acquired for the flesh? Embroidered clothing, gem, silk, purple are sought with a thousand tricks for the use of the flesh; the luxury of gluttony feeds the fat of the flesh; the pleasure of the flesh rushes through every wickedness. Heal, I pray, executioner, such great evils, cut down, pluck out the tinder of sins; make it so that, the decay of the weak flesh cut away, the mind may survive free from all pain, and no longer carry what a tyrant may cut off. Nor be frightened by the crowd of those standing around: I lose only this, which will perish for all,

for king, client, poor and rich; so the flesh of little slaves, so that of senators, wastes away when it has been buried in the depth of a tomb. A cheap loss and a light damage bites us if we are afraid to lose what we must do without: why does the will not seize upon what is necessary? Why does it not turn nature into a matter of glory? Let us count a loss imposed by law among rewards. But let us see what the form of the rewards is for the brave: that, surely, which never perishes. The spirit, poured back to heaven, will fly up, will enjoy the light of God the Father, standing in the royal citadel where Christ reigns. One day the sky will be rolled up like a book, the globe of the revolving sun will fall to the earth, ruin will destroy the monthly sphere: God alone will survive, and the righteous with him will remain with the everlasting angels. Despise present advantage, O prudent man, which must end, which you must leave behind: let go the body, a matter of the tomb and funeral; strive toward future glory, go on to God: know who you are; conquer the world and the age.” Hardly had the martyr finished speaking this speech, when, raging, Asclepiades interjects: “Let the executioner turn the blow to the speaker’s mouth, and his hand to the jaws, and transfer there the sharp furrows and the cords. Let the very seat of verbosity be burst, and let loquacity, torn, no longer fan the breezes of speech, its bellows pierced, to whose sounding no law sets a limit; I want the very words of the speaker to be tortured.” The impious lictor fulfils the orders of the one who commands,

he carves both cheeks with writing claws, and cuts the face with bloody marks: the skin, shaggy with beard, comes off piece by piece, and the whole face is cut right down to the chin. The martyr speaks amid the flowing blood: “I owe you great thanks, Prefect, that, opening many mouths, I now speak Christ. A single passage was cramping the proclamation of the great name, unequal to the praises of God. The voice sent forth has found open cracks, and, poured out through many mouths, gives back more sounds on this side and that, and proclaims everywhere the everlasting glory of Christ and the Father. See, as many mouths praise as there are wounds.” Checked by such constancy, the judge orders the punishment to cease; then he says: “I swear by the fire of the sun, which governs our days with its returning circles, by whose return light and year are drawn out, that the fires of a grim pyre are now to be prepared for you, to devour that body with a fitting end, which persists in resisting so wickedly the ancient rites; nor does it give way, conquered by the darts of pains, but becomes stronger with punishments. What stupor has put this hardness into his breast? The mind is obstinate, the whole body has grown callous. So great is the madness of the new doctrine that reigns: this Christ of yours did not exist long ago, whom you yourself confess was fixed to a cross.” “This is that Cross, the salvation of us all,” says Romanus; “this is the redemption of man: I know you are incapable of the sacrament, impious man,

that with blind senses you cannot drink in our mystery: night takes in nothing of the day. Yet in the darkness I will bring forth a bright torch. The healthy will see; the bleary-eyed will cover his eyes. “Take away the light,” the incurable will say; “brightness is an injury to one who sees nothing.” Hear, profane man, what you will hate, weighed down by it. The everlasting King brought forth an everlasting King, abiding in himself, and not less in time, for time does not hold him: for he is the source, going back, of beginnings, of days and of times: Christ is from the Father: the Son is what the Father is. Death met with the one who bore the limbs of a man; while it attacked what is ours, it yielded to what is immortal. You think this foolish, sophists of the world; but the supreme Father chose the foolish things of the world, so that one might be foolish to the world and wise to God. You recount the antiquity of Romulus, and the wolf of Mars, and the first omen of the vultures. If you reject new things, nothing is so recent: the course of days since the founding augur scarcely fills this little age with a thousand years of records. How many kingdoms founded long ago I could bring forward in the whole world, if there were leisure, famous long before Jupiter, father of Mars, is said to have sucked the Cretan goat; but they no longer exist, and these too will one day not be. This Cross of Christ, which you call new, at the birth of the world, as soon as man was made,

was expressed in signs and set out in writings: his coming was foretold through a thousand miracles by the harmonious mouth of the prophets. Kings, prophets, judges and princes, by valor, wars, worship, rites, pen, did not cease to paint the form of the cross: the cross was noted beforehand, the cross was foreshadowed, the ancient ages drank in the cross. At last, the prophetic voices unveiled, antiquity proved true in our age, it shone out before us with a face that could be seen, lest the truth waver with doubtful faith, if it did not lie open with the witness of sight close at hand. From this we believe that even the body, which is handed over to the tomb to be devoured, does not perish: because Christ, raising with himself the body dead on the Cross, carried it in himself to the Father’s throne, and gave all a way to rise again. That cross is ours; we have climbed the gibbet; for us Christ was slain, and for us he is God, Christ returned, he who in dying is man: a twofold nature, he dies and tames death, and returns into that which knows not how to perish. Let it be enough to have said a little of the mysteries of our salvation and of the hope that has come forth. Now, now I shall be silent: we are forbidden to scatter Christ’s pearls among unclean swine, lest muddy animals trample the holy thing. But since it is not permitted to wrestle with you by reason on deep matters, let us consult what is near at hand. Let the simple, artless judgment of the natural senses itself be questioned: let an untaught boy be present as judge,

a boy of about seven, or less, who is free of partiality, and hates no one, and falls into no vice of mind. Let us test what fresh infancy says should be followed, what new vigor thinks.” Gladly embracing this word of the holy martyr, he picks one little one from the crowd of children, not long weaned from milk, and orders him seized and brought. “Ask what you like,” he says; “let us follow what the boy approves.” Romanus, burning to test the innocent disposition of tender age, says: “Little son, tell me what seems true and fitting: to worship one Christ, and in Christ the Father, or to pray to gods of a thousand shapes?” The infant smiled, and without delay replied: “Whatever that is which men call God must be one, and what belongs to one is unique. Since Christ is this, Christ is the true God. Not even boys think there are many kinds of gods.” The tyrant was stunned, wavering in shame; it was not seemly to use force against innocent childhood, and yet his savage fury did not allow him to spare one who said such things. “Who taught you these words?” he says. He answered: “My mother, and God taught my mother. She drank them in, taught by the parent Spirit, to nourish me with them even in the cradle: I, as a little one, drank milk from the twin fountains of the breasts, and drank in belief in Christ.” “Then let the mother herself be present, I say,” cries Asclepiades, “and let the impious teacher see the sad end of her teaching;

bereaved, let her be tortured by the death of the badly taught infant, and let her weep for the one she corrupted. Far be it that a cheap little woman should weary our attendants: and how little pain will vex her limbs, short with the help of death? The mother’s eyes will be punished more sharply than if bloody claws were plucking her limbs.” Hardly had he said this when he orders the little boy to be lifted up and his buttocks beaten with the hand; soon, his clothes removed, to be beaten with rods, and his tender back cut with hard blows, from which more milk than blood might flow. What rock could endure that spectacle, what hardness of bronze or iron could bear it? As often as the willow struck the body, the wet rods grew red with thin blood, which the blow had poured out with dewy bruises. They say the threatening cheeks of the floggers shed tears, drops running down of their own accord over the roaring barbarian faces; and that the clerks themselves, and the ring of common people, and the nobles, did not stand with dry eyes. But the mother alone is without these laments; her brow alone smiles with serene joy; in her heart piety stands stronger than the impious, defiant of pains through the love of Christ, and strengthens her feeling of soft tenderness. The little one had cried out that he was thirsty: the fever of his soul, burning in the torments, demanded this, that he should ask for a drink of water; the grim mother, looking at him sadly from afar, rebukes him thus with stern face and words:

“I think, my son, you are troubled by a weak fear, and the horror of pain is overcoming you, afflicted; I did not promise God that this offspring of my womb would be such; not for this hope of glory did I beget you, that you should know how to yield to death. You ask for water to drink, when you have at hand that living fountain which always flows, and alone waters all living things, within and without, spirit and body together, granting eternity to those who drink. You will come to that stream soon, if only this one desire burns in your mind and marrow, to see Christ: once drunk abundantly, it so calms all the burning of the heart that the blessed life no longer knows thirst. Here, here is the cup you must now drink, my son, which a thousand little ones drank in Bethlehem: an age that had forgotten milk and was unmindful of the breast, refreshed with bitter and then with sweet cups, took the honey of blood. Strive toward this example, brave boy, noble offspring, and your mother’s power: the Father has commanded that all ages are capable of virtues: he excepted no day, granting triumphs even to wailing infants. [You know that Isaac,] a little boy, was his father’s only son, who, when he saw the altar and the sword for his sacrifice, of his own accord offered his neck to the old man who was sacrificing. I have also told you of that noble and memorable contest which seven sons born of one mother

boys, yet men in deeds, waged: the same mother urging them, in the doubtful outcome of punishment and crown, not to spare their blood. The parent, present, saw the very preparations for the deaths of her own, and was not moved, rejoicing whenever the frying pan, sizzling with oil, had roasted a fried youth, or the dire pressure of the plates had crackled. The torturer had torn off the hair and the skin of the scalp from the forehead, so that the skull, bare of covering, might disfigure the head right down to the neck. She cried out: ‘Endure! A crown from a royal diadem will clothe this summit with gems.’ The tyrant had ordered the tongue to be cut out of one of the youths. The mother said: ‘Enough glory has now been won by us: see, the best part of our body is sacrificed to God; the faithful tongue is worthy to be the victim. Interpreter of the soul, announcer of the senses, servant of the heart, herald of the hidden breast, let it be offered first in the sacrament of death, and let it be the first redeemer of all the limbs; the rest will soon follow their dedicated leader.’ With these goads the parent spurring on the Maccabees subdued the enemy, subjugated seven times, as glorious in triumphs as she was fruitful in sons: that my one child may show me fruitful in glory, my life, lies in your hand. By the faithful receptacle of this womb, by the hospitable home of twice five months; if the nectar of my breast was sweet to you, if my lap was soft, if your rattles pleased you, persist, and claim the author of these gifts.

By what art you began to live within me, and what that nothing is from which your body came, I do not know: only he who gave you life and made you knows: spend yourself for him, by whose gift you were born: you will do well to pour back to the giver what he gave.” As the mother sang such things, the boy, now glad, at the whistling rods and the pain of the blows laughed. Then the judge pronounces: “Let the infant be shut in prison, and Romanus, author of so great an evil, be tortured more sharply.” They ploughed him again through the fresh paths of the scars, and where they had drawn the sharp iron a little before, as the wounds broke open again, they followed the open marks. Now, proud victor, he calls them cowards: “O strength unmanly, O soft hands! That for so long you cannot scatter the one frame of a tottering little body! It scarcely holds together now, yet it does not fall entirely, conquering the arms of idle right hands. Dogs would pluck a corpse with their teeth sooner, and the bite of vultures is far more effective at devouring morsels of dead flesh. You languish with an unwarlike hunger, and you tire: your gluttony is bestial, but your voracity sluggish.” The judge’s turbulent anger flared at this, and he rouses himself to the final sentence: “If you are sorry for the delays, you may undergo a swift end: you will be devoured by fire, condemned, and you will soon become thin ash.” But as he went off, when the cruel attendants were dragging the man from the forum, looking back he said:

“I appeal, treacherous man, from this cruelty of yours to my Christ, not trembling with fear of death, but so that what you judge may be proved nothing.” “Why do I delay,” he says, “to destroy both, the boy and the master, accomplices of the impious sect? Let the sword cut off the cheap head of the infant, scarcely yet a man; let the avenging flame burn that one; let them have under one end a different exit.” They came to the very place where the slaughter was to be done. The mother carried her son in her embrace and on her bosom, so that you would think a firstborn offspring was being carried to be offered to God on the dish of holy Abel, chosen from the fold as purer than the rest. The executioner demanded the boy; the mother gave him, nor did she linger in tears; she pressed on him only one kiss. “Farewell,” she says, “sweetest one: and when, blessed, you have entered the kingdom of Christ, remember your mother, now a patron instead of a son.” As the executioner struck with the sword, the woman, skilled in psalm-singing, sang a hymn from David’s song: “Precious is the death of a saint in the sight of God: this is your servant, the offspring of your handmaid.” Repeating such words she spread out her cloak, and held out her hands under the blow and the blood, to catch the flowing wave of the streaming veins and the ball of the quivering face: she caught it, and pressed it to her dear breast. But on the other side of the field the smoky burner was weaving an immense pyre of dry pine, twigs set beneath mixed with a heap of hay,

sprinkling them with the melted dew of boiling pitch, so that the flame might grow more fiercely with this food. And now, his arms twisted back, Romanus, driven from afar with a fork, was being brought to the pyre. “I know,” he says, “that I shall not be burned, nor has this kind of passion been given to me; and there remains a huge miracle that will happen.” These words of his are followed by an immense crash of a falling cloud; a storm in waves, headlong with a black flood of waters, overwhelms the fires. They feed the half-burnt torches with oil, but the rain conquers the now soaking kindling. The foul executioner trembled, troubled by the strange events, and with whatever art he could pressed on, turning the brands among the wet ashes, cherishing the coals with handfuls of tow, and seeking a seed of fire among the waters. When this, reported to the swelling judge, had moved the anger of his implacable gall: “How long,” he says, “will this supreme magician mock us with the spell of the Thessalians, skilled at turning punishment into a joke? Perhaps his neck, if I order it to be bent beneath the sword to be cut, will not open to the wound; or the neck, cut off by the blow that divides it, will come together again and be glued back, and the head will stand out, added again to the shoulders. Let us try, then, first to cut off with iron some part of the surviving body, lest, guilty of many crimes, he should fall by a single death,

or the faithless man meet his end by one slaughter: I want him to perish in as many ways as he carries limbs. I would like to try, as is told of Lerna, whether he sprouts with reborn limbs and from the losses of his diminished body restores a new enemy; then Hercules himself will be at hand, accustomed to cauterize the hydra’s wounds. Now let a craftsman skilled in cutting be present, who knows all the boundaries of the inner parts and how to separate the bonds knit by sinews. Give me one who heals torn-out bones, or mends and joins what is broken at the joints. Let him first tear out the tongue by the roots, which alone in the whole body lives more wicked: it, worst of all, inveighing against our gods with insolent motion, has profaned the ancient law, and in its daring has not spared even the emperor.” A certain physician, Aristo, comes when summoned; he orders him to put out his tongue: at once the martyr puts it out uncovered, opens the depths of his throat. He handles the palate, and with his finger, going over the exit of the voice, explores the place for the wound. Then, drawing the tongue far out of the mouth, he drives the scalpel in, inserting it right to the throat. As he cut each fibre little by little, the martyr never bit, nor pressed his mouth tightly with his teeth, nor sucked in the blood. He stood unmoved with jaws open, while the blood flowed outside, gushing: handsome, he bears his chin drenched with a red ornament, and beholds the beauty of his bloody breast, and enjoys a garment of purple, as if already royal. So the prefect, thinking that the tongueless man could be compelled to sacrifice, since, lacking words,

he could babble nothing to the disgrace of the gods, orders him, now silent and weak, to be brought back, he who was once terrified by the whirlwind of the speaker. He sets up the altars again at the tribunal, and incense, and fire alive in the coals, and bull’s entrails, or pig’s paunches. He, entering, as he sees these things prepared, breathes on them, as if he saw the demons themselves. Asclepiades, more cheerful, laughs at this. Then he adds: “Are you ready to speak more harshly, as you used to? Say anything, make your speech and argue; I permit you to exercise your voice freely.” Romanus, sighing long from the depth of his heart, drew out a complaint with a groan, and began thus: “A tongue has never been lacking to one who speaks Christ; nor need you ask by what organ the words are governed, when the very giver of words is proclaimed. He who made it so that the force of the voice, pressed out from the inmost lungs and twisted under the vault of the mouth, now gives sounds echoed back from the palate, now is tempered by the comb of the teeth, and that the tongue is the moving plectrum for this work, if he so commands, the pipes of the throat breathe in harmony with consonant breath, so as to unfold words in the very passages, or to speak out at the exit of the mouth as with cymbals, the lips now pressed together sparingly, now open. Do you doubt that the state of nature can be changed, to which its form was given, such as it was at first? Surely its maker can change it as he pleases, and weave and unweave the laws he has given,

so that speech should not demand the tongue as its servant. Do you want to know the power of our Godhead? He pressed the waves of the liquid sea with his foot: nature, flowing and thin, comes together into a solid, and, quite unlike the laws by which it was founded, it bears footsteps, though it is used to bearing swimming. Divinity has this as a customary gift, which is truly worshiped by us in Christ and the Father: to give speech back to the mute, a quick step to the lame, hearing to be enjoyed to the deaf, to grant the day of unaccustomed light to the blind. Or you yourself, if you thought these things too little to be believed, may now recognize them as true: you have speaking before you the man whose tongue you had cut off: yield now to proven miracles.” Horror comes upon the astonished persecutor, and fear and anger turned his breast to darkness: he does not know whether he is awake or dreaming; he wonders, at a loss, what kind of portent it is. Dread breaks him; indignation arms him. Nor can he tame the force of his unbridled mind, nor find where to turn the weapons of his fury. At last the cruel man orders the innocent physician to be summoned as defendant: he accuses him of having been bought, of having agreed for a fixed fee to collude: either he had turned the iron in the mouth in vain, doing nothing and useless, with blunted strokes, or by some art had inflicted a brief wound, which would harm the tongue in a wounded part and not cut all the sinews entirely; he argues that the harmony of voice remains safe,

because words cannot be produced in an empty hollow, which the tongue, as governor, makes to sound. Granted that the breath may echo in an empty cave, an echo comes from there, not speech. The physician refutes this slander with the truth: “Search even now yourself the hiding places of the throat, and carry your curious thumb around inside the teeth, or inspect the open gulps, lest anything lie hidden that governs the breathings. Though if perhaps I had pierced it with a light point, or touched the tongue with a slight wound, he would have spoken weakly with a tottering plectrum. For when the mistress of the voice falls into a fault, all the power of speaking must fall away. Let a test be made, if you please, what kind of complaint a four-footed beast utters when its tongue is torn out, and what grunt a tongueless sow makes, whose voice is rough, whose cry is shapeless: I will prove that a mute thing sounds nothing but shrill. I call to witness the emperor’s safety that I, performing the simple art of one who cuts, best judge, served the public orders without fraud. Let him know here what God suggests words to him; I do not know how the mute man is eloquent.” With these words Aristo clears himself; but these things do not move the impious robber of Christians at all. More and more he is carried into madness: he asks whether some other blood had sprinkled the man, lest it had flowed from his own wound. Romanus answered him: “Here I am, at hand: this blood of mine is true, not a bull’s; do you recognize, most wretched pagan, that of which I speak,

the sacred blood of your bull, with whose sacrificial slaughter you are soaked? The high priest, of course, to be consecrated, is sunk deep under the earth in a pit dug out, wondrously adorned with fillets, binding his festive temples with ribbons, then, his hair combed back, with a golden crown, wearing his silk toga in the Gabine girding. Above, they weave a platform laid with planks, full of cracks with the joints of the open framework; then they cut or bore the flooring, and pierce the wood with frequent points, so that it may lie open with many small gaps. Here a huge bull, grim and shaggy of brow, bound with garlands of flowers about its shoulders or on its entangled horns, is led down; the victim’s brow too flashes with gold, and the gleam of gold leaf tinges its bristles. Here, when the beast appointed for sacrifice is set, they divide its breast with a consecrated hunting spear: the gaping wound belches a wave of hot blood, and pours a steaming stream onto the woven bridge beneath, and seethes far and wide. Then through the many ways of the thousand cracks the shower, falling through, rains a putrid dew, which the priest, buried within, receives, foully putting his head under every drop, rotten in his clothing and his whole body. He even turns up his face, offers his cheeks to meet it, puts under it his ears, lips, presents his nostrils, bathes his very eyes in the liquid; nor does he spare his palate, but wets his tongue, until he drinks in all the black blood.

After the flamens have drawn back the corpse, stiff with the blood drained out, from that framework, the pontiff comes forth from there, horrid to see, and shows off his wet head, his heavy beard, his dripping fillets and drunken garments. Him, defiled with such contagions, filthy with the gore of the fresh expiation, all greet and adore from afar, because cheap blood and a dead ox have washed him as he lay hidden under foul caverns. Shall we add, if you like, that hecatomb of yours? When a hundred animals fall by the iron, and the blood, abounding from the varied slaughter, stagnates, so that the augurs can scarcely pass with bloody swimming through the depth of blood. But why do I accuse the fat butchery of the sacred couches, why the butchers of the greatest flocks, raw with disemboweled flesh? There are rites when you cut yourselves, and when votive pain lops off limbs. The fanatic draws his knife against his arms, and appeases the Mother goddess with cut arms; to rage and whirl is thought a mystic right; a right hand sparing in cutting is held impious; the cruelty of wounds earns heaven. But this one dedicates his genitals to be reaped, appeasing the goddess with a cut groin; the half-man offers a shameful gift to the goddess: he feeds her, enlarged, with the flowing blood, the vein of the male seed torn out. Each sex displeases this holiness; he keeps a middle between the two kinds,

so that the same is neither a man nor a woman. The happy Mother of the gods prepares for herself beardless ministers with smooth razors. What of when the one to be consecrated receives the seals? They put little needles into furnaces: with these they go on to burn his limbs, when they have grown fiery: whatever part of the body the hot mark has branded, this they proclaim thus consecrated. Then, when the spirit has left the dead man, and the funeral procession carries him to the tomb, gold leaf is pressed on those very parts; a glorious plate of gold covers the skin, what was burned by fire is covered with metal. Heathenism is compelled to bear these punishments; by this law the gods constrain their worshipers: so the demon himself mocks those he has caught, teaches them to bear accursed outrages, orders torments to be burned into the unhappy. But this blood of ours flows from your cruelty: you, with impious tyranny, ulcerate the bodies of the innocent. If you let us, we live bloodlessly; but if we are punished bloodily, we conquer. But now I shall be silent: the due end is at hand, the end of evils, the glory of the passion: now it will not be allowed, wicked man, as it was just now, to torture or cut our inner parts; you must yield, conquered, and now stop. The torturer and cutter will indeed cease from now on.” The judge threatens: “But the hand of the slayer will succeed them, strangling the throat; otherwise the restless voice of the garrulous mouth

does not know how to be silent, unless I break its trumpet.” He spoke, and ordered the man to be dragged from the forum and thrust into the darkness of the criminal prison: there the wicked lictor crushes the martyr’s neck with a rope. So the passion was completed; the soul, released from its chains, seeks heaven. The prefect is said to have reported all the deeds to the emperor, adding the order of the records and setting out the sequence of so great a tragedy. Noting every charge, the tyrant enters it into his bundles of records with durable papers. But long age wears these away; soot darkens them, dust covers them with mould, old age plucks them, or buries them in ruins: the page written for Christ is immortal, nor does any letter grow obsolete in heaven. An angel standing before God took down both what the martyr said and what he suffered; nor did he record only the words of the speaker, but, painting the very wounds, he expressed them with his pen, of the sides, cheeks, breast and throat: every measure of the blood was noted, as each furrow had ploughed each blow, deep, open, near, long, short: what force of pain, or what measure of cutting: he lost not a single drop of blood. This book is in the heavenly registers, keeping the monuments of indelible praise, to be read again one day to the eternal Judge, who with even balance will compare the weights of evils and the abundance of rewards. I would wish, when I am on the left among the flocks of goats, as I will be, to be distinguished from afar, and, at his prayer, that the best King might say: “Romanus prays; bring that goat over here to me: let him be a lamb on the right, let him be clothed in fleece.”

Countless ashes of saints in the city of Romulus we have seen, O Valerian, consecrated to Christ. Do you ask for the titles cut on the tombs, and the individual names? It is hard for me to be able to unfold them. Impious fury drained such great peoples of the righteous, when Trojan Rome worshiped its ancestral gods. Many tombs, marked with little letters, tell either the name of a martyr or some epigram. But there are also mute marbles shutting in silent tombs, which indicate only the number. You may know how many bodies of men lie in heaped-up piles, of whom you can read no names. I remember learning that there the remains of sixty men lie buried under one mass, whose names Christ alone knows, as those whom he has joined in his own friendship. While I survey these things with my eyes, and follow through the monuments of the ancients any hidden traces of the facts, I find that Hippolytus, who had once [joined] the schism of Novatus, advanced to the glorious mark of martyrdom, bore the bright rewards of a bloody punishment. Do not wonder that the old man, once of a perverse doctrine, was enriched with the gift of the catholic faith. When, already victor, he was being snatched away by the raging enemy, his soul exulting at the death of the flesh, asked which sect was better, [he answered:] “Flee, wretched ones, the accursed schism of Novatus; return to the catholic peoples. Let the one faith flourish which was founded in the ancient temple, which Paul holds, and the chair of Peter.” With these words he turned the people from the left-hand path, and showed them to follow where the right way calls, and, spurning winding ways, he himself, as leader of the right,

offered himself, who had earlier been the author of error. He is set before the mad governor, [who was then harassing] Christians. For on that day he had withdrawn from Rome, to shake with his plague the suburban peoples themselves. Not content to dye the ground within the high walls of Rome with constant slaughters of the righteous, when he saw the Janiculum already wet, the forums, the Rostra, the Subura, flowing with a flood of blood, he had carried his rage to the edge of the Tyrrhenian shore, and to the places nearest the sea harbor. He sat among the executioners and the crowded attendants, higher on a raised throne. He burned to hand over to perfidy the disciples of the faith, rebels against the detestable idol. He had ordered long-haired columns, from the squalor of the prison, to stand before him, to be tortured in horrid ways. On one side the dragging of chains, on the other leather scourges hissed, the crash of rods resounded. The claw, fixed in the hollow lattice of the ribs, opened the deep recesses and tore the liver. And now, with the torturers tired, the judge was going into fury, roaring at his vain inquiry. For no one among Christ’s servants was found, through such great tortures, who would dare to corrupt his soul. Then the raging inquisitor said: “Now, torturer, stop with the hook; if the inquiry is vain, proceed with death. Cut off this one’s head; let the cross lift that one into the air and offer his living eyes to the birds. Seize these headlong, and throw them bound into the fire; let one pyre devour many accused. See, these you must hurry to put in a leaky boat

and drive them into the deep pools of the open sea: when the badly sewn boat has carried them, taken on board, over the rushing sea, and, broken, has labored in the swelling waters, let the planks, separated, loosen the rotten keel and drink in shipwreck from every side. […] a tomb in its belly, […] raw with corpses.” As he was raging thus, suddenly before the high tribunal an old man is brought, entangled in bonds. Young men crowding around reported with a shout that he was the head of the Christian peoples: if the head were quickly destroyed, all the hearts of the people would willingly be consecrated to the Roman gods. They demand an unusual kind of death and new inventions of punishment, by whose example others would tremble. He, sitting with head thrown back, says: “What is he called?” They affirm that he is called Hippolytus. “Then let him be Hippolytus: let him shake and trouble the yoked team, and perish torn apart by wild horses.” Hardly had he said this: they force two animals, ignorant of the bridle, to submit their necks to an unaccustomed yoke: not stroked in the stalls or by the coaxing hand of a trainer, nor tamed before to bear the command of a rider; […] which fear drives in their untamed, wild hearts. And now the chains had joined the resisting pair, and had bound their mouths in a discordant union. In place of a pole there is a rope, which divides the backs of the two, and touches each side in the middle. And from the yoke, stretching out long behind the footsteps, it is dragged and passes beyond the feet. At its far end, where the track worn in the top of the dust follows the fleeing ways of the horn-footed, a noose binds the man’s legs, and with a tight knot fastens his feet and ties them to the rope.

After they had sufficiently furnished, with ordered preparation, the scourges, chains, beasts for the martyr’s punishment, they spur them on with sudden shouts and whips, and pierce their flanks with hostile goads. The last voice heard from the venerable old man was this: “Let these snatch my limbs; you, Christ, snatch my soul.” They burst forth eagerly and are carried away by blind terror, wherever noise and trembling, wherever frenzy drives them. Wildness inflames them, impetus sweeps them along, the crash urges them, nor does their winged course feel the moving burden. Through woods, through rocks they rush; no river bank slows them, nor does an opposing torrent check them. They throw down hedges and burst all obstacles, make for steep and rugged places, leap over heights. The rough field with its thorny stumps plucks the pieces torn bit by bit from the shattered body. Part hangs from the tops of cliffs, part clings to brambles; with part the leaves grow red, with part the ground grows wet. A painted wall has a likeness of the crime, on which many-colored paint sets out the whole wickedness. Above the tomb a picture lives in clear shades, portraying the bloody limbs of the man who was dragged. I saw the dripping tops of rocks, best father, and purple marks set on the brambles. A hand skilled in imitating had played at shaping the green thickets, and the reddish gore with vermilion. One could see the limbs, their joints broken, lying in no order, scattered through uncertain places. The painter had added his dear ones, following with step and tears where the out-of-the-way path shows the broken route; they went, stunned with grief, with searching eyes, and filled their bosoms with the torn flesh. One embraces the snowy head, and the venerable

white hair he cherishes in his soft lap; this one gathers the shoulders and the cut-off hands, the arms and elbows, the knees, and the bare fragments of the legs. With little cloaks the thirsty sands are also dried, lest any dew remain in the stained dust. If any blood also sits on the stakes with still-warm sprinkling, a pressed sponge snatches it all. Now the dense wood no longer holds anything of the sacred body, nor cheats it of a complete funeral. And when, the parts having been reviewed, it was found to have the number that the whole body had had, and the cleansed pathless places owed nothing of the whole man, the leaves and rocks having been wiped clean, a place is chosen for the tomb by measuring: they leave Ostia: Rome pleases, to hold the holy ashes. Not far from the outermost rampart, by the tilled ground beside the walls, a crypt lies open, sunk in hidden pits: a way sloping down by winding steps teaches one to go into its hidden depth through turnings without light. For daylight enters the first doors as far as the top of the opening, and lights up the threshold of the entrance hall. Then, when, as one goes easily forward, the dark night is seen to grow black through the ambiguous caves of the place, openings let into the cut roofs meet you, which cast bright rays into the caves. However much the uncertain recesses weave on this side and that narrow halls under shady porticoes, yet beneath the hollow inside of the excavated hill the light penetrates frequently through the bored vault. So it is granted to see underground the brightness of the absent sun, and to enjoy its light. To such hidden places the body of Hippolytus is entrusted,

near where an altar dedicated to God is placed. That table, giver of the Sacrament, and likewise placed as the faithful guardian of its martyr, keeps the bones in the tomb for the hope of the eternal Judge, and also feeds the dwellers by the Tiber with holy food. Wonderful is the holiness of the place, and the altar, ready for those who pray, helps the hopes of men with gentle favor. Here, as often as I prayed prostrate, sick with the corruptions of mind and body, I obtained help. That I rejoice in my return, that I have been allowed to embrace you, venerable bishop, that I write these very things, I know I owe to Hippolytus, to whom Christ, God, has given the power to grant what anyone asks. The little shrine itself, which contains those spoils of the soul within, flashes with solid silver. A rich hand has fixed plates with a smooth surface in front, gleaming like a hollow mirror shining. Not content to cover the entrance with Parian stones, it added splendid sums to adorn the work. In the morning people run together to greet him: all the youth adore; they come, they go, right until sunset. Love of religion gathers into one wedge Latins and strangers alike, peoples mixed together. They fix kisses pressed on the shining metal, pour out balsams, water their faces with tears. Now, when the year renews itself as the months run out, and the festal passion brings back his birthday, how great a crowd do you think gathers with eager zeal, or what prayers come together to celebrate God? The august City pours out and spills forth its Quirites, patricians too with equal ambition. The plebeian phalanx mingles, with equal shields,

the distinctions of the nobles, as faith hurries them headlong. No less does a white-robed line unfold itself from the Alban gates and is led in long ranks. The roars of the various roads on this side and that exult: the native comes, and the Picenian, and the Etruscan people. The fierce dweller of the Samnite land runs together, and the Campanian of lofty Capua, and now the man of Nola is here. Each, glad, with his wife and his sweet children, is eager to make his swift journey. The open plains scarcely hold the joys of the peoples, and the dense throng sticks even in the great spaces. There is no doubt that that cave is narrow for such crowds, though it opens with a wide mouth. But beside it stands another temple, for so great a throng to come to then, noble with royal adornment, lofty with high walls, and powerful in proud majesty, and rich in gifts. A double row of columns supports the panels of the roof, set under gilded beams. Slender aisles are added with lower roof, which hollow out the series of the sides continuously. But a wider way opens the middle tract of the high roof, rising with a loftier summit. Opposite the front, a lofty tribunal is raised by steps, from which the bishop preaches God. The full house receives with difficulty the laboring waves, and seethes, narrow, at the crowded doors, opening its maternal bosom to shelter its nurslings, and, heaped up, to cherish the brood in its lap. If I remember rightly, most beautiful Rome honors it on the Ides of August, as she herself calls

the day, by ancient custom; and I would wish you too, holy master, to count it among your annual feasts. Believe me, it will bring saving risings to those who venerate it, repaying the rewards of the honored light. Among the solemn days of Cyprian, or of Chelidonius, and of Eulalia, let this one too run its course for you. So may Christ almighty hear you praying for the people whose life has been entrusted to you. So may the wolf be shut out from your full fold, and may no lamb, captured, diminish your flock. So may you, careful shepherd, carry me back at last, a sick sheep left behind in the grassy field. So, when you have filled the folds with milk-white lambs, may you yourself, caught up, be the companion of holy Hippolytus.

are running about through all Rome, rejoicing.” “This festal day of the apostolic triumph returns to us, glorious with the blood of Paul and Peter. One and the same day, though renewed after a full year, saw each crowned with laurel by a proud death. The Tiber marsh, washed by the nearby river, knows it, witness of the cross and of the sword, by which twice a shower of blood flowed, watering the same grass. The first sentence, by the laws of Nero, seized Peter, ordered to hang on a lofty beam. But he, afraid of seeking the glory of so great a Master by imitating the honor of a lofty death, demands that they press down his head, sunk, with his feet upturned, so that he might look with his head at the bottom of the stake. So his hands are fixed below, his soles turned to the top: greater in mind by as much as he is lesser in posture. He knew that heaven was usually reached more quickly from a low place; he cast down his face as he was about to give up his spirit. [When] the wheel of the turning year had run its circuit, Nero vomits his burning fury against the throat of Paul, and orders the teacher of the nations to be struck. “I must go to Christ; I am now being released,” he said. Neither the hour nor the day deceived the prophet. The Tiber divides the bones of the two, sacred on both banks, as it flows between the consecrated tombs. […] gray with olive, murmuring with its stream. For water, rising at the brow of a rock, has roused an everlasting fountain, fruitful in chrism. Now it rushes over precious marbles, and makes the slope slippery; the inner part of the tomb is where with sounding falls

Many-colored painting above tinges the glassy waters, the mosses gleam, and the gold grows green; and the dark-blue water takes on the shade of the purple above: you would think the panelled ceiling moved with the waves. There the Shepherd himself feeds his sheep with the cold freshness of the fountain, whom he sees thirsting for the streams of Christ. On the other side the Ostian road keeps the memorial of Paul, where the river grazes the turf on its left. The splendor of the place is royal: the good emperor consecrated these heights, and lavished great sums upon their circuit. He gilded the beams with gold leaf, so that all the light within might be golden, like radiance at sunrise. He set beneath the tawny ceilings columns of Parian marble, which a fourfold row arranges there. Then he ran the curved arches variously with splendid glass: so meadows shine with spring flowers. See two gifts of faith, conferred by the supreme Father, which he gave to the toga-clad City to honor. Look, the people of Romulus pours out through the twin streets; one daylight burns in two feasts. Yet let us hurry with quick step to both, and enjoy both these hymns and those. We shall go further, where the road of Hadrian’s bridge leads, then we shall make for the left side of the river. The wakeful bishop first performs the rites across the Tiber, then hurries back here, and doubles the prayers. It is enough for you to have learned this at Rome: when you return home, remember to keep the doubly festive day in this way.”

The Punic land brought forth, to make bright all that exists anywhere, Cyprian from its own home, but the glory and teacher of the world. He is the martyr proper to his homeland, but ours in love and speech. His blood lies in Libya, but his tongue is powerful everywhere: it alone survives from the body, it alone knows not how to die. As long as Christ allows the human race to exist and the world to thrive, as long as there is any book, as long as there are sacred cases of letters, everyone who loves Christ will read you, Cyprian, and will learn what is yours. That Spirit of God, who had flowed as author into the Prophets, moved from heaven, watered you with the fountains of eloquence. O kind of speech whiter than snow! O new savor! As ambrosial liquid soothes the heart, steeps the palate, penetrates the seat of the soul, cherishes the mind, travels through the limbs, so God is felt within, and put into the marrow. Reveal, Father, whence you gave this sudden good to the earth. The apostolic writings lacked a rich expounder: a wealthy eloquence is chosen, to teach the world, and, serving the volumes of Paul, to discuss them, so that the crude hearts of men, polished more, might know either the work of fear, or the mystical or deep things of Christ. There was one young man most learned in sinister arts, in breaking chastity by fraud, in thinking nothing sacred, often too in performing magic spells among the tombs, to dissolve the marriage right of the bed by inflaming a bride. Christ suddenly checks the madness of such great wantonness, shakes the darkness from his breast, and drives out the frenzy, fills him with love of himself, gives him to believe, gives him to be ashamed of what he did. And now the form of his face and his appearance is other than it was: his face puts off its delicate skin, passes into a severe one; his flowing hair is checked into short locks. He himself [learns] to speak modestly, to seek hope, to keep the rule, to live the righteousness of Christ, to penetrate our doctrine. For these merits, most worthy, the teacher is promoted to the episcopal throne, and takes the highest seat.

Valerian was emperor of the realm’s wealth, and Gallienus; together they established the penalty of death for one who confessed God. They had ordered thousands of most filthy [gods] crowned with towers to be worshiped. Against this, Cyprian the teacher roused the minds of the people, lest anyone should depart from the honor of outstanding virtue, or anyone, degenerate, fear to take the reward of faith, saying that torture is light, if only you compare the future things which God himself has promised as endless to the brave: that the hope of light and everlasting day are bought with the payment of pain, that every evil flies swiftly past with winged time: nothing is grievous which an end brings to completion and endows with rest. He himself would be the beginning of a beautiful death and the leader in blood, submitting his head to the sword, dedicating his blood: let whoever wishes to join his soul to Christ follow as companion. When by these words he had prepared men’s hearts, warmed for Christ, he is led before the others, bound, as the proconsul raged. There are caves of Tyrian Carthage hidden deeper, acquainted with the gloom of Tartarus, cut off from the sun: shut in these caves holy Cyprian, bound with a chain on both hands, calls on the name of the supreme Father: “Almighty God, begetter of Christ, and creator of the world, Christ, parent of man, whom you love and forbid to perish, I am he whom, smeared with viper’s poisons, stained with various crimes, you in your goodness pitied and washed, and now you command me to become yours: I become another Cyprian, and new from the old, no longer guilty or harmful, as before. If you have expiated my muddy breast with easy grace, and scattered the dark, blind prisons of my soul, snatch this soul from the bodily prison and the chains of the world: let me be sacrificed to you with my blood poured out, and let no clemency restrain the fierce judge, nor let the tyrant’s spite know how to grow mild and deny me the glory.

Grant too that no one of the flock which I ruled as yours be idle, lest any of yours fall, impatient of punishment, or waver; that I may give back the number to you unharmed, and pay my debt.” With such prayers he had moved the Lord; from there the Spirit flowed into the people of Carthage, author of a keener spirit, so that their hearts, with goads applied, grew hot to seek outstanding glory at the risk of blood; teaching them not to tremble, not to yield, not to be conquered by pain, to be carried away by love of praise, to savor Christ, and to guard the faith. Report says that a pit was ordered to lie open in the middle of a field, filled almost to the top of its edges with steaming lime: the burnt stones vomit fire, and the snowy powder burns, able to burn what it touches, with a breath deadly in its smell. They record that an altar stood placed at the top of the pit, under this law: either Christians should offer a grain of salt or a pig’s liver, or of their own accord rush into the depths in the middle of the pit. Three hundred leapt forward eagerly at a rapid run together; the dry liquid devoured them, plunged in the powdery whirlpool, and wrapped the headlong mass right down to the bottom. Whiteness holds their bodies, whiteness carries their minds to the heights; from then on it deserved to be called the White Mass through every age. Meanwhile Thascius, gladder now because of his people’s day, is set before the untamed proconsul’s fury, at a distance. He had been ordered to declare by what he lived: “Worshiper of one God,” he says, “[I keep] the consecrated mysteries of saving Christ.” At this the other: “There is enough guilt now; Thascius himself confesses it: he himself denies the godhead of Jupiter. Get the iron ready, executioners: let the enemy of idols pay the penalty by the sword.” He gives God due thanks and sings, triumphant. Sorrowful Africa wept that he had gone to Christ, by whose teaching she was made more cultivated, she who, learned, glories in his eloquence; soon Carthage built a tomb and consecrated his ashes. Stop weeping for so great a good: he seeks the kingdoms of heaven; yet he hovers over the earth no less, nor departs from this world: he discusses, speaks, treats, teaches, instructs, prophesies. Nor does he rule only the peoples of Libya: he goes out to the rising of the sun, and to its setting; he cherishes the Gauls, steeps the Britons, presides over Italy, sows Christ among the farthest Spaniards. He is a teacher on earth, and likewise a martyr in heaven: here he instructs men, there as patron he gives holy gifts.

The tomb of Agnes is in the house of Romulus, the brave girl, the glorious martyr. Laid to rest in full sight of the towers, the Virgin keeps the Quirites safe; and she protects strangers too who pray with a pure and faithful heart. A double crown was granted to the martyr: virginity untouched by any sin, then the glory of a free death. They say that, scarcely fit for the marriage bed, in her first years, a little girl, glowing with love for Christ, she bravely resisted impious commands, lest, given over to idols, she should desert the sacred faith. Now by the mouth of the enticing, coaxing judge, now by the threats of the raging executioner, [tried,] she offered her body of her own accord to harsh tortures, not refusing to die. Then the savage tyrant says: “If it is easy to bear punishment by subduing pains, and life is spurned as cheap, yet the modesty of her dedicated virginity is dear. It is settled to thrust her into the public brothel, unless she bows her head at the altar and now asks pardon of Minerva, the virgin whom, a virgin, she persists in scorning. All the young men will rush in and seek the new slave of their sport.” “Christ,” says Agnes, “is not so forgetful of his own as to let our golden modesty perish, or to desert us. He is at hand for the chaste, and does not allow the gifts

of sacred integrity to be polluted. You will stain your sword with blood, if you will; you will not defile my limbs with lust.” [He orders] the virgin to be set at the corner of the square. The sorrowful crowd shrinks from her as she stands, their faces turned away, lest anyone should look too boldly on the place to be revered. One, as it happened, insolently turned his face toward the girl, and did not tremble to look upon the sacred form with lustful eye. See, a winged fire, like a thunderbolt, is hurled burning, and strikes his eyes: blinded by the flashing light he falls, and writhes in the dust of the square. His companions lift him half-dead from the ground, and lament him with funeral words. The virgin went on in triumph, singing of God the Father and of Christ in a sacred song, because, under the threat of a profane danger, her victorious virginity had found the brothel chaste and inviolable. There are those who have reported that, when asked, she poured out prayers to Christ to give back light to the guilty man as he lay; then breath of life was renewed in the young man, with his sight whole. But this was the first step Agnes had to the heavenly court; soon another is given. The bloody enemy is kindled to anger, for fury drives him: “I am beaten,” he says, groaning; “go, soldier, draw your sword, and carry out

[When Agnes saw the soldier standing] with naked blade, she says, more joyful: “I exult that rather such a man comes, mad, savage, turbulent, armed, than if there came a languid and tender one, a soft youth, steeped in perfume, to destroy me by the death of my modesty. I will receive all the iron in my breasts, and so, bride of Christ, I will leap over all the darkness of the sky, higher than the upper air. Eternal Ruler, part the doors of heaven, barred before to the earthborn, and call, Christ, the soul that follows you, a virgin’s, and also a victim for the Father.” So she spoke, and with bowed head adores Christ as a suppliant, so that her neck, bent forward, might more readily undergo the impending wound. And he with his hand accomplishes so great a hope; swift death forestalls the sense of pain. The spirit, put off from there, flashes out, and leaps free into the air. Angels […] She marvels at the world placed beneath her feet; from on high she looks at the darkness below, and laughs at what the wheel of the sun goes round, what the whole world turns and entangles, the life lived in the black whirlwind of things, what the vain fickleness of the age sweeps away: kings, tyrants, empires and ranks, and the pomps of honors of the foolishly swollen; the force of silver and gold sought with rabid thirst by all through various wickedness; dwellings built with much splendor; the empty mockeries of embroidered clothing;

anger, fear, vows, dangers; now long sadness, now brief joy; the smoky torches of black envy, by which the hope and honor of men grows black; and, what is fouler than all evils, the filthy clouds of heathenism. Agnes tramples these and crushes them with her foot, standing and pressing with her heel the head of the dragon, who, savage, sprinkles all the earthly things of the world with poisons, and plunges them into the underworld. Now, utterly subdued by the virgin’s sole, he lowers the crests of his fiery head. Meanwhile God binds the brow of the unwed martyr with two crowns: [one] reward is made up of everlasting light; in the other stands the hundredfold fruit. O happy virgin, O new glory, noble dweller of the heavenly citadel, turn toward our filth your face with its twin diadem; to you alone the Father of all has given the power to make even the brothel chaste. […] by the brightness [of your face], if you fill my heart. Nothing is not chaste that you, loving one, deign to visit