The Battle for the Soul

The faithful old man, the first way of believing, Abram, late-born father of a blessed seed, whose name a syllable added enlarged, called Abram by his parent, Abraham by God, who offered the pledge of his old age as a victim, teaching that when anyone wishes to sacrifice at the altar, what is sweet to his heart, what is dear, what is his only one, he should believe must be offered gladly to God, urged us to fight against the profane nations, and gave his own example as he urged it; and showed that we do not beget a wedded offspring pleasing to God, born of a mother, Virtue, until the warlike spirit, with great slaughter, has conquered the monsters of the enslaved heart. Fierce kings had happened to take Lot captive, when he lingered in the criminal cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, which he cherished as a sojourner, strong in the honor of his uncle’s glory. Abram, roused by evil tidings, hears that his kinsman, taken by the fortune of war, is serving in the harsh chains of barbarians: he arms three hundred and eighteen household servants to go and cut down the rear of the enemy as he went, whom rich treasure and a noble triumph held hampered by the captured spoil. Nay, he himself draws the sword and, full of God, drives the proud kings, heavy with the mass of their plunder, to flight, tramples the wounded, breaks the chains, and frees the booty: gold, girls, little children, necklaces,

herds of mares, vessels, clothing, heifers. Lot himself, freed from his broken bonds, raises his neck, chafed by the links, as a free man. Abram, scatterer of the enemy’s triumph, returns, renowned for recovering his brother’s son, so that the power of the wickedest princes should possess no offspring of the faithful blood. The Priest presents the man, still fresh from such great slaughter, with heavenly dishes, the Priest of God, and likewise a most powerful king, whose origin, hidden in an unspeakable source, reveals no author of himself: Melchizedek, of what stock, of what ancestors unknown, known only to God alone. Soon the threefold trinity of angels visits the hut of the aged host, and Sarah, now fertile in her withered womb, a bloodless mother, is amazed at the gift of youth, rejoicing in an heir and repenting of her laughter. This line was drawn beforehand as a figure, for our life to carve again with straight foot: that we must keep watch in the arms of faithful hearts, and that every part of our body which, captured, serves foul lust, must be freed by forces gathered at home; that we are richly supplied with household servants, we shall know by a mystic figure, if we know what three hundred, with twice nine added, can do. Soon Christ himself, who is the true Priest, born of a Father on high and beyond speech, offering food to the blessed victors, will enter the small cottage of the chaste heart, showing honor to the Trinity as its guest. Then the Spirit, with his embraces, will make the soul, dutifully wedded but long without offspring, fertile with everlasting seed. Then, a late mother possessing her dowry, she will fill the Father’s house with a worthy heir.

Christ, who have always pitied the heavy toils of men, who are renowned in your Father’s power and your own, yet one power (for we worship one God under both names, yet not one alone, since you, Christ, are God from the Father), tell, our King, with what soldiery the armed mind can drive out sins from the cavern of our breast; whenever sedition rises within, our senses in turmoil, and the strife of diseases wears out the soul, what defense there is then to protect its freedom, or what battle line, when furies mingle in the heart, … you have not exposed Christians, lacking great virtues and without sinews, to the vices that lay them waste. You yourself order saving squadrons to fight it out in the besieged body; you yourself arm the mind with excellent skills, by which it may fight for you with power to assault the mockeries of the heart, and conquer for you. The way to conquer is at hand, if we may mark at close range the very faces of the virtues, and the monsters that wrestle against them with hostile strength. Faith first takes the field, to fight under the doubtful fortune of the duel, wild in rustic dress, her shoulders bare, her hair unshorn, her arms uncovered; for the sudden heat of glory, burning for new battles, does not remember to gird itself with weapons or armor; but, trusting in a strong breast and with limbs exposed, she challenges the perils of mad war, to break them. See, Worship of the Old Gods dares first to strike Faith as she provokes her, matching strength with her. But Faith, rising higher, smites the enemy’s head, its temples decked with fillets, and the mouth that was sated

with the blood of cattle, she lays it on the ground and tramples with her foot the eyes crushed out in death; the broken passage of the throat, cut off, chokes the malignant soul, and long gasps wear out a hard death. The victorious legion exults, a thousand martyrs whom Queen Faith had gathered and fired against the foe; then she crowns her brave comrades with flowers for the glory won, and bids them be clothed in glowing purple. Next, ready to meet the foe on the grassy field, the virgin Chastity shines in beautiful arms. Sodomite Lust, girt with the torches of her country, attacks her, thrusts a pitch-pine torch burning with sulphur into her face, aims the flames at her modest eyes, and tries to choke them with foul smoke; but the dauntless virgin strikes the right hand of the blazing fury and the fiery weapons of the dreadful she-wolf with a stone, and drives the torches, struck from her hand, away from her holy face. Then she drives her sword home and pierces the throat of the disarmed harlot: she spews out hot vapors clotted with filthy blood; and her foul breath, breathed out from there, pollutes the air nearby. “She has it,” cries the victorious queen; “this will be your final end; you will lie prostrate for ever; nor will you dare any longer to scatter deadly flames against the menservants and maidservants of God, in whom the innermost vein of the chaste mind burns only from the lamp of Christ. Could you, huntress of men, regain your strength and grow warm again with the breath of a head that was destroyed, after the severed neck of Holofernes washed the Assyrian chamber, soaked with lustful blood, and stern Judith spurned the jeweled bed of the adulterous captain

and checked his unchaste fury with the sword, a woman bringing back a famous trophy from the enemy with unshaking hand, my avenger, bold by heaven’s aid? But perhaps that woman, fighting still under the shadow of the Law, was not strong enough, while she prefigured our times, in which true power has flowed into earthly bodies, to cut off the great head through weak ministers. After the childbearing of the inviolate Virgin, is any right still left to you? After the Virgin’s childbearing, since when the old origin has left the nature of the human body, a power on high has sown new flesh, and an unwedded woman has conceived Christ, God, man from a mortal mother, but divine together with the Father. From then on all flesh is divine that conceives him and takes on the nature of God by a partnering covenant. For the Word made flesh did not cease to be what it had been, the Word, while it joins to itself the use of flesh, its majesty not degenerating through the use of flesh, but drawing the wretched to nobler things. He remains what he always was, beginning to be what he was not; we are no longer what we were, enlarged by being born into something better: he gave to me, and remained himself. Nor did God lessen what is his from what is ours, but while he gives what is his to what is ours, he carried us up to heavenly gifts. These are the gifts: that you lie conquered, muddy Lust, and cannot break my rights after Mary. You, the leader on the road to death, you, the gate of destruction, staining bodies, plunge souls into Tartarus. Hide your head now in the gloomy abyss, cold plague; die, harlot; seek the shades; be shut in Avernus;

be thrust down into the dark depths of night. Let the flaming waters roll you below, the black waters, and the sulphurous whirlpool spin you through the roaring pools. And tempt Christians no longer, greatest of the furies, so that bodies made clean may be kept for their King.” So she spoke, and Chastity, glad at the death of Lust, whom she had slain, washes her stained sword in the waters of Jordan, on which the gore had clung with its red dew and spotted the bright iron with the wound. So, knowing how, she cleanses the blade with the river’s bath, the victor her victorious sword, removing by baptism the stain of the enemy’s throat; and, not content now to put the purified sword in its sheath, lest hidden rust seize its washed brightness with scabby dirt, she consecrates it in the Catholic church at the altar of the divine font, where it may flash, shining with eternal light. See, modest Patience was standing with grave face, unmoved, amid the battle lines and the varied tumults, and was watching, her eyes fixed, the wounds and the vitals pierced by stiff javelins, and stayed calm. From afar Anger, swelling, burning, with foaming mouth, rolling her bloodshot eyes suffused with gall, provokes her with weapon and voice, as one who has no part in the war, and, impatient of delay, attacks her with a pike and abuses her, shaking the shaggy crest on her helmeted head. “Here,” she says, “you who watch our war as one free of it, take the deadly steel in your carefree breast, and do not grieve, since it is shameful for you to groan in pain.” So she spoke, and the hissing pine shaft follows her abuse, whirling through the gentle south winds, and with sure aim

comes down on her stomach and strikes with a direct blow; but it bounces off, thrown back by the hard rebound of the breastplate. For the provident Virtue had put on her shoulders a corselet of three-ply woven adamant, and had joined fabric of scaly iron all around with twisted sinews. So Patience stays calm, strong against all the clouds of weapons, enduring unpierced. Nor was she moved by the javelin of the monster raging beyond measure, but waited for Anger to perish by her own strength. For after the barbarian warrior had spent her untamed arms in her rage, and wearied her right hand, useless and to no purpose, with a cloud of javelins, when the windy weapons had fallen in light flight, the wicked hand turns to the hilt, and, straining for a blow with the flashing sword, the right hand is raised high above the ear and, poised, strikes the middle of the head. But the bronze helmet, formed of smelted metal, gives back a ringing when struck, and blunts the edge as it rebounds, being hard; the stubborn metal also breaks the steel dashed against it, while, not knowing how to yield, it receives the vain assaults and resists the striker safely. When Anger saw the fragments of the broken blade and the sword shattered far into tiny pieces, out of her mind, she throws away the unlucky ivory hilt, the treacherous emblem of a shameful pride, and the sad memorials, far … One missile, out of the many she had scattered in vain, she takes up from the dust of the field for a perverse use: she fixes the smooth shaft in the ground and, with the point turned, pierces herself and passes through her lung with a hot wound. Standing over her, Patience says, “We have conquered,

exulting over the vice, with our accustomed virtue, without any risk of blood or life: our law has this kind of warfare, to extinguish furies and the whole army of evils and their raging strength by enduring. Madness is its own enemy, and kills itself by raging, and fiery Anger dies by her own weapons.” Having said this, she cuts unharmed through the midst of the cohorts, accompanied by an excellent man: for Job, next to her, had kept close to his unconquered teacher through the hard wars, his brow still stern, panting from many wounds, but now, smiling with a grim face at his closed sores, and recounting by the number of his scars the thousands of battles sweated through, his rewards, the enemy’s disgrace. The goddess bids him rest at last from all the din of arms, and to multiply with captured wealth everything he had lost, and to bring back what will no longer perish. She herself breaks through the masses of the legions and the clashing ranks, walking untouched through the wounding showers. She joins herself as the one companion of all the virtues, and strong Patience mingles her help with them. No virtue enters a doubtful struggle without this virtue, and a virtue that Patience does not strengthen is widowed. It happened that Pride, puffed up, was flying through the scattered squadrons on an unbridled horse, which she had covered with a lion’s skin, loading its strong shoulders with its shaggy hair, so that, propped on the wild beast’s mane, she might carry herself more boastfully, looking down on the ranks with swollen disdain. She had piled her head high in a tower of twisted

hair, so that the added mass might raise the piled-up curls and the lofty brow carry a high peak. A linen mantle, gathered from her shoulders into a fold at the top, came together, tying a round knot at her breast; a border flowing from her neck in a thin veil catches the breezes blown into its swelling fabric. Nor is the steed less proud in its restless wildness, impatient of having its mouth reined with the wet bits. Champing, it turns its back this way and that, denied the freedom to bolt, and swells against the tightened reins. Showing herself off in this attire, the windy virago towers between the two battle lines, wheels her caparisoned horse, and threatens with face and voice, looking at the opposing wedge, which Lowly Mind had gathered for the war with few soldiers and poor arms: a queen indeed, but in need of others’ help, and not trusting enough in her own equipment. She had joined Hope to herself as her colleague, whose wealth is set on high and hung above the earth in a rich kingdom. So, when crazed Pride sees Lowly Mind equipped with cheap weapons and no display, she pours herself out in bitter words: “Are you not ashamed, you wretches, to attack famous leaders with a plebeian soldiery and to provoke with the sword a nation distinguished by its titles, for which warlike valor won ancient riches, and granted it to tread the hills, glad with grass, under its rule? Now a naked newcomer strives, if heaven permits, to drive out the ancient kings. See, those who want our sceptres to yield as plunder to their right hands! See, those who strive to furrow our fallow lands

and to plunder with a stranger’s plough the fields we took by force, and to drive out by war the hardy settlers! Why, you ridiculous mob, from the hour of birth we embrace the whole man and his limbs warm from his mother, we spread the force of our powers through the members of the newborn nursling, and all of us rule in his unformed bones. What place was given you in our seat then, when our kingdoms grew with equal strength together with our inborn dominions? For, born under one light, house and masters grew up with equal years, ever since the new creature, going out from the fenced border of paradise, fled into the wide world, and venerable Adam put on clothing of skins, who would still be naked had he not followed our precepts. Who is this enemy now rising from unknown shores, importunate, idle, unlucky, degenerate, senseless, who claims so late a right for himself, an exile until now? No doubt the trifles of an empty rumor are believed, which bids the wretches long for the hope of a good that may perhaps come some day, so that slow consolations may flatter their soft idleness with sluggish musing on things. Why should not idle hope flatter those, recruits whom Bellona does not rouse in this dust with her grim trumpet, whose unwarlike spirits a tepid virtue relaxes? Is the cold liver of chastity useful in war? Or is the tender work of piety sweated out in arms? How ashamed I am, Mars, and conscious valor, to stand against such a line, to provoke trifles with the sword, and to join battle with dances of girls! … thirsty Sobriety, Fasting with her pale face,

Modesty barely tinged with thin blood, open Simplicity, exposed to every wound without cover, and Lowly Mind, prostrate on the ground and not free in her own judgment, whom her trembling betrays as degenerate. I will see to it that this feeble band is trampled underfoot like stubble; for we do not deign to break it with hard swords, to steep our steel in cold blood, and to disgrace our men with a fragile triumph.” Shouting such things, she urges her swift horse with the spurs and flies recklessly with loosened reins, desiring to lay low her lowly enemy with the thrust of the horse’s breast and to trample her as she falls. But she falls headlong into a pit which cunning Fraud had chanced to dig secretly, cutting through the level ground: Fraud, one of the detestable plagues of the vices, crafty artisan of deceit, who, foreseeing the battle, had spoiled the plain with treacherous trenches, lurking on the enemy’s side, so that the ditch might catch the charging wedges and swallow the ranks plunged into it. And so that the wary line might not detect the deceitful pit, she had covered its mouths with a lattice of twigs and counterfeited the field with turf laid on top. But the lowly queen, though unaware, was staying farther off, and had not yet come to the covered snare nor trodden on the trickery of the malignant pit. That horsewoman, as she is carried at headlong speed, falls into this trap and suddenly lays open the hidden gulf: she is rolled forward over the neck of the falling horse, and, crushed under the pressure of its breast, is whirled among its legs. But the Virtue of calm self-restraint, when she sees the levity

crushed in the death of the monster lying there, she steps forward moderately, raises her face sparingly, and tempers her joy with a gracious look. As she hesitates, Hope, her faithful companion, comes to help, offers an avenging sword, and inspires love of glory. Lowly Mind seizes the bloodied enemy by the hair, drags her forward and, pulling her back with her left hand, turns her face up. Then, as she pleads, she cuts off her head with bent neck and takes it away, and hangs it up by its dripping hair. Hope rebukes the slain vice with holy mouth: “Stop talking big: God breaks every proud thing. Great things fall, swollen things burst, puffed-up things are pressed down. Learn to lay aside your haughty brow, learn to beware of the pit before your feet, whoever threatens from on high. The well-known saying of our Christ holds good: that the lowly climb the heights and the fierce return to the depths. We have seen Goliath, dreadful in limbs and spirit, fall by a feeble hand: a boy’s right hand whirled a pebble at him with the sling’s whistle and pierced his forehead through with a hollow wound. He, threatening, stiff, boastful, savage, bitter, while he swells untamed, while he seethes formidably, while he shows himself off with his shield, while he terrifies the air, learned what the playthings of a little boy can do, and the turbulent warrior succumbed to tender years. That boy, following me then in the youth of his virtue, stretched his flourishing spirit upward to my kingdom, because a sure home is kept for me beneath the feet of the almighty Lord, and the victors, when the stain of sins is cut down, reach me as I call them on high.”

She spoke, and, dazzling the air with golden wings, the virgin snatches herself up to heaven; the Virtues marvel at her going, and lift their spirits in longing, wishing to go with her, did not earthly wars hold back the leaders. They clash with the vices and keep themselves for their rewards. From the western ends of the world an enemy had come, Luxury, long since prodigal of her ruined reputation, her hair perfumed, her eyes roving, her voice languid, lost in pleasures, for whom the purpose of life is delight: to soften the nerveless mind, to drink in wantonly pleasant allurements, and to loosen the broken senses. And just then, drooping, she was belching out an all-night dinner, because, as she chanced to be lying at the dishes toward dawn, she had heard the hoarse trumpets, and, leaving her warm cups, with steps slipping on wine and balsam, she was going drunk to war, treading on flowers. Yet she came not on foot, but riding in a lovely chariot, she captured the wounded hearts of the men who admired her. … [no arrow] flies, driven by the string, nor does a whistling lance dart from the twisted thong, nor does her right hand threaten with a spear; but she wantonly throws violets, fights with rose petals, and scatters baskets of flowers through the enemy ranks. Then, when the Virtues have been coaxed, her enticing breath breathes a tender poison through their weakened bones, and the evil-sweet scent subdues faces and breasts and arms, and softens their iron-clad muscles, their strength crushed. They lose heart, as if conquered, and lay down their spears shamefully, alas, dazed, their right hands languid, while they admire the chariot flashing with the varied light of jewels, while they admire the reins rattling with gold leaf,

and they gape with fixed gaze at the axle of solid gold, of precious weight, and at the row of spokes, white with silver, which the outer curve of the wheels holds in a rim of pale electrum. And now the whole battle line, faithless, was going over of its own accord, its standards reversed, in love of surrender, wishing to serve Luxury, and of the dissolute mistress … Sobriety, a most valiant virtue, groaned at so grim a crime, that her comrades were deserting from the right wing, and that a band once unconquered was perishing without slaughter. She plants the lofty standard of the Cross, which she, the good leader, had carried in the front rank, fixing its point in the ground, and rallies the fickle wing with biting words, spurring their spirits now with reproaches, now mingled with entreaty: “What frenzy drives your maddened minds with darkness? Where are you rushing? To whom do you give your necks? What bonds, at last, O shame, do you love to bear on arms made for weapons: lilies gleaming among yellow garlands, and crowns blooming with purple flowers? Do you like to give over to these bonds hands used to war? to tie your stiff arms with these knots, so that a gilded turban, binding a man’s hair, may soak up nard poured on it with a saffron band, after the seals inscribed on your foreheads with oil, by which the royal ointment and the everlasting chrism were given? so that a mincing gait may sweep its steps with a trailing robe, and silk mantles may float on enervated limbs, after the immortal tunic which kind Faith wove with skilled thumb, giving an impenetrable covering to washed breasts, to which she herself had given rebirth?

[Do you go] from there to night banquets, where a huge tankard spits out the foaming waste of poured Falernian onto the table from dripping ladles, where couches, wet with much wine, and embossed cups are drenched with old dew? Has the thirst of the desert then fallen from your minds? Has that fountain fallen from them, given to your fathers from the rock, which the mystic rod drew forth, leaping from the top of the split stone? Or the angels’ food that flowed into the tents of your forefathers at first, which now, in a late and happier age, the evening people eat from the body of Christ? Does the foul surfeit of Luxury now snatch you, steeped in these feasts, into a reeking brothel, importunate as she is? Has a drunken dancing girl turned men whom neither roaring Anger nor the idols compelled to give way in war? Stand, I pray, mindful of yourselves, mindful also of Christ. You should remember what your tribe is, what your glory, who your God and king, who your lord. You, the noble offspring of Judah, have come by a long line of princes down to the Mother of God, through whom God himself became man. Let the most famous glory of David, trained in continual cares of war, rouse your excellent minds; let Samuel rouse them too, who forbids the touching of spoil from a rich enemy, and does not allow the conquered uncircumcised king to live, lest the plunder, surviving, should call the peaceful victor back to renewed battles. He thinks it a crime to spare a tyrant once captured; but you, on the contrary, wish to be conquered and to yield. Repent, by the reverence for the supreme Godhead, if any moves you, of having chosen to follow this so sweet evil

with wicked treachery; if you repent, the error does no harm. Jonathan repented of having broken his sober fast with the sweet honeycomb on his sceptre, and of the taste of honey, alas, wrongly tasted, while the alluring pleasure of royalty delights the youth and breaks the sworn sacred oath. But because he repented, his lot is not to be wept over, nor does a cruel sentence stain his father’s axes. See, I, Sobriety, if you are ready to stand together, open the way for all the virtues, so that evil-counseling Luxury, surrounded by a large guard, may pay the penalty with her legion, with Christ as judge.” Having spoken thus, she holds out the Cross of the Lord in front of the eager four-horse team, aiming the venerable wood at their very reins; and when the fierce horses took fright at it, flashing with its outstretched arms and its top, they turn, routed by blind terror, in headlong flight over steep ground: the driver is carried backward, pulling the reins in vain, and fouls her dripping hair with the dust of the ground. Then the whirling wheels entangle their mistress, thrown out; for she slips forward under the axle and slows the chariot as a mangled brake. Sobriety adds a deadly wound as she lies there, hurling a millstone of flint from part of a rock. Chance drives this stone, as fortune offered the blow to the standard-bearer, who carried no spears in her hand but only the emblem of war, so that it broke the breathing passage in the middle of her mouth and mashed her lips into the hollow palate; her teeth loosened inward, her mangled tongue fills her cut throat with gobbets of blood. Her gullet grows raw with unaccustomed fare, and, devouring

the melted bones, she vomits up the morsels she had swallowed. “Drink up your own blood now, after many cups,” says the virgin, rebuking her; “let these at last be your grim dishes, instead of the excessive sweets of your past life. The taste of bitter death, and its last savor, make harsh the wanton allurements of life with a horrifying draught.” At the slaughter of their leader, the trifling army flees, scattered in trembling fear. Jest and Petulance first throw away their cymbals: for they played at war with such arms, practicing wounds with the rattling sistrum. Love turns his back in flight: his poisoned weapons, the bow slipped from his shoulders, and the falling quiver he leaves behind his steps, pale with fear himself. Pomp, show-off of empty splendor, is stripped and bared of her empty robe; the garlands of Charm are torn and dragged away, the gold of her neck and head is loosened, and discordant Discord scatters the jewels. Pleasure does not mind going with bruised feet through sharp thickets, since a greater force compels her to endure a bitter flight: fear of danger hardens her tender soles for the painful journey. Wherever the fleeing band carries itself in trembling course, the losses lie: hairpin, ribbons, fillets, brooch, bridal veil, breast-band, diadem, necklace. Here Sobriety and all Sobriety’s soldiers keep away from the spoils, trample with chaste feet the condemned stumbling blocks, and do not turn their stern eyes to the joys of plunder with a conniving brow. They say that Avarice, girt with a capacious fold,

snatched up with hooked hand whatever precious thing devouring Luxury had left behind, gaping with huge mouth at the pretty trinkets, and gathering fragments of fallen gold among the heaps of sand; nor is it enough to have filled her ample folds; she likes to stuff her purses with foul gain and to swell her money bags, heavy with theft, which she covers with her concealing left hand and veils with the covering of her left side; for her swift right hand scrapes up plunder and exercises its brazen nails on the spoils. Care, Hunger, Fear, Anxiety, Perjury, Pallor, Corruption, Deceit, Lies, Sleeplessness, Meanness, various Furies, go along as the monster’s retinue. Meanwhile, no less, like rabid wolves, Crimes leap about, prowling over the whole field, born of the black milk of their mother Avarice. If a brother, fellow soldier, has seen his brother’s helmet gleaming with tawny jewels, he does not fear to draw his sword and strike the head of his comrade with the blade, to snatch the gems from the head of his own blood. If a son has chanced to see his father’s corpse, killed by the fortune of war, he rejoices to have snatched the belt gleaming with studs and the bloody spoils. Civil discord drives off kindred plunder, and the insatiable love of having does not spare its own children, and impious hunger robs its own sons. Such deaths was Avarice, conqueror of the world, producing among the peoples, laying low hundreds of thousands of men with various wounds: this one, his sight taken away and his eyes dug out, she lets wander blind as in the darkness of night, and go through many stumbling blocks,

and not test the danger in front of him with a staff. Another she catches by his gaze and deceives as he looks, showing off some prize; and while he goes for it, he is caught off guard by a weapon, and, wounded in the very depth of his heart, he groans at the hidden steel driven in. Many she drives headlong into open fires, and does not let them avoid the hearths in which the gold is seething, which the greedy watcher seeks, to burn with it. She seizes every race of men, overwhelms everything mortal with destruction, and there is no more violent vice on earth, to wrap the age of the world’s people in such disasters and condemn it to hell. Nay, she even dared, if it is fit to believe, to attack with her hand the priests of the Lord, who happened to be leading the battle as captains before the front line, for the glory of the virtues, and were filling the trumpets with mighty breath. And perhaps she would have stained her steel with innocent blood, had not armed Reason, the one ever-faithful companion of the Levite race, thrown her shield in front of them and covered her famous foster-children from the dark enemy’s attack. They stand safe by Reason’s help, they stand immune from every whirlwind, and strong of spirit: the point of Avarice grazes a few, barely on the top of the skin, and hurts them with a slight wound. The wicked plague was stunned that her weapons were driven far back from the chaste throats of the heroes; she groans, and, burning, begins with furious words: “We are conquered, alas, slack as we are; our power does not keep up its accustomed force; the cruel violence of harming languishes, which used to burst all men’s hearts everywhere with invincible strength; for nature never formed any man

so iron that his hardness would scorn bronze or that he would be impenetrable to our gold. Every kind of mind we have given to death: tender, harsh, hard, learned and unlearned alike, brutish and wise, and also chaste and unchaste breasts have lain open to my right hand. I alone, then, have seized whatever the Styx hides in its greedy whirlpools: wealthiest Tartarus owes to us the peoples it holds; what the ages roll along is ours; the mad business the world stirs up is ours. How does it happen that our mighty glory deserts our strong powers, and fortune mocks our empty arms? The tawny image of glittering coin is worthless to Christians; the embossed work of silver is worthless; and all treasure loses value as its honor grows dark in their eyes. What does this learned disdain mean? Did we not triumph over Iscariot? He, great among the disciples and a guest at God’s table, while he deceives in the pact of the table one by no means unaware, and joins his right hand in the dish, fell upon our weapon through flaming desire, having bought an infamous field with the blood of his divine friend, to pay for the acres with a broken neck. Jericho too, amid its own deaths, had seen how much our hand could do, when Achan fell as a conqueror, distinguished in slaughter and proud of the destruction of the walls; he succumbed to gold taken from the conquered enemy:

while, picking out a notable dedicated object from the forbidden ashes, the insatiable man drinks in the sad spoils of the ruins. Neither his noble tribe helped him, nor [the founder] of his ancestral people …, the noble patriarch, happy in such a descendant. Those who like the example of his stock, let them like also the manner of his ruin: let there be the same punishment for those who have one stock. Why do I hesitate to deceive by some fraud either the people of Judah or the people of the high priest (for Aaron is called high priest), though I am no match for them in the encounters of war? It makes no difference whether the palm comes by arms or by tricks.” She spoke, and took off her grim face and her furious arms, and transforms herself into a respectable dress: she becomes in appearance the virtue, stern in face and dress, whom they call Thrift, whose heart is set on living sparingly and keeping what is her own; as if she snatched nothing greedily, she has won praise, as one careful, for her counterfeit art. The lying war-goddess fits herself to this one’s appearance, so that she may be thought not a greedy plague but a sparing virtue; and with the tender covering of piety too she hides her snaky hair, so that the white mantle may disguise the hidden madness, and, drawn over her dreadful fury, may boast of what is robbing and stealing and greedily hiding what is gained under the sweet name of care for one’s children. Mocking with such images, she deceives the credulous hearts of men, and they follow the deadly monster: while they believe it the work of virtue, the impious Fury seizes them, ready in their consent, and binds them with tight manacles. The leaders were stunned, the companies thrown into confusion, and the army of the virtues was wavering through the deceit of the two-formed monster, not knowing what in it to believe friendly

or what to mark as hostile: the shifting and ambiguous death makes their uncertain gazes slip under a doubtful image. Suddenly Good Works, gnashing her teeth, leaps into the middle of the field to help her comrades, and takes up the fight, last of the army in rank, but the only one to lay the final hand on the duel, so that nothing grim may remain. She had thrown every burden from her shoulders; she went stripped of all her clothing, and had relieved herself of a heavy load, once weighed down with riches and heavy talents, now free through pity for the poor, whom she had generously cherished with large gifts, well-prodigal in pouring out her ancestral wealth. … counting an eternal sum, with interest to return. Avarice shuddered at the thunderbolt of the unconquered virtue and, out of her mind, stuck fast with stunned senses, sure to die. For what way of fraud remains, so that she who tramples the world should be overcome and give way to worldly allurements, and entangle herself again in gold she has scorned? The most valiant virtue attacks the trembling foe with the hard grip of her arms, and, crushing her throat, breaks her bloodless, dry gullet: the clasped bonds of her arms are tied under her chin, and with her jaws squeezed tight they wring out her life, which, taken with no wound, flutters, and, the passage of breath cut off, suffers death shut in the prison of the veins. As Avarice struggles, Good Works, pressing with knees and heels, pierces her ribs and bursts her panting flanks; then she tears the spoils from the stripped body: dirty

lumps of crude gold, metal not yet refined in the furnace; purses eaten by many moths, and coins covered with green verdigris, long hoarded, she scatters, and, victorious, distributes them to the needy, and presents the poor with the captured gift. Then, looking round with exultant face at the ring gathered around her, she cries joyfully amid the thousands: “Ungird yourselves, you righteous, and leave your arms. The cause of so great an evil lies slain: now that the gluttony of gain is perishing, the saints may rest. The highest rest is to want nothing beyond what due need requires: that simple food and one garment should cover the weak limbs and moderately refresh them, and should not draw beyond the measure that satisfies nature. When you set out on a journey, do not take a bag, and do not go providently carrying a second tunic; nor let tomorrow trouble you, that food may be lacking for your belly: the daily food returns with the sun. Do you not see how no bird thinks of tomorrow, and believes without anxiety that it will be fed, God providing? The birds trust that their living will not fail; and the cheap sparrows, sold for a small penny, have an undoubting faith that the mighty Lord cares that they do not perish. Do you, God’s care, and Christ’s handiwork too, doubt whether your Maker will ever desert you? Do not tremble, men: the giver of life is also the giver of food. Seek the light-bringing nourishment of heavenly teaching, which, multiplying hope, may feed you for an inviolable age, unmindful of the body: he who made it is mindful to supply food and cherish its needy members.”

At these words cares were removed; Fear and Toil and Violence and Crime and Fraud, the denier of the Faith we love, were driven off and quit the ground. Then kindly Peace, the enemies routed, drives away war; all Terror is ungirt, and loosens the clasps at her waist, her belts torn off. Her garment flows down, descending to the bottom of her feet, and the modesty of peacetime tempers her rapid step. The curved bronze of the horn-blowers is silent; the sword, appeased, fills its sheath; and, the dust of the field settled, the clear face of the sky returns: you could see the bright light of heaven grow clear in a cloudless, limpid day. The chaste ranks felt that the face of the Thunderer above was smiling on the joyful squadrons, the battle driven off, and that Christ was rejoicing in his victors and opening the citadel of heaven and the Father’s depths to his servants. Happy Concord gives the signal to bring back the victorious eagles to the camp and to gather in the tents. Never was there such a sight, nor glory equal to it in any army, when she led the two columns far in ordered ranks, the company of foot singing psalms, and on the other side the cavalry with resounding hymns. Not otherwise did victorious Israel sing, looking back at the gaping fury of the threatening sea behind them, when, advancing, they were already treading the farther shores with dry foot, and the mountain of hanging water, roaring at the farthest heels, was collapsing, and catching the black dwellers by the Nile at the bottom as the flood fell back, and the wave, its gulf flowing back, was now restoring to the fish the space to swim, and rushing down to cover the bared sands. The people of God beat the timbrels that kept time

with resounding plectrum, celebrating the wonderful work of the Almighty, memorable for ages: that between the waters clear banks rose up, the waves cut through and the storm standing still, and that the suspended masses could be held. So, the nation of the vices overthrown, the mystic songs of the virtues resound in sweet-measured psalms. They had come to the entrance of the camp gate, where the barriers give entry to the threshold on double hinges. Here, by the cunning of evil, there arises an unexpected, lamentable storm, the envious disturber of calm Peace, to trouble so great a triumph with a sudden disaster. While Concord, as it happened, closely surrounded, was setting foot amid the crowded columns within the now safe walls, she received in her left side a dagger, hidden, from the stroke of a lurking vice, although the rough fabric of chain-linked iron surrounded her body and the sewn hooks rejected the point of a wound, and the threads, tenacious with stiff knots, would not let a driven weapon penetrate to her vitals. Yet a gap in the joining gave a narrow passage for the steel to pass through with a fine point, where the last scale of the polished tunic binds itself and the fold joins its edges. This wound was dealt by a sly fighter of the conquered party, who lay in wait for the unwary victors. For, the army of the sins driven off, Discord had entered our columns, feigning the appearance of an ally. Her torn mantle and her whip, made of many snakes, lay far off amid the slaughter of the fields; she herself, showing off her hair wreathed with leafy olive, joyfully joins in the festive dances.

But she hides a dagger under her robe, seeking you, greatest virtue, you alone, Concord, out of so great a number, with grim fraud. But it was not permitted to break the vitals of the sacred body; the outer skin, hurt only by a touch at the surface, marked a thin stream with blood. The virtue, suddenly disturbed, cries out: “What is this? What hostile hand lurks here? What wounds our success, and brandishes steel amid such great joy? What good is it to have calmed untamed furies in war, and to have regained all that is holy as the vices perish, if a virtue falls in peacetime?” The anxious ranks turned their sad eyes: the blood, the sign of the wound, was dripping from the iron-clad robe; and soon fear betrays the enemy standing close by: for the pallor on her face, conscious of the bold deed, gives signs of guilt, and her languid hand, caught, trembles, and her white color. The whole legion of the Virtues quickly surrounds her with drawn swords, inquiring in a seething uproar her race and name, her country and sect, what god she worships, and by whose sending she has come. She, bloodless, with fear disturbing her: “I am called Discord,” she says, “surnamed Heresy. My God is of varied color, now lesser, now greater, now double, now single; when I please, he is of air and seen as a phantom, or he is the soul inborn, whenever I choose to make sport of the Godhead. Belial is my teacher; my home and region is the world.” Faith, queen of the Virtues, would bear no further the blasphemies of the captured monster, but stops the words of the speaker and closes the passages of her voice with a javelin, piercing her polluted tongue with the rigid point.

The deadly beast is torn apart by countless hands. Each one snatches a piece for himself, to scatter to the winds, to give to the dogs, to offer to the greedy crows, to throw into the filthy sewers with their reeking mud, to hand over to the sea monsters to eat. The whole corpse, torn apart, is divided among foul animals: horrid Heresy perishes, her limbs torn asunder. So, when the good things of the state and of morals had been settled for the common good, and it fell to them to stay within safe walls, to enjoy their station, to cherish peaceful feelings within the rampart, and to relax their cares in leisure, a tribunal is built in the middle of the camp on a higher place, which a mound with sharp summit raises up as a lookout, from which a free sight looks round on all things lying far below, through unobstructed air. Sincere Faith and Concord together, sisters sworn by a sacred covenant in the love of Christ, climb its peak; and soon the holy and dear pair stand above the lofty tribunal, conspicuous on an equal footing, and bid the peoples stand by in crowds. All run eagerly together from all the camps: no idle part of the mind lies hidden, to conceal itself in degenerate sloth in any recess of the body, shut off in its chambers; all the tents stand open with their flaps drawn back, the canvas is unfastened, so that no dweller may grow languid, snoring under dark cover. The assembly waits with attentive ears to hear what Concord, the leader, calls the victors to after the wars, and what law she and Faith wish to give the virtues. Concord first breaks into speech in this way:

with this address: “Full glory has now indeed … fallen to you: the savage barbarism has been destroyed by much fighting, which had besieged the natives of the holy city and pressed its men with sword and flame. But public peace, in country and forum, rests on private friendships: domestic division troubles the commonwealth, and what is at odds within totters without. So beware, men, that there be no discordant opinion in our feelings, that no foreign sect be born within our walls, kindled by hatred, because a divided will confuses the secrets of the double-natured man with varied fibers. Let love join what we think; let what we live breathe together in one zeal: nothing that can be divided is firm. And as Jesus has come between as mediator of man and God, who joins the mortal to the Father, so that the things of flesh should not stand apart from the eternal Spirit, and that one God should be both; so let one Spirit weave whatever we do by action of mind and body in single-shaped joinings. Peace is the full work of virtue; peace is the crown of labors; peace is the reward of war ended, and the reward of danger. The stars flourish by peace; earthly things stand firm by peace. Nothing pleases God without peace: he does not approve a gift you wish to offer at the altar, if your mind, troubled, hates your brother in the cave of an unpeaceful breast; nor, if as a martyr you leap into the flaming fires for the name of Christ, keeping a hateful wish under oblique bile, will it profit you to have spent your precious life for Jesus; for peace is the seal of merit. It does not swell puffed up, it does not envy a brother as a rival; … it never grieves when hurt; it forgives every offense;

it is eager to forestall the setting of the light with pardon, anxious that the sun should not go down witness to a lasting anger. Whoever wishes to make offering to God with slain burnt offerings, let him offer peace first of all: no victim is sweeter to Christ; by this gift alone, turning his face to the holy offerings, he is delighted with a clear fragrance. But God himself also teaches the snowy doves to distinguish skillfully, with searching wit, the winged serpent, clothed in a tender garment of feathers, mingled among the harmless birds; and the wolf with bloody mouth lurks, feigning a milk-white sheep under soft fleece, practicing cruel slaughter with lamb-like jaws. By this art Photinus and Arius hide themselves, wolves monstrous in savagery: our dangers and the fresh blood, though from the surface of the body, show what a stealthy hand can do.” The whole people of the Virtues groaned, shaken by the bitter event. Then noble Faith added this: “No, in prosperity let groaning cease. Concord has been hurt, but defended by Faith; nay, Concord, safe, accompanying her sister Faith, laughs at her wounds. This is my one salvation: with her restored, nothing is sad to me. One work remains, after the wars, for distinguished labor, … [which the peaceful heir] of the warlike [king], the unarmed successor of an armed court, Solomon, founded; since his panting father’s right hand had smoked with the hot blood of kings. For when the blood was wiped away the temple is founded, and the altar is set up, the lofty house of Christ with gilded roofs.

Then Jerusalem, made glorious by the temple, now divine, received God at rest, after the wandering ark was settled, founded on marble altars. Let a venerable temple rise in our camp too, whose holy of holies the Almighty may visit. For what does it profit to have driven off with the sword the earthborn phalanxes of sins, if the Son of Man, gliding down from the citadel of heaven, should enter the city of a cleansed body unadorned, lacking a shining temple? Up to now we have sweated in close combat with alternating arms; now let the white toga of quiet peace do its duties, and let the youth, ungirt, hasten to make a seat for sacred things.” When she had said this, the queen leapt down from the proud steps, and Concord, partner in so great a work, to measure out the new temple, the foundation laid: a golden reed runs over the plain in measured spaces, so that four fronts may square on every side, lest an unequal corner, with joinings out of line, spoil the precise rule through discordant half-measures. On the side of the dawn the bright quarter lies open, lit by three gates; to the south a triple number of gates opens; three it offers on the western side … the lofty house opens. There is no built stone there, but a gem, hollowed through its solid mass and pierced with much hewing, embraces the threshold with a gleaming arch, and one stone contains the vestibule to be passed through. On the tops of the fronts of the gates, written in gold, shine the names of the twelve of the apostolic senate. By these titles the Spirit embraces the hidden secrets of the mind and calls the chosen feelings into the heart;

and wherever the nature of man flourishes, which a fourfold force animates throughout the body, it approaches the altar of the heart by three entrances and worships at its shrines with chaste vows. Whether the first sun drives boys, or excessive heat inflames youths, or the full light of the age of completion perfects men, or the chill age of the north wind calls decrepit old age to holy rites, the threefold name meets them at the four crossroads, which the King duly assigns to his twelve disciples. Moreover, as many emblems of gems shine, set in the woven walls, and a deep light pours out the living souls of their colors from its liquid depth. A huge chrysolite, streaked with native gold, had joined a sapphire to itself on this side, a beryl on that, and the brightness in the middle varied their different glories. Here the dull chalcedony is suffused with the light of the neighboring jacinth; for the stone, near the azure pools, chanced to gleam, holding in watery purple. Amethysts color the sardonyx, jasper colors the sardius set beside it, and the beautiful topaz. Among these kinds the emerald meadows grow green with spring grass, and the grassy light rolls its wandering waves. You too, chrysoprase, conspicuous, the glowing structure sets in, and adds a star to the starry stones. The rope-driven machine was creaking with heavy chains, hauling the immense gems up to the lofty summit. But the inner house is built resting on seven columns cut from the glassy rock of cold crystal; a white stone, cut into a cone, covers their raised capitals, and is drawn in below with a curve

in the likeness of a shell: a huge pearl which bold Faith had bought for a thousand talents and had acquired with her riches and her wealth put up at auction. On this throne sits mighty Wisdom, and from her high hall she orders every counsel of her kingdom and ponders in her heart the laws for protecting man. In the hands of the mistress is a sceptre, not polished by art, but alive with green wood; though cut from its stock, and though no moisture of earthly turf feeds it, it is green with unharmed foliage, and it mingles white lilies interwoven with roses dyed with blood, which do not know how to let their flower droop on a withering neck. The flowering rod borne by Aaron was the figure of this sceptre, which, thrusting out buds from its dry bark, unfolded a tender beauty with ripening hope, and the dry rod suddenly swelled into new fruit. We render eternal thanks to you, most kind Teacher, Christ, and we consecrate due honors to you with pious mouth; for the heart is foul with the dung of vices. You willed that we should recognize the hidden dangers of the body’s covering and the fortunes of the struggling soul. We know that the doubtful feelings in our clouded breast sweat in alternate conflicts, and, as the fortune of the battles varies, now grow with a better disposition, now, with bent necks, are dragged to the yokes of a worse life, give themselves over to shameful offenses, and suffer the loss of their own salvation. O how often have we felt the soul grow warm with God, the plague of vices driven back! How often has the heavenly mind, grown lukewarm after bright joys, given way to foul temper! Horrid wars seethe, they seethe shut up in our bones, and the nature of man, not single, roars with discordant arms; for the flesh, shaped from mud, presses down the soul; on the other hand, the spirit, born of a clear breath, chafes in the prison of the darkening heart, and rejects the filth amid its narrow chains. Light and darkness fight with different spirits, and a double substance animates opposing powers, until Christ, God, comes to our help and sets all the gems of the virtues in a purified seat, and, establishing the golden halls of the temple where sin had reigned, weaves from the beauty of good conduct ornaments for the soul, in which rich Wisdom may delight and reign for ever on a beautiful throne.