Poems 19.129–19.703

So is Isis a goddess? A woman a goddess? If a goddess, she has no body, and without a body there is no sex, or without sex no childbirth. Whence then does she have the Osiris she seeks? And does a goddess not know where to seek him? But a goddess can never be a mother nor a woman. For God is one, threefold power: God the Father one, and one in him the Son, and from him at the same time, one with the Father, the Spirit of the Word; these three names are always one God. The nature of God alone is God, which the Son and the Spirit and the Father are; but the Son is born of the Father, the Spirit proceeds from the Father. Nothing here has any nature among created things in common or like it. But mighty Carthage flourishes with Cyprian the martyr, whose fountains, poured out at once from his mouth and his blood, made fruitful the sands of thirsty Libya. Not far from there the White Mass raised Utica up with martyrs gathered in a great heap of venerable slaughter; for one mound of blessed turf, covering many bodies, has raised its head high over the fields, and testifies to lofty merits by the mountain of its tomb. Hence Africa, long since fruitful for God and Christ, multiplies abundant harvests from so great a seed and bears excellent teachers in word and faith. Nor did less grace shine out in the western lands. Ambrose stands out for Latium, Vincent for the Iberians. Gaul took Martin, Aquitaine Delphinus. And many other seeds of saints besides, abundantly spread through the same regions in the tombs laid there, illuminate the whole world with heavenly powers and thrust the ancient dragon out of the whole world, who shakes the human race with the art of harming through the thousand names of gods, which he, the snake, took from dead mortals for himself and gave to his own; a prince, he holds his foul kingdom in the empty air, and wanders about as head of the demons, our enemy.

So therefore this our Nola too, by the love of merciful Christ, deserved to be fortified and at the same time purified by the tomb of Felix, because, mingled with the blind ruins of the world, it also lay dying in the night, long polluted by worshippers of stones, in which the brothel of Venus and the madness of Bacchus were deities to the wretched, and lust, joined to frenzy, celebrated wicked rites with a foul ceremony. And what place was there here for life, where there was no shame anywhere nor any fear? For who would fear to sin here, where bloody frenzy and incestuous lust were religion? And crime was in place of a deity for those who had believed that there was any deity in crime, and in the whole throng the worshipper was held as it were holier who had grown hot more pollutedly in the rites of Venus, so that he was full of the god and more blessed than the rest, he who, with the demon poured more into him, raving more savagely against himself and offering frenzied rites with his own wounds, had deserved to lose a sound mind. O mind worthy of blind souls, and deities worthy of them! Let those who turn away from serving God have Venus and the grove as god; let mad drunkenness and impious love sanctify them; let them worship what is cut off and call the wretched shame of foul error the mysteries of the Mother. Fitting faith for those who, in the kindly light of truth, have no faith and no love for chaste laws and the great name of Christ, and therefore there is no value in the blood of Christ for an unworthy life.

Let their belly be god to them, or the other joys of the flesh, those for whom God himself is not God, for whom there is no glory in the cross of Christ, because the power of the cross does not deign to approach degenerate souls. Hence blessed Felix, like other martyrs in different parts of the world, was a physician to the people of Nola, and is so for ever with that help, and not only to the people of Nola but to all by whom he is implored, he will give health by this right, if the kindly faith of the cross be present in the suppliant's breast. That faith heals and expiates the human race; where this medicine is lacking, there will linger the whole kingdom of evil, nor will the Cyprian goddess ever cease to reign in him with adulteries, nor Lyaeus with frenzies, in whom the shame of Christ and the ardour of the cross are lacking. For a divine fire is present where the power of the cross within, as faith burns up, torments guilty hearts and gives life to the soul, the vices in the flesh being killed. Long crushed by these enemies and corrupted by such great pests, Nola needed a huge remedy, and therefore, God weighing the danger and the help, she received Felix as physician, to overcome every ruin, however ancient, in the black hearts of the wretched, and, more powerful by the strength of his merit, to cut open the callus drawn over the rotten ulcers in deep wounds, so as to squeeze out from the opened folds the pus gathered by the spreading corruption, and then a scar drawn with smooth skin might fill the hollow of the wound. So when Felix shone for the people of Nola like a star in the darkness, coming from the mouth of God and bearing the word of healing in his mouth, as serene Phosphorus, before the sun's coming, puts forth his glad radiance at the morning rising, and, new among the setting stars, shines forth as herald of the approaching day, as night gives way:

so now, as the gospel shines over the whole world, and as God draws near, soon to be judge of all lands, Christ holds out everywhere the standards of his coming and flashes his signs through his friends. Which of them did he wish to shine before him on this shore? Felix, so that by this star he might pluck away our shadows and drive the ancient demons out of this city too, so that, when such colonists were expelled from the hearts of men, God might enter as dweller into pure minds, and, the roles reversed, with us released by kindness, our former chains might now press on our lions, raging in vain against Christ's sheep with their bound ferocity. And this grace still remains for us even now, which releases us from sins through the entreating prayer of the saints, and, with the same saints as avengers, binds them and torments the enemies who used to bind us. These now, like thieves caught when a light is brought in and put in chains, now bear the fiery whips of the godly, as they deserved, or, wretchedly thrust into the infernal prisons, they tremble, confessing that the Lord's judgment is near at hand, grim only for themselves and for all their own, whom a sinister will has turned to Satan's side, and a life that copies Satan's has joined to Satan, men who are their companions here in wickedness, there in punishment. Behold the day acceptable to God; now the true light of salvation flashes; we see all things now turned well for us; deceits have fled, Bel has fallen, error perishes, and the demons who used to be worshipped as deities in whole temples are tormented, unarmed, throughout the temples of God, and those who dared to take divine honours are now punished, subdued under a human law.

For these, whom now in the crowded hall of Felix we see tormented, crying out, snatched about through the bodies they have captured, are held bound in those very bodies into which they thrust themselves, and of their own will they found that their punishment was human. So now, in the persons of the accused, they howl in their punishments, those who by false divinity had been gods, and who, with feigned divinity, had given living men over to themselves, men who before the worship of God saw nothing heavenly; these now, when by the light of Christ true faith has been revealed, cannot bear the buried saints. But to make it clearer that those demons who are now tormented before the doors or before the tombs of the godly are the same as those to whom once the slavish race of men sacrificed and madly poured out sacred honours, the very manner of their voices teaches; for more often they groan with that voice, so that you may recognize the familiar frenzy in the shouting. So often, as if with mouth loosed more widely, they gnash their teeth, foam at the lips, bristle with their hair, and, as if a hand grasped their hair, they are jerked up into the air and stand hanging by their hair, feet aloft; meanwhile there, remembering their old rites, in which they used to lick the entrails of slaughtered cattle or feed on libations and lead lascivious choruses in ivy-wreathed processions, even now bearing witness that those rites were theirs, in which a drunken crowd made mad uproars, panting, they imitate with broken voices “euhoe,” the cry of Bacchus, and toss their necks in slow rotation.

But since the life of one mortal could not suffice to wash away contagions drawn out over a long time in the few years which Felix lived in the body, confessor and presbyter, teacher by word, martyr by title, priest in merit and office, the almighty Lord made the bounded age of his body continue for Felix in a better way, continuing the healing acts of the hard-working martyr, so that, buried, he might perform the same works of power which, while he remained in the flesh, he did by Christ's power, and so that, though dead, he might not be absent in body from the city that had received him, since the healing spirit of the one laid to rest was present, and though the face of the dear patron, withdrawn for a time, lay hidden from the longings of those who loved him, a ready medicine was always present for the health of the sick. Hence everlasting honour and glory surround holy Felix, with merits flourishing without end; and though, hidden in his tomb from long ago, he lies in the covering of the earth as far as he was mortal, yet a living grace, God quickening it, surviving in his limbs, glorifies for the peoples the martyr's bones, which breathe the divine, as the merit of the buried lives, and a crowd thronging from various lands continually reveres the small throne of the great confessor. But God, as the sower of all men, granted that this help should go forth from the saints to all lands, so that now from their tombs the blessed martyrs might perform godly gifts and, buried, might heal the living. Nor was this gift enough for the Lord, that martyrs should illuminate only their own places by their name or powers;

the merciful one, multiplying the monuments of the godly even from the same tombs, granted the same saints to many nations. And I shall relate from the beginning the various causes from which this blessing arose for various lands. For since the first faith had not gone out equally spread through the whole world, martyrs had been absent from many regions of the world, and for this reason, I think, by a great gift Christ was pleased, now inspiring the powerful, as was first done under Constantine Caesar, now revealing them to his servants, that they should transfer martyrs summoned from their former seat to new lodgings on earth; as we know was done not long ago by the holy bishop Ambrose, who, supported by such a gift, after he had transferred to his own hall, changing their place, saints before unknown and then discovered with Christ as informant, confounded the raging queen with ready light. For when Constantine was founding a city of his own name, and was the first among the kings of the Roman name to bear the worship of Christ, he received in his mind a divine counsel, that, since he was then building walls rivalling the walls of the Roman city with magnificent undertakings, he should follow the city of Romulus in these endowments too, and gladly fortify his walls with apostolic bodies. Then he carried Andrew from the Achaeans and Timothy from Asia; so with twin towers stands Constantinople, the rival head of great Rome, more truly like the Roman walls in this eminence, that God compensated it for Peter and Paul with equal ambition, since it deserved to receive the disciple of Paul with the brother of Peter. How great a benefit for the needs of our life has grown along that road through the long divides of the earth, the very places teach even today, in which that carriage of the blessed, able to bear its load, rested at a halt in all the stretches, wherever there was a stopping place for the holy bodies and rest for those carrying those consecrated ashes; they cry out with wondrous signs.

For the divine hand is at work there with healing power along all the ways where the holy bodies imprinted living tracks in their sacred passage. Hence, then, as faith persuaded, the opportunity was given to the zeal of the faithful companions to wish to take for themselves certain pledges from the holy bones, a deserved fruit, so that each might bring home, as the wages of service and the price of labour, protection for private use. From that time the sacred ashes, like seeds of life, have been scattered in various places, and wherever, from a tiny bone, a slight dew from a small portion of a sacred body fell upon the nations, there godly grace produced fountains, and a drop of ash produced rivers of life. Hence the abundance of Christ, rich even in the least things, has dripped on us too; for this also we have received here: sacred pledges of apostolic flesh in a little dust, which holy Felix, lord and father of our dwelling, guardian of our soul and protection of our salvation, received in the building nearby, close to himself, which, more recent in age than his other halls, keeps slight ashes and great honours, and is itself rather kept by its patrons as guardians; for far be it that those should ever seem to need keeping who are wont to keep; yet they deign to care for the interests of their nurslings with fatherly love and to cherish the protection of places dedicated to them; that this zeal of piety is in the holy spirits they have given proofs of wondrous faith. So I shall tell in a few words a recent work; for it is fitting to set forth the gifts of holy Felix on his very birthday in thankful words. I shall not speak of things foreign in place or ancient in time;

I shall relate a work done lately in our borders and in this seat, which you will perhaps readily recognize, since the matter was done in the open light. I believe that of this number hardly anyone of you will be new to hearing it, since flying report has gone far to distant people. Certainly some of you were present in this city at the time when it happened that a thief, driven in mind by unlawful goads, put greedy hands on the sacred gifts, and, shameless and mad, out of all the insignia of the venerable hall chose one as booty: the form of the cross, not knowing that it would be his betrayal, not his spoil, which, like a greedy fish swallowing a hook, he gulped down, to be caught by the bait he had taken. Who, I ask, drove the robber to a venture of so great a spirit, armed him, blinded him, threw him headlong, so that neither from the watch of the guards nor, what is more, from the very altars which cover the revered sacred ashes and breathe the power of the holy dust, did he flee with a struck heart, and that he took the object outstanding not only in divine power but also in beauty and value? For there were many other ornaments, as you know, in that very place which he could take, sparing the gold of the cross; for within lay hidden the mystic vessels entrusted for receiving the sacraments. But besides, in the space of the hall itself there were gifts notable in various forms, placed according to custom, which you see there ready every day, or fixed round all the columns in measured order, like candelabra, which carry painted candles on a projecting spike, so that fragrant lights may be given by the papyrus wicks enclosed.

And in the middle space, fixed to the high ceilings, hollow lamps hung on bronze chains, which, in the shape of trees, as if like vines, throwing out arms with pliant rods, carry on the highest tip of the branch little glass cups as their fruits, and as if blossoming with kindled light they flower and imitate the dense stars with many-haired flames, and pick out the heavy darkness with numerous lights, and paint the tender air with flowering little fires, and while they tremble their liquid hair and flash frequently, the gloom of night scattered by constant torches, they mingle an uncertain face between light and shadow and confuse the doubtful air for trembling eyes. So although this man saw these ready for him in the open, and safer for him to steal, since there would be less crime and less value in carrying off a light lamp of silver, hanging farther from the edge of the altar, yet the wretch, ambitious and proud even in fraud, scorned to take silver by theft as a cheap crime, and stretched his bold right hand to the golden things, which he had seen skilfully set off with various little stones, and had puffed up his breast with great wishes, to rejoice, rich, in gems and gold together. But he remained heavy only with the unjust weight of a great crime, and light in money; his punishment awaits the sacrilegious man, his booty deserted the robber. Stripped of the spoil of theft, not of the crime, he lives poor in fruit, but abounding in the wound of fraud. Yet I would think that he was permitted to approach the crime not without the great will and counsel of Christ, so that, since he had admitted into his mind to take anything from the sacred things, he was allowed to come to those things in which the impiety committed would be more notable.

A few days before, the same man had fled there for refuge, pretending to flee military service, and was received in friendly fashion as a guest by the sacristans who looked after the sacred hall. Lying hidden there almost a whole month, he had explored the beds, the sleep, and the times of the guards, and when he had seized on the hours suitable for his planned crime, he committed the wickedness in the silent night, with no labour or noise, shut in behind closed doors as if one of the guards, whose guest he was; when the watchmen, no longer watchful, began to snatch their first sleep in the silent shadows and draw forgetfulness over their weighed-down cares, he took the place for the crime, where he knew from practice that a little machine, placed there for tending the lamps through the night as usual, offered a ladder with steps ready, left there by a guard ill secure for himself, where there was the likeness of a cross, as there is now too: an upright continuous rod carrying on a crossbar two little cups; a small chain hanging from its foot supports one. In these three little cups lights set in them shine when a festal day brings it; but then, without use of light, it hung only for show. But a little in front of the glory of the cross, on the same line, there is a silver cup fitted for use. This, shining with a light inconvenient to him, the robber at once puts out; for he also knew that it often used to go out, when the very dry tow buried the light in the long night with the oil used up, and that the watchman would not wonder if he happened to see the darkness take away the roof as the lamp was covered, thinking the night made by custom, not by crime.

So not as a thief, which, as a robber, he was, but as a guardian, the robber carries off the unlawful plunder securely, and does not flee, and stays fearless. One little cell of many hides him, of those which, set along the sides on every side by the great roofs, give secret lodgings to the buried. In one of these the thief is hidden; and when in the morning he sees the bars open, he springs out of the unlocked hall and, leaving his hiding place, carries off his crime; he was preparing to go to the city of Romulus, as he later told when caught, to carry on there the trade of his unspeakable fraud. Meanwhile, while ours knew nothing, that night and the whole day passed; late in the evening, attending to their usual duty, they set up the steps; when one began to climb to light the lamp, he found nothing; the rod of the cross remained bereft, stripped of its usual beautiful ornament. The wretched men grow pale and do not dare to disclose the loss by the crime, knowing that the guilt rightly fell on them. They go off trembling and hurry after the robber, pursuing the fugitive. Nowhere do they find any traces of the one who had slipped away. All go to different roads and search the harbours on different shores. Eight or ten days slipped by for the vain searchers, and when all had returned with an empty search, one boy among the searchers, himself frustrated in a labour spent in vain over a long region, was returning, and, coming now near to Nola, he stops on the very road, and with a great groan and pouring tears, calling on Felix, he resolves with faithful heart not to return home except with the cross; and soon he readily retraced the journey he had finished. And straightway there meets him a certain man, who knew the thief, not as a thief, but as a citizen. Our boy first asks him whence he came as a traveller; he tells him. Again he is asked about the thief, whether he had seen him; and he answered that he was staying in places near there, and that region (which he named) was near them, as they spoke, joined to Mount Vesuvius, the fifth milestone from the city of Nola. But the onset of evening delays the plan. They agree that the next day's light should again join them together. Morning comes, the informer returns;

he leads our men there, the thief is caught, the booty brought back. It happened that the holy day had dawned that brought back the birthday of blessed Priscus, whom Nola also celebrates, though he was bishop of Nuceria, another city. See, into the very hall of holy Felix, which then the people packed with solemn honour, when the bishop was now dismissing the godly assemblies after the sacred rites, at a time divinely provided, to meet the people as they came out, he is suddenly brought in, his thieving hands tied behind his back. The people are filled with joy, the robber with fear, and the whole city runs together as to some strange monster. The crowd, raging with popular hatred, went at him; joy and anger mixed uncertain uproars. I was greatly afraid, I confess, that the devil, with that envy he is wont to have, might violate the procession with blood, and treat one wound first with a worse wound. He is snatched from the people and shut in the very cell, as it happened, now that the guilty man was caught, in which he had hidden when he snatched the cross; the cross recovered, he himself is shut in, that he may live. Then, having recovered his mind, the guilty man began to tell of his crime and its obstacles in wondrous ways, and confessed that through those eight or ten days, in which he had prepared to go to the city of Romulus, he had been driven back with his feet entangled, so that, always preparing to go, he always came back, something drawing him back, and returned again to that region of Vesuvius, in which he had been ordered to be shut up as in a prison, an angelic hand binding him; yet he thought, wretch, that he was in his own power, because he seemed to be free in body, he whom, with no chain visible, a stronger right hand held with hidden bonds.

Felix, the avenger, bound him with a fitting wandering and drove the madman round in such a whirling that, always going away, he went away nowhere, and when he had begun to leave with springing step, he came back. Wondrous faith! He went while standing, remained while going, not knowing that by that very thing for which he was preparing to flee it was brought about that he did not flee, and that his chains stayed with him, and that his own crime was an unbroken chain for him. For he had entrusted the weight of his booty to the closed fold of his garment, and hence, greedy, as if captured in mind, seeking a hiding place, he still wandered in broad daylight in open fields, and, thinking he was hidden, stood out on the clear plain. Guilty impiety had so blinded his mind that neither did he escape by fleeing nor was he concealed by wandering. With opposing feelings, fear on one side and stupor on the other had confused his guilty soul; he avoided the paved roads, he feared, sluggish, to approach the secret woods, fearing that even in the woods the very silence might cry out his crime, or thinking that grim monsters of avenging beasts would meet him in their shapes. Then the wretch, withdrawn from the busy highway, was wandering near some houses in a certain countryside, pretending to be at ease to those who did not know, but pressing fear in his heart as he pressed his crime under his clothing; for his garment, girded up high, had stored the gold shut in its folds. For he had not dared to entrust his theft to the silent earth or to hollow caves as robbers do, fearing betrayal, too greedy to entrust his fraud. So the wicked man had entrusted his thefts only to his tunic, where he had knotted his garment, tied back, hanging his flowing clothing up above a bare knee.

This storehouse of crime the robber had then built for himself in his own person, and he was fittingly bound by such fear that he would trust no one with a share in the wretched theft, so that he alone would have the contagion of so great a crime, and the fold of the one whose hand had dared the sacrilegious plunder should become the guardian of that theft, that he should carry his own burden himself, and the deadly pack of his booty should weigh down and pollute him alone, so that nothing of him should remain free of impiety, he who, enclosing the spoil of crime taken from the sacred building, bound himself with his girdled garment and himself displayed the sign of his chains. For, soon caught, he exchanged his girdle for bonds, and as the gold fell from the loosened folds of his ungirded clothing, the robber, bound with the very strap with which he had been girded, the bold hands he had stretched out to the sacred gifts caught by the knot of his own strap, brought them back emptied of booty and filled with rope. But if we wish to look deeply at the whole series of the order of events, more and more in every aspect, both where the crime lay hidden and where, disclosed, it became clear, we shall see that Felix did wondrous hidden things by God's hand. We have already told many things before: how fleeing he did not flee, and how, his steps driven back, he retraced along his own tracks the courses he had covered, so many times in vain, his undertaking turning round, shut out from distant places and beaten back to near ones. Now I shall recall another work of Felix, which the right hand of Christ produced to show the merit of his dear nursling, a wondrous proof with an equal sign, which the guilty man himself, trembling, disclosed when he confessed his venture.

But first, since the matter requires it, I shall describe the likeness of the cross itself, which painting is accustomed to represent in two forms, either two-horned on an upright staff, or with its horns distributed in five points over three rods. The form of the cross is composed in a twofold appearance: now, standing up, it shows the appearance of the yard on the image of a ship's mast, or the sign that the Greeks use to mark three hundred, when it is fixed with one upright and, where it has its top, is joined with a crosspiece; now the same cross, put together with a different arrangement, expresses the Lord Christ as by a monogram. For the sign by which Latin reckoning marks twice five in counting, the Greeks write as chi, and rho is in its middle, whose top also holds sigma, which, bent back to the rod itself, makes o as if a circle were completed. For the stiff upright makes what in Greece is iota. Then the stroke itself, drawn back a little from the top, makes tau, and so the six letters, by which the name above every name is expressed, come together under one sign, and one letter is formed of three rods. So one sign expresses six at once, so that one sign with three rods may signify that the Lord is at once three and one, and that God is in Christ, whom the concord of the threefold mind willed to be born for us, taking a body. And there is a sacrament in this, that in each of the two rods the tips, as if spread apart, slope back at an equal end, but below, set apart in equal position, they stand on equal foot, and, fixed to one another, they cohere in a central joint, and their separate tops look out at equal heights.

Between these, set in at the central meeting point, a rod stands out more proudly like a royal sceptre, signifying that Christ, God, reigns over all things, who, with the cross extended through the four extremities of the wood, touches the world measured in four parts, to draw peoples to life from all shores. And since by the death of the cross Christ, God, is all things to all, for the rising of life and the end of evils, alpha and omega stand around the cross, each letter completing a different figure with three rods in a threefold manner, because the perfect is one mind, a threefold power. Alpha and o likewise is Christ to me, who, embracing equally the highest ends of the heights and of the depths, as victor took both the infernal and the heavenly, and, the abysses broken, penetrated the open heavens, bringing back victorious salvation, death overcome. And as victory joined him to the Father's right hand, he set up a bodily trophy in the heavenly seat and fixed the standard of the cross above all the stars. So that ornament, which the thief, driven by greedy furies, had in vain unfastened from its hanging hook and with polluted hand removed from the holy hall, is so made that, set in wondrous ways, it designs both forms of the eternal cross, as now, if you wish to view it close at hand, faith is ready for the eyes; for, restored, it shines in the very place where it was fitted before, and adorns the face of the altar enclosed by its veil with the sign of piety. So the same ornament displays that form of the cross which marks a balance weighed with an even beam and in harmony figures a yoke with a pole set upright, or, as the brows join the eyes across the forehead, the tall tree imitates the face with crosswise horns, on which the Lord hung as the world trembled, pouring out innocent blood for the sinner.

But below this cross, which a double bar joins in solid weight, at the lowest end of the extended metal, there is a little crown surrounded with various gems. With this too the Lord's cross, girded as with a diadem, shines out with the eternal image of the life-giving wood. This alone, of the whole body of his theft, that thief left untouched by the iron with which he had broken the rest; and when, as he was caught and ungirded, his clothing undone, the fragments of the booty slipped out and fell, the sight of the thing then confused the hearts of the finders themselves with mixed feelings. They rejoice at what is found, but grieve at what is broken; when they begin to seek the reason, marvelling at the robber, cautious and bold at once, blind in what he broke and cautious in what he left, then he confesses to the astonished men his crime and the divine power; for he had cut up everything, in his mind, but this one thing he had kept by divine power, in that the cross enclosed in it forbade the robber, however bold, with a power that made him sluggish. He himself confessed the crime of his mind and, bearing witness to the power of the cross, said that as often as he had armed his hands against that crown joined to the cross in close fitting, they had fallen as if broken, the blow recoiling, and his sick arms had grown numb, their sinews loosened. Here it pleases me to rise up briefly against the wretched thief: Unhappy man, what madness had so turned your mind that, caught by so great a light of truth, you did not hasten to forestall every search, flying back, to bring back your theft of your own accord? Did so great a force crush your greedy mind with darkness that you dared to hide in your bosom that part which, as God kept you off, you so often feared to violate?

Tell me, where did that fear of yours flee, and whence did it return, so that headlong boldness so badly hardened your fearless sense? A fearful scorner, you went away both the same and different toward the same form of crime, mixing faith with faithlessness in a divided heart. Did you believe in the power of the cross and the inviolable sign of Christ by fearing to touch it with iron, and deny by carrying it off what you knew in fearing? But your impiety did not profit you, and you, having confessed your folly and the divine signs, have made us exult in a great triumph of the cross. So let us now leave off attacking the captured thief, for whom the poverty of a fraud stripped of its spoils is punishment enough. Now to you, venerable cross of God, I turn my words, and, having spoken, I shall end with thanks in your praise: O cross, great kindness of God, cross, glory of heaven, cross, eternal salvation of men, cross, terror to the wicked, strength to the just, and light to the faithful. O cross, you who granted that God in the flesh should serve salvation on earth and that man in God should reign in heaven; through you the light of truth was opened, impious night fled. You destroyed the shrines, overturned for the believing nations; you are the harmonious clasp of human peace, reconciling man through the covenants of Christ the mediator. You have become a ladder for man, by which he can be carried to heaven. Be always a pillar for the godly and an anchor for us, so that our house may stand firm and our fleet sail well, resting on the cross, gaining by faith a crown from the cross.