Poems 20.1–21.129

Good masters often serve their dear nurslings with godly mind, protect their subject slaves with fatherly love, and favour with closer care those to be cherished whom, with searching affection, they see more in need of help and lacking strength. And if one of them, as the solemn custom of human usage demands, wishes to celebrate some vow and cannot accomplish it with his needy resources, the poor slave is cared for by his master's zeal, and the master, rich in wealth, gives him what the poor man lacked, the expense of a heaped table. This is the condition given to me under Felix as patron; let nothing be mine from myself, so that all things may be mine through him; for at his birthday now, as indeed before in past years in which this day flowered for me, I had no means to prepare a solemn feast for my vows, and the day was pressing, and no ready means was yet at hand from anywhere; suddenly, behold, my abundant patron gave me the means to set out a lavish banquet: two pigs along with a heifer; and with their flesh we fed the poor, and we took the material for our song from these same animals, since God lately produced miracles with remarkable signs through these very animals, goading men by deep reason to attend to Christ and not to prefer the desire of the flesh to faith; for the sequence I must tell will teach that God has given the highest signs through cattle lacking human reason, to the lamentable shame of our avarice. I shall not sing fictions, though I use the art of poetry. I shall tell with historical faithfulness, without a poet's deceit; for far be it from a servant of Christ to utter falsehoods. Let these arts please the nations, as they worship false things;

but for us the one art is faith, and our music is Christ, who taught a wondrous peace of once discordant harmony to come together in himself, the harmony he brought together into one body by taking up man, he who mingled kindly God with man by infusing his power, to establish the two in himself and to make natures far apart into one; so that God might be man, God was made man, made so by himself, who is God from God his Begetter, to whom it is not by grace but by nature that he is the only heir of the highest Father, alone having as his own what by gift he grants to have to those whom kindly faith has given to merit divine things. He, then, is truly the author of our music, he is the true David, who restored the lyre of this body, lying long with its rotten frame, and, when it was silent with its strings broken by the ancient crime, the Lord repaired it for his own use by taking it up, and, joining mortals to God, made all things flourish again in the likeness of their first form, so that all things might be new, as old decay departs from all. To renew this lyre, God himself, the master, himself hung his own lyre, once laid aside, on the tree of the wood, and renewed it by the cross that kills the sin of the flesh. And so he composed one mortal lyre, fitted to heavenly measures, out of various nations, joining peoples of every kind into one body. Then, the strings struck by the plectrum of the Word, the voice of the gospel lyre fills all things with the praise of God; Christ's golden lyre in the whole world sounds through countless tongues in one melody, and new songs answer God on matched strings. But I shall turn my foot back to what I began; for it is time and the hour to offer the promised dishes, to set before you a meal to be taken chastely through attentive ears.

I shall not fetch from an ancient age what I am about to tell; I shall speak of things seen here a few days ago. A certain man had come here to pay a vow that pleased him, a stranger to our seats from the territory of the city of Abellinum. He had brought from there a pig prepared with careful attention and long kept back, so that it might grow in years and fatness alike; and when he came, he slaughtered the fat animal of his vow, as is the custom of those who vow. Report had kindled keen hunger for great portions in the mouths of the needy, and all the old men, in hope of a large share, stretched their gaping throats toward the rich feast. Meanwhile the needy giver divides the cut meat in unequal parts: he takes away for his own the middle flitch, and cooks only the innards of the cut belly, and distributes only the vitals of the slaughtered pig to the poor, and leaves himself the whole body, and thinks he has fulfilled his vow, and gladly begins to return, daring to put those remains on his beast of burden with him, and wrongly believing that in them he was carrying home holy pledges of the vow that pleased him, in which the same miser was carrying the loss of his soul and a knot for his road. In short, he had soon gone not even a thousand paces on the way, in bright daylight and on a level road, with no darkness to frighten nor rough places to trip him, when he slipped from his horse, and, as if fixed to the ground, he could not rise again, trying to stand with renewed strength, and began to cry that his feet were bound, and to prove it, lying there, with his soles joined as by a fetter. Here another wonder is joined to the same event;

for while the sorrowful crowd of his relatives stands around him lying there in such weakness, the beast of burden, which still had only the pork as its load, left empty of its rider and driver, of its own accord, with no one turning it, reining itself in, as if it knew the cause of the stumbling, or had seen someone forbidding the road on which it had begun to go, fled, turned back its path and course, and ran back with hastening step to the house of its hosts, flying ahead of all those whom attentive care for the fallen man held, as little by little the faithful company carried him in broad daylight back into the holy halls, the sick man's heavy body borne up by their hands; he was straining as if with a broken body, his stiff knees refusing to walk, confessing with tearful voice the blind bonds of his feet and at the same time the deserving cause of his fall and punishment, and praying to be brought back to the very threshold of Felix the physician, to find sure healing there soon. As he was carried by hands and through the crowds into the sacred courts, the throngs marvelling, the old men set out on long benches in a threefold company were astonished, the pitiable common crowd of the needy, and the white-haired mothers sitting with them in their ranks. Besides, many whom their devotion had brought to the holy buildings from various distant shores saw the godly sign, since at the same time, indeed on the same day, there was so wonderful a change of things. The same man who a little before had left the same threshold on his own feet now, brought back, is carried in on others' feet, hanging, his body borne up.

Elsewhere, with none of the followers to watch it, the horse, still laden with the pork, stood before the doors of the host, nor had anyone well known to it stood by, who had the care to relieve it of its burden and lead it, returned, into the familiar stable. Yet it, as if filled with human reason, stood like one looking for his own and waiting for them at once, keeping its tracks fixed in one place, twitching its ear and blowing through its nostrils, seeking the known smells of the men it was used to. The hosts wondered what flight, what state of the horse this was, and the strangeness of the thing made the familiar animal doubtful to friends, and there was no one to tell what had happened, since all were crowding round inside the man who had been carried by hands into the holy hall of the martyr, where the sick man, poured out before the holy threshold, his body thrown down and clinging to the embraced doorposts, fixed kisses as a suppliant and washed them with weeping, and, recognizing himself to be the source of his own pain, uttered such complaints, accusing himself: “Woe is me, who have deserved to take such a punishment, wretch that I am, in this seat, in which, if any wretch arrives, he is made happy! But I confess that I have received and suffer a just ruin, equal to my malicious desert, so that, a guilty man, I am now punished amid these very thresholds, burning, with a pain that both burns and binds my feet, on which, alas, mad that I was, violating faith by fraud, I turned the gifts of my offered vow into the loss of my salvation. Yet there is, there is something, I confess, that I can say: that now the sad things are changed for me into glad by a welcome turn, and that, as my mind looks to better things, with the evils broken, the very punishments have begun to grow sweet, from which this very grace now comes well to me, by which it has come about that so soon I, wretch, am allowed to touch again the venerable threshold of Felix.

For if this fall had been none, or slight, so that I could carry on the course I had seized, then I would have been more unhappy from my prosperity, because the guilt would have remained harmful, and I would not have felt the wound driven inward into the bones of the soul, with the flesh rebellious. For the vigour of an unharmed body would have hidden the danger of my unjust desert, and a hardened mind would have bound the guilty man inert, had punishment not bound the fallen one. So, mighty physician in the name of Christ the Lord, Felix, let this now be enough for you and for the mighty Lord, that not anger but kindness, friendly to salvation, produced my punishment, so that, bound in body, I might be released from guilt. Behold, the bad servant, the greedy runaway, you have rightly dragged back with chains put on him for his crime. An unhappy debtor, I am held, bound, burned, set before all as a model of divine fear. All of you, attend with trembling minds to these things which now you see me, wretch, bear as a lesson to the rest. For are some free of this error? But it pleased God that the example be made in one, so that my punishment may be a warning to those for whom there is no amendment. But now spare your wretched one, I pray, best Felix, spare willingly, help with favour; extreme pain urges me to repeat my clamorous prayers; be present quickly, lest hastening death forestall the physician who delays. But I know that this is the Lord's hand, which strikes and which will spare at your word; only hasten for me, weary and now failing, to loosen the chain, which you, saint, see, and I feel; as you secretly and silently bound the fugitive's limbs with a hidden bond, so release the returned one with invisible medicine.”

As he cried such things, clinging to the very doorposts of holy Felix and wiping them with kisses as he licked them, the godly crowd both sees and hears him in astonished gatherings; he himself, lying there, is even now raised up by hope and rebukes all delays and the slow services of his own people. He orders the pig to be brought and soon all its parts to be given back to the poor; he asks only that life be granted him, and that he be fed by the filling of the needy. His companions quickly carry out the faithful orders, vying with one another. They go to the familiar lodging; there the load is taken off the beast, the meat is cut into pieces, and the fire cooks it, divided, in foaming bronze pots. Cooked, it is brought in, in many wide dishes. The hunger of the needy, filled, returns thankful words to God and, appeased, asks pardon for the giver. Without delay, at once, the account of the vow being paid, that debtor is loosed within from the bond of the chain he deserved, and, his feet restored as the Lord pitied him, like a free horse or a bird whose net is broken he flies out and runs in the likeness of a leaping deer. A wondrous proof is held before the eyes. All rejoice at so ready a kindness of God and at the so powerful merit of Felix, that Christ is present in person in him, governing powerfully in both ways according to men's merits, so as to be physician to the repentant and avenger to the wicked. For see how great was the wrong of that fraud, by which the wretch had first divided the pig between the needy and himself, and there, where he ought to have paid the whole vow, had taken only the head and intestines of the pig for them, and had made the remaining part, the whole body, his own, imprudent and shameless; and yet, by that very fraud by which he had been wretched, he was soon made blessed, God changing the guilt by the scourge of kindness.

For such is God's judgment; so God, judge and father and king, tempers the weights of his lofty judgment, that he weighs out a calm justice for all with a moderate balance, and his power, lighter, mixed with goodness, warns the guilty first with a goad rather than destroy them with a thunderbolt, so that, if the stroke of the lash sent ahead has helped, salvation may return safe to the man who repents his misdeeds. But if anyone, warned by the terror of the sacred scourge, refuses to feel the blow, he will go away uncured, and, kept for death, will feel the full wrath. So that man, wretched before, then soon himself blessed, was healed in flesh and soul by such a remedy. But because he recognized the cause, and, recognizing it as he lay there, repented, he found in himself the merit of being cured, and in a short time experienced both: that by a just law the right and work of divine peace and wrath await all, so that avenging punishment may rightly await proud offenders, and kindness may pity and save those who confess. So, his bonds loosened, he was returning, eager in step, the same man who had quickly become weak from sound and quickly free from captive, with glad voice, leaping like that man once, lame from his mother's womb, whom Peter and John commanded at the word of the Lord to rise up into a leap on strong soles. This poor man too was worthy of the threshold of the Beautiful Gate, whom God himself, the God of Peter and of Felix, by the same power of his word has now healed among us, lame from a fall just now, as he had once healed one lame from the womb; by that help he was now going away glad; and he who had poured out sorrowful prayers within, in his wound, see, outside, with a sound body, was returning thanks: “What can I repay to Felix my patron?

What thanks shall I worthily return to him for so great a gift, healed so quickly of so great a wound? I set no fee for a physician nor bore the sad weariness of a sickbed; nor did medicine, more savage than diseases and wounds, attack my body with scalpels or fires or painfully biting juices of various herbs, as happens to those whom a human hand visits with suspect art and always strokes, trembling, with uncertain comfort. See, I, carried in a short space to the very throne of holy Felix and thrown down on the very threshold, broken on marble as cold as it was hard, lay in pain, and my only speech was prayer, faith alone was my medicine; I saw no physician present, and I felt one. Who was the physician here but Christ himself, or Felix, made mighty by Christ in the name of Christ and by his power? I perceived neither at that time, and yet he was present in both, either to rebuke me quickly as a sinner or to heal me as I suffered. Equal was the way, in different form, of the Lord chastising and sparing me. The healer and the avenger lay hidden from the eyes; the punishment and the healing shone forth. Now, with signs completed in full order, I shall go home rejoicing, safe with Felix as my physician and eternal patron; no longer shall I fear any dangers of the road that might meet me as before; for danger will be absent, because the cause of danger has been loosed. Faith not kept had bound me, and now faith duly kept has loosed me; yet may your love, Felix, I pray, always bind me. Tie this chain on me, by which neither death nor life may ever release me from you.

But all, whoever have seen my pains and in your merit beheld the lofty hand of Christ in great signs, ought to recognize how much good my punishment has provided for them, so that now they may beware of sparing earthly things for themselves and, while they grasp at gain, acquiring the loss of salvation. For if it was evil for me to defraud the poor of food from the flesh of a cheap animal, what of those who wrongly embrace riches with vain love, and brood over metals buried along with their heart, and show that these superfluous things lie hidden, which they guard, far withdrawn from their own use? What will they do? What will they say for themselves to you, Christ, they who have seized the share of so many poor and have provided no salvation for themselves from their superfluous property?” One dish has been served. Now we shall set out the welcome courses of a second table; but we shall bring the same meat again, though seasoned with a different sauce. For I shall unfold for you, with wondrous novelty, another wonderful work that Felix played concerning a pig. The event is earlier in time; but, passed over before in our little books, it has been kept to be sung at the present time. Nor does it matter at what time a work was done, since there is one worker in various years, Christ, who does various miracles in praise of his saints in all lands. Certain farmers far from our regions, tilling Apulian fields beyond the city of Beneventum, from their bristly herd chose for themselves one of many piglets while it was still pushing at the milky teats with its tender snout, and, caring for it a long time, they fed the pig for a vow, and began, when it was ready, to lead it to the consecrated hall of holy Felix, so that, slaughtered, it might feed many needy with its great body, and the martyr might rejoice in the poor man filled.

But the pig, heavy with fat that outweighed the strength of its feet, could not carry itself long, and at the first threshold of the road it collapsed of itself, and then could not be moved by voice, hand or goads. Its sorrowing masters left it lying and commended it, abandoned, to their hosts. Their anxious minds wavered in doubt; for their godly hearts would not call back the journey of the vow; again, to go to venerate the threshold of Felix far away empty of the vowed gift shamed them. So this decision settled in their doubtful minds: that they should choose for their vows as many smaller pigs of the same stock as the years to which that pig had grown, which remained inert, weighed down by its own bulk; for their devoted faith, preparing to hasten the payment of the binding vow, thought by such a reckoning to make up for one fat animal with several modest ones. So they came to this sacred place, and when their vows were fulfilled they returned to their lodging, not close by; for at that time the dense crowd with its usual throngs had happened to fill the houses around the martyr's hall. Therefore, content, they went into a cottage far from here in a secluded countryside, from which in the morning they were preparing to set out on their return, when the first dawn reddened, giving birth to the day. When the door of the hut was opened, their host goes out of the house, and the man sees the familiar pig standing before the doors in wondrous readiness, as if it were saying that it was present, sent by the Lord, and like one greeting them it licks the tracks of its rejoicing master, and grunts softly with a gesture to its keeper, fawning, and, sniffing, gives kisses with moving snout, and, as if it recognized that it owed the master's vow, presses forward and invites the slow knives with its throat.

Under what guide, I ask, did it travel roads through unknown territories, or what feet did it take up, to be able to run so far, that pig which, within short spaces, at the very start of the roads, gave out, weighed down by the bulk of its flowing fat? Certainly no hand carried so large an animal along the long highway, nor any fold of a garment, nor did its own mind compel it to make its way through so long a road in an unknown region, since even men vigorous in the reason of the mind, and easily guided through unknown places with a tongue to interpret, if they lack a guide to make the way clear to them, are entangled by blind error in foreign regions. Who then directed the pig's way? Whence its will to follow its masters, or its sense to be aware that it had been prepared for a vow over a long time? Whence did the beast have this care, which rarely stirs the faithful, that, as if it had stayed behind sluggishly, guilty by its own act, the pig, struck with holy fear, should take care to expiate by coming the fault it had incurred by staying behind, and atone for the vice of inert sloth, though it accompanied its departed masters with its service late? A wondrous portent is plain, given by heavenly command to so great a venture of a pig, that it went alone on a long road, and that the pig had so great a mind as to direct itself by a straight path through unknown spaces. And how great is this too, that as it came here from the territory beyond Beneventum, whether it boldly took the public paved roads of the highway, no frequent encounters caught it anywhere, or whether it made its tracks through hidden woods, no hand with iron, no beast with its bite met it. What hand led it alone or protected it on its way?

Surely, hidden by some cloud, it escaped eyes, or, snatched through the air, it came by wind rather than by foot, and, slipping down from a sudden breeze to its master's lodging, it stood, a four-footed guest, before the unknown threshold. I shall tell another wonder, a sign near to this one. For a heifer, of a different kind, from the herd, certain men, who had likewise set out from a distant home, had separated at first from the breast of its suckling mother and reared, pledged as a votive gift for our poor, whom, gathered here in a great crowd, the grace of Felix feeds with the generous help of many. So when the calf was already frisking with grown limbs, made fit for the vow by its developed body, they set out from home; but, as seems to be the custom of those who bring their vows from far away to be paid to the godly martyrs, to yoke the animal to the wagon in which they were to ride, they set about yoking it, though it was unaccustomed, yet as if gentle, its mind already subdued to human uses, for which its masters had taken it, small, from the herd and had made it share their house and food; thinking therefore that its wildness was tamed, and that it would give itself easily under the yoke with teachable neck, they coax it with stroking hand and try to lead it into the narrow space; and it, trusting that the touches were the usual ones playing with it, at first agrees and follows those who call. But when, brought near the yoke, it saw the reins and felt the straps being prepared for its neck, indignant at the trick and suddenly changed, it becomes wild, and takes neither yoke on its neck nor bonds on its throat, and, the hands overcome and the straps shaken off, it springs away from the group holding it and seeks far-off, lonely places, fleeing its masters and its familiar house.

Yet it does not rush far from the sight of men in the manner of wild beasts and hide itself as a fugitive in blind woods; for, fleeing its masters, standing off at a distance as they departed, it so fled that it did not allow itself to be left behind in the countryside. Finally, when it sees the wagon, yoked with a pair of oxen, setting out, it understands as a human does, and, as if aware that it was owed to the vow, begins to be a companion to those who had set out. Nor is it a companion for long; it scorns to go as companion of slow wheels, and, with an excursion as if mocking them, passing the groaning wheels, it looks back at the column of slow effort as it flies ahead, and no longer fears being forced to the yoke, and becomes friendly to the wagon it hated before and goes in front of it, until they came to the consecrated hall of Felix. There it stops its step of its own accord and comes to the one who calls it, and, as if bound by the vow, rejoices to stand in the very place to which the victim owes its own slaughter. That rebellious one, not subject to human bonds, is led to a calm death with no struggle; submitting to the axe its neck, unspoiled by yokes, to make food for the poor from its slain body, it gladly pours out its blood for the vows of its masters. To what end are these things? Is it for cattle, as the apostle says, that God cares? But he who made all things for our sake, as author works all things for us in all things, and through unknowing cattle makes signs that work for us, stirring brute minds through clear tokens to strengthen their faith and to trust the truth, so that men, teachable, their tongues loosed into words, may not be silent about the Lord, of whom dumb beasts speak by signs.

White peace, by a welcome turn of the times, leads the year on with tranquil light after the winters have passed, and opens to secure peoples the day marked by the honour of holy Felix. Triumphant Felix urges us to rejoice with serene minds, now that the darkness of dread war has been wiped away, because he too, a patron of peace, together with the fathers Paul and Peter and with the kindly brothers, the martyrs, has entreated the King of kings with friendly divinity to prolong the times of the Roman empire, and to drive back the Goths who were pressing upon the very jaws of the city, and to turn destruction or chains back upon them, who were threatening the last end to the Roman realms. So now, with fear driven off, as after rains are over it delights to look back at the clouds driven away, so it delights to compare present things with past. How foul was the night through those days that have flowed by, as the year slipped away, when frenzy, kindled by the motions of divine anger, burned in the Latin cities with the enemy let loose! Now likewise behold the gifts of gentle Christ's power; the enemies slaughtered together with their profane king, the victory of the boy Augustus has restored peace, and, tender in years, the same man, strong in arms, prevailed by the power of God and broke the mortal strength of the sacrilegious tyrant, as Christ overcame. But why should I say more here now, since the commonwealth shows that this is not a work special to my Felix? For this cause was cared for by many patrons, so that Roman safety and public life might remain.

Here Peter, here Paul, the chiefs, here all the martyrs, whom the circuit of the great city holds, countless together, and whom, through countless nations with its boundaries spread, the church venerates within the bounds of Romulus, kept anxious vigils together with earnest prayer. My Felix was among these as one of them, a great part in the prayers; but the sum of the gift asked is credited to all, to none privately. So I shall turn back my foot; for I have said enough on a matter in which nothing was Felix's own by merit; yet I could not keep silent, because a portion of praise from this too belonged to Felix, in that the highest power, the mighty King of kings, Christ God, had assented to all the saints together, among whom, mingled in the suppliant flock, he kindly heard Felix with equal goodness. I shall refrain, then, from adding public gifts to his own, and I shall sing the private honours of Felix, and set forth what he does properly here in his own seat. Whence, then, shall I begin the song to be woven? Which good deeds of Felix shall I relate? Shall I rather unfold the many he does everywhere for all, or tell the domestic gifts for which I am his special debtor? These rather I shall recall, which I remember well were bestowed on me and mine; and since in past little books I have told more of those which he granted partly to others and partly mixed with us, now from those riches which he has bestowed abundantly on us I shall weave this little book with grateful mind, and, against my usual habit, with varied measure, as he himself produces varied material for me every year, I shall change my metres, and in one series I shall go, not under one law of the foot of a given song.

For as if in the fruitful field of holy Felix new flowers have sprung up, two shoots of Christ, Turcius with godly face, Suerius in flourishing age, and likewise holy mothers and girls like them, such as was Apphia, that noble sister of Philemon long ago, whom Paul's letter marks in its address, and with them Eunomia, a maiden already betrothed to the eternal bridechambers in heaven, whom Christ, snatched from her mother's breast, dedicated with swift love as pleasing to himself, and poured over her the ointment of his name, from which, her soul's hair dyed and the chaste head of her mind anointed, she breathes the sacred perfumes of the heavenly bridegroom; she is the sister of Melania and as it were her daughter, at whose side she clings exultant, having gained a sister as teacher. Both together, bound by divine dowries, wear on their beautiful breasts, with cultivated minds, the varied jewels of virtues like living necklaces. These a numerous troop of nobles follows, and the holy crowd of a virgin company, of one colour in one fleece. Here Christ, in the beloved Lamb, gladly listens to Eunomia, taught under Melania as leader by her voice, forming the vessels of the psalms with modest measures, because, as God gives the measure, the little leader with chaste mouth guides the blessed dances, companions of the saints. So this grace persuaded me, as I meditated, of a fitting thing: with a song played in many kinds of metres to imitate a garden picked out with various flowers, as I marvel that the bosom of Felix flowers, filled with varied light like a rich countryside, with many guests sent to him with Christ as guide, and with children in a dense band as pledges to father Felix, so that he rejoices that his dwellings have suddenly grown through his bounds with cells everywhere, and that sober roofs at last sound chaste measures with voices fitted to them, and he himself, with full bosom, marvels at nurslings worthy of his lodgings both in body and in speech, and souls equal in virtue in unequal sex;

as on a fruitful hill of olives the old planter rejoices, seeing new shoots from the divine seed of Christ as settlers among his fields. So let the threshing floor of my song flower for me with a new meadow, and, in praise of the Lord, who is the founder of the mouth and of every art, let music run, serving with varied foot. And now let the elegiac follow, with iambics woven in; let the heroic hexameter be the head and foundation of the little book. A sacred day, to be spent in chaste joys and sacrifices, has shone forth with the praise of Felix. Learn that what I have called “praise” is said for “death,” because the death of the godly will rightly be called praise, being precious to the Lord, repaid to God. Hence the prophet too says in the word of God that praise is given to a proven life at its end, and the divine word teaches by the mouth of Solomon that no one is to be praised before death, although some do praiseworthy things in this life, and praise, which is to be sung at the end, cannot be prepared anywhere but in this age. But I believe that since the whole matter of this life, fluctuating and doubtful, hangs in a slippery state, and the wheel turns our age in a short time, rising and falling through rough roads, by which the course of this age must be unrolled, therefore Providence our teacher warns us that before the end no one ought to applaud himself or another, or be confident; though one walk upright in an honourable way, yet he should always fear the stumbling of the foot, until, his courses finished all the way to the goal, he grasps the palm of the glory he has sought.

Therefore the blessed martyrs, whom perfect virtue has raised to the heavenly crown, we all, their descendants in the confession of the Christian name, celebrate with just proclamations of the honour due them, who by shedding their blood for the holy faith sowed the good of eternal fruit, so that, if we walk in the footsteps of the martyrs, we may enjoy rewards equal to our fathers'. Hence, then, the days consecrated to the saints, whether confessors or witnesses consecrated by suffering, the days on which, having finished the day of mortal life, they passed by a life-giving death from the stain of the world to God, the faithful peoples observe with solemn joys, giving thanks in honour of Christ, like this day of holy Felix in peace, on which the old man once closed the life of his body, having first fought the battles of confession, but consecrated by a bloodless end; victor after wars, taken up on a day of peace, at Christ's call he left the earth exulting and made his passage into the dwellings above, not cheated of the martyr's crown, because he had borne the vow of suffering in his mind. For often the mighty soldier entered the contest, and always, the enemy overcome, the confessor returned; but God, content with a prepared mind, kept him, not denying him the martyr's crown, but adding also the priest's crown, so that, having gained the palm in a bloodless battle, he might also possess the reward of one who fought, with the purpling laurel of confession, and, wreathed with the fillet of peace on a priest's stole, the same Felix, God's confessor and presbyter, might be twice crowned.