Poems 21.165–21.741

This day, then, which we recall with yearly vows, is not the day of his contest, but of his burial, on which, the two substances separated from each other, the soul flew to God, while the flesh, returned to earth, rested hidden in the tomb. And rightly this is marked as the birthday of the saints, on which, having done with the law of the flesh, they are stripped of the chains of mortality and are born to God into the kingdoms above, and bring with them the glad hope of rising again. I have always honoured this day in such a way that I would think it more my birthday than the day on which I was born in vain. For that day is more fittingly to be mourned by me, on which, created into this world, I, a sinner, fell from the womb of a sinful woman, conceived out of black iniquities, so that my mother bore me already guilty. Cursed, then, be the day on which I, wretched, was brought forth from the iniquitous into iniquities. Blessed be this birthday for me too, on which Felix, born in heaven as my patron, rose to that power by which he could, having purged me of my dregs, loose me from chains and, redeemed, release me from the mournful death of my birth. This same day always recurs for all as the year runs round the world in its circles; but since every year grace renews the diversity of gifts which Christ gives to his companion, that Felix may give them to me, it is changed, and is not the same day that comes to all, bringing the varied themes of my songs.

So let us see what new thing this year has brought me, from which I may flower with new words. I shall not go far, nor take for myself from afar things past in time or absent in place. They are present, the gifts themselves are held close at hand; you all see the gifts given us this year, joined in the one bosom of Felix: slaves of Christ, once nobles of the earth, but now inhabitants destined for heaven, whom Christ himself, who had created them rich, has made poor in this world, so that he may carry them into his kingdom, cast down from the citadel of earthly honour: Apronianus, the glory of the Turcian family, a boy in age, an old man in mastery of the flesh's senses, noble by an ancient lineage of the toga, but more illustrious by the Christian name, who, with the glory of old and new birth mixed, is an old senator of the curia, new to Christ. Near him is a companion under an equal yoke, younger in age, Pinianus, equal in faith, himself a boy illustrious by ancient blood, of the family of the first consul in the chief city: that Valerius who, by consular lineage, holds the first name in the Latin Fasti, whom Rome, the kings expelled, added to Brutus, is the ultimate founder, far back, of the family of this Valerius, now a Christian consul. O happy vein! Though that man, having died in pagan error, does not grasp this good of his stock, sunk in the black lake of hell, yet we, beholding with faithful light the past and present works of the lofty Creator in the human state, marvel, and are amazed at the godly sons of the impious, prepared from ancient ages by the lines of mystical successions;

yet in the darkness of impious minds we see that seeds of light flashed out in the very time of the ancient night, those in whom, though pagans, mind and will were approved by the law of nature. Hence in some of their descendants now the vein of the ancient fathers answers from time to time; as that man, the remotest ancestor of my Pinianus now, chosen to set his fellow citizens free into liberty after the hard rule of kings, foreshadowed the rise of this descendant, who, pursuing pride with his ancestral mind, for a better cause drove slavery from himself, conqueror of his own body, and, the kingdom of the devil driven from his members, the chaste liberty of a faithful soul now tramples the yoke of sin in spiritual peace; and in this the boy, serving as a soldier in the consulship of Christ, reproduces something of that ancestor, that, taking counsel to set free, he dispenses to God the godly office in the work of redemption, thus far emulating his ancient ancestor, in that he frees his household from slavery, as that man freed citizens. But what that man had done in one city, and that small, in the first years of Rome, this man now does in many cities set in different parts of the world, kind everywhere to his own and to strangers. For he drives the servile yoke from the necks of very many free men with his holy wealth, releasing with gold from the chain of interest those bound by debt in the darkness of prison.

These, then, Felix, hidden in his bosom, has housed in his dwellings at Christ's command, and has taken them with me as everlasting guests. Glad now in these helpers on both sides, I dedicate a vow of three under one voice, one spirit speaking with the affection of three. Magnify God with me, and in wise and honourable songs, boys of one mind, sing psalms. As the ten-stringed psalteries sound when their strings are struck, and discordant strings come together in equal measures, so let the godly lyre of our frame resound, as if a threefold tongue sounded from one lip. For we are three in number, yet one in minds, and more souls come together in these three, whose names, set down, the heavenly book keeps: first of the choir is Albina with her equal Therasia; a sister is joined to this yoke, so that the third, the leader of the band with her hymn-singing choirs, is the mother Avita. These three mothers have two children of one sex, a twin flower, Melania, Albina's offspring, and Eunomia. These same are children to us men too; for those whom sex divides, piety joins together. With father Paulinus, this Turcius is equally a father, but age makes me a father, offspring makes him one. From different veins we are joined in one name, not both old men, yet both fathers. So this whole company together: three names are mothers, four are in the children, in the fathers two. For here is the boy, Melania's husband in the body of Christ, to whom God gave to take his name from the pine, so that the boy, born for eternal life, might take his name from that tree which flourishes without end.

For the pine, always standing with flourishing crown, always loving to set its lofty foliage on high ridges, does not change its appearance with the seasons (for under heat and snow it stands like itself with green foliage), and, fruitful, as a mother it holds within, for food, the tender milk of a strong nut under its crinkled covering, and its rich wood sweats out fragrant resin, so that the tree is not barren even in its timber. This tree, then, is a type of the eternal body, beautiful, fruitful, long-lived, lofty, fragrant, green. This blessed boy will be for the Lord like this tree, so that grace may remain everlasting for him. And now, planted for God, he lives, and with holy progress raises his fruitful head like the tall pine. He stands out for me as the first son in my own flock; but I have another equal light in Asterius, whom his parents, of one mind in true piety, established sacred to Christ as an infant, so that, like Samuel, marked from his first years, he might grow up vowed among the saints, God nourishing him. He first loosed his babblings under the name of Christ, and the Lord's name was his first speech, and now, born for the heavenly kingdoms with God as parent, he shines alike with a starry name and face. Godly grace made this boy also the brother of his father; for they were born together from the holy stream. Those whom nature had divided by generation, God, by his kindly gift, will carry as brothers into his kingdom. So let all nine of us, parents with our offspring together, be like one lyre with harmonious breast; let us all make of ourselves a lyre into one song, composed of different strings.

Let Aemilius come as tenth. Then at last, with the number full, the mystic law will sound in us together. For with this number of persons, on the tortoiseshell of peace, the living string will speak the saving work. Felix will be the plectrum of this lyre; with this plectrum Christ, triumphant, will strike the ten-stringed lyre. This lyre will sound in us, as Christ makes the music, a harmony full of perfect senses, if our peace is in tune with God in all its strings, so that we may be united in body, mind, and faith. For such a man fills out the lyre with holy laws, composed in all measures for life, whose life agrees with the sacred law in all things; for every string will sing with unbroken thread. Now to you, revered parent, eternal patron, my sponsor, Felix, most dear to Christ, I shall turn my speech and render thankful words. You have bestowed many gifts on me with varied presents; all things that produce the substance of the present life and the hope of the future I remember owing to you, to whom Christ gave me as a slave from my first years. If eloquence ran for me with the waves of a river, and I had a thousand mouths sounding with a hundred tongues, perhaps not even, filled with these riches from a gathered fountain, could I run through all the gifts of Felix, the great gifts the Lord Christ gave to his friend, which the confessor poured over to me, his servant and nursling. Which shall I put before which? Many great things meet together, different in gift but equal in weight, nor among them can I distinguish what I should choose to mention first; abundance confuses the ready distinction of judgment.

If I unroll everything, going back to the first beginning, all that you granted me with equal kindness at various ages, I could sooner count the hairs of my own head than relate your gifts toward me, good Felix. You first cast for me, by saving causes, the seeds of heavenly things, if I could but attain them. For as a boy, brought from the western shores of the Gauls, as soon as I touched your threshold with trembling step, seeing the wondrous proofs of sacred works teeming before your doors, where you are enclosed with buried body and are spread far and wide by lofty merits, I drank in with my whole heart faith in the divine name, and, rejoicing in your light, I came to love Christ. With you as guide, in early youth, I bore the honour of the fasces, and with you governing my hand and keeping my soul safe, I remained pure of the danger of human blood. Then also, as a youth, I cut the first offerings of my beard before your throne, as if you were clipping it; already then, the pledge of a dwelling sent ahead through my office, I fixed a dwelling to be measured out in Campanian places, you founding the future lodgings of your servant, when, breathing on me with silent mind, you bade me take care that the road leading to your house be fortified and paved, and that a roof rise in a long stretch adjoining your buildings, under which the needy first dwelt. After this the house, built with a doubled roof, grew, which now remains hospitable for our cells; the portico below serves the sick poor, and bears us, living in the roofs added above, in lodgings set upon it, and provides wholesome fellowship with the needy for our wounds under one dwelling, so that we may provide friendly benefits to one another in turn: they, praying, may strengthen our foundations, we may shelter the brotherly bodies of the needy under a roof.

So when, relieved of the twice-three bundle of rule, I laid down the axe stained by no slaughter, you called me back, and I was restored to my anxious mother on the shore of my native soil. Then, as a pilgrim, I went across the ridges of the Pyrenees to the neighbouring Iberians. There you allowed me to be joined in marriage by human law, so that you might purchase the life of two together, and through the yoke of the flesh the doubled salvation of souls might make up for the delayed salvation of one. From that time, although my life ran by another path, and I lived far away in another world, where Gaul, sounding round, is beaten by the tide of the Ocean sea, yet in mind I was never torn away from this seat, and I always clung to the bosom of Felix, and in turn I felt Felix stand by my affairs for every good, in all things to be done at home and abroad. My property and the defence of my property was Felix alone, with Christ's divinity appeased, always averting adversity and granting prosperity. You, Felix, always fortunate for me, lest I be wretched, were father and guardian with constant kindness. And when I was in trouble over the blood of my murdered brother, and my brother's case brought me the danger of his kinship, and the confiscator was already approaching my property, you, father, rescued my neck from the sword, my patrimony from the treasury, and kept me and mine for Christ the Lord. For with what counsel Christ then brought help to my affairs and to my life, and how mightily the care of Felix was present, the great outcome of things afterward taught, by which the lot and purpose of my life was changed, my faith renouncing the world, fatherland, and home.

Faith carried on an exchange of the goods given up in various lands, and, everything sold off, bought a cross to be carried. So the property of earth bought the hope of the heavenly kingdom; for the hope of faith is stronger than the property of the flesh. This hope, resting on God, brings forth an everlasting property; but fleshly property destroys heavenly hope; yet that hope, if it prevails with faith conquering, does not at once take away the property, but reforms it, well changed by divine right, bringing back an eternal property from a fragile one, and, removing it from earth, setting it in heaven, where Christ, the faithful guardian, holds what is entrusted; nor does he keep the deposit only in the amount in which he took it from here, but will repay the talents entrusted multiplied with interest to those who have believed, and will make himself the property of believers. And what property can be more precious than this property? If the whole world had been my private property, would this possession be better than the Lord Christ? And who granted me to be, even in hope, the possessor of so great a property? Who compelled me to scorn that property for Christ, so that he might turn Christ into my property? Who but you, Felix, always my great power, enemy to my sins and friend to my salvation? You changed my fatherland for a better provision, giving yourself to me in place of my fatherland. You broke our fleshly chains. You made us, freed from the stain of perishing blood, migrate from the shore of our native land to your family and breathe heavenly things with great souls. You, changing our lineage from mortal ancestors, will make our names, among the friends of the heavenly Lord and signed in the everlasting book, with the birth of our mortal origin transferred, blotted out for death and transcribed for salvation.

What had I like these, when I was called a senator, such as I now have here, when I am called needy? See, throughout the many halls of the blessed martyr, ample in space and lofty in roofs and showy with deeply hollowed coffered ceilings, watered with fountains and wreathed with porticoes, everywhere, on every side alike, whatever through these places is cultivated, celebrated, held in the name of blessed Felix, in all these spaces is my house. Nor is there any place joined to and set in his buildings which does not lie open to me as my property. But why should I boast of this gift, if, a home-born guest, I possess the property of beloved Felix under a visible roof of stones? How much more is it for me that Felix himself, by God's gift, is my house, in whom my life lives and possesses a house that will fall in no years? For that Felix's house is also my house, he himself granting me the lawful reins of his right, our boldness proves even by these services: that we have received companions under the hospitable roofs, and now all of us with equal right hold the rights of Felix, and are cherished in the bosom of father Felix as joined children: those whom you know, whom you see even now in the very roofs of Felix, guarding the lodgings marked out with me, forgetting the lofty roofs of their old houses, and remaining more safely in narrow cells near the martyr, in a small place, ambition scorned. For Christ is near to the modest, turns away from the lofty, and frequents the narrow roofs of a poor man's hut more than the lofty pinnacles of proud estates. So, as I compare the roofs I now dwell in with the summits left behind, what I now have with what I remember having had, judge, if you please, with just verdicts among yourselves.

What house so beautiful, what field so fertile ever was mine in mortal property, as Christ has now given me in this poverty, through whom Felix abounds for me, a rich possession with inexhaustible revenue? If I go back over my estates from my old census, whatever once was great for me in any matter was earth, and the windy appearance of an empty shape; or if it was gold or gems, that furniture was a cheap price to the good, a precious poison to the greedy. But now, empty of riches, or rather more truly free of condemned burdens, I enjoy a poverty carefree of having, nor do hostile chains have a fringe by which to hold one who is stripped. He goes out lightly, with an easy body, whom the enticing image of the deceiving world does not choke with any loves through its varied appearances. O poverty of Christ, revered by me and more precious than the whole world! You enrich with heavenly treasure those you strip of wealth; you purge them as of the rubble of earth, you destroy earthly things in us, and in turn you build eternal ones; you turn the losses of earth into the price of life by a new right, reversing loss and gain, so that money kept makes loss for us, and money not kept makes gain; but in a sinister way the same money poured out is loss. For it profits no one to pour out his goods except in the name of Christ and by God's precept; for what is spent on profane vices truly perishes. Luxury and ambition, in the great danger of disease, equal the crime of avarice, because in both there lies an equal cause of death, which shameful lust accomplishes as does the evil-counselling desire for worldly things.

In these riches you want me poor, best Felix, so that you may make me rich in life, and by a poor man's way of life make me exempt from the endless death to be paid by the rich of the world, for whom the deadly use of gold brings forth eternal fires along with the worms. You want us joined to you not only by living under your roofs, we whom you are preparing to nourish for yourself into the fellowship of eternal life too, and to lead to that form which you, made perfect in the image of Christ the Lord, bore on earth, once a man made poor from rich. For to whom does your poverty lie unknown, which, rejoicing, as a confessor you took on for the holy name, your wealth proscribed, and in which, until old age, you always tilled a rented garden, Felix? Therefore you strive to make all whom you receive under your hospitable roof like yourself in godly poverty; for an unlike form could not come together with you. For as far as the wolf is discordant with the lamb and light with darkness, so far apart are the way of the rich man and the way of Christ; for the broad way lies open, which, slippery, on a downward slope, tends to hell, which drives the greedy rich, pushed by their own masses, to be carried into Tartarus. But the way which is Christ's, which lies open to kindly confessors and martyrs, opens a steep road to few. This way, then, does not take in the stuffed; it shuts out the laden. Therefore it befits the servant and follower of the blessed martyr to be pulled tight, and, stripped of troublesome fetters, to become thin by wholesome poverty and smooth, so that he may pass through the narrow gate and climb the lofty mountain of the Lord. But why do I, imprudent in weighing things, set these things down in place of your great gifts, best father?

However great these things are for me too, yet they are small, if I speak of greater things. For what fraction of your works toward us is the reckoning of this gift, that you gave land for lodging and granted us to build houses to live in, when you, father, offered us even your inmost being? For what else but your inmost being did you bring forth for us, when, holy one, you deigned to open the inner parts of your tomb, reasons having been raised from the hidden dust, and willed by so great a sign to show us inserted into you by a special love, so that the seat of your body, silent and fixed through so many ages past, kindly one, you willed to be opened in our time, as the ash of the dust suddenly came forth? So I shall run over those riches of Felix in his praises with hastening passage, as lesser gifts, the many he has diligently assigned to us, now received in his bosom, nor will he, prodigal, cease to flow toward us continually with countless gifts of rich help. Not only supplying those things which the use of the body needs, he has added also those for which even now the favour of praise is sought and after us the name of honour is kept, so that he, buried through so many ages past, allowed his halls to grow or be renewed with porticoes and houses built by our work. He also revealed to us the holy secrets of his own tomb. I shall tell the venerable gift in a few words, so that it may shine as a pattern of the great kindness with which he deemed us, unworthy as we are, worthy of so great a love, that, letting our eyes come almost to the awful secret, he disclosed his bones as if to his own marrow. So I shall tell you in full order the reason by which he granted us to see things near his limbs and to touch the very chest of his body laid to rest.

The appearance of the place remains known to all: above the very throne of the hidden martyr, with the railing enclosing the tomb, there is in the middle a broad slab of marble, clothed with fixed silver metal. The surface of this slab opens with a double mouth, providing openings below for nard poured in, which the spirit, coming from the seat where the holy ash is laid, sanctifies, healing with a secret breath. These little vessels, which had drunk the liquids poured in as usual, suddenly, as earth rose up from the tomb, and those who had put nard in the place, preparing to draw it out to carry away for themselves, find, with wondrous novelty, instead of nard, the little vessels filled with a heap of bursting sand, and, frightened, draw back their hands with much dust from the jaws of the tomb. The new thing moves all and kindles zeal to inquire into the cause of the sudden portent. So it is agreed to fix a day and, the marble removed, to search the inner seat. For this, I confess, a too anxious care feared: whether perhaps the dust held something of the godly body, which the hand had drawn up, ready, out of the tomb through the open holes, and was carrying, clotted with various dirt, mixed with little bones together with sherds and rubble. Hence men's fears, in talk among themselves, supposed that perhaps some little animal, shut in hidden holes, was spitting out the sacred ash of the holy flesh from deeper down, as wild monsters in deserted fields are wont to dig the earth within with sharp snouts and pour out black heaps around their pits, so also from the inner hiding place of holy Felix. What made this more wondrous was that the marvellous eruption of heaped earth came at intervals of days.

So on the agreed day the work, useful in many respects, is taken up. The bishop sends all the presbyters to us. While they watch, the craftsman's hand sets to doing the priests' orders; and their first labour was to remove the railings from the place, and with following care to lift the clinging slabs, their nails loosened. But when we saw the chest set down under the covering of marble remaining with the joining of the throne unbroken, then secure faith drove the danger of error from the doubtful heart, since it proved by touch and eye that, the throne unharmed and the tomb nowhere cracked, the body of the veteran martyr, walled round on every side with strong defence, had lain open to no sacrilege, and that his godly bones kept the worthy honour of his flesh, bones to which holy spirits never cease to be present, whence a living grace abides at godly tombs, which proves that the bodies of those who died in Christ, buried without death, sleep for a time in calm sleep. So, the honour of Felix's tomb restored, we leave everything carefully secured, so that now, until the day of the Lord, when the due glory will shine on the saints raised together under Christ as leader, the bones may rest undisturbed in their bed, and the same peace that awaits the holy soul in the region above may keep the venerable body on earth. What remains for me still to tell? As if indeed I had worthily set forth what I have sung, or had told all the gifts of my lavish patron in full speech. Many lie hidden in their number, yet all of them sit fixed in our remembering breast, and very many have already been recalled, and more still remain to be recalled. But the rule of governing a book warns that the greatest must be picked out from the many.

When all the works had been built that are seen to stand by art in various ways, lofty through the halls, and surrounded far and wide through the forecourts by extended porticoes, all the buildings together seemed to beg only for the gift of water for their sorrowful inhabitants. I myself even, I confess, used now with complaining voice to accuse my Felix, as if he were pressing on sluggishly with these prayers, because he allowed the sharing of water to be denied us so long by the allied city. But he was drawing out delays for those hurrying with unconsidered mind, by a better counsel, linking them to fitting times; for thus the order of the works rightly required that the completion of these undertakings come first, which diligent care was preparing with many-sided effort around the holy halls of the venerable martyr; and when divine grace had put the finishing hand to the works, then, the vows ended in full order, it would channel the fountains, led into the built courts. In short, as soon as all the work here stood in finished preparation, the dry thirst of our vow was not drawn out long, and soon, God willing, the people's hearts, harsh before, gave easy consent with ready heart. I shall tell, then, the gift of water. Grant me now, Felix, by entreating the Lord, that speech may run for me in words with as easy eloquence as the fountains you have granted to stream with abundant flow into your forecourts and houses. All the things which the kindly Lord, through your intercession, has given us, he has adorned and increased with such a gift, by which he brought fountains to the thirsty fields.

That rock, Christ, flowed again for the godly from his breast, bringing back the gift of ancient kindness, so that he might moisten with unaccustomed water all the sand that was dry before, and make the waterless land stream with sudden floods, and that into the holy halls of his Felix, for the guest peoples gathered from various nations, through wells and pools and capacious basins alike, new drinks might run from streams poured abundantly. Who would grant me, highest fountain, that you water my deserts, and break through the pumice rock of my heart, and that I found my house on the rock and drink from you the water that would produce in my dry breast a living vein of water springing up eternally? But even this drop of slender eloquence, with which I speak of you, is surely drawn from there, whence also the source overflows into rivers. For who could speak of you even slightly without you, Christ, highest power of the highest Father? Your Spirit himself inspires you to be spoken of, the light in which we see the light of Father and Son as equal, so that, with the Holy One as guide breathing on us, we may confess Christ as God with the Father. But since, while I bear the name of the living fountain in my mouth, a drop has dripped into my mouth from the river of the Word, perhaps my lips will bring some taste from here, and now my tongue, not parched with dry throat, but as if more richly moistened, will speak of the gift of water. Among all the works built, which are seen to be many, this place requires me to set the name of devoted Abella into my little verses; for she seems worthy of the honour of this name, so that she too may be praised in the praise of Felix, because for Felix's honour she took on herself of her own accord a labour, sweating at which in the heat among sheer rocks she thought rest and reward.

Small in walls, but this town will be reported great for this holy work. Six miles from our Nola it lies among high-ridged mountains, from which it draws close at hand the waters that rise there and receives them into one basin, whence, through inserted pipes, it claims for itself the first of the flow and with the rest of the stream flows to the city of Nola, watering many estates here and there in the fields as well. But let me return to the thanks owed for the work as a gift; for she gave labour abundantly and freely for calling back the aqueduct, which long age had broken, to its vessels and channels again. The place, set among high rocks, with no path of roads, would not admit even pack animals, so that the heights of the immense mountain made it hard to find labour ready even for pay; hence a greater honour of reward enriches Abella, because, readily serving the sacred honour of Felix, with lavish piety she spent unpaid hands. One could see eager throngs from the whole people, council and populace driven together with one mind, roused at new morning, running gladly to the work, and eager, vying with one another, carried to the highest peaks, and, with necks bowed under the heavy load of a basket and with rubble carried along over the bushy heights, repeating frequent returns under the burning sun, and stretching the whole day, as long as the long day lingers in summer, from dawn to the late hours of evening, and, wakeful, their bodies barely refreshed by a short night, rising again before day to their workmen's tools, and, God quickening them, not feeling the labour.

In short, the grace of the great work went forward so that, as if in play, in a few days the whole work reached its end, completed with the task perfected, and the channel, from the distant mountains, in a packed column, where before it had been interrupted by long decay, receiving little springs from different rocks on every side, called back the gathered water to cities once thirsty, and, overflowing along the full course of the channels for many miles of road and through the buildings of our Felix, filled a new basin, with the Summus overflowing. And what gave proof of the divine gift: the water ran here more abundantly in the summer months than it used to flow before from winter rains. Here, my Nola, I will now rightly set you as defendant before our common patron, and, keeping a calm mind amid the anger of gentle piety, I will play the part of a roused patron, rebuking his little daughter in the words of the old complaint. For when I sought, Nola, a just share in your spring, why, troubled by fear, did you harshly refuse the hospitality of shared water? Forgetting to respect divine rights, you thought my wishes were for human uses, and, forgetting Felix, you believed you would be giving to me, and you groaned sadly that, if you granted it, your homeland would soon be dry, its drink taken away, and you often shouted this in a stirred-up uproar, not knowing that fountains would be ready through divine resources, as you also experienced. For soon God the Creator himself rebuked minds sluggish to trust Christ, when, after the peace agreed, you held the use of the stream dutifully divided with Felix as partner, so as to rebuke your complaint the more with surpassing goodness. He did not, as you feared, make you thirst by dividing the water, but, as author and nourisher of things and of men together, who founded all things by his word, he showed you that the thing was his which you, distrusting the Lord of things, denied to his friend as if it were your own;