Carmen ad Felicem de resurrectione mortuorum (cum observatione praevia E. Martene)

THE SONG TO FELIX, ON THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD.

(From the Most Ample Collection of Ancient Writers and Monuments, vol. IX.)

PRELIMINARY OBSERVATION

OF DOM EDMOND MARTÈNE.

The Song on the Resurrection of the Dead, which we place at the threshold of this volume, bears the name of St Cyprian in a very old manuscript of Corbie, written in majuscule letters nine hundred years ago. But who that Cyprian may be is not easy to divine. For what stands in the way of our attributing it to that most celebrated bishop and martyr of Carthage, whose excellent writings are read with the greatest delight,

seems to be the excessively rough style and the laws of metre too often violated; although the grave and vigorous sentiments are by no means foreign to him, nor would they be judged unworthy of so great a doctor. But neither does the author's age seem far removed from the time of Cyprian of Carthage. For if he is not older than him, a number of things prove that he was at least his contemporary. Certainly that he lived above all at the time when

the worship of idols was still flourishing, he hints in these verses, in which he brings in the impious at the Last Judgement, driven by the goads of conscience, detesting that same worship of idols:

There each will confess the savage deeds of his life. Now first whoever had before thought ill of God, and [those who] had worshipped wandering stones with a false divinity, and [whoever] had consecrated with fire altars stained with blood, and had feared painted figures without voice, etc.

That he also flourished in the most turbulent times of the nascent Church, when the heralds of the sacred Word were handed over to cruel death, and as unconquered witnesses sealed with the shedding of their blood the faith of Christ which they preached, he shows clearly enough when he rebukes the savagery of the tyrants against the Christians in these words:

You, however, denied this Lord of heaven and earth, and rather killed the just with cruel slaughter, and very many of you often put to flight the heralds of God; truth always clung to you as a crime.

Add to these that he hints, not obscurely, at the opinion of the Millenarians concerning the earthly kingdom of Christ after the resurrection, an opinion which scarcely reached the end of the third century. Nor does it savour any less of antiquity that, with arguments sought from every side, he attacked in this poem the senseless philosophers of his age who denied the future resurrection of bodies, which is not unlike the truth.

There will perhaps be someone who would make the author of this poem Cyprian, a Christian from a magician, then at Antioch in

I who in song have chosen for myself the rustic Muses, and have given title to the rosy breezes with the flowers of spring, and have ripened the heavy ears of the summer harvest, have cut the swelling grapes from the vines of autumn, and [have chosen] always to praise the gentle olives of winter, and have shut off the measured waters from the springs, and have sung of the leafy woods from the wandering grass: forthwith I shall tune the ethereal breezes of light. Now let it be granted me to reach the light-bearing Muses, to disclose the nymphs hidden at the river's head, and the glad woods set beneath another star, and at the same time I shall commemorate in song the eternal Muses. Whence the immense sea tosses its swelling waves, what power moves the solid lands to tremble; and whence the golden light shone forth upon the new world. Who could have fashioned man from the fertile clay, whence the race could have grown in an empty age, and what desire of living there is for the varied people, what offspring of dying was first created by evil, whence come good scent and modesty for rosy garlands. What makes the vine swell with glad grapes, and how the new barley grows milky on the old stalks, and how the tree grows downy with dark olives against the ice, who [gives] the waning of greenness in varied buds, and protects the mother of the sons with soft shades. It is good to know all things that are the beginnings of branches, and let it be granted through all things to recognize the true God, Who prepared light, seas, heaven and earth, and adorned the new world by varying it with stars. And first He bade the cattle, the birds, come forth, and granted the sea waves to be filled with fishes, and made the sands fruitful with living creatures. Such songs shall I draw out with the Muses set in order, and I shall set forth to you the healthful water from the springs; and the glad rain coming from gentle clouds, flowing deep into the souls of men and of its own accord, I shall receive in full streams into our fallow fields.

II. Come now, reach the secure and living water, and, swift, drink the easy liquor of life. If anyone wishes to escape the punishments of eternal flame, and, ignorant of the day and unaware of the age to come, rather to obtain the rewards of a just life, [he must] remember this one God, and He alone is to be prayed to, Who placed the whole world in a balance beneath the threshold, and, remaining eternal and ever to be unto the age,

Phoenicia, bishop and martyr, whose acts, divided into three books by a contemporary writer, we were the first to publish in volume III of our Anecdota. But he would have written not in Latin but in Greek.

Moreover, the value of this little work is proved by the chief dogmas of the Christian religion asserted in it: original sin, the necessity of Baptism, the mystery of the Trinity, the Resurrection of the dead. These indeed seemed of such weight in a most ancient author that his half-barbarous diction could by no means deter us from publishing him. That diction, copied out moreover by an unskilled scribe, albeit a very ancient one, is so corrupted that one must often be at a loss; nor, we believe, will learned men complain on that account that we have spent our labour in vain.

After I had written this, I noticed afterwards that the poem had been published at the end of the works of Tertullian. When I had read it there and compared it with our manuscript, I found a bold editor. Impatient of the laws of metre violated by Cyprian, whoever he is, and of his humble style, this editor tried to render the little work in more elegant verses, and so made public not Cyprian's lucubration but his own. Wherefore, since learned men are accustomed to venerate even the very errors in ancient writers, we have thought it worth the labour to restore the same poem, such as it came forth from its author, to its own genuineness.

Holding all the ages, and alone before all ages, / God unbegotten, without end, and the divine throne / alone possessing, He ever towers above in high heaven. / Alone almighty, Whom all things in the world obey, / Father, Son, Spirit, Who are ever into one. / He formed for Himself man, well-pleasing to Him, for ever, / [and willed] to have given [him as] shepherd of the flocks and lord of the wild beasts, / and gave him right over the birds, and the sea and the soil to be ruled. / He Who by a word alone could stretch out the heaven, / and by His word commanded the solid earth to hang suspended, / and quicker than speech separated the wave of the sea, / delighted to fashion this dear form with His hands, / and willed His own comely likeness to be in it. / With His Spirit He breathed a life-giving breath upon its countenance.

III. He, unmindful of God, [was] rash to commit such great things. / That beyond the warning he should not touch anything, the one thing / whence he might know evil and whence he might discern the right, / He forthwith forbade him to touch the unlawful fruit. / How great were the gifts of the world God granted to man! / And He sealed a most sweet pledge of His love, / He bestowed useful and dear commandments of salvation, / under his dominion He gave the lands and the living soul, / and the feathered kind, the flocks, every kind of wild beast, / and the kind of the sea, all swimming animals. / But since, having transgressed the law by a first crime, / now the first man was changing the commandments of the Lord, / at his wife's urging to all evils, he was perishing by death. / For the woman first committed the evil of sin, / betrayed, and deceived her husband concerning the law. / Eve, wrongly persuaded, opened the thresholds to death, / and created funerals for herself together with the whole race. / Hence heedless wickedness [and] death flowed forth for ever. / Thence deep crime grew the more and easily, / and the farmer's labour drove the year more harshly. / The cunning serpent cast this in with wicked jealousy. / Thence the peoples [committed] the more many misdeeds of evils, / and by evil deeds brought forth unspeakable seeds.

IV. And therefore God alone, Who has supreme power, / and, holding on high the lofty summits of heaven, / dwelling on high for ages in unapproachable light, / both mindful of the past and foreknowing the future beforehand, / keeps for ever the decree of desert for the progeny, / and all souls which govern sluggish bodies / and by reason move [them], man wandering through the limbs; / that, as soon as the weight of the limbs has been laid aside, they depart,

and, light, loosed from earthly bonds, they will go, and will seek again their own [places] in the different parts of the world. Straightway, that some are shut into hidden darkness, but that others are at once recalled to joyful breezes, kept deep within for the decreed rewards of the law, until bodies rise again from the members of death. That men now weigh the interest of their first life, and stand mindful of God the Judge and of former things; that each awaits his own punishment from his own crime. Or utterly, as of cattle, without name, weight or breath, or in vain to pour out the breath of God by ending.

V. Or is God almighty, under Whose nod all things are ruled, unable to give back life after death, or does the Lord seem unable to do anything at all? If He could shut out the bright light from the darkness, and could compose all masses by His word, and prepare all things out of nothing by His mighty voice, why could He not out of something fashion the known shape which had once existed, which had lived before, and bid a form like its own rise again? Since all things are God's, they will rather give back all things; the earth, commanded, will recall whatever it had once covered over; if flame on the pyres has destroyed someone lulled to sleep, or the sea had cast someone down into the blind waves; if, moreover, fish have glutted themselves on someone's flesh, or wild beasts have wrought cruel deaths on his limbs, or his blood has lain for the birds, his body snatched away, deaths will no longer deny anyone to the Lord; the living must be made ready for God out of death, and men must stand with their own forms resumed. So dry seeds will be entrusted to the turned earth, and, fixed deep in the furrows, they rot dead; thence, the ears restored, the stalk is quickened, and again they grow golden, strong with living grains, and new harvests rise up together with varied increase. All the stars will set, and, reborn, will again grow bright, and the day dies with its light in the dense night; and night sets into day, and rests from things in the light, and the lofty day will rise again in its stars. And the sun will set, and, light-bearing with clear light, the light perishes as the world is shadowed by the coming evening, and returns, and joys renewed for the whole age; thus the phoenix, burned, lives from its own funeral, and the bird forthwith rises again from its own pyre. The tree stripped of its leaves bears fruit in its season, and again bent with fruits from the bud on its branches.

VI. Therefore, as at the divine voice the world trembles, and the powers of the high air are deeply moved: then an unwonted crash, and the greatest rumblings of heaven, as God moves forward and the Judge of the world comes; at once they hasten together to go with innumerable ministers, and they surround the Lord with His heavenly majesty, the angelic hosts descend far and wide upon the earth. All the messengers of God who have divine power, in prayers and in the form of power, every spirit. Fiery is their vigour, glowing their bodies of heaven, divine force flashes; hence the whole earth bellows back, hence the trembling earth, the whole of it, bellows back from its depths, giving birth to the men whom justice will bid it return. The companions marvel, the clouds at last are troubled, the stars, amazed, tremble at the sudden power from on high; here, as God commands easily with the voice of the Mighty One, at once, the sepulchres burst open throughout all kingdoms, every soil pours forth bones from wide gaps, and the parent sand belches out living peoples. Limbs cling to hair, bones are bound to marrow, and sinews, joined together, govern breathing bodies, and at the same time the veins, poured into them, are stirred with blood. And the souls sent down are given back to the opened hollows; and each thing, rising, seeks again its own organs. O wondrous faith! hence every age sprouts forth. The ancient throng of the dead sprouts forth from the dust, mothers and men rise again with light regained, great-souled youths, boys, and wedded girls, and dead old men stand there with living souls, and the world, groaning, resounds with the wailings of infants. When the various nations come from the lowest seats, and the band of the East and those whom the farthest land sees, those who dwell in the middle zones in the sloping clime, and hold the Riphaean citadels of the frosty star, every settler of each frontier is present, afraid, the countryman and the soldier, kings with their diadem laid aside, the rich man mingled with the poor in an equal column; deep trembling everywhere, the world now groans with prayers, and the peoples, stretching out their hands, marvel to cry out.

VII. The Lord Himself, bright with surpassing light, and all-powerful, flashes in all the powers of fire, and from His lofty throne, His heavenly seat, gleams,

fenced about by a gleaming number of martyr men, He stands forth with His blessed prophets accompanying Him, whose bright temples shine with snow-white fillets. And now they are present in a priest's shining vestments, bearing glowing crowns, the rewards of life, and all, submissive and with bended knees, adore. "Alone holy (agios) and holy God" is the one voice of all. Then the Lord will order the twofold people to stand, and He commands the just to be separated from the number of the wicked, and orders them, clothed with vigour now that death is conquered, to have for ever unquenchable breaths of light, to go through kingdoms flourishing for ever from of old, through rich groves, through ever pleasant green places, and to spend a perpetual life in a glorious body.

VIII. There is a place in the Aeolian regions beloved by the Lord, where the light is clear and a more wholesome breeze breathes, and there is eternal day and unchanging time, and a region set apart for God, very rich in fields, and an exceedingly blessed seat in a serene quarter of the sky; the air is ever glad, and ever to be gentle in the light, and life-giving breezes breathe with the winds. The earth, very rich in soil, bears all things evenly. Flowery purple blazes in the level meadows. All things, deep red, mingle their light without envy; one glad flower clothes another with its own light as a garment. Hence the rosy countryside is varied with snowy seed, and the snowy breeze is ruffled with rosy flowers, not knowing by which of them the fields grow more beautifully sweet. Which is better in appearance, or which excels more in honour? Never are like ones born in flower-bearing gardens, nor have such lilies flourished in our fields, nor does the known [flower] so redden as soon as the rose spreads over the fields, nor is purple so dyed with Tyrian red; the beautiful gem shines with coloured stones, here the prase gleams, there the carbuncle glows, the emerald pours forth glittering lights from its facets. Here too cinnamon springs from fragrant twigs, and amomum blazes with glad green leaf. Here lies native gold of radiant light, and the lofty groves, flourishing, reach heaven with their top, and most abundant buds weigh down the green branches. India has put forth no groves like them; the green pine does not so raise dense tops, nor does the vernal bough flourish better in its season. Nor does the quivering cypress so crisp its lofty foliage. Here the close black firs flourish at their top, and the woods alone are ever green, without hail; no leaves fall, and no flower fails in its season; the tops grow green, compact with redness, the tree purple. But I think that flower is a rose, the redness in it alike. So it breathes from its leaves such fragrance with such beauty. The most beautiful tree stands in flower together with new fruits, and fruitful trunks thicken the life-giving produce. Rich metals blaze on the branches of the greening [tree]; milk also flows, fit to drink, in full streams. Whatever grows green in the holy earth breathes life there. And whatever blossoms from the bud [makes] blessed together; and the soil of beautiful chalk gives forth a healing scent. There a gentle spring floods the fields with grass; thence four rivers water the divided earth. I think the sky, clothed with flowers, keeps spring for ever. Cold does not change the breezes under a wintry star, nor does radiant summer glitter with oppressive heats; heaven tempers the calm breezes with its own light, and refreshes the fruitful earth, made better by the breeze. There is no night there; the stars pour away their darkness.

IX. Angers and snares are absent, and dire desire, and fear is shut out, and cares are driven from the boundary. Hence the wicked one is banished as an exile to the farthest shores, and toil too, fearing to touch the blessed borders; there ancient faith rests in the chosen seat, justice lives rejoicing in an eternal covenant, and secure salvation rejoices in the peaceful fields, ever to live, ever to be in the light. Here is whoever was a pious tiller of the just and the good, and whoever feared the Lord the Thunderer with a harmless mind, and honoured his parents with sacred devotion, and cultivated a holy life ever without crime; or as often as he consoled the needy with friendly wealth, and came to the aid of the poor who toil exceedingly, a helper of the poor man, accustomed to set orphans free, and rescued the harmed, came to the aid of those oppressed by accusation, gave his pledges to the table dear to guests, performed all his duties by divine commands, harmed no one, coveted no one else's goods. They all, exulting in divine praises, and praying together, raise their voices to the stars; singing psalms to the Lord, they render thanks with joy,

and they will go the blessed way with messengers accompanying them.

X. After the Lord had accomplished these happy gifts, and had likewise sent the just away into the eternal kingdoms, the pitiable crowd also comes, lamenting its crimes. Here there is groaning; all mourn with increasing tears, and bear witness to their deeds with frequent wailings; they tremble at the flaming darts pressing upon them for their deserts. The angels seize them, and now, even now, forbid them to pray, and forbid them to pour forth belated words of penitence. And now, as the flame comes on, pardon for their prayers is denied. O wretched ones, how often was the divine power made known to you, how often was the majesty of the truth recognized? You heard the sounds, you saw the lightnings of heaven, the continual rains, the angers of winds and hail; you experienced how often both nights and days were serene; the seasons made the gifts of God fertile with gifts; spring [gave] roses in abundance, nor did summer lack fruits; autumn offered varied mellow apples; icy winter always ruled the glad olives. God bestowed all things, nor was any goodness lacking, nor through so many things did the whole human race know God. The earth trembled at God, the sea hung upon the nod of God, and the river, trembling, flowed back from the dried sands, and all that is begotten joyfully confesses God through all things.

XI. You, however, denied this Lord of heaven and earth, and instead killed the just with cruel slaughter, and very many of you often put the heralds of God to flight. Truth always stuck in you as a crime. And therefore you will reap the fruit of a wicked sowing. Behold, you do not know the day which you are accustomed to laugh at. You will go into the deep darkness of fire and sulphur, to suffer savage angers in pains by burning. These the Lord commands to depart to eternal punishment, to go beneath the burnings of Gehenna forever without end, the mass to be driven through the torrential pools of flame; He commands the elements of the threatening [world] to be turned into flames, and all the fire of heaven to descend from the clouds,

XII. Then the swift fire of Tartarus shuts in the greedy, and they will belch out stormy flames upon the sea, and the whole earth will confound the living with ashes, and the flaming air will brandish angry furrows, and the scorching globe will be armed with all its torches. With Tartarean onset the conflagrations gnash at the world. They, driven out, are lifted into the headlong surge; this way they flee, that way they are borne back in a swift course. The anger of the savage flame meets those who flee, and then at last they recognize their own punishment for their crime. And now the earth is possessed by no wandering husbandman, and pressed down beneath the deep at the furthest end of the sea. Where the sun, having traversed Olympus, sets a bound to its rays, and the risen stars are raised when the world has passed away, the air swells with dense darkness, its light hidden, the last pools flaming with secret streams. The nature of the place is fiery with sealed punishments, and the marsh of the lower world, climbing from the depths with burnings, thunders; the penal [stream] is borne along in horrifying furnaces, it seethes and is churned by the swift whirl of flame, a river rushing into torments with a surging eddy; all the scorched sand is mingled with mud. Hither the captive crowd of the wicked will be sent groaning, and the host of the criminal body, a wickedness doomed to burn. Great lamentation there, weeping, with shouting joined to it, and a swift gnashing; then the wailing of those in pain will rise from the flame far off, and the deep groaning of the fire and of the burning rises into the resounding air,

XIII. Then the image of evil, the promised offspring, hangs, and they will begin to hang belated prayers up to heaven, and they will now wish to know God, Whom they were unwilling to know. There each one will confess the savage deeds of his own life, and his guilty hands, and minds savage with crime,

and will bear witness to the unspeakable savage deeds of his own life. Now first, whoever had previously thought ill of God, and had worshipped wandering stones with a lying divinity, and had consecrated bloodied altars with fire, and had feared painted figures without voice, and had adored the thin shades of a false divinity; and whomever evil error straightway led astray: if anyone was an adulterer, whoever had killed children; if anyone lived with a mind conscious of any evil whatever, or had run riot in plunder or in defrauding a client; if anyone stained his palms with human blood, and mixed poisons with hidden death. Then, if anyone defiled his breast with empty theft, or rejoiced in the unjust gain of another's evil; whoever committed any wrong whatever among evils, a deep burning will torment them with bitter fire, and all will pay the penalty in living deaths, so as to keep the whole crowd of men mourning.

14. How often did the holy prophets sing these very things, and often, admonished by the Spirit of God, speak of things to come? No one (wretched thing!), no one, alas, lent his ears. Thus God almighty willed His rewards to be known, and the very many threats of the law laid down, through such means, by sending more men crying out heavenly words. Finally, at the command of God, the prophet joined together bones, and was astonished that in the tombs, moved suddenly not of their own accord, bodies sprung from scattered ashes had lain, marvelling that they then rose living as the soul came, and with their own voice stretched out their palms to heaven, and give such thanks to God and to Christ the victor. Those indeed sought the tomb in silence, and withdrew for the future day of God that is to be kept. He ordered them to be held for a little while in the lowest beds, until that great day should come when the time is completed. All of you, know the true Lord, Who alone makes the soul ascend to the light, and can likewise thrust it into the Tartarus of punishment, and to Whom all power of life and death lies open. For God, to be able, not to will, is enough, and by speaking it is done; He, my [God], alone is to be feared in the innermost senses; and since every course is closed by death, whoever exists today, his life will be borne along with him.

15. And therefore, while life remains, while [it is permitted] to enjoy the light, while it is permitted to repent, before the end of the age seizes the unwary and that last day of death, which is held by law, releases the unknowing eyes, keep watch carefully for salvation, which is what first remains, and it will be easy and good to turn aside the course. After the brazen expiations pressed upon their rites, and after those whom the too-wandering storms [used] to vex, approach the straight ways, and hold to the right winds. Hence, with glad minds first, drive back crime, and let the fault, long corrected, be washed out of the breast; then, gentle, abolish the unspeakable evils committed, and with eternal prayers appease the dreadful God. Let all the worst mortal things yield to the good living. Keep a new life now without crime, and keep pious minds, and in the true name. And as suppliants ask pardon for your first offences; now let pure hearts ripen for the pious tillers; and raise innocent hands in just prayers, and render voices ready for divine praises. And let minds begin to grow accustomed to good and true things, and let the gifts of the divine law be celebrated the more; and call to mind good things, and at the same time undertake deeds; let the sordid things of evils once committed be made to shine, and all better things will blaze for you, the pious, and at the same time life is set free from horrid dangers, and will come to eternal rewards for its vows.

Here it ends.