Marco Girolamo Vida: The Lightening of Hell

 Introduction

Christ is risen!  

I intended to post this closer to Pascha, originally on Great and Holy Saturday, but it is still fitting even now.  This poem is a loose translation, close to a paraphrase, of a passage from the Christiad, a Latin epic poem by Marco Girolamo Vida (1485-1566).  Here, he represents the descent of Christ into Hades to free the souls imprisoned there; Vida's description of Hell and Satan, throughout the Christiad, was a key influence on John Milton's descriptions in Paradise Lost.  My translation is written in a kind of four-foot blank verse, an unrhymed, loosely iambic tetrameter.  (True blank verse, as in Milton, is unrhymed iambic pentameter.)  It is not perfectly metrical, but I inclined more towards closeness to the original than to metrical perfection.

There are a number of full English translations of Vida's epic; the 18th-century translations (John Cranwell, Edward Granan) are in heroic couplets; the 20th-century translations by Drake and Forbes (see Source below) and James Gardner (I Tatti Renaissance Library) are in prose. 

The Lightening of Hell

(A Paraphrase of Marco Girolamo Vida’s Christiad VI.198-221)

Behold, there comes, without delay,
Avenger of the greatest might
up to the doors, and light divine
there splendid shines.  Enormous gate,
with hundred bars of bronze, stays shut,
eternal gate.  None availed
to conquer this, no flame, no force,
no strength of hardest iron.  But here
stands God, and strikes with His right hand.
At the blow, earth, terror-struck,
quakes in every place, the stars
which wander all throughout the sky
tremble, darkness’ kingdom’s shadowed
caverns echo the sovereign boom.
From deepest vale, with horrid march,
in haste, light-fliers’ brothers’ band
comes forth, in fear of sound—
human in form unto the groin
and dragons from there—and with unwonted
roar they shout, and dire fire
flows from out their jaws, and all
the house is wrapped in smoke of pitch.
At once the doors are open—behold!—
suddenly the posts from hinges spring,
shaken, shattered by their own will.
Within the house all seems confused,
and, round the highest atria,
the darkness shrinks, and once-blind night
recedes.  For God, thus so beheld,
blinding eyes within the halls
obscure, shines with light divine.
And as a gem in royal chambers,
imitating fire’s glow,
gleams with splendor in the night,
and blackest darkness puts to flight,
and all the place with largesse clothes,
casting round its crimson light—
so is God in Satan’s halls.

Source: Marco Girolamo Vida, The Christiad: A Latin-English Edition, ed. and tr. Gerturde C. Drake and Clarence A. Forbes (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978), 250.

Translation ©2024 Brandon P. Otto.  Licensed via CC BY-NC.  Feel free to redistribute non-commercially, as long as credit is given to the translator.

The Exultet of the Ambrosian Rite

 Introduction

Translated here is the opening of the Paschal Vigil in the Ambrosian Rite, which begins after the chanting of the Ninth Hour on Holy Saturday.   My translation is based on the scanned missal pages included in Nicola de Grandi, "Easter in the Ambrosian Rite -- Part II," 4/04/2010, https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2007/03/further-notes-on-ambrosian-rite.html.  I'm not sure what the source is for de Grandi's scanned pages, but the text seems generally identical to that found in the 1640 Missale Ambrosianum, pp. 145-157 of the second paginated section, though I have not compared every line.  De Grandi's article gives an overview of the whole Paschal Vigil in the Ambrosian Rite; the ceremonies translated below stop before the Scripture readings.

Let the angelic crowd of the heavens now exult:
let the divine mysteries exult,
and, because of such a King’s victory, let the trumpet of salvation sound.
Let the earth, irradiated by splendors, rejoice so much,
and, lustered by the eternal King’s splendor, let the whole globe feel the gloom depart.
Let Mother Church delight too, adorned with the splendor of such light,
and let this hall resound with the great voices of the peoples.
Wherefore, you who stand, beloved brethren, in the so wondrous clarity of this holy light,
one with me, I beseech you, invoke the mercy of the Almighty God.
So that He Who deigned to gather me among the number of Levites, not by my merits,
infusing the grace of His light, would begin to complete the praise of this Candle.
With the aid of our Lord Jesus Christ His Son,
living and reigning with Him, God, in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
through all the ages of ages. Amen.

℣: The Lord be with you.

℟: And with your spirit.

℣: Lift up your hearts.

℟: We lift them up to the Lord.

℣: Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

℟: It is right and just.

It is right and just, indeed, it is truly right and just, fitting and saving, for us, here and everywhere, to give You thanks, holy Lord, Father Almighty, eternal God. Who declared that the Pascha of all peoples would be [offered], not with the cattle’s blood or fat, but with the Body and Blood of Your Only-Begotten, our Lord, Jesus Christ, so that, supplanting the rite of the ungrateful nation, grace would succeed the law, and one victim, once offered by itself to Your Majesty, would expiate the offense of all the world. This is the Lamb prefigured in the stone tablets, not led forth from the flocks, but sent forth from heaven, not lacking a shepherd, being being Himself the Good Shepherd Who lays down His soul for His sheep and takes it up again, so that the divine deigning would show us humility, and the bodily resurrection, hope. Who, before the shearer, did not send out a cry of bleating complaint, but proclaimed with evangelic oracle, saying: “Henceforth you will see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of majesty.” Let Him reconcile us and You, Father Almighty, and grant it, supported by a majesty equal with You. For what reached the fathers in figure comes to us in truth.

Here the Subdeacon bears the lamp lit with the new fire into the Choir. Then the Deacon lights the great Candle, and two other candles; immediately there follows:

Behold, now the column of fire shines, which goes before the people, in the time of the blessed night, to the saving streams, in which the persecutor is submerged, and [from which] Christ’s people emerge liberated. For, conceived by the wave of the Holy Spirit, born to death through Adam, it is reborn to life through Christ. Let us therefore unloose the voluntarily-celebrated fasts, for Christ our Pascha is sacrificed; let us not only feast on the Body of the Lamb, but let us also be inebriated by His Blood. For let the drinkers not believe that His Blood is propitiation,¹ but [rather] salvation. Let us also eat of this unleavened bread, too, for man does not live on bread alone, but on every word of God. Indeed, this is the bread which descended from heaven, far more wondrous than that frugal-flowing dew of manna, having feasted upon which, Israel then perished. He who feeds on this true Body, becomes a possessor of perennial life. Behold, the old have passed away: all things are made new. For the sword’s point of Mosaic circumcision is now dulled, and the sharp bitterness of the stones of Joshua [son] of Nun² has grown old; truly, Christ’s people are signed on the forehead, not on the groin, with the wash, not with the wound, with Chrism, not with bloodshed.

Here the Deacon sticks five grains of incense into the Candle, in the shape of a Cross.

Therefore, it is fitting, on this arrival of the evening resurrection of our Lord and Savior, for us to burn wax instead of fat, whose heat it accords with in appearance, sweetness in scent, splendor in light, which does not flow with wasting liquor, nor exhale the offense of foul stench. For what is more befitting and more festive than that we keep watch³ over Jesse’s flower with flowers and torches? Especially when even Wisdom sings of herself, “I am the flower of the field, and the lily of the valley.”⁴ Therefore, the burnt-up pine does not sweat wax, nor does the wounded cedar with close-knit two-edge branches weep with it, but its creation is a secret of virginity, and they grow white through the transfiguration of snow’s whiteness. Truly, the liquid wave of the reeds’ font produces it, which, an image of the innocent soul, is divided into no interwoven joints, but, enclosed in virginal matter, the nursling of rivulets is hospitable to fires.⁵ Therefore, it is fitting to meet the coming of the Bridegroom with the sweet lamps of the Church, and, having received the largesse of holiness, to think of how much the gift of devotion avails, to not interrupt the holy watches with darkness, but to wisely prepare a torch with perpetual lights, lest, while candle-oil is added, we approach the coming of the Lord with a late service, He Who will certainly come in the blink of an eye, like lightning.⁶

Here the lamps are lit, and the other lights of the Church.

Therefore, in the evening of this day, all the fullness of the venerable sacrament is gathered together, and those things which were prefigured or done in various times are supplied in the unfolding of the course of this night. For, first, this evening light comes forth, like that star leading the Magi. Then follows the wave of mystical regeneration, that is, the Lord granting it,⁷ the streams of Jordan. Third, the apostolic voice of the Priest announces the Resurrection of Christ. Then, to fulfill the whole mystery, the crowd of the faithful is fed on Christ. May the day of the Resurrection of the Lord be thus undertaken,⁸ sanctified by the prayer or merits of Your high Priest and Archbishop Ambrose, with Christ making everything prosper. Through Your good and blessed Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, with Whom, blessed, You live and reign, God, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, through all the ages of ages. Amen.

Then the Deacon sprinkles [holy water] and lights the Candle. 

 

1Piaculum refers to some means of appeasing a deity, such as a sin-offering or a propitiatory sacrifice.

2In Jos 5:2, the Lord commands Joshua to circumcise the Israelites a second time with “stony knives” (cultros lapideos) or “flint knives” (RSV-CE).

3Excubo originally has the sense of “camping out” of “sleeping outside”; thus the watch being kept here is an outdoors one.

4Sgs 2:2.

5I confess that I had trouble fully understanding these two sentences, especially with their heavily poetic nature. The prayer seems to be explaining the origin of the wax used: it does not come from pines or cedars, but from reeds (papyrum). Reeds grow singular and straight, not jointed like a tree’s branches; I think that is what is meant by it being “divided into no interwoven joints” (nullis articulatur sinuata compagibus). Being singular, a reed is virginal, and an image of an innocent soul—consider Kierkegaard’s Purity of the Heart Is to Will One Thing, and St. James’ rebuke of the “double-souled” (Jas 1:8).

6Here is an interesting twist on the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. In Jesus’ parable, the wise are those who have oil, and the foolish must go buy some. Here, even having oil is foolish, because it takes time to refill the lamp with oil, and this causes a delay. Instead, the truly wise have wax candles instead, which, lit once, never need to be refilled. That way, there will be no “late service” (tardo...obsequio).

7Dignante Domino.

8More literally, this phrase should be worded, “Let this”—what was just discussed—”undertake the day of the Lord’s Resurrection” (Quae...Resurrectionis Dominicae diem...suscipiat).

Translation ©2024 Brandon P. Otto.  Licensed via CC BY-NC.  Feel free to redistribute non-commercially, as long as credit is given to the translator.

Hymn: Longest Night of Earthly Vigil

Here is another Lenten hymn, to pair with my recent setting of my old hymn text "When Time Had Come for Christ to Die."  Whereas that hymn is fitting for commemorating Christ's death on Good Friday, this hymn is a hymn of the myrrh-bearers, who came to anoint Christ's tomb.  It is a hymn of abandonment, a hymn of Holy Saturday.  I first wrote it almost a decade ago, with some adjustments throughout the years, and I'm happy to finally share it.

The tune is "Picardy," a French carol tune.  It is best-known through Ralph Vaughan Williams' arrangement of "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence."  That is certainly the inspiration for my use of it here, as the text of that hymn is used as the Cherubikon for Holy Saturday.

Have a blessed Fast.

Longest Night of Earthly Vigil by Brandon P. Otto on Scribd

Scribd link:https://www.scribd.com/document/706723610/Longest-Night-of-Earthly-Vigil

Internet Archive mirror: https://archive.org/details/longest-night-of-earthly-vigil

Text:

1. Longest night of earthly vigil,
'fore the rock now keeps the Bride.
Taken from the bloody sigil
In the Tomb He'll e'er abide.

R: Christ the Lord to earth descended,
O black earth, release Him now!

2.  Rank on rank the hosts of heaven
Took their leave so silently.
Hast Thou lost that holy leaven
Which would raise Thee gloriously?

3. Moon and stars of night are fading
And the sun no more will rise.
Yet, departing, some faint shading
In the darkness piques our eyes.

4. All the night we've kept in sorrow,
Yet the dark has just begun.
Return shall we on the morrow
And each night till time has run.

5. On the morrow we anoint Thee
If the rock will bend away.
For myrrh makes the dead smell sweetly
But can God redeem death's prey?

6. Farewell, O our Friend and Master!
Now we take our bitter leave!
Farewell, O our wolf-maimed Pastor!
At the blood of dawn, we grieve!

Lyrics ©2023 Brandon P. Otto.  Licensed via CC BY-NC.  Feel free to redistribute non-commercially, as long as credit is given to the lyricist.

Pseudo-Augustine: The Biting and Slaying of Hell (Sermon CLX)

 Introduction

It was long a tradition for unknown writers to sign a famous author's names to their works; sometimes, the work was half by the purported author anyway.  The homily translated below is nominally attributed to St. Augustine, but scholars reject it as spurious.  Some pieces of it can be traced to other writers: a large portion of §1 is copied from St. Gregory the Great's Homilies on the Gospels XXII.6 (PL76:1177B-D).  The editor of the Latin text claims portions of §§2-3 are taken, respectively, from the homilies on Pascha and on the Ascension by a certain Eusebius, but I have not yet located the source.  

Sermon CLX

On Pascha II

The Biting and Slaying of Hell

 

1. The Passion or resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, beloved brethren, all of the volumes of the Old Testament spoke of beforehand in many ways, so that, even through the mouth of David the prophet, the Holy Spirit clearly shows this, saying, A God of vengeance is the Lord, the God of vengeance acts to free (Ps 94:1). For He alone acts to free, He Who shows us today what He did. For He acts to free, about which there were many prophecies beforehand, since He became like a man without help, free among the dead (Ps 88:4-5). But do you want to know what He did? Hear what He did. Without any necessity, but by His own will, He permitted Himself to be hanged on the wood, He did not forbid nails to pierce His body, He allowed the putting of His soul to death, He rested His flesh in the sepulchre, and, His soul accompanying Him, He descended into hell. Through this, the elect, who, although they were in the bosom of tranquility, were yet held in the cloisters of hell, were led back to the pleasant plains of paradise. What He said before His Passion, the Lord fulfilled in His resurrection: If I am raised up, He said, from the earth, I will draw all unto Me (Jn 12:32). For He drew all, He Who left none of His elect in hell: He took all away, namely, the elect. For the Lord, arising, did not bring to pardon the unfaithful and those given over to eternal tortures due to their crimes, but he snatched from the cloisters of hell those whom He recognized as His own in faith and acts. Wherefore it is rightly said by Hosea too: I will be your death, O death; I will be your bite, hell (Hos 13:14). For what we slay, we act so that it will not be at all; but, out of that which we bite, we take out a part and we leave a part: therefore, since, among His elect, He completely slew death, there was the death of death; but, since He took a part out of hell and left a part, He did not completely slay, but bit, hell. Therefore He says, I will be your death, O death, as if He openly said, “Since I will completely destroy you in My elect.” I will be your bite, hell, “since, taking away My own, I will cut you into parts.” For, at that time, our Lord Jesus Christ tied up that prince of darkness and death, troubled his legions, shattered the iron bars of hell’s gates, loosed all of the just, who had been tightly held by original sin, called the captives back to pristine liberty, infused with splendid light those blinded by the darkness of sins.

2. Behold, you have heard described how our defender, the Lord of vengeance, acted to free. For, after He was exalted, that is, hung on the Cross by the Jews—so that I might briefly smush everything together—immediately, when He handed over His spirit, His soul, united to his divinity, descended into hell’s depths. And when, like some splendid and terrible despoiler, He reached the end of the darkness, the impious and Tartarean legions, spying Him, terrified and trembling, began to inquire, saying, “Who is this one, terrible and flashing with snowy splendor? Never has our Tartarus received such a one, never has the world vomited such a one into our cavern. He is an invader, not a debtor; He is an demander, not a pleader; we see a judge, not a supplicant. He comes to command, not to succumb, to rip out, not to remain. Why did our porters sleep when this warrior vexed our cloisters? If he were guilty, he would not be so powerful. If any sin had darkened him, never would our Tartarus have scattered at his shining. If he is God, why did he come? If man, how does he presume so? If God, what is he doing in a sepulchre? If man, why does he loose sinners? Did he make a pact with our author, or, perhaps, fight and conquer him, and so ascend to our kingdoms? Certainly he is dead, certainly he is conquered. Our fighter was ridiculed; he didn’t know that this one would obtain the overthrow of hell, that Cross deceiving our joy, giving birth to our damnation. Through wood, we were made rich, through wood, we were overthrown; that power, always formidable to the people, perishes. No living one has entered here, no one has terrified the torturers, never has a joyful light appeared in this filthy and black place, always blinded by fog. Or perhaps the sun has come over from the world? But neither heaven nor stars appear to us, and yet hell shines. We cannot defend the custody of our prison against him. Badly did we enter the contest; we didn’t know how to darken such a light, and, moreover, we are terrified of our downfall.

3. “Wherefore is he so splendid, so strong, so brilliant, and so terrible? That world that was subject to us, and always offered tributes of the dead for our uses, never sent such a one to us, never destined such gifts for hell. Therefore, who is this, who so intrepidously enters our bounds, and not only does not respect our tortures, but even frees others from our chains? Perhaps he is the one of whom our prince spoke a little time ago, who, by his death, would receive power over the whole world? But if this is he, the sentence of our warrior is turned backwards, and, while he saw himself as having conquered, rather was he himself conquered and made prostrate. O our prince, is this the one about whose future death you always congratulated yourself? Is he the one by whose cross you thought the whole world would be subjected to you? Is he the one from whose death you promised such spoils for us? What is it that you’ve done? What is it that you wanted to do? Behold, now he has set all of your darkness to flight by his splendor, and he has shattered all your prisons, cast off the captives, loosed the bound, changed their sorrow into joy. Behold, those who were wont to sigh beneath our torments insult us, having received salvation, and now they not only fear nothing, but they even make threats. Never have captives thus been proud over death, nor at any time been able to be so joyous. Why did you want to lead this one here, he by whose coming all who before were despairing are returned to joy? No one now hears their usual bellowing, no groans resound. But the transaction of the redemption of the captive has been accomplished. O our prince, those riches of yours, which you first acquired through the loss of paradise, you have now lost through the Cross; all your joy perishes, your joys are turned into sorrow. While you hang Christ on the wood, you don’t know how many injuries you suffer in hell. Could you not foresee that you were leading the overthrower of your kingdom into death, without any charge? If you attend to the cause, you require a fault. Him in whom you found no evil, why did you lead him into our fatherland? You brought him free, and you lost all the damned.”

4. After these cries from the cruel infernal ministers, without any delay, at the command of our Lord and Savior, all the iron bars were broken, and, behold, at once innumerable peoples of the saints, who were held captive in death, swarming about the Savior’s knees, with tearful plea, demanded of Him, saying: “You have come, Redeemer of the world; You have come, Whom we, desiring, have daily hoped for; You have come, Whom the Law and Prophets announced to us would come; You have come, giving indulgence to the sinners of the world, living in flesh: loose the dead and captives of hell. You have come after long tears; pull us out, You Who alone suffered for us. Maker of the heavens, You deigned to enter hell; for our sighs called to You, long laments demanded You, wherefore there is hope for the hopeless, wherefore consolation for the tormented. In Your coming, our chains fell, night fled away. At the coming of life, death dies, nor does torturer nor beater remain. The prayers of the damned have succeeded: the Creator rules, not the invader. Chains are wrapped around the tyrant, and our torturer squirms with pain. Loose, Redeemer of the world, the dead and captives of hell. You have descended to hell for us; do not leave us when You return to the realms above. You placed the title of glory in the world; place the sign of victory in hell.”

5. No delay: after He heard the request and discussion of the innumerable captives, at once all the ancient just, at the Lord’s command, received the rights of power, and they immediately turned the torments against their torturers, with humble supplication, with ineffable joy, crying out to the Lord, and saying, “Ascend, Lord Jesus, having despoiled hell, and, having wrapped the author of death in chains, return joy to the world now. Let Your faithful rejoice in Your ascension, beholding the scars on Your body.” Christ did this, as it was said above. Having taken spoils in hell, alive, He departed from the sepulchre; He arose by His own power, and again dressed Himself in immaculate flesh. He appeared to His disciples, so to take doubt away from the unbelieving; He showed the wounds of the nails, so that He would leave no suspicion for the Manichees.¹ Publicly He ate and drank; afterwards, then, He appeared in the sight of many. He ascended into the heavens on a cloud, and set Himself in His seat at the right hand of the Father, from which the Word had never separated. Therefore, let the Christian people exalt, for whom Christ’s blood was shed. Let all rejoice in the Lord, we who solemnly celebrate the resurrection of the flesh in Christ. Let the whole Catholic Church through all the world be glad, since Christ the Lord both diminished nothing of His divinity and freed man whom He had made. Wherefore, exulting, with humble voice, let us supplicate Him, so that He might deign to take us, for whom He did these things, freed from the hand of hell, with Him, when He comes into the world: to Him is honor and glory with the Father and the Holy Spirit unto the ages of ages. Amen.

1The Manichees (or Manicheans) believed that Jesus’ Passion, death, and Resurrection were only in appearance, not in reality, similar to the Docetists, who taught that Jesus’ body, as a whole, was merely an illusion and not real flesh.

 

Source: PL 39:2059-2061.

Translation ©2023 Brandon P. Otto.  Licensed via CC BY-NC.  Feel free to redistribute non-commercially, as long as credit is given to the translator.