Hymn 1

1. Hymn in Honour of the Holy Martyrs Emeterius and Chelidonius of Calahorra.

The names of two martyrs are written in heaven,

which Christ has inscribed there in letters of gold,

and the same he has given to earth, written in marks of blood.

By this lineage the blessed Spanish land flourishes the world over,

this place God saw as worthy to hold their bones,

a chaste host fit to keep their blessed bodies.

Here, stained by a twofold slaughter, the ground drank the warm streams,

and now the dwellers throng the sands steeped in holy gore,

imploring with voice, with vows, with offerings.

From abroad too the settler of the world comes hither,

for rumour, the betrayer, has run through every land

that here are patrons of mankind whom suppliants may surround.

No one here, in his asking, has ever heaped up pure prayers in vain;

glad the suppliant returns from here, his weeping wiped away,

feeling that all he justly asked for has been granted.

So great is the care of these advocates for our perils,

they let no one pour out a single murmur of the voice in vain,

but hear it, and at once bear it to the ear of the eternal King.

Thence from the very fountainhead gifts flow in abundance to the earth,

which water the suppliants’ causes with the remedies they sought.

Never has good Christ denied anything to his own witnesses,

witnesses whom neither chains nor cruel death could frighten

from confessing the one God at the cost of their blood—

blood, yet a longer light repays so great a loss.

This kind of death is glorious, this worthy of upright men:

to give to the enemy’s sword the limbs that disease would have devoured,

woven of failing veins, and by death to conquer the foe.

A beautiful thing it is to suffer the stroke beneath the persecutor’s blade.

Through the wide wound a noble gate is opened to the just:

the soul, washed in the red fount, leaps out from its seat in the heart.

Nor had they led, before, a life untried by hard toil,

these soldiers whom Christ calls to the everlasting belt of service;

their valour, schooled in war and arms, now fights in sacred shrines.

They leave the standards of Caesar, they choose the sign of the cross,

and in place of the windblown banners of the dragons they once bore

they carry the glorious wood before them, the wood that crushed the dragon.

They count it base to bear javelins in their ready right hands,

to batter a wall with engines, to ring a camp with trenches,

to stain impious hands with bloody slaughter.

By chance then a fierce commander of the worldly court

had ordered the second offspring of Israel to go to the altar,

to make sacrifice to the dark idols, to become deserters of Christ.

A plague girt with steel pressed hard upon their free faith;

but that faith, brave, sought out of its own accord the rods,

the axes, the cloven claws, undaunted in the love of Christ.

The prison fetters their necks bound fast with hard rings;

the torturer plies his barbarous hands through all the forum;

truth is reckoned a crime, the faithful voice is punished.

Then valour, cut down by the sword, struck the grim ground,

and, cast upon the mournful pyres, drank in the flames with its mouth.

Then sweet it was to the just to be burned, sweet to endure the steel.

Here the dear hearts of two brothers grow warm together,

whom a faithful comradeship had joined through all their days.

They stand ready to bear whatever the last lot might bring,

whether the neck must be offered to the public axe

after the force of the cracking lash, after the racks of fire,

or the breast must be thrown to the leopards or the lions.

“Shall we, begotten for Christ, be dedicated to Mammon,

and, bearing the image of God, be slaves to the world?

Far be it that the heavenly fire should mingle itself with darkness.

Let it suffice that our life, seized under the first bond,

has paid every debt, having discharged what was Caesar’s;

it is time that what is God’s own be repaid to God.

Go, masters of the standards; and you, tribunes, stand aside.

Take away your golden collars, the rewards of the wounded!

Already from here the bright wages of the angels call us.

There Christ presides over cohorts robed in white,

and, reigning from his high throne, he condemns the infamous gods

and you, who fashion for yourselves laughable monsters as deities.”

As they speak these words the martyrs are crushed with a thousand torments;

a twisting rigour wraps both their hands in bonds,

and steel rings their chafed necks with heavy circles.

O the worn-out oblivion of a silent age!

These deeds are begrudged us, and their very fame is snuffed out.

For a blasphemous henchman once carried off the records,

lest the ages, instructed by enduring books,

should scatter through the ears of those to come

the order, the time, the manner of the passion handed down by sweet tongues.

Yet this alone the old silences withhold from us:

whether they fed their long hair under unbroken chains,

with what pain the torturer, with what parade, arrayed the men.

But this praise is not hidden, nor does it grow old with time:

that gifts, sent upward through the air, flew away,

gifts that, gleaming ahead, would show the way of heaven lying open.

Figuring the faith of one, a ring is borne upon a cloud;

the other gives, they say, a kerchief as pledge of his lips,

and these, snatched up by a breath from on high, enter the inmost light.

Through the axis of the flowing sky the flash of gold is hidden,

and the white of the cloth long flees the eye that follows it;

they are borne up even to the stars and are seen no more.

The crowd standing by saw this; the executioner himself saw it

and held back his hand, faltering, and grew pale with amazement;

yet still he carried through the stroke, lest the glory should be lost.

Do you believe now, you brutish heathenry of the Basques of old,

what sacred blood your cruel error sacrifices?

Do you believe that the souls of victims are carried up to God?

See how openly the fierce demons are tamed here,

who, seizing in wolfish fashion, devour men’s hearts,

strangle minds, and mingle themselves with the very senses.

Then, now full of his foe, the man is set there raving,

breathing out foaming spittle, twisting his savage eyes,

to be cleansed by an examination not of his own crimes.

You may hear—though no torturer stands by—the piteous wailings;

the body is torn under the scourge, yet no scourge is seen,

and the man himself, hung up, swells under hidden bonds.

By such means the martyrs’ power shakes the filthy robber,

this restrains him, racks, burns, this strikes him with chains;

the plunderer, tormented, strips himself from the marrow he had left.

He leaves the prey unharmed, he flees with dry jaws,

from the bottom of the nail to the hair he gives all back whole,

confessing that he himself burns; for he is a dweller in hell.

Why should I tell of bodies cleansed of long diseases and made white,

when a cold shuddering shakes the discoloured limbs,

here a swelling leaves the face, here the true colour returns?

This good the Saviour himself granted us to enjoy,

when he consecrated the limbs of the martyrs to our town,

which now keep safe the dwellers whom the Ebro washes.

Stand now and sing the hymn, you mothers, for your little ones recovered;

let the glad voice of wedded wives ring out for their husbands’ safety:

let this day be a feast for us, let it be a hallowed joy!