Hymn 2

2. Hymn in Honour of the Passion of Lawrence, Most Blessed Martyr.

Ancient mother of pagan shrines,

Rome now given over to Christ,

victorious with Lawrence for your leader,

you triumph over the barbarous rite.

You had conquered proud kings

and curbed whole peoples with the bridle;

now upon the monstrous idols

you lay the yoke of your empire.

This glory alone was lacking

to the honours of the toga-clad city,

that, having captured the savagery of the nations,

it should tame the filthy Jove—

not by the turbulent strength

of Cossus, Camillus, or Caesar,

but by the martyr Lawrence

in a battle not without blood.

Faith fought in arms,

lavish of its own gore;

for by death it destroyed death,

and spent itself upon itself.

The priest had foretold this would be,

Xystus, already nailed to the cross,

seeing Lawrence weeping

at the very foot of the cross:

“Cease at my departure

to pour out tears in grief!

I go before, brother; you too

will follow after three days.”

The bishop’s last word,

herald of his glory,

failed in nothing: for the foretold

day brought the palm.

With what voice, with what praises

shall I celebrate the order of his death?

In what song shall I sing,

worthily retracing his passion?

He, first of the seven men

who stand nearest the altar,

a deacon high in rank

and surpassing the rest,

presided over the sacred enclosures,

governing the secret of the heavenly house

with faithful keys,

and dispensing the wealth vowed to God.

The prefect of the royal city

turns over his hunger for money,

minister of a maddened ruler,

an exactor of gold and of blood,

by what force he may dig out the hidden

coins, supposing that talents

lie covered beneath the sanctuaries

and that heaped-up hoards are concealed.

He orders Lawrence to be brought,

demanding the chest crammed with rich

ingots and the mountains of gleaming

coined money laid up in store.

“You are wont,” he says, “to complain

that we rage more than is just,

when we cut Christian bodies

more cruelly than blood allows.

No fervent severity is found

in these more atrocious commotions;

gently and quietly I demand

what you ought to undergo of your own will.

It has been disclosed that this is the custom

and the practice handed down in your rites,

this the discipline of your covenant,

that the priests make offering of gold.

They say that the sacred blood smokes

in cups of silver,

and that in the nightly rites

fixed candles stand upon gold.

Then it is the brethren’s chief care,

as the talkative report attests,

to offer, when their lands are sold,

thousands of sesterces.

The estates of their grandfathers, made over

under base auctions,

the disinherited heir bewails,

left needy for his holy parents.

These things are hidden in the secret

corners of the churches,

and it is held the highest piety

to strip one’s sweet children bare.

Bring forth the treasures which, by wicked

and deceitful tricks of persuasion,

you hold heaped together,

which you shut up in a blackening cave.

This the public service requires,

this the treasury, this the exchequer,

that money assigned to the soldiers’ pay

may aid the ruler.

So is your doctrine, I hear:

render to each man his own.

Lo, Caesar recognizes his own

stamp set upon the coins.

What you know to be Caesar’s, give

to Caesar—surely I ask what is just;

unless I am mistaken, your God

stamps no money at all,

nor, when he came, did he bring down

golden Philips with him,

but gave his precepts in words,

empty of any purse.

Fulfil the pledge of those sayings

by which you peddle yourselves through the world:

gladly give back the coins,

be rich in words alone.”

Lawrence brings back to these

nothing harsh or troubled,

but, as one ready to comply,

he nods his obedient assent.

“He is rich,” he says, “I do not deny it;

our Church possesses

great store of wealth and gold,

nor is anyone in the world richer.

Augustus himself does not have

so much of those silver tokens,

though he holds the citadel of empire,

and every coin is inscribed to him.

Yet I do not refuse to bring forth

the chest of a wealthy deity;

I will make all things known and bring out

the precious things that Christ holds.

But one thing I ask, in prayer:

a little space of truce,

that I may more effectively discharge

the duty of my promise,

while all the furniture of Christ

is set down for me in order;

for first the small sum must be reckoned,

then noted down.”

The prefect swells with gladness,

glad, and devours his hope,

exulting as if the gold, already

stored at home, were waiting.

They fixed a term of three days;

commended then, Lawrence

is released, surety for himself

and surety of a vast profit.

For three days he runs about the city,

driving the feeble companies

and all who ask for alms

into one place, gathering them together.

There, displaying to both his eyes

hollowed sockets,

one with a guiding staff was steering

his step that wandered in blindness;

another, lame with a broken knee

or half-footed with a maimed leg,

or with one sole shorter than the other,

dragged an uneven gait.

There is one with ulcerous limbs

that drip with corrupting decay,

one whose withered right hand

draws its sinews up to the elbow.

Such men he seeks in every street,

used to be fed

from the store of mother Church,

whom he himself, as steward, had known.

Then he reviews them one by one,

writing each man’s name,

and bids them, set in a long row,

stand before the temple.

And now the appointed day

had passed: the judge raged hot,

with a greedy spirit,

demanding that the promise be paid.

Then the martyr: “I would have you stand by

and marvel at the wealth set out

before you, which our God

most rich possesses in his saints.

You will see a vast hall

gleaming with vessels of gold,

and through the open porticoes

rows built up of talents.”

He goes, and is not ashamed to follow;

they came to the consecrated door,

where stood the throngs of the poor,

unkempt swarms to look upon.

A din of beggars rises up:

the prefect shudders, amazed,

turning upon Lawrence,

threatening with troubled eyes.

Against him the other, gnashing nothing, says,

“Why menacing? Or what displeases you?

Do you reckon these things sordid or cheap,

do you reckon them fit to be spat upon?

The gold for which you ardently thirst,

the dug-up rubble brings forth,

and penal labour hammers it

out of the squalid mines,

or a torrent, a turbid river

rolling, enfolds it in its sands;

what is earthy and sordid

must be boiled down by fire.

Through gold modesty is undone,

by gold integrity is violated,

peace falls dead, faith perishes,

and the laws themselves fall away.

Why do you exalt the poison of glory

and reckon it a great thing?

If you seek truer gold,

it is light, and the human race.

These are the nurslings of light,

whom a feeble body confines,

lest, through the health of the flesh,

the swollen mind grow insolent.

When disease breaks the limbs apart,

the spirit thrives the more robust,

and, when the limbs are strong in turn,

the force of the senses is wounded.

For blood, hot toward sin,

supplies the less strength

if its heat, worn out by wickedness,

draws in a sluggish poison.

If by chance the choice were given,

I would rather, in sharpest pain,

suffer the breaking of my limbs

and live, fair, within.

Set the shapes of disease together

and compare the rival plagues:

is the sickness of the flesh more foul,

or the ulcers of mind and morals?

Our men, through their feeble limbs,

whole in their inward beauty,

bear a harmless sense of grace,

untouched by toil.

Your men, strong in body,

an inward leprosy corrupts,

and error limps, maimed,

and blind fraud sees nothing.

Any one of your princes,

who shine in robe and face,

I will prove more crippled

than any one of my poor men.

This man, who is proud in silk,

whom a chariot carries puffed up,

a watery dropsy stretches

with shining poison within.

But here the miser draws together

his curved hands, and, folding

his palm with hooked nails,

cannot loosen the sinews.

That one, dragged by foul lust

through the public brothels,

mud and sewers defile,

while he begs for filthy debauchery.

What? That one, burning with ambition

and seething with thirst for honour,

does he not gasp in sunken fevers

and rage with the fire of his veins?

Whoever, unrestrained in keeping silence,

itches to betray what should be unspoken,

is tormented and scratches his liver

and bears the itch of his heart.

Why should I lay open the swollen

tumours of envious breasts?

Why the festering and livid

wounds of their malignancies?

You yourself, who rule Rome,

a despiser of the eternal God,

while you worship the filth of demons,

labour under the royal disease.

These, whom you proudly despise,

whom you judge fit for cursing,

will soon put off their ulcerous

limbs and be made whole,

when, freed and loosed at last

from the most corrupted flesh,

in the fairest state of life

they will shine in the Father’s citadel,

not soiled or feeble,

as they seem for now,

but bright in purple robes

and in crowns of gold.

Then, if the chance should offer,

before your very eyes

I would have these mighty men of the age

given over to be reviewed.

You would see them covered in rags

and with snivelling nostrils,

the chin wet with spittle,

and bleared with rotting eyelid.

Nothing is more loathsome than the sinner,

nothing so leprous or putrid;

raw is the scar of his crimes,

and it reeks like the cave of Tartarus.

For souls, by a reversed turn,

a corrupted form is inflicted,

souls that a fair appearance once

had delighted in the body.

Lo, then, the golden coins

which lately I promised,

which no ashes can bury

nor any thief steal away.

Now I add noble gems,

lest you think Christ poor,

gems of glittering light,

with which this temple is adorned.

You see the consecrated virgins,

you marvel at the untouched aged women,

who, after the loss of a first marriage-bed,

know nothing of a second fire.

This is the necklace of the Church,

with these gems she is adorned;

so dowered she pleases Christ,

so she crowns her lofty head.

Behold the talents, take them;

you will adorn the city of Romulus,

you will enrich the prince’s estate,

and you yourself will become richer.”

“We are mocked,” the prefect cries out,

raging, “and in marvellous ways

through so many guises we are played with:

and the madman’s head still lives!

Do you think, you gallows-bird,

that you have woven such great tricks

with unpunished, mimic mockery,

while, a buffoon, you dance your farce?

Did it seem a fine wit

to handle us with jests?

Was I, sold to your laughter,

a festive little turn?

Is there then no severity,

no censure in the fasces?

Has soft gentleness so blunted

the public axe?

You say, ‘I will gladly meet death,

death is the martyr’s wish.’

This is your vanity of persuasion,

we know it well.

But to one who wills it I will not grant

that a swift death’s

short-cut exit be supplied;

I will not let you perish in haste.

I will hold your life and prolong it

with the unbroken penalties of delay,

and an inextricable death

shall draw out long agonies.

Spread out the warm coals,

lest the heat, too fiery,

seize the stubborn man’s face

and enter the hidden places of his heart.

Let the vapour grow faint and languish,

which, poured out with a light breath,

may gradually temper the torments

of the half-burnt body.

It is well that the high priest himself

of them all has fallen here;

he alone will give an example

of what they must soon fear.

Climb the spread-out pyre,

lie down on a worthy little bed;

then, if you please, argue

that my Vulcan is nothing.”

As the prefect speaks this, the savage

torturers on this side and that prepare

to strip the martyr of his garment,

to bind his limbs and stretch them out.

His face shone with beauty,

and a radiance was poured around him.

Such a countenance the lawgiver bore down

when he returned from the mountain,

which the Jewish people, defiled

and discoloured by the golden ox,

feared, and turned their face back,

unable to endure God.

Such glory too did that other

show of a gleaming face,

Stephen, through the shower of stones

gazing on the opened heavens.

This shone from afar

upon the lately cleansed brethren,

whom baptism, newly given,

had made able to receive Christ;

but the blindness of the impious,

their face smeared with the grime of night,

covered beneath a blackening veil,

does not see the brightness,

after the manner of the Egyptian plague,

which, while with darkness it condemned

the barbarians, showed the Hebrews day

in clear light.

Indeed the very quality of the smell

which the scorched skin gives back

moves the two in opposite ways:

to these a stench, to those it is nectar,

and the same sense, varied

by differing air, either afflicts

the nostrils with avenging horror

or soothes with delight.

So God is the eternal fire,

for Christ is the true fire;

he himself fills the just with light

and burns the guilty.

After the long-lasting vapour

had cooked the burnt-out side,

unprompted, from the gridiron he addresses

the judge with a brief speech:

“Turn the part of my body

long since sufficiently roasted,

and make trial of what your

burning Vulcan has done.”

The prefect orders him turned over.

Then he: “It is cooked, devour it,

and take the proof

whether it is sweeter raw or roasted.”

This he had said in sport,

then he looks up to heaven,

and, groaning deeply, he prays,

pitying the city of Romulus:

“O Christ, the only name,

O splendour, O power of the Father,

O maker of earth and sky,

and founder of these walls,

who set the sceptre of Rome

at the summit of things, ordaining

that the world should serve the Quirinal toga

and yield to its arms,

so that the customs of discordant nations,

their observance,

their tongues, their characters, their rites

you might tame under single laws,

lo, beneath the realm of Remus

the whole mortal race has yielded,

discordant rites speak alike,

they feel the selfsame thing.

This was destined, that all the more

the law of the Christian name

might bind whatever land lies open

with a single bond.

Grant, Christ, to your Romans

that the city be Christian,

through which you gave that to the rest

there should be one mind in worship.

All its members are confederated,

from this side and that, into one creed.

The subject world grows gentle;

let the supreme head grow gentle too.

Let it turn the sundered regions

to meet in a single grace;

let Romulus become faithful,

and let Numa himself now believe.

The Trojan error still confounds

the senate-house of the Catos,

venerating at hidden hearths

the exiled household gods of the Phrygians.

Two-faced Janus and Sterculus

the senate worships (I shudder

to name so many monsters of the fathers)

and the feasts of old Saturn.

Wipe away, Christ, this disgrace,

send forth your Gabriel,

that the wandering blindness of Iulus

may acknowledge the true God.

And already we hold most faithful

hostages of this hope,

for here indeed already reign the two

chief among the apostles,

one the caller of the nations,

the other, holding the first chair,

unlocks the entrusted

gates of eternity.

Depart, adulterous Jupiter,

stained with your sister’s defilement,

leave Rome free,

and flee now the people of Christ.

Paul drives you out from here,

the blood of Peter dislodges you;

that which you yourself had armed,

the deed of Nero, works against you.

I see that there will be a prince

some day who, a servant of God,

will not suffer Rome to serve

the foul filth of the rites,

who will bar the temples with bolts,

block up the ivory doors,

condemn the accursed thresholds,

fastening them with bars of bronze.

Then, pure from all blood,

the marbles will gleam at last,

and the bronzes will stand harmless

that now are held as idols.”

This was the end of his praying

and the same the end of the bond

of the flesh: the spirit, willing,

broke forth, following his voice.

Certain fathers bore the body

on their bent necks,

whom the man’s wondrous freedom

had urged to seek out Christ.

A sudden disposition had breathed

into their marrow and compelled them,

through love of the exalted God,

to hate their former trifles.

From that day the worship

of the base gods grew cold:

fewer in the shrines, the people

run to the tribunal of Christ.

So fighting, Lawrence

girt no sword upon his side,

but, turning the enemy’s steel back,

bore it against its author.

While the demon provoked God’s

unconquered witness to battle,

pierced through, he himself fell

and lies laid low forever.

That death of the holy martyr

was the true death of the temples;

then Vesta felt the Palladian household gods

deserted with impunity.

Whatever of the Romans was wont

to pray at Numa’s sacrificial ladle,

thronging the courts of Christ,

echoes the martyr in hymns.

The very luminaries of the senate,

once Luperci or flamens,

kiss the thresholds

of the apostles and martyrs.

We see illustrious houses,

noble in both sexes,

offer in their vows the pledges

of their most renowned children.

The once fillet-crowned pontiff

is enrolled under the sign of the cross,

and a Vestal, Claudia, enters

your temple, Lawrence.

O three and four and seven times

blessed dweller of the city,

who close at hand honours you

and the seat of your bones,

who is permitted to fall down beside them,

who sprinkles the place with weeping,

who presses his breast to the ground,

who pours out his vows in a murmur.

Us the Basque Ebro separates,

set apart by two ranges of Alps,

across the ridges of the Cottian heights,

and across the snowy Pyrenees.

The fame is scarcely known how full

of hidden saints Rome is,

how richly the city’s soil

flowers with sacred tombs.

But we who lack these blessings,

and cannot see the traces

of their blood before us,

gaze on heaven from afar.

So, holy Lawrence, we seek out

your passion:

for you have a twofold hall,

here for your body, in heaven for your mind.

There, chosen as a citizen

of the unutterable city,

in the citadel of the eternal court

you bear the civic crown.

I seem to see the man

glittering with illustrious gems,

whom heavenly Rome has chosen

for herself as everlasting consul.

What power has been entrusted to you

and how great a gift is given,

the joys make proof, for Rome,

which, when asked, you grant.

Whatever each suppliant asks,

he bears it granted, with good success;

they ask, they jest, they tell their need,

and not one returns in sorrow,

as though you were ever present and at hand

and, embracing your city’s nurslings

at your nursing bosom,

fed them with a father’s love.

Among these, O glory of Christ,

hear a rustic poet

confessing the crimes of his heart

and betraying his own deeds.

Unworthy, I acknowledge and know,

that Christ himself should hear me,

but through the patron martyrs

he can obtain a remedy.

Hear kindly the suppliant

Prudentius, a man guilty before Christ,

and, the slave of his body,

absolve him from the chains of the age.