Hymn 9

9. The Passion of Saint Cassian of Forum Cornelii.

Cornelius Sulla founded a Forum; this the Italians call a city

from the very name of its founder,

here, as I journeyed toward you, Rome, greatest of all things,

a hope arose in me that Christ would be favourable.

Stretched on the ground, I rolled before a tomb which the holy

martyr Cassian adorns with his consecrated body.

While, weeping, I reckon with myself my wounds and all

the labours of my life and the sharp points of my griefs,

I raised my face to heaven, and there before me stood

an image of the martyr, painted with bright colours,

bearing a thousand blows, lacerated through all his limbs,

showing his skin torn with tiny punctures,

countless boys around him—a pitiable sight—

pierced his pricked limbs with little styluses,

with which they had been wont to run over the wax of their tablets,

writing the murmur of the schoolroom that they were noting down.

The sacristan, when consulted, says: “What you see, stranger,

is no empty or old wives’ tale;

the picture relates a history which, handed down in books,

shows the true faith of an ancient time.

He had presided over the studies of boys and, hedged about

by a great flock, had sat as a master of letters,

skilled to grasp all words in brief notes,

and swiftly to follow what was said with flying marks,

his precepts, sometimes harsh and seeming grim,

had moved the youthful crowd with anger and with fear.

For a teacher is always bitter to the learning youth,

nor is the discipline of childhood sweet to any.

Behold, a savage tempest, shaking the faith, pressed

upon the people dedicated to the Christian glory.

He, the guide of his pupil-flock, is dragged out

from the midst of the assembly, because he had scorned to pray at the altars.

When the deviser of punishments asked what kind of craft

the man knew, so rebellious in his lofty spirit,

they answer: “He governs a tender, boyish band,

training them to mark words with invented signs.”

“Lead him,” he cries out, “lead the captive, and of his own

let the scourger be given over to the little ones themselves,

that they may mock him as they please, may tear him with impunity,

and dye their hands, given holiday, in the master’s blood.

It is a pleasure that the master himself, who has

too harshly constrained them, should furnish the pupils their sport.”

His hands are bound behind his back, his garment stripped away,

and a band comes, armed with sharp styluses.

However much hatred each had conceived in silent anger,

he pours it out, burning, with gall at last set free,

some hurl the fragile tablets and break them

in his face, the wood splits, struck back against his brow,

the waxed boxwood cracks, dashed against his bloody cheeks,

and the page, shortened and wet, reddens from the blow.

Then others brandish goads and iron points,

on the part where the wax is written with ploughed furrows,

and where the cut letters are erased and the rough surface

of the field, gleaming again, is renewed.

On this side Christ’s confessor is dug, on that he is cut;

one part enters the soft flesh, one part splits the skin,

two hundred hands alike pierced all his limbs,

and as many drops of wounds drip at once,

the greater torturer was the child who had pricked the surface,

than he who had bored through the deep flesh;

for the one, a light striker, since death is denied,

knows how to rage with the stabs of pain alone,

while the other, the more deeply he strikes the hidden seats of life,

gives the more relief, since he brings death near.

“Be strong, I pray, and conquer your years by your strength;

what age may grant, let cruelty supply.”

But the tender, weak one labours, his efforts ill-made;

the torments grow while the executioner tires.

“Why do you groan?” one cries out; “you yourself, master,

gave this iron and armed our hands.

See, we give you back as many thousands of marks

as we, standing and weeping at your teaching, received.

You cannot be angry that we write; you yourself bade

that the right hand should never bear a resting stylus,

we do not ask, greedy teacher, for the school-holidays

so often denied us while you were our master,

it pleases us to set down the dots and weave furrows in furrows,

to entangle the bent strokes with chains.

You may correct the verses, inspected in long order,

if perchance a faulty hand has erred in anything.

Exercise your authority: you have the right to punish the fault,

if any of your own has marked you too slackly.”

Such things the boys made sport of upon the master’s limbs,

nor did the long punishment release the weary man,

at last Christ, pitying him as he struggled, from heaven

bids the bonds of his breast be loosed,

and relaxes the hard delays of his soul and the tethers

of his life, and frees its narrow hiding-places,

the blood, following the open ways from the inner

fount of his veins, forsakes his heart,

and through so many openings of his pierced body departs

that vital warmth of his fibres, gasping out.

These are the things which, set forth in clear colours, stranger,

you marvel at; this is the glory of Cassian,

lay before him, if you have any just or lovely vow,

if you have any hope, if you seethe with anything within.

Believe me, the most prosperous martyr hears all prayers,

and grants fulfilled those which he sees worthy.”

I obey, I embrace the tomb, I pour out tears too,

the altar grows warm with my mouth, the stone with my breast.

Then I review all the secret things of my toil,

then I murmur what I was seeking, what I was fearing,

and the home left behind me under a doubtful lot,

and my hope of future good, perhaps wavering.

I am heard, I reach the city, I enjoy favourable success:

I return home, I proclaim Cassian.