Hymn 13

13. The Passion of Cyprian.

The Punic land bore him, that there might shine whatever is anywhere,

thence by his home Cyprian, but the glory and teacher of the world,

he is a martyr proper to his country, but ours by love and by speech,

his blood lies in Libya, but his tongue prevails everywhere,

it alone survives apart from the body, it alone knows not how to die,

while Christ shall allow the race of men to be and the world to thrive.

While there shall be any book, while there are sacred chests of letters,

everyone who loves Christ will read you, Cyprian, will learn your words.

That Spirit of God, who, as author, had increased in the prophets,

driven from heaven, watered you with the fountains of eloquence.

O kind of tongue whiter than snow! O new savour!

as ambrosial liquor softens the heart and steeps the palate,

penetrates the seat of the soul, cherishes the mind and wanders through the limbs,

so God is felt within and is set deep in the marrow.

Whence you gave this sudden good to the earth, Father, reveal.

A rich executor was lacking to the apostolic writings:

a wealthy eloquence is chosen, to teach the world

and, ministering to the volumes of Paul, to expound them,

that the raw hearts of men, refined, might better know

either the work of fear or the mystic and the deep things of Christ.

There was one of the youths most learned in sinister arts,

to break through chastity by fraud, to reckon nothing sacred,

often too to undertake a magic spell among the tombs,

that he might loosen the wedded right of the marriage-bed when the bride was aflame,

the madness of so great wantonness Christ suddenly checks,

and shakes the darkness from his breast and drives off his frenzy,

fills him with love of himself, gives him to believe, gives him shame of his deed,

and now his form is other than the face and lustre that was before:

his countenance is stripped of its delicate skin and passes into a stern one,

the flowing hair is restrained to short locks,

he himself begins to speak modestly, to seek hope, to hold the rule,

to live by the justice of Christ, to enter into our doctrine,

by these merits, then, most worthy, the teacher is advanced

all the way to the episcopal throne and takes the highest seat.

Valerian was prince of wealth, and Gallienus too;

together they appointed the penalty of death for him who confessed God.

They had ordered the filthiest thousands of earthborn idols to be worshipped,

against them the teacher Cyprian roused the spirits of the people,

that no one might fall short of the honour of outstanding virtue,

nor any, degenerate, fear to take up the price of faith.

That the torment was light, if only you compare the things to come,

which God himself has promised, without limit, to brave men;

that with the price of pain is bought the hope of light and a perennial day,

that every evil flies swiftly past with fleeting time,

that nothing is grievous which the end accomplishes and grants to rest.

That he would be the beginning of a fair death and the leader of the bloodshed,

and would submit his head to the sword and dedicate his blood;

whoever wished to join his soul to Christ, let him follow as a companion,

when with these things he had prepared the hearts of the men, warmed for Christ,

he is led, bound, before the others, the proconsul raging.

There lie hidden the caves of Tyrian Carthage, set in secret places,

sharers of Tartarean gloom, banished from the sun.

Shut in these caverns, holy Cyprian, and with a chain

binding both his hands, calls upon the name of the supreme Father:

“Almighty begetter of Christ, God and creator of the world,

Christ, parent of man, whom you love and forbid to perish,

that I am, whom you, good, forgetful, smeared with the venoms of serpents,

stained with various crimes, in your pity washed clean

and now bid to become yours, I become another Cyprian

and new from the old, no longer guilty or harmful, as before.

If you have cleansed a muddy breast with an easy grace,

visit gladly the dungeons, the darkness dispersed, the blind caves,

snatch from the bodily prison and from the bonds of the world

this soul, let it be granted, my blood poured out, to be sacrificed to you,

lest any madness restrain the savage judge, or the tyrant’s

envy know how to grow gentle, and deny me glory.

Grant also that no one be idle of the flock which I was governing for you,

lest any of yours fall, impatient of punishment, or waver,

that I may render the number whole to you and pay my debt.”

With these words he had moved the Lord; thence the Spirit

flowed into the people of Carthage, author of a keener

spirit, that their hearts, with goads set beneath, might glow

to seek the outstanding glory by the peril of blood,

teaching them not to tremble, nor to yield, nor be conquered by pain,

to be seized by the love of praise, to savour Christ and guard the faith.

Report tells that a pit was ordered to lie open in the midst of the field,

filled near the topmost edges with steaming lime;

the re-baked stones vomit fire and the snowy powder burns,

able to scorch what it touches, and a deadly breath comes from its smell,

they relate that an altar was set, standing at the top of the pit,

under this law: that the Christians should offer either a grain of salt,

or the liver of a sow, or of their own will rush into the depths of the mid-trench.

Three hundred leaped forth eagerly at once, with rapid course,

the dry liquid devoured them, sunk in the dusty whirlpool,

and wrapped the headlong throng down to the lowest floor.

Whiteness holds their bodies, whiteness bears their minds to the heights,

and the White Mass it deserved to be called thereafter through every age.

Meanwhile Thascius, now gladder for the day of his own,

is set far off before the fury of the unbridled proconsul,

he had been bidden to declare by what creed he lived: “A worshipper of one,” he says,

“I deliver the consecrated mysteries of saving Christ.”

That one to this: “There is now enough of the charge, he himself confesses,

Thascius, he himself denies the thunderbolt of Jove, draw the iron,

executioners, let the enemy of the idols pay the penalty by the sword.”

He gives due thanks to God and sings, triumphant.

Mournful Africa wept that the man departed, by whose teaching it became

more cultivated, and by whose eloquence, made learned, it glories in itself;

soon, weeping, it built a tomb and consecrated his ashes.

Cease to weep for so great a good, he holds the realms of heaven,

nor any the less does he fly over the lands nor depart from this world:

he discourses, he speaks, he treats, he teaches, he instructs, he prophesies,

nor does he govern the peoples of Libya only; he goes out even to the rising

of the sun and even to its setting, he cherishes the Gauls, he steeps the Britons,

he presides over Hesperia, he sows Christ among the farthest Spaniards,

in short, he is a teacher on earth, the same also a martyr in the heights,

here he instructs men, there, as a patron, he gives pious gifts.