In Romanum martyrem

On the Holy Martyr Romanus. Second Oration. 1. Wrestling floors bestow courage upon bodies and the skills of athletic art; but the memorials of martyrs arm souls against the arts of the demons and train them for grips against those beings. For by making public the athletic tension and the unyielding struggle against the scourges, they rouse piety to boldness, setting forth, as in arenas, a double course stretched out by the whole martyr through the narrations of his sufferings. Such is the memory of the athlete crowned today. For who would not take courage for the contests against the devil, having trained his soul with the wrestlings of the martyr, whom the multitude of so many dangers did not shake? For a great tyranny of impiety was then dancing in the world, and life imitated a sea shaken from its depths, and the high waves of the ocean had moved onto the land, and a violent surge of impiety was bailing out the vessel of piety, in which many pilots were dead everywhere, and not a small number of sailors were submerged; everything was full of bitter fears and shipwrecks.

Kings breathed more violently than a storm-wind, tyrants brought on fearful triple waves, the thrones of rulers were shaken, judges proclaimed denial of Christ, lawgivers threatened bitter punishments, men were snatched away to sacrifices of demons, women were dragged to the abomination of altars, virgins were also dragged to this madness, priests were given over to exiles and slaughters, the faithful were driven from sacred precincts. Against such a battle the martyr armed himself, and he withstood so many dangers to his resolve, laughing at the array as if it were a shadow-fight, and as if in wrestling grounds, sprinkling the judges with faith instead of dust, he thus fanned the mind of the then presiding judge, halting the course he was devising against the Church. Therefore the noble one was swiftly seized for punishment, and many varieties of tortures were applied; but the martyr resembled a lyre, moved to a note by the plectrum of torments. The executioners standing around crushed his body, but he, like some bronze, resounded the melody of piety when struck; hanging him on a beam, they lacerated him, but he embraced the beam as a tree of life; they tore his cheeks as if they were the ribs of a righteous man, but he, as if gaining more mouths, declaimed and shamed the adversary with a novel fall. For when he saw the judge summoning him to the zeal of the demons, he asked for an infant to be brought from the marketplace, as if making that child a judge of the matters sought by the judge; and when the infant was brought, he presented his question concerning the matters at hand.

Child," he says, "is it just to worship God, or the so-called gods of these men?" Great is the abundance of the martyr's wisdom: the child sets the judge as judge; and it quickly pronounced a verdict for Christ, to show that even children are wiser than impious judges, or rather to reveal that the martyr is not only a martyr but also a trainer of martyrs. Yet even this did not overthrow the judicial frenzy, but immediately the martyr was seized with the infant for the plank, and the punishment of the plank was followed by prison, and that by a verdict dividing various punishments for the athletes: for the infant it condemned to death, for the martyr to the cutting out of the tongue. Who has heard of such a manner of judgment? Judges scourge the condemned, forcing them to confess what they know against themselves, but the judge of impiety cuts out the tongue, compelling silence about what he knows against himself. O dreadful invention of evil craft! "I have not," he says, "removed the soul that thinks of Christ's things, even if I cut out the tongue speaking for Christ." Cut out the tongue, O tyrant, that you may learn that nature, even without a tongue, speaks eloquently for Christ; gouge out the tongue of the mouth, that you may learn the truth of the one who promised the gifts of tongues. For he cut out the instrument of the tongue, but the word rushed out more vehemently, as if freed from the tongue as an impediment; a strange and paradoxical sight: a fleshly being speaking fleshlessly to fleshly beings. So the martyr's song befits the prophet: "Our mouth was filled with joy, and our tongue with exultation.

The mouth was filled with joy, having offered a new sacrifice to Christ—the tongue. The tongue had great exultation, having appeared as a forerunner martyr of the martyr. O tongue that anticipated the soul of the martyr before the crowds of martyrs! O mouth that gave birth to a hidden martyr! O tongue that made the mouth an altar! O mouth that made the tongue a sacrificial victim! You were hidden, O noble one, having a temple—the mouth, a temple in which you sacrificed your own tongue, a strange lamb. 2. What orator could worthily crown your virtues? You received a tongue from nature, and you nurtured it into a martyr; you received a mouth as a guard for the tongue, and you made the mouth an altar for the tongue; you received a plectrum for speaking, and you made it a cut ear of grain; you received a tongue as a servant of words, and you sacrificed it as a spotless sheep to Christ. With what fitting name shall I honor your tongue? With what name shall I adorn your tongue? The executioners brought the iron to it, and it did not leap about like the bound Isaac, but as if lying on an altar in the mouth, it received the blow with pleasure, teaching the tongues of men that they must not only speak for Christ but also be slaughtered. You seized, O noble one, the zeal of the patriarch's sacrifice, offering a single shoot of the tongue instead of a single child. Rightly, then, did Christ plant a second tongue in you; for he found you a good cultivator of the first. Rightly did he grant you a fleshless tongue; for a fleshly one did not befit an angelic mind. Rightly did he give you the reward for the tongue.

You lent your tongue to the Master for sacrifice, and He lent it back to you a voice for rhetoric; and there came about an exchange between the tongue and Christ, the tongue being cut for Christ, and Christ speaking for the tongue. Where now is Macedonius, who fights against the Paraclete, the giver of the gift of tongues? And that I am not lying in ascribing the gifts of the charismata to the divinity of the Paraclete, the blessed Paul is our witness, now crying out to your love of hearing: All these things one and the same Spirit works, distributing to each individually, as He wills. “As He wills,” it says, not “as He is commanded.” But lest we, by adding further points to these, overwhelm your memory with the multitude, we, remembering this strong voice on behalf of the Paraclete, shall depart from here in this way, thinking great things against those men, but for the present forgiving them in their error, and worshipping the divinity of the Paraclete. Now the prophetic trumpet, prefiguring the universal harmony concerning Christ, said: “They shall know me,” it says, “from their small to their great, and every tongue shall confess the true God.” And the prophet, as I said, encloses every tongue in the net of the knowledge of God; but we today

and we shall hear a tongue-less orator pleading for piety; as if a lyre without a plectrum praises its maker. Let the blessed Romanus then speak: "My tongue is the pen of a swift-writing scribe." What tongue? Not the one which the iron removed, but the one which the grace of the Spirit forged; for when the tongue was taken away, the grace of the Spirit was introduced in its place. The apostles also had tongues, but to show the power of the one who acts, the clay was idle, and the heavenly fire spoke. The Mosaic Scripture also had an image of a thing beyond reason: a bush there and fire. And the apostolic fire prefigured the voices of the proclamation on the bush, and bestows a voice upon the lifeless, so that it might be believed that the animate instruments were touched. For if the lifeless was made vocal by the touch of fire, how was it not going to fill rational souls through touch, striking up the all-harmonious melody? Romanus the renowned partook of this grace, and with his tongue cut off, he refuted the tyrant with a clearer utterance. The tyrant would not have rushed at all to the excision of the tongue, if he had not feared the streams of refutations, if he had not been astounded by the torrent of the proclamation, if he had not supposed he could calm the waves of evangelical rhetoric. But let us see whence the tyrant comes to the necessity of such audacity.

3. Once, after sacrificing to a demon, the impious man, filled with smoke and the savor of burnt offerings, and stained with the drops of impiety, hastened to the church, and bearing his blood-stained axe, sought the bloodless altar for an unlawful sacrifice. But the fury of the tyrant did not escape the notice of the martyr. Immediately, then, springing forth to the forecourt, he checks the flood of impiety already advancing; and just as a skillful helmsman, seeing the sea bearing down upon the prow, does not allow himself to rest, but runs the whole length of the ship with a light foot, and, raising the stern by means of the rudder, sets the ship facing the waves, and, lifting the endangered vessel, cleaves the very midst of the triple wave, and with some skill furrows the swelling sea—this also the blessed Romanus did. With the idolatrous sea bellowing blasphemies and raging against the vessel of the Church, and belching forth a foam of blood against the altars, he alone arms himself against the maddened sea, and, seeing the ship tottering to the brink, he awakens the Master in the ship, awakens him who was sleeping the sleep of forbearance. He sees the sea storm-tossed by contrary winds, and utters the words of the endangered disciples: "Master, save us, we are perishing! Pirates surround the ship, wolves besiege the flock, robbers dig through your bridal chamber, adulterous whistles resound around your bride, again the serpent undermines the wall of paradise; the foundation of the Church, the rock, is shaken.

But cast from heaven the gospel anchor, and steady the rock that is shaken. "Master, save us, we are perishing." The common danger divides the martyr, and he speaks boldly to the Lord; he lets his tongue flow against the tyrant, saying, "Stop this mad course, O tyrant. Recognize the measures of your weakness, respect the boundaries of the Crucified. The boundaries of the Crucified are not the walls of the church, but the ends of the world. Shake off the mist of your madness. Look to the earth, and consider the weakness of your nature. Look up to heaven, and reckon the magnitude of the war. Spit upon the weak alliance of the demons. Consider that the demons, struck by the cross, set you up as the protector of their own altars. Why do you pursue the incomprehensible? Why do you shoot at the boundless? Is God confined by walls? The divine is unconfined. Is our Lord seen by eyes? He is invisible and formless in essence, but according to human nature he is depicted and seen. Does he dwell in stone and wood, selling his providence for an ox or a sheep? Does an altar mediate his transactions? This is the greedy begging of your demons. My Lord, rather the Lord of all, Christ, dwells in heaven, guides the world, and his sacrifice is a soul reaching up to him; his one food is the salvation of believers. Cease moving your weapons against the church. The flock is on earth, and the shepherd is in heaven. The vine branches are on earth, and the vine is in heaven.

If you cut away the vine-branches, you multiply the vine. Your hands are full of gore, your sword is from the slaughter of irrational beasts; spare the innocent cattle, and turn the iron against us who rebuke you; spare the silent beasts, and slaughter us who accuse you. For I do not fear the man-slaying iron as I fear the altar-axe; the man-slaying iron tears the body, the altar-axe destroys the soul; the man-slaying iron slaughters the victim, but the altar-axe destroys both the victim and the sacrificer together. Cut my neck, and do not defile the altar; you have a self-willed victim, why do you hobble the reluctant bull? If you desire to sacrifice, sacrifice a rational victim in the forecourts of the church. The tyrant cannot bear the martyr's boundless boldness, but begins immediately from the tongue of the victim. He therefore cuts out the tongue, not wishing to kill, but warring against the proclamation; not so much envying the herald as begrudging the one proclaimed. But He who catches the wise in their own cunning returns from heaven the severed instrument of speech, and supports the halting utterance with an invisible tongue, and grants speech to the tongueless one, showing the tyrant in deed the divine craftsmanship. And just as well-diggers, by digging through the veins, make a wider outflow for the water, so the tyrant, by digging through the root of the tongue with iron, was flooded with more violent streams of rebukes.

I would have liked to dance in the theme of the martyr to the very end, but the time for due measure has come, and it bids me be silent. For what has been said is sufficient for your benefit, and the father's teachings are necessary for the completion of what has been spoken. But let us embrace what has been said in the folds of memory, and let us open the furrows of the soul for what is yet to be said, and above all let us worship the wonder-working Christ, because glory belongs to him, together with the Father and the all-holy Spirit, now and always, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.