In Historiam Testamenti Veteris Et Novi Carmina

Rusticius Helpidius, Poems on the History of the Old and New Testaments. Eve Seduced by the Devil. The envious one, by his craft, prepares the forbidden apple to be plucked for Eve, who, ignorant of such great deceit, trusted the unhappy one and was to perish together with her husband. The Angel’s Arrival to Mary. The angel warns Joseph, through dreams, to preserve the untouched marriage of Mary: here, filled with a dowry, the Spirit—whatever this may be, fragrant—is saved by honor. Adam and Eve Are Driven from Paradise. Girt with skins, bearing the signs of sin, the servants of punishments leave the happy realms; the hall, always friendly to the pious, rejects the sinners. The Thief Is Led into Paradise. The blessed thief, under the Lord’s guidance through the pleasant groves of the sacred wood, earns a life-giving lodging; fortified faith overcomes so many crimes of a life. Noah, by the Lord’s Command, Shuts Everything in the Ark. Here Noah gathers birds, herds, men, every kind of wild beast, lest the violence of the flood destroy anything, and he stores all these stored things in one ark.

Peter Shown a Vision from Heaven. The class of reptiles and cattle, and all the birds, the net holds, which the father commands Peter to eat, deeming nothing common that the creator had made clean. The Tower of Confusion Is Destroyed. Insanity builds a tower with immense wealth, but God, the supreme ruler, creates discord, lest the foolish hand prepare anything beyond its own rights. Peter and the Apostles Speak in Various Languages. A harmonious narrative pours forth diverse tongues, each barbarian nation recognizes its own voice, which the sacred spirit utters through a human mouth. Joseph Sold by His Brothers. Here, devouring envy compels the brothers, conspiring, to sell their sibling; contrary things benefit the just; this is a divine work, that he who now sells may later adore. Christ Sold by Judas. Dire hunger for money compels Judas to sell the royal head for punishment; a wicked mind carries out the commerce of such great blood for a paltry profit. Abraham Leads His Son to Be Sacrificed.

You cut down the expenses: the victim itself carries the wood, for the dear father, prepared to sacrifice his own child, leads Abraham: it is the merit of faith, not to spare even one's son. CHRIST IS LED TO BE CRUCIFIED. The renowned hand of all bears the wood to be honored, by which the holy victim of the world allows herself to be suspended! She is raised up, so that one death may bring salvation to the wretched. QUAIL AND MANNA ARE GIVEN TO THE JEWS. The quail sent on the day recalls the flesh-hungry, and the heavenly abundance of bread fills the undeserving: for to the worthy, the manna gives whatever flavor each one desires. CHRIST FEEDS FOUR THOUSAND WITH SEVEN LOAVES. With seven loaves here he feeds thousands of peoples, four, and few fishes satisfy the feasts: for twelve baskets were filled with fragments of bread. MOSES ASCENDS THE MOUNTAIN. Truth-telling Moses unfolds the inner sanctuaries of the law, that the highest ruler of all is one and the same, and that not divided power rules the world, but a single authority. CHRIST TEACHES ON THE MOUNTAIN.

Sitting in a mountain valley, he speaks the grave and immutable word and the pious precepts of justice to the peoples; wherever it goes, wherever it proceeds, wisdom shows itself. MARTHA AND MARY. Martha reproaches her companion with undeserved complaints, because she is idle from duty; to whom the truthful arbiter says: The care of God, a better home, and more useful to him. THE CENTURION TO CHRIST. Alas for me, savior, a servant yearns to be saved: I am not worthy, for whose sake you would enter a roof, but you can heal with a word, for you suffice when absent. CHRIST MAKES WINE FROM WATER. The once tasteless waters, the elements, took on the flavor of blazing wine, for the provident author made gifts of joy, the beginnings of virtues. A WOMAN IS HEALED BY CHRIST. He gives his right hand to the wretched, and compassionately raises kindly the woman whom the long torments of disease had bent; upright faith rises, and the mind of the believer is pure. A WOMAN IS HEALED FROM A FLOW. This woman, by the touch of a garment, was pierced to health, and faith dried up the veins and the shameful flow: beautiful faith, whose power to compel is great for the Thunderer.

CHRIST RAISES THE WIDOW'S SON. The mother was grieving with unknowing mind over the corpse, when the salvation of the whole world of men met her at the threshold of the gate, and turned her mourning into joy. CHRIST SEES ZACCHAEUS IN THE TREE. The sweet honor of the Lord shone upon the friend Zacchaeus, sounding with majesty: today you set out as my guest; from now on, descend from the branches you have left behind to greater things. LAZARUS RECALLED FROM DEATH. Here Lazarus rises again, death having been cast off, and tombs give birth to souls under a changed law. He who knows how to restore life by the word pours forth life; he is life. A POEM OF RUSTICUS HELPIDIUS ON THE BENEFITS OF JESUS CHRIST. The all-powerful creator of things, the sole mind of the highest, and the eternal offspring of God: because of the glory of the Father, and the fruitful honor of the Word, by which he spread out the blue of the sea, solidified the earth, and suspended Olympus. The places hold their appointed stations; even the discordant elements preserve their faithful alternations, and the day obeys the received sun, and the days endure the moon in its risings and settings to return to its own, nor do the stars refuse to yield to the light: and they bear that their own courses grow fiery, and the swift horns of the moon are content to wane.

By this word, what great kingdoms the Sower has prepared for himself! He has also proven you to be a partner in the kingdoms and a son. Those things which are equally joined together tremble, and our praise always celebrates the faith, ever ready, because you sit with the Father, free from time: for what was ever lacking to you, or what more can you be than the Father, to whom a single majesty always rules, and names reign? The Spirit is always to be venerated with a shared worship, and bearing the command, one power thrives, lacking both beginning and end, and the same through all. And by merit, a common honor: among the sorrows of the earth, you bore celestial glory, deigning to display both aspects: nothing greater than the mother's body, nothing lesser than the Father's power, never absent from the ether, never abandoning the limbs once assumed for us, always and everywhere powerful. Be present, I pray, and guide my heart, rule my soul and spirit, and grant joys, to overcome the plague of vices and finally conquer whatever depraved love, whatever fierce passion commands.

Whatever is shameful to say, whatever is cruel to commit, whatever harms me or anyone, whatever hinders good conduct, and enslaves hearts bound by perpetual penalties—indulging in pardon for the slips which the first author, provident for preserving laws and for life, mercifully judges as light, so that I may be more gently afflicted: may it repent me to have sinned to you, and may I be corrected as your hostage. Take up the guilty with the vengeance of sparing, I beg, the gifts of my needy mouth, of one singing nothing worthy of praise. May you approve wishes more than gifts, and not count among those bards the arts learned in errors of speech, which the dweller of Permessus at Aganippean waters, drawing from the source, has as food for the mind captured by vain sweetness, and delights himself with empty murmur, by which the mouth of a flattering song is powerful. Hence even my grief has been trifled with in pattern, a chattering page falsely composing satyromata with the Muses, so that a singing page might deceive trembling laments. But to you my mind lies open, confessed; to you my panting tongue pours out prayers and wearies sober words. You are the Lord, you are true goods and perpetual glory, and the maker of things, you are the manifest hope and the exemplary pattern for the restored soul: you are the victor and heir of the dying body, after it the same and the surviving limbs, after the underworld God, and after mortal things alive. You are divine salvation, pitying bitter clamor and diseases and raging furies, and the crimes of wounded blood, having seemed to descend into our sufferings to mingle man with God. Soon faith, conscious of truth, displayed proofs, and the subject world, at predicted times, marveled at the miracles.

And the earth lies, the sea is silent, and the glittering aether scarcely suffices to serve with lesser homage, and the swift axis serves the trampled clouds: this one, with God impregnating, a mortal unknowing of offspring, fruitful virginity bore, and with chaste birth the work of piety was fulfilled, for common nature would not produce a new origin, nor would the summit of majesty lie open, if it gave nothing wondrous to the lands, nothing unknown, nor did the pledges of such offspring shine forth together, for the world, irradiating with a clear star, recognized the honor of glittering light, that its own author had perished, who, bearing noble beginnings, proceeded into fragile limbs. Immediately assuming the granted times in his taken-up limbs, he who was nothing before, nor does the origin of a created beginning exist, which after God could be born as everything, which he begot with the Father, and with the great Spirit. And the triple thrives in praise, and will always thrive, he cultivated the divine holy cradle with pious acts, seeing the shining one above the stars, whom the earth raised. The Chaldean people, endowed with the light of the holy flame, and following the brightness pointed out in the skies, merited to know you first, with future things through a kind of teaching, bearing gifts, gives gifts to the king, divinity to God, and myrrh to the tomb, there the glory of the all-producing word grew, and joyful wines of the couches, and dishes returned to the table: the guest people marveled at the heaped platters, the bride leading feasts with piled-up banquets.

You, with a light touch, commanded the hollows of a darkened brow to shine, and with hiding places burst open, you made conceived days rejoice, and with night put to flight from a monster-bearing face, you brought lights to the blind. Through you, supreme Father, with its joints torn apart, the sick man, with barely a lingering soul, returns—nay, dragging a dead corpse, by the sound virtue of the word, with its strength recovered, it leapt up: for since it could no longer remain fallen, it bent its neck to a hard bed. You, powerful to restrain diseases, and to drive off the griefs of the tomb, and to recall a corpse to the spirits of life, and to trample the broken bars of cruel death, so that with one face returning, the world might grasp what your right hand had prepared to bestow upon all its own. Nor is it enough for us that you have founded the soil, made the fallow fields fertile, poured out foliage for the forests and grasses for the meadows, subjected wild beasts, renewed the various liquids, opened the breezes for birds and the waves for fish, and fortified our race with shrewd reason and strong hand, and raised up its head through the stars—once, to the flowing motions you come to aid, and with the stain of primal guilt healed, you lead back extinguished souls and lifeless bodies into heaven, and pious laws: not with sweet herbs of a harvested and withered crop, nor with the honor of soft clothing.

The gleaming Sidonian poison which defiled you, redeemed by Libyan hides or Indian wares, your offspring and your lineage, but with sacred blood and great price you bestow, teaching slippery ways among the limbs, so that you might render back life, you conquered the faults deserved for the crime of the flesh, performing the praise of the flesh, pure through so many contagions, and exulting before man, enduring human sorrows and death for death, you fulfilled the sign of the ethereal summit, for our funeral of the wood. From which the prior penalty bit the laws of nature, breaking warnings, and the shameful commands of the parent and its own maker, to whom it must always be prayed with outstretched hands, the hands stretched out in a deserved death showed, so that living glory might assert to the lands, nor should anyone refuse the torments of the cross willingly to endure for the Lord, with hesitating arms, what the Lord bore for the people: nor is it right to say with slight senses, with how much honor the grace is celebrated, which, unlocking the inner sanctum of the sacred font, summons all to pardon: and gave the power to be reborn better, and opens the heavenly doors and thresholds, to the path of a better world, and the eternal kingdom of the celestial fatherland: now no dry fever here, no thirst, or violent hunger, no flame of fear: there will be no war, no disease, nor will unjust power rage, nor will anyone exercise the right of crime with a sword taken away, nor will any guilty one rule, in the holy seat, pious morals will bear rewards, and faithful love will shine, and green youth.

Crawling infancy would not attempt silent years, nor would bent old age be furrowed by a parched mouth: only the happy few will rejoice in an unstable age. We believe and, by the calm mercy of the Lord, we will also flow here in righteousness, and hoping for the gifts of life,