'Saturn's Rule Returns'—Saturn & the New Golden Age in Virgil & Lewis

Continued from Parts 1, 2, and 3.

As will have been noticed, line 6 of Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue contains the statement redeunt Saturnia regna, ‘Saturn’s rule returns’ in Lee’s simple translation. [1] Dame Frances Yates comments, ‘The poets taught . . . that justice reigned in the golden age of Saturn and left the earth.’ [2] Therefore, the return of Justice—Virgo—means the return of Saturn. The mythology to which Virgil refers, of the Golden Age and its end, can be found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses 1.89-124. Here are a few pertinent lines:

First to be born was the Golden Age. Of its own free will,
without laws or enforcement, it did what was right and trust prevailed.
. . .
Spring was the only season. Flowers which had never been planted
were kissed into life by the warming breath of the gentle zephyrs;
and soon the earth, untilled by the plough, was yielding her fruits,
and without the renewal the fields grew white with the swelling corn blades.
. . .
When Saturn was cast into murky Tartarus, Jupiter seized
the throne of the universe. Now there followed the age of silver,
meaner than gold but higher in value than tawny bronze.
Gentle spring was no longer allowed to continue unbroken;
the king of the gods divided the year into four new seasons:
. . . [3]

When I first read the Eclogue I didn’t pay much attention to the reference to Saturn. But when I really started thinking about how the whole poem might relate not only to the Incarnation generally, but to the Nativity in particular, a question reared its head.

In an earlier post, I discussed the thesis of Michael Ward that each of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia are meant to correspond to one of the seven planets in classical Western astronomy. Referring to an article Ward published in Touchstone, I pointed out that The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe, in the plot of which the coming of Christmas has an important rôle, could be seen to correspond to the sphere of Jupiter, as expressed by Lewis’s alliterative poem, ‘The Planets’:

. . . Of wrath ended
And woes mended, of winter passed
And guilt forgiven, and good fortune
Jove is master; and of jocund revel,
Laughter of ladies. The lion-hearted,
The myriad-minded, men like the gods,
Helps and heroes, helms of nations
Just and gentle, are Jove’s children,
Work his wonders. . . . [4]

A little search also yielded another passage Ward quotes, from Lewis’s Allegory of Love: ‘The poetry which represents . . . winter overgone, [is] the poetry born under Jove . . .’ [5] Again, the passing of winter means the coming of Jove.

Even ‘Father Christmas’ appears in Narnia, where it has been ‘always winter and never Christmas’, [6] giving gifts to the Pevensie children. As winter in Narnia is beginning to pass, Lewis describes him in very ‘Jovial’ terms:

He was a huge man in a bright red robe (bright as holly-berries) with a hood that had fur inside it and a great white beard that fell like a foamy waterfall over his chest. . . . Some of the pictures of Father Christmas in our world make him look only funny and jolly. But now that the children actually stood looking at him they didn’t find it quite like that. He was so big, and so glad, and so real, that they all became quite still. They felt very glad, but also solemn.

‘I’ve come at last,’ said he. ‘She has kept me out for a long time, but I have got in at last. Aslan is on the move. The Witch’s magic is weakening.’

And Lucy felt running through her that deep shiver of gladness which you only get if you are being solemn and still. [7]

Finally, I recalled Lewis’s words in his wonderful poem on the Nativity, ‘The Turn of the Tide’:

Saturn laughed and lost his latter age’s frost,
His beard, Niagara-like, unfroze; [8]

So I’m not sure if it will be clear to all, but I had formed an idea in my head from of all of this of the coming of Christ meaning the passing of Saturn before Jupiter and the beginning of the end of winter. Yet, here in this Eclogue that I am reading through a Messianic lens, it says that the coming of Christ means the return of Saturn! How can these things be reconciled? I wasn’t looking for perfect logical consistency from a myth, but it seems that they usually have their own logic, and Lewis, who of course knew Virgil and Ovid well, surely knew what he was doing!

Although he was not coming at it from the same point of departure as I, I found that revisiting a fascinating article by Charles A. Huttar answered the question rather well. In ‘C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot, & the Milton Legacy: The Nativity Ode Revisited’, Huttar is studying the controversy between Lewis and Eliot over the continued influence of Milton on English poetry and whether it was positive or negative. Huttar argues that Lewis’s ‘Turn of the Tide’ was written as a sort of update to Milton’s ‘Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’ in order to demonstrate how his legacy can be put to positive use. I shall quote this article at length:

‘Saturn laughed and lost his latter age’s frost’ (line 69); that is, he cease to be saturnine (melancholic). What does Lewis have in mind? . . . The bitter cold (‘frost’) and the melancholy derive from the planet’s distance from the sun and its astrological significance, and Lewis exploits these features elsewhere in his poetry and his fiction. But the cold belongs to the myth also, not as an inherent property of Saturn but as a condition to which he is subjected: Ovid, for example, tells how winter first appeared when Jupiter overthrew Saturn and banished him (Met. 1.116-20). In the present lines, Lewis has the myth in mind as well as the astronomy, and as so often in Lewis’s handling of myths, he gives it a new, creative twist. Saturn has been melancholy, we may suppose (and the cause of melancholy in others), ever since Jupiter dispossessed him and put an end to the Age of Gold over which he ruled; but now, with the prospect of that Age’s returning, his melancholy gives way to mirth. . . . [Thus, Lewis] ties the return of the Golden Age back to the winter setting of his opening lines—and of the ancient Roman Saturnalia, whose carnival atmosphere in December Lewis reflects not only in Saturn’s laughter but in the word ‘revel’ (line 67). No longer burdened with the endless postponement of his rôle as returning king, Saturn greets the true king who will have that rôle. [9]

Huttar also adds a footnote to the statement about Saturn’s melancholy giving ‘way to mirth’:

A connection may also be drawn between the melting of the ice in Saturn’s beard—the ‘Niagara’ image wonderfully illustrates the vast scale of Lewis’s imaginations of the heavens—and the thaw that brings spring to Narnia when Aslan comes (heralded by Father Christmas, whose ‘great white beard . . . fell like a foamy waterfall over his chest’) in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe . . . . The imaginative identification of Saturn with the paradisal had long occupied Lewis’s thoughts. [10]

So, for Lewis it is not Saturn’s rule passing that is equated with the passing of winter (and thus he does not disagree with Virgil), but the melancholy frost passing from Saturn, who thereby becomes more ‘jovial’. Of course, even devoid of his frost, Saturn’s rule, like that of Caesar Augustus, is not the purpose of Christ’s coming, but its prefigurement. As Huttar states, ‘Saturn greets the true king’ whose coming unfroze his beard. [11]

The Saturnine theme links back to my post on the shepherds as well. Recall Albert Hamilton’s statement that the ‘shepherd was taken as the type of the contemplative life as opposed to the active plowman’. [12] Well, Saturn is of course traditionally associated with contemplation, which Cornelius Agrippa considered a species of melancholy (on Saturn & contemplation, see this post). [13] Note too that in l. 23 of the Metamorphoses Ovid says the ‘active plowman’ began his work ‘for the first time’ after the overthrow of Saturn. [14]

I conclude with the words of Lactantius, who, having acknowledged in Divine Institutes V.5 the truth from a Christian perspective in Ovid’s account of the Golden Age, writes in V.7:

But God, as a most indulgent parent, when the last time approached, sent a messenger to bring back that old age, and justice which had been put to flight, that the human race might not be agitated by very great and perpetual errors. Therefore the appearance of that golden time returned, and justice was restored to the earth, but was assigned to a few; and this justice is nothing else than the pious and religious worship of the one God. [15]

[1] Virgil, The Eclogues, trans. Arthur Guy Lee (London: Penguin, 1988), p. 57.

[2] Dame Frances A. Yates, Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Ark, 1975), p. 35.

[3] Ovid, Metamorphoses: A New Verse Translation, trans. David Raeburn (London: Penguin, 2004), pp. 9-10.

[4] C.S. Lewis, Poems, ed. Walter Hooper (San Diego: Harcourt, 1992), p. 14.

[5] C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love: A Study in the Medieval Tradition (Oxford: Oxford U, 1959), p. 197.

[6] C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe, illust. Pauline Baynes (London: HarperCollins, 2009), p. 23.

[7] Ibid., p. 101.

[8] Lewis, Poems, p. 51.

[9] Charles A. Huttar, ‘C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot, & the Milton Legacy: The Nativity Ode Revisited’, Texas Studies in Literature & Language, Vol. 44, No. 3, Fall 2002, pp. 334-5.

[10] Huttar, p. 344, n. 48.

[11] Ibid., p. 335.

[12] Albert Charles Hamilton, The Spenser Encyclopedia (Toronto: U of Toronto, 1997), p.531.

[13] Dame Frances A. Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 62-3.

[14] Ovid, p. 11.

[15] Here.

'When Augustus Reigned Alone Upon Earth'—The Augustan Peace as Prefigurement

This is my third post on Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue. Here are the first and second.

Dame Frances Yates has discussed some of the more this-worldly readings of Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue in her study of the figure of Astraea-Virgo as background to the cult of Queen Elizabeth I. She writes:

Later ages have read the Eclogue in the light of subsequent history and seen it in the context of Virgil’s position as the prophet of the imperial mission of Rome. In the sixth book of the Aeneid, Aeneas, in the course of his journey through Hell in the company of the Cumaean Sybil, hears from the lips of Anchises the prophecy of the return of the gold age under Augustus Caesar. [1]

She then gives a prose translation of Aeneid VI, 791-5. Here is James Rhoades’s rendering:

This, this the man so oft foretold to thee,
Caesar Augustus, a god’s son, who shall
The golden age rebuild through Latian fields
Once ruled by Saturn, and push far his sway
O’er Garamantians and the tribes of Ind,
. . . [2]

Finally, Yates concludes, ‘The golden age is the Augustan rule, the Augustan revival of piety, the peace of the world-wide Augustan empire.’ [3] As Donna Tartt writes of the character ‘Bunny’ Corcoran in her striking psychological thriller, The Secret History:

Caesar Augustus was Bunny’s hero; he had embarrassed us all by cheering loudly at the mention of his name during the reading of the Bethlehem story from Luke 2 at the literature division’s Christmas party. ‘Well, what of it,’ he said, when we tried to shush him. ‘All the world shoulda been taxed.’ [4]

Obviously, whatever his merits, to equate the ‘golden age’ with the rule of Augustus is to set one’s sights rather low from a Christian perspective. But Bunny’s excitement serves to call our attention to a connection here with the Nativity. It was the decree of Caesar Augustus that led the Most-Holy Theotokos to the place appointed for her to give birth to Christ. Commenting on Luke 2:1, ‘And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be enrolled’, Bl Theophylact writes, ‘An enrollment took place for this reason: so that, as every one went to their ancestral city, the Virgin too would go up to Bethlehem, her own ancestral city, and thus the Lord would be born in Bethlehem, and the prophecy fulfilled (see Micah 5:2).’ [5] True, as St Ambrose of Milan observes:

Then, that ye may know that the enrolment is not of Augustus, but of Christ, the whole world is bidden to enroll. When Christ is born, all confess Him; when the world is included, all are tested. Then, Who could exact the confession of the whole world, save He Who had power over the whole world? For the earth is the Lord’s, and not Augustus’, the fullness thereof, the world, and all that dwell therein [Psalm 23:1]. Augustus did not rule over the Goths, he did not rule over the Armenians; Christ ruled. [6]

But in the words of Archbishop Chrysostomos and Bishop Auxentios, ‘Christ was born into a Greek and Roman world that existed simply to accommodate His Birth.’ [7] It is no surprise that we should chant in a doxasticon of St Cassia at Vespers for the Nativity:

When Augustus reigned alone upon earth, the many kingdoms of men came to end: and when Thou wast made man of the pure Virgin, the many gods of idolatry were destroyed. The cities of the world passed under one single rule; and the nations came to believe in one sovereign Godhead. The peoples were enrolled by the decree of Caesar; and we, the faithful, were enrolled in the Name of the Godhead, when Thou, our God, wast made man. Great is Thy mercy: glory to Thee. [8]

Thus, in the historical perspective of the Orthodox Church, there is perhaps a sense in which Augustus’s rule, while not the ‘Golden Age’ itself, is a prefigurement or herald of it. Keeping in mind St Ambrose’s insistence that not even the enrolment is of Augustus, it may be an even more pronounced case of the ‘unwitting prophet’, as we saw of Virgil himself in the first post on this Eclogue. But it is a connection worth noticing nonetheless.


[1] Dame Frances A. Yates, ‘Queen Elizabeth I as Astraea’, Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Ark, 1975), p. 33.

[2] James Rhoades, trans., The Poems of Virgil, Vol. 13 in Great Books of the Western World (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1980), p. 232.

[3] Yates, p. 33.

[4] Here.

[5] Fr Christopher Stade, trans., The Explanation by Bl Theophylact, Archbishop of Ochrid & Bulgaria of the Holy Gospel According to St Luke, Vol. 3 of Bl Theophylact’s Explanation of the New Testament (House Springs, MO: Chrysostom, 1997), p. 29.

[6] St Ambrose of Milan, Exposition of the Holy Gospel According to St Luke, trans. Theodosia Tomkinson (Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1998), p. 50.

[7] Archbishop Chrysostomos of Etna & Bishop Auxentios of Photiki, The Roman West & the Byzantine East (Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1997), p. 19.

[8] The Festal Menaion, trans. Mother Mary & Archim. Kallistos (Ware) (South Canaan, PA: STS, 1998), p. 254.

'The Shepherds Sing'—Shepherds Virgilian, Biblical, & English

There are three specific themes I’d like to consider further with regards to Virgil’s ‘Messianic’ Fourth Eclogue (which I began examining here). The first is the pastoral conceit of the poem, second, the connection of the new ‘Golden Age’ with the reign of Augustus Caesar, and third, the rôle of Saturn in the Eclogue and in its Christian interpretation. I shall deal with them in separate posts.

While the Fourth Eclogue is the least ‘pastoral’ in the sense of making explicit use of the classic pastoral setting and imagery, [1] we mustn’t forget that its very genre is still inspired by ‘the actual practice of . . . shepherds (who will surely have played pipes and sung songs during the long hours of watching their flocks)’. [2] The lyric purports to be a song sung by a shepherd, who in this case is also a prophet. This has not been lost on Christian readers, who have often seen in the shepherds of the Eclogues a connection with the shepherds of Luke 2:8-18, who, because of their simplicity, as Blessed Theophylact tells us, ‘were counted worthy of the vision of divine things’, who ‘saw the Babe and then spoke of Him to others’. [3] Spenser refers to the shepherds of Christ’s Nativity as ‘the silly Shepheards’—meaning ‘innocent or happy’, from the Anglo-Saxon saelig, or ‘blessed’, [4] and Albert Hamilton notes in The Spenser Encyclopedia the Christian tradition of the significance of shepherds:

That Abel ([cf. Spenser’s ‘Julye’, l.] 127) and the Old Testament patriarchs (as Moses, [‘Julye’, l.] 157) were shepherds, that shepherds were the first to hear the news of the Nativity ([cf. Spenser’s ‘Hymn to Heavenly Love’, l.] 230), and that Christ called himself the Good Shepherd were taken as proofs of the close relationship between the shepherd and God; they were continually cited by pastoralists, including Spenser. The shepherd was taken as the type of the contemplative life as opposed to the active plowman; and this symbolism was combined with the metaphorical link between shepherd and priest, and with the fact that shepherds in their night vigils could watch the course of the heavens, to make the shepherd also the source of authoritative wisdom. [5]

As if to illustrate Hamilton’s points, Metropolitan Hierotheos summarises the patristic tradition regarding the reason for the shepherds being first to hear the news of Christ’s birth:

First, because of the purity of the Shepherds by reason of their solitude and hesychia. Secondly, because the Shepherds were imitators and followers of the way of life and virtues of the Patriarchs of the Old Testament. That is to say, the Shepherds were not chance characters. Thirdly, for it to be shown that Christ will be the true Shepherd of the Israelite and Gentile people. Fourthly, for it to be seen clearly that Christ chose the most simple-hearted and most capable of receiving this revelation, and not the crafty Scribes and Pharisees. All these things show the method that one can use to experience the mystery of the revelation. [6]

Finally, the great G.K. Chesterton has the following to say about the shepherds, returning us to the Eclogue:

I fear that many modern critics will see only a faded classicism in the fact that men like Crashaw and Herrick conceived the shepherds of Bethlehem under the form of the shepherds of Virgil. Yet they were profoundly right; and in turning their Bethlehem play into a Latin Eclogue they took up one of the most important links in human history. Virgil, as we have already seen, does stand for all that saner heathenism that had over-thrown the insane heathenism of human sacrifice; but the very fact that even the Virgilian virtues and the sane heathenism were in incurable decay is the whole problem to which the revelation to the shepherds is the solution. If the world had ever had the chance to grow weary of being demoniac, it might have been healed merely by becoming sane. But if it had grown weary even of being sane, what was to happen, except what did happen? Nor is it false to conceive the Arcadian shepherd of the Eclogues as rejoicing in what did happen. One of the Eclogues has even been claimed as a prophecy of what did happen.

But it is quite as much in the tone and incidental diction of the great poet that we feel the potential sympathy with the great event; and even in their own human phrases the voices of the Virgilian shepherds might more than once have broken upon more than the tenderness of Italy ‘Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem’. They might have found in that strange place all that was best in the last traditions of the Latins; and something better than a wooden idol standing up for ever for the pillar of the human family; a household god. But they and all the other mythologists would be justified in rejoicings that the event had fulfilled not merely the mysticism but the materialism of mythology. Mythology had many sins; but it had not been wrong in being as carnal as the Incarnation. But something of the ancient voice that was supposed to have rung through the graves, it could cry again, ‘We have seen, he hath seen us, a visible god.’ [7]

As GKC suggests, many examples of this theme could be cited from English poetry. I offer two. First, ‘The Shepherds’ Song’ of Edmund Bolton (1575-1633?):

Sweet Musicke, sweeter farre
Then any song is sweet:
Sweet Musicke heauenly rare,
Mine eares, O peeres, doth greeete.
You gentle flocks, whose fleeces, pearl'd with dewe,
Resemble heaven, whom golden drops make bright:
Listen, O Listen, now, O not to you
Our pipes make sport to shorten wearie night.
But voyces most diuine
Make blissfull harmonie:
Voyces that seeme to shine,
For what else cleares the skie?
Tunes can we heare, but not the singers see,
The tunes diuine, and so the singers be.

Loe how the firmament
Within an azure fold
The flock of starres hath pent,
That we might them behold.
Yet from their beames proceedeth not this light,
Not can their christals such reflection giue.
What then doth make the element so bright?
The heauens are come downe vpon earth to liue.
But harken to the song,
Glory to glories king,
And pece all men among,
These quyeristers doe sing.
Angels they are, as also (Shepheards) hee
Whom in our feare we doe admire to see.

Let not amazement blinde
Your soules, said he, annoy:
To you and all mankinde
My message bringeth joy.
For loe the world's great Shepheard now is borne,
A blessed babe, an infant full of power:
After long night, vp-risen is the morne,
Renowning Bethlem in the Sauiour.
Sprung is the perfect day,
By prophets seene a farre:
Sprung is the mirthfull May,
Which Winter cannot marre,
In Dauid's citie doth this sunne appeare:
Clouded in flesh, yet Shepheards sit we here. [8]

But perhaps the most profound poem on the theme is the ‘song’ from Herbert’s delightful ‘Christmas’ (part of which I quoted here):

The shepherds sing; and shall I silent be?
My God, no hymne for thee?
My soul’s a shepherd too; a flock it feeds
Of thoughts, and words, and deeds.
The pasture is thy word: the streams, thy grace
Enriching all the place.
Shepherd and flock shall sing, and all my powers
Out-sing the day-light houres.
Then we will chide the sunne for letting night
Take up his place and right:
We sing one common Lord; wherefore he should
Himself the candle hold.
I will go searching, till I finde a sunne
Shall stay, till we have done;
A willing shiner, that shall shine as gladly,
As frost-nipt sunnes look sadly.
Then we will sing, shine all our own day,
And one another pay:
His beams shall cheer my breast, and both so twine,
Till ev’n his beams sing, and my music shine. [9]

[1] Though of course we still find such pastoral imagery as the Sicilian setting (l. 1), the references to sheep (ll. 43-5), and the references to Pan and Arcadia (ll. 58-9).

[2] Arthur Guy Lee, ‘Introduction’, The Eclogues, by Virgil, trans. Guy Lee (London: Penguin, 1988), p. 14.

[3] Fr Christopher Stade, trans., The Explanation by Bl Theophylact, Archbishop of Ochrid & Bulgaria of the Holy Gospel According to St Luke, Vol. 3 of Bl Theophylact’s Explanation of the New Testament (House Springs, MO: Chrysostom, 1997), p. 30.

[4] The phrase is from ‘An Hymne of Heavenly Love’, l. 230. See Edmund Spenser, The Fowre Hymnes, ed. Lilian Winstanley (Cambridge: Cambridge U, 1930), p. 29. The note is Winstanley’s, in Spenser, p. 67.

[5] Albert Charles Hamilton, The Spenser Encyclopedia (Toronto: U of Toronto, 1997), p.531.

[6] Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) of Nafpaktos, The Feasts of the Lord: An Introduction to the Twelve Feasts & Orthodox Christology, trans. Esther Williams (Levadia, Gr.: Birth of the Theotokos Monastery, 2003), p. 42.

[7] G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, Pt 2, Chapt 1 (from this page).

[8] From this page. I have a printed copy in H.C. Beeching, ed., A Book of Christmas Verse, illust. Walter C. Crane (NY: Bonanza, 1986), pp. 77-8, but it’s in modernised spelling!

[9] Rev. Robert Aris Willmott, ed., The Works of George Herbert in Prose & Verse (NY: D. Appleton & Co., 1857), pp. 79-80.

'A New Begetting Now Descends from Heaven's Height'—Virgil's Messianic Eclogue

In this time of looking forward to the Feast of Christ’s Nativity, the Church is of course continually reminding us of those who looked forward to His Nativity of old, by which I mean chiefly the holy Prophets of the Old Testament. As we chanted in the Theotokion at Ode 7 of the Matins for the Sunday before the Nativity, the ‘Virgin who will give birth’ is the ‘strange wonder spoken of openly of old by prophets and by fathers’. [1]

But a few readers may recall that in two posts last year (here and here) I investigated the presence in a mediæval Christmas drama—sometimes called the Processio Prophetarum—of the pagan seeress known as ‘the Sibyl’. Well, not many will be surprised to learn that one of the other dramatis personae in that ‘Procession of Prophets’ is the great Roman poet, Virgil, who appears ‘with an ink-horn and a candlestick, crowned with ivy, holding a quill pen’. [2] He only has one line in the Processio—Ecce polo dimissa sola nova progenies est, ‘Behold, from the heavens has been sent down a single new offspring’. [3] The line as spoken is not actually found in Virgil’s writings, but it is an echo of l. 7 of his Fourth Eclogue, on which his status as a prophet of Christ famously rests.

Picking up on the messianic tone of the Eclogue, however, can be affected by one’s choice of translation. I was first led to the poem by Frank Kermode’s untranslated quotation of ll. 5-7, where the word Virgo really stood out and stuck with me:

magnus ab integro saeculorum nascitur ordo.
iam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna;
iam nova progenies caelo demittitur alto . . . [4]

But in the translation to which I turned subsequently, that of James Rhoades in the Britannica Great Books series, these lines are rendered:

. . . and the majestic roll
Of circling centuries begins anew:
Justice returns, returns old Saturn’s reign,
With a new breed of men sent down from heaven. [5]

Fortunately, Arthur Guy Lee’s translation is a bit more faithful and less ‘interpreted’:

The great succession of centuries is born afresh.
Now too returns the Virgin; Saturn’s rule returns;
A new begetting now descends from heaven’s height. [6]

Dame Frances Yates has traced the history of the Christian reading of this Eclogue in her article, ‘Queen Elizabeth I as Astraea’. [7] She observes that ‘the first person to make a detailed and public claim for the Fourth Eclogue as a Messianic prophecy was the Emperor Constantine’, that is, St Constantine the Great, Equal-to-the-Apostles.

‘Who is that virgin who returns?’ enquires the Emperor [in Oratio ad Sanctorum Coetum XIX], and answers his own question; she is the Virgin Mother of Christ. The Emperor associates his Christian interpretation of the Eclogue with his exposition of the Sibylline prophecies as also relating to the advent of Christ. [8]

Peter Hawkins notes that for St Constantine, ‘Virgil had full knowledge of all these allegorical meanings, but given the pagan world he lived in chose to express himself only covertly.’ [9] But while the idea is developed by Lactantius in Divinarum institutorum in some detail, [10] in Civ. dei X.27 St Augustine is of the opinion that Virgil ‘did not himself understand what he was saying’. [11] He quotes ll. 13-4—‘With you to guide, if traces of our sin remain, / They, nullified, will free the lands from lasting fear’—commenting, that it is of Christ ‘that the most famous poet speaks, poetically indeed, since he applies it to the person of another, yet truly, if you refer it to Christ’. [12] Yates finds the tradition continued in the poetry of the Carolingian bishop, Theodulf of Orleans, [13] but the Christian reading of Virgil becomes especially poignant in Dante’s Purgatorio (XXII.64-81). According to W.S. Merwin’s translation, when Virgil asks the poet Statius how he became a Christian, the latter replies:

. . . ‘You first showed me the way
to Parnassus to drink from its grottoes,
and it was you, after God, who first enlightened me.

You did what someone does walking at night
holding the lantern behind him so that
it does him no good but makes wise those who follow

when you said, “The age is growing new again.
Justice returns, and the first human time, [14]
and a new progeny descends from Heaven.’

Because of you I was a poet, because of you
a Christian, . . . [15]

Obviously, Dante’s is ‘the correct Augustinian reading of the Eclogue as a true Messianic prophecy made by the poet without a full understanding of what he was saying’. [16] But Hawkins’s perception that because Virgil ‘could only read the pagan words he actually wrote and not the Christian meaning “uncovered” later’ [17] seems to me unwarranted from an Orthodox perspective, in light of the Eastern Fathers’ emphasis on the despoiling of Hades (see this article).

Frank Kermode and Fr Andrew Louth alike take up T.S. Eliot’s discussion (to which I unfortunately do not have access here at home!) of this tradition of Messianic reading of Virgil, the former in the course of his discussion of the idea of ‘the classic’, the latter in his discussion of the allegorical tradition. Eliot follows the Augustinian view that Virgil was saying more than he knew, which, in Kermode’s words, is ‘precisely what is meant by being inspired’ anyway. [18] Fr Louth quotes him at length:

That Virgil was himself consciously concerned only with domestic affairs or with Roman politics I feel sure: I think that he would have been very much astonished by the career which his fourth Eclogue was to have. If a prophet were by definition a man who understood the full meaning of what he was saying, this would be for me the end of the matter. But if the word ‘inspiration’ is to have any meaning, it must mean just this, that the speaker or writer is uttering something which he does not wholly understand—or which he may even misinterpret when the inspiration has departed from him. This is certainly true of poetic inspiration: and there is more obvious reason for admiring Isaiah as a poet than for claiming Virgil as a prophet. A poet may believe that he is expressing only his private experience; his lines may be for him only a means of talking about himself without giving himself away; yet for his readers what he has written may come to be the expression both of their own secret feelings and of the exultation and despair of a generation. He need not know what his poetry will come to mean to others; and a prophet need not understand the meaning of his prophetic utterance. [19]

Of course, while Eliot’s point is well taken in the general sense that a prophet may not understand entirely his own prophecy, and particularly in the specific case of a pagan who may be used by God to some purpose to which he is not consciously or voluntarily attuned, it is important to emphasise that as Orthodox Christians we do believe that the Old Testament Prophets had some inkling of what they were about. After all, we chanted in Matins for the Sunday before Nativity that ‘Avvakum foresaw you, Jesu, incarnate of a shaded mountain, the Virgin’ [20]—that is, the Prophet Habbakuk was not simply writing down some incomprehensible words or speaking of some this-worldly event, but recording the content of a mystical experience he himself had undergone.

More unambiguously valuable, I believe, are Fr Louth’s own conclusions about the rôle of faith and tradition in hermeneutics, a rôle well illustrated by the history of Virgil interpretation. Although he does not specifically mention the Fourth Eclogue in this passage, Fr Louth earlier cites the words of Theodor Haecker:

. . . [T]hat I should leave out in my analysis of Vergil and Vergilian man ‘the’ faith, the greatest concern of the West, the emergence, so close to Vergil, of Christendom, that I should determine it only from the past and what was immediately contemporary with it and not from the future, which now lies in the past and still lies in the present, . . . is improper and absurd. [21]

As Fr Louth puts it, ‘we must be aware not just of the past and contemporary influences on Vergil, but also of Vergil’s influence on history, the tradition, that has made him accessible to us.’ [22]

I will continue to look at other aspects of the Fourth Eclogue from this perspective in at least one other post—this week, I hope!


[1] From this page at the website of Archimandrite Ephrem (Lash).

[2] Joseph Quincy Adams, ed., Chief Pre-Shakespearean Dramas, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1924), p. 41.

[3] Ibid., p. 46.

[4] Frank Kermode, The Classic: Literary Images of Permanence & Change (NY: Viking, 1975), p. 24.

[5] James Rhoades, trans., The Poems of Virgil, Vol. 13 in Great Books of the Western World (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1980), p. 14.

[6] Virgil, The Eclogues, trans. Arthur Guy Lee (London: Penguin, 1988), p. 57.

[7] Dame Frances A. Yates, Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Ark, 1975), pp. 29-87.

[8] Ibid., pp. 34-5.

[9] Peter S. Hawkins, Dante’s Testaments: Essays in Scriptural Imagination (Stanford, CA: Stanford U, 1999), p. 105.

[10] Yates, pp. 35-6.

[11] Ibid., p. 36.

[12] St Augustine, The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods (NY: Modern Library, 1950), p. 333.

[13] Yates, p. 36.

[14] Lest my reference to the similar line in Rhoades’s Virgil translation cast some suspicion on Merwin at this point, the Italian at l. 71 does indeed say torna giustizia e primo tempo umano.

[15] Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, trans. W.S. Merwin (NY: Knopf, 2001), p. 217.

[16] Yates, p. 36.

[17] Hawkins, p. 120.

[18] Kermode, p. 25.

[19] Fr Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mystery: An Essay on the Nature of Theology (Wichita, KS: Eighth Day, 2007.

[20] From the Theotokion at Ode 4 of the Canon for the Sunday before Nativity, Fr Ephrem’s translation (here).

[21] Fr Louth, p. 36.

[22] Ibid., p. 36.

‘my eros is crucified’—Ss Ignatius & Dionysius on Eros

In today’s post on St Ignatius the God-bearer, I quoted his Epistle to the Romans 7:2, ὁ ἐμὸς ἔρως ἐσταύρωται, which the Lightfoot/Holmes translation renders, ‘My passionate love has been crucified . . . .’ [1] Holmes has added a footnote here which reads, ‘love: i.e., for the “world”; cf. Gal. 6:14’. [2] But in an interesting passage of his rather unconventional ecclesiastical history, Charles Williams seems to find such an interpretation of St Ignatius’s eros far too limiting. Williams refers to the statement as ‘the greatest epigram of all’, writing:

Ignatius of Antioch in the early second century, had tossed it out on his way to martyrdom: ‘My Eros is crucified.’ Learned men have disputed on the exact meaning of the word: can it refer, with its intensity of allusion to physical passion, to Christ? or does it rather refer to his own physical nature? We, who have too much separated our own physical nature from Christ’s, cannot easily read an identity into the two meanings. But they unite, and others spring from them. ‘My love is crucified’; ‘My Love is crucified’: ‘My love for my Love is crucified’; ‘My Love in my love is crucified.’ The physical and the spiritual are no longer divided: he who is Theos is Anthropos, and all the images of anthropos are in him. The Eros that is crucified lives again and the Eros lives after a new style: this was the discovery of the operation of faith. The Eros of five hundred years of Greece and Rome was to live after a new style; unexpected as yet, the great Romantic vision approached. ‘My’ Eros is crucified; incredible as yet, the great doctrines of interchange, of the City [on which, see this post], approached. ‘Another is in me’; ‘your life and death are in your neighbour’; ‘they in Me and I in them.’ [3]

But Williams has also led us to one very patristic use of this epigram: that of St Dionysius the Areopagite. [4] In Divine Names IV.12, St Dionysius is responding to those who argue that the notion of eros is somehow counter to Scripture. He writes:

12. Indeed some of our writers on sacred matters have thought the title ‘yearning’ [eros] to be more divine than ‘love’ [agape]. The divine Ignatius writes: ‘He for whom I yearn has been crucified.’ In the introductory scriptures you will note the following said about the divine wisdom: ‘I yearned for her beauty’ (Wis of Sol 8:2). So let us not fear this title of ‘yearning’ nor be upset by what anyone has to say about these two names, for, in my opinion, the sacred writers regard ‘yearning’ and ‘love’ as having one and the same meaning. They added ‘real’ [ontos] to the use of ‘yearning’ regarding divine things because of the unseemly nature such a word has for men. The title ‘real yearning’ is praised by us and by the scriptures themselves as being appropriate to God. Others, however, tended naturally to think of a partial, physical, and divided yearning. This is not true yearning but an empty image or, rather, a lapse from real yearning. [5]

Thus, while there may be some value in Williams’s emphasis on the ambiguity of the passage, it seems to me that St Dionsysius’s teaching that agape and eros are the same thing leaves little room for a ‘great Romantic vision’ in St Ignatius, if we take this ‘vision’ in the context of Williams’s whole ‘Romantic theology’. In other words, I do not see how we can escape the conclusion that Williams is overly ‘eroticising’ St Ignatius’s eros, that there is not enough agape in it. Although I am convinced that we can indeed speak with Chrestos Yannaras of ‘the asceticism of marriage’, in which the ‘progressive transfiguration of natural eros into [St Dionysius’s] “true eros”’ is accomplished, it is important that we emphasise the place of such marriage within the context of ascesis rather than separating the two, as Williams seems to do in his notion of the ‘Romantic’ and ‘Ascetic Ways’ (on which, see this post). [6]

At any rate, I certainly find the Lightfoot/Holmes rendering of this passage wholly unsatisfactory!


[1] Michael W. Holmes, ed. & rev., The Apostolic Fathers, 2nd ed., trans. J.B. Lightfoot & J.R. Harmer (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1996), p. 105

[2] Ibid., p. 105, n. 76

[3] Charles Williams, The Descent of the Dove: A Short History of the Holy Spirit in the Church (Vancouver: Regent College, 2002), p. 46

[4] Ibid., p. 59.

[5] St Dionysius the Areopagite, The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid (NY: Paulist, 1987), p. 81.

[6] Chrestos Yannaras, The Freedom of Morality, trans. Elizabeth Briere (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 1984), p. 162.

'I Am Passionately in Love with Death'—St Ignatius of Antioch

Today, 20 December on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the memory of Hieromartyr Ignatius the God-bearer (c. 35-107), Bishop of Antioch and one of the great ‘Apostolic Fathers’. [1] In a homily on St Ignatius, a later son of Antioch, St John Chrysostom, calls him ‘this blessed and noble martyr Ignatius’. [2] Michael Holmes has provided us a thoroughly eloquent introduction to this holy Hierarch:

Just as we become aware of a meteor only when, after traveling silently through space for untold millions of miles, it blazes briefly through the atmosphere before dying in a shower of fire, so it is with Ignatius, bishop of Antioch in Syria. We meet him for the first and only time for a few weeks shortly before his death as a martyr in Rome early in the second century. But during those few weeks he wrote, virtually as his ‘last will and testament’, seven letters of extraordinary interest because of the unparalleled light they shed on the history of the church at this time and what they reveal about the remarkable personality of the author. Because of the early date of these writings and the distinctiveness of some of his ideas, particularly with regard to the nature and structure of the church, Ignatius’s letters have influenced later theological reflection and continue to be a focus of scholarly contention and discussion regarding early Christian origins. [3]

Here is the account of St Ignatius’s life in the Prologue:

This holy man was named the ‘God-Bearer’ because he always carried the name of the living God in his heart and on his lips. Also, by tradition, he was thus named because he was held in the arms of God incarnate, Jesus Christ. On a day when the Lord was teaching His disciples humility, He took a child and set it among them, saying: ‘Whosoever shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the Kingdom of heaven’ (Matt. 18:4). This child was Ignatius. He was later a disciple of St John the Theologian, together with Polycarp, the Bishop of Smyrna. As bishop in Antioch, he governed the Church of God as a good shepherd, and was the first to introduce antiphonal singing into the Church, in which two choirs alternate. This way of singing was revealed to St Ignatius from among the angels in heaven. When the Emperor Trajan passed through Antioch on his way to battle with the Persians, he heard about Ignatius, summoned him and urged him to offer sacrifice to idols, so that he could be made a senator. The Emperor’s urgings and threats being in vain, holy Ignatius was put in irons and sent to Rome, escorted by ten bestial soldiers, to be thrown to the wild beasts. Ignatius rejoiced to be suffering for his Lord, and prayed to God that the wild beasts should be the tomb for his body, and that none should hinder his death. After a long and difficult journey from Asia through Thrace, Macedonia and Epirus, Ignatius reached Rome, where he was thrown to the lions in the circus. They tore him to pieces and devoured him, leaving only a few of the larger bones and his heart. This glorious lover of the Lord Christ suffered in the year 106 in Rome, in the time of the Emperor Trajan. He appeared many times from the other world and worked wonders, helping to this day all who call on him for help. [4]

Referring to the Hieromartyr’s writings, Fr John McGuckin comments on his designation as ‘the God-bearer’: ‘As confessor martyr and as bishop, Ignatius both sees and designates himself as God-bearer (theophoros).’ [5] The namesake of this Hieromartyr, St Ignatius (Brianchaninov), cites an ancient tradition concerning the finding of the great Bishop’s heart which sheds further light on this designation:

When they were taking him to be devoured by wild beasts and he had the name of Jesus constantly on his lips, the pagans asked him why he unceasingly remembered that name. The Saint replied that he had the name of Jesus Christ written in his heart and that he confessed with his mouth Him Whom he always carried in his heart. After the saint had been eaten by the wild beasts, by the will of God among his bones his heart was preserved intact. The infidels found it, and then remembered what St Ignatius had said. So they cut the heart into two halves, wishing to know whether what they had been told was true. Inside, on the two halves of the heart that had been cut open, they found an inscription in gold letters: Jesus Christ. Thus St Ignatius was in name and in fact a God-bearer, always carrying Christ our God in his heart, written by the reflection ( or meditation) of his mind as with a reed. [6]

St Ignatius (Brianchaninov) adds that the Hieromartyr ‘was taught the Prayer of Jesus by the holy Evangelist [John] and practiced it in that flourishing period of Christianity like all other Christians.’ [7] Although I have emphasised before (here) that I think the most important thing is that we acknowledge the historical practice of prayer of the heart generally, and not so much the use of the Jesus Prayer formula specifically, surely if we interpret ‘the Prayer of Jesus’ broadly we are forced to concede that the early Christians obviously invoked the name of our Lord by some means, and it does not seem too much to believe that such invocation would be the basis for acquiring prayer of the heart for many of them. But I leave this matter to wiser and more learned judges.

We have been blessed with a most beautiful homily on the Hieromartyr, delivered according to J.N.D. Kelly at the very tomb of St Ignatius himself by perhaps the most gifted preacher the Church has produced—St John Chrysostom—during the first year of his priesthood. [8] Here is a moving passage from this homily:

The season then already calls us to discourse of the mighty works of this saint. But our reckoning is disturbed and confused, not knowing what to say first, what second, what third, so great a multitude of things calling for eulogy surrounds us, on every side; and we experience the same thing as if any one went into a meadow, and seeing many a rosebush and many a violet, and an abundance of lilies, and other spring flowers manifold and varied, should be in doubt what he should look at first, what second, since each of those he saw invites him to bestow his glances on itself. For we too, coming to this spiritual meadow of the mighty works of Ignatius, and beholding not the flowers of spring, but the manifold and varied fruit of the spirit in the soul of this man, are confused and in perplexity, not knowing to which we are first to give our consideration, as each of the things we see draws us away from its neighbours, and entices the eye of the soul to the sight of its own beauty. For see, he presided over the Church among us nobly, and with such carefulness as Christ desires. For that which Christ declared to be the highest standard and rule of the Episcopal office, did this man display by his deeds. For having heard Christ saying, the good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep (John x.11), with all courage he did lay it down for the sheep.

He held true converse with the apostles and drank of spiritual fountains. What kind of person then is it likely that he was who had been reared, and who had everywhere held converse with them, and had shared with them truths both lawful and unlawful to utter, and who seemed to them worthy of so great a dignity? The time again came on, which demanded courage; and a soul which despised all things present, glowed with Divine love, and valued things unseen before the things which are seen; and he lay aside the flesh with as much ease as one would put off a garment. What then shall we speak of first? The teaching of the apostles which he gave proof of throughout, or his indifference to this present life, or the strictness of his virtue, with which he administered his rule over the Church; which shall we first call to mind? The martyr or the bishop or the apostle. For the grace of the spirit having woven a threefold crown, thus bound it on his holy head, yea rather a manifold crown. For if any one will consider them carefully, he will find each of the crowns, blossoming with other crowns for us. [9]

It seems to me that it is only in the writings of the Hieromartyr himself that we can find a more eloquent testimony to his virtues. Therefore, here are a few passages from his magnificent Epistle to the Romans:

4. I am writing to all the churches and am insisting to everyone that I die for God of my own free will—unless you hinder me. I implore you: do not be ‘unseasonably kind’ to me. [10] Let me be food for the wild beasts, through whom I can reach God. I am God’s wheat, and I am being ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I might prove to be pure bread. (2) Better yet, coax the wild beasts, that they may become my tomb and leave nothing of my body behind, lest I become a burden to someone once I have fallen asleep. Then I will truly be a disciple of Jesus Christ, when the world will no longer see my body. Pray to the Lord on my behalf, that through these instruments I might prove to be a sacrifice to God. . . .

5. . . . (3) Bear with me—I know what is best for me. Now at last I am beginning to be a disciple. May nothing visible or invisible envy me, so that I may reach Jesus Christ. Fire and cross and battles with wild beasts, mutilation, mangling, wrenching of bones, the hacking of limbs, the crushing of my whole body, cruel tortures of the devil—let these come upon me, only let me reach Jesus Christ!

6. Neither the ends of the earth nor the kingdoms of this age are of any use to me. It is better for me to die for Jesus Christ than to rule over the ends of the earth. Him I seek, who died on our behalf; him I long for, who rose again for our sake. The pains of birth are upon me. (2) . . . Do not give to the world one who wants to belong to God, nor tempt him with material things [11]. Let me receive the pure light, for when I arrive there I will be man. (3) Allow me to be an imitator of the suffering of my God. If anyone has Him within himself, let him understand what I long for and sympathize with me, knowing what constrains me.

7. The ruler of this age wants to take me captive and corrupt my godly intentions. Therefore none of you who are present must help him. Instead take my side, that is, God’s. Do not talk about Jesus Christ while you desire the world. (2) For though I am still alive, I am passionately in love with death as I write to you. My passionate love [ὁ ἐμὸς ἔρως ἐσταύρωται] has been crucified and there is no fire of material longing within me, but only water living and speaking in me, saying within me, ‘Come to the Father.’ (3) I take no pleasure in corruptible food or the pleasures of this life. I want the bread of God, which is the flesh of Christ who is of the seed of David; and for drink I want his blood, which is incorruptible love. [12]

On the occasion of St Ignatius’s feast, St John Chrysostom exhorts us, ‘Not only to-day, therefore, but every day let us go forth to him, plucking spiritual fruits from him.’ [13] As we chant in the Kontakion of the Hieromartyr:

The divine and brilliant day * of thine illustrious contests * doth proclaim to all mankind * Him that was born of a Virgin; * for it was for Him that thou didst * thirst to delight in, * and didst haste to be devoured by beasts in thy longing. * Hence, O glorious Ignatius, * the name God-bearer * was rightly given to thee. [14]

But the reference to the Nativity of our Lord in this hymn is only a small example of the beautiful integration of the hymnography of St Ignatius with that of the Forefeast of the Nativity, which begins today and lasts until the eve of the Feast on the twenty-fourth. Thus, throughout the entire Akolouthia for the day, we find a recurring pattern of doxastica devoted to the Hieromartyr and Theotokia looking forward to the Great Feast of our Lord. Here, in conclusion, is just one such pair taken from the conclusion of Lauds at Matins, translated by Fr Ephrem (Lash):

Glory. Of the Saint

Living monument and breathing image, your yearly festival is here, Godbearer Ignatios, and proclaims your priestly service and your deeds of valour; your resistance to shedding of blood on behalf of the Faith; that blest and revered voice which said: I am God’s wheat, and am being ground by the teeth of wild beasts; and so, as you became an imitator of Christ, intercede that our souls may be saved.

Both now. Of the Forefeast. Tone 2. By Byzas.

Cave, make ready; for the Ewe-lamb has come, bearing Christ in her womb. Manger, receive the One who by a word frees us who are born of earth from irrational action. Shepherds abiding in the fields, bear witness to the fearful wonder; and Magi from Persia, offer gold and incense and myrrh to the King; because the Lord has appeared from a Virgin Mother. Bowing low like a slave his Mother worshipped him, and cried out to the One in her arms: How were you sown in me, or how did you come to be in me, my Redeemer and my God? [15]

[1] Fr John A. McGuckin, The SCM Press A-Z of Patristic Theology (London: SCM, 2005), p. 25.

[2] St John Chrysostom, ‘Homily on St Ignatius’, NPNF (here).

[3] Michael W. Holmes, ed. & rev., The Apostolic Fathers, 2nd ed., trans. J.B. Lightfoot & J.R. Harmer (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1996), p. 79.

[4] St Nicholas (Velimirović), The Prologue from Ochrid, Vol. 4, trans. Mother Maria (Birmingham: Lazarica, 1986), p. 349.

[5] Fr McGuckin, p. 178.

[6] St Ignatius (Brianchaninov), On the Prayer of Jesus, trans. Archim. Lazarus (Moore) (Boston: New Seeds, 2006), p. 5.

[7] Ibid., p. 6.

[8] J.N.D. Kelly, Golden Mouth: The Story of John Chrysostom—Ascetic, Preacher, Bishop (Ithaca, NY: Cornell U, 1998), pp. 66-7.

[9] St Chrysostom, op. cit.

[10] Holmes adds a note here: ‘unseasonably kind: apparently an allusion to an ancient proverb: “an unseasonable kindness is no different than hostility”’ (p. 103, n. 68).

[11] Concerning the term here translated ‘material things’, Constantine Cavarnos notes that St Ignatius employs an Aristotelian term for matter, hyle. Cavarnos concludes that the Hieromartyr ‘probably took [it] over from common use in Antioch, Syria, which was at that time a great center of Hellenic learning’ (Orthodoxy & Philosophy [Belmont, MA: Institute for Byzantine & Modern Greek Studies, 2003], p. 18).

[12] Ibid., pp. 103-5.

[13] St Chrysostom, op. cit.

[14] The Great Horologion, trans. HTM (Boston: HTM, 1997), p. 352.

[15] Taken from this page at Fr Ephrem’s site.

'Holy Russia Does Not Stand Empty'—St Ilya Muromets

Today, 19 December on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the memory of St Ilya Muromets [1], ‘Elijah of Murom’ (1188). Here is the account of his life in the Prologue:

He was a monk of the Kiev Caves, and died in 1188. His uncorrupt relics have wonderworking power. Three fingers of his right hand are to this day raised in prayer, whence it is seen that he died at prayer. This is a commentary on those who do not make the sign of the Cross with three fingers. [2]

It seems that St Ilya is popularly identified with a legendary Russian bogatyr, or mediæval hero, to whom James Billington refers as ‘perhaps the most popular hero of Christianized epic folklore’, linking him with the Prophet Elijah the Tishbite. [3] Sir Dimitri Obolensky has published a text with prose translation of one of the byliny (‘oral heroic poems of medieval Russia’ sung in recent centuries ‘by peasant bards’ [4]) about St Ilya. Here is part of the translation:

It is not a green oak tree bending low to the earth, nor paper leaves fluttering down to the ground—a son is falling down before his father, and begging his blessing: ‘O dear father mine, give me your blessing, that I may go to glorious and royal Kiev town, there to pray to the wonder-workers of Kiev, to do fealty to Prince Vladimir, to serve him in truth and honour, to defend the Christian faith.’

The old peasant Ivan Timofeevich replied: ‘I will give you my blessing that you may perform good deeds, but you have not my blessing for evil ones. When you go on your way, do not harbour evil designs against any Tatar, nor kill any Christian man in the open plain.’

Il´ya of Murom bowed to the ground before his father, mounted his good steed and rode out into the open plain. He strikes the horse on its steep flanks, he strikes through the hide to the black flesh; his fiery steed grows angry, frees itself from the ground, and leaps higher than the standing trees and only a little lower than the passing clouds. At its first leap, it leapt fifteen versts; at its second leap, a well sprung up; by the well he felled a green oak and built a chapel; on the chapel he inscribed his name: ‘A strong and mighty hero rode by here—Il´ya of Murom, son of Ivan.’ The third leap brought him to the neighbourhood of Chernigov town. At the approaches to Chernigov stood a numberless host, at the approaches to Chernigov there stood three [Tatar] princes, each with an army of forty thousand men. The hero’s heart is ardent and impetuous: it flared up hotter than fire, hotter than burning frost.

Then Il´ya of Murom spoke these words: ‘I did not want to oppose my father nor indeed to break his commandment.’

He seized his battle saber and began to walk through the host: wherever he wheeled, he hacked out streets, wherever he turned round, [public] squares appeared; he slashed his way through to the three princes. Then Il´ya of Murom spoke these words: ‘O my three princes! Shall I take you prisoners, or shall I cut off your unruly heads? If I take you prisoners I shall have roads for people to ride along and bring me bread. But if I cut off your heads I shall destroy the seed of kings. Go back to your homes and spread the report everywhere that Holy Russia does not stand empty, and that there are strong and mighty heroes in Holy Russia.’

The governor of Chernigov caught sight of him: ‘What a messenger the Lord has sent us! He has liberated our glorious Chernigov town.’ [5]

There is a brief prose account of some of St Ilya’s more famous adventures here. The comparison of him there to the Arthurian knight, Sir Launcelot, whether or not it is an apt one, reminds me of a wonderful 1940 essay by C.S. Lewis called ‘The Necessity of Chivalry’. [6] There Lewis, in an attempt ‘to isolate that particular conception of the man comme il faut which was the special contribution of the Middle Ages to our culture’ [7], cites Malory’s Morte Darthur, Bk. XXI:

‘A, Launcelot!’ he sayd, ‘thou were hede of al Crysten knyghtes! And now I dare say,’ sayd syr Ector, ‘thou sir Launcelot, there thou lyest, that thou were never matched of erthely knyghtes hande. And thou were the curtest knight that ever bare shelde! And . . . thou were the kindest man that ever strake with swerde. And thou were the godelyest persone that ever cam emonge prees of kynghtes, and thou was the meekest man and the jentyllest that ever ete in halle emonge ladyes, and thou were the sternest knyght to thy mortal foo that ever put spere in the reeste.’ [8]

Lewis observes:

The important thing about this ideal is, of course, the double demand it makes on human nature. The knight is a man of blood and iron, a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and the ragged stumps of lopped-off limbs; he is also a demure, almost a maidenlike, guest in hall, a gentle, modest unobtrusive man. He is not a compromise or happy mean between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth. [9]

Of course, Lewis argues that this ideal is as important today as ever:

The medieval ideal brought together two things which have no natural tendency to gravitate towards one another. It brought them together for that very reason. It taught humility and forbearance to the great warrior because everyone knew by experience how much he usually needed the lesson. It demanded valour of the urbane and modest man because everyone knew that he was as likely as not to be a milksop. [10]

I recommend that all read this essay in full.


[1] I use the transliteration of the Russian form of this name rather than ‘Elijah’ because it is under the former that St Ilya is most widely known. My standard policy has long been that of thoroughly Anglicising names, but this seems a worthwhile exception.

[2] St Nicholas (Velimirović), The Prologue from Ochrid, Vol. 4, trans. Mother Maria (Birmingham: Lazarica, 1986), p. 346.

[3] James H. Billington, The Icon & the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture (NY: Vintage, 1970), p. 24.

[4] Sir Dimitri Obolensky, ed., The Heritage of Russian Verse (Bloomington, IN: Indiana U, 1976), p. xi.

[5] Ibid., pp. 23-5.

[6] C.S. Lewis, ‘The Necessity of Chivalry’, Present Concerns: Essays by C.S. Lewis, ed. Walter Hooper (San Diego: Harcourt, 1986), pp. 13-6.

[7] Ibid., p. 13.

[8] Sir Thomas Malory, Works, 2nd ed., ed. Eugène Vinaver (NY: Oxford U, 1978), p. 725. Lewis quotes only the last lines of this passage, but I thought it worthwhile to give a bit more of Sir Ector's description of the chivalric ideal.

[9] Lewis, p. 13.

[10] Ibid., p. 14.