The last stanza:
Sola digna tu fuisti ferre pretium saeculi
atque portum praeparare nauta mundo naufrago,
quem sacer cruor perunxit fusus agni corpore.
Neale:
Thou alone wast counted worthy
This world's ransom to uphold;
For a shipwreck'd race preparing
Harbour, like the Ark of old;
With the sacred blood anointed
From the smitten Lamb that rolled.
More literally: You alone were worthy to bear the price of the world.
The 'Ransom' model of the Atonement which I discussed earlier. There is
considerable scriptural support for such a view; e.g.
Mark 10:45, Matthew 20:28, Sicut Filius hominis non venit ministrari, sed
ministrare, et dare animam suam redemptionem pro multis - For the Son of Man
did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom
for many.
I Timothy 2:6 Qui dedit redemptionem semetipsum pro omnibus - 'Who gave
himself as a ransom for all.'
And especially I Peter 1:18, Scientes quod non corruptibilibus auro vel
argento redempti estis de vana vestra conversatione paternae traditionis:
sed pretioso sanguine quasi agni immaculati Christi - 'Knowing that you were
not redeemed with corruptible gold or silver from the futile ways of the
tradition of your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a
lamb without blemish'.
'pretioso' suggests our 'pretium' and the mention of the blood of the Lamb
supplies the image of our third line.
And to be a mariner to prepare a harbour for a shipwrecked world
Surely the reference is to Noah, and Neale is right to draw out the allusion
with 'like the Ark of old'.
The typological connexion between Noah's flood and the Atonement is made in
I Peter 3:20-21, ' . . . when God's patience waited in the days of Noah,
during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were
saved through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not
as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a clear
conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ . . .'
Whom (masculine, now agreeing with 'nauta') the sacred blood anointed,
poured from the body of the Lamb.
For the use of sacrificial blood to sanctify priests and altars, cf. Exodus
29:20-21,
'And you shall kill the ram, and take part of its blood and put it upon the
tip of the right ear of Aaron . . . and throw the rest of the blood against
the altar round about. Then you shall take part of the blood that is on the
altar, and of the anointing oil, and sprinkle it upon Aaron . . .'
And so concludes the remarkable Pange, lingua of Venantius Fortunatus.
Thomas Aquinas paid it a compliment by modelling his hymn for Corpus Christi
upon it:
Pange, lingua, gloriosi corporis mysterium . . .
But that is another story, which we may tell in due course.
The Supple Doctor.
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