Venantius Fortunatus.
Let us move on a few hundred years to Venantius Fortunatus (c.530 - c.610).
A native of Treviso, near Venice, he was educated at Ravenna. He settled at
Poitiers, and became chaplain to the community of nuns led by the former
Queen Radegunde. He is the author of two hymns, the "Vexilla Regis" and the
"Pange Lingua", adressed to a relic of the True Cross which came into
Radegunde's possession. We shall look at the "Pange Lingua". This is used
to this day in the ceremony of the Veneration of the Cross, in the Good
Friday Liturgy:
Pange, lingua, gloriosi proelium certaminis
et super crucis tropaeo dic triumphum nobilem,
qualiter redemptor orbis immolatus vicerit.
Translation by Percy Dearmer:
Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle,
Sing the ending of the fray;
Now above the cross, the trophy,
Sound the loud triumphant lay:
Tell how Christ, the world's Redeemer,
As a victim won the day.
The entire hymn depends upon a view of the crucifixion with which not all
subscribers may be familiar, and it is necessary to spend some time on the
theological background. R.W. Southern has well described this in a famous
passage from "The Making of the Middle Ages":
"Until the end of the eleventh century a very consistent view was held by
theologians about the process by which Man had been saved from the
consequences of sin. They argued that, by sin - by disobedience to God and
obedience to the will of the Devil - Man had voluntarily withdrawn himself
from the service of God and committed himself to the service of the Devil.
It was rather like the act of 'diffidatio' in feudal custom by which a man
rejected the authority of his overlord and submitted himself to another. Of
course, the overlord did not acquiesce in this state of affairs: it meant
war - but still, the rules of diffidatio having been observed, the war must
be fought according to the rules.
"So it was in the war between God and the Devil over the soul of Man. God
could not fairly use his omnipotence to deprive the Devil of the rights he
had acquired over Man by Man's consent: the rule of justice must be
observed even in fighting the Devil. The command over Man which the Devil
had acquired by a voluntary cession, could only be lost in one of two ways:
either Man could go back on his choice and voluntarily turn again to God;
or the Devil could forfeit his claim by abusing his power and breaking the
rules by which he held mankind in fee. But Man's tragedy consisted
precisely in the impossibility of a voluntary return. The only hope
therefore lay in some breach of the rules by the Devil himself,
"It was this which God brought about by a great act of strategy: God became
Man, and the Devil himself failed to realise it. He failed to see the
Divinity beneath the human form. He claimed Him as his own and subjected
Him to death. But in doint this he committed that great act of lawlessness
- that extension of his authority over One who had made no diffidatio, no
surrender of himself to the Devil - and this lost him his empire.
Henceforth, the Devil could be smitten hip and thight, and God could save
whom he would."
We see this view of the Atonement gradually emerging in the Fathers. It is
first hinted at in the letter of St Ignatius of Antioch to the Ephesians,
written about 106 AD. Ignatius writes, "Mary's virginity was hidden from
the prince of this world [i.e. from the Devil]; so was her child-bearing,
and so was the death of the Lord." It is only a sentence, but few sentences
have been so often-quoted or so influential.
The notion that the Devil was fooled by failing to spot the Incarnation
became central to the patristic and early medieval view of the Atonement. A
little later in the "Adversus omnes Haereses" [against all the heresies] of
Irenaeus of Lyons (c.130-c.200 AD) we find this interesting passage:
" . . . The powerful Word, and true Man, redeeming us by his own blood in a
reasonable way, gave himself as a ransom for those who have been led into
captivity. And since the Apostasy [i.e. the Devil] unjustly held sway over
us, and though we were by nature [the possession of] Almighty God, estranged
us against nature, making us his own disciples; therefore the word of God,
mighty in all things and not lacking in his own justice, acted justly even
in the encounter with the Apostasy itself, ransoming from it that which was
his own, not by force, in the way in which it secured the sway over us at
the beginning, snatching insatiably what was not its own; but by
persuasion, as it became god to receive what he wished; by persuasion, not
by the use of force, that the principles of justice might not be infringed,
and, at the same time, God's original creation might not perish."
Gregory of Nyssa (c.330-c.395 AD) in his Oratio Catechetica, xxi-xxvi,
presents the Incarnation in terms of a baited hook. His argument was
reproduced by Rufinus of Aquileia, c. 400 AD, in his Commentary on the
Apostles' Creed:
"The purpose of the Incarnation . . . was that the divine virtue of the Son
of God might be as it were a hook hidden beneath the form of human flesh . .
. to lure on the prince of this age to a contest; that the Son might offer
him his flesh as a bait and that then the divinity which lay beneath might
catch him and hold him fast with its hook . . . Then, as a fish when it
seizes a baited hook not only fails to drag off the bait but is itself
dragged out of the water to serve as food for others; so he that had the
power of death seized the body of Jesus in death, unaware of the hook of
divinity concealed therein. Having swallowed it, he was caught straightway;
the bars of hell were burst, and he was, as it were, drawn up from the pit,
to become food for others . . ."
I think that behind this "fish-hook" image lies the rather puzzling myth of
Leviathan or Rahab, which crops up several times in the Old Testament.
According to this ancient creation-myth, God pulls up a sea-monster,
representing chaos, from the depths of the sea, chops it up and feeds it to
the wild beasts. The removal of the element of chaos reduces the elements
to order and is responsible for the creation of the world.
So we have at Job 40:20 [Vulgate]: An extrahere poteris Leviathan hamo, Et
fune ligabis liguam eius? Can you draw out Leviathan with a fish-hook, and
bind his tongue with a cord?
This idea of the Atonement has, to our mind, some fairly obvious flaws.
Gregory of Nazianzen (Orationes, xlv.22) was not impressed by the idea of
the Atonement as a ransom. He asks:
"Was it paid to the Evil One? monstrous thought! The devil receives a
ransom not only from God but of God . . . To the Father? But we were not in
bondage to him. And could the Father delight in the death of his Son?"
Anselm and Abelard, in the twelfth century, would decisively reject the
whole idea of the Atonement as a ransom. But for the moment, and despite
Gregory Nazianzen's objections, the idea became very popular, being
expounded in various forms by Hilary of Poitiers (316-367 AD), by Augustine
of Hippo (354-430 AD), who uses the simile of the mousetrap, Christ's
humanity being the bait and the divinity the trap, by Pope Leo the Great (d.
461), Pope Gregory the Great (540-604 AD) and by the western Fathers
generally. It was never so popular among the Eastern Fathers, but we do
find Maximus the Confessor (c.580-662 AD) writing:
"God becomes perfect man, then, leaving aside no element of nature - except
sin, and this does not belong to nature. He offered his flesh as a bait, to
provoke the insatiable dragon to devour the flesh which he was greedily
pursuing. This flesh would be poison to the dragon, destroying him utterly
by the power of the divinity in it. But it would be a medicine for human
nature, restoring it to its original grace by the power of the divinity in
it." [Century 1:8-13].
We shall see these ideas worked out in the course of the hymn. Notice for
now that the crucifixion is presented, not in terms of suffering and death,
but as a glorious battle in which Christ is a victor over the Devil:
qualiter redemptor orbis immolatus vicerit.
More tomorrow.
Doctor Elasticus.
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