Messingham, Florilegium (1624) — translated from the Latin.

From Richard Stanihurst the Irishman, book 1 of the Life of St Patrick.

¹ Patrick, then (as Stanihurst says), seeing the chief men of the people gathered from every side in the utmost joy at his coming — as he had been earnestly awaited by the Irish for a long time — and a crowd of the common folk, and the minds of all hanging expectant on his words as he was about to make his address, bound fast, as it were, the crowns of all their attention upon himself. Therefore the pious man, meeting the expectation of the multitude, delivered a sermon in this fashion:

² “If anyone were to break into some prison, foul with intolerable stench, in which he found a great throng and multitude of men, whose bodies were fast bound in chains, whose limbs executioners — casting off all humanity — were mangling with continual torments: I believe that man’s coming would be most welcome to those wretches, if he could teach them the way and means whereby they might, if they only willed it, pass from the foul and putrid stench to the odour of sweetness, from thick darkness to the light of the sun, from long chains to a new freedom, from grievous pains to longed-for consolations — without any turning back. Since it is thus by nature established, as is certain, I cannot but be led into the greatest hope that my coming will be most welcome to you — for I am indeed such a messenger, who brings you captives the longed-for tidings, and opens a fountain of salvation, which shall set you free from long bondage to everlasting liberty, if only you be hearers of the word.

³ “‘But how so?’ someone will say. “Captives, truly — we, who live as free men? Cast into prison — we, who wander far and wide? Lying in darkness — we, who see with open eyes that celestial splendour? Strange things you tell us, Patrick — things not only beyond our understanding but repugnant to the habit of common sense.”

⁴ “Well said. And by this very token that man seems to me most to be pitied, who does not feel in how great misery he lives entangled. For if someone were caught in manifest crime, condemned by the judge’s sentence, and a certain day appointed on which he must pay the penalty by law and judgement — unless before the fixed time of death he repents and by penitential entreaty seeks pardon: would not his case seem to you most wretched, if the accused persuaded himself that he had never committed such a crime, that he was beyond all danger, and, puffed up with empty confidence, held it beneath him to acknowledge his guilt, to move the judge to mercy, and to obtain the pardon of his offences? In the same way, all of us who live a life mingled with the greatest miseries ought to fix our whole mind and all our soul’s striving on this one thing — to see with intent eyes the losses by which we are stricken, the bondage by which we are vexed, the tyranny by which we are oppressed: lest perchance, while we vainly boast of the highest security amid the greatest perils, and of false felicity amid true miseries, we be suddenly cast down from every degree and rush headlong into swift and everlasting destruction. First, therefore, let us apply ourselves to the consideration of our calamities; and then let us search with great care and diligence by what means we may be relieved of these miseries.

⁵ “God, the maker and moulder of heaven and earth, in the first framing of the universe created man in His own image and likeness. And God endowed this our common parent with a heap of ornaments and a great abundance of good things — with a firm stability besides, provided only that he should firmly and constantly submit to the will of the Godhead. He also placed him in Paradise, that is, in a most shining and most verdant field, suffused with every delight. In that place of pleasure nothing was wanting that could gladden, nothing present that could offend. Yet he did not so long enjoy the use of such pleasure. For the most bitter enemy of the human race, the demon — cast down from heaven with his proud company for pride — most sorely envied our parent’s felicity. For he saw the race of men, after his own ruin, chosen by divine election to take his place. Therefore he bent all his endeavour to this one thing: to cut off our ascent to heaven by craft and malice. The method of which he contrived with this cunning. God had placed man in the Paradise of pleasure, to work it and keep it, and had commanded him, saying: “Of every tree of Paradise you may eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat; for in the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die.” Hence the law of living that God gave to man — and that our first parent should break it, our eternal enemy did not delay to strive with all his effort. In which endeavour he prevailed. For the crafty deceiver, beguiling the woman, and the woman drawing her husband into deceit — since they both ate the forbidden fruit — in this first parent all sinned; and he, justly and by most rightful judgement pronounced a debtor of death by God the just judge, stripped himself and his posterity of that inborn dignity, and miserably cast our neck into the horrible snare of the demon. For he was driven with his wife out of Paradise, bereft of those first ornaments and delights, weighed down by the consciousness of his offence — from which offence, as from an impure whirlpool, all human wickedness flowed forth.

⁶ “For before this fall God had so ordered the parts of the soul that the appetite should render to reason — as to its lawful mistress — the power of ruling and governing it. But when man fell away from the command of the Godhead, all things were turned to the contrary. For the appetite, like an unbroken colt, with unbridled ferocity cast off the reins and reared up, refused to obey reason — no, in every action it willed, like a raging beast, to lord it over her. And rightly so. For he is unworthy that inferiors should obey him who refuses to obey God who is above him. Nor was it only in this inward war that man burned, but outwardly also there was a confusion and disorder of all things. For the very beasts — gentle creatures over which man before sin had natural authority — after sin, made savage, began to disdain him. No, wherever his eyes fell, he plainly perceived dangers ready at hand on every side. He saw the sea — but it might drown the swimmer in its waves. He saw likewise the mountains, which by their falling might overwhelm him when he descended; he trod the plains, which by an unexpected and sudden gaping might swallow the traveller; he looked upon the air, which might infect him with pestilent breath and afflict his sickening body with the torments of various diseases; he saw the fire, which might burn that mortal, suffering body of his with flames or choke it with smoke; he cast his eyes on the sun’s rays, by whose approaching heat he might be scorched, and by whose departing he might freeze stiff with cold. As often as he sowed seed, so often he gathered, instead of grain, thorns; instead of fruits, briars and other plants most hostile to crops. After the planting of shoots, the twigs, checked by frost, could not bud forth, or, grown out, withered away. And so, with heaven and earth conspiring together in opposition and resistance, scanty fruit rewarded his immense labours. What shall I say of men themselves, each of whom threatened the rest with arms, violence and death? What wars were undertaken? How many battles were fought? What wounds were dealt? What slaughters were wrought? How great was the multitude of the slain? How many murders were perpetrated? And in this manner the demon, exercising a raging tyranny over the whole orb of the earth as in his own kingdom, left no kind of cruelty untried — no, he so ploughed up the minds of men that, having abandoned the worship of the true Godhead, they fashioned for themselves new gods, into whose patronage they would fly as often as they fell into any difficulty. One chose to consecrate himself to the Sun; another bound himself by superstitious sacrifice to the Moon; another, the worshipper of a god of his own making or of an idol, attributed the honour of divinity to it with all the impulse of his soul. Everyone had free choice of whatever deity pleased him. For this the Demon allows — that each may worship whatever god he will, so long as he spurns the true God.

⁷ “For in truth, so long as men labour under this gross ignorance, they cannot but live without eyes and without mind, holding depraved habits impressed and engrained in their souls, and be utterly undone with every misery — to the utmost extremity, I say, which extremity, to you who dwell in ignorance of these things, is altogether unknown. For if, as of the present life, so some end of our calamities could be found, our miseries would not deserve the name of miseries — since that is not miserable in which some end is found. But there is another world beyond the present, in which God has appointed punishments for the impious and the wicked — in kind, horrible beyond dispute; in variety, infinite; in bitterness, most grievous; in endurance, intolerable; in continuance, unending: at the very recollection of which I grow pale with shuddering fear and tremble in all my limbs. Into this slaughterhouse, heaped with all torments and miseries, those men are driven after death who in this world bind themselves to crimes and live as slaves of the demon’s tyranny. And to this very prison our first parent, departing from Paradise at God’s command, doomed himself and his posterity. Of human miseries I have set forth very few; of their remedy you shall hear somewhat.

⁸ “When our salvation was thus afflicted beyond measure in these wretched times and evil days, in which the demon had shut us out as fugitives from the everlasting blessedness: God most good, most great, moved with compassion, had determined to relieve the human race — befouled with the filth of every crime — of this long-enduring calamity. For which cause He sent His Son into the world, who, made partaker of our nature and free of every stain of sin, redeemed our misery with His precious blood — the clearest sign of infinite mercy. What greater thing could have befallen us in dignity or goodness than to be rescued from destruction at so great a price?

⁹ “But that these mysteries may be spoken by me intelligently, I beg that they be attentively heard by you. Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, born of the most divine virgin Mary, bestowed innumerable benefits upon men — yet they abused His divine bounty immoderately and ungratefully. For He gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the dumb, walking to the lame, health to the sick, life to the dead — and, chiefest of all, pardon to the penitent. Nevertheless the Jews, too ungrateful for such unheard-of grace, resolved to slay with dire torments Him whom they ought to have honoured with every service. They brought Christ bound to Caiaphas, the chief of the priests. And whatever malice could contrive, fraud could feign, envy could devise, vanity could conceive — in wicked accusation and capital deceit — they impiously and wickedly laid upon Christ, the pattern of all innocence. They suborned perjured witnesses, desperate traitors seared in conscience by their own deceits, whose tongues — bound to them by hire — were ready and fitted to every beck of calumny. Afterwards they delivered Him to Pontius Pilate the governor, by whom, an unjust judge, He was barbarously and unjustly scourged, set forth for the mockery of the soldiers, most cruelly afflicted with stripes; and His enemies, kindled with fury, lifted Him on the cross — a manner of death than which nothing, among other nations as among the Jews, was either more shameful in repute or more bitter in pain.

¹⁰ “But how great a force of torments the author of salvation and of our liberty then endured, no man can comprehend in his mind, much less express in words. Into whatever part of His body you might have cast your eyes, you would have seen nothing that was not bloody, nothing not torn to the quick. You would have seen His head crowned with a crown of thorns; His hands pierced with great nails; His feet fastened to the cross with like cruelty; His heart transfixed with a soldier’s lance; His tongue parched with thirst; His skin torn with stripes; His veins swollen and tumid with the multitude of wounds; His sinews stretched to the utmost cruelty; His vessels streaming with the freshest blood. O most blessed earth, that could drink in that flowing blood! But why should I turn my speech to the inward stings of grief, whose bitterness the narrow capacity of the human heart can in no wise contain, nor all tongues of all men declare? Who then could be so savage and iron-hearted as to see with his eyes, without a flood of tears and sorrows, that ineffable spectacle — the Jews’ cruelty? It was even so monstrous that the very Sun, lest it should see the Jews’ crime, drew back behind its accustomed covering (for nothing of the like within the memory of any age had ever been seen), and thick darkness at midday overspread the earth. From where it happened that our Lord, who at His birth had a star to guide Him, had the sun also to mourn Him at His death. Nor was it only the things above that grieved with troubled countenance, but the things beneath likewise took their share of sorrow. What bellowing in the caverns! What trembling in the depths! How horrible the earthquakes! How many monuments were opened! What rocks were rent — so that even the very stones, softened at their Lord’s torments, grew faint, while at His pains the marble hearts of the most wicked Jews hardened! Why say more? No man born and known among men has ever anywhere endured such tortures, nor by the common condition of life could possibly endure them; yet the restorer of our human safety, eagerly desiring our salvation, willed to perish amid these most cruel examples. For had He not Himself willed to undergo these torments, His enemies could have done Him no violence. By this manner of death Christ, by the greatest counsel, decreed to succour the salvation of men. For as by a tree the Demon triumphed over man, so by a tree the conquered Demon yielded to man. The first man, forsaking and casting off obedience, drove us out of Paradise; the second man, made obedient to death, even the death of the cross, opened to us not only a way to heaven but an entrance. What then could be added to this gentleness? If a friend should die for a friend, or an equal for an equal, surely that man would be a boor and inhuman who should cast off the memory of so great a benefit, and who should not render singular honour to so singular a friend, even dead. What gratitude then shall we be able to pay to Jesus Christ, who did not turn away His eyes from our misery, but — the Just for the unjust, the Lord for the captives, the Son for the exiles, the freeholder for the strangers, the Free for the slaves, the Lamb for the wolves, the Friend for the enemies, God for men made of clay and mire — poured out His life? By which most full sacrifice He made satisfaction for us, and reconciled the heavenly Father to us. And so, gloriously rising from the dead on the third day, He attained immortality; and sitting at the Father’s right hand, He blesses for ever with His sweetest presence His servants, snatched from the demon’s jaws. To which seat the course is open to you — if only you will scatter the old darkness from your souls, renounce the fictions and fables of superstition, and yield yourselves to Christ’s authority, who weakened and broke the certain power of the most foul beast, and freed us, by His blood, from the greatest torments of bondage and destruction.”

¹¹ This sermon (these are Stanihurst’s words), diligently heard, was poured into the minds of many — which had before never been taught — and began to take effect; and in their minds this new doctrine began at once to inscribe itself as with a chisel. While he was delivering this discourse to the assembly, the point of his host’s shoe — a certain chieftain who was present at the sermon, or rather presiding over it — pierced his foot; and as the orator was rising to the fervour of his eloquence, he kept his foot unmoved as it were nailed to the spot. But the wounded primate, having yielded to the operation, suffered the fellow’s foot to press his own — desiring that by this very goad he might make trial of how willingly he should endure the sharpest torments of the cross for man’s liberation. For he was borne into that part of our religion by a great impulse of devotion. The chieftain, moreover, was of this mind: that he, whose mind was being fashioned to the Christian religion, must needs be tortured in some part of his body. And so, concealing his resolve, he would not move his foot from its place, even though it was pierced through. As soon as the woman perceived her error with astonishment, the chieftain, admiring the man because he had never winced at the pain, gave way and desisted — affirming that this had happened through inadvertence — and humbly besought the primate to apply some remedy; at whose prayers the chief physician, not abandoning his place, healed the wound most excellently, without any scar remaining. And this miracle, a great proof of the Christian doctrine, won over a multitude of men.

Thus far Stanihurst, in the passage cited above. Whether, however, he took this oration or sermon of St Patrick from old manuscripts or printed books — since it could have been actually uttered by St Patrick — or composed it himself in his own ingenious and eloquent manner, is to us unknown. There is but one thing from which it seems to be inferred that it was taken from elsewhere — namely, that the whole of this oration is marked off by him with certain marginal signs or marks of quotation, distinct from the rest of the narrative. Whether this argues that it was composed by another, or by Stanihurst himself, I leave to the judgement of the prudent reader.

THE END.

All that is contained in this volume is subject to the judgement and correction of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Roman Church.

[Editorial errata note: “Errors, and also omissions, are to be corrected as follows; some are corrected earlier, some later.” Then follow line-corrections for the preliminary tract and Jocelin’s prologue, ending the volume.]