Epigrams 2

It is certain and beyond doubt that the first of all writers to note that several of Damasus's poems had perished—and indeed the more important ones—was the most eminent Cardinal Baronius, on the year 384, §§ 21 and 31. And although Marzio Milesio Sarazani gathered the works from the Palatine parchments published by Gruter, and was the first to elucidate them (which, completed in the year 1638, Federico Ubaldini issued in print), yet in this the most distinguished Antonio Maria Merenda agreed with Baronius—in his latest, enlarged edition of the works of St Damasus, published at Rome in 1754, with little works falsely attributed to that same most blessed pope added—and, speaking of the poems together with St Jerome (in the Catalogue of Illustrious Men, chapter 3), he concluded in a similar manner. For from St

Jerome we are taught that he had a gift for composing verse, and published many short pieces—all of which they confess they do not possess. Since, then, there came into my hands a parchment codex of the library of Novalesa, marked A. B., perhaps written in the ninth or tenth century, containing the Epistles of the blessed Apostle Paul with the prefaces of blessed Jerome, I found at the beginning several poems inscribed to Dom Damasus, among which were these; and lest these—which were carefully weighed against both the edition of the works of St Damasus, that of Merenda, and that of the most distinguished Galland in volume VI of the Library of the Fathers—

should perish—being unpublished and very like in style—we have taken care to have them published, so as to do a favour to those eager for ecclesiastical matters, that anyone may be able to weigh these things which we bring to light against those already in print; we have been content to note a few points. Although these poems swarm with many errors in the old codices, yet I have not thought it best to correct them, so that their antiquity might appear genuine. On the Epistles of Dom Paul the apostle: 'Here are many sacred things, here many worldly things; / from these, if any please you, take and read the verses. / You see meadows full of thorns and an abundance of flowers; / if you wish to take the thorns, rather take the roses. / Here shine the twin venerable volumes of the law; / here are stored alike the new together with the old.' In praise of blessed Paul the apostle.

'Saul he was once, by rightly keeping that surname, / for, as though already discharged of service, he suppressed the true teachings. / Who at last, wholly led over into the true Light, / as Paul earned it, was worthy of the name? / Deprived of the light of his mind, he was then forbidding sacred things; / but when he received his sight, he forsook all wickedness. / To the Gentiles he hands down the true precepts of the Master, / and calls all together with honey-flowing doctrine. / To dulled hearts he unlocks the blessed mysteries, / which at last, full of brightness, he prepares for those in darkness. / Like the sun he gleams, scattering his rays throughout the world, / and shines among all the more clearly in his eloquence. / Caught up, he seeks the heights, following the heavenly words / which it is scarcely permitted to repeat with human mouth. / He is overwhelmed by the waves, plunged for the name of Christ; / innocent, he is beaten with manifold scourging.'

'These things he suffers, bearing in his flesh the marks of Christ, / a victor, and he ascends the bright summits of heaven. / If any of you should read and seek out what these things meant, / look to what remains, who will explain them. / But for you, worshipping with worship through incense, he will abide in the hall / where the foul devil can never be. / Safe was he, though driven from the highest summit by him who makes firm; / we are chosen, freely and with honour, as companions. / The wool-bearing Easter-pastures flourish without bar of delay; / behold the rest—I doubt not that it will there be full. / High will be the report when we walk in the kingdom; / there will be terror for the fallen, as the good man seeks the heights. / Who will be able to recount the promised rewards of the heavens? / Hail, dear Father, receive whatever you ask.' On the Passion of the Redeemer: 'The penalty of the Redeemer was this way full of sorrow:'

'Spittings, scourges, the gates, the cross, the sponge of fury; / the onset of horror, and the myrrh of taste; / the thorns of terror, gall, nails, paleness, and the cry / of sorrow, equal to grief, the lance, the drop of gore: / the loving signs of love break the heart of the sinner.' Note. This was drawn out from our paper codex in quarto, as it is commonly called, marked I. N. 1000, in which are found the Meditations of blessed Bernard the abbot on the Passion of Christ over the seven canonical hours, written in the fourteenth century. Let the learned consult Poem VI, on the surnames of the Saviour, page 346, in Galland praised above.