Christmas Prophesy

 

 

 

Occasionally Edward Hutton would report on discussions he had with Italian friends. On one spring day he visited a friend at a Camaldoli monastery outside of Naples, and found him engaged in a heated discussion with a visiting French professor. They were discussing the fourth Eclogue of Virgil, Hutton's favorite Roman poet, in which the poet, only 40 years before the birth of Christ, had mentioned the birth of a son who would usher in a Golden Age. Here is his account of part of the discussion.

 

Now during the latter part of the discussion that learned professor from Naples whom everyone reveres had arrived on the terrazza unseen by any but myself. We had exchanged glances. He now came forward and was introduced. When he was seated he turned to Dom Costanzo his host and then to the Professor from abroad.

 

“I have heard,” he said, “part of your discussion, and if you permit… It seems to me there are two ways of interpreting this lovely Eclogue of Virgil’s. Looking at in in one way it becomes a supernatural prophecy; looking at it in another way it is merely historical and deals with events of Virgil’s own time. Both ways are right. But those who would interpret the poem simply historically, for the most part modern scholars, would generally deny that there is such a thing as the supernatural and consequently must interpret the poem simply historically or leave it alone. That is surely unfortunate. Nevertheless I think they may be right, not in their prejudice, but in their interpretation, without thereby condemning their opponents as wrong. To say of any verse of Vergil’s that we have got to the bottom of it is dangerous. I think in fact that this poem is a prophecy of the birth of Christ, but I do not think Vergil knew what he was saying. In other words I believe Virgil was supernaturally inspired, but was in himself in ignorance. …”

 

“In any case,” I said, “Vergil has prophesied the Birth of Christ whether he knew it or not, whether he intended it or not, whether he was acquainted with the Messianism of the Jews, or of the time, or not, and whether we like it or not. The Fourth Eclogue as Reinach has said is ‘la premiere en date des oeuvres chretienne’.”

 

“After all,” said the Professor from Naples, “a prophecy is something which is to be fulfilled. Vergil’s poem in its Christian sense has been fulfilled. Moreover a prophesy is largely what one can make of it. Now historically one can make nothing of the fourth Eclogue. What has the birth of a son to Pollio come to? And why should the birth of a son to Pollio bring in a Golden Age? On the other hand the whole of Christian antiquity with the exception of S. Jerome, from Constantine, Lactantius, S. Augustine, Abelard, Dante and Innocent III, to Marsilio Ficino and even to Alexander Pope has accepted the poem as a prophecy that has been fulfilled in the birth of Christ. It is only now, when Christianity and with it the supernatural are denied altogether, that the supernatural content of the poem is passionately and eagerly refuted, rather through hatred and material interpretation of things than for any other reason. If the critics are right then Virgil was wrong. Credo in Virgilium.

 

Does anyone believe that the authors of Ecclesiasticus or of the Song of Songs knew they were prophesying of the Blessed Virgin? Yet assuredly they were, as the whole world for more than a millennium has testified; or that Isaiah had any but at most the vaguest notion that the Puer natus est of whom he chanted was to be the Jesus Parvulus born in a stable at Bethlemen.?

 

A prophecy is to be tested by its fulfillment, and its fulfillment is to be tested by the judicum orbis terrarium. Few are the prophets who understand what they are prophesying."

 

 

###

 

Edward Hutton: Naples and Campania Revisited. London, 1958.Preface. Pp. 99-100.