To Heaven's Rim: The Kingdom Poets Book of World Christian Poetry, Beginnings to 1800, in English Translation

From its very first days, the church has been lifting up its songs and poems from the earth to the heavens, whether in praise, thanksgiving, or lament. Join poets from across Syria, Europe, Armenia, Ethiopia, China, and the Philippines in raising their voices. Learn about these great Christian singers from around the world, many of whom are hardly known at all among English readers, yet who are often considered the greatest poets in their own languages. Explore the many styles and genres which Christians have used to express their faith in song, whether hymn, psalm, dream vision, epic, drama, lyric, or didactic poem. Journey through the lives of biblical characters, through abstract theological and philosophical arguments, through moments of intense personal grief and joy, through the lives of saints and terrible sinners, sometimes even through heaven and hell themselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Feb 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666716849

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To Heaven’s Rim

The Kingdom Poets Book of World Christian Poetry Beginnings to 1800, in English Translation

edited by Burl Horniachek

Executive Editor: D. S. Martin

To Heaven’s Rim

The Kingdom Poets Book of World Christian Poetry, Beginnings to

1800

, in English Translation

Copyright ©

2023

Wipf and Stock Publishers. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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Cascade Books

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

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paperback isbn: 978-1-6667-1682-5

hardcover isbn: 978-1-6667-1683-2

ebook isbn: 978-1-6667-1684-9

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: Horniachek, Burl.

Title: To Heaven’s Rim : The Kingdom Poets Book of World Christian Poetry , Beginnings to

1800

, in English Translation/ Burl Horniachek.

Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books,

2023

| Poiema Poetry Series | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers:

isbn 978-1-6667-1682-5 (

paperback

) | isbn 978-1-6667-1683-2 (

hardcover

) | isbn 978-1-6667-1684-9 (

ebook

)

Subjects: LCSH: Poetry. | Christian poetry.

Classification: PN

1010 H67 2023 (

print

) |

PN

1010 (

ebook

)

March 2, 2023 12:57 PM

Table of Contents

Title Page

Introduction

St. Ephrem the Syrian (c. 306 – 373)

St. Ambrose of Milan (c. 340 – 397)

Prudentius (c. 348 – 405/413)

Sedulius (5th century)

St. Jacob of Serug (c. 451 – 521)

St. Romanos the Melodist (late 5th century – after 555)

The Akathistos Hymn

St. Yared (505 – 571)

St. Venantius Fortunatus (c. 530 – 600/609)

St. John of Damascus (c. 675 – 749)

St. Cosmas of Maiouma (d. 773 or 794)

The Stikhera for the Last Kiss

The Dream of the Rood

Alcuin (c. 735 – 804)

A Prayer for Recollection

St. Gregory of Narek (c. 950 – 1003/1011)

Mael Ísu Ua Brolcháin (d. 1086)

St. Nerses IV the Gracious (1102 – 1173)

St. Francis of Assisi (1181/1182 – 1226)

Arnulf of Leuven (c. 1200–1250)

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274)

Dante Alighieri (c. 1265 – 1321)

Juan Ruiz, Archpriest of Hita (c. 1283 – c. 1350)

Petrarch (1304 – 1374)

Dafydd ap Gwilym (c. 1315/1320 – c. 1350/1370)

Hensa Krestos (15th century)

François Villon (1431 – c. 1463)

Jorge Manrique (c. 1440 –1479)

Marko Marulić (1450 – 1524)

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475 – 1564)

Martin Luther (1483 – 1546)

Vittoria Colonna (1492 – 1547)

Pierre de Ronsard (1524 – 1585)

Luís de Camões (c. 1524/1525 – 1580)

Fray Luis de León (1527 – 1591)

Jan Kochanowski (1530 – 1584)

St. John of the Cross (1542 – 1591)

Torquato Tasso (1544 – 1595)

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (1544 – 1590)

Mikołaj Sęp Szarzyński (c. 1550 – c. 1581)

Vitsentzos Kornaros (1553 – 1613/1614)

Bàlint Balassi (1554 – 1594)

Luis de Góngora (1561 – 1627)

Lope de Vega (1562 – 1635)

Tommaso Campanella (1568 – 1639)

Francisco de Quevedo (1580 – 1645)

Joost van den Vondel (1587 – 1679)

Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski (1595 – 1640)

Adam Michna of Otradovice (c. 1600 – 1676)

Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600 – 1681)

Pierre Corneille (1606 – 1684)

Paul Gerhardt (1607 – 1676)

Fridrich Bridel (1619 – 1680)

Angelus Silesius (c. 1624 – 1677)

Wu Li (1632 – 1718)

Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg (1633 – 1694)

Thomas Kingo (1634 – 1703)

Jean Racine (1639 – 1699)

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648 – 1695)

Gaspar Aquino de Belén (late 1600s – early 1700s)

William Williams Pantycelyn (1717 – 1791)

Gavrila Derzhavin (1743 – 1816)

Ann Griffiths (1776 – 1805)

Translators

Acknowledgments

Introduction

This anthology has its origins in the Kingdom Poets blog by D.S. Martin. Don had been doing great work there for several years, posting a new poem every week from a different Christian poet and thus bringing attention to the many great poets who have written about their Christian faith. However, when I began to read his blog, I noted that, with some exceptions, he did not post many poems originally written in languages other than English. After I began attending his writers’ group in Brampton and began to get to know him, I started to suggest poets from many different languages, in translation. I have long had an interest in translation, ever since studying Hebrew at the University of Toronto, where I had encountered the work of Robert Alter. After seeing the long list of suggested translations in the back of Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon, I started informally comparing different translations on my own, particularly of poetry, where it makes the most difference. So, I had a fair bit of knowledge to draw on by the time I met Don. After Don published The Turning Aside, his anthology of contemporary Christian poets, I realized that no one had ever done an anthology of Christian poetry from around the world in translation. I talked with Don and he thought it would be a good idea.

Most people in the English-speaking world who are interested in Christian poetry are familiar with poets such as John Donne, George Herbert, John Milton, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Gerard Manley Hopkins, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, as well as more recent figures such as Geoffrey Hill, Les Murray, R.S. Thomas and Luci Shaw, among many others. For Christian poets in other languages, they will typically also be familiar with Dante, along with perhaps one or two others, such as Petrarch or St. John of the Cross, and a few traditional hymns. However, aside from these, they will very rarely know about other Christian poets in other languages, including many who are considered among the very best, sometimes the best, in their own tongue. The goal of this anthology is to make English-language readers aware of these poets.

(I should note that a couple of the poets here, Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas and Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski, were, in the past, immensely popular in English translation. In fact, many of Isaac Watts’ well-known hymns were adapted from Sarbiewski. However, both have long since fallen out of notice among English speakers.)

On those few occasions where the English reader is likely to already know something of the poet, I have tried to draw attention to parts of their work which are not so well known. For example, with Dante, the last canto of the Paradiso is perhaps the greatest religious poetry ever written, but many are not familiar with it, as it comes at the end of a long poem which many people never finish.

Unless you count Anglo-Saxon, which at this point is essentially a different language, I have not included any poetry originally composed in English. There are already several good anthologies covering Christian poetry in English during this same time period, such as Donald Davie’s New Oxford Book of Christian Verse, and, since space is limited, I did not want to repeat their work.

What do we mean by Christian poetry? It can be difficult to define. My first criteria here is that the poet as a person must have some apparent level of Christian belief. This means, as far as we can tell, believing in the existence of God, that Jesus was divine and that his death and resurrection were involved in the salvation of men from sin, evil and death. Furthermore, at least for the purpose of this anthology, the work itself must have some specifically Christian subject matter, such as God, Jesus, the saints, the Bible, etc. Mere moral sentiment or vague gestures toward the transcendent are not enough. Still, there is no denying that, to a certain extent, this is something of a judgment call, and that, in many cases, personal belief often has to be inferred from the work.

While I am not concerned by some degree of uncertainty of belief or departure from orthodoxy, I would not include anyone who explicitly repudiated Christianity or who identified with another religious tradition. Nor would I include someone who explicitly denied certain core beliefs of Christianity, such as the existence of God or that Jesus was divine.

Aside from those religious concerns, the main criterion for inclusion in this anthology has been literary excellence. Doubtless some eccentricities of my own interests and tastes have influenced the results, but I have not gone into this project with any specific agenda: literary, theological or otherwise. Within those very broad parameters, I have intended the anthology to be historically representative, and have not limited it to poets or poems which I think have correct theology.

The most obvious area of controversy is that of Mary. There are a lot of Marian poems in this anthology. However, I think it important to clarify just what the issues are. First, Protestants have historically objected to giving Mary any continuing role (that is, beyond bearing and giving birth to Jesus) in mediating salvation, especially the not uncommon assertion that salvation must always come through her ongoing mediation. Second, Protestants have objected to addressing her in prayer. These issues are connected, of course, as the reason for addressing her in prayer is frequently that she has an ongoing and essential role as mediator. The poem here which most exemplifies the first issue is François Villon’s Ballade of Prayer to Our Lady:

Your graces, Holy Dame, I hardly dare

Think can outweigh the load of sins I bear.

Without such graces, no soul hopes to fly

Upward, nor merit Heaven.

For most other poems, such as Dante’s Paradise Canto 33 or Petrarch’s poem 366, the main problem is simply that Mary is being addressed in prayer at all. I do not mean to minimize the seriousness of these theological issues: even Erasmus complained, rightly I think, that prayers to Mary and the saints had come to vastly outnumber prayers to Jesus himself. However, Protestants should at least note that most of the imagery applied to Mary in these poems is often not objectionable in itself, even from a more stringent Protestant perspective. As Sebastian Brock writes of Jacob of Serug:

[Mary] is always regarded in relationship to the Incarnation and never in vacuo. In Orthodox icons the virgin is normally depicted with the incarnate Christ in her arms, symbolic of her role of co-operation with the divine economy; although the Syriac-speaking churches in fact do not make great use of icons, this iconographical tradition admirably exemplifies their Christocentric approach. And Mary's relationship to the Holy Spirit is always clear cut: the Holy Spirit is essentially the Sanctifier, while Mary is the sanctified, par excellence.¹

In other words, as Jacob and others here emphasize, Mary, in relation to God, is always the receptacle for divine grace. Much can be learned about incarnational theology from these poems, even if one ultimately objects to the context. For those who remain skeptical, I would note that there is a significant decline in Marian poetry in the second half of this anthology, even among the mostly Catholic poets there, and that this is not an artefact of my own selection process.

Another issue is when a particular poet is seen as engendering heresy and division by another tradition. The most obvious example is Martin Luther. While there is no doubt that Luther believed in God, in Christ’s divinity and in his central role in salvation from sin and death, there is also no denying that, from a Roman Catholic perspective, Luther is perhaps the arch-schismatic. One can perhaps more easily overlook theological differences with later followers, but it is far more difficult with the originator himself. Still, however much distaste a more stringent Catholic may have for Luther’s life and work, it is difficult to deny that he was a Christian in at least a broad sense. Thus, aside from being myself largely sympathetic to his theological leanings, I have felt no hesitation in including him. As well, A mighty fortress is our God, the hymn I have included here, has even made its way into use among at least some Catholics.

I have also not excluded anyone for immoral behavior. While many of the poets here are rightly regarded as saints, others were seriously flawed in ways both known and unknown. Perhaps the most notorious offender here is François Villon, who engaged in various violent and criminal enterprises throughout his life. This is compounded by an undernote of self-pity in his work, a tendency to put the blame on others for his misdeeds, rather than to offer full contrition for his sins. Several others, such as Petrarch, Dafydd ap Gwilym, Pierre de Ronsard, Luís de Camões and Lope de Vega, apparently engaged in sexual activity outside marriage throughout their lives, though most are thought to have eventually stopped. In a few other cases, poets may have outright advocated for sexual arrangements widely seen as immoral among Christians. Though we don’t have much information about his life, the Archpriest of Hita writes about various love affairs in an apparently autobiographical manner and some have speculated that he was an advocate for clerical concubinage. It is also unclear whether Tommaso Campanella was expressing his own preferences when he has his utopia, The City of the Sun, hold all women, like everything else, in common. On a much pettier level, Luis de Góngora and Francisco de Quevedo notoriously engaged in a long and vicious literary feud. I suspect they were not alone in such personal failings. Doubtless many of the poets here also held various social, religious and political views which many modern people might find offensive. Those views are not much represented in the poems here, though some might find Tasso’s celebration of the First Crusade in Jerusalem Delivered problematic.

I have tried to cover all the major languages of Europe and of any other places where there were significant numbers of Christians. Still, the vast majority of the poets here are from Europe. That simply reflects where the geographic center of Christianity was for most of its first 1800 years. I did not deliberately try to make this anthology ethnically or linguistically diverse. Nonetheless, Christianity came out of the Ancient Near East and there have always been other significant pockets of Christian civilization outside Europe. Accordingly, I have ended up including a significant number poets from elsewhere. If you count the two Syriac poets, the two Armenian poets, the two Ethiopian poets, the one Chinese poet and the one Filipino poet, there are eight. If, among named poets, you add Sor Juana from Mexico and the three Greek language poets from Syria, you end up with twelve, though arguably those latter are still operating within a European cultural ambit.

If we look at the poets over time, some interesting patterns emerge. Sixteen of the poets here are from before the Great Schism of 1054. Of these, two wrote in Syriac, five in Greek, five in Latin, one in Armenian, one in Ge’ez, one in Irish and one in Old English. The still relatively unified Christian tradition had comparatively equal Greek, Latin and Syriac branches, with significant offshoots in places like Armenia and Ethiopia. Northern Europe, especially England and Ireland, would eventually also begin to make contributions.

Thirteen poets come between the Great Schism and the Protestant Reformation. One wrote in Armenian, one in Irish, two in Latin, three in Italian, two in Spanish, one in Welsh, one in French, one in Ge’ez and one in Croatian. The Western Catholic tradition was beginning to be dominant, but significant work was still being done in Armenia and Ethiopia. Poetry among the Eastern Orthodox was in decline.

Thirty-four poets, the majority, come from after the Protestant Reformation. Four wrote in Italian, four in German, four in French, seven in Spanish, one in Portuguese, two in Polish, one in Greek, one in Latin, one in Hungarian, one in Dutch, two in Czech, one in Chinese, one in Danish, one in Tagalog, two in Welsh and one in Russian. Of these, twenty-five were Catholic, seven Protestant, one Orthodox and one uncertain. (No one know for sure whether the author of the Cretan Sacrifice of Abraham was Orthodox or Catholic.) Accordingly, most explicitly religious poetry in Europe was being written by Catholics (though there would be a bit more balance if you included the English). As well, Christianity had begun to spread around the world and people from those places were beginning to make their own literary responses to the faith.

Of the named poets, fifty-five are men and four are women. Four are anonymous. All of the women I have included wrote during or after the Renaissance and Reformation, though there were notable women Christian poets before.

One might wonder why some languages and some areas of the world are not represented. In several cases, Christian cultural vitality and innovation were suppressed by Islamic hegemony. In Arabic, there was the occasional well-known Christian poet, such as Al-Akhtal, who, though he would occasionally allude to the Bible or Christian liturgical practices, did not himself write religious verse. Bulgaria was the first Slavic nation to become Christian, and, indeed, the Old Church Slavonic often used for liturgy in Slavic countries is a form of Bulgarian. However, while there were, accordingly, some medieval hymns in the language, which I chose not to include, once Bulgaria came under Muslim rule, literary culture in Bulgarian effectively ceased to exist.

A lot of high-quality poetry was written before 1800 in the closely related languages of Occitan, Catalan and Valencian, but notable religious poetry would only emerge in the 19th century. Important poets such as Ausiàs March (1400 – 1459) may have written some religious verse, but it was not among their best.

The most prominent genre of poetry in Old East Slavic (sometimes called Old Russian) was the oral folk epic. These narrative poems often featured incidental Christian elements mingled with paganism, but were not primarily religious in content. Christian religious poetry would not emerge in descendant languages such as Modern Russian and Ukrainian until the 18th and 19th centuries. Many other parts of Northern, Central and Eastern Europe had similar stories: mostly oral folk poetry for many centuries, with literate Christian poetry only emerging later, sometimes as early as the 15th century, but sometimes as late as the early 20th.

I could perhaps have looked more diligently at the smaller languages of Europe. In this case, Irish and Welsh no doubt benefitted from being so close to the English geographically. While I have included work originally written in Old English, I have not included anything from works such as Pearl, Langland or Chaucer in Middle English. Though there have been translations of these works, they are still often read in the original.

I have tried to include poetry from Ethiopia, which has been largely Christian since the 300s, including excerpts from St. Yared and a selection from The Harp of Glory by Hensa Krestos. However, the work of many of Ethiopia’s greatest religious poets, including that of Yohannis Geblawi, Tewaney, and Kifle Yohannis, exists only in oral form and has never been written down. It was simply not practical to travel to Ethiopia to collect these poems for translation, especially in the midst of a pandemic.

Greek poetry flourished under the Byzantine Empire, and two great poets, St. John of Damascus and St. Cosmas of Maiuma, would continue to write in Greek even under early Islamic rule in Syria-Palestine. However, with the reduced fortunes of the Byzantine