Ad Scotiam Protrepticon ad Pacem (Epigr. XXXV)
The Paradox of Frozen Zeal
The poet observes the strange intensity of religious fervor in a cold climate, comparing it to a coal that burns brighter in the frost.
Scotland, you who lie stretched out beneath the freezing North, why do you burn with such excessive religious fervor? Does the very contrast of the cold increase your flames, just as numb hands grow warm in the snow? Or, just as a coal burns more sharply in the biting frost, do such great chills sharpen your zeal?
A Call to Cooling Grace
The poet urges the nation to replace destructive, excessive zeal with the cooling, noble blood of Christ.
Instead, I pray you, extinguish these harmful fires; the water is near, and the sea offers you its neighboring waves—or better yet, the blood of Christ, sent down from on high, flows closer and is more noble, so that if your flame grows by being fanned by new winds, the world might not perish by your fire before the appointed day.
Read the original Latin
Scotia, quae frigente jaces porrecta sub Arcto, Cur adeo immodica relligione cales? Anne tuas flammas ipsa Antiperistasis auget, Ut nive torpentes incaluere manus? Aut ut pruna gelu summo mordacius urit, Sic acuunt zelum frigora tanta tuum? Quin nocuas extingue faces, precor: unda propinqua est, Et tibi vicinas porrigit aequor aquas; Aut potius Christi sanguis demissus ab alto, Vicinusque magis nobiliorque fluit: Ne, si flamma novis adolescat mota flabellis, Ante diem vestro mundus ab igne ruat.
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