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On the Ruin of Britain
St Gildas, tr. Williams, 1899
Listen also to what Ezekiel the famous prophet, the wonderful seer of the four beasts of …
Listen also to what Ezekiel the famous prophet, the wonderful seer of the four beasts of the gospels1, has said of the wicked. To him first, as he piteously weeps the scourge of Israel, the Lord says: The iniquity of the house of Israel and of Judah hath grown exceeding great, because the land is full of many peoples and the city is full of iniquity and uncleanness. Behold it is I. Mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity. And below. Because the land is full of peoples, and the city is full of iniquity, I will also turn away the force of their prowess, and their holy places shall be polluted. Supplication shall come, and they shall seek peace, and it shall not be. And after a while. The word of the Lord, he says, came unto me saying, Son of man, the land which shall sin against me to commit a trespass, I will stretch out my hand and break her foundation of bread, and send famine upon it, and take away from it man and beast. Although those three men be in the midst of it, Noah, Daniel, and Job, they shall not deliver it, but shall be themselves saved by their righteousness, saith the Lord. Because if I bring noisome beasts upon the land, and punish it, and it shall be a banishment, and there shall not be to walk from the face of the beasts, and if those three men be in the midst of it, as I live saith the Lord, its sons and daughters shall not be delivered, yet they themselves alone shall be saved, but the land shall be a desolation. And again. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, nor shall the father bear the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself. And the unjust man if he turn from all the iniquities which he hath done, and keep all my commandments, and do righteousness and plenteous mercy, he shall surely live and not die. All his transgressions which he hath committed, shall not be: in the righteousness which he hath done, he shall surely live. Do I, indeed, desire the death of the unrighteous, saith the Lord, rather than that he turn from his own evil way and live? But when the righteous shall turn away from his righteousness and commit iniquity, according to all the unrighteousnesses which the sinner hath committed, all the righteousnesses which he hath done, shall not be in remembrance. In his own trespass, by which he hath fallen, and in the sins by which he hath sinned, shall he die. And after a while. And all the nations shall know that it was on account of their sins the house of Israel were carried away captive, because they forsook me. And I have turned my face away from them, and delivered them into the hands of their enemies, and all have fallen by the sword. According to their uncleanness, and according to their transgressions, have I done unto them and have turned my face away from them.
Notes
- Evangelicorum animalium. Though Gildas could not have read the interpretation of the four faces of animals, mentioned by Jerome in the Commentary on Ezekiel, he may have been well acquainted with it from the Prologue to the Commentary on the first Gospel. In fact, we need not derive his familiarity with this symbolical representation of the four evangelists by the four animals which Ezekiel had seen, from any one writer. The idea is, at least, as old as Irenaeus (c. A.D. 180), and a mosaic in the apse of the Basilica of S. Pudenziana, dating from the time of Bishop Siricius (384-398), still survives to represent it. Schultze gives an engraving of this symbolic picture in Archäologie der Altchr. Kunst, s. 230. Gildas’ reference to the symbolical animals in this passage is made in such a way as to imply that he and his readers were perfectly familiar with the symbols, and perhaps with pictorial representations of them. Zahn, in his Forschungen zur Gesch. der neutestam. Kanons, und der altkirchl. Litterature, vol. iii, 257, traces the following groups in the representation.
I. Matthew = Man; Mark = Lion; Luke = Ox; John = Eagle (Works of Theophilus, Victorinus, Epiphanius, Jerome, etc.).
II. Matthew = Man; Mark = Eagle; Luke = Ox; John = Lion (Irenaeus, Ambrose, etc.).
III. Matthew = Lion; Mark = Man; Luke = Ox; John = Eagle (Augustine, Primasius, Beda).
IV. Matthew = Man; Mark = Ox; Luke = Lion; John = Eagle (Pseudo-Athanasian Synopsis).
We see that the symbols varied in the Western Church, so that it would be impossible to tell which group would be met with in Britain. The probability would be strongly in favour of Group I, because found in the writings of Jerome. Zahn traces the tradition to some unknown exegete or homilist of the second century, who compared the Four Evangelists to the “four living creatures” which, according to Ezek. i, 10, drew the chariot of Jehovah, which, in Rev. iv, 7, is the throne of Christ.