Upon the Annunciation and Passion falling on one day, by John Donne

March 25 is a day of great importance in the Christian calendar since it is celebrated as the feast of the Annunciation, when Gabriel the Archangel visited Mary and announced that she would carry the son of God. It is commonly held that Christ was immaculately conceived in this episode from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 2, which is daily rehearsed in the liturgical office as the Magnificat. The Annunciation has been a feast of high status throughout Christian history, and even after the Reformation it was celebrated in Protestant countries. In Norway, for instance, the feast is known as "Maria bodskapsdag" (in Nynorsk) or "Bebudelsen" (in Bokmål), meaning the day of Mary's message.

This year, however, March 25 has a double importance as it is also Good Friday, the day of Christ's crucifixion, one of the two most important events in the Christian salvation story. That these two celebrations are conjoined in one and the same day is of great mystical importance to a Christian, as it is possible to commemorate both the conception and the death of Christ, both the beginning and the end of his life as a man on earth (save a short while after the Resurrection).

This combination of feasts is a rare occurrence, and I was first notified of it via a recent blogpost on the excellent blog Clerk of Oxford. For the details I will therefore refer you to the Clerk's exposition. In the Clerk's blogpost, however, I was made aware of a poem by John Donne which he wrote when the same confluence occurred in 1608. Being immensely fond of John Donne's poetry, I've read the verse twice today, and I'm presenting it to you here so that you can share the brilliance that is Donne.


Upon the Annunciation and Passion falling on one day

1608

Tamely frail body' abstain today; today
My soul eats twice, Christ hither and away.
She sees him man, so like God made in this,
That of them both a circle emblem is,
Whose first and last concur; this doubtful day
Of feast or fast, Christ came, and went away;
She sees him nothing twice at once, who is all;
She sees a cedar plant itself, and fall,
Her maker put to making, and the head
Of life, at once, not yet alive, and dead;
She sees at once the virgin mother stay
Reclused at home, public at Golgotha.
Sad and rejoiced she's seen at once, and seen
At almost fifty, and at scarce fifteen.
At once a son is promised her, and gone,
Gabriel gives Christ to her, he her to John;
Not fully a mother, she's in orbity,
At once receiver and the legacy;
All this, and all between, this day hath shown,
Th'abridgement of Christ's story, which makes one
(As in plain maps, the furthest west is east)
Of the angel's Ave, 'and Consummatum est.
How well the Church, God's court of faculties
Deals, in sometimes, and seldom joining these;
As by the self-fixed pole we never do
Direct our course, but the next star thereto,
Which shows where the 'other is, and which we say
(Because it strays not far) doth never stray;
So God by his Church, nearest to him, we know
And stand firm, if we by her motion go;
His Spirit, as his fiery pillar doth
Lead, and his Church, as cloud; to one end both:
This Church, by letting these days join, hath shown
Death and conception in mankind is one:
Or 'twas in him the same humility,
That he would be a man, and leave to be:
Or as creation he had made, as God,
With the last judgement, but one period,
His imitating spouse would join in one
Manhood's extremes: he shall come, he is gone:
Or as though one blood drop, which thence did fall,
Accepted, would have served, he yet shed all;
So though the least of his pains, deeds, or words,
Would busy a life, she all this day affords;
This treasure then, in gross, my soul uplay,
And in my life retail it every day.


Here taken from Carey, John (ed.), John Donne - the Major Works, Oxford World's Classics, 1990: 155-56.

Two fleas - Saint Macarius and John Donne

Since the past few days have entailed and will entail quite a lot of travelling for me, I will in this blogpost very briefly present two very different historical snippets, both concerning fleas.

The first flea can be found in Legenda Aurea by Jacobus de Voragine, as part of an anecdote about the great desert father Macarius of Egypt (c.300-90), founder of a monastery in Scetis in Egypt, whose feast-day is January 15. The best known accounts of Macarius are in the collections of stories known as Apothegmata Patrum or Sayings of the Desert Fathers, and Vitae Patrum or Lives of the Desert Fathers. However, it doesn't seem that Jacobus knew these collection sfrom first-hand experience, as there are several anecdotes in the themwhich are not included in the Legenda. For instance, in Vitae Patrum we are told how Macarius healed the blindness of a hyena's puppy, and how as a reward the hyena brought Macarius a sheepskin for him to sleep on.

A further indication that Jacobus did not draw on these collections is the anecdote of the flea, which is not found in either. In Legenda Aurea the story goes as follows:

Fresco of St Macarius, by Theophanes the Greek (1340-1410) from 1378
Church of the Transfiguration on Ilina Street, Veliky Novgorod
Courtesy of Wikimedia

Once a flea bit Macarius and he killed it with his hand, and a great deal of blood came out of it. As a punishment for having so avenged the injury done him he lived naked in the desert for six months and came out with bites and scabs all over his body. After that he fell asleep in the Lord, renowned for his many virtues.
- Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda Aurea (translated by William Granger-Ryan)

Excerpt from the Aberdeen Bestiary on "Lice, fleas and ticks"
Aberdeen University Library MS 24, f72v, English bestiary, c.1200
Courtesy of Aberdeen University Library

The second flea is a poem composed by John Donne at the turn of the sixteenth century, and the text is taken from Bartleby. Donne's poem is in marked contrast to the anecdote of Macarius, because although both are concerned with the negative consequences of killing a flea, John Donne's poem is an erotic argument whose purpose would be horrifying to the lover of chastity Macarius. The poem is typical of Donne's clever verbal play in which metaphors for love and sex are drawn from objects, animals and even geographical abstractions. It was this quality that made Samuel Johnson baptise this style of poetry – very popular throughout the seventeenth century – “metaphysical poetry”.

MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know’st that this  cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper’d swells with one blood made of two;
And this, alas! is more than we would do.
O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we’re met,
And cloister’d in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.
Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck’d from thee?
Yet thou triumph’st, and say’st that thou
Find’st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
’Tis true; then learn how false fears be;
Just so much honour, when thou yield’st to me,
Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.

Bibliography


Burrow, Colin (ed.), Metaphysical Poetry, Penguin Classics, 2013

Farmer, David, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004

Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, translated by William Granger-Ryan, Princeton University Press, 2012

Russell, Norman (ed. and transl.), Lives of the Desert Fathers, Cistercian Publications, 1980

Ward, Benedicta (ed. and transl.), Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Cistercian Publications, 1975