Hymn II
320 MARIUS VICTORINUS SECOND HYMN 1 HAVE MERCY LORD! Have mercy Christ! Have mercy Lord For I have believed in thee, Have mercy Lord Because through thy mercy I have known thee. Have mercy Lord! Have mercy Christ! Thou art the Logos of my spirit! Thou art the Logos of my soul! Thou art the Logos of my flesh! Have mercy Lord! Have mercy Christ! God lives,2 And God lives forever, And because before him was nothing, God lives from himself? Have mercy Lord! Have mercy Christ! Christ lives, And because God gave begetting to him, Christ lives from himself,4 Because he lives from himself, Christ lives always. 1 The first invocation is addressed to the three divine persons in the liturgical manner of Kyrie eieison, and should, therefore, be studied in any documentary history of this prayer. Just as the first hymn was linked to Book III, this second hymn is close to Book IV, and there are many parallels between this hymn and the hymns of Synesius. In his work, PV I 463-68, Hadot names Prophyry as their common source. In his fine monograph Hadot speaks of this hymn as a poem (MV 281) composed immediately after Victorinus's conversion and baptism as his personal prayer. Cf. hymn. II 38. 2 The tone becomes didactic after the invocation as happened also in hymn. I. If hymn. I 7-16 described the three Ones (Father, Son, and World), hymn. II describes the three lives: the Father who lives through himself eternally, the Son who lives through himself eternally by the Father's gift, finally the living soul in the image of the first two. This doctrine has issued from the encounter between In 5.26 and the Platonic theory (Phaedrus 246C) concerning the self-moving character of the soul; cf. adv. Ar. I 27, 26; 163 and IV 13,5. 3 Cf. In 5.26. 4 Cf. In 5.26. HYMN II Have mercy Lord! Have mercy Christ! Because God lives and God lives forever, Hence life was born eternal, But eternal life is Christ the Son of God. Have mercy Lord! Have mercy Christ! But if the Father lives from himself, And by the Father's begetting, the Son lives from himself As consubstantial with the Father, the Son lives forever. Have mercy Lord! Have mercy Christ! o God, Thou hast given me a soul; But the soul is image of life because the soul lives. Let my soul also live eternally.5 Have mercy Lord! Have mercy Christ! If to your likeness God the Father And to the image6 of the Son I was made man 7 Created for time, may I live because the Son knew me. Have mercy Lord! Have mercy Christ! I have loved the world8 because you made the world;9 321 5 The hymnal prayer based on the soul's essential reality in the image and likeness of eternal life begs the realization of this essence, i.e. life eternal. 6 In all the texts which treat of Gn 1.26 and here, "according to the image" (ad imaginemj is interpreted as the soul's relation to the image of God who is the Son or Life. "According to the likeness" (ad similitudinemj is related to the order of quality, of moral perfection and not of substance; Cf. adv. Ar. I 20,52; I 63,28; adv. Ar. 162-64. "In the likeness of the Father" is therefore a new formula for Victorinus, perhaps inspired by Mt 5.48: "Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father." 7 Cf. Gn 1.26. 8 Note the autobiographical character: the soul's destiny is a drama in three acts: preexistence, fall, return; cf. Augustine, Confessions 10.27.38. 9 "World" in this stanza has a Johannine overtone; cf. In 15.19; 17.14; 1 In 2.15; it is at once the visible world and the evil in the world. Cf. R. Brown, J. Fitzmyer, R. Murphy (eds.), The Jerome Biblical Commentary 2 (Englewood Cliffs 1968) 830-31. The soul, seeing in the world the work of God, the reflection of divine beauty, is drawn toward the world. But it falls prisoner there because the world contains a principle hostile to God and to those who are of God. When the soul receives the Spirit, it turns from the world to return to God. Cf. Victorinus, in Eph. 1.7 (1243 C). [3.145.143.239] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 06...
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