In his Icones, Theodore Beza includes poems on various Christian reformers. One of them is Peter Martyr Vermigli. In this post, I share a new verse translation, which I plan to use in the “Introduction” of my forthcoming translation of Loci communes 2.16-17.[1]
For the meter, I used a stress-based imitation of the quantitative Latin elegiac couplet–whether with success, I am not sure. I give the Latin text first, followed by my version.
Tuscia te pepulit, Germania et Anglia fovit,
Martyr, quem extinctum, nunc tegit Helvetia.
Dicere quae si vera volent, te et nomine dicent,
Hic fidus Christi (credite) Μάρτυρ erat.
Utque istae taceant, satis hoc tua scripta loquuntur:
Plus satis hoc Italis exprobrat exilium.
Here is my rendering:
Tuscany drove you away; Germany, England received you,
Martyr, whom in death Switzerland now covers o’er.
If these lands want to say what is true, they will speak of you by name:
Here was a faithful (believe!) martyr—yes, witness—of Christ.
Even if these lands are silent, your writings sufficiently say it;
Even more, Italy’s stung, guilty, by exiled rebuke.
References
| ↑1 | I previously published a non-metrical version in Beyond Calvin: Essays on the Diversity of the Reformed Tradition, which (embarrassingly) contained a mistake in the first line, I believe as an inadvertent result of the pressure of the pseudo-Vergilian allusion I discuss in an accompanying footnote. I correct it here. |
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