Pseudo-Fulgentius, Sermon 46 (‘On the True Vine’)
Edition: PL65: 912-13.
This sermon was preached by a Nicene bishop in Vandal Africa. Its precise date is impossible to gauge. It is preserved as part of a set of 79 sermons in a manuscript from c. 900, which seems to transmit an originally fifth- or sixth-century sermon collection. A (now lost) preface indicated that the preacher was a bishop standing in for a colleague. As Leslie Dossey has noted (Dossey, Peasant and empire, 161), the author was likely in place as a visitor for a congregation whose usual bishop was in exile. This particular sermon uses the metaphor of the true vine from Psalm 79—often read by late ancient exegetes as an allegory for the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE—to develop the theme of barbarian persecution of the Nicene Church.
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Sermon 46: ‘On the True Vine’
Because the vines of our vineyard are torn away by the blades of cruel harvesters, and, with the atria of the churches contaminated, their chambers languish for the lack of spiritual ones left behind [de paucitate relictorum camerae spiritalium elanguent: or, ‘for the lack of relics’?], and since we do not have even a little shelter, let us run to Christ, who is the true vine (John 15:1). His bleeding vines shade the burning church.
For he is the true vine, planted for us from the paternal substance, whose power covered the heavens and the earth is full of his praise (Habakkuk 3:3). So, ascending to the right hand of the Father, the eternally pleasant vine [vitis semper amoena], giving blossoming grace to those who are burning up, extends his branches, both to those clothed in the white flower of his nativity, and those who have put on the bloodstains of the passion, stretching his hands out on the cross as if he was spreading vines across the earth, that there might be a pleasant coolness for Christians who believe rightly. Let us run underneath that shade, which the truth of life has covered from heaven, and let us say beneath the worldly heat, behold, Christ our Lord, who was given for our sins (Romans IV:25), let us live in his shade amongst foreign peoples: and regarding ourselves also, let us say, reciting the lyre of David in our lives, I will hope in the shadow of your wings, until the iniquity passes. (Psalm 56 [57]:2)
But look, the iniquity does not pass, it grows; it does not calm, it rages.
Since the boar ravages the wood [uindemiat de silua: both ‘harvests’ and ‘afflicts’] and every wild beast grazes it; because the true vine is quiet on his throne, and the Father, the cultivator, is angered; because the vine of another has become bitter [quia amara vitis facta est aliena], let us run to the purple stay of that vine, of the bloody passion, and let us hold the stem as if it were a statue of the cross, until the Father, the cultivator, leaving off the scythe, restores piety, and let us say to him, protected by the consoling shoot of his one prayer, Father, Father, you who are in heaven, why do we struggle so much on earth? Are you not the cultivator of the true vine, and does the boar not harvest us from the wood, the barbarian who does not know human mercy?
Did you not transfer the vine from Egypt, plant it, and fill the earth? (Psalm 79[80]:9) Golgotha is a witness, where you made a furrow beneath the cross. There you planted the true vine with blood and water, until, once the vine was propagated with the fork, from the tomb to the heavens, its shade covered the mountains, and now the importunate barbarian has occupied those mountains to cut off its branches. He has covered his orchard and the cedars of God (Psalm 79[80]:11), and now the powerful enemies cut us off: since neither infants nor old people were pitied, because they did not blush at the faces of old men, and they did not have mercy for those suckling at teats. Where is the tower of strength in the face of the enemy? The angels have deserted it and the barbarians, more nimble than eagles, ascend.
For he says, God, the peoples have come to your inheritance, they have polluted your holy temple (Psalm 78[79]:1). Interpose for us, true vine, because our sins have become bitter: let us then seek the shade, and let us not find anything except scythes and lances. The boar shrieks as it goes about the wood, and each fierce creature grazes it, because the lion from the tribe of Juda is quiet in his seat, and will not give the voice of light, until the fierce creatures with their nocturnal blindness flee. So we are made into desolation. Father, refuse to give the scythe of your government into the control of foreign peoples. They do not know to think, only to cut off.
You know well how to purge, who have deemed us fit to make whiter than snow. Cut us off in such a way, that you might protect us at the root, not so that our memory might perish on earth, but that our vestiges might be in the true vine, and once the bloody slaughter stops, the vine might turn the desert green, with the shoots revived from captivity, which is how we think about all the holy people who are proffered from that vine. Don’t they now weep bitterly, the grieving holy people, the afflicted, the living walking beneath his roots, the abandoned, suffering with the dead? Do we not say, why does the boar harvest us from the wood, and perhaps the good vineyard worker, Isaiah, responds to us, Why? Because, he says, I have suffered, that you might make grapes as you have made thorns (Isaiah 5:4). Why? Because I have suffered, he says, that you might produce equity: you have not produced justice, but a clamour. But once again, let us turn [convertamur] to the Father, the good cultivator, whose heart professed the good word (Psalm 44[45]:1). He alone purges the shoots from his vine, not with a sharp scythe, but with mild grace. Angel and archangel do not dare to purge his vine, for they are his ministers, not cultivators. For the Father alone knows the Son, because no-one knows the Father except the Son. Let us pray this alone, that we not be cut off and fail, but let us offer up these great fruits from these purged shoots.
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