Illuminations
The First Blood
by Anthony Esolen
When I first encountered Roman history, I was puzzled by some of the cognomens of their heroes, such as Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus. Was Scipio an African, or at least born in Africa? Was Tiberius's brother Germanicus born in the shadows of the Alps? It never occurred to me then that you would be given a name from some deed you had performed in battle, and that then it would become a family name, passed down to your children and your children's children. Imagine Douglas MacArthur Philippinus, or Theodore Roosevelt Mexicanus.
Sometimes your name came not from the place where you shed other people's blood to win glory for yourself, but from some peculiarity of the battle. So it was that the young Titus Manlius, in battle against the cisalpine Gauls who so often pressed against Rome and her allies, took up in single combat the challenge of a Gallic giant, slew him, and ripped the gold torque from his neck, to put it on his own. Hence he was called Torquatus, the man with the neck chain.
That tradition gave inspiration to an unknown Christian poet from the early centuries, writing in Latin, as he thought about the feast that the Church celebrates on the eighth day after the birth of Christ: the Feast of the Circumcision. Of course we understand that Jesus did not need for himself this circumcision in the flesh, as he was not only among the people of God, but the Son himself, the fire in the burning bush, the manna come down from heaven. So, too, when he went to the Jordan to be baptized by John, it was to "fulfill all righteousness," not for himself, but for us: it was our sins he would wash away, and not by those waters of the Jordan that roll from the northern mountains into the Dead Sea, but by the life-giving water flowing from his pierced side.
But Jesus was taken to be circumcised, and he received his name then: Yeshua, God Saves. Hence the first stanza of the poem Victis sibi cognomina, well translated into English by Reverend John Chandler (post-1736), and set to the English carol-melody, "Innocents":
Conquering kings their titles take
From the lands they captive make:
Jesu, thine was given thee
For a world thou madest free.
That stanza has all the concentrated wit of an epigram. The Romans honored their Torquati, but we worship the Crucifixus: he and he alone is who we are to preach. The Romans honored their Africani, but we bow the head and bend the knee at the holy name of Jesus. He has reversed the traditions of men, and took upon himself, as an infant who could neither speak nor walk, the name of a military mission to come. Slain in that victory, he the Crucified will take captivity captive, and bring to heaven as spoils the souls of men awaiting their liberation from sin and death.
The Only Saving Name
That conferring of a name, as Joseph was commanded by the angel, reminds the poet of what Saint Paul says in Philippians:
Not another name is given
Power possessing under heaven,
Strong to call dead souls to rise
And exalt them to the skies.
In the Latin our situation is made quite clear. We are, in the dative case, aegris mortalibus, sickly beings moving toward death. That name alone, the name of Jesus, is given to us so that we may rise from death, the name alone perenne per quod viverent, by which we may live forever.
Anthony Esolen is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Thales College and the author of over 30 books, including Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church (Tan, with a CD), Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture (Regnery), and The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord (Ignatius). He has also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House) and, with his wife Debra, publishes the web magazine Word and Song (anthonyesolen.substack.com). He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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