The Royal Banners Forward Go

Venantius Fortunatus, 6th century

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In honor of Holy Week, and our word, holy, I’m presenting one of the grandest hymns in the Christian tradition, a mighty poem that I think pierces to the heart of sorrow and triumph, and shows most powerfully the complete inversion of worldly values that the Cross represents. The poem, in its Latin title, is Vexilla regis prodeunt, and its author is Venantius Fortunatus, the saintly bishop of Poitiers (ca. 540-605).

I’m thinking of a scene here in Dante’s Inferno. He and Virgil have descended to the lowest pit of Hell. My students have often been surprised that the place is characterized not by fire, but by ice. Fire, after all, is lively and hot: it can burn, but it can also purge, and it is often associated with the divine. Think of the burning bush that Moses saw. Think of the tongues of fire descending upon the apostles at Pentecost. But ice? The best we can say about it is that it mimics the changelessness and stability of God. In itself it is impotent, and it thwarts the actions of all those treacherous souls who are encased in it — and I do mean treacherous. And the worst of the traitors are those who betrayed their benefactors, returning evil for good; and the worst of those in turn are Satan and Judas.

But as Dante and Virgil enter this icy wasteland, Virgil rings a change on the first line of today’s hymn. Vexilla regis prodeunt inferni, says he: The banners of the king of hell advance. It’s thoroughly ironic, because no one advances here; no one can move one inch from where he is fixed in ice. And when we see this supposed “king of hell,” he is a bat-like monster, a parody of an angel, frozen to his waist in the ice, flapping his wings like a machine, and thereby raising the very gales themselves that freeze the River Cocytus and that lock him in place. With every flap of his wings, I tell my students, he says, implicitly, “I am my own, and I rise by my power.” Were he to tell the truth that all created souls must acknowledge, that he is not his own and he does not rise by his power, the sinkhole would melt, and he might move. But he does not tell that truth. Such is the wisdom of the world.

Our poet Fortunatus had to tussle with the half-civilized Franks and other German tribes living in what is now France — they were a violent lot, for sure. I wonder, though, whether they were easier to persuade than we would be, to look at the Cross and say, as he says in his poem, that it shines with beauty, that it is dyed in the purple of royalty. Jesus did not say to his disciples that their lives would pass with the gentleness of a spring breeze. He said instead that they would have trouble in the world, but they should not fear: “I have overcome the world.” And where did he overcome it? We might say that it was just when the world was crowing in triumph, on that Friday afternoon at Golgotha. But it had been utterly defeated, not by brute force but by love. Imagine that Cross, a tree stripped of all its branches and leaves, a gibbet for execution: and it is the Tree of Life, and the King’s throne, and the glorious standard before which are united all the hosts of heaven, the hosts of love.

And what, after all, does the world boast of? Men of power, or wealth, or glory — such as Fortunatus had to deal with among the Merovingian princes, and I’d rather not get into their murders and treacheries. But the Cross is like a sword that pierces such vanity to the heart. One splinter of the Cross will do it.

Translations of Fortunatus’ poem are all over the place, so what you find in one hymnal is not at all likely to be the same as what you find in another, even from the same church. I’m giving you here what is to be found, with one well-done revision that doesn’t change the meaning, in The English Hymnal (1933); it is the work of the brilliant translator of hymns, John Mason Neale (and if you sang the great “All Glory, Laud, and Honor” on this Palm Sunday, you sang his translation; we sang it at our chapel, with my son David on the organ). The rendition below is from the choir at Ely Cathedral, in England. The melody itself is ancient, from the eighth century, a plainsong First Mode melody, in a minor key (F minor, in my hymnal). The choir at Ely sing seven stanzas, alternating between the men and the boys; they sing in unison, and the stark simplicity of it is powerful indeed.

The royal banners forward go;
The Cross shines forth in mystic glow;
Where he in flesh, our flesh who made,
Our sentence bore, our ransom paid.

Where deep for us the spear was dyed,
Life's torrent rushing from his side,
To wash us in that precious flood,
Where mingled Water flowed, and Blood.

Fulfilled is all that David told
In true prophetic song of old;
The universal God is he,
Who reigned and triumphed from the tree.

O Tree of beauty, Tree of light!
O Tree with royal purple dight!
Elect on whose triumphal breast
Those holy limbs should find their rest:

On whose dear arms, so widely flung,
The weight of this world's ransom hung:
The price of humankind to pay,
And spoil the spoiler of his prey.

O Cross, our one reliance, hail!
So may thy power with us prevail,
To give new virtue to the saint,
And pardon to the penitent.

To thee, eternal Three in One,
Let homage meet by all be done;
Whom by thy Cross thou dost restore,
Preserve and govern evermore.

Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcasts on a wide variety of topics. Paid subscribers receive audio-enhanced posts, on-demand access to our full archive, and may contribute comments to our posts and discussions. To support this project, please join us as a subscriber. We thank you for reading Word and Song!

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