I=2E59
Les exiles deport=E9s dans les isles
Au changement d'ung plus cruel monarque,
Seront meurtrys: & mis deux des scintilles
Qui de parler ne seront est=E9s parques.
Line 3 - "des scintilles/'saint-illes' [calembour]"
Verse translation
The banished exiles to the isles conveyed
When for the worse shall change a crueller king
Shall murdered be, and saintly torches made
Of those who'll not curb what they say or sing.
Books II, IV and V of Victor Vitensis's Historia Persecutionis
Provinciae Africanae (5th century) and/or book I of Procopius's
Vandalic War (6th century), describing the persecution by the North
African Arian Vandals of the local Roman Catholics during the latter,
particularly cruel years of King Huneric of Carthage (AD 477-484). As
recalled by Edward Gibbon in his Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, the
local bishops were first banished to Corsica and then rebanished to
Sardinia, where 'these unhappy exiles... were condemned to share the
distress of a savage life.' Meanwhile, in the areas settled by the
Vandals, 'the exercise of the Catholic worship was... strictly
prohibited; and severe penalties were denounced against the guilt both
of the missionary and the proselyte... Respectable citizens, noble
matrons, and consecrated virgins, were stripped naked, and raised in
the air by pulleys, with a weight suspended at their feet. In this
painful attitude their naked bodies were torn with scourges, or burnt
in the most tender parts with red-hot plates of iron. The amputation of
the ears, the nose, the tongue, and the right hand, was inflicted by
the Arians; and although the precise number cannot be defined, it is
evident that many persons, among whom a bishop and a proconsul may be
named, were entitled to the crown of martyrdom.
Merlin the Magician
"As it once was so shall it be again, world without end"
[TEOTW: 27, Shelter from the Storm, 346]
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