Bridging the Continental divide: neo-Latin and its cultural role in Jacobean Scotland, as seen in the Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum (1637)

  [p100]

Against the Jesuitical attack of sulphurous powder

1'O Roman, you will undeservedly expiate the fault of the British kings, until you summon the baleful Furies from the gloomy halls of hellish Dis,

5 and the three sisters make their way up to the light of day, threatening dreadful things to those who advocate a stricter discipline and a pure faith.'

9Thus spake the triple-crowned head surrounded by the raging Tridentine Council a of the fathers: thus spake the butchering fathers with savage thought and hellish deceit.

13Necessity preserves the holy ordinances of the Assembly on the bronze tablets of Fate, which are to be implemented by the sword, or by the force of sulphured powder, or by lead soon-to-melt.

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17Once due sacrifice has been offered in the orgies of the mass-makers, the fierce hands of the Jesuits are armed with the baleful thunderbolts of the papal fortress and with infernal abominations.

21Forthwith they leave the city: they fly over the snowy heights of the lofty Alps, swiftly pass the British sea, and enter the kingdom,

25 hearts dedicated to holy slaughter, an army on the march well-versed in the tricks of war, ugly incendiary birds of ill-omen, male whores both flame-spewing and lecherous.

29They creep into the homes of trusting noble families, relying on deceitful wiles and gold, but in altered dress, their robes refashioned into military garb.

33Like a grim army bristling with warlike companies, clad in adamantine b breastplates brandishing bull-hide shields and lion-skins,

37 they prate in hair-raising language of battles and victories, ramparts shattered by siege engines, cities emptied of their citizens, and a thousand country districts emptied of their husbandmen,

41 so many thousands laid low and sent to the grave as the fury of the Spaniards c has unpeopled the kingdoms of Peru and Mexico. Violence has spread the savage rule of Portugal

45 far and wide across the famous regions of the Ganges, where India's precious stones abound: where the Javanese flourish under the blossoming crown of the Chinese.

49'Roman d virtue is preached with care, to religions that should be cunningly vanquished: nor are they deemed teachable under Papal rule,

53 no matter how much Europe, Africa and Asia may cast aside the yoke removed from their necks which the rebellious, conquered spirits   [p102] of the barbarians should bear.

57What more can be said? The Spanish alliance now benefits the Britons as much as it harms the Dutch, and French, and Germans, and even the Poles, who are too cunning to take up their share of the burden.

61For Italian virtue is more esteemed than the proud heretics who ought to be subdued: just like the fate that once befell the Templars, e so the more recent slaughter at Paris f

65 has now erected a more magnificent trophy than ever graced many a triumphal procession. Stratagem is to be preferred over true virtue: it is right to use manifold deceit to overcome the enemy through the asperities of war.

69What blockage, what sluggishness is wrongly holding us back at this most critical turn of events? A British and most special parliament is assembling,

73crowded with royalty, senators, nobles and commoners, intent on the closest of unions, the minds of everyone open and their will directed as one to join together the kingdoms of two peoples into one.

77A British kingdom established by the highest law, g one in institutions, religion, and divine worship, and with a single body of law just as it united under a single king. h

81what damage, and how much, would such a British union give to Rome under such a king and body of law? Under the offspring of such a king, and with a royal prince who is now also Puritan?

85What curse should I invoke on our Puritan foes, whom England, that careful nurse, rears: how very many, who are sad, severe and just as troublesome to kings:

89 and who are used to the idea that no mitred bishops, either of the old order and the new, should exist? What can be more loathsome than this unspeakable plague of kingdoms?

93Shall we stand idly by? Let us now swiftly blow sky-high this cursed race   [p103] with a sulphurous blast of powder, making corpses and torches at a single stroke,

97 while the mob is sitting secure in full parliament confidently getting their best hopes up for exterminating the Papists whom they boldly denounce as Antichrists!'

101No sooner said, than done. Beneath the chamber and its timbers bound with plaster and mortar, someone places a monstrous quantity of gunpowder and flame-bearing fuses.

105O bitter gall! O sad affliction! O shocking crime! O what violent ferocity! Alas, the Papists' faith is more evil than the perfidy of the Carthaginians! i