Commentaria in Isaiam
Thirdly: “Finally, fever tames even him.”
As, therefore, the three young men of the Hebrews before Darius discussed what was strongest, and the first said: “Wine is strong;” the second: “The king is stronger;” the third, namely Zorobabel: “Women are stronger: but above all things truth beareth the victory,” 3 Esdras 3:10; so also here let us say: Iron is strong, hard and untamable; but the smith is stronger, who hammers and tames it; and strongest of all is fever, which tames and destroys the smith and all men and kings; and therefore compels them, however proud, to weep and to beseech.
King Antigonus, after he had recovered from a grave sickness, said: “This sickness has warned us not to be exalted in mind, since we are mortal.” So Plutarch in the Apophthegms. So often a lighter sickness of the body drives out a greater sickness of the mind, namely pride and insolence. Anaxarchus laughed at Alexander for making himself a god: but when Alexander fell sick, and the physician ordered broth to be made for him, Anaxarchus said, laughing: “But all the hope of our god is placed in a sip from a dish.” Surely sickness taught Alexander that he was not a god, but a mortal and one who would die. So Aelian, book 8.
So Blesilla, touched by fever, learned to disdain the world and its pomps. Hear St. Jerome to Marcella, letter 19: “Ezechias,” he says, “is terrified by approaching death, and, pouring forth tears, is granted a span of fifteen years. So also now, my Marcella, we have seen our Blesilla burn with the heat of fevers continually for almost thirty days, that she might learn to cast away the delights of a body that shortly will be furrowed by worms. The Lord Jesus came to her also, and touched her hand; and behold, rising, she ministered to him. There was something about her of negligence, and, bound with the bands of riches, she lay in the sepulchre of the world: but Jesus groaned, and was troubled in spirit, and cried out, saying: Blesilla, come forth. Called, she arose, and, come forth, dines with the Lord,” and so on. “Our widow was formerly adorned too fastidiously, and all day long asked at the mirror what she lacked: now she rises in haste to pray, and, in a ringing voice outstripping the rest in the Alleluia, is first to begin praising her Lord. Her knees are bent upon the bare ground, and her dark tunic is the less soiled when she has lain on the ground,” and so on.
Theodoric, Archbishop of Cologne, famous for prudence and holiness, being asked by the Emperor Sigismund what was the straight way that led to heaven, answered: “If you order your life as you promised to do when the stone, or gout, or some other graver sickness oppressed you.” Surely sickness warns, and almost compels one to take up a better life. So Aeneas Sylvius, book 2, Commentary on the Deeds of Alphonsus. But in many cases that common saying is true:
Damon lay sick, and then wished to be a monk: but when he recovered, he remained as he was before.
5. BEHOLD I WILL ADD TO THY DAYS FIFTEEN YEARS. Hence it is plain that Ezechias knew the years of his life, and consequently the year of his death, namely that he would die in the 16th year from then. How diligently, then, he prepared himself for death in that year! If this year were fatal to us, and we knew it, how should we prepare ourselves for it? Now it is doubtful whether it will be fatal: why do we not prepare for it with equal diligence? why in a matter so great, on which our eternal salvation depends, do we not choose the safer part in doubt? So a Pope, if he comes to the 24th year of his pontificate, is as it were certain that that year will be his last. For the experience of 1600 years teaches that what is said to the Pope is true: “Thou shalt not see the years of Peter”: for St. Peter sat at Rome 25 years.
8. BEHOLD I WILL MAKE THE SHADOW TO RETURN, and so on, ON THE DIAL OF ACHAZ, that is, built by order of Achaz, the father of Ezechias. This is the first sciothericon horologe, that is, one showing the hours by shadow, that we read of in histories, either sacred or profane.
Pliny is therefore mistaken, book 2, chapter 26, when he says: the method, and what they call Gnomonics, was invented by Anaximenes of Miletus, the pupil of Anaximander, and he first showed at Lacedaemon the dial which they call sciothericum. For Achaz long preceded Anaximenes: for Achaz lived about the first Olympiad; Anaximenes, as also the other sages of Greece, about the fiftieth; therefore Achaz preceded Anaximenes by almost two hundred years. Wherefore I should believe that this method of dials took its origin from those first fathers (as Josephus affirms also of other sciences), and gradually came to the Egyptians, from them to the Greeks, and from the Greeks at last to the Latins. So our Clavius, book 1 of the Gnomonics, page 7. For that the Latins began later to use dials Pliny teaches, book 7, chapter 60: “The first to set up a sundial among the Romans, twelve years before the war with Pyrrhus, at the temple of Quirinus,” he says, “was L. Papirius Cursor, when he dedicated it, vowed by his father, as is reported by Fabius Vestalis.” This was in the time of the first Punic war. Hence again from the Hebrew or, that is, light and the shining sun, the Egyptians called the year and the sun Horus. Thence the Greeks called the four chief parts of the year, and at length the day, and then a known part of the day, which we call an hour, by the name hora.
So from P. Clavius our Voellus, book 1 On the Horologe, chapter 1, in the scholia. And hence Horus the Egyptian, who wrote the Hieroglyphics, was called Horus Apollo. Apollo, that is, the Sun.
It is asked, first, whether only the shadow went back on the dial of Achaz, or the sun also, and consequently its shadow throughout the world? Vatablus, Burgensis, Arias Montanus, and some others think that only the shadow went back on the dial of Achaz. For this only Isaias proposes, and this only the dying king could see from his bed, and Sanchez proves it at length. God could, moreover, cause the sun’s shadow to go back, without the sun itself. For he could easily hinder the solar rays so that they did not spread light on the style of the dial, except only from that part from which the shadow would fall opposite on the lines designated by Isaias: which done, the shadow necessarily was cast on those and not on others, and so as it were went back. But the contrary, namely that not only the shadow but the sun itself was driven back and brought back by God, the Fathers and Interpreters commonly teach, as St. Jerome, Cyril, Procopius, Haymo, Lyranus, Hugh, Adam and others, and expressly St. Dionysius to Polycarp, and P. Clavius in the place soon to be cited.
This opinion is proved first from 2 Paralipomenon 32:31, where it is said that the Babylonians came to Ezechias to inquire about the portent that had happened upon the earth (“This portent cannot be anything else than the going back of the sun, as interpreters commonly teach: for the slaughter of Sennacherib’s army happened later,” namely in the second year from then, “as I said in chapter 20, 2”); therefore the going back of the shadow, proceeding from the going back of the sun, was seen in Babylon also: and when the Babylonians learned by rumor that the cause of the miracle was in Judea, they sent ambassadors there to learn of it. Secondly, because Isaias himself says this plainly here, saying in verse 8: “And the sun returned ten lines,” and so on. Ecclesiasticus, chapter 48, verse 26, asserts the same expressly. Thirdly, because such dials, in which only the shadow goes back, can naturally be erected anywhere: “namely, if the planes are so erected that they have a pole altitude less than 23 and a half degrees. Hence where that altitude is, namely between the Equator and either of the Tropics, of Cancer or of Capricorn, this happens naturally.” Our P. Clavius gives the demonstration of this in his Construction of the Instrument for the Horologe, chapter 21 (where he also rightly refutes Peter Nonius, who asserted that the going back of the shadow in this dial of Achaz was of such a kind and therefore natural, though it is established that it was miraculous). Nor is this strange: for as, according to the nature of their situation, some regions have shadows to the right, others to the left; whence that saying of Lucan:
Arabs, you have come into a world unknown to you, wondering that the shadows of the groves do not fall to the left.
(Where he asserts that the shadows of the Arabs who came to the help of Pompey against Caesar were suddenly changed from southern to northern, that is, ours. For these Arabs, before they had left the torrid zone, had their shadows following them, but after leaving it their shadows went before. For the poets call the whole hemisphere from the Equator to the North the right, and the other and opposite one the left; although the Geographers and Astronomers name these otherwise, indeed in just the opposite way.) So also in a certain position of place, and a certain relation to the sun, it can happen that the shadow seems now to advance as the sun advances, now to go back as the sun turns. This, therefore, is natural. But here not something natural, but a stupendous miracle was given to Ezechias as a sign. Finally, from this history the Poets took the fable of the chariot of the sun driven back. Whence he sings:
“While we drove back the averted horses of the sun.”
It is asked, secondly, whether the ten degrees by which the shadow went back are ten hours.