Annotatio CCLXIV
”But last of all, after the sons, the mother also was consumed,” etc. — 2 Maccabees 7:41
Marius Victorinus, the preceptor of St. Jerome, in the book on the Maccabees which
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he composed in heroic verse, expressing the sense of that word “Consumpta est” [she was consumed] — for which in the Greek is had ἐτελεύτησεν [she died] — seems to indicate that the mother of the Maccabees did not perish, slain by the hands of the executioners, but that, after the slaughter of the last and younger son, [she died] the amplitude of joy and gladness being exhausted [i.e., overcome by an excess of joy]: since, on account of the triumphs obtained over death by [her] seven sons, she had conceived [so great a joy];1 which sentiment he not inelegantly expressed in these verses:
While the boy bears these things, the joys undid the mother. And now, as she was, unstrung by [her] woes, now with voice failing, Sighing, and collapsed amid the hands of her own, She fell down lifeless, and [her] loosened limbs grew still. So she too, with [her] sons, was received into the portion of the saints.
(Dum puer ista gerit soluerunt gaudia matrem. / Iamque, ut erat laxata malis, iam voce negata / Suspirans, interque manus collapsa suorum, / Concidit exanimis, resolutaque membra quierunt. / Sic ipsa, & nati sanctorum in parte recepta est.)
This sense, although the historical record does not reject it (for Livy also has handed down to memory that, after the noble battle at Trasimene, two mothers, their sons being received back unexpectedly, were extinguished by excessive joy)2 — nevertheless all ecclesiastical writers hand down that she was killed by the lictors with various tortures and torments, according to Polybius of Megalopolis, who writes these things concerning her: “Last of all, her single sons being consumed, the admirable parent of such great champions, in the cruel butchery of punishments, suddenly, [her] knees being bent, besought from God the dissolution of the body: for [she had drawn out the time] not by desire of living, but had prolonged so much time only for the sake of [her] sons. Antiochus, therefore, gnashing [in his throat], orders the noble mother to be afflicted; she is snatched away tyrannically, is stripped in [her] tender limbs, [her] hands are bound aloft, the old woman is struck with scourges, she mourns with wounded breasts; and, condemned to the frying-pan of flame, she of her own accord accompanies her burnt sons into the punishments, and, extended in prayer, and [her] hands raised up as though for child-bearing mothers, being poured out [prostrate], she poured forth [her] chaste spirit.” This opinion of Josephus all the Christian Fathers receive, as it is said, with open arms.
QVINTI LIBRI FINIS.
[THE END OF THE FIFTH BOOK.]
— F. Sixtus [Senensis]