Prostrate my contrite heart I rend, Well may they curse their second birth, Let guilty man compassion find. Amen. "AS DAVID AND THE SIBYLS SAY " FIRST SIBYL SIBILLA PERSICA "Chara Dei soboles nascetur Virgine Matre, Ipse triumphator Solymas pervadet asello THE Sibyl Persica was a native of Persia, a region of Oriental Asia called Persia from King Perse or Perseo. Her proper name was Sambetha, and mention is made of her by Nicanor, the historian of Alexander the Great. This Sibyl is called by some Persica, by others Chaldea, and by others again, Helrea, as is affirmed by Genebrado, who says: her father was Beroso, he who wrote the Chaldean History; and her mother was Erimanta. St Augustine A and Lactantius Firmianus speak in particular of this Sibyl to whom is commonly attributed the following prophecy : "Ecce bestiam conculcaberis et gignetur Dominus in orbe terrarum, et gremium virginis erit salus gentium et pedes ejus in valetudine hominum, et invisibile verbum palpabitur." She flourished in the time of Gideon of the tribe of Manasses, about the year 2769 B.C. There are also found of this Sibyl some verses which treat of the preaching and baptism of St John, and of the miracle of the five loaves and two fishes, with which Our Lord fed the five thousand people in the desert, there remaining twelve baskets of bread, as is described by the Evangelists. This Sibyl is depicted, according to the treatise De Vaticiniis Sibilarum, clothed in a robe of gold brocade and a white veil over her head. Others paint her with a book of her prophecies in the right hand, and the left placed on her breast, the heavens illumined with a Cross in the centre of the light; because she, more than all the other Sibyls, treated largely of the Coming, Cross, and Death of Christ Our Lord, for which reason she wrote eighty-four books of prophecies and notable events, as she lived a long time. |