Institutes & Conferences 1 part 31/44

'And I know such a man — that he was caught up into paradise and heard ineffable words, which it is not lawful for a man to speak.' It is impossible for us to run through all things briefly. For who could suffice to enumerate almost all the patriarchs and the innumerable saints, of whom some, for the safeguarding of life, some for the desire of a blessing, some for mercy's sake, some for the concealment of some mystery, some for zeal of God, some for the examination of truth, took up, so to speak, the patronage of a lie? Which, as they all cannot be enumerated, so ought they not all to be utterly passed over. For piety compelled blessed Joseph to lay a false charge upon his brothers, even with an oath by the safety of the king, saying:

'You are spies: you have come to view the weaker parts of the land'; and below: 'Send,' he says, 'one of you, and bring your brother here; but you shall be kept here, until your words be made manifest, whether you speak truth or not; but if not, by the safety of Pharaoh, you are spies.' For if he had not terrified them with this merciful lie, he could neither have seen his father and brother again, nor nourished them in such great perils of want, nor finally cleansed the conscience of his brothers from the guilt of their selling him. It was therefore not so reprehensible to have struck fear into his brothers by a lie, as it was holy and laudable — by the occasion of a feigned peril — to have driven his enemies and sellers to a salutary repentance.

Finally, when they were pressed by the odium of a most grave accusation, they were broken not by consciousness of that which was falsely charged, but of their former crime, saying to one another: 'Deservedly do we suffer these things, because we sinned against our brother, because we despised the anguish of his soul when he besought us, and we did not hear him; therefore has all this tribulation come upon us.' And this confession, by its most wholesome humility, expiated so great a crime of theirs — as we believe — not only before the brother against whom they had sinned with impious cruelty, but also before God. What of Solomon, who declared the gift of wisdom received from God, in his first judgment, only by the assumption of a lie?

For, in order to dig out the truth which was covered by a woman's lie, he himself too used the help of a lie, most cunningly devised, saying: 'Bring me a sword, and divide the living infant into two parts, and give half to one and half to the other.' And when this pretence of cruelty had moved the bowels of the true mother, but was praised by her who was not the mother, then at last, by a most sagacious indication of the truth, he promulgated that sentence which no one has failed to believe was inspired by God, saying: 'Give the living infant to this woman, and let it not be killed: she is its mother.'

Accordingly, that we neither ought to nor are able to fulfil everything that we decide upon, whether in tranquillity of mind or in agitation, we are also taught more amply by other testimonies of the Scriptures, in which we read that holy men, or angels, or even Almighty God himself frequently altered the things they had determined. For blessed David resolved with the solemnity of an oath, saying: 'May God do so to the enemies of David, and add more besides, if I leave until morning, out of all that belongs to Nabal, so much as one that pisses against a wall.' Yet at once, when his wife Abigail intervened and pleaded on that man's behalf, he set aside his threats, softened his sentence, and preferred to be judged a breaker of his purpose rather than to keep faith with his oath through the execution of a cruel deed, saying:

'As the Lord lives, unless you had come quickly to meet me, there would not have remained to Nabal until the morning light so much as one that pisses against a wall.' Just as we judge that the rashness of that reckless oath, which sprang from the agitation of a disturbed mind, is by no means to be imitated, so we declare that the remission and correction of the thing decreed is to be followed. The vessel of election, writing to the Corinthians, promises his return with an absolute declaration, saying: 'I will come to you when I shall have passed through Macedonia, for I shall pass through Macedonia. With you, however, I shall remain, or even spend the winter, that you may set me forward wherever I go. For I do not wish to see you now merely in passing; for I hope to remain with you for some time.' Concerning this matter also, in the second epistle,

records thus: 'And in this confidence I wished first to come to you, that you might have a second favour, and to pass through you into Macedonia, and again to come from Macedonia to you, and to be set forward by you into Judaea.' But when a more wholesome counsel supervened, he most plainly confesses that he by no means carried out what he had promised. 'When I intended this,' he says, 'did I act with fickleness? Or the things I purpose, do I purpose according to the flesh, so that with me there should be Yes yes and No no?' Finally, why he preferred to pass over the declaration of his own word rather than to inflict burdensome sorrow upon his disciples by his coming, he declares even with the solemn invocation of an oath: 'But I call God as witness upon my soul, that it was to spare you that I came no more to Corinth.'

'For I determined this very thing with myself, that I would not come to you in sorrow.' When the angels had refused to enter Lot's house at Sodom, saying to him: 'We will not enter, but we will remain in the street,' at once by his prayers they are compelled to change the word they had decreed, as the Scripture adds: 'And Lot constrained them, and they turned aside to him.' Now if indeed they knew that they were going to turn aside to him, then by a feigned excuse they refused the request of the one inviting them; but if they were excusing themselves truthfully, then they are plainly proved to have changed their sentence.

And we believe that the Holy Spirit set these things down in the sacred volumes for no other reason than that we should be instructed by such examples not to persist obstinately in our own determinations, but that we ought to subject them to our own judgement, and so to keep our discernment free from every bond of law, that it may be ready to follow wherever wholesome counsel shall have called it, and neither delay nor refuse to pass over, without any hesitation, to that which saving discretion has found more useful. And, to ascend to still loftier examples: when King Hezekiah lay in his bed labouring under a grievous sickness, the prophet Isaiah approached him in the person of God, saying: 'Thus says the Lord: Set your house in order, for you shall die and not live.'

'And Hezekiah,' it says, 'turned his face to the wall, and prayed to the Lord, and said: I beseech you, O Lord, remember, I pray, how I have walked before you in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done what is good in your eyes. And Hezekiah wept with a great weeping.' After which it is again said to that same prophet: 'Return and say to Hezekiah, king of Judah: Thus says the Lord God of David your father: I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tear; and behold, I will add to your days fifteen years; and out of the hand of the king of the Assyrians I will deliver you, and I will protect this city for my own sake and for the sake of David my servant.'

What is more evident than this testimony, in which, out of regard for mercy and lovingkindness, the Lord chooses rather to cancel his own word and to extend by fifteen years the life of the one who prays, beyond the appointed term of death, than to be found inexorable through the immovability of his own decree? Similarly the divine sentence speaks also to the Ninevites: 'Yet three days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown'; and presently by their repentance and fastings a sentence so threatening and abrupt is softened, and by lovingkindness is bent aside toward the side of mercy.

But if anyone should assert that the Lord, as foreknowing their conversion, threatened the city's overthrow for this very end, namely to rouse them to saving repentance, it follows that those who preside over their brethren may, without any reproach of falsehood, threaten those who need to be corrected even with somewhat harsher things than they intend to carry out, should the need arise. If, on the other hand, one should say that God recalled that severe sentence of his in consideration of their repentance, according to that which he says through Ezekiel: 'If I shall say to the wicked man: You shall surely die,'

'and he does penance for his sin, and executes judgement and justice, he shall live in life, he shall not die' — we are likewise taught that we ought not to persevere stubbornly in our own determinations, but to soften by clement compassion a threat that has been set forth out of necessity. And lest it should be believed that the Lord granted this specially to the Ninevites alone, he perpetually testifies through Jeremiah that he will do the same generally toward all, and that, when it shall be necessary, he will without delay change his sentence according to our deserts, promising, saying: 'Suddenly I will speak against a nation and against a kingdom, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy it. If that nation shall do penance for the evil which I have spoken against it,'

'I too will repent of the evil which I had thought to do to it. And suddenly I will speak concerning a nation and a kingdom, to build and to plant it. If it shall do evil in my eyes, so as not to hear my voice, I will repent of the good which I had spoken that I would do to it.' To Ezekiel also: 'Do not withhold the word, if perchance they may hear and each one turn back from his evil way; and I will repent of the evil which I thought to do to them because of the wickedness of their pursuits.' By which testimonies it is declared that it is not fitting for us to cling stubbornly in our

determinations, but that they are to be tempered by reason and judgement, and that the better course is always to be chosen and preferred, and that we must pass over without any hesitation to that side which shall have been judged more useful. And above all things, that inestimable judgement instructs us in this: that although the end of every single person is foreknown to him before his birth, yet in a common order and reasoning, and as it were with human affections, he dispenses all things in such a way that, judging all things not according to his power nor according to the ineffable knowledge of his foreknowledge, but according to men's present acts, he either rejects or draws each one to himself, and either pours out his grace upon him daily or turns it away. That this is so, that election of Saul also makes manifest:

since the foreknowledge of God could not be ignorant of his blameworthy end, he chose him out of so many thousands of Israel and anointed him king, weighing in him the merit of his present life, not regarding the sin of his future transgression; so that, after he had been made a reprobate, God, as though feeling regret for his election, complains of him after the manner of human words and affections, saying: 'It repents me that I made Saul king, for he has forsaken me and has not fulfilled my words in deed.' And again: 'Nevertheless Samuel mourned for Saul, because it repented the Lord that he had made Saul king over Israel.'

Finally, that which he had carried out in deed, the Lord afterwards attests through the prophet Ezekiel as well, that he will act toward all men by a daily judgement, saying: 'Even if I shall say to the just man that he shall surely live, and, trusting in his own justice, he shall commit iniquity, all his acts of justice shall be given over to oblivion, and in the iniquity which he has wrought, in that very thing he shall die. But if I shall say to the wicked man: You shall surely die, and he does penance for his sin, and executes judgement and justice, if that wicked man restores the pledge and gives back the plunder, and walks in the commandments of life, and does nothing unjust, he shall live in life, he shall not die. All his sins which he has committed shall not be imputed to him.'

Finally, when the Lord had turned away the countenance of his mercy from that people whom he had adopted out of all the nations, because of their sudden transgression, the lawgiver, interceding on its behalf, cries out: 'I beseech you, O Lord, this people has sinned a great sin; they have made themselves gods of gold. And now, if you forgive their sin, forgive it; but if not, blot me out of your book which you have written.' To whom the Lord says: 'Whosoever shall have sinned before me, him will I blot out of my book.' David also, when in the prophetic spirit he was complaining of Judas and of the persecutors of Christ, says: 'Let them be blotted out of the book of the living.' And because they did not deserve to attain to saving repentance for the guilt of so great a crime, he adds: 'and with the just let them not be written.'

Finally, in Judas himself the force of the prophetic curse was evidently fulfilled. For, having completed the crime of his betrayal, he did away with himself by hanging, lest, after that blotting out of his name, having turned to repentance, he should deserve to be written again with the just in heaven. It ought not therefore to be doubted that even the name of Judas, at that time when, chosen by Christ, he had obtained the rank of the apostolate, was inscribed in the book of the living, and that he alike with the rest had heard: 'Do not rejoice that the demons are subject to you, but rejoice rather that your names are written in heaven.' But because, corrupted by the plague of avarice, he was cast down from the heavenly enrolment to earthly things, it is fittingly said of him and of those like him through the prophet:

'O Lord, all that forsake you shall be confounded; those that depart from you shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the Lord, the vein of living waters.' And elsewhere: 'They shall not be in the council of my people, and in the writing of the house of Israel they shall not be written, and into the land of Israel they shall not enter.' Nor is the usefulness of this precept to be passed over in silence: that even if, at the prompting of anger or of any other passion, we have bound ourselves by some oath — which indeed ought by no means to be done at all by any of the monks — nevertheless the cause of each matter is to be weighed with unimpaired judgement of mind, and that thing which we have determined is to be compared with this to which we are compelled to pass over, and we must pass without hesitation to that which, upon a sounder deliberation supervening, shall have been judged the more just.

For it is more upright for us to pass over our own word than to undergo the loss of a more wholesome and holy thing. Finally, we do not recall that reasonable and approved fathers were ever hard or irrevocable in determinations of this kind, but that, like wax by heat, they were so softened by reason, and, when a more wholesome counsel intervened, yielded without hesitation to the better course. But whomever we have seen clinging stubbornly to their own determinations, these we have always judged to be unreasonable and destitute of discretion. GERMANUS: As far as concerns this reasoning, which has been evidently and copiously set out, a monk ought to determine nothing, lest he be found either a transgressor or obstinate. And where then shall we place that saying of the Psalmist:

'I have sworn, and I have determined to keep the judgements of your justice'? For what else is it to swear and to determine, than to keep immovably the things determined? JOSEPH: We are not decreeing these things about the principal commandments, without which our salvation cannot at all subsist, but about those which, without peril to our state, we can either relax or keep: as, for instance, about the unremitted rigour of fasting, about the perpetual abstinence from wine or oil, about the utter restraining of going forth from the cell, about the unceasing continuity of reading or of meditation — things which, without loss to our profession and purpose, can both be practised when it pleases, and, when it is necessary, be blamelessly omitted.

But concerning the observance of those principal commandments, a most constant determination is to be made, and for these even death, if it be necessary, is not to be shunned, for which it is to be said immovably: 'I have sworn and I have determined.' This ought to be done for the keeping of charity, for which all things are to be despised, lest the good of that tranquillity and its perfection be stained. Likewise one must swear for the purity of chastity; nor ought we to act otherwise for faith, for sobriety, and for justice — all of which are to be held with unalterable perseverance, and to have withdrawn even a little from them is damnable.

But concerning those bodily exercises, which are said to be profitable for a little, it is to be determined as we have said: that if some more certain occasion of piety shall supervene, urging that they be relaxed, we are held by no law concerning these, but, having left them aside, we may freely pass over to more useful things. For in those bodily exercises, if they be given up for a time, there is no peril; but from these commandments to have turned aside even for a moment is deadly. This also is to be attended to with like caution: that if perchance some word which you wish to be kept secret has slipped from your mouth, no precepts of concealment should trouble the hearer;

for it will lie hidden more if it be passed over negligently and simply, because no brother will be so tormented by the temptation to divulge it, judging the matter a trifling one, brought forth in some passing conversation, and one which for this very reason is the lighter, precisely because it was not commended to the hearer's senses by any most careful precept of silence. For if you should also bind his faith by some solemn adjuration of oaths, do not doubt that it will be betrayed the sooner; for a greater force of diabolical assault will rise up against him, that it may both grieve or lay you bare and make him as quickly as possible a transgressor of his own oath.

And therefore a monk ought to determine nothing abruptly, at least concerning those things which pertain to bodily exercises, lest, by rousing the adversary the more to the assault of those things which he guards as though under the observance of a law, he be compelled the sooner to violate them. For indeed, each one who, set under the grace of liberty, prefixes a law for himself, binds himself in a pernicious servitude, so that the things which he might lawfully — nay, even laudably, with thanksgiving — have presumed to take, if necessity perchance shall compel him, he is forced to receive as a transgressor, with the transgression of sin. For where there is no law, neither is there transgression. Confirmed by this instruction and teaching of the most blessed Joseph as by a divine oracle, we preferred to remain in Egypt.

But although thereafter we were little concerned about our promise, yet when the number of seven years was completed, we gladly fulfilled our pledge. For hastening to our monastery at that very time when we entertained confidence of obtaining our return to the desert, we first paid the due honour to our elders; then we restored the former charity to the spirits of those who, on account of the ardour of love, had by no means been appeased by the very frequent apologies of our letters; and at last, the sting of our pledge having been fully plucked out, and they themselves also accompanying us with joy, we returned to the secret places of the Scetic solitude.

This knowledge and teaching of the illustrious fathers, O holy brethren, my ignorance has, as it could, laboured to bring forth for you; and even if my uncultivated speech has perhaps confounded rather than set it in order, I beg that the reproach of my rusticity may not nullify the praise of those distinguished men. For it seemed safer to us, in the sight of our Judge, to bring forth the magnificence of this teaching even in uncultivated words than to keep silence; since, both for the reader's progress — if he contemplate the sublimity of the meanings — this, that is stumbled over in the unskilfulness of my speech, cannot be a hindrance, and to us the care of usefulness is greater than that of praise.

This indeed I admonish all into whose hands these little works shall have come: that whatever in them shall please them is the fathers', but let them know that whatever displeases is ours. [Manuscript sigla: B = Benedictoburanus, now Monacensis 4549, of the 8th–9th century. F = Frisingensis, now Monacensis 6343, of the 9th century. O = Parisinus 2170, of the 9th century. R = Reginensis 140, of the 9th–10th century. K = Carolirubensis, formerly Augiensis XCII, of the 9th century. Z = Sangallensis 575, of the 9th century. P = KZ.] Having sent forth, with the help of the grace of Christ, ten conferences of the fathers — which, as the most blessed bishops Helladius and Leontius required, were set in order as best they could — I dedicated seven others to the blessed bishop Honoratus, blessed both in name and in merits, and also to the holy servant of Christ, Eucherius:

and now I have resolved to consecrate just as many to you, O holy brethren Jovinianus, Minervius, Leontius, and Theodorus. For the last of you founded that holy and excellent discipline of the monasteries in the provinces of Gaul with the strictness of the ancient virtues; while the rest of you, by your instructions, have provoked monks not only to seek the cenobitic profession to the highest degree, but even to thirst after the anchoretic sublimity. For these conferences have been woven from the disputation of the greatest fathers and are so tempered in all things that they may suit both professions, by which you have made not only the western regions but even the islands to flourish with the greatest throngs of brethren:

that is, that not only those who still continue in the congregations with praiseworthy submission, but also those who, withdrawing not far from your monasteries, long to follow the discipline of the anchorites, may be more fully instructed according to the condition of the places and the measure of their own state.

To whom the industry of your labour, going before them, has conferred this special benefit: that, being already prepared and found practised in the same exercises, they may more easily receive the precepts and institutions of the elders; and that, taking into their own cells the very authors of the conferences together with the volumes of the conferences themselves, and conversing with them as it were in daily questions and answers, they may not, by their own inventions, seek out that arduous and, in this region, almost unknown way, but rather — a way perilous even there, where already the most-trodden paths and innumerable examples of predecessors are not lacking — may accustom themselves to grasp the discipline of anchoretism by the precepts of those whom both ancient tradition and the industry of long experience have instructed in all things.

ON THE THREE KINDS OF MONKS. CHAPTER HEADINGS. How, coming to Diolcos, we were received by Abbot Piamun. The words of Abbot Piamun, how untrained monks ought to be instructed by the example of their elders. That the younger should not scrutinize the precepts of their elders. On the three kinds of monks that are within Egypt. By what authors the profession of the cenobites was instituted. On the order and origin of the anchorites. On the origin and manner of life of the Sarabaites. On the fourth kind of monks. A question: what is the difference between a cenobium and a monastery. The answer. On true humility, and how Abbot Sarapion exposed the false humility of a certain man. A question: how true patience may be acquired. The answer.

On the example of the patience of a certain religious woman. On the example of the patience of Abbot Paphnutius. On the perfection of patience. After the sight and the conversation of those three elders, whose conferences we set in order as best we could at the compulsion of our holy brother Eucherius, when we longed with greater ardour to seek out even the further parts of Egypt, in which a larger and more perfect number of the saints resided, we came to a village whose name is Diolcos, overlooking one of the seven mouths of the river Nile — driven not so much by the necessity of the journey as by the desire for the saints dwelling there.

For since, like most eager merchants, we had heard from the ancient fathers that very many and most renowned monasteries had been founded there, we at once undertook, as it were a voyage of uncertain inquiry, at the persuasion of the hope of greater gain. There, while for a very long time, tossed to and fro, we strained our curious eyes on every side toward those mountains conspicuous for the sublimity of their virtues, the first glance of those looking about noted Abbot Piamun, the eldest and also the presbyter of all the anchorites dwelling there, as though a most lofty lighthouse. For he, like that gospel city set on the top of a high mountain, at once shone forth to our gaze.

His virtues and wonders, which through him — even under our own sight, the divine grace bearing witness to his merits — were accomplished, we believe are to be passed over in silence, lest we exceed either the form of our purpose or the measure of this volume. For we did not undertake to hand down to memory things concerning the wonders of God, but certain things concerning the institutions and pursuits of the saints, such as it is possible to recall, so that we might offer to readers only the necessary instruction of a perfect life, and not an unprofitable and superfluous admiration devoid of any correction of vices.

And so, when blessed Piamun had received us with the utmost congratulation and had also refreshed us with fitting hospitality, perceiving that we were not of the same region, he first carefully inquired whence and why we had sought Egypt; and learning that we had come thither from a cenobium of Syria out of a desire for perfection, he thus began. 'Every man, O sons, who desires to attain skill in any art whatsoever, unless he devotes himself with all care and vigilance to the studies of that discipline which he desires to know, and observes the precepts and institutions of the most accomplished masters of that very craft or science, in vain does he with empty wishes long to attain the likeness of those whose care and industry he disdains to emulate.'

'For we have known some to have come to these places from your regions in such a way that they went about the monasteries of the brethren only for the sake of getting acquainted, not that they might take up those rules and institutions for the sake of which they had journeyed hither, and, withdrawing into cells, might try to prove by works the things which they had perceived either by sight or by tradition. These, retaining their own manners and the pursuits with which they had been imbued — as is wont to be reproached to them by some — were thought to have changed provinces not for the sake of their own progress, but out of the necessity of avoiding want. For not only could they acquire nothing of learning, but by the obstinacy of a stubborn mind they could not even remain longer in these parts.'

'For since they had changed neither the manner of their fasts, nor the order of their psalms, nor even the very fashion of their garments, what else could they be believed to be pursuing in this region than merely the means of their sustenance? Wherefore, if — as we believe — God has drawn you for his own cause to the emulation of our way of knowledge, then, all the institutions with which your beginnings were forestalled there being utterly renounced, follow with the utmost humility whatever you shall see our elders do or hand down.'