I. TO THE PRESBYTER INNOCENTIUS, CONCERNING THE WOMAN STRUCK SEVEN TIMES. Often, dearest Innocentius, you have asked me not to keep silence about the miracle of that event which had befallen in our own age. And when I, out of modesty and truly—as I now find by experience—declined, and doubted that I could accomplish it, whether because all human speech is inferior to heavenly praise, or because leisure, like a certain rust of the wit, had dried up my slender faculty for former eloquence, you on the contrary insisted that in the things of God one ought not to consider possibility but the will, and that he could not lack words who had believed in the Word. What, then, shall I do? What I cannot fulfill, I dare not refuse.
I am set as an untrained passenger upon a cargo ship, and I, a man who has not yet steered even an oar-pin upon a lake, am entrusted to the roar of the Euxine Sea. Now, with the lands vanishing from sight, there is sky on every side and sea on every side; now the wave, bristling with darkness, and in the blind night of storm-clouds the foaming billows grow white. You urge me to hoist the swelling sails upon the mast, to unfurl the ropes, to hold the helm. I now obey your command, and, because charity can do all things, I will trust with the Holy Spirit pursuing my course, having consolation on either side: if the tide drives me to the wished-for harbors, I shall be reckoned a helmsman; but if amid the rough windings of my discourse my unpolished speech should founder, you may perhaps seek ability, but assuredly you will not be able to demand goodwill.
Now Vercellae, a city of the Ligurians, situated not far from the foothills of the Alps, once powerful, is now half-ruined with but a rare inhabitant. When the consular, according to custom, was visiting it, there was brought before him a certain wretched woman together with her adulterer—for the husband had leveled this charge—and he surrounded her with the penal horror of the dungeon. And not long after, when the bloody claw was beating the livid flesh and pain, with the sides furrowed, sought the truth, the most unfortunate young man, wishing by a shortcut of death to avoid the long torments, while he lies against his own blood, accused another's, and alone of all, wretched, deserved to be struck with justice, because he left the innocent woman no means by which she could deny.
But the woman, stronger than her sex, when the rack stretched her body and chains held her filth-defiled hands behind her back, lifted to heaven the eyes which alone the torturer could not bind, and with tears rolling down her face, said: 'You, Lord Jesus, are my witness, from whom nothing is hidden, who are the searcher of the reins and of the heart, that I do not wish to deny lest I perish, but that I refuse to lie lest I sin. But you, most wretched man, if you hasten to perish, why do you destroy two innocent people? I too indeed desire to die, I desire to put off this hateful body, but not as an adulteress. I offer my throat, undaunted I receive the glittering blade—only my innocence will I carry with me.
He does not die, whosoever is slain only to live.' The consular, then, his eyes feasted on gore like a wild beast which, once having tasted blood, ever thirsts for it, orders the torments to be doubled, and gnashing his teeth savagely, threatened the weaker sex with a punishment like the executioner's, unless she should confess what manly strength had been unable to keep silent. 'Come to my aid, Lord Jesus: how many torments have been devised against this one servant of yours!' Her hair is bound to a stake, and with her whole body fastened more tightly to the rack, fire is set near her feet, the executioner digs into both her sides, and no respite is given to her breasts: the woman remains unmoved, and her spirit being separated from the body's pain, while she enjoys the good of a clear conscience, forbade the torments to rage about her.
The cruel judge raises himself up as though vanquished; she entreats the Lord. Her limbs are loosed from their joints; she stretches her eyes to heaven. Of the common crime the other confesses; she denies on behalf of the confessor, and though herself in peril, vindicates another who is in peril. Meanwhile one voice: 'Strike, burn, tear; I did it not. If credit is withdrawn from words, a day will come that shall diligently sift out this crime; I shall have my own judge.' Now the weary torturer sighed in a groan, nor was there room for a fresh wound; now savagery, overcome, shuddered at the body which it had mangled. Straightway the consular, roused with anger, said: 'Why do you marvel, you bystanders, if a woman prefers to be tortured rather than to perish?
Adultery certainly cannot be committed by fewer than two, and I think it more credible that a guilty woman should deny the crime than that an innocent youth should confess it.' A like sentence, therefore, having been pronounced against both, the executioner drags the condemned away. The whole people pours out to the spectacle, and, just as if the city were thought to be migrating, the crowd, thronging, bursts out through the packed gates and grows dense. And indeed, at the very first blow the head of the most wretched youth is cut off by the sword, and the headless corpse rolls in its own blood.
But after it came to the woman, and with her knees bent to the ground, the sword was raised above her trembling neck, and the executioner drove his practiced right hand with all his strength, at the first touch upon the body the deadly point stood still, and lightly grazing the skin drew a little blood from a slight scratch. The striker was terrified at his own feeble hand and, marveling at his vanquished right hand with its slack sword, turns it for a second attempt. Again the point falls faint upon the woman, and, as though the iron feared to touch the accused, it lies numb and harmless about her neck. And so, raging...
and the panting lictor, with his cloak thrown back over his neck, while he summons all his strength, shook to the ground the clasp which bit the edges of his cloak, and unaware of the matter poised his sword for the wound. And 'See,' said the woman, 'the gold has slipped from your shoulder. Gather up what was sought with much toil, lest it be lost.' I ask, what is this composure? She does not fear the death impending over her; struck, she rejoices; the executioner turns pale. Her eyes, not seeing the sword, see only the clasp; and, as though it were too little that she did not dread her destruction, she rendered a kindness to the one raging against her. Now, therefore, came the third blow as well: it had frustrated the sacrament of the Trinity. Now the...
...the terrified executioner, no longer trusting the iron, was fitting the point to her throat, so that he who could not cut might at least bury it in the body by the pressure of his hand: O thing unheard of in all ages! The sword bends back to its hilt, and as though gazing upon its own vanquished master, confessed that it could not strike. Hither, hither to me the examples of the three youths, who amid the cold globes of flames uttered hymns instead of weeping, about whose loose trousers and holy hair the harmless fire played. Hither let the history of blessed Daniel be recalled, beside whom, with fawning tails, the mouths of the lions feared their own prey. Now let noble Susanna come into the minds of all by her faith, who, condemned by an unjust judgment, was saved by the Holy Spirit filling the boy.
Behold, the mercy of the Lord is not unlike in either case: the one delivered by the judge, that she might not go to the sword; this one, condemned by the judge, absolved through the sword. At length, therefore, the people arm themselves to vindicate the woman. Every age, every sex puts the executioner to flight, and as the assembly gathers into a circle, almost each one scarcely believes what he has seen. The neighboring city is thrown into confusion by such news, and the whole troop of lictors is massed together. From among them, bursting forth into the midst, the one to whom the charge of the condemned pertained, and fouling his filthy gray hair with sprinkled dust: 'It is my head, O citizens,' he said, 'that you seek; you offer me as her substitute! If you are merciful, if you are clement, if you wish to save the condemned woman, surely I, being innocent, ought not to perish.
' By this weeping the mind of the crowd was shaken, and a sorrowful numbness creeps through them all, and, their will marvelously changed—whereas before they had defended her out of pity—it now seemed a kind of pity to let her be slain. A new sword, therefore, a new striker is brought up. The victim stands, fortified only by the favor of Christ. Struck once, she is shaken; assailed a second time, she is battered; wounded a third time, she is laid prostrate; and—O the majesty of divine power to be exalted!—she who before had been struck a fourth time yet unharmed, seemed for that reason to die a little while, that an innocent man might not perish for her sake. The clergy, whose office it was, wrap the bloody corpse in linen and, building up the dug earth with stones, prepare a mound according to custom.
In hasty course the sun seeks its setting, and night comes on, about to conceal the mercy of the Lord. Suddenly the woman's breast throbs, and with her eyes seeking the light the body is quickened to life: now she breathes, now she sees, now she is raised up and speaks, now she can break forth into that utterance: The Lord is my helper, I will not fear what man may do to me. Meanwhile a certain old woman, who was sustained by the resources of the church, rendered up her spirit, due to heaven; and, as though on purpose in the running course of events, a substitute body is buried in the tomb. While the light was still doubtful, the devil in the guise of a lictor comes up, seeks the corpse of the slain woman, asks to be shown the sepulcher; he supposes her to live, whom he marvels could have died.
The fresh turf is shown by the clergy, and the earth lately heaped over is thrown at him with these words as he demands: 'Dig up, forsooth, the bones already buried, wage a new war upon the sepulcher, and, if that is too little, tear the limbs apart to be mangled by birds and beasts; struck seven times, she must suffer something more than death.' The executioner being confounded by such reproach, the woman is secretly revived at home; and, lest perchance the frequent coming and going of the physician to the church should open a path to suspicion, she is sent off, her hair cut, with certain virgins to a more secluded little farm. There, gradually changing her garb into a man's dress, the wound closes into a scar. And—O truly, the extreme right is the extreme injury!—after such great miracles the laws still rage. Behold whither the order of events has drawn me!
For now we have come to the name of our own Evagrius. If I should think that his labor for Christ's sake could be told by me, I would be unwise; if I should wish to keep entirely silent, I could not, with my voice breaking forth into joy. For who could worthily celebrate with fitting proclamation that Auxentius, brooding over Milan, was buried by this man's vigilance almost before he was dead; that the Roman bishop, already almost ensnared in the toils of a faction, both conquered his adversaries and did no harm to the vanquished? But these things indeed I myself, shut out by narrow limits, pass over, and leave to be recorded by others after me. I am content only with the end of the present matter: he approaches the emperor by his diligence, wearies him with entreaties, mollifies him by the merit of the cause, wins him over by his solicitude, that he might restore to liberty her who had been restored to life. II.
TO THEODOSIUS AND THE OTHER ANCHORITES DWELLING WITHIN. How, how I would wish now to share in your assembly and to embrace with all exultation that admirable fellowship, though these eyes do not deserve to behold it! I would gaze upon the desert, more pleasant than any city; I would see the places forsaken by their inhabitants beset, as it were after the likeness of a certain paradise, by companies of saints. But because my sins have brought this about, that my head, besieged by every crime, should not be inserted into the fellowship of the blessed—for this reason I beseech you, since I do not doubt that you are able to obtain it, that you set me free by your prayer from the darkness of this world. Both before, when present, I had said it, and now through letters I do not cease to declare my vow, that my mind is snatched with all eager desire to this end;
now it is yours that the effect may follow the will. It is mine to be willing; it belongs to your entreaties that I may both will and be able. I am as it were a sick sheep straying from the whole flock. Unless the good Shepherd carry me back to His own folds, laid upon His shoulders, my steps will falter, and in the very effort the footsteps of one rising up will collapse. I am that prodigal son who, having squandered all the portion which my father had entrusted to me, have not yet cast myself down at my begetter's knees, have not yet begun to drive from myself the allurements of my former riotous living.
And because I have but a little ceased from my vices — or rather have only begun to wish to cease — now the devil binds me with new snares, now, setting fresh obstacles before me, he girds me about on every side with seas and on every side with the deep; and now, set in the midst of the element, I neither wish to turn back nor am able to go forward. It remains that by your prayer the breath of the Holy Spirit may bear me onward and escort me to the harbour of the shore I long for. III. TO RUFINUS. That God bestows more than He is asked, and often grants those things which eye has not seen nor ear heard nor have entered into the heart of man — though I had learned this before from the teaching of the sacred volumes, yet in my own case I have now proved it, my dearest Rufinus.
For I, who with sufficient boldness believed my prayers fulfilled if by an exchange of letters we might counterfeit for ourselves the likeness of presence, now hear that you are penetrating the hidden places of Egypt, visiting the choirs of monks, and going about the heavenly household upon earth. Oh, if the Lord Jesus Christ would now suddenly grant me the sort of translation that carried Philip to the eunuch or Habakkuk to Daniel, how closely would I now clasp your neck in embraces, how would I press upon that mouth — which once with me either erred or was wise — my lips fixed fast! But because I am not worthy, and frequent illnesses have broken this frail little body even when it is sound, I send you these substitutes of myself to meet you, that they may lead you, bound in the bond of love, all the way to me.
The first happiness, an unlooked-for joy, was announced to me by Heliodorus. I did not believe as certain what I longed to be certain, especially since he too said that he had heard it from another, and the novelty of the matter took away credit from the report. Again a certain Alexandrian monk — who had been sent by the devout service of the people to the Egyptian confessors, men already martyrs in will — as a manifest author of the news pressed my mind, still hanging in suspense upon my wish and wavering, toward belief. I confess that in this too my judgement faltered. For since he was ignorant both of your homeland and your name, he seemed to bring no more than this — that he was asserting the same things which another had already indicated. At last the full weight of the truth broke forth.
For a frequent throng of travellers reported that Rufinus was at Nitria and had gone on to the blessed Macarius. Here indeed I loosed the whole rein of my belief, and then truly did I grieve that I was sick. And had not the wasted strength of my body held me back as with a fetter, neither the heat of midsummer nor the sea, ever uncertain to those who sail it, could have withstood one advancing in pious haste. Believe me, I pray you, brother: not so does the sailor tossed by storm gaze toward the harbour, not so do the thirsty fields desire the rains, not so does the anxious mother, sitting upon the curving shore, await her son.
After a sudden whirlwind swept me from your side, after an impious wrenching tore me away while I clung fast with the glue of love, then the dark cloud stood above my head, then seas were on every side and on every side the sky. At last, while I wandered uncertain in my pilgrimage, when Thrace, Pontus, and Bithynia, and the whole journey through Galatia and Cappadocia, and the land of the Cilicians with its burning heat had broken me, Syria met me like a most faithful harbour to a shipwrecked man. There, having experienced every kind of sickness there could be, of my two eyes I lost one; for a sudden burning of fevers snatched away Innocentius, part of my own soul. Now I enjoy Evagrius, our one and whole light to me, upon whom I, ever infirm, have come as a certain burden added to his toil.
There was also with us Hylas, the servant of holy Melania, who by purity of morals had washed away the stain of servitude; and he too tore open a scar not yet closed. But because we are forbidden by the voice of the Apostle to grieve for those who sleep, and the excessive violence of sorrow has been tempered by the arrival of joyful news, we make known to you — that, if you do not know it, you may learn, and if you knew it before, that we may rejoice together. Your Bonosus — nay, mine, and, to speak more truly, ours — is already climbing the ladder foreshown to Jacob in his dream: he bears his cross and takes no thought for the morrow and looks not back behind him. He sows in tears that he may reap in joy, and, in the mystery of Moses, he lifts up the serpent in the wilderness. Let the miracles feigned by lies, whether in Greek or Roman style, yield to this truth.
Behold, a youth trained together with us in the honourable arts of the world, one who had wealth in abundance and rank foremost among his peers, has despised his mother, his sisters, and his most beloved brother, and settled upon a shipwrecking island, girt about by the roaring sea, where rough crags and bare rocks and solitude are a terror — like some new colonist of paradise. There is no husbandman there, no monk, not even that little Onesimus whom you know, whom he enjoyed as a younger brother; in so vast a wasteland no companion cleaves to his side. He is alone there — nay, now with Christ accompanying him, not alone — and beholds the glory of God, which even the apostles beheld only in the desert. He does not indeed gaze upon towered cities, but he has given his name into the register of the new City.
His limbs shudder in a hideous sackcloth, but so shall he be the better caught up to meet Christ in the clouds. He enjoys no pleasant flowing waters, but drinks the water of life from the Lord's side. Set before your eyes, sweetest friend, and turn wholly with soul and mind into the presence of the thing; then will you be able to praise the victory, when you have recognized the toil of the one who fights. Round about the whole island the mad sea roars, and the deep, dashing against the winding heights, cries back from the crags; the land grows green with no grass; the field, decked with no spring foliage, is thickened with no shady coverts; the sheer cliffs enclose him as though in the prison of some former dread.
He, secure, undaunted, and wholly armed by the Apostle, now hears God when he re-reads the divine writings, now speaks with God when he prays to the Lord; and perhaps, after the example of John, he sees something while he tarries on the island. What snares do you now think the devil is weaving, what ambushes do you suppose he is preparing? Perhaps, mindful of his ancient fraud, he will try to urge hunger. But he has already been answered that man lives not by bread alone. Perhaps he will set forth riches and glory, but it will be said to him: those who desire to become rich fall into a trap and temptations; and: all my glorying is in Christ. He will shake the limbs wearied by fasting with the burden of disease, but he will be beaten back by the Apostle's word:
when I am weak, then am I stronger; and: strength is made perfect in weakness. He will threaten death, but he will hear: I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ. He will hurl fiery darts, but they will be caught upon the shield of faith. And, in a word, Satan will assail, but Christ will guard. Thanks be to Thee, Lord Jesus, that in Thy day I have one who can pray to Thee on my behalf.
Thou Thyself knowest — for to Thee the breasts of each man lie open, who searchest the secrets of the heart, who beholdest the prophet shut in the belly of so great a beast in the deep — how I and he grew up together from tender infancy to flourishing youth; how the same bosoms of nurses, the same embraces of bearers, cherished us; and how, when after our Roman studies we enjoyed by the half-barbarous banks of the Rhine the same food and shared lodging, it was I who first began to wish to reverence Thee. Remember, I pray, that this warrior of Thine was once a raw recruit together with me. I have the promise of Thy Majesty: he who shall teach and not do shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven;
but he who shall do and teach, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Let him enjoy the crown of virtue and, robed for his daily martyrdoms, let him follow the Lamb — to me — (for there are many mansions with the Father, and star differs from star in glory) — to me grant that among the heels of the saints I may be able to lift up my head; that when I have willed, he may have accomplished; forgive me, because I could not fulfil, and bestow upon him the reward which he deserves. I have perhaps drawn out this in a longer discourse than the brevity of a letter allowed — which is wont always to happen to me whenever something must be said in praise of our Bonosus.
But to return to that point from which I had departed: I beseech you, do not let your mind lose, together with your eyes, a friend who is long sought, scarcely found, and hard to keep. Let anyone gleam with gold, and let the metals flash from his burdens, glittering in pompous processions: love cannot be compared to them; affection has no price; a friendship that can come to an end was never true. IV. TO FLORENTINUS, ON THE BIRTH OF FRIENDSHIP. How great a report of your blessedness has filled the various mouths of peoples, you may judge from this: that I begin to love you before I know you. For as the Apostle says:
the sins of certain men are manifest, going before them to judgement; so, on the contrary, the fame of your love is scattered abroad, that not only is he to be praised who loves you, but he is thought to commit a crime who does not love you. I pass over the countless in whom you have sustained, fed, clothed, and visited Christ: the need of brother Heliodorus, relieved by you, can loosen even the mouths of the dumb. With what thanks, with what heralding, did he report the discomforts of his pilgrimage cherished by you — so that even I, that slowest of men, since an intolerable languor holds me, have with winged feet, as they say, greeted you by a letter of love and by longing, and already embraced you! Therefore I congratulate you, and I pray that the Lord may deign to seal our nascent friendship.
And because brother Rufinus, who is said to have come with holy Melania from Egypt to Jerusalem, is joined to me by the indivisible love of brotherhood, I beg you not to think it a burden to deliver to him my letter, joined to this letter of yours. Do not judge us by his virtues. In him you will behold the marks of holiness expressed; I am ash and a portion of the vilest mud and now embers — so long as I have life, I count it enough if the weakness of my eyes can bear to endure the splendour of his character. He has just now washed, is clean, and whitened as though snow; I, defiled with all the filth of my sins, wait day and night, with trembling, to pay the last farthing.
Yet because the Lord looses those who are bound, and rests upon the humble and the quiet and the one who trembles at His words, perhaps to me too, lying in the sepulchre of my crimes, He may say: 'Jerome, come forth.' The holy presbyter Evagrius greets you warmly; and with joined homage we greet brother Martinianus, whom, though I desire to see him, the chain of my sickness fetters me from doing. V. TO FLORENTINUS. While I was dwelling in that part of the desert which, near Syria, joins the Saracens, the writings of your love were brought to me; on reading which my mind was so rekindled to set out for Jerusalem that it almost harmed my resolve because it profited my love. Now therefore, as best I can, I present a letter to you on my behalf.
Though absent in body, in love and spirit I come, earnestly imploring that neither the greatness of time nor of place should tear apart the friendships now being born, which have cohered by the glue of Christ. Rather let us bind them by mutual letters; let them run between us, let them meet one another, let them converse with us. Love will lose not much if it chats with itself in such discourse. But brother Rufinus, as you write, has not yet come; and if he does come, it will profit my desire little, since I shall not now see him. For he is separated from me by so long an interval that he cannot hasten hither, and I am confined within the bounds of the solitude I have seized, so that what once I was unwilling to do is now no longer permitted to me.
For this reason I too beseech, and I ask most earnestly that you also request, that the commentaries of the blessed Reticius, bishop of Autun, be granted you to copy, in which he expounded the Song of Songs with a sublime mouth. There has also written to me a certain old man, Paulus, from the homeland of the aforesaid brother Rufinus, that his own copy of Tertullian is with him, which he has vehemently asked back. And from this too I ask that those books which a brief note appended below will show me not to have, you would order to be written by a copyist's hand upon paper. The interpretation of the Psalms of David also, and the very lengthy book of holy Hilary on the synods, which I myself had copied out for him at Trier with my own hand, I likewise ask that you transcribe for me.
You know this to be the food of the Christian soul, if it meditate in the law of the Lord day and night. Others you receive with hospitality, cherish with comfort, and help with your means; if you grant me the things I ask, you have bestowed much. And since, by the Lord's granting, we abound in many volumes of the sacred library, command in return: whatever you wish, I will send. Nor think it a burden to me if you bid: I have foster-sons who serve the copyist's art. Nor indeed do I promise a favour in exchange for what I request. Brother Heliodorus has indicated to me that you seek many things from the Scriptures and do not so find them; or, if you have them all, love will begin to claim for itself the right to ask more.
But as for the tutor of your boy, concerning whom you have deigned to write back, whom there is no doubt to be a kidnapper of him — Evagrius the presbyter, while I was still at Antioch, often rebuked him in my presence. To him he replied: 'I fear nothing.' He says that he was dismissed by his master and, 'if it please you, here he is; send him wherever you wish.' I think I do no wrong if I do not allow a vagrant man to flee farther. Wherefore, because I, set in this solitude, cannot do what you have bidden, I have asked my dearest Evagrius that, both for your sake and mine, he pursue the business urgently. VI. TO THE DEACON JULIAN OF AQUILEIA. There is an ancient saying: 'liars bring it about that credit is not given even to those who speak the truth';
which I see has happened in my case, when you chided me for my silence in writing. Shall I say: 'I often wrote, but it was the negligence of the carriers'? You will reply: 'That is the old excuse of all who do not write.' Shall I say: 'I found no one to carry the letters'? You will say that very many went from here to there. Shall I contend that I even gave letters to these? But they, because they did not deliver them, will deny it, and among the absent the knowledge will be uncertain. What then shall I do? Without fault I shall ask pardon, judging it more right to seek peace after being moved from my place than on equal footing to stir up strife; although a constant sickness both of body and a grief of soul has so consumed me that, with death imminent, I have been scarcely even mindful of myself.