'In many labours, in prisons more frequently, in stripes beyond measure, in deaths often. From the Jews five times I received forty stripes save one; thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck; a night and a day I was in the deep of the sea; in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils from my own kindred, in perils from the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in labour, in wretchedness, in watchings many, in hunger and thirst, in fastings most frequent, in cold and nakedness.' Which of us can claim for himself even the smallest portion out of this catalogue of virtues? Assuredly he was afterward able to say with confidence:
'I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; there remains for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord will render to me.' But if our food happens to be somewhat unsalted, we grow sad and think that we are conferring a favour upon God; when we drink our wine a little too watered, the cup is dashed down, the table overturned, blows resound, and water lukewarm is avenged as though it were blood. 'The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.' Unless you do violence, you shall not seize the kingdoms of heaven. Unless you knock importunately, you shall not receive the bread of the sacrament. Does it not seem to you an act of the violent, when the flesh longs to be what God is, and to climb up—there whence the angels fell—to sit in judgement upon the angels?
Go forth, I beseech you, for a little while out of the body, and paint before your eyes the reward of your present labour, which 'neither eye hath seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man.' What a day that will be, when Mary, the mother of the Lord, shall come to meet you, accompanied by choirs of virgins; when, after the Red Sea and Pharaoh drowned with his host, holding the timbrel she shall lead the song to those who answer: 'Let us sing to the Lord, for gloriously hath he been magnified; the horse and his rider hath he cast into the sea.' Then Thecla shall fly rejoicing into your embrace. Then the Bridegroom himself shall come to meet you and shall say: 'Rise up, come, my nearest one, my fair one, my dove; for behold, the winter is past, the rain is gone.' Then the angels shall marvel and shall say:
'Who is she that looketh forth as the dawn, fair as the moon, chosen as the sun?' 'The daughters shall see thee and shall praise thee, and the queens and concubines shall proclaim thee.' Then another choir of chastity shall come to meet you: Sarah shall come with the wedded wives, Anna the daughter of Phanuel with the widows. They shall be, as in diverse flocks, of flesh and of spirit, your mothers. The one shall rejoice that she bore you; the other shall exult that she taught you. Then truly shall the Lord ascend upon an ass's colt and shall enter the heavenly Jerusalem. Then the little ones, of whom the Saviour speaks in Isaiah, 'Behold, I and the children whom the Lord hath given me,' lifting up the palms of victory, shall sing with one accord: 'Hosanna in the highest; blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest.'
Then the hundred and forty and four thousand shall hold their harps before the throne and the elders, and shall sing a new song, and no one shall be able to know that song save the appointed number: 'these are they who have not defiled themselves with women, for they have remained virgins; these are they who follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth.' As often as the vain ambition of the world delights you, as often as you see anything glorious in the world, pass over in mind to paradise; begin to be what you shall one day be, and you shall hear from your Bridegroom: 'Set me as a seal upon thy heart, as a seal upon thy arm'; and fortified alike in deed and in mind you shall cry aloud: 'Many waters cannot quench charity, neither shall the floods cover it.'
TO MARCELLA, ON THE DEATH OF LEA. When at about the third hour of this present day we had begun to read the seventy-second psalm, that is, the beginning of the third book, and were compelled to teach that the title itself belongs partly to the end of the second book and partly to the beginning of the third—namely that 'the hymns of David the son of Jesse are ended' is the end of the former, while 'a psalm of Asaph' is the beginning of what follows—and had come as far as that place in which the righteous man speaks, 'I said: If I should tell it thus, behold, I have dealt treacherously against the generation of thy children' (which in the Latin manuscripts we do not have thus expressed), it was suddenly announced to us that the most holy Lea had departed from the body.
And thereupon I saw you grow so pale that in truth there is little or no soul which, when the earthen vessel is broken, does not break forth in sorrow. And you indeed grieved, not because you were uncertain of her future, but because you had not rendered the mournful last office to her funeral. Then, in the midst of our conversation, we learned in turn that her remains had already been carried away to Ostia. You may ask, to what purpose is this rehearsal? I shall answer you in the words of the Apostle: much in every way. First, because she is to be attended with the rejoicings of all, who, having trodden the devil under foot, has now received the crown of security; secondly, that her life may be briefly set forth; thirdly, that we may teach that the consul-designate, dragged down from his splendid days, is in Tartarus.
Indeed, who could exalt with worthy praise the manner of life of our Lea? So wholly was she turned to the Lord that she became head of a monastery, a mother of virgins; after soft raiment she wore her limbs upon sackcloth; she spent the nights in prayer, and taught her companions more by example than by words. Of such and so lowly a humility that she who was once the mistress of many might have been taken for the handmaid of any man—save that thereby she was the more Christ's handmaid, in that she was not reckoned the mistress of men. Her dress was rude, her food cheap, her head unkempt—yet so that, while she did all these things, she shunned the ostentation of each one, lest she should receive her reward in the present world. Now therefore, in return for her brief labour, she enjoys eternal blessedness:
she is received by the choirs of angels, she is comforted in Abraham's bosom, and with Lazarus, once poor, she beholds the rich man—clothed in purple, and a consul not merely robed in the palm-embroidered toga, but sacred to himself—seeking a drop from the tip of her little finger. O how great a change of things! He whom, but a few days ago, the highest summits of all dignities went before, who—as though he triumphed over subdued enemies—ascended the Capitoline heights, whom the Roman people received with a kind of applause and dancing, at whose death the whole city was stirred, is now made desolate, naked, held not in the milky palace of heaven (as his unhappy wife pretends), but in squalid darkness.
But she, whom the seclusion of a single chamber walled about, who seemed poor and slight, whose life was thought to be madness, follows Christ and says: 'Whatsoever things we have heard, we have also seen in the city of our God'—and the rest.
Wherefore I admonish, and weeping and groaning I solemnly charge, that while we run the race of this world we be not clothed with two tunics, that is with a double faith; that we be not weighed down by the leathern coverings of our sandals, namely by dead works; that the wallet of riches press us not to the earth; that no help be sought from the staff, that is from secular power; that we be not willing to have both Christ and the world at once, but that for things brief and perishing eternal things may take their place; and that—since day by day, in respect of the body, I die—we account ourselves not everlasting in other matters, that we may be able to be everlasting. TO MARCELLA, ON THE LIFE OF ASELLA.
Let no one blame me because in my letters I either praise some or find fault with others, since both in reproving the wicked there is a correction of the rest, and in proclaiming the best the zeal of the good is roused to virtue. The day before yesterday we said something concerning Lea of blessed memory: at once it pricked my mind, and it came to me that we ought not to be silent about a virgin, we who have spoken of the second order of chastity. So then the life of our Asella must be briefly set forth; and this letter I beg you not to read to her—for she is burdened by her own praises—but rather deign to have it read by those who are young girls, so that, forming themselves after her example, they may reckon her manner of life the standard of a perfect life.
I pass over the fact that she was blessed in her mother's womb before she was born; that she was delivered to her father in sleep, a virgin, in a vial of shining glass and purer than any mirror; that, still wrapped in the swaddling-clothes of infancy, scarcely exceeding the tenth year of her age, she was consecrated to the honour of a future blessedness—let all that went before her toil be of grace, though God, foreknowing things to come, both sanctifies Jeremiah in the womb and makes John leap in his mother's belly and separates Paul, before the foundation of the world, unto the gospel of his Son. I come to those things which after her twelfth year she chose, seized, held, began, and fulfilled by her own sweat. Shut within the narrowness of a single little cell, she enjoyed the breadth of paradise.
The same patch of ground served as her place both of prayer and of rest. Fasting she held for sport, hunger for refreshment; and since it was not any desire of eating but human exhaustion that drew her to food, with bread and salt and cold water she rather kindled her hunger than allayed it. And because I have almost forgotten what I ought to have said at the beginning: when first she took up this purpose, the gold about her neck—
which the common folk call a 'little lamprey' (because forsooth, when the metal is drawn out into little rods, a kind of chain of winding links is woven together)—she sold without her parents' knowledge; and putting on a darker tunic, which she had not been able to obtain from her mother, under this pious omen of her transaction she suddenly consecrated herself to the Lord, so that the whole family might understand that nothing else could be wrested from her who had already condemned the world in the matter of dress. But, as we had begun to say, she always conducted herself so modestly and kept herself within the seclusion of her chamber, that she never set foot in public, never knew the address of a man, and—what is the more to be admired—loved rather than saw her virgin sister. She worked with her own hands, knowing it to be written: 'He that worketh not, neither let him eat.'
To the Bridegroom she spoke either in prayer or in chanting the psalms; to the thresholds of the martyrs she hastened almost unseen; and when she rejoiced in her resolve, she exulted the more vehemently in this, that no one recognized her. And while through the whole year she fed upon continual fasting, so remaining for two or three days together, then indeed in Lent she spread the sails of her ship, joining together almost all the weeks with a joyful countenance.
And—what is perhaps impossible for men to believe, yet by God's granting is possible—she thus came to the age of fifty, so that her stomach did not ache, her bowels were not tortured by neglect, the dry ground did not bruise her limbs as she lay upon it, the skin roughened by sackcloth did not contract any foulness or mustiness; but sound in body, sounder in mind, she deemed solitude to be her delights, and in the turbulent city she found a hermitage of monks. And these things indeed you know better, you from whom I have learned the little that I know, and before whose eyes the hardness of camel-like calluses on the knees of that holy little body, worn from the frequency of her praying, was clearly perceived. We set forth what we are able to know.
Nothing was more pleasant than her severity, nothing more severe than her pleasantness; nothing sadder than her laughter, nothing sweeter than her sadness. Such is the pallor upon her face that, while it betokens continence, it does not smack of ostentation. Her speech is silent, and her silence speaks; her gait is neither hurried nor slow; her bearing always the same; a cleanliness neglected, and in her uncultivated dress an adornment itself without adornment. By the sole quality of her life she has so earned it that, in a city of pomp, of wantonness, of luxuries, in which to be lowly is a misery, both the good proclaim her and the wicked dare not detract; widows and virgins imitate her, wives revere her, the guilty fear her, the priests look up to her. TO MARCELLA, ON THE TEN NAMES BY WHICH GOD IS CALLED AMONG THE HEBREWS.
Reading the ninetieth psalm, at that place which is written, 'He that dwelleth in the aid of the Most High shall abide under the protection of the God of heaven,' I had said that among the Hebrews, for 'God of heaven,' there is placed 'Saddai,' which Aquila renders 'hikanon' (sufficient), which we may take as 'the strong one' and 'the one sufficient to accomplish all things,' and that it is one of the ten names by which God is called among them. Straightway you most eagerly requested that I would send you all the names together with their interpretation. I will do what you have asked. The first name of God is 'El,' which the Seventy render 'God,' and Aquila, expressing its etymology as 'ischyron,' that is 'strong,' interprets. Then 'Elohim' and 'Eloe,' which itself also is called 'God.'
The fourth is 'Sabaoth,' which the Seventy translated 'of powers,' Aquila 'of hosts.' The fifth is 'Elion,' which we call 'the Most High.' The sixth is 'Eser ieie,' which is read in Exodus, 'He who is hath sent me.' The seventh is 'Adonai,' which we generally call 'Lord.' The eighth is 'Ia,' which is put only for God, and sounds also in the last syllable of 'Alleluia.' The ninth is the Tetragrammaton, which they reckoned 'anekphoneton,' that is, ineffable, and it is written with these letters: iod, he, uau, he; which certain persons, not understanding, because of the similarity of the characters, when they have found it in Greek books, have been accustomed to read 'PIPI.' The tenth is that which was mentioned above, 'Saddai,' and in Ezekiel it is set down untranslated.
But we ought to know that 'Elohim' is of common number, since both one God is so called and several; after which likeness the heavens also are called 'heaven'—that is, 'samaim.' Whence the translators too often vary, of which thing we can have an example in our own tongue: Athenae, Thebae, Salonae. TO MARCELLA. Lately, when we were together, not by letter, as you were formerly accustomed, but present yourself you asked what those words—which we do not have expressed from the Hebrew into Latin—might sound like among their own people, and why they are set down without interpretation; such as this: Alleluia, Amen, Maran atha, Ephod, and the rest, which you recalled as scattered throughout the Scriptures.
To which we, since we are constrained by the narrowness of dictation, briefly reply: that either the Seventy translators or the Apostles took care that, since the first church had been gathered out of the Jews, they should innovate nothing to the offence of believers, but should hand down things just as they had imbibed them from childhood; and afterward, when the word of the gospel had been spread abroad among all nations, that what had once been received could not be changed. Although Origen too, in his books which he calls 'Stromateis,' asserts that, on account of the native idiom of each several tongue, they cannot sound the same among others as they were spoken among their own, and that it is far better to set down things untranslated than to weaken their force by translation. So then 'Alleluia' is expressed 'praise ye the Lord';
for 'Ia' among the Hebrews is one of the ten names of God. And in that psalm in which we read 'Praise the Lord, for a psalm is good,' among the Hebrews it is read: 'Alleluia chi tob zammer.' But 'Amen' Aquila expresses as 'pepistomenos,' which we can render 'faithfully,' the adverb being derived from the noun of faith 'amuna'; the Seventy render it 'genoito,' that is, 'let it be.' Whence also at the end of the books—since the psalter among the Hebrews is divided into five volumes—they translated 'fiat, fiat' ('let it be, let it be'), which in the Hebrew is read 'amen amen,' namely so that those things which were said above may be confirmed as truly spoken.
因為「Ia」在希伯來人中是神的十個名字之一。在那篇我們讀作「你們要讚美主，因為歌頌讚美是美好的」的詩篇中，在希伯來人那裡讀作：「Alleluia chi tob zammer」。至於「Amen（阿們）」，亞居拉譯作「pepistomenos」，我們可以譯為「忠信地」，這副詞源出於「信」這名詞的「amuna」；七十士譯本則譯作「genoito」，即「願如此成就」。因此，在各卷之末——既然詩篇在希伯來人中分為五卷——他們譯作「願成就、願成就（fiat, fiat）」，這在希伯來文中讀作「amen amen」，就是好叫上面所說的話得以被確認為真實所言。
Whence also Paul asserts that no one can answer 'Amen,' that is, confirm what has been proclaimed, unless he has understood the proclamation. 'Maran atha' is more Syriac than Hebrew, although from the border of both languages it sounds somewhat Hebrew as well, and it is interpreted 'Our Lord is come'; so that the sense is: 'If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema'—and that being completed, thereupon is added 'Our Lord is come,' meaning that it is superfluous to wish to contend with obstinate hatreds against him whose coming is now established.
I would gladly write to you something also about the 'diapsalma,' which among the Hebrews is called 'sela,' and about the 'ephod,' and about that which is found in the title of a certain psalm for 'aieleth,' and other things of this kind, were it not that I should both exceed the measure of the epistolary character and that your questions, if deferred, ought rather to make you eager. For it is a well-worn proverb that unsolicited wares stink. Whence we too of set purpose keep silent about things that ought to be said, that you may the more eagerly wish to hear what has been left unspoken. TO MARCELLA.
After the former letter, in which I had touched briefly upon a few Hebrew words, word was suddenly brought to me that certain paltry little men were assiduously detracting from me: why against the authority of the ancients and the opinion of the whole world I had attempted to emend certain things in the Gospels. Although I might by my own right despise them—for the lyre sings in vain to an ass—nevertheless.
lest they should accuse us of pride, as they are wont to do, let them have this answer: that I was not of so dull a heart nor of such gross rusticity (which they alone hold for holiness, asserting themselves to be disciples of the fishermen, as though they were righteous for this reason, if they knew nothing) as to have thought anything in the Lord's words needed correcting or was not divinely inspired; but that I had been unwilling to recall the faultiness of the Latin manuscripts—which is proved from the diversity of all the copies—to the Greek original, from which even they do not deny that they were translated.
If the wave of the purest fountain displeases them, let them drink from muddy rivulets, and let them cast away, in the reading of the Scriptures, the diligence with which they know the spittle of birds and the whirlpools of shellfish; and let them be, in this one matter only, simpletons, and reckon Christ's words rustic—in which, for so many ages already, the talents of so many great men have sweated, so that they have rather conjectured the meaning of each several word than expressed it. Let them accuse the Apostle of ignorance, who is said to be mad by reason of his much learning. I know that when you have read these things you will wrinkle your brow, and again fear that my freedom is a seedbed of quarrels, and wish, if it could be, to press my mouth shut with your finger, lest I dare to say what others do not blush to do. I ask, what have we said freely?
Did I describe idols engraved upon platters? Did I paint, amid Christian banquets, the embraces of Bacchantes and satyrs before virginal eyes? Has any bitterer speech assailed anyone? Did I grieve that the rich are made out of beggars? Did I reprehend hereditary sepulchres? One wretched thing have I said: that virgins ought more often to be with women than with men. On this account I have offended the eyes of the whole city; I am marked by the fingers of all. 'They that hate me without cause are multiplied above the hairs of my head, and I am become to them a parable'—and do you think I am going to say anything further? But, lest Flaccus laugh at us—'A jar was begun to be shaped:
as the wheel runs round, why does a pitcher come out?'—we return to our two-footed little asses, and into their ear we blare rather with the trumpet than the lyre. Let them read: 'rejoicing in hope, serving the time'; let us read: 'rejoicing in hope, serving the Lord.' Let them think that an accusation against a presbyter is by no means to be received; let us read: 'Against a presbyter receive not an accusation, but under two or three witnesses; but them that sin rebuke before all.' Let this please them: 'a human saying, and worthy of all acceptation'; let us, with the Greeks, that is, with the Apostle—who spoke in Greek—err: 'a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation.'
At the last, let them rejoice in Gallic geldings; let that ass of Zechariah, loosed from its bonds and made ready for the mystery of the Saviour, delight us—the ass which, after it had offered its back to the Lord, began to chime in with the proclamation of Isaiah: 'Blessed is he that soweth beside all waters, where the ox and the ass tread.' TO MARCELLA, ON THE DIAPSALMA. What you have received must be repaid with interest, and delay of the loan brings forth usury. You had demanded our opinion about the 'diapsalma': we pleaded the brevity of a letter, and put forward as a pretext that a matter of a book cannot be explained in a letter. But what does it profit against your keenness? A greater desire is stirred in you by silence. And so, that I may not drag you out any longer, take a little in place of much.
Some have said that the 'diapsalma' is a change of metre; others, a pause for breath; some, the beginning of another sense; there are those who make it a distinction of rhythm, and, because the psalms in those times were sung with joined voice to an instrument, a mark of some musical variation. To us none of these seems right, since Aquila—who is a most diligent expositor of the Hebrew words—translated 'sela,' that is 'diapsalma' (which is written from samech, lamed, he), as 'always'; and we find 'diapsalma' set also at the end of psalms, as is that in the third: 'Thou hast broken the teeth of sinners; salvation is of the Lord, and thy blessing is upon thy people, sela,' that is 'always'; and in the twenty-third: 'Who is this King of glory?'
'The Lord of powers, he is the King of glory'—'always'; and, on the contrary, in psalms of many verses it is not found at all, namely in the thirty-sixth and the seventy-seventh and the hundred and eighteenth; and again the ninth psalm is marked 'a song of diapsalma'—whereas surely, if, as it seems to some, the diapsalma is a sign of silence, there cannot be a song of silence. From this we observe that this word connects together things both above and below alike, or at least teaches that the things which have been said are everlasting; as is that in the third: 'Many say to my soul, There is no salvation for him in his God, always'; and again: 'With my voice I cried to the Lord, and he heard me from his holy mountain, always'; and in the fourth:
utquiddiligitisuanitatemetquaeritismendacium? semper, etalibi: quaedicitisincordibusuestris, etincubilibusuestrisconpungimini, semper. ScireautemdebesapudHebraeosinfinelibrorumunumetribussoleresubnecti, utaut \'amen\' scribantaut ( sela \' aut " salom1 , quoexprimunt \'pacem\', undeetSalomon \'pacificus\' dicitur.
'Why do ye love vanity and seek after a lie? always'; and elsewhere: 'The things that ye say in your hearts, be ye pricked with compunction upon your beds, always.' But you ought to know that among the Hebrews, at the end of the books, one of three things is customarily subjoined: they either write 'amen,' or 'sela,' or 'salom,' by which they express 'peace'—whence also Solomon is called 'the peaceable.'
Therefore, just as we are wont, when our little works are completed, to interpose in the middle, for the distinction of another following matter, 'here it ends' or 'happily' or something of this kind, so also the Hebrews either strengthen the things that have been written, by saying 'amen'; or they commemorate as everlasting both the things written and those to be written, by putting 'sela'; or they attest that things have been transacted happily, subscribing 'peace' at the very end. These things we have sipped from the innermost fountain of the Hebrews, not pursuing the rivulets of opinions, nor terrified by the variety of errors with which the whole world is filled, but desiring both to know and to teach the things that are true. But if it does not seem so to you,
I will interpret word for word what Origen thought about the 'diapsalma,' so that, since you despise the new must, you may at least be led by the authority of the old wine. 'Often, inquiring into the reasons why in certain psalms the diapsalma is interposed, I observed most diligently in the Hebrew and compared it with the Greek, and I found that, where the Hebrew tongue has sela, but the Greek has always or something of this kind, there the Seventy and Theodotion and Symmachus translated diapsalma. Nor indeed is it amiss to confirm what we say by examples. In the seventy-fourth psalm, whose beginning is: We will confess to thee, O God, we will confess and will call upon thy name, after that:'
'I have established its pillars'—among the Seventy and Theodotion and Symmachus there is 'diapsalma,' for which in Aquila: 'I have weighed its pillars, always'; but in the fifth edition: 'It is I who have prepared its pillars, always'; and in the sixth: 'I have made firm its pillars, continually.' Moreover, in the Hebrew it has, after 'ammuda,' which is 'its pillars,' the word 'sela.' And again in the seventy-fifth, whose beginning is:
'God is known in Judaea'—we found among the Seventy and Theodotion, after 'shield and spear and war,' 'diapsalma'; among Symmachus, after 'buckler and sword and war,' likewise 'diapsalma'; for which, among Aquila, after 'buckler, sword and war,' 'always'; in the fifth edition, after 'shield and broadsword and war,' 'always'; but in the sixth, after 'shield and sword and war,' 'unto the end.' And there was again in the Hebrew, after 'umalama,' which is 'and war,' 'sela.' And in the same psalm, after that place: 'that he may save the meek of the earth,' 'diapsalma'; among Symmachus likewise 'diapsalma,' and among Aquila 'always,' and also in the fifth.
But in the sixth: 'unto the end'; and in the Hebrew it was, after 'anie ares,' which is 'the meek of the earth,' 'sela.' And thus, when we had found such an opinion for each several edition, we noted these things down. But whether those who translated it 'diapsalma' understood a change of some musical melody or rhythm, or understood something else, I leave to your judgement.' Thus far Origen, whose unlearnedness in this disputation, at least, we have preferred to follow rather than to hold the foolish knowledge of those who know nothing. TO MARCELLA.
The epistolary office is to write something about domestic affairs or about daily conversation, and in a manner to make the absent present to one another, while they mutually announce what they either wish or what has been done; although sometimes such a banquet of familiar talk is seasoned also with the salt of doctrine. But you are occupied in treatises; you write nothing to me except what may torment me and compel me to read the Scriptures. In fine, yesterday, a most famous question having been propounded, you demanded that I write back at once what I thought; as though indeed I held the chair of the Pharisees, so that, as often as there is a quarrel about Hebrew words, I should be demanded as arbiter and umpire of the suit.
Feasts are not pleasant which do not also smell of pastry, which Apicius has not seasoned, in which nothing steams up from the sauce of the master-cooks of our day. But since the courier and go-between of our discourse is hastening to return, I shall set forth a great matter more quickly than I ought — although for one disputing about the Holy Scriptures the words are not so necessary as the sense; for if we seek eloquence, we must read Demosthenes or Tully, but if we seek the divine mysteries, our own codices must be closely examined, which do not resound well from the Hebrew into Latin. At the head of your letter you had set down what this may mean which is written in the First Book of Kingdoms: