It would be long now to run through the several ages, from the Lord's ascension to the present day, of how many bishops, how many martyrs, how many men eloquent in ecclesiastical doctrine have come to Jerusalem, thinking that they had less of religion, less of knowledge, and had not received, as the saying goes, the finishing touch of virtues, unless they had adored Christ in those places in which the Gospel first flashed forth from the gibbet.
Surely, if even a distinguished orator thinks I know not whom is to be censured, because he learned his Greek letters not at Athens but at Lilybaeum, and his Latin not at Rome but in Sicily—for indeed each province has something of its own which another cannot equally possess—why do we think that anyone has reached the summit of studies apart from our Athens? Nor do we say this to deny that the kingdom of God is within us, and that holy men are also in other regions; but rather to affirm this above all, that those who in the whole world are foremost are gathered here together. To which places we have come not as the first, but as the last, that in them we might behold the foremost of all nations.
Surely a certain flower and most precious stone among the ecclesiastical ornaments is the choir of monks and virgins. Whoever is foremost in Gaul hastens hither. The Briton, sundered from our world, if he advances in religion, forsaking the setting sun seeks a place known to him only by fame and by the report of the Scriptures. Why should we recount the Armenians, the Persians, the peoples of India and of the Ethiopians, and Egypt itself, near at hand and fertile in monks, Pontus and Cappadocia, Coele-Syria and Mesopotamia, and all the swarms of the East? Who, according to the Saviour's word which says: Wheresoever the body shall be, thither shall the eagles be gathered together, throng to these places and display to us a specimen of diverse virtues.
The voice is diverse indeed, but the religion is one. There are almost as many choirs of psalm-singers as there are diversities of nations, and among these—that which is well-nigh the first virtue among Christians—there is nothing arrogant, nothing of the raised eyebrow of continence: there is a contest of humility among all. Whoever is last is reckoned first. In dress there is no distinction, no wonder. However one may choose to walk about, it is matter neither for detraction nor for praise. Fastings too exalt no one; abstinence is not deferred to, nor is moderate satiety condemned. Each one stands or falls to his own Lord. No one judges another, lest he be judged by the Lord. And that which in very many provinces is customary, that men tear one another with their native tooth, here is utterly unknown.
Far off is luxury, far off is pleasure. So many are the places of prayer in the city itself that the days would not suffice to traverse them: but, to come to Christ's little cottage and to Mary's lodging—for everyone praises most what he possesses—with what speech, with what voice can we set forth to you the cave of the Saviour? And that manger, in which the little infant wailed, is to be honoured by silence rather than by feeble speech. Where are the broad porticoes? where the gilded ceilings? where the houses clothed with the punishments of the wretched and the labour of the condemned? where the basilicas built after the fashion of a palace with the riches of private men, that the vile little body of man may walk more preciously, and, as though anything in the world could be more adorned, may prefer to gaze upon its own roofs rather than upon heaven?
Behold, in this small hole of the earth the Founder of the heavens was born. Here he was wrapped in swaddling clothes, here seen by shepherds, here pointed out by the star, here adored by the Magi. And, I think, this place is holier than the Tarpeian rock, which, struck by lightning from heaven again and again, showed what displeased the Lord. Read the Apocalypse of John, and behold what is sung of the woman clothed in purple and of the blasphemy written on her forehead, of the seven mountains, of the many waters, and of the ruin of Babylon. Go out, saith the Lord, from her, my people, and be not partakers of her sins, and receive not of her plagues. Turning also to Jeremiah, attend likewise to what is written: Flee out of the midst of Babylon, and save each one his own soul.
For she has fallen, that great Babylon has fallen, and has become a dwelling-place of demons and a haunt of every unclean spirit. There indeed is the holy Church, there are the trophies of the apostles and martyrs, there is the true confession of Christ and the faith preached by the apostles; and, with paganism trodden underfoot, the name of Christian daily lifts itself on high. Yet the very ambition, the power, the greatness of the city, being seen and seeing, being greeted and greeting, praising and disparaging, hearing or holding forth, and enduring, however unwillingly, so great a throng of men — all these are foreign to the monk's calling and to his repose. For either we look upon those who come to us and lose our silence, or we do not look upon them and are charged with pride.
And now and then, in order to repay our visitors in kind, we go to proud doorways, and amid the tongues of gnawing servants we pass through gilded portals. But in Christ's little country estate, as we said above, all is rustic simplicity, and apart from psalms there is silence. Wherever you turn, the ploughman gripping the plough-handle chants his Alleluia; the sweating reaper beguiles himself with psalms; and the vinedresser, as he prunes the vine with his curved knife, sings something of David's. These are the songs of this province; these, as the common folk say, are its love-ditties; this is the shepherd's whistle; these are the weapons of husbandry. But what are we about, thinking only of what we desire and not of what is fitting?
O when will that time come, when a breathless traveller shall bring the tidings that our Marcella has landed on the shore of Palestine, and all the choirs of monks and all the throngs of virgins shall ring out together? Even now we long to run to meet her, and, not waiting for a carriage, to bear our body swiftly on foot. We shall clasp her hands, gaze upon her face, and scarcely tear ourselves from the longed-for embrace. Shall that day then come, when it will be permitted us to enter the cave of the Saviour? To weep in the Lord's tomb with our sister, to weep with our mother? Then to kiss the wood of the cross, and on the Mount of Olives, with the Lord ascending, to be lifted up in vow and in spirit? To see Lazarus come forth bound in grave-clothes, and the streams of Jordan made purer by the Lord's washing?
Thence to go on to the shepherds' folds, to pray at David's mausoleum, and to behold the prophet Amos even now sounding forth with his shepherd's horn upon his own crag? To hasten to the tents or the memorials of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and of the three illustrious women as well? To see the spring in which the eunuch was baptized by Philip? To go on to Samaria and there venerate together the ashes of John the Baptist and of Elisha and Obadiah? To enter the caves in which, in the time of persecution and famine, the companies of the prophets were fed? We shall go to Nazareth and, according to the interpretation of its name, we shall see the "flower" of Galilee. Not far from there Cana will be seen, in which the water was turned into wine.
We shall go on to Mount Tabor and to the tabernacles of the Saviour — not, as Peter once wished, with Moses and Elijah, but with the Father and the Holy Spirit shall we behold Him. Thence we shall come to the Sea of Gennesaret, and of the five and of the seven loaves we shall see in the wilderness the five and the four thousand men filled. There will appear the town of Nain, in whose gates the widow's son was raised. There will be seen Hermon and the torrent of Endor, at which Sisera was overcome. Capernaum too, familiar with the Lord's signs, and indeed all Galilee alike, will be beheld.
Then, with Christ accompanying us through Shiloh and Bethel and the other places in which churches stand erect like so many banners of the Lord's victories, when we shall have returned to our cave, we shall sing continually, we shall weep often, we shall pray unceasingly, and, wounded by the Saviour's dart, we shall say together: "I have found him whom my soul sought; I will hold him and will not let him go." XLVII. TO DESIDERIUS. Having read the discourse of your Excellency, which your goodwill has bestowed on me quite unexpectedly, I rejoiced indeed at the testimony of an honourable and most eloquent man; but returning to myself I grieved greatly that I should be crushed rather than relieved by being deemed unworthy of such praises and heralding.
For you know that our teaching holds fast the banner of humility, and that, walking through the lowest things, we climb to the highest. How small then and how insignificant am I, that I should deserve the testimony of a learned tongue, that the palm of eloquence should be conferred on me by one who, by writing most eloquently, has deterred me from writing? Nevertheless I must be bold, and let charity, which seeks not the things that are its own but those of one's neighbour, render the offices of greeting, since it cannot fill the place of a teacher. — I congratulate you and your holy and venerable sister Serenilla, who, having trodden underfoot the waves of the world (as by a leap), has attained to the calm of Christ — though this prophecy of the name was foreordained in you as well.
For we read that holy Daniel too was called "a man of desires" and a friend of God, because he desired to know His mysteries. And so, what the venerable Paula begged me to do, I do willingly, and I exhort you and beseech you by the love of the Lord, that you grant us the sight of yourselves and, taking occasion of the holy places, enrich us with so great a gift. Certainly, if company should displease you, to have worshipped where the Lord's feet stood is a part of faith, and to have seen, as it were fresh, the traces of His nativity, His cross, and His passion. Of my little works, because very many have flown from their little nest and been published with the rash honour of edition, I have sent nothing, lest perchance I should send you the very things you already had.
But if it should please you to borrow copies, you can obtain them either from holy Marcella, who dwells on the Aventine, or from the light of our times, Domnio, a most holy man. As for me, awaiting your presence, I shall either give you the whole when you are here, or, if any difficulties should hinder this, I shall gladly send whatever you direct. I have written a book on illustrious men, from the apostles down to our own age, in imitation of Tranquillus and the Greek Apollonius; and after the catalogue of very many, I placed myself too at the end of the volume, as it were untimely-born and the least of all Christians — where it was necessary for me briefly to note what I have written, down to the fourteenth year of the emperor Theodosius.
When you have received this book from the persons mentioned above, whatever you find lacking from the index, I shall have written out little by little, if you wish. XLVIII (XLIX Vall.). TO PAMMACHIUS. It is a mark of Christian modesty at times to keep silence even among friends, and to console one's own humility by silence rather than, by reviving old friendships, to incur the charge of ambition. As long as you were silent, I was silent, nor did I ever wish to remonstrate on this matter, lest I should seem to seek not a friend but a more powerful patron. But now, provoked by the courtesy of your letter, I shall try always to have the first part, and not so much to write back as to write, so that I may be known both to have been silent thus far out of modesty, and to have begun to speak still more modestly.
As for your having acted both prudently and lovingly in withdrawing copies of my little works against Jovinian, I know it full well. But that diligence availed nothing, since several persons coming from the city kept reading to me the very things which they said they had received at Rome. In this province too the books had already been spread abroad; and, as you yourself have read, "a word once sent forth knows not how to return." I am not of so great good fortune as very many treatise-writers of this age, that I can correct my trifles whenever I wish. As soon as I have written anything, either my admirers or the envious, with opposite zeal but with equal contention, scatter my writings among the common folk, and are excessive whether in praise or in reproach, following not the merit of the pen but their own stomach.
And so, the only thing I could do, I have addressed to you a synopsis of the work itself; when you have read it, either you yourself will make satisfaction for us to the rest, or, if you too should wrinkle your nose, you will be compelled to expound in another way that passage of the apostle in which he discusses virginity and marriage. Nor do I say this to provoke you to writing — you whose zeal in the sacred letters I proclaim above my own — but that you may compel others, who tear us to pieces, to do this. They know letters, they seem to themselves half-learned: they are able not to reprove me but to instruct me. If they write anything, my rendering will rather be neglected by comparison with their work.
Read, I beg you, and carefully consider the apostle's words, and then you will see that, for the sake of avoiding calumny, I was far more lenient toward husbands than he intended. Origen, Dionysius, Pierius, Eusebius of Caesarea, Didymus, and Apollinaris have interpreted this epistle most extensively; of whom Pierius, when he was sifting and discussing the apostle's meaning, and had set out to expound that passage, "I wish that all were as I myself am," added: "In saying these things, Paul openly preaches celibacy." What sin of mine is here, what harshness? All the things I wrote are most gentle compared with this opinion.
Turn over the commentaries of all those I have mentioned above, and make use of the church libraries, and with a quicker pace you will attain the things you desire and have begun. I hear that the zeal of the whole city has been stirred up toward you; I hear that the will of the bishop and of the people agree with one mind. It is a lesser thing to hold the priesthood than to deserve it. The sixteen books of the prophets, which I have translated into Latin from the Hebrew tongue — if you read them, and I learn that you are delighted with this work, you will spur me on not to keep the rest also shut up in the cupboard. I have lately translated Job into our language; a copy of which you can borrow from holy Marcella, your kinswoman.
Read the same in Greek and in Latin, and compare the old edition with our translation, and you will clearly perceive how great a difference there is between truth and falsehood. I had sent certain notes on the twelve prophets to the holy father Domnio, and also Samuel and Malachim, that is, the four books of Kings. If you should be willing to read these, you will prove how great a difficulty it is to understand the divine Scripture, and especially the prophets, and how, through the fault of the translators, things which among their own people flow with the purest course of speech teem with faults among us. Furthermore, do not look in these little ones for the eloquence which, for Christ's sake, you despise in Cicero.
Ecclesiastical interpretation, even if it possesses a charm of eloquence, ought to dissemble and shun it, so that it may speak not to the idle schools of philosophers and to a few disciples, but to the whole race of mankind. — XLIX (XLVIII Vall.). AN APOLOGY TO PAMMACHIUS. That I did not write to you until now, the cause was your silence. For I feared that, if I wrote to one who was silent, you might think me troublesome rather than obliging.
But now, provoked by your most sweet letter, and by a letter of such a kind as would summon me to the philosophy of our own doctrine, I receive with open hands, as they say, one who is at once my former fellow-student, my comrade, and my friend, and I make ready a defender of my little works — yet only on this condition, that I first have a judge appeased, nay rather, that I first instruct my advocate concerning all the things that are charged against me. For this too your Tully, and before him, in a brief and single volume, Antonius writes: that the first victory of a case is diligently to learn the case for which you are about to plead.
Certain persons reproach me because, in the books I wrote against Jovinian, I was excessive either in the praise of virgins or in the disparagement of the married; and they say that it is in a way a condemnation of marriage that chastity should be so extolled that no comparison could seem to be left between a wife and a virgin. If I rightly remember the problem, this is the dispute between Jovinian and us: that he equates marriage with virginity, while we subordinate it; he holds that there is either little or no difference, while we say there is much. In short, for that reason — with you, next after the Lord, doing it — he was condemned, because he dared to compare marriage with perpetual chastity. Or, if the very same thing is to be reckoned of a virgin and a married woman, why could Rome not endure to hear the sin of this utterance?
A woman is a virgin from a man, not a virgin from childbirth. There can be no middle ground: either my opinion is to be followed or Jovinian's. If I am reproached because I subordinate marriage to virginity, let him be praised who equates them; but if he was condemned who thought them equal, let his condemnation be a testimony to my work. If men of the world are indignant that they are in a lower degree than virgins, I marvel that clergy and monks and the continent do not praise that which they themselves practise. They castrate themselves from their own wives, in order to imitate the chastity of virgins — and do they wish husbands to be that very thing which virgins are? Either, therefore, let them be joined to their wives, whom they had renounced, or, if they have abstained, then even by their silence they confess that better is that which they have preferred to the work of marriage.
Or was I, being unversed in the Scriptures and reading the sacred volumes now for the first time, unable to preserve a line — and, so to speak, a fine thread of speech — between virginity and marriage? Doubtless I did not know it was said: "Be not righteous overmuch"; and, while I protect one flank, I have been wounded on the other; and, to speak more plainly, while I fight against Jovinian with close-pressed step, my back has been stabbed by the Manichaean. Did I not, I ask, straightway at the very beginning of my work make this preface? "Nor, following the doctrine of Marcion and Manichaeus, do we disparage marriage. Nor, deceived by the error of Tatian, the chief of the Encratites, do we hold all intercourse to be foul — he who condemns and rejects not only marriage but also the foods which God created for use."
We know that in a great house there are vessels not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay; and upon the foundation of Christ, which Paul the architect laid, one builds gold, silver, precious stones, while another, on the contrary, hay, wood, stubble. We are not ignorant that "marriage is honourable and the bed undefiled." We read the first sentence of God: "Increase and multiply and fill the earth"; yet we receive marriage in such a way as to prefer the virginity which is born of marriage. Will silver not be silver, if gold is more precious than silver? Or is it an insult to the tree and the crop, if to the root and the leaves, to the stalk and the ears, the apples and the fruit are preferred?
As the apples come from the tree, the grain from the stalk, so virginity comes from marriage. The hundredfold and sixtyfold and thirtyfold fruit, although it is born of one earth and of one sowing, nevertheless differs greatly in number. Thirty refers to marriage; for the very joining of the fingers, as if embracing and pledging one another with a gentle kiss, depicts husband and wife. Sixty, however, refers to widows, because they are set amid straits and tribulation — whence too they are pressed down by the upper finger; and by how much greater is the difficulty of abstaining from the enticements of pleasure once experienced, by so much greater also is the reward. Furthermore, the hundredfold number — pay careful attention, reader, I beg you.
Attend — it is transferred from the left hand to the right, and indeed with the same fingers, but not with the same hand by which, on the left, the married and the widows are signified; forming a circle, it expresses the crown of virginity. I ask you: does he who speaks these things condemn marriage? Gold we called virginity, silver we called matrimony. The hundredfold and sixtyfold and thirtyfold fruit we set forth as being generated from one earth and one sowing, though it differ much in number. And will any reader be so unfair as to judge me not from my words but from his own understanding? And certainly we have been far more lenient toward marriages than almost all the Latin and Greek expositors, who refer the hundredfold number to martyrs, the sixtyfold to virgins, the thirtyfold to widows.
And thus it comes about, according to their opinion, that husbands are excluded from the good earth and from the seed of the father of the household. But though in the beginning I was cautious, in the rest I was perhaps improvident. Did I not, after the division of the little work, when I came to the questions, straightway bring in: "I beg you, virgins and continent of either sex, husbands too and the twice-married, that you aid my endeavours with your prayers"? Is Jovinian the common enemy of them all? Those by whose prayers I have need, and whom I entreat as helpers of my work — can I condemn them with the error of Manichaeus? Let us hasten on to the rest — for the brevity of a letter does not allow us to linger longer on single points — while interpreting that testimony of the apostle: "The wife has not power over her own body, but the husband";
"likewise also the husband has not power over his own body, but the wife" — we subjoined this: "This whole question is about those who are in matrimony, whether it is lawful for them to dismiss their wives" — which the Lord too forbade in the Gospel. Whence the apostle also says: "It is good for a man not to touch a woman"; but because he who has once taken a wife cannot abstain except by consent, nor give a bill of divorce to one who does not sin, "let him render to his spouse the debt," because he has bound himself of his own accord, so as to be compelled to render it. Can he who says it is the Lord's command that wives be not dismissed, and that without consent what God has joined man does not separate — can such a one be said to condemn marriage? Again, in what follows:
"But each one," he says, "has his own gift from God, one indeed thus, another thus." Expounding which opinion, we brought in this: "What I would wish," he says, "is clear. But since in the Church there are diverse gifts, I concede marriage too, lest I seem to condemn nature. And at the same time consider that the gift of virginity is one thing, the gift of marriage another. For if the reward of the married and of virgins were the same, he would never have said, after the precept of continence: 'But each one has his own gift from God, one indeed thus, another thus.' Where there is a property of individuals, there on both sides is diversity. I concede that marriage too is a gift of God; but between gift and gift there is great diversity."
Finally the apostle too, concerning the same man doing penance after his incest, says: "On the contrary, forgive him and comfort him"; and: "If you have forgiven anything to anyone, I also." And lest we should think a man's forgiveness to be despised, he added: "For I also, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, was for your sakes in the presence of Christ." The gifts of Christ are diverse. Whence Joseph too, as a type of Him, had a coat of many colours; and in the forty-fourth psalm "the queen stood at his right hand in gilded raiment, girt about with variety." And Peter the apostle says: "as fellow-heirs of the manifold grace" — which is expressed more significantly in Greek as poikilēs, that is "varied." I ask: what is this contention, to shut one's eyes and not behold the plainest light?
In the Church we said the gifts are diverse, and the gift of virginity is one thing, the gift of marriage another. And a little after: I concede that marriage too is a gift of God; but between gift and gift there is great diversity. And do we, who proclaim with the plainest voice that it is a gift of God, get said to condemn it? Moreover, if Joseph is received as a type of the Lord, his varied and diversified coat is among virgins, widows, the continent, and the married; and one who is of Christ's coat can seem in a way an alien to it, since we have said that the queen herself, that is, the Saviour's Church, is likewise girt about in gilded raiment with the same variety. But also in what follows, discussing marriage, we followed the same sense: This passage does not pertain to the present controversy.
For I taught, according to the sentence of the Lord, that a wife is not to be repudiated except for the cause of fornication, and that a woman repudiated is not to marry another while her husband lives, or at least ought to be reconciled to her own husband. And likewise in another place: "A woman is bound as long as her husband lives; but if her husband have fallen asleep, she is free; let her marry whom she will, only in the Lord" — that is, a Christian. He who concedes second and third marriages in the Lord, forbids the first with a heathen. Let my detractors, I beg, open their ears and see that I have conceded second and third marriages in the Lord. I who have not condemned second and third marriages, could I have condemned the first? In that passage too, where we interpret the apostle's chapter: "Was anyone called being circumcised?
Let him not draw on a foreskin. Was anyone called in uncircumcision? Let him not be circumcised" — although certain most prudent interpreters of the Scriptures contend that this was said concerning circumcision and slavery — have we not most plainly preserved the covenants of marriage? For we said: "If anyone was called in uncircumcision, let him not be circumcised. You had," he says, "a wife when you believed; do not think the faith of Christ a cause of separation, because God has called us in peace. Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God."
For without works, both celibacy and marriage profit nothing, since even faith, which properly belongs to Christians, if it have not works, is said to be dead; and by this law even the virgins of Vesta and the one-husbanded women of Juno could be numbered in the order of the saints. And a little after: "Wast thou called being a slave? Let it not be thy care; but if thou canst even be made free, use it rather." Even if you have a wife, he says, and are bound to her and pay the debt and have not power over your own body — and, to speak more plainly, are a slave of your wife — do not on this account have sadness, nor sigh over your lost virginity.
But even if you can find some grounds for separation, so as to enjoy the freedom of chastity, do not seek your own salvation together with another's ruin. Keep your wife a little while, and do not run ahead of one who is lagging: wait until she follows. If you act patiently, your spouse will be changed into a sister. In that passage too, where we treated why the apostle had said: "Concerning virgins I have no precept of the Lord; but I give counsel, as one who has obtained mercy from the Lord, that I may be faithful" — we so exalted virginity that we preserved the rank of marriage: If the Lord had commanded virginity, He would have seemed to condemn marriage and to take away the seed-plot of mankind, from which virginity itself is born. If He had cut off the root, how would He seek the crops?