For it is interpreted 'my father is superfluous' or 'the roaring of my father.' The word 'superfluous' is ambiguous, and in the present passage sounds a virtue, namely that wisdom is ampler in the aged, and abounding and lavish; but in another place 'superfluous' is set down as it were for 'not necessary.' And 'sag,' that is 'roaring,' is properly so named when the waves of the sea resound and, so to speak, a roar is heard coming from the deep. From this it is shown that the thunder of divine speech, most abundant and beyond the human voice, abides in the aged. Furthermore, 'Shunammite' in our tongue is called 'scarlet,' that it may signify that wisdom is warm and glows with divine reading;
which, although it indicates the mystery of the Lord's blood, yet also shows the fervor of wisdom. Hence also that midwife in Genesis binds the scarlet thread on the hand of Perez, who obtained the name 'divider,' that is 'Perez,' from the fact that he had divided the wall separating the two peoples before. And Rahab the harlot, in a type of the Church, hung out the little cord containing the mysteries of blood, that when Jericho perished she might be saved. And in another place Scripture records concerning those holy ones: These are the Kenites, who came of the heat of the house of Rechab. And our Lord in the Gospel says: I have come to send fire upon the earth, and what will I but that it be kindled! which, kindled in the heart of the disciples, compelled them to say:
Was not our heart burning within us, while he spoke on the way and opened to us the Scriptures? To what end have I recalled these things with so long a preamble? That you may not seek from me boyish declamations, little flowers of maxims, the allurements of words, and, at the end of each chapter, certain pointed and briefly concluded turns of phrase such as excite the applause and the shouts of the hearers. Let wisdom alone embrace me, and let our Abishag, who never grows old, rest in my bosom. She is undefiled, and of perpetual virginity, and, after the likeness of Mary, while she daily brings forth and ever gives birth, she is uncorrupted. Hence I think the apostle also said, 'fervent in spirit,' and the Lord in the Gospel foretold that at the end of the world, when according to the prophet Zecha-
riah a foolish shepherd shall arise, with wisdom decreasing the charity of many shall grow cold. Hear therefore, as blessed Cyprian says, not eloquent things, but strong things. Hear a brother by fellowship, a father by age, who may lead you from the cradle of the faith to perfect age, and, appointing rules of living for each several step, may through you instruct others. I know indeed that from your uncle, blessed Heliodorus, who is now a pontiff of Christ, you have both learned the things that are holy and daily do learn them, and that you have the example of his virtues as the rule of your life; but receive also our contributions, such as they are, and join this little book to that little book of his, that, when he has instructed you as a monk, this may teach you to be a perfect cleric.
Therefore let the cleric who serves the Church of Christ first interpret his own name, and, the definition of the name being set forth, let him strive to be that which he is called. For if kleros in Greek is called 'lot' in Latin, therefore they are called clerics either because they are of the lot of the Lord, or because the Lord himself is the lot, that is, the portion, of the clerics. But he who is either himself the portion of the Lord, or has the Lord as his portion, ought so to show himself as both to possess the Lord and himself to be possessed by the Lord. He who possesses the Lord and says with the prophet, The Lord is my portion, can have nothing outside the Lord; for if he should have anything besides the Lord, the Lord will not be his portion.
For example, if he has gold, if silver, if possessions, if varied furniture—with these portions the Lord does not deign to become his portion. But if I am the portion of the Lord, and the cord of his inheritance, and I do not receive a portion among the rest of the tribes, but, like a Levite and priest, live by the tithes and, serving the altar, am sustained by the offering of the altar, then, having food and clothing, with these I shall be content, and naked I shall follow the naked cross. I beseech you therefore, and, repeating it again and again, I shall warn you, do not think the office of the clerical state to be a kind of ancient military service—that is, do not seek the gains of the world in the warfare of Christ, nor have more than when you began to be a cleric, lest it be said to you: Their portions shall not profit them.
For instance, if you have gold, if silver, if possessions, if varied household goods, with these portions the Lord does not deign to become your portion. But if I am the portion of the Lord and the cord of his inheritance, and I do not receive a portion among the other tribes, but, like a Levite and priest, live by the tithes, and, serving the altar, am sustained by the offering of the altar, having food and clothing, with these I shall be content, and naked I shall follow the naked cross. I beseech you therefore, and, repeating it again and again, I shall warn you, that you do not think the clerical office to be a kind of ancient soldiery—that is, that you do not seek the profits of the age in the warfare of Christ, nor have more than when you began to be a cleric, and it be said to you: Their portions shall not profit them.
Let the poor and strangers, and with them Christ, know your little table as a fellow guest. Flee as a kind of plague the trafficking cleric, who from a pauper has become rich, and from ignoble has become glorious. Evil conversations corrupt good manners. You despise gold, another loves it; you tread down riches, he pursues them; to you silence, gentleness, seclusion are dear, but to him talkativeness, a brazen brow, the forums and the streets and the shops of the physicians are pleasing: amid such discord of manners, what concord can there be? Let the feet of women rarely, or never, tread your little lodging. Either equally ignore, or equally love, all girls and virgins of Christ. Do not remain under the same roof; do not trust in your past chastity.
You can be neither holier than David nor wiser than Solomon; remember always that a woman cast the tiller of paradise out of his own possession. In your sickness let any holy brother attend you, or your own sister, or your mother, or any woman of proven fidelity in the sight of all. But if there are no such persons of kinship and chastity, the Church nourishes many aged women, who may both render service and receive benefit by their ministering, so that even your infirmity may have the fruit of almsgiving. I know some who have recovered in body and begun to sicken in soul. She ministers to you dangerously whose face you frequently regard.
If on account of the clerical office either a widow or a virgin is visited by you, never enter the house alone, and have such companions that by their company you may not be defamed. If a reader, if an acolyte, if a psalm-singer follows you, let them be adorned not with garments but with morals, nor let them curl their hair with the curling iron, but let them promise chastity by their bearing. Do not sit alone in secret and without a witness with a woman alone. If anything more private must be spoken, she has a nurse, the elder virgin of the house, a widow, a married woman; she is not so inhuman as to have no one but you to whom she might dare to entrust herself. Beware of all suspicions, and whatever can plausibly be invented, avoid beforehand, lest it be invented.
Frequent little gifts, and handkerchiefs, and little bands, and garments pressed to the mouth, and tasted foods, and coaxing and sweet little notes—holy love does not have these. 'My honey, my light, and my desire,' and the other follies of lovers, all the dainties and charms and laughable urbanities that we blush at in comedies, that we detest in men of the world: how much more in clerics, and in clerics who are monks, whose priesthood adorns their profession, and whose profession is adorned by their priesthood! Nor do I say this because I dread such things either in you or in holy men, but because in every profession, in every rank and sex, both good and bad are found, and the condemnation of the bad is the praise of the good. I am ashamed to say it:
the priests of idols, the mimes and charioteers and harlots receive inheritances; to clerics and monks alone is this forbidden by law, and forbidden not by persecutors but by Christian princes. Nor do I complain of the law, but I grieve that we have deserved this law. The cauterizing iron is a good thing, but why the wound, that I should have need of the cautery? The provision of the law is provident and severe, and yet not even so is avarice curbed. By trust-bequests we mock the laws, and, as though the decrees of emperors were greater than those of Christ, we fear the laws and despise the Gospels. Let there be an heir, but the mother of his children—that is, of his flock, the Church, which bore, nourished, and fed them. Why do we thrust ourselves in between the mother and her children?
It is the glory of a bishop to provide for the needs of the poor; it is the shame of every priest to labour after his own riches. Born in a poor house and in a rustic hut, I who could scarcely fill my growling belly with millet and coarse bread, now turn up my nose at fine flour and honey; I know the kinds and names of fishes, I am expert on which shore a shellfish was gathered, by their flavours I can tell apart the provinces that produce the birds, and at last the very rarity of dishes, and their cost, are what delight me. Moreover I hear of certain men's shameful servility toward old men and childless old women: with their own hands they set out the chamber-pot, they lay siege to the sickbed, and they receive the foul matter of the stomach and the phlegm of the lungs.
They tremble when the physician enters, and with quivering lips ask whether the patient is any better; and if the old man rallies a little, they are in torment, and while they feign gladness their inwardly greedy mind is racked. For they fear to lose their office, and reckon the long-lived old man to the years of Methuselah. Oh how great would be their reward with the Lord, if they did not hope for a present recompense! With how much sweat is an empty inheritance sought after! With less labour the pearl of Christ might have been bought. Read the divine Scriptures often; nay rather, let the sacred reading never be laid down from your hands. Learn what you may teach; hold fast the faithful word which is according to doctrine, that you may be able to exhort in sound teaching and to confute the gainsayers.
Continue in the things which you have learned and which have been entrusted to you, knowing from whom you learned them, and being ready always to give satisfaction to everyone who asks you a reason of the hope that is in you. Let not your works belie your words, lest, when you speak in the church, someone silently answer: 'Why then do you not do these things yourself?' He is a dainty master who, with a full belly, disputes about fasting; even a robber can accuse avarice; let the mind and mouth of Christ's priest agree. Be subject to your bishop and look up to him as the parent of your soul: to love is the part of sons, to fear the part of servants; and 'If I am a father,' he says, 'where is my honour? and if I am a lord, where is my fear?' In one and the same man many titles are to be observed by you:
a monk, a bishop, an uncle. But let bishops also know that they are priests, not lords: let them honour the clergy as clergy, that the clergy in turn may render to them the honour due to bishops. That saying of the orator Domitius is well known: 'Am I,' he said, 'to regard you as a chief man, when you do not regard me as a senator?' Let us recognize that what Aaron and his sons were, that the bishop and the presbyters now are: one Lord, one temple, so let there also be one ministry. Let us always remember what the apostle Peter enjoins upon priests:
Feed the flock of the Lord which is among you, taking oversight not by constraint but willingly according to God, not for filthy lucre's sake but of a ready mind, neither as being lords over the clergy but being made examples to the flock and from the heart, that when the chief Shepherd shall appear, you may receive an unfading crown of glory. It is a most wicked custom in certain churches that the presbyters are silent and do not speak when the bishops are present, as though the bishops either envied them or did not deign to listen. 'And if,' says the apostle Paul, 'anything be revealed to another that sits by, let the first hold his peace. For you may all prophesy one by one, that all may learn and all may be comforted. And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets; for God is not the author of dissension but of peace.'
'A wise son is the glory of his father'; let the bishop rejoice in his own judgment, when he has chosen such priests for Christ. When you speak in the church, let not the shouting of the people but their groaning be stirred up; let the tears of your hearers be your praise. Let the sermon of the presbyter be seasoned with the reading of the Scriptures. I would not have you a declaimer and a ranter and a chatterer, but skilled in the mystery and most learned in the sacraments of your God. To roll out words and by rapidity of speech to win admiration from an ignorant crowd is the mark of unlearned men. The brazen brow often expounds what it does not know, and, when it has persuaded others, claims knowledge for itself as well.
Gregory of Nazianzus, once my teacher, when I asked him to explain what was meant in Luke by the Sabbath called deuteroproton, that is 'second-first', wittily jested, saying: 'I will teach you about this matter in church, where, with all the people acclaiming me, you will be forced against your will to know what you do not know; or else, if you alone keep silent, you alone will be condemned of folly by everyone.' There is nothing so easy as to deceive a cheap and unlearned rabble by a glib tongue, for the common folk marvel the more at whatever they do not understand. Consider what Marcus Tullius—to whom that most beautiful tribute was paid:
'Demosthenes robbed you of being the first orator, you robbed him of being the only one'—mark what he says in his speech for Quintus Gallius about the favour of the crowd and about unskilled public speakers: 'But at these shows'—for I am speaking of things I myself have lately experienced—'one poet holds sway, a fellow of much reading, whose are those banquets of poets and philosophers, when he makes Euripides and Menander converse together, and in another place Socrates and Epicurus—men whose ages we know to have been separated not by years but by centuries. And what applause and shouting he stirs up! For he has many fellow-pupils in the theatre who likewise never learned their letters.' Shun dark garments as much as white ones;
finery and squalor are alike to be shunned, because the one savours of luxury, the other of vainglory. Not to go about without a linen cloak, but to have no money to pay for linen garments—that is praiseworthy; otherwise it is ridiculous and full of disgrace, with a full purse, to boast that you have no handkerchief or napkin. There are those who give a little to the poor that they may receive more, and under the pretext of almsgiving seek riches: this is rather to be called a hunt than almsgiving. Thus are beasts, thus are birds, thus too are fishes caught: a little bait is placed on the hook, that the purses of matrons may be drawn out by it. The bishop, to whom the church is committed, knows whom to set over the dispensing and care of the poor.
It is better not to have what to give than shamelessly to beg. But it is also a kind of arrogance to wish to appear more merciful than Christ's bishop is. We cannot all do all things. In the church one is an eye, another a tongue, another a hand, another a foot, another an ear, a belly, and the rest. Read Paul to the Corinthians: the diverse members make up one body. Neither let a rustic and merely simple brother think himself holy for this reason, if he knows nothing, nor let the learned and eloquent man reckon holiness to lie in the tongue. Of two imperfect things it is far better to have holy rusticity than sinful eloquence. Many build the walls and take away the columns of the church:
the marble gleams, the ceilings shine with gold, the altar is set with gems, and yet there is no choosing of Christ's ministers. And let no one object to me the wealthy temple in Judaea—the table, the lamps, the censers, the dishes, the cups, the little mortars, and all the rest wrought skilfully of gold. These things were then approved by the Lord, when the priests offered victims and the blood of beasts was the redemption of sins—although all these went before as a figure. 'They were written for our sakes, upon whom the ends of the ages are come.' But now, since the poor Lord has dedicated the poverty of His own house, let us think upon the cross and we shall count riches but as dung. Why do we marvel that Christ calls mammon unrighteous?
Why do we look up to and love what Peter testifies that he did not possess? Otherwise, if we follow only the letter and the plain narrative delights us in gold and riches, then along with the gold let us observe the rest as well: let Christ's bishops marry virgin wives; however good in mind a man may be, if he has a scar and is deformed, let him be deprived of the priesthood; let leprosy of the body be preferred to vices of the soul; let us increase and multiply and replenish the earth; let us neither sacrifice the lamb nor celebrate the mystic Passover, since by the law these are forbidden to be done apart from the temple; let us pitch a tabernacle in the seventh month and sound the solemn fast with the trumpet.
But if we understand all these things by comparing spiritual things with spiritual, and knowing with Paul that the law is spiritual, and singing the words of David: 'Reveal my eyes, and I will consider the wondrous things of your law'—understanding them in such a way as our Lord Himself understood and interpreted the Sabbath—then either let us reject the gold along with the other superstitions of the Jews, or, if the gold pleases us, let the Jews also please us, whom together with their gold we must needs either approve or condemn. You must shun the banquets of worldly men, and above all of those who are swollen with honours.
It is shameful that before the doors of a priest of the crucified and poor Lord, who Himself even fed on another's food, the lictors of consuls and soldiers should keep watch, and that the governor of the province should dine better at your house than in his palace. But if you plead that you do this in order to intercede for the wretched and the oppressed, the judge of the world defers more to a self-controlled cleric than to a rich one, and venerates your holiness more than your wealth; or, if he is such a man that he will not hear clerics except over the wine-cups, I will gladly do without a favour of this kind and will entreat Christ on behalf of the judge—Christ who is more able to help; for it is better to trust in the Lord than to trust in man, better to hope in the Lord than to hope in princes.
Never smell of wine, lest you hear that saying of the philosopher: 'This is not to offer a kiss, but to give a toast.' Wine-bibbing priests both the apostle condemns and the old law forbids: 'Those who serve at the altar shall drink neither wine nor strong drink.' 'Strong drink' (sicera) in the Hebrew tongue is the name for any drink that can intoxicate, whether it is made with ferment, or apple juice, or honeycombs are boiled down into a sweet barbarian potion, or the fruit of palms is pressed into liquor, or a thicker water is strained from boiled grains. Whatever intoxicates and overturns the balance of the mind, flee it as you would wine.
Nor do I say this so as to condemn God's creature—since indeed the Lord too is called a wine-drinker, and to Timothy, whose stomach ailed him, a little sip of wine was allowed—but we demand in drinking a measure suited to age, to health, and to the constitution of the body. But if without wine I burn, and burn with youth, and am inflamed by the heat of my blood, and am of a juicy and vigorous body, I will gladly forgo the cup in which there is suspicion of poison. It is well said among the Greeks—though I know not whether it rings equally well among us: 'A fat belly does not beget a fine understanding.' Impose upon yourself as much fasting as you are able to bear. Let your fasts be pure, chaste, simple, moderate, not superstitious.
What good is it not to eat oil and to seek out certain troubles and difficulties in one's food? Dried figs, pepper, nuts, the fruit of palms, fine flour, honey, pistachios—the whole cultivation of gardens is put under strain, that we may not feed on common bread. I hear, moreover, that certain men, against the nature of things and of men, drink no water and eat no bread, but dainty broths and pounded vegetables and the juice of beets, sipped not from a cup but from a shell. For shame! Are we not ashamed of such follies, nor weary of the superstition? On top of this we even seek a reputation for abstinence amid our delicacies. The mightiest fast is water and bread; but because it has no glory, and we all live on bread and water, it is reckoned as it were no fast, being common and ordinary.
Beware lest you go bird-catching after men's petty gossip, lest you exchange the offence of God for the praise of peoples. 'If I yet pleased men,' says the apostle, 'I should not be the servant of Christ'; he ceased to please men and became the servant of Christ. Through good report and ill report, on the right hand and on the left, the soldier of Christ marches on: he is neither exalted by praise nor broken by blame, is not puffed up by riches nor cramped by poverty, and despises both joyful things and sad. 'By day the sun shall not scorch him, neither the moon by night.' I would not have you pray at the corners of the streets, lest the breath of popular favour break the straight path of your prayers; I would not have you broaden your fringes and make a show of your phylacteries, and, with your conscience protesting, be encompassed with pharisaical ambition.
It is better to carry these things in the heart than on the body, to have God as your favourer, not the eyes of men. Do you wish to know what adornments the Lord seeks? Have prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude. Let yourself be enclosed within these regions of heaven; let this four-horse team bear you, as Christ's charioteer, at full speed to the goal. Nothing is more precious than this necklace, nothing more resplendent than this variety of gems. On every side you are adorned, girded, and protected; they are to you both an ornament and a defence: the gems are turned into shields. Beware also lest you have either a tongue or ears that itch—that is, lest you either disparage others yourself or listen to others disparaging. 'Sitting,' it says, 'you spoke against your brother and against your mother's son you laid a stumbling-block;
these things you have done, and I kept silence. You thought wickedly that I would be like you; I will reprove you and set myself before your face.' It is understood: 'your words and all that you have spoken of others—so that by your own sentence you may be judged, caught yourself in the very things which you censured in others.' Nor indeed is that a just excuse: 'I cannot help doing an injury when others report it.' No one gladly reports to an unwilling hearer. An arrow is never fixed in a stone; sometimes rebounding it strikes the one who shot it. Let the slanderer learn, when he sees that you do not listen gladly, not readily to slander. 'Have no dealings with slanderers,' says Solomon, 'for destruction shall come upon them suddenly, and who knows the ruin of them both?'
the ruin, that is to say, both of him who slanders and of him who lends his ear to the slanderer. It is part of your office to visit the sick, to know the houses, the matrons and their children, and not to be ignorant of the secrets of noble men. Let it therefore be part of your office to keep not only your eyes chaste but also your tongue. Never discourse about the beauty of women, nor let one house learn through you what is done in another. Hippocrates binds his disciples by an oath before he teaches them, and compels them to swear in his own words; he extorts silence by oath, and prescribes their speech, gait, dress, and manners: how much more ought we, to whom the medicine of souls has been committed, to love the houses of all Christians as our own!
Let them know us rather as comforters in their sorrows than as table-companions in their prosperity. A cleric is easily despised who, often invited to dinner, does not refuse. Let us never accept when we ask, and rarely when asked. For somehow or other, even the very man who begs you to accept, once you have taken it, judges you the cheaper; and, wonderful to say, if you scorn him when he asks, he admires you the more. Let the preacher of continence not arrange marriages. He who reads the apostle, 'It remaineth that they also who have wives be as though they had none,' why does he compel a virgin to marry? He who is a priest of one marriage, why does he exhort a widow to be twice-married?
How can those who are bidden to despise their own possessions be managers and stewards of others' houses and estates? To snatch something from a friend is theft; to defraud the church is sacrilege. To have received what is to be distributed to the poor, and while very many are hungering, either to wish to be cautious or timid, or—what is the mark of the most open crime—to withdraw something from it, surpasses the cruelty of all robbers. I am racked with hunger, and do you judge how much is enough for my belly? Either divide at once what you have received, or, if you are a timid dispenser, dismiss the giver, that he may distribute his own goods himself. I would not have your purse full under pretext of me. No one can keep what is mine better than I. He is the best dispenser who reserves nothing for himself.
You have compelled me, dearest Nepotianus—now that the little book on virginity which I had written for holy Eustochium at Rome has been stoned—after ten years to open my mouth again at Bethlehem, and to expose myself to be pierced by all men's tongues. For either nothing ought to be written, lest we should undergo the judgment of men—which you forbade me to do—or, in writing, we must know that the darts of all who speak evil against us are to be hurled. Whom I entreat to be still and to cease from railing; for we have written not as adversaries but as friends, nor have we inveighed against those who sin, but have admonished them that they should not sin. Nor have we been severe judges against them only, but also against ourselves, and, wishing to take the mote out of another's eye, we have first cast out our own beam.
I have injured no one; no one at least has been marked out by description; my discourse has attacked no one in particular: it is a general disputation about vices. Whoever chooses to be angry with me first confesses of himself that he is such a man. LIII. TO PAULINUS THE PRESBYTER. Brother Ambrose, in bringing me your little gifts, delivered also your most delightful letter, which, at the very beginning of our friendship, gave proof of a friendship already tested and of long standing. For that is a true bond, cemented by the glue of Christ, which is brought together not by any advantage of household interest, not by the mere presence of bodies, not by crafty and fawning flattery, but by the fear of the Lord and the study of the divine Scriptures.
We read in ancient histories that certain men traversed provinces, visited new peoples, crossed seas, in order to see face to face those whom they knew from books. Thus Pythagoras visited the seers of Memphis, thus Plato traversed Egypt, and, for the sake of Archytas of Tarentum, also that coast of Italy which was once called Magna Graecia, journeying most laboriously, so that he who was a master at Athens and mighty, and by whose teaching the schools of the Academy resounded, became a foreigner and a disciple, preferring modestly to learn what was another's rather than shamelessly to thrust his own upon others. In short, while he pursued learning as though fleeing throughout the whole world, he was captured by pirates and sold, and obeyed even a most cruel tyrant;