Letters (CSEL) 1 part 51/85

Let this be said, Laeta, most religious daughter in Christ, that thou mayest not despair of thy parent's salvation, and that by the same faith by which thou didst merit a daughter, thou mayest also win over thy father, and enjoy the blessedness of the whole house, knowing that which was promised by the Lord: 'the things that are impossible with men are possible with God.' Conversion is never late. The thief passed from the cross to paradise; Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, after the brutalizing of both heart and body and his living among wild beasts in the wilderness, recovered his human mind.

And, to pass over ancient things, lest among unbelievers they seem too fabulous — a few years ago your kinsman Gracchus, whose name sounds forth patrician nobility, when he was governing the urban prefecture, did he not overturn, break, and burn up the cave of Mithras and all the monstrous images by which the corax, the cryphius, the miles, the leo, the Perses, the heliodromus, and the pater are initiated, and, having sent these as it were beforehand as hostages, obtain the baptism of Christ? Paganism suffers desolation even in the city; the gods once of the nations remained with the horned owls and the owlets upon lonely rooftops. The standards of the soldiers bear the emblems of the cross; the purple robes of kings and the blazing gems of diadems are adorned by the picture of the saving gibbet. Now Serapis of Egypt too has become a Christian;

Marnas of Gaza mourns shut up, and continually trembles at the overthrow of his temple. From India, Persia, and Ethiopia we daily receive throngs of monks. The Armenian has laid down his quivers, the Huns learn the psalter, the frosts of Scythia grow warm with the heat of faith; the ruddy and fair-haired army of the Getae carries about the tents of the churches, and perhaps for that reason fights against us with equal battle-line, because they trust in an equal religion. I have almost slipped into another subject, and, while the wheel runs on and I mean to make a pitcher, my hand has fashioned an amphora.

For my purpose was, invited by the prayers of holy Marcella and of thyself, to direct my discourse to the mother, that is, to thee, and to teach how thou oughtest to instruct our little Paula, who was consecrated to Christ before she was born, whom thou didst receive by vows before by the womb. We have seen in our own times something out of the prophetic books: Anna changed the sterility of her belly into fecundity; thou hast exchanged a mournful fecundity for living children. I speak with confidence that thou shalt receive sons, thou who hast rendered thy first offspring to the Lord. These are the firstborn which are offered in the law. Thus was Samuel born, thus Samson sprang forth, thus John the prophet leaped and sported at the entrance of Mary.

For he heard, through the mouth of the Virgin, the words of the Lord thundering forth, and from his mother's womb was eager to burst forth to meet Him. Therefore let her who was born of a promise have an upbringing worthy of her birth from her parents. Samuel is nurtured in the temple, John is prepared in the wilderness. The one is venerable with sacred hair, drinks neither wine nor strong drink, and while still a little child converses with God; the other flees the cities, is girt with a leathern belt, is fed on locusts and wild honey, and, as a type of penance, preaches clothed in the skins of the most tortuous of animals. So must the soul be trained which is to be the temple of the Lord. Let her learn to hear nothing, to speak nothing, save what pertains to the fear of God.

Let her not understand foul words, let her be ignorant of the songs of the world, let her still tender tongue be steeped in sweet psalms. Let the wanton company of boys be kept far off; let the very girls and maidservants be kept away from association with the worldly, lest what they have learned ill, they teach worse. Let letters be made for her, whether of boxwood or of ivory, and let them be called by their own names. Let her play with them, so that even her play may be instruction; and let her not only keep the order of the letters, so that the memory of their names passes into a song, but let their very order often be jumbled among themselves, and the last mixed with the middle, the middle with the first, so that she may know them not only by sound but also by sight.

But when she begins with trembling hand to draw the stylus in the wax, either let her fingers be guided, held by another hand laid over hers, or let the letters be carved on a tablet, so that her tracings, enclosed within the margins, may be drawn along the same furrows and be unable to stray outside. Let her join syllables for a reward, and let her be enticed by such little gifts as that age can be delighted with. Let her have companions too in her learning, whom she may envy, by whose praises she may be stung. She is not to be chided if she is somewhat slow, but her talent is to be roused by praises; and let her rejoice when she has won, and grieve when she has been beaten. Above all, care must be taken lest she come to hate her studies, lest the bitterness of them, perceived in infancy, pass beyond her untutored years.

The very names, through which she will gradually grow accustomed to weave together words, let them not be haphazard, but fixed and heaped up on purpose — namely, of the prophets and apostles, and let the whole series of patriarchs from Adam descend from Matthew and Luke, so that, while she does one thing, she may be prepared for a future memory. A master of proven age and life and learning is to be chosen; nor, I think, does a learned man blush to do for a kinswoman or a noble virgin what Aristotle did for the son of Philip, so that he himself, with the lowliness of a copyist, imparted to him the first elements of letters. Things are not to be despised as trifling, without which great things cannot stand.

The very sound of the elements and the first teaching of a master is uttered otherwise from a cultivated mouth, otherwise from a rustic one. Whence thou too must take care lest thou accustom thy daughter, with the silly blandishments of women, to speak half-words, and to play in gold and purple, of which the one harms the tongue, the other the morals — lest she learn in her tender years what she must afterwards unlearn. The eloquence of the Gracchi is written to have owed much, from infancy, to the speech of their mother; the oration of Hortensia grew up in her father's bosom. That which untutored minds have drunk deep is unlearned with difficulty. Who can call back the purples of wools to their former whiteness? A new jar long retains the taste and odor with which it was first imbued.

Greek history relates that Alexander, the most powerful king and subduer of the world, could not, both in his manners and in his gait, be free of the vices of Leonides his tutor, with which as a little child he had been infected. For the imitation of evils comes readily, and, when thou canst not attain their virtue, thou quickly imitatest the vices of those. Let the nurse herself not be drunken, nor wanton, nor talkative; let her have a modest bearer, a grave foster-father. When she sees her grandfather, let her leap upon his breast, hang from his neck, and sing 'Alleluia' to him against his will. Let her grandmother snatch her; let her recognize her father with smiles; let her be lovable to all, and let the whole kindred rejoice at a rose born of themselves.

Let her learn at once how she has another grandmother too, and an aunt; for what commander, for what army she is being reared as a young recruit. Let her long for those, let her threaten thee with departure to them. Let her very bearing and dress teach her to whom she is promised. Beware lest thou pierce her ears, lest thou paint with white lead and rouge a face consecrated to Christ, lest thou weigh down her neck with pearls and gold, lest thou load her head with gems, lest thou redden her hair and thereby portend for her something of the fires of Gehenna. She has other pearls, with which, sold hereafter, she is to buy the most precious pearl.

Praetextata, once a most noble woman, at the bidding of her husband Hymetius, who was the uncle of the virgin Eustochium, changed her dress and adornment and combed her neglected hair in a waving fashion, desiring to overcome both the virgin's resolve and her mother's desire. And behold, that same night she sees in her dreams that an angel had come to her, with a terrible face threatening punishments and breaking forth these words: 'Hast thou dared to prefer thy husband's command to Christ? Hast thou dared to touch with sacrilegious hands the head of a virgin of God? Hands which even now shall wither, that tormented thou mayest feel what thou hast done, and at the end of five months thou shalt be led to hell. But if thou persevere in thy crime, thou shalt be bereaved of both husband and children at once.'

All was fulfilled in order, and a swift death sealed the wretched woman's too-late repentance. Thus does Christ avenge the violators of His temple; thus does He defend His gems and most precious ornaments. And this I have related, not because I wish to insult the calamities of the unhappy, but that I may warn thee with how great fear and caution thou oughtest to guard what thou hast promised to the Lord. Eli the priest offended the Lord on account of the vices of his children; he cannot become a bishop who has had sons wanton and not subject. But on the contrary it is written of the woman, that she shall be saved through the bearing of children, if she abide in faith and charity and sanctification with chastity.

If a perfect age, and one that is its own master, is imputed to the parents, how much more one that is at the breast and frail, and which, according to the Lord's sentence, knows not its right hand or its left — that is, knows not the difference of good and evil! Solicitous, thou providest lest thy daughter be struck by a viper; why dost thou not provide with the same care lest she be smitten by the hammer of the whole earth, lest she drink from the golden cup of Babylon, lest she go out with Dinah and desire to see the daughters of a strange region, lest she play with her feet, lest she trail her tunics? Poisons are not given save smeared round with honey, and vices do not deceive save under the appearance and shadow of virtues. 'And how,' thou wilt say, 'are the sins of the fathers not rendered to the children, nor the children's to the parents, but the soul that has sinned, that same shall die?'

This is said of those who are able to reason, of whom it is written in the Gospel: 'He is of age, let him speak for himself.' But whoever is a little child and understands only as a little child, until he comes to the years of discretion and the letter of Pythagoras leads him to the forking of the ways, his evils no less than his goods are imputed to his parents — unless perhaps you suppose that the children of Christians, if they have not received baptism, are themselves alone guilty of sin, and that the crime is not laid also to those who were unwilling to give it, especially at that time when those who were to receive it could raise no objection; just as, on the other side, the salvation of infants is the gain of their elders. Whether to offer your daughter or not lay within your own power — although your case is different, for you vowed her before you conceived her.

But to neglect her once she has been offered pertains to your own peril. He who offers a victim that is lame, mutilated, or stained with any filth is guilty of sacrilege; how much more shall he be punished who, if he is negligent, prepares a part of his own body and the purity of an unspotted soul for the King's embraces! Once she has begun to grow up a little and, after the example of her Bridegroom, to increase in wisdom, in age, and in grace before God and men, let her go with her parents to the temple of the true Father, but let her not go out of the temple with them. Let them seek her along the road of this world, among the crowds and throng of kinsfolk, and nowhere else let them find her but in the sanctuary of the Scriptures, questioning the prophets and apostles about her spiritual nuptials.

Let her imitate Mary, whom Gabriel found alone in her chamber, and who was perhaps for that reason struck with fear, because she beheld a man such as she was not accustomed to see. Let her emulate her of whom it is said: 'All the glory of the King's daughter is from within'; and let her, too, wounded by the chosen dart of love, say: 'The King has brought me into his chamber.' Let her never go outside, lest those who go about the city find her, lest they strike and wound her and, carrying off the veil of her chastity, leave her naked in her blood; rather, when someone knocks at her door, let her say: 'I am a wall, and my breasts are like a tower. I have washed my feet, I cannot defile them.' Let her not eat in public, that is, at her parents' banquet, nor look upon the foods that she might desire.

And although some think it is a greater virtue to despise a pleasure that is present, yet I judge it the more secure continence not to know what you might seek. As a boy I once read in the schools: 'You will hardly rebuke what you allow to become habitual.' Let her learn even now not to drink wine, in which is riotous excess. Before the years of robust age, heavy abstinence is dangerous for tender bodies. Until that time, if necessity should demand it, let her go to the baths, use a little wine for her stomach's sake, and be sustained by a diet of flesh, lest her feet fail before she begins to run. And I say this by way of indulgence, not by way of command, fearing weakness, not teaching self-indulgence.

Otherwise, that which Jewish superstition does in part by the abjuring of certain animals and foods, that which the Brahmans of the Indians and the gymnosophists of the Egyptians observe by feeding on a diet of barley-meal, rice, and fruit alone — why should not the virgin of Christ do it wholly? If glass is worth so much, why should not the pearl be of greater price? She who was born from a promise, let her live as those lived who were begotten of the promise. Let equal grace have equal labor also. Let her be deaf to musical instruments; let her not know why the pipe, the lyre, and the cithara were made. Let her render you daily a fixed task of the Scriptures. Let her learn by heart a set number of Greek verses. Let Latin learning follow at once;

for unless the tender mouth is trained from the very beginning, the tongue is corrupted into a foreign accent, and the mother-tongue is defiled by outside faults. Let her have you as teacher; let her untutored infancy look up to you in wonder. Let her see nothing in you or in her father that she would sin by imitating. Remember that you are the parents of a virgin, and that you can teach her more by example than by word. Flowers quickly perish; a pestilent breeze quickly ruins violets, lilies, and the crocus. Let her never go out in public without you; let her not visit the basilicas of the martyrs and the churches without her mother. Let no young man, no one with curled hair, smile upon her. Let our little virgin so keep the days of vigils and the solemn all-night watches that she does not depart even a nail's breadth from her mother.

I do not wish her to love any one of her little handmaids more than the rest, one into whose ear she frequently whispers. Whatever she says to one, let all know it. Let her have as a companion not one who is dressed up and comely, who trills a sweet song with a liquid throat, but one who is grave, pale, meanly clad, and somewhat sad. Let there be set over her some elderly virgin of approved faith, character, and chastity, who may teach her and accustom her by example to rise at night for prayer and psalms, to sing hymns in the morning, and at the third, sixth, and ninth hours to stand in the battle-line like a warrior of Christ, and, having lit her little lamp, to render the evening sacrifice. So let the day pass, so let night find her at her labor. Let reading follow prayer, and prayer succeed reading. The time will seem short that is occupied with such varied works.

Let her learn also to work wool, to hold the distaff, to place the basket in her lap, to turn the spindle and draw out the threads with her thumb. Let her scorn the webs of silkworms, the fleeces of the Seres, and gold softening into thread. Let her prepare such garments as ward off the cold, not such as, while clothing bodies, leave them bared. Let her food be a little vegetable and fine flour, and rarely small fish. And that I may not draw out the precepts of the gullet at greater length — of which I have spoken more fully in another place — let her so eat that she is always hungry, that immediately after her meal she can read, pray, and sing psalms. Long and immoderate fasts displease me, especially in tender ages — fasts to which whole weeks are joined and in which oil and fruit are avoided in the food. By experience I have learned that a little ass on the road, when it is weary, seeks by-paths.

Let the worshippers of Isis and Cybele do this, who with dainty abstinence devour Phasian birds and steaming turtledoves, lest, forsooth, they defile the gifts of Ceres. Let this be the rule in perpetual fasting: that unbroken strength be supplied for the long journey, lest, running in the first stage, we collapse in the middle. But, as I wrote before, in Lent the sails of continence are to be spread wide and the whole reins loosed to the hastening horses of the charioteer — although the condition of the worldly is one thing, that of virgins and monks another. The worldly man in Lent boils down the gluttony of his belly and, after the manner of snails living on their own juice, prepares his paunch for future feasts and fattening;

but let the virgin and the monk so send forth their horses in Lent that they remember they must always be running. Finite labor is greater, infinite labor more moderate; for in the one we take breath, in the other we advance perpetually. Whenever you go to the suburbs, do not leave your daughter at home; let her not know how, nor be able, to live without you; when she is alone, let her tremble. Let her have no conversations with worldly people, no company of wicked maidens; let her not be present at the weddings of the servants, nor mingle in the games of a noisy household. I know that some have laid down that the virgin of Christ should not bathe with eunuchs, nor with married women, because the former do not lay aside the minds of men, and the latter, with swelling wombs, present a repulsive sight.

To me, baths altogether displease in a grown virgin, who ought to blush at her own self and be unable to look upon her own nakedness. For if by vigils and fasts she macerates her body and reduces it to servitude, if she desires to extinguish the flame of lust and the incitements of a fervent age by the chill of continence, if she hastens to disfigure her natural beauty by cultivated squalor, why, on the contrary, should she rouse by the fomentations of baths the fires that have been lulled to sleep? Instead of gems or silk, let her love the divine books, in which let it be not the elaborate painting of Babylonian gold and skin that pleases, but a corrected and learned accuracy that commends itself to faith. Let her first learn the Psalter, let her divert herself with these songs, and be trained for life in the Proverbs of Solomon.

In Ecclesiastes let her grow accustomed to tread underfoot the things that are of the world; in Job let her pursue the examples of virtue and patience. Let her pass on to the Gospels, never afterward to lay them down from her hands. Let her drink in the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles with the whole devotion of her heart. And when she has enriched the storehouse of her breast with these riches, let her commit to memory the Prophets, the Heptateuch, the books of Kings and Chronicles, and the volumes of Ezra and Esther, so that at the last she may learn without danger the Song of Songs — lest, if she had read it at the outset, she should be wounded, not understanding beneath the carnal words the epithalamium of the spiritual nuptials.

Let her beware of all the apocryphal books, and if ever she should wish to read them not for the truth of doctrines but out of reverence for the miracles they contain, let her know that they are not the works of those whose names are prefixed to their titles, that much that is faulty is mixed in with them, and that it is a task of great prudence to seek gold in the mire. Let her always hold the little works of Cyprian in her hand; let her run through the letters of Athanasius and the books of Hilary with unstumbling foot. Let her take delight in the treatises and the talents of those in whose books the piety of the faith does not waver; let her read the rest in such a way that she judges them rather than follows them. You will answer:

'How can I, a woman of the world, in so great a throng of people at Rome, keep all these rules?' Do not, then, take up a burden that you cannot bear, but, after you have weaned her with Isaac and clothed her with Samuel, send her to her grandmother and aunt. Restore the most precious gem to Mary's chamber, and lay it in the cradle of the wailing Jesus. Let her be nourished in a monastery, let her be among choirs of virgins, let her not learn to swear, let her count lying to be sacrilege, let her not know the world, let her live as an angel, let her be in the flesh without the flesh, let her count all the human race as like herself, and — to say nothing of the rest — let her at least free you from the difficulty of guarding her and the peril of watching over her.

It is better for you to long for her when absent than to be in dread at every moment — with whom she is speaking, what she is saying, to whom she is nodding, whom she is glad to look upon. Hand over the little one to Eustochium, whose very wailing is now for you a prayer, hand over the future companion and heir of her holiness. Let her look upon Eustochium, let her love her, let her admire her from her earliest years — one whose speech, bearing, and gait are a teaching of the virtues. Let her be in the lap of her grandmother, who may recall in the granddaughter whatever she once sent ahead in the daughter, who by long practice has learned to nurture, teach, and guard virgins, in whose crown a hundredfold number of chastities is daily woven. Happy virgin, happy the Paula of Toxotius, who by the virtues of her grandmother and aunt is nobler in holiness than in birth!

Oh, if it were granted you to see your mother-in-law and your kinswoman, and to behold in little bodies such mighty spirits! Because of the modesty implanted in you, I would not doubt that you would go before your daughter and would change the first sentence of God by the second law of the Gospel. Would that you might esteem lightly the desire for other children and offer your very self the more to God! But since there is a time for embracing and a time to be far from embraces, and a wife has not power over her own body, and let each one remain with the Lord in that calling in which he was called, and he who is under the yoke ought so to run as not to leave his companion behind in the mire — render wholly in your offspring what for the present you have deferred in yourself.

Anna, after she had offered to the tabernacle the son whom she had vowed to God, never took him back, deeming it unseemly that a future prophet should grow up in the house of one who still desired to have other children. And so, after she conceived and bore, she did not dare to approach the temple and appear empty before the Lord, until she first paid back what she owed; and having offered such a sacrifice, she returned home and bore herself five other children, because she had borne her firstborn to God. Do you marvel at the happiness of that holy woman? Imitate her faith. I myself, if you send me Paula, promise to be both her teacher and her foster-father.

I will carry her on my shoulders; an old man, I will shape her stammering words — far more glorious than the philosopher of the world, who trained, not the king of the Macedonians who was to perish by Babylonian poison, but a handmaid and bride of Christ, to be offered to the kingdoms of heaven. CVIII. THE EPITAPH OF SAINT PAULA. If all the members of my body were turned into tongues, and all my limbs resounded with a human voice, I could say nothing worthy of the virtues of the holy and venerable Paula.

Noble in lineage, but far nobler in holiness; once powerful in riches, but now more distinguished by the poverty of Christ; a scion of the Gracchi, an offspring of the Scipios, the heir of that Paulus whose name she bears, the true and genuine progeny of Maecia Papiria, the mother of the elder Africanus — she preferred Bethlehem to Rome, and exchanged roofs gleaming with gold for the vileness of shapeless mud.

We do not mourn that we have lost such a woman, but we give thanks that we had her — nay, that we have her; for to God all things live, and whatever is referred to the Lord is reckoned in the number of the family, although the loss of her is a dwelling in the heavenly house. She, as long as she was in the body, was a pilgrim away from the Lord, and with ever tearful voice she complained, saying: 'Woe is me, that my sojourning is prolonged; I have dwelt with the inhabitants of Kedar; my soul has long been a pilgrim.'

And is it any wonder if she lamented that she dwelt in darkness — for this is what Kedar means — since the whole world is set in wickedness? And as its darkness, so also its light; and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. Whence also she often uttered this: 'I am a stranger and a pilgrim, as all my fathers were'; and again: 'I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ.' And whenever she was afflicted by the infirmity of her little body — which she had contracted by incredible abstinence and by doubled fasts — she would turn this over on her lips: 'I subdue my body and bring it into servitude, lest, while preaching to others, I myself should be found reprobate'; and: 'It is good not to drink wine and not to eat flesh'; and: 'I humbled my soul with fasting'; and:

'You have turned all my bed in my sickness'; and: 'I am afflicted in misery, while a thorn is fixed in me.' And amid the goads of pain, which she bore with wondrous patience, as if she beheld the heavens open to her, she would say: 'Who will give me wings like a dove, that I may fly away and be at rest?' I call to witness Jesus and his holy angels, and that particular angel who was the guardian and companion of this admirable woman, that I say nothing to gratify her, nothing in the manner of those who praise, but that whatever I am about to say, I say by way of testimony, and that it is less than her merits, which the whole world sings, which priests admire, which the choirs of virgins long for, which the throng of monks and paupers bewails. Does the reader wish to know her virtues briefly? She left all her own poor poorer than herself.

And it is no wonder to bring forth these things concerning kinsfolk and household — which of both sexes, from slaves and handmaids, she had changed into brothers and sisters — since she left Eustochium, a virgin and a daughter devoted to Christ, for whose consolation this little book is fashioned, far from her noble lineage, rich in faith and grace alone. Let us take up, therefore, the order of our narrative.

Let others go back further and, so to speak, from her very cradle and infant rattles, bring forth her mother Blesilla and her father Rogatus — of whom the one is the offspring of the Scipios and the Gracchi, the other is said, throughout all Greece even to this day, to draw his blood, both in pedigree and in wealth and nobility, from Agamemnon, who destroyed Troy in a ten-year siege. We will praise nothing but what is her own and is brought forth from the purest fountain of her holy mind.

Although the Lord and Savior in the Gospel teaches the apostles, when they ask what he will render to those who have left all their own for his name, that they shall receive a hundredfold at present and in the future eternal life — from which we understand that it is not a matter of praise to possess riches, but to despise them for Christ; not to be puffed up at honors, but to esteem them lightly for the faith of the Lord — truly, what the Savior promised to his servants and handmaids he has rendered in the present. For she who despised the glory of one city is celebrated in the estimation of the whole world; she whom, while she dwelt at Rome, no one outside Rome knew, hidden in Bethlehem, both the barbarian and the Roman land admires. For men of what nation do not come to the holy places?

And who among these in the holy places found anything more to marvel at among men than Paula? And just as among many gems the most precious gem sparkles, and the radiance of the sun overwhelms and darkens the little fires of the stars, so by her humility she surpassed the virtues and powers of all, and was least among all, that she might be greatest of all; and the more she cast herself down, the more she was lifted up by Christ. She lay hidden, and did not lie hidden. By fleeing glory she merited glory, which follows virtue like a shadow, and, deserting those who seek it, seeks out those who scorn it. But what am I doing? Passing over the order of my narrative, while I am held fast in particulars, I do not keep the precepts of speaking.