Letters (CSEL) 1 part 54/85

Therefore, according to the traditions of the churches and the apostle Paul, this is to be answered: that we shall rise again unto a perfect man and unto the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ, in which age the Jews assert that Adam too was created and in which we read that the Lord and Saviour rose again' — and many other things which from both Testaments I brought forth to the choking of the heretic. From which day she began so to detest the man and all who were of the same dogma, that she proclaimed them with public voice enemies of the Lord. And these things I have said, not that I might briefly refute the heresy, to which reply must be made in many volumes, but that I might show the faith of so great a woman, who preferred to undergo perpetual enmities of men rather than by harmful friendships to provoke the offence of God.

Let me then say, as I had begun: nothing was more teachable than her wit. She was slow to speak, swift to hear, mindful of that precept: 'Hear, O Israel, and be silent.' She held the Scriptures by memory and, though she loved the historical sense and called it the foundation of truth, she rather followed the spiritual understanding, and with this crowning covering she protected the edification of the soul. In short, she compelled me to read through with her, expounding, both the Old and the New Testament together with her daughter. This, denying it out of modesty, on account of her assiduity and frequent requests I granted, that I might teach what I had learned not from myself — that is, from presumption, the worst of teachers — but from illustrious men of the Church.

Wherever I hesitated and frankly confessed that I did not know, she would by no means acquiesce in me, but by continual questioning compelled me to indicate, out of many strong opinions, which seemed to me the more probable. Let me relate another thing too, which to rivals may perhaps seem incredible: she wished to learn the Hebrew tongue, which I from my youth learned in part with much labour and sweat and by tireless meditation do not abandon, lest I myself be abandoned by it; and she attained it so well that she could sing the psalms in Hebrew and utter the speech without any peculiarity of the Latin tongue.

Which indeed to this day we discern in her holy daughter Eustochium, who so always clung to her mother and obeyed her commands that she never slept apart from her, never went out, never took food without her, nor had even a single coin in her own power, but rejoiced that both her paternal and maternal little substance was distributed by her mother to the poor, and believed piety towards her parent to be her greatest inheritance and riches. I ought not to pass over in silence with how great joy she exulted, that she heard Paula, her little granddaughter, born of Laeta and Toxotius — nay, conceived by a vow and the promise of future virginity — in her cradle and rattles, with lisping tongue, sing Alleluia, and break the names of grandmother and aunt in half-spoken words.

In this one thing only she had a longing for her homeland: that she might know her son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter renounce the world and serve Christ. This she obtained in part; for the granddaughter is reserved for Christ's bridal veil, and the daughter-in-law, giving herself to eternal chastity, follows her mother-in-law's works by faith and almsgiving, and strives at Rome to express what the other fulfilled at Jerusalem. What are we doing, O soul? Why do you dread to come to her death? Already too long a book is being forged, while we fear to reach the end, as though, while we are silent and occupied in her praises, her death could be deferred. Thus far we have sailed with prosperous winds, and the gliding keel has furrowed the ruffled expanses of the sea;

now the discourse runs upon rocks, and with the swelling mountains of the waves the present shipwreck of both monasteries is threatened, so that we are compelled to say: 'Master, save us, we perish,' and that other: 'Arise, why sleepest thou, O Lord?' For who could with dry eyes narrate Paula dying? She fell into a most grievous sickness — nay rather she found what she desired, that she might leave us and be more fully joined to the Lord. In this illness the piety of her daughter Eustochium, ever proved towards her mother, was the more approved by all.

She herself sat by the little bed, held the fan, supported the head, placed the pillow beneath, rubbed the feet with her hand, warmed the stomach, arranged the soft bedding, tempered the hot water, brought the towel, forestalled the offices of all the maidservants, and whatever another had done she counted as subtracted from her own reward. With what prayers, with what laments and groaning did she run to and fro between her lying mother and the Lord's grotto, that she might not be deprived of so great a companionship, that she might not live in her mother's absence, that she might be carried on the same bier! But, O the frail and perishable nature of mortals, and, unless the faith of Christ raise us to heaven and the eternity of the soul be promised, the condition of the body is one with the beasts and cattle!

The same falling-asleep is for the just and the impious, the good and the evil, the clean and the unclean, the one who sacrifices and the one who does not sacrifice. As is the good, so also is he who sins; as is he who swears, so also is he who fears an oath. Alike both men and cattle are dissolved into embers and ash. Why do I long delay, and by lingering on other things make my grief the longer? The most prudent of women felt death drawing near, and, while the rest of her body and limbs grew cold, and the warmth of the soul alone throbbed in that holy and sacred breast, nonetheless, as though she were setting out to her own and forsaking strangers, she whispered those little verses: 'Lord, I have loved the beauty of thy house, and the place of the habitation of thy glory,' and: 'How lovely are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts!'

'My soul longs and faints for the courts of the Lord,' and: 'I have chosen to be abject in the house of my God, rather than to dwell in the tabernacles of sinners.' And when she was asked by me why she kept silent, why she would not answer when I called out, whether she was suffering any pain, she answered in the Greek tongue that she had no discomfort, but perceived all things quiet and tranquil. After this she fell mute, and with closed eyes, as though already despising human things, right up to the breathing-out of her soul she repeated the same little verses, so faintly that I could scarcely hear what she said; and holding her finger to her mouth she traced the sign of the cross upon her lips. Her spirit had failed and she gasped toward death; and her soul, eager to burst forth, turned into praises of the Lord that very rattle by which the life of mortals is ended.

There were present the bishops of Jerusalem and of other cities, and an innumerable multitude of priests of lower rank and of Levites. The whole monastery of virgins and the choirs of monks had filled the place. And straightway, as she heard the Bridegroom calling: 'Arise, come, my neighbour, my beautiful one, my dove, for lo, the winter is past, the rain is gone,' she joyfully answered: 'The flowers have appeared in the earth, the time of pruning is come,' and: 'I believe I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living.' Thenceforth there were not howlings and lamentation, as is wont to be done among men of the world, but the psalms of the monks in diverse tongues resounded in swarms.

And being borne by the hands of the bishops — the stronger of them putting their necks beneath the bier — while some pontiffs carried before her lamps and tapers, and others led choirs of psalm-singers, she was laid in the midst of the church of the Saviour's cave. The whole throng of the cities of Palestine came together for her funeral. What cell of the monks hidden in the desert kept its man back? What secret of the maidens' chambers concealed its virgin? He deemed it sacrilege who had not rendered the last office to such a woman. Widows and the poor showed the garments furnished by her, after the example of Dorcas; the whole multitude of the needy cried out that they had lost a mother and a nurse.

And what may be wondered at, no pallor had changed her face, but a certain dignity and gravity had so filled her countenance that you would think her not dead but sleeping. In Greek, Latin, and Syriac speech the psalms sounded in order, not only for three days and until she was buried beneath the church and beside the Lord's grotto, but throughout the whole week they proclaimed to all who had come her funeral and, to those who believed, their own tears. Her venerable virgin daughter Eustochium, like one weaned, could not be torn from her parent over her mother: to kiss her eyes, to cling to her face, to embrace the whole body, and to wish to be buried together with her mother.

Jesus is witness that not even a single coin was left by her to her daughter, but, as I have already said before, a great debt left behind, and — what is harder than this — an immense multitude of brothers and sisters, whom both to sustain is arduous and to cast off is impious. What is more wondrous than this virtue: a woman of the noblest family, once of great wealth, who with such faith lavished all away that she came almost to the utmost destitution? Let others boast of their moneys, of coins heaped into the treasury of God, of gifts hanging by golden cords: no one gave more to the poor than she who left nothing for herself. Now she enjoys riches and those good things which neither eye has seen nor ear has heard nor have entered into the heart of man.

We grieve for our own part, and shall rather seem to envy her glory, if we should wish to weep longer for one who reigns. Be secure, Eustochium; you are enriched with a great inheritance. The Lord is your portion; and, that you may rejoice the more, your mother is crowned with a long martyrdom. Not only the shedding of blood is reckoned in confession, but the spotless service of a devoted mind is also a daily martyrdom. That crown is plaited of roses and violets, this one of lilies. Whence also in the Song of Songs it is written: 'My kinsman is white and ruddy,' bestowing the same rewards on the victors both in peace and in war. Your mother, I say, has heard together with Abraham:

'Go forth from your land and from your kindred, and come into the land which I will show you'; and through Jeremiah He commanded, 'Flee from the midst of Babylon and save your souls.' And until the day of her death she never turned back to Chaldea, nor did she long for the fleshpots of Egypt or its rich meats; but, escorted by choirs of virgins, she was made a fellow-citizen of the Saviour, and, ascending from little Bethlehem to the heavenly kingdoms, she says to the true Naomi: 'Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.' This book I have dictated for you in the course of two brief night-vigils, laboring under that same grief which you also endure. For as often as I wished to fix my pen to the page and to trace out the promised work, so often did my fingers stiffen, my hand fall, and my senses grow faint.

And so this rough and unadorned discourse, without any elegance or charm of words, bears witness to the vow of the writer. Farewell, Paula, and aid with your prayers the last old age of your worshipper. Your faith and your works join you to Christ; being now present with Him, you will more readily obtain what you ask. I have raised a monument more lasting than bronze, which no lapse of time can destroy. I have engraved an epitaph upon your tomb, which I have appended to this volume, so that wherever our discourse shall reach, the reader may know that you are praised, that you are buried in Bethlehem. The inscription of the tomb: 'She whom Scipio begot, whom the parents of Paulus brought forth, the offspring of the Gracchi, the renowned descendant of Agamemnon, lies in this mound; men of old called her Paula.'

'The mother of Eustochium, the first of the Roman senate, she followed the poverty of Christ and the fields of Bethlehem.' And at the entrance of the cave: 'Do you look with scorn upon this narrow tomb hewn from the cleft rock? It is the resting-place of Paula, who now holds the heavenly kingdoms. Leaving her brother, her kinsfolk, Rome and her fatherland, her riches and her offspring, she is buried in this Bethlehem grotto. Here is your manger, O Christ, and here the Magi bearing mystic gifts offered them to a Man and to a God.' The holy and blessed Paula fell asleep on the seventh day before the Kalends of February, on the third day of the week, after the setting of the sun. She was buried on the fifth day before the same Kalends, in the consulship of Honorius Augustus for the sixth time and of Aristaenetus. She lived in her holy calling at Rome for five years, and at Bethlehem for twenty years.

She completed her whole span of life in fifty-six years, eight months, and twenty-one days. LETTER 109. TO THE PRESBYTER RIPARIUS. Now that I have received your letter, not to answer would be a mark of pride, but to answer, of rashness. For you ask me about matters which it is a sacrilege either to utter or to hear. You say that Vigilantius — who is called by this name by antiphrasis, since he would more rightly be called Dormitantius (the Sleeper) — has once again opened his foul mouth and poured out his most filthy stench against the relics of the holy martyrs, and calls us who receive them 'cinder-worshippers' and idolaters, because we venerate the bones of dead men.

O unhappy man, to be bewailed with every fountain of tears, who in saying these things does not understand that he is a Samaritan and a Jew, men who hold the bodies of the dead to be unclean, and who suspect that even the vessels which have been in the same house are defiled — following the letter that kills and not the spirit that gives life. But we, I do not say the relics of the martyrs, but not even the sun and the moon, not the angels, not the archangels, not the seraphim, not the cherubim, nor any name that is named both in the present age and in that which is to come, do we worship and adore, lest we serve the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever.

But we honour the relics of the martyrs in order to worship Him whose martyrs they are; we honour the servants, that the honour of the servants may redound to the Lord, who says: 'He who receives you receives me.' Are then the relics of Peter and Paul unclean? Shall the little body of Moses be unclean, which according to the Hebrew truth was buried by the Lord Himself? And as often as we enter the basilicas of the apostles and prophets and of all the martyrs, do we so often venerate the temples of idols, and are the candles lit before their tombs the marks of idolatry? I will say something further, that may recoil upon the head of their author and either heal his mad brain at last or destroy it, lest by such great sacrileges the souls of the simple be overthrown.

Was then the Lord's body also unclean when it was laid in the tomb, and did the angels who wore white garments keep watch over a dead and defiled corpse — so that after so many ages Dormitantius might dream, nay, might belch forth his most unclean drunkenness, and with Julian, the persecutor of the saints, either destroy the basilicas or turn them into temples? I marvel that the holy bishop, in whose parish the man is said to be a presbyter, gives way to his frenzy, and does not with the apostolic rod and rod of iron shatter this useless vessel and deliver it over to the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved. Let him remember that saying: 'You saw a thief and you ran with him, and you set your portion with adulterers.' And in another place:

'In the morning I destroyed all the sinners of the land, that I might cut off from the city of the Lord all who work iniquity.' And again: 'Did I not hate those who hate you, O Lord, and pine away over your enemies? With a perfect hatred I hated them.' If the relics of the martyrs are not to be honoured, how do we read: 'Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints'? If their bones defile those who touch them, how did the dead Elisha raise a dead man and give him life — which according to Vigilantius lay there unclean? Were then all the camps of the army of Israel and of the people of God unclean, because they carried the bodies of Joseph and of the patriarchs in the wilderness and brought back unclean ashes to the holy land?

Was Joseph too, who went before as a type of our Lord and Saviour, a wicked man, because with such great devotion he carried Jacob's bones to Hebron, so as to join his unclean father to unclean grandfather and great-grandfather, and to couple a dead man with the dead? His tongue ought to be cut out by physicians — nay rather, his mad head should be cured, so that he who knows not how to speak may at length learn to keep silent. I, I myself, once saw this monstrous man, and I wished to bind the madman with the testimonies of the Scriptures as with the chains of Hippocrates; but he departed, he withdrew, he escaped, he broke away, and amid the waves of the Adriatic and the Alps of King Cottius he cried out against us in his ranting. For whatever a madman utters must be called mere bawling and clamour. Perhaps in silent thought you rebuke me, asking why I inveigh against one who is absent.

I confess my grief to you: I cannot patiently listen to so great a sacrilege. For I have read of the lance of Phinehas, the sternness of Elijah, the zeal of Simon the Canaanite, the severity of Peter who slew Ananias and Sapphira, and the constancy of Paul, who condemned Elymas the magician, who resisted the ways of the Lord, to eternal blindness. It is no cruelty to show piety for God's sake. Hence it is said in the Law: 'If your brother, or your friend, or the wife who is in your bosom, should try to seduce you from the truth, let your hand be upon them, and you shall shed their blood and take away the evil from the midst of Israel.' I will say it again: Are then the relics of the martyrs unclean?

And what did the apostles suffer, that with such great funeral pomp they went before the unclean body of Stephen and made great lamentation over him, so that their mourning might be turned into our joy? For as to your saying that he abhors vigils, in this too he acts against his own name, in that Vigilantius (the Watchful) wishes to sleep and does not hear the Saviour saying: 'Could you not thus watch one hour with me? Watch and pray, that you enter not into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.' And in another place the prophet sings: 'At midnight I rose to give thanks to you for the judgments of your righteousness.'

We also read in the Gospel that the Lord passed the whole night in prayer, and that the apostles, shut up in prison, kept watch the whole night, so that as they sang psalms the earth was shaken, the keeper of the prison believed, and the magistrates and the city were terrified. Paul says: 'Continue in prayer, watching in it'; and in another place: 'in watchings often.' Therefore let Vigilantius sleep, and while sleeping let him be smothered with the Egyptians by the destroyer of Egypt; but let us say with David: 'He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep,' that there may come to us the Holy One and the Watcher, whose name is interpreted 'vigilant.' And if ever, on account of our sins, He should sleep, let us say to Him: 'Arise, why do you sleep, O Lord?' Let us rouse Him, and, as the little ship is tossed by the waves, let us cry out:

'Master, save us, we perish!' I had wished to dictate more, were it not that the brevity of a letter imposes upon us the modesty of silence, and if only you had been willing to send us the ditties of his very books, so that we might know what we ought to write in reply. But as it is, I have only beaten the air, and I have laid bare not so much his faithlessness — which is plain to all — as our own faith. But if you should wish us to write a longer book against him, send me his ravings and follies, that he may hear John the Baptist proclaiming: 'Already the axe is laid to the roots of the trees. Every tree that does not bear good fruit shall be cut down and cast into the fire.' LETTER 110. THE LETTER OF AUGUSTINE TO JEROME.

To his venerable lord and most longed-for brother and fellow-presbyter Jerome, Augustine sends greeting in the Lord. Although I suppose that, before you received this letter, my earlier letter came into your hands — the one I sent by the servant of God, our son the deacon Cyprian, by which you would most certainly recognise that the epistle was mine, copies of which you mentioned had reached you there (whence I now judge that I have begun to be struck and buffeted by your reply, as by the great and sharp gauntlets of Entellus, and to be tossed about like an over-bold Dares) — yet now I reply to that very letter of yours which you deigned to send me by our holy son Asterius.

In it I found many tokens of your most benevolent charity toward me, and again certain indications of some offence you have taken at me. And so, where I was soothed as I read, there I was at once struck; and I marvel at this above all: that whereas you say you thought it wrong to give hasty credence to the copies of my letter, lest perchance, being wounded by your reply, I should justly complain that you ought first to have proved the discourse to be mine and so to have written back — yet afterward you bid me, if the letter is mine, to write openly, or to send more accurate copies, so that we may engage in the discussion of the Scriptures without any rancour of temper. For by what means can we engage in this discussion without rancour, if you are preparing to wound me?

Or, if you are not preparing to do so, how could I, being not wounded by you, justly complain that you ought first to have proved the discourse to be mine and so to have written back — that is, and so to have wounded me? For unless you had wounded me by writing back, I could not justly complain. Accordingly, when you write back in such a way as to wound, what room is left us in the discussion of the Scriptures for engaging without any rancour? For my part, far be it from me to be wounded, if by sure reasoning you should be willing and able to show me that you have understood some passage from the apostle's letter, or anything else of the holy Scriptures, more truly than I; nay rather, far be it from me not to count it among my gains, with thanksgiving, if I should be either instructed by your teaching or corrected by your amendment.

But nevertheless, my dearest brother, unless you thought yourself wounded by my writings, you would not think that I could be wounded by your reply. For in no way should I have supposed this of you — that, not thinking yourself wounded, you would yet write back so as to wound. Or if, when you did not so write, I was thought capable of being wounded through my own excessive folly, in this very thing you have plainly wounded me, in that you so judged of me. But in no way would you rashly believe me to be such a man — one you never found to be so — you who were unwilling rashly to believe even the copies of my letter, though you knew my style.

For if you rightly saw that I would justly complain, should you rashly believe to be my letter what was not mine, how much more justly should I complain that I myself was rashly supposed to be such a man as he who supposed it did not know me to be! By no means, then, would you so far slip as to think that I, who am not so foolish, could be wounded even by such a reply of yours, when you were not writing back in such a way as to wound me. It remains, therefore, that you intended to wound me by writing back, if by certain proof you had known that letter to be mine. And so, since I do not believe that you would think me to be justly wounded, it remains that I acknowledge my sin — that I first wounded you by that letter, which I cannot deny to be mine.

Why then do I strive against the current of the stream, and not rather ask for pardon? I beseech you therefore, by the meekness of Christ, that if I have wounded you, you forgive me, and do not in turn requite evil for evil by wounding me. But you would wound me, if you should keep silent about my error, which perhaps you have found in my deeds or words. For if you should censure in me things that are not to be censured, you wound yourself more than me — which be far from your character and holy calling, that you should do this out of a will to wound, faulting in me something with a slanderous tooth which with truthful mind you know is not to be faulted. And through this, either with a benevolent heart you will reprove even what is free from fault, if you think it ought to be reproved, or with fatherly affection you will soothe one whom you cannot cast off.

For it may happen that something appears otherwise to you than the truth holds, provided only that nothing be done by you otherwise than charity holds. And I shall most gratefully receive a most friendly reproof, even if I did not deserve to be reproved, in a matter which can rightly be defended; or I shall at once acknowledge both your benevolence and my own fault, and, as far as the Lord grants, be found in the one thankful, in the other amended. Why then should I perhaps dread your words, hard indeed but surely wholesome, as the gauntlets of Entellus? That man was beaten, not treated; and therefore he was overcome, not healed. But I, if I receive your medicinal correction calmly, shall feel no pain.

But if human weakness, or my own, cannot help being somewhat saddened even when I am truly reproved, it is better that the swelling of the head should ache while it is being cured, than that, while it is spared, it should not be healed. For this is what he saw keenly who said that enemies who quarrel are often more useful than friends who fear to chide. For the former, while they wrangle, sometimes say true things which we may correct; but the latter show less freedom of justice than they ought, while they fear to embitter the sweetness of friendship. Wherefore, even though I am, as you seem to think, an ox wearied perhaps by bodily old age, yet not in vigour of mind, sweating at fruitful labour on the Lord's threshing-floor — behold, here I am: if I have said anything wrong, plant your foot more firmly.

The weight of your age ought not to be burdensome to me, so long as the chaff of my fault is threshed out. Accordingly, that which you set at the end of your letter, I read or recall with the sigh of great longing. 'Would that,' you say, 'we might deserve your embraces, and by mutual conference either teach or learn something!' But I say: Would that at least we dwelt in neighbouring regions of the earth, so that, if our conversations cannot be mingled, at least our letters might be more frequent!

But as it is, we are so far removed by the vast distance of place from the presence of our minds, that I remember I wrote to your holiness as a young man about those words of the apostle to the Galatians, and behold, already an old man I have not yet earned a reply; and copies of my letter have more easily reached you, by I know not what chance forestalling them, than the letter itself for which I took such care. For the man who then received it neither delivered it to you nor brought it back to me. Yet so great a light appears to me in those letters of yours which have been able to come into our hands, that there is nothing among my studies I would prefer, if I could, than to cleave to your side. And since I cannot do this, I think of sending to you one of our sons in the Lord to be instructed;

if in this matter too I should earn a reply from you. For neither is there in me, nor can there now be, so great a knowledge of the divine Scriptures as I see to be in you; and if I have any measure of ability in this matter, I spend it, such as it is, upon the people of God. But to have leisure to instruct the studious more diligently than the people hear cannot at all be mine, because of ecclesiastical occupations. We do not know what slanderous writings against your name have reached Africa. We have heard, however, that you deigned to send a reply to those slanders. When I had read it, I confess, I grieved much that between persons so dear and intimate, joined by a bond of friendship most well known to almost all the churches, so great an evil of discord had arisen.