Letters (CSEL) 1 part 59/85

For after, by rebuking crimes, I myself became a criminal, and — according to the worn proverb of the common folk, all men swearing and denying — I neither, I believe, have ears nor do I touch them, and the very walls resounded with curses against me, and they who drank wine sang psalms against me — compelled by the trouble, I learned to keep silence, judging it more right to set a guard over my mouth and a fortified door before my lips, than to incline my heart to words of malice and, while I carp at vices, to fall into the vice of detraction.» When I had said this, «It is not detraction,» he says, «to speak the truth; nor does a private reproof make a general doctrine, since either rare or none is he who falls under the guilt of this fault.

I beg you therefore, do not suffer me, worn out by so long a journey, to have come in vain. For the Lord knows that, after seeing the holy places, I had this cause above all: that by your letters you might restore me to my sister and to my mother.» And I: «Now, now,» I say, «I will do what you wish; for the letter is to cross the sea, and a discourse specially dictated can find few whom it may bite. But I warn you to keep this discourse secret. And when you have carried it as your traveling-provision, if it be heeded, let us rejoice together; but if it be scorned — which I rather suppose — I shall have wasted words, you the length of the journey.»

First I wish you to know, sister and daughter, that I write not because I suspect anything sinister concerning you, but that, lest others suspect it, I entreat your concord. Otherwise — which God forbid — if I judged you to have cleaved together by the glue of sin, I would never write, and I would know that I was telling a tale to the deaf. Next, I beseech this: that, if I write anything rather bitingly, you reckon it to be not so much of my austerity as of the disease. Rotten flesh is cured by iron and by cautery; poisons are driven out by the serpent's antidote; what pains sufficiently is expelled by a greater pain. Lastly I say this: that, even if the conscience have no wound, yet reputation has its disgrace.

Mother and daughter — names of piety, titles of dutiful office, bonds of nature, and, after God, the second covenant — it is no praise if you love one another; it is a crime that you hate. The Lord Jesus was subject to His parents: He revered the mother whose own father He was; He honored the foster-father whom He had nourished; and He remembered that He had been carried in the womb of the one, in the arms of the other. Whence also, hanging on the cross, He commends His parent to the disciple — the parent whom before the cross He had never let go. But you, daughter — for now I cease to speak to the mother, whom perhaps age and infirmity and solitude render excusable — you, I say, daughter: do you judge her house too narrow, whose womb was not too narrow for you?

For ten months you lived shut in the womb — and can you not endure one day in one bedchamber with your mother? Or can you not bear her eyes; and, because she who bore you, who nourished you and brought you to this age, more easily understands all your movements, do you flee a domestic witness? If you are a virgin, why do you fear diligent guardianship? If corrupted, why do you not marry openly? A second plank after shipwreck it is — that what you have begun ill, you should at least temper by this remedy. Nor indeed do I say this in order that after sin I should take away penance, so that what began ill should ill persevere; but because I despair of a divorce in a union of this kind. Otherwise, if after the ruin you migrate to your mother, you will more easily be able to bewail with her what you lost through her absence.

But if you are still whole and have not lost it, keep it, lest you lose it. What need is there for you to dwell in that house in which you must needs daily either perish or conquer? Does any mortal take secure sleep beside a viper? Though it may not strike, at least it disquiets. It is safer not to be able to perish than, beside a danger, not to have perished; in the one is tranquility, in the other pilotage; there we rejoice, here we escape. But perhaps you will answer: «My mother is not of good character; she craves the things of the world, she loves riches, she knows nothing of fasting, she paints her eyes with antimony, she wishes to go forth adorned, and she harms my resolve; nor can I live with such a one.»

First indeed, even if she be such as you allege, you will have a greater reward if you do not forsake such a one. She carried you long, nourished you long, and with fond piety bore the more difficult ways of your infancy. She washed the filth of your swaddling-clothes and was often defiled with unclean dung. She sat by you when you were sick, and endured for your sake what she had endured of her own loathings. She brought you to this age; she taught you to love Christ. Let not her manner of life displease you — she who consecrated you a virgin to your Bridegroom. But if she cannot be borne, and you flee her delicacies and, as you commonly are wont to say, «the mother is worldly» — you have other virgins, you have the holy choir of chastity.

Why, forsaking your mother, do you choose him who has perhaps left his own sister and mother? She is difficult, but he is easy; she is a scold, he is agreeable. And I ask whether you followed him, or afterward found him. If you followed him, it is manifest why you left your mother; if you found him afterward, you show what you could not find in your mother's lodging. A harsh teacher and one wounding me with my own sword-point, he says: «Whoever walks simply, walks confidently.» I would be silent, if my conscience bit me back, and I would not reprove my own crime in others, nor through the beam of my own eye see another's mote.

But now, since I dwell far off among brethren and enjoy their fellowship honorably under witnesses, and both see rarely and am seen rarely, it is most shameless of you not to follow the modesty of her whose example you testify that you follow. But if you say: «My own conscience suffices me; I have God as judge, who is witness of my life; I care not what men say» — hear the Apostle writing: «providing good things, not only before God, but also before men.» If anyone carps at you because you are a Christian, because you are a virgin — do not care; because you have therefore left your mother, that you might live in a monastery among virgins — such detraction is your praise. Where not wantonness but hardness is carped at in God's maiden, that cruelty is piety.

For you prefer to your mother Him whom you are bidden to prefer even to your own soul. And if she too prefer Him, she will feel you to be both daughter and sister. What then? Is it a crime to have the fellowship of a holy man? With twisted neck you drag me into court, so that I must either prove what I do not wish, or undergo the ill-will of many. A holy man never separates a daughter from her mother; he looks up to both, he venerates both. Let the daughter be ever so holy — a widowed mother is a token of chastity. If that man, whoever he is, be your coeval, let him honor your mother as his own; if older, let him love you as a daughter and subject you to a parent's discipline. It does not profit the reputation of either that you love him more than your mother, lest he be seen to have chosen in you not affection but age.

And I would say this even if you had not a brother a monk, if you lacked domestic safeguards; but now, alas for the grief, between a mother and a brother — and a widowed mother and a monk brother — why does a stranger interpose himself? It is good indeed that you know yourself both daughter and sister; but if you cannot be both, and the mother is spurned as it were harsh, at least let the brother please you. If the brother is too rough, let her who bore you be gentler. Why do you turn pale? Why are you in a heat? Why do you suffuse your face with a blush and, with trembling lips, attest the impatience of your breast? Nothing surpasses the love of a mother and a brother except the affection of a spouse alone. I hear moreover that you go around the suburban places and the pleasantnesses of the villas with kinsfolk and relatives and men of that sort.

Nor do I doubt that it is either a cousin or a sister for whose solace you are led along as a follower of a new kind — for far be it that, however near of kin and related they be, I should suspect you of angling for the company of men — I beseech you therefore, virgin, to answer me: do you go alone in the retinue of your kin, or with your lover? However shameless you may be, you will not dare to thrust him upon the eyes of the worldly. For if you do this, the whole household will sing of both you and him; the fingers of all will point you out; and that very sister or kinswoman or cousin, who to flatter you call the man «saint» and «monk» to your face, will, when she has turned herself away a little, laugh at your monstrous consort.

But if you go out alone — which I rather suppose — then surely, a girl clad in dark garments, you will walk among young male slaves, among married and betrothed women, among wanton maidens and youths with flowing hair and dressed in fine linen. Some smooth-cheeked young man will offer you his hand and support you when you are weary, and, your fingers pressed, he will either be tempted or will tempt. There will be a banquet for you among men and matrons: you will look for the kisses of others, for foretasted foods, and without any scandal to yourself you will marvel at silken and gilded robes on other women. At the very feast too, that you may eat flesh you are compelled as if against your will; that you may drink wine, God's creature is praised; that you may bathe in the baths, filthiness is alleged against you.

And when you have done anything of what they urge, they will all with one voice acclaim you pure, simple, a true lady and nobly born. Meanwhile some singer will strike up at the table, and amid psalms that run along in sweet melody, since he dares not eye the wives of others, he will look again and again at you, who have no guardian. He will speak by nods, and whatever he fears to say, he will signify by his feelings. Amid such and so many enticements of pleasures, lust tames even minds of iron, and it suffers a keener hunger in virgins, since it counts sweeter everything it does not know. The fables of the heathen relate how sailors were dashed headlong upon the rocks by the songs of the Sirens, and how at Orpheus's lyre the trees and beasts and the hard flint were softened.

Chastity is hard to keep amid banquets. A glistening skin betokens a filthy soul. As boys we read in the schools — and we have looked upon the breathing bronzes in the public squares — how a certain man, scarcely clinging to his bones, burned with unlawful loves, and lost his life before he lost the plague of it. What will you do, girl of a sound body, dainty, plump, ruddy, growing hot amid meats, amid wines and baths, next to married women, next to young men? Even if, when asked, you do not yield, yet you may reckon it a testimony to your beauty that you are asked at all. A lustful mind pursues the honorable more ardently, and suspects the sweeter that which is not permitted.

The very garment, cheap and dark, is a sign of a silent mind — if it has no wrinkle, if it is trailed along the ground so that you may seem taller, if the tunic is deliberately unstitched so that something within may show, and it covers what is foul and uncovers what is comely. The little boot too, black and shining as you walk, calls young men to you by its creaking. The breasts are compressed with bands, and the chest is more tightly bound with a crimped girdle. The hair flows down either onto the forehead or over the ears. The little mantle sometimes slips off to bare the white shoulders, and, as though it had not wished to be seen, in haste it hides what it had willingly uncovered. And when in public it covers the face as if out of modesty, by a harlot's art it shows only that which, once shown, can please the more. You will answer:

'How do you know me? and how from so far off do you cast your eyes upon me?' Your brother's tears told me this, and his intolerable, ever-recurring sobs. And would that he had lied, and had spoken this rather out of fear than as an accusation! But believe me, sister: no one who is lying weeps. It grieves him that a young man has been preferred to him — not indeed one with flowing hair, nor of silken robes, but a fop and a fine gentleman in his squalor, one who himself seals the money-bag, keeps the weaving-shop, doles out the wool, governs the household, buys whatever is needed from the market, steward and master and forestaller of the little slaves' duties, whom all the servants gnaw at, and whatever the mistress has not given, they cry aloud that he has filched.

The race of little slaves is a querulous one, and however much you give them, it is always too little for them. For they do not consider out of how much, but how much, is given, and they console their grievance solely with the disparagements that are within their power. One calls him a parasite, another an impostor, this one a legacy-hunter, another dubs him with some newfangled name. They fling it about that he sits by the couch, that he brings in midwives to the sick woman, carries the chamber-pot, warms the linens, folds the bands. Men more readily believe evil, and whatever is invented at home becomes a rumor abroad. Nor should you wonder if maidservants and slaves fabricate such things about you, when even your own mother and brother make the very same complaint.

Do therefore what I advise, what I entreat: that you be reconciled first to your mother, and then, if that cannot be, at least to your brother. Or if you so hatefully detest these names so dear, then part from him whom you are said to have preferred to your own kin. But if you cannot even do this — for you will return to your own people, if you can forsake him — then at least use your companion more honorably. Let your houses be separated and your table divided, lest slanderous men, seeing you abide under one little roof, accuse you also of having a common bed. You can both have such solace for your needs as you have wished, and in some measure be free of public infamy — though the stain must be guarded against which, according to Jeremiah, can be washed out with no natron, with no fuller's herb.

When you wish him to see you — and let him visit you — bring in as witnesses friends, freedmen, slaves. A good conscience will flee no one's eyes. Let him enter unafraid and go out secure. Silent eyes, a wordless speech, and the bearing of the whole body sometimes proclaim either trepidation or security. Open, I pray, your ears and hear the outcry of the whole city. Already you have lost your own names, and have taken surnames from each other: you are called his, and he yours. This your mother hears, and your brother, and they are ready and they beg you to separate for their sakes, and to turn the private infamy of your union into a common praise. Be you with your mother, let him be with his brother. You love your brother's companion the more boldly:

more honorably will a mother love her son's friend than her daughter's. But if you are unwilling, if with wrinkled brow you scorn my admonitions, this letter with free voice will cry out to you: 'Why do you besiege another's servant? Why do you make Christ's minister your own slave? Look at the people, gaze into the faces of individuals. That man reads in the church, and all eyes are on you — save that, with almost the license of wedlock, you glory in your own infamy, nor can you any longer be content with a secret disgrace; you call your effrontery liberty. You have gotten yourself a harlot's face; you know not how to blush.' Again you cry out that I am malicious, again suspicious, again a peddler of gossip.

Am I suspicious, am I malevolent — I who, as I said in the letter's opening, wrote for this very reason, because I did not suspect? Or is it you who are careless, dissolute, contemptuous, who, being twenty-five years of age, have so shut up within your arms, as within a net, a youth not yet well-bearded? An excellent tutor indeed, one to admonish you, to terrify you with the sternness of his brow, and, although in no age is lust safe, yet to defend even a hoary head from open dishonor! It will come, it will come, the time — the day glides on while you know it not — when this pretty fellow of yours, since women grow old quickly, especially those who are near to men, will find either a richer or a younger woman.

Then you will repent of your resolve and be weary of your obstinacy, when you have lost both your fortune and your good name, when what was ill joined shall be well divided — unless perhaps you feel secure, and, with the affection of so long a time grown together, you do not fear a parting. You too, mother, who because of your age do not fear slanders, be not so avenged as to sin. Let your daughter rather learn to be separated from you, than you to be sundered from her. You have a son and a daughter and a son-in-law — nay, a companion of your daughter; why do you seek alien solaces and rekindle fires already quenched? It is more honorable for you at least to bear with your daughter's fault than to seek an occasion for your own. Let your son the monk be with you, a bulwark of piety and of widowhood.

Why do you want a stranger's man, especially in that house which could not hold a son and a daughter? You are already of such an age that you can have grandchildren from your daughter. Invite them both to yourself. Let her who had gone out alone return with a man — I said a man, not a husband; let no one cavil: I meant to indicate the sex, not marriage — or, if she blushes and hangs back and thinks the house in which she was born too cramped, then go you to her little lodging. However narrow it be, it can more easily hold a mother and a brother than a stranger, with whom certainly she could not remain in one bedroom. Let there be in one house two women, two men.

But if that third one, your 'nurse of your old age,' is unwilling to depart and stirs up seditions and tumults, let there be a pair, let there be a threesome: your brother and son will show himself both a brother to them and a son to their mother. Let others call him stepfather and son-in-law; let him call himself foster-nurse and brother. These things I have dictated in a hurried speech, for a brief night's labor, wishing to satisfy the longing of one who asked, and as it were exercising myself upon a rhetorical theme — for that very morning at dawn there was knocking at the door the man who was about to set out — and at the same time, to show my detractors that I too can say whatever comes into my mouth. Hence I have touched but lightly on the Scriptures, nor have I woven my discourse, as I am wont to do in my other books, with their flowers.

It is an extempore composition, and poured forth with such fluency by the light of a little lamp that the scribes' hands could not keep pace with my tongue, and the volubility of my speech overwhelmed the signs and the thefts of the words. This I have said so that he who does not pardon my talent may at least pardon the haste. Letter 118. To Julian, an Exhortation. My son, your brother Ausonius, at the very point of his departure — having granted me his presence but tardily, and snatched it away swiftly, and in a moment of time said both 'hail' and 'farewell' — thought that he would return empty-handed unless he carried to you in hasty speech some trifle of mine.

Already, the passport having been issued, the public horse was being saddled, and a belt girded the noble youth clad in his crimson tunic, and yet he, setting a scribe beside me, kept compelling me to speak, that his swift hand might follow what was swiftly uttered, and the signs might catch the swiftness of my tongue. And so it is not by the diligence of a writer but by the rashness of a dictator that I break my long silence toward you, offering you the bare goodwill of my duty. It is an extempore letter, without any order of thoughts, without allurement and composition of words, so that in it you find the whole friend, nothing of the orator. You may reckon it poured out on the march, and thrust as provision upon one eager to be gone. Divine Scripture says: 'A tale out of season is like music in a time of mourning.'

Hence I too, despising the charm of the rhetorical art and the elegance of a boyish and crowd-pleasing eloquence, take refuge in the gravity of the holy Scriptures, where is the true medicine of wounds, where the sure remedies for sorrows — in which a mother receives back her only son upon the bier, and to the surrounding crowd it is said, 'The girl is not dead, but sleeps,' and the man four days dead comes forth bound at the voice of the Lord who calls aloud.

I hear that in a short space of time you have carried out to burial two little virgin daughters in almost joined funerals, and that your most chaste and most faithful wife Faustina — nay, in the warmth of faith your very sister — in whom alone, after the loss of your children, you found repose, was withdrawn from you by a sudden slumber; as if a shipwrecked man should meet with robbers on the shore, and, according to the words of the prophets, fleeing from a lion should run into a bear, and stretching out his hand to the wall should be bitten by a serpent.

There followed losses of your household estate, the devastation of the whole province by a barbarian enemy, and amid the common depopulation the private ruins of your possessions, the herds of cattle and flocks driven off, your slaves conquered and slain, and — in your one remaining daughter, whom your so frequent bereavements had made the dearer to you — a most noble son-in-law chosen, from whom, to pass over all else, you received more grief than joy. This is the catalogue of your temptations; this is the battle of the ancient foe with Julian, the raw recruit of Christ. These things, if you look to yourself, are great; if you look to the mightiest of warriors, they are but sport and the shadow of a contest. To blessed Job, after the trials of his misfortunes, a most wicked wife was reserved, that through her he might learn to blaspheme;

but from you the best was taken away, that you might lose the solace of your miseries. Yet it is one thing to endure what you would not, another to long for what you love. He, amid so many deaths of the children of his house, had but one sepulcher for his ruin, and, rending his garments to show a parent's affection, falling to the ground he worshiped and said: 'Naked came I forth from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away; as it hath pleased the Lord, so is it done. Blessed be the name of the Lord.' You — to speak most sparingly — amid the offices of many kinsmen and consoling friends, followed the funeral processions of your own.

He lost all his riches at once, and, as messengers of his misfortunes came in succession, he was struck at each blow, yet unmoved, fulfilling in himself that famous encomium of the wise man: 'Though the shattered world should fall in upon him, the ruins will strike him undismayed.' To you the greater part of your substance was left, and you are tempted only as much as you are able to bear. For you have not yet come to that degree where the whole army contends against you. Once a wealthy lord and a still wealthier father, he is suddenly bereaved and naked. And when in all these things which had befallen him he had not sinned before the Lord, nor spoken anything foolish, God, exulting in the victory of His servant and counting that man's patience His own triumph, said to the devil:

'Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him upon the earth? An innocent man, a truthful worshiper of God, one who abstains from every evil, and he still perseveres in his innocence.' Beautifully He added: 'and he still perseveres in his innocence,' because it is hard for innocence, when pressed by evils, not to grieve, and in this very thing to be endangered in one's faith — that it sees itself unjustly bearing what it suffers. To which the devil, answering the Lord, said: 'Skin for skin; and all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth thy hand and touch his bones and his flesh, and see if he will not bless thee to thy face.'

The most cunning adversary, grown old in evil days, knows that there are some things which are external and which even the philosophers of the world call adiaphora, that is, indifferent things, and that in the loss and contempt of these virtue is not made perfect; and other things which are within and, being given as part of oneself, compel him who loses them to grieve. Hence he boldly refuses assent to God's proclamation and says that by no means ought that man to be praised who has given nothing of himself but all outside himself, who for his own skin has offered the skins of his children, has laid down his purse, and enjoys the health of his body.

Hence your prudence understands that your temptations have reached only to this limit, and that you have given skin for skin, hide for hide, and are ready to give all that you have for your life, but that God's hand has not yet been stretched out against you, nor your flesh touched, nor your bones broken — at whose pain it is hard not to groan and to bless God to His face, which is to curse. Whence also Naboth in the book of Kings is said to have blessed God and the king, and for that reason is stoned by the people. But the Lord, knowing that His athlete — nay, a most valiant man — could conquer even in this last and consummate contest, said: 'Behold, I deliver him to thee; only preserve his life.'

The flesh of the holy man is given into the devil's power, but the soundness of his soul is reserved, lest, if he had struck that in which sense and the mind's judgment reside, the guilt should be not the sinner's but his who had overthrown the state of the mind. Let others praise you and celebrate your victories over the devil with panegyrics — that with cheerful face you bore the deaths of your daughters, that on the fortieth day of their falling asleep you changed your mourning garment, and the dedication of the martyr's bones gave you back white raiment, so that you did not feel the grief of bereavement which the whole city felt, but exulted at the martyr's triumph, because your most holy wife you escorted forth not as one dead but as one setting out on a journey;

but I will by no means deceive you with flattery, nor trip you up with slippery praise, but will rather speak that which it profits you to hear: 'My son, when thou drawest near to the service of God, prepare thy soul for temptation.' And when you have done all, say: 'I am an unprofitable servant; I have done what I ought to do. Thou didst take away the children whom Thou Thyself hadst given; Thou hast received back the handmaid whom Thou hadst lent me for a brief solace. I grieve not that Thou hast received her back, but I give thanks that Thou didst give her.' Once a rich young man boasted that he had fulfilled all that was commanded in the Law; to whom the Lord in the Gospel said: 'One thing thou lackest: if thou wilt be perfect, go, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and come, follow me.'

He who said he had done all cannot in his very first contest conquer his riches. Hence too the rich enter with difficulty into the kingdom of heaven, which desires inhabitants unencumbered and borne up by the lightness of wings. 'Go,' He says, 'and sell' — not part of your substance, but all that you possess — 'and give' — not to friends, not to kinsmen, not to relations, not to a wife, not to children — and I will add something more: reserve nothing for yourself out of fear of want, lest with Ananias and Sapphira you be condemned — 'but give all to the poor, and make thee friends of the unrighteous mammon, who may receive thee into everlasting tabernacles,' that you may follow me, that you may have the Lord of the world in your possession, that you may sing with the prophet:

'The Lord is my portion,' so that as a true Levite you may possess nothing of the earth's inheritance. And this I urge, if you wish to be perfect, if you wish, taking up the cross, to follow Christ, if, having laid hold of the plow, not to look back behind you, if, set upon the loftiest roof, you despise your former garments, and, that you may escape the Egyptian mistress, you leave behind the mantle of the world. Hence Elijah too, hastening to the kingdom of heaven, cannot go with his mantle, but leaves the world's garments in the world. 'But this,' you say, 'belongs to apostolic dignity, and to him who wishes to be perfect.' But why do you too not wish to be perfect? Why, being first in the world, should you not also be first in Christ's household? Or is it because you have a wife?