Letters (CSEL) 1 part 71/85

The thief believed on the cross, and at once deserved to hear: 'Amen, amen I say to thee: today thou shalt be with me in paradise.' Judas falls from the height of the apostolate into the Tartarus of betrayal, and neither by the intimacy of the banquet, nor by the dipping of the morsel, nor by the grace of the kiss is he broken, so as not to betray as a mere man the one whom he had known to be the Son of God. What is cheaper than the Samaritan woman? Yet not only did she herself believe, and after six husbands find one Lord and recognize the Messiah at the well—whom the people of the Jews knew not in the temple—but she also becomes the author of salvation to many, and while the apostles are buying food, she refreshes the hungering one and sustains the weary. What is wiser than Solomon? And yet he is made a fool by the loves of women.

Salt is good, and no sacrifice is accepted without its sprinkling—whence the Apostle also enjoins: 'Let your speech be seasoned with salt'—but if it loses its savour, it is cast out of doors, and loses the dignity of its name to such a degree that it is not even useful on the dunghill, with which the fields of believers are wont to be enriched and the barren soil of souls made fat. These things we say, my son Rusticus, that at the very outset we may teach you that you have undertaken great things, that you pursue lofty things, and that, trampling upon the incitements of youth—nay, of the very time of manhood—you climb the step of perfect age; but that the road along which you enter is slippery, and that the glory to be pursued after victory is not so great as the ignominy after ruin.

I need not now lead you through the meadows of the virtues, nor labour to show you the beauty of the varied flowers—what purity the lilies possess in themselves, what the modesty of the roses holds, what the purple of the violet promises in the kingdom, what the sparkling picture of glittering gems pledges. For now, the Lord being favourable, you hold the plough-handle; now, with the apostle Peter, you have climbed up onto the roof and the terrace—Peter, who, hungering among the Jews, is filled with the faith of Cornelius, and quenches the hunger of their unbelief by the conversion of the Gentiles, and in the four-cornered vessel of the gospels, which came down from heaven to the earth, is taught and learns that all men can be saved.

And again, what he had seen in the appearance of a most white sheet is transferred to the heights, and snatches the throngs of believers from the earth to heaven, that the promise of the Lord may be fulfilled: 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.' The whole of what I desire to impart to you, taking you by the hand—what, like a seasoned sailor after many shipwrecks, I try to instruct a raw passenger—is this: that you may know on what shore the pirate of chastity lies, where is Charybdis and the root of all evils, avarice, where are the Scyllan dogs of the detractors, of whom the Apostle speaks: 'lest, biting one another, you be mutually consumed'; how, in the midst of the very calm, we may sometimes be overwhelmed, off our guard, by the Libyan Syrtes of the vices; what venomous living creatures the desert of this world nourishes.

Those who sail the Red Sea—in which it is to be wished by us that the true Pharaoh may be drowned with his army—arrive with many difficulties and perils at the city of Maximum. On both shores dwell wandering nations—nay rather, most ferocious beasts. Always anxious, always armed, they carry provisions for the whole year. All places are full of hidden rocks and most treacherous shoals, so that the lookout and the pilot sits at the very top of the mast, and thence proclaims his commands for steering and turning the ship about.

Fortunate is the voyage if, after six months, they reach the harbour of the aforesaid city, from which the ocean begins to open out—through which one scarcely reaches India in a whole year's continuous sailing, and the river Ganges, which holy Scripture names Phison, which encircles all the land of Havilah and is said to carry down many kinds of pigments from the fount of paradise. There is born the carbuncle and the emerald, and gleaming pearls, and gems for which the ambition of noble women burns; and golden mountains, which it is impossible for men to approach on account of dragons and griffins and monsters of immense bodies—so that it may be shown to us what sort of guardians avarice has. To what purpose is this? It is plain.

If the merchants of the world endure so much in order to attain uncertain and perishable riches, and keep, at the peril of their soul, the things they sought with many dangers, what must the merchant of Christ do, who, having sold all things, seeks the most precious pearl, who with all the resources of his substance buys the field in which he may find the treasure that neither thief can dig up nor robber carry off? I know that I shall offend very many, who take a general disputation about vices as an insult to themselves, and, while they are angry with me, betray their own conscience and judge far worse concerning themselves than concerning me.

For I will name no one, nor heap up the reproaches of the old comedy; who—even though he is held by the same charges—is certainly the better in this respect, that his own evils do not please him.

I hear that you have a devout mother, a widow of many years, who nourished you, who educated you as an infant, and after the studies of the Gauls—which are even most flourishing—sent you to Rome, not sparing expense, and enduring her son's absence in the hope of things to come, so that the gravity of Rome might season the richness and brilliance of Gallic speech, and might use, not spurs, but reins upon you; which we read also of the most eloquent men of Greece, who dried up the Asiatic bombast with Attic salt, and pruned back the luxuriant vines with sickles, so that the winepresses of eloquence might overflow, not with the tendril-leaves of words, but with the pressings, as it were of grapes, of sound sense. Look up to her as a parent, love her as a nurse, revere her as a holy woman.

And do not imitate the example of others, who leave their own women and hanker after strangers, whose disgrace is in the open—men who, under the names of piety, seek suspicious companionships. I have known certain women, already of more mature age, and most of them of freedman stock, to delight in young men and to seek spiritual sons, and, little by little, with shame overcome, to break out into marital licence under the feigned names of mothers. Others desert their virgin sisters and are joined to widows who are strangers. There are women who hate their own kin and are caressed by affection for those not their own, whose impatience—the index of their mind—admits no excuse, and rends the empty veils of unchastity like the threads of spiders' webs.

You may see not a few men, with loins girt, in dark tunic, with a long beard, unable to depart from the company of women, dwelling under the same roof, entering banquets together, having young maidservants in attendance, and, except for the name of nuptials, everything belonging to matrimony. Nor is it the fault of the Christian name if a pretender of religion be in vice—nay rather, it is the confusion of the heathen, when they see those things displease the churches which displease not all good men. But you, if you wish to be a monk and not merely to seem one, have care not for your family property, by renouncing which you began to be this, but for your own soul. Let the squalor of your garments be the sign of a pure mind; let a cheap tunic prove contempt of the world—provided only that your spirit be not puffed up, that your dress and your speech do not disagree.

Do not seek the soothing warmth of the baths, you who desire to extinguish the heat of the body by the cold of fasting. Let even these fasts be moderate, lest excessive ones weaken the stomach and, demanding a larger refreshment, break out into indigestion, which is the parent of lusts. Moderate and temperate food is useful both to the flesh and to the soul. See your mother in such a way that you be not compelled through her to see other women, whose faces may cling to your heart and a silent wound live beneath your breast. Know that the little maidservants who are in her service are for you a snare, since the cheaper their condition, the easier the ruin.

John the Baptist too had a holy mother and was the son of a high priest, yet he was overcome neither by affection for his mother nor by his father's wealth, so as to live in his parents' house with peril to his chastity. He lived in the desert, and with eyes longing for Christ he deigned to look upon nothing else. His garment was rough, his girdle of skin, his food locusts and wild honey—all prepared for virtue and self-restraint. The sons of the prophets—whom we read of in the Old Testament as monks—built themselves little huts beside the streams of the Jordan, and, forsaking the crowds of the cities, lived on barley-meal and wild herbs. As long as you are in your homeland, keep your little cell as a paradise; pluck the varied fruits of the Scriptures, enjoy these delights, take pleasure in their embrace.

If your eye, your foot, your hand scandalize you, cast them away. Spare no one, that you may spare your soul alone. 'Whoever shall look upon a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.' Who shall boast that he has a chaste heart? 'The stars are not clean in the sight of the Lord'—how much more men, whose life is a temptation! Woe to us, who, as often as we lust, so often do we fornicate. 'My sword,' He says, 'is made drunk in heaven'—how much more upon the earth, which brings forth thorns and thistles.

The vessel of election, in whose mouth Christ resounded, mortifies his body and subjects it to servitude; and yet he perceives the natural ardour of the flesh to fight against his own resolve, so that he is compelled to do what he does not will, and, as though suffering violence, he cries out and says: 'Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?' And do you suppose that you can pass through without a fall and a wound, unless with all watchfulness you keep your heart and say with the Saviour: 'My mother and my brethren are these, who do the will of my Father'? This cruelty is piety; nay rather, what is so pious as for a holy son to guard himself for his holy mother? She too wishes you to live, not to see you for a time, that she may see you forever with Christ.

Hannah bore Samuel not for herself, but for the tabernacle. The sons of Jonadab, who drank neither wine nor strong drink, who dwelt in tents and had as their abodes wherever the night compelled them, are recorded in the psalm as having been the first to bear captivity, because, when the army of the Chaldeans was laying Judaea waste, they were compelled to enter the cities. Let others see what they think—for each is led by his own perception—; to me a town is a prison, and solitude a paradise. Why do we desire the throngs of cities, we who are reckoned by our singleness? Moses, that he might preside over the people of the Jews, is trained forty years in the desert; a shepherd of sheep is made a shepherd of men; the apostles passed over from the fishing of the lake of Gennesaret to the fishing of men.

Then they had a father, a net, a boat: having followed the Lord, they at once left all things, daily carrying their cross and not having even a staff in their hand. This I say, so that, even if the desire for the clerical office titillates you, you may learn what you can teach, and may offer to Christ a reasonable sacrifice, lest you be a soldier before a recruit, lest you be a master before a disciple. It is not for my humble station nor for my measure to pass judgment on others and to say anything sinister concerning the ministers of the churches. Let them have their order and their rank; and if you hold it, how you must live therein the book published to Nepotian will be able to teach you.

Now we examine the cradle and habits of a monk—and of that monk who, trained in liberal studies, in his youth laid the yoke of Christ upon his neck. And first we must treat whether you ought to live alone or with others in a monastery. It is my judgment that you should have the fellowship of holy men, and not be your own teacher, nor enter without a guide upon a way you have never trodden, so that at once you turn aside to the other side and lie open to error, and walk more or less than is needful—so that by running you grow weary, or by delay fall asleep. In solitude pride quickly creeps in, and if a man has fasted a little while and seen no one, he thinks himself of some importance; and forgetful of who he is, whence he came, and whither he goes, he wanders within in body and abroad in tongue.

Against the Apostle's will he judges another's servants; whatever gluttony demands, he stretches out his hands for; he sleeps as much as he wills, does what he wills; he fears no one, thinks all beneath himself, and is more often in the cities than in his cell; and he feigns modesty among the brethren—he who jostles in the crowds of the streets. What then? Do we condemn the solitary life? By no means, for we have often praised it.

But we wish such soldiers to come forth from the training-school of the monasteries—men whom the first rudiments do not affright, who have given proof of their manner of life over a long time, who have been the least of all that they might become first of all, whom neither hunger nor fullness has ever overcome, who rejoice in poverty, whose dress, speech, countenance, and gait are a teaching of the virtues; who do not, after the fashion of certain foolish men, invent portents of demons assailing them, so as to make a marvel of themselves before the ignorant and the common people, and thereby chase after gain. We have lately seen and lamented the wealth of a Croesus, discovered at one man's death—the alms of a city, gathered as it were for the use of the poor, left behind to his kindred and heirs.

Then the iron that lay hidden in the deep floated upon the water, and among the palm trees of Marah the bitterness was shown. And no wonder: such a companion and such a master he had. I wish you therefore, and for the reasons I have set out above, not to dwell with your mother—chiefly lest either by refusing you grieve her when she offers you dainty foods, or, if you accept them, you add oil to the fire; and lest amid the throng of maidens you see by day what you may brood upon by night. Never let a book depart from your hand and your eyes; let the Psalter be learned word for word; let prayer be without ceasing; let your senses be watchful and open to no vain thoughts. Let body and mind alike be stretched toward the Lord. Conquer wrath by patience; love the knowledge of the Scriptures, and you will not love the vices of the flesh.

Nor let your mind be idle amid its various disturbances, which, if they settle in the breast, will lord it over you and lead you to the gravest sin. Do some work as well, that the devil may always find you occupied. If the apostles, though they had the right to live by the gospel, labored with their own hands lest they should burden anyone, and gave refreshment to others—from whom, in return for spiritual things, they might have reaped carnal ones—why do you not provide things to be turned to your own use? Either weave a basket of rushes or plait a hamper of pliant osiers; let the ground be hoed; let the little beds be divided by even boundaries; and when the seeds of vegetables have been cast upon them, or the plants set in rows, let irrigating waters be led in, that you may stand as a spectator of those most beautiful verses:

'Lo, from the brow of the sloping path he draws the stream; it, falling, wakes a hoarse murmur among the smooth stones, and with its bubbling tempers the parched fields.' Let barren trees be grafted, whether with buds or with slips, that a little while after you may pluck the sweet fruits of your labor. Fashion hives for bees, to which the Proverbs send you, and in tiny bodies learn the order of monasteries and the discipline of a kingdom. Let nets, too, be woven for catching fish; let books be copied, that both the hand may work for food and the soul be filled with reading. 'The idle man is all in his desires.'

The monasteries of the Egyptians keep this custom, that they receive no one without work and labor—not so much for the necessities of sustenance as for the soul's health, lest it wander in ruinous thoughts and, like Jerusalem playing the harlot, spread apart its feet to every passer-by. When I was young and the wastes of the desert hemmed me about, I could not bear the incitements of vice and the ardor of my nature; and though I broke them with frequent fasts, still my mind seethed with imaginings. To subdue it I gave myself as a pupil to a certain brother who had come to the faith from among the Hebrews, so that, after the subtleties of Quintilian, the rivers of Cicero, the gravity of Fronto, and the smoothness of Pliny, I might learn the alphabet and rehearse hissing and panting words.

What labor I spent there, what difficulty I endured, how often I despaired and how often I gave up, and, out of eagerness to learn, began again—there is witness both in my own conscience, who suffered it, and in the consciences of those who lived with me. And I thank the Lord that from the bitter seed of letters I gather sweet fruits. Let me tell another thing as well, of what I saw in Egypt. There was a young Greek in a monastery who by no continence, by no greatness of toil, could quench the flame of the flesh. In his peril the father of the monastery saved him by this device. He commanded a certain grave man to pursue the fellow with quarrels and insults, and, after the injury inflicted, to be the first to come with complaints.

When witnesses were summoned, they spoke on behalf of the man who had done the insult. The young man wept against the lie; no one else would believe the truth; only the father would craftily set up a defense of him, lest the brother be swallowed up by too great a sorrow. Why say more? Thus a year was passed, and when it was completed, the youth was asked about his former imaginings, whether he still endured any trouble. 'Good heavens,' he said, 'I am not even allowed to live—and would I take pleasure in fornicating?' Had he here been alone, by what helper would he have overcome? The philosophers of this world are wont to drive out an old love by a new, as one nail by another. This too the seven princes of the Persians did for Ahasuerus, that they might check his longing for Queen Vashti by the love of other maidens.

They remedy vice with vice and sin with sin; but let us overcome vices by the love of the virtues. 'Turn away,' he says, 'from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.' Unless we hate evil, we cannot love good. Nay rather, good is to be done that we may turn away from evil; peace is to be sought that we may flee wars. And it is not enough to seek it, unless, when we have found it and it flees, we pursue it with all our zeal—that peace which surpasses all understanding, in which is the dwelling of God, as the prophet says: 'And His place was made in peace.' And beautifully is it called a pursuit of peace, according to that word of the Apostle:

'Pursuing hospitality'—that we may invite guests not with light and hurried speech and, so to speak, with the tips of our lips, but hold fast to them with all the ardor of the mind, as though they carried away with them something of our gain and profit. No art is learned without a master. Even dumb animals and the herds of wild beasts follow their leaders. Among bees there are rulers; the cranes follow one in lettered order. There is one emperor, one judge of a province. Rome, when it was founded, could not have two brothers as kings at once, and it is consecrated by fratricide. In Rebecca's womb Esau and Jacob waged war. Each church has its single bishop, single archpriest, single archdeacon, and every ecclesiastical order rests upon its own rulers.

In a ship there is one helmsman; in a household one master; in an army, however great, the signal of one man is awaited.

And that I may not, by unrolling still more, breed weariness in my reader, through all this my discourse tends to this: to teach you that you must not be left to your own judgment, but ought to live in a monastery under the discipline of a single father and in the fellowship of many, so that from one you may learn humility, from another patience; let this one teach you silence, that one meekness; that you do not do what you will, eat what you are bidden, have as much as you receive, be clothed with what you receive, discharge the appointed tasks of your work, be subject to one to whom you would not, come weary to your bed and fall asleep even as you walk, be compelled to rise before your sleep is finished, and say the psalm in your turn—in which not sweetness of voice but affection of mind is sought, as the Apostle writes: 'I will sing with the spirit, I will sing also with the mind,' and:

'Singing in your hearts'—for he had read that it was a precept: 'Sing psalms wisely'—that you serve the brethren, wash the feet of guests, keep silent when you suffer wrong, fear the superior of the monastery as a master, love him as a parent, believe that whatever he enjoins is for your salvation, and not sit in judgment on the sentence of an elder, whose duty it is to obey and to fulfill what is commanded, as Moses says: 'Hear, O Israel, and hold your peace.' Busied with such great affairs, you will be free for no idle thoughts; and while you pass from one thing to another and task succeeds task, you will retain in your mind only that which you are compelled to do.

I myself have seen certain men who, after renouncing the world—only in their garments and in the profession of their lips, not in reality—have changed nothing of their former manner of life. Their household estate is increased rather than diminished; the same services of little slaves, the same array of the banquet; gold is eaten from glass and earthenware dishes, and amid the crowds and swarms of servants they claim for themselves the name of solitaries. But those who are poor and of slender means, and who think themselves learned, come forth into public like the litters of a procession, that they may practice a cynic's eloquence. Others, with shoulders raised on high and croaking within themselves I know not what, weigh out swelling words with eyes fixed in stupor upon the ground, so that, if you added a herald, you would think a prefecture was passing by.

There are those who, from the damp of their cells and immoderate fasting, from weariness of solitude and too much reading—while day and night they din in their own ears—are turned to melancholy and need the fomentations of Hippocrates more than our warnings. Very many cannot do without their former crafts and dealings, and, having changed the names of tradesmen, ply the same commerce—seeking not food and clothing, as the Apostle enjoins, but greater profits than men of the world. And formerly, indeed, the frenzy of sellers was restrained by the aediles—whom the Greeks call agoranomoi—and sin did not go unpunished; but now, under the title of religion, unjust gains are pursued, and the honor of the Christian name works fraud rather than suffers it.

And—what is shameful to say, but must be said, that at least in this way we may blush at our own disgrace—stretching out our hands in public, we hide gold beneath our rags, and, contrary to all men's belief, we die rich with full purses, we who have lived as though poor. For you, when you are in the monastery, it will not be permitted to do these things; and as the habit gradually takes root, you will begin to will what at first you were compelled to do, and your labor will delight you; and forgetful of things past, you will always press on toward the things before, in no way considering what evil others do, but what good you yourself ought to do. Nor indeed let yourself be led by the multitude of sinners, nor let the throng of the perishing entice you, so that you silently think: 'What then? Shall all who dwell in the cities perish?'

'Behold, they enjoy their own possessions, they serve the churches, they frequent the baths, they do not scorn perfumes—and yet they flourish in the esteem of all.' To this I have answered before, and now I will answer briefly: that in the present little work I am not disputing about clerics, but forming a monk. Holy are the clergy, and the life of all of them is praiseworthy. Act therefore, and live in the monastery, so that you may deserve to be a cleric; so that you may stain your youth with no defilement; so that you may come forth to the altar of Christ as a virgin from the bridal chamber, and have a good testimony from those outside, and that women may know your name but not know your face.

When you have come to full age—if only life attend you—and either the people or the bishop of the city elect you into the clergy, do the things that belong to clerics, and among them follow the better sort; for in every condition and rank the worst are mingled with the best. Do not leap forth quickly to writing, nor be led on by a light madness. Learn for a long time what you would teach. Do not believe your praisers—nay, do not gladly lend your ear to your mockers, who, when they have coddled you with flatteries and in a manner made you not master of your own mind, if you suddenly look back, you will catch behind you either the bent necks of storks, or ears wagged by the hand like an ass's, or the panting tongue of a dog thrust out. Disparage no one, nor think yourself holy in this, if you tear the rest to pieces.

We often accuse what we ourselves do, and, eloquent against our own selves, we inveigh against our own vices, judging mutely of the eloquent. Grunnius used to advance to speech with a tortoise's gait, and at certain intervals could scarcely catch a few words, so that you would think him to be hiccuping rather than speaking out. And yet, when the table was set and he had laid out a heap of books, with brow drawn up, nostrils contracted, and forehead wrinkled, he would snap with two little fingers, by this sign summoning his disciples to listen. Then he would pour out mere trifles and declaim against individuals: you would say he was a Longinus in criticism, a censor of Roman eloquence, marking down whomever he pleased and excluding him from the senate of the learned. This fellow, well supplied with money, pleased the more at luncheons.

And no wonder—he who was wont to bait many, and, having formed a wedge of chattering babblers clamoring around him, would go forth in public, a Nero within, a Cato without, wholly ambiguous, so that from contrary and diverse natures you would say a single monster and a new beast had been compacted together, after that poetic line: 'a lion in front, a dragon behind, and in the middle the she-goat herself.' Never, then, may you look upon such men, nor attach yourself to men of this sort, lest you incline your heart to words of malice and hear: 'Sitting, you spoke against your brother, and against your mother's son you laid a stumbling-block'; and again: 'The sons of men—their teeth are weapons and arrows'; and elsewhere: 'His words were made softer than oil, and yet they are darts'; and more openly in Ecclesiastes:

'If a serpent bite in silence, so is he who secretly disparages his brother.' But you say: 'I myself do not disparage; when others are speaking, what can I do?' We hold out such things to make excuses for our sins. Christ is not mocked by craft. It is by no means my sentence, but the Apostle's: 'Be not deceived; God is not mocked.' He looks upon the heart; we see the face. Solomon speaks in the Proverbs: 'The north wind scatters the clouds, and a sad countenance the tongues of disparagers.' For just as an arrow, if it be shot against a hard material, sometimes returns upon the one who shot it and wounds the wounder, and that is fulfilled: 'They became to me a crooked bow'; and elsewhere: 'He who casts a stone on high, it will fall back upon his own head'—so is the disparager.

When he sees the sad face of a listener—nay, not even of a listener, but of one who stops his ears lest he hear the judgment of blood—he at once falls silent, his countenance grows pale, his lips cleave together, his saliva dries up. Whence the same wise man says: 'Do not mingle with disparagers, for their destruction shall come suddenly; and who knows the ruin of both?'—namely, both of him who speaks and of him who hears the speaker. Truth does not love corners, nor does it seek whisperers. It is said to Timothy: 'Against an elder receive not an accusation hastily. But him that sins rebuke before all, that the rest also may have fear.'