勞蘇之史 第 1 章 第 3/7 段

And whenever he went out for his necessity, he would quickly go back in and stand, speaking to no one, not opening his mouth, but standing in silence;

of the work in their hands he did nothing.

So all the ascetics, beholding this, rose up in revolt against the superior, saying:

“Where did you bring us this fleshless man from, to our condemnation? Either cast him out, or know that we all withdraw.”

So having heard the matters of his manner of life, Pachomius prayed to God, that it might be revealed to him who he was.

And taking him by the hand, he led him out to the house of prayer, where the altar was, and said to him:

“You are Macarius, and you have hidden it from me.”

“I am grateful to you that you have boxed the ears of my children, so that they may not be high-minded over their own ascetic feats.

Go off, then, to your own place;

for you have sufficiently edified us;

Then, having been entreated, he withdrew.

On another occasion again he related: “Having accomplished every way of life that I desired, I then came to another desire: whence I once wished to make my mind undistracted from God for five days only.

And having resolved this, I shut up my cell and the courtyard, so as to give answer to no man, and I stood, beginning from the Monday.

So I charge my mind, saying:

‘You have there angels, archangels, the powers above, the God of all things;

do not come down below heaven.’

And having held out for two days and two nights, I so provoked the demon that he became a flame of fire and burned up everything in my cell, so that even the rush-mat on which I was standing was consumed by fire, and I thought that I was being wholly burned up.

At last, smitten with fear, I gave up on the third day, being unable to make my mind undistracted, but came down to the contemplation of the world, lest pride should be reckoned to me.”

To this holy Macarius I once came, and I found, outside his cell, a presbyter of a village lying there, whose whole head was eaten away by the affliction called cancer, and the very bone showed from the crown.

He had come to be healed, but Macarius would not receive him into his presence.

“He is unworthy of being healed;

for chastisement has been sent upon him.

But if you wish him to be healed, persuade him to desist from his liturgical ministry;

for he was officiating while committing fornication, and on this account he is being chastised.”

So when I told the afflicted man, he agreed, swearing no longer to officiate as priest.

Then Macarius received him and said to him:

“Do you believe that there is a God?” He says to him: [“Yes.”]

“Were you able to mock God?” He answered, “No.”

“If you acknowledge your sin and the chastisement of God for which you have suffered this, set yourself right for the time to come.”

So he confessed the cause, and gave his word no longer to sin nor to officiate, but to embrace the lay estate.

And so Macarius laid his hand upon him, and in a few days he was healed and grew hair again and went away whole.

Before my own eyes there was brought to him a little boy who was energized by an evil spirit.

So laying one hand on his head and the other on his heart, he prayed to such a degree until he made him hang suspended from the air.

So the boy, swelling up like a wineskin, became so inflamed that he was all erysipelas.

And suddenly crying out, he discharged water through all his senses, and when this subsided he came back again to the measure that he had been.

So Macarius gave him back to his father, having anointed him with holy oil and poured water over him, and charged him for forty days to touch neither meat nor wine.

Once thoughts of vainglory troubled this man, casting him out of his cell, and suggesting, for stewardship’s sake, that he should reach the city of the Romans (Rome) for the cure of the sick;

for grace was mightily at work in him against spirits.

And when for a long while he did not heed it, but was being violently driven, falling upon the threshold of the cell he stretched his feet outside and said:

“Drag me, demons, and haul me away;

for by my own feet I am not going;

if you can carry me off in this way, I will go.”

Swearing to them: “I lie here until evening;

though you shake me, I will by no means hearken to you.”

So having lain a long while, he rose up.

And when night came on, they again set upon him;

and filling a basket with two modii of sand and setting it on his shoulders, he kept moving about through the desert.

Now Theosebius the curator, an Antiochene by race, met him and said to him:

“What are you carrying, abba? Hand the load over to me, and do not tire yourself;

for being idle, it (the demon) is suggesting a journey to me.”

So having moved about for a long while, he entered the cell, his body worn out.

This holy Macarius related to us—for he was a presbyter—saying: “I took note, at the time of the distribution of the mysteries, that to Mark the ascetic I never myself gave the offering, but an angel would administer it to him from the altar;

I beheld only the knuckle of the hand of the one who gave.”

Now this Mark was younger, having committed the Old and New Scriptures to memory, exceedingly meek, and chaste if anyone ever was.

So one day, having a free moment, in his (Mark’s) extreme old age, I go off and sit down by his door, thinking him to be more than man, as being ancient, listening to what he says or what he does.

And being all alone within, having already reached about a hundred years and having lost his teeth, he was battling with himself and with the devil, and was saying:

“What do you want, evil old man? Behold, you have tasted oil and partaken of wine;

what more, then, do you want, you grey-haired glutton?” insulting himself.

“Is there yet anything I owe you? You will find nothing.”

And as if humming to himself, he conversed with himself;

and striking the courtyard door with her head, [a lioness] came in while he sat outside, and threw her cub down at his feet.

And the holy one, taking it and spitting upon its eyes, prayed, and immediately it recovered its sight.

And its mother, having suckled it, took it and went away.

And the next day she brought the holy one the fleece of a large sheep.

As the blessed Melania told me: “From Macarius I received that fleece as a gift.”

Now his appearance was somewhat stunted, beardless, having hair only on the upper lip and at the tip of the chin;

for through excess of asceticism not even the hair of his beard grew.

To him I once came in despondency, and I say to him:

“Abba, what shall I do? for the thoughts afflict me, saying, ‘You are accomplishing nothing; depart from here.’”

And he says to me: “Tell them:

‘For Christ’s sake I am keeping watch over the walls.’”

These few things out of many I have indicated to you concerning the holy Macarius.

Concerning Moses the Ethiopian. A certain man so called, Moses, an Ethiopian by race, black, was the slave of a certain official;

whom his own master cast out because of his great viciousness and brigandage;

for it was said that he even went as far as murders;

for I am compelled to tell the things of his wickedness, in order to show the virtue of his repentance.

whose deed too is plain in his brigandage, that he once bore a grudge against a certain shepherd who had hindered him in some affair with his dogs by night;

whom, wishing to kill, he prowled around the place where he kept the standing of his flocks;

and it was disclosed to him that he was on the far side of the Nile;

and the river being in flood and stretching about one mile, gripping the dagger in his mouth and putting his little tunic on his head, he crossed over, thus swimming the river.

Now while he was swimming across, the shepherd managed to escape his notice by burying himself in the sand.

So slaughtering four choice rams and binding them with a rope, he swam back again;

fifty miles he went off to where he had his band of confederates.

This man of such great deeds, being at last late in life pierced with compunction from some circumstance, gave himself over to a monastery, and so set himself to the work of repentance that he brought even the very demon, his confederate in evil from his youth, who had sinned together with him, to the open acknowledgment of Christ.

Among which things it is said that once robbers fell upon him while he was sitting in his cell, not knowing who he was;

all of whom, having bound them and placing them like a saddle-pack of straw upon his back, he carried into the church of the brethren, saying:

“Since it is not lawful for me to wrong anyone, what do you order concerning these?” So those men, having confessed, and recognizing that this was Moses, once famous and notorious among the robbers, glorified God; and they too renounced the world because of this man’s transformation, reasoning: “If this man, so capable and powerful among the brigands, feared God, why do we put off our salvation?” Against this Moses demons set themselves, driving him back to the old habit of his lewd fornication;

who was tempted to such a degree, as he himself related, that he was very nearly run aground from his purpose.

So coming to the great Isidore in Scetis, he brought up the matters of the warfare.

“for these are but beginnings, and on this account they have set upon you the more violently, seeking the old habit.

For just as a dog in a butcher’s shop does not leave off because of habit, but if the shop is shut and no one gives it anything, it no longer draws near;

so you too, if you persevere, the demon, growing weary, must depart from you.”

So departing from that hour he practiced asceticism more severely, and especially as to food, partaking of nothing except dry bread in the measure of twelve ounces, working a very great deal of work, and performing fifty prayers.

So having wasted away his poor body, he still remained on fire and troubled with dreams.

Again he had recourse to another of the holy men and said to him:

“What shall I do, for the dreams of my soul darken my reason according to the habit of pleasure?” He says to him:

“Since you have not withdrawn your mind from the fantasies about these things, for this reason you undergo this;

give yourself to vigil and pray soberly, and you will be set free from these things quickly.”

He, hearing this counsel too, went off into his cell and gave his word not to sleep all night long, nor to bend the knee.

So remaining in his cell for six years, all the nights he stood in the middle of the cell praying, not closing an eye;

and yet he could not get the better of the matter.

So he set himself yet another manner of life, and going out at night he would depart to the cells of the elders and the more ascetic men, and taking their water-jars secretly he would fill them with water.

For they have their water from a distance, some from two, some from five miles, others from half a mile.

So one of the nights the demon, lying in wait and no longer enduring it, struck him on the loins with a club as he bent over the well, and left him for dead, not feeling either what he had suffered or by whom.

The next day, then, someone coming to draw water found him lying there, and reported it to the great Isidore the presbyter of Scetis.

So taking him up, he carried him into the church;

and for a year he was sick, so that his body and soul barely came to be in strength.

So the great Isidore says to him:

“Cease contending, Moses, with the demons;

for there are also measures even to the manliness shown in asceticism.”

“I will by no means cease until the fantasy of the demons ceases from me.”

“In the name of Jesus Christ your dreams have ceased;

so partake of the communion with confidence (boldness);

for, lest you should boast as having overcome a passion, for this reason you were brought low under it, for your profit.”

And he went away again to his cell.

After this, being asked by Isidore some two months later, he said that he had no longer suffered anything at all.

so that these flies fear us more than the demons fear that man.

Such was the way of life of Moses the Ethiopian, who was himself reckoned among the great fathers.

And so he died at the age of seventy-five, having become a presbyter in Scetis, and leaving behind seventy disciples.

Concerning Paul. There is a mountain in Egypt leading to the utterly desolate desert of Scetis, which is called Pherme.

On this mountain about five hundred men dwell, practising asceticism;

among them was a certain Paul, so called, who lived this way of life:

he engaged in no labour, no trade, received nothing from anyone beyond what he ate.

His work and his asceticism was to pray without ceasing.

He had a fixed number of prayers—three hundred; and so he gathered as many pebbles, held them in the fold of his garment, and at each prayer cast one pebble out of the fold.

This man, coming for a meeting with holy Macarius the one called 'the urban' (Politicus), said to him:

So Macarius pressed him to say for what reason he had come.

"In a certain village there lives a virgin who has practised asceticism for thirty years;

concerning her they told me that, except on Saturday or Sunday, she never tastes food;

but spending the whole time, she draws out the weeks, eating only every five days, and offers seven hundred prayers.

And learning this I despaired of myself, that I have not been able to do more than three hundred."

Holy Macarius answered him:

"For sixty years I have had an appointed rule of saying one hundred prayers, while also working for my food and rendering to the brethren the debt of fellowship, and my conscience does not condemn me as having been negligent.

But if you, doing three hundred, are condemned by your conscience, it is clear that you plainly do not pray them with sincerity, or that you are able to pray more and do not."

Concerning Eulogius and the cripple. Cronius the presbyter of Nitria related to me: "When I was younger and, on account of acedia, had fled from the monastery of my archimandrite, I wandered until I reached the mountain of holy Antony.

He dwelt between Babylon and Heracleon in the utterly desolate region that stretches toward the Red Sea, about thirty miles from the river.

So when I came to his monastery beside the river—where his disciples Macarius and Amatas, who also buried him when he fell asleep, dwelt at the place called Pispir—I waited five days in order to meet holy Antony.

For it was said that he used to visit this monastery, sometimes every ten days, sometimes every twenty, sometimes every five, as God led him for the benefit of those who happened to be at the monastery.

Among them was a certain Eulogius, an Alexandrian living the monastic life, and another man, a cripple, who had come for the following reason.

This Eulogius was a scholar versed in the general liberal studies, who, smitten with desire for immortality, renounced the world's turmoil; and having scattered all his possessions, he kept for himself only a little money, being unable to work.

Then, being in despondency by himself, and neither willing to enter a community nor finding assurance alone, he found a certain cripple cast down in the marketplace, who had neither hands nor feet.

This man had only his tongue unimpaired—to the misfortune of those who met him.

So Eulogius, standing still, gazed at him and prayed to God, and made a covenant with God, saying: "Lord, in your name I take this cripple and will care for him until death, that through him I too may be saved.

Grant me endurance for his service."

And approaching the cripple, he said to him:

"Do you wish, good sir, that I take you into my house and care for you?" He said to him:

"Then," said Eulogius, "shall I bring a donkey and take you?" He agreed.

So, bringing a donkey, he lifted him up and carried him off to his own lodging, and was caring for him.

the cripple being nursed and worthily fed by Eulogius in his sickness.

But after fifteen years a demon assailed him, and he rose in rebellion against Eulogius;

and he began to drench the man with such blasphemies and insults, saying:

"You wretch, you runaway from your master! You stole others' goods, and you want to be saved through me!"

So that, had he had hands, he would perhaps even have hanged himself, the demon having so maddened him.

So Eulogius went off to the ascetics in the neighbourhood and said to them:

"What shall I do, for this cripple has driven me to despair? Shall I cast him off? I have given my pledge to God, and I am afraid.

But shall I not cast him off? He makes my days and nights wretched.

What then I shall do with him I do not know."

"While the great one is still alive—for so they called Antony—go up to him; put the cripple in a boat and bring him up to the monastery, and wait until he comes out of his cave, and lay the matter before him for judgement;

and whatever he tells you, abide by his decision, for God speaks to you through him."

And he heeded them, and putting the cripple into a small herdsman's skiff, he set out by night from the city, and brought him up to the monastery of the disciples of holy Antony.

And it happened the next day that the great one came at deep evening, as Cronius related, wrapped in a leather cloak.

Now when he came to their monastery, it was his custom to call Macarius and ask him:

"Brother Macarius, have any brethren come here?" He answered:

"Yes." "Are they Egyptians or Jerusalemites?" Now he had given him a sign: "If you see rather simple ones, say they are Egyptians;

but when they are more devout and more learned, say Jerusalemites."

So he asked him as usual:

"Are the brethren Egyptians or Jerusalemites?" Macarius answered and said to him:

"They are Egyptians." Holy Antony said to him:

"Make some lentils and give them to eat;"

and he would offer them one prayer and dismiss them.

But when he said "They are Jerusalemites," he would sit through the whole night, speaking to them the things pertaining to salvation.

"So on that evening," he said, "having sat down, he summoned everyone; and though no one had told him what name anyone had, in the darkness he called out and said:

'Eulogius, Eulogius, Eulogius,' three times.

That one, the scholar, did not answer, thinking some other Eulogius was being called.

"I say to you, Eulogius, the one who came from Alexandria."

"What do you command, I beg you? Why have you come?" Eulogius answered and said to him:

"He who revealed my name to you has also revealed to you the matter;

but say it before all the brethren, that they too may hear."

"This cripple I found in the marketplace;

and I gave my pledge to God that I would nurse him, and that I might be saved through him, and he through me.

Since then, after so many years, he afflicts me to the extreme, and I have thought of casting him off; for this reason I have come to your holiness, that you may advise me what I ought to do, and pray for me."

Antony said to him in a grave and stern voice:

"You would cast him off? But He who made him does not cast him off.

You cast him off? God will raise up one better than you and gather him in."

So Eulogius, falling silent, cowered down.

And leaving Eulogius again, he began to scourge the cripple with his tongue and to cry out:

"Cripple, maimed one, unworthy of earth and heaven, will you not cease fighting against God? Do you not know that it is Christ who serves you? How dare you utter such things against Christ? Was it not for Christ's sake that he enslaved himself to your service?" So, having crushed this one too, he let him be.

And having spoken to all the rest about their needs, he took aside Eulogius and the cripple and said to them:

"Do not turn aside anywhere; depart;

do not be parted from one another, but go to your cell where you have spent your time.

For God is already sending for you.

For this trial befell you because you are both near your end and are about to be counted worthy of crowns.

So do nothing else, lest the angel come and not find you in your place."

So, journeying more quickly, they came to their own cell.

And within forty days Eulogius died;

and within another three days the cripple died." Now Cronius, having spent a long time in the regions about the Thebaid, went down to the monasteries of Alexandria.

And it happened that the funeral rites of the one were being completed on the fortieth day, and those of the other on the third, by the brotherhood.

So Cronius learned of it and was amazed;

and taking the Gospel and setting it in the midst of the brotherhood, he swore an oath, relating what had happened, saying: "I was the interpreter of all these words, for the blessed Antony did not know Greek;"

"for I understood both languages, and I interpreted for them—to the others in Greek, and to him in Egyptian." And Cronius also recounted this: "On that night the blessed Antony told us that he had prayed for a whole year that the place of the righteous and of sinners might be revealed to him.

And I beheld a certain tall giant, black, reaching up to the clouds, with his hands stretched out toward heaven, and beneath him a lake the size of the sea;

and I saw souls flying up like birds.

And as many as flew up over his hands and his head were saved;

but as many as were struck down by his hands fell into the lake.

Then a voice came to me, saying:

'These souls which you see flying up over him are the souls of the righteous, which are saved into paradise;

but the others are those being dragged down into Hades, having followed after the desires of the flesh and the bearing of grudges.'"

Now Paul, coming in suddenly from the field, found them committing a shameful act, divine providence guiding Paul toward what was for his good.

And laughing with dignity, he called out to them and said:

"By Jesus, I no longer take her for myself.

Go, have her and her children;

for I am going off to become a monk."

And without saying anything to anyone, he hurried over the eight stages and went off to the blessed Antony and knocked at the door.

"I want to become a monk." Antony answered and said to him:

"You are an old man of sixty years; you cannot become a monk here;

but rather go off to a village and work, and live a laborer's life, giving thanks to God;

for you cannot endure the afflictions of the desert."

The old man answered again and said:

"Whatever you may teach me, that I will do."

"I have told you that you are old and cannot;

go off—if indeed you wish to become a monk—to a coenobium of many brothers, who are able to bear with your weakness.

For I sit here alone, eating only once every five days, and that in hunger."

With these and suchlike words he tried to drive Paul away;

and when he would not put up with him, Antony shut the door and did not come out for three days on his account, not even for necessity.

But on the fourth day, when necessity compelled him, he opened up and went out, and again said to him:

"Why do you keep wearing me down? You cannot stay here."

"It is impossible for me to die anywhere else but here."

So Antony, looking him over and seeing that he carried nothing for nourishment—no bread, no water—and had held out fasting for four days now, said, "Lest he even die and so defile my soul," and received him.

...in those days [he embraced] a way of life such as he had never [practiced] in his youth.

And having soaked palm-leaves, he said to him:

The old man plaited until the ninth hour, having toiled to make fifteen fathoms.

Now Antony, looking at it, was displeased and said to him:

"Unplait it and plait it again from the start;

imposing this irksome toil on him though he was fasting and aged, so that the old man, finding it unbearable, might flee from Antony.

But he both unplaited and again plaited the same palm-leaves, though it was harder because they had grown wrinkled.

And Antony, seeing that he neither grumbled nor lost heart nor became indignant, was deeply moved.

And when the sun was setting he said to him:

"Shall we eat a morsel of bread?" Paul said to him: ["As you wish."]

And this too won Antony over—that he did not rush eagerly to the announcement of food, but cast the decision upon him.

So setting the table, he brought loaves.

And Antony, setting out the dried biscuits, each weighing six ounces, soaked one for himself—for they were dry—and three for the other.

And Antony struck up a psalm that he knew, and having chanted it twelve times, he prayed twelve times, in order to test Paul.

But he again eagerly joined in prayer with him;

for he would have chosen, as I think, to shepherd scorpions rather than to live together with an adulterous woman.

And after the twelve prayers they sat down to eat, when the evening was far advanced.

So Antony, having eaten the one biscuit, did not touch another.

But the old man, eating more slowly, still had some of his biscuit left;

Antony waited until he should finish, and said to him:

"Eat, father, another biscuit too."

"But if you are not eating, I do not eat either;

for I too wish to become a monk."

He rose again and made twelve prayers and chanted twelve psalms.

He slept a little of the first sleep, and again rose to chant at midnight until daybreak.

So when he saw the old man eagerly following after his way of life, he said to him:

"If you can do thus every day, stay with me."

"Whether there might ever be anything more, I do not know;

but as for these things which I have seen, I do them with ease."

Antony said to him the next day:

"Behold, you have become a monk." So Antony, being fully assured after some set months that he was of a perfect soul, being exceedingly simple, with grace working together with him, made for him a cell about three or four miles away, and said to him:

"Dwell by yourself, so that you may also gain experience of demons."

So having dwelt for one year, Paul was counted worthy of grace against demons and diseases.

Among these, there was once brought to Antony an exceedingly fierce man who had a ruling-spirit demon, one that even blasphemed heaven itself.

So Antony, giving attention, said to those who had brought him:

"This is not my work;

for against this rank of the ruling order I have not yet been counted worthy of a gift of grace, but this belongs to Paul."

So Antony, going off to Paul, led them to him and said to him:

"Abba Paul, cast this demon out of the man, so that he may go away healthy to his own home."

"But what about you?" Antony said to him:

"I have no leisure for it; I have other work."

And leaving him, Antony went back again to his own cell.

So the old man, rising up and praying an effectual prayer, spoke to the one possessed by the demon:

"Abba Antony has said: Come out of the man."

But the demon cried out with blasphemy, saying: ["I will not come out!"]

So taking his sheepskin, he beat him on the back with it, saying:

"Come out! Abba Antony has said so."

The demon reviled both Antony and him again all the more violently.

"Come out, or I will go and speak to Christ!"

"By Jesus, if you do not come out at once, I will go right now and speak to Christ, and woe to you for what He will do to you!"

The demon blasphemed again, crying out:

So Paul, furious against the demon, went out of the dwelling at the very height of noon;

and the scorching heat of the Egyptians is akin to that of the furnace of Babylon.

And standing upon a rock on the mountain, he prayed and spoke thus:

"You see, O Jesus Christ, who were crucified under Pontius Pilate, that I will not come down from this rock, I will not eat nor drink until I die, unless You cast the spirit out of this man and set the man free."

And before the words of his mouth were finished, the demon cried out, saying:

"The simplicity of Paul drives me out—and where shall I go?" And immediately the spirit came out and was changed into a great serpent seventy cubits long, dragging itself away toward the Red Sea, that the saying might be fulfilled:

"The righteous man shall declare the faith he has shown."

This is the wonder of Paul, who was called "the Simple" by the whole brotherhood.

Concerning Pachon. A certain man named Pachon, having reached about his seventieth year, was dwelling in Scetis.

It came to pass that I was troubled by lust for a woman, and was distressed both by impure thoughts and by nightly fantasies;