This I took care to intimate to Your Venerableness on account of the council — which I also did not conceal from the man himself, but faithfully disclosed to him what had been established. And if, within a year, he neglects to plead his cause — if perchance he thinks something ought to be done for himself — thenceforth let no one hear his voice. But we, most blessed lord and venerably to be received father, if we suppose that these indications of the evil conduct of clerics — especially when a bad reputation has begun to accompany them — are not to be punished except in the manner established in the council, we begin to be compelled to wish to examine things that cannot be known, and either to condemn uncertain things or to pass over things truly unknown.
I certainly judged that a presbyter — who, on a fast-day on which the church of that same place also was fasting, bidding farewell to his colleague, the presbyter of that same place, dared, at a woman of ill fame's, having no cleric with him, to remain and to dine and to sup and to sleep in one house — ought to be removed from the office of the presbyterate, fearing thenceforth to entrust to him the church of God. But if perchance it seems otherwise to the ecclesiastical judges — because it was established in council that the cause of a presbyter be terminated by six bishops — let whoever wishes commit to him the church entrusted to his charge;
I, for my part, confess that I fear to commit any people whatsoever to such men, especially those whom no good reputation defends, so that this might be able to be pardoned them — lest, if anything more pernicious should break out, I should, remiss, impute it to myself. LXVI. You ought indeed to have feared God; but because in rebaptizing the people of Mappalia you wished to be feared as a man, why should not the royal command prevail in a province, if the provincial command prevailed so much in a country estate? If you compare persons: you a landholder, he an emperor; if you compare places: you on an estate, he in a kingdom; if you compare causes: he that division may be mended, you that unity may be divided. But we do not terrify you concerning a man. For we could act so that you should pay ten pounds of gold according to the imperial commands.
Or perhaps you have nothing from which to pay what the rebaptizers were ordered to give, because you spend so much to buy those whom you may rebaptize? But we, as I said, do not terrify you concerning a man; rather let Christ terrify you. To whom I wish you to know what you would answer, if He should say to you: 'Crispinus, was the price you paid to buy the fear of the Mappalians dear, and My death to buy the love of all the nations cheap? Did that which was counted out from your worldly goods avail more for rebaptizing your tenants, than that which flowed from My side availed for baptizing My peoples?' I know you can hear more, if you lend an ear to Christ, and be admonished from your very possession how impiously you speak against Christ.
For if by human right you presume that you firmly possess what you bought with your silver, how much more firmly does Christ by divine right possess what He bought with His blood! And He indeed shall possess unshaken the whole of that concerning which it was said: 'He shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth.' But surely, how do you trust that you shall not lose what you seem to have bought in Africa, you who say that Christ, having lost the whole world, has remained in Africa alone? Why say more? If of their own will the Mappalians have crossed over into your communion, let them hear us both, so that what we say may be written down and, subscribed by us, interpreted to them in Punic; and, the fear of domination removed, let them choose what they will.
For from the things we say it will appear whether, being coerced, they remain in falsehood, or whether, willingly, they hold the truth. For if they do not understand these things, by what rashness did you lead across men who do not understand? But if they do understand, let them, as I said, hear us both, and do what they will. If any peoples too have crossed over to us, whom you think were coerced by their lords, let this be done there also: let them hear us both and choose what shall please them. But if you are unwilling for this to be done, to whom will it not appear that you do not presume upon the truth? But the wrath of God is to be guarded against, both here and in the age to come. I adjure you by Christ to answer these things. LXVII. TO HIS MOST DEAR AND MOST LONGED-FOR AND HONOURED BROTHER IN CHRIST AND FELLOW-PRESBYTER JEROME, AUGUSTINE SENDS GREETING IN THE LORD.
I have heard that my letter reached your hands; but that I have not yet been deemed worthy of a reply I would by no means charge to your love; without doubt some hindrance intervened. Hence I recognize that I ought rather to beseech the Lord to grant your will the opportunity of sending what you may write in answer, for He has already granted you the will to reply, since, whenever you wish, you will be able to do so most easily. This too has indeed been reported to me: whether I should believe it I was in doubt, yet whether on this account I should write you something I ought not to have doubted. And it is briefly this: it was suggested to your Charity by I know not what brethren, and told to me, that I had written a book against you and sent it to Rome. Know that this is false; I call our God to witness that I did no such thing.
But if perchance some things are found in certain of my writings in which I am found to have held an opinion otherwise than you, I think you ought to recognize—or, if it cannot be recognized, to believe—that they were written by me not against you, but as it seemed to me. So indeed I would say this, that I am not only most ready, if anything in my writings has disturbed you, to receive in a brotherly spirit whatever you may think to the contrary, rejoicing either in my own correction or in your own goodwill, but that I even ask and beg this of you. Oh, if only it had been granted me, if not to dwell together, at least to enjoy you as a neighbor in the Lord for frequent and sweet converse!
But since that has not been granted, I ask that you strive to preserve, and to have increased and perfected, this very thing—that in Christ we may be together as much as we can—and that you not despise a reply, however rare. Greet with my homage the holy brother Paulinianus and all the brethren who rejoice with you and concerning you in the Lord. Mindful of us, may you be heard by the Lord in every holy desire, dearest and most longed-for lord, and brother to be honored in Christ. LXVIII. TO THE TRULY HOLY LORD AND MOST BLESSED POPE AUGUSTINE, JEROME SENDS GREETING IN THE LORD. At the very moment of the departure of our holy son Asterius the subdeacon, your Blessedness's letter reached me, in which you satisfy me that you did not send a book against my littleness to Rome.
I had not heard that this was done, but copies of a certain letter, as if written to me, reached this place through our brother the deacon Sisinnius, in which you exhort me to sing a palinode over a certain passage of the Apostle and to imitate Stesichorus, who wavered between the censure and the praise of Helen, so that he who had lost his eyes by disparaging her recovered them by praising her. I frankly confess to your Dignity that, although the style and the argumentation seemed to me your own, still I judged that credit ought not to be given rashly to copies of a letter, lest perhaps, when I replied, you, being aggrieved, should justly complain that I ought first to have proved the discourse to be yours and so to reply. To the delay was added the long illness of the holy and venerable Paula.
For while we sat by her side as she languished for a long time, we almost forgot your letter, or that of him who had written under your name, mindful of that verse: 'A discourse ill-timed in grief is like music.' And so, if the letter is yours, write openly, or send more genuine copies, that without any rancor of spleen we may engage in the discussion of the Scriptures, and either correct our own error or teach that another has censured us in vain. But far be it from me to dare touch anything in the books of your Blessedness. For it is enough for me to prove my own writings and not to carp at those of others. For the rest, your prudence well knows that every man abounds in his own opinion, and that it is childish vainglory—which striplings once used to practise—to seek fame for one's own name by accusing illustrious men.
Nor am I so foolish as to think myself injured by the diversity of your expositions, since neither are you injured if we hold contrary opinions. But that is true reproof among friends, when, not seeing our own wallet, we consider, according to Persius, the pack of others. It remains that you love one who loves you, and that, being young, you do not provoke an old man in the field of the Scriptures. We have had our own times and have run as far as we could.
Now that you are running and traversing the long courses, rest is owed to us; and at the same time—that I may say it with your leave and honor, lest I seem to have proposed something to you from the poets alone—remember Dares and Entellus, and the common proverb, that a tired ox plants its foot the more firmly. These things I have dictated in sadness. Would that we were worthy of your embraces, and by mutual conference might either teach or learn something! Calpurnius, surnamed Lanarius, has sent me his revilings with his accustomed rashness, which by his zeal I have learned reached Africa as well. To these I have replied briefly in part, and have sent you copies of his little book—a fuller work I shall dispatch at the first opportunity, when it is fitting.
In it I have taken care of this, not to injure Christian reputation in anyone, but only to refute the lie and madness of a raving ignoramus. Remember me, holy and venerable Pope. See how much I love you, that even when provoked I have been unwilling to reply, and do not believe that to be yours which in another I might perhaps censure. Brother Communis suppliantly greets you. LXIX. TO THE LORD DESERVEDLY MOST BELOVED AND WORTHILY HONORABLE, AND TO OUR SON CASTORIUS WHO IS TO BE RECEIVED, ALYPIUS AND AUGUSTINE SEND GREETING IN THE LORD.
The adversary of Christians has indeed contrived, through our dearest and sweetest son your brother, to stir up a most perilous scandal against the Catholic Mother—who received you into the bosom of her love as you fled from the disinherited amputation into the inheritance of Christ—desiring, namely, to cloud with foul sadness the serenity of our joy, which has arisen for us from the good of your conversion. But the Lord our God, merciful and compassionate, consoling the afflicted, nourishing the little ones, healing the sick, permitted him to be able to do somewhat toward this end: that we might rejoice far more over the matter set right than we grieved over it when afflicted.
For it is far more glorious to have laid down the burden of the episcopate in order to avoid dangers to the Church than to have taken it up in order to hold the helm. For he who does not unworthily defend an honor once received shows that he could worthily have accepted it, had the reckoning of peace allowed. God therefore willed, even through your brother our son Maximianus, to show the enemies of His Church that there are within her bowels those who seek not their own things but the things of Jesus Christ. For he did not desert that ministry of dispensing the mysteries of God, overcome by any worldly desire, but, moved by peace-loving piety, laid it down, lest on account of his honor a foul and dangerous—or perhaps even ruinous—dissension should be born in the members of Christ.
For what could be blinder and more worthy of every execration than, for the sake of the peace of the Catholic Church, to forsake a schism, and yet to disturb that very Catholic peace by a wrangle over one's own honor? And what could be more praiseworthy and more suited to Christian charity than, having abandoned the insane pride of the Donatists, so to cleave to the inheritance of Christ that the testimony of humility might be proved by love of unity? And so, as far as concerns himself, just as we rejoice that he has been found such that no storm of this temptation could overthrow what the divine word had built up in his heart, so we hope and beseech of the Lord that by his consequent life and morals he may more and more declare how well he would have governed what he would surely have governed, had this been fitting.
Let there be repaid to him the eternal peace which has been promised to the Church—to him who understood that what was not expedient for the Church's peace was not expedient for himself. But you, dearest son, who are hindered by no such necessity from undertaking the episcopate, ought—no small joy of ours—as befits your character, to dedicate to Christ what He gave into you. For your talent, prudence, eloquence, gravity, sobriety, and the other qualities with which your morals are adorned, are gifts of God. To whom do they better do service than to Him from whom they were bestowed, that they may be both guarded and increased and perfected and rewarded? Let them not serve this world, lest they vanish with it and utterly perish.
We know that we need not deal long with you on this point, with what readiness you consider the hopes of vain men, and their insatiable desires, and the uncertain life. Cast away therefore from your soul whatever it had conceived in expectation of earthly and false felicity; labor in the field of God, where the fruit is sure, where so many things promised so long before have been fulfilled, that those which remain are most insanely despaired of. We entreat you, by the divinity and humanity of Christ, by the peace of that heavenly city—whence, as pilgrims, by temporal toil we procure eternal rest—that you succeed to the episcopate of the church of Bagai, in place of your brother who falls not ignominiously but yields gloriously.
May that people, for whom through your mind and tongue, made fruitful and adorned with the gifts of God, we hope for most abundant increases, understand in you that your brother did what he did not out of his own sloth but for the sake of its peace. This letter we have charged that it not be read to you until those to whom you are necessary already hold you fast. For we hold you by the bond of spiritual love, since you are very necessary also to our own college. But why we have not also afforded our bodily presence, you will learn afterward. LXX. TO THE LORD MOST BELOVED AND HONORABLE BROTHER NAUCELLIO, ALYPIUS AND AUGUSTINE.
When you had reported to us what answer was given by your bishop Clarentius—that is, concerning Felician of Mustis—that they did not deny that he had been condemned by them and afterward received again into his honor, but that he had been condemned though innocent, because he was absent and had proved himself to have been absent: to this we say, that he should answer to this, that it was not lawful to condemn unheard one whom the very men who condemned him now say to have been innocent. Either, then, an innocent man ought not to have been condemned, or a guilty man ought not to have been received. If an innocent man was received, an innocent man was condemned; if a guilty man was condemned, they must be arraigned as to whether he was innocent, a guilty man was received.
If they did not know, then they are guilty of rashness, because they dared to condemn an innocent man unheard, of whom they knew nothing; and from the present deed we understand that with the same rashness they condemned even their predecessors also, whom they defamed with the crime of surrender. For if an innocent man could be condemned by them, men could also be called surrenderers by them who were not surrenderers. Then this same Felician, condemned by them, for a long time communicated with Maximian. If he was innocent when he was condemned, why in later time, communicating with the criminal Maximian, did he baptize many outside their communion? Witnesses are the very men who acted before the proconsul, that this same Felician might be excluded from the basilica as being with Maximian.
It was too little, then, to have condemned an absent man, to have condemned him unheard, to have condemned, as they say, an innocent man; besides this, the proconsul was even approached against him, that he might be expelled from the church. Or, at that time, when they were expelling him from the church, they confess that they reckoned him among the condemned and the criminal and the Maximianists; when therefore he baptized men, communicating with Maximian, did he give a true baptism or a false one? If he gave a true baptism, he who communicated with Maximian, why is the baptism of the whole world accused? But if he gave a false baptism, when he communicated with Maximian, why were those whom he baptized in the schism of Maximian received together with him, and no one in your party rebaptized them? LXXI.
TO THE VENERABLE AND DESIRABLE LORD, HOLY BROTHER AND FELLOW-PRESBYTER JEROME, AUGUSTINE SENDS GREETING IN THE LORD. From the time I began to write to you and to desire your writings, no better occasion has ever presented itself to me than that my letter should be conveyed to you through so faithful and most dear a servant and minister of God as is our son the deacon Cyprian. Through him I certainly hope for your letters in such a way that I could not hope more surely for anything in this kind of affair. For neither will zeal in seeking a reply be lacking to our aforesaid son, nor grace in deserving it, nor diligence in guarding it, nor eagerness in bearing it, nor fidelity in delivering it.
Only, if in any way I deserve it, may the Lord help and be present to your heart and to my desire, that no greater will may hinder your brotherly will. Since therefore I have already sent two letters and afterward received none of yours, I wished to send those same ones again, believing that they had not reached you. But if they did reach you, and perchance yours rather could by no means reach me, send again those very writings which you have already sent, if perchance they have been preserved; but if not, dictate again what I may read—provided only that you do not find it burdensome to answer these things, which I have now long been awaiting.
The first letter also, which while still a presbyter I had prepared to be sent through a certain brother of ours, Profuturus—who afterward, having been made our colleague, has now departed from this life, and could not then himself deliver it, because immediately, while he was arranging to set out, he was detained by the burden of the episcopate and then in a short time died—even now I wished to send, that you may know how I have long burned for converse with you, and what force I suffer, in that the senses of your body are so far from me, through which my soul might approach to your soul, my sweetest brother and one to be honored among the members of the Lord.
In this letter, moreover, I add this, which we learned afterward: that you have translated Job from the Hebrew, though we already had a certain translation of yours of that prophet, turned from the Greek tongue into Latin, where nevertheless you marked with asterisks those things which are in the Hebrew and are lacking in the Greek, and with obeli those which are found in the Greek and are not in the Hebrew, with so wonderful a diligence that in certain places, beside individual words, we see stars signifying that these same words are in the Hebrew but are not in the Greek.
But in this latter translation, which is turned from the Hebrew, the same fidelity of words does not occur, and it disturbs one considering it not a little: either why in that first one such great diligence is used in fixing the asterisks, so as to indicate that even the smallest particles of speech are lacking in the Greek codices which are in the Hebrew; or why in this other, which is from the Hebrew, this has been more negligently attended to, so that these same particles should be found in their places. I wished to set down something thence by way of example, but at the hour a codex which is from the Hebrew was lacking to me. Nevertheless, since you outrun me by your genius, you understand well enough, as I think, not only what I have said, but also what I meant to say, that, the reason being given, you may expound what perplexes.
For my part, I would much rather that you translate for us the Greek canonical Scriptures which are attributed to the Seventy translators. For it will be very hard, if your translation should begin to be read more frequently in many churches, that the Latin churches should be dissonant from the Greek churches, especially because a gainsayer is easily convicted when the Greek book is produced—that is, of a most well-known tongue. But whoever, in that which has been translated from the Hebrew, is disturbed by anything unusual and alleges the charge of falsity, one scarcely or never arrives at the Hebrew testimonies by which the objection may be defended. And even if one should arrive there, who would bear that so many Latin and Greek authorities be condemned?
To this is added that the Hebrews, even when consulted, can answer otherwise, so that you alone would seem necessary, who could convict even them; but yet by what judge—it would be a marvel if you could find one. For a certain brother of ours, a bishop, when he had appointed your translation to be read in the church over which he presides, a passage in the prophet Jonah moved them, placed far otherwise by you than it was ingrained in the senses and memory of all and chanted through the successions of so many generations. So great a tumult arose among the people—especially with the Greeks reproaching and inflaming the calumny of falsity—that the bishop was compelled (for it was the city of Oea) to demand the testimony of the Jews.
But whether those men, out of ignorance or malice, answered that this was in the Hebrew codices, which both the Greeks and Latins had and spoke—what need of more? The man was compelled, as though unwilling, to correct the alleged error after great danger, lest he remain without a congregation. Whence it also seems to us that sometimes you too could have been mistaken in some places; and see of what sort this is in those Scriptures which cannot be emended by the collation of the testimonies of the customary languages. Accordingly, we give no small thanks to God for your work, in that you have translated the Gospel from the Greek, because in almost everything there is no stumbling-block when we have compared the Greek Scripture.
Whence, if anyone contentiously favors the old falsehood, when the codices are produced and collated, he is either most easily taught or refuted. And if certain very rare things justly move us, who is so hard as not easily to pardon a labor so useful, to which it does not suffice to render the recompense of praise? But what seems to you to be the reason why in many places the authority of the Hebrew codices differs one way, and that of the Greek—which is called the Septuagint—another way, I could wish you would deign to make plain. For no small weight belongs to that version which has so deserved to be spread abroad, and which the Apostles used—as not only the thing itself indicates, but I remember that you too have attested.
And through this you will profit very greatly, if you restore to Latin truth that Greek Scripture which the Seventy produced, which in various codices is so diverse that it can scarcely be tolerated, and so suspect that we hesitate to bring forward or prove anything from it, lest something else be found in the Greek. I thought this letter would be brief, but I know not how it has become so sweet to me to go forward in it, as if I were speaking with you. But I beseech you by the Lord, do not let it irk you to answer all things, and to afford me, as much as you can, your presence. LXXII. TO THE TRULY HOLY LORD AND MOST BLESSED POPE AUGUSTINE, JEROME.
You send me frequent letters and often press me to answer a certain letter of yours, copies of which reached me (as I have already written before) through the deacon Sisinnius, without your subscription; and which you signify that you first sent through brother Profuturus, and secondly through a certain other. And meanwhile Profuturus was drawn back from his journey and, made a bishop, was carried off by a swift death; while the other, whose name you keep silent, feared the perils of the sea and changed his plan of voyaging.
Since these things are so, I cannot marvel enough how it is that this very letter is said by very many to be held both at Rome and in Italy, and yet has not reached me alone, to whom alone it was sent—especially since the same brother Sisinnius said that he found it, among your other treatises, not in Africa, not with you, but in the island of the Adriatic, almost five years before this. From friendship all suspicion is to be removed, and one must so speak with a friend as with a second self.
Some of my familiars and vessels of Christ, of whom there is a very great abundance at Jerusalem and in the holy places, suggested that it was done by you not with a simple mind, but by one seeking praise and the little rumors and paltry glory of the people—that you might grow at our expense, that many might recognize that you challenge and I fear, that you write as a learned man and I keep silent as an unskilled one, and that at last one had been found who might impose a limit on my garrulity. But I, to confess frankly, at first for this reason was unwilling to reply to your Dignity, because I did not clearly believe the letter to be yours, nor—as is the common proverb about certain things—a sword smeared with honey.
Then I guarded against this, lest I should seem to reply insolently to a bishop of my own communion, and to censure some things in the letter of one censuring me—especially since I judged certain things in it to be heretical; and, last of all, lest you should justly complain and say: 'What then? Had you seen my letter and detected the signs of a familiar hand in the subscription, that you should so easily injure a friend and turn another's malice into an insult against me?' Therefore, as I have already written before, either send the same letter subscribed with your own hand, or cease to provoke an old man hiding in his little cell.
But if you wish either to display or to exercise your learning, seek out young men, both eloquent and noble, of whom there are said to be very many at Rome, who can and dare to engage with you and to draw the yoke with a bishop in the disputation of the holy Scriptures. I, once a soldier, now a veteran, ought to praise your victories and those of others, not myself again to do battle with an exhausted body—lest, if you frequently impel me to write, I recall that history, how Fabius Maximus broke Hannibal, who was exulting with youthful spirit, by his own patience. 'Age bears away all things, the mind as well. Often, as a boy, I remember, I passed the long suns in singing. Now so many songs are forgotten to me; the very voice now flees from Moeris.'
And, that I may rather speak from the holy Scriptures: that Barzillai the Gileadite, delegating the benefits and all the delights of King David to his young son, showed that old age ought neither to seek these things nor to accept them when offered. But as for your swearing that you have not written a book against me nor sent to Rome one that you have not written—but that if perchance certain things are found in your writings which differ from my opinion, I was injured not by you, but that what seemed right to you was written by you—I beg that you hear me patiently. You did not write the book. And how then were the writings of my censure by you delivered to me through others? Why does Italy have what you did not write? By what reasoning do you demand that I write back to those things which you deny you have written?
Nor am I so dull that, if you have thought differently, I should think myself injured. But if you reprove my words in close combat, and demand a reason for my writings, and compel me to emend what I have written, and challenge me to a palinode, and would restore my eyes to me—in this friendship is injured, in this the laws of intimacy are violated. That we may not seem to contend childishly, and to furnish our respective partisans or detractors with matter for strife, I write these things, because I desire to love you purely and in a Christian manner, and to retain nothing in my mind that differs from my lips.