This work once seemed to Erasmus not to be alien to the style of Tertullian, so far, says Vallarsius, as one may catch the scent of it from his fragments: for it is rather affected and somewhat harsh, though weighty in its sentiments. Others think, perhaps even more fittingly, that it belongs, by the diction of the letter that follows, to Saint Maximus of Turin (since none now denies that letter is his), so that it approaches it in style, yet without ascribing it to him with certainty. For my part, though I do not yet dare pronounce upon this matter, I nevertheless incline more toward their opinion, that he who wrote these things sustains the character of a bishop, who says at the very outset that he is occupied by the religious necessity of the Lord's affairs.
Among the spurious works of Saint Maximus we also place the letters formerly attributed to the divine Jerome, and two of them published under his name. Compare in the preface the weight of the arguments which impelled us to render this judgment against the opinion of Vallarsius and others. Nothing else remains for us to add, except that we have taken the variants from codex X of Shelf XIX, on parchment, in folio, of the fifteenth century, page 265, of the Medicean Laurentian library, and from the Roman edition of the Letters of Saint Jerome, published by Peter de Maximis in the year 1468. Chapter I. — Although I know most surely that your experience does not need the relief and support of another's consolation:
since you yourself, by the felicity of a vigorous and warm spirit, cherish the weaknesses and the hardships of an ailing body and the numbness of stiffened limbs, and by a physician's method heal and compose them; nevertheless, amid adversities a safeguard, amid diseases a remedy, amid cares a solace, in the waves the oarage of another's hand, is ever sought and desired. For the fruit of a brother's consolation is without doubt a part of the greatest remedies: and the kindling of words, by the sweetness of those who console, introduces relief to fainting spirits. And even if not in the members of the body, yet in the recesses and hidden parts of the soul, by spiritual endeavor it composes the man, and bears in, like a physician, soundness, and aids the efforts of exhausted strength beneath the burden of long-continued pressures:
especially since it is written: A brother helping a brother shall be exalted (Prov. 18). Therefore, since the religious necessity of the Lord's affairs so holds me occupied that no opportunity is granted me to relieve your hardships by frequent bodily visits, it pleased me, as you asked, to soothe with some consolation of letters trials of virtue so long-drawn—nay rather, to visit for the benefit of your salvation, and to advance a soul grounded in Christian virtue into the greatest strength. We who strive to seize the spoil of the heavenly kingdoms and the treasure of an everlasting reward cannot be victors without some contest.
For never does a virtue that is soft and unacquainted with combat ascend the palm-bearing summit of victory, nor receive the prize from adversities subdued—one who judges the vilest life of his own body dearer than victory. For neither is he shaken by the fear of death, for whom out of death life is born: it is precious to him even to shed his blood; it is his happiness to fight against unhappiness, of the highest health to bear bitter wounds, and he reckons the very loss of limbs to be the greatest gain. And what is the utmost, I will say it: it is glorious for him in the very contest to return his palm-bearing soul to his Creditor. For it is better, as reason determines, that what is owed to nature be paid to virtue.
They must be borne, brother, all things must therefore be borne, by which the Lord willed to prove you by a most protracted affliction, and to appoint you to great rewards. Chapter II. — THE INFIRM ONE: What spirit, its strength not yet failing, could bear these unavoidable calamities, and the assaults of ruinous disaster, and hostile diseases, which, as far as I can see, are now to die together with the body itself? JEROME: He must needs contend and struggle with dangers whom the storm has caught among the waves. And although no one willingly suffers or bears danger, yet under the weight of danger, when necessity compels, he is hardened. THE INFIRM ONE: But another anxiety comes upon me, which, with sorrows doubled, entangles my senses, and lays upon me, biting cares beside cares, cares inexplicable.
For it moves me that it has fallen to me alone to fight with such trials and with the combat of so obstinate a disease, when I have known others to be corrected with milder blows and to have come forth victors in a brief struggle. Why has the Lord not appointed for me the contest along with the rest? Why has He not chastised me as the others? JEROME: First, being set in so arduous a contest, you ought not to think of lowly things. For lesser are the rewards for lesser battles. Where, in short, strong things are commanded to the strong, a stronger recompense of reward follows the stronger; and therefore the strong man judges it a disgrace to be matched with an inferior. For great is he who has conquered great things; it belongs to the greatest devotion to endure the greatest things, it is of immense virtue to overcome immense things.
For by more eminent merits he will excel the rest in the sight of the king, whom the heat of wars has most greatly troubled, and who has, when overcome, rendered him a victor. There is at hand, in the very conflict, a spoil suited to the quality of the combat, deservedly appointed for the victor. Kings impose burdens according to a man's strength in the camp's reckoning: physicians dispense remedies according to the causes. He who is to be cured does not tell the physician by what rule he is to be cured; nor does the soldier choose whither he is to be sent, nor the slave with what scourge he is to be chastised. For what depends on the judgment of a superior is not in the power of the subject.
Therefore we who are governed by a supernal power, and are engaged among the manifold miseries of the world in being corrected, it is not for us to choose from the power of the Lord either the strokes or the other contests which we may conquer by enduring: just as it is not for slaves to choose from their masters the kinds of scourgings. For never does the license of the one who strikes depend on the judgment of the one who hangs beneath it. It belongs to power to correct, it belongs to a servile condition to lie subject. It is the king's part to impose the burden, and the soldier's part to bear it.
Since indeed by the king himself nothing unjust is done, who, imposing warlike toils on his legions according to the quality of their strength, sends the strong to strong deeds and commands them to things fitting for lesser men, so that neither is the inferior kept from the contest of a more powerful man against his own strength, nor is the latter, his merits degraded, humbled by the contest of an inferior. And while this is done, so that no one is diminished in another's place or utterly succumbs, he desires all to be victors. Nor is he an enemy who strikes, that he may take away the danger and shut out wounds with a wound. Nor is paternal affection opposed, if it teach children by the embraces of scourges. For paternal scourgings are the exercises of a harmless love.
Therefore, since the chastisement of a correcting love is the cause, seeing that it descends from tenderness, love the physician who strikes, whose wound is the mother of medicine. For tenderness brings forth nothing impious, so that the one spiritually cured may, when virtues are embraced, enclose the fruit of tenderness. I, says the Lord, will kill, and I will make to live, I will strike, and I will heal (Deut. 32). Chapter III. — THE INFIRM ONE: But you have said: Does tenderness then strike? JEROME: It strikes indeed; lest it be judged impiety, if it does not correct the one who offends. For since there is not lacking in man that which is to be cured, it strikes in order to cure, as are the hands of the physician, which, by much wounding, confer health, not without the murmuring of the patient.
In this way we too, under the care of the healer's stroke, amid the very straits of grief, so murmur against the Lord, as the wounded against the physician, who are healed and yet feel pain. Approach therefore, brother, approach the remedy of endurance, whereby you may be able to lighten a burden heavy with temptations, and, while you suffer, to overcome dangers. Let a firm spirit console and heal the prostrate members. Let virtue hold the kingdom within a body held captive by anxieties, so that the soul, shut in by dangers, may flourish in the very freedom of virtue, which, in the conflict of temptation, was long ago commanded by the legal trumpets to be prepared; and, in the very footstep of the Lord's service, to be armed against hostile calamities.
Son, it says, coming to the service of God, stand in justice and in fear, and prepare your soul for temptation (Sir. 2). Therefore, since temptation is prolonged for our benefit, it is not to be wondered at if its heat befalls us. As the most blessed Peter admonishes in his epistle and says: Do not wonder at the fiery trial coming upon you, which is for your temptation, lest you fall away amid the various waves of the world (1 Pet. 4). By frequent storms the Christian life is shaken and tempted, and by countless pressures it is nourished and grows. This the most blessed prophet Solomon, and one right illustrious, attests and proves: Join yourself, he says, to the Lord, and endure, that your life may grow in the end (Sir. 2).
The ship of our life rejoices in things that toss it: by tranquility alone is it troubled. For its course is benumbed when the winds cease; it is imperiled if it be not tested by perils. For it is uncertain whether he belongs to the Lord whom tribulation, the mother of glory, does not purge by tossing, does not nourish by pressing, does not prove by chastising, does not cure by striking. For since divine love bestows on us stripes, that is, various trials, and, like a physician, confers a remedy out of contraries, and by torturing brings succor: he does not prove himself to belong to the love of the Lord who has not deserved to lie under medicinal blows. But perhaps you say: If God is my lover, why then do the scourges of my lover sadden me with grievous laceration, and disturb me by wounding?
If He who loves torments me with the embraces of scourges, then a false love, wearing the well of hatred, is at work; then let Him rather hate, that He may not torment. Nay, beware lest He hate you; entreat that He may deign to love. For love amends, but hatred threatens punishment. Love is wont to bestow discipline; but hatred, by the dictate of its sentence, to recite the guilt. This hatred is propagated from God upon man by the very birth of the human race. And therefore it is man's fault that God hates or is angry: He hates while He is offended, He is angry while, being offended, He is not entreated. For he provokes the Lord to hatred of himself who by hateful deeds makes himself hateful, and disdains to entreat the One offended.
For the rest, God loves man as a craftsman loves his handiwork, but He hates the evil works by which the handiwork is driven to its fall and forced to ruin. And He who hates evil works cannot love the doer of evil works: as most holy Solomon declared: Hateful to God, he says, are the impious man and his impiety (Wis. 14). Therefore it is better, in this world that is to perish as the years decline, whose old age its setting presses and swallows up, to endure medicinal stripes out of the love of the Lord, than out of hatred to await an incurable plague, and under the thunderbolt of sentence to lead a damnable life. It is better, being about to pass through the hands of the physician, to endure a slight torment, than to renounce the physician and incur a punishment that will torment one with eternal tormentors.
Or if you still wonder that the medicine of our loving physician consists in scourges, you ought also to wonder at this: that remedies torment those whom the physician loves, who by hurting shuts out that which hurts. Assuredly he who seeks to shut out harmful things cannot do harm; and therefore by hurting he cures, that health may be prepared out of sorrows, dear as it is. For if the medicine did not lacerate the one to be healed, the merit of health would always delight in a voluntary wound. If the precious cure of harmful remedies did not consist in biting aids, the case to be cured would not force one into grief. And therefore the cure is accomplished by hurtful remedies, so that health, redeemed at the price of grief, may be held dearer and more welcome. Therefore, he who is to be loved cannot but be amended by whatever ordeal;
he who is to be corrected cannot but be scourged by the lover's stroke; he who is to be cured cannot but be hurt by the biting of the healer. Why are you stupefied with wonder? He whom fire and iron cure awaits help from perils. For there are many things that are not healed except when struck. There are many whom physicians cannot cure without the knife. Those who, when entreated, grant health through diverse torments, often, when disease demands, offer to the unthirsty, for the sake of a remedy, most bitter draughts, which are not swallowed without a wrinkling of the brow. For if you observe the face of the drinker, he drinks sad and anxious, that he may live glad and unharmed. O reasonable perversity of medicine, whose disadvantages are advantages enough!
A man is urged to drink what he does not thirst for, whose remedy is at times that which he does thirst for. For because at times they enjoin abstinence from food, and by an imposed fast empty out the body, that from that very weariness they may render it refreshed and most strong. Sudden wounds which mischance has brought into the camp, they foment, bind, stitch, cure; by saddening they gladden, by wearying they strengthen, by hurting they heal. For while, with the skin of the parts continued over the wound with fodder, they insert soundness by certain clasps, they promise life by consoling, which by curing they compose. But lighter are the things we have said: among whom there is a remedy—not with the scalpel to take away enervated putrefactions and to amputate the dead parts from the living man;
though one of the members, without any feeling, be cut off from the whole body, yet the man consents to his own losses, that he may live. Among them, the skins having been sometimes drawn off, the very bones are scraped, that the whole man may be cruelly torn. Among them not seldom a festering gathering and a burning swelling is furrowed by the medicinal iron. Among them it burns, that it may cool; the powder bites and lacerates, that it may heal. What more? Under the physician's tenderness a man is greatly tormented, that he may greatly live. Behold a necessary peril, in which the faithful torment is a benefit. He is truly imperiled whom the physician cures, but he perishes who renounces him. For to the former, though under torment, life is promised; to the other, the hope of living is denied.
Therefore, where necessity demands, it is better to be imperiled than to perish. To be harmed by disadvantages with profit is better than to die when disadvantages are denied: that is, it is more satisfactory to be harmed by a remedy than to be unable to be cured. Chapter IV. — This I speak according to the heavenly Physician, and I refer it rather to spiritual healing, not to that alone which, destined to die by its art, is engaged among mortal members. It is therefore better to be reproved and chastised by the Lord, and to be cured under His stroke, than to be removed from His medicine as incurable. For God keeps away from His wounds those whom He has seen vexed by the iniquity of an incurable disease, and, like dust, or chaff scattered by the force of a whirlwind, dispersed through vices: as He Himself speaks in His own voice, saying:
Let the wicked depart from me, for I will not know their ways: because their lamp is extinguished, and they shall have groaning in their own dwelling. For they shall be as chaff that flies before the wind, and as dust that is lifted up by the tempests (Job 21). They are unwilling to know the ways of those who are unwilling to hold the road that leads to the heights. For to the one Lord one way is to be held in Christ, which, through straitening trials, leads into the space of long security. To this way alone the palace of heaven lies open; but the rest, winding through the twists of pleasures, seek the flame-bearing region: of which Solomon thus testifies in his own words: There are ways which seem to men just, and in the end of them are sadness and grief (Prov. 14).
And by these ways those go headlong to whom the course of a hostile life fawns with deceitful blandishments; whom the deaf age deceives and beguiles, receives to ruin and shuts in. Whom, as a storm drives a ship about to perish upon the rocks, so unhappy happiness leads, prone and slipping, to ruin. And just as it twists the guard of the feet of someone walking with secure steps, by a sudden fall, either the smoothness of marble or the overturned slab of the pavement: so those whom the uncertain journey of prosperous things and a life ill-pleasant unhappily leads, must needs be struck by a sudden fall into an irrevocable collapse. As most holy Solomon testifies and cries out:
As, he says, one who falls upon the pavement, so the fall of the wicked shall come hastily (Sir. 20). These are without doubt those who do not deserve to be shaken by the winnowing entreaties of any misery, in whom an eternal sickness is nourished, nor to be scourged with the saints, while the Lord chastises, with whom, after the scourges, one may reign; of whom David demands mention in this song: They are not in the labors of men, and with men they shall not be scourged; therefore their pride has held them fast (Ps. 72). You see therefore the unworthy despised by the medicinal scourge, and the worthy amicably chastised. For God, the Parent of all, as He is a faithful physician toward those He has received, and a begetter toward His own children, so strikes those whom He loves, that He may correct, not that He may kill.
Therefore happy is he who is beaten, where the stroke is of love. Blessed is he whom the remedy of the supernal scourge cures, corrects, amends, and composes; him David, a blessed and right illustrious prophet, celebrates and proclaims, saying: Happy is he whom You have amended, O Lord, and instructed him out of Your law (Ps. 93). Therefore, since by divine permission we lie subject to the languors of diverse biting, and pass a life to be cured amid long calamity, let us, for the testing of our virtue, bear with equanimity the miseries foretold of old. Let us carry, with felicity of mind, the unhappy and manifold calamities, the anxieties and weepings, which we, being born, have incurred.
Nor indeed is it to be wondered at that the life of mortals is so laid waste in the world by the diverse slaughters of frequent evils, in which no one is born laughing, in which no one begins the light of life save with tears. For when the tent of the maternal womb showed us to the world, we learned the world by weeping, so that, as it were, we might taste the first-fruits of evils in tears at the very first. Solomon the prophet testifies by this pronouncement: I too, he says, being born, received the common air, and fell upon the earth made in like manner: I sent forth my first voice like all men, weeping. In swaddling clothes I was nurtured, and with great cares. No one of the kings had any other beginning of birth. There is therefore for all one entrance into life and a like departure (Wis. 7).
For it is necessary that whoever has come should pass on to where he once lived as a stranger; and Solomon in particular bears witness thus: 'There is,' he says, 'one entrance into life, and a like departure.' What prosperity, then, or gladness can befall us, where the first thing we learn is to weep, and where, in the very cradle of newborn infancy and on the very threshold of life, nothing new of the world meets us but weeping? We trod upon the light of the world with weeping, and weeping too shall we depart. O narrow and anxious enough is the span of this mortal life, where together with its beginning the end is named, where we receive our beginning together with its end! He has already been seized by death who has been born. The dead are our witnesses, since they do not deny that they must die.
Therefore, since we come as those destined to depart, after the manner of pilgrims, let us conquer with pious devotion whatever befalls us within the world's lodging, as though we were merely passing through: evils laid upon us are overcome by being borne with good devotion. For an evil harms the more grievously if it is ill borne; and even good things wound, if they are ill carried. There, assuredly, the work of virtue is a comfort (under the contemplation, that is, of the heavenly reward), where the end and departure of life is so longed for, as the safety of harbour is desired upon the deep. For who, amid the anxieties of this wandering age and the hardships of afflicting diseases, would not rather long for death than for a life long enough and languishing, as Solomon says: 'Better is death than a bitter life, and eternal rest than enduring languor' (Ecclus. XXX). And elsewhere:
'It is better for thee to die than to live' (Ibid. XL). For death gives rest to every man. Assuredly, amid raging evils the departure is necessarily longed for with thirst. But just as it was not ours to be born, so neither is it in our power to die. Otherwise, if to die lay within our power, it would be in our power not to die. For this reason, amid the straits of death we cry out for rest, because amid evils it is a comfort not to be silent about the good: after the manner of sailors, whose refreshment, amid perilous and anxious voyaging, is to speak of the safety of harbour; and although it is not permitted to reach it as swiftly as the mind desires, yet it helps, and it is beautiful enough, to choose the better part.
But since it is not within our power to attain the better things which are born from death, while we await these better things, let us meanwhile wage a good contest amid evils. Now the good contest is this: not to yield to evils, but to be exalted through the good of virtue over evils, so that by them we may be raised on high into the better things that are born out of death, free from diseases and death itself. For without the leading and the goading of unhappiness we shall not come into the triumphs of immortal glory, since it is through perils that the course is finished at the harbour. No one can be called triumphant except him whose virtue has found the victory, which sees crushed beneath itself everything that is feared, and drags the captive along, itself unconquered.
Among these things is this world, like a sea impatient by nature and swelling even without winds, raising up, that is, in its very calm, threatening and terrible waves; and although it may not harm those who sit upon it, yet even its harmless vastness has something of dread, and terrors are frequently not wanting to those who sail, nor the buffeting of the waves. In short, never has a helmsman unfurled his whole bosom to the sea in security. And in this world too, we who seek out the rugged and turbulent course of this life are often touched by the threats and occasions of evils, especially those whom the heavenly warfare has marked and enclosed within the royal camp.
We have already said that this age is to be compared to the deep, in which prosperous things are rare, troubled things are thick, there is terror, there is fear, diseases too are not wanting, and the only safe thing is the harbour of departure. On this side and on that the assaults of hostile calamity press in; but right up to the harbour, that is, to the departure, it is the part of virtue to endure. Amid dangers the helmsman guards and preserves the ship. Amid calamities the ruling mind steers and governs the man. Although someone, when the perils are somewhat abated, may bring his vessel along easily; yet rather that ship is awaited, and received with greater triumphs, which has mightily shaken off the blind waves into the vortex of a turbulent stream. Her a triumphal safety receives.
Comely is the soldier stationed in the army of arms; but slothful and empty, he grows squalid with disfigured virtue, who on the field is known neither to himself nor to another. For he lacks praises, he lacks also rewards. And therefore danger ought not to be harmful, where reward is born. Nor ought a soldier to be recalled, or to suffer dread, where the palm of victory follows. For by his own good fortune that man is wretched who, with the misfortunes by which glory is begotten, has never deserved to have conflict. Nor has he learned his own virtue whom calamity has not shaken. In short, the soldier who has never panted after the glorious heats of burning wars, who has never found triumphs by his sweat, ever lies with idle limbs, ignorant of his own strength and unknown to himself.
Nor does the happiness of rewards follow him who is unwilling to bear the pack of arms. And therefore that which produces reward ought to be in practice, and that which begets glory to be desired. Therefore, since we must contend against the diverse darts of temptations, if anything should arise which tests our strength, which shakes our limbs, which proves our soul, let us seize it as an occasion for a gift, with the embrace of virtue.
Such ought to be the unmoved virtue of the soul and the unconquered strength of an unshaken mind, as that rock in the sea which nature founded amid the waves, which is buffeted by the frequent collision of swelling waters yet is not moved. And so, when adversities provoke a man to battle and calamity urges and compels him to the contest, let a soul happy in virtue bring him forth armed with the shield of virtue, and render him safe and secure amid perils, show him happy amid misfortunes, present him glad amid anguish, sound amid diseased sicknesses, and, calamity being conquered, make him a victor by the javelin of endurance. For disease is overcome in the body, if the soul learn to endure.
and therefore, where the body lies weak, in its inner retreats the greater virtue is to be nourished, and there is to be prepared that which neither weariness may strike down nor age bend low. (Chapter VI) Hold fast then, brother, hold fast the unconquered strength of faith; hold fast the unmovable Christian bulwark, founded upon the firmness of heavenly vigour; amid languishing and stiffening limbs, carry the shield of faith and of the soul whole and strong, and you will conquer the sluggish disease and the pernicious languor. As evils batter against you, meet them with the barriers of virtue. Conquer while you are being buffeted; for thus is Christian power nourished by hardships, and advanced by adverse evils. It befits the Christian warfare to be shaken by calamities and to be tested.
It belongs to that warfare to be happily enlarged amid misfortunes and straits, to grow up under pressures, and by growing to trample down the pressures. It belongs to it to nourish its own defence by frequent exercises, and to have contest with dangers. It belongs to it to sail through the burning perils of the world to the harbour of everlasting happiness, and, under the blows of a medicinal discipline, mightily to reign by that very necessity. Ours it is, I say, by the exercise of calamity to be exalted to the summit of glory, and, while evils press, to be advanced into good rewards. With us infirmity, or any pressure whatever, is an argument of power, and assuredly the mother of palm-crowned virtue:
just as the most blessed apostle Paul, amid diverse blows and sundry stripes and stormy assaults, set in the battle of afflictions, as a heavenly armour-bearer mighty in infirmities, glories and says: 'Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me' (II Cor. XII); 'for which cause it pleases me to glory in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in imperfections, in distresses for Christ. For when I am weak, then am I strong' (Ibid.); and again: 'As often,' he says, 'as I am weak, then am I the more truly proven, and I take pleasure in my infirmities.' And again, when he begged that the goad of the flesh be taken from him, he learned that virtue can be nourished in infirmity: he says: