mentioned—namely that we are at once both wretched and given to luxury? Be it granted. For suppose these are the vices of the prosperous (although no one can be at the same time both shameful and happy, since where there is no true honour there is no true happiness)—but yet, as I said, grant that these be the vices of a long peace and of opulent security. Why, I ask, are they there, where now there is no peace, where there is no security? For in almost the whole Roman world there is neither peace nor security. Why do the vices alone endure? Who, I ask, could bear to see wantonness in a man reduced to want? For luxurious poverty is more criminal, and the whole Roman world, worthy of greater hatred, is both a wretch and a trifler,
both wretched and given to luxury. Who, I ask, is at once a pauper and a trifler? Who, awaiting captivity, thinks of the circus? Who dreads death and yet laughs? We both make sport amid the fear of captivity and, set in the terror of death, we laugh—as though the whole Roman people, in a manner of speaking, had been fed to satiety with Sardinian herbs: it dies and laughs. And therefore in almost all parts of the world our merriment is followed by tears, and even now there comes upon us that word of our Lord: 'Woe unto you that laugh, for ye shall mourn.'
But perhaps, since we have spoken at very great length about the public spectacles and shameful shows, you may think that we are worse than the barbarians in this alone—that they do not do these things while we do—but that in other respects they are not so defiled by the crime of carnal lust and by the filth of deadly fornication. Let us compare, if you please, the Romans even in this respect with the other nations. And indeed I know not whether they can more fitly be compared with any than with those whom God, set in the very bosom of the commonwealth, has made possessors and lords of what used to be Roman soil. Hence, although nothing may be disputed concerning the judgment of God, yet, since He has taken from us the best part of our own right and given it to the barbarians, let us see whether that which He has taken from us and handed to them He may seem to have handed over by a just judgment.
It is doubtful to no one that the Aquitanians and the Novempopulani possessed the marrow, so to speak, of all the Gauls and the very abundance of all fertility—and not fertility alone, but those things which are sometimes preferred even to fertility: pleasantness, beauty, delight. So much so that there almost the whole region was either interwoven with vines, or flowery with meadows, or marked out with cultivated fields, or planted with orchards, or made pleasant with groves, or watered with springs, or crossed by rivers, or crowned with harvests—so that in truth its possessors and lords seem to have possessed not so much a portion of that soil as the very image of paradise. What then, after all this? Beyond doubt they ought to have been more dutiful toward God, whom God had specially endowed with the most abundant dowry of His benefits.
For what is more right, or what more fitting, than that those whom the Lord seemed as it were specially to have willed to please by His gifts, should themselves also have pleased the Lord more especially by their worship and religion—particularly since God demands of us nothing burdensome, nothing heavy? For He calls us not to the plough nor to the mattock, not to the breaking up of the earth nor to the trenching of vineyards; nor, in a word, does He demand of His servants those things which we demand of ours. For what says He? 'Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you: take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls; for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.'
The Lord, then, calls us not to toil but to refreshment. For what does He demand of us, what does He bid us render Him, save only faith, chastity, humility, sobriety, mercy, holiness?—all of which surely do not burden us but adorn us. And not this only, but for this reason they adorn the present life, that they may be the more able to adorn the life to come. O good, O holy, O Lord of inestimable mercy! Who to this end bestows on us in the present the gifts of religion, that afterward He may reward in us those very gifts which He now gives. Such, then, ought all the Aquitanians without doubt to have been, and indeed, as we said, more especially such, because they possessed the special gifts of God. And what, after all this?
What came next? What but the very opposite of all this? For in all the Gauls, even as they were first in riches, so were they first in vices; for nowhere was there more shameless pleasure, nowhere a more polluted life, nowhere more corrupt discipline. This was the recompense they rendered to the Lord for His sacred gifts: that in proportion as He had drawn them to Himself by His benefits to be propitiated, in that same proportion they laboured by their outrages to provoke Him. But perhaps these things are stated falsely and out of malice rather than truly? I will not use that proof which others are wont to use in their causes, of bringing forward whatever witnesses to prove their point, be they few, or strangers, or less than trustworthy: let us question the very ones by whom these deeds were done. We shall have spoken falsely if they deny it.
For they confess it, and indeed—which is the more grievous—they confess it in such a way that in the very confession they feel no grief. For the mind now in those who confess is the same as it was in those who committed the deeds. Even as then they were not ashamed to commit their outrages, so now they are not at all sorry to have done these shameful things. Yet excepting a very few holy and distinguished men who—as one of their own number says—'redeemed their sins with money scattered abroad'; excepting these, I say, I speak of those whom, even in that then well-nigh universal cesspool of vices, we believe rightly to have been guilty only of lesser crimes, who deserved to be corrected by the Godhead. For he does not wholly offend his Lord for whom a means of mercy is reserved. And what more?
I think that even in his very straying he ever looked back to God, from whom he could obtain this—that he should not stray any longer. But the rest, and well-nigh the most, and almost the noblest, are one and all alike: nearly one whirlpool is the gluttony of all, nearly one brothel is the life of all. And why should I speak of brothels? For I think that even a brothel is a lesser crime. For the harlots who are there know nothing of the marriage bond, and therefore do not defile what they know not: they are indeed liable to the guilt of unchastity, yet they are not held to the charge of adultery. Add to this that the brothels are well-nigh few, and few are the wretched harlots who have condemned themselves to that life within them. But among the cities of Aquitaine, which one, in its wealthiest and noblest quarter, was not as it were a brothel?
Which of the powerful and the rich did not live in the mire of lust? Which did not plunge himself into the abyss of the filthiest defilement? Which rendered to his wife the fidelity of wedlock? Nay—so far as concerns the promiscuity of lust—which did not reduce his wife to the number of his handmaids, and to such a degree cast down the sacraments of venerable wedlock that none in his house seemed more cheaply held, through a husband's contempt, than she who was chief in the dignity of matrimony? But perhaps someone thinks it is not quite so fully as I say: that the matrons there kept their own right and held the honour and the power of mistresses. It is true. Many indeed held the full right of ownership, but scarcely any the unpolluted right of matrimony.
And we are not now asking what power the women had, but how corrupt the discipline of the men was. Although I would say that even the power the matrons had there was not entire; for whoever has not the right of wedlock inviolate and secure has not the right of ownership secure either. For the matron is not much removed from the vileness of slave-women, where the father of the household is the husband of handmaids. And which of the rich Aquitanians was not this? Whom did the most shameless handmaids not take to themselves, by their own right, as either paramour or husband? For, as the prophet says, they had become 'as stallions in heat toward the women: every one neighed after his neighbour's wife.'
And yet those of whom we read these things written sinned, perhaps, with a lesser crime and, as I think, with a lesser number of crimes and with less promiscuity. But these men truly, like stallions in heat, neighed not merely after a few, but well-nigh after all their home-born slave-girls—that is, as it were after their own herds—and, after the manner of those beasts which are called the husbands of the herds, went ranging in the frenzy of seething lust. Upon whatever woman the burning fury of their most shameless passion had first drawn them, upon her they rushed. Here now I ask of the wise: since these things were so, of what sort do they think the households there were, where the fathers of the households were such men? How great a corruption of the slaves there, where so great was the corruption of the masters?
For where the head is diseased, nothing is sound, nor does any member at all perform its office where that which is chief is not in good state. Now in his own house the master is as it were the head of his own body, and his life is the rule of living for all. And this is the worst thing in this matter: that all men more gladly follow the worse, and a bad training more easily depraves the good than a good one amends the bad. Furthermore, since even good and honourable fathers of households cannot make their servants good, how great a ruin of households must we suppose there was there, where the masters were the very pattern of impurity?
Although there it was not merely a bad example, but a kind of force and necessity; for the maidservants were compelled unwillingly to obey their most shameless masters, and the lust of those who ruled was the necessity of those who were in subjection. From which it can be understood how great was the mire of shameless filth, where under masters of the utmost impurity the women were not permitted to be chaste, even had they wished. But of course this can hardly be proved, and there remain no traces at all of the past disgraces and outrages. Behold, even now many of them, although they are deprived of their homeland and live poor in comparison with their former wealth, are well-nigh worse than they were.
And worse in more than one way: for even if they do the same things they did before, by this very fact they are worse, because they do not cease from wickedness. For their crimes, even if they be not greater in kind, are yet more in number, and thereby, even if they do not grow by the novelty of the offences, they are heaped up by their multiplicity. Add, moreover, that these things, as I said, they now do as old men; add that they do them as poor men; for either is an aggravation of the sin. For it is less monstrous that the young should sin, that the wealthy should sin. But what hope or remedy is there in those who are recalled from their accustomed impurity neither by the want of their miseries nor by the extremity of life? For grant that some may be consoled either by a foolish presumption of long life or by the hope of doing penance at some time:
is not this a new kind of monstrosity, that there should be some who are vicious even in death? And since these things are so, is there anything more that can be said? Yet even so we add still further: namely, that many do these things this very day, though set among enemies and captives in daily peril and dread; and though for their most impure life they have been handed over by God to the barbarians, yet even among the barbarians they do not leave off those same impurities. But perhaps the enemies among whom they live are of such a sort that these things delight them, and they would be most gravely offended if, being themselves unchaste, they were to see the Romans chaste.
But if it were so, nevertheless the wickedness of another ought in no way to make us wicked, since it befits any man rather to render himself good than another evil, and one ought to labour more that we may please God through honourable conduct than men through impurity. And accordingly, even if one should live among unchaste barbarians, he ought still the more to pursue chastity, which is to his own advantage, than unchastity, which pleases impure enemies. But what is added over and above to our evils? Among chaste barbarians we are unchaste. I say yet more: the barbarians themselves are offended by our impurities. It is not permitted among the Goths for a Goth to be a fornicator:
among them the Romans alone are permitted, by the prejudice of their nation and name, to be impure. And what hope, I ask, have we before God? We love the unchastity which the Goths abhor; we flee the purity which they love; fornication among them is a crime and a peril, among us an ornament. And do we think that we can stand before God, do we think that we can be saved, when every crime of impurity, every disgrace of unchastity is committed by the Romans and punished by the barbarians? Here now I call upon those who think that we are better than the barbarians: let them say which of these things even the fewest Goths do, or which of them not all, or nearly all, the Romans do.
And do we wonder if the lands, whether of the Aquitanians or of us all, have been given by God to the barbarians, when those lands which the Romans defiled by fornication the barbarians now cleanse by chastity? But perhaps this is only among the Aquitanians. Let us pass over also to other parts of the world, lest we seem to have spoken of the Gauls alone. What of the Spains—did not the same, or perhaps even greater, vices ruin them? Even if the wrath of heaven had handed them over to any other barbarians whatsoever, the enemies of purity had endured torments worthy of their outrages. But there was added here, for the manifesting of the condemnation of unchastity in that land, that they should be handed over to the Vandals above all—that is, to chaste barbarians.
In that captivity of the Spaniards God willed to show in a twofold manner how greatly He both hated the lust of the flesh and loved chastity, when He both set the Vandals above them chiefly for the sake of chastity alone, and subjected the Spaniards chiefly for the sake of unchastity alone. For what? Were there not in all the world stronger barbarians, to whom the Spaniards might have been handed over? Beyond doubt there were many—nay, unless I am mistaken, all were. But for this reason He handed everything over to the feeblest of enemies: namely, to show that it is not strength that avails but the cause; and that we were not then overwhelmed by the valour of enemies once most cowardly, but overcome by the mere impurity of our vices—so that in truth there has come upon us that word which the Lord speaks to the Jews:
'According to their uncleannesses and according to their iniquities have I dealt with them, and I have turned away my face from them.' And elsewhere, to that very nation: 'The Lord shall bring against thee a nation from afar, and with the hoofs of their horses,' saith He, 'they shall trample down all thy streets, and shall slay thy people with the sword.' All things, therefore, which the divine word foretold have been fulfilled in us, and the force of the heavenly words has been paid for by the punishment of us all. But nevertheless, since well-nigh all the barbarian nations have drunk Roman blood and all have torn our vitals, why is it that our God has given the greatest resources of the commonwealth and the wealthiest peoples of the Roman name chiefly into the power of enemies once most cowardly? What is the reason?
Save that we should recognize, namely, what I said above—that this was a matter of deserts, not of strength; and that this very thing too should fall to us as confusion and punishment, that we were handed over to the most cowardly, and that even thus we might recognize the stroke of the heavenly hand, since not the strongest of enemies but the most cowardly subjugated us. For thus we read that whenever God willed it to be plainly understood that great works were wrought by Him, the thing was done either through a few or through the lowliest, lest the work of the heavenly right hand should be ascribed to human strength. Therefore indeed the captain Sisera, at whom the Hebrew army trembled, was laid low by a woman; and a woman's hand struck down Abimelech the stormer of cities; and the iron-clad battle-lines of the Assyrians fell with a widow's aid.
And not to speak of women alone: Benhadad king of Syria, to whom besides the countless thousands of his own people thirty-two kings and armies of the same number were subject—did not the Lord for this reason will him to be conquered by a few, by the attendants of the princes, that he who was the author of such a victory might be made known? Against the Midianites also, who, as the book of Judges relates, had filled the whole land like locusts, Gideon is bidden to fight with few; not because he had not more in his army, but he is forbidden to lead many to war, lest the multitude should be able to claim anything of the victory for itself. And so when he had gathered thirty thousand armed men, the Lord spoke to him thus: 'The people that are with thee are too many, neither shall Midian be delivered into their hands.' And what afterward?
For a man who was to fight against countless thousands of barbarians, He left only three hundred men. He commanded the host of soldiers to be reduced to such smallness that the fewness of them could claim nothing for itself of the work of the war accomplished by divine power. Finally, why the Lord did this, He Himself most plainly declared, saying: 'Lest Israel should glory against me and say, By my own strength am I delivered.' Let them hear this, I say, all the wicked; let them hear, all the presumptuous; let them hear, the exceedingly powerful; let them all hear what God says: 'Lest'—He says—'Israel should glory against me and say, By my own strength am I delivered.' Let them hear, I say, all who vaunt things contrary and blasphemous; let them hear this, who place their hope in man.
God says that all speak against Him who presume that they can be delivered by their own strength. And who of the Romans is there who does not so speak? Who is there who does not so think? Who of our party is there who does not blaspheme in this respect well-nigh continually? It is the conscience of all that the commonwealth now has no strength, and not even thus do we recognize to whose benefits we owe it that we still live. For whenever God bestows on us anything prosperous beyond our hope and desert, one man ascribes this to fortune, another to chance, another to the disposition of the generals, another to counsel, another to guidance, another to patronage—none to God. And do we wonder if the heavenly hand bestows nothing upon us, when whatever it has bestowed we take away from it?
For what else do we do, when the good things which He bestows we impute either to the outcomes of chances, or to the valour of generals, or to any other trifling things whatsoever? For in this fashion we ought also to give thanks to the earth that we reap the yearly crops, and to the vineyards that we gather the vintage, and to the sea that we catch fish, and to the woods that we cut wood, and to the sheep that we are clothed with garments, and to the rest of the cattle that we are filled with flesh. For what reason is there that we should be willing to be grateful to Him for His other gifts, from whom we take away the thanks for His greatest benefits? Or what man of our condition is content that anyone should reckon to his credit some trifle, from whom he has withdrawn the sum total of his bounties?
So also we, although in nothing do we worthily give thanks to God, yet it would have been too little if we were willing to be grateful only for those things which He has given us for the use of living—when we take away this thanksgiving from Him who both helps us in our straits and delivers us in our perils, and preserves us, set in the midst of barbarian nations, by His continual protection. But not so the Goths, not so the Vandals: instructed though they be by bad teachers, yet they are better even in this respect than we. Though I suspect that some are offended by these things which we say, yet because truth ought to be considered rather than offence, I will say, and often say: not so the Goths, not so the Vandals—who both, when set in danger, seek help from God, and call their prosperities the gift of the Godhead.
In short, our own misfortune in the recent war proved this. For when the Goths feared, we presumed—they placed their hope in God, we in the Huns; when peace was sought by them, it was refused by us; they sent bishops, we drove them away; they honoured God even in the priests of others, we despised Him even in our own—according to the deeds of each party, so also was the outcome of things. To them was given the palm in the utmost fear, to us confusion in the utmost pride: so that in truth, both in us then and in them, that word of our Lord was plainly proved: 'For whosoever exalteth himself shall be humbled, and whosoever humbleth himself shall be exalted.' For to them exaltation was given for their humility, to us downfall for our pride.
And so that commander of our party recognized this—he who entered as a captive the same enemy city which that very day he had presumed to enter as a conqueror. He proved, indeed, what the prophet said: 'The way of man is not his own, neither is it in man to walk and direct his steps.' For because he supposed his own way to be within his own right, he had neither steadiness of going nor found the way of safety. There was poured out, as we read, contempt upon the prince, and he was led astray in a pathless place and not in the way, and was brought to nothing like running water. In which, indeed, besides the very unhappiness of events, the present judgment of God was made plain, that whatsoever he had presumed he would do, he himself should suffer.
For because he believed that the enemy was to be taken by him without the aid of the Godhead and the nod of God, he himself was taken; he usurped the height of counsel and wisdom, and incurred the disgrace of rashness; the chains which he had prepared for others, he himself endured. And what, I ask, could have been a plainer judgment of God, than that he who had the confidence of a plunderer should become plunder, that he who presumed a triumph should be a triumph—that he should be surrounded, seized, bound, that his hands should carry his arms twisted behind his back, that he should see fettered the hands he thought warlike, that he should become a spectacle for boys and women, should behold the barbarians mocking him, should endure the derision of both sexes, and that he who had borne the greatest arrogance of a brave man should undergo the death of a coward?
And would that this itself had been a brief remedy of his ills, and not a long-drawn endurance! But he, so far as concerns the magnitude of his punishments, was consumed for a long time and by lingering wasting in the prison-house of the barbarians, and was reduced to such misery that—which men very often think heavier and more bitter than the punishments themselves—he came to be an object of the enemies' pity. And why this? Why, beyond doubt, save that, as I have already said, they were humble toward God, we rebellious; they believed victory to be in God's hand, we in our own—nay, in one sacrilegious and impious, which is worse and more harmful than our own?
In short, the very king of the enemies, so far as the event betrayed and proved, up to the day of battle prostrated himself in sackcloth and poured out prayers; before the war he lay in prayer, and from prayer he rose up to the war. Before he took the fight in hand, he fought by supplication, and therefore he went forth to battle confident, because he had already earned the victory in prayer. And not unlike this was that also among the Vandals: for when our party, marching against them set in Spain, brought as great a confidence of presumption to subduing them as it had lately brought against the Goths, they fell with equal haughtiness of pride and equal ruin. And there came upon our army that word of the prophet: 'The Lord shall overthrow thy confidence, and thou shalt have nothing prosperous.'
For we trusted in our own wisdom and strength, against the commandment of God who says: 'Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, nor the strong man in his strength, but let him that glorieth glory in this, to understand and know me, that I am the Lord.' Not undeservedly, therefore, were we conquered; for they betook themselves to better succours than ours. For while we were proud of our arms and auxiliaries, from the enemies' side there met us the book of the divine law. For to this help above all did the fear and consternation of the Vandals then flee, that they might set against us the sequence of the heavenly discourse, and against their advancing rivals unseal the writings of the sacred volume as though they were, in a manner, the very mouth of the Godhead.
Here now I ask, who from our side has ever done this, or who would not have been laughed at had he thought it should be done? Laughed at, assuredly—just as by us almost all religious things are laughed at. And therefore what can that prerogative of the religious name profit us—that we call ourselves catholics, that we boast to be faithful, that we despise the Goths and Vandals by reproaching them with the name of heretics—when we ourselves live in heretical depravity? And so most rightly is that said to us which the divine word said to the Jews who trusted in the Law: 'How say ye, We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us? Trust not,' He says, 'in lying words, saying, The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord is it.'
'For if ye thoroughly amend your ways and your doings, if ye do no wrong to the stranger and the orphan and the widow, neither shed innocent blood in this place, then will I dwell with you in this place from generation to generation.' By which it is surely shown that, if we do not these things, in vain do we applaud ourselves with the presumption of the catholic name. But of this enough has already been said above, and perhaps will yet be said, nor is there need that we discourse of it further, where the judgment of God is perpetual. For what God may judge concerning us, or concerning the Goths and Vandals, the fact itself proves: they grow daily, we diminish; they advance, we are brought low; they flourish, and we wither away.
So that there may truly come upon us that word which the divine discourse speaks concerning Saul and David: that David went on prospering and grew ever stronger than himself, while the house of Saul dwindled day by day. For He is righteous, as the prophet says: righteous is the Lord, and upright is His judgment. XII. We are therefore judged by God even by a present judgment, and for that reason there has been stirred up, to our ruin and disgrace, a most cowardly people, which, passing from place to place and crossing from city to city, laid all things waste. And first it poured forth from its native soil into neighbouring Germany, barbarian in name but Roman in jurisdiction;
After whose first destruction the region of the Belgae was set ablaze, then the wealth of the luxuriating Aquitanians, and after these the whole body of the Gauls; yet all this little by little, so that, while one part was cut down by disaster, another part might be corrected by the example. But where among us is there any amendment, or what part of the Roman world, however afflicted, corrects itself? For all, as we read, have turned aside; together they have become unprofitable. And therefore the prophet cries out to God and says: Thou hast struck them, and they have not grieved; Thou hast bruised them, and they have refused to receive discipline; they have hardened their faces above the rock, and would not return. And how truly this too falls upon us the matter itself shows. Gaul was long laid waste: was Spain therefore amended, when it lay so near?