Hexameron 4.30–5.18

Some men too, even learned and Christian, have alleged that the air is usually changed at the rising of the moon; but if this happened by some violence of the lunar change, heaven would be covered with clouds and rains would pour down at every one of its risings. Indeed, when a day before there was talk about rain, which was said to be needed, someone said: “See, the new moon will give it.” And though we were eager for rain, I did not want such assertions to be true. So I was delighted that no rain fell until, given at the prayers of the church, it showed that it was not to be hoped for from the beginnings of the moon but from the providence and mercy of the creator. Yet the straits, though they overflow on all sides according to the other phases of the moon, and either take waves upon waves or are themselves carried with great force, stand calm at its rising, as long as the moon is without light; but when the increase of days has uncovered it again, they return to their ebbing courses. The tide too, which is said to be in the ocean, though on other days it keeps its order, is said to give clear evidence of its change at the moon's rising, so that the western sea itself, in which the tide is seen, comes in and goes out more than usual and is carried with a greater surge, as if it were drawn back by certain breathings of the moon and, driven and drawn back again by the same, poured back to its proper measure.

So if you wonder how the moon suffers waning, when it has so great a power of change, consider that there is a great mystery in this too: from its example you learn, O man, that there can be nothing in human affairs and in the whole worldly creation that is not at some time dissolved. For if even the moon, to which the Lord entrusted so great a ministry, to light the world, both grows and wanes (for all things wane that, arising from nothing, have come to perfection and, when perfected, are diminished again; for heaven and earth will pass away), why do we not take on this moderation: neither to cast down our spirit in adversity (for he who made all things from nothing is easily able to bring you too to the highest and most perfect things), nor again to be lifted up in prosperity, nor to boast of some power or riches, nor to glory in strength of body or beauty, in which there is easy and frequent change, but to pursue the grace of the soul that remains for the future? If the setting of the moon, which always repairs and re-forms itself, saddens you, much more should it sadden you if the soul, when it has been filled with progress in virtue, afterward, through inconstancy of mind and carelessness, is turned from its purpose and often changes its pursuits, which is a mark of folly and dreadful. So Scripture too says: “The fool changes like the moon.” And so the wise man is not changed with the moon, but will remain in wisdom with the sun. So the moon is not a partner of folly, because the moon does not change like the fool, but the fool like the moon. Indeed, “the seed of the righteous is like the full moon, it remains for ever, and a faithful witness in heaven.” For it is one thing to perform a ministry, another to be carried about by temperament and, through weakness of sense, to have no fixed judgment. The moon labours for you and is subject because of the will of God; for “the creation was subjected to vanity, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope.” It, then, changes unwillingly; you change willingly. It groans and … its beauty by its change; you do not understand, and rejoice in …. It often waits for your redemption, so as to be freed from the common servitude of the whole creation; you bring a hindrance both to your own redemption and to its freedom. It is due to your folly, then, not its own, that, while you are waited for and are not converted even late, it is still changed.

Do not, then, judge the moon with the eye of your body but with the liveliness of your mind. The moon is diminished so as to fill the elements. This, then, is a great mystery. He gave this to it who gave grace to all. He emptied it so as to fill, he who also emptied himself so as to fill all; for he … himself, so as to come down to us; he came down to us, so as to ascend for all; for, he says, “he ascended above the heavens, that he might fill all things.” So he who had come emptied filled the apostles from his fullness. So one of them says: “For of his fullness we have all received.” The moon, then, has announced the mystery of Christ. Not ordinary is that in which he placed his sign, not ordinary that which bears the type of the beloved church, which the prophet signifies, saying: “In his days shall righteousness arise and abundance of peace, until the moon is taken away.” And in the Song the Lord says of his bride: “Who is this that looks forth like the dawn, beautiful as the moon, chosen as the sun?” And rightly the church is like the moon, which has shone over the whole world and, lighting up the darkness of this age, says: “The night is far spent, the day is at hand.” Fittingly he says “looks forth,” as looking out on her own from above, as you have it: “The Lord looked forth from heaven upon the children of men.” Looking forth, then, the church, like the moon, has frequent waning and risings, but she has grown by her wanings and has merited to be enlarged by them, while she is diminished by persecutions and crowned by the martyrdoms of confessors. This is the true moon, which borrows for itself from the perpetual light of its brother the light of immortality and grace. For the church shines not with her own light but with Christ's, and draws her splendour from the Sun of Righteousness, so as to say: “I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me.” Truly blessed are you, who have merited so great a distinction! So I would call you blessed not for your new moons but as the type of the church; for in the one you serve, in the other you are loved.

And how ridiculous it is that men often believe that you can be drawn down by magic spells! These are old wives' tales and opinions of the crowd. For who would think that a work of God appointed to so great a ministry could be tampered with by Chaldaean superstitions? He fell who transforms himself into an angel of light, and was drawn down by his own will, not by the power of spells. Indeed in this too, O church, you are thought capable of being drawn down from your place and station. Many tempt the church, but the spells of the witch's art cannot harm her. Enchanters have no power where the song of Christ is sung daily. She has her own enchanter, the Lord Jesus, through whom he made void the spells of enchanting magicians and the poisons of serpents; and she herself, like the serpent lifted up, devours the snakes, and though the Egyptians may murmur their deadly spell, it is dulled in the name of Christ. So too Paul struck down the magician, not only by the weakness of the witch's art but also by the loss of his eyes. So Peter, when Simon was making for the heights of heaven by magic flight, broke the power of his spells, threw him down, and laid him low.

Fittingly, I think, the fourth day has passed. How then have many become accustomed to … the fourth, and think it useless to begin anything on this number, on which the whole world shone with new light? Did the sun begin under unlucky auspices? And how can another sign good things, if at its rising it did not know how to choose a gentle day? Or how do they approve of its signs, whose rising they do not approve? What too do we say of the moon, which both began on the fourth day and on the fourteenth marks the day of salvation? Or does the number displease by which the mystery of redemption is celebrated? That is why the demons persuade men to avoid that number by which their wickedness was destroyed. That is why the pagans assert that nothing should be undertaken on it, because they know that then their arts first began to be idle and the pagan peoples moved over to the church. Certainly they think that the fourth moon, if it is “clear and its horns not blunted,” gives a sign of fair weather for the remaining days until the end of the month. They do not wish, then, to begin with the same beginnings with which fair weather begins. But now we must beware lest the fourth day set on us during our sermon; for greater shadows are falling from the mountains, the light is diminished, the shadow increased.

The Fifth Day. Now the whole earth was green with various shoots, and heaven too shone with sun and moon, the twin lights of its face, and adorned with the beauty of the stars. There remained the third element, namely the sea, so that grace too might come to it by the divine gift. For all the offspring of the lands are nourished by the airy breath, and the earth too, loosening its seeds, quickens them all, and especially then, when first ordered by the word of God to grow green, it sprouted by the gift of its …; the water was idle and seemed to be left on holiday from the benefit of the divine operation. The creator still had something to confer on it, by which it could equal the services of the lands; he was keeping it for it, so that it too might claim for itself something proper and special as the prerogative of the gift bestowed on it. The earth had quickened first, but things that did not have a breathing soul; the water is commanded to produce those that would display the vigour and dignity of a living soul and would receive the sense of guarding their safety and fleeing death.

So God said: “Let the waters bring forth creeping things with living souls after their kind, and birds flying along the firmament of heaven.” The command came, and at once the water was poured out in the births commanded; the rivers began to generate, the lakes to give life, the sea itself to bring forth various kinds of creeping things and to pour out after its kind whatever it had formed. Not the smallest pools, not the muddy marshes were idle, but all took up the power of creating given to them. Fish leapt from the river, dolphins played in the waves, shellfish clung to the rocks, sea urchins grew. Woe is me! Allurement began before man, the mother of our luxury; delicacies before man. Temptation, then, came before the creation of men. But nature did no wrong: it gave nourishment, it did not prescribe vices. It gave these things in common, so that you would not claim any as your own. For you the earth brings forth its fruits, for you the parrot-fish and the sturgeons, and for you the waters generate all their offspring; and not content with these you tasted the food forbidden you. All things are heaped up to your reproach, so that the transgression of your greed may be the heavier.

But we cannot even recount how many species and names there are, all of which were given life in the moment of the divine command. At the same time the form of the body came together and the soul was at work, and the vital vigour too, something of power. The earth had been filled with shoots, the sea was filled with living creatures. There senseless things sprout, here sentient things move about. On land too the waters claim their portions. The fish of the waters lick the earth and seek their prey from it, and the gnats too hum around the marshes that bred them; these too heard the Lord's command, saying: “Let the waters bring forth creeping things with living souls.”

We know that the kinds of serpents are called creeping things because they creep on the earth; but much more does everything that swims have the appearance or … of creeping. For although, when they dive into the depth, they seem to fall into the water, yet when they swim on top, they creep with their whole body, which they drag over certain backs, as it were, of the waters. So David too said: “This great and spacious sea; there are creeping things without number.” Indeed, though many have feet and the use of walking because they are amphibious, living either in the waters or on land, like seals, crocodiles, and river horses, which they call hippopotamuses because they are usually born in the Nile, yet when they are in deep water they do not walk but swim, using the foot not as a step for going but as an oar for creeping; for a ship too glides driven by oars and furrows the water with its keel.

“Let the waters bring forth creeping things,” said the Lord. A short word, but forceful and wide-reaching, pouring a common nature into the smallest and the greatest. The whale is produced in the same moment in which the frog is born by the force of the same operation. God does not labour over the greatest things nor disdain the smallest. Nature felt no pain in bearing dolphins, just as it felt no pain when it produced little murex-shells and snails. Notice, O man, how many more things there are in the sea than on land. Count, if you can, the kinds of all the fish, whether small or very large: polyps, crustaceans, crayfish, crabs, and among these innumerable of their kind. What shall I say of the kinds of sea serpents, the dragons, which Job asserts? Nor will I pass over sea scorpions, sea frogs, turtles, sea weasels too and dogfish, sea calves, huge sea monsters, dolphins, seals, sea lions. What of the sea blackbirds, thrushes, peacocks too, whose colours we see expressed in birds: the blackbirds black, the peacocks with backs and necks painted in changing colour, the thrushes with speckled bellies, and the rest? Whose species and names have the lands claimed for themselves? For these began first in the sea …, since water first, at the divine bidding, produced the creeping things of living souls that were commanded.

Add this grace, that what we fear on land we love in the waters. For things harmful on land are harmless in the water, and even the snakes there are without poison. The lion, terrible on land, is sweet in the waves. The moray, which they say has something harmful, is a more precious food. The frog, bristling in the marshes, is comely in the waters and surpasses almost all foods. If anyone eager wishes to know more, let him ask the fishermen of different places; for no one can grasp everything. Beware, indeed, of dogs in the sea too, which the apostle teaches are troublesome in the church also and to be guarded against, saying: “Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers.” The weasel's smell is heavy on land, in the waters it is pleasant. The land one knows how to avenge itself by the punishment of its stench; this one has no less grace when caught than when free. Nor will I dismiss you without honour in our account, grayling, whose name grew from a flower. Whether the water of the river Ticinus or the water of the pleasant Adige has nourished you, you are a flower. Indeed there is a well-known saying, wittily said of one who smelled of a pleasant sweetness: “He smells either of fish or of flower”; so the same smell was declared to be that of fish and of flower. What is more pleasing than your appearance, more delightful than your sweetness, more fragrant than your odour? What honeys breathe, that you breathe from your body. What shall I say of the gentleness of the sea ravens and of the sea wolves? The lamb does not know how to fear these wolves. So great is the grace of the waters that even its lions flee its calves. So that this prophetic saying about the holiness of the church fits them rightly: “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion and the ox shall eat straw together.” Nor is it any wonder, since in the church too the waters do this, so that the wickedness of robbers is washed away and they are matched with the innocent. Why should I mention the purple shellfish, which adorn the banquets of kings and dye their robes? What is honoured in kings belongs to the waters; that appearance which shines belongs to the waters. Add the sea-pigs, acceptable even to the Jews, because there is nothing common that water does not wash, and so they cannot consider them common as if born on land.

Innumerable, then, are the habits, innumerable the kinds of fish. Some produce eggs, like the larger spotted fish which they call trout, and entrust them to the waters to be cherished. Water, then, gives life and creates, and still carries out the service of that first command as of a perpetual law, a kind of gentle mother of living creatures. Others bring forth live young from their own body, like the sea weasels and dogfish and huge sea monsters, dolphins and seals and other sea creatures of this kind. When these have given birth, if they perhaps sense any snare or terror around their young, to protect them or calm the fear of their tender age with maternal affection, they are said to open their mouths and hold their young suspended in a harmless tooth, to take them back into their body too and hide them in their birth-womb. What human affection could imitate this devotion of fish? Kisses are enough for us; for them it is not enough to open their insides and take back their offspring and recall them whole, and again quicken them with a kind of warmth of their own heat and kindle them with their own breath, and for two to live in one body, until they either bring them safety or defend their offspring from dangers by the interposition of their own body. Who, seeing these things, would not yield to so great devotion of fish, even if he could hold out? Who would not be amazed with wonder that nature keeps in fish what it does not keep in men? Many, from suspicion, have killed their own sons, attacked with stepmotherly hatreds; other mothers in famine, as we read, have eaten their own offspring. For human children the mother has become a tomb; for the offspring of fish the parent's womb, like a wall with a kind of rampart of the inmost organs, keeps the young unharmed.

Different kinds of fish, then, have different habits: some produce eggs, others bear live and formed young. And those that produce eggs do not weave nests like birds, do not take on the labour of long brooding, do not nourish them with trouble to themselves. The egg has fallen, and the water, like a gentle nurse, has received it into the lap of its nature and by quick warmth returned it as a living creature. For at once, quickened by the touch of the parent, the egg falls and a fish comes out.

Then how pure and inviolate is their succession! No one mixes with another, but with its own kind: grayling with grayling, sea bass with sea bass. The scorpion fish too keeps the chastity of an unstained union with its own kind. So it has the modesty of its kind, but not the poison of its kind; for the scorpion fish does not sting but refreshes. They do not know, then, adulterous unions with a partner of another kind, like those brought about with great care by men when the kinds of asses and mares are coupled, or again when she-asses are mixed with horses, which are truly of an adulterous nature; for certainly what is committed to the pollution of nature is greater than what is committed to the injury of a person. And you, man, procure these things as the go-between of beastly adultery, and you think that animal more precious which is adulterous than that which is true. You yourself confuse alien kinds and mix different seeds and often force the unwilling to forbidden couplings, and you call this industry. And because you cannot do this with men, so that a mixture of different kinds could bring forth offspring, you take from a man what he was born, strip the man from the man, and by cutting off a part of the body deny his sex; you make a eunuch, so that daring might accomplish in men what nature denied.

And see from this too how good a mother water is. You, O man, have taught fathers to disown their sons, taught separations, hatreds, offences; learn what the bond of parent and children ought to be. Fish cannot live without water, nor be separated from the company of their parent nor parted from the service of their nurse; and this happens by a kind of nature, that when separated they die at once. For they do not live, like all things, by the breath of this air, because the nature of drawing in and giving out breath is not available to them; otherwise they could not always live under water, not taking in the inflow of breath. What breath is to us, water is to them. As breath supplies us, so water supplies them with the substance of living. If the passage of breath is shut off, we die at once, because we cannot be without vital breath even for a short space; so fish too, taken from the water, cannot exist without their substance.

And the reason is plain: in us the lung receives breath through the looser inner chambers of the chest and, since it is penetrable by many pores, cools the inner heat by the inflow of breath. For as the chest receives the food, so it separates the excess of the foods from the healthful juices and blood … the lung has gathered, so that the breathing of air can reach it more easily. But fish have gills, which they now fold and draw together, now unfold and open. In this drawing together and opening, then, while water is taken in, passed through, and penetrates, the function of breathing seems to be fulfilled. Fish have, then, their own proper nature, not shared with others, a special habit and a kind of separate and secret substance of living. That is why they are not tamed and do not delight, like land animals, in the touch of a human hand and some caress, even if they live kept in their ponds.

What shall I say of the closeness of their teeth? For they do not have teeth on one side only, like sheep or cattle, but both jaws are armed with teeth, because they are in the water, and if they turned their food over for long and did not swallow it quickly, the food could be carried off from their teeth by the waters and washed away. So they have close and sharp teeth, to cut quickly, finish their food quickly, and swallow it easily without any delay or postponement. So they do not chew the cud; yet the parrot-fish alone among them is said to chew the cud, as those report who have had the chance, the practice, or the zeal to learn such things.

Indeed they themselves have not escaped the violence of the powerful among them, and, subject to the greed of the stronger, the lesser are everywhere inferior. The weaker each is, the more it lies open as prey. Many, indeed, feed on grasses and tiny worms; yet there are some that devour one another and feed on their own flesh. Among them the smaller is the food of the larger, and the larger in turn is attacked by a stronger, and the plunderer of another becomes another's food. So it happens that when one has devoured another, it is devoured by another, and both come together into one belly, the devoured with its own devourer, and there is in one stomach a partnership of prey and vengeance. And perhaps this wrong grew up among them of their own accord, as with us it did not begin from nature but from greed; or, because they were given for the use of men, they were also made for a sign, so that in them we might see the vices of our own conduct and beware of their examples, lest anyone stronger attack an inferior, being about to give against himself to one more powerful the example of wrong. So he who harms another prepares a snare for himself, into which he himself falls.

And you are a fish, you who invade the insides of others, who sink the weak, who pursue the one who yields even to the depths. Beware lest, while you pursue him, you yourself fall upon a stronger one, and he who avoids your snares lead you into those of another, and he who feared his own misfortune while you pursued him see yours first. What difference is there between a rich man who swallows the patrimonies of the weak with the gluttony of wicked greed and a sheatfish with its belly filled with the insides of smaller fish? The rich man has died and his spoils have profited him nothing; rather the infamy of his robberies has made him more detestable. The sheatfish is caught and its useless prey is uncovered. How many are found in it that had devoured others! And you, rich man, hold in your bosom the plunderer of another. He had the poor man's means, which he had seized; you, crushing him, have added two patrimonies to your means, and still you are not satisfied with so great an increase, and you say you have avenged others, while you commit the same things you punish, more unjust than the unjust, more wicked than the wicked, greedier than the greedy. See that the same end does not find you as found that fish: beware the hook and the nets. But you presume on your power, that no one can resist you; the sheatfish too presumed that no one would cast a hook for it, no one would spread nets, and, if it fell into them, it would break them all; and yet it did not escape the trident, or it ran into the knots of a stronger bond from which it could not free itself. Without doubt the iniquity of men too, the more grievous the things it has committed, the less it can be safe in its crime, so as not at some time to pay what it is agreed can hardly be avoided as the price of crimes.

You are a fish, then, O man. Hear that you are a fish: “The kingdom of heaven is like a net cast into the sea, which gathered of every kind of fish. And when it was filled, they drew it to the shore and, sitting down, chose the best into their vessels, but cast the bad away. So shall it be at the consummation of the age. The angels shall go out and separate the bad from among the righteous and cast them into the furnace of fire.” There are, then, both good and bad fish; the good are kept for their value, the bad burn at once. The nets do not entangle the good fish but lift it up; the hook does not kill and destroy it but drenches it with the blood of a precious wound; in the confession of its mouth a good price is found, by which the apostolic tribute and Christ's own tax is paid. For so it is written, as the Lord says: “From whom do the kings of the earth take tribute or tax? From their own sons or from strangers?” And when Peter answered, “From strangers,” the Lord said: “Go to the sea and cast a hook, and take the fish that comes up first, and when you open its mouth you will find a stater there; take it and give it for me and for you.”

Do not, then, O good fish, fear the hook; it does not kill but consecrates. Do not despise yourself as cheap because you see your body is weak. You have in your mouth what you may offer for Peter and for Christ. Do not fear the nets of Peter, to whom Jesus says: “Put out into the deep and let down your nets”; for he casts not on the left side but on the right, as he was ordered by Christ. Do not fear its folds, because it was said to him: “From now on you will be catching men alive.” So he cast his nets and embraced Stephen, who first came up out of the gospel, having in his mouth the stater of righteousness. With constant confession he cried out, saying: “Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” For this fish the Lord Jesus was standing; for he knew that in its mouth was the price of his tax. Indeed by a glorious martyrdom he, a rich defender, fulfilled both the judgment and teaching of Peter and the grace of Christ.

Do not let it trouble you that I have put the gospel in place of the sea. The gospel is the sea on which Christ walked; the gospel is the sea on which, though Peter wavered when he denied, yet through the right hand of Christ he found the defence of faith and the grace of standing firm; the gospel is the sea from which the martyr came up; the gospel is the sea in which the apostles fish, into which the net is cast that is like the kingdom of heaven; the gospel is the sea in which the mysteries of Christ are figured; the gospel is the sea in which the Hebrew escaped and the Egyptian was destroyed; the gospel is the sea, because the bride of Christ is the church and the fullness of divine grace, which is founded upon the seas, as the prophet said: “He has founded it upon the seas.” Leap over the waves, O man, because you are a fish. Do not let the waves of this world overwhelm you. If there is a storm, seek the deep and the depth; if fair weather, play in the waves; if a tempest, beware of the rocky shore, lest the raging surf dash you against a rock; for it is written: “Be wise as serpents.”

And since the example of wise serpents has been set before us, let us be wise in seeking and keeping marriages; let us love the partnerships granted us. And if those who were born far apart, separated by times and regions, have come together, and if one has set out to foreign parts, let no distance, no abstinence diminish the love once agreed. The same law binds those present and absent; the same bond of nature has bound the rights of love between those far apart and those near together; the necks of both are joined under the same yoke of blessing, even if one undergoes long separations in distant regions, because they have received the yoke of grace not on the neck of the body but of the mind. The viper, the most wicked kind of beast and more cunning than all of the serpent kind, when it feels the desire to mate, seeks out the lamprey of the sea as its familiar partner or prepares a new one, and, going to the shore, signals its presence with a hiss and calls her out to the conjugal embrace; and the lamprey, invited, does not fail, and grants the poisonous serpent the desired enjoyment of her union. What does such a story mean, but that the ways of spouses are to be borne, and if one is absent, his presence is to be awaited? Let him be harsh, deceitful, rough, slippery, drunken: what is worse than poison, which the lamprey does not shun in her spouse? Called, she does not fail, and embraces the slippery one with diligent love. He bears your faults and the frivolity of feminine levity; can you, woman, not bear your husband? Adam was deceived by Eve, not Eve by Adam. It is just that the woman take as her guide the one whom she called to sin, lest she fall again through feminine frivolity. “But he is rough and uncultivated.” He pleased you once. Is a husband to be chosen often? The ox too seeks its partner, and the horse loves its own, and if another is substituted, the partner does not know how to draw the yoke with another and does not think itself whole; you repudiate your yoke-fellow and think he should often be changed, and if he is absent for one day, you bring in a rival, and at once, as if the case were known when it is unknown, you avenge an injury to your chastity. The viper seeks the absent one, calls the absent one, cries out with a coaxing hiss, and when she senses that her partner is approaching, vomits out her poison, showing reverence to her husband, respecting the grace of the marriage; you, woman, drive back with insults your husband coming home from far away. The viper looks out to sea, scouts the path of her spouse; you block your husband's way with injuries, you stir up the poisons of quarrels and do not cast them out, at the time of the conjugal embrace you boil with dire venom, and you neither blush at your marriage nor reverence your husband.