Letters 68.1–72.5

At the very moment of departure of our holy son Asterius the subdeacon, your Blessedness's letter reached me, in which you assure me that you did not send a book against my littleness to Rome. I had not heard that this was done either; but copies of a certain letter, as if written to me, have come here through our brother Sisinnius the deacon, in which you urge me to sing a palinode on a certain chapter of the apostle, and to imitate Stesichorus, wavering between blame and praise of Helen, so that he who had lost his eyes by disparaging might recover them by praising. I simply confess to your Worthiness that, although the style and the arguments seemed to me to be yours, I did not think I should rashly believe copies of a letter, lest perhaps, if I replied and you were hurt, you should justly complain that I ought first to have proved the discourse to be yours and then written back. Added to the delay was the long illness of the holy and venerable Paula. For while we sat for a long time by her sickbed, we almost forgot your letter, or the letter of him who had written in your name, mindful of that little verse: 'Music in mourning is an untimely tale.' So if the letter is yours, write openly, or send truer copies, so that without any rancour of temper we may engage in the discussion of the Scriptures, and either correct our own error or show that another has censured us in vain.

Far be it from me to dare to touch anything in your Blessedness's books. For it is enough for me to approve my own and not to pick at others'. Moreover, your prudence knows very well that each one abounds in his own sense, and that it is a mark of childish boasting, as young men used to do long ago, to seek fame for one's own name by accusing illustrious men. Nor am I so foolish as to think myself injured by the difference of your interpretations, since neither are you injured if we think the opposite. But that is true reproach among friends, if, not seeing our own bag, we look at the wallet of others, as Persius says. It remains that you love one who loves you, and that in the field of the Scriptures you, a young man, do not challenge an old one. We have had our time and have run as far as we could. Now that you are running and covering long distances, rest is owed to us; and at the same time, if I may say so with your leave and with respect to you, so that you may not seem to be the only one to have put forward something from the poets, remember Dares and Entellus, and the common proverb that the tired ox plants its foot more firmly. We have dictated this in sadness. If only we might be worthy of your embraces, and in mutual conference either teach or learn something!

Calpurnius, surnamed Lanarius, has sent me his abuse with his usual rashness, and I have learned that through his efforts it has reached Africa too. I have answered it briefly in part, and have sent you copies of my little book, intending to send a larger work at the first opportunity, when convenient. In it I have taken care not to injure Christian reputation in anyone, but only to refute the lies and folly of an ignorant madman. Remember me, holy and venerable pope. See how much I love you, that even when provoked I have not wished to answer, nor do I believe that to be yours which I would perhaps censure in another. Brother Communis greets you humbly.

The adversary of Christians did indeed try, through our dearest and sweetest son, your brother, to stir up a most dangerous scandal against the Catholic mother, who received you into her loving bosom when you fled from disinherited separation into the inheritance of Christ; he wished, that is, to cloud with foul sadness the serenity of the joy that had arisen in 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, allowed him power for this purpose only, that we might rejoice far more at the matter set right than we grieved at its trouble. For it is far more glorious to have laid down the burden of the episcopate to avoid dangers to the church than to have taken it up to hold the helm. For he shows that he could worthily have accepted the honour, if the principle of peace allowed, who does not unworthily defend it once accepted. God willed, then, through your brother, our son Maximian, to show the enemies of his church that there are in her heart those who seek not their own but the things of Jesus Christ. For he did not abandon that ministry of dispensing the mysteries of God overcome by any worldly desire, but laid it down moved by peaceable piety, lest because of his rank a foul and dangerous, or perhaps even destructive, dissension should arise among the members of Christ. For what would be blinder and more deserving of all execration than to leave a schism for the sake of the peace of the Catholic Church, and then to disturb that very Catholic peace by a question about one's own rank? And what more praiseworthy and more befitting Christian love than, having abandoned the mad pride of the Donatists, to cleave to the inheritance of Christ in such a way that a testimony of humility is shown by love of unity? So, as far as he is concerned, just as we rejoice that he has been found such that the storm of this temptation by no means overthrew what the divine word had built in his heart, so we wish and pray the Lord that by his subsequent life and conduct he may show more and more how well he would have exercised what he certainly would exercise, if it had been right. May he be repaid with the eternal peace promised to the church, who understood that what was not expedient for the peace of the church was not expedient for him.

But you, dearest son, no small joy of ours, who are hindered from accepting the episcopate by no such necessity: it befits your character to dedicate to Christ what he has given you. For your talent, prudence, eloquence, seriousness, sobriety, and the other things that adorn your character are gifts of God. Whom do they serve better than him by whom they were bestowed, so that they may be kept, increased, perfected, and rewarded? Let them not serve this world, lest they vanish and perish with it. We know there is no need to argue long with you on this, with how much ease you consider the hopes of vain men, their insatiable desires, and their uncertain life. Cast out of your mind, then, whatever it had conceived in expectation of earthly and false happiness; work in the field of God, where the fruit is sure, where so many things promised so long before have been fulfilled that it is utter madness to despair of what remains. We beseech you, by the divinity and humanity of Christ, by the peace of that heavenly city from which, as pilgrims, we gain eternal rest by temporal labour, to succeed in the episcopate of the church of Bagai your brother, who did not fall disgracefully but withdrew gloriously. Let that people, for whom we hope for the richest increase through your mind and tongue, made fruitful and adorned by the gifts of God, understand in you that your brother did what he did not from his own sloth but for its peace. We ordered that this letter should not be read to you until those to whom you are needed already had hold of you. For we hold you by the bond of spiritual love, because you are much needed in our college too. Why we have not also been present in body, you will learn later.

Since you reported to us what answer your bishop Clarentius gave concerning Felicianus of Musti, namely that he did not deny that he was both condemned by them and afterwards received back in his rank, but said that he had been condemned when innocent, because he was absent and proved that he had been absent, we say this, so that he may answer it: since it was not lawful to condemn unheard one whom those who condemned him now themselves say was innocent, either he should not have been condemned if innocent, or he should not have been received back if guilty. If he was received back innocent, he was condemned innocent; if he was condemned guilty, he was received back guilty. If those who condemned him did not know whether he was innocent, they are to be convicted of rashness, because they dared to condemn an innocent man unheard about whom they did not know; and from the present case we understand that with the same rashness they also condemned those earlier men whom they defamed with the crime of handing over. For if an innocent man could be condemned by them, men who were not traitors could also be called traitors by them.

Then, the same Felicianus, condemned by them, was in communion with Maximian for a long time. If he was innocent when he was condemned, why at a later time, in communion with the criminal Maximian, did he baptize many outside their communion? Witnesses are those very men who took action before the proconsul to have the same Felicianus excluded from his basilica as one in communion with Maximian. So it was not enough to have condemned him absent, condemned him unheard, condemned him, as they say, innocent; on top of that the proconsul was approached against him to have him expelled from the church. At least then, when they were expelling him from the church, they admit that they counted him among the condemned, the criminals, and the Maximianists. When, then, he was baptizing people while in communion with Maximian, did he give true baptism or false? If he who was in communion with Maximian gave true baptism, why is the baptism of the whole world accused? But if he gave false baptism while in communion with Maximian, why were those whom he baptized in the schism of Maximian received with him in such a way that no one in your party rebaptized them?

Since I began to write to you and to long for your writings, no better opportunity has ever come my way than that my letter should be brought to you by a servant and most faithful minister of God, very dear to me, such as is our son Cyprian the deacon. Through him I hope for your letter with such confidence that I could not hope for anything of this kind more surely. For our said son will not lack zeal in asking for a reply, nor favour in obtaining it, nor care in keeping it, nor eagerness in carrying it, nor faithfulness in delivering it. Only, if I am in any way worthy, may the Lord help and be present to your heart and to my desire, so that no greater will may hinder a brotherly will.

Since, then, I have already sent two letters and have received none of yours since, I wished to send those same letters again, believing that they had not arrived. And if they did arrive, and perhaps yours could not reach me, send again the very letters you have already sent, if they have been kept; if not, dictate again something for me to read, provided you are not unwilling to answer these, which I have long been waiting for. The first letter too, which I had prepared for you while still a presbyter, to be sent through a brother of ours, Profuturus, who afterwards became our colleague and has now departed this life, and who could not carry it then, because just as he was arranging to set out he was detained by the burden of the episcopate and then died shortly after, I wished to send even now, so that you may know how long I have burned for conversation with you, and how much I suffer because the senses of your body, through which my mind might approach your mind, are so far from me, my sweetest brother, to be honoured among the members of the Lord.

In this letter I add what we have learned since: that you have translated Job from the Hebrew, though we already had a translation of yours of that prophet turned from the Greek into Latin, in which you marked with asterisks what is in the Hebrew and missing in the Greek, and with obelisks what is found in the Greek and is not in the Hebrew, with such wonderful care that in some places we see stars against single words, signifying that those words are in the Hebrew but not in the Greek. But in this later translation, which is turned from the Hebrew, the same fidelity to the words does not appear; and it greatly troubles one who reflects, either why in that first one the asterisks are fixed with such care that they show even the smallest particles of speech missing from the Greek manuscripts that are in the Hebrew, or why in this other, which is from the Hebrew, less care has been taken that those same particles should be found in their places. I wished to give an example from it, but at the time I did not have the manuscript translated from the Hebrew. However, since you fly ahead in talent, you understand well enough, I think, not only what I have said but also what I meant to say, so that you may give the reason and explain what troubles me.

I for my part would rather you translated for us the Greek canonical Scriptures which are said to be of the Seventy translators. For it will be very hard if your translation begins to be read more often in many churches, because the Latin churches will differ from the Greek churches; especially since an objector is easily refuted by producing the Greek book, that is, of a very well-known language. But if anyone is disturbed by something unusual in what has been translated from the Hebrew and brings a charge of falsification, one can hardly or never get to the Hebrew testimonies by which what is objected may be defended. And even if one does get to them, who would tolerate so many Latin and Greek authorities being condemned? Besides, even Jews when consulted may give a different answer, so that you alone would seem necessary, who could refute even them; but before what judge, it would be a wonder if you could find one.

For a certain brother of ours, a bishop, when he had arranged for your translation to be read in the church over which he presides, stirred things up by something in the prophet Jonah that you rendered very differently from what was ingrained in everyone's senses and memory and had been chanted for so many successive generations. Such a tumult arose among the people, especially as the Greeks argued and inflamed the charge of falsification, that the bishop (the city was Oea) was compelled to ask for the testimony of the Jews. And they, whether out of ignorance or malice, answered that what the Greeks and Latins had and said was in the Hebrew manuscripts. Why say more? The man was compelled to correct what seemed a mistake, not wishing, after great danger, to be left without a people. From this it seems to us too that you also could sometimes be mistaken in some things; and see what this means in writings that cannot be corrected by comparing the testimonies of languages in common use. Accordingly, we give no small thanks to God for your work in translating the gospel from the Greek, because in almost everything there is no difficulty when we have compared the Greek Scripture. So if anyone contentiously favours an old error, he is very easily either taught or refuted when the manuscripts are produced and compared. And if some very rare things rightly cause difficulty, who is so hard as not readily to pardon so useful a labour, which cannot be repaid enough with praise? But I wish you would be good enough to explain what you think is the reason why in many places the authority of the Hebrew manuscripts is one thing and that of the Greek, called the Seventy, another. For that version has no small weight, which has deserved to be so widely spread, and which not only the thing itself shows that the apostles used, but which I remember you also testified that they used. And so you would do very great service if you rendered into accurate Latin that Greek Scripture which the Seventy produced, which in different manuscripts varies so much that it can hardly be tolerated, and is so suspect, lest something else be found in the Greek, that we hesitate to quote or prove anything from it. I thought this letter would be short, but somehow it has become so sweet to me to go on with it as if I were talking with you. But I beseech you by the Lord not to be reluctant to answer everything, and to give me your presence as far as you can.

You send me frequent letters and often press me to answer a certain letter of yours, copies of which reached me, as I wrote before, through Sisinnius the deacon, without your signature; a letter which you indicate you sent first through brother Profuturus and a second time through someone else; and that meanwhile Profuturus was called back from his journey, made bishop, and taken away by a swift death, while the other, whose name you do not mention, feared the dangers of the sea and changed his plan of sailing. This being so, I cannot wonder enough how that same letter is said to be held by many both in Rome and in Italy, and has not reached me alone, to whom alone it was sent; especially since that same brother Sisinnius said that he found it, among your other treatises, not in Africa, not with you, but on an island of the Adriatic about five years ago.

From friendship all suspicion must be removed, and one should speak with a friend as with another self. Some of my intimate friends and vessels of Christ, of whom there is a very great number at Jerusalem and in the holy places, suggested that this was not done by you with a single mind, but in search of praise and petty rumours and the small glory of popular favour, so that you might grow at my expense; that many might know that you challenge and I fear, that you write as a learned man and I keep silent as an ignorant one, and that at last someone had been found to put a limit to my chatter. But I, to confess it simply, did not wish at first to answer your Worthiness, because I did not clearly believe it to be your letter, nor, as the common proverb says of some, a sword smeared with honey; and then I was wary of seeming to answer a bishop of my communion impudently and to censure some things in the letter of one who was censuring me, especially since I judged certain things in it to be heretical;

and finally, lest you should justly complain and say: 'What? Had you seen my letter and recognized the marks of a familiar hand in the signature, that you so easily wounded a friend and turned another's malice into an insult to me?' Therefore, as I wrote before, either send that same letter signed with your own hand, or stop provoking an old man hiding in his cell. But if you wish either to display or to exercise your learning, look for young, eloquent, and noble men, of whom there are said to be very many at Rome, who can and dare to engage with you and bear the yoke with a bishop in the debate over the holy Scriptures. I, once a soldier, now a veteran, ought to praise the victories of you and others, not myself fight again with a worn-out body; lest, if you often drive me to write, I recall that story of how Quintus Maximus by his patience broke Hannibal in his youthful exultation. 'Age bears all away, the mind too. Often, I remember, as a boy I spent long days in song; now so many songs are forgotten by me; even his voice has now fled Moeris.' And, to speak rather from the holy Scriptures, Barzillai the Gileadite, handing over to his young son King David's favours and all his delights, showed that old age ought not to seek these things nor accept them when offered.

As for your swearing that you did not write a book against me nor send to Rome one you had not written, but that if perhaps some things are found in your writings which differ from my opinion, I have not been wounded by you, but you have written what seemed right to you: I ask you to hear me patiently. You did not write a book. How, then, have writings containing your censure of me been brought to me by others? Why does Italy have what you did not write? On what ground do you ask me to reply to what you deny having written? Nor am I so dull as to think myself wounded if you hold different opinions. But if you censure my sayings at close quarters, demand an account of what I have written, press me to correct what I have written, challenge me to a palinode, and give me back my eyes, in this friendship is wounded, in this the rights of close ties are violated. I write this so that we may not seem to contend childishly and give our supporters or detractors material for quarrelling with one another, because I wish to love you purely and as a Christian, and to keep nothing in my mind that differs from my lips. For it is not fitting that I, who from youth to this age have toiled and sweated in a little monastery with holy brothers, should dare to write anything against a bishop of my communion, and that bishop whom I began to love before I knew him, who first invited me to friendship, whom I rejoiced to see rising after me in the learning of the Scriptures. Therefore either deny that the book is yours, if perhaps it is not, and stop demanding a reply to what you did not write; or, if it is yours, confess it frankly, so that, if I write anything in my own defence, the fault may be yours, who provoked me, not mine, who was compelled to answer.

You add, moreover, that you are ready, if anything in your writings troubles me or I wish to correct it, to receive it in a brotherly way, and that you will not only rejoice in my goodwill towards you but even beg me to do this very thing. Again I say what I think: you provoke an old man, you goad one who is silent, you seem to show off your learning. But it does not befit my age to be thought ill-disposed towards one whom I ought rather to favour. And if perverse men find in the Gospels and the Prophets what they strive to censure, do you wonder if in your books, and especially in the exposition of the Scriptures, which are very obscure, some things seem to depart from the straight line? I say this not because I already judge that certain things in your works should be censured. For I have never given attention to reading them, nor do we have a supply of copies of them here, except your books of the Soliloquies and some short commentaries on the Psalms; if I wished to discuss these, I would show that they differ, I will not say from me, who am nothing, but from the interpretations of the ancient Greeks. Farewell, my dearest friend, my son in age, my father in rank; and, as I ask of you, see to it that whatever you write to me reaches me first.