The Institutes

The history of the Old Testament relates that the most wise Solomon, after he had received from God wisdom and very great prudence and breadth of heart like the countless sand of the sea — so that by the Lord's testimony it is said that none like him had arisen in times past nor would rise after him — when he wished to build that magnificent temple to the Lord, asked for the help of a foreign king, the king of Tyre. When Hiram, the son of a widow, was sent to him, whatever splendid work he undertook in the temple of the Lord or in the sacred vessels at the prompting of divine wisdom he accomplished by Hiram's service and arrangement.

If, then, that sovereignty higher than all the kingdoms of the earth, that noblest and most excellent offspring of the race of Israel, and that wisdom inspired by God, which surpassed the learning and institutions of all the peoples of the East and of the Egyptians, by no means disdained the counsel of a poor foreign man, you too, most blessed father Castor, rightly taught by these examples, are planning to build a true and rational temple to God, not of senseless stones but of a congregation of holy men, not temporal and corruptible but eternal and impregnable; and you wish to consecrate to the Lord most precious vessels, not cast from the dumb metal of gold or silver, which a Babylonian king might afterwards capture and assign to the pleasure of his concubines and princes, but holy souls, which, shining with the integrity of innocence, justice, and chastity, carry within themselves Christ the King dwelling in them. And so you deign to summon me, needy and poor in every respect, to share in so great a work.

For you wish to establish in your province the institutions of the coenobia of the East, and especially of the Egyptians. Although you yourself are perfect in all virtues and knowledge, and so filled with all spiritual riches that not only your words but your life alone is sufficient and more than sufficient as an example to those who seek perfection, you nevertheless ask and command me too, tongue-tied and poor in speech and knowledge, to contribute something from the poverty of my understanding to the fulfilment of your desire: to set out, though in an unskilled style, the institutions of the monasteries which we saw observed throughout Egypt and Palestine, as they were handed down to us there by the fathers. You are not looking for charm of style, in which you yourself are exceptionally learned, but wish the simple life of the saints to be explained in simple language to the brothers in your new monastery.

The more the holy ardour of your desire urges me to obey this, the more a great surge of difficulties deters me, though I wish to comply. First, because the merits of my life are not such that I can trust myself to grasp worthily in heart and mind matters so arduous, so obscure, so holy. Second, because what we attempted to do, or learned, or saw with our own eyes from our boyhood, when we lived among these men and were spurred on by their daily exhortations and examples, we can by no means now retain entire, having been separated for the course of so many years from their company and from imitating their way of life; especially since the principle of these things can by no means be handed on, understood, or kept in memory by idle meditation and verbal teaching.

For the whole of it consists in experience and practice alone; and just as these things cannot be handed on except by one who has experienced them, so they cannot even be grasped or understood except by one who has laboured to lay hold of them with equal zeal and sweat. And unless they are frequently examined and polished by constant conference with spiritual men, they quickly slip away again through carelessness of mind. Third, because even what we can remember in some fashion — not as the subject deserves, but as present circumstances allow — our rather unskilled speech cannot fittingly explain. Besides this, men distinguished in life and eminent in speech and knowledge have already laboured over many works on this subject: I mean Saint Basil and Jerome, and some others. The former of these, when the brothers questioned him about various institutions and questions, answered in an abundant discourse that was not only eloquent but also rich in testimonies from the divine Scriptures; the other not only published books worked out by his own talent, but also translated into Latin works composed in the Greek language.

After such overflowing rivers of their eloquence I might not undeservedly be charged with presumption if I tried to add this trickle of mine, were I not encouraged by trust in your holiness and by your promise that these trifles, such as they are, would be acceptable to you, or that you would assign them only to the community of brothers living in your new monastery. If anything perhaps has been set forth by us less carefully, let them read it again with piety and bear with it with more indulgent pardon, looking for the faithfulness of my account rather than for elegance of style.

Therefore, most blessed father, unique pattern of religion and humility, encouraged by your prayers I shall undertake the work you enjoin, according to the powers of my ability, and I shall make known, as to an untrained monastery and to men who thirst for the truth, those things which have been left entirely untouched by our predecessors, since they attempted to describe what they had heard rather than what they had experienced. Nor shall I try to weave together an account of God's wonders and signs. Although we have not only heard of many and incredible things from our elders but have also seen them accomplished before our very eyes, I shall pass over all these, since they contribute nothing more to readers than astonishment, nothing to instruction in the perfect life. I shall strive only to explain faithfully, as far as I can with the Lord's help, their institutions and the rules of the monasteries, and especially the origins, causes, and cures of the principal vices, which they reckon to be eight, according to their traditions.

For my purpose is to discuss a few things, not about the wonders of God, but about the correction of our morals and the consummation of the perfect life, according to what we have received from our elders. In this too I shall try to satisfy your instructions: if I find in these regions anything not founded on the pattern of the elders by very ancient ordinance, but reduced or added at the discretion of each person founding a monastery, I shall faithfully add or cut away according to the rule of the monasteries which we saw founded of old throughout Egypt and Palestine. For I by no means believe that a new foundation in the western parts of Gaul could have found anything more reasonable or more perfect than those institutions in which the monasteries founded by holy and spiritual fathers from the beginning of the apostolic preaching have lasted down to our own day.

I shall certainly venture to include in this little work one moderation: where I find that things in the rule of the Egyptians are impossible, or hard, or arduous in these regions, whether because of the severity of the climate or because of the difficulty and difference of customs, I shall temper them somewhat by the institutions of the monasteries found in Palestine or Mesopotamia; for if a reasonable measure of what is possible is kept, the perfection of observance is the same even where the ability is unequal.

Since we are going to speak of the institutions and rules of the monasteries, where could we more fittingly begin, by God's gift, than with the very dress of the monks? We shall then be able to set out their inner adornment in due order once we have pictured their outward appearance before the eyes. A monk, then, as a soldier of Christ always ready for battle, must always go about with his loins girded. For the authority of the divine Scriptures shows that those who laid the foundations of this profession in the Old Testament, namely Elijah and Elisha, went about in this dress; and we know that afterwards the leaders and founders of the New Testament, John, Peter, and Paul, and the other men of the same order, walked in this way. The first of them, who already in the Old Testament foreshadowed the flowers of virginity and the examples of chastity and continence, was sent by the Lord to rebuke the messengers of Ahaziah, the sacrilegious king of Israel, because, hindered by illness, he had resolved to consult Beelzebub, the god of Ekron, about his recovery; and when the prophet met them and denied the king a descent from the bed on which he had fallen, the king as he lay there recognized him from the description of his clothing. For when the messengers had returned and reported the prophet's sentence, he asked what was the appearance and dress of the man who had met them and spoken such words. "A hairy man," they said, "with a girdle of skin about his loins." From this dress the king at once recognized the man of God and said, "It is Elijah the Tishbite": he recognized the man of God without doubt by the sign of the girdle and by the appearance of his rough and unkempt body, because, living among so many thousands of the people of Israel, this manner of dress clung to him always as a kind of special mark impressed on him. Of John too, who stood as a most sacred boundary, the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New, we learn as the evangelist relates: "And John himself had a garment of camel's hair and a girdle of skin about his loins." When Peter had been thrust into prison by Herod and was to be brought out to death the next day, the angel standing by commanded him: "Gird yourself and put on your sandals." The angel of God would never have told him to do this had he not seen that Peter, to refresh his weary limbs with a night's rest, had for a little while loosened them from the usual binding of the girdle. And when Paul was going up to Jerusalem and was soon to be put in chains by the Jews, the prophet Agabus met him at Caesarea, took his girdle, bound his own hands and feet with it, to foreshadow by this bodily gesture the injuries of his sufferings, and said: "Thus says the Holy Spirit: So will the Jews bind in Jerusalem the man whose girdle this is, and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles." This could certainly not have been said by the prophet, "the man whose girdle this is," unless Paul had been accustomed to wear it constantly about his loins.

Let a monk's clothing also be such as only covers the body, keeps off the shame of nakedness, and wards off the harm of cold, not such as nourishes the seeds of vanity or pride, as the same apostle teaches: "Having food and covering, let us be content with these." He says "covering," not "clothing" as some Latin copies inaccurately have it: that is, what only covers the body, not what flatters by the glory of dress. Let it be so plain that it is not distinguished among the other men of this profession by any novelty of colour or style; so far from studied elegance that it is not, on the other hand, discoloured by affected dirt through neglect; in short, so separated from the finery of this world that it remains in every respect common to the dress of the servants of God. For whatever is presumed among the servants of God by one or a few, and is not held universally by the whole body of the brotherhood, must be judged either superfluous or proud, and therefore harmful, displaying a sign of vanity rather than of virtue. Therefore it will be right for us too to cut away as superfluous and useless those things which we do not see handed down as examples either by the ancient saints who laid the foundations of this profession or by the fathers of our own time who by succession keep their institutions to this day. So they entirely avoided a garment of haircloth, as conspicuous and noticeable to everyone, and for that very reason not only unable to bring any benefit to the spirit, but even apt to breed the vanity of pride, and also unsuitable and unfit for the practice of necessary work, in which a monk ought always to go about active and unencumbered. And if we have heard that some who wore this dress were men of good repute, the rule of the monasteries is not to be established on that account, nor are the ancient decrees of the holy fathers to be overthrown, because a few, relying on the privilege of their other virtues, are thought not to deserve blame even in those things which they have taken up contrary to the universal rule. For the opinion of a few ought not to be set above or to prejudge the general ordinance of all. We ought to give unquestioning faith and unhesitating obedience in all things to those institutions and rules which, not the will of a few, but the antiquity of so many ages and the countless number of holy fathers have handed down to posterity by unanimous decision. Nor, certainly, should it weigh with us as an example for daily life that Joram, the sacrilegious king of Israel, when surrounded by hosts of enemies, is said to have been found wearing sackcloth underneath when he tore his garment, or that the Ninevites, to soften God's sentence pronounced against them by the prophet, were covered with rough sackcloth. For he is shown to have worn it secretly underneath, so that no one at all could have known of it had his outer garment not been torn; and they wore the covering of sackcloth at a time when all were mourning over the imminent destruction of the city and all were clothed in the same dress, so that no one could be charged by anyone with ostentation. For unless difference is unusual, uniformity gives no offence.

There are, besides, certain things in the dress of the Egyptians that are suited not so much to the care of the body as to the shaping of character, so that the observance of simplicity and innocence may be kept even in the kind of clothing. For day and night they constantly wear very small hoods, reaching down only to the base of the neck and the shoulders and covering only the head, so that by the very imitation of this covering they may be continually reminded to keep the innocence and simplicity of little children. Having returned to childhood for Christ, they sing at all hours with feeling and power: "Lord, my heart is not exalted, nor are my eyes lifted up; nor have I walked in great things, nor in wonders above me. If I was not humbly minded, but exalted my soul, as a weaned child upon its mother."

They are also dressed in linen colobia, which barely reach to the elbows, and they go about with their arms otherwise bare, so that the cutting off of the sleeves may suggest that they have cut off the deeds and works of this world, and the garment of linen may teach that they are dead to all earthly conduct; and through it they may hear the apostle saying to them every day: "Put to death your members which are upon the earth," the very dress also declaring: "For you are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ in God," and: "I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me," and "the world is crucified to me, and I to the world."

They also wear double cords woven of woollen thread, which the Greeks call analaboi, and which we may call girdles or bands, or more properly arm-braces. These come down over the top of the neck, divide at the sides of the neck, go round the folds of both armpits, and gird them on either side, so that by drawing in the width of the garment they bring it close and fasten it to the body; and so, with their arms bound up, they are made active and unencumbered for every work, striving with all their strength to fulfil the apostle's precept: "For these hands have ministered not only to me but also to those who are with me"; "nor did we eat anyone's bread for nothing, but with labour and toil, working night and day, so as not to burden any of you"; and: "If anyone will not work, neither let him eat."

Next they cover their neck and shoulders with a narrow cape, aiming at humility of dress as well as cheapness and economy; this is called a mafors both in our language and in theirs. And so they avoid both the cost and the display of cloaks and capes.

The last item of their dress is a goatskin, which is called a melota or pera, and a staff. They wear these in imitation of those who foreshadowed the lines of this profession already in the Old Testament, of whom the apostle says: "They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, needy, distressed, afflicted, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes of the earth." This dress of goatskin signifies that, all the wantonness of carnal passions having been put to death, they ought to stand firm in the utmost seriousness of virtue, and that nothing wanton or hot of youth and of their former fickleness should remain in their body.

That these same men carried a staff is also shown by Elisha, who was one of them, when he says to his servant Gehazi, sending him to raise the woman's son: "Take my staff and go running; put it on the boy's face, and he will live." The prophet would certainly not have given it to him to carry if he had not been accustomed always to carry it in his own hand. Spiritually, carrying it warns them never to go unarmed among so many barking dogs of the vices and invisible beasts of spiritual wickedness — from which blessed David, asking to be delivered, says: "Do not deliver to the beasts, O Lord, the soul that confesses you" — but to beat them back when they rush on them with the sign of the cross and drive them far away, and to extinguish them when they rage against them by the constant remembrance of the Lord's passion and by imitation of his mortification.

Shoes, however, they refuse, as forbidden by the gospel precept; but when bodily weakness, or the cold of a winter morning, or the burning heat of noon requires it, they protect their feet only with sandals. They interpret the use of these, and the Lord's permission, as meaning that, if while we remain in this world we cannot be entirely stripped of the care and concern of this flesh, nor wholly freed from it, we should at least meet the needs of the body with slight attention and little entanglement; and that we should not allow the feet of our soul — which ought always to be ready and unencumbered for the spiritual race and for preaching the gospel of peace, with which we run after the fragrance of Christ's ointments, and of which David says, "I ran in thirst," and Jeremiah, "But I have not laboured in following you" — to be entangled in the deadly cares of this world, thinking about things that serve, not to supply the needs of nature, but superfluous and harmful pleasure. We shall fulfil this if, according to the apostle, we make no provision for the flesh in its desires. Yet although they use these sandals lawfully, as allowed by the Lord's command, they by no means allow them to stay on their feet when they approach to celebrate or receive the most holy mysteries, thinking that what was said to Moses and to Joshua son of Nun ought to be kept even according to the letter: "Loose the strap of your shoe, for the place on which you stand is holy ground."

Let this be said so that we may not seem to have left out anything about the dress of the Egyptians. But we should keep only those things which the situation of the place or the custom of the province allows. For the severity of the winter does not allow us to be content with sandals or colobia or a single tunic, and the covering of a very small hood or the wearing of a goatskin would bring ridicule rather than any edification to those who saw it. Therefore we think that we too should adopt only those things we mentioned above that suit both the humility of our profession and the nature of the climate, so that the whole of our clothing may consist, not in a novelty of dress that might give offence to the people of this world, but in decent plainness.

So the soldier of Christ, clothed in these garments, should know first that he is fortified by the binding of the girdle so that he may go about always ready, not only in mind but also in his very dress, for all the uses and works of the monastery. For he will be proved the more fervent in spiritual progress and in the knowledge of divine things through purity of heart, the more devoted he has been to the pursuit of obedience and work. Second, he should know that in the very wearing of the girdle there is no small mystery that is required of him. For the girding of the loins and the encircling with a dead skin signify that he bears about the mortification of those members in which the seeds of lust and wantonness are contained, understanding that the gospel command, "Let your loins be girded," is always pressed on him by the apostle's interpretation: "Put to death your members which are upon the earth: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desire." And so we read in the holy Scriptures that only those were girded with a girdle in whom the seeds of intercourse are found to be extinguished, and who sing in deed and in power that saying of blessed David: "For I have become like a wineskin in the frost," because, the flesh of the vices having been scraped away to the marrow, they stretch the dead skin of the outer man by the power of the spirit. And therefore he significantly added "in the frost," because they were by no means content with mortification of the heart alone, but also had the movements of the outer man and the incitements of nature itself frozen by the frost of continence applied from without, no longer allowing, according to the apostle, any reign of sin in their mortal body, nor carrying a flesh that fights against the spirit.

Girded, then, with this double girdle of which we have spoken, let the soldier of Christ next learn what measure of canonical prayers and psalms was established of old by the holy fathers in the regions of the East. As for their quality, and how we can pray without ceasing according to the apostle's saying, we shall set this out in its proper place, as far as the Lord grants, when we begin to relate the conferences of the elders.

For we have found that many in other regions, according to the capacity of their minds — having, as the apostle says, a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge — have set up various patterns and rules for themselves on this matter. Some have decided that twenty or thirty psalms should be said each night, and these drawn out with the melodies of antiphons and the addition of certain chants; others have even tried to exceed this measure; some say eighteen. And in this way we have found a different canon established in different places, and we have seen almost as many patterns and rules adopted as we have seen monasteries and cells. There are some who have thought that even in the daytime offices of prayer, that is, at the third, sixth, and ninth hours, the number of psalms and prayers should be made equal to the number of the hour at which these services are rendered to God; others have chosen to assign six psalms to each of the day's gatherings. Therefore I think it necessary to bring forward the most ancient ordinance of the fathers, which is still observed by the servants of God throughout all Egypt, so that the untrained infancy in Christ of your new monastery may be instructed rather in the very ancient institutions of the most ancient fathers.

Throughout all Egypt and the Thebaid, then, where monasteries are not founded at the whim of each person who renounces the world, but either continue to this day or are founded to endure through the succession and traditions of the elders, we saw a lawful measure of prayers kept in the evening gatherings and the night vigils. For no one is allowed to preside over a gathering of brothers, or even over himself, before he has not only become a stranger to all his possessions but has also learned that he is not even his own master and has no power over himself. For one who renounces this world, whatever possessions and riches he may have, must seek to live in a coenobium in such a way that he does not flatter himself in any way about what he has left or brought into the monastery. He must so obey everyone that he knows that he must return to his former childhood according to the Lord's saying, claiming nothing for himself on account of his age or the number of his years, which he considers lost because spent vainly in the world; but, as befits a beginner and the newness of the apprenticeship which he knows he is serving in the warfare of Christ, he must not hesitate to submit himself even to younger men. He is also compelled to take up the habit of work and sweat, so that, providing his daily food with his own hands according to the apostle's precept, either for his own use or for the needs of visitors, he may forget both the pride and the luxuries of his former life and acquire humility of heart through the contrition of labour. And therefore no one is chosen to preside over a congregation of brothers before he who is to be put in charge has learned by obeying what ought to be commanded to those who will obey, and has grasped from the institutions of the elders what he ought to hand on to the younger. For they declare that to rule well or to be ruled well is the mark of a wise man, and they define it as the highest gift and grace of the Holy Spirit. For no one can lay down wholesome precepts for those who obey except one who has first been trained in all the disciplines of the virtues, and no one can obey an elder except one who is consummated in the fear of God and perfected in the virtue of humility. And the reason why we see a variety of patterns and rules adopted in other provinces is that very often we dare to preside over monasteries without experience of the elders' teaching, and, professing ourselves abbots before we have been disciples, we lay down whatever we please, readier to demand the observance of our own inventions than to keep the tested teaching of our forebears. But while wishing to explain the measure of prayers that ought chiefly to be kept, we have, eagerly drawn on by the institutions of the fathers, anticipated by a hasty digression an account we were reserving for its proper place. Let us now return to our subject.

Throughout all Egypt and the Thebaid, then, as we said, the number of twelve psalms is kept both at the evening and at the night services, with this condition, that after them two readings follow, one from the Old Testament and one from the New. This measure, established of old, has lasted unviolated to this day for so many ages in all the monasteries of those provinces, because the elders affirm that it was not established by human invention but was brought down from heaven to the fathers by the teaching of an angel.

For in the beginnings of the faith, few indeed, but most approved men, were reckoned under the name of monks. They had received their rule of life from the evangelist Mark of blessed memory, who was the first to preside as bishop over the city of Alexandria. They not only kept those great things which we read in the Acts of the Apostles that the church, or the crowds of believers, first practised — "the multitude of believers had one heart and one soul, and none of them said that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common. For as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the prices of what they sold and laid them at the feet of the apostles, and it was distributed to each as anyone had need" — but they had also added things far more sublime than these. For withdrawing to more secluded places in the outskirts, they led a life so strict in the rigour of its abstinence that the hard profession of their way of life astonished even those who were strangers to their religion. They applied themselves day and night with such fervour to the reading of the divine Scriptures, to prayer, and to manual work that not even the appetite for food, or the thought of it, troubled them except when hunger pressed on the body every second or third day; and they took food and drink not so much as something desired but as something necessary, and not even this before sunset, so as to join the hours of daylight to the pursuit of spiritual meditation, and the care of the body to the night; and they practised other things far more sublime than these. Anyone who knows less of them from the report of the local people can learn of them from the Church History. At that time, then, when the perfection of that primitive church still endured unviolated among its successors, while the memory was fresh, and the fervent faith of the few had not yet cooled by being spread among the many, the venerable fathers, providing with watchful care for those who would come after, met to discuss what measure should be decreed for daily worship throughout the whole body of the brotherhood, so that they might hand on to their successors an inheritance of piety and peace free from all strife of dissension. They feared, of course, that some discord or variety in the daily services might arise among men sharing the same worship and might some day in the future put forth a seed of error or rivalry or harmful schism. Each one, according to his own fervour and forgetting the weakness of others, thought that what he judged very easy, considering his own faith and strength, should be established, giving too little thought to what was possible for the whole body of the brothers, in which the greater part must also be weak; and in different ways they strove to establish an enormous number of psalms according to the strength of their own minds, some fifty, others sixty, and some, not content even with this number, thought it should be exceeded. And there was among them a holy variety of pious contention about the rule of religion, so much so that the time of the evening service arrived while the most sacred question was still under discussion. When they wished to celebrate the daily rites of prayer, one man rose up in the midst to sing psalms to the Lord. While all sat, as is still the custom in the parts of Egypt, with the whole attention of their hearts fixed on the words of the one singing, he sang eleven psalms, separated by the insertion of prayers, with the verses joined together and pronounced evenly; and completing the twelfth with the response of Alleluia, he was suddenly withdrawn from the eyes of all, and put an end to the question and the ceremonies alike.

From then on, the venerable senate of the fathers, understanding that a general canon had been established for the congregations of the brothers by the teaching of an angel, not without the Lord's dispensation, decreed that this number should be kept both at the evening and at the night gatherings. To these they added two readings, one from the Old Testament and the other from the New, as handed down by themselves and as extraordinary, only for those who wished and who studied to possess the memory of the divine Scriptures by constant meditation. But on the Sabbath or the Lord's day they read both from the New Testament, that is, one from the apostle or the Acts of the Apostles and the other from the Gospels. Those to whom the reading or memorizing of the Scriptures is a concern also do this on all the days of Pentecost.

They begin and end these prayers of which we have spoken in this way: when a psalm is finished they do not immediately fall on their knees, as some of us do in this region, who, before the psalm is well finished, hurry to prostrate ourselves in prayer, rushing to finish the service as quickly as possible. For while we wish to exceed the measure established of old by our forebears, counting the number of the remaining psalms, we are urged on to reach the end, thinking about the refreshment of our tired bodies rather than seeking the benefit and advantage of prayer. With them it is not so. Before they bend their knees, they pray for a little while, and they spend the greater part of the time standing in supplication. Then, after this, they fall to the ground for the briefest moment, as if only adoring the divine mercy, rise up again as quickly as possible, and standing upright again with outstretched hands, as they had prayed standing before, they continue in their prayers. For they say that one who lies too long on the ground is attacked more heavily not only by thoughts but also by sleep. Would that we did not know this to be true from experience and daily habit — we who often, prostrate on the ground, wish this bending of the body to be prolonged, under pretext not so much of prayer as of rest! And when the one who is to gather up the prayer rises from the ground, all rise together, so that no one presumes to bend the knee before he bows or to linger when he has risen from the ground, lest he seem not to have followed the conclusion of the one who gathers up the prayer but to have celebrated his own.

What we have seen in this province, namely that when one person sings, all who stand by join loudly at the end of the psalm in "Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit," we have never heard anywhere in the whole East; there, when the psalm is finished by the one who sings, a prayer follows in silence from all, and this glorification of the Trinity usually concludes only the antiphon.

And since the order of the institutions has brought us in due course to the measure of the canonical prayers, although we are reserving a fuller treatment of them for the conferences of the elders, where we shall set it out more fully when we begin to discuss their quality and continuity in their own words, I nevertheless think it necessary, as the place and the course of the account itself suggest, since the occasion has presented itself, to touch on a few things now as well. In this way, by shaping the movements of the outer man for the time being, and laying as it were certain foundations of prayer now, we may afterwards, with less labour, build the summit of his prayers as well when we begin to discuss the state of the inner man. Above all we provide that, if the end of our life should come first and shut us out from the account we hope to set out at the proper time, God willing, we may at least leave you in this work the beginnings of a matter so necessary — you to whom, in the ardour of your desire, everything is slow. So, while the respite of this life is granted us, we may at least sketch for the time being some outlines of prayer, by which especially those who live in coenobia may be shaped to some extent. At the same time we provide for those who may come across only this book and will be unable to reach that other, so that by its instruction they may be imbued at least in part with the quality of prayer; and just as they have been instructed about the dress and clothing of the outer man, so they may not be ignorant of how they ought to present him for offering spiritual sacrifices. For these little books, which with the Lord's help we are now preparing to compose, will be more fittingly adapted to the observance of the outer man and the institution of the coenobia; the others will rather concern the discipline of the inner man, the perfection of the heart, and the life and teaching of the anchorites.

When, then, they gather to celebrate these services, which they call synaxes, such silence is kept by all that, though so great a multitude of brothers is gathered together, you would think that no one at all was present except the one who rises and sings the psalm in the midst; and especially when the prayer is being completed. In it no one spits, no clearing of the throat makes a noise, no cough sounds, no sleepy yawn is drawn out with jaws parted and gaping, no groans or sighs are uttered that might hinder those standing by; no voice is heard except that of the priest concluding the prayer — unless perhaps one that has escaped the barrier of the mouth through ecstasy of mind and has stolen unnoticed from the heart, when it has been kindled by an immoderate and unbearable fervour of spirit, while what the fiery mind cannot contain within itself tries to escape from the inmost chambers of the breast through a kind of unutterable groaning. But one who, being in a lukewarm state of mind, prays aloud, or lets out of his throat any of the things we have mentioned, and especially is overtaken by yawning, they declare sins doubly: first, because he is guilty in respect of his own prayer, since he offers it negligently; second, because by his undisciplined noise he also interrupts the attention of another who might perhaps have been able to pray more intently. And so they teach that the prayer should be brought to a quick close, lest perhaps, if we linger in it, some overflow of spittle or phlegm should interrupt the ecstasy of our prayer. And therefore, while it is still fervent, it must be snatched quickly, as it were, from the jaws of the enemy; for he, being always hostile to us, stands by as most hostile of all when he sees that we wish to offer prayers to the Lord against him, hastening, by stirring up thoughts or various humours, to draw our mind away from the intentness of supplication, and striving in this way to make it lukewarm after the fervour with which it began. For this reason they consider it more useful that prayers should be short but very frequent: the one, so that by praying to God more often we may cleave to him continually; the other, so that by concise brevity we may avoid the darts of the devil lying in wait, which he is most intent on inflicting on us when we pray.

And therefore they do not try to finish even the psalms they sing in the assembly in one continuous recitation, but divide them, according to the number of verses, into two or three sections with prayers inserted, and complete them separately, part by part. For they take pleasure, not in a multitude of verses, but in the understanding of the mind, pursuing with all their strength this: "I will sing with the spirit, I will sing also with the mind." And therefore they hold it more useful for ten verses to be sung with reasonable attention than for a whole psalm to be poured out with confusion of mind, which is sometimes produced by the haste of the singer, when, considering the measure and number of the psalms still to be sung, he is concerned not to make the meaning clear to the hearers but to hurry to the end of the synaxis. Finally, if any of the younger men, whether from fervour of spirit or because he is not yet trained, begins to exceed the measure of singing, the progress of the singer is cut short by the elder with a clap, which he gives with his hand on the seat where he sits, making all rise for prayer; he takes every care that no weariness is produced in those sitting by the length of the psalms, by which the singer would not only lose the fruit of understanding for himself but also cause loss to those whom he has made weary of the synaxis by its excess. This too is kept among them with all observance: that with the response of Alleluia no psalm is said except one that is marked in its title with the inscription Alleluia. They divide the twelve psalms mentioned above in this way: if there are two brothers, each sings six; if three, four each; if four, three each. They never sing fewer than this number in the assembly, and so, however great a multitude has gathered, never more than four brothers sing at the synaxis.

This canonical number of twelve psalms mentioned above they lighten by such bodily rest that, when they celebrate these services of the assemblies according to custom, all except the one who has risen to say the psalms in the midst sit on very low seats and hang with the whole attention of their hearts on the voice of the singer. For they are so wearied by fasts and by the work of the whole day and night that, unless they were helped by some such rest, they could not complete even this number standing. For they allow no time to pass free from the practice of work, since they not only strive with all diligence to do with their hands the work that the light of day permits, but also anxiously seek out those kinds of work which not even the thickest darkness of the night can hinder, believing that they will gain a more sublime vision of spiritual contemplation through purity of mind the more devotedly they are intent on the pursuit of work and labour. And therefore they judge that a moderate number of canonical prayers was divinely regulated, so that for those more ardent in faith there might remain room into which the untiring course of their virtue could extend, and yet no weariness from excess might be produced in tired and sick bodies. And so, when the offices of the canonical prayers have been completed according to custom, each one hastens back to his own cell — which he is permitted to inhabit either alone or with just one other, one whom partnership in work, or the training of discipleship and instruction, has joined to him, or at least whom likeness of virtues has made his equal — and there they again celebrate the same office of prayers more earnestly as their own private sacrifice; and none of them gives himself further to the rest of sleep until, when the light of day comes, the daytime work succeeds the night's work and meditation.

Besides the reason that, striving with all diligence, they believe they offer a sacrifice to God from the fruit of their hands, they keep this labour with all care for two reasons, which we too should observe with the same diligence if we aim at perfection. The first is so that the envious enemy, jealous of our purity, against which he always lies in wait above all and is unceasingly hostile, may not defile by some illusion in sleep the purification we have gained by the night psalms and prayers. After the satisfaction we have offered for our negligences and ignorances, and the pardon of our confession begged with abundant groans, he hastens all the more eagerly to stain us if he finds a time of rest, striving to cast down and weaken our confidence especially when he sees that we are reaching towards God more fervently through the purity of our prayers; so that sometimes he tries to disgrace, within the brief space of that hour, those whom he could not wound through the whole night. The second is that, even if no such illusion of the devil arises to be feared, even a pure sleep coming in between breeds sluggishness in a monk who must soon wake, and bringing a slow torpor on the mind blunts its vigour through the whole day, dulls that keenness of perception and drains that richness of heart which can keep us more watchful and stronger through the whole day against all the snares of the enemy. For this reason private vigils are added by them to the canonical vigils and follow them with even greater observance, so that the purification gained by psalms and prayers may not be lost, and a more intent watchfulness, which will guard us more diligently through the day, may be prepared by the night's meditation.

And so they carry out these vigils with the addition of work, lest sleep be able to creep in on them as if they were idle. For just as they allow themselves hardly any time of leisure, so they set no end even to their spiritual meditation. Exercising the powers of body and soul together, they balance the wages of the outer man with the gains of the inner, fixing the weight of work, like a firm and immovable anchor, against the slippery movements of the heart and the unstable fluctuation of thoughts. Bound to it, the restlessness and wandering of the heart can be held within the enclosure of the cell as in a most secure harbour. And so, intent only on spiritual meditation and the guarding of thoughts, it not only does not allow the watchful mind to fall into consent to any evil suggestion, but also guards it from every superfluous and idle thought, so that it cannot easily be discerned by anyone which depends on which: whether they practise unceasing manual work for the sake of spiritual meditation, or whether through the continuity of their work they gain such remarkable progress of the spirit and light of knowledge.

So when the psalms are finished and the daily assembly has been dismissed, as we mentioned above, none of them dares to linger even for a moment or to converse with another; nor does anyone presume, through the whole day, to leave his cell or abandon the work he usually does in it, except perhaps when they are called out to the duty of some necessary work. And when they go out, they carry it out so that no conversation at all takes place among them; each one performs the work enjoined in such a way that, by going over a psalm or some Scripture from memory, he gives no opportunity or time, not only to harmful conspiracy or evil plans, but not even to idle talk, since the service of mouth and heart alike is continually occupied in spiritual meditation. For it is kept with the greatest care that no one, and especially the younger ones, is found to have stood together with another even for a moment, or to have gone aside anywhere together, or to have held each other's hands. If any are found to have committed any of these forbidden things against the discipline of this rule, they are declared guilty of no slight fault, as contumacious and transgressors of the commandments, and they cannot escape even the suspicion of conspiracy and evil plans. Unless they wash away this fault by public penance, with all the brothers gathered together, none of them is allowed to take part in the prayer of the brothers.

Indeed, if anyone has been suspended from prayer for any fault he has committed, no one at all has permission to pray with him until, after penance done prostrate on the ground, his reconciliation and pardon for the fault have been granted publicly by the abbot before all the brothers. They separate and cut themselves off from sharing in his prayer with such care because they believe that one who is suspended from prayer is, according to the apostle, delivered to Satan; and whoever, moved by thoughtless pity, presumes to join in his prayer before he is received back by the elder makes himself an accomplice in his condemnation, voluntarily handing himself over to Satan, to whom the other had been assigned for the correction of his guilt. In this he incurs a still graver guilt, because by mixing with him in the fellowship of conversation or prayer he gives him greater fuel for insolence and nourishes the offender's contumacy for the worse. For by giving him a harmful consolation he will make his heart harder and harder, and will not allow him to be humbled for the reason he had been separated; and through this he will lead him either to think little of the elder's rebuke or to think insincerely about satisfaction and pardon.

The one to whom the summoning of the religious assembly and the care of the synaxis is entrusted does not presume to wake the brothers for the daily vigils at random, as he pleases, or whenever he himself has woken in the night, or as the convenience of his own sleep or sleeplessness urges him. Rather, although daily habit makes him wake at the usual hour, he carefully and frequently examines the time fixed for the assembly by the course of the stars and then calls them to the office of prayers, lest he be found careless in either of two ways: if, overcome by sleep, he lets the appointed hour of the night go by, or if, wishing to sleep and eager for rest, he anticipates it, and so seems to have served, not the spiritual office and the rest of all, but his own rest. We should also know this: among the Egyptians, from the evening of the Sabbath which dawns into the Lord's day until the following evening, the knees are not bent, nor on all the days of Pentecost, and the rule of fasting is not kept on them. The reason for these things will be set out in its place in the conferences of the elders, when the Lord commands. For now our purpose is only to run through the reasons in a brief account, lest the book exceed its restrained measure and burden the reader with weariness or labour.

I think that the measure of the night prayers and psalms kept throughout Egypt has now been dealt with, by God's gift, as far as the slenderness of our ability allowed. Now we must discuss the services of the third, sixth, and ninth hours according to the rule of the monasteries of Palestine and Mesopotamia, tempering, as we said in the preface, the perfection of the Egyptians and the inimitable rigour of their discipline by the institutions of these others.

For among the Egyptians these offices, which we are compelled to render to the Lord at separate hours and intervals of time at the summons of the one who calls us, are celebrated continually and voluntarily throughout the whole day, together with work. For manual work is done by them unceasingly in private in their cells in such a way that meditation on the psalms or the other Scriptures is never entirely omitted; and mingling prayers and petitions with it at every moment, they spend the whole day in those offices which we celebrate at fixed times. Therefore, apart from the evening and night gatherings, no public service is held among them during the day except on Saturday and Sunday, when they gather at the third hour for Holy Communion. For what is offered unceasingly is more than what is paid at intervals of time, and a voluntary gift is more pleasing than duties rendered by canonical compulsion; for this David too rejoices somewhat more gloriously when he says, "I will sacrifice to you willingly," and, "Let the free offerings of my mouth be pleasing to you, O Lord."

So in the monasteries of Palestine and Mesopotamia and the whole East the services of the hours mentioned above are completed daily with three psalms each, so that constant prayer may be offered to God at fixed times, and yet the necessary duties of work may in no way be hindered, since the spiritual services are completed with fair moderation. For we know that the prophet Daniel too poured out his prayers to the Lord daily at these three times, with the windows open in his upper room. And not without reason have these times been assigned more especially to religious offices, since in them the fulfilment of the promises and the sum of our salvation were accomplished. For it is shown that at the third hour the Holy Spirit, promised of old through the prophets, first descended on the apostles when they were engaged in the office of prayer. For when, because of the speaking in tongues that flowed from them through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the unbelieving people of the Jews, both astonished and mocking, said that they were filled with new wine, Peter stood in their midst and said: "Men of Israel, and all you who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. For these men are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is the third hour of the day; but this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: And it shall be in the last days, says the Lord, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; and indeed upon my menservants and upon my maidservants in those days I will pour out of my Spirit, and they shall prophesy." We see that all this was fulfilled at the third hour, and that the coming of the Holy Spirit foretold through the prophets came upon the apostles at that time. At the sixth hour our Lord and Saviour was offered to the Father as a spotless victim, and ascending the cross for the salvation of the whole world he blotted out the sins of the human race; despoiling the principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, and freed all of us, who were bound and held fast by the debt of an indissoluble bond, taking it out of the way and fixing it to the trophy of his cross. At the same hour too, to Peter in an ecstasy of mind, the calling of the Gentiles was revealed from heaven, through the letting down of the vessel of the gospel and the voice from God that came to him declaring the cleansing of all kinds of living creatures that were in it, saying to him: "Rise, Peter, kill and eat." That this vessel let down from heaven by four corners signifies nothing other than the gospel is plainly recognized. For although, distinguished by the fourfold narrative of the evangelists, it seems to have four beginnings, yet the body of the gospel is one, embracing the birth and also the divinity of the same Christ, his wonders and his passion. And it says beautifully, not "a linen sheet," but "as it were a linen sheet"; for linen is a sign of mortification. Since, then, the death of the Lord's passion was undergone not by the law of human nature but by the choice of his own will, it is called "as it were a linen sheet." For though he died according to the flesh, he did not die according to the spirit, because "neither was his soul left in hell, nor did his flesh see corruption." And again he says: "No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." So in this vessel of the Gospels, sent down again — that is, written by the Holy Spirit — all the nations which were once held to be unclean, because they stood outside the observance of the law, flowing together through the belief of faith, so that they may be healthfully sacrificed from the worship of idols and may advance to saving food, are brought to Peter cleansed by the Lord's voice. And at the ninth hour, penetrating the underworld, he extinguished the inextricable darkness of Tartarus by the flash of his splendour, and breaking its gates of bronze and shattering its bars of iron, he took with him to heaven, taken captive for their salvation, the captivity of the saints which was held shut in the darkness of pitiless hell; and removing the fiery sword, he restored the ancient inhabitant to paradise by his faithful confession. At the same hour too Cornelius the centurion, continuing in prayer with his customary devotion, learns from an angel speaking with him that the remembrance of his prayers and alms had been made before the Lord; and at the ninth hour the mysteries of the calling of the Gentiles are openly disclosed to him, which had been revealed to Peter in ecstasy at the sixth hour. In another passage of the Acts of the Apostles it is also related of the same time: "Peter and John were going up to the temple at the ninth hour of prayer." By these things it is clearly proved that these hours, consecrated not without reason by holy and apostolic men to religious services, ought likewise to be observed by us too. For unless we are compelled, as if by some law, to pay these offices of devotion at least at fixed times, we spend the whole day, entangled in forgetfulness or sloth or business, without any interruption for prayer. And what should be said of the evening sacrifices, which even in the Old Testament are ordained by the law of Moses to be offered continually? For that morning burnt offerings and evening sacrifices were offered unceasingly in the temple every day, though with figurative victims, we can prove also from what David sings: "Let my prayer be directed as incense in your sight, the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." In this passage it can be understood in a more sacred sense of that true evening sacrifice which was given by the Lord our Saviour to the apostles at supper in the evening, when he instituted the most holy mysteries of the church, or which he himself, on the following day, offered to the Father as an evening sacrifice — that is, at the end of the ages — by the lifting up of his hands for the salvation of the whole world. This stretching out of his hands on the cross is quite properly called a lifting up. For he lifted up to heaven all of us who lay in hell, according to the word of his promise: "When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all things to myself." As for the morning service, we are also taught by what is regularly sung in it every day: "O God, my God, to you I watch from the dawn," and, "In the mornings I will meditate on you," and, "I came before you in the early hour and cried out," and again, "My eyes came before the dawn, that I might meditate on your words." At these hours, too, the householder in the gospel hired labourers for his vineyard. For he is described as hiring first early in the morning, which time signifies our morning service; then at the third hour, then the sixth, after that the ninth, and lastly the eleventh, by which the hour of the lamp-lighting is signified.

It should be known, however, that this morning canonical office, which is now observed especially in the western regions, was first established in our own time and in our own monastery, where our Lord Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, deigned to undergo the growth of human infancy, and by his grace strengthened our infancy too, still tender and at the breast in religion. For until that time we find that, when this morning service — which in the monasteries of Gaul is usually celebrated a little while after the night psalms and prayers are finished — was completed together with the daily vigils, the remaining hours were assigned by our forebears to the refreshment of the body. But some of the more negligent, abusing this indulgence, prolonged their time of sleep too far, since no need of any assembly invited them to leave their cells or rise from their beds before the third hour; and to the loss of their work they were sluggish with excessive sleep even during the daytime, when they ought to have been attending to various duties — especially on those days when a heavier weariness arose from keeping vigil from the evening hours until near dawn. So some brothers there, fervent in spirit, who were seriously displeased by this kind of negligence, brought a complaint to the elders, and after long discussion and careful consultation it was decreed by them that, rest being allowed to tired bodies until sunrise, when reading could be prepared or manual work taken up without harm, all should then be summoned to this religious observance and rise together from their beds; and, after celebrating three psalms and prayers according to the measure established of old for the observance of the third and sixth hours, after the example of the threefold confession, they should put an end to sleep and a beginning to work at the same time with even moderation. Although this pattern seems to have been devised for an occasion and was clearly established within recent memory for the reason we have given, it nevertheless most plainly fulfils according to the letter the number indicated by blessed David, though this also has a spiritual meaning: "Seven times a day I have praised you for the judgments of your justice." For with this service added we are shown, by holding these spiritual assemblies seven times a day, to be saying praises to the Lord seven times in it. Finally, although this same pattern, coming from the East, has spread very usefully as far as here, it does not seem to have been admitted even now in some very ancient monasteries throughout the East, which will by no means allow the most ancient rules of the fathers to be violated.

Some in this province, not knowing why this service was established or devised, go back to sleep again after the morning hymns are finished, falling into the very thing which our elders instituted this service to check. For they hurry to complete it at the very hour at which the more negligent and less careful are given an occasion to sleep again. This should by no means be done, as we explained more fully in the preceding book when describing the synaxis of the Egyptians, lest some overflow of natural humours arise and pollute our purification, gained by humble confession and prayers before dawn, or an illusion of the enemy corrupt it; or at least lest the refreshment of even a pure and simple sleep coming in between break the fervour of our spirit and, having made us lukewarm with the torpor of sleep, lead us on sluggish and slothful through the whole day. To avoid this, the Egyptians, even though they usually rise at fixed times before cockcrow, prolong their vigils after the canonical office has been celebrated until daylight, so that the morning light when it comes may find them established in this fervour of spirit, and may keep them more fervent and watchful through the whole day, receiving them prepared for the conflict and strengthened against the devil's daytime struggle by the exercise of the night vigils and spiritual meditation.

We should also know that our elders, who decided that this same morning service should be added, changed nothing of the ancient custom of the psalms; the office in the night assemblies has always been celebrated in the same order as before. For the hymns which in this region they have taken over for the morning service are still sung today in the same way at the end of the night vigils, which they usually finish after cockcrow and before dawn: that is, Psalm 148, which begins "Praise the Lord from the heavens," and the rest that follow. But Psalms 50, 62, and 89 were assigned to this new service. Indeed, throughout Italy today, when the morning hymns are finished, Psalm 50 is sung in all the churches, and I do not doubt that this was derived from no other source than this.

Anyone who has not come to prayer at the third, sixth, or ninth hour before the psalm that has been begun is finished does not dare to enter the oratory any further or to join those who are singing, but waits, standing outside the doors, for the dismissal of the assembly, until, as all come out, he obtains pardon for his negligence or lateness by penance done prostrate on the ground. He knows that he cannot atone for the fault of his sloth in any other way, and that he will not be admitted even to the service that will follow three hours later unless he hastens at once to make satisfaction for his present negligence, relying on true humility. In the night gatherings, however, a latecomer is allowed a delay up to the second psalm, provided only that he hurries to insert and join himself to the assembly before the brothers prostrate themselves in prayer at the end of that psalm. He will certainly be subject to the same rebuke and penance we have mentioned if he is even a little later than the appointed time of delay.

The vigils that are celebrated each week from the evening before the Sabbath dawns are regulated by the elders in the monasteries in winter, when the nights are longer, so as to last until the fourth cockcrow, so that after keeping watch through the whole night they may refresh their bodies for about the remaining two hours, and may not grow sluggish with the torpor of sleep through the whole day, being content with the rest of this short time in place of a whole night's refreshment. We too should keep this with all care: being content with the sleep allowed us after the end of the vigils until daylight comes, that is, until the morning psalms, we should spend the whole day afterwards in work and necessary duties, lest, compelled by the weariness and emptiness of the vigils to take back during the day the sleep we took from the night, we seem not so much to have withdrawn rest from the body as to have exchanged the time of rest and the night's refreshment. For frail flesh can by no means be so defrauded of a whole night's rest that on the following day it can keep an unshaken watchfulness without drowsiness of mind and torpor of soul; this watchfulness will be hindered rather than helped unless the body has tasted a little sleep after the end of the vigils. And therefore, if at least one hour of sleep is granted, as we have said, before daylight, we shall gain all the hours of vigil we have spent in prayer through the whole night, giving nature what is its own and having no need to take back during the day what we withdrew from the night. For whoever tries, not reasonably to withdraw a part from this flesh, but to deny it the whole, and — to put it more truly — wishes to cut off not what is superfluous but what is necessary, will certainly give it back everything. For this reason vigils that are prolonged until daylight with thoughtless and unreasonable excess must be repaid at greater interest. And so they divide them into three kinds of office, so that the labour, divided by this variety, may relieve the body's weariness with a certain pleasure. For when they have sung three antiphons standing, they then sit on the ground or on very low seats and respond to three psalms, one singing — each psalm being given to a different brother in turn — and in the same restful posture they add three readings. So it comes about that, lessening their bodily labour, they keep their vigils with greater attention of mind.

It has been established throughout the whole East since the time of the apostolic preaching, when the Christian religion and faith were founded, that these vigils should be celebrated as the Sabbath dawns, because, when our Lord and Saviour was crucified on the sixth day of the week, the disciples, still stricken by his recent passion, remained watching through the whole night, allowing their eyes no rest of sleep. For this reason the solemnity of vigils assigned to this night since that time is observed likewise throughout the whole East to this day. And so the breaking of the fast on the Sabbath after the labour of vigils, established by those same apostolic men, is not without reason followed in all the churches of the East, in accordance also with that saying of Ecclesiastes, which, though it has another, mystical sense as well, is not foreign to this one either, by which we are commanded to give the same share of solemnity to both days, that is, to the seventh and to the eighth, saying: "Give a portion to these seven, and also to these eight." For this breaking of the fast should not be thought to be a sharing in the Jewish festival, especially by those who are shown to be strangers to all Jewish superstition, but belongs to the refreshment we have mentioned of the tired body, which, fasting continually for five days in every week of the year, easily grows weary and fails unless it is refreshed by at least two days in between.

Some in certain western cities, and especially in the City, not knowing the reason for this moderation, think that the fast should by no means be broken on the Sabbath, because they assert that the apostle Peter fasted on that day when he was about to contend with Simon. From this it appears rather that he did this, not by canonical custom, but because of the need of the conflict at hand, since there too Peter seems to have enjoined on his disciples, for this same reason, not a general but a special fast. He would certainly not have done this if he had known that it was customarily kept by canonical rule; he would no doubt have been ready to enjoin the same even on the Lord's day if the occasion of that contest had fallen to him then. Yet a canonical rule of fasting should not at once have been proclaimed on that account, since it was not a general observance that had established it, but the reason of necessity had forced it to be done once.

Nor should it be unknown that on the Lord's day only one office is celebrated before the midday meal. In it, out of reverence for the collect itself and the Lord's communion, they give somewhat more solemn and generous attention to psalms, prayers, and readings, and they count the third and the sixth hours as completed together in it. So it comes about that nothing is taken away from the services of prayer, since readings are added, and yet some difference or relaxation seems to be allowed the brothers, out of reverence for the Lord's resurrection, in comparison with the rest of the time. This seems to relax the observance of the whole week, and by the very difference that is introduced it makes the same day be looked forward to again more solemnly as a festival, and makes the fasts of the coming week less felt in expectation of it. For any fatigue is always borne more patiently, and labour is spent without weariness, if some alternation or some change of work comes in between.

Finally, on those days too — that is, on the Sabbath and the Lord's day, or on feast days — when both a midday meal and a supper are usually given to the brothers, no psalm is said in the evening, neither when they go to supper nor when they rise from it, as is usually done at the solemn midday meals or at the canonical meal that ends a fast, which the customary psalms usually precede and follow. Instead, after a simple prayer they go to supper, and when they rise from it they again conclude it with a prayer only, since this meal is extraordinary among monks and not all are obliged to come to it, but only brothers who have arrived as guests, or those whom bodily weakness or their own will invites.

From the canonical measure of prayers and psalms that ought to be kept in the daily gatherings in the monasteries, the order of our account now leads us on to the training of one who renounces this world. First we shall try to cover, as briefly as we can, the conditions on which those who desire to turn to God are received into the coenobia, combining some things from the rules of the Egyptians and some from those of the Tabennesiots. Their coenobium in the Thebaid is as much stricter in the rigour of its way of life as it is more populous than all others; for in it more than five thousand brothers are governed by one abbot, and this great number of monks is subject to its elder for their whole lives with an obedience such as among us one man cannot show to another, or exercise over another, even for a short time.

I think we ought first of all to touch on how their long perseverance, humility, and submission lasts so long, and by what training it is formed, so that they persevere in the coenobium until bowed old age — for it is so great that we cannot remember anyone who entered our monasteries keeping it even for a whole year — so that, when we have seen the beginnings of their renunciation, we may understand that it followed naturally that the foundations of such beginnings should rise to such lofty heights of perfection.

Anyone, then, who seeks to be received into the discipline of the coenobium is not admitted at all until he has lain outside the doors for ten days or more and has shown proof of his perseverance and desire, and also of his humility and patience. He throws himself at the knees of all the brothers who pass by and is deliberately rejected and despised by all, as though he wished to enter the monastery not for the sake of religion but from necessity; he is also subjected to many insults and reproaches, and so gives proof of his constancy and shows by his endurance of abuse what he will be like in temptations. When he has thus been received, the ardour of his mind having been tested, the greatest care is taken to find out whether the contagion of even a single coin of his former possessions clings to him. For they know that he cannot last long under the discipline of the monastery, nor will he ever attain the virtue of humility or obedience, nor be content with the poverty and strictness of the coenobium, if even a little money lies hidden in his conscience; but as soon as some disturbance has arisen on any occasion, encouraged by his confidence in that money, he will at once flee from the monastery like a stone from a whirling sling.

And therefore they do not agree to accept money from him even for the uses of the coenobium: first, lest, puffed up by confidence in this offering, he should not deign to make himself equal to the poorer brothers; then, lest through this pride he should by no means descend to the humility of Christ, and when he has been unable to endure under the discipline of the coenobium and has left it, should, grown lukewarm afterwards, try with a sacrilegious spirit to take back and demand, not without injury to the monastery, what he had brought in at the beginning of his renunciation when he was kindled by spiritual fervour. They have often been taught by many experiences that this must be observed in every way. For in other, less careful monasteries, some who were received without precaution later tried, with great blasphemy, to demand the return of what they had brought in and what had been spent in the work of God.

Therefore each one, when he has been received, is so stripped of all his former possessions that he is not allowed to keep even the clothing he wears; he is brought out into the midst of the council of the brothers, stripped of his own clothes, and clothed by the abbot's hands in the monastery's garments. By this he is to know not only that he has been despoiled of all his old things, but also that, having laid aside all worldly pride, he has come down to the poverty and want of Christ, and is now to be supported, not by wealth acquired by worldly skill or kept back from his former unbelief, but will receive the wages of his service from the holy and devout bounty of the monastery. Knowing that he is to be clothed and fed from it from now on, he is to learn, according to the saying of the gospel, both to have nothing and nevertheless not to be anxious about tomorrow; and he is not to be ashamed to be made equal to the poor, that is, to the body of the brotherhood, with whom Christ was not ashamed to be numbered and whose brother he was not ashamed to be called; rather, he is to glory that he has been made a sharer with his household.

The clothes he has laid aside are handed over to the steward and kept until they clearly recognize, through various temptations and trials, his progress and the virtue of his way of life and endurance. If, as time goes on, they see that he can stay there and persevere in the same fervour with which he began, they give those clothes to the needy. But if they find that he has fallen into some vice of grumbling or into the fault of even a small disobedience, they strip him of the monastery's garments with which he had been clothed, dress him again in his old ones that had been set aside, and drive him out. For it is not lawful for anyone to depart with what he has received, nor do they allow anyone to wear them any longer whom they have once seen grow lukewarm towards the rule of his training. Hence no one at all is given the opportunity of leaving openly: either he flees by night like a runaway slave, seizing the thickest darkness, or, judged unworthy of this order and profession, he is expelled with shame and disgrace before all the brothers, after laying aside the monastery's garment.

When, then, someone has been received and approved by the perseverance we have described, and, having laid aside his own clothes, has been clothed in the monastic habit, he is not at once allowed to mix with the congregation of the brothers, but is assigned to an elder who lives apart, not far from the entrance of the monastery, and who has been given charge of strangers and visitors, and spends all diligence on receiving them with kindness. When he has served there for a whole year and has shown his service to the strangers without any complaint, he has been imbued by this first training in humility and patience and has become known through long exercise in it. When he is to be admitted to the congregation of the brothers, he is handed over to another elder who is in charge of ten juniors, whom, entrusted to him by the abbot, he both trains and governs, according to what we read was ordained by Moses in Exodus.

His chief concern and teaching, by which the junior who has been brought in may be able to climb in due course to the highest summits of perfection, will be this: to teach him first to conquer his own will. Exercising him in this zealously and diligently, he will take pains always to command him deliberately those things which he perceives to be contrary to his inclination. For, taught by many experiences, they say that a monk, and especially the younger ones, cannot bridle even the pleasure of his desire unless he has first learned through obedience to put to death his own will. And so they declare that one who has not first learned to overcome his own will can by no means succeed in extinguishing anger or dejection or the spirit of sexual immorality, nor can he keep true humility of heart, or lasting unity with the brothers, or firm and enduring harmony; nor can he even remain long in the coenobium.

By these institutions, as by certain letters and syllables, they hasten to imbue and shape those whom they are initiating towards perfection, discerning clearly through them whether they are grounded in a feigned and imaginary or a true humility. To help them reach this easily, they are next trained not to hide in their hearts, through harmful embarrassment, any itching thoughts at all, but to reveal them to their elder as soon as they arise, and not to trust anything to their own discernment in judging them, but to believe that to be bad or good which the elder's examination has discussed and pronounced. So it comes about that the cunning enemy cannot get the better of the young man in anything, as if he were inexperienced and ignorant, nor deceive by any fraud one whom he sees protected, not by his own discernment, but by his elder's; nor can he persuade him to hide from the elder any of the suggestions or fiery darts he has thrown into his heart. For the most subtle devil cannot otherwise mock or cast down a junior, except when he has enticed him, whether through arrogance or through shame, to cover up his thoughts. For they declare it a general and clear sign of a diabolical thought if we are ashamed to reveal it to an elder.

After this, the rule of obedience is kept with such care that the juniors not only do not dare to leave their cell without the knowledge or permission of their superior, but do not even presume to satisfy the common and natural necessity on their own authority. And they hasten to carry out, without any discussion, everything he commands, as if it had been given from heaven by God, so that sometimes they receive even impossible commands with such faith and devotion that they strive with all their strength and without any hesitation of heart to carry them out and complete them, and out of reverence for the elder they do not even measure the impossibility of the command. I pass over for now speaking in detail of their obedience, for we plan to give it by actual examples a little later in its place, if the Lord grants us leave through your prayers. Let us now go through their other institutions, passing over those which in this region cannot be handed on to the monasteries or kept by them, as we promised in our short preface we would do: for instance, that they do not use woollen garments but only linen ones, and not even two of these; the superior of each group of ten supplies changes to them when he sees that the ones they wear have become dirty.

Passing over likewise that arduous and sublime kind of abstinence, in which it is thought the height of luxury if a herb seasoned with salt, which they call labsanion, soaked in water, is set before the brothers as their meal, and many other things like these, which in this province neither the mildness of the climate nor the nature of our weakness permits, I shall pursue only those things which no weakness of the flesh and no situation of place can hinder, unless weakness of soul and lukewarmness of mind take them away.

So, sitting in their cells and giving their attention equally to work and meditation, when they hear the sound of the one knocking at the door and striking the cells of the various brothers — calling them, that is, to prayer or to some work — each one rushes out of his cell as if in competition, so that one who is working as a scribe does not dare to finish the letter he is found to have begun, but at the very moment when the sound of the knocking reaches his ears he leaps up as quickly as possible, not allowing even as much delay as would complete the shape of the stroke he has begun, but leaving the lines of the letter unfinished; he does not so much pursue the savings or profit of his work as hasten with all zeal and eagerness to carry out the virtue of obedience. They prefer this, not only to manual work, reading, and the silence and quiet of the cell, but to all the virtues, so that they judge everything should be put after it, and they are content to suffer any loss, provided they are not seen to have violated this good in anything.

I think it superfluous even to mention among their other institutions that virtue, namely that no one is allowed to possess a box or a basket of his own, or anything of the kind that he might keep as his own and ought to secure with his seal. We know that they are so completely stripped that they have nothing more than a colobium, a mafors, sandals, a melota, and a mat; and in other monasteries too, where some things are allowed more leniently, we see this rule kept most strictly to this day, that no one dares even in word to say that anything is his own, and it is a great offence if there has come out of a monk's mouth "my book," "my tablets," "my pen," "my tunic," "my sandals"; and he must make satisfaction for this by suitable penance if by some chance such a word has escaped his lips through inadvertence or ignorance.

And although each of them brings in daily to the monastery such income from his own work and sweat that from it he could not only support his own frugal needs but could also supply the uses of many in abundance, yet he is in no way puffed up, nor does he flatter himself over so great a profit from his work and sweat, but apart from two small loaves, which sell there for barely three denarii, each one claims nothing more for himself. Among them no private work — which I am ashamed to say, and which I wish we did not know to be done in our monasteries — is aimed at by anyone, I do not say in deed, but not even in thought. And although each believes the whole store of the coenobium to be his own property, and devotes all care and concern to everything as if he were the master of all, yet, in order to keep the virtue of the nakedness he has embraced, which he strives to guard perfectly and inviolably to the end, he considers himself so much a stranger to everything and so alien from all things that he behaves as a pilgrim and sojourner in this world, and thinks of himself as a nursling and servant of the monastery rather than presume to be the master of anything.

What do we wretches say to this, we who, living in coenobia and placed under the care and concern of an abbot, carry our own keys about with us, and, trampling on all the modesty and shame of our profession, are not even ashamed to wear openly on our fingers rings with which to seal what we have stored away; for whom not only boxes and baskets, but not even chests and cupboards are enough to store what we heap up or what we kept back when we left the world; and who are sometimes so inflamed over the most trifling things of no value, claiming them as our own, that if anyone presumes to touch any of them even with a finger, we are filled with such anger against him that we cannot keep the disturbance of our heart even from our lips and from the indignation of our whole body. But passing over our own vices, and consigning to silence those things which are not even worth mentioning, according to that saying, "Let my mouth not speak the works of men," let us pursue in the order of our account the virtues that are found among them, and those which we too ought to seek with all zeal; and let us now set down the rules and patterns themselves, quickly and briefly, so that when afterwards we come to certain acts and works of the elders, which we intend to record carefully, we may strengthen what has been set out in our account as by the most powerful testimonies, confirming all we have said rather by their examples and by the authority of their lives.

If, then, anyone has by some accident broken an earthenware jar, which they call a baucalis, he will wash away his negligence only by public penance: when all the brothers are gathered at the synaxis, he will lie prostrate on the ground asking pardon until the service of prayers is completed, and he will obtain it when he is ordered by the abbot's judgment to rise from the ground. Anyone will make the same satisfaction who, called to some work or to the usual assembly, comes too late; or if while singing a psalm he stumbles even a little; likewise if he answers needlessly, harshly, or insolently; if he carries out the services enjoined on him negligently; if he grumbles even slightly; if, preferring reading to work or obedience, he performs his appointed duties sluggishly; if, when the synaxis is dismissed, he does not hurry back quickly to his cell; if he stops with anyone even for a moment, or goes aside anywhere for an instant; if he holds another's hand; if he presumes to talk even a little with one who does not share his cell; if he prays with one who is suspended from prayer; if he sees any of his relatives or worldly friends, or talks with them, without his elder; if he tries to receive a letter from anyone, or to reply, without his abbot. The spiritual correction goes this far, and for faults like these. But the rest, which among us are committed without distinction and are borne by us too more blameworthily — that is, open abuse, manifest contempt, swollen contradiction, free and unbridled going out, familiarity with women, fits of anger, quarrels, enmities and disputes, presuming to do private work, the contagion of love of money, the desire for and possession of superfluous things which the other brothers do not have, extraordinary and secret eating, and things like these — are corrected, not by the spiritual rebuke we have described, but either by blows or by expulsion.

We should know that the custom of reading the sacred lessons in the coenobia while the brothers eat did not come from the Egyptian pattern but from that of the Cappadocians. No one doubts that they wished to establish it, not so much for the sake of spiritual exercise, as to check superfluous and idle talk, and especially the arguments that usually arise at meals, seeing that these could not otherwise be restrained among them. For among the Egyptians, and above all the Tabennesiots, such silence is kept by all that, when so great a number of brothers has sat down together to eat, no one dares even to mutter except the one in charge of his group of ten; and even he, if he sees that anything needs to be brought to the table or taken away, signals it by a sound rather than by his voice. And such discipline of silence is kept while they eat that, with their hoods drawn down beyond their eyelids so that the eye may not have freedom to wander too curiously, they see nothing more than the table and the food set on it or what they take from it, so that no one notices how or how much another is eating.

Before or after the lawful common meal the greatest care is taken that no one presumes to allow himself any food at all outside the table. So, when they walk through the gardens and orchards, where fruit hanging temptingly here and there on the trees not only presents itself to the chests of those passing by but also lies strewn on the ground to be trodden underfoot, and, ready to be gathered, could easily entice those who see it to consent to desire, and by the opportunity and abundance could provoke even the strictest and most abstinent to long for it — they consider it sacrilege, not only to taste any of it, but even to touch it with the hand, except what is openly set before all at the common meal and is publicly served, by the steward's arrangement, through the service of the brothers.

So that we may not seem to have passed over anything about the institutions of the coenobia, I think I should briefly mention how the daily services are rendered to the brothers in other regions too. Throughout all Mesopotamia, Palestine, Cappadocia, and the whole East, the brothers succeed one another each week in turn in performing these duties, and the number of servers is assigned according to the size of the coenobium. They hasten to fulfil them with such devotion and humility as no slave shows in serving the harshest and most powerful master, so that, not content even with the services rendered by canonical rule, they also rise at night to relieve by their own zeal those on whom this charge especially rests, and try to anticipate secretly and carry out what those men should do. Each one who undertakes these weeks keeps them, serving until the supper of the Lord's day. When this is over, the service of the whole week is concluded in this way: when the brothers gather to sing the psalms they usually sing before going to rest, those who are to hand over their office wash the feet of all in order, faithfully asking of them, as the reward of their blessing for the labour of the whole week, that the prayer offered by all the brothers together may accompany them as they fulfil Christ's commandment, interceding for their ignorances or for sins committed through human frailty, and commending to God as a rich sacrifice the completed services of their devotion. And so on Monday, after the morning hymns, they hand over to those who succeed them the utensils and vessels in which they have served. These receive them and guard them with such care and concern that nothing of them may be lost or perish, since they believe that even for the smallest vessels, as for sacred ones, they will give account not only to the present steward but also to the Lord, if by chance anything is lost through their negligence. What is the measure of this discipline, and with what faithfulness and care it is kept, you will be able to recognize from one testimony, which I shall give as an example; for just as we strive to satisfy your fervour, by which, desiring full knowledge of everything, you wish even things you know very well to be repeated to you in this book, so we fear to exceed the measure of brevity.

In the week of a certain brother, the steward, passing by, saw three grains of lentils lying on the ground, which had slipped from the hands of the weekly server, who was hurrying as he prepared them for cooking, together with the water in which they were being washed. At once he consulted the abbot about it, and the brother was judged by him as a waster and neglecter of sacred property and was suspended from prayer. The guilt of his negligence was not forgiven him until he had washed it away by public penance. For they believe that not only they themselves are not their own, but also that everything that is theirs is consecrated to the Lord. Therefore, if anything has once been brought into the monastery, they decide that it ought to be treated with all reverence as sacred; and they manage and dispense everything with such faithfulness that, even in things considered contemptible and thought small and worthless — if they move them from their place or put them in a more suitable one, if they fill a jar with water, if they offer a drink from it to anyone, if they remove a tiny straw from the oratory or the cell — they trust with complete belief that they will receive a reward from the Lord.

We knew brothers in whose week such a shortage of firewood occurred that there was nothing at all with which to prepare the usual food for the brothers; and until wood could be bought and brought in, it had been ordered by the abbot's authority that they should be content with dry food. This was agreeable to all, and no one could hope for any cooked dish. But these brothers, as if they would be cheated of the fruit and reward of their labour and service if in the order of their turn they did not prepare food for the brothers in the usual way, imposed on themselves so much voluntary work and care that, in those dry and barren places where wood cannot be found at all unless it is cut from fruit trees (for there are no wild thickets there as there are among us), they ran over wide trackless places and went through the desert that stretches towards the Dead Sea, gathering in their laps and the folds of their garments the tiny straws and thorns that the wind had scattered here and there; and so by their voluntary service they prepared the whole customary meal, allowing nothing to be lessened from the usual provision. They rendered these services to the brothers with such faithfulness that, although either the shortage of wood or the abbot's command could honourably have excused them, they would not make use of this permission, for the sake of their fruit and reward.

Let this be said, as we stated at the beginning, according to the pattern of the whole East, which we say must necessarily be kept in our parts too. But among the Egyptians, whose chief concern is work, there is no alternation of weeks, lest under pretext of this office all be hindered from their fixed amount of work. Instead, the care of the storeroom or the kitchen is entrusted to one most approved brother, who performs this work continually for as long as his strength or age allows. For he is not wearied by great bodily labour, since among them not much care is spent on preparing or cooking food, as they mostly use dry or raw food; and among them the greatest delicacy is leaves of leeks cut once a month, charlock, roasted salt, olives, and tiny salted fish which they call maenomenia.

And since this book is about the training of one who renounces this world, by which, being introduced to true humility and perfect obedience, he can also climb the heights of the other virtues, I think it necessary, as we promised, to set out as examples some deeds of the elders in which they shone by this virtue, picking out a very few from many, so that those who strive to follow higher things may find in them not only an incentive to the perfect life but also a model for their purpose. Therefore, bringing forward two or three out of so countless a multitude of fathers, for the sake of the brevity of this book, we put first Abba John, who lived near Lyco, a town of the Thebaid, and who, raised by the virtue of obedience even to the grace of prophecy, became so famous throughout the whole world that by his merit he was made illustrious even to the kings of this world. For although, as we said, he lived in the farthest parts of the Thebaid, the emperor Theodosius did not presume to go forth to the wars against very powerful usurpers until he had been encouraged by his oracles and answers; and trusting in these as if brought down from heaven, he won trophies from wars and enemies that had seemed hopeless.

This blessed John, then, served an elder from his youth until mature manhood, as long as the elder remained in this life, and attended on him with such humility that his obedience struck even the old man himself with the greatest astonishment. Wishing to test more clearly whether this virtue of his came from true faith and deep simplicity of heart, or was affected and somehow forced and shown only in the presence of the one giving orders, he frequently enjoined on him many things that were even superfluous and less necessary, or impossible. I shall give three of these, by which the integrity of his mind and his submission may be shown to those who wish to know. The old man took from his woodpile a stick which had been cut long before and prepared for use in the fire; and since there had been no occasion for cooking, it lay there not only dry but almost rotten with the passage of time. He planted this in the ground before John and ordered him to bring water and water it twice a day, so that, taking root with the daily moisture and coming to life again as a tree, as it had been of old, it might spread its branches and offer a pleasant sight to the eyes and shade to those sitting under it in the burning heat. The young man received this command with his usual reverence, without any thought of its impossibility, and carried it out every day, constantly carrying water from nearly two miles away and never ceasing to water the wood; for through the whole year neither bodily sickness, nor the solemnity of a feast, nor the pressure of any necessity which might honourably have excused him from carrying out the command, nor finally the harshness of winter coming on, could hinder him from observing this precept. The old man, silently and secretly watching this diligence of his every day, and seeing that he kept his command with simple affection of heart as if it had been given by God, without any change of expression or discussion of its reason, approved the sincere obedience of his humility; and at the same time, pitying the long labour he had spent with zealous devotion through the whole year, he went up to the dry stick and said: "O John, has this tree put out roots or not?" When John said he did not know, the old man, as if inquiring into the truth of the matter and testing whether it was now supported by its own roots, pulled up the stick before him with a light movement, and throwing it away told him to stop watering it from then on.

So, as the young man, trained by exercises of this kind, grew daily in this virtue of obedience, and the grace of his humility shone out, and the sweet fragrance of his obedience spread through all the monasteries, some brothers came to the old man to test him, or rather to be edified; and as they marvelled at the submission of which they had heard, the old man suddenly called him and said: "Go up, take the flask of oil, and throw it down through the window." (This flask alone supplied the tiniest quantity of oil in the desert for his own use and for that of visitors.) John ran quickly upstairs, held it out through the window, and let it fall to the ground to be smashed, giving little thought or consideration to the absurdity of the command, to their daily need, to bodily weakness, to the lack of means, or to the hardships and difficulties of the barren desert, in which, even if money were available, the lost goods could not be found or replaced.

Again, when others wished to be edified by the example of his obedience, the elder called him and said: "Run, John, and roll that rock here as quickly as possible." At once he strove to roll forward, with such effort and exertion, a huge rock which great crowds of men could not have moved — applying now his neck, now his whole body — that with the sweat of all his limbs he not only soaked his whole garment but even wet the rock itself with his neck. In this too he gave little thought to the impossibility of the command or the task, out of reverence for the old man and in the sincere simplicity of his obedience, by which he believed with complete faith that the old man could command nothing in vain or without reason.

Let it be enough to have told these few things out of many about Abba John. Now I shall record a deed of Abba Patermutus worthy of memory. Wishing to renounce this world, he lay outside the doors of a monastery for so long that by his immovable perseverance he obtained, against all the custom of the coenobia, to be received together with his little son, who was about eight years old. When at last they had been received, they were at once not only handed over to different superiors but also separated in the cells where they lived, so that the father, by constantly seeing the child, should not remember that, of all the property and fleshly attachment he had cast away in renouncing, at least his son remained to him; and that, just as he knew he was no longer rich, so he might not know that he was a father. To test more fully whether he would put first the affection of blood and love for his own flesh, or obedience and the mortification of Christ, which everyone who renounces ought to prefer for his love, the child was deliberately neglected, dressed in rags rather than clothes, and so covered and fouled with dirt that he might offend rather than delight his father's eyes whenever he saw him. He was also exposed to cuffs and slaps from various people, which the father often saw inflicted even without cause on the innocent child before his very eyes, so that he never saw his cheeks except stained with the dirty traces of tears. And although the child was treated like this before his eyes day after day, yet for the love of Christ and by the virtue of obedience the father's heart always remained firm and unmoved. For he no longer regarded him as his son, since he had offered him to Christ together with himself; nor did he care about the child's present injuries, but rather rejoiced because he saw that they were by no means endured without fruit, giving little thought to his tears but concerned for his own humility and perfection. The elder of the coenobium, seeing this strictness of his mind and his immovable firmness, wishing to test the constancy of his heart completely, one day, when he had seen the child crying, pretended to be angry with him and ordered the father to take him and throw him into the river. Then, as if the Lord had commanded him, he at once snatched up his son in his arms and ran with him to the river bank to throw him in. This would certainly have been carried out in deed, in the fervour of his faith and obedience, had not brothers been deliberately stationed to watch the river bank carefully; they snatched the child, who had already been thrown and was as it were on the surface of the stream, and so held back from its actual effect and outcome a command that had been completed by the father's obedience and devotion.

His faith and devotion were so acceptable to God that they were at once confirmed by divine testimony. For it was immediately revealed to the elder that by this obedience he had performed the deed of the patriarch Abraham. And when, a short time afterwards, the same abbot of the coenobium passed from his sojourn in this world to Christ, he left Patermutus in charge of all the brothers as his successor and abbot of the monastery.

We shall not be silent either about a brother known to us who, by the order of this world, was of a very high family: for he was the son of a count and a very rich man, and he had been well educated in the liberal studies. When he had left his parents and hastened to the monastery, to test the humility of his mind and the ardour of his faith, the elder at once ordered him to load on his shoulders ten baskets, which there was no need to sell in public, and to carry them round the streets for sale; with the added condition, to keep him longer at this task, that if anyone wished to buy them all together he should not agree, but should sell them one by one to those who asked. He did this with complete devotion, and trampling on all the shame of embarrassment for the name and desire of Christ, he put the baskets on his shoulders, sold them at the fixed price, and brought the money back to the monastery. He was not at all frightened by the novelty of so lowly and unaccustomed a task, nor did he consider the indignity of the thing, the splendour of his birth, or the humiliation of selling, since he desired to obtain, through the grace of obedience, that humility of Christ which is true nobility.

The measure of this book compels us to hasten to the end; but the good of obedience, which holds first place among the other virtues, does not allow us to pass over entirely in silence the deeds of those who shone by it. So, tempering both aims fittingly — serving both brevity and the desires and benefit of the studious — we shall give one more example of humility, which, having been carried out not by a beginner but by a perfect man and an abbot, will be able by its reading not only to instruct the younger but also to rouse the older to the perfect virtue of humility. We saw Abba Pinufius. He was the presbyter of a huge coenobium in Egypt, not far from the city of Panephysis, and because of the reverence due to his life, his age, and his priesthood he was honoured and venerated by all. Seeing that for this very reason he could not practise the humility he desired with the ardour of his mind, and had no means of exercising the virtue of the submission he longed for, he fled secretly from the coenobium and withdrew alone to the farthest parts of the Thebaid. There he laid aside the monastic habit, put on secular clothes, and sought out the coenobium of the Tabennesiots, which he knew to be the strictest of all, and in which he thought he would be unknown because of the distance of the region, or could easily be hidden because of the size of the monastery and the number of brothers. There he persevered for a long time at the doors, throwing himself at the knees of all the brothers and begging with the most earnest prayers to be received. When at last he had been admitted with much contempt — because, they said, a decrepit old man who had lived out his whole life was asking to enter the coenobium at a time when he could no longer serve his pleasures, and was seeking it, they claimed, not even for the sake of religion but compelled by hunger and want — the care and tending of the garden was entrusted to him, as to an old man fit for no work at all. He did this under another, younger brother, who kept him as entrusted to himself, and he was so subject to him and cultivated the humility he desired with such obedience that every day, with all diligence, he carried out not only what belonged to the care of the garden but also all the duties that were hard or degrading for everyone and that all shrank from. Many things, too, he rose at night and did so secretly, with no witness or confidant, under cover of darkness, that no one at all discovered who had done the work. When he had lain hidden there for three years, and was being sought throughout all Egypt by brothers scattered everywhere, he was at last seen by someone who had come from the parts of Egypt, and could hardly be recognized because of the humbleness of his dress and the lowliness of the work he was doing. For he was bent down with a hoe, loosening the soil for the vegetables, and then carrying manure on his shoulders and putting it round their roots. When the brother who saw this had hesitated for a very long time over recognizing him, he at last came nearer, and after carefully examining not only his face but also the sound of his voice, he fell at his feet. At first this struck all who saw it with the greatest astonishment, that he should have done this to one who was held among them as the lowest, a novice lately come out of the world; but afterwards they were struck with greater wonder when he at once revealed his name, which had become widely famous among them too. Then all the brothers asked his pardon for their former ignorance, because they had counted him for so long among the juniors and the children; and though he was unwilling and weeping, because through the devil's envy he had been cheated of a way of life and a humility worthy of him, which he rejoiced at last to have found after seeking it for so long, and had not been counted worthy to end his life in the submission he had taken up, they brought him back to his own coenobium, guarding him with the greatest care lest he should slip away from them too and flee somewhere in the same way.

When he had stayed there for a short time, he was again kindled by the same desire and ardour for humility, and taking advantage of the silence of the night he fled, this time seeking not a neighbouring province but unknown and foreign regions far away. For he boarded a ship and made his way to Palestine, believing that he would lie hidden more safely if he took himself to places where not even his name had been heard. When he arrived, he at once sought out our monastery, which was not far from the cave in which our Lord deigned to be born of a virgin. Hiding there for a very short time, he could not, according to the Lord's saying, be hidden for long, like a city set on a hill. For at once some brothers who had come from Egypt to the holy places to pray recognized him and with the most urgent prayers called him back to his own coenobium.

Afterwards, because of the familiarity we had with him in our monastery, we sought this old man out most eagerly in Egypt; and I intend to weave into this little work the exhortation he gave to a brother whom he received into his coenobium in our presence, since I think some instruction can come from it. "You know," he said, "for how many days you lay outside the doors before being received today. You ought first to understand the reason for this difficulty. For it can help you greatly on this road you wish to enter, if, having understood its reason, you come to the service of Christ in due order and as you ought."

"For just as immense glory is promised in the future to those who serve God faithfully and cleave to him according to the rule of this way of life, so the heaviest punishments are prepared for those who have carried it out lukewarmly and negligently and have failed to show him fruits of holiness fitting to what they have professed or to what men believe them to be. For, according to the saying of Scripture, 'It is better for someone not to vow than to vow and not to pay,' and 'Cursed is he who does the work of the Lord negligently.' That is why you were refused by us for so long: not because we do not desire with all our longing to embrace your salvation and that of all, nor because we do not wish to run out even from afar to meet those who desire to turn to Christ; but lest, by receiving you rashly, we should make ourselves guilty of levity before God and you guilty of a heavier punishment, if, being easily received now and not understanding the weight of this profession, you should afterwards turn out a deserter or lukewarm. Therefore you ought first of all to understand the very reason for renunciation; when you have seen it, you will be taught more clearly by its reason what you ought to do."

"Renunciation is nothing other than a sign of the cross and of mortification. And so you should know that today you have died to this world and its deeds and desires, and that, according to the apostle, you have been crucified to this world and this world to you. Consider, then, the conditions of the cross, under whose mystery you must from now on live in this light, since it is no longer you who live, but he lives in you who was crucified for you. We too, then, must spend this life in the same state and form in which he was hung on the cross for us, so that, according to David, piercing our flesh with the fear of the Lord, we may have all our wills and desires, not serving our own lust, but fastened to its mortification. For so we shall fulfil the Lord's command, who says: 'He who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.' But perhaps you will say: How can a man carry his cross continually, or how can anyone be crucified while he is alive? Hear the reason briefly."

"Our cross is the fear of the Lord. Just as one who is crucified no longer has the power to move or turn his limbs anywhere as his mind pleases, so we too must direct our wills and desires, not according to what is pleasant and delightful to us at present, but according to the law of the Lord, wherever it binds us. And just as one who is fastened to the gibbet of the cross no longer looks at present things, nor thinks about his affections, is not distracted by anxiety and care for tomorrow, is moved by no desire of possessing, is inflamed by no pride, no contention, no rivalry, does not grieve over present injuries nor remember past ones, and, while he still breathes in the body, believes himself dead to all the elements, sending the gaze of his heart ahead to the place where he does not doubt he will at once pass over — so we too, crucified by the fear of the Lord, must be dead to all these things, that is, not only to the vices of the flesh but to the very elements, having the eyes of our soul fixed there where we ought to hope to depart at any moment. For in this way we shall be able to have all our desires and fleshly affections put to death."

"Beware, then, lest you ever take back any of the things you cast away in renouncing, and, against the Lord's prohibition, be found to have returned from the field of gospel work to clothe yourself again with the tunic of which you had stripped yourself; and lest you fall back to the low and earthly desires and pursuits of this world, and against Christ's command come down from the roof of perfection and presume to take up anything you gave up in renouncing. Beware lest you remember your parents or your former affection, and, called back to the cares and anxieties of this world, putting your hand to the plough and looking back, you cannot, according to the Saviour's saying, be fit for the kingdom of heaven. Beware lest at any time, when you have begun to taste some knowledge of the psalms or of this profession, you gradually become puffed up and think of reviving the pride which you have now trampled on as a beginner in the ardour of faith and full humility, and, according to the apostle's saying, by building again what you destroyed, make yourself a transgressor. Rather, persevere to the end in this nakedness which you have professed before God and his angels; and in this humility and patience, with which you persevered for ten days at the doors and begged with many tears to be received into the monastery, not only persist but also advance and grow. For it is wretched enough that, when you ought to advance from your first rudiments and beginnings and reach towards perfection, you should begin to fall back even from them to lower things. For it is not he who has begun these things, but he who has persevered in them to the end, who will be saved."

"For the crafty serpent always watches our heel, that is, lies in wait for our end, and tries to trip us up right to the end of our life. And therefore it will profit nothing to have begun well and to have taken up the first beginnings of renunciation with full fervour, if a fitting end does not likewise commend and conclude them, and if the humility and poverty of Christ, which you have now professed before him, is not kept by you to the very end of life as it was taken up. To be able to fulfil this, always watch his head, that is, the first beginnings of thoughts, bringing them at once to the elder. For so you will learn to crush their harmful beginnings, if you are not ashamed to reveal any of them to your elder."

"Therefore, according to the saying of Scripture, having come out to serve the Lord, stand in the fear of God and prepare your soul, not for rest, not for security, not for delights, but for temptations and hardships. For 'through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God'; for 'narrow is the gate and hard the way that leads to life, and few are those who find it.' Consider, then, that you have been made one of the few and the elect, and do not grow cold through the example and lukewarmness of the many; but live as the few, so that you may deserve to be found with the few in the kingdom. For 'many are called, but few are chosen,' and it is 'a little flock' to which 'it has pleased the Father to give' the inheritance. So you should know that it is no light sin for one who has professed perfection to pursue imperfect things. This state of perfection is reached by these steps and in this order."

"The beginning of our salvation and its safeguard is the fear of the Lord. For through it are gained, by those who are being trained in the way of perfection, the beginning of conversion, the cleansing of vices, and the safeguarding of virtues. When it has penetrated a man's mind, it produces contempt of all things and begets forgetfulness of parents and horror of the world itself. And by contempt and deprivation of all possessions humility is gained. Humility is proved by these signs: first, if a man has all his wills put to death in himself; second, if he hides nothing of his own from his elder, not only of his actions but also of his thoughts; third, if he entrusts nothing to his own discernment but everything to the elder's judgment, and listens to his advice eagerly and gladly; fourth, if in all things he keeps the gentleness of obedience and the constancy of patience; fifth, if he not only does injury to no one, but does not even grieve or become sad over injury done to him by another; sixth, if he does nothing and presumes nothing that is not urged either by the common rule or by the examples of the elders; seventh, if he is content with every lowliness and judges himself, like a bad workman, unworthy of everything given him; eighth, if he declares himself inferior to all, not with the surface of his lips, but believes it with the inmost affection of his heart; ninth, if he restrains his tongue and is not loud in voice; tenth, if he is not easy and quick to laugh. By such signs and others like them true humility is recognized. When it has been possessed in truth, it will at once lead you on by a higher step to the love that has no fear; through it you will begin to keep, without any labour and as if naturally, everything that you formerly observed not without the pain of fear, no longer from regard for punishment or any fear, but from love of the good itself and delight in the virtues."

"To be able to reach this more easily, while you live in the community you should seek examples to imitate and of the perfect life from a few, indeed from one or two, not from many. For besides the fact that a life tested and refined to purity is found in few, there is also this advantage: one is more carefully trained and formed for the perfection of this purpose, that is, the coenobitic life, by the example of one person."

"To be able to attain all this and to persevere always under this spiritual rule, you must necessarily keep these three things in the community. According to the saying of the psalmist, 'But I, like a deaf man, did not hear, and like a dumb man who does not open his mouth; and I became like a man who does not hear and who has no rebukes in his mouth,' you too should go about as if deaf, dumb, and blind. Apart from the one whom you have chosen to imitate because of his perfection, be like a blind man and do not see whatever you see that is less edifying, lest, encouraged by the authority or example of those who do such things, you be led over to what is worse and what you had previously condemned. If you hear someone disobedient, insolent, slandering, or doing anything otherwise than as you have been taught, do not be offended or overturned by such an example into imitating him, but let it all pass by as a deaf man who has not heard these things at all. If abuse or injuries are inflicted on you or on anyone, stand unmoved, and as regards answering in kind listen like a dumb man, always singing in your heart this little verse of the psalmist: 'I said, I will guard my ways, that I may not sin with my tongue. I set a guard on my mouth while the sinner stood against me. I was dumb and was humbled and kept silence from good things.' But cultivate above all this fourth thing, which adorns and commends the three we have mentioned: make yourself a fool in this world, according to the apostle's precept, that you may be wise; that is, do not discern or judge anything that is commanded you, but always show obedience with all simplicity and faith, judging that only to be holy, useful, and wise which either the law of God or the elder's examination has enjoined on you. Grounded in such a training, you will be able to endure under this discipline for ever and will not be driven out of the coenobium by any temptations or schemes of the enemy."

"So you ought not to hope for your patience from the virtue of others, that is, to possess it only when no one has provoked you — for it is not in your power to ensure that this does not happen — but rather from your own humility and long-suffering, which depend on your own will."

"And so that all these things, which have been set out at greater length, may be more easily impressed on your heart and cling most firmly to your mind, I shall gather from them a kind of summary, by which you can hold everything in memory through the brevity and conciseness of the commands. Hear, then, in a few words the order by which you can climb to the highest perfection without any labour or difficulty. The beginning of our salvation and wisdom, according to the Scriptures, is the fear of the Lord. From the fear of the Lord is born saving compunction. From compunction of heart proceeds renunciation, that is, nakedness and contempt of all possessions. From nakedness humility is produced. From humility is begotten the mortification of wills. By the mortification of wills all vices are uprooted and wither away. By the expulsion of vices the virtues shoot up and grow. By the budding of the virtues purity of heart is gained. By purity of heart the perfection of apostolic love is possessed."

This fifth book is now being composed with God's help. For after the four books that have been set out on the institutions of the monasteries, we now intend, with the Lord strengthening us through your prayers, to take up the struggle against the eight principal vices: first, gastrimargia, which means the desire of the palate; second, sexual immorality; third, filargyria, which is understood as avarice, or, to express it more properly, love of money; fourth, anger; fifth, dejection; sixth, acedia, which is anxiety or weariness of heart; seventh, cenodoxia, which means vain or empty glory; eighth, pride. Entering on this contest, we now need your prayers more urgently, most blessed father Castor, so that we may be able, first, to investigate worthily their natures, so minute, so hidden, and so obscure; next, to set out their causes adequately; and third, to offer fitting cures and remedies for them.

The causes of these passions, once they have been disclosed by the traditions of the elders, are at once recognized by all; but before they are revealed, although we are all ravaged by them and they dwell in all men, they are unknown to all. We trust, however, that we can explain them to some extent if, through your intercessions, the word of the Lord uttered through Isaiah is directed to us too: "I will go before you and humble the mighty of the earth; I will break the gates of bronze and shatter the bars of iron, and I will open to you hidden treasures and the mysteries of secret things." So may the word of God, going before us too, first humble the mighty of our earth — that is, these same harmful passions which we wish to overcome, which claim for themselves dominion and a most savage tyranny in our mortal body — and make them submit to our search and exposition; and so, breaking the gates of ignorance and shattering the bars of the vices that shut us out from true knowledge, may it lead us to the mysteries of our secret places, and, according to the apostle, reveal to us, once enlightened, the hidden things of darkness and manifest the counsels of hearts. Thus, penetrating the foul darkness of the vices with the purest eyes of the soul, we may be able to lay them bare and bring them out to the light, and to explain their causes and natures both to those who have been free of them and to those who are still bound by them. And so, according to the prophet, passing through the fire of the vices that burn our minds most cruelly, we may at once pass unharmed through the water of the virtues that extinguish them, and, bedewed with spiritual remedies, deserve to be brought out into the refreshment of perfection by purity of heart.

So our first contest must be entered against gastrimargia, which we have said is the desire of the palate. And being about to speak first of the measure of fasting and the kind of food, we turn again to the traditions and ordinances of the Egyptians, in whom, as everyone knows, there is a higher discipline of continence and a perfect method of discernment.

For there is an old and admirable saying of blessed Antony, that a monk who, after the coenobitic life, strives to reach the summit of higher perfection, and, having gained the power of discernment, is now able to stand by his own judgment and to reach the height of the anchoritic life, ought by no means to seek all kinds of virtues from one man, however eminent. For one is adorned with the flowers of knowledge, another is more strongly fortified by the method of discernment, another is grounded in the steadiness of patience, another excels in the virtue of humility, another of continence, another is decorated by the grace of simplicity; this one surpasses the rest in magnanimity, that one in mercy, another in vigils, another in silence, another in zeal for work. And therefore a monk who wishes to lay up spiritual honey ought, like a most prudent bee, to gather each virtue from those who possess it most intimately and store it carefully in the vessel of his own breast; he should not inquire into what anyone lacks, but consider only what virtue he possesses and zealously pluck it. For if we wish to borrow all of them from one person, examples fit for imitation will be found with difficulty or, rather, never. For although we do not yet see Christ made all in all, as the apostle says, we can nevertheless find him in this way, that is, in parts in all. For of him it is said: "who became for us from God wisdom, justice, sanctification, and redemption." While, then, wisdom is found in one, justice in another, holiness in another, meekness in another, chastity in another, humility in another, Christ is now divided limb by limb among each of the saints. But when all come together into the unity of faith and virtue, he is restored as the perfect man, completing the fullness of his body in the joining and proper character of the individual members. So until that time comes when God will be all in all, God can for the present be in all in the way we have described, that is, through parts of the virtues, although he is not yet all in all through their fullness. For although the end of our religion is one, yet the professions by which we tend towards God are various, as will be discussed more fully in the conferences of the elders. And therefore the pattern of discernment and continence is to be sought by us especially from those in whom we see these virtues flowing more abundantly through the grace of the Holy Spirit; not that anyone can acquire alone what has been divided among many, but so that in those goods of which we can be capable we may strive to imitate those who have obtained them more especially.

So a uniform rule cannot easily be kept about the measure of fasting, because the same strength is not in all bodies, and fasting is not, like the other virtues, achieved by the firmness of the mind alone. And therefore, since it does not consist in strength of mind alone (for it shares in the capacity of the body), we have received the definition handed down to us on this matter: that the time, measure, and kind of refreshment are different according to the unequal condition of bodies, age, or sex, but that there is one rule of self-discipline for all as regards continence of mind and virtue of soul. For it is not possible for all to prolong fasts for weeks, nor even to put off taking food by a fast of three days or two. For many who are worn out by sickness, and especially by old age, cannot bear a fast even until sunset without distress. Not everyone can digest a diet of soaked beans, nor is a sparing diet of plain vegetables suitable for all, nor is a strict meal of dry bread allowed to everyone. One man does not feel full after two pounds; another is weighed down by eating one pound or six ounces. Yet in all these there is one aim of continence: that no one should be burdened by gorging himself to the measure of his capacity. For not only the quality but also the quantity of food blunts the edge of the heart, and when the mind is fattened together with the flesh, it kindles the harmful and fiery tinder of the vices.

A belly filled with any kind of food produces the seeds of lust, and the mind, choked by the weight of food, cannot steer the helm of discernment. It is not only drunkenness with wine that usually intoxicates the mind; an excess of any food makes it unsteady and wavering and robs it of all contemplation of integrity and purity. The cause of the overthrow and lust of the Sodomites was not drunkenness with wine but fullness of bread. Hear the Lord rebuking Jerusalem through the prophet: "For how did your Sodom sin, except that she ate her bread in fullness and abundance?" And because through fullness of bread they had been kindled with the inextinguishable heat of the flesh, they were burned up by the judgment of God with fire and sulphur from heaven. But if excess of bread alone drove them through the vice of satiety to such a sheer precipice of shameful deeds, what should be thought of those who, with a vigorous body, presume to take meat and wine with immoderate freedom, taking not what their weakness requires but what the desire of their mind has suggested?

Weakness of the flesh is no obstacle to purity of heart, if only what frailty requires, not what pleasure demands, is taken. We have more easily seen men who abstained entirely from richer foods than men who used what was allowed them for their need in moderation; more easily those who denied themselves everything for love of continence than those who, taking such foods on the pretext of weakness, kept to the measure of sufficiency. Bodily weakness too has the palm of its own continence, provided that, when foods are allowed for the failing of the flesh, it defrauds itself of refreshment while it still needs it, and allows itself only as much food as the strict discernment of temperance judges sufficient for the needs of life, not as much as the appetite of desire demands. Richer foods, just as they procure health for the body, do not take away the purity of chastity if they are taken with moderation. For whatever strength is gained by eating them is used up by the labour and weakness of illness. Therefore, just as the virtue of frugality is taken from no state of life, so neither is the fullness of integrity denied to any.

Most true and most approved, then, is the saying of the fathers, that the measure of fasting and continence consists only in the measure of frugality and restraint, and that this is the goal of perfect virtue common to all: that in the food we are compelled to take by the need of sustaining the body we restrain ourselves while we still have an appetite for it. For although someone may be weak in body, he will possess perfect virtue equal in all respects to the strong and healthy if by firmness of mind he restrains the desires which the frailty of the flesh does not require. The apostle says: "And make no provision for the flesh in its desires." He did not forbid care for it altogether, but refused that it should be taken in its desires. He took away pleasure-seeking attention to the flesh; he did not exclude the management necessary for life: the one, lest by indulging the flesh we fall into the harmful business of desires; the other, lest the body, damaged by our own fault, cannot fulfil its spiritual and necessary functions.

The sum of continence, then, must be gathered not only from the reckoning of time nor only from the kind of food, but above all from the judgment of conscience. For each one ought to impose on himself as much frugality as the battle of the body's struggle demands. The canonical observance of fasts is indeed useful and to be kept in every way; but unless a frugal eating of food follows it, one cannot reach the goal of integrity. For the hunger of long fasts followed by bodily fullness gains temporary weariness rather than the purity of chastity. Integrity of mind goes together with an empty belly; one who is not content to keep a constant evenness of temperance does not have the purity of lasting chastity. Strict fasts are made void by excessive relaxation afterwards and at once collapse into the vice of gluttony. A reasonable daily meal with moderation is better than a hard and long fast at intervals. Immoderate fasting is known not only to weaken the constancy of the mind but also to make the efficacy of prayer feeble through bodily weariness.

Abstinence from food alone is not enough to preserve integrity of mind and body unless the other virtues of the soul are joined to it. So first humility must be learned by the virtue of obedience and by the grinding of work and the fatigue of the body. Not only must the possession of money be avoided, but the desire for it must also be torn up by the roots. For it is not enough not to have it, which often comes about even from necessity, but one must not even take up the will to have it, if by chance it should be offered. The fury of anger must be crushed, the downheartedness of dejection overcome, cenodoxia, that is, vainglory, despised. The haughtiness of pride must be trampled on, and the unstable and wandering rovings of the mind itself must be curbed by constant remembrance of God; and the slippery wandering of the heart must be brought back to the contemplation of God as often as the subtle enemy, trying to take the mind captive away from this gaze, creeps into the recesses of our heart.

For it is impossible for the fiery incitements of the body to be extinguished before the tinder of the other principal vices is also cut out by the roots. We shall discuss these one by one in separate books in their place, by the Lord's gift. Our purpose now is to discuss gastrimargia, that is, the desire of the palate, against which our first conflict is waged. No one, then, will ever be able to check the goads of burning lust who has been unable to bridle the desires of the palate. The chastity of the inner man is discerned by the perfection of this virtue. For you will never trust that one can wrestle with stronger opponents whom you have seen overcome by weaker and smaller ones in a lighter contest. For all the virtues have one nature, although it seems to be divided into many kinds and names; just as gold too is one substance, although it seems to be distinguished into many and various kinds of ornaments according to the skill and will of the craftsmen. So no one will be proved to possess any virtue perfectly who is known to be defeated in part of them. For how can he be believed to have extinguished the burning heat of lust, which is kindled not only by the incitement of the body but also by a vice of the mind, who could not calm the stings of anger that break out from the intemperance of the heart alone? Or how is he to be thought to have beaten back the wanton goads of flesh and soul, who could not overcome the simple vice of pride? Or how is he to be believed to have trampled on the lust implanted in the flesh, who was unable to renounce the desire for money, which lies outside us and is foreign to our substance? And by what reasoning will he triumph in the war of flesh and soul who was not able to cure the disease of dejection? However well a city is fortified by the height of its walls and the strength of its closed gates, it will be laid waste through a single back gate, however small. For what difference does it make whether the deadly enemy creeps into the heart of the city over the high walls and through the wide gateways, or through the hiding places of a narrow tunnel?

"He who contends in the games is not crowned unless he has contended lawfully." Whoever wishes to extinguish the natural appetites of the flesh should first hasten to overcome the vices that lie outside nature. For if we wish to experience the force of the apostle's saying, we must first learn what are the laws and discipline of the worldly contest, so that by comparison with them we can know what the blessed apostle wished to teach us who contend in the spiritual contest by this example. In those contests which, according to the same apostle, provide a corruptible crown for the victors, this custom is kept: one who strives to prepare himself for the glorious crown, adorned with the privilege of immunity, and wishes to sweat through the contests of the perfect games, first shows the promise of his youth and the strength of his first training in the Olympic and Pythian games. In these the younger men who wish to take up these disciplines are approved as to whether they deserve or ought to be admitted to them, by the judgment both of the president of these contests and of the whole people. When someone has been carefully examined, and has first been found stained by no disgrace in his life; next, has been judged not to be ignoble by the yoke of slavery and therefore unworthy of this discipline and of the company of those who profess it; third, if he shows worthy proofs of skill and strength, and, contending with younger men and those of his own age, has shown the skill and courage of his youth; and advancing from the wrestling of the youths, has been permitted by the president's examination to engage with grown men long proved by experience, and has proved himself not only equal to their strength by constant wrestling but has often won the palm of victory among them too — then at last he will deserve to reach the famous contests of the games, in which the right to compete is granted only to victors and to those adorned with the rewards of many crowns. If we have understood the example of the bodily contest, we ought to recognize by comparison with it what is the discipline or order of the spiritual contest too.

We too must first show our freedom by the subjection of the flesh. For "by whom a man is overcome, of him he is also the slave," and, "Everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin." And when the examination of the president of the contest finds us stained by no disgrace of shameful desire, and we have not been judged by him to be slaves of the flesh, ignoble and unworthy of the Olympic wrestling against the vices, then we shall be able to enter the contest against those of our own age, that is, the desires of the flesh and the movements and disturbances of the soul. For it is impossible for a full belly to experience the battles of the inner man, and one who can be thrown in a lighter conflict is not worthy to be tested in stronger wars.

First, then, we must trample on the desire of the palate, and the mind must be thinned down by not only fasts but also vigils, reading, and frequent compunction of heart over the things in which it remembers perhaps having been deceived or overcome, groaning now with horror of the vices, now kindled with desire for perfection and integrity, until, occupied and possessed by such cares and meditations, it recognizes that the very taking of food is granted to it not so much for enjoyment as imposed on it as a burden, and feels that it has been given as something necessary for the body rather than desirable for the soul. Held by this zeal of mind and constant compunction, we shall beat back the wantonness of the flesh, which grows more violent when fostered by food, and its harmful stings; and so we shall be able to extinguish, by abundance of tears and weeping of heart, the furnace of our body, which is kindled by the Babylonian king as he continually supplies us with occasions of sin and vices, by which we are burned more fiercely than by naphtha and pitch, until, by the grace of God breathing the wind of his dew into our hearts, the heats of fleshly desire can be entirely put to sleep. This, then, is our first contest, our first trial as it were in the Olympic games: to extinguish the desire of the palate and the belly by the desire for perfection. For this reason not only must the superfluous appetite for food be trampled on by contemplation of the virtues, but even what is necessary to nature must be taken not without anxiety of heart, as though it were opposed to chastity. And so the course of our life must be arranged in such a way that there is no time at which we feel more drawn away from spiritual pursuits than when we are compelled by the body's frailty to come down to its necessary care. And when we submit to this necessity, serving the needs of life rather than the desire of the mind, let us hasten to withdraw from it as quickly as possible, as from something that draws us away from saving pursuits. For we shall never be able to despise the pleasures of present food unless the mind, fixed on divine contemplation, delights rather in the love of the virtues and the beauty of heavenly things. And so one will despise all present things as perishable when he has fixed the gaze of his mind inseparably on what is immovable and eternal, contemplating in his heart, while still in the flesh, the blessedness of the dwelling to come.

It is as if someone were hurrying to hit huge prizes of skill, marked high up by certain small targets, with the keenest gaze of his eyes stretched out along the line of his weapon, knowing that immense glory and the rewards of recompense depend on piercing them: he must turn the edge of his eyes away from every other sight and direct it there where he sees the sum of reward and prize placed, since he will certainly lose the palm of skill and the reward of prowess if the edge of his gaze strays even a little.

So when the desire of the belly and the palate has been overcome by this gaze, and we have been declared neither slaves of the flesh nor branded with the mark of the vices, we shall be judged, as in the Olympic contests, worthy also of the conflict of the higher contests; and having given such proofs first, we shall be believed able to engage with the spiritual hosts of wickedness, which deign to fight only with victors and with those who deserve to contend in the spiritual contest. For this is, as it were, the most solid foundation of all the struggles: that first the incitements of fleshly desires be destroyed. For no one who has not conquered his own flesh can contend lawfully, and one who does not contend lawfully can certainly neither fight in the games nor earn the glory of the crown by the grace of victory. But if we are overcome in this contest, proved to be slaves of fleshly desire and therefore bearing the marks neither of freedom nor of strength, we shall at once be driven back from the conflict of the spiritual engagements as unworthy and as slaves, not without the brand of shame — for "everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin" — and it will be said to us by the blessed apostle, together with those among whom sexual immorality is named: "No temptation has seized you except what is human." For we who could not subdue the frail flesh that resists our spirit will not deserve, not having sought strength of mind, to experience the heavier battles of the heavenly wickednesses. Not understanding this testimony of the apostle, some have put the optative mood in place of the indicative, that is, "Let no temptation seize you except what is human"; but it is clear that he said it with the feeling, not of one wishing, but of one declaring or reproaching.

Do you wish to hear a true athlete of Christ contending by the lawful rule of the games? "I," he says, "so run, not as uncertainly; so I fight, not as one beating the air; but I chastise my body and bring it into subjection, lest, having preached to others, I myself should become reprobate." Do you see how he set the sum of the struggles in himself, that is, in his flesh, as on a most solid base, and placed the outcome of the fight solely in chastising the flesh and subjecting his body? "I therefore so run, not as uncertainly." He does not run uncertainly, because, looking at the heavenly Jerusalem, he has fixed the point towards which the unswerving swiftness of his heart must be directed. He does not run uncertainly, because, "forgetting what is behind and reaching out to what is ahead, he presses on towards the mark, to the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." Always directing the gaze of his mind towards it and hastening to it with all the speed of his heart, he proclaimed with confidence: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith." And because he knew that he had run tirelessly after the fragrance of Christ's ointments with swift devotion of conscience, and had won the contest of the spiritual games by chastising the flesh, he adds with confidence and says: "For the rest, there is laid up for me the crown of justice, which the Lord, the just judge, will give me on that day." And to open to us too a like hope of reward, if we wish to imitate him in the contest of this race, he added: "And not to me only, but also to all who love his coming," declaring that we shall share in his crown on the day of judgment if, loving the coming of Christ — not only that coming in which he will appear even to the unwilling, but also this one by which he comes daily into holy souls — we gain the victory of the contest by chastising the body. Of this coming the Lord says in the gospel: "I and my Father will come to him and make our dwelling with him"; and again: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will sup with him, and he with me."

Yet he does not describe himself as having completed only the contest of running when he says, "I so run, not as uncertainly" — which refers especially to the intention of his mind and the fervour of his spirit, with which he followed Christ with all ardour, singing with the bride, "We run after you to the fragrance of your ointments," and again, "My soul has clung to you" — but he testifies that he has won another kind of struggle as well, saying: "I so fight, not as one beating the air; but I chastise my body and bring it into subjection." This refers properly to the pains of continence, bodily fasting, and affliction of the flesh. By it he describes himself as a vigorous boxer against his own flesh, showing that he did not deliver the blows of continence against it in vain, but gained the triumph of the fight by mortifying his body; and when it had been chastised by the blows of continence and beaten down by the gloves of fasting, he brought to his victorious spirit the crown of immortality and the palm of incorruption. You see the lawful order of the struggle and you behold the outcome of the spiritual contests: how the athlete of Christ, having won the victory over the rebellious flesh and having, as it were, put it under his feet, rides on as a lofty conqueror. And therefore he does not run uncertainly, because he trusted that he would soon enter the holy city, the heavenly Jerusalem. He so fights — with fasts and affliction of the flesh — not as one beating the air, that is, not throwing the blows of continence in vain; for by chastising his body he struck, not the empty air, but those spirits that dwell in it. For one who says "not as one beating the air" shows that, although he does not strike the empty and void air, he does strike some beings in the air. And because he had overcome these kinds of contest and went on enriched with the rewards of many crowns, he rightly begins to take on the struggles of stronger enemies; and having triumphed over his earlier rivals, he proclaims with confidence and says: "Our struggle now is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places."

For the athlete of Christ, while he remains in the body, the palm of struggles is never lacking; but the more he has grown through successive triumphs, the stronger the rank of struggles that follows for him. For when the flesh has been subdued and conquered, what cohorts of adversaries, what armies of enemies rise up against the victorious soldier of Christ, provoked by his triumphs — lest, growing slack in the leisure of peace, the soldier of Christ should begin to forget the glorious contests of his struggles and, dissolved by the idleness of security, be cheated of the rewards of his prizes and the merits of his triumphs. So if we wish to climb these steps of triumph as our virtue grows, we too must enter on the contests of the battles in the same order, and first say with the apostle, "I so fight, not as one beating the air; but I chastise my body and bring it into subjection," so that when this conflict has been won we may again say with him: "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." For otherwise we shall by no means be able to engage with them, nor shall we deserve to experience spiritual battles if we are thrown in the fleshly conflict and beaten in the struggle with the belly; and the apostle will rightly say to us in reproach: "No temptation has seized you except what is human."

A monk, then, who wishes to reach the battles of the inner contests should impose this precaution on himself first of all: never to allow himself, overcome by any pleasure in drink or food, to take anything at all outside the table before the lawful end of the fast and the common hour of the meal; and not even to permit himself to take the least thing after the meal is over; and likewise to keep the canonical time and measure of sleep. For these wantonnesses of the mind must be cut off with the same zeal as the vice of fornication. For how will one who could not restrain the superfluous appetites of the palate be able to extinguish the heat of fleshly desire? And how will one who could not check the small passions that lie in the open be able to conquer by governing discernment the hidden ones that itch with no human witness? And therefore the strength of the soul is proved in each movement and in any desire; and if it is overcome in the smallest and open desires, each one's own conscience is witness to what it would endure in the greatest, stronger, and hidden ones.

For we do not have an adversary to fear from outside; the enemy is shut up within ourselves, and a civil war is waged within us every day. When he has been conquered, everything outside will be made weak, and all things will be at peace and subject to the soldier of Christ. We shall have no adversary to fear from outside if what is within us has been conquered and subjected to the spirit. Nor should we believe that this fast from visible food alone can suffice for perfection of heart and purity of body unless a fast of the soul is joined to it. For the soul too has its own harmful foods; fattened on them, it rolls down the steep slope of lust even without an abundance of food. Detraction is its food, and a very sweet one. Anger too is its food, though by no means a gentle one; for a time it feeds the soul with an unhappy meal and at the same time lays it low with its deadly taste. Envy is a food of the mind, corrupting it with poisonous juices and never ceasing to torment the wretched soul continually with the prosperity of another's success. Cenodoxia, that is, vainglory, is its food; it soothes it with a delightful meal for a time, but afterwards leaves it empty, stripped of all virtue and naked, sending it away barren and void of all spiritual fruits, so that it not only makes the merits of immense labours perish but even brings on greater punishments. Every desire and every wandering of the unstable heart is a kind of pasture of the soul, nourishing it with harmful foods but leaving it afterwards without heavenly bread and solid food. If, then, we abstain from these with all the strength we have in a most sacred fast, we shall have a useful and profitable observance of bodily fasting. For the labour of the flesh joined to contrition of spirit will present to God a most acceptable sacrifice and a dwelling worthy of holiness in pure and clean inner chambers. But if, while fasting in body, we are entangled in the most deadly vices of the soul, the affliction of the flesh will profit us nothing when we are defiled in the more precious part — sinning, that is, in that substance by which we are made a dwelling of the Holy Spirit. For it is not so much the corruptible flesh as a pure heart that is made a dwelling for God and a temple of the Holy Spirit. So while the outer man fasts, the inner man too must likewise be restrained from harmful foods. The blessed apostle urges that the inner man above all be presented pure to God, so that it may deserve to receive Christ as a guest within it, in these words: "In the inner man, that Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts."

Let us know, then, that we spend the labour of bodily continence so that by this fast we may be able to reach purity of heart. Otherwise the labour is spent by us in vain, if we sustain it tirelessly for the sake of its end but cannot obtain the end for which we have endured such afflictions; and it would have been better to have restrained the soul from forbidden foods than to have fasted in body from things allowed and less harmful. For in the latter there is a simple and innocent partaking of God's creature, which has no sin in itself; but in the former there is first a deadly devouring of the brothers, of which it is said: "Do not love to detract, lest you be uprooted"; and of anger and envy blessed Job says: "For anger kills the foolish man, and envy slays the little one." At the same time it should be noted that one who is angry is judged a fool, and one who envies is judged little. For the one is rightly declared a fool, since, spurred on by these goads, he brings death on himself voluntarily; and the other, while he is jealous, proves himself little and lesser; for while he envies, he testifies that the one whose prosperity torments him is greater.

So a food should be chosen that not only moderates and kindles less the heat of burning desire, but is also easy to prepare, cheaper and more convenient to buy, and suited to the common life and use of the brothers. For the nature of gluttony is threefold: one kind urges us to anticipate the canonical hour of the meal; another delights only in stuffing the belly and in fullness with any food at all; a third takes pleasure in more refined and richer dishes. And therefore against it the monk must keep a threefold observance: first, to wait for the lawful time for breaking the fast; next, to be content with restrained quantities; third, to be content with any food, even the plainer kinds. Whatever is taken up outside the custom and common use is marked by the most ancient tradition of the fathers as defiled by the disease of vanity, glory, and ostentation. Nor have we known any of those whom we have seen shine by the merit of knowledge and discernment, or whom the grace of Christ has set before all as most brilliant lights to imitate, to have abstained from eating bread, which among them is considered plain and easy to get; nor have we ever seen any of those who, turning aside from this rule and giving up the use of bread, followed a diet of beans or vegetables or fruit, counted among the most approved, nor even attaining the grace of discernment or knowledge. For they decide not only that a monk should not seek foods unusual among the others, lest his course, exposed to all as it were in the open, become empty and void and perish by the disease of cenodoxia, but they also declare that even the common discipline of fasting should not be easily revealed to anyone, but should be covered and hidden as far as possible. When brothers arrive, however, they have judged it more commendable to offer them the virtue of kindness and love than to display the strictness of continence and the rigour of one's daily rule; and not to attend to what our own will and advantage or the ardour of our desire demands, but to put first and gladly fulfil what the rest or weakness of the visitor requires.

When, wishing to learn the precepts of the elders, we had come from the parts of Syria to the province of Egypt, we marvelled that we were received there with such eagerness of heart that no rule of refreshment was kept until the appointed hour of the fast, as we had been trained in the monasteries of Palestine; but, except for the lawful fasts of Wednesday and Friday, wherever we went the daily fast was broken. When we asked why the daily fasts were so freely passed over among them, one of the elders answered: "Fasting is always with me; but you I shall soon send away, and I shall not be able to keep you with me always. And fasting, though it is useful and necessary, is the offering of a voluntary gift; but the necessity of the commandment requires the work of love to be fulfilled. So, receiving Christ in you, I ought to refresh him; but when I have sent you on your way, I shall be able to make up in myself, by a stricter fast, for the kindness shown for his sake. For the sons of the bridegroom cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them; but when he has departed, then they will lawfully fast."

One of the elders, when he was urging me at a meal to eat a little more and I had said that I could not, answered: "I have already laid the table six times for different brothers who arrived, and, urging each one, I have eaten with them all, and I am still hungry; and you, eating now for the first time, already say you cannot?"

We saw another who lived in solitude, who testified that he had never allowed himself food alone, but even if none of the brothers had come to his cell for five whole days, he kept putting off his meal until on the Sabbath or the Lord's day, going to church for the devout assembly, he found some stranger; bringing him back from there to his cell, he took refreshment for his body with him as companion, not so much on account of his own need as for the sake of kindness and for the brother's sake. So, just as they know how to break their daily fasts freely when brothers come, so when they depart they make up for the refreshment allowed on their account by greater continence, exacting the taking of the smallest amount of food with sharper discipline, by cutting down not only on bread but also on sleep itself.

When the elder John, who was in charge of a great coenobium and a multitude of brothers, had come to the elder Paesius, who lived in a vast desert, and asked him, as a very old companion, what he had done during all the forty years in which he had been separated from him in solitude and scarcely disturbed by the brothers, he said: "The sun has never seen me eating." And the other said: "Nor me angry."

When this same elder was at his last breath, cheerful as one departing to his own home, the anxious brothers surrounding him humbly begged him to leave them some memorable command, as a kind of inherited legacy, by which they might more easily reach the summit of perfection through a brief precept. With a groan he said: "I never did my own will, and I never taught anyone what I had not first done myself."

We saw an elder named Machetes, living far from the crowds of the brothers, who had obtained this grace from the Lord by long prayers: that, however many days and nights a spiritual conference went on, he was never relaxed at all by the torpor of sleep. But if anyone tried to bring in a word of detraction or an idle word, he at once fell asleep, so that the poison of slander could not reach even so far as to pollute his ears.

This same elder, when teaching us that we ought to judge no one, added that there had been three things in which he had criticized or blamed the brothers: that some allowed their uvula to be cut out, that they had a cloak in their cells, and that they blessed oil and gave it to people of the world who asked for it; and he said that he himself had fallen into all these things. "For having contracted a disease of the uvula," he said, "I wasted away so long with its weakness that, compelled both by the necessity of pain and by the urging of all the elders, I allowed it to be cut out. On account of this illness I was also forced to have a cloak. And as for blessing oil and giving it to those who asked — which I loathed above all, judging that it came from great presumption of heart — I was suddenly surrounded by many people of the world and so hemmed in that I could by no means escape them otherwise, until by the greatest force and entreaties they wrung from me that I should place my hand, marked with the sign of the cross, on a little vessel they held out; and so, believing they had obtained the oil of blessing, they at last let me go. By these things I clearly learned that a monk is bound by the same causes and faults in which he has presumed to judge others. For each one ought to judge only himself and guard himself circumspectly and carefully in all things, and not examine the conduct and life of others, according to that precept of the apostle: 'But why do you judge your brother? To his own master he stands or falls,' and: 'Judge not, that you be not judged; for with the judgment you judge you will be judged.' For besides the reason we have given, it is also dangerous to judge others because, not knowing the necessity or the reason by which they do the things in which we take offence, either rightly before God or pardonably, we are found to have judged them rashly, and so we commit no light sin by thinking of our brothers otherwise than we ought."

This same elder showed by these signs that the devil is the patron of idle tales and always the opponent of spiritual conferences. For when he was discussing necessary and spiritual matters with some brothers and saw them sinking into a kind of Lethean slumber, unable to drive the weight of sleep from their eyes, he suddenly brought in an idle tale. When he saw that at the pleasure of it they had at once woken up and pricked up their ears, he groaned and said: "Until now we were speaking of heavenly things, and the eyes of all of you were weighed down with deadly sleep; but when an idle tale was brought in, we all woke up and shook off the torpor of the sleep that ruled us. Consider from this at least who was the opponent of that spiritual conference, and who is the one who slips in this fruitless and carnal talk. For it is most clearly detected to be he who, rejoicing in evil, never ceases either to foster the one or to oppose the other."

Nor do I think it less necessary to record this deed of a brother intent on the purity of his heart and very concerned for divine contemplation. When, after fifteen years, many letters were brought to him from his father and mother and his friends in the province of Pontus, he took the great bundle of letters and, turning it over in his mind for a long time, said: "How many thoughts will reading these cause me, which will drive me either to empty joy or to fruitless sadness! For how many days will the memory of those who wrote them call the attention of my breast away from the contemplation I have set before me! After how long a time must this confusion conceived in the mind be digested, and with how much labour must this state of tranquillity be restored again, if once the mind, moved by the feeling of the letters and going over the words and faces of those whom it left so long ago, begins to revisit them again and to be present with them and live with them in heart and mind! It will certainly profit nothing to have left them in the body if one begins to look on them in the heart, and, coming to life again, readmits the memory which everyone who renounces this world has given up as one dead." Turning this over in his breast, he decided not only not to open any letter, but not even to unseal the bundle itself, lest, by going over the names of those who had written or remembering their faces, he should fall away from the intention of his spirit. And so, just as he had received it tied up, he gave it to the fire to be burned, saying: "Go, thoughts of my homeland, be burned up together, and do not try to call me back any more to the things I have fled."

We also saw Abba Theodore, endowed with the highest holiness and knowledge, not only in the active life but also in knowledge of the Scriptures, which had been given him not so much by study of reading or worldly learning as by purity of heart alone; for he could barely understand or speak even a very few words of the Greek language. When he was seeking the explanation of a very obscure question, he persevered tirelessly in prayer for seven days and nights, until he learned the solution of the question put to him by the Lord's revelation.

So when some brothers marvelled at so brilliant a light of knowledge in him and asked him for the meaning of certain passages of Scripture, he said that a monk who wishes to attain knowledge of the Scriptures ought by no means to spend his labours on the books of commentators, but should rather keep all the diligence of his mind and the intention of his heart on cleansing himself from carnal vices. When these have been driven out, the eyes of the heart, the veil of the passions being removed, at once contemplate the mysteries of the Scriptures as by nature. For they were not made known to us by the grace of the Holy Spirit so as to be unknown or obscure; they are made obscure by our own fault, as the veil of sins clouds the eyes of the heart. When these are restored again to their natural health, the reading of the holy Scriptures itself is abundantly sufficient on its own for the contemplation of true knowledge, and they have no need of the instructions of commentators, just as these fleshly eyes need no teaching in order to see, provided they are free from cataract or the darkness of blindness. For this is why so much variety and so many errors have arisen even among the commentators themselves: because very many, rushing into interpreting the Scriptures without applying any diligence to the purification of the mind, have thought things different from and contrary to either the faith or one another, according to the grossness or impurity of their hearts, and have been unable to grasp the light of truth.

When this same man had come unexpectedly to my cell in the dead of night, secretly finding out with fatherly curiosity what I, still a novice anchorite, was doing alone, and had found me, just after finishing the evening service, beginning to refresh my tired body and lying on my mat, he drew deep sighs from his heart, and calling me by name he said: "How many, O John, are at this hour conversing with God and embracing and holding him within themselves! And you are cheated of so great a light, relaxed in idle sleep?" And since the virtues and grace of the fathers have led us on to this kind of narrative, I think it necessary to commit to this volume a memorable work of love which we experienced in the kindness of the eminent man Archebius, so that the purity of continence, set beside the work of love, may shine out more clearly, marked by a beautiful variety. For the gift of fasting is made acceptable to God only when it is completed by the fruits of love.

So when, still quite untrained, we had come from the monasteries of Palestine to a town of Egypt called Diolcos, and there saw, to our wonder, a very great crowd bound by the discipline of the coenobium and ordered in the excellent rule of monks which is also the first, we hastened, spurred on by everyone's praises, with a very eager heart to see another order too, which is held to be more excellent, that of the anchorites. For these, having first lived for a very long time in coenobia and having been carefully taught the whole rule of patience and discernment, and having gained the virtue of humility and nakedness and completely consumed all the vices, penetrate the deep recesses of the desert to engage in the most terrible battles with the demons. Learning, then, that men of this way of life lived on this side of the bed of the river Nile, in a place which, surrounded on one side by the river and on the other by the vast sea, forms an island habitable by none but monks seeking seclusion — for the saltness of the soil and the barrenness of the sand do not allow it to be fit for any cultivation — hastening to them, I say, with the greatest desire, we marvelled beyond measure at the labours they endure out of contemplation of the virtues and love of solitude. For they are so constrained by the very scarcity of water that they dispense it with such care and scrupulousness as none of the most frugal men uses to keep and spare the finest wine. For they bring it for their necessary uses from the bed of the river over three miles or more; and yet this distance, broken by sandy hills, is doubled by the heavy difficulty of the labour.

When, then, having seen these things, we were kindled with the ardour of imitating them, and the Archebius already mentioned, the most approved among them, had drawn us to his cell out of the grace of kindness, he discovered our desire and pretended that he wished to leave that place and to offer us his cell as if he were about to move away from there, declaring that he would do this even if we had not been present. We, kindled with the desire to stay there and giving unhesitating credit to the assurances of so great a man, gladly accepted and took over the cell with all its furniture and utensils. So, having achieved his pious deception, he left the place for a few days, while he gathered the means for building a cell; and returning afterwards he built himself another with the greatest labour. Not long afterwards, when brothers arrived who wished with the same desire to stay there, he deceived them with a similar lie of love and handed it over to them with all its equipment. And he himself, persevering tirelessly in the work of love, built himself a third cell to live in.

It seems worthwhile to me to record another work of love by the same man, by which the monks of our parts may be taught, by the example of one and the same man, to keep not only the rigour of continence but also the most sincere feeling of love. For he, born of no ignoble family, fled from his childhood, despising the affection of this world and of his parents, to a monastery which is about four miles from the town already mentioned. There he spent his whole life in such a way that for fifty whole years he never entered or even saw the village from which he had come, nor did he look on the face of any woman, not even of his own mother. Meanwhile his father, overtaken by death, left a debt of a hundred solidi. Although he himself was entirely free from all trouble, since he had been cut off from all his father's property, he learned that his mother was being severely harassed by the creditors. Then, softened by consideration of filial duty from that evangelical rigour by which, while his parents were in prosperity, he knew he had had neither father nor mother on earth, he believed that he had a mother and hastened to help her in her distress, yet in such a way as to relax nothing of the strictness he had undertaken. For remaining within the enclosure of the monastery he asked that his usual task of work be tripled; and toiling there day and night for a whole year, he paid the creditors the amount of the debt earned by his sweat and freed his mother from all the harm of harassment. So he rescued her from the burden of the debt without allowing anything of the rigour of his purpose to be lessened on the pretext of a dutiful necessity; he kept his usual strictness in such a way that he by no means denied the work of filial duty to his mother's heart, recognizing her again for Christ's love of duty, whom he had previously disregarded for the love of Christ.

When a brother very dear to us, named Symeon, entirely ignorant of the Greek language, had come from the parts of Italy, one of the elders, wishing to show a work of love to him as a stranger under some colour of repayment, asked him why he sat idle in his cell. He guessed from this that Symeon could not stay there long, both because of the wandering that idleness brings and because of the lack of necessities, being certain that no one can endure the attacks of solitude except one who is content to provide his food with his own hands. When Symeon answered that he knew nothing and was able to do none of the work practised there by the brothers except copying books, if indeed anyone in the land of Egypt had any use for a Latin book, then at last the elder, having found an occasion by which he could purchase the work of piety he desired under colour of a debt, said: "This occasion has been found by God; for I have long been looking for someone to write out the Latin apostle for me with his own hand. For I have a brother bound by the snares of military service and very well instructed in Latin, to whom I want to send something from the holy Scriptures to read for his edification." So, while Symeon gladly took up this occasion as offered him by God, the old man, more gladly embracing the pretext under cover of which he could freely do the work of piety, at once not only brought him all his needs for a whole year under the pretext of wages, but also brought the parchment and the implements needed for writing; and when the book was written he received it — a book that would be of no use or benefit, since everyone in that region was entirely ignorant of this language — except that by this subtlety and at greater expense he had bought this: that Symeon could receive the necessary food for his living, without the shame of embarrassment, as the reward of his labour and work, and he himself could fulfil the kindness of his generosity as if under the necessity of a debt. And he gained for himself a reward all the more abundant, because with greater contrivance he had given the stranger brother not only the necessities of life but also the tools for work and the occasion of working.

But since works and affection of love seem to have been mixed in at the place where we set out to say something about the rigour of fasts and continence, returning to our purpose we shall insert in this little work a memorable deed of some who were boys in age but not in understanding. When someone had brought, to everyone's amazement, some figs from the parts of Mareotis in Libya, as something never seen before in that place, to Abba John, the steward in the desert of Scete, who governed the administration of that church entrusted to him by the blessed presbyter Paphnutius in his time, he at once sent them by two young boys to an old man who was suffering from ill health in the inner parts of the desert; for he lived eighteen miles from the church. Having received the fruit, as they were making for the old man's cell, a very thick mist suddenly came down — which easily happens there even to the elders — and they lost the track of the right path. And when, running about all day and night through the trackless waste of the desert, they could not find the sick man's cell at all, worn out by the weariness of the journey as well as by hunger and thirst, they fixed their knees in the office of prayer and gave up their spirit to the Lord. Afterwards, when they had been sought for a very long time by the traces of their footprints — which in those sandy places are marked as if pressed in snow, until the fine sand, moved even by a light breath of wind, covers them again — they were found to have kept the figs untouched as they had received them, choosing rather to give up their soul than to betray the trust of what had been entrusted to them, and to lose their temporal life rather than violate the elder's command.

One more saving command of the blessed Macarius shall be brought forward by us, so that the saying of so great a man may close this book on fasts and continence. He said that a monk ought to give his attention to fasting as though he were going to live in the body for a hundred years, but to curb the movements of the mind, forget injuries, reject dejection, and despise pains and losses as though he were going to die every day. For in the first there is useful and prudent discernment, making the monk always go forward with even strictness and not allowing him, on the pretext of bodily weakness, to roll down from the heights to the most deadly precipices; and in the second there is a saving magnanimity, which can not only despise what seems prosperous in the present world, but also not be broken by adversity and sadness, and despise them as small and of no account, keeping the gaze of its mind always fixed there, where it believes it is to be summoned every day and every moment.

Our second contest, according to the tradition of the fathers, is against the spirit of sexual immorality: a contest longer and more lasting than the others, and won completely by very few; a savage war which, since it begins to attack the human race from the first time of puberty, is not extinguished unless the other vices are overcome first. For it is a double attack, rising to battle armed with a twofold vice. And therefore it must likewise be resisted with a double battle line; for just as it gains strength compounded of disease of both flesh and soul, so it cannot be conquered unless both fight together. For bodily fasting alone is not enough to acquire or possess the purity of perfect chastity, unless it is preceded by contrition of spirit and persevering prayer against this most unclean spirit; then continual meditation on the Scriptures, to which spiritual knowledge is joined; labour too and manual work, which check and recall the unstable wanderings of the heart; and above all, unless true humility has been laid as a foundation, without which no triumph over any vice at all can ever be gained.

For the correction of this vice comes chiefly from the perfection of the heart, from which, as the Lord's voice indicates, the poison of this disease also comes forth: "Out of the heart," he says, "come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness," and the rest. That, then, must first be cleansed from which the fountain of life and death is known to flow, as Solomon says: "Keep your heart with all watchfulness, for from it are the issues of life." For the flesh serves its will and command. And therefore the frugality of fasts must be pursued with the greatest zeal, lest the flesh, refreshed by abundance of food, should oppose the saving precepts of the soul and in its insolence throw down its ruler, the spirit. But if we place the whole matter only in chastising the body, while the soul does not likewise fast from the other vices and is not occupied with divine meditation and spiritual pursuits, we shall by no means be able to climb to that most sublime height of true integrity, while that which is principal in us attacks the purity of our body. We must therefore first cleanse, according to the Lord's saying, the inside of the cup and the dish, so that the outside may also become clean.

Moreover, the other vices are usually cleansed also by contact with people and daily practice, and are in a way cured by the very offence of falling. For example, the sickness of anger, dejection, and impatience is healed by meditation of the heart and watchful care, and also by the company of the brothers and constant provocation; and while, when stirred up, they are more often revealed and more frequently rebuked, they come more quickly to health. But this disease needs, together with affliction of the body and contrition of heart, solitude and withdrawal as well, so that it may lay aside the deadly fever of its heats and reach a complete state of health. Just as it is often useful for those suffering from a certain illness that harmful foods should not even be offered to their eyes, lest the sight of them produce a deadly desire in them, so quiet and solitude help very greatly to drive out this disease in particular, so that the sick mind, not being disturbed by various images, may reach a purer gaze of contemplation and more easily tear out by the roots the deadly tinder of desire.

Yet let no one think from this that we deny that continent men are found even among those living in a community of brothers; we admit that this can very easily happen. For it is one thing to be continent, that is, enkratēs, and another to be chaste, and, so to speak, to pass over into a disposition of integrity and incorruption, which is called hagnos. This virtue is attributed above all to those alone who remain virgins either in flesh or in mind, as both Johns in the New Testament, and in the Old Elijah, Jeremiah, and Daniel are known to have been. In their rank those too will not undeservedly be counted who, after experience of corruption, have reached a like state of purity through long labour and diligence, by integrity of mind and body, and who feel the goads of the flesh not so much as an attack of shameful desire as only a movement of nature. We say that this state can be attained only with the greatest difficulty among crowds of men. Whether it is also impossible, let each one not wait to learn from our opinion, but search it out by the examination of his own conscience. But we do not doubt that there are many continent men who, whether from fear of hell or from desire for the kingdom of heaven, extinguish and suppress the attack of the flesh, which they experience either rarely or daily. The elders declare that these can be not wholly overwhelmed by the incitements of the vices, but they define that they cannot always remain secure and unwounded. For everyone who is engaged in a struggle, although he often conquers and overcomes his adversary, must himself sometimes be shaken.

Therefore, if it is our heart's desire to contend lawfully in the spiritual contest with the apostle, let us hasten with all the attention of our mind to overcome this most unclean spirit, not trusting in our own strength (for human effort cannot accomplish this), but in the Lord's help. For the soul must be attacked by this vice until it recognizes that it is waging a war beyond its strength, and that it cannot obtain the victory by its own labour or effort unless it is supported by the Lord's help and protection.

And indeed, although in all progress of the virtues and in the overcoming of all vices the grace and the victory are the Lord's, in this one especially it is most clearly declared, both by the judgment of the fathers and by the experience of this purification itself to those who have deserved to possess it, that it is a particular benefit of God and a special gift. For in a way it is to go out of the flesh while remaining in the body, and it is beyond nature not to feel the goads of the flesh while surrounded by frail flesh. And therefore it is impossible for a man to fly up, so to speak, on his own wings to so lofty and heavenly a reward unless the grace of the Lord has drawn him out of the mud of the earth by the gift of chastity. For by no virtue are fleshly men made so equal to the spiritual angels in imitation of their way of life as by the merit and grace of chastity; through it, while still living on earth, they have, according to the apostle, their citizenship in heaven, possessing already here in frail flesh what is promised that the saints will have in the future when the corruption of the flesh has been laid aside.

Hear what the apostle says: "Everyone who contends in the games abstains from all things." Let us ask from what "all things" he means, so that instruction for the spiritual contest may be gained by comparison with the bodily one. Those who seek to contend lawfully in this visible contest do not have the freedom to use all the foods that the lust of desire suggests, but only those which the discipline of those contests prescribes. And they must abstain not only from forbidden foods, drunkenness, and all excess, but also from all sloth, idleness, and laziness, so that their strength may grow by daily exercise and constant practice. And so they become strangers to all anxiety and sadness and worldly business, and also to the affection and act of marriage, so that they know nothing but the exercise of their discipline and are not entangled at all in any worldly care, hoping only from the one who presides over the contest for the means of their daily food, and to win the glory of the crown and the fitting rewards with the praise of victory. And they keep themselves so pure from all pollution of intercourse that, when they are preparing for the contests of the games, lest by chance, deceived in sleep by some nocturnal illusion, they should lessen the strength gained over a long time, they cover the region of the loins with plates of lead, so that the hardness of the metal applied to the genital members may be able to check unclean fluids. For they understand that they would certainly be beaten, and could no longer fulfil the contest set before them with their strength taken away, if a deceitful image of harmful pleasure should corrupt the firmness of chastity they have secured.

So if we have understood the discipline of the worldly contest, by whose example the blessed apostle wished to teach us, showing how much observance, how much diligence, how much watchfulness there is in it, what will it befit us to do? With what purity shall we have to guard the chastity of our body and soul, we who must daily eat the most holy flesh of the Lamb, which even the precepts of the old law do not allow anyone unclean to touch? For in Leviticus it is commanded thus: "Everyone who is clean shall eat the flesh. And any soul that eats of the flesh of the sacrifice of salvation which is the Lord's, while there is uncleanness in it, shall perish before the Lord." How great, then, is the gift of integrity, without which both those who were under the Old Testament could not take part in the figurative sacrifices, and those who wish to gain the corruptible crown of this world cannot be crowned!

So the hidden places of our heart must first be cleansed with all watchfulness. For what they seek to attain in purity of body, we must possess even in the secret places of the conscience, where the Lord sits as judge and president of the games, continually watching the fight of our race and contest; so that what we shudder to commit openly we may not allow to grow even inwardly by a careless thought, and so that we may not be defiled even by secret connivance in things at which we would be ashamed before human knowledge. For although this may escape the notice of men, it cannot be hidden from the knowledge of the holy angels and of almighty God himself, from whom no secrets escape.

This will be a clear sign and full proof of this purity: if no alluring image comes to us when we are at rest and relaxed in sleep, or at least, if one does intrude, it cannot stir any movements of desire. For although such a stirring is by no means counted as the full guilt of sin, yet it is not yet a sign of a perfect mind, nor a proof that the vice has been purged to purity, when an illusion works through deceptive images of this kind.

For the quality of the thoughts which is guarded too carelessly amid the distractions of the day is tested in the quiet of the night. And therefore, when some such illusion has occurred, it should not be believed to be the fault of sleep, but of negligence in the time before, and the manifestation of a disease lurking within, which the hour of the night did not first bring forth, but, hidden in the inmost fibres of the soul, brought out to the surface of the skin through the refreshment of sleep, revealing the hidden fevers of heat which we contracted by feeding on harmful thoughts during the whole day. So too bodily illnesses are usually not gathered at the time when they appear to break out, but have been acquired by negligence in the previous time, when someone, eating unwisely of unsuitable foods, contracted harmful and deadly humours.

And therefore God, the creator and maker of the human race, knowing above all the nature of his handiwork and its correction, applied the care of medicine there where he knew the causes of the disease chiefly flowed from: "Whoever," he says, "has looked at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart." In noting wanton eyes he does not so much blame them as that inner sense which uses their service wrongly for seeing. For it is the heart, sick and wounded by the dart of lust, that sees in order to desire, twisting by its own fault the benefit of sight rightly granted it by the Creator to the service of evil works, and bringing out on the occasion of seeing the disease of desire hidden within itself. For this reason the saving command is given to that part by whose fault the worst sickness proceeds on the occasion of sight. For it is not said, "Keep your eyes with all watchfulness," which certainly ought to have been guarded above all if the feeling of desire came from them (for the eyes provide nothing more than the simple service of sight to the soul); but it says, "Keep your heart with all watchfulness," applying the medicine above all to that which can misuse the service of the eyes everywhere.

This, then, will be the first safeguard of this purification: when the memory of the female sex has crept into our mind through a subtle suggestion of the devil's cunning — first brought in by the memory of a mother, sisters, or relatives, or even of holy women — we should hasten to drive it out of our inner recesses as quickly as possible, lest, if we linger on it too long, the instigator of evils, having once obtained the occasion of the sex, should afterwards subtly bring the mind down and hurl it towards those persons through whom he can insert harmful thoughts. Therefore we ought always to remember that command, "Keep your heart with all watchfulness," and, according to God's first command, carefully watch the harmful head of the serpent, that is, the beginnings of evil thoughts, by which the devil tries to creep into our soul; and not allow the rest of his body, that is, consent to pleasure, to enter our heart through negligence; for if it is let in, it will certainly kill the captive mind with its poisonous bite. We must also destroy the sinners of our land as they emerge, that is, the fleshly senses, in the morning of their rising, and, while they are still little, dash the children of Babylon against the rock; for unless they are killed while they are very tender, when grown up through our connivance they will rise up stronger to our destruction, or at least will be overcome only with great groaning and labour. For while the strong man — that is, our spirit — guards his house armed, fortifying the recesses of his heart with the fear of God, all his goods will be in peace, that is, the fruits of his labours and the virtues acquired over a long time. But if a stronger one comes and overcomes him — that is, the devil through consent to thoughts — he will seize his arms in which he trusted, that is, the memory of the Scriptures or the fear of God, and divide his spoils, scattering the merits of the virtues through the contrary vices.

And to pass over everything inserted in the holy Scriptures in praise of this virtue — for my purpose is not to compose a praise of chastity, but to explain, according to the traditions of the fathers, its nature, how it should be acquired and kept, and what its end is — I shall set down only one saying of the blessed apostle, from which it may be seen how, writing to the Thessalonians, he preferred it to all virtues, commending it with such nobility of words.

"This," he says, "is the will of God, your sanctification." And lest he should leave it doubtful or obscure to us what he meant by "sanctification" — whether justice, or love, or humility, or patience (for sanctification is believed to be acquired in all these virtues) — he adds and clearly indicates what he properly meant by sanctification: "This is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality, that each one of you know how to possess his vessel in honour and sanctification, not in the passion of desire, like the Gentiles who do not know God." See with what praises he honours it, calling it the honour of the vessel, that is, of our body, and sanctification. On the contrary, therefore, one who lives in the passion of desire remains in dishonour and uncleanness and lives estranged from sanctification. A third time too, a little later, he adds, declaring it again to be holiness: "For God has not called us to dishonour but to holiness. Therefore he who rejects this rejects not man but God, who has also given his Holy Spirit in us." He joined inviolable authority to his precept, saying, "He who rejects this" — that is, what I have said before about holiness — "rejects not man," that is, me who command these things, "but God," who speaks in me, and who has also appointed our heart as a dwelling for his Holy Spirit. You see with what praises and how great commendations, in simple and pure words, he has extolled it: first, by attributing sanctification properly to this virtue; next, by asserting that through it the vessel of our body is freed from uncleanness; third, that, dishonour and shame being cast off, it will remain in honour and sanctification; and finally — which is the sum of the perfect reward and blessedness — he has shown that through it the Holy Spirit will be the dweller in our breast.

And although my discourse is hastening to the end of the book, I shall set down, beyond what I promised, another testimony of the same apostle like this one. For writing to the Hebrews he says: "Pursue peace with all, and holiness, without which no one will see God." Here too he has clearly declared that without holiness — which he usually calls integrity of mind or purity of body — God cannot be seen at all. For here too he likewise adds, explaining the same sense: "lest anyone be sexually immoral or profane like Esau."

So the more sublime and heavenly the reward of chastity, the heavier the snares of the adversaries by which it is attacked. And therefore we must apply more earnestly not only continence of body but also contrition of heart with constant groans of prayer, so that the furnace of our flesh, which the Babylonian king does not cease to kindle with the incitements of fleshly suggestions, may be extinguished as the dew of the Holy Spirit comes down into our hearts.

For just as the elders say that chastity cannot be attained unless the foundations of humility have first been laid in the heart, so they define that one cannot even reach the fountain of true knowledge as long as the root of this vice sits in the recesses of our soul. And they say that it is possible for integrity to be found without the grace of knowledge, but impossible for spiritual knowledge to be possessed without the chastity of integrity; for the gifts are various, and not both graces of the Holy Spirit are given to all, but to each the one of which he has shown himself worthy and fit by his own zeal and diligence. Finally, although the virtue of integrity is believed to have been perfect in all the holy apostles, yet the gift of knowledge abounded more richly in Paul, because he prepared himself to be fit for it by skilful zeal and diligence.

A strict saying of Saint Basil, bishop of Caesarea, is reported: "I do not know a woman, and I am not a virgin." So far did he understand that incorruption of the flesh consists not so much in abstaining from women as in integrity of heart, which truly keeps the holiness of the body incorrupt for ever, either by the fear of God or by love of chastity.

So this is the end and perfect proof of integrity: if no tickling of pleasure creeps in while we are at rest, and if, through the necessity of nature, the accumulated unclean fluids are discharged without our being aware of it. Just as it is beyond nature to cut these off entirely and remove them for ever, so to reduce them to an unavoidable and very rare necessity of nature is a mark of the highest virtue; this necessity usually troubles a monk after an interval of two months. Yet let this be said according to our experience, not according to the judgment of the elders, by whom even this interval of time we have mentioned was judged quite short; for if we wished to set it out as we received it from them, we might perhaps be believed by those who, through their negligence or more remiss zeal, have less experience of this purity, to have described things incredible or impossible.

We shall be able to keep this state for ever, and never exceed the natural measure and time mentioned above, if we reflect that God is the observer and witness, by day and by night alike, not only of our secret actions but also of all our thoughts, and believe that we shall give account to him for everything that goes on in our heart, just as for our deeds and works.

So far, then, we must hasten, and so long must we fight against the movements of the soul and the incitements of the flesh, until this condition of the flesh fulfils the necessity of nature without arousing pleasure, discharging the accumulated excess without any itching or harm and without stirring up a fight against chastity. But as long as the mind, while still asleep, is deluded by the sight of images, let it know that it has not yet been refined to the complete perfection of chastity.

So, in order that these illusions may not be able to creep in on us even while we sleep, an even and moderate fast must always be kept. For whoever exceeds the measure of strictness must also exceed the measure of relaxation. Held by this unevenness, he will certainly be drawn away from this most level state of tranquillity, now weakened by excessive emptiness, now distended by too generous food. For with a change in our eating the quality of our purity must also change. Next, constant humility and patience of heart must be practised continually, and careful watchfulness during the day against anger and the other passions. For where the poison of rage has settled, the fire of lust must also penetrate. Above all, a watchful care at night is necessary. For just as purity and watchfulness during the day prepare chastity at night, so the night vigils lay down a most solid state and strength for the heart and for the observance of the day.

Our third conflict is against filargyria, which we can call love of money: a foreign war, outside nature, which in a monk takes its beginning from nothing else than the sloth of a corrupt and torpid mind, and usually from a renunciation badly begun and founded on a lukewarm love for God. For the other incitements of the vices, implanted in human nature, seem to have their beginnings in us as if inborn; in a way they are rooted in the flesh and almost as old as birth itself, and they come before the discernment of good and evil; and although they seize a man first, they are overcome by long labour.

But this disease, coming on later and approaching the soul from outside, is as much the easier to guard against and reject, as it is, when neglected and once admitted into the heart, more deadly than all and harder to drive out. For it becomes the root of all evils, putting forth many shoots that kindle the vices.

For example, do we not see the simple movements of the flesh not only in boys, in whom innocence still precedes the discernment of good and evil, but even in little children and infants at the breast? Although they have not even the beginning of any lust in themselves, they show that movements of the flesh are present in them by a natural incitement. Likewise, do we not see the fierce stings of anger already strong in little children, and before they know the virtue of patience, we see them moved by injuries and feel insults offered to them in words, even in jest; and sometimes, though they lack strength, the will to revenge, spurred on by anger, is not lacking. I do not say this to call the nature of our creation to account, but to assert that of these movements which proceed from us, some have been implanted in us for a useful purpose, while others are brought in from outside by the fault of negligence and the choice of an evil will. For those fleshly movements we mentioned above have been usefully implanted in our body by the Creator's providence for the renewal of offspring and to raise up the propagation of posterity, not for committing the shameful acts of debauchery and adultery, which are condemned even by the authority of the law. And do we not understand that the stings of anger were given to us most healthfully, so that, being indignant at our own vices and errors, we might rather be occupied with virtues and spiritual pursuits, showing all love to God and patience to our brothers? We know too how great is the usefulness of sadness, which is counted among the other vices when it is changed into a contrary disposition. For it is both most necessary when it is according to the fear of God and very deadly when it is according to the world, as the apostle teaches, saying: "For the sadness that is according to God produces a repentance leading to lasting salvation; but the sadness of the world produces death."

So if we have said that these movements were implanted in us by the Creator, he will not on that account seem to be at fault if we, abusing them wickedly, prefer to twist them to harmful services, and choose to be sad over fruitless and worldly gains rather than for saving repentance and the correction of vices, or if we are angry, not usefully with ourselves, but with our brothers, against the Lord's prohibition. And if someone chooses to twist iron, which was provided for a necessary and useful service, to the killing of the innocent, he will not on that account defame the maker of the material, if he has used for harm what the other provided as fit and necessary for the use of good living.

We say, however, that certain vices grow up without any preceding natural occasion, by the choice of a corrupt and evil will alone, such as envy and this very filargyria. Since they have no beginnings in us from natural instinct, they are contracted from outside. Yet the easier they are to guard against and the more convenient to avoid, the more wretched they make the mind they have occupied and possessed, and they scarcely allow it to reach the remedies of health: either because those who have been wounded by vices which they could have ignored, avoided, or very easily overcome do not deserve to be cured by a swift medicine, or because, badly founded, they are unworthy to take on the structure of the virtues and the summit of perfection.

Therefore let this disease seem worthless and contemptible to no one; for just as it can very easily be avoided, so, if it has taken possession of anyone, it scarcely allows him to reach the remedies of health. For it is a receptacle of vices and the root of all evils, and it becomes the tinder of inextricable wickedness, as the apostle says: "The root of all evils is filargyria," that is, love of money.

When, then, this vice has taken possession of the relaxed and lukewarm mind of a monk, it first tempts him with a small sum, describing to him certain just and seemingly reasonable pretexts for which he ought either to keep back some money for himself or to acquire it. For he complains that what is provided in the monastery is not sufficient and can hardly be endured by a sound and strong body. What is to be done if bad health of the flesh should arise and nothing of his own has been put aside with which to support his weakness? The monastery's provision is very meagre, and its neglect of the sick very great. If there is nothing of his own with which to take care of the body, he must die miserably. Even the clothing provided is not enough, unless he procures the means of getting other clothes for himself. Finally, he cannot stay long in the same place or monastery; and unless he has provided himself with money for the journey and the fare for a voyage overseas, he cannot move when he wishes, and, constrained by the necessity of poverty, he will always have to endure a laborious and wretched life without any progress, and, always poor and naked, have to be supported by the property of others, not without reproach. So when he has snared his mind with thoughts of this kind, he considers how he can acquire at least one denarius. Then he anxiously seeks out some private work he can do without the abbot's knowledge. Selling it secretly and having at last got the coin he wanted, he is tormented more sharply and violently about how to double it, uncertain where to put it or to whom to entrust it. Then he is distracted by a heavier care as to what he may buy with it, and by what trade he can double it. And when this wish too has turned out well for him, a greedier hunger for gold grows, and it is roused the more violently the greater the sum of gain that is added. For with the increase of money the madness of desire increases. Then long life is promised him, bent old age, various and lengthy illnesses, which cannot be endured in old age unless a larger sum has been prepared in youth. So the unhappy soul is driven on, bound in the serpent's coils, while with more wicked care it longs to increase the substance wrongly gathered, bringing forth for itself a plague by which it is more cruelly inflamed; and wholly possessed by the thought of gain it looks with the eye of its heart at nothing else than how it can get money, by which it can fly away as quickly as possible from the discipline of the monastery, keeping faith nowhere where some hope of a coin can gleam. For this it does not shudder to commit the crime of lying, perjury, or theft, to break faith, or to be filled with the harmful fury of anger if it falls short of its hope of profit anywhere; it does not fear to go beyond the bounds of honesty and humility; and in all things gold and the hope of gain become its god, as the belly does for others. Hence the blessed apostle, foreseeing the harmful poisons of this disease, declared it not only to be the root of all evils but also the service of idols, saying: "And avarice (which in Greek is called philargyria), which is the service of images." You see, then, to what a fall this madness grows step by step, so that it is even declared by the apostle's voice to be the service of idols or images, because, passing over the image and likeness of God, which one who serves God devoutly ought to keep unstained in himself, it has chosen to love and guard, in place of God, the images of men stamped on gold.

Growing worse by such advances in falling away, he is no longer willing to keep, I will not say the virtue, but even the shadow of humility, love, or obedience. He is indignant at everything, grumbles and sighs at every task, and, keeping no reverence any longer, is carried headlong to the precipice like a hard-mouthed horse without a bridle. Content neither with his daily food nor with his usual clothing, he declares that he will not put up with these things any longer; he proclaims that God is not only there, and that his salvation is not confined to that place alone; and he groans heavily that he will perish at once unless he takes himself off somewhere quickly.

So, having his coins as provisions for his instability, fitted on him like wings for his protection, and already ready to move, he answers every command insolently, and, behaving as a stranger and outsider, he neglects and despises whatever he sees needs correction. And although he secretly possesses hidden money, he complains that he does not even have shoes and clothes, and is indignant that they are given him too late. And if by the elder's arrangement any of these things has been given first to one who is known to have nothing at all, he burns with greater stings of anger and thinks he is despised as an outsider; not willing to put his hands to any work, he finds fault with everything that the needs of the monastery compel to be done. Then he carefully seeks occasions for being offended or angry, lest he should seem to leave the discipline of the coenobium for a slight cause. Yet not content to move away alone, lest he be thought to have left through his own fault, he does not cease to corrupt as many as he can by secret whisperings. And if bad weather has cut off his passage by road or sea, he sits all that time with a restless and anxious heart and does not cease to sow and stir up discontent, believing that he will find comfort for his departure and an excuse for his fickleness only by bringing a mark or stain on the monastery.

So he is driven on, kindled more and more by the torches of his money, which, once possessed, never allow a monk either to stay in a monastery or to live under the institution of a rule. And when, like some wild beast, it has separated him from the company of the flock, and has made him a sheep fit for prey by being deprived of companions, and easy to devour by being deprived of fellowship, it compels him — who previously had disdained to do the light tasks of the monastery — to labour tirelessly day and night in the hope of gain. It does not allow him to keep the solemn prayers, the measure of fasts, or the rule of vigils; it does not let him fulfil the duties of honourable intercession, provided only that he can satisfy the madness of avarice or meet his daily needs, kindling the fire of desire while he believes he is putting it out by acquiring.

From here some, falling over a sheer precipice, are carried to death in irretrievable ruin. Not content to possess alone the money which they either never had before or kept back from a bad beginning, they seek the company of women to guard what has been wrongly gathered or kept. And they entangle themselves in such harmful and deadly occupations that they sink down to the depths of hell, since they refuse to accept that apostolic saying, that having food and clothing they should be content with what the frugality of the monastery provides; but wishing to become rich they fall into temptation and the snare of the devil and many useless and harmful desires, which plunge men into ruin and perdition. "For the root of all evils is covetousness," that is, filargyria, "which some, desiring it, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows."

I know of someone who thinks himself a monk and — what is worse — flatters himself about his perfection. When he had been received into a coenobium and was being warned by his abbot not to return to what he had given up in renouncing, but to free himself from filargyria, the root of all evils, and from earthly snares; and, if he preferred to be cleansed from his former passions, by which the abbot saw him most heavily pressed at every moment, to stop aiming at things he had not possessed even before, fettered by whose bonds he could certainly not reach the cleansing of his vices — he did not hesitate to answer him with a savage face: "If you have many things with which to support others, why do you forbid me to have them likewise?"

Let these things seem to no one either superfluous or tiresome. For unless the kinds of wounds have first been set out and the origins and causes of the diseases have been traced, neither can a fitting cure of medicine be applied to the sick nor the safeguard of perfect health be given to the healthy. For these things and many more than these are usually brought out in conference by the elders, who have experienced countless falls and ruins of various persons, for the instruction of the younger. Often recognizing many of them in ourselves as the elders set them out and revealed them, as though we too were struck by the same passions, we were cured without the shame of embarrassment, since we silently learned both the remedies and the causes of the vices that attacked us. We have covered or passed over some of these, not out of respect for the body of the brotherhood, but lest perhaps the book, falling into the hands of those who seem less trained in this way of life, should reveal to the inexperienced things which ought to be known only to those who toil and hasten to reach the summit of perfection.

This sickness, then, is a threefold disease, condemned by all the fathers with equal abhorrence. The first is the one whose stain we have described above, which, deceiving the wretched, persuades them to heap up what they did not possess even before, when they lived in the world. The second compels them afterwards to take back and desire again what they had cast away at the beginning of their renunciation. The third, contracted from a bad and faulty beginning and starting from imperfection, does not allow those whom it has once infected with this lukewarmness of mind, terrified by fear of poverty and distrust, to strip themselves of all the world's possessions; and keeping money or property, which they certainly ought to have cast away in renouncing, it never lets them reach the perfection of the gospel. We find examples of these three ruins in the holy Scriptures too, condemned with no light punishment. For Gehazi, wishing to acquire what he had not possessed even before, not only did not deserve to possess the grace of prophecy, which he was to receive from his master as by hereditary succession, but on the contrary was covered with everlasting leprosy by the curse of the holy Elisha. Judas, wishing to take back the money he had cast away when he followed Christ, not only fell into betraying the Lord and lost the rank of apostle, but did not even deserve to end his life by the common way of death, and closed it with a violent death by his own hand. Ananias and Sapphira, keeping back some part of what they had possessed, were punished with death by the apostle's word.

Concerning those, then, who, while saying that they have renounced this world, are broken by unbelief and afraid to be stripped of earthly wealth, it is commanded mystically in Deuteronomy: "If there is any man who is fearful and faint-hearted, let him not go out to war; let him go and return to his house, lest he make the hearts of his brothers fear, as he himself is terrified with fear." What, I ask, could be clearer than this testimony? Does not Scripture clearly prefer that they should not take on themselves even the beginning or the name of this profession, rather than, by their corrupting exhortation and example, call others back from gospel perfection and weaken them with faithless terror? So they are ordered to withdraw from the battle and return to their house, because no one can fight the Lord's battles with a double heart (for "a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways"), and, considering, according to that parable of the gospel, that one who goes out with ten thousand cannot fight against a king coming with twenty thousand, they should ask for peace while he is still far off, that is, they should not even take up the beginning of renunciation rather than, carrying it out lukewarmly afterwards, involve themselves in greater danger. For "it is better not to vow than to vow and not to pay." And it is beautifully described that this one comes with ten thousand and that one with twenty; for the number of the vices attacking us is greater than that of the virtues fighting for us. "But no one can serve God and mammon," "and no one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."

These, then, try to bring back their former avarice by a kind of authority of holy Scripture, which, interpreting it with a faulty understanding, they are eager to corrupt and distort to their own desire — the saying of the apostle, or rather of the Lord. Not fitting their life or understanding to the sense of the Scriptures, but doing violence to the Scriptures to suit the desire of their lust, they want them to agree with their opinions, and they say it is written: "It is more blessed to give than to receive." By a most perverse interpretation of this they think that the Lord's saying is weakened, in which it is said: "If you wish to be perfect, go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." Under this pretext they think they ought not to cast away their riches, declaring themselves more blessed if, supported by their former property, they also give to others out of its abundance, while they are ashamed to take on for Christ the glorious nakedness with the apostle and are unwilling to be content with the work of their hands or the frugality of the monastery. It remains for them either to recognize that they are deceiving themselves and have by no means renounced this world while brooding over their former riches, or, if they wish to experience the profession of a monk in deed and act, to scatter and cast away everything, keeping nothing of what they had renounced, and to glory with the apostle in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness.

As if he too could not likewise have been supported by his former means — he who testifies that he was not undistinguished even in the order of this world, since he asserts that from birth he was honoured with the dignity of a Roman citizen — if he had judged this more suitable for perfection! And as if those at Jerusalem who, being owners of lands or houses, sold everything, kept back nothing at all for themselves, brought the prices, and laid them at the apostles' feet, could not have supported the needs of their bodies from their own means, if this had been judged more perfect by the apostles or if they themselves had proved it more useful! But casting away all their property at once, they preferred to be supported by their own labour or by the contribution of the Gentiles. Writing to the Romans about the cost of supporting them, and commending to them his own ministry in this, and subtly encouraging them to this contribution, the holy apostle says: "But now I am going to Jerusalem to minister to the saints. For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor among the saints who are in Jerusalem. For they were pleased, and they are their debtors; for if the Gentiles have come to share in their spiritual things, they ought also to minister to them in fleshly things." To the Corinthians too, showing the same concern for them, he urges them to prepare more carefully before his coming the contribution which they were planning to send for their use: "Now concerning the collections that are made for the saints, as I directed the churches of Galatia, so do you also. On the first day of the week let each of you lay up by himself, storing what pleases him, so that collections may not be made when I come. And when I come, whomever you approve by letters, these I will send to carry your gift to Jerusalem." And to encourage them to a more generous contribution, he adds: "And if it is fitting that I also go, they will go with me" — that is, if your offering is such as to deserve to be escorted by me too. To the Galatians also, when he divided the ministry of preaching with the apostles, he testifies that he agreed this same thing with James, Peter, and John: that although he took up the preaching to the Gentiles, he would by no means reject concern and care for the poor who were at Jerusalem, who, renouncing all their property for Christ's sake, had undergone voluntary poverty. "And when they had seen," he says, "the grace of God that was given to me, James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship, that we should preach among the Gentiles and they among the circumcision; only that we should remember the poor." He testifies that he fulfilled this with all care, saying: "which I also was eager to do." Who, then, are more blessed? Those who, lately gathered from among the Gentiles and not able to climb to gospel perfection, still clung to their property — in whom the apostle counted it great fruit if only, called back from the worship of idols and from sexual immorality and things strangled and blood, they had received the faith of Christ together with their possessions? Or those who, satisfying the saying of the gospel and carrying the Lord's cross daily, wanted nothing of their own property left to them? And when the blessed apostle himself, bound by chains and prisons, or hindered by the hardship of travel, and for these reasons unable to provide his usual food with his own hands as he was accustomed, asserts that he received the supply of his need from the brothers who had come from Macedonia (for he says, "What was lacking to me the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied," and he himself tells the Philippians, "For you yourselves also know, Philippians, that in the beginning of the gospel, when I set out from Macedonia, no church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving except you alone; for even in Thessalonica you sent once and again for my need") — will those people, according to the opinion they have formed with a lukewarm mind, be more blessed than the apostle, because they are found to have given to him of their property? No one, however mad, will dare to say this.

Therefore, if we wish to obey the gospel precept and to be imitators of the apostle and of that whole primitive church, or of the fathers who in our times have succeeded to their virtues and perfection, let us not rest in our own definitions, promising ourselves gospel perfection from this lukewarm and wretched state; but following in their footsteps let us by no means seek to deceive ourselves, and let us seek the discipline and training of the monastery in such a way as to renounce this world in truth, keeping nothing of what we have despised, with unbelief holding us back, and let us obtain our daily food, not by hidden money, but by our own work.

A saying of Saint Basil, bishop of Caesarea, is reported, spoken to a certain Syncletius who was sluggish with the lukewarmness we have described. Although he said that he had renounced this world, he kept back for himself some of his own property, unwilling to be supported by the work of his own hands and to acquire true humility by nakedness, the grinding of work, and submission to the monastery. "You have lost Syncletius the senator," Basil said, "and have not made Syncletius the monk."

So if we wish to contend lawfully in the spiritual contest, let us drive this deadly enemy too out of our hearts. Just as it is no great virtue to overcome him, so it is shameful and full of disgrace to be conquered by him. For to be thrown by a powerful opponent, although there is pain in the fall and groaning in the loss of the victory, still gives the defeated some consolation from the strength of the adversary; but if the enemy is feeble and the kind of struggle weak, a more shameful confusion is added beyond the pain of the fall, and a disgrace heavier than the loss.

This will be the highest victory and lasting triumph over it: that, as they say, the conscience of a monk should not be defiled even by the smallest coin. For it is impossible that one who has been overcome in a tiny sum and has once received the root of desire in his heart should not at once be set ablaze by the fire of greater desire. For the soldier of Christ will be victorious and secure and a stranger to every attack of desire only so long as this most wicked spirit has not sown the beginnings of this desire in his heart. Therefore, although in all kinds of vices the head of the serpent must generally be watched, in this one especially it is fitting to be more carefully on guard. For if it has been let in, it will grow strong on its own material and stir up more violent fires for itself. And so not only must the possession of money be avoided, but the very will for it must be driven entirely out of the mind. For it is not so much the effect of filargyria that must be avoided as its disposition that must be cut off at the root; for it will profit nothing not to have money if the will to possess it is in us.

For it is possible that even one who does not have money is by no means free from the disease of filargyria, and that the benefit of nakedness profits him nothing, because he has not been able to cut away the vice of desire; he has enjoyed the good of poverty, not by the merit of virtue, and has put up with the burden of necessity not without sickness of heart. Just as the word of the gospel declares that those who are not defiled in body have committed adultery in the heart, so it is possible for those who are not at all burdened by the weight of money to be condemned in feeling and mind with the lovers of money. For it was the opportunity of having that was lacking to them, not the will, which is always wont to be crowned by God more than necessity. So we must hasten, lest the rewards of our labours perish in vain. For it is wretched to have endured the effects of poverty and nakedness, but to have lost their fruits through the fault of an empty will.

Do you wish to know how deadly and how harmful this tinder, unless it is carefully cut out, grows to the destruction of the one who has conceived it, and sprouts with every kind of shoot of the vices? Look at Judas, counted among the apostles: because he would not crush the deadly head of this serpent, see how it destroyed him with its poison, and, entangled in the snares of desire, to what a crime of sheer precipice it drove him, so that it persuaded him to sell the Redeemer of the world and the author of human salvation for thirty pieces of silver. He would never have fallen into so wicked a crime of betrayal had he not been infected with the disease of filargyria, nor would he have become sacrilegiously guilty of denying the Lord unless he had first been accustomed to rob the purse entrusted to him.

This is a monstrous and clear enough example of this tyranny, which, as we said, once it has taken the soul captive, allows it to keep no rule of honesty and cannot be satisfied by any addition of gain; for the end of this madness is reached not by riches but by nakedness. For although Judas had received into his power, entrusted to him, the purse assigned to the care of the poor, so that, satisfied at least by the abundance of money, he might set a limit to his desire, the abundance of it made him burn with a more abundant tinder of desire, so that he now chose not to rob the purse secretly but to sell the Lord himself. For the madness of this desire surpasses all the heaps of riches.

Finally, the chief of the apostles, taught by these examples, knowing that one who has anything cannot control the reins of desire, and that its end lies not in a small or great sum but in the virtue of nakedness alone, punished with death Ananias and Sapphira, whom we mentioned above, because they had kept back something of their property for themselves; so that the death which Judas had brought on himself of his own accord for the guilt of betraying the Lord, these received for the lie of their desire. How great a likeness of crime and punishment meets here too! There betrayal followed filargyria; here falsehood. There the truth is betrayed; here the crime of lying is committed. For although the outcome of their deeds seems different, one end meets in both. For he, fleeing poverty, desired to take back what he had cast away; they, lest they should become poor, tried to keep back something of their property, which they ought either to have offered faithfully to the apostles or to have distributed entirely to the brothers. And therefore the condemnation of death follows in both cases, because both crimes sprouted from the roots of filargyria. So if so severe a sentence went out against those who did not desire other people's property but tried to spare their own, and had no desire of acquiring but only the will of keeping, what should be thought of those who desire to gather money they never possessed, and, displaying nakedness before men, are proved rich before God by the disposition of desire?

They are known to be lepers in spirit and mind, after the likeness of Gehazi, who, desiring the perishable money of this world, was covered with the contagion of unclean leprosy. By him he has left us a clear example that every soul polluted with the stain of desire is covered with the spiritual leprosy of the vices and is counted unclean before God under an everlasting curse.

So if, in the desire for perfection, you have left everything and followed Christ, who says to you, "Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me," why, having put your hand to the plough, do you look back, so as to be declared by the voice of the same Lord not fit for the kingdom of heaven? Set on the housetop of the gospel height, why do you come down to take anything from your house, that is, of the things you formerly despised? Placed in the field and in the work of the virtues, why do you run back and try to clothe yourself again with the property of the world, of which you stripped yourself in renouncing? But if, overtaken by poverty, you had nothing to leave, much less ought you to acquire what you did not possess before. For you were prepared in this way by the Lord's kindness so that you might run to him more readily, unhindered by any snares of money. Yet let no needy man be broken on this account; for there is no one who has not something to leave. Whoever has cut off at the root the desire to possess the goods of the world has renounced all of them.

This, then, is the perfect victory over filargyria: that we do not allow the little spark of even the smallest coin to remain in our heart, certain that we shall no longer have the power of putting it out if we foster in ourselves the material of even the least of this spark.

We shall be able to keep this virtue unimpaired in no other way than by remaining in the monastery and, according to the apostle, being content with food and clothing.

So, keeping in memory the condemnation of Ananias and Sapphira, let us shudder at keeping back any of the things we vowed to give up entirely when we renounced. Let us also fear the example of Gehazi, who for the fault of filargyria was punished with the everlasting penalty of leprosy, and let us beware of acquiring anything we did not possess before. And also, dreading both the deed and the end of Judas, let us avoid with all our strength taking back any of the money we have once cast away from us. Above all, considering the condition of our frail and uncertain nature, let us beware lest the day of the Lord, coming like a thief in the night, should find our conscience stained by even a single obol; for it would make void all the fruits of our renunciation and cause what was said in the gospel to the rich man to be addressed to us too by the Lord's voice: "Fool, this night they require your soul of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?" And, taking no thought for tomorrow, let us never allow ourselves to be torn away from the discipline of the coenobium.

We are certainly not permitted to fulfil this, nor even to remain under the rule of the institution, unless the virtue of patience, which proceeds from no other source than the fountain of humility, has first been founded in us with firm solidity. For humility knows how to cause no disturbances to anyone, and patience how to bear with magnanimity those caused to it.

In the fourth contest too the deadly poison of anger must be dug out completely from the recesses of our soul. For while it sits in our hearts and blinds the eye of the mind with harmful darkness, we shall not be able to acquire the judgment of right discernment, nor possess the gaze of honourable contemplation or maturity of counsel; nor can we be sharers in life or holders of justice, nor even capable of the spiritual and true light, because "my eye," it says, "is troubled by anger." Nor can we become sharers in wisdom, even if we seem to be pronounced wise by everyone's opinion, because "anger rests in the bosom of fools"; nor shall we even be able to attain the life of immortality, though we seem to be judged prudent by the definition of men, because "anger destroys even the prudent." Nor shall we be able to keep the governance of justice by the keen discernment of the heart, even if we are considered perfect and holy by everyone's opinion, because "the anger of man does not work the justice of God." We shall by no means be able to possess even that dignity of honour which is usually familiar even to men of this world, though we are thought noble and honourable by the privilege of birth, because "an angry man is dishonourable." We shall by no means be able to obtain maturity of counsel either, however serious and endowed with the highest knowledge we may seem, because "the angry man acts without counsel"; nor shall we be able to be at rest from harmful disturbances or free from sins, even if no disturbances are brought on us by others, because "a passionate man begets quarrels, and an angry man digs up sins."

We have heard some trying to excuse this most deadly disease of the soul in such a way as to be eager to lessen it by a more detestable interpretation of the Scriptures, saying that it is not harmful if we are angry with brothers who do wrong, since God himself is said to rage and be angry against those who either will not know him or, knowing him, despise him, as in the passage, "And the Lord was angry with fury against his people," or when the prophet prays, saying, "Lord, do not rebuke me in your fury, nor chasten me in your anger." They do not understand that, while they wish to grant men an occasion for a pestilent vice, they are mixing the injury of a fleshly passion with the divine infinity and the fountain of all purity.

For if these things, when said of God, are to be taken in a fleshly and gross sense according to the letter, then he also sleeps, since it is said, "Arise, why do you sleep, O Lord?" — he of whom it is said, "Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep"; and he stands and sits, since he says, "Heaven is my seat, and the earth the footstool of my feet" — he who "measures the heaven with his span and holds the earth in his fist"; and he is drunk with wine, since it is said, "And the Lord awoke as one asleep, like a mighty man drunk with wine" — he "who alone has immortality and dwells in light inaccessible." To pass over the ignorance and forgetfulness which we read are frequently ascribed to him in the holy Scriptures, and then the features of limbs, which are described as of a man with a form and a composite body: hair, namely, and head and nostrils, eyes and face, hands and arm, fingers, womb, and feet. If we choose to accept all these according to the mean sound of the letter, we must think that God is composed of bodily limbs and a bodily form — which is wicked even to say, and far be it from us.

So, just as these things cannot be understood according to the letter without abominable sacrilege of him who is defined by the authority of the holy Scriptures as invisible, ineffable, incomprehensible, inestimable, simple, and uncompounded, so neither can the disturbance of fury and anger be fitted to that unchangeable nature without enormous blasphemy. For by such a meaning of limbs we ought to understand the divine workings of God and his immense operations, which cannot be made known to us except through these familiar names of limbs. For example, by the meaning of "mouth" let us recognize his speech, which is usually poured graciously into the secret senses of the soul, or that he himself spoke among our fathers and prophets. In the "eyes" we may know the immensity of his sight, by which he surveys and sees all things, and that nothing of what is done or is to be done or thought by us is hidden from him. By the naming of "hands" let us understand the providence and working by which he is the creator and maker of all things. The "arm" too is the sign of his power and government, by which he sustains, governs, and rules all things; and, to say nothing of the rest, what else does the white hair of his head signify than the eternity and antiquity of the Godhead, by which he is without any beginning and surpasses all creatures before all times? So also when we read of the anger or fury of God, we ought to understand it not anthrōpopathōs, that is, according to the lowliness of human disturbance, but in a manner worthy of God, who is a stranger to all disturbance: namely, that through these things we may perceive him as the judge and avenger of all that is done unjustly in this world, and, fearing him as the terrible rewarder of our deeds through these meanings of the words, may fear to commit anything against his will. For human nature is accustomed to fear those whom it knows to be indignant, and is afraid to offend them; as with some most just judges, the avenging anger is usually feared by those who are gnawed by some guilt of conscience — not, of course, because this disturbance exists in the minds of those who are going to judge justly, but because to those who fear, that disposition is felt as anger which proceeds from the execution of the laws, the examination of justice, and the weighing of equity. However much gentleness and mildness of mind it is delivered with, it is judged heavy fury and most savage anger by those who must be punished according to their deserts. It would be long, and not part of the present work, to explain everything said figuratively of God in the Scriptures with human meaning. Let it suffice to have said this for the present need, which concerned the vice of anger, so that no one may through ignorance draw from the source where holiness, immortality, and the remedies of life and salvation are sought an occasion of disease and eternal death.

So let the monk who is striving for perfection and wishes to contend lawfully in the spiritual contest be a stranger to every vice of anger and fury, and let him hear what the vessel of election commands him: "Let all anger and indignation and clamour and blasphemy be taken away from you, with all malice." When he says, "Let all anger be taken away from you," he makes no exception of any as necessary and useful to us. And if necessary let him hasten to cure an erring brother in such a way that, while trying to bring a remedy to one suffering perhaps from a lighter fever, he does not in his anger involve himself in the fouler disease of blindness. For one who wishes to heal another's wound ought to be free of every sickness and sound, lest that saying of the gospel be addressed to him, "Physician, first heal yourself," and, seeing the speck in his brother's eye, he does not see the beam in his own. Or how will he see to cast the speck out of his brother's eye, who carries the beam of fury in his own?

From whatever cause the movement of anger boils up, it blinds the eyes of the heart, and, thrusting the deadly beam of a stronger disease on the keenness of their sight, it does not allow them to look on the sun of justice. It makes no difference whether a plate of gold or of lead or of any other metal is placed over the eyes; the costliness of the metals makes no difference to the blindness.

We do indeed have a use for anger quite fittingly implanted in us, and for this alone it is useful and wholesome for us to admit it: when we rage indignantly against the wanton movements of our heart, and are indignant that the things we are ashamed to do or say before men have risen up in the hidden places of our breast, trembling with all fear at the presence of the angels and of God himself, who penetrates everywhere and all things, and at his eye, from which the secrets of our conscience can by no means be hidden.

Or at least when we are moved against this very anger, because it has crept in on us against a brother, and in anger we drive out its deadly promptings and do not allow it to have harmful hiding places in the inner sanctuary of our breast. The prophet too teaches us to be angry in this way, who had so driven it from his feelings that he would not take revenge even on his own enemies, and those delivered into his hands by God: "Be angry," he says, "and do not sin." For when he had longed for water from the cistern of Bethlehem, and it had been brought to him by three mighty men through the midst of the hosts of the enemy, he at once poured it out on the ground; and so, angrily extinguishing the pleasurable passion of desire, he offered it to the Lord and did not satisfy the longings of his desire, saying: "The Lord be merciful to me, that I should not do this. Shall I drink the blood of these men who went, and the peril of their lives?" Or when Shimei threw stones and curses at King David in his hearing before everyone, and Abishai son of Zeruiah, the commander of the soldiers, wished to avenge the insult to the king by cutting off his head, blessed David, moved with pious indignation against his cruel suggestion, kept the measure of humility and the firmness of patience with unshaken gentleness, saying: "What have I to do with you, sons of Zeruiah? Let him alone, that he may curse; for the Lord has commanded him to curse David; and who is there who dares to say, Why has he done so? Behold, my son, who came out of my womb, seeks my life; how much more now a son of Jemini? Let him alone, that he may curse according to the Lord's command, if perhaps the Lord may look on my affliction and repay me good for this day's cursing."

So we are commanded to be angry in a wholesome way, but with ourselves and with the evil suggestions that rise up, and not to sin by carrying them through to a harmful effect. Finally, the following little verse explains this same sense more clearly: "What you say in your hearts, be sorry for on your beds"; that is, whatever you think in your hearts under sudden and slippery promptings, amend and correct with most wholesome compunction, by the moderation of counsel, removing all the noise and disturbance of fury, as if placed on a bed of rest. Finally, the blessed apostle, using the testimony of this verse, when he had said, "Be angry and do not sin," added, "Let not the sun go down on your anger, and do not give place to the devil." If it is harmful for the sun of justice to go down on our anger, and if when angry we at once give place to the devil in our heart, how did he command above that we should be angry, saying, "Be angry and do not sin"? Is he not clearly saying this: Be angry with your vices and your fury, lest, if you connive at them, the sun of justice, Christ, should begin to set on your minds darkened by anger, and when he departs you give place to the devil in your hearts?

Of this sun God clearly speaks through the prophet, saying: "But to those who fear my name the sun of justice will rise, and healing in his wings." And again he is said to set at midday for sinners, false prophets, and those who are angry, as the prophet says: "The sun will set for them at noon." Or at least, according to the figurative sense, the mind, that is, the nous or reason — which is rightly called the sun because it surveys all the thoughts and discernments of the heart — is extinguished by the vice of anger; lest, when it sets, the darkness of disturbances, with the devil as their author, should occupy the whole sense of our heart, and, possessed by the darkness of anger as in a blind night, we should not know what we ought to do. We have set out, though at some length, this passage of the apostle in the sense handed down to us by the institutions of the elders, because it was necessary to show what they thought about anger. They do not allow it to enter our heart even for a moment, observing in every way that saying of the gospel: "Whoever is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment." Otherwise, if it were permitted to be angry until sunset, the fill of fury and the movements of avenging anger could accomplish their harmful disturbance before this sun turned to its setting.

But what is to be said of those — which indeed I cannot say without my own shame — whose implacability not even the setting of this sun puts an end to, but who prolong it for many days, keep rancour of mind against those with whom they have been annoyed, and, while denying in words that they are angry, are proved in fact and deed to be most seriously indignant? For they neither address them with fitting words nor speak with them in a friendly way; and they think they do no wrong in this, because they do not seek revenge for their annoyance. Yet since they either do not dare or are not able to bring it out openly and exercise it, turning the poison of anger back to their own destruction, they digest it silently in their heart and consume it quietly within themselves, not driving out the bitterness of resentment at once by strength of mind, but digesting it with the passing of days and softening it somehow with time.

As if the end of each revenge were not this, and a man had not abundantly satisfied his own fury or resentment if he has done what he could at anger's instigation — which those too are known to do who restrain their movements, not from a desire for calm, but from lack of means of revenge; for they can do nothing more to those with whom they are angry than not speak with them in their usual friendly way — or as if anger were to be moderated only in the effect of the deed, and not rather torn out from the hidden places of our breast, lest, darkened by its shadows, we should be able to admit neither the light of wholesome counsel nor of knowledge, nor be the temple of the Holy Spirit while an evil spirit dwells in us. For fury restrained in the heart does not indeed offend the men standing by, but it shuts out the most splendid radiance of the Holy Spirit just as much as if it had been uttered.

Or how does the Lord wish it to be kept even for a moment, who does not allow even the spiritual sacrifices of our prayers to be offered if we know that another has some rancour against us, saying: "If, then, you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there at the altar, and go first to be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift"? How, then, are we permitted to keep resentment against a brother, I will not say for many days, but even until the setting of this sun, when we are not allowed to offer our prayers to God even when he has something against us? To us the apostle commands: "Pray without ceasing," and, "In every place lifting up pure hands without anger and disputing." It remains, then, either that we never pray, keeping such poison in our hearts, and are guilty against this apostolic or evangelical precept by which we are commanded to pray unceasingly and everywhere; or, if, deceiving ourselves, we presume to pour out prayer against his prohibition, we should know that we are offering to the Lord not prayer but contumacy in a spirit of rebellion.

And because we often despise brothers whom we have hurt and grieved, or at least disregard them, saying that they have not been offended by our fault, the physician of souls and knower of secrets, wishing to tear the occasions of anger out of our hearts by the roots, commands us not only to forgive and be reconciled to our brothers if we have been hurt, and to keep no memory of injury or hurt against them, but likewise, if we know that they have something against us, whether justly or unjustly, he has commanded that we should leave our gift — that is, check our prayers — and hasten first to make satisfaction to them, and so, having first cured our brother, bring the gifts of our prayers unimpaired. For the common Lord of all does not take such pleasure in our services that he would lose in one what he gains in another, while resentment rules. For in the loss of any one he suffers a single harm, since he desires and awaits in the same way the salvation of all his servants. And therefore our prayer will be ineffective just as much when a brother has something against us as if we ourselves kept the bitterness of indignation against him with a swelling spirit.

But why do we dwell longer on the precepts of the gospel and the apostle, when even the old law, which seems to allow some indulgence, guards against these same things, saying: "You shall not hate your brother in your heart," and again, "You shall not remember the injury of your fellow citizens," and again, "The ways of those who keep the memory of wrong lead to death"? You see that there too wickedness is cut off not only in deed but also in secret thoughts, since not only the repayment of hatred and injury, but even the memory of it, is ordered to be torn out of the heart by the roots.

Sometimes, overcome by pride or impatience, when we do not wish to correct our rough and disordered habits, we complain that we desire solitude, as though we would find the virtue of patience there at once because no one would provoke us; excusing our negligence and saying that the causes of our agitation arise, not from our impatience, but from the fault of the brothers. And while we turn the causes of our error on others, we shall never be able to reach the goal of patience and perfection.

So the sum of our amendment and tranquillity must not be placed in another's choice, which is by no means subject to our power, but should rather lie within our own control. So our not being angry ought to come, not from another's perfection, but from our own virtue, which is gained not by another's patience but by our own long-suffering.

Moreover, it is the perfect, those purged of every vice, who ought to seek the desert; and they should enter it, when their vices have been refined to purity in the community of the brothers, not as a refuge of faint-heartedness but for the sake of divine contemplation and in the desire of a higher vision, which can be attained only in solitude and only by the perfect. For whatever vices we carry uncured into the desert, we shall feel them covered up in us, not abolished. For just as solitude knows how to open the purest contemplation to those whose characters have been amended, and to reveal the knowledge of spiritual mysteries to their most sincere gaze, so it usually not only preserves but even increases the vices of those who are less amended. A man seems to himself patient and humble only so long as he mixes with the company of no one; he soon returns to his former nature when the occasion of any disturbance arises. For the vices that were hidden at once burst out of him, and, like unbridled horses fed by longer idleness, they rush out of their stalls, vying with one another, more fiercely and more wildly to the destruction of their own driver. For when the exercise and practice of human company ceases, the vices grow wilder in us unless they have been purged beforehand, and through the sloth of security we lose even that shadow of patience which, mixed among the brothers, we seemed to possess in appearance, at least out of respect for them and for fear of public reproach.

As if all the poisonous kinds of serpents or wild beasts did not remain harmless while they stay in solitude and in their lairs! Yet they cannot on that account be declared harmless because they harm no one; for it is not a disposition of goodness but the necessity of solitude that gives them this. When they have found an opportunity of harming, they at once pour out and show the poison stored in themselves and the savagery of their soul. And therefore it is not enough for those seeking perfection not to be angry with a man. For we remember that when we were living in solitude a movement of indignation crept in on us against a pen, when its thickness or thinness displeased us; or against a knife, when it cut sluggishly with a blunt edge what had to be cut; or against a flint, if perhaps, when we were hurrying to our reading, a spark of fire flashed from it too slowly — so much so that we could not work off and dispel the disturbance of our mind except by uttering a curse either against the insensible objects or at least against the devil. Therefore, for the purpose of perfection at least, it will not help enough to be away from men against whom anger may be moved; for if patience has not first been acquired, the feeling of anger can likewise be exercised even towards dumb things, and, remaining in our heart, it will not allow us to possess a lasting state of tranquillity or to be free of the remaining vices. Unless perhaps we think that some gain or remedy is obtained for our agitations because inanimate and dumb things do not answer our curses or our anger, and do not provoke the intemperance of our heart to blaze into a greater madness of fury.

Therefore, if we wish to attain that highest divine reward of which it is said, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," anger must not only be cut off from our actions but also rooted out of the inner parts of the soul. For it will not help much that the fury of anger is restrained in word and not brought out into deed, if God, from whom the secrets of hearts are not hidden, sees it present in the hidden places of our breast. For the word of the gospel has commanded that the roots of the vices be cut off rather than their fruits; for when the tinder has been torn out, they will certainly never sprout again; and so the mind will be able to persevere continually in all patience and holiness, when these have been torn out, not from the surface of work and action, but from the inner recesses of thoughts. And therefore, so that murder may not be committed, anger and hatred are cut down, without which the crime of murder can by no means be committed. "For whoever is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment," and, "Whoever hates his brother is a murderer": that is, because he desires in his heart the death of one whose blood he is known not to have shed before men by his own hand or weapon, he is declared a murderer by the Lord through the feeling of anger. For the Lord will give each one reward or punishment not only for the effect of his work, but also for the desire of his will and wish, according to what he himself says through the prophet: "But I know their works and their thoughts; I come to gather them with all nations and tongues"; and again: "their thoughts among themselves accusing or else excusing them, on the day when God will judge the secrets of men."

It should be known, however, regarding what is found in some copies, "Whoever is angry with his brother without cause shall be liable to judgment," that "without cause" is superfluous and was added by those who did not think anger should be cut off when there are just causes; although certainly no one, however unreasonably he is moved, will say that he is angry without cause. Therefore it appears to have been added by those who did not understand the purpose of Scripture, which wishes to cut off the tinder of anger altogether and to keep no occasion for indignation at all, lest, while we are ordered to be angry with cause, an occasion for being angry without cause should also be let in on us. For the goal of patience consists not in being angry justly but in not being angry at all. I know that some interpret this very phrase "without cause" as meaning that he is angry without cause who, when angry, is not permitted to seek revenge. Yet it is better to hold it as many new copies and all the old ones are found to be written.

Therefore the athlete of Christ who contends lawfully must tear out the movements of anger by the roots. The perfect medicine for this disease will be this: first, that we believe that we are by no means permitted to be angry, whether for unjust or for just causes, knowing that we shall at once lose the light of discernment and the firmness of right counsel, and even honour and the governance of justice, if the ruling part of our heart has been darkened by its shadows; next, that the purity of our mind will soon be disturbed, and that it cannot become a temple of the Holy Spirit at all while the spirit of anger dwells in us; lastly, that we reflect that we are by no means permitted to pray, or to pour out prayers to God, while angry. And above all, keeping before our eyes the uncertain state of the human condition, let us believe every day that we are about to depart from the body, and that the continence of chastity, the renunciation of all possessions, the contempt of riches, and the labours of fasts and vigils will profit us nothing, when, on account of anger and hatred alone, eternal punishments are promised by the judge of the universe.

In the fifth contest we must beat back the goads of devouring dejection. If, through its various attacks and uncertain and changing occurrences, it has the power to take hold of our soul, it separates us at every moment from all gaze of divine contemplation, and, casting the mind itself down from every state of purity, it utterly weakens and depresses it. It does not let it fulfil its prayers with the usual eagerness of heart, nor allow it to apply itself to the remedies of sacred reading. It does not let it be calm and gentle towards the brothers, and makes it impatient and harsh towards all the duties of work or religion; and when all wholesome counsel has been lost and the steadiness of the heart overthrown, it makes the mind as if mad and drunk, and breaks and overwhelms it with penal despair.

Therefore, if we wish to sweat through the contests of the spiritual struggle lawfully, this disease too must be cured by us with no less foresight. For "as the moth harms a garment and the worm wood, so dejection harms the heart of a man": the divine Spirit has expressed clearly and aptly enough the force of this harmful and deadly vice.

For a garment touched by the eating of moths can no longer have any value or honourable use, and likewise wood eaten out by worms will deserve to be assigned, not to the adornment even of a modest building, but to burning in the fire. So, then, the soul which is devoured by the most voracious bites of dejection will be useless either for that priestly garment which, according to the prophecy of holy David, is said to receive the ointment of the Holy Spirit coming down from heaven, first on Aaron's beard and then on its own hem, according to that saying, "Like the ointment on the head, which ran down on the beard of Aaron, which ran down on the hem of his garment"; nor can it belong to the building and adornment of that spiritual temple whose foundations Paul, the wise architect, laid, saying, "You are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you." The bride in the Song of Songs describes what its timbers are like, saying: "Our beams are cypress, the rafters of our houses cedar." And therefore such kinds of wood are chosen for the temple of God as are both of good fragrance and incorruptible, and can be subject neither to the decay of age nor to the eating of worms.

Sometimes it usually follows from the vice of a preceding anger, or arises from a desire, or from some gain not obtained, when someone sees that he has fallen short of a hope of these things he had conceived in his mind. But sometimes, even when there are no causes by which we might be provoked to fall into this ruin, at the instigation of the subtle enemy we are suddenly depressed by such grief that we cannot even receive the arrival of those dear and close to us with our usual friendliness; whatever they say in suitable conversation is judged by us importunate and superfluous, and no pleasant answer is given them by us, since the gall of bitterness occupies all the recesses of our heart.

From this it is most clearly proved that the goads of our agitations are not always roused by the fault of others, but rather by our own, since we have stored up within ourselves the causes of offence and the seeds of the vices, which, when the rain of temptations has watered our mind, at once burst out into shoots and fruits.

For no one, provoked by another's fault, is compelled to sin unless he has stored-up material for sins in his own heart. Nor should anyone be believed to have been suddenly deceived when, having seen a woman's beauty, he has fallen into the abyss of shameful desire; rather, hidden diseases lurking deep within were then brought out to the surface on the occasion of the sight.

And therefore God, the creator of all, knowing above all the cure of his handiwork, and because the roots and causes of offences lie not in others but in ourselves, did not command that the company of the brothers be abandoned, nor that those whom we have hurt, or by whom we think we have been offended, be avoided; but he orders that they be soothed, knowing that perfection of heart is gained not so much by separation from men as by the virtue of patience. When patience is firmly possessed, just as it can keep us peaceable even with those who hate peace, so, if it has not been acquired, it makes us continually at odds even with those who are perfect and better than we. For occasions of agitation, for which we hasten to leave those with whom we are joined, cannot be lacking in human society; and therefore we do not escape the causes of dejection for which we separate from our former companions, but only change them.

So we must see to it that we hasten rather to amend our own vices and correct our characters. If these have been amended, we shall very easily get on, I will not say with men, but even with wild animals and beasts, according to what is said in the book of blessed Job: "For the wild beasts will be at peace with you." For we shall not fear stumbling blocks coming from outside, nor will any scandals be able to be brought on us from without, if their roots have not been received and implanted within ourselves. "For there is much peace for those who love your name, and there is no scandal for them."

There is also another, more detestable kind of dejection, which brings, not correction of life or amendment of vices, but a most deadly despair to the soul of one who has sinned. It did not make Cain repent after killing his brother, nor Judas hasten to the remedies of satisfaction after his crime, but drew him by his despair to hang himself with a noose.

Therefore dejection is to be judged useful to us in one case only: when we conceive it, kindled either by penitence for sins, or by desire for perfection, or by contemplation of future blessedness. Of this the blessed apostle too says: "The sadness that is according to God produces a repentance leading to lasting salvation; but the sadness of the world produces death."

But that sadness which produces repentance leading to lasting salvation is obedient, friendly, humble, gentle, pleasant, and patient, since it comes down from the love of God; and it stretches itself tirelessly towards all pain of body and contrition of spirit out of desire for perfection; and in a way glad and vigorous with the hope of its own progress, it keeps all the sweetness of friendliness and long-suffering, having in itself all the fruits of the Holy Spirit which the same apostle lists: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, goodness, kindness, faith, meekness, continence." But the other is most harsh, impatient, hard, full of rancour, fruitless grief, and penal despair; it breaks and calls back the one it has embraced from diligence and from wholesome sorrow, since it is irrational; and it not only cuts off the efficacy of prayers, but also makes void all the spiritual fruits we have mentioned, which the other knows how to bestow.

Therefore, apart from that which is taken up either for saving penitence, or for zeal for perfection, or for desire of the things to come, all dejection, as being of the world and bringing death, must be rejected equally, and driven entirely out of our hearts like the spirit of sexual immorality, or of love of money, or of anger.

We shall be able to drive this most deadly passion out of ourselves by keeping our mind continually occupied with spiritual meditation and lifting it up by future hope and the contemplation of the promised blessedness. For in this way we shall be able to overcome all kinds of dejection — whether those that come from a preceding anger, or those that come to us from the loss of gain or damage inflicted, or arise from injury done to us, or proceed from an irrational confusion of mind, or bring deadly despair on us — when, always glad and immovable through the sight of eternal and future things, we are neither cast down by present misfortunes nor lifted up by prosperity, regarding both as perishable and soon passing.

Our sixth contest is with what the Greeks call akēdia, which we can call weariness or anxiety of heart. It is akin to dejection, and is more familiar to solitaries, a more hostile and frequent enemy to those living in the desert, troubling the monk especially around the sixth hour, like a fever coming on at a fixed time and bringing the burning heat of its attacks on the sick soul at its usual and appointed hours. Finally, some of the elders declare that this is the noonday demon named in the ninetieth psalm.

When it has besieged the wretched mind, it produces a loathing of the place, disgust with the cell, and scorn and contempt for the brothers who live with him or at a distance, as negligent and less spiritual. It also makes him slothful and inactive for all the work within the enclosure of his dwelling. It does not allow him to stay in his cell or to give his attention to reading. He groans often that he makes no progress while staying so long in the same place, and complains and sighs that he will have no spiritual fruit as long as he is joined to that company; he grieves that he is empty and void of all spiritual gain in the place, since, though he could guide others and benefit very many, he has built up no one nor won anyone by his instruction and teaching. He praises distant monasteries far away, describes those places as more useful for progress and better suited to salvation, and pictures the company of the brothers there as delightful and full of spiritual conversation; on the other hand, everything at hand is harsh, and not only is there no edification in the brothers who live in the place, but even food for the body cannot be obtained without enormous labour. Finally, he thinks he cannot be saved if he stays in that place, unless he leaves the cell — in which he will have to perish if he stays in it any longer — and takes himself away from there as quickly as possible. Then, at the fifth or sixth hour, it rouses such bodily weariness and hunger for food that he seems to himself worn out and tired as if by a long journey and very heavy labour, or as if he had put off eating for a fast of two or three days. Then, besides, he looks anxiously here and there and sighs that none of the brothers is coming to him; he goes out of his cell and in again more often, and keeps looking at the sun as if it were hastening too slowly to its setting. And so, by a kind of irrational confusion of mind, he is filled as with a foul darkness and becomes idle and empty of all spiritual activity, so that he thinks no remedy for so great an attack can be found in anything but the visit of some brother or the comfort of sleep alone. Next, the same disease suggests honourable and necessary greetings to be paid to the brothers, and visits to the sick, whether near or farther away. It also dictates certain pious and religious duties: that these or those relatives ought to be sought out and one should hurry more often to greet them; that it is a great work of piety to visit frequently that religious woman devoted to God, especially destitute of all help from her relatives, and that it is a most holy thing to provide whatever she needs, neglected and despised as she is by her own relatives; and that one's efforts of piety ought rather to be spent on these things than on sitting fruitlessly and without any progress in the cell.

So the unhappy soul is driven on, assailed by such devices of the enemies, until, worn out by the spirit of acedia as by a most powerful battering ram, it either learns to fall asleep, or, shaken out of the enclosure of its cell, grows accustomed to seek comfort in this attack by visiting a brother, to be weakened more sharply a little later by this remedy it uses for the present. For the adversary will attack more often and more cruelly one whom he knows, when battle is joined, will at once turn his back to him, and whom he sees hoping for safety not from victory or conflict but from flight; until, drawn out of his cell little by little, he begins to forget the work of his profession, which is nothing other than the vision and contemplation of that divine purity which excels all things, and which can be gained nowhere else than in silence, continual perseverance in the cell, and meditation. And so the soldier of Christ, having become a runaway and deserter from his service, entangles himself in worldly business, and will by no means please him to whom he enlisted himself.

Blessed David elegantly expressed all the harms of this sickness in one little verse, saying: "My soul has slumbered from weariness," that is, from acedia. Quite aptly he said, not that the body, but that the soul had slumbered. For truly the soul that has been wounded by the dart of this disturbance slumbers, away from all contemplation of the virtues and all insight of the spiritual senses.

So the true athlete of Christ who wishes to contend lawfully in the contest of perfection should hasten to drive this disease too out of the hiding places of his soul, and fight against this most wicked spirit of acedia on both sides, so that he neither falls, thrown by the dart of sleep, nor departs as a runaway, driven out of the enclosure of the monastery, however pious the pretext.

For whomever it begins to overcome in any part, it will either allow to remain in his cell as an idle man who has surrendered to it, without any progress of the spirit, or, having shaken him out of it, it will make him unstable and a wanderer from then on, and, slothful for all work, it will make him go round the cells of the brothers and the monasteries continually, and seek nothing else but where, or on what pretext, he can arrange the occasion for his next meal. For the mind of an idle man knows how to think of nothing else than food and the belly, until, having at some time found the company of some man or woman sluggish with the same lukewarmness, he becomes involved in their affairs and needs, and so is gradually entangled in harmful occupations, so that, bound as if by the coils of a serpent, he can never again free himself to return to the perfection of his former profession.

The blessed apostle, as a true and spiritual physician, either already seeing this disease that springs from the spirit of acedia creeping in, or foreseeing by the revelation of the Holy Spirit that it would arise, hastens to forestall it with the saving remedies of his precepts. For writing to the Thessalonians, first, like a most skilful and perfect physician, soothing the weakness of his patients with a gentle and mild cure of words, and beginning with love and praising them in that respect, until the deadly wound, softened by the milder remedy and with its angry swelling gone down, might more easily bear harsher medicines, he says: "But concerning brotherly love we have no need to write to you; for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another; and indeed you do it towards all the brothers in all Macedonia." He first applied the mild dressings of praise and made their ears calm and ready for the cure of the saving word. Again he adds: "But we beseech you, brothers, to abound more." He still soothes them with the gentle mildness of his words, lest perhaps he find them not yet fit to receive the perfect cure. What is it, apostle, that you ask them to abound more in? In love, of course, of which he had said above, "But concerning brotherly love we have no need to write to you." And why need you say to them, "But we beseech you to abound more," when they have no need even for anything to be written to them on this matter? Especially since you also give the reason why they do not need it, saying, "For you yourselves are taught by God to love one another," and you add a third and greater point, that they are not only taught by God but also fulfil in deed what they are taught. "For indeed you do it," he says, not to one or two, but "to all the brothers," and not only to your own fellow citizens or acquaintances, but "in all Macedonia." Tell us, then, at last, why do you put all this first so elaborately? Again he adds, "But we beseech you, brothers, to abound more," and at last he barely breaks out into what he had long been preparing: "and that you make it your aim to be quiet." He gives the first point, then adds the second: "and to do your own business"; the third too: "and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you"; the fourth: "and that you walk honourably towards those outside"; the fifth: "and that you desire nothing of anyone's." See, that hesitation, which he put off bringing out with so many preambles — what is it known to have been bringing to birth in his breast? "And that you make it your aim to be quiet": that is, staying in your cells and not, made restless by various rumours which are usually born of the wishes or tales of the idle, bringing restlessness on others too. "And to do your own business": not wishing out of your curiosity to inquire into the affairs of the world, and, prying into the conduct of various people, to spend your effort not on your own correction or the pursuit of the virtues but on slandering the brothers. "And to work with your own hands, as we commanded you": he now added the reason why the things he had warned them above not to do were being done — that is, being restless, minding others' business, walking dishonourably towards those outside, or desiring what belongs to another — saying, "and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you." For he clearly expressed that idleness was the cause of the things he rebuked above. For no one can be restless or mind others' business except one who is not content to apply himself to the work of his hands. He also brought in the fourth disease, which is born of this same idleness, namely, that they should not walk dishonourably, saying, "and that you walk honourably towards those outside." One who is by no means content to keep to the enclosure of his cell and the work of his hands can never walk honourably even among those who are men of the world; he must necessarily behave dishonourably while he seeks the necessities of life, give himself to flattery, chase after the latest rumours, and seek occasions for business and gossip by which he may prepare for himself an entrance and a means of getting into various people's houses. "And that you desire nothing of anyone's": one who does not delight in providing the means of daily food by the devout and quiet labour of his own work cannot help gaping after the gifts and presents of others. You see how many causes, so grave and so shameful, are born of the stain of one vice. Finally, see how in the second letter he sets about healing these same people, whom in the first letter he had soothed with the soft caress of words, as men who had not profited by the milder remedies, with harsher and burning medicines; and he no longer puts first any dressings of mild words, nor that tender and caressing voice, as there, "But we beseech you, brothers," but: "We command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw yourselves from every brother walking disorderly." There he asks, here he commands; in the one is the feeling of one who coaxes, in the other the severity of one who adjures and threatens. "We command you, brothers": since you despised hearing us when we first asked, at least now obey when we command. And he makes this command terrible, not with a bare word, but with the invocation of the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, lest perhaps they should again despise it as simple and uttered in a human voice, and not think it much to be observed. And at once, like a most skilful physician, he tries to heal by the incision of the spiritual knife the putrid members to which he could not bring a remedy with gentle medicine, saying: "that you withdraw yourselves from every brother walking disorderly and not according to the tradition which they received from us." So he orders that they withdraw from those who will not give themselves to work, and cut them off like members corrupted by the rot of idleness, lest the disease of inertia, like a deadly contagion, corrupt even the healthy parts of the members as the corruption spreads. And being about to speak of those who will not work with their own hands and eat their bread in silence, from whom he also commanded that they withdraw, notice with what reproaches he brands them from the beginning. First he calls them disorderly and not walking according to his tradition; in other words, he marks them as contumacious, since they would not walk according to his instruction, and as dishonourable, that is, not keeping a fitting and honourable measure in going out, in visiting, in speech, or in timing. For every disorderly person must be subject to all these vices. "And not according to the tradition which they received from us": in this too he brands them as in a way rebels and despisers, who scorn to keep the tradition they received from him and will not imitate what they remember their master not only taught by word but also know he carried out in deed. "For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us." He heaps up an enormous mass of reproach when he asserts that they are not observing what both clings to their memory and what they learned to imitate, not only by his instruction in word, but also by the encouragement of the example of his works.

"For we were not restless among you." When he wishes to prove that he was not restless among them through the practice of work, he abundantly marks those who will not work as always restless through the vice of idleness. "Nor did we eat anyone's bread for nothing." With each word the teacher of the Gentiles heightens the rebuke. The preacher of the gospel says that he did not eat anyone's bread for nothing, though he knew that the Lord had commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should live by the gospel, and again, "The workman is worthy of his food." When he who preached the gospel, performing so sublime and spiritual a work, would certainly not have taken his food for nothing if he took it by the authority of the Lord's command, what shall we do, to whom not only has no preaching of the word been entrusted, but no care at all has been committed except that of our own soul? With what confidence shall we dare to eat bread for nothing with idle hands, when the vessel of election, bound by the care and preaching of the gospel, does not presume to eat it without the work of his hands, but says, "with labour and toil, working night and day, so as not to burden any of you"? He still heaps up additions to his reproof. For he did not simply say, "We did not eat anyone's bread for nothing," and stop there — for he might have seemed to have been supported by his own private expense and hidden money, or by the contribution or gifts of others, though not of these — but he says, "with labour and toil, working night and day," that is, supported especially by our own work; "and we did this," he says, "not by our own choice nor for pleasure, as rest and bodily exercise might invite, but as the necessity and want of food compelled us to do, not without great weariness of body. For not only through the whole length of the day, but also of the night, which seems granted for the body's rest, I pressed on unceasingly with this manual work out of concern for food."

Yet he does not testify that he alone lived among them in this way, lest perhaps this pattern should seem neither great nor general if it were handed down by his example only; he asserts that all who were appointed with him to the ministry of the gospel, that is, Silvanus and Timothy, who write these same things with him, laboured with similar work. In saying "so as not to burden any of you" he also strikes great shame into them. For if he who preached the gospel and commended it by signs and miracles does not dare to eat bread for nothing, so as not to burden anyone, how can those not think they are a burden who take it every day while idle and unoccupied?

"Not because we did not have the right, but to make ourselves a pattern for you to imitate us." He reveals the reason why he imposed so much labour on himself: "to make ourselves a pattern for you to imitate us," so that, if perhaps you should forget the teaching of words often pressed on your ears, you might at least keep in memory the examples of conduct handed on to you before your very eyes. There is no light rebuke of them in this too, when he says that he exacted this labour and weariness of body day and night for no other reason than as an example, and yet they are unwilling to be instructed, for whose sake he himself, having no need, imposed so much weariness on himself. "And indeed," he says, "though we had the right, and the means and property of all of you were open to us, and I knew I had permission from our Lord to use them, yet I did not use this right, lest what was done by me well and lawfully should give others an example of harmful idleness. And therefore, while preaching the gospel, I preferred to be supported by my own hands and work, to open the way of perfection to you too who wish to walk the road of virtue, and to provide a pattern of conduct by my labour."

But lest he should seem, working in silence and wishing to teach them by example, not to have instructed them also by the admonitions of precepts, he adds: "For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: if anyone will not work, neither let him eat." He heightens still further the sloth of those who, knowing that he, as a good master, worked with his own hands for the sake of teaching and instruction, scorn to imitate him; and he heightens his own diligence and care, saying that when present he not only handed this on to them by example but also preached it continually in words: that if anyone will not work, neither should he eat.

He no longer uses the counsel of a teacher or physician towards them, but attacks them with the strictness of a judicial sentence, and, taking up again his apostolic authority, pronounces sentence on the despisers as from a tribunal: that authority, namely, which, writing to the Corinthians with a threat, he asserted had been given him by the Lord, when he warned them, who were in sin, to hasten to correct themselves before his coming, instructing them thus: "I beg you that when I am present I may not be compelled to be bold against some with that authority which has been given me among you"; and again: "For even if I should boast somewhat of the authority which the Lord gave me for your edification and not for your destruction, I shall not be ashamed." With that authority, I say, he pronounces, "If anyone will not work, neither let him eat," not condemning them with a fleshly sword, but by the authority of the Holy Spirit forbidding them the means of this life, so that, if perhaps, giving no thought to the punishment of future death, they still wish to remain contumacious out of love of idleness, they may at least be forced to accept the saving precepts, constrained by natural necessity and fear of present death.

So after so great a rigour of gospel strictness he now explains the reason why he put all this first: "For we hear that some among you are walking restlessly, doing no work, but being busybodies." He is nowhere content to declare that those who will not give themselves to work are corrupted by only one disease. For in the earlier letter he calls them disorderly and not walking according to the tradition they received from him; he also defines them as restless and eating bread for nothing. Again here he says, "We hear that some among you are walking restlessly," and at once he adds the second sickness, which is the root of this restlessness: "doing no work"; and the third disease too, which springs from it like a little branch: "but being busybodies."

So he now hastens to bring a fitting remedy for the tinder of so many vices; and laying aside the apostolic authority he had used a little before, he returns again to the heart of a loving father or a merciful physician, and, as to his children and patients, he brings the remedies of health with wholesome counsel, saying: "Now those who are such we command and beseech in the Lord Jesus, that working in silence they eat their own bread." The causes of so many ulcers, which spring from the root of idleness, he cured with the one saving precept of work, like the most skilful of physicians, knowing that the other bad sicknesses sprouting from the same stock would at once be extinguished once the origin of the principal disease had been removed.

Nevertheless, like a most perceptive and provident physician, he desires not only to heal the wounds of the sick, but likewise commends to the healthy fitting precepts by which their health may be kept for ever, saying: "But you, do not grow weary in doing good." You who follow us, that is, our ways, and fulfil by imitating our work the examples handed on to you, and by no means follow their sloth and inertia, "do not grow weary in doing good," that is, show your kindness to them likewise, even if they have neglected to observe what we have said. Just as he rebuked the weak, lest, dissolved by idleness, they should give themselves to restlessness and curiosity, so he warns the healthy that, if some perverse people will not be converted to sound teaching, they should not cut off from them the kindness which by the Lord's command we are ordered to show to good and bad, but should not cease to do them good and to cherish them both with words of consolation and reproof and with the usual benefits and kindness.

Yet again, lest perhaps some, encouraged by this mildness, should scorn to obey his precepts, he mixes in apostolic severity: "And if anyone does not obey our word by this letter, note that man and do not keep company with him, that he may be ashamed." And warning them what ought to be observed out of reverence for him and for the common good, and with what care they should keep the apostolic commands, he at once adds the mildness of a most indulgent father, and likewise teaches them, as his children, what feeling they ought to keep towards those just mentioned out of brotherly love: "And do not regard him as an enemy, but rebuke him as a brother." He mixed a father's tenderness with a judge's severity, and tempered with merciful gentleness the sentence pronounced with apostolic rigour. For he orders that one who has scorned to obey his precepts be noted, and not be kept company with; and yet he commands that this be done, not from the vice of hatred, but with a view to brotherly love and their amendment. "Do not keep company with him," he says, "that he may be ashamed" — so that he who has not been corrected by my mild precepts may at least, put to shame by public separation from all of you, begin at some time to be called back to the path of salvation.

In the letter to the Ephesians too he gave a command about this same work, saying: "Let him who stole steal no more, but rather let him labour, working with his hands what is good, so that he may have something to give to those in need." In the Acts of the Apostles too we likewise find that he not only taught these same things but also carried them out in deed. For when he had come to Corinth, he would not stay anywhere except with Aquila and Priscilla, because they were workers in the same trade he was accustomed to practise. For so you have it: "After this Paul left Athens and came to Corinth; and finding a certain Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, and Priscilla his wife, he went to them because he was of the same trade, and he stayed with them and worked; for he was a tentmaker by trade."

Then, going on to Miletus and sending from there to Ephesus, he called to himself the presbyters of the church of the Ephesians and gave them instructions on how they ought to govern the church of God in his absence, saying: "I have coveted no one's silver or gold; you yourselves know that these hands have ministered to my needs and to those who are with me. I have shown you all things, that by so labouring you ought to support the weak and remember the word of the Lord Jesus, that he himself said: It is more blessed to give than to receive." He has left us a weighty example of his conduct, since he testifies that he worked not only for what would meet the needs of his own body, but also for what could suffice for the use of those who were with him, namely those who, occupied daily with necessary ministries, could by no means likewise provide their food with their own hands. And just as he said to the Thessalonians that he worked to give them a pattern to imitate him, so here too he added something similar, saying: "I have shown you all things, that by so labouring you ought to support the weak" — weak, that is, either in mind or in body — that is, that we should hasten to refresh them by our own labour and by the expense earned by the sweat of our work, and not from a heap of abundance or stored-up money, nor even from another's generosity and property.

And he says that this very thing is the Lord's command: "For he himself said," that is, the Lord Jesus, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." This is the generosity of the giver, more blessed than the want of the receiver: not that which is spent from money kept back through unbelief or distrust, nor from the hidden treasures of avarice, but that which is brought out from the fruit of one's own work and devout sweat. And therefore it is more blessed to give than to receive, because, although the giver has the poverty of the one who receives, he nevertheless hastens by his own labour to provide with devout care not only sufficiency for his own need but also something to give to the needy. So he is adorned with a double grace: he possesses the perfect nakedness of Christ by casting away all his possessions, and he shows the munificence of a rich man by his labour and his disposition; he honours God from his just labours and offers him the firstfruits of the fruits of his justice. But the other, dissolved by the torpor and inertia of idleness, proves himself unworthy even of the food of bread by the apostle's sentence, since, idle as he is, he takes it against his prohibition, not without the guilt of sin and contumacy.

We knew a brother whose name we would even reveal if it would add anything to this instruction. He lived in a coenobium, and necessity required him to hand over to the steward every day a fixed task of work. Lest he be stretched to a greater measure of work, or put to shame, by the example of someone labouring more eagerly, whenever he saw that some brother had entered the coenobium who wished in the ardour of faith to hand in something more of work, if he could not call him back from this intention by secret persuasion, he would persuade him by evil counsels and whisperings to move away from there. And to carry him off more easily, he would pretend that he too had long been offended for many reasons and wished to leave, if he could find the comfort of a journey or a companion. And when he had lured him into agreement by secret disparagements of the monastery, arranging with him the hour at which he should leave the monastery and the place where he would go ahead and wait for him, he himself stayed there, as though he were about to follow at once; and since the other, out of shame at his departure, did not dare to rejoin the monastery from which he had fled, the one who had enticed him to flight remained in the coenobium. Let it suffice to have given this one example of this kind of man for the caution of beginners, so that it may be seen more clearly how many evils idleness, according to the saying of Scripture, brings forth in a monk's mind, and how "evil conversations corrupt good morals."

The most wise Solomon too marks this vice of idleness most clearly in many places, saying: "He who pursues idleness will be filled with poverty" — whether visible or invisible, by which every idle man must be held entangled in various vices and be always a stranger to the contemplation of God and to spiritual riches, of which the blessed apostle says: "For in everything you have been made rich in him, in all speech and in all knowledge." Of this poverty of the idle man it is also written elsewhere: "And every sleepy man will be clothed in torn rags." Without doubt he will not deserve to be adorned with that garment of incorruption of which the apostle commanded, "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ," and again, "having put on the breastplate of justice and love," and of which the Lord also speaks to Jerusalem through the prophet: "Arise, arise, Jerusalem, put on the garments of your glory" — whoever, overcome by the sleep of idleness or acedia, has chosen to be covered, not by the labour of his own diligence, but by the rags of inertia. Cutting these off from the perfect fullness and body of the Scriptures, he will fit to his own sloth, not a garment of glory or beauty, but a shameful veil of excuse. For those who are dissolved by this sluggishness, unwilling to be supported by the work of their hands, which the apostle practised unceasingly and commanded us to practise, usually use certain testimonies of Scripture to put a kind of veil over their inertia, saying that it is written, "Work not for the food that perishes, but for that which endures to eternal life," and, "My food is to do the will of my Father." But these testimonies are certain rags cut from the solid fullness of the gospel reading, sewn on to cover the shame of our idleness and disgrace rather than to warm and adorn us with that precious and perfect garment of the virtues which that wise woman in Proverbs, who is clothed with strength and beauty, is described as having made for herself or for her husband; of whom it is also said next: "She is clothed with strength and beauty, and she has rejoiced in the last days." Of this disease of inertia the same Solomon again says: "The ways of those who do no work are strewn with thorns" — that is, with these and similar vices, which the apostle said above sprout from idleness; and again: "Every idle man is in desires," of which the apostle speaks, saying, "and that you desire nothing of anyone's"; and lastly: "For idleness has taught much evil." The apostle clearly enumerated these evils in the passages we have explained above, saying, "doing no work but being busybodies," and to this vice he joined another: "and that you make it your aim to be quiet," and then, "that you do your own business, and that you walk honourably towards those outside, and that you desire nothing of anyone's." He also brands such people as disorderly and rebellious, commanding all the zealous to separate from them: "that you withdraw yourselves," he says, "from every brother walking disorderly and not according to the tradition which they received from us."

Taught by these examples, the fathers throughout Egypt by no means allow monks, and especially the young, to be idle, measuring the state of the heart and progress in patience and humility by diligence in work. And not only do they not allow anything to be received from anyone for the use of their food, but from their own labours they not only refresh brothers who arrive and visitors, but also send huge supplies of food and provisions to the parts of Libya that suffer from barrenness and famine, and also, throughout the cities, to those who are wasting away in the squalor of prisons, believing that by such an offering they present to the Lord a rational and true sacrifice from the fruit of their hands.

Hence it is that in these regions we see no monasteries founded with such a great number of brothers, because they are not supported by the resources of their own work so as to be able to last in them continually; and even if a sufficiency of food could somehow be supplied to them by another's generosity, the pleasure of idleness and the wandering of the heart do not allow them to persevere long in the place. Hence there is this holy saying among the ancient fathers in Egypt: that a working monk is attacked by one demon, but an idle one is laid waste by countless spirits.

Finally, Abba Paul, most approved of the fathers, living in the vaster desert called Porphyrio, secure with the fruit of the palm trees and a small garden, had sufficient means of food and nourishment and could practise no other work by which to support himself, since his dwelling in that desert was separated from towns or habitable land by seven days' journey or more, and more would be asked for the cost of transport than the price of the work produced could be worth. Yet he gathered palm leaves and continually exacted of himself a daily task, as though he were to be supported by it. And when his cave had been filled with the work of a whole year, he would set fire to what he had laboured over with such care and burn it every year, proving so clearly that without manual work a monk can neither stay in one place nor ever climb to the summit of perfection, that, though the need of food by no means required it, he did it solely for the purification of his heart, the firmness of his thoughts, perseverance in the cell, and victory and conquest over acedia itself.

When, as a beginner living in the desert, I had told Abba Moses, the highest of all the saints, that I had been most severely afflicted the day before by the sickness of acedia and could not be freed from it in any other way than by running at once to Abba Paul, he said: "You have not freed yourself from it; rather, you have shown yourself its surrendered subject. For the adversary will attack you more heavily from now on as a deserter and runaway, since he saw you flee at once when defeated in the conflict — unless from now on, when battle is joined, you choose not to disperse its onsets for the moment by deserting your cell or by the torpor of sleep, but rather learn to triumph by endurance and struggle." Hence it has been proved by experience that the attack of acedia must not be fled from by avoiding it, but overcome by resisting it.

Our seventh contest is against the spirit of kenodoxia, which we can call vain or empty glory: a spirit many-shaped, varied, and subtle, so that even with the keenest eyes it can scarcely — I will not say be guarded against — but even be seen or detected.

For it attacks the monk not only, like the other vices, in the fleshly part, but also in the spiritual, insinuating itself into the mind with a subtler wickedness, so that those who could not be deceived by fleshly vices are wounded more sharply by their spiritual successes; and it is the more deadly to fight the more obscure it is to guard against. For the encounter with all the other vices is more manifest and open, and in each of them the instigator, refuted by firm contradiction, will withdraw weaker, and the defeated adversary will afterwards attack his conqueror more feebly. But this one, when it has attacked the mind with fleshly pride and has been repulsed by the shield of a reply, again, like a many-shaped wickedness, changing its former dress and character, tries to stab and slay the victor under the appearance of the virtues.

For the other vices or disturbances are known to be uniform and simple, but this one is manifold, many-shaped, and varied, meeting the fighter from every side and the victor from every quarter. For it tries to wound the soldier of Christ in his dress and appearance, in his walk, in his voice, in his work, in vigils, in fasts, in prayer, in withdrawal, in reading, in knowledge, in silence, in obedience, in humility, in long-suffering; and like a most deadly rock hidden by the swelling waves, it brings an unforeseen and miserable shipwreck on those sailing with a fair wind, since it is neither guarded against nor foreseen.

So one who wishes to walk on the royal road must, according to the apostle's teaching, pass through the arms of justice on the right hand and on the left, through glory and dishonour, through evil report and good report, and must direct the course of virtue among the swelling waves of temptations with such caution, discernment steering and the Spirit of the Lord blowing on us, that we know that if we turn aside a little to right or left we shall soon be dashed on deadly rocks. And therefore we are warned by the most wise Solomon: "Do not turn aside to the right or to the left": that is, do not flatter yourself about your virtues and be lifted up by successes on the right and spiritual ones, nor, turning aside to the left-hand path of the vices, seek glory for yourself from them in your shame, as the apostle says. For one in whom it could not produce kenodoxia under the appearance of a neat and elegant garment, it tries to plant it in through a squalid, unkempt, and cheaper one; one whom it could not cast down through honour, it trips up through humility; one whom it could not lift up by the adornment of knowledge and eloquence, it throws down by the gravity of silence. If he fasts openly, he is attacked by the glory of vanity; if he hides it in order to despise glory, he is struck by the same vice of pride. To avoid being stained by the contagion of vainglory, he avoids praying at length in the sight of the brothers; and because he does it secretly and has no one aware of the act, he does not escape the stings of vanity.

The elders beautifully describe the nature of this disease as like an onion or bulbs, which, when stripped of one skin, are found clothed again with another, and are found covered as often as they have been stripped.

In solitude too it does not cease to pursue one who flees the company of all mortals for the sake of glory; and the more someone has avoided the whole world, the more sharply it hunts him. It tries to lift up one because he is most patient in work and labour, another because he is most ready to obey, another because he surpasses the rest in humility; one is tempted by the length of his knowledge, another of his reading, another of his vigils. Nor does this disease try to wound anyone except through his own virtues, setting the stumbling blocks of destruction in the very things by which the rewards of life are gained. For the enemies, lying in wait for those who wish to walk the road of piety and perfection, hide the snares of deception nowhere else than in the way on which they walk, according to that saying of blessed David, "In this way on which I walked they hid a snare for me" — so that on this very road of the virtues, by which we go forward reaching for the prize of the heavenly calling, we may fall, lifted up by our successes, and, with the feet of our soul entangled, collapse, fettered by the snares of cenodoxia. And so it comes about that we who could not be overcome in conflict with the adversary are conquered by the height of our own triumph; or at least — which is another kind of deception — by exceeding the measure of continence or of our own capacity, we lose the perseverance of our course when bodily weakness intervenes.

All the vices, when overcome, wither away, and when conquered become weaker day by day, and are lessened and cool down either through place or time; or at least, being opposed by the contrary virtues, they are more easily guarded against or avoided. But this one, when thrown down, rises more sharply to the struggle, and when it is thought extinguished, grows stronger through its own death. The other kinds of vices usually attack only those whom they have overcome in the contest; but this one pursues its conquerors more sharply, and the more strongly it has been beaten down, the more violently it attacks through the pride of the victory itself. And this is the subtle cunning of the enemy: to make the soldier of Christ fall by his own weapons, when he could not overcome him with hostile arms.

Other vices, as we have said, sometimes subside through the benefit of place, and usually slacken and lessen when the material of sin, or its opportunity and occasion, has been removed; but this one enters the desert with the one who flees, and knows neither how to be shut out by place nor to wither when its material is removed from outside. For it is fed from no other source than the successes in virtue of the one it attacks. Some vices too, as we said before, are sometimes softened and vanish with the passing of time; but to this one long life, unless it is grounded in skilful diligence and prudent discernment, not only does no harm but even knows how to gather greater fuel for vanity.

Lastly, the other passions, being opposed to their contrary virtues and fighting openly as in broad daylight, are more easily overcome and guarded against; but this one, grafted onto the virtues and mixed into the battle line, fights as in a blind night and deceives more cruelly those who are unsuspecting and unwary.

For so we read that Hezekiah, king of Judah, a man of perfect justice in all things and approved by the testimony of the holy Scriptures, after countless praises of his virtues was cast down by one dart of pride; and he who by one prayer was able to obtain the slaughter of a hundred and eighty-five thousand of the army of the Assyrians, laid waste by an angel in the night, is overcome by boasting of vanity. To pass over so long a catalogue of his virtues, which would take very long to unfold, I will say this one thing: after the end of his life had been declared and the day of his death fixed by the Lord's sentence, he earned by one prayer to pass the limits of his life by fifteen years, while the sun went back ten steps which it had already lit on its way to setting, and, driving back by its return the lines which the following shadow had occupied as it withdrew, gave the whole world a doubled day by an unheard-of miracle against the fixed laws of nature. After such great and incredible signs, after such immense proofs of virtue, hear the Scripture telling how he was cast down by his own successes: "In those days," it says, "Hezekiah was sick to death, and he prayed to the Lord, and he heard him and gave him a sign" — that is, the one we read in the fourth book of Kingdoms was given through the prophet Isaiah by the return of the sun. "But he did not repay," it says, "according to the benefits he had received, for his heart was lifted up; and wrath came upon him and upon Judah and Jerusalem. And afterwards he was humbled because his heart had been exalted, both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and therefore the wrath of the Lord did not come upon them in the days of Hezekiah." How deadly, how grave is the disease of pride! So much justice, so many virtues, so much faith and devotion, which deserved to change nature itself and the laws of the whole world, perish by one act of pride, so that, all his virtues being consigned to oblivion as if they had never been, he would at once have incurred the Lord's wrath had he not appeased it by taking up humility again; so that he who had fallen from so lofty a height of merits under the impulse of pride could climb back to the lost summit only by the same steps of humility. Do you wish to hear another example of a similar fall?

Uzziah, the great-great-grandfather of the king we have mentioned, himself also praised in all things by the testimony of Scripture, after immense praises of his virtues, after countless triumphs which he achieved by the merit of his devotion and faith — learn how he was cast down by the pride of vainglory: "And the name of Uzziah went forth," it says, "because the Lord helped him and strengthened him. And when he had been strengthened, his heart was lifted up to his destruction, and he neglected the Lord his God." You see another example of a most grievous fall, and you perceive in two men so just and so perfect how deadly successes in prosperity usually are, so that those who could not be broken by adversity are thrown down more sharply by prosperity if they are unwary, and those who escaped the dangers of death in conflict and battle succumb to their own trophies and triumphs.

Therefore the apostle warns: "Do not be desirous of vainglory"; and the Lord, rebuking the Pharisees, says: "How can you believe, who receive glory from one another, and do not seek the glory that is from God alone?" Of these blessed David too says with a threat: "For God has scattered the bones of those who please men."

It also usually lifts up the minds of beginners, and of those who have made less progress so far in virtue of mind or knowledge, either because of the sound of their voice — because they sing psalms more tunefully — or because they are gaunt in flesh, or better off in body, or because they have rich and noble parents, or because they have despised military service and honours. Sometimes too it persuades someone that he would very easily have obtained dignities and wealth, which perhaps he could never have attained at all, if he had remained in the world, puffing him up with vain hope even about uncertain things, and lifting him up with the glory of vanity about things he never possessed, as though he had despised them.

Sometimes too it instils the desire for a clerical rank, the priesthood or the diaconate. It pictures to him that, if he had obtained it even against his will, he would fulfil it with such holiness and strictness that he could offer an example of holiness even to the other priests; and then that he would win many not only by the pattern of his conduct but also by his teaching and preaching. It also makes him, while living in solitude or in his cell, go round in mind and spirit the houses and monasteries of various people and gain the conversions of very many under the stimulus of imaginary exhortation.

So the unhappy soul is driven on, deceived by such vanity as by a very deep sleep, so that often, enticed by the sweetness of thoughts of this kind and filled with these images, it cannot even attend to its present actions or to the brothers, since it delights to cling, as if they were true, to the things it has dreamed while awake in the wandering of its thoughts.

I remember an old man, when I was living in the desert of Scete, who came to the cell of a certain brother to visit him. When he had approached the door and heard him murmuring something inside, he stopped for a little, wishing to learn what passage of Scripture he was reading, or, as is the custom, going over from memory while working. And when the most devout investigator, putting his ear carefully to the door, listened more curiously, he found him so enticed by the attack of this spirit that he believed he was delivering a sermon of exhortation to the people in church. And when the old man, standing there, had heard him finish his discourse and, changing his office again, celebrate as a deacon the dismissal of the catechumens, then at last he knocked at the door. The brother came out and met the old man with the usual reverence, and as he led him in, his conscience stung by his thoughts, he asked him how long ago he had come, lest he had suffered the discourtesy of standing too long at the door. The old man answered jokingly and kindly: "I came just now, when you were celebrating the dismissal of the catechumens."

I have thought it necessary to insert these things in this little work so that, instructed not only by reasoning but also by examples about the force and order of the attacks of the vices by which the wretched soul is torn, we may be more cautious in avoiding the snares and manifold traps of the enemy. For the Egyptian fathers bring these things out openly in this way, so that by their account they uncover and lay bare among themselves the struggles against all the vices — those which the younger monks suffer or will suffer — as though they themselves still endured them. In this way, when they set out the illusions of all the passions which belong to beginners and those fervent in spirit, the younger learn the secrets of their own struggles, and, contemplating them as in a mirror, are taught both the causes of the vices that attack them and their remedies; and being instructed about the encounters of future contests before they come, they are taught how they ought to guard against them, meet them, and fight them. Just as the most skilful physicians usually not only heal present diseases but also meet future ones with shrewd skill and forestall them by precepts or wholesome draughts, so these most true physicians of souls, killing in advance by spiritual conference, as by a heavenly antidote, the sicknesses of hearts that are about to arise, do not let them grow up in the minds of the young, revealing to them both the causes of impending passions and the remedies of health.

Therefore this is a saying of the fathers from of old that remains to this day, which I cannot bring forward without my own shame, since I could neither avoid my sister nor escape the bishop's hands: that a monk must by all means flee women and bishops. For neither of them allows one whom they have once bound to their friendship to give himself any longer to the quiet of the cell or to cling with the purest eyes to divine theōria through the contemplation of holy things.

Therefore the athlete of Christ who desires to contend lawfully in the true and spiritual contest should hasten by all means to overcome this many-shaped and varied beast. We shall be able to escape it, as it meets us from every side like a manifold wickedness, by this remedy. First, reflecting on that saying of David, "The Lord has scattered the bones of those who please men," let us not allow ourselves to do anything with the intention of vanity and for the sake of gaining empty glory. Next, let us try to guard with like watchfulness what we have done with a good beginning, lest the disease of cenodoxia creeping in afterwards make void all the fruits of our labours. Also, whatever the common practice in the life of the brothers does not accept or practise, let us avoid with all zeal as given to boasting; and let us shun those things that could make us conspicuous among the others, as though praise were to be sought among men for doing what we alone do. For by these signs above all it will be shown that the deadly contagion of cenodoxia clings to us. We shall very easily escape it if we consider not only that we shall entirely lose the fruits of whatever labours we have done with the intention of cenodoxia, but also that, made guilty of a great crime, we shall pay eternal punishments as sacrilegious, since, to God's injury, we chose to do for the sake of men the work we ought to have done for his sake, and are convicted by him who knows secret things of having preferred men to God and the glory of the world to the glory of the Lord.

Our eighth and last contest is against the spirit of pride. Although this disease is the last in the conflict with the vices and is placed last in order, it is first in origin and time: a most savage beast, more monstrous than all those above, tempting above all the perfect and feeding with a crueller bite on those already almost at the consummation of the virtues.

It has two kinds: one, by which we have said the spiritual and highest are attacked; the other, which embraces even beginners and the carnal. And although the harmful self-exaltation of both kinds of pride puffs up against God as well as against men, yet the first refers especially to God, while the second properly concerns men. We shall pursue its origin and remedies, as far as we can with God's gift, in the later parts of this book. Now our purpose is to discuss a few things about the first, by which, as we said, the perfect are especially tempted.

There is no other vice, then, which so drains all the virtues and strips and denudes a man of all justice and holiness as the evil of pride. Like a general and pestilent disease, it is not content to weaken one member or part, but corrupts the whole body with deadly ruin, and tries to cast down and slaughter with the heaviest fall those already placed at the summit of the virtues. For every vice is content with its own limits and end, and although it also troubles other virtues, it is directed chiefly against one, and especially oppresses and attacks it. To make clearer what we have said: gastrimargia, that is, the appetite of the belly or the desire of the palate, corrupts the strictness of temperance; lust defiles chastity; anger lays waste patience; so that sometimes someone given to one vice is not entirely destitute of the other virtues, but, only that virtue being cut off which gives way when the rival vice fights against it, he can keep the rest at least in part. But when pride has taken possession of the unhappy mind, like a most savage tyrant who has captured the highest citadel of the virtues, it destroys and overturns the whole city from its foundations; levelling the once lofty walls of holiness with the ground of the vices and mixing them with it, it allows no image of freedom to remain afterwards to the soul subject to it; and the richer the soul it has captured, the more heavily it will subject it to the yoke of slavery and strip it of all the resources of the virtues by the cruellest plundering.

And that we may know the power of its most grievous tyranny, we find that that angel who, because of the excess of his splendour and beauty, was called Lucifer, was cast down from heaven by no other vice than this, and, wounded by the dart of pride, fell from that blessed and lofty station of the angels to the regions below. If, then, one elation of heart could bring down from heaven to earth so great a power, adorned with the privilege of so great might, the very greatness of his fall shows with what watchfulness we, surrounded by the frailty of the flesh, ought to be on guard. We shall be able to learn how to avoid the most deadly poison of this disease if we trace the causes and origin of that fall. For sicknesses can never be cured, nor remedies applied to bad health, unless their origins and causes are first investigated by shrewd inquiry. For he, clothed with divine brightness and shining among the other heavenly powers by the Creator's bounty, believed that he possessed the splendour of wisdom and the beauty of virtues with which he was adorned by the Creator's grace by the power of his own nature, not by the gift of God's generosity; and lifted up on this account, as though he did not need divine help to persevere in this purity, he judged himself like God, since, like God, he needed nothing — trusting, that is, in the power of free will, believing that through it everything pertaining to the perfection of the virtues or the perpetuity of the highest blessedness would be abundantly supplied to him. This one thought became his first fall. Because of it, forsaken by God, whom he believed he did not need, he suddenly became unstable and tottering, felt the weakness of his own nature, and lost the blessedness he enjoyed by God's gift. And because "he loved words of ruin," by which he had said, "I will ascend into heaven," "and a deceitful tongue," by which he said either of himself, "I will be like the Most High," or to Adam and Eve, "You will be like gods," "therefore God will destroy him for ever, he will pluck him up and remove him from his dwelling, and his root from the land of the living. Then the just will see his fall and fear, and will laugh at him and say" — which will also most justly be directed at those who trust that they can accomplish the highest good without God's protection and help — "Behold the man who did not make God his helper, but trusted in the abundance of his riches and prevailed in his vanity."

This is the cause of the first fall and the origin of the principal disease, which, creeping again through the one who had been cast down by it into the first-formed man, sprouted the weaknesses and materials of all the vices. For while he believed that he could gain the glory of the Godhead by the freedom of his will and his own effort, he lost even that which he had obtained by the grace of the Creator.

So it is most clearly proved by the examples and testimonies of the Scriptures that the stain of pride, though later in the order of conflicts, is earlier in origin and is the beginning of all sins and crimes; and that, unlike the other vices, it does not extinguish only its contrary virtue, that is, humility, but is the slayer of all the virtues together; and that it tempts not only the middling and the small, but especially those standing on the summit of strength. For so the prophet speaks of this spirit: "And his food is choice." And therefore blessed David, although he guarded the secrets of his heart with such circumspection that he boldly cried out to him from whom the secrets of his conscience were not hidden, "Lord, my heart is not exalted, nor are my eyes lifted up; nor have I walked in great things nor in wonders above me, if I was not humbly minded," and again, "He who works pride shall not dwell in the midst of my house" — yet, knowing how difficult this watchfulness is even for the perfect, he does not rely on his own effort alone, but in prayer implores the Lord's help, that he may escape the dart of this enemy unwounded, saying, "Let not the foot of pride come to me," trembling and fearing lest what is said of the proud should befall him: "God resists the proud," and again, "Everyone who exalts his heart is unclean before God."

How great an evil is pride, that it deserves to have as its adversary not an angel, not other virtues contrary to it, but God himself! For it should be noted that he by no means said of those entangled in other vices that they have the Lord resisting them — that is, the Lord resists the gluttonous, the sexually immoral, the angry, or the lovers of money — but only the proud. For those vices either rebound only on each of those who commit them or on their accomplices, that is, they are seen to be committed against other men; but this one properly reaches to God, and therefore especially deserves to have him as its opponent.

And therefore God, the creator and physician of the universe, knowing that pride is the cause and beginning of diseases, provided to heal contraries by contraries, so that what had fallen through pride might rise again through humility. For the one says, "I will ascend into heaven"; the other says, "My soul is humbled to the earth." The one says, "I will be like the Most High"; the other, "being in the form of God, emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death." The one says, "I will exalt my throne above the stars of God"; the other says, "Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart." The one says, "I do not know the Lord, and I will not let Israel go"; the other says, "If I say that I do not know him, I shall be a liar like you; but I know him and keep his commandments." The one says, "The rivers are mine, and I made them"; the other says, "I can do nothing of myself, but my Father who dwells in me does the works." The one says, "All the kingdoms of the world and their glory are mine, and I give them to whom I will"; the other, though he was rich, became poor, that by his poverty we might be made rich. The one says, "As eggs that are left are gathered, so I have gathered the whole earth, and there was none that moved a wing or opened the mouth or chirped"; the other says, "I have become like a pelican in the wilderness; I have watched and become like a sparrow alone on the housetop." The one says, "I have dried up with the sole of my feet all the streams of the embankments"; the other says, "Can I not ask my Father, and he will now give me more than twelve legions of angels?" If we have seen the cause of the principal fall and the foundations of our salvation — by whom and how the latter were laid and the former arose — let us be taught, by the fall of the one or the example of the other, how we ought to avoid so terrible a death as pride.

So we shall be able to escape this snare of the most wicked spirit in this way: if, in each of the virtues in which we feel we have made progress, we say that saying of the apostle, "Not I, but the grace of God with me," and, "By the grace of God I am what I am," and that it is God "who works in us both to will and to accomplish according to his good will"; as the author of our salvation himself also says: "He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit, for without me you can do nothing"; and, "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it have laboured in vain; unless the Lord guards the city, he who guards it has watched in vain"; and, "It is vain for us to rise before the light"; "for it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy."

For no one's will or running, however fervent and eager, can be so adequate that, surrounded by the flesh that fights against the spirit, he can reach so great a reward of perfection and the palm of integrity and purity, unless he has been protected by the divine mercy, so that he may deserve to reach what he greatly wills and runs towards. "For every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights." "For what do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?"

For if we remember that thief who was brought into paradise for one confession, we shall understand that he did not attain such blessedness by the merit of his own running, but obtained it by the gift of a merciful God. Or if we recall the two so grave and monstrous crimes of King David, blotted out by one word of repentance, here too we shall see that the merits of labour did not equal the obtaining of pardon for so great a crime, but that the grace of God abounded all the more, who, seizing the occasion of true repentance, consumed so great a mass of sins through the full confession of a single word. Examining too the beginning of human calling and salvation, by which, according to the apostle, we are saved not of ourselves nor by our works but by the gift and grace of God, we shall clearly be able to see how the sum of perfection is "not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy"; who makes us victors over the vices, not because the merit of our labours or running earns it, and who makes us climb, the flesh we bear having been subdued, to so arduous a summit of integrity, not because the effort of our will is equal to it. For no affliction of this body and no contrition of heart could be worthy of attaining that true chastity of the inner man, so as to obtain by bare human labour, that is, without God's help, so great a virtue of purity, which is inborn in the angels alone and native to heaven. For the effect of every good flows from the grace of him who, with multiplied generosity, has given so great an eternity of blessedness and so immense a glory to our small will and our short and little running.

For all the length of the present life, when you look at that eternity of future glory, vanishes; and all sorrows are put to flight by the contemplation of that immense blessedness, and, thinned to nothing like smoke, they melt away and appear nowhere, like ashes.

Therefore it is now time to set out the judgment of the fathers in the very words in which they hand it down — those, that is, who have depicted the way of perfection and its nature, not by boasting of words, but, possessing it rather in fact and deed and in the power of the spirit, have handed it down by their own experience and most certain examples. They say, then, that no one can be completely cleansed from carnal vices unless he has understood that all his labour and effort cannot suffice for so great an end as perfection, and unless he recognizes — taught not so much by the instruction of someone handing it on as by his own feeling, strength, and experience — that it cannot be grasped except by God's mercy and help. For however much labour of fasts, vigils, reading, solitude, and withdrawal may have been spent on attaining such magnificent and lofty rewards of purity and integrity, it cannot be worthy to obtain them by the merit of its diligence or sweat. For one's own labour or human diligence will never repay the divine gift, unless it has been granted to the one who desires it by the divine mercy.

I do not say this in order to make human efforts void and try to call anyone back from diligence and the intention of labour; but plainly and most firmly, not by my own judgment but by that of the elders, I define that perfection certainly cannot be grasped at all without these things, but that it can be completed by no one through these alone without the grace of God. For just as we say that human efforts cannot attain it by themselves without God's help, so we declare that the mercy and grace of God are given only to those who labour and sweat, and, to speak in the apostle's words, are imparted to those who will and run, according to what is also sung in the eighty-eighth psalm in the person of God: "I have laid help upon one who is mighty, and I have exalted one chosen from my people." For we say, according to the Saviour's saying, that it is given to those who ask, opened to those who knock, and found by those who seek; but that our asking, seeking, and knocking are not worthy unless the mercy of God gives what we ask, opens what we knock at, or causes what we seek to be found. For he is at hand to bestow all these things, if only the occasion of a good will is offered him by us. For he desires and awaits our perfection and salvation more than we do. And blessed David knew so well that the success of his work and labour could not be obtained by his own diligence alone, that he asked with repeated prayer to earn from the Lord the direction of his works, saying: "And direct the works of our hands over us; and direct the work of our hands"; and again: "Confirm, O God, what you have worked in us."

Therefore, if we wish to reach the true consummation of the virtues in effect and in deed, we must listen to those masters and guides who, not dreaming of it in vain-talking disputation but grasping it in fact and experience, can likewise teach us too and direct us to it, and show us by a most certain path the way by which we may reach it; and who testified that they had reached it by faith rather than by the merit of their labours. The purity of heart they had acquired gave them this especially: that they recognized more and more that they were weighed down by sins — for their compunction for sins grew daily as much as their purity of mind had advanced — and they continually drew sighs from the depths of their hearts, because they felt that they could by no means avoid the blemishes and stains of sins which were branded on them through the many trifles of their thoughts. And therefore they proclaimed that they hoped for the rewards of the future life, not by the merit of their works, but by the mercy of the Lord, granting themselves nothing for such great circumspection of heart in comparison with others, since they ascribed it, not to their own diligence, but to divine grace. Nor did they flatter themselves on the negligence of inferior and lukewarm men, but rather sought lasting humility by contemplating those whom they knew to be truly free from sin and already enjoying eternal blessedness in the kingdom of heaven. And so by this consideration they both avoided the ruin of pride and always found something to strive for and something to grieve over, understanding that they could not reach the purity of heart they desired while the burden of the flesh resisted.

So according to their traditions and institutions we ought to hasten towards it by giving ourselves to fasts, vigils, prayers, and contrition of heart and body, in such a way that we do not make all these void through the puffing up of this disease. For we must believe not only that we cannot possess perfection itself by our diligence or labour, but that we cannot even carry out the very things we practise for its sake — that is, our labours, efforts, and pursuits — without the help of divine protection and the grace of his inspiration, correction, and exhortation, which he usually pours graciously into our hearts, visiting us either through another or by himself.

Finally, let the author of our salvation teach what we ought not only to feel but also to confess in each of the things we do. "I can do nothing of myself," he says; "but the Father who dwells in me does the works." He, in the person of the manhood he assumed, says that he can do nothing of himself; and do we, dust and earth, think that in the things that concern our salvation we do not need the Lord's help? So let us too learn, feeling in each thing both our weakness and his help, to cry out daily with the saints: "I was pushed and overturned so that I might fall, and the Lord upheld me. The Lord is my strength and my praise, and he has become my salvation"; and: "Unless the Lord had helped me, my soul had almost dwelt in hell. If I said, My foot is moved, your mercy, O Lord, helped me. According to the multitude of my sorrows in my heart, your consolations have gladdened my soul." Seeing also our heart strengthened in the fear of the Lord and in patience, let us say: "And the Lord became my support, and he brought me out into a broad place." Understanding too that knowledge is increased in us through progress in works, let us say: "For you light my lamp, O Lord; my God, enlighten my darkness. For in you I shall be delivered from temptation, and in my God I shall leap over a wall." Then, feeling that we have gained the strength of endurance and are directed more easily and without labour on the path of the virtues, let us add: "God, who girded me with strength and made my way blameless; who made my feet like the feet of deer and set me on high places; who teaches my hands to war." Having attained also discernment, strengthened by which we can overthrow our adversaries, let us cry to God: "Your discipline has set me upright to the end, and your discipline itself will teach me. You have enlarged my steps under me, and my feet have not been weakened." And because I have been so strengthened by your knowledge and power, I shall confidently add what follows and say: "I will pursue my enemies and overtake them, and I will not turn back until they fail. I will crush them, and they will not be able to stand; they will fall under my feet." Again, mindful of our weakness, and that, surrounded by frail flesh, we cannot overcome such fierce enemies, the vices, without his help, let us say: "In you we will scatter our enemies, and in your name we will despise those who rise up against us. For I will not trust in my bow, and my sword will not save me. For you have saved us from those who afflict us, and have put to shame those who hate us." "But you have also girded me with strength for battle; you have tripped up under me all who rose up against me. And you have given me the backs of my enemies, and have put to shame those who hate us." But thinking that we cannot conquer even with our own arms, let us say: "Take hold of arms and shield, and rise up to help me. Draw out the sword and shut the way against those who pursue me; say to my soul, I am your salvation." "And you have made my arms a bow of bronze, and you have given me the protection of your salvation." "For our fathers did not possess the land by their sword, and their arm did not save them; but your right hand and your arm and the light of your countenance, because you were pleased with them." Lastly, surveying with an attentive mind and with thanksgiving all his benefits — that we have fought, or have obtained from him the light of knowledge or the discipline of discernment, or that he has equipped us with his arms and fortified us with the belt of strength, or that he has made our enemies turn their backs to us and given us the power to grind them like dust before the face of the wind — let us cry to him with the inmost feeling of our heart: "I will love you, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my support and my refuge and my deliverer. My God is my helper, and I will hope in him; my protector and the horn of my salvation and my upholder. Praising I will call upon the Lord, and I shall be saved from my enemies."

We should give him thanks not only because he created us rational, or endowed us with the power of free will, or bestowed the grace of baptism, or granted the knowledge and help of the law, but also for the things bestowed on us daily by his providence: that he frees us from the snares of the adversaries; that he works together with us so that we can overcome the vices of the flesh; that he protects us from dangers even without our knowing; that he fortifies us against falling into sin; that he helps and enlightens us so that we can understand and recognize the very help given us, which some wish to interpret as nothing other than the law; that we are secretly pricked with compunction for our negligences and sins by his inspiration; that, visited by his condescension, we are most healthfully chastised; that we are sometimes drawn by him to salvation even against our will; and finally, that he directs our free will itself, which is inclined more readily to the vices, to a better fruit, and turns it towards the way of the virtues by the visitation of his prompting.

This is properly humility towards God; this is the sincere faith of the most ancient fathers, which remains pure among their successors to this day. To this faith the apostolic miracles, which have often been shown through them, bear undoubted witness, not only among us but also among unbelievers and the incredulous. Keeping the simple faith of the fishermen with a simple heart, they did not conceive it in a worldly spirit by dialectical syllogisms and Ciceronian eloquence, but grasped by the evidence of their own eyes, through sincere experience of life, most pure action, and the correction of vices, and — to speak more truly — by the very nature of perfection, that without it neither piety towards God, nor cleansing of vices, nor amendment of morals, nor the consummation of the virtues can be attained.

I knew one of the brothers — whom I wish I had not known, since afterwards he allowed himself to be burdened with the rank of my own order — who confessed to a most approved elder that he was most severely attacked by a vice of the flesh: for he burned with an intolerable heat of lust, against the use of nature, with the desire of suffering disgrace rather than inflicting it. Then the elder, as a spiritual and true physician, at once saw the inner cause and origin of this disease; and sighing deeply he said: "The Lord would by no means have allowed you to be handed over to so wicked a spirit unless you had blasphemed against him in something." When the brother learned this, he at once fell at his feet on the ground, and, struck with the greatest wonder, as one who saw the secrets of his heart laid open as if by God, he confessed that he had blasphemed against the Son of God in an impious thought. From this it is clear that one who is possessed by the spirit of pride, or who is a blasphemer against God, as though he did injury to him from whom the gifts of purity must be hoped for, is deprived of the integrity of perfection and does not deserve the sanctification of chastity.

We read something like this in the book of Chronicles. For Joash, king of Judah, was raised to the throne at seven years of age by Jehoiada the high priest, and as long as that high priest lived he was praised in everything by the testimony of Scripture. Hear what Scripture relates of him after Jehoiada's death, and how, lifted up by pride, he was handed over to a shameful passion: "Now after Jehoiada died, the princes of Judah came in and worshipped the king; and he, softened by their flattery, agreed with them. And they forsook the temple of the Lord, the God of their fathers, and served groves and idols; and wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem for this sin." And a little later: "And when a year had passed, the army of Syria came up against him; and it came into Judah and Jerusalem and killed all the princes of the people, and they sent all the spoil to the king at Damascus. And indeed, although a very small number of Syrians had come, the Lord delivered into their hands a countless multitude, because they had forsaken the Lord, the God of their fathers. On Joash too they executed shameful judgments; and departing, they left him in great sicknesses." You see to what shameful and filthy passions pride deserves to be handed over. For he who, lifted up by arrogance, allowed himself to be worshipped as a god, is handed over, according to the apostle, to dishonourable passions and to a reprobate mind, to suffer things that are not fitting. And since, as Scripture says, "everyone who exalts his heart is unclean before God," this man, who was puffed up by swelling pride of heart, is handed over to be mocked by most shameful confusion, so that, thus humbled, he might feel himself unclean by the uncleanness of the flesh and the awareness of an impure passion, which he had not wished to feel through the pride of his mind; and so that the shameful contagion of the flesh might reveal the hidden uncleanness of his heart which he had contracted through the evil of pride, and he who did not feel that he had become unclean through pride of spirit might be proved impure by the manifest pollution of his body.

By these things it is clearly proved that every soul possessed by the swelling of pride is handed over to the spiritual Syrians, that is, to the spiritual hosts of wickedness, and is entangled in the passions of the flesh, so that, humbled at least by earthly vices, it may recognize that it is unclean, polluted in the flesh — the soul which, lifted up in lukewarmness of mind, could not before understand that it had become unclean in the sight of God through pride of heart. So that, humbled even in this way, one may depart from his former lukewarmness, and, cast down and put to shame by the disgrace of fleshly passions, may hasten to give himself more ardently to spiritual fervour from then on.

So it is clearly shown that no one can reach the end of perfection and purity except through true humility, which he must show first to the brothers and also to God in the inner sanctuary of his heart, believing that without his protection and help, given him at every moment, he can by no means obtain the perfection he desires and towards which he runs with all his strength.

Let it be enough to have said this much, by God's gift, as far as the slenderness of our ability allowed, about spiritual pride, by which we said the perfect are attacked. This kind of pride is not known or experienced by many, because not many strive to attain perfect purity of heart so as to be able to reach these grades of battle, nor is any cleansing undertaken of the preceding vices, whose nature and remedies we have set out in the separate books. It usually attacks only those who, having conquered the vices above, are already almost placed at the summit of the virtues. Since the most subtle enemy could not overcome them by a fleshly fall, he tries to cast them down and trip them up by a spiritual ruin, striving by it to strip them of all the merits of their former service, gained with much labour. But us, who are still entangled in earthly passions, he by no means deigns to tempt in this way, but trips us up by a grosser and, so to speak, fleshly pride. And therefore I think it necessary, according to our promise, to set out a few things about this kind too, by which we, or men of our measure, and especially the minds of the young or of beginners, are usually endangered.

When, then, this carnal pride we have spoken of has settled in a monk's mind through a lukewarm and badly undertaken beginning of renunciation, it does not allow him to come down from his former worldly swelling to the true humility of Christ. First it makes him disobedient and harsh; then it does not allow him to be gentle and friendly; it does not let him become equal and common with the brothers, nor allow him, according to the command of God and our Saviour, to be stripped and made naked of earthly wealth. And although renunciation is nothing other than a sign of mortification and the cross, and cannot be begun or built on other foundations than that one should know oneself spiritually slain to the doings of this world and also believe that one will die bodily any day, pride on the contrary makes him hope for a long life, sets before him long and many illnesses, and strikes him with confusion and shame if, having been made naked, he should begin to be supported by the means of others and not his own. It also persuades him that it is much better for his food and clothing to be supplied from his own property rather than another's, according, that is, to that saying which, dulled by sluggishness and lukewarmness of heart, they will never be able even to understand in what sense it was said: "It is more blessed to give than to receive."

So, beset by such distrust of mind, and called back by diabolical unbelief from the spark of faith with which they had been kindled at the beginning of their conversion, they begin to guard more carefully the money they had begun to scatter, and keep it with more violent avarice, as though, once spent, they could not replace it; or, what is worse, they take back what they had cast away; or at least — the third and worst kind of wickedness — gathering what they did not possess even before, they are proved to have gained nothing more by leaving the world than just the name and title of monk. On these beginnings, badly and faultily laid, the whole structure must then rise more faultily, and nothing can be built on the worst foundations except what will lay the wretched soul low in a more lamentable ruin.

A mind hardened by such passions and beginning from a detestable lukewarmness must grow worse every day and end the rest of its life in a more shameful end. And while it delights in its former desires and, according to the apostle, is overcome by sacrilegious filargyria (as he declares of it, "and filargyria, which is the service of images or idols," and again, "the root of all evils is filargyria"), it can never receive into its heart the simple and true humility of Christ, since it glories in the nobility of its birth, or is puffed up with the rank of the world, which it has left in body but not in mind, or is lifted up by the money which it keeps to its ruin. Through these things it is no longer content to bear the yoke of the monastery or to be trained by the discipline of any elder; and not only does it not deign to keep any rule of submission or obedience, but it does not even admit the teaching of perfection to its ears. And such distaste for the spiritual word grows in his heart that, when perhaps such a conference has arisen, his gaze cannot stay in one place, but his stupid glance is carried here and there, and his eyes are fixed elsewhere and askance, contrary to custom. Instead of wholesome sighs, spittle is drawn up from a dry throat; clearings of the throat are provoked without any interruption of phlegm; the fingers play and flutter and draw as if writing something; and so all the limbs of the body are moved here and there, so that, while the spiritual conference is going on, he thinks he is sitting wholly on swarming worms or on the sharpest stakes; and whatever a simple conference brings out for the edification of the hearers he thinks was brought out to insult him. And the whole time during which the examination of the spiritual life is being discussed, occupied with his suspicions, he does not look for what he ought to take from it for his progress, but searches with anxious mind for the reasons why each thing was said, or conjectures with a silent turning over of his heart what he could object to them, so that he can grasp nothing at all of the things most wholesomely set out, or be corrected in anything. And so it comes about that the spiritual conference not only does him no good in anything, but even becomes more harmful and is made for him a cause of greater sin. For while, because of his conscience, he suspects that everything has been said against him, he is hardened with more violent obstinacy of heart and goaded more sharply by the stings of anger. Then after this come a loud voice, harsh speech, bitter and turbulent answers, a proud and restless walk, a ready tongue, insolent talk, never a friend of silence except when he has conceived some rancour in his heart against a brother; and his silence is a sign, not of compunction or of any humility, but of pride and indignation, so that it is not easy to discern which is more detestable in him, that diffuse and wanton merriment or this grim and poisonous seriousness. For in the former there is untimely talk, light and foolish laughter, and unbridled and undisciplined elation of heart; in the latter, a silence full of anger and poison, conceived only so that rancour against a brother, kept by silence, may be prolonged, not so that the virtue of humility and patience may be shown by it. And while he himself, possessed by swelling pride, easily brings sadness on everyone and disdains to submit himself to make satisfaction to a brother he has hurt, he also rejects and despises satisfaction offered to him by that brother; and not only is he not moved or softened by any satisfaction of the brother, but he is even more indignant that he has been anticipated in humility by him; and the wholesome humility and satisfaction which usually put an end to diabolical designs become for him the cause of a fiercer fire.

I have heard, in this very region — which I shudder and am ashamed to recall — that a certain young monk, when he was rebuked by his abbot for beginning to depart from the humility he had kept for a very short time after renouncing, and to be puffed up with diabolical pride, answered with the utmost insolence: "Did I humble myself for a time in order to be always subject?" At this so unbridled and wicked an answer the elder was so astounded and all his speech so cut off, as though he had heard these words uttered, not by a man, but by that ancient Lucifer himself, that he could utter no word at all from his mouth against such effrontery, but only groans and sighs from his heart, silently turning over within himself only what is said of our Lord and Saviour: that, "being in the form of God, he humbled himself, becoming obedient" — not, as that one said, possessed by a diabolical spirit and swelling, "for a time," but "unto death."

And to sum up more briefly what has been said about this kind of pride, gathering as far as we can some of its signs, so that we may in some way depict its features from the movements of the outer man for those who thirst to be taught about perfection, I think it necessary to repeat the same things in a few words, so that we may recognize more concisely by what signs we can discern and detect it; so that the roots of this passion, laid bare and brought to the surface and detected as deadly with our own eyes, can more easily be torn up or avoided. For this pestilent disease can be wholly avoided only when we do not take up a late watchfulness against its deadly heats and harmful onsets when it already rules, but, recognizing, so to speak, its preceding outlines, we forestall it with provident and shrewd discernment. For, as we said before, the state of the inner man is recognized from the movement of the outer. By these signs, then, the carnal pride we have spoken of is revealed. First, there is loudness in its speech, bitterness in its silence, loud and unrestrained laughter in its merriment, unreasonable gloom in its seriousness, rancour in its answers, glibness in its talk, words bursting out at random without any seriousness of heart. It is without patience, a stranger to love, bold in inflicting insults, faint-hearted in bearing them, difficult to obey except where its own desire and will have gone before, implacable in receiving exhortation, weak in cutting off its own will, most stubborn in submitting to others, always striving to establish its own opinions but by no means yielding to or agreeing with another's; and so it comes about that, made incapable even of wholesome counsel, it trusts its own judgment in everything rather than that of the elders.

Rolled down by these steps of decline, the one whom it has once possessed now shudders at the very discipline of the coenobium; and, as though he were held back from perfection by the company of the brothers and called away from the good of patience and humility by the fault and hindrance of others, he desires to live in a solitary cell; or at least, as though he were going to win many others, he hastens to build a monastery and gather those whom he is to teach and instruct, having become from a worthless disciple a more detestable master. For when he has fallen through such elation of heart into the most deadly and harmful lukewarmness, and has become neither a true monk nor a layman, he even promises himself perfection — which is worse — from this very wretched state and way of life.

Therefore, if we wish the summit of our building to rise perfect and pleasing to God, let us hasten to lay its foundations, not according to the will of our own desire, but according to the discipline of gospel strictness. These can be nothing other than the fear of God and humility, which comes from gentleness and simplicity of heart. But humility can by no means be gained without nakedness. When nakedness is absent, neither the good of obedience, nor the strength of patience, nor the tranquillity of gentleness, nor the perfection of love can be attained; and without these our heart cannot be a dwelling of the Holy Spirit at all, as the Lord declares through the prophet: "On whom shall my Spirit rest but on the quiet and humble and one who trembles at my words?" Or, according to the copies that express the Hebrew truth: "But to whom shall I look, except to the poor one, and the contrite in spirit, and one who trembles at my words?"

Therefore the athlete of Christ, who, contending lawfully in the spiritual contest, desires to be crowned by the Lord, should hasten by all means to extinguish this most ferocious beast too, as the devourer of all the virtues, certain that while it dwells in his breast he not only cannot be free of every kind of vice, but even, if he seems to have any virtue, it will perish by its poison. For the structure of the virtues can by no means rise in our soul unless the foundations of true humility have first been laid in our heart, which, laid most firmly, can bear the summit of perfection and love. That is, as we have said, we must first show true humility to our brothers with the inmost feeling of our heart, by no means consenting to sadden or hurt them in anything. We shall by no means be able to fulfil this unless true renunciation, which consists in being stripped of all possessions and in nakedness, has been founded in us for the love of Christ; and then unless the yoke of obedience and submission has been taken up with a simple heart and without any pretence, so that apart from the abbot's command no will at all lives in us. This cannot be kept in any other way than if one judges himself not only dead to this world but also foolish and a fool, carrying out without any discussion everything commanded him by the elders, believing it sacred and given by God.

For those who stand firm in this quality, that truly tranquil and immovable state of humility will certainly follow, so that, judging ourselves inferior to all, we bear most patiently everything inflicted on us, even if it is injurious, saddening, or harmful, as though it were inflicted by our superiors. These things will not only be borne by us most easily but will even be judged small and of no account if we continually recall in our mind the sufferings of our Lord or of all the saints, considering that we are attacked by injuries as much lighter as we are farther from their merits and way of life; and also thinking that we shall shortly depart from this world and, by the swift end of this life, soon be their companions. For this contemplation is deadly not only to pride but to all the vices in general. Then after this let us most firmly keep this same humility towards God. This will be fulfilled by us if we recognize that we can accomplish nothing that pertains to the perfection of the virtues without his help and grace, and truly believe that even this very understanding we have been granted is his gift.