Orations (other than the Theological Orations) 8.1–8.22

In praising my sister I shall be honouring what is my own; yet not falsely because it is my own, but praiseworthily because it is true; and true, not only because it is just, but because it is known. Even if we wished it, favour is not allowed; for the hearer stands in the middle, like a skilled umpire, between my words and the truth, neither accepting what is beyond desert nor failing, if he is just, to demand what is deserved. So the fear I have is not that we may overshoot the truth, but on the contrary that we may fall short of it, and, coming far below her worth, lessen her glory by our praises; since it is hard to match either deed or word to her good qualities. Let nothing that belongs to others be praised if it is not just, nor let what is one’s own be dishonoured if it is honourable, so that being a stranger may not be a gain to the one, and being kin may not turn into a loss for the other. For in both ways the principle of justice would be harmed, if those were praised and these passed over in silence. But using truth as our boundary and rule, looking to it alone and considering nothing else of the things that the many cheap people consider, we will praise what deserves praise and keep silent about what deserves silence. [2] Most absurd of all would be this: if we shall think it impious to deprive our own of anything, or to revile or accuse them, or to wrong them in anything, small or great, and even hold wrongdoing against those closest to us the worst of all; but in depriving them of words, which are owed most of all to the good, and by which we could make their memory immortal, we shall think we are doing something just, and take more account of the wicked who accuse us of favour than of the decent who demand what is deserved. And while their being unknown and unattested does not prevent us from praising outsiders (although it would be much more just to refrain), friendship is to prevent us from praising those we know, together with the envy of the many; and this especially in the case of those who have departed from here, to whom it is too late to show favour, since along with everything else they have left behind those who praise or blame them. [3] But since we have sufficiently defended ourselves on these points, and shown that this discourse is necessary for us, come, let us now approach the praises, setting aside polish and refinement of diction (since the woman we praise was unadorned, and her lack of adornment was her beauty), but paying the due rite as one of the most necessary debts, and at the same time training the many to emulation and imitation of the same virtue, since in every word and deed our concern is to build up those entrusted to us. Let another, then, praise the departed’s homeland and family, out of respect for the rules of encomium; he will certainly not lack many fine words, if he wishes to adorn her with external things too, like a precious and beautiful form adorned with gold and stones and the ornaments of art and hand, which expose the ugly by contrast but add no beauty to the beautiful, being outshone. But I will make use of the rule for these things only so far as to mention our common parents (for it is not holy to pass over those who begot and taught so great a good), and will turn my discourse to her as quickly as possible, and not defraud the longing of those who want to hear about her.

Who, then, does not know our new Abraham and the Sarah of our own day, Gregory, I mean, and Nonna his wife (for it is good not to pass over even their names, as an encouragement to virtue)? He was justified by faith, she lived with the faithful one; he became father of many nations beyond hope, she brought them forth spiritually; he fled the slavery of his fathers’ gods, she is daughter and mother of the free; he went out from his kindred and his house for the land of promise, she was the cause of his departure (in this alone, if I may be bold, she was even above Sarah); he sojourned well, she eagerly shared his sojourning; he attached himself to the Lord, she both called and considered her husband lord, and was in part justified by this; theirs was the promise, theirs, so far as lay with them, Isaac, and theirs the gift. [5] … remnant, and what was left of them for piety, but long and lasting was the life in which they had laboured. One thing more I will add to my words about them: they were well and justly divided between the two sexes, he being the adornment of men and she of women, and not an adornment only but a pattern of virtue.

From them Gorgonia had both her being and her good repute; from them she had the seeds of piety; from them both to live well and to depart with the better hopes. These things are fine, and such as do not easily belong to many of those who pride themselves greatly on their noble birth and their ancestry from above. But if we must speak of her more philosophically and loftily, Gorgonia’s homeland is the Jerusalem above, which is not seen, … the city in which we have our citizenship and toward which we hasten; whose citizen is Christ, and whose fellow citizens are the festal gathering and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, keeping festival around the great Citizen in the contemplation of his glory, and dancing the dance that never ends; and her noble birth is the keeping of the image and the likeness to the archetype, which reason and virtue and pure longing bring about, ever more conforming to God those who are true initiates of the things above, and who know whence and who we are and for what we were made.

So I judge these things; and for this reason I know and call her soul nobler than any from the rising of the sun, using a better rule and measure of nobility and lowliness than the many do, marking them not by blood but by character, and judging those who are praised or blamed not by their clans but each one by himself. Let my discourse, then, be about her own good qualities, and let each of you contribute something and help it along; since it is not possible for one person to embrace everything, even one very able in hearing and understanding.

In temperance she so excelled, and so surpassed all the women of her time (not to speak of those of old, whose renown for temperance is great), that, since life for all people is divided into these two, I mean marriage and celibacy, the one higher and more divine but more laborious and more dangerous, the other lower and safer, she escaped what is unpleasant in both, and chose what is finest in both and brought it together into one, the height of the one and the safety of the other; and she became temperate without pride, blending the good of celibacy with marriage, and showing that neither of these entirely binds us to God or to the world, nor again separates us from them; so that the one is not to be fled by everyone because of its own nature, nor is the other wholly praiseworthy; but it is the mind that presides well over marriage and virginity, and these, like some material, are shaped and wrought toward virtue by the artist Word. For she was not separated from the Spirit because she was joined to the flesh; nor, because she had her husband as head, did she ignore her first Head; but having ministered a little to the world and to nature, as much as the law of the flesh required, or rather the One who gave the flesh these laws, she consecrated herself wholly to God. And what is finest and most august: she won her husband to her side, and gained in him not an unreasonable master but a good fellow servant. And not only this, but she also made the fruit of her body, I mean her children and her children’s children, a fruit of the Spirit, consecrating to God a whole family and a whole household instead of one soul, and making marriage praiseworthy through her being well pleasing to God in marriage and through the fine fruit that came from it; while she lived, she set herself before those born of her as an example of every good, and when she was called away, she left her will to the household after her as a silent exhortation.

The divine Solomon, in his instructive wisdom, I mean the Proverbs, praises a woman’s keeping of her house and love for her husband; and against the woman who wanders outside, unrestrained and dishonoured, hunting precious souls with the dress and words of a harlot, he sets the woman who conducts herself well within and is manly in a woman’s tasks, always setting her hands to the spindle and preparing double cloaks for her husband, buying a field in its season, providing grain well for her servants, receiving her friends at a full table, and all the other things with which he celebrated the temperate and industrious woman. But if I were to praise my sister for these things, I would be praising the statue from its shadow, or the lion from its claws, passing over the greater and more perfect things. Who had more right to be seen? Who was seen less, and kept herself inaccessible to the eyes of men? Who knew better the measures of gravity and cheerfulness, so that her gravity did not seem inhuman nor her gentleness licentious, but the one prudent and the other kind, and this the very bound of decorum, kindness blended with dignity? Hear, you women who are too fond of display and careless, and dishonour the veil of modesty. Who so chastened her eye? Who so laughed laughter to scorn, that even the beginning of a smile seemed a great matter to her? Who more set doors upon her hearing? And who opened it more to divine words; or rather, who set the mind as guide over the tongue to speak the ordinances of God? Who so set her lips in order?

[10] Do you wish me to tell this too among her good qualities, which seemed worth nothing to her, nor to any women truly temperate and orderly in character, but which women very fond of ornament and finery, and not purified even by the words of those who teach about such things, have made seem a great matter? No gold adorned her, worked by art to an excess of beauty; no blonde tresses, showing through and half shown, no spiral curls, no tricks of those who most dishonourably make a stage of the precious head; no costliness of flowing and transparent dress; no gleams and charms of stones, colouring the air around and lighting up the forms; no arts and witchery of painters, and that cheap beauty, and the sculptor from below who rivals creation and hides God’s creature under treacherous colours, shaming it by the very honour he pays it, and setting forth the divine form as a harlot’s idol before lustful eyes, so that a bastard beauty may steal the natural image that is kept for God and for the life to come. Though she knew the many and varied outward adornments of women, she knew none more precious than her own character and the brightness stored up within. One red was dear to her, that of modesty; one white, that which comes from self-control. The paintings and pencillings, the living pictures and the fading comeliness, she left to the women of the theatre and the street, and to those for whom shame is a shame and a reproach. [11] Such, then, were these things; but no word could reach her prudence and her piety, nor could many examples of them be found, except in her fathers according to the flesh and according to the spirit. To these alone she looked, and falling short of them in no point of virtue, she was outdone in this one thing alone, and very willingly: that she had her good from them, and knew and confessed them as the root of her own illumination. What was sharper than her mind, which not only her kin, nor those of the same people and the one fold, but all around knew as a common counsellor, and made her suggestions and advice an unbreakable law? What was more apt than her words? What more intelligent than her silence? But since I have mentioned silence, I will add what was most characteristic of her, most fitting for women, and most useful for the present time. Who knew the things of God better, from the divine oracles and from her own understanding? And who spoke less, keeping within the bounds of piety proper to women? And as was due from one who truly knew how to be pious, in which alone insatiability is good: who so adorned churches with offerings, among them the one I know not whether it will be adorned again after her? Or rather, who so presented herself to God as a living temple? Who so glorified priests, among them the one who was her fellow contestant and teacher in piety, whose are the fine seeds and the pair of children consecrated to God? [12] … So that I would boldly adorn her with the words of Job: “Her door was open to every comer; no stranger lodged outside. She was an eye to the blind, a foot to the lame, a mother to orphans.” And of her compassion toward widows what greater thing need be said than that she won the reward of not being called a widow? Her house was a common lodging for her kin by blood, and her goods were common to all in need, no less than her own. “She scattered, she gave to the poor”; and trusting in the unfailing and unlying promise, she laid up much in the winepresses there; much she welcomed Christ, through many who received her benefits; and finest of all, with her the appearance was not greater than the truth, but in secret she cultivated piety well for him who sees in secret. She snatched everything from the ruler of this world and transferred everything to the safe storehouses; she left nothing to the earth but her body; she exchanged everything for the hopes there; one wealth only she left her children: the imitation of these things and emulation of them. [13] Nor was it that, while her magnanimity was such and so incredible, she gave her body to luxury and to the unrestrained pleasures of the belly, that raging and tearing dog, as though trusting in her good works; as many do, who buy their luxury with their compassion toward the poor, and do not heal evil with good but take back the bad in return for the good. Nor did she wrestle down the dust by fasting and leave to another the remedy of sleeping on the ground; nor, having found this help for the soul, set a less strict measure on sleep than another; nor, having laid down this law as though bodiless, lie down on the ground while others kept vigil all night upright, which is the special contest of philosophers. In these she showed herself more manly not only than women but than the noblest men: in the earnest tone of psalmody, the reading of the divine oracles, their exposition or seasonable recollection, the bending of knees hardened and as it were grown to the ground, the tears that cleanse defilement in a contrite heart and a spirit of humility, the prayer that sets one on high, and the mind unwandering and lifted up. In all these, or in any of them, is there anyone, man or woman, who could boast of having surpassed her? It is a great thing to say, but true: in some of these good things she emulated others, in others she was the one emulated; some she found, others she conquered. And if in some one of them she had a rival, yet by gathering them all into one she prevailed over all. So she achieved all of them, as no one else achieved even one moderately; and each to its summit, so that even one alone would have sufficed instead of all.

[14] O squalid body and garment, blooming with virtue alone! O soul holding the body fast, almost without food, as though it were immaterial! Or rather, O body forced to die even before the separation, that the soul might receive its freedom and not be hampered by the senses! O sleepless nights, psalmody, and standing that ended only from one day into the next! O David, whose songs are not long only to faithful souls! O tender limbs, cast on the ground and roughened against nature! O fountains of tears, sown in affliction that they might reap in exultation! O cry by night, piercing the clouds and reaching the heavenly One! O fervour of spirit, daring the dogs of the night for love of prayer, and frosts and rains and thunders and hail and the hours of darkness! O female nature that overcame the male through the common contest for salvation, and proved that female and male are a difference of body and not of soul! O purity after the bath of baptism, O soul, the bride of Christ, in the pure bridal chamber of the body! O bitter taste, O Eve, mother of the race and of sin, O deceitful serpent, O death, overcome by her self-control! O emptying of Christ, form of a servant, and sufferings, honoured by her mortification! [15] O how shall I count up all her deeds, or, passing over most, not defraud those who did not know her? But it is fitting now to add also the rewards of her piety; for you who knew her well seem to me to have long been longing and looking for this in my discourse: not only the present things, nor those in which she now exults there, which surpass the mind and hearing and sight of men, but also those with which the just Rewarder repaid her here; since he often does this for the building up of unbelievers, confirming great things by small ones and the invisible by the visible … of those who perceive, even moderately, God and his power above all things.

… she went away at once, feeling her salvation, light in body and soul and mind, receiving as the reward of her hope the thing she hoped for, and recovering the strength of her body through the strength of her soul. These things are great, but not false. Believe them, all of you, both the sick and the healthy, so that some of you may keep your health and others may regain it. And that the story is no boast is clear from the fact that I kept silent about it until now and have now revealed it; and I would not have published it even now, be sure, had not some fear held me lest I hide so great a wonder from believers and unbelievers, from those now living and those to come. [19] These, then, are the things of her life; and we have left out most of them for the sake of proportion in the discourse, and so as not to seem insatiable in praise. But perhaps we would wrong her holy and famous end if we did not mention its good things too, especially since it is so longed for and asked about. I will mention them as briefly as possible. She longed for her departure (for she had great boldness toward the One who called her), and preferred being with Christ to everything on earth; and no one of those most given to lust and least restrained loves the body as she longed to throw off these fetters and rise above the mire in which we live, to be purely with the Beautiful, and to receive wholly her Beloved, and, I will add, her Lover, by whose small rays we are now illumined, and from whom, so far as knowing him goes, we are separated. Nor does she fail of this desire, so great and lofty as it was; and, what is greater still, she enjoyed the good beforehand through foreknowledge and much watchfulness. This was repaid by one of the sweetest sleeps, and by one vision that comprehended the set time of her departure and made known this very day, so that, God presiding, she might be prepared and not troubled.

For her, the good of purification and perfection was recent, which all of us have received from God as a common gift and as the foundation of a second life; or rather, her whole life was purification and perfection for her; and she had the regeneration from the Spirit, and its security from the life she had already lived. And for her almost alone, if I may be bold to say it, the mystery was a seal and not a gift of grace. And seeking, in addition to all this, the perfecting of her husband (do you wish me to describe her husband briefly? He was the husband of that woman, and I do not know what more need be said), so that she might be consecrated to God with her whole body and not depart half perfected, nor leave anything of her own imperfect, she did not fail of this prayer either, from him who does the will of those who fear him and brings their requests to fulfilment.

When everything was as she wished, and nothing she longed for was lacking, and the appointed day was near, she now prepared herself for death and departure, and fulfilled the custom about it by lying down. And having given her charges to her husband, her children, and her friends, as was fitting for one who loved her husband, her children, and her brothers, and having philosophized brilliantly about the things there, and making her last day a day of festival, she fell asleep, full not of days according to man (which she did not even pray for, knowing them to be evil and spent for the most part with dust and error), but very full of days according to God, more so, I think, than anyone easily could be of those who have ended their life in a rich old age and counted many cycles of years. So she was released, or rather, better to say, taken up, or flew away, or changed her dwelling, or departed a little before her body.

But what a thing of hers I nearly passed over! Perhaps you would not have allowed it, you her spiritual father, who kept the wonder carefully and made it known to us: a great thing for her honour, and a great thing for us as a reminder of virtue and a longing for the same departure. A shudder runs through me, and tears with it, as I remember the wonder. She was already dissolving and drawing her last breaths, and around her was a chorus of kin and strangers rendering the last farewells; her aged mother bending over her, her soul torn in jealousy of the departure; and the love of all mixed with anguish, some longing to hear something to kindle their memory, others to hear what she would say, but no one daring to ask. The tears were silent, and the travail of grief unrelieved (for it did not seem holy to honour with laments one who was parting so), and there was a deep silence, and death was a kind of sacred rite. She was breathless and speechless to all appearance, and the silence of her body was a paralysis, as though the organs of speech had already failed through the withdrawal of the one who moved them. But the shepherd, who watched all her doings carefully because of the wonder in all of them, perceived her lips moving gently, and put his ear to her lips (he had the boldness for it from his character and his sympathy): you yourself tell the mystery of the silence, what it was and of what kind; no one will disbelieve you when you say that it was psalmody that she was murmuring, the closing words of a psalm; or, to speak the truth, a testimony of her boldness was her departure. And blessed is she who rests with those words: “In peace I will lie down and sleep.” These things, fairest of women, both befell you and were fitting for you; what happened was a song, and with your departure came your epitaph: for you were truly at peace from the passions, and received, beyond the common sleep, the sleep owed to the beloved; as befitted one who had lived and departed in the words of piety … in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory with the Father and the Holy Spirit for ever.