Funeral Oration on Flacilla (complete)

The faithful and wise steward (for I take my opening from the reading of the divine Gospel), whom the Lord has set over this household to give those in his charge their portion of food at the proper time, who in the time before this rightly sentenced speech to silence, who rightly perceived the greatness of the calamity and honored the mourning with quiet, now, I know not how, brings speech back to the church in this assembly, himself annulling his own sentence against it. And though I greatly admire the teacher’s understanding in many things, in this I admired him above all, that he rightly silenced speech in the calamity. For silence seems to me a fitting and suitable remedy for mourners, easing the swelling of the soul through quiet with time and downcast stillness. For if, while

grief still keeps the soul heated, someone stirs up speech, the wound of sorrow will become harder to heal, scraped by the memory of painful things as if by thorns. If it is not too bold for me to add a correction to my teacher’s judgment, perhaps it would have been well for quiet to keep its hold on us until now, so that speech, dragged toward grief, might not pain your hearing. For the time that has passed is not yet so long that the mind has grown used to the evil. The grief is still new in our soul; and perhaps the pain will always be new in our life. Our heart is still troubled, and like a sea whipped into waves it is churned up from the depths by the storm of the calamity; our thoughts still swell, boiling up at the memory of the evils. Since, then, the soul is unsteady in such a surge, how can one steer speech on a straight course when it is storm-tossed by the grief of sorrow as by a hurricane? But since one must obey the one who commands, I do not know how I am to use my speech. For I cannot guess my teacher’s intention. Or perhaps he wishes to give something to grief as well, and by more moving words to stir tears in the church? If that is his intention, he does this too rightly, in my judgment; for just as we are eager to enjoy good things, so we must also be properly disposed toward the sad things that befall us. This is what the Preacher also advises: “A time to laugh,” he says, “and a time to weep.” For we learn from this that we must dispose the soul in keeping with what is before us. Do things go with the current? It is the season to be glad. Has brightness turned to gloom? Then good cheer too must change to tears. For as laughter is a sign of brightness within, so the pain in the heart is expressed by laments, and tears become like the blood of the soul’s wounds. The Proverb of Solomon also says this: “When the heart is glad, the face flourishes; but when the soul is in sorrow, it is gloomy.” It is wholly necessary, then, that speech share the gloom of the heart’s condition. Would that it were possible to find such words as the great Jeremiah once lamented over the calamity of the Israelites! For the present events deserve those words more than anything recorded among the sad events of old. The stories of Job are grievous. But why set the countable sufferings of a single house against this evil? Even if you go through the great and more widespread evils, earthquakes, wars, floods and chasms, these too are small compared with the present ones. Why? Because the calamity of war does not touch the whole world at once; one part of it is at war while another is at peace. What then? Either a thunderbolt burned something, or water

flooded something, or something was swallowed up by a chasm. But the present evil is a blow to the whole world at once. It is not one nation or one city that must be lamented; perhaps it is fitting to utter the cry of Nebuchadnezzar that he made to his subjects: “To you I say, peoples, tribes, tongues.” Or rather, allow me to add something to the Assyrian’s proclamation, to proclaim the calamity more loudly, and to say, as one would cry aloud on a stage: O cities and peoples and nations and the whole earth, and all of the sea that is sailed and all that is inhabited, all of the world in our time that is governed by the scepter of this empire, O all people everywhere, groan together over the grief, raise together the chorus of lament, lament together the loss of all! Or do you wish me to tell you, as best I can, what the loss is? In our generation human nature, going beyond its own bounds and surpassing its usual measures (nature, or rather the Lord of nature), brought forth a human soul in a woman’s body beyond almost all the examples of virtue before her, in whom every virtue of body and every virtue of soul met together, and she showed human life an incredible wonder: how great a concurrence of good things one soul contained in one body. And so that the good fortune of the generation might be most evident to all, she was raised to the lofty throne of the empire, so that like the sun she might shine on the whole world from her high rank with the rays of her virtues. Joined in partnership of life and rule with him who by divine decree stands at the head of the whole world, she made the subjects most blessed through herself, truly becoming, as Scripture says, a helper to him for every good thing. If it was the time for kindness to people, she either ran with him toward this good or even ran ahead; the scale was equal on both sides in the weight of kindness. The proclamations made before, past numbering, bear witness to my words, and so do those of the present, which we have just heard from the herald of truth. If you look for piety, the course of both toward piety was the same. If foresight, if justice, if any other of the things pursued for the better, all was in rivalry, as they strove to outdo each other in good deeds, and there was no loser. The delight of each in the other was equal: she had as the prize of her virtue the ruler of the world, and he thought the power over land and sea small compared with his good fortune in her. They gave each other equal joys, seeing each other and being seen by each other: he being such as he is (for what beauty could anyone point to beyond what is seen? and may what is seen last even into the life of his descendants), while what she was cannot be shown by speech; for no likeness of her made with exactness by art has survived, and even if something has been made in paintings or sculptures, all fall short of the truth.

Such is the story up to this point; but what came next? Again I am forced to cry out; forgive me for crying out the grief beyond measure. O Thrace, name to be shunned! O unhappy land, a people known for calamities! You who were once ravaged with enemy fire by the raids of the barbarians, and now have received in yourself the sum of the common calamity! From there our good was snatched away, there envy rioted against the empire, there the world suffered shipwreck, there, as if striking a reef in a heavy sea, we sank into the depth of sorrow. O wicked journey, which did not grant a return! O bitter waters, whose springs she drank, as she should not have! O place in which the misfortune happened, named after darkness because of the misfortune! For I hear that in the language of the country the place is called Skotoumis. There the lamp was darkened, there the light was quenched, there the rays of the virtues were dimmed. Gone is the ornament of the empire, the rudder of justice, the image of kindness, or rather its very original; taken away is the model of love for one’s husband, the pure offering of chastity, approachable dignity, gentleness that no one despised, lofty humility, modesty with freedom of speech, the harmonious blend of good things. Gone is the zeal for the faith, the pillar of the church, the adornment of the altars, the wealth of the poor, the right hand that supplied many, the common harbor of the afflicted. Let virginity mourn, let widowhood lament, let orphanhood wail; let them know what they had now that they have it not. But why should I divide the lament into parts and ranks? Let the whole generation groan, sending up its groan deep from the middle of the heart; let the priesthood itself mourn too, since envy has stripped away the common adornment. Is it bold to say the words of the Prophet: “Why, O God, have you rejected us forever, and why has your anger been kindled against the sheep of your pasture?” For what sins are we paying the penalty? For what are we scourged with calamity upon calamity? Or perhaps because the impiety of the various heresies has increased, that very sentence has prevailed against us? For you see what evils we have met in a short time. We had not yet breathed again after the earlier blow, we had not yet wiped the tear from our eyes, and again we are in so great a calamity. Then we lamented the newly opened flower, now the very stem from which the flower sprang; then the beauty that was hoped for, now the beauty in its prime; then the good that was expected, now the good that was known by experience. Will you forgive me, brothers, if in grief I speak wildly? Perhaps, as the Apostle says, creation itself has groaned with our evil. Let me remind you of what happened, and I think most of you will agree with what I say. When the empress, covered with gold and purple, was being carried into the city

(and it was a bier that carried her), and every rank and every age poured out of the town, the open air was cramped by the crowd; everyone, even those highest in rank, were out of the way, going before the funeral procession. You surely remember how the sun covered its rays with clouds, so as not to see with pure light, perhaps, the empress entering the city in such a state: not on a chariot or a gold-mounted carriage in imperial splendor, proud of her guards, but covered in a coffin, her beauty hidden under a gloomy veil; a dreadful and pitiable sight, set before those who met it as an occasion for tears. Everyone gathered there, stranger and native alike, received her as she entered, not with acclamations but with laments. Then the air too was gloomy as if in mourning, throwing darkness around itself like a mourning garment. And the clouds too wept as far as they could, shedding soft drizzle in place of tears over the grief. Or are these things really nonsense, not even worth saying? For if anything of the kind happened in creation that marked the calamity, it surely did not come from creation but from the Master of creation, who by what he did honored the death of the holy woman. For “precious in the sight of the Lord,” it says, “is the death of his holy ones.” But then I saw another sight more marvelous than what I have described. I saw a double rain, one falling to the earth from the air, the other from tears, and the rain from the eyes was no less than that from the clouds. For among so many tens of thousands of those present there was no eye that did not wet the ground with drops of tears. But perhaps we have not rightly guessed our teacher’s intention, dwelling more than we ought on gloomy things. For perhaps he wishes to heal the hearing rather than to pain it; and we have now done the opposite, as if a physician who had taken on a wounded man not only neglected his treatment but even rubbed in some corrosive drugs on top of his pain. We must, then, pour the oil of speech on the swollen wound. For the healing of the Gospel too knows how to mix oil with the sting of wine. Let us tip toward you the flask of oil, taking it from Scripture, as far as we can, turning what was gloomy in what we said into consolation, as if singing a recantation. And let no one disbelieve what I say, however strange it is: the good we seek, brothers, exists; it exists and has not perished. Or rather, I have said less than the truth. For not only does the good exist, it is in a higher place than before. Are you looking for the empress? She lives in the palace. But do you long to know this with your eye?

You are not allowed to busy yourself with the sight of an empress. Fearful is the guard of the bodyguards around her; I do not mean these bodyguards whose weapon is iron, but those armed with the flaming sword, whose form human eyes cannot receive. You will see in which secret places of the kingdom her dwelling is when you too have leaned out of the body; for one cannot otherwise come within the inner sanctuary of the kingdom without parting the curtain of the flesh. Let the divine Apostle teach you, then, who shared in the unspeakable mysteries of paradise. What does he say about life here, speaking perhaps on behalf of all people? “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from the body of this death?” Why does he say this? Because, he says, to depart and be with Christ is far better. And what of the great David, who was proud of such power and had everything for pleasure and in his power for enjoyment? Is he not hemmed in by life? Does he not call life here a prison? Does he not cry to the Lord, “Bring my soul out of prison”? Is he not vexed at the length of life, saying, “Woe is me, that my sojourning has been prolonged!” Or did the saints not know how to tell the good from the worse, and was it for this that they thought departure from the body preferable for the soul? Or do you think it better to share in life through the flesh? Tell me, what good do you see in life? Consider what life consists of. I do not quote you the prophet’s saying, “All flesh is grass”; for he rather dignifies the wretchedness of our nature by the comparison. Perhaps it would be better to be grass than what it is. Why? Because grass by nature has nothing disgusting, but our flesh is a workshop of foul smell, turning everything it takes in to corruption and uselessness. And to be subject all the time to the service of the belly, what punishment is not less painful than that? For you see this unending tax collector, I mean the belly, how great a necessity of demand it imposes each day. Even if we sometimes pay down more than the fixed sum, we have paid off none of the next debt in advance; like the animals toiling in the mill with their eyes covered, we go round the mill of life, always moving through the same things and returning to the same. Let me tell you this circular round: appetite, fullness, sleep, waking, emptying, filling. Always these after those and those after these and again these, and we never stop going round in a circle until we are outside the mill. Solomon rightly calls life here a pierced jar and another’s house. For it is truly another’s house and not ours, because it is not up to us

to be in it either when we wish or as long as we long to; we are brought in without knowing how, and turned out without knowing when. You will understand the riddle of the jar if you look at the insatiability of desires. Do you see how people pour honors, powers, glories and all such things into themselves? But what is poured in leaks away and does not stay with the one who has it; the pursuit of glory and power and honor is always at work, while the jar of desire remains unfilled. And love of money? Is it not truly a pierced jar, leaking through its whole bottom, which, even if you pour the whole sea into it, has no power to be filled? What is there to grieve over, then, if the blessed woman has been separated from the evils of life, and, casting off the filth of the body like some rheum from the eye, has moved with a pure soul to the undefiled life, in which deceit has no citizenship, slander is not believed, flattery has no place, falsehood is not mixed in, and pleasure and pain, fear and boldness, poverty and wealth, slavery and lordship, and all such unevenness of life are banished as far as possible from that life? “Pain and sorrow and sighing have fled away” from there, as the prophet says. And in their place, what? Freedom from passion, blessedness, estrangement from every evil, the company of angels, the contemplation of things unseen, participation in God, gladness that has no end. Is it right, then, to grieve for the empress when we have learned what she has received in exchange for what? She has left an earthly kingdom but gained the heavenly one; she has laid aside the crown of jewels but put on the crown of glory; she has put off the purple but put on Christ. This is the truly royal and precious garment. I hear that the purple here is dyed red with the blood of a sea snail; but the purple above is made to shine by the blood of Christ. You see how great is the difference in the garment. Do you want to be persuaded that she is among those things? Read the Gospel: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father” (the judge says this to those on his right), “inherit the kingdom prepared for you.” Prepared by whom? By what you prepared for yourselves beforehand, he says, through your works. How? “I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was a stranger, naked, sick, in prison. As much as you did it to one of these least, you did it to me.” If, then, zeal for these things wins the kingdom, count, if it is possible to count, how many were covered with the clothes she gave! How many were fed by that great right hand! How many of those shut up in prison were granted not only a visit but complete release! And if visiting one in prison wins the kingdom, setting him free from punishment is clearly worthy of a greater honor, if there is anything higher than the kingdom. But her praise does not stop at these things. For she goes beyond even what is commanded for righteous deeds. How many through her

came to know in themselves the grace of the resurrection: those who had died by the laws and received the sentence of death were called back to life again through her. The testimony to what I say is before your eyes. You saw a youth by the altar who had despaired of being saved. You saw a poor woman lamenting the condemnation of her brother, how, through the remembrance of the empress, the gloomy sentence of death is dissolved into life by the one who proclaims good news to the church. Is this all? Where shall we put her humility, which Scripture prefers to every virtuous accomplishment? She, who drove the great empire together with the great emperor, when every power bowed down, when such nations paid tribute, when land and sea escorted her each with its own goods, did not give [room] against herself to pride, always looking to herself and not to things outside herself; for this reason she becomes heir of the beatitude, having purchased true height through temporary humility. Let me also give a proof of her love for her husband. When the bodily union was dissolved, the precious goods that belonged to her had of course to be divided. How, then, did she make the division? There were three children (for these are the chief of good things): she left the sons to their father, to be the supports of his empire, and of her own share she took only the daughter. Do you see how considerate and loving she was, yielding the greater part of what was precious to her husband? But I will add what most needs to be said by us, and then end my speech. Hatred of idols is common to all who share in the faith; but what was special to her was that she loathed the Arian unbelief as much as idolatry. For she thought that those who suppose the Divine to be in the creation worship no less than those who make idols of matter, and she judged this rightly and piously. For he who worships the creature, even if he does it in the name of Christ, is an idolater, having given the name of Christ to an idol. Having learned this, that there is no new God, she worshiped one Godhead, glorified in Father and Son and Holy Spirit. In this faith she grew, in this she flourished, to this she committed her spirit, by this she was brought into the bosom of Abraham, father of the faith, beside the spring of paradise (whose drop does not come to unbelievers), under the shade of the tree of life planted by the streams of waters. May we too be counted worthy of these things in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory to the ages.