Letters 1.1–6.2

You have often asked me, my dearest Innocent, not to keep silent about the wonderful thing that has happened in our own time. I declined, modestly and, as I now find, truly, and doubted that I could do it justice, either because all human speech falls short of heavenly praise, or because idleness, like a kind of rust on the mind, had dried up what little power of speech I once had. You argued in reply that in the things of God it is not ability that should be considered but willingness, and that words cannot fail a man who has believed in the Word.

What, then, am I to do? What I cannot accomplish, I dare not refuse. An unskilled passenger, I am put aboard a merchant ship; a man who has never yet steered an oar on a lake is entrusted to the roar of the Euxine Sea. Now, as the land fades from sight, there is "sky on every side and on every side the sea"; now the water shudders with darkness, and in the blind night of the storm clouds the foaming waves grow white. You urge me to hang the swelling sails on the mast, to let out the ropes, to steer the helm. I obey your command at last, and because love can do all things, I shall trust in the Holy Spirit to speed my course, and I shall have comfort either way: if the tide carries me into the harbor I longed for, I shall be thought a pilot; if my unpolished speech runs aground among the rough windings of the discourse, you may perhaps look for ability, but you certainly cannot fault my good will.

Vercellae, then, is a Ligurian city lying not far from the foot of the Alps, once powerful, now half-ruined and thinly inhabited. When the consular governor was visiting it in the usual way, a poor woman was brought before him together with an alleged adulterer (for her husband had laid that charge against her), and he committed them to the horror of the prison as punishment. Not long afterward, when the bloody hook was beating on their livid flesh and pain was seeking the truth from furrowed sides, the most wretched young man, wishing to escape long torture by the shortcut of death, lied against his own blood and accused another; he alone of all men was, in his misery, deservedly struck down, because he left the innocent woman no way to deny it. But the woman, stronger than her sex, while the rack stretched her body and chains held her hands, filthy from the prison, behind her back, looked up to heaven with her eyes, which alone the torturer could not bind, and with tears rolling down her face she said: "You are my witness, Lord Jesus, from whom nothing is hidden, who search the reins and the heart, that I do not deny this in order not to die, but refuse to lie in order not to sin. And you, most wretched man, if you are in haste to perish, why do you destroy two innocent people? I too long to die, I long to put off this hated body, but not as an adulteress. I offer my throat; I receive the flashing blade without fear; only let me take my innocence with me. Whoever is killed in order to live does not die."

Then the governor, his eyes glutted with blood like a wild beast that, once it has tasted blood, always thirsts for it, ordered the tortures to be doubled; gnashing his teeth in his cruelty, he threatened the executioner with the same punishment unless the weaker sex confessed what a man's strength had not been able to keep silent.

Help, Lord Jesus! How many tortures have been devised for this one servant of yours! Her hair is tied to a stake, her whole body is bound more tightly to the rack, and fire is set near her feet; the executioner digs into both her sides, and her breasts are given no respite. The woman remains unmoved, and with her spirit set apart from the pain of her body, enjoying the good of a clear conscience, she forbade the tortures to rage around her. The cruel judge rises as though defeated; she prays to the Lord. Her limbs are wrenched from their joints; she lifts her eyes to heaven. Another confesses to a shared crime; she denies it on behalf of the one confessing, and, in peril herself, defends another who is in peril.

Meanwhile she has one cry only: "Beat me, burn me, tear me: I did not do it. If my words are not believed, a day will come that will examine this charge carefully; I shall have my Judge." By now the weary torturer was sighing and groaning, and there was no room for a new wound; his cruelty defeated, he shrank from the body he had mangled. At once the governor, roused to anger, said: "Bystanders, why are you surprised if a woman would rather be tortured than die? Adultery certainly cannot be committed without two, and I think it more believable that a guilty woman denies the crime than that an innocent young man confesses it."

So the same sentence was passed on both, and the executioner drags the condemned away. The whole people pours out to the spectacle, and the crowd, rushing out through the packed gates as though the city itself were thought to be moving away, grows dense. At the very first stroke the most wretched young man's head is cut off by the sword, and the headless corpse rolls in its own blood. But when they came to the woman, and she had bent her knees to the ground, the flashing sword was raised over her trembling neck, and the executioner swung his practiced right hand with all his strength; at the first touch of her body the deadly blade stopped, and lightly grazing her skin it drew only the blood of a slight scratch. The striker was terrified at his feeble hand, and, marveling that his right hand was defeated and his sword gone limp, he swings for a second blow. Again the blade falls limply on the woman and, as though the steel feared to touch the accused, it lies harmless around her neck. So the officer, raging and panting, twisted his military cloak back onto his neck, and as he gathered all his strength, he shook to the ground the brooch that fastened the edges of his mantle; not noticing it, he poises his sword for the wound. "Look," says the woman, "a piece of gold has fallen from your shoulder. Pick up what you gained with much labor, so that it is not lost."

What, I ask, is this calm? She does not fear the death hanging over her; she rejoices when struck; the executioner turns pale. Her eyes do not see the sword; they see only the brooch; and, as though it were not enough that she did not dread her end, she did a kindness to the one raging against her. And now a third stroke too: the mystery of the Trinity had made it vain. Now the executioner, terrified and no longer trusting the blade, set its point against her throat, so that what could not cut might at least be driven into her body by the pressure of his hand. O thing unheard of in all the ages! The sword bends back to the hilt and, as though looking at its master in defeat, confessed that it could not strike.

Come here, come to me, examples of the three young men, who among the cool balls of flame sang hymns instead of weeping, around whose trousers and holy hair the fire played harmlessly! Let the story of blessed Daniel be recalled here, near whom the lions' mouths, fawning with wagging tails, feared their prey. Let Susanna, noble in faith, now come to everyone's mind, who, condemned by an unjust judgment, was saved when the Holy Spirit filled a boy. See how the Lord's mercy is alike in both: Susanna was freed by a judge so that she did not go to the sword; this woman, condemned by a judge, was acquitted by the sword.

At last, then, the people take up arms to defend the woman. Every age and sex drives off the executioner, and as the crowd gathers in a ring almost no one believes what he has seen. The nearby city is thrown into confusion by the news, and the whole troop of lictors assembles. From their midst the one responsible for the condemned bursts out, and, soiling his gray hair with sprinkled dust, says: "Citizens, you are seeking my head; you are giving me as her substitute! If you are merciful, if you are clement, if you want to save the condemned woman, I at least, who am innocent, ought not to die." The people's feelings were shaken by his tears, a sad numbness crept over everyone, and, their will wonderfully changed, whereas they had defended her out of compassion before, now it seemed a kind of compassion to let her be killed.

So a new sword, a new executioner is brought. The victim stands protected only by the favor of Christ. Struck once, she is shaken; struck again, she staggers; wounded a third time, she is laid low. And (O majesty of divine power, to be extolled!) she who before had been struck four times without harm seemed to die for a little while for this very reason: that an innocent man might not die for her.

The clergy whose duty it was wrap the bloody corpse in a linen cloth, and, digging the earth and building it up with stones, they prepare a tomb in the customary way. The sun speeds to its setting, and night arrives to hide the Lord's mercy. Suddenly the woman's breast stirs, her eyes seek the light, and her body is brought back to life. Now she breathes, now she sees, now she rises and speaks, now she can burst out with the words: "The Lord is my helper; I will not fear what man can do to me."

Meanwhile an old woman who was supported by the church's funds gave back her spirit to heaven as it was owed, and, as though by design in the course of events, her body is put in the tomb in the other's place. While the light was still dim, the devil meets them in the person of the lictor; he looks for the corpse of the executed woman and demands that her grave be shown him; he thinks she is alive, marveling that she could have died. The clergy show him the fresh turf, and the earth lately heaped over her is pressed on the one demanding it, with words like these: "Dig up, of course, bones already buried; bring a new war upon the tomb, and if this is not enough, tear apart her limbs for birds and beasts to mangle; a woman struck seven times ought to suffer something more than death!"

With the executioner thrown into confusion by such reproach, the woman is secretly nursed back to health at home, and, lest the doctor's frequent visits to the church should open the way to suspicion, her hair is cut and she is sent with some virgins to a more secluded country house. There, gradually, with her clothing changed to a man's dress, her wound closed into a scar. And (O how true it is that the highest law is the highest injustice!) even after such great miracles the laws still rage.

See where the course of events has drawn me! For now we have come to the name of our Evagrius. If I thought I could describe his labor for Christ, I should be foolish; if I wished to be wholly silent, I could not, since my voice breaks out in joy. For who could celebrate with fitting praise how, by his vigilance, Auxentius, who brooded over Milan, was buried almost before he was dead, and how the bishop of Rome, already almost caught in the snares of a faction, both overcame his opponents and did not harm those he had overcome? "But these things I myself, shut out by narrow limits, pass over, and leave for others after me to tell." I am content with the end of the present matter: by his diligence Evagrius approaches the emperor, wearies him with entreaties, softens him by his merits, and wins him by his earnestness, so that the woman restored to life was restored to freedom.

How I wish I could be present at your gathering now, and embrace your wonderful fellowship with all joy, even though these eyes do not deserve to see it! I would look on the desert, lovelier than any city; I would see places abandoned by their inhabitants filled with bands of saints, like a kind of paradise.

But since my sins have brought it about that a head weighed down with every crime should not be admitted to the fellowship of the blessed, I beg you (for I do not doubt that you can obtain it) to set me free from the darkness of this world by your prayer. I said it before when I was with you, and now I do not cease to make my wish known by letter: my mind is swept toward that way of life with all its desire. Now it is your part to see that the deed follows the will. Mine is to will; your prayers must bring it about that I both will and am able.

I am like a sick sheep straying from the whole flock. Unless the good shepherd lays me on his shoulders and carries me back to his fold, my steps will falter, and my feet will give way in the very effort to rise. I am that prodigal son who has squandered the whole portion my father entrusted to me, and I have not yet bowed at my father's knees, nor yet begun to drive away from me the allurements of my former self-indulgence.

And because I have not so much left off my vices as begun to wish to leave them off, the devil now binds me in new nets; now, setting new obstacles before me, he surrounds me with seas on every side and the deep on every side; now, set in the middle of the element, I neither wish to go back nor can go forward. It remains that, by your prayer, the breeze of the Holy Spirit should carry me along and bring me to the harbor of the shore I long for.

That God grants more than he is asked, and often bestows "what eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has entered into the heart of man", I had known before from the teaching of the sacred books; but now I have proved it in my own case, dearest Rufinus. For I, who thought my wishes bold enough if by exchanging letters we could give ourselves a make-believe image of each other's presence, hear that you are exploring the hidden places of Egypt, visiting the companies of the monks, and going the rounds of heaven's household on earth. O if the Lord Jesus Christ would now suddenly grant me to be carried off as Philip was to the eunuch, or Habakkuk to Daniel, how tightly I would now clasp your neck in my embrace, how I would press my lips upon that mouth which once went astray with me or grew wise with me! But since I do not deserve it, and frequent illnesses have broken my body, which is feeble even when it is well, I send this letter to take my place and to meet you, that it may bind you with the bond of love and bring you all the way to me.

The first happiness of this unexpected joy was announced by Heliodorus. I did not believe for certain what I longed to be certain, especially since he said he had heard it from another, and the strangeness of the news took away the credit of the report. Again, when my mind was hanging on the wish and wavering, a certain Alexandrian monk, who had been sent by the devout service of the people to the Egyptian confessors, already martyrs in will, pushed me toward belief as a clear witness to the news. I confess that even here my judgment wavered. For since he knew neither your homeland nor your name, he seemed to add only this, that he said the same as another had already reported. At last the full weight of the truth broke through: a steady crowd of travelers reported that Rufinus was in Nitria and had gone on to the blessed Macarius. Then indeed I let go all the reins of belief, and then I grieved that I was truly ill. And if my weakened bodily strength had not held me back as if with a fetter, neither the heat of midsummer nor the sea, always uncertain for sailors, could have stopped me as I hurried in devoted haste. Believe me, brother: not so does the storm-tossed sailor look out for the harbor, not so do the thirsty fields long for rain, not so does the anxious mother, sitting on the curving shore, wait for her son.

After a sudden whirlwind tore me from your side, after an impious wrench pulled me apart from you, to whom I clung with the glue of love, then "a dark storm-cloud stood over my head", then there were seas on every side and sky on every side. At last, as I wandered in the uncertainty of travel, when Thrace, Pontus, and Bithynia, and the whole road through Galatia and Cappadocia, and the land of Cilicia with its burning heat had broken me, Syria met me like a most faithful harbor for a shipwrecked man. There, having experienced every sickness there could be, I lost one of my two eyes: a sudden burning fever took from me Innocent, half of my soul. Now I have Evagrius, my one and whole light, to whom I, always sick, have been added as an extra load of labor. There was with us also Hylas, the servant of holy Melania, who by the purity of his life had washed away the stain of slavery; he too has torn open the wound before it had healed. But since we are forbidden by the apostle's word to grieve over those who have fallen asleep, and the excessive force of grief has been tempered by joyful news arriving, I tell it to you, so that if you do not know it you may learn it, and if you knew it before we may rejoice together.

Your Bonosus, or rather mine, or to speak more truly ours, is now climbing the ladder foreshown to Jacob in his dream. He carries his cross, takes no thought for tomorrow, and does not look back. He sows in tears, that he may reap in joy, and, as in the mystery of Moses, he lifts up the serpent in the wilderness. Let the miracles invented by lies in Greek and Roman writing give way to this truth. See, a young man trained with us in the arts that the world counts honorable, with wealth in plenty and rank among the first of his peers, has despised his mother, his sisters, and the brother dear to him, and has settled, like a new tiller of paradise, on an island dangerous to ships, with the sea roaring round it, whose rough crags, bare rocks, and solitude are a terror. No farmer is there, no monk; not even little Onesimus, whom you know, and whom he loved like a younger brother, stays by his side as a companion in so vast a wilderness. Alone there, or rather not alone since Christ is with him, he sees the glory of God, which even the apostles did not see except in a desert place. He does not look on towered cities, but he has entered his name in the register of the new city. His limbs bristle in ugly sackcloth, but so he will better be caught up in the clouds to meet Christ. He enjoys no pleasant canals, but he drinks the water of life from the Lord's side. Set this before your eyes, sweetest friend, and turn your whole mind and heart to the scene as if present; then you will be able to praise the victory, when you know the labor of the fighter. All around the island the mad sea roars, and the waters, dashed against the winding cliffs, roar back; the land is green with no grass; no spring field grows thick with shade; the sheer rocks shut it in like a prison of dread. He, secure, fearless, and wholly armed by the apostle, now hears God, when he reads the divine books again, now speaks with God, when he prays to the Lord, and perhaps, like John, sees some vision while he stays on the island.

What wiles do you think the devil is weaving now, what snares do you suppose he is preparing? Perhaps, remembering his ancient trick, he will try to urge him to hunger. But he has already been answered: man does not live by bread alone. Perhaps he will offer wealth and glory; but it will be said to him: "Those who want to become rich fall into a trap and temptations", and: "All my glorying is in Christ." He will shake limbs worn out by fasting with the weight of disease; but he will be beaten back by the apostle's words: "When I am weak, then I am stronger", and: "Power is made perfect in weakness." He will threaten death; but he will hear: "I desire to depart and be with Christ." He will hurl fiery darts; but they will be caught on the shield of faith. In short, Satan will attack, but Christ will protect. I thank you, Lord Jesus, that in your day I have one who can pray to you for me. You yourself know (for the hearts of all lie open to you, who search the secrets of the heart, who saw the prophet shut in the belly of so great a beast in the deep) how he and I grew up together from tender infancy to the flower of youth, how the same nurses' laps and the same arms of attendants cherished us, and how, when after our studies at Rome we shared the same food and lodging on the half-barbarous banks of the Rhine, I was the first to begin to wish to serve you. Remember, I pray, that this warrior of yours was once a recruit with me. I have the promise of your majesty: "Whoever teaches and does not do will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches will be called great in the kingdom of heaven." Let him enjoy the crown of virtue and, robed for his daily martyrdoms, follow the Lamb; to me (for there are many mansions with the Father, and star differs from star in glory) grant that I may lift my head among the heels of the saints; since I willed and he accomplished, pardon me because I could not fulfill it, and give him the reward he deserves.

Perhaps I have drawn this out at greater length than the brevity of a letter allowed, as always happens to me when something must be said in praise of our Bonosus. But to return to where I left off, I beg you not to let your mind lose, together with your eyes, a friend who is long sought, hardly found, and hard to keep. Let anyone glitter with gold and let metals shine from his baggage on showy litters: love cannot be compared with anything; love has no price; a friendship that can end was never true.

How widely the report of your holiness has filled the mouths of different peoples you can judge from this: I begin to love you before I know you. For as the apostle says, "The sins of some men are manifest, going before them to judgment", so, on the contrary, the fame of your love is spread abroad so far that it is not so much that the one who loves you deserves praise as that the one who does not love you is thought to commit a crime. I pass over the countless people in whom you have sustained, fed, clothed, and visited Christ; the need of brother Heliodorus, which you relieved, could loosen even the tongues of the dumb. With what thanks, with what praise did he tell how you cared for him in the hardships of his journey, so that I, slowest of men, since my sickness is unbearable, have greeted you "on winged feet", as they say, by a letter of love and prayer, and have already embraced you! So I congratulate you, and I pray that the Lord may deign to seal the friendship now being born.

And since brother Rufinus, who is said to have come from Egypt to Jerusalem with holy Melania, is bound to me by the inseparable love of brotherhood, I ask you not to mind delivering to him my letter joined to this letter of yours. Do not judge me by his virtues. In him you will see the marks of holiness clearly stamped; I am ashes, a scrap of the vilest clay, and already cinders while still alive; it is enough for me if the weakness of my eyes can bear the brightness of his character. He has just now washed, he is clean and made white as snow; I, stained with all the filth of sins, wait day and night with trembling to pay the last farthing. And yet, since the Lord sets the prisoners free, and his words rest upon the humble and quiet one who trembles, perhaps to me also, lying in the tomb of my crimes, he may say: "Jerome, come out." The holy presbyter Evagrius sends you warm greetings; and we greet brother Martinianus together with you, whom I long to see but am held by the chain of sickness.

While I was living in that part of the desert that borders on the Saracens next to Syria, your loving letter was delivered to me. When I read it, my desire to set out for Jerusalem was so rekindled that what helped my love almost harmed my resolution. So now, as best I can, I present myself to you by letter in my stead. Though absent in body, I come in love and spirit, earnestly asking that neither time nor great distance may tear apart a newborn friendship that has been joined by the glue of Christ. Rather, let us seal it by letters back and forth; let them run between us, let them meet one another, let them speak with us. Love will not lose much if it converses with itself in such speech.

As for brother Rufinus, as you write, he has not yet come, and even if he comes it will not do much for my longing, since I shall not see him now. For he is separated from me by such a long distance that he cannot run here, and I am confined within the bounds of the solitude I have taken up, so that what I did not wish has now begun to be not permitted to me. For this reason I too beg you, and earnestly ask you to request it, that he may let you copy the commentaries of blessed Reticius, bishop of Autun, in which he discussed the Song of Songs in lofty style. Also a certain old man from the homeland of the aforementioned brother Rufinus, Paul, wrote to me that his manuscript of Tertullian is with him, and he urgently asks for it back. Further, I ask you to have the books that the short list below will show I do not possess written out on papyrus by a copyist's hand. I also ask you likewise to send me the interpretation of David's psalms and the very long book On the Synods by holy Hilary, which I copied for him with my own hand at Trier. You know that this is the food of a Christian soul, if it meditates on the law of the Lord day and night. Others you receive with hospitality, cheer with comfort, and help with money; if you grant me what I ask, you will have given much. And since by the Lord's gift I have many books of the sacred library, command me in turn: whatever you wish, I will send. Do not think it a burden to me if you command it; I have pupils who practice the art of copying. Nor am I promising a favor in return for what I ask: brother Heliodorus told me that you look for many things in the Scriptures and do not find them; or if you have everything, love will begin to claim the right to ask for more.

As for the man now holding your servant boy (his "master", as you kindly wrote back), who is undoubtedly his kidnapper: the presbyter Evagrius often rebuked him in my presence while I was still at Antioch. He answered him: "I fear nothing." He says that he was released by his master; and if you wish, here he is: send him wherever you want. I think I do no wrong if I do not let a vagrant flee any farther. Therefore, since I, set in this solitude, cannot do what you asked, I have asked my dear Evagrius to pursue the matter urgently for your sake and mine.

There is an old saying: liars bring it about that no one believes them even when they tell the truth. I see that this has happened to me, reproached by you for not writing. Shall I say, "I often wrote, but the carriers were careless"? You will answer, "That is the old excuse of everyone who does not write." Shall I say, "I found no one to carry letters"? You will say that a great many people went from here to there. Shall I insist that I gave letters even to them? But they, because they did not deliver them, will deny it, and between absent parties the truth will be uncertain. What, then, shall I do? I shall ask pardon without being at fault, thinking it better to give ground and ask for peace than to stir up a contest on equal footing. Although constant sickness of body and illness of soul have so worn me down that, with death at hand, I almost forgot myself. Lest you think this is false, I shall call witnesses after the arguments, in the manner of orators.

Holy brother Heliodorus was here; he wished to live in the desert with me, but my sins drove him away and he left. But my present talkativeness will excuse all my fault. For, as Flaccus says in his satire: "All singers have this fault: among friends, when asked, they never sing; when not asked, they never stop." So from now on I shall bury you under such bundles of letters that on the contrary you will begin to ask me not to write. I am glad that you are the first to tell me that my sister, your daughter in Christ, is persevering in what she began. For here where I now am, I do not know not only what is happening in my homeland, but whether my homeland itself still stands. And although an Iberian viper tears me with evil rumor, I will not fear the judgment of men, since I shall have my Judge: "if the world should break and fall, its ruins will strike him unafraid." Therefore I ask you, remembering the apostle's precept that teaches that our work ought to endure, to prepare for yourself a reward from the Lord in her salvation, and to make me happier by frequent letters about our common glory in Christ.