Letters 125.1–125.20

Nothing is happier than a Christian, for to him the kingdom of heaven is promised; nothing more toilsome, for he is in danger of his life every day. Nothing is stronger, for he conquers the devil; nothing weaker, for he is overcome by the flesh. There are very many examples of both. The robber believed on the cross and at once was found worthy to hear: “Truly, truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” Judas slips from the summit of apostleship into the Tartarus of betrayal; neither the intimacy of the meal, nor the dipping of the morsel, nor the grace of a kiss could break his resolve to hand over as a man him whom he knew to be the Son of God. What was more worthless than the Samaritan woman? Yet not only did she herself believe, and after six men find one Lord, and recognize at the well the Messiah whom the Jewish people did not know in the temple, but she became the author of salvation for many, and while the apostles were buying food she refreshed him when hungry and sustained him when weary. What was wiser than Solomon? Yet he was made foolish by the love of women. Salt is good, and no sacrifice is accepted without being sprinkled with it—hence the apostle too commands, “Let your speech be seasoned with salt”—but if it becomes foolish, it is thrown out, and it so loses the dignity of its name that it is not useful even for the dunghill, with which the fields of believers are usually enriched and the barren soil of souls made fertile. I say this, my son Rusticus, to teach you at the very outset that you have begun great things and are pursuing lofty ones, and that, treading down the incitements of youth—or rather of adolescence—you are climbing to the rank of mature age; but that the path by which you walk is slippery, and the glory that follows victory is not as great as the disgrace that follows a fall.

You do not now need to be led by me through the meadows of the virtues, nor need I labor to show you the beauty of various flowers: what purity lilies hold, what the modesty of roses possesses, what the purple of the violet promises in the kingdom, what the painted brilliance of glowing gems pledges. For already, by the Lord’s favor, you hold the plow-handle; already you have climbed to the roof and the upper room with the apostle Peter, who, hungry among the Jews, is filled by the faith of Cornelius and quenches the famine of their unbelief by the conversion of the Gentiles, and who by the four-cornered vessel of the Gospels, which came down from heaven to earth, is taught and learns that all people can be saved. And again what he had seen, in the form of a most white linen sheet, is taken up on high and carries the crowds of believers from earth to heaven, so that the Lord’s promise may be fulfilled: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” All that I wish to instill into you, taking you by the hand—all that, like an experienced sailor after many shipwrecks, I try to teach an inexperienced passenger—is this: that you may know on what shore the pirate of chastity lurks; where Charybdis is, and avarice, the root of all evils; where the Scyllaean dogs of detractors are, of whom the apostle speaks, “lest, biting one another, you be consumed by one another”; how, secure in the midst of calm, we are sometimes overwhelmed by the Libyan Syrtes of vices; what poisonous creatures the desert of this world nourishes.

Those who sail the Red Sea—in which we should pray that the true Pharaoh may be drowned with his army—reach the city of … Maxima after many difficulties and dangers. On both shores dwell wandering tribes, or rather most savage beasts. Always anxious, always armed, they carry provisions for the whole year. Everything is full of hidden rocks and very dangerous shoals, so that a lookout and pilot sits at the top of the mast and from there calls out directions for steering and turning the ship. It is a happy voyage if after six months they reach the harbor of that city, from which the ocean begins to open out, across which one barely reaches India in a whole year, and the river Ganges—which Holy Scripture calls the Pishon—which encircles the whole land of Havilah and is said to carry many kinds of spices from the spring of paradise. There the carbuncle is found, and the emerald, and shining pearls and the great pearls for which the ambition of noble women burns, and mountains of gold, which it is impossible for men to approach because of dragons and griffins and monsters of immense bodies—so that we may be shown what guardians avarice has.

What is the point of this? It is plain. If the merchants of this world endure so much to reach uncertain and perishable riches, and at the risk of their lives guard what they have sought through many dangers, what should the merchant of Christ do, who sells all and seeks the most precious pearl, who with all the resources of his substance buys the field in which he may find a treasure which no thief can dig up nor robber carry off?

I know that I shall offend a great many people who will take a general discussion of vices as an insult to themselves, and who, while they are angry with me, betray their own conscience and judge much worse of themselves than of me. For I shall name no one, nor heap up the abuse of the old comedy; and whoever is held by the same faults is certainly better in this, that his own evils do not please him.

I hear that you have a devout mother, a widow of many years, who nourished and taught you as a child, and after your studies in Gaul, which are very flourishing, sent you to Rome, sparing no expense and bearing her son’s absence in hope of the future, so that Roman gravity might season the richness and brilliance of Gallic speech, and she might use on you not spurs but reins—as we read also of the most eloquent men of Greece, who dried the Asiatic swelling with Attic salt and checked with pruning hooks the vines running riot with shoots, so that the winepresses of eloquence might overflow, not with the vine-leaves of words, but with the pressings, as it were of grapes, of thought. Look up to her as a parent, love her as a nurse, revere her as a saint. And do not imitate the example of others, who leave their own women and seek those of others, whose disgrace is out in the open, seeking suspect partnerships under names of piety. I know some women, already of riper age, most of them of freedwoman class, who delight in young men and seek spiritual sons, and little by little, when shame has been overcome, break out through the pretended name of mothers into the license of marriage. Others desert their virgin sisters and attach themselves to widows who are strangers. There are women who hate their own and are caressed by the affection of those not their own, whose impatience, betraying their mind, admits no excuse and breaks the empty veils of their unchastity like spiders’ webs. You may see some men, with girded loins, dark tunic and long beard, unable to leave the women, living under the same roof, going to banquets together, having young maidservants to wait on them, and having everything of marriage except the name. Nor is it the fault of the Christian name if one who feigns religion lives in vice; rather it is to the confusion of the Gentiles when they see that the churches disapprove of what all good people dislike.

But you, if you wish to be a monk and not merely to seem one, have a care, not for your property, by renouncing which you began to be what you are, but for your soul. Let the shabbiness of your clothes be a sign of a white mind; let a cheap tunic prove your contempt of the world—provided only that the mind does not swell, that dress and speech do not disagree. Do not seek the warm comforts of the baths, since you wish to quench the heat of the body by the cold of fasting. And let the fasts themselves be moderate, lest excessive fasts weaken the stomach and, demanding greater refreshment, break out into indigestion, the parent of lusts. Moderate and temperate food is useful for both flesh and soul. See your mother in such a way that you are not compelled through her to see other women, whose faces may cling to your heart, and “the silent wound live beneath the breast.” Know that the little maidservants who attend her lie in ambush for you, because the meaner their condition, the easier the fall. John the Baptist too had a holy mother and was the son of a high priest, and yet he was not overcome either by his mother’s affection or by his father’s wealth so as to live in his parents’ house at risk to his chastity. He lived in the desert, and with eyes longing for Christ he deigned to look at nothing else. Rough garment, leather belt, food of locusts and wild honey—all prepared for virtue and continence. The sons of the prophets, whom we read of in the Old Testament as monks, built themselves huts beside the streams of the Jordan and, leaving the crowds of the cities, lived on barley meal and wild herbs. As long as you are in your homeland, count your cell a paradise; pluck the varied fruits of the Scriptures, use these as your delights, enjoy their embrace. If your eye, your foot, your hand causes you to stumble, cast them away. Spare nothing, so that you may spare your soul alone. “He who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Who will boast that he has a chaste heart? The stars are not clean in the sight of the Lord: how much less men, whose life is temptation! Woe to us, who commit sexual immorality as often as we lust. “My sword,” he says, “has been drunk in heaven”: much more on earth, which produces thorns and thistles. The chosen vessel, in whose mouth Christ spoke, subdues his body and brings it into subjection, and yet he sees the natural heat of the flesh fighting against his resolve, so that he is compelled to do what he does not will; and, as though suffering violence, he cries out and says: “Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?” And do you think you can pass through without a fall and a wound unless you keep your heart with all watchfulness and say with the Savior, “My mother and my brothers are those who do the will of my Father”? This cruelty is piety; indeed, what is so dutiful as to guard a holy son for a holy mother? She too wishes you to live, and not to see you for a time, so that she may see you always with Christ. Hannah bore Samuel not for herself but for the tabernacle. The sons of Jonadab, who drank neither wine nor strong drink, who lived in tents and had as dwellings whatever places night had forced on them, are written of in a psalm as the first to suffer captivity, because, when the army of the Chaldeans was laying Judea waste, they were compelled to enter the cities.

Let others see what they think—for each is led by his own mind—to me a town is a prison and solitude a paradise. Why do we long for the crowds of cities, we who take our name from being single? Moses, to preside over the Jewish people, is trained for forty years in the desert; a shepherd of sheep, he became a shepherd of men. The apostles passed from fishing in the lake of Gennesaret to fishing for men. Then they had a father, a net, a little boat; following the Lord, they at once left everything, carrying their cross daily and not having even a staff in their hand. I say this so that, even if the desire for the clerical office tickles you, you may learn what you can teach and offer to Christ a reasonable sacrifice; so that you may not be a soldier before you are a recruit, a master before you are a disciple. It is not for my humility and measure to judge others and to say anything unfavorable about the ministers of the churches. Let them keep their order and rank; if you should hold it, the book I published for Nepotian can teach you how you should live in it. Now we are discussing the beginnings and the manners of a monk—and of a monk who, trained in liberal studies, placed the yoke of Christ on his neck in youth.

First we must consider whether you should live alone or with others in a monastery. My preference is that you should have the company of holy men, and not teach yourself and enter without a guide a way you have never entered, so that you must at once turn aside to one side or the other, lie open to error, and walk more or less than is needed—running till you tire, or delaying till you fall asleep. In solitude pride quickly creeps in; and if a man has fasted for a little while and has seen no one, he thinks himself of some importance, and, forgetting himself, whence he came and where, he is inside in body but wanders outside with his tongue. Against the apostle’s will he judges other men’s servants; he stretches out his hands to whatever his gullet demands; he sleeps as long as he likes, does what he likes; he respects no one, thinks all inferior to himself, is more often in the cities than in his cell, and among the brothers feigns a modesty, though he is jostled by the crowds of the streets. What then? Do we find fault with the solitary life? Not at all; indeed we have often praised it. But we wish soldiers of this kind to go out from the training school of the monasteries: men whom the first rudiments do not frighten; who have given proof of their way of life over a long time; who were the least of all so that they might become first of all; whom neither hunger nor fullness has ever overcome; who rejoice in poverty; whose dress, speech, look and gait are a teaching of virtues; who do not know how, as certain foolish men do, to invent portents of demons fighting against them, so as to make themselves a marvel among the ignorant and the common people and thereafter pursue gain.

We saw recently, and lamented, the riches of a Croesus discovered at the death of one man, and a city’s alms, gathered as if for the use of the poor, left to his family and heirs. Then the iron that lay hidden in the deep floated on the water, and among the palm trees the bitterness of Marah was shown. Nor is it surprising: he had such a man both as companion and as teacher, who …

I wish you, then, not to live with your mother, both for the reasons I set out above and above all lest you either grieve her by refusing the delicate food she offers or, if you accept it, add oil to the fire, and among a crowd of girls see by day what you will think of by night. Let a book never leave your hand and eyes; let the Psalter be learned word for word; let prayer be without ceasing, the mind watchful and not open to vain thoughts. Let body and soul alike be stretched toward the Lord. Conquer anger by patience; love the knowledge of the Scriptures, and you will not love the vices of the flesh. Nor let your mind lie open to various passions, which, if they settle in your breast, will be your masters and lead you to the greatest offense. Do some work too, so that the devil may always find you occupied. If the apostles, who had the right to live by the Gospel, worked with their own hands so as not to burden anyone, and gave relief to others from whom they were owed a harvest of material things in return for spiritual, why should you not provide what will go to your own use? Either weave a little basket of rushes or plait a hamper from pliant osiers; let the ground be hoed, let the plots be divided with even borders; and when the seeds of vegetables have been sown in them or plants set in rows, let channels of water be led in, so that you may stand watching the lovely lines: “Behold, from the brow of the sloping path he draws the water; it, falling, stirs a hoarse murmur over the smooth stones and with its springs tempers the parched fields.” Let unfruitful trees be grafted with buds or slips, so that after a short time you may pluck the sweet fruit of your labor. Build hives for bees, to which Proverbs sends you, and learn from little bodies the order of monasteries and royal discipline. Let nets too be woven for catching fish; let books be copied, so that the hand may earn food and the soul be filled with reading. “Every idle man is in desires.” The monasteries of Egypt hold to this custom, that they receive no one without work and labor, not so much for the necessities of life as for the salvation of the soul, lest it wander in harmful thoughts and, like Jerusalem the harlot, spread its feet to every passerby.

When I was a young man and the wilderness of solitude walled me in, I could not bear the incitements of vices and the heat of nature; though I broke them with frequent fasts, my mind still seethed with thoughts. To tame it I gave myself as a pupil to a certain brother who had come to faith from among the Hebrews, so that, after the subtleties of Quintilian, the rivers of Cicero, the gravity of Fronto and the gentleness of Pliny, I might learn the alphabet and practice words that hiss and gasp. What labor I spent there, what difficulty I endured, how often I despaired, how often I gave up and, in my eagerness to learn, began again, my conscience is witness—both mine, who suffered it, and that of those who lived with me. And I thank the Lord that from the bitter seed of learning I am gathering sweet fruits.

I will tell you something else I saw in Egypt. There was a Greek youth in a community who could not quench the flame of the flesh by any continence or any amount of work. When he was in danger, the father of the monastery saved him by this device. He ordered a certain grave man to pursue the young man with quarrels and abuse, and, after doing him wrong, to be the first to come and complain. Witnesses were called and spoke in favor of the one who had done the insult. The youth wept against the lie; no one else believed the truth; only the father cleverly put forward a defense of him, lest the brother be swallowed up by excessive sorrow. In short, a year passed in this way; at its end the young man was asked about his former thoughts, whether he still suffered any trouble. “Good heavens,” he said, “I am not allowed to live, and am I to want to commit fornication?” If he had been alone, by whose help would he have overcome?

The philosophers of the world are accustomed to drive out an old love with a new one, as one nail with another. This is what the seven princes of the Persians did for Ahasuerus, to check his longing for Queen Vashti by the love of other girls. They cure vice by vice and sin by sin; let us overcome vices by love of the virtues. “Turn aside,” he says, “from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.” Unless we hate evil we cannot love good. Rather, good must be done so that we may turn aside from evil; peace must be sought so that we may flee wars. Nor is it enough to seek it unless, when it is found and fleeing, we pursue it with all zeal—the peace that surpasses all understanding, in which is the dwelling of God, as the prophet says: “And his place has been made in peace.” The pursuit of peace is well spoken of, in keeping with the apostle’s saying, “pursuing hospitality,” so that we may not invite guests with light and hasty words and, so to speak, with the tips of our lips, but hold them fast with the whole ardor of our mind, as though they were taking away with them something of our gain and profit.

No art is learned without a master. Even dumb animals and herds of wild beasts follow their leaders. Among bees there are rulers; cranes follow one in a formation like a letter. There is one emperor, one judge of a province. Rome, as soon as it was founded, could not have two brothers as kings at once, and was consecrated with fratricide. In Rebekah’s womb Esau and Jacob waged war. Each church has one bishop, one archpresbyter, one archdeacon, and every ecclesiastical order depends on its rulers. In a ship there is one pilot, in a house one master; in an army however large, the standard of one man is awaited. And not to weary the reader by repeating more, all this is directed to one end: to teach you that you should not be left to your own judgment but should live in a monastery under the discipline of one father and in the company of many, so that you may learn humility from one, patience from another; that this one may teach you silence, that one gentleness; that you may not do what you wish; that you may eat what you are ordered, have as much as you have received, wear what you have received; that you may complete your allotted task of work, be subject to one you would rather not be, come to your bed tired and doze as you walk, be compelled to rise before you have had your sleep out; that you may say the psalm in your turn—in which not sweetness of voice but the disposition of the mind is sought, as the apostle writes, “I will sing with the spirit, I will sing with the mind also,” and, “singing in your hearts”; for he had read the command, “Sing wisely”—that you may serve the brothers, wash the feet of guests, keep silent when you have suffered wrong, fear the superior of the monastery as a master and love him as a parent, believe that whatever he commands is salutary for you, and not judge the decision of your elder, since your duty is to obey and fulfil what has been ordered, as Moses says: “Hear, O Israel, and be silent.” Occupied with so many tasks, you will have no leisure for thoughts, and, as you pass from one thing to another and work follows work, you will keep in mind only what you are compelled to do.

I have seen some who, after renouncing the world—in dress, that is, and in verbal profession, not in reality—changed nothing of their former way of life. Their property was increased rather than diminished; the same service of slaves, the same splendor of banquets; gold is eaten from glass and earthenware dishes, and amid crowds and swarms of servants they claim for themselves the name of solitaries. Those, however, who are poor and of slender means, and think themselves knowing, go out in public like the litters in a procession, to exercise their dog-like eloquence. Others, with shoulders raised high and croaking something or other to themselves, with eyes fixed stupidly on the ground, weigh out swollen words, so that if you added a herald you would think the prefecture was passing by. There are some who, from the damp of their cells and immoderate fasts, from the weariness of solitude and too much reading, while their ears ring day and night, are turned to melancholia and need the poultices of Hippocrates more than our admonitions. Very many cannot do without their former crafts and trades, and, merely changing the names of the shopkeepers, carry on the same commerce, pursuing not food and clothing, as the apostle commands, but greater profits than men of the world. Formerly the rage of sellers was restrained by the aediles, whom the Greeks call agoranomoi, and sin was not unpunished; but now unjust gains are made under the title of religion, and the honor of the Christian name commits fraud rather than suffers it. And—what is shameful to say, but necessary, so that at least in this way we may blush at our disgrace—stretching out our hands in public, we hide gold under rags, and, contrary to everyone’s opinion, we who lived as if poor die rich with full purses. You, when you are in a monastery, will not be allowed to do these things; and as habit gradually grows, you will begin to will what at first you were compelled to do, and your labor will delight you, and, forgetting what lies behind, you will always pursue what lies ahead, considering not what evil others do, but what good you ought to do.

Do not be led by the multitude of those who sin, nor let the crowd of those who are perishing tempt you to think silently: “What? Will all who live in the cities perish, then? Look, those men enjoy their property, serve the churches, go to the baths, do not despise perfumes, and yet they flourish in everyone’s esteem.” To this I have answered before, and will answer briefly now: in this little work I am not discussing clergy but instructing a monk. The clergy are holy, and the life of all of them is praiseworthy. So act and live in the monastery that you may deserve to be a cleric; that you may stain your youth with no defilement; that you may come forth to Christ’s altar as a virgin from the bridal chamber and have a good report from outsiders; that women may know your name but not your face. When you come to mature age, if life stays with you, and either the people or the bishop of the city chooses you for the clergy, do the things that belong to clergy, and among them follow the better ones, because in every condition and rank the worst are mixed with the best.

Do not rush quickly into writing, and do not be carried away by a light madness. Learn for a long time what you are to teach. Do not believe those who praise you; or rather, do not willingly lend your ear to those who mock you: when they have coddled you with flattery and made you in a manner not master of your mind, if you suddenly look round, you will catch them either bending their necks behind you like storks, or wagging their hands like a donkey’s ears, or sticking out their tongues like a panting dog. Disparage no one, and do not think yourself holy because you tear others to pieces. We often accuse others of what we do ourselves, and, eloquent against ourselves, we inveigh against our own vices, dumb men passing judgment on the eloquent. Grunnius used to come forward to speak at a tortoise’s pace and at intervals barely got out a few words, so that you would think he was hiccuping, not speaking. And yet, when the table was set and he had laid out a heap of books, he would draw his brows together, contract his nostrils, wrinkle his forehead and snap two little fingers, calling his disciples to listen by this sign. Then he would pour out sheer trifles and declaim against one person after another: you would say he was a critic Longinus, a censor of Roman eloquence, branding whom he pleased and excluding them from the senate of the learned. This man, being well supplied with money, was more pleasing at luncheons. No wonder, since he was accustomed to bait many, and, with a wedge of chattering people clamoring around him, he went out in public—Nero within, Cato without, altogether ambiguous, so that you would say one monster and a new beast had been put together from contrary and different natures, as in the poet’s line: “In front a lion, behind a dragon, in the middle the chimaera itself.”

Never, then, look at such men, and do not attach yourself to men of this kind, lest you incline your heart to words of malice and hear: “Sitting, you disparaged your brother, and put a stumbling block before your mother’s son,” and again: “The sons of men, their teeth are weapons and arrows,” and elsewhere: “His words are softer than oil, and yet they are darts,” and more plainly in Ecclesiastes: “If a serpent bites in silence, so is he who secretly disparages his brother.” But you say: “I do not disparage anyone myself; what can I do when others speak?” We put forward such things to make excuses in our sins. Christ is not deceived by artifice. It is not my sentence but the apostle’s: “Do not be deceived; God is not mocked.” He sees in the heart, we see in the face. Solomon says in Proverbs: “The north wind scatters the clouds, and a sad face the tongues of detractors.” For just as an arrow, if shot against hard material, sometimes returns on the one who shot it and wounds the wounder—and that saying is fulfilled, “They have become to me a crooked bow,” and elsewhere, “He who throws a stone on high, it will fall back on his head”—so it is with the detractor. When he sees the sad face of the hearer—or rather not of a hearer, but of one who stops his ears so as not to hear a judgment of blood—he falls silent at once, his face grows pale, his lips stick, his saliva dries up. Hence the same wise man says: “Do not mingle with detractors, for their destruction will come suddenly; and who knows the ruin of both?”—of him, that is, who speaks, and of him who listens to the speaker. Truth does not love corners, nor does it seek whisperers. To Timothy it is said: “Do not readily receive an accusation against a presbyter. But rebuke one who sins before all, so that the others also may be afraid.” It is not easy to believe ill of a man of mature age, whom his past life defends and the title of his dignity honors; but since we are men, and sometimes, in spite of the maturity of our years, fall into the faults of boys, if you want me to be corrected when I offend, rebuke me openly, only do not bite me in secret. “The righteous will correct me in mercy and rebuke me, but let not the oil of the sinner anoint my head.” “For whom the Lord loves he corrects, and he scourges every son whom he receives.” And God cries through Isaiah: “My people, those who call you blessed deceive you and trip up the paths of your feet.” What does it profit me if you tell others of my faults, if without my knowledge you wound another with my sins—or rather with your detractions—and, while you vie in telling everyone, speak to each as though you had told no one else? This is not to correct me but to satisfy your own vice. The Lord commanded that those who sin against us should be rebuked in private, or with a witness called in, and, if they will not listen, be referred to the church, and that those who persist obstinately in evil be regarded as heathens and tax collectors.

I speak of these things rather explicitly so as to free my young man from the itch both of the tongue and of the ears, so that I may present him, reborn in Christ, without wrinkle or spot, as a chaste virgin, holy both in mind and in body; lest he glory in the name alone and, his lamp gone out without the oil of good works, be shut out by the bridegroom. You have there the holy and most learned bishop Proculus, who by his living and present voice may surpass my pages and direct your journey by daily discourses, and not allow you, by turning aside to one side, to leave the royal road by which Israel, hastening to the land of promise, promises that it will pass. And would that the voice of the church lamenting may be heard: “Lord, give us peace; for you have given us all things.” Would that our renouncing the world were a matter of will, not of necessity, and that poverty, when sought, had glory, and not, when imposed, torment. For the rest, amid the miseries of this time and swords raging everywhere, he is rich enough who does not lack bread, and more than powerful who is not compelled to be a slave. The holy Exuperius, bishop of Toulouse, an imitator of the widow of Zarephath, feeds others while himself hungry, and, his face pale with fasting, is tormented by the hunger of others; he has spent all his substance on the bowels of Christ. No one is richer than he, who carries the body of the Lord in a wicker basket and his blood in glass; who has cast avarice out of the temple; who, without a scourge of cords and without rebuke, has overturned the tables of mammon and of those who sell doves—that is, the gifts of the Holy Spirit—and scattered the coins of the money-changers, so that the house of God may be called a house of prayer and not a den of robbers. Follow closely his footsteps and those of others like him in virtue, whom the priesthood makes both humbler and poorer; or, if you desire perfection, go out with Abraham from your country and your kindred and go where you do not know. If you have property, sell it and give to the poor; if you do not, you have been freed from a great burden: naked, follow the naked Christ. It is hard, great, difficult; but great are the rewards.