Letters 146.1–148.2

We read in Isaiah: “The fool will speak folly.” I hear that someone has broken out into such madness as to put deacons before presbyters, that is, before bishops. For since the apostle clearly teaches that presbyters are the same as bishops, what has come over the servant of tables and widows, that he puffs himself up above those at whose prayers the body and blood of Christ are made? Do you ask for authority? Hear the testimony: “Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons.” Do you want another example? In the Acts of the Apostles Paul speaks thus to the priests of a single church: “Take heed to yourselves and to the whole flock, in which the Holy Spirit has placed you as bishops, to rule the church of the Lord, which he acquired with his own blood.” And lest anyone contentiously argue that there were several bishops in one church, hear another testimony too, in which it is most plainly proved that bishop and presbyter are the same: “For this reason I left you in Crete, that you should correct what was lacking and appoint presbyters in every city, as I charged you: if anyone is without reproach, the husband of one wife, having believing children, not accused of debauchery or insubordinate. For a bishop must be without reproach, as God's steward.” And to Timothy: “Do not neglect the gift that was given you through prophecy by the laying on of the hands of the presbytery.” And Peter too, in his first letter: “The presbyters among you I entreat, as a fellow presbyter and a witness of the sufferings of Christ and a sharer in the glory that is to be revealed: rule the flock of Christ and oversee it, not under compulsion but willingly, according to God.” This is expressed more pointedly in Greek, episkopeuontes, from which the name of bishop is also derived. Do the testimonies of such great men seem small to you? Let the gospel trumpet sound, the son of thunder, whom Jesus loved most, who drank the streams of doctrine from the Saviour's breast: “The presbyter to the elect lady and her children, whom I love in the truth”; and in another letter: “The presbyter to the dearly beloved Gaius, whom I love in the truth.” That one was later chosen to be set over the rest was done as a remedy for schism, lest each man draw the church of Christ to himself and tear it apart. For at Alexandria too, from Mark the evangelist down to the bishops Heraclas and Dionysius, the presbyters always chose one of their own number, placed him in a higher rank, and called him bishop, just as if an army should make its general, or deacons should choose one of themselves whom they knew to be diligent and call him archdeacon. For what does a bishop do, except ordination, that a presbyter does not do? Nor is the church of the city of Rome to be thought one thing and the church of the whole world another. Gaul and Britain and Africa and Persia and the East and India and all the barbarian nations worship one Christ and keep one rule of truth. If authority is sought, the world is greater than the city. Wherever there is a bishop, whether at Rome or at Gubbio, at Constantinople or at Rhegium, at Alexandria or at Tanis, he is of the same merit and of the same priesthood. The power of riches or the lowliness of poverty makes a bishop higher or lower; but all are successors of the apostles.

But you will say: how is it that at Rome a presbyter is ordained on the testimony of a deacon? Why do you bring forward to me the custom of one city? Why do you claim for the laws of the church the fewness from which this arrogance has arisen? Everything rare is more sought after; among the Indians pennyroyal is more precious than pepper. Their fewness makes deacons honoured; their crowd makes presbyters despised. Yet even in the church at Rome the presbyters sit and the deacons stand, although, as vices have gradually increased, I have seen a deacon sit among the presbyters in the bishop's absence, and give blessings to presbyters at private dinners. Let those who do this learn that they do not do rightly, and let them hear the apostles: “It is not fitting that we should leave the word of God and serve tables.” Let them know why deacons were appointed; let them read the Acts of the Apostles; let them remember their own position. Presbyter and bishop: the one is a name of age, the other of dignity. That is why, in the letters to Timothy and Titus, the ordination of a bishop and of deacons is spoken of, but of presbyters nothing at all is said, because the presbyter is included in the bishop. Whoever is promoted is promoted from the lesser to the greater. Either, then, let a deacon be ordained from a presbyter, so that the presbyter is shown to be less than the deacon, into whose rank he grows from a small one; or, if a presbyter is ordained from a deacon, let him know that he is less in gains but greater in priesthood. And that we may know that the apostolic traditions were taken from the Old Testament: what Aaron and his sons and the Levites were in the temple, let the bishops and presbyters and deacons claim for themselves in the church.

Samuel once mourned for Saul, because the Lord had repented that he had anointed him king over Israel; and Paul, with a tearful voice, warned the Corinthians, among whom sexual immorality was reported, and such sexual immorality as is not even among the Gentiles, saying: “Lest, when I come again, God humble me among you, and I mourn for many of those who sinned before and did not repent of the uncleanness which they practised in impurity and sexual immorality.” If the prophet and the apostle, themselves stained by no blemish, did this with a mind merciful towards all, how much more ought I, a sinner myself, to do it for you, a sinner, because you will not rise after your fall nor lift your eyes to heaven, but, having squandered your father's substance, you delight in the pigs' pods, and climbing the precipices of pride you slide headlong into the depths! You want to have your belly for God instead of Christ; you serve lust, you glory in your shame, and like a fat victim you are fattened for your own death; you imitate the vices of those whose torments you do not fear, not knowing that the goodness of God urges you to repentance. But according to your hardness and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath. Or is your heart hardened like Pharaoh's because you are not struck at once but are put off for a long time before punishment? He too was put off, and endured ten plagues, not as from an angry God but as from a father warning him, until, his repentance turned into perversity, he pursued through the desert the people he had let go and dared to enter the sea, by which alone he could have been taught that he should fear one whom even the elements served. He too had said: “I do not know the Lord, and I will not let Israel go.” Imitating him, you say: “The vision which this man sees is for many days, and he prophesies of distant times.” Therefore the Lord Adonai says: “None of my words which I speak shall be delayed any longer, for I will speak a word and do it.” Holy David, concerning the ungodly and wicked, of whom you are not a small part but the chief, because they enjoyed the prosperity of the world and said: “How does God know, and is there knowledge in the Most High? Behold, these are sinners, and abounding in the world they have obtained riches”, with foot almost slipping and step unsteady, complained, saying: “So in vain have I justified my heart and washed my hands among the innocent.” For he had said before: “For I was envious of those who do wrong, seeing the peace of sinners; for there is no regard for their death, and their plague is not firm in their scourge. They are not in the troubles of men, and they will not be scourged with men. Therefore pride has held them; they are covered with their iniquity and ungodliness. Their iniquity will come forth as from fat; they have passed into the affection of the heart. They have thought and spoken evil; they have spoken iniquity on high. They have set their mouth against heaven, and their tongue has gone through the earth.”

Does not the whole psalm seem to you to have been composed about you? For you are vigorous in body, and a new apostle of Antichrist; when you have become notorious in one city you move on to another; you lack no means; you are not struck with a heavy blow; and with men, who are not, like you, irrational beasts, you do not deserve to be chastised. Therefore you are lifted up into pride, and luxury has become your garment; belching deadly words as if from rich lard and fat, you do not consider that you are going to die, nor after your lust is sated are you ever pricked by repentance. You have passed into the affection of the heart, and so as not to seem to yourself to go astray alone, you invent abominations about the servants of God, not knowing that you speak iniquity on high and set your mouth against heaven. No wonder if any servants of the Lord are blasphemed by you, since your fathers called the master of the house Beelzebul. The disciple is not above the teacher, nor the servant above his master. If they did such things in the green wood, what will you do in me, the dry wood? Something of the kind is said in Malachi by the scandalized people of believers about men of your company: “They said: He who serves God is vain. And what more? Because we kept his commandments, and because we went as suppliants before the face of the Lord Almighty. And now we call strangers blessed. All who do wicked things are built up again. They have opposed God and have been saved.” Afterwards the Lord, threatening them with the day of judgment and foretelling long before what the difference between the righteous and the unrighteous will be, says: “And you will turn and see what is between the righteous and the unrighteous, and between one who serves God and one who does not serve him.”

Perhaps these things seem ridiculous to you, and since you delight in comedies and lyric writers and the mimes of Lentulus (though I would not grant that you can understand even these, so great is the dullness of your heart), you despise the words of the prophets. But Amos will answer you: “For three and for four impieties, shall I not turn away from him? says the Lord.” For since Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, the Edomites, the Ammonites and the Moabites, and Judah and Israel too, often scorned to listen to the prophecy of God sent to them so that they might at some time repent, the Lord sets out the most just causes of the wrath he is going to bring, saying: “For three and for four impieties, shall I not turn away from them?” It is wicked, he says, to think evil: I have allowed it. It is more wicked to wish to carry out what has been thought: this too in my mercy I have kindly pardoned. Was the sin also to be completed in deed, and my clemency to be proudly trampled on? Yet even after the deed, because I prefer the repentance of the sinner to his death (for those who are well do not need physicians, but those who are sick), I stretch out my hand to the one lying down, and I exhort the one spattered with his own blood to be washed with his own tears. But if he will not repent, and when his ship is wrecked does not hold on to the plank by which he could have been saved, I am compelled to say: “For three and for four impieties, shall I not turn away from him? says the Lord”, reckoning turning away to be the punishment, when the sinner is left to his own will. Hence it is that he visits the sins of the fathers on the third and fourth generation: he does not wish to punish sinners at once, but, pardoning the first, he condemns the last; otherwise, if he were at once the avenger of crimes, the church would lack many others and certainly the apostle Paul. The prophet Ezekiel, whom we mentioned above, reporting the word of God that came to him, says: “Open your mouth and eat what I shall give you. And I looked,” he says, “and behold, a hand stretched out to me, and in it a scroll of a book. And he unrolled it before me, and on it was written, in front and behind, lamentation and song and woe.” The first writing concerns you, if only you are willing to repent after your offence; the second concerns the saints, who are called to God's song (for praise is not beautiful in the mouth of a sinner); the third concerns those like you, who in despair have given themselves over to uncleanness and sexual immorality and to the belly and to what is below the belly, who think that everything ends with death and that there is nothing after death, and who say: “If the storm passes, it will not come upon us.” That book which the prophet devours is the whole series of the Scriptures, in which the penitent is lamented, the righteous is sung, and the one who despairs is cursed. Nothing is so opposed to God as an impenitent heart; it is the only crime that cannot obtain pardon. For if one who ceases to sin is pardoned after sin, and one who asks moves the judge, but every impenitent person provokes the judge to anger, the crime of despair alone is incurable. Moreover, so that you may know that the Lord daily calls sinners to repentance, and that, if they remain hard, they turn him from merciful to severe and stern, hear the words of Isaiah: “And the Lord of hosts called in that day to weeping and mourning and baldness and girding with sackcloth; but they made gladness and rejoicing, slaying calves and sacrificing sheep, to eat flesh and drink wine, saying: Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die.” After these words and the boldness of a lost mind, Scripture records: “And these things were revealed in the ears of the Lord of hosts: This sin shall not be forgiven you until you die.” For if they die to sin, then their sin will be forgiven them; but as long as they live in sin, it will not be forgiven.

Spare your soul, I beg you. Believe that God's judgment is to come; remember by what a bishop you were ordained deacon. It is no wonder that a man, however holy, could be deceived in choosing a man, since even God repents that he anointed Saul as king, and among the twelve apostles Judas was found a traitor, and of men once of your order, Nicolaus of Antioch is reported to have been the author of all uncleanness and of the heresy of the Ophites. I do not now rehearse to you the stories that you have violated several virgins, that noble marriages violated by you have been punished by the public sword, that you have run impure and gluttonous through the brothels. These are indeed great in their own weight, but they become lighter by comparison with what I am about to bring against you. I ask you, how great is a crime where sexual immorality and adultery are too little? Most unhappy of mortals, do you enter that cave in which the Son of God was born, and truth sprang from the earth, and the earth yielded its fruit, to arrange an act of sexual immorality? Are you not afraid that the infant may cry from the manger, that the virgin who gave birth may see you, that the mother of the Lord may behold you? Angels cry out, shepherds run, a star shines from above, magi worship, Herod is terrified, Jerusalem is troubled, and you creep into the chamber of a virgin to deceive a virgin? I tremble, wretch that I am, and shudder in mind as in body as I wish to set your work before your eyes. The whole church was resounding with Christ the Lord in the night vigils, and in the tongues of various peoples one Spirit was singing together in praise of God; you, between the doors of what was once the Lord's manger and is now an altar, were tucking in love letters, which that wretched girl would afterwards find and read as if kneeling to pray; then you stood in the choir of those singing psalms and spoke with shameless nods.

O the abomination, I cannot go further. Sobs break out before words, and with indignation and grief together my breath is choked in the very passage of my throat. Where is that sea of Tullian eloquence? Where is the torrent of Demosthenes? Now, now surely you would both be dumb and your tongues would grow numb. A thing has been found that no eloquence can unfold; a deed has been discovered which no mime could feign, no buffoon act, no Atellan player utter. It is the custom in the monasteries of Egypt and Syria that both virgin and widow, who have vowed themselves to God and, renouncing the world, have trampled on all its delights, offer their hair to the mothers of the monasteries to be cut off; not that they will afterwards go about with head uncovered, contrary to the apostle's will, but bound and veiled alike. No one knows of this except those who cut and those who are shorn, except that, because it is done by all, it is almost known to all. And this has passed from custom into nature for a double reason: either because they do not go to the baths or because they know no oil on head or face, lest they be overrun by the small creatures that usually breed in untended hair and by caked dirt.

Let us see, then, what you, good man, did in the midst of all this. In that venerable cave, as pledges of a future marriage, you receive her hair, you carry off the unhappy girl's handkerchiefs and girdle as a dowry pledge, you swear to her that you will love no other woman in the same way. Then you run to the place of the shepherds and, while the angels' song sounds from above, you swear to the same words. I say nothing more, that you rushed into kisses, that you embraced. Anything indeed can be believed of you, but reverence for the manger and the field does not let me believe more than that you fell in will and intention only. Wretch! When you began to stand in the cave with the virgin, did your eyes not grow dim, your tongue go numb, your arms fall, your breast tremble, your step falter? After the basilica of the apostle Peter, in which she was consecrated with Christ's veil; after the holy places of the Lord's cross and resurrection and ascension, at which she had again promised that she would live in a monastery, do you dare to take the hair, to sleep with you at night, which she had cut off for Christ in the cave? Then from evening till morning you sit at her window, and because its height did not let you cling to one another close at hand, you receive or send things by a cord. See how careful her mistress was, that you never saw the virgin except in church, and that, though both of you had such a will, you had no chance to speak except through a window at night. The sun, as I learned later, rose against your will. Bloodless, wasted and pale, to escape all suspicion, you read the gospel of Christ as if you were a deacon. We thought it the pallor of fasting, and we marvelled at your bloodless face, contrary to your custom and habit, as if worn out by vigils. Already the ladders by which you would let the wretched girl down were being prepared; already the journey was arranged, ships decided on, the day agreed, the flight accomplished in mind; and behold, that angel, the doorkeeper of Mary's chamber, the guardian of the Lord's cradle and bearer of the infant Christ, before whom you were doing such things, himself betrayed you.

O my ill-fated eyes! O that day, most worthy of every curse, on which with dismayed mind I read your letters, which we keep to this day! What obscenities were there! What endearments! What exultation over the agreed sexual immorality! Could a deacon, I will not say speak these things, but even know them? Where, wretch, did you learn them, you who boasted that you had been brought up in the church? Except that in those same letters you swear that you were never chaste, never a deacon. If you choose to deny it, your hand will convict you; the very letters will cry out. Meanwhile keep the gain of your crime: I cannot set before you what you wrote.

So you lie rolled at my knees; you beg for a half-pint of blood, to use your own words, and (O wretched man!), neglecting the judgment of God, you fear only me, as if I were your avenger. I forgave you, I admit; for what else could I, a Christian, do to you? I urged you to repent, to roll in sackcloth and ashes, to seek solitude, to live in a monastery, to win the mercy of God by continual tears. But you, pillar of good hope, inflamed by the goads of a serpent, have become to me a crooked bow and shoot arrows of abuse against me. I have become your enemy by telling the truth. I do not grieve over the curses (for who does not know that nothing but what is shameful is praised by your mouth?); I lament this, that you do not lament yourself, that you do not feel that you are dead, that like a gladiator made ready for Libitina you are adorned for your own funeral. You clothe yourself in linen, you load your fingers with rings, you polish your teeth with powder; you arrange the few hairs on your reddened scalp; your bull's neck swells with rolls of fat, and it does not bend, even though it is broken. On top of this you reek of ointments, you change baths, and you fight against the hair that grows again; through the forum and the squares you walk sleek and polished, a lover. You have the face of a harlot; you do not know how to blush. Turn, wretch, to the Lord, that the Lord may turn to you; repent, that he too may repent of all the evils which he has spoken, to do them to you.

Why, neglecting your own wound, do you strive to defame others? Why do you tear me with your bite like a madman, when I give you good and careful counsel? Suppose I am a shameful man, as you publicly boast: at least repent with me. Suppose I am a criminal, as you allege: imitate the tears of a criminal. Are my sins your virtues? Or do you think it a comfort in your evils if you have many like you? Let a few tears flow from your eyes amid the silk and linen in which you think yourself splendid and handsome; understand that you are naked, torn, filthy, a beggar. Repentance is never too late. Although you have gone down from Jerusalem, and are not merely wounded on the way, so that the Samaritan might set you on his beast and bring you back to the inn to be cared for, but lie dead in the tomb, yet the Lord raised even one who stank. At least imitate those blind men for whose sake the Saviour, leaving his house and his inheritance, came to Jericho, and a light arose for those sitting in darkness and the shadow of death. When they learned that the Lord was passing by, they began to cry out, saying: “Son of David, have mercy on us.” You too will be able to see, if you cry out so, if, when he calls you, you throw off your filthy garments. When you turn and groan, you will be saved, and then you will know where you have been. Let him only touch your scars and handle the traces of your former eyes. Though you were born so from the womb, and your mother conceived you in sins, he will sprinkle you with hyssop and you will be clean; he will wash you and you will be made whiter than snow. Why do you cling bent down to the earth, wholly in the mire? The woman whom Satan had bound for eighteen years, after she was healed by the Saviour, stood upright and looked up to heaven. Think that what was said to Cain was said to you: “You have sinned? Be still.” Why do you withdraw further from the face of God and dwell in the land of Nod? Why do you toss wholly on the sea, and do not set your feet upon the rock? Beware lest Phinehas pierce you too with his lance as you commit fornication with the Midianite woman. Why, after you have defiled your sister Tamar, a virgin, as her brother and kinsman, do you turn into Absalom and desire to kill the one who mourns for you both in rebellion and in death? The blood of Naboth cries out against you, and the vineyard of Jezreel, that is, of the seed of God, which you have turned into a garden of the herbs of pleasure and wantonness; they demand fitting vengeance on you. Elijah is sent to you, announcing torments and destruction: bow yourself down, put on sackcloth for a little while; God may be able to say of you too: “Have you seen how Ahab has humbled himself before my face? I will not bring the evil in his days.”

But perhaps you flatter yourself that you were ordained deacon by such a bishop. I have already said above that neither is the father punished for the son nor the son for the parent: “For the soul that sins, it shall die.” Samuel too had sons who departed from the fear of God and went after greed and iniquity. And Eli was a holy priest, but he had sons who, as we read in the Hebrew volume, committed fornication with women in the tabernacle of God and, just like you, shamelessly claimed for themselves the ministry of God. That is why the place of the tabernacle itself was overthrown, and the sanctuary of God was abandoned because of the vices of the priests. Yet Eli himself, by being too mild towards his sons, offended God; and so far are you from being freed by the righteousness of your bishop that it is to be feared that, on your account, he may fall from his seat and perish with an incurable backward fall. If Uzzah the Levite wished to hold up the ark of the Lord, which he should himself have carried, as if it were falling, and was struck down, what do you think will become of you, who have tried to throw down the ark of the Lord while it stood? The more worthy of approval the bishop who ordained you is, the more detestable are you, who deceived such a man. We are usually the last to know the evils of our own house, and we are ignorant of the vices of our children and wives while the neighbours sing of them. All Italy knew you; everyone groaned that you stood before the altar of Christ. Nor were you so cunning as to hide your vices prudently. You so boiled over, pleasure so snatched you here and there in your rut and wantonness, that you raised up triumphs and the palm of vices, as it were, from your sated lusts.

Then, amid the swords of a barbarian, a barbarian husband and a powerful husband, and his guards, the flame of impurity carried you away. You were not afraid to commit adultery in that house in which the wronged husband could avenge himself without a judge. You are led to the gardens, dragged to the suburban villas; you act so freely and so madly that in the husband's absence you think you have a wife, not an adulteress. Then, while she is held, you escape through some underground passages, you enter Rome secretly, you hide among the Samnite robbers, and at the first news that the husband, like a new Hannibal, had come down from the Alps upon you, you think yourself safe only on a ship. So swift was your flight that you thought a storm safer than the land. You come somehow to Syria; from there you promise that you wish to go up to Jerusalem and serve the Lord. Who would not receive a man who promised to be a monk, especially one ignorant of your tragedies and reading your bishop's letters of commendation to the other priests? But you, unhappy man, were transforming yourself into an angel of light, and, a minister of Satan, were posing as a minister of righteousness. Under sheep's clothing you lay hid, a wolf, and after committing adultery against a man you wished to be an adulterer against Christ.

I have said these things so that I might paint for you, as on a small tablet, the whole stage of your deeds, and set your acts before your eyes, lest you think the mercy and great clemency of the Lord an occasion for sins, crucifying the Son of God again for yourself and holding him up to contempt, and not reading what follows in that passage: “For land which drinks the rain that often comes upon it, and produces herbs useful to those by whom it is tilled, receives a blessing from God; but if it bears thorns and thistles, it is rejected and near to a curse, and its end is burning.”

There is an old and celebrated saying of Scripture, that there is a shame by which glory and grace are found, and again a shame which is apt to give birth to sin. Although the truth of this saying shines by its own clearness sufficiently for everyone's understanding, yet somehow it has become known to me more closely in the present case. For when I was challenged to write by your letter, which demanded this of me with wonderful entreaties, I hesitated long, I confess, about replying, since modesty commanded me to be silent. Yet the faithful urgency of your prayers resisted it most strongly and did it violence; the humility of the one entreating fought sharply with my hesitation and, with a great force of faith, beat upon the bars of my mouth. And while my mind wavered between the two and contrary thoughts weighed it, shame almost shut out duty. But the wise man's saying which I set down above armed me to drive off useless modesty and to break a harmful silence, since I saw that the very reason for writing was so honourable, so holy, that I believed I would altogether sin if I kept silent, turning over in my mind that word of Scripture: “A time to keep silence and a time to speak”; and again: “Do not hold back a word in the time of salvation”; and that of blessed Peter: “Be always ready to give satisfaction to everyone who asks you for a reason.”

For you ask, and ask with care and watchfulness, that we lay down for you from the holy Scriptures a fixed rule by which you may order the course of your life, so that, knowing the Lord's will, you may amid the honours of the world and the allurements of riches love rather the furniture of good character, and that, being set in marriage, you may please not only your husband but also him who granted marriage itself. Not to satisfy so holy a petition and so pious a desire, what else is it than not to love another's progress? I will therefore obey your prayers, and I will try to spur you, who are ready to fulfil God's will, by his own sayings. For the same true Lord and Master of all both commands us to please him and teaches us how we can please him. Let him therefore instruct you, let him teach you, who, when the young man in the gospel asked what he should do to merit eternal life, at once set before him the divine commandments, showing us that his will must be done from whom we also hope for the rewards. For this reason he testifies in another place: “Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven, he will enter the kingdom of heaven.” By this it is plainly shown that we do not merit the greatness of so great a reward by the confession of God alone, unless the works of righteousness are joined to faith.