Letters 39.1–41.4

"Who will give water to my head, and to my eyes a fountain of tears, and I will weep," not, as Jeremiah says, for the wounded of my people, nor, as Jesus, for wretched Jerusalem, but I will weep for holiness, mercy, innocence, chastity; I will weep for all the virtues together in the death of one woman; not because she who has departed is to be mourned, but because we must grieve more impatiently that we have ceased to see such a one. For who can recall with dry eyes that a young woman of twenty raised the standard of the cross with such burning faith that she grieved more for her lost virginity than for her husband's death? Who can pass over without sobs her earnestness in prayer, the elegance of her speech, the tenacity of her memory, the sharpness of her mind? If you had heard her speaking Greek, you would have sworn she did not know Latin; if her tongue turned to the Roman sound, her speech had no trace at all of a foreign accent. And, what all Greece admires in the famous Origen, in a few, I will not say months, but days, she had so overcome the difficulties of the Hebrew language that she rivaled her mother in learning and singing the psalms. The lowliness of her dress did not, as in many, betray a swollen spirit; but, since she had humbled herself in her inner mind, there was no difference between the dress of her maidservants and of their mistress, except that she was more easily recognized because she went about more carelessly. Her steps faltered with illness, and her thin neck could scarcely hold up her pale and trembling face; and yet she always had a prophet or the gospel in her hands. My face is filled with tears, sobs choke my voice, and my troubled heart does not loosen my faltering tongue. When the heat of fever was consuming her holy little body, and a circle of relatives surrounded the bed of the half-dead woman, these were her last words: "Pray to the Lord Jesus that he may forgive me, because I could not fulfill what I wished." Be secure, my Blesilla, we are confident; you prove true what we say: conversion is never too late. This word was first dedicated in the robber: "Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise." But after her soul, casting off the burden of the flesh, flew back to its Maker and, after long wandering, ascended to its ancient possession, the funeral was prepared according to custom, and, with the ranks of nobles going before, a golden covering was spread over the bier. It seemed to me then that she cried from heaven: "I do not recognize the garment; this robe is not mine; this finery is foreign."

But what are we doing? About to forbid a mother's tears, we ourselves lament. I confess my feelings; this whole book is written with weeping. Jesus wept for Lazarus, because he loved him. He is not the best comforter whom his own groans overcome, whose words, his heart softened, sweat out broken in tears. I call to witness, my Paula, Jesus, whom Blesilla now follows; I call to witness his holy angels, whose company she enjoys, that I suffer the same torments of grief as you: I am her father in spirit, her foster father in love; and sometimes I say: "Perish the day on which I was born," and: "Woe is me, mother, why did you bear me, a man to be judged and condemned by all the earth?" And also: "You are righteous, Lord, yet I will speak judgments to you: why does the way of sinners prosper?" and: "My feet had almost slipped, seeing the peace of sinners, and I said: How does God know, and is there knowledge in the Most High? See, these are sinners, and, prospering in the world, they have obtained riches." But again this occurs to me: "If I should speak thus, see, I would betray the generation of your children." Does not this wave often dash against my mind too? Why do godless old men enjoy the riches of the world? Why is untried youth and sinless childhood stripped of its flower before its time? What is the reason that often children of two and three, still sucking their mothers' breasts, are seized by a demon, filled with leprosy, devoured by jaundice, while, on the contrary, the ungodly, adulterers, murderers, and sacrilegious men, vigorous and secure, blaspheme God in their health; especially since the father's unrighteousness does not overflow to the son, and "the soul that sins, it shall die"? Or if that old sentence stands, that the sins of the fathers must be repaid on the children, it would be unjust for innocent infancy to pay for the countless sins of a long-lived father. "And I said: Then in vain have I justified my heart and washed my hands among the innocent, and I have been scourged all day long." But when I thought this, at once I learned with the prophet: "And I undertook to understand; this is a labor in my sight, until I enter the sanctuary of God and understand their last end." For "the judgments of the Lord are a great deep," and "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God; how unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out!" God is good, and all that he, being good, has made must be good. The loss of a husband is inflicted: I lament what has happened, but because it so pleases the Lord, I will bear it with equanimity. An only son has been snatched away: hard indeed, but bearable, because he who gave has taken away. If I become blind, a friend's reading will comfort me. If deaf ears also deny me hearing, I shall be free from vices; I shall think of nothing but the Lord. Hard poverty, cold, sickness, and nakedness will threaten besides: I shall await the end, death, and think the evil short, since a better end will follow. Let us consider what that ethical psalm says: "You are righteous, O Lord, and your judgment is right." None can say this but he who magnifies God in all that he suffers, and, charging it to his own deserving, glories in God's mercy in adversity. "For the daughters of Judah rejoiced in all the judgments of the Lord." If Judah is interpreted "confession", and every believing soul is confessing, then whoever says he believes in Christ must rejoice in all Christ's judgments. I am well: I give thanks to the Creator. I am ill: in this too I praise the Lord's will. For when I am weak, then I am stronger, and the power of the spirit is perfected in the weakness of the flesh. The apostle too suffers something he does not want, and prays to the Lord three times about it. But it is said to him, "My grace is sufficient for you"; and to humble the pride of revelations a reminder of human weakness is set beside him, like those triumphing generals behind whom in the chariot a companion stood, saying at each acclamation of the citizens: "Remember that you are a man."

Why, then, should what must one day be suffered be hard? We grieve that someone has died: were we born to remain for ever? Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, Peter, James and John, Paul, the chosen vessel, and above all the Son of God dies; and are we indignant that someone leaves the body, who perhaps was snatched away for this reason, lest wickedness should change her understanding? "For her soul was pleasing to God; therefore he hastened to lead her out of the midst of iniquity," lest on the long road of life she should wander in devious byways. Let the dead be mourned, but him whom Gehenna receives, whom Tartarus devours, for whose punishment eternal fire burns. We, whose departure a crowd of angels accompanies, whom Christ comes out to meet, should rather be burdened if we live longer in this tabernacle of death. Because, as long as we stay here, we are away from the Lord, let that, that longing hold us: "Woe is me, that my sojourning is prolonged; I have dwelt with those who dwell in Kedar; my soul has long been a sojourner." If Kedar is darkness, and this world is darkness, because "the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it," let us rejoice for our Blesilla, who has passed from darkness to light, and, amid the ardor of her beginning faith, has received the crown of a finished work. Truly, if an untimely death had snatched her while she was thinking of worldly desire and (which God avert from his own) the pleasures of this life, she would be lamented and wept over with every fountain of tears. But now, since by Christ's favor about four months ago she was washed, as it were, in a second baptism of her resolve, and lived thereafter so that, having trampled on the world, she always thought of the monastery, do you not fear that the Savior may say to you: "Are you angry, Paula, because your daughter has become my daughter? Are you indignant at my judgment, and with rebellious tears do you reproach the one who possesses her? For you know what I think of you and of the rest of yours. You deny yourself food not from zeal for fasting but from grief. I do not love such frugality; these fasts are my adversary's. I receive no soul that is separated from the body against my will. Let foolish philosophy have such martyrs: Zeno, Cleombrotus, or Cato. My spirit rests on none but on the humble and quiet one who trembles at my words. Is this what you promised me, a monastery, since, with your dress distinguished from other married ladies, you seemed to yourself more religious? This mind that laments belongs to silk dresses. You are cut off and die, and, as if you were not going to come into my hands, you flee a cruel judge. Once Jonah too, a bold prophet, fled, but even in the depth of the sea he was mine. If you believed your daughter alive, you would never lament that she has passed to better things. This is what I had commanded through my apostle: that you should not grieve over those who sleep, like the Gentiles. Blush: you are outdone by comparison with a pagan woman. The devil's handmaid is better than mine. She imagines her unbelieving husband translated to heaven; you either do not believe or do not want your daughter to be staying with me."

But you say: "How can you forbid me to mourn, when Jacob too wept for Joseph in sackcloth and, gathering all his relatives to him, refused to be comforted, saying, 'I will go down mourning to my son in hell'; and David, with covered head, lamented Absalom, repeating, 'My son Absalom, my son Absalom! Who will grant that I might die for you, Absalom my son?'; and when a solemn mourning was held for Moses and Aaron and the other saints?" The answer to this is very easy. Jacob mourned his son, whom he thought killed, and to whom he himself was going to descend to hell, saying, "I will go down mourning to my son in hell," because Christ had not yet broken the door of paradise, nor had his blood yet quenched that flaming sword and the whirling of the cherubim who guard it; hence even Abraham, although in a place of refreshment, is written to be in the underworld with Lazarus. And David rightly wept for his parricidal son, he who did not weep for another little son after he could not obtain his life, because he knew he had not sinned. As for Moses and Aaron, it is not surprising that mourning was held for them according to the old custom, since even in the Acts of the Apostles, when the gospel was already shining, the brothers at Jerusalem made great lamentation over Stephen; and surely "great lamentation" must be understood not as the prostration of the mourners, as you suppose, but as the pomp of the funeral and the crowd at the obsequies. Finally, Scripture speaks thus of Jacob: "And Joseph went up to bury his father, and with him went up all the servants of Pharaoh and all the elders of his house and all the elders of the land of Egypt and all the house of Joseph and his brothers." And a little after: "And chariots and horsemen went up with him, and it was a very great camp." And then: "And they lamented him with a great and very strong lamentation." This solemn lamentation does not command long tears from the Egyptians but shows the splendor of the funeral. In the same way it is clear that Aaron too and Moses were mourned. I cannot praise enough the mysteries of Scripture and admire the divine sense in words, simple though they are: what does it mean that Moses is lamented, and Joshua son of Nun, a holy man, is reported buried, and yet it is not written that he was wept for? Surely this: that under Moses, that is, the old law, all were held under the sentence of Adam's sin, and, as they went down to the underworld, tears fittingly followed them, according to the apostle, who says, "And death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned"; but under Jesus, that is, the gospel, through whom paradise has been opened, joys follow death. The Jews weep to this day, and, with bare feet, rolled in ashes, they lie on sackcloth; and, lest anything be lacking to superstition, following the vain rite of the Pharisees they take lentils as their first food, showing, of course, for what dish they lost the birthright. And rightly so, because, not believing in the Lord's resurrection, they are being prepared for the coming of Antichrist. But we, who have put on Christ and have become, according to the apostle, a royal and priestly race, ought not to be saddened over the dead. "And Moses," it says, "said to Aaron and to Eleazar and Ithamar his sons who were left: You shall not uncover your heads nor tear your clothes, lest you die and wrath come upon all the congregation." "Do not tear your clothes," he says, "and show Gentile mourning, lest you die." Our death is sin. And (what may perhaps seem cruel to some but is necessary to faith) in the same Leviticus it is written how the high priest is forbidden to go to his dead father, mother, brothers, or children, so that the soul free for God's sacrifices and wholly occupied in his mysteries may not be hindered by any affection. Is not the same commanded in other words in the gospel, that the disciple should not bid farewell to his household, nor give burial to his dead father? "And he shall not go out from the holy places," it says, "and the sanctification of his God shall not be defiled, because the holy oil of anointing from God is upon him." Certainly, after we have believed in Christ and, having received the oil of his anointing, carry him within us, we ought not to go out of the temple, that is, out of the Christian resolve, not go outside, that is, mingle with the unbelief of the Gentiles, but always be within, serving the will of the Lord.

I have said this so that ignorance of the Scriptures should not give you authority for mourning and you should not seem to err reasonably. And so far I have spoken as if I were addressing one Christian woman from the crowd. But now, since I know that you have renounced the whole world, and, having cast off and trampled on its pleasures, you give yourself daily to prayer, fasting, and reading; since, after the example of Abraham, you long to go out from your land and your kindred, so that, leaving the Chaldeans and Mesopotamia, you may enter the land of promise; since you have either distributed all your little property to the poor or given it to your children before death, being dead to the world, I am surprised that you do things which, if other women did them, would seem to deserve rebuke. Her conversation comes back to your memory, her endearments, her speech, her company, and you cannot bear to be without them. We pardon a mother's tears, but we ask for measure in grief. If I think of the parent, I do not blame you for mourning; if of the Christian and the monastic Christian, the mother is excluded by these names. The wound is recent, and this touch with which I soothe it does not so much heal as irritate; yet what must be softened by time, why is it not overcome by reason? For Naomi too, fleeing famine to the land of Moab, lost both her husband and her sons. And when she was left without the help of her own, Ruth the foreigner did not leave her side. See how great a merit it is to have given comfort to a woman left alone: from her seed Christ arises. Look how much Job endured, and you will see (you who are too delicate!) that, with his eyes lifted to heaven, amid the ruin of his house, the pains of his sores, countless bereavements, and finally the plots of his wife, he kept an unconquered patience. I know what you will answer: "This happened to him as a righteous man, for testing." Then choose which of the two you wish: either you are holy and are being tested, or you are a sinner and complain unjustly, suffering less than you deserve. Why should I recount old examples? Follow present ones. Holy Melania, true nobility among the Christians of our time (with whom may the Lord grant you and me to have a share in his day), while her husband's body was still warm and not yet buried, lost two sons at once. I am going to say something incredible, but, with Christ as witness, not false. Who would not have thought that then, like one frenzied, with hair loose and dress torn, she would attack her lacerated breast? Not a drop of tears flowed; she stood unmoved, and, falling at the feet of Christ, as if she were holding him, she smiled: "I shall serve you more freely, Lord, since you have freed me from so great a burden." But perhaps she is overcome in other things? On the contrary, with what mind she despised them she proves afterwards in her only remaining son, when, giving up all the property she had, she sailed to Jerusalem as winter was already setting in.

Spare yourself, I beg you; spare your daughter, who already reigns with Christ; spare at least your Eustochium, whose young age and almost untrained childhood are directed by your teaching. The devil now rages, and because he sees one of your children triumphant, grieving that he has been crushed, he seeks in the one who remains the victory he has already lost in the one who went before. Great devotion to one's own is ungodliness toward God. Abraham gladly prepares to kill his only son, and do you complain that one of many has been crowned? I cannot say without a groan what I am about to say. When they carried you back half-dead from the middle of the funeral procession, the people muttered among themselves: "Is not this what we have often said? She grieves that her daughter was killed by fasting, because she did not have grandchildren from her even by a second marriage. How long will this detestable race of monks not be driven from the city, not overwhelmed with stones, not thrown into the waves? They have seduced a wretched lady, and how little she wanted to be a nun is proved by this, that no pagan woman ever wept for her children like this." What sadness do you think Christ felt at these words, how Satan exulted, who now, hurrying to snatch your soul and setting before you the allurements of a devout grief, while the image of your daughter is always before your eyes, wishes to kill the mother of the victorious one together with her, and to invade the solitude of the sister left behind? I do not speak to frighten you, but, as the Lord is my witness, I address you in these words as if standing before his tribunal. Those tears are detestable, full of sacrilege, most full of unbelief, which have no measure, which come near to death. You wail and cry out, and, as if set on fire by torches, you are, as far as lies in you, always your own murderer. But to such a one Jesus comes in mercy and says: "Why do you weep? The girl is not dead, but sleeps." Let the bystanders laugh: that is the unbelief of the Jews. Indeed, if you want to roll at your daughter's tomb, the angels will rebuke you: "Why do you seek the living among the dead?" Because Mary Magdalene had done this, after she recognized the voice of the Lord calling her and fell at his feet, she heard: "Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father"; that is, you do not deserve to touch the risen one whom you think dead in the tomb.

What crosses do you think our Blesilla now suffers, what torments does she bear, because she sees Christ somewhat angry with you? She now cries to her mourning mother: "If ever you loved me, mother, if I sucked your breasts, if I was trained by your counsels, do not begrudge me my glory; do not act so that we are separated for ever. Do you think I am alone? In place of you I have Mary, the mother of the Lord. Here I see many women whom I did not know before. O how much better is this company! I have Anna, who once prophesied in the gospel, and, to make you rejoice more, I have attained in three months the labor of so many years. We have received one palm of chastity. Do you pity me because I have left the world? But I grieve for your lot, you whom the prison of the world still shuts in, who daily, fighting in the battle line, are dragged to ruin now by anger, now by greed, now by lust, now by the incitements of various vices. If you want to be my mother, take care to please Christ. I do not recognize a mother who displeases my Lord." She says many other things too, which I pass over; and she prays to God for you, and for me, as I am confident of her mind, she obtains pardon for my sins, because I warned, because I encouraged, because I endured the hostility of her relatives so that she might be saved.

So, while the spirit governs these limbs, while we enjoy the leave of this life, I pledge, I promise, I vow: my tongue will sound of her, my labors will be dedicated to her, my mind will sweat for her. There will be no page that does not sound of Blesilla. Wherever the monuments of our writing reach, she will travel with my little works. Virgins, widows, monks, and priests will read of her, fixed in my mind. Eternal memory will make up for the short span of her life. She who lives with Christ in heaven will live also on the lips of men. The present age will pass, and the ages to come will follow, which will judge without love and without envy: her name will be set between Paula and Eustochium. She will never die in my books. She will always hear me speaking with her sister and her mother.

Physicians whom they call surgeons are thought cruel, and they are to be pitied. Is it not misery to grieve over others' wounds and to cut dead flesh with a merciful knife? Not to shudder at the cure, when the patient himself shudders at it, and to be thought an enemy? Such is nature that truth is bitter and vices are thought pleasant. Isaiah is not ashamed to walk naked as a sign of the coming captivity; Jeremiah is sent from the middle of Jerusalem to the Euphrates, the river of Mesopotamia, to lay down something to be spoiled among hostile nations, where the Assyrian is and the camps of the Chaldeans; Ezekiel is commanded to eat bread made of every kind of seed and baked first with human dung, then with cow's dung, and sees his wife's death with dry eyes; Amos is driven from Samaria. Why, I ask? Surely because, as spiritual surgeons cutting away the vices of sinners, they urged them to repentance. The apostle Paul says: "I have become your enemy by telling the truth." And because the Savior's words seemed hard, very many of his disciples went back.

So it is not surprising if we too offend many by disparaging vices. I have decided to cut off a stinking nose: let the man with scrofula be afraid. I want to take down a chattering crow: let the crow understand that she is rancid. Is there only one man in the Roman world who has a nose cut off by a disgraceful wound? Is Onasus of Segesta the only one who weighs out hollow words, swelling like bladders, with puffed-out cheeks? I say that some have reached some rank or other by crime, perjury, and falsehood: what is that to you, who know yourself innocent? I laugh at an advocate who needs a patron; I sneer at eloquence worth a farthing: what is that to you, who are eloquent? I want to inveigh against money-grubbing priests: you who are rich, why are you angry? I want lame Vulcan to burn in his own fires: are you his guest or neighbor, that you strive to keep the fire from the idol's shrine? I like to laugh at ghosts, the owl, the screech owl, and the portents of the Nile: whatever is said, you think it is said against you. Against whatever vice the point of my pen is turned, you cry out that you are meant; you summon me to court with hands joined, and foolishly accuse a writer of satire in prose. Do you think yourself handsome because you are called by a lucky name? As if a grove (lucus) were not so called because it has very little light (luceat), and the Parcae because they do not spare (parcant) at all, and the Furies Eumenides ("kindly ones"), and Ethiopians commonly called "silvery". But if you are always angry at the description of ugly things, I will now sing you handsome with Persius: "May king and queen want you as son-in-law, may the girls fight over you; whatever you tread on, may it become a rose."

Yet I will give you advice on what to hide so that you may look handsomer: let your nose not be seen on your face, and let your speech not sound when you talk; and so you will be able to seem both handsome and eloquent.

As for the testimonies gathered from John's Gospel that a follower of Montanus has pressed on you, in which our Savior promises that he will go to the Father and send the Paraclete: to what time they were promised and at what time fulfilled, the Acts of the Apostles testify. On the tenth day after the Lord's ascension, that is, the fiftieth after the resurrection, the Holy Spirit came down and the tongues of the believers were divided, so that each spoke in the language of all nations; when some who still hardly believed asserted that they were drunk with new wine, Peter, standing in the midst of the apostles and the whole assembly, said: "Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ear to my words. For these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is the third hour of the day; but this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 'In the last days, says the Lord, I will pour out of my Spirit on all flesh, and their sons and daughters will prophesy, and the young men will see visions, and the old men will dream dreams; and on my servants and handmaids I will pour out of my Spirit.'"

If, then, the apostle Peter, on whom the Lord founded the church, recorded that both the prophecy and the Lord's promise were fulfilled at that time, how can we claim another time for ourselves? And if they choose to answer that afterwards the four daughters of Philip prophesied, that the prophet Agabus is found, that in the distributions of the Spirit, as the apostle writes, prophets too were established among the apostles and teachers, and that Paul himself prophesied much about future heresies and the end of the world, let them know that we do not so much reject prophecy, which was sealed by the Lord's Passion, as refuse to receive those who do not agree with the authority of the Old and New Scriptures.

First, we differ in the rule of faith. We place the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit each in his own person, although we join them in substance; they, following the doctrine of Sabellius, force the Trinity into the narrow limits of one person. We do not so much seek second marriages as allow them, since Paul commands young widows to marry; they think repeated marriages so wicked that whoever does this is held an adulterer. We fast one Lent a year according to the tradition of the apostles, in agreement with the whole world; they keep three Lents a year, as if three saviors had suffered; not that it is not lawful to fast throughout the whole year except at Pentecost, but that it is one thing to offer a gift out of necessity, another out of free will. With us the bishops hold the place of the apostles; with them the bishop is third. For they have as first the patriarchs of Pepuza in Phrygia, second those they call koinonoi, and so the bishops are pushed down to the third, that is, almost the last, rank; as if religion became more distinguished if what is first with us is last with them. They shut the doors of the church against almost every sin; we read daily: "I would rather have the repentance of a sinner than his death," and: "Does he who falls not rise again? says the Lord," and: "Return to me, you returning children, and I will heal your breaches." They are rigid, not because they themselves do not commit worse sins, but because the difference between us and them is this: they are ashamed to confess their sins, as if they were righteous; we, while we do penance, more easily earn pardon.

I pass over the wicked mysteries said to be celebrated with a nursing child and a martyr-to-be. I prefer not to believe evil things; let everything that involves blood be false. The open blasphemy must be refuted of those who say that God first wished to save the world in the Old Testament through Moses and the prophets; that, because he could not accomplish it, he took a body from the virgin and, preaching in Christ under the form of the Son, underwent death for us; and that, because he could not save the world by these two stages, he finally came down through the Holy Spirit into Montanus, Prisca, and Maximilla, mad women; and that the castrated half-man Montanus had the fullness that Paul did not have when he said, "We know in part and we prophesy in part," and, "Now we see through a mirror in an enigma." These things need no refutation; to have exposed their faithlessness is to have overcome it; nor is it necessary for the short speech of a letter to overturn each of the ravings they put forward, since you yourself, knowing the Scriptures thoroughly, were not so much disturbed by their questions as wanting to learn from me what I thought.