Letters 65.22–66.15

'I will remember your name in every generation and generation; therefore the peoples will confess to you for ever and for ever and ever.' In the Hebrew: 'I will remember your name in every generation and generation; therefore the peoples will confess to you for ever and ever.' For what we translated 'will confess to you,' Symmachus has 'will praise you.' The queen, who had stood at the king's right hand in gilded clothing, and had been told to forget her people and her father's house, and to whom it had again been said, 'Instead of your fathers sons are born to you; you will make them princes over all the earth,' understanding with what glory she is to be adorned and with what rewards exalted, turns her voice to the bridegroom and promises that she will always remember the bridegroom's name in every generation and generation. What she promised we see fulfilled. She herself, being Christian, has given all of us the name of Christians, a new name, in which all the families of the nations are blessed. She remembers not in one generation but in all, signifying either all nations or two generations, of the Jews and of the Gentiles. And because it is too little if she remembers the Lord's name in two generations, therefore the peoples who are in the church will confess and praise the Lord for ever and for ever and ever. When you too, O daughter Principia, mingled with the choir of the saints, are led among the virgins to the king, and from the ivory houses delight the bridegroom in your honor, then remember me too, who, the Lord revealing it, gave you the understanding of this psalm, and say, 'I will remember your name'; so that you, who have understood a part of the song, may, if life goes with us, understand the whole Song of Songs too.

When a wound has healed, and the skin has been drawn over it into a scar, if medicine wishes to restore its color, then, in seeking the beauty of the body, it renews the pain of the blow. So I too, a late consoler, who have been unseasonably silent for two years, fear that I may now speak still more unseasonably, and, touching the wound of your heart, which has been healed by time and reason, may inflame it again by remembrance. For what ears are so hard, what heart hewn from flint and nursed on the milk of Hyrcanian tigers, that it can hear the name of your Paulina without tears? Who could look with equal eyes on a rose in bud and a swelling cluster cut down before its time, before its round opens into a cup and the whole compass of its red leaves unfolds, and see it wither? The most precious pearl has been broken; the green emerald has been crushed. Sickness shows what good health has; we feel more what we had once we have ceased to have it.

In the field of good soil we read of three yields, a hundredfold, sixtyfold, and thirtyfold; in three women joined by blood and virtue I recognize the three rewards of Christ. Eustochium reaps the flowers of virginity, Paula treads the laborious threshing floor of widowhood, Paulina keeps the chaste bed of marriage. The mother, supported by such a company of daughters, claims for herself on earth all that Christ promised in heaven. And so that one house might send out a four-horse team of holiness, and men might match the virtues of the women, Pammachius is added as companion: a true cherub of Ezekiel, kinsman, son-in-law, husband, or rather most loving brother, since holy partnerships of the spirit do not keep the names of marriage. Jesus presides over this chariot, and Habakkuk sings of these horses: 'You will mount your horses, and your riding is salvation.' With unequal pace but equal spirit they press on to the prize. The horses are of different colors, but, agreeing in will, they draw the one yoke of the charioteer, not waiting for the lash of the whip, but eager at the encouragement of his voice.

Let us say something of the philosophers too. The Stoics describe four virtues so bound to one another and mutually connected that whoever lacks one lacks all: prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance. You all have them all, yet each of you excels in one. Prudence is praised in you, justice in your mother, fortitude in the virgin, temperance in the wife. For what is wiser than one who, despising the folly of the world, has followed Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God? What more just than the mother, who, distributing her wealth among her children, taught by her contempt of riches what her children ought to love? What braver than Eustochium, who by her resolve of virginity broke through the gates of nobility and the pride of a consular family, and in the first city brought the first family under the yoke of chastity? What more temperate than Paulina, who, reading the apostle's words, 'Marriage is honorable and the bed undefiled,' and not daring to aspire either to her sister's happiness or to her mother's continence, preferred to walk safely on the lower ground rather than to totter with uncertain step on the heights? Yet from the time she once entered marriage she thought of nothing else day and night than that, having rendered the fruit of marriage, she might take hold of the second grade of chastity and, 'a woman leading the deed,' might join her husband to her resolve, not leaving him as companion of her salvation but waiting for him. And while, with frequent miscarriages and proven fruitfulness in conceiving, she did not despair of children, and put her mother-in-law's eagerness and her husband's sadness before her own weakness, she suffered something after the example of Rachel, and, instead of a son of sorrow and of the right hand, she bore the husband she longed for as her heir. And I have learned from sure sources that she did not wish to serve God's first sentence, 'Increase and multiply and fill the earth,' or the marital duty for its own sake, but desired children for this purpose: that she might bear virgins for Christ.

We read also that the wife of the priest Phinehas, on hearing of the capture of the ark of the Lord, was suddenly seized with the pains of childbirth, bore a son, Ichabod, and breathed out her life with her child amid the hands and services of the women. From the first woman is born Benjamin, that is, son of strength and of the right hand; from the second an illustrious priest of God, named after the ark. To us, after the falling asleep and repose of Paulina, the church has borne Pammachius as a monk, a posthumous child, a patrician by the nobility of father and wife, rich in alms, lofty in humility. The apostle writes to the Corinthians: 'Consider your calling, brothers, that not many are wise according to the flesh, not many powerful, not many noble.' This the beginnings of the newborn church required, that the mustard seed might grow little by little into a tree, that the leaven of the Gospel might gradually raise the whole lump of the church. In our times Rome possesses what the world did not know before. Then there were few wise, powerful, noble Christians; now there are many monks who are wise, powerful, noble. Of them all my Pammachius is wiser, more powerful, more noble: great among the great, first among the first, the commander-in-chief of monks. Such children Paulina has borne us by her death, whom in life she longed to possess. 'Rejoice, barren one, who do not bear; break forth and cry, you who are not in labor,' because you have suddenly borne as many sons as there are poor in Rome.

The glowing gems which once adorned her neck and face now fill the bellies of the needy; her silk dresses and gold drawn into threads have been changed into soft woollen garments, to keep out the cold, not to lay ambition bare; virtue now spends what was once the furniture of luxury. That blind man, stretching out his hand and often crying out where no one is, is Paulina's heir and Pammachius's co-heir; that man maimed in his feet, dragging himself along with his whole body, is supported by the tender hand of a girl. The doors that once poured out crowds of callers are now besieged by the wretched. One, with a swollen belly, is in labor with death; another, tongueless and dumb, not even having the means to ask, asks the more because he cannot ask; this one, crippled from childhood, begs alms not for himself; that one, rotting with jaundice, outlives his own corpse. 'Not if I had a hundred tongues and a hundred mouths could I run through all the names of the punishments.' With this army for escort he goes forth; in them he cherishes Christ; by their squalor he is made white; a giver of shows to the poor, a candidate of the needy, he thus hastens to heaven. Other husbands scatter violets, roses, lilies, and purple flowers over their wives' tombs and console the grief of their hearts with these offices; our Pammachius waters the holy ashes and venerable bones with the balsam of almsgiving. With these spices and odors he cherishes the resting ashes, knowing that it is written: 'As water extinguishes fire, so almsgiving sins.' How great are the virtues of mercy and with what rewards it is to be crowned, the blessed Cyprian sets out in a large volume, and Daniel's counsel proves it, who knew that the most impious king, if he had been willing to listen to him, could be saved by supporting the poor. The mother rejoices in such an heir of her daughter; she does not grieve that the wealth has passed to another, since she sees it distributed to the same persons to whom she herself had wished it given. Rather, she rejoices that her own wishes are fulfilled without her own labor; for it is not a lessening of the substance but a change of the workman.

Who would believe this: that the great-grandson of consuls, the glory of the Furian line, should walk among the purple of senators clad in a dark tunic; that he should not blush before the eyes of his companions, that he should himself laugh at those who laughed at him? 'There is a shame that leads to death, and there is a shame that leads to life.' The first virtue of a monk is to despise the judgments of men and always to remember the apostle's words: 'If I still wished to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.' Something similar the Lord says to the prophets: that he had made their face like a bronze city, a stone of adamant, and an iron pillar, so that they should not fear the insults of the people, but crush the impudence of mockers with the firmness of their brow. Minds liberally educated are more easily overcome by shame than by fear, and those whom tortures do not conquer shame sometimes does. It is no small thing for a noble man, an eloquent man, a rich man, to avoid the company of the powerful in the streets, to mix with the crowds, to cling to the poor, to associate with rustics, to become one of the common people instead of a leader. But the humbler he is, the more exalted he is.

A pearl shines in filth, and the brilliance of a very pure gem gleams even in mud. This is what the Lord promised: 'Those who glorify me I will glorify.' Let others understand this of the future, when grief is turned into joy and, while the world passes away, the crown of the saints does not pass; I see the promises fulfilled even in the present. Before he served Christ with his whole mind, he was known in the senate; but many others too wore the insignia of proconsuls. The whole world is full of honors of this kind. He was first, but among the first; he preceded others in dignity, but he also followed others. However bright, honor grows cheap in a crowd, and among good men dignity itself becomes undignified when many unworthy men possess it. Hence Tully says excellently of Caesar: 'While he wished to adorn certain men, he did not honor them but disgraced the ornaments themselves.' But now all the churches of Christ speak of Pammachius. The world admires as a poor man him whom until now it did not know as a rich one. What is more illustrious than the consulship? It is a yearly honor, and when another has succeeded, the former ceases. Laurels lie hidden in the crowd, and triumphs are sometimes polluted by the squalor of the triumphant. What was once handed down from hand to hand among the patricians and possessed by the nobility alone, of which Marius, conqueror of Numidia, of the Teutons, and of the Cimbri, was thought unworthy because of the newness of his family, which Scipio earned by his merit before his years, is now possessed by the army alone, and the gleaming embroidered robe wraps bodies lately rustic. So we have received more than we gave. We have let small things go and possess great things; the promises of Christ are repaid with hundredfold interest. In such a field Isaac once sowed, who, ready for death, carried a Gospel cross before the Gospel.

'If you wish,' he says, 'to be perfect, go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and come, follow me.' 'If you wish to be perfect': great things are always left to the choice of the hearers. And so the apostle does not command virginity, because the Lord, speaking of the eunuchs who had castrated themselves for the kingdom of heaven, added at the end: 'Let him who can receive it receive it.' For 'it depends not on him who wills or on him who runs, but on God who shows mercy.' 'If you wish to be perfect': no necessity is laid on you, so that your will may obtain the reward. If, then, you wish to be perfect and desire to be what the prophets were, what the apostles were, what Christ is, sell not part of your substance, lest fear of poverty become an occasion of unbelief and you perish with Ananias and Sapphira, but all that you possess. And when you have sold it, give it to the poor, not to the rich, not to the proud. Give to support necessity, not to increase wealth. And when you read the apostle's words, 'You shall not muzzle the ox that treads out the grain,' and 'The worker is worthy of his wage,' and 'Those who minister at the altar share in the altar,' remember this sentence too: 'Having food and clothing, we are content with these.' Where you see dishes smoking and pheasants being slowly cooked in the steam, where there is a weight of silver, spirited ponies, long-haired boys, costly clothes, painted tapestries, where the one to be given to is richer than the giver, it is a kind of sacrilege to give the property of the poor to those who are not poor. And yet it is not enough for a perfect and accomplished man to despise wealth, to scatter money and throw away what can be both lost and found in a moment. Crates of Thebes did this, Antisthenes did it, very many did it whom we read were most vicious. The disciple of Christ ought to do more than the disciple of the world; the philosopher is an animal of glory and a venal slave of popular favor and rumor. It is not enough for you to despise wealth unless you follow Christ. And he follows Christ who forsakes sins and is a companion of the virtues. We know Christ to be wisdom. This is the treasure born in the field of the Scriptures, this is the gem bought with many pearls. But if you have fallen in love with the captive woman, that is, secular wisdom, and have been captivated by her beauty, shave her head and cut off the allurements of her hair and the ornaments of words together with her dead nails. Wash her with the prophetic nitre, and then, resting with her, say: 'His left hand is under my head, and his right hand will embrace me.' The captive will give you many children, and from a Moabitess she will be made an Israelite. Christ is sanctification, without which no one will see the face of God; Christ is redemption, himself both redeemer and price; Christ is all, so that he who has left all for Christ may find one in place of all and may cry out freely: 'The Lord is my portion.'

I perceive that you are burning with divine studies, and do not, like the rashness of some, teach what you do not know, but first learn what you are to teach. Your simple letters smell of the prophets and taste of the apostles. You do not affect a buskined eloquence or, like boys, build pointed little epigrams at the ends of your sentences. Swelling foam quickly dissolves, and a swelling, however large, is contrary to health. That saying of Cato is well known: 'Quick enough, if good enough.' We laughed at it once as young men, when an orator of the first rank quoted it in a little preface. I think you remember our shared error, when the whole Athenaeum rang with the voices of the students: 'Quick enough, if good enough.' 'The arts would be happy,' says Fabius, 'if only artists judged them.' No one can know a poet except one who can compose verse; no one understands philosophers except one who knows the variety of their doctrines; craftsmen are better judges of things made by hand and plain to the eye. How hard our necessity is you may see from this, that we must stand by the judgment of the crowd, and that man in a crowd is to be feared whom, if you saw him alone, you would despise. I have touched on these things in passing, so that, content with learned ears, you may not greatly care what the rumors of the unskilled spread about your talent, but may drink daily the marrow of the prophets, an initiate of Christ, a fellow initiate of the patriarchs.

Whether you read or write, whether you wake or sleep, let the horn of Amos always sound in your ears; let this trumpet rouse your soul; carried away by this love, seek on your bed him whom your soul desires, and say confidently: 'I sleep, but my heart wakes.' And when you have found him and held him, do not let him go. And if, while you doze a little, he slips out of your hands, do not despair at once. Go out into the streets, adjure the daughters of Jerusalem, and you will find him lying at noon, weary, drunk, wet with the dew of the night, among the flocks of his companions, amid various spices, among the fruits of paradise. There give him your breasts; let him suck from your learned bosom and rest among the lots, the wings of a dove covered with silver and its inner parts with the gleam of gold. This little one, this child, who is fed on butter and honey, who is nourished among the curdled mountains, quickly grows into a young man, swiftly despoils the enemy in you, soon plunders Damascus and conquers the king of Assyria.

I hear that you have built a hospice at the port of Rome and planted a shoot from the tree of Abraham on the Ausonian shore. Like Aeneas, you are marking out a new camp, and above the waters of the Tiber, where he once, driven by hunger, did not spare the fated crusts and broad squares of bread, you are building our little village, that is, the house of bread, and making up for long hunger with sudden plenty. Well done, our friend! Passing beyond the beginnings, you at once hold the summit; from the root you come to the top; first among monks in the first city, you follow the first patriarch. Let Lot, whose name means 'turning aside,' choose the plains, and, according to the letter of Pythagoras, follow the easy, the left-hand, and the perishing; you, in the steep and rocky places, prepare a tomb for yourself with Sarah, so that the city of letters may be near, and, the giants, the sons of Anak, being destroyed, joy and laughter may receive your inheritance. Abraham was rich in gold, silver, cattle, possessions, and clothes, and had such a household that on sudden news he could arm an army of chosen young men and overtake and kill at Dan the four kings from whom five kings had fled. And yet, after he had deserved, by frequent hospitality, while not refusing men, to receive God, he did not order his slaves and maids to wait on the guests, and so lessen through others the good he was doing, but, as if he had found a prize, he devoted himself to hospitality alone with his Sarah. He himself washed their feet, he himself carried a fat calf on his shoulders from the herd, he stood like a servant while the strangers dined, and, himself fasting, set before them the food cooked by Sarah's hands.

I give you this advice, dearest brother, from the affection with which I love you: that you offer to Christ not only your money but yourself, a living sacrifice, pleasing to God, your reasonable service, and imitate the Son of Man, who did not come to be served but to serve, and who, as master and Lord, showed to his disciples and servants what the patriarch showed to strangers. 'Skin for skin, and all that a man has he can give for his life. But touch,' says the devil, 'his flesh, and see whether he will not curse you to your face.' The ancient enemy knows that the contest of continence is greater than that of money. What clings from outside is easily thrown off; the war within is more dangerous. We unglue what is joined, we split what is united. Zacchaeus was rich, the apostles poor. He repaid fourfold what he had stolen and divided among the poor half of the property that remained; he received Christ as a guest, and salvation came to his house; and yet, because he was small and could not stretch himself to apostolic stature, he was not among the number of the twelve apostles. The apostles, as far as riches go, left nothing, but as far as will goes, left the whole world together. If we offer Christ our wealth together with our soul, he gladly accepts it; but if we give what is outside to God and what is inside to the devil, the division is not fair, and it is said to us: 'If you offer rightly and do not divide rightly, have you not sinned?'

That you, of patrician family, have begun to be a monk, first among the first, should be an occasion not of pride but of humility for you, knowing that the Son of God became the son of man. However much you abase yourself, you will not be humbler than Christ. Suppose you go on foot, are clothed in a dark tunic, are made equal to the poor, graciously enter the cells of the needy, are an eye to the blind, a hand to the weak, a foot to the lame; suppose you carry water yourself, chop wood, build the fire: where are the chains? where the blows? where the spitting? where the scourges? where the gibbet? where the death? And when you have done all I have said, you are still surpassed by your Eustochium and Paula, if not in work, then certainly in sex. I was not at Rome (the desert held me then, and would that it had held me still!) when, in the lifetime of your father-in-law Toxotius, they were serving the world; but still I hear it: those who could not bear the dirt of the streets, who were carried in the arms of eunuchs and found uneven ground troublesome to cross, to whom a silk dress was a burden and the sun's heat a fire, now, shabby and in mourning dress and, by comparison with themselves, rather strong, trim the lamps or light the fire, sweep the floors, clean vegetables, throw bunches of greens into the boiling pot, set the tables, hand the cups, serve the food, run hither and thither. And certainly a great choir of virgins lives with them. Could they not order others to do services of this kind? But they do not wish to be surpassed in bodily labor by those whom they surpass in strength of mind. I say this not because I have any doubt about the ardor of your mind, but to urge on one who is running and increase by encouragement the fervor of one who fights keenly.

We in this province, having built a monastery and a hostel close by, lest Joseph with Mary coming to Bethlehem now too should find no lodging, are overwhelmed by such crowds of monks flowing in from the whole world that we can neither abandon the work we have begun nor bear it beyond our strength. So, since what the Gospel says has almost happened to us, that we did not first count the cost of the tower we were going to build, we have been compelled to send our brother Paulinian to our homeland to sell the half-ruined villas that escaped the hands of the barbarians, and what remains of our common parents' property, so that we may not abandon the service of the saints we have begun and give occasion for laughter to slanderers and rivals.

At the end of the letter I remembered your four-horse team, and that Blesilla is missing as a fifth; I had almost forgotten to speak of her who first of you went before to the Lord. Truly now we see five divided into three and two: she with her sister Paulina enjoys sweet sleep; you, between the two, will fly up to Christ more lightly.