Letters 73.1–75.5

You have sent me an anonymous volume, and I do not know whether you removed the name from the title, or whether the man who wrote it did not wish to own himself the author, so as to escape the danger of debate. When I read it, I saw that the much-discussed question of the high priest Melchizedek had been carried so far, by very many arguments, that he tried to show that the one who blessed so great a patriarch was of a more divine nature and must not be reckoned among men. And at the end he dared to say that it was the Holy Spirit who met Abraham, and that he was the one seen in the form of a man. But how the Holy Spirit brought out bread and wine and received the tithes of the spoil which Abraham brought back after defeating the four kings, he did not care to touch on at all. And you ask me to reply what I think of the writer and of the question. I confess I wished to keep my opinion to myself and not to involve myself in a dangerous and contentious discussion, in which, whatever I said, I should have critics. But when I read your letter again and found on its last page that you had adjured me with remarkable entreaties not to spurn your request, I turned over the books of the ancients to see what each of them said, and to answer you as if on the advice of many.

At once, at the opening of Genesis, I found the first of Origen's homilies written about Melchizedek, in which, arguing at great length, he came round to calling him an angel; and with almost the same arguments that your writer uses of the Holy Spirit, he spoke of the heavenly powers. I passed to Didymus, his follower, and saw that he had gone over wholly to his master's opinion. I turned to Hippolytus, Irenaeus, Eusebius of Caesarea and of Emesa, Apollinaris too, and our Eustathius, who as first bishop of the church of Antioch sounded the battle charge against Arius with a most clear trumpet; and I found that the opinions of all these, by different arguments and byways, came to one meeting point: they said that Melchizedek was a Canaanite, king of the city of Jerusalem, which was first called Salem, later Jebus, and finally Jerusalem; and that it is no wonder if a priest of God Most High is described without circumcision, legal ceremonies, and descent from Aaron, since Abel too, and Enoch and Noah, pleased God and offered victims; and we read in the book of Job that he was both an offerer of gifts and a priest and sacrificed victims daily for his sons. And they say that Job himself was not of the tribe of Levi but of the line of Esau, though the Hebrews claim otherwise.

And just as Noah, drunk in his house, stripped and mocked by his elder son, provided a type of the Saviour and of the Jewish people; and as Samson, the lover of a harlot and of poor Delilah, killed many more of his enemies in death than in life, so as to express the passion of Christ; and as almost all the saints, patriarchs, and prophets expressed a figure of the Saviour in some respect; so Melchizedek too, because he was a Canaanite and not of the Jewish race, went before as a type of the priesthood of the Son of God, of whom it is said in the hundred and ninth Psalm, 'You are a priest for ever according to the order of Melchizedek.' His 'order' they interpret in many ways: that he alone was both king and priest, and exercised the priesthood before circumcision, so that the Gentiles did not receive the priesthood from the Jews, but the Jews from the Gentiles; that he was not anointed with priestly oil, as the precepts of Moses lay down, but with the oil of gladness and purity of faith; that he did not sacrifice victims of flesh and blood or receive the entrails of brute animals, but with bread and wine, a simple and pure sacrifice, consecrated the sacrament of Christ; and many other things which the brevity of a letter does not admit.

Further, they say it is treated more fully in the Letter to the Hebrews, which all the Greeks accept and some of the Latins, that this Melchizedek, that is, 'king of righteousness', was king of Salem, that is, 'king of peace', without father, without mother; and how this is to be understood is explained at once by a single word, agenealogetos, 'without genealogy': not that he was without father and mother, since Christ too, according to each of his natures, had both a father and a mother, but because in Genesis he is suddenly introduced as meeting Abraham returning from the slaughter of the enemy, and his name is recorded neither before nor afterwards. The apostle affirms that the priesthood of Aaron, that is, of the Jewish people, had both a beginning and an end, but that of Melchizedek, that is, of Christ and the church, is eternal both into the past and into the future and had no originator; and that when the priesthood is changed there is also a change of the law, so that the word of the Lord and the law of God go forth, not from Hagar the slave and Mount Sinai, but from Sarah the free woman and the citadel of Zion, out of Jerusalem. And he heightens the difficulty of the matter in his preface, saying: 'About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain.' If the chosen vessel is amazed at the mystery and confesses that what he is discussing is ineffable, how much more should we, little worms and fleas, confess only the knowledge of our ignorance, and show a very large house as if through a small hole, saying that two priesthoods, of the former and of the later people, are compared by the apostle, and that the whole argument aims to show that before Levi and Aaron there was a priest from the Gentiles, Melchizedek, whose merit so far excels that he blessed the future priests of the Jews in the loins of Abraham; and that all that follows in praise of Melchizedek refers to the type of Christ, whose advance is the mysteries of the church.

This is what I have read in the volumes of the Greeks; and as if showing very wide tracts of land on a small map, I wished to set it out without spreading out the full extent of the ideas and treatises, indicating endless matters by certain points and summaries, so that in a short letter you might learn the views of many at once. But since you ask lovingly, and all that I have learned must be poured into faithful ears, I will also set down the opinion of the Hebrews, and, so that nothing may be lacking to your curiosity, I will add the Hebrew words themselves: umelchisedech melech salem hosi lehem uaiain, uhu cohen lehel helion: uaibarcheu uaiomer baruch abram lehel helion cone samaim uares: ubaruch hel helion eser maggen sarach biadach uaiethen lo maaser mecchol. This is translated into Latin as follows: 'And Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine (he was a priest of God Most High), and blessed him and said, Blessed be Abram by God Most High, who created heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand. And he gave him a tenth of everything.' And they hold that this is Shem, Noah's first son, and that at the time Abram was born he was 390 years old, reckoned thus. Shem, in the second year after the flood, when he was a hundred years old, begot Arphaxad, after whose birth he lived five hundred years, that is, six hundred in all. Arphaxad at thirty-five begot Shelah, who himself at thirty begot Eber, whom we read begot Peleg at thirty-four. Peleg again, at thirty, begot Reu, who likewise after his thirty-second year begot Serug; of him, when he reached thirty, Nahor was born, who at twenty-nine begot Terah, who, we read, at seventy begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Add up the number of years generation by generation, and you will find three hundred and ninety years from the birth of Shem to the begetting of Abram. Abraham died in the hundred and seventy-fifth year of his age. When the reckoning is made, it is found that Shem outlived Abraham, his descendant in the tenth generation, by thirty-five years.

They also hold that until the priesthood of Aaron all the firstborn of the line of Noah, whose series and order are described, were priests and sacrificed victims to God, and that this is the birthright which Jacob bought from his brother Esau. And it is no wonder, they say, if Melchizedek went out to meet the victorious Abraham and brought out bread and wine to refresh him and his fighters, and blessed him, since he owed this by right to his descendant; and he received from him a tenth of the spoil and the victory, or else (since it is ambiguous) he himself gave Abraham a tenth of his own property and showed an ancestor's generosity to his descendant. For both can be understood, according to the Hebrew and according to the Seventy translators: that he himself received a tenth of the spoils, and that he gave Abraham a tenth of his property; although the apostle in the Letter to the Hebrews states most plainly that Abraham did not receive from Melchizedek a tenth of his riches, but that the high priest received a part of the enemy's spoils.

Salem, they say, is not Jerusalem, as Josephus and all our writers think (a name compounded of Greek and Hebrew, the absurdity of which the mixture of a foreign language shows), but a town near Scythopolis which is still called Salem today. And the palace of Melchizedek is shown there, the size of whose ruins displays the magnificence of the ancient work. Of it, too, it is written in the later part of Genesis: 'Jacob came to Succoth, that is, to the tents, and made houses and tents for himself there, and passed on to Salem, a city of the region of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan.'

It must also be considered that, for Abraham returning from the slaughter of the enemy, whom he pursued as far as Dan, which is now called Paneas, Jerusalem would have been out of the way, whereas the town of the capital, Shechem, was on his road. Of this town we read in the gospel as well: 'John was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because there was much water there.' Nor does it matter whether it is called Salem or Salim, since the Hebrews very rarely use vowels in the middle of words, and the same words are pronounced with different sounds and accents according to the will of readers and the variety of regions.

This I learned from the most learned men of that nation, who are so far from accepting that Melchizedek was the Holy Spirit or an angel that they even give him a quite definite human name. And indeed it is foolish, when something is said as a type (because Christ's priesthood has no end, and he himself, both king and priest, has given us both, so that we are a royal and priestly race, and as the cornerstone has joined both walls, so that the good shepherd might make one flock of two flocks), for some to refer it so to anagoge, the higher sense, that they take away the truth of the history and say that he was not a king but an angel shown in the likeness of a man; whereas the Hebrews strive so hard to show that Melchizedek, king of Salem, was Shem son of Noah, that they cite what is written before: 'The king of Sodom went out to meet him' (no doubt Abraham) 'after he returned from the slaughter of Chedorlaomer and of the kings who were with him, in the valley of Shaveh, that is, the King's Valley'; and of it there follows immediately: 'And Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine,' and so on. If, then, this is the king's city and the king's valley, or, as the Seventy translated, the king's plain, which the Palestinians today call the Aulon, it is clear that he was a man who reigned in an earthly valley and city.

There you have what I have heard and read about Melchizedek. It was my part to cite the witnesses; it is yours to judge their reliability. Even if you reject them all, you will certainly not accept that spiritual interpreter of yours, who, unskilled in speech and knowledge, declared with such haughtiness and authority that Melchizedek was the Holy Spirit that he proved most true the saying the Greeks sing: 'Ignorance breeds confidence; learning, fear.' After a long illness I was barely able to be free of fever in the days of Lent, and as I was preparing myself for another work I spent the few days that remained on an exposition of Matthew, and I took up again the studies I had set aside with such eagerness that what profited the exercise of my tongue harmed the health of my body.

Rumour often lies greatly in both directions, and celebrates with false report bad things of the good as well as good things of the bad. So, though I rejoice at the testimony your Holiness bears to me and at the love of the holy presbyter Eusebius, and I do not doubt that you praise me in public, I stand in fear of the silent judgement of your prudence. So I beg you, remember me all the more, and make me worthy of your praise. That you were the first to call me to this duty, and that the second part in writing was given to me, came not from carelessness toward friends but from ignorance; for had I known, I would have spoken before you.

The interpretation of Solomon's judgement in the dispute between the two harlots is plain as regards the simple history: a boy of twelve, beyond the measure of his age, judged by the inmost affection of human nature. So all Israel both marvelled at him and feared him, since clearly things in plain view would not escape one who had so wisely detected what was hidden. As for the typical senses, since the apostle says, 'All these things happened to them in figure, but they were written for us, on whom the ends of the ages have come,' some of the Greeks hold that it must be understood of the synagogue and the church, and that everything should be referred to the time when, after the cross and resurrection, the true Solomon, that is, 'the peaceful one', began to reign both in Israel and among the Gentile people. That the synagogue and the church are called adulteresses and harlots in the Scriptures there is no doubt.

At first sight this seems blasphemous. But if we go back to the prophets, namely Hosea, who took a wife of harlotry and begot children of harlotry, and afterwards an adulteress, and Ezekiel, who accuses Jerusalem as a harlot for following her lovers, spreading her legs for everyone who passed by, and building a brothel in a public place, we perceive that Christ came in order to grant marriage to harlots, to make one fold of two flocks, and, breaking down the dividing wall, to gather the sheep that were once diseased into the same pens. These are the two rods which are joined in Ezekiel and of which the Lord says through Zechariah: 'And I took for myself two rods: one I called Beauty and the other I called Cord; and I fed the flock.' The harlot in the gospel too, who washes Jesus' feet with tears, wipes them with her hair, and has all her sins forgiven, plainly depicts the church gathered from the Gentiles. I have gone over these things at the very beginning so that no one may think it unfitting if they are called harlots, one of whom by Solomon's judgement was given possession of the son. A prudent hearer may ask: how is the church a harlot, which has neither spot nor wrinkle? We do not say that the church remained a harlot, but that she was one. For the Saviour is also written to have gone to a banquet in the house of Simon the leper: not one who was a leper at the time he had the Saviour as his guest, but one who had been a leper before. Matthew too, in the list of the apostles, is called the tax collector, not because he remained a tax collector after the apostolic dignity, but because he had once been a tax collector; so that 'where sin abounded, grace might abound all the more'.

Consider at the same time what the church says against the slandering synagogue: 'I and this woman lived in one house.' For after the resurrection of the Lord and Saviour one church was gathered from both peoples. And how elegantly she says: 'I gave birth beside her in the chamber!' For the church of the Gentiles, which previously had not the law and the prophets, gave birth in the house of the synagogue, and did not go out of the chamber but came into it. So she says in the Song of Songs, 'The king brought me into his chamber,' and again, 'And indeed they will not despise you. I will take you and bring you into my mother's house, into the chamber of her who conceived me.' 'On the third day,' she says, 'after I gave birth, this woman also gave birth.' If you consider Pilate washing his hands and saying, 'I am innocent of the blood of this righteous man'; the centurion before the cross confessing, 'Truly this was the Son of God'; and those who before the passion wished through Philip to see the Lord, you will not doubt that the church gave birth first, and that afterwards the Jewish people was born, for whom the Lord prayed, 'Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.' In one day three thousand believed, and on another day five thousand. 'And we were together' (for the multitude of believers had one soul and one heart) 'and there was no one else with us in the house but the two of us': neither blaspheming Jews nor Gentiles serving idols. 'And this woman's son died in the night.' For while she follows the observance of the law and joins the yoke of the Mosaic teaching to the grace of the gospel, she is covered by the error of darkness. 'And his mother smothered him while she slept', she who could not say, 'I sleep, but my heart is awake.' Rising at midnight, she took the son from the side of the sleeping church and laid him in her own bosom. Reread the apostle's whole letter to the Galatians, and you will see how the synagogue hastens to make the church's sons its own, and how the apostle says, 'My little children, with whom I am again in labour until Christ is formed in you.' She took the living child, not to possess him but to kill him. For she did this not from love of the son but from hatred of her rival, and she put her own dead child, through the ceremonies of the law, in the bosom of the church.

It would take long to go through the details: how through the apostle Paul and the men of the church the church understood that the son who was held under the law was not hers, and recognized in the light the one she had not seen in the darkness. Then the dispute arose in the king's presence, the one saying, 'Your son is dead, and mine is alive,' and the other answering, 'You lie; my son is alive and your son is dead.' And thus they argued before the king. Then King Solomon, who is plainly to be taken as the Saviour, according to the seventy-first Psalm, which bears the title 'Of Solomon' (where there is no doubt that everything said fits, not the dead Solomon, but the majesty of Christ), feigns ignorance and pretends human feelings in accordance with the dispensation of the flesh, as in another place, 'Where have you laid Lazarus?', and to the woman with the flow of blood, 'Who touched me?'; and he asks for a sword (the sword of which he had said, 'Do not think that I have come to send peace on earth; I have not come to send peace but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man's enemies will be those of his own household'). The Lord of nature tests nature, and wishes, according to the will of both, to divide the living son between law and grace: not because he approves this, but because he says he wishes it in order to expose the slander of the synagogue. She, who did not want the church's son to live in grace or to be set free by baptism, gladly lets the boy be divided, not to possess him but to kill him. The church gladly yields him, whom she knows to be her own, to her rival, provided he at least lives with her adversary, so that he may not be divided between the law and grace and struck by the Saviour's blade. So the apostle too says: 'Behold, I, Paul, say to you that if you keep the law, Christ will profit you nothing.'

Let these things be said under the cloud of allegory. But your prudence knows very well that the rules for the shadows of tropology are not the same as those for the truth of history. If anywhere we have stumbled, and what we have written seems trivial to a wise reader, let him lay the blame on the author. For I dictated even this to a stenographer, to be taken down quickly, while lying in bed, worn out by a long illness, not to exhaust the subject but so as not to seem to refuse you something you asked at the beginning of our friendship. Pray the Lord for my health, so that after the twelve months in which I have been worn out by constant toil I may write something worthy of your wishes; and forgive me if my overflowing speech does not run in its usual course. For I do not dictate with the same grace with which I write, since in writing I often turn my pen to write again things worth reading, while in dictating I roll together in hasty speech whatever comes into my mouth. I was glad to see Caninus, who will be able to tell you how difficult and dangerous a wound of the right hand I have suffered, up to the present day on which I dictated this.

Overwhelmed by the sad news of the falling asleep of Lucinius, holy and venerable in my eyes, I have scarcely been able to dictate a short letter; not because I grieve for his lot, for I know he has passed to better things, saying, 'I will pass over and see this great sight,' but because I am tormented with longing that I did not merit to see the face of the man whom I believed would come here in a short time. True is the prophetic saying about the necessity of death, that it divides brothers, and cruel and harsh separates names most dear to each other. But we have this consolation, that it is slain by the word of the Lord, and it is said to it: 'I will be your death, O death; I will be your bite, O hell'; and in what follows: 'The Lord will bring a burning wind coming up from the desert, which will dry up all its veins and make its spring desolate.' For a rod has come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower has sprung from the virgin shoot, who says in the Song of Songs, 'I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys.' Our flower is the destruction of death; and so he died, that death might die by his death. When it is said that he is to be brought from the desert, the virgin womb is shown, which without intercourse and the seed of a man poured forth for us God as an infant, to dry up the springs of lust by the heat of the Holy Spirit and to sing in the psalm, 'In a desert land, pathless and without water, so in the sanctuary I appeared before you.' Against the harshness and most cruel necessity of death, therefore, we are raised up by this consolation, that we shall soon see those whose absence we grieve. For it is called not death but falling asleep and slumber. So the blessed apostle forbids us to be sad about those who sleep, so that we may believe that those we know to be sleeping can be raised, and after their sleep is over will keep watch with the saints and say with the angels, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.' In heaven, where there is no sin, there is glory and perpetual praise and unwearied proclamation; but on earth, where there is sedition, wars, and discord, peace must be prayed for; and peace not among all, but among those who are of good will and hear the apostolic greeting, 'Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ be multiplied'; so that his place may be in peace and his dwelling in Zion, on the watchtower, on the height of doctrines and virtues, in the soul of the believer, whose angel daily sees the face of God and with unveiled face beholds the glory of the Lord.

So I beg you, and spur on one who is already running, as they say, to miss your Lucinius as a brother, but to rejoice that he reigns with Christ, because he was taken away lest wickedness should change his mind. For his soul was pleasing to God, and in a short span he fulfilled many times. It is we who should rather be grieved for, who stand daily in the battle against sins, are stained with vices, receive wounds, and must give account for every idle word. He, now safe and victorious, looks on you from on high, supports you in your labour, and prepares a place for you beside him, with the same love and charity with which, forgetting the marriage duty, he had already begun on earth to have you as a sister, or rather as a brother, because a chaste union has no sex of marriage. And if, while still in the flesh and reborn in Christ, we are not Greek and barbarian, slave and free, male and female, but are all one in him, how much more, when this corruptible has put on incorruption and this mortal has put on immortality, 'they will neither marry nor be given in marriage, but will be like the angels in heaven'! When it is said, 'They will neither marry nor be given in marriage, but will be like the angels in heaven,' the nature and substance of bodies is not taken away, but the greatness of the glory is shown. For it is not written, 'They will be angels,' but, 'like angels'; where likeness is promised, identity is denied. 'They will be,' he says, 'like the angels,' that is, similar to angels; so they do not cease to be human beings, glorious indeed and adorned with angelic splendour, but still human beings; so that the apostle will be the apostle and Mary will be Mary, and the heresy will be confounded that promises uncertain and great things in order to take away what is certain and measured.

And since we have once mentioned heresy, with what trumpet of eloquence can our Lucinius be worthily proclaimed? When the most foul heresy of Basilides was raging through the Spanish provinces and laying waste, like a plague and disease, all the provinces between the Pyrenees and the Ocean, he held to the purity of the church's faith, and by no means accepted Armazel, Barbelon, Abraxas, Balsamus, and the ridiculous Leusibora, and the other monsters rather than names, which they draw as if from Hebrew springs to excite the minds of the ignorant and of silly women, frightening all the simple with their barbarous sound, so that they may marvel the more at what they do not understand. Irenaeus, a man of apostolic times, a disciple of Papias the hearer of John the evangelist, and bishop of the church of Lyons, relates that a certain Marcus, descended from the stock of Basilides the Gnostic, first came to Gaul and polluted with his teaching the parts through which the Rhone and the Garonne flow; that he especially seduced noble women with this error, promising them certain secret mysteries and winning their love by magic arts and the secret pleasure of their bodies; that he then crossed the Pyrenees and occupied Spain, making it his aim to seek out the houses of the rich, and in them especially the women, who are led by various desires, always learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth. He wrote this about three hundred years ago, in the books he composed with most learned and eloquent language against all the heresies.

From this your prudence can weigh what praise our Lucinius deserves, who 'stopped his ear so as not to hear the judgement of blood', and 'dispersed' all his substance, 'gave to the poor; his righteousness endures for ever'. Not content with generosity to his own country, he sent to the churches of Jerusalem and Alexandria enough gold to relieve the need of many. While many admire and proclaim this, I shall rather praise in him his fervour and zeal for the Scriptures. With what longing he asked for my little works! He sent six stenographers, since in this province there is a lack of Latin speakers and scribes, and had copied for himself whatever I have dictated from my youth to the present time; honouring not me, who am the little one and least of all Christians and, conscious of my sins, dwell among the rocks of the countryside of Bethlehem, but Christ, who is honoured in his servants and promises to the apostles, saying, 'Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me.'

So, dearest daughter, take this letter of my love for him as his epitaph, and whatever you know I can do in spiritual work, boldly command it; so that future ages may know that he who says in Isaiah, 'He has made me as a chosen arrow; in his quiver he has hidden me,' wounded with his point two men separated from each other by such distances of sea and land, so that, though they did not know each other in the flesh, they were joined by the love of the spirit. Closing greeting. May that Samaritan, that is, Saviour and Keeper, keep you holy in body and spirit, of whom it is written in the psalm, 'He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep'; so that the Watcher, which is the meaning of 'Ir', who came down to Daniel, may come to you also, and you may be able to say, 'I sleep, but my heart is awake.'