The Lausiac History preface–7

Many people at various times have left many and varied writings to the world. Some, by the inspiration of grace from above, given by God, wrote for the building up and the safety of those who follow the teachings of the Saviour with a faithful purpose. Others, from a man-pleasing and corrupt purpose, ran riot in writing to comfort those who itch for vainglory. Still others, from a kind of madness and from the working of the demon who hates the good, out of pride and spite, to the ruin of light-minded people and to the staining of the spotless catholic church, slipped into the minds of the foolish to the injury of the holy way of life. So it seemed good to me also, lowly as I am, out of respect for the command of your magnanimity, most studious one, which aims at the advancement of the mind, to set out for you from the beginning, in the form of a narrative, this book. I am in my thirty-third year in the community of the brothers and in the solitary life, the twentieth of my episcopate, and the fifty-sixth of my whole life; and you long for the stories of the fathers, both men and women, those I have seen and those I have heard about, and those with whom I lived in the desert of Egypt and Libya and the Thebaid and Syene, under which lie also the so-called Tabennesiots, then in Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Syria, and in the regions of the West, Rome and Campania and the places around it. I write so that, having a holy and soul-profiting reminder and an unfailing remedy against forgetfulness, you may put away through it all drowsiness that comes from irrational desire, all double-mindedness and meanness in necessities, all hesitation and smallness of soul in character, quick temper, agitation, grief, and irrational fear, and the distraction of the world, and may advance with unceasing longing in your purpose of godliness, becoming a guide both to yourself and to those with you and those under you and to the most pious emperors. Through such right conduct all who love Christ hasten to be united to God, awaiting also the departure of the soul day by day, as it is written: “It is good to depart and be with Christ”; and, “Prepare your works for the departure, and make ready for the field.” For he who always remembers death, that it will come of necessity and will not delay, will not stumble greatly. Do not misjudge the counsel of these instructions, and do not spurn the plainness and lack of elegance of the style. For it is not the business of divine teaching to speak with sophistication, but to persuade the mind with thoughts of truth, as it is said: “Open your mouth with the word of God”; and again: “Do not miss the narrative of the elders, for they too learned from the fathers.”

I, then, most studious man of God, following this saying in part, have met many of the saints. I did not do this from idle curiosity; I travelled a journey of thirty days and twice as many, and, as before God, trod on foot the whole land of the Romans, gladly accepting the hardship of travel to meet a man who loved God, so that I might gain what I did not have. For if Paul, who was far better than I and surpassed me in way of life, knowledge, conscience, and faith, made the journey from Tarsus to Judea to meet Peter, James, and John, and tells of it as a kind of boast, publishing his own labours to rouse those who live in sloth and idleness, when he says, “I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas,” not content with the report of his virtue but longing also to meet him face to face, how much more was I, the debtor of ten thousand talents, obliged to do this, not doing them a favour but helping myself. For those who wrote the lives of the fathers, Abraham and those after him, Moses, Elijah, and John, did not tell their stories to glorify them, but to help those who read them.

Knowing this, then, most faithful servant of Christ, Lausus, and admonishing yourself, bear also with our chatter for the guarding of a godly mind, which by nature is tossed about by various vices, visible and invisible, and can be calmed only by constant prayer and by minding one's own business. For many of the brothers, priding themselves on labours and almsgiving, boasting of celibacy or virginity, and trusting in the study of the divine oracles and in zealous efforts, have missed the mark of freedom from passion. Under an indiscriminate pretence of godliness they fell sick with meddlesomeness, from which are born busybodiness or evil-doing, which drive out good-doing, the mother of minding one's own business.

Play the man, then, I beg you, and do not fatten your wealth. You have in fact done this already, having reduced it sufficiently by distributing it to those in need, for the service of virtue that comes from this. Nor should you, from some impulse or irrational prejudice, to please men, fetter your free choice with an oath, as some have done: out of rivalry and love of glory they enslaved their free will to the compulsion of an oath not to eat or drink, and then again fell pitiably under it, and through love of life, listlessness, and pleasure brought forth perjury. If you partake with reason and abstain with reason, you will never sin. For the reason that governs the movements within us is divine: it banishes what is harmful and takes up what is profitable. “For the law is not laid down for the righteous.” Better is wine-drinking with reason than water-drinking with pride. Look, I pray you, at holy men who drank wine with reason, and at profane people who drank water without reason, and no longer blame or praise the material, but call blessed or wretched the intention of those who use the material well or badly. Joseph once drank wine among the Egyptians, but his mind was not harmed, for he had made his intention secure. Pythagoras, Diogenes, and Plato drank water, and among them also the Manichaeans and the rest of the company of self-made philosophers, who went so far in the licence of empty opinion that they did not know God and worshipped idols. Those around the apostle Peter also made use of wine, so that even their teacher, the Saviour, was reproached for partaking of it, the Jews saying, “Why do your disciples not fast as John's do?” And again, assailing the disciples with reproaches, they said, “Your teacher eats and drinks with tax collectors and sinners.” They would not have found fault over bread and water, but plainly over cooked food and wine. And to those who irrationally admire water-drinking and blame wine-drinking the Saviour said: “John came in the way of righteousness, neither eating nor drinking” (that is, meat and wine, for without the other things he could not have lived), “and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a wine-drinker, a friend of tax collectors and sinners,’” because he ate and drank. What then shall we do? Let us follow neither those who blame nor those who praise, but either fast with reason with John, even if they say, “They have a demon,” or drink wine in wisdom with Jesus, if the body needs it, even if they say, “Look, gluttons and wine-drinkers.” For in truth neither eating nor abstaining is anything, but faith extending itself through love into works. When faith accompanies every action, the one who eats and drinks because of faith is not condemned, “for whatever is not from faith is sin.” But since every one of those who do wrong will say that he partakes in faith, or does something else, with an irrational confidence and a corrupted conscience, the Saviour made a distinction, saying, “By their fruits you will know them.” That the fruit of those who live by reason and understanding is, according to the divine apostle, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self-control, is agreed; for Paul himself said, “For the fruit of the Spirit is” this and that. And that one who is eager to have such fruits will not eat meat or drink wine irrationally, aimlessly, or at the wrong time, nor live with a bad conscience, the same Paul said again: “Everyone who competes exercises self-control in all things.” When the flesh is healthy, he abstains from what fattens it; when it is ill, or in pain, or shares in griefs and troubles, he will use foods or drinks as medicines to heal what afflicts it, but he will abstain from what harms the soul: anger, envy, vainglory, listlessness, slander, and irrational suspicion, giving thanks in the Lord.

Having said enough on this, I bring yet another exhortation to your love of learning. Flee as far as you can from meeting men who are of no use and who adorn their skin unfittingly, even if they are orthodox, not to speak of heretics, who do harm by their hypocrisy, even if they seem to drag out a long span of time with grey hairs or wrinkles. For even if you suffer no harm from them because of the nobility of your character, at least you will be made slack or puffed up by laughing at them, which is harm to you. But, as through a bright window, seek out the company of holy men and women, so that through them, as in a finely written book, you may clearly see your own heart also, being able by comparison to test your own sloth or negligence. For the complexion of their faces blooming with grey hair, the arrangement of their clothing, the modesty of their words, the reverence of their speech, and the grace of their thoughts will strengthen you, even if you happen to be in listlessness. “For a man's attire and the step of his foot and the laughter of his teeth tell about him,” as Wisdom says.

Beginning my narratives, then, I will leave unknown to you none of them, neither those in the cities nor those in the villages or deserts. For it is not the place where they lived that is to be sought, but the manner of their purpose.

When I first set foot in the city of Alexandria, in the second consulship of Theodosius the Great, the emperor, who is now among the angels because of his faith in Christ, I met there a wonderful man, adorned in every way in character and in knowledge, Isidore the presbyter, guest-master of the church of Alexandria. He was said to have accomplished the first contests of his youth in the desert; I even saw his cell on the mountain of Nitria. I found him an old man of seventy years; he lived fifteen years more and died in peace. To the very end he wore no linen except a headband, never bathed, and never ate meat. Yet by grace his little body was so well knit that all who did not know his way of life expected that he lived in luxury. If I wished to tell of the virtues of his soul one by one, time would fail me. He was so kind and peaceable that even his enemies, the unbelievers, revered his very shadow because of his great goodness. He had such knowledge of the holy Scriptures and of the divine teachings that even at the brothers' meals his mind would go out of itself and he would fall silent; and when he was asked to tell what happened in the ecstasy, he said, “I was away from home in my mind, caught up by a kind of contemplation.” I myself knew him often to weep at table, and when I asked the reason for his tears, I heard him say, “I am ashamed to partake of irrational food, being rational and bound to live in a paradise of delight because of the authority given us by Christ.” He was known to the whole senate at Rome and to the wives of the great men, from the time when he went there first with Athanasius the bishop and afterwards with Demetrius the bishop. And though he abounded in wealth and plenty of goods, he made no will when he died and left no money, nor any property to his own sisters, who were virgins; instead he commended them to Christ, saying, “He who created you will provide for your life, as he did for mine.” With his sisters there was a community of seventy virgins.

When I visited him as a young man and asked to be grounded in the solitary life, while my age was still lusty and needed not words but bodily labours, he, like a good breaker of colts, led me out of the city to the place called the Solitudes, five miles away,

and handing me over to a certain Dorotheus, a Theban ascetic who was in his sixtieth year in a cave, he told me to complete three years with him to tame my … passions; for he knew that the old man lived in great hardship. He instructed me to come back to him afterwards for spiritual teaching. But I could not complete the three years, for I fell ill, and so I was taken away from him before the three years were up; for his diet was squalid and very dry. All day long, in the heat, in the desert by the sea, he gathered stones, and continually building with them and making cells, he gave them over to those who could not build, completing one cell each year. Once when I said to him, “What are you doing, father, at such an age, killing your little body in this heat?” he answered, “It kills me; I kill it.” He ate six ounces of bread and a bunch of small herbs, and drank water in proportion. As God is my witness, I never knew him to stretch out his feet or to sleep on a reed mat or on a bed; but all night long he sat plaiting rope of palm fronds to earn his food. Supposing that he did this because I was there, I inquired carefully and learned exactly from others, his disciples, who lived on their own, who said that he had lived this way from his youth, never once lying down to sleep on purpose; only when he was working or eating he would close his eyes, overcome by sleep, so that often the morsel even fell from his mouth at mealtime from excess of drowsiness. Once when I was urging him to lie down for a little on the mat, he said, much grieved, “If you persuade the angels to sleep, you will persuade the zealous man too.”

Once, about the ninth hour, he sent me to his well to fill the bucket for our meal. When I got there I happened to look down and see an asp in the well, and I did not draw the water but went and said to him, “We are dead, abba, for I saw an asp in the well.” He smiled gravely, looked at me for a long time, and, shaking his head, said, “If the devil chose to become a snake or a tortoise in every well and to fall into the springs of water, would you go on never drinking?” And he went out, drew the water himself, and, still fasting, drank first, saying, “Where the cross comes, no one's wickedness has strength.”

This blessed Isidore, who had met Antony of blessed memory, told me a thing worth writing down, which he had heard from him. There was a girl named Potamiaena, in the time of Maximian the persecutor, a very beautiful young woman, the slave of a certain man. Her master pressed her with many promises but could not persuade her. At last, in a rage, he handed her over to the then prefect of Alexandria, giving her up as a Christian who reviled the times and the emperors for the persecutions. With money he instructed him: “If she agrees to my purpose, keep her unpunished; but if she persists in her severity, I ask you to have her punished, so that she may not live to laugh at my debauchery.” She was brought before the tribunal, and her resolve was assailed with various instruments of torture. Among these the judge ordered a great cauldron to be filled with pitch and a fire lit beneath it. When the pitch was boiling and burning fiercely, he put the choice to her: “Either go and submit to your master's wishes, or know that I order you to be lowered into the cauldron.” She answered, “Never may there be such a judge as orders submission to debauchery.” In a rage he ordered her to be stripped and thrown into the cauldron. But she cried out, “By the head of your emperor whom you fear, if you have decided to punish me in this way, order me to be lowered into the cauldron little by little, so that you may know how much endurance Christ, whom you do not know, gives me.” And being lowered little by little over the space of about an hour, she breathed her last when the pitch reached her neck.

Very many men and women were perfected in the church of the Alexandrians, worthy of the land of the meek. Among them was Didymus the writer, who was blind. I met him on four occasions, visiting him at intervals over ten years; he died at the age of eighty-five. He was blind, as he himself told me, having lost his sight at four years old, before he had learned letters or gone to teachers; for he had a strong natural teacher, his own conscience. He was adorned with such grace of knowledge that in him the Scripture was literally fulfilled: “The Lord makes the blind wise.” He interpreted the Old and New Testaments word by word, and he gave such care to doctrines, setting out the account of them subtly and powerfully, that he surpassed all the ancients in knowledge. Once he was urging me to offer a prayer in his cell, and when I was unwilling, he told me this story: “The blessed Antony came into this cell for the third time to visit me, and when I asked him to offer a prayer, he knelt at once in the cell and did not make me repeat my request, teaching me obedience by his deed. So if you are walking in the footsteps of his way of life, as a monk and a stranger for virtue's sake, put away contentiousness.”

He also told me this: “I was anxious about the life of Julian, the wretched emperor, as a persecutor, and was distressed. One day, until late evening, I had not tasted bread because of this anxiety. As I sat in my chair I happened to be overcome by sleep, and in an ecstasy I saw white horses running about with riders who proclaimed, ‘Tell Didymus: today, at the seventh hour, Julian died. Get up, then, and eat, and send word,’ they said, ‘to Athanasius the bishop, so that he too may know.’ And I noted,” he said, “the hour, the month, the week, and the day, and so it was found to be.”

He also told me about a maidservant named Alexandra, who left the city, shut herself up in a tomb, and received what she needed through an opening, for ten years seeing neither women nor men face to face. In the tenth year she fell asleep, having laid herself out; so the woman who went to her as usual and got no answer reported it to us. We forced the door, went in, and found her fallen asleep. The thrice-blessed Melania, of whom I will speak later, also said of her: “I did not see her face to face, but standing by the opening I asked her to tell me the reason why she had shut herself up in the tomb. She spoke to me through the opening, saying, ‘A man was wounded in his mind because of me, and so as not to seem to grieve him or to defame him, I chose to bring myself alive into the tomb rather than cause a soul made in the image of God to stumble.’ When I said,” she continued, “‘How then do you endure, meeting no one but wrestling with listlessness?’ she said, ‘From dawn to the ninth hour I pray hour by hour, spinning flax; in the remaining hours I go over in my mind the holy patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs. Then, having eaten my bread, I wait out the other hours in perseverance, awaiting the end with good hope.’”

In my narrative I will not pass over those also who lived in contempt of the good, to the praise of those who succeeded and for the safety of those who read. There was a virgin in Alexandria, humble in dress but haughty in disposition, exceedingly rich in money, who never gave an obol to a stranger, a virgin, the church, or a poor person. Despite many admonitions from the fathers she would not rid herself of her material goods. She had relatives too, and she adopted as her child her own sister's daughter, to whom night and day she promised her property, having fallen from the heavenly longing. For this too is a form of the devil's deceit: he prepares people to labour for greed under the pretext of love for their kin. That he does not care about family is agreed, since he teaches the murder of brothers, mothers, and fathers. Even if he seems to instil concern for relatives, he does it not out of goodwill toward them but to train the soul in injustice, knowing the sentence: “The unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God.” One who is moved by divine prudence can, without despising his own soul, also give comfort to his relatives if they are in want. But when someone subjects his whole soul to concern for relatives, he falls under the law, reckoning his own soul as a vain thing. The holy psalmist sings of those who care for their soul in fear: “Who shall ascend into the mountain of the Lord?” (that is, rarely) “or who shall stand in his holy place? He who is innocent in hands and pure in heart, who has not taken his soul in vain.” Those take it in vain who neglect the virtues, thinking that it is dissolved together with the flesh.

This virgin the most holy Macarius, the presbyter who was in charge of the hospital for cripples, wished, as the saying goes, to bleed, to relieve her of her greed, and he devised this scheme. In his youth he had been a stone-cutter, what they call a gem-engraver. He went and said to her, “Some fine stones, emeralds and hyacinths, have fallen into my hands, and whether they were found or stolen I cannot say. They are beyond price, being past valuation, but the owner is selling them for five hundred gold coins. If you would like to take them, you can recover the five hundred coins from one stone and use the rest to adorn your niece.” The virgin, hanging on his words, took the bait and fell at his feet, saying, “I clasp your feet: do not let anyone else take them.” He urged her, “Come to my house and see them.” But she would not; she threw the five hundred coins to him, saying, “Take them as you wish; I do not want to see the man who is selling them.” He took the five hundred coins and gave them for the needs of the hospital.

Time went by, and because the man was held in great esteem in Alexandria as one who loved God and was merciful (he flourished to a hundred years, and we too spent time with him), she was afraid to remind him. At last she found him in the church and said to him, “Please, what do you say about those stones for which we gave the five hundred coins?” He answered, “From the moment you gave me the gold I paid it out for the price of the stones. If you wish to come and see them in the hospital, for they lie there, come and see whether they please you; if not, take back your gold.” She came most gladly. The hospital had women on the upper floor and men on the lower. He brought her in at the gate and said to her, “What do you want to see first, the hyacinths or the emeralds?” She said to him, “As you think best.” He took her up to the upper floor and showed her women who were maimed and had disfigured faces, and said to her, “Look, the hyacinths.” Then he brought her down again and, showing her the men, said, “Look, the emeralds. If they please you, well; if not, take back your gold.” So she went out put to shame, and going home she fell ill from great grief that she had not done the thing for God's sake. Later she gave thanks to the presbyter, when the girl she had cared for died childless after her marriage.

After meeting and living for three years with the monasteries around Alexandria, with excellent and most zealous men, about two thousand of them, I withdrew from there and came to the mountain of Nitria. Between this mountain and Alexandria lies a lake called Mareotis, seventy miles long. I crossed it in a day and a half and came to the mountain on its southern side. Next to this mountain lies the great desert, stretching as far as Ethiopia, the Mazices, and Mauretania. On this mountain live about five thousand men with different ways of life, each as he can and as he wishes, so that one may live alone, or with one other, or with many. On this mountain there are seven bakeries which serve both them and the anchorites of the great desert, six hundred men. I lived on this mountain for a year and was greatly helped by the blessed fathers Arsisius the Great, Putubastes, Asion, Cronius, and Serapion; and spurred on by many stories of the fathers told by them, I went into the innermost desert.

On this mountain of Nitria there is a great church, in which stand three palm trees, each with a whip hanging from it. One is for monks who do wrong, one for robbers if any fall into their hands, and one for visitors who happen by; so that all who do wrong and are convicted as deserving blows embrace the palm tree, receive a fixed number of strokes on the back, and are so released. Next to the church is a guest house, where they welcome a stranger who arrives for as long as he wishes until he leaves of his own accord, even if he stays two or three years. They allow him one week of idleness, and for the rest of the days they occupy him with work, in the garden, the bakery, or the kitchen. If he is a man of note, they give him a book, and do not let him meet anyone until the sixth hour. On this mountain live also doctors and pastry-cooks. They use wine too, and wine is sold. All of them work linen with their hands, so that none is in need. And indeed, about the ninth hour one can stand and hear how psalmody rises from each dwelling, so that one might think oneself caught up into paradise. They go to the church only on Saturday and Sunday. There are eight presbyters who lead this church; as long as the first presbyter lives, no other offers the sacrifice, preaches, or judges, but they only sit quietly beside him.

This Arsisius and many other old men with him, whom we have seen, were contemporaries of the blessed Antony. Among other things they said that they knew Amoun of Nitria, whose soul Antony saw being taken up and escorted by angels. He said that he also knew Pachomius of Tabennesi, a prophet, archimandrite of three thousand men, of whom I will tell later.