The Lausiac History 18–20

The other Macarius, the Alexandrian, I did meet; he was presbyter of the place called the Cells. I lived in these Cells for nine years, and he survived three of my years there. Some things I saw, some I heard from him, and some I learned from others. His asceticism was this: whatever he ever heard of, he achieved completely. Hearing from some people that the Tabennesiots eat uncooked food throughout Lent, he decided for seven years to eat nothing that had passed through fire, and apart from raw vegetables, when any were to be found, and soaked pulse, he tasted nothing else. Having achieved this virtue, he heard again of someone else that he ate a pound of bread; so he broke up his biscuit, put the pieces into a jar, and decided to eat only as much as his hand could bring up. As he told it, jesting, “I would grab several pieces, but I could not get them all out because of the narrowness of the opening; for the tax-collector would not let me eat nothing at all.” He kept this practice for three years, eating four or five ounces of bread and drinking as much water, and a pint of oil in the year.

Another of his ascetic practices: he determined to overcome sleep, and he told us that he did not go under a roof for twenty days in order to conquer sleep, burned by the heat by day and shrivelled by the cold at night. And as he said, “If I had not gone under a roof quickly and taken some sleep, my brain would have dried up so much as to drive me out of my mind at last. As far as it depended on me, I conquered; as far as it depended on nature, which needs sleep, I gave way.”

Once, as he sat in his cell in the morning, a gnat settled on his foot and stung him; in pain he crushed it with his hand when it was full of blood. Condemning himself for having avenged himself, he sentenced himself to sit naked for six months in the marsh of Scetis, which is in the great desert, where the gnats pierce even the hides of wild boars, being like wasps. So he was bitten all over and broke out in swellings, so that some thought he had elephantiasis. When he came back to his cell after six months, he was recognized as Macarius only by his voice.

Once he wished to enter the garden-tomb of Jannes and Jambres, as he himself told us. This garden-tomb was made by the magicians who were once powerful at Pharaoh's court. Since they held power for a long time, they built the work of square stones, made their tomb there, and laid up much gold; they also planted trees, for the place is damp, and dug a well among them. Since the saint did not know the way, but followed the stars by guesswork, crossing the desert as one crosses the sea, he took a bundle of reeds and set one up every mile as a mark, so as to find the way back. Having travelled for nine days he drew near the place. Then the demon, who always works against the athletes of Christ, gathered up all the reeds and, while he slept about a mile from the garden-tomb, put them by his head. When he got up he found the reeds, God perhaps allowing this too for his greater training, so that he might put his hope not in reeds but in the pillar of cloud that guided Israel forty years in the desert. He said, “Seventy demons came out from the garden-tomb to meet me, shouting and flapping like crows against my face and saying, ‘What do you want, Macarius? What do you want, monk? Why have you come to our place? You cannot stay here.’ I said to them,” he said, “‘Let me only go in and look, and I will go away.’ So I went in,” he said, “and found a small bronze bucket hanging, and an iron chain over the well, by now consumed with age, and pomegranate fruit with nothing inside, because it had been dried up by the sun.” So he turned back and came home in twenty days. When the water he carried and his loaves ran out, he was in great distress. And when he was near collapse, a girl appeared to him, as he told it, wearing clean linen and holding a jar dripping with water. He said she was about a stade away from him, and he walked for three days, seeing her with the jar as though standing still but unable to reach her, as in dreams; but sustained by the hope of drinking he held out. After her a herd of antelopes appeared, one of which stood still with a calf (there are many in those places). And as he said, her udder was flowing with milk. So he went under the antelope, sucked, and was satisfied. And the antelope came as far as his cell, suckling him and not letting her own calf near.

Another time, while digging a well near some brushwood, he was bitten by an asp, a deadly creature. He took it in both hands, gripped it by the jaws, and tore it apart, saying to it, “If God did not send you, how did you dare to come at me?”

He had several cells in the desert: one in Scetis, in the inner great desert, one in Libya, one in the place called the Cells, and one on the mountain of Nitria. Some of them have no windows, and he was said to sit in them in the dark during Lent; another was too narrow for him to stretch out his feet; another, wider, was where he met those who came to him.

He healed so great a number of the possessed that they could not be counted. While we were there a noble virgin was brought to him from Thessalonica, who had been paralysed for many years. He anointed her with holy oil with his own hands for twenty days, praying, and sent her back healthy to her own city; and when she had gone she sent him many gifts.

Hearing that the Tabennesiots had a great way of life, he changed his clothes, put on the secular dress of a workman, and went up to the Thebaid in fifteen days, travelling through the desert. Arriving at the ascetic house of the Tabennesiots, he asked for their archimandrite, named Pachomius, a well-proven man with the gift of prophecy; but the facts about Macarius were hidden from him. Meeting him, he said, “Please receive me into your monastery so that I may become a monk.” Pachomius said to him, “You have already reached old age and cannot practise asceticism. The brothers are ascetics, and you will not bear their labours; you will be scandalized and leave speaking ill of them.” And he did not receive him either the first day or the second, for seven days. But when he held out, remaining there fasting, at last he said to him, “Receive me, abba, and if I do not fast and work as they do, order me to be thrown out.” Pachomius persuaded the brothers to receive him; the community of that one monastery numbers fourteen hundred men to this day. So he went in. A little while later Lent came, and he saw each of them practising a different way of life: one eating in the evening, one every two days, one every five days; another again standing all night and sitting in the daytime. So he soaked a large quantity of palm leaves and stood in a corner, and until the forty days were completed and Easter came he touched neither bread nor water; he did not bend his knee or lie down; he took nothing but a few cabbage leaves, and that on Sundays, so as to seem to be eating. If ever he went out for his needs, he quickly came back in and stood, speaking to no one, not opening his mouth, but standing in silence; apart from the prayer in his heart and the leaves in his hands he did nothing. When all the ascetics saw this, they rose against their superior, saying, “Where did you bring us this fleshless man from, to condemn us? Either throw him out, or know that we are all leaving you.” Having heard about his way of life, he prayed to God that it might be revealed to him who he was. It was revealed to him, and taking him by the hand he led him out to the house of prayer, where the altar was, and said to him, “Come, good old man. You are Macarius, and you hid yourself from me. For many years I have longed to see you. I am grateful to you for knocking my children about, so that they may not think great things of their own ascetic practices. Go back, then, to your own place, for you have edified us enough; and pray for us.” Then, being thus asked, he left.

Another time he told this: “When I had achieved every way of life I desired, I came to another desire. I wanted for just five days to keep my mind undistracted from God. Having decided this, I shut up my cell and the courtyard so as not to answer anyone, and I stood, beginning at the second hour. I commanded my mind, saying, ‘Do not come down from heaven. You have there angels, archangels, the powers above, the God of all; do not come down below heaven.’ I held out for two days and two nights, and so provoked the demon that he became a flame of fire and burned up everything in my cell, so that even the reed mat on which I stood was consumed by fire and I thought I was wholly ablaze. At last, struck with fear, I gave up on the third day, unable to keep my mind undistracted, and I came down to the contemplation of the world, so that it should not be reckoned to me as pride.”

I once visited this holy Macarius, and outside his cell I found lying a village presbyter, whose whole head had been eaten away by the disease called cancer, so that the very bone showed at the crown. He had come to be healed, and Macarius would not receive him for an audience. I pleaded with him, “Please, have pity on him and give him an answer.” He said to me, “He is unworthy to be healed, for a chastisement has been sent to him. If you want him healed, persuade him to give up the liturgy; for he was celebrating the liturgy while committing sexual immorality, and for this he is being chastised; and God will heal him.” When I told the sufferer, he agreed, swearing not to serve as a priest any longer. Then Macarius received him and said to him, “Do you believe that there is a God?” He said to him, “Yes.” “You were not able to mock God, were you?” He answered, “No.” He said to him, “If you recognize your sin and the chastisement of God for which you have suffered this, amend yourself from now on.” So he confessed the cause and gave his word no longer to sin or to celebrate the liturgy, but to embrace the lay state. And so Macarius laid his hand on him, and in a few days he was healed, his hair grew again, and he went away well.

Before my eyes a little boy possessed by an evil spirit was brought to him. He laid one hand on his head and the other on his heart, and prayed so long that he made him hang in the air. The boy swelled up like a wineskin and became so inflamed that he was red all over as with erysipelas. Suddenly he cried out and discharged water through all his senses, and when the swelling went down he returned to his former size. Macarius gave him back to his father, having anointed him with holy oil and poured water over him, and ordered that for forty days he should touch neither meat nor wine. And so he healed him.

Once thoughts of vainglory troubled him, driving him out of his cell and suggesting that, as a matter of good stewardship, he should go to Rome to heal the sick; for grace worked powerfully in him against spirits. For a long time he did not obey, but he was violently driven. So he fell down on the threshold of his cell, put his feet outside, and said, “Drag me, demons, and pull! I will not go on my own feet; if you can carry me off like this, I will go.” And he swore to them, “I will lie here till evening; if you do not move me, I will not listen to you.” After lying a long time he got up. When night came they attacked him again, and he filled a basket holding two bushels with sand, put it on his shoulders, and walked about the desert. Theosebius the cosmetor, an Antiochene by birth, met him and said to him, “What are you carrying, abba? Let me have the load, and do not trouble yourself.” He said to him, “I am troubling the one who troubles me; for when he is at ease he suggests journeys to me.” After walking about for a long time he went into his cell, his body worn out.

This holy Macarius, who was a presbyter, told us: “At the time of the distribution of the mysteries I noticed that I never gave the offering to Mark the ascetic, but an angel gave it to him from the altar; I saw only the knuckle of the hand of the one who gave it.” This Mark was a young man who knew the Old and New Testaments by heart, exceedingly meek, and self-controlled if anyone ever was. One day, when I had leisure, in his extreme old age, I went and sat by his door, thinking him above human nature, as being so ancient, and listened to what he was saying or doing. Quite alone inside, already nearly a hundred years old and having lost his teeth, he was fighting with himself and with the devil, and saying, “What do you want, you bad old man? Look, you have touched oil and taken wine. What more do you want, you grey-haired glutton?” So he abused himself. Then to the devil he said, “Do I still owe you anything? You find nothing; go away from me.” And as if humming, he talked with himself: “Come on, grey-haired glutton; how long shall I be with you?”

Paphnutius his disciple told us that one day a hyena took her cub, which was blind, and brought it to Macarius; she knocked on the door of the courtyard with her head and came in while he was sitting outside, and threw the cub at his feet. The saint took it, spat on its eyes, and prayed, and at once it could see. Its mother suckled it, took it, and went away. The next day she brought the saint the fleece of a large sheep. And the blessed Melania told me, “I received that fleece from Macarius as a guest-gift.” And what wonder is it, if he who tamed the lions for Daniel also gave understanding to the hyena?

He said that since he was baptized he had not spat on the ground, and it was sixty years since he was baptized. In appearance he was rather short, with a scanty beard, having hair only on his lip and at the tip of his chin; for through excess of asceticism not even the hairs of his beard grew. Once, when I was in listlessness, I went to him and said, “Abba, what shall I do? My thoughts afflict me, saying, ‘You are doing nothing; go away from here.’” He said to me, “Say to them: ‘For Christ's sake I am guarding the walls.’” These are a few of the many things I have recorded for you of the holy Macarius.

A man called Moses, an Ethiopian by race, black, was the slave of a government official. His own master drove him out because of his great depravity and brigandage; for he was said to have gone as far as murder. I am compelled to speak of his wickedness in order to show the virtue of his repentance. They said that he was even the leader of a band of robbers. One of his deeds as a robber is reported: he once bore a grudge against a shepherd who had hindered him with his dogs in some enterprise at night. Wanting to kill him, he went round the place where the shepherd kept his sheep, and was told that he was across the Nile. The river was in flood and about a mile wide; so he took his sword in his teeth, put his tunic on his head, and crossed the river swimming. While he was swimming across, the shepherd managed to escape him by burying himself in the sand. So he slaughtered the four best rams, tied them with a rope, and swam back again. Coming to a small farmyard, he flayed them, ate the best of the meat, sold the fleeces for wine, drank a measure of about eighteen Italian pints, and went off fifty miles to where his gang was.

This man, so great a criminal, late in life was struck to the heart by some circumstance, gave himself to a monastery, and so devoted himself to the work of repentance that he brought even the demon who had been his accomplice in evil from his youth, who had sinned with him, openly to the knowledge of Christ. Among other things it is said that robbers once fell upon him while he sat in his cell, not knowing who he was. There were four of them. He tied them all up, put them on his back like a sack of chaff, carried them to the church of the brothers, and said, “Since I am not allowed to harm anyone, what do you bid me do with these?” Then they confessed, and when they learned that this was Moses, once famous and notorious among robbers, they too glorified God and renounced the world because of his conversion, reasoning, “If this man, so capable and powerful among robbers, feared God, why do we put off our salvation?”

Demons attacked this Moses, driving him toward his old habit of sexual licence. He was tempted so severely, as he himself told, that he very nearly ran aground from his purpose. So he went to the great Isidore in Scetis and reported the war. Isidore said to him, “Do not be grieved. These are the beginnings, and that is why they have attacked you more fiercely, seeking your old habit. For just as a dog at a butcher's shop does not leave it from habit, but if the shop is shut and no one gives him anything, he no longer comes near, so you too, if you persevere, the demon will grow weary and have to leave you.” Withdrawing, then, from that hour he practised asceticism more severely, especially in food, taking nothing but dry bread, twelve ounces, doing a great deal of work, and completing fifty prayers. Though he wasted his body away, he remained inflamed and still troubled by dreams. Again he visited another of the saints and said to him, “What shall I do? The dreams of my soul darken my mind according to the habit of pleasure.” He said to him, “Because you have not turned your mind away from the imaginations of these things, you suffer this. Give yourself to vigil and pray soberly, and you will quickly be freed from them.” Hearing this counsel too, he went off to his cell and gave his word not to sleep all night and not to bend his knee. So he stayed in his cell for six years, standing every night in the middle of the cell praying, not closing his eyes; and he could not overcome the thing.

Then he set himself yet another way of life. He went out by night to the cells of the old men and the more ascetic monks, took their water jars, and secretly filled them with water; for they fetch their water from far off, some from two miles, some from five, others from half a mile. One night the demon, watching him and unable to bear it, struck him on the loins with a club as he bent over the well, and left him as if dead, not knowing what he had suffered or from whom. The next day someone came to draw water, found him lying there, and told the great Isidore, the presbyter of Scetis. He took him and carried him to the church, and he was ill for a year, so that his body and soul barely recovered their strength. The great Isidore said to him, “Stop contending with the demons, Moses; there are limits even to courage in asceticism.” He said to him, “I will not stop until my imaginations from the demons stop.” He said to him, “In the name of Jesus Christ your dreams have ceased. Receive Communion, then, with boldness. You were overpowered for your own good, so that you might not boast of having overcome passion.” And he went back again to his cell. When Isidore asked him about two months later, he said that he had suffered nothing more. He was granted such a gift against demons that we fear these flies more than he feared the demons. This was the way of life of Moses the Ethiopian, who was himself numbered among the great fathers. He died at seventy-five in Scetis, having become a presbyter, and left seventy disciples.

There is a mountain in Egypt leading to the great desert of Scetis, which is called Pherme. On this mountain about five hundred men live practising asceticism. Among them a man called Paul had this way of life: he touched no work, no business, and took nothing from anyone except what he ate. His work and his asceticism was to pray without ceasing. He had a fixed number of three hundred prayers; he would collect as many pebbles, hold them in his lap, and at each prayer throw one pebble out of his lap. He visited the holy Macarius called the citizen to talk with him, and said to him, “Abba, I am distressed.” Macarius made him say for what reason. He said to him, “In a certain village lives a virgin who has practised asceticism for thirty years. They told me about her that apart from Saturday and Sunday she never tastes food, but she draws out the whole year, week after week, eating every five days, and she says seven hundred prayers. And I was disgusted with myself because I could not say more than three hundred.” The holy Macarius answered him, “I have been sixty years saying a fixed hundred prayers, working for my food, and paying the brothers the debt of conversation, and my mind does not condemn me as negligent. But if you, saying three hundred, are condemned by your conscience, it is clear that either you do not pray them with purity, or you could pray more and do not.”