Religious History preface

It is a fine thing to see the contests of the best of men, the athletes of virtue, and to draw benefit from them with one's own eyes. For praiseworthy things, when they are seen, appear worth acquiring and become objects of love, and they urge the spectators on to acquire them. Yet the narratives of such achievements also bring no small benefit, when they are carried by those who know to the ears of those who do not. Some say that sight is more trustworthy than hearing; yet hearing too is persuaded, judging what is said by the truthfulness of those who say it. For just as the tongue and the palate are entrusted with judging sweetness and bitterness and the other such qualities, and deliver their verdict accordingly, so hearing has been entrusted with discerning words, and knows how to separate those that bring some benefit from those that do harm. Now if the memory of beneficial narratives remained inviolate, and the injury of forgetfulness did not lie over it like a kind of mist, it would surely be superfluous to write such things down, since the benefit from them would pass very easily to later generations as well. But since time injures bodies by bringing on old age and death, and injures achievements by producing forgetfulness and dulling memory, no one could reasonably blame us for undertaking to write the way of life of these God-loving men. For just as those entrusted with healing bodies prepare medicines, fighting disease and coming to the aid of the sick, so the labor of such a work becomes a kind of medicine against harm, an enemy of forgetfulness and an ally of memory. For how would it not be absurd that poets and historians have written of brave deeds in wars, and tragedians have … and left the memory of these in writing, and others have spent their words on comedy and laughter, while we allow to be handed over to forgetfulness men who in a mortal and passible body displayed freedom from passion and emulated the bodiless nature? What penalty would we not justly pay if we overlooked the memory of these admirable contests growing dim? For if they themselves, emulating the highest philosophy of the saints of old, did not engrave the memory of those saints in bronze and letters, but took on the whole impress of their virtue and made themselves into living images and monuments of them, what pardon could we fairly obtain if we did not honor their celebrated life even with writing? And this, when the athletes and pancratiasts who compete at Olympia are honored with images, and the victorious charioteers who appear at the horse races receive this same honor. And not only these: even men … , effeminates, and those of doubtful sex, whether they are men or women, are painted on panels by the devotees of such spectacles, who strive to make their memory last as long as possible. And yet that memory brings injury to souls, not benefit. Nevertheless, those who love these paint these, and those who love the others paint the others; and although death ravages nature, they mix colors and set the likenesses of their favorites on panels, and so contrive that the memory lasts much longer than the life. But we are writing of a life that teaches philosophy and has emulated the way of life in heaven; and we paint not the features of bodies, nor do we show their impressions to those who do not know them, but we sketch the forms of invisible souls and display unseen wars and hidden combats. For such is the full armor with which the commander of their phalanx … : “Take up,” he says, “the full armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand.” And again: “Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the readiness of the gos[pel] … the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming darts of the evil one; and … of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” Having clothed them with this armor he led them into the contests. For such too is the nature of the enemies: bodiless, invisible, attacking unseen, as this same general taught when he said: “Our wrestling is not against blood and flesh, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of the darkness of this age, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Yet although the company of these saints had such adversaries, or rather, although each of them was surrounded by so many and such enemies (for they did not attack all in common, but now this one, now that one), they won so … a victory that the enemies fled and he pursued them in force and set up a trophy with no one standing in his way. It was not their nature that gave them the victory, for that is mortal and full of countless passions, but their will, which drew the divine grace to itself. For having become ardent lovers of the divine beauty, and having gladly chosen to do and to suffer everything for the beloved, they nobly bore the uprising of the passions and stoutly beat back the showers of the devil's darts; and, to speak with the apostle, pummeling the body and bringing it into subjection, they calmed the inflammations of anger and compelled the frenzy of the desires to keep quiet. By fasting and by sleeping on the ground they so lulled the passions to sleep that they forced … against the soul; and so they ended this civil war. And having thus brought peace among them, they drove out the whole mass of the enemy. For the enemies, having no thoughts that would betray what lay within, and being deprived of the cooperation of human members, could not make war. For the devil uses our own members against us. If the eyes are not enticed, and the mind does not receive evil counsels, the zeal of those who plot against us is in vain. For just as no enemy could take … walled all around and surrounded on every side by deep ravines, unless someone within betrayed it and opened some posterns from inside, so it is impossible for the demons warring from outside to overcome the soul surrounded by divine grace, unless the slackness of some thought should open a postern of our senses and receive the enemy within. Those whom we are praising had been taught this clearly by the divine Scripture, and had heard God say through the prophet, “… through the windows”; and so they shut their senses with the divine laws as with bars and bolts and entrusted the keys of them to the mind. Neither tongue nor lips were opened unless the mind commanded it, nor the eye …; and hearing, which cannot wall off its entrance with eyelids or lips, thrust away senseless words and admitted only those in which the mind took delight. So they trained the sense of smell not to long for fragrances, since these by nature soften and slacken. So they drove satiety out of the belly, and taught it to take such things as supply need, not pleasure, and only so much as could prevent death from starvation. So they overthrew the sweet tyranny of sleep; they freed their eyelids from its slavery and trained them to rule instead of serving, and to receive what sleep supplies not when it comes upon them but when they themselves allow it, as a brief support for nature. So, then, having taken care to guard the walls and the gates, and having presided over concord among the thoughts within, they laughed at the adversaries who attacked from without. These could not enter by force because of the security that divine grace gave, and found no traitor willing to admit the foe; and the enemies, invisible as they are by nature, could not master the body, visible as it is and subject to the necessities of nature. For the charioteer, holding the reins, persuaded the horses to run in good order; he tuned the strings of the senses to produce in rhythm a perfectly harmonious music; and moving the rudders with skill he broke the onset of the waves and the assault of the winds. These men, then, who traveled through life by countless labors, who subdued the body with sweat and hardships, who did not know the passion of laughter, who held that their whole life should be spent in mourning and tears, who counted laborious vigil the sweetest sleep, the hardness of the ground a soft bed, and the time spent in prayers and psalmody a boundless and insatiable pleasure, these men who had gathered every form of virtue: who would not rightly admire them? Or rather, who could praise them as they deserve? I too know clearly that no speech could reach their virtue; nevertheless, the attempt must be made. For it would not be right that, because they became perfect lovers of true philosophy, they should for that reason not receive even lesser praises. We shall not write one eulogy common to them all, for different gifts were given them from God, as the blessed Paul taught when he said: “To one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit; to another gifts of healings by the same Spirit; to another workings of miracles; to another prophecy; to another kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues.” And showing the source of all these, he added: “All these the one and the same Spirit works, distributing to each one individually as he wills.” Since, then, they received different gifts, we shall rightly make a separate narrative for each, not going through everything they did in their lives (for a whole lifetime would not suffice for such a work), but narrating a few of the things each one lived or did, and through the few showing the character of the whole life; then we shall go on to another. Nor shall we attempt to commit to history the way of life of all the saints who have been distinguished everywhere, for we do not know those who have shone in every place, nor is it possible for all to be written up by one man. I shall record the life only of those who have appeared like luminaries in the East and have reached the ends of the inhabited world with their rays. The account will proceed by narrative, not following the rules of encomium but simply telling of a few things. I ask those who will read this God-loving history, or ascetic history (let each call the work as he wishes), not to disbelieve what is said if they hear of anything beyond their own power, and not to measure the virtue of those men by themselves, but to know clearly that God is accustomed to measure out the gifts of the Holy Spirit according to the dispositions of the devout, and gives the greater gifts to the more perfect. Let this be said to those who are not very precisely initiated into divine things. For those initiated into the sanctuaries of the Spirit know the generosity of the Spirit, and what wonders he works through human beings among human beings, drawing the unbelieving to the knowledge of God by the greatness of the wonders. Whoever will disbelieve what we are going to relate plainly would not believe as true what was done through Moses and Joshua and Elijah and Elisha either, and regards as a myth the miracles done through the holy apostles too. But if he bears witness that those are true, let him believe that these too are free of falsehood. For the grace that worked in those men has brought it about that it works through these as well. Grace is ever-flowing; it chooses the worthy, and through them, as through fountains, it pours out the streams of its beneficence. Of the things I shall tell, I was myself an eyewitness of some; what I did not see I heard from those who did see, men who loved virtue … and were deemed worthy to see those men and be taught by them. For in writing the gospel teaching, too, not only Matthew and John, the first and great among the evangelists, eyewitnesses of the Master's miracles, are trustworthy, but also Luke and Mark, whom those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and servants of the word [taught] not only what the Master suffered and did, but also what he [said] in his teaching. For the blessed Luke, who had not been an eyewitness, says at the beginning of his work that he is composing a narrative concerning the things that have been fulfilled; and we, though we hear that he was not an eyewitness of these very events but received this teaching from others, pay no less attention to him and to Mark than to Matthew and John. For each of them is a trustworthy narrator, having been taught by those who saw. So we too shall tell some things as eyewitnesses, and others trusting the eyewitnesses who told them to us, men who have emulated the life of those saints. I have spent rather many words on this because I wish to persuade you that what I shall tell is true. I shall begin my narrative from this point.