Letters 228.1–230.6

When I sent Your Charity a copy of the letter I wrote to our brother and fellow bishop Quodvultdeus, I thought I was free of the burden you laid on me in asking advice on what you ought to do in these dangers that have come upon our times. For although I wrote that letter briefly, I think I left out nothing that would be enough for the one answering to say and the one asking to hear, since I said both that those who wish to move to fortified places, if they can, should not be prevented, and that the bonds of our ministry, by which the love of Christ has bound us not to desert the churches we ought to serve, must not be broken. These are the words I put in that letter: “It remains, then,” I said, “that we, whose ministry is so necessary to the people of God, however small, who remain where we are, that they ought not to remain without it, should say to the Lord: ‘Be to us a God of protection and a fortified place.’”

But this advice does not satisfy you, you write, because we should not strive to act against the Lord's command or example, where he warns us to flee from city to city; for we remember the words of the one who says: “When they persecute you in this city, flee to another.” But who would believe that the Lord wanted this done in such a way that the flocks he bought with his own blood should be deprived of the necessary ministry without which they cannot live? Did he himself do this when, as a little child, he fled into Egypt carried by his parents, when he had not yet gathered churches that we could say were deserted by him? When the apostle Paul was let down through a window in a basket so that the enemy would not seize him, and escaped his hands, was the church that was there deprived of the necessary ministry, and was it not fulfilled, as was right, by other brothers stationed there? Indeed the apostle had done this at their wish, so as to preserve himself for the Church, since that persecutor was seeking him in particular. Let the servants of Christ, then, the ministers of his word and sacrament, do what he commanded or permitted. Let them by all means flee from city to city when any one of them is sought in particular by the persecutors, so that the church is not deserted by the others, who are not sought in this way; let them provide food for their fellow servants, who they know cannot live otherwise. But when the danger is common to all, that is, to bishops, clergy and laity, let not those who need others be deserted by those whom they need. Either, therefore, let all move to fortified places, or let those who must remain not be left by those through whom their church needs must be supplied, so that they may either live together or suffer together what the Father of the household wills them to endure.

If it happens that some suffer more and others less, or all suffer equally, it is clear which of them are those who suffer for others: namely those who, although they could have rescued themselves from such evils by fleeing, preferred to remain so as not to desert the need of others. Here above all is proved that love which the apostle John commends when he says: “As Christ laid down his life for us, so we too ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” For those who flee, or cannot flee because bound by their own necessities, if they are caught and suffer, surely suffer for themselves and not for the brothers; but those who suffer because they would not desert the brothers who needed them for their Christian salvation without doubt lay down their lives for the brothers.

Hence what we heard a certain bishop said, “If the Lord commanded us to flee in those persecutions where there can be the fruit of martyrdom, how much more ought we to flee barren sufferings when there is an invasion of barbarian enemies!”, is true indeed and acceptable, but for those whom the bonds of church office do not hold. For he who does not flee the disasters of war, when he could escape, so as not to desert the ministry of Christ, without which men cannot become or live as Christians, finds a greater fruit of love than he who flees not for the brothers' sake but for his own, and, being caught, does not deny Christ and undergoes martyrdom.

What, then, of what you put in your earlier letter? For you say: “If we are to remain in the churches, I do not see what good we will do ourselves or the people, except that before our eyes men will fall, women be violated, churches be burned, and we ourselves die under torture when what we do not have is demanded of us.” God is indeed able to hear the prayers of his household and to avert the things that are feared; and yet, because of these things, which are uncertain, there ought not to be a certain desertion of our office, without which there is certain ruin for the people, not in the affairs of this life but of the other, which must be cared for incomparably more diligently and anxiously. For if these evils that are feared might happen in the places where we are were certain, all those for whose sake we must remain there would flee from there first and set us free from the need to remain; for no one says that ministers must remain where there is no longer anyone who needs to be ministered to. So some holy bishops fled from Spain, after their people had partly slipped away in flight, partly been killed, partly been consumed by siege, and partly been scattered in captivity; but many more remained under the thick of the same dangers, because those for whose sake they should remain were remaining there. And if some have deserted their people, this is what we say ought not to be done; for such men were not taught by divine authority, but were either deceived by human error or overcome by fear.

For why do they think they must obey indiscriminately the command where they read that one should flee from city to city, and yet do not shudder at the hireling who sees the wolf coming and flees, because he has no care for the sheep? Why do they not try to understand these two true sayings of the Lord, the one where flight is permitted or commanded and the other where it is censured and blamed, so that they may be found not to be contrary to each other, as they are not? And how is this found unless attention is paid to what I have already argued above: that Christ's ministers should flee from the places where they are under the pressure of persecution when either there is no people of Christ there to be ministered to, or the necessary ministry can be fulfilled by others who do not have the same reason to flee? So the apostle fled, let down in a basket, as I mentioned above, when he himself was sought in particular by the persecutor, while others did not have the same necessity, by whom, far be it, the ministry of the church there was not deserted. So the holy Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, fled when the emperor Constantius wished to seize him in particular, while the Catholic people that remained in Alexandria was in no way deserted by the other ministers. But when the people remain and the ministers flee and the ministry is withdrawn, what is that but the damnable flight of hirelings, who have no care for the sheep? For the wolf will come, not a man but the devil, who has often persuaded believers to become apostates when the daily ministry of the Lord's body was lacking to them; and through your, not knowledge, but ignorance the weak brother will perish, for whom Christ died.

As for those who in this matter are not misled by error but overcome by fear, why do they not rather fight bravely against their fear, with the Lord's mercy and help, so that evils incomparably heavier, which are far more to be dreaded, may not befall? This happens where the love of God burns, not where the desire of the world smokes. For love says: “Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I do not burn?” But love is from God. Let us pray, then, that it may be given by him by whom it is commanded. And through it let us fear more that Christ's sheep be slain in the heart by the sword of spiritual wickedness than by steel in the body, where, at some time and by some kind of death, they are going to die anyway. Let us fear more that the chastity of faith perish through the corruption of the inner sense than that women be violently defiled in the flesh; for by such violence modesty is not violated if it is kept in the mind, since it is not violated even in the flesh when the will of the one who suffers does not make shameful use of her own flesh but endures without consent what another does. Let us fear more that living stones be extinguished when we desert them than that the stones and timbers of earthly buildings be burned while we are present. Let us fear more that the members of Christ's body be killed when deprived of spiritual food than that the members of our body be tortured when overwhelmed by the enemy's attack: not because these things should not be avoided when they can be, but because they should rather be borne when they cannot be avoided without impiety; unless perhaps someone will contend that a minister is not impious who withdraws the ministry necessary for godliness at the very time when it is most necessary.

Do we not consider, when the extremity of these dangers is reached and there is no possibility of flight, how great a crowd of both sexes and every age usually gathers in the church, some demanding baptism, others reconciliation, others even the performance of penance itself, all of them consolation and the celebration and distribution of the sacraments? If ministers are lacking there, what destruction follows for those who leave this world either unregenerate or bound! How great too is the grief of their faithful relatives, who will not have them with them in the rest of eternal life! How great, finally, the groaning of all, and how great the blasphemy of some, at the absence of ministries and ministers! See what the fear of temporal evils does, and how much it gains of eternal evils. But if ministers are present, all are helped according to the strength the Lord supplies them: some are baptized, others reconciled, none is cheated of the communion of the Lord's body, all are consoled, built up and exhorted to ask God, who is able to avert all that is feared, ready for either outcome, so that, if this cup cannot pass from them, the will may be done of him who cannot will anything evil.

Surely you now see what you had written that you did not see: how much good the Christian people gain if in present evils the presence of Christ's ministers is not lacking to them. You see too how much their absence harms, while they seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ, and do not have that love of which it was said, “It does not seek its own,” nor imitate him who said, “Not seeking what is profitable to me, but to many, that they may be saved.” He would not even have fled the plots of that persecuting ruler had he not wished to preserve himself for others who needed him; that is why he says: “I am hard pressed between the two, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better; but to remain in the flesh is necessary for your sake.”

Here someone may perhaps say that God's ministers ought to flee when such evils threaten, so as to preserve themselves for the benefit of the Church in calmer times. Some do this rightly, when there are others through whom the church's ministry may be supplied, so that it is not deserted by all; this, as we said above, is what Athanasius did. For how necessary it was to the Church, and how much it profited, that that man remained in the flesh, the Catholic faith knows, which was defended against the Arian heretics by his mouth and love. But when the danger is common, and it is more to be feared that someone may be thought to do this not from the wish to provide but from the fear of dying, and that he may do more harm by the example of flight than good by the duty of living, it must by no means be done. Indeed holy David, so as not to commit himself to the dangers of battle and perhaps be extinguished, as it says there, as the lamp of Israel, accepted this from his men who asked it; he did not presume it himself. Otherwise he would have made many imitators of cowardice, who would have believed he did it not out of regard for the good of others but out of the agitation of his own fear.

Another question arises, somewhat different, which we must not disregard. If this benefit is not to be neglected, that some ministers flee when some devastation threatens so that there may be survivors to minister to those they may find left after the disaster, what will happen where all seem likely to perish unless some flee? What if that destruction rages so far as to pursue only the ministers of the Church? What shall I say? Is the church to be left by ministers fleeing, so that it may not be left more miserably by them dying? But if laymen are not sought out for death, they can hide their bishops and clergy in some way, as he helps in whose power are all things, who can preserve even one who does not flee by his wonderful power. But we ask what we ought to do, so that we may not be judged to tempt the Lord by expecting divine miracles in everything. This storm, indeed, is not of that kind, since the danger is common to laity and clergy, as on one ship the danger is common to merchants and sailors. But far be it that this ship of ours should be valued so little that the sailors, and above all the helmsman, ought to desert it in danger, even if they could escape by leaping into a boat or even by swimming. For in the case of those we fear may perish by our desertion, it is not temporal death we fear, which will come some time, but eternal death, which may come if not guarded against, and, if guarded against, may not come. But in the common danger of this life, why do we think that wherever there is an enemy invasion all the clergy will die and not all the laity too, so that those for whose life the clergy are necessary will end this life at the same time? Or why should we not hope that some clergy will remain, as some laity will, by whom the necessary ministry can be provided for them?

And yet, O that there might be a dispute among God's ministers over which of them should stay, so that the church is not deserted by the flight of all, and which should flee, so that it is not deserted by the death of all! Such a contest will take place among them where both sides burn with love and both please love. If this dispute cannot be ended otherwise, it seems to me that those who stay and those who flee should be chosen by lot. For those who say that they ought rather to flee will seem either timid, because they were unwilling to bear the threatening evil, or arrogant, because they judged themselves more necessary to the Church and so more to be preserved. Then perhaps the better men will choose to lay down their lives for the brothers, and those will be preserved by flight whose life is less useful because they have less skill in counseling and governing; yet these, if they are wise in a godly way, will oppose those whom they see both ought rather to live and prefer to die rather than flee. Therefore, as it is written, “the lot puts an end to disputes and decides between the powerful”; for God judges better than men in perplexities of this kind, whether he deigns to call the better to the fruit of suffering and to spare the weak, or to make the latter stronger to endure evils and to take from this life those whose life cannot profit God's Church as much as the life of the others. It will indeed be an unusual thing if this casting of lots is done; but if it is done, who will dare to find fault with it? Who, except the ignorant or the envious, will not praise it as it deserves? But if it is not thought good to do what has no example to recall, let no one's flight cause the ministry of the Church, necessary and owed above all in such dangers, to be lacking. Let no one favor his own person, so as to say that, because he seems to excel in some grace, he is more worthy of life and therefore of flight. For whoever thinks this is too pleased with himself, and whoever also says it displeases everyone.

There are, to be sure, those who think that bishops and clergy who do not flee in such dangers but remain cause the people to be deceived, since the people do not flee because they see their leaders remaining. But it is easy to avoid this reply or reproach by addressing these same people and saying: “Do not be deceived because we do not flee from this place; for we remain here not for our own sake but rather for yours, so as not to fail to minister to you whatever we know is necessary for your salvation, which is in Christ. If, then, you wish to flee, you also free us from these bonds by which we are held.” I think this should be said when it truly seems useful to move to safer places. If, on hearing this, all or some say, “We are in the power of him whose anger no one escapes wherever he goes, and whose mercy one can find wherever he is,” and do not wish to go anywhere, whether hindered by definite necessities or unwilling to toil toward uncertain refuges, not to end their dangers but to exchange them, without doubt they must not be deprived of the Christian ministry. But if, on hearing this, they prefer to leave, those who were remaining for their sake need not remain either, because there are no longer any there for whose sake they should still remain.

Whoever, then, flees in such a way that the necessary ministry of the Church is not lacking because of his flight does what the Lord commanded or permitted. But whoever flees in such a way that the flock of Christ is deprived of the nourishment by which it lives spiritually is that hireling who sees the wolf coming and flees, because he has no care for the sheep. I have written this back to you, dearest brother, since you consulted me, with what I judged to be truth and with sure love; but I have not prescribed that you should not follow a better opinion, if you find one. Still, we can find nothing better to do in these dangers than prayers to the Lord our God that he may have mercy on us. And by God's gift some prudent and holy men have deserved both to will and to do this very thing, namely not to desert their churches, and amid the teeth of detractors have in no way failed in the purpose they set themselves.

I have learned what kind of man you are, and how great, from my holy brothers and fellow bishops Urbanus and Novatus, one of whom came to know you near Carthage in the town of Hilara and now at Sicca, and the other at Sitifis. Through them it has come about that I too could not have you unknown to me. For although bodily weakness and a double cold, that is, of winter and of age, do not allow me to converse with you face to face, I have not therefore not seen you: for one of them, when he deigned to come to me in person, and the other by letter, showed me not the face of your flesh but of your heart, so that I saw you the more pleasantly the more inwardly. This face of yours we too, and you yourself, by God's favor, look upon with great joy as in a mirror in the holy gospel, where it is written by the Truth who says: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”

Great indeed are warriors, and they have their glory, not only the bravest but also, which is the source of truer praise, the most faithful ones, by whose labors and dangers, with the help of God who protects and aids, an untamed enemy is conquered and quiet is secured for the state and the provinces pacified. But it is greater glory to slay wars themselves with a word than men with steel, and to gain or keep peace by peace, not by war. For those who fight, if they are good, without doubt seek peace, but through blood; you, however, were sent so that no one's blood should be sought. For others, then, there is that necessity; for you this happiness. Therefore, my lord justly illustrious and most magnificent, and my dearest son in Christ, rejoice in this great and true good of yours, and enjoy it in God, from whom you received it that you should be such a man and should undertake such tasks. May God confirm what he has wrought for us through you. Receive this greeting of ours and deign to repay it with yours. As brother Novatus wrote to me, he has arranged that Your Excellency and learning should know me also through my writings. If, then, you have read what he gave you, I too have become known to your inner mind, and, I think, not much to your displeasure, if you read with more inclined love than severity. It is not much, but very welcome, if for our letters, both this and those, you return us one letter. I also greet the pledge of peace that, by the help of the Lord our God, you have happily received, with the love I owe.

Would, holy lord father, that as my name has reached your ears through the kind favor toward me of your fellow bishops, as you say, Urbanus and Novatus, so God, the God of all and your God, had presented me myself to your hands and eyes: not that the better file of your judgment might have proved me greater, or perhaps such as the kindly words of such great men and the recommendation of their letters had made me in your eyes, but that I might have taken the truest and immortal fruits of your heavenly wisdom rather from your mouth, like the sweetness of pure water from the present and perpetual stream of the spring itself! O me, not only three or four times, as some poet says, but a thousand times and beyond all number blessed, if it had been given me to look upon your truly starry face in person, and to take in and drink your divine voice, singing divine things, not only with the fruit of the mind but with the delight of the ears! I would surely have thought that I was receiving certain laws of immortality, not merely from heaven but set in heaven itself, and hearing certain voices of God, not far off from the temple but standing beside God's very tribunal.

That these things should happen to me I perhaps deserved because of my most ardent longing for you; because of my conscience, I confess, I did not deserve it. But even in absence I have gained not the least fruits of good desire, and for me the summit of goods is perfected from the second-best goods. I have been commended to the one I wished by the mouth of saints and of two bishops far apart in place and region: on the one side his kindly words about me and, so to speak, his present testimony; on the other, the writings of the second, of the same mind and equal judgment, flying to you, concur. Such great men have woven for me a kind of crown in your sight, not with the buds of green flowers but with the testimony of a glorious voice, as with gems of permanence. For this I pray the most high God for you, and I ask your intercession, holy father, that, since I am not at all conscious of deserving such testimony, it may some day come about that I am such. And have not these things overcome all the losses of my absence, that you yourself deign to converse with us, to write, to greet, and do not let me be absent though absent? I grieved that I had not seen, next after God, the savior of my savior; but yet you look not at the face of the flesh, as you say, but, what is more, of the heart, and so I appeared more pleasing to you the more inwardly you looked. God grant, my father, that I may answer to your judgment and not be guilty before my conscience, if I do not inwardly see myself as you have formed me for yourself.

In that same divine and heavenly letter of yours, with your usual eloquence serving what you wished to praise, you say that I slay wars, slay them, I say, with a word. Here indeed, my holy father, my mind emerged as if from certain darkness of thoughts, as though it recognized its true praises. For, to confess everything to Your Blessedness briefly and simply, if we have not extinguished wars, we have certainly postponed them, and with the help of God, the ruler of all, the evils that had grown to a kind of peak of calamity have been laid to rest. Yet I hope from him from whom we must hope for every good thing, and indeed I augur from the blessing of your letter itself, so ample, so sure, that this very postponement of wars I spoke of may have and keep the lasting and perpetual firmness of peace. For you have said it and fixed it by God's perpetual law, that I should rejoice in this, as you say, great and truly good thing of mine and enjoy it in God, from whom you say I received it, that I should be such and undertake such tasks. You then add: “May God confirm,” you say, “what he has wrought for us through me.” O vows uttered not only for me but for the salvation of all! For this glory of mine cannot be separated from the salvation of all; and for me to be happy by your prayers, all must be happy together with me. For a long time, father, may you take up and utter such vows for the Roman Empire, for the Roman state, and for those too whom you find worthy, and when at last, late, you are taken up to heaven, may you hand them on to posterity and entrust them to those who follow.

I have gone on perhaps further than I should, but certainly said too little compared with what I wished. For I confess: in writing to you I imagine your face as if you were present, and, though rough speech and a poor tongue have long failed me, yet, as if I were conversing and talking with you face to face, I am not satisfied. Measure from this our longing for you. Although the perhaps unwelcome wordiness of this letter has long deserved an end, we lay aside modesty while we serve our desire, and suspect that to leave off speaking is to withdraw from you. So it is not that I do not wish to stop, but I cannot. For, believe me, my father, you have clung to our mind and heart ever since, not content with your fame, so glorious and so great, we preferred to look upon you in your writings, since one letter of yours, and a short one, has stirred such flames and fires of ardor in me. Therefore we beg and ask with our whole mind, since through reading you too we have despised pagan rites amply and fully as never before (for although we received the laws of Christ from our parents, from our grandfathers, and down to the latest offspring of our family, yet sometimes the proud vanity of superfluous superstition wandered into our thoughts), I ask that you deign to send and give us also the books of the Confessions you have written. For if others too have given us their writings readily and kindly, how much less ought you to excuse yourself from giving your own!

There is reported a letter of a satrap, or rather a king, who besought the Lord God Christ, while he was still living in the regions of Judea and had not yet returned to his heaven, that, since the king was hindered by sickness from going to him and did not believe he could be healed otherwise, the salvation and medicine of the world might, if he deigned, hasten to him; and, lest any insult seem done to so great a majesty, which the king, not knowing it, had conceived with a foresighted but not perfect mind, he is said also to have praised his city, so that God, attracted by the beauty of the city and the king's hospitality, might not disdain the prayers of the suppliant. God came to the king's aid; he was healed. And, enlarging the gift requested, he sent by letter not only health, as to a suppliant, but also security, as to a king; he ordered moreover that his city should be forever and always free from enemies. What can be added to these benefits? I, lowly and a servant of kings, ask of you, my lord, that you do not hesitate to intercede daily for my sins with this Christ, Lord and sovereign God of all, and that you pray for me untiringly and ask whatever you yourself will.

If our long letter wearies you, temper it with the patience of your magnanimity and blame yourself, since you yourself ordered it. Yet we pray and beg again and again that you write once more; for from this we will be able to suppose that you received our writing gladly. May God grant us Your Blessedness for many years praying for us, my truly holy lord father. Our son Verimodus warmly greets Your Blessedness; he was very glad that your letter to us deigned to mention him. We have given the holy presbyter Lazarus some medicines received from the chief physician who is with us, to bring to Your Blessedness; the man I mentioned assures us that they will help not a little to relieve pain and cure illness.