Letters 248.1–259.5

Although the sweet bond of love in no way allows you to be separated from our mind, and we unceasingly recall your holy character and conversations, still you did well, and we thank you, that by sending us a letter announcing your bodily health too you greatly cheered us. But I sensed in your letter that weariness has gripped you because of sinners who abandon the law of God; for you live by that spirit in which it was said, “I saw the senseless and I wasted away.” This sadness is godly, and, if one may say so, it is a blessed misery to be troubled by others' vices and not entangled in them, to grieve and not cling, to be wrung by sorrow and not drawn in by love. This is the persecution that all suffer who wish to live godly in Christ, according to the apostle's biting and true saying. For what so persecutes the life of the good as the life of the wicked, not when it compels them to imitate what displeases them, but when it compels them to grieve at what they see? For one who lives impiously before a godly man, even if he does not bind him to consent, tortures him as he perceives. For often and for long the bodies of the impious are spared by worldly powers and by vexations of every kind, but the hearts of the godly are never spared by the evil ways of men until the end of this world. Thus rather is fulfilled what I mentioned the apostle said, that all who wish to live godly in Christ suffer persecution, and the more bitterly the more inwardly, until the flood passes, in which the ark holds both the raven and the dove. But cling, brother, to him from whom you heard, “Whoever perseveres to the end will be saved”; join yourself to the Lord, so that your life may grow in its last days. For I know that you do not lack refreshment of heart from good brothers. Add to this the promises of God, faithful, great, sure, eternal, and the untroubled and ineffable reward of patience itself, and see how truly you sing to the Lord: “According to the multitude of my sorrows in my heart, your consolations have gladdened my soul.” Send our letter to brother Firmus. The brothers and sisters who are with us join us in greeting in the Lord Your Holiness and the family of God that is governed by your ministry. [In another hand:] May you pray for us in safety, dearly beloved and holy brothers. I, Alypius, most warmly greet your sincerity and all who are joined to you in the Lord, and I ask you to count this letter as mine too; for although I could have sent another of my own, I preferred to sign this one, so that one page might also testify to our unanimity.

The agitations that show the godly flame of your heart have been made known to me by brother Deogratias, who, as you know, most faithfully shares them. Read, then, Tyconius, whom you know well, not indeed to approve everything in him, for you know well what in him is to be guarded against; but this question, how things in the Church of God that we cannot correct or extinguish, however perverse or even criminal, are to be tolerated without breaking the bond of unity, he seems to me to have treated and solved vigorously. Yet with his writings we must only redirect our attention and run back to the very springs of the divine Scriptures, so as to see there how few testimonies of statements or examples of deeds on this matter he set down, and how no one could set down all of them unless he wished to transfer almost all the pages of the holy books into his own writings. So there is hardly a page that does not warn us that within the very fellowship of the sacraments, by which we are initiated into eternal life, we ought to be peaceable with those who hate peace, until, groaning, our long pilgrimage passes and we enjoy in most secure peace the strength of Jerusalem, our eternal mother, and in her towers the abundance of true brothers, whose fewness we now groan over among many false ones. And what is the strength of that city but its God, our God? You see, then, in what alone peace comes about: both for individual men, who without him wage war with themselves even when no stumbling block arises from outside, and for all together, who, although they love one another in this life and are held by bonds of faithful friendship, are yet joined neither by bodily presence nor by agreement of mind supremely and perfectly. May your heart be strengthened in the Lord, mindful of us.

Our son, the distinguished Count Classicianus, has complained gravely to me by letter that he has suffered the injury of anathema from Your Holiness. He relates that he came to the church accompanied by a few attendants befitting his office, and dealt with you so that you would not, against his safety, favor men who, having perjured themselves by the Gospels, were seeking help in the very house of faith to violate faith; yet, he says, considering what evil they had done, they were not dragged out from there by force but left of their own accord; and that thereupon Your Reverence was so angry with him that, by the drawing up of church proceedings, he was struck with the sentence of anathema together with his whole household. When I had read his letter, greatly agitated, my thoughts tossed in a great storm of the heart, I could not keep silent with Your Charity, so that, if you have a view on this matter proven by sure reasons or testimonies of the Scriptures, you may deign to teach us too how a son can rightly be anathematized for his father's sin, or a wife for her husband's, or a slave for his master's, or anyone in the household, even one not yet born, if he is born at the time when the whole household is bound by anathema and cannot be helped by the washing of regeneration in danger of death. For this is not a bodily punishment, such as that by which we read some despisers of God were killed together with all their family, who were not sharers in the same impiety. Then mortal bodies, which would surely die at some time, were destroyed to terrify the living; but spiritual punishment, by which is done what is written, “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven also,” binds souls, of which it is said: “The soul of the father is mine and the soul of the son is mine; the soul that sins, it shall die.”

You have perhaps heard that some bishops of great name have anathematized a sinner together with his household. But perhaps, if they had been asked, they would be found able to give a reason for it; I, however, since I find no answer to give if anyone asks me whether it is rightly done, have never dared to do it, though I was most gravely moved by the crimes of certain people monstrously committed against the Church. But if perhaps the Lord has revealed to you how justly it is done, I by no means despise in you your youth and the beginnings of your church office. Here I am, an old man ready to learn from a young one, and a bishop of so many years from a colleague not yet a year in office, how we can give a just account to God or to men if we punish with spiritual punishment innocent souls for another's crime, from which they do not inherit original sin as they do from Adam, in whom all sinned. For although Classicianus's son inherited from his father the guilt of the first man, to be expiated by the sacred font of baptism, yet who doubts that whatever sin his father committed after begetting him, in which he himself had no part, does not concern him? What shall I say of his wife? What of so many souls in the whole household? Hence, if one soul perishes by leaving the body without baptism through this severity by which this whole household has been anathematized, the death of countless bodies, if innocent men were dragged from the church by force and killed, cannot be compared with this loss. If, then, you can give a reason for this, I wish you would give it to us too by writing back, so that we can also; but if you cannot, what business have you to do, in a rash commotion of mind, something for which, if you are questioned, you cannot find a right answer?

I have said this even supposing our son Classicianus committed something that seemed to you most justly to deserve anathema. But if he has written me a true letter, he did not deserve to be restrained by this censure either, not even alone in his household. But on this point I do nothing with Your Holiness except to ask you to pardon him if he asks forgiveness, should he acknowledge a fault; but if you prudently recognize that he did not sin at all, since he was rather justly demanding that in the house of faith faith should be kept, so as not to be broken where it is taught, do what a holy man ought to do: if it has happened to you as a man, as the man of God certainly says in the psalm, “My eye is troubled because of anger,” cry out to the Lord, “Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am weak,” so that he may stretch out his right hand to you, restrain your anger, and calm your mind to see and do justice. For, as it is written, “the anger of man does not work the justice of God.” And do not think that unjust agitation cannot creep upon us because we are bishops; let us rather consider that we live most dangerously amid the snares of temptations, because we are men. So remove the church proceedings that you perhaps drew up when too agitated, and let the love return between you that you had with him even as a catechumen; remove the quarrel and recall peace, so that you may not lose a man who is a friend and the devil, an enemy, may not rejoice over you. The mercy of our God is able both to hear me as I pray that my sadness over you may not increase but rather that what has arisen may be healed, and to guide you by his grace and gladden your youth, which does not despise my old age.

Since, before Your Reverence came, the presbyter Secundinus was not displeasing to the people of Germaniciana, how it has now come about that, as you wrote, they are ready to accuse him even of some crimes or other, I do not know, my lord dearly beloved and justly honorable son. Yet we can by no means disregard what they seem to charge against the presbyter, but only if those who make the charges are Catholics; for we neither can nor should admit accusations by heretics against a Catholic presbyter. So let Your Prudence first see to it that there are no heretics where there were none before your coming, and we will hear the presbyter's case as it ought to be heard. I do advise this, since you are so kind, because both your welfare and your reputation are very dear to us, and the people of Germaniciana themselves belong to the care of our humility: please produce with confidence what you obtained from the most glorious emperors and what you did before the competent judges, so that it may appear to all that you do nothing irregularly, lest in your case, you who are contending over the estate, those poor people themselves be worn out again and perish more grievously afflicted. At the same time I also ask that the presbyter's house not be plundered or laid waste; for it has been reported to us that some want to pull down his church; but I do not think that this can in any way be permitted by Your Reverence.

Your Reverence knows very well what care the Church and the bishops owe to protecting all people, and especially orphans. So, having received your letter and a copy of the letter of our distinguished brother, I neither could nor should hand the girl over to anyone at random, especially since he entrusted her to the church, my lord dearly beloved, justly honorable and preeminent brother. Therefore I await his coming, so that, if anything should be done, I may deliberate in his presence and do what the Lord inspires to be done.

We congratulate the man through whom I greet Your Holiness on his faith and good zeal for the Church. He wished to come to your kindness with a letter from me, my lord dearly beloved and venerable brother. And since I have heard that you are thinking of settling that matter, if it is true, which I wonder at, if it is true, you know how you ought to provide for the Catholic Church with episcopal fatherliness: not to do it with just anyone, if indeed, as I said, what I have heard is true, but rather with a Catholic household, from which the Church can have not only no opposition but even faithful help.

The girl about whom Your Holiness wrote to me is of such a mind that, if she were already of mature age, she would agree to marry no one. But she is of such an age that, even if she had the wish to marry, she ought not yet to be given or promised to anyone. Add to this that God protects her in the Church in such a way as to protect her against the wicked, not so that she can be handed over to whomever I wish, but so that she cannot be carried off by anyone by whom she should not be, my lord Benenatus, dearly beloved and venerable brother. So the match you deigned to suggest does not displease me, if she is to marry; but whether she will marry, although we rather wish for what she has on her lips, we do not know now, since she is at such an age that her saying she wants to be a nun may be the jest of a chatterer rather than the pledge of one professing. Then she has a maternal aunt, whose husband, our honorable brother Felix, when I had conferred with him about this matter (for I neither could nor should do otherwise), did not take it unwillingly, indeed even rejoiced; but by the right of friendship he complained, not unreasonably, that nothing had been written to them about it. For perhaps her mother too, who does not appear now, will appear, whose will in giving her daughter in marriage nature puts before all others, I think, unless the girl herself is already of an age to choose for herself by a freer right what she wishes. Consider this too, my sincere friend: if supreme and complete power over her marriage were given to me, and she herself, being mature and willing to marry, entrusted herself to me to be given to whom I wished, under God as judge, I say, and I say truly, that this match pleases me, but in such a way that, because of God the judge, I could not reject a better one; and whether one will come is certainly uncertain. So Your Charity sees how many things must be considered together, so that she cannot be promised by me to anyone at all now.

Although I wish you and your whole household all good things, not only those belonging to the happiness of this present world but also those belonging to the future and eternal life, which you have not yet been persuaded to believe, yet I have written back to my holy brother and fellow bishop Benenatus, as much as seemed sufficient, what moves me not to dare to promise anything yet about the girl you ask for, my lord dearly beloved and venerable son. For if you, though you know most certainly that, even if we had absolute power to give any girl in marriage, a Christian girl could not be given by us except to a Christian, nevertheless did not wish to promise me any such thing about your son, whom I hear is still a pagan, how much less ought I, because of the things you will be able to read in the letter of my brother I mentioned, to pledge anything about that girl's marriage, even if I not only held a promise about your son, as I said, but rejoiced that it had already come about!

Your letter told me that you wanted a letter from me; and brother James came as a richer witness of that desire of yours toward us, since he told me more pleasant things about you, and experienced in himself, than that little sheet could. So I congratulate your kindness, and thank the Lord our God, whose gifts these are, for your Christian heart, my lord justly praiseworthy, sincerely dearest and most longed-for brother. As for your asking me to seek you by letter, I seek you with an affection that surpasses all letters, and I know you understand well where I seek you. But as for reading me, I fear more that my talkativeness may be criticized in your hands than that eloquence may be looked for. Let me say this briefly, and if you chew on it in long thought you will taste what it savors of: when on the way of God easier and fruitful things are fled from with lazy fear, on the way of the world harder and barren things are endured with wretched labor. May you be safe in Christ, flourish and make progress, my lord justly praiseworthy, sincerely dearest and most longed-for brother.

I thank you for deigning to send a letter even before Your Excellency's arrival, and for sending conversation before sight, so that we might enjoy your address before your appearance, and, foretasting with a kind of letter's consolation the long-desired acquaintance, might await more eagerly and ardently what we would receive the more pleasantly and gratefully, my excellent lord, justly honorable and esteemed son. So I return to your merits and your forerunning courtesies the due service of a return greeting, rejoicing that your safety has been announced and wishing that it may continue. And as for your adding, in asking by the right of your prior goodwill for a reply from my littleness, “if indeed we can deserve this from such holiness,” I by no means dare to despair that it will please your prudence that the very fountain of that holiness, by drinking from which we are something in our small measure, should be not only praised but also shared with us, so that God, incomparably and unchangeably good, who by his power formed so good a mind of yours, may also by his grace restore it. May God almighty keep you safe and happier, my excellent lord, justly honorable and esteemed son.

I have snatched, or rather stolen, and in a way pilfered myself from my many occupations to write to you, a very old friend, whom yet I did not have as long as I did not hold you in Christ. For you know how Tully, as someone says, “the greatest author of Roman eloquence,” defined friendship. For he said, and said most truly: “Friendship is agreement on things human and divine, with goodwill and love.” But you, my dearest, once agreed with me in human things, when I wanted to enjoy them in the manner of the crowd, and by your favor you set sail with me toward those things I am now sorry for; indeed, among my chief admirers at that time you filled the sails of my desires with the breeze of praise. But in divine things, of which no truth had then shone on me, our friendship was lame in the greater part of that definition: for it was agreement only on things human, not also divine, although with goodwill and love.

And after I stopped desiring those things, you, with persevering goodwill, wanted me safe with a mortal safety and happy with that prosperity which the world is accustomed to wish for. So even then there was some measure of kindly and loving agreement between us in human things. Now, then, with what words can I explain how much I rejoice over you, when I have as a true friend one whom I long had as a friend in some fashion? For agreement on divine things too has been added, since you, who once spent temporal life with me in most delightful kindness, have now begun to be with me in the hope of eternal life. And now there is no disagreement between us even about human things, since we weigh them by the knowledge of divine things, so as not to attribute more to them than their measure most justly demands, nor, by rejecting them with unjust contempt, to do injury to their Creator, the Lord of things heavenly and earthly. So it happens that, among friends between whom there is no agreement on divine things, there cannot be full and true agreement even on human things. For he who despises divine things must value human things otherwise than he ought, and whoever does not love him who made man does not know how to love man rightly. Therefore I do not say, “Now you are more fully my friend, who were so in part,” but, as reason shows, you were not my friend even in part, since you did not hold true friendship with me even in human things. For you were not yet my companion in divine things, by which human things are rightly weighed, whether when I myself was not in them, or after I began in some measure to taste them, from which you shrank far away.

Do not be angry, and do not think it absurd, that at that time, when I was burning in the vanities of this world, though you seemed to love me much, you were not yet my friend, since I was not a friend to myself but rather an enemy. For I loved iniquity, and true, because divine, is the saying written in the holy books: “But he who loves iniquity hates his own soul.” Since, then, I hated my own soul, how could I have a true friend who wished me the things in which I was suffering myself as my own enemy? But when the kindness and grace of our Savior shone on me, not according to my merits but according to his mercy, how could you, a stranger to it, be my friend, since you were utterly ignorant of what could make me happy and did not love me in that respect in which I had already become in some measure a friend to myself?

Thanks be to the Lord, then, that at long last he deigns to make you my friend. For now we have agreement on things human and divine, with goodwill and love, in Christ Jesus our Lord, our most true peace, who summed up all the divine proclamations in two commandments, saying: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,” and, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself; on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” In the first is agreement on divine things, in the second on human things, with goodwill and love. If you hold these two most firmly with me, our friendship will be true and eternal, and will unite us not only to each other but also to the Lord himself.

That this may come about, I exhort your gravity and prudence now to receive the sacraments of the faithful as well; for it befits your age and suits, I believe, your character. Remember what you said to me as I was leaving, recalling a line from Terence, a comic one, but most apt and useful: “This day brings another life and demands other ways.” If you said it truly, as I ought not to doubt of you, you surely now live so as to be worthy to receive in saving baptism the remission of past sins. For there is absolutely no one but the Lord Christ to whom the human race can say: “Under your leadership, if any traces of our crime remain, they will be undone and free the lands from perpetual fear.” Virgil admitted that he took this from the Cumaean, that is, the Sibylline song, since perhaps that prophetess too had heard something in the spirit about the only Savior, which she had to confess. These things, my lord justly esteemed and in Christ dearly beloved and most longed-for brother, whether few or perhaps many, I have written somehow, being very busy. I long to receive your reply and to learn that you have given in your name among the candidates for baptism, or are about to give it at any moment. May the Lord God, in whom you have believed, keep you both here and in the world to come, my lord justly esteemed and in Christ dearly beloved and most longed-for brother.

You wrote asking me to send you a long letter of consolation, since you are gravely moved by the death of your excellent wife, as you remember holy Paulinus did for Macarius. That soul, indeed, received into the company of the faithful and chaste, neither cares for nor seeks human praises; but since these things are done for the sake of the living, the first thing is that you, who wish to be consoled by her praise, should live so as to deserve to be where she is. For I do not doubt that you do not believe her to be where those women are who either polluted the marriage bed by adulteries or, bound by no marriage, ran loose in fornication. Therefore, to want to drive away sadness by praising her to a husband far unlike her is flattery, not consolation. For if you loved her as she loved you, you would have kept for her what she kept for you; and since she, if you had died first, is by no means to be believed to have married anyone else, would you not, if you truly grieved over her death so as to be consoled by her praises, refrain from seeking even one lawful wife after her?

Here you will say: “Why do you deal with me so harshly? Why do you rebuke me so severely?” Have we not grown old amid these words, while life is led to be ended before it is corrected? You want me to pardon your deadly unconcern; how much better that you pardon my anxiety, if not lovable, at least pitiable! Tully, indeed, was inveighing with a hostile mind, and the purpose of one governing an earthly state was far different, and yet he said: “I desire, senators, to be merciful; I desire not to seem lax amid such great dangers to the state.” How much more justly do I say, since you know what a friendly mind I bear toward you, set as I am in the service of the eternal city as a minister of the divine word and sacrament: “I desire, brother Cornelius, to be merciful; I desire not to seem lax amid such great dangers, yours and mine!”

A crowd of women keeps watch at your sides; the number of concubines grows daily; and are we bishops patiently to listen to the master of that number, or rather its slave, flowing away in insatiable lust through so many harlots, demanding of us by right of friendship praises of his dead chaste wife, as if to soothe his grief? When you were, I will not say a catechumen, but caught with us in a most pernicious error, a young man with us when we were younger, you had corrected yourself of this vice with most temperate resolve; you fell back into it more foully not long after, and then, baptized in extreme danger of life, you have not yet been corrected, I will not say for a faithful man, but even for us, now old men and bishops besides. You want to be consoled by us for the death of a good wife; who consoles us for this truer death of yours? Or, because we cannot forget your great services to us, must we therefore still be tormented by your ways, and therefore despised and counted as nothing, when we groan to you about you? But we confess that we are nothing for correcting and healing you; let God be attended to, let Christ be thought of, let the apostle be heard saying: “Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot?” If in your heart you spurn the words of a bishop, your friend, of whatever worth, think of your Lord's body in your body. Finally, why do you sin, putting it off from day to day, when you do not know your last day?

Now I will test how much you want praises of Cypriana from my mouth. Certainly, if I were still selling words to pupils in a school of rhetoric, I would take my fee from them first. I want to sell you the praise of your most chaste wife: first give me the fee, your chastity; give it, I say, and receive. I speak in human terms because of your weakness: I think Cypriana is not worthy of you if you put the love of your concubines before her praises, which you will certainly do if you prefer to remain in that love rather than to come to these praises. Why do you want to wring something from me by asking, when you see that what I ask is for your own good? Why do you beg as a subject for what you could command if corrected? Let us send gifts to your wife's spirit: you imitation, I praise. Although, as I said above, she no longer seeks praise from men, she seeks your imitation even in death as much as she loved you, unlike her, in life. I will do what you wish about her when you have done what both I and she wish.

For if that proud and impious rich man, as the Lord says in the Gospel, who was clothed in purple and fine linen and feasted splendidly every day, when he was paying the penalty of his evil deeds in the underworld and could not obtain a drop of water from the finger of the poor man he had despised before his door, remembered his five brothers and asked that the same poor man, whose rest in Abraham's bosom he saw far off, be sent to them, so that they too might not come to that place of torment, how much more does your wife remember you! How much more does the chaste one not want you to come to the punishment of adulterers, if even the proud man did not want his brothers to come to the punishment of the proud! And if a brother did not want his brothers joined to him in evils, how much less does a wife set among the good want to have her husband separated in evils! Read the passage itself in the Gospel: it is the loving voice of Christ; believe God. You grieve, of course, over your dead wife, and think that if I praise her you will be consoled by my words. Learn what to grieve over: if you will not be with her. Or ought you to grieve more that she is not yet praised by me than I that she is not loved by you? For surely, if you loved her, you would desire to be with her after death, where you certainly will not be if you remain as you are. Love, then, the one whose praise you demand, lest I justly refuse what you deceitfully demand. [In another hand:] May the Lord grant us to rejoice over your salvation, my lord dearly beloved and honorable brother.