Letters 313–355

who would surely suffer the most terrible harm if, while practising oratory, they learned vice, and that not without paying for it, as having you for teachers not of virtue but of vice. If I seem tiresome to you in writing this, … me in kind by giving me some useful advice yourself, so that you may either benefit me if I obey or accuse me if I resist. For example: I did not know what a boorish and uneducated man I was admonishing for his folly, a sophist; nor did I learn from the common proverb that a bald man should not doze in front of a ram, nor stir up a wasps' nest against himself, a tongue all too ready for abuse. This does not much vex me (for I have been added to many, as I hear, and, if you live, I shall have many after me); but rather that I was not trusted to do it out of friendship. However, may you be healthy in body and soul, and restrain your tongue if you can; but for now we will be content with our part.

… you will wrong him. For we shall have given him offence and gained nothing more from you. But if you grant as much as we hope, you will show yourself fair, and both will go as well as possible for us: to him we will make our defence, and you we will praise. And if you allow us to give you fatherly advice, do not spit out the counsel from your habit of ruling; accept the word of a man not ignorant of such things. Lay down at last your weapons, your slings, and your more terrible spears, your tongues, with which you shoot at and wound one another, and that before your admiring students. And lay them down all the more because this weapon is readier to hand than the others, so that you may not be guides to vice rather than to virtue for the young, if not by words, then by deeds. For what one enjoys when it happens, he recommends even in silence. If you do this, you will benefit yourselves, have us as friends, and not belie the hopes of those who have trusted you. This is your reward for your labours over Nicobulus. If we receive fuller proof, we will repay you with fuller praise than this.

… to become best in every way and according to our common … . [Letter 194. To the same] See, here is a second son-in-law for you, and you are laying down your sweet burden, and doing well. We are idle, as you might say yourself; but, to tell the true story, we are weak, not idle. But things from God are well with us. For we have yielded the tumults to others, and we shall enjoy philosophy with you when you withdraw to God and belong wholly to the things above, held by no bond. And now we contribute to the wedding our prayers, which are the finest gift we ought to bring.

And so that you may know how much I trust your goodness, see, I bring you an intercession very necessary to us, and I ask of your friendship what belongs to friends. I entrust to you from my own right hand my Nicobulus with his brothers, not to pay a penalty but to receive justice; and their mother, widowed before her time; and a house once brilliant and admired, while our great Nicobulus was alive, but now not even allowed to mourn, because of the evils that have already appeared and those that are expected, unless you and your justice stand by them against the evil demon, and honour us, and respect human feeling, and make your office brilliant for yourself by your kindness to us.

… and those oaths which they took at the inquiry, they are now again trying to harass the orphans. [Letter 197. To Gregory of Nyssa] I had set out to you in all haste and had come as far as Euphemias, when I was held back by the synod you are holding for the holy martyrs, since I could not take part in it because of my sickness, and would otherwise have been burdensome by coming at the wrong time. I set out both to visit you after so long, and to admire your endurance and the philosophy you show (for I hear of it) at the departure of your holy and blessed sister, as a good and perfect man, who stands before God and knows better than anyone things divine and human; judging what is heaviest to others in such cases to be the lightest: to have lived with such a woman, and to have sent her on ahead and laid her up in the safe dwellings, “like a heap of the threshing floor gathered in its season,” to use the words of divine Scripture; having shared the delights of life and escaped its sorrows by the measure of her years, and, before having to mourn for you, honoured by you with the fair funeral owed to such women. I too, be well assured, long for my departure, if not with you (that is too much to say), at least right after you. But what must one feel before God's law, which has long prevailed, and which has taken my Theosebia (for I call her mine who lived according to God, since spiritual kinship is better than bodily): Theosebia, the boast of the Church, the ornament of Christ, the benefit of our generation, the freedom of speech of women; Theosebia, amid such great

beauty of the brothers the most comely and the most conspicuous; Theosebia, truly holy, the consort of a priest and of equal honour, and worthy of the great mysteries; Theosebia, whom future time too will receive, set up on immortal pillars, the souls of all who know her now and of all who will come after? And do not wonder if I name her often; for I delight even in the memory of the blessed one. This, then, is from us both a funeral speech for her, much in little, and a word of consolation for you, though you are able to console others in such things through your philosophy in all things. Our meeting (since we long for that too) we have been deprived of for now, for the reason I gave. We pray together for ourselves, as long as we are still above ground, that the common end, to which we draw near, may not part us. Therefore we must bear everything, as men who will neither rejoice nor grieve much longer. [Letter 198. To Nemesius] Some praise Pythagoras of Samos because, when he had to offer a sacrifice (since otherwise he did not approve of sacrificing), he discharged the sacrifice with an ox of clay; for one must not, he said, purify the dead with dead things, meaning bodies. You would do well to imitate him yourself, my admirable friend. Since imposing fines has been forbidden you, and you alone of governors, or with very few, have established among your subjects a fear without penalty, do not fine Valentinian either, who is yours and ours (for we intercede for a relative), but

after pronouncing the fine only so far as to utter it, hold back the penalty. For he is not paying the penalty for his own negligence (if we may make bold to say so). If, then, we persuade you as a judge, that is best; if not, we will take refuge in the friend, and say to your Eloquence what someone is said to have written to his friend: “So-and-so: if he does no wrong, release him for justice's sake; if he does wrong, release him for mine.” But release him in any case, bearing in mind, besides everything else, that the community would gain nothing great from a fine of two horses, while for us the favour will be on record. And let this also be added: help the misfortune of the man, who has been badly crushed by an accident.

… give a hand to his misfortune, which you yourself will examine. For your office needs no addition to its good repute, any more than the morning star needs brightness; but if you seek some addition, none could be greater or more brilliant than this, be well assured, as many who wish to speak the truth will tell your goodness. [Letter 200. To the same] You were making even your office philosophy for us, and I know you will continue to do so, if God cares for our affairs. Yet it would have been best to be with you now, when you have leisure from public affairs, as you longed for, and when one may enjoy your understanding in quiet; of which we had only a small share, as much as a lightning flash gives an eye that cannot hold it, and missed the greater part. But this is a great thing to pray for and not easy to obtain, our body being as it is. If we obtain this too, we shall have everything (for you also owe us some time together, by your promise, about the discourse you left somehow unfinished); if not, we will bear the loss unwillingly. But know that you are with us wherever you may be, and are guided by our prayers. And you remain with us, as long as we breathe, inscribed on hearts more honoured than any pillar, where you have inscribed yourself; and you will inscribe yourself still more when you become God's, and plainly ours, or we yours, if that is sweeter to say. [Letter 201. To the same] What is this? You ran past us without our knowing, and it was not possible to catch you, any more than those can hold the echo who think they have it and are deceived by its answers; or this alone of all things we would have seized by force.

But at least write to us, my admirable friend, and we will have this in place of you: a shadow, as the saying goes, instead of the body. [Letter 202. To Nectarius, bishop of Constantinople]

… they parade …, gathering congregations as though they were doing so by permission. And those of Macedonius's party have gone so far in their folly, in their rivalry, that, even taking for themselves the name of bishops, they swarm over our region, boasting of Eleusius in their ordinations. And our domestic evil, Eunomius, is no longer content merely to exist; unless he drags everyone along with him into his own ruin, he counts it a loss. And these things can be borne. But the hardest of all among the misfortunes of the Church is the boldness of the Apollinarians, whom your Holiness, I do not know how, overlooked when they obtained for themselves the right to hold assemblies on an equal footing with us. You, who have been thoroughly instructed in the divine mysteries in everything by God's grace, know not only the defence of the right doctrine, but also all that the heretics have devised against the sound faith; yet perhaps it is not untimely for your Dignity to hear from our littleness too that a pamphlet of Apollinarius has come into my hands, whose arguments go beyond every heretical wickedness. For he maintains that the flesh which was assumed in the economy by the only-begotten Son for the remaking of our nature was not acquired, but that that fleshly nature was in the Son from the beginning. And, wrongly taking a certain saying of the Gospel as testimony for this absurdity, he leaps on it, saying that “No one has ascended into heaven except the Son of Man who came down from heaven,” as though he were Son of Man even before he came down, and came down bringing with him his own flesh, which he had in heaven, existing before the ages and sharing his essence. For he quotes again a certain saying of the Apostle, torn away from the whole body of the passage: “The second man is from heaven.” Then he argues that that man

who came from above does not have the mind, but that the Godhead of the Only-begotten, filling the place of the nature of the mind, became the third part of the human compound, soul and body being present in him in human fashion, but mind not being present, God the Word filling its place. And this is not yet the terrible thing; but the hardest of all is that he argues that the only-begotten God himself, the judge of all, the author of life, the destroyer of death, is mortal, and received suffering in his own Godhead; and that in that three-day deadness of the body the Godhead too died along with the body, and so was raised again from death by the Father. The other things he adds to such absurdities it would take long to go through. If, then, those who think such things obtain the right to assemble, let your wisdom, approved in Christ, consider that, since we do not agree with what they think, their receiving the right of assembly is nothing else than their being considered truer than our doctrine. For if they are allowed, as men of right belief, to teach what they think and to preach their doctrine openly, it is plain that the doctrine of the Church has been condemned, as though the truth were with them. For two contrary statements about the same thing cannot by nature both be true. How, then, did your great and lofty mind bear not to use its usual freedom of speech to correct so great an evil? But even if this did not happen before, now at least let your Perfection, … in virtue, rise up, and teach the most pious emperor that there will be no gain from all the rest of his zeal for the Churches if such an evil, for the destruction of the sound faith, prevails through their freedom.

“We are driven out of Karbala most unholily,” for I will use the tragic line, changing it a little. We are driven out, not in word at all, but in deed very forcibly. It would have been much better to proclaim our withdrawal by public notice than by means of the women whom you have settled opposite us, cutting away the dignity of our life and yoking to it daily indecency and slander from those who readily abuse people who choose to live as we do. If it is not too bold to say so, you have cast us out of paradise through Eve. It is easy, of course, to find some fair pretext, to satisfy appearances and seem to speak justly: that we are not being driven out by you but honoured, since you wish to be our neighbour; and you will perhaps add that you greet us in a friendly and kinsmanly way and enjoy something of our friendship. But that is word, not deed. For you yourselves, when you visit the place, we both receive and embrace; but before the household rule of women we will withdraw as before the attacks of vipers. Our part is at an end. We have been outwitted, we have drawn in, we have chosen our own dignity, leaving the labours of our hands and our hopes, and making many apologies to the holy martyrs. Surely, even if these things are heavy and hard to bear, still they are borne with philosophy on the road of our life, and are not yet more burdensome than moving from city to city (which we were commanded to bear). May you live in the place longer than those who lived there before you, but more modestly than we expect, so that you neither insult the holy martyrs nor are yourselves struck down for your stay there. Above all, take this precaution: spare what has been consecrated to the martyrs, so that you may not take bad counsel about yourselves and your

But we offer you one thing in place of all, ourselves; and indeed we seek one thing in place of all, you. If, then, you are better and from better stock (we admit it, since this too becomes ours), yet in one thing at least you will not surpass us (it shall be said in God): in faithfulness and sincerity toward kinship; of which those who have sense ought to take more account than of all other things together. This is enough for your Perfection, and perhaps beyond the measure of a letter. For the rest I will pray for myself and for you: may God, by whom these things and all others are ordered for those who love him, put into your minds whatever is best and most advantageous for us and for you alike, especially as you deliberate about such great matters.

… was severely blamed, and the pious father paid the penalty for the lawlessness of his sons. Fearing this example myself, I have come to give you this warning. What has happened to you I do not know. What is this great darkness of a moonless night around you? How can you disgrace your own family, and disgrace our grey hair, and the hopes we had in you when we stayed at Nauila, speaking of every good thing and persuading you, as we thought? How do you not hear Scripture saying, “Do not give your wealth to women, nor your goods to after-regret”? Know well that you will repent of this a little later, “when the flesh of your body is consumed,” as it is written, and your mind, breaking through as from a cloud, can look to God and reckon clearly what is profitable. … the snare, lest you be caught by the eyes; and if you have been caught, come to your senses, lest you confirm the rumour that your mind has been stolen by drugs; for licentiousness is clever at devising evils. It is grievous to scatter and destroy in so short a time so great a house, gathered with such labours, and especially at the beginning of life, when each man lays the foundation of a good or a bad reputation for himself. But it is much more terrible to commit sacrilege and carry off women who are virgins, whom your parents and you yourself, as you persuaded us, consecrated to God; and to have some already and terrify others as about to suffer the same. Fear God, then, whom you serve, and respect us, and restrain yourself henceforth from every evil purpose. For if you could look out and know the disgrace you have poured on all of us, perhaps you would need no other exhortation, but would make shame itself the counsellor of your actions. I could write more pleasant things than these, but none more profitable. I will refrain from writing more, knowing this, that unless the fear of God disciplines you, words will avail little or nothing; for wax is easily engraved with iron, iron with more labour, and adamant not even by the hardest tool, because of the hardness of its nature.

[Letter 207. To Jacob] If I were in such bodily health as to be equal to the labour, I would have come to you myself, satisfied my longing to meet you, and discussed what I wished; for our concern is not with small matters. But since I am held by sickness, I have of necessity turned to letters. I present to your nobility our most modest daughter Simplicia, once the wife of the good and noble Alypius, the ornament of our whole country, with the pitiable names of widowhood and orphanhood, to obtain from you justice in what she will ask of you. And consider the greatness of the misfortune. She has not yet ceased her lamentations, and she is in anguish over the orphans, and travels long journeys abroad with a body so weak and with no experience of affairs, she who was not accustomed even to look out of her house. What is more pitiable than this? To have no room even for mourning, and to have the modesty of her rank broken down by suffering. Considering all this, then, and respecting our request besides, do not wait for someone else to become judge in place of the great and good Jacob, nor force her into a longer stay abroad, confident as she is in her just claims, as she persuades many and us too. But read the letters, examine her claims with all uprightness, and send her back to us more cheerful, considering this before all, that you have many things from God: power, wealth, glory, the road to greater success. Keep these for yourself through your present kindness; and think as a father of children, and as one who has been delivered from some dangers and may enter others; and make your hopes in God favourable for yourself through the present case.

I know your Honour by hearsay; but I admire you as few even of those who have long associated with you do; so great is the report of your goodness among all. Therefore I too have dared this intercession. The admirable Alypius has left us, the common protector of his friends and guardian of orphans. This is no small misfortune for us. A second has been added: that his most modest wife must care for the orphans. Console her by your present kindness, secure safety for your own children by your good deed to the orphans, and show that kinship counts for more than strangers. And there will also be the favour to us, since whatever honour you show us you will have shown to God, whose attendants and ministers we have been counted worthy to be, even if we fall short of the dignity.

A foreign land, it seems, is kinder to me than my own country. For the one let me enjoy your friendship, the other has granted me nothing of the kind. And this I owe to my sickness, which holds me fettered and makes me slow to move toward many things, or rather unable to move, if I must speak more truly. This loss we will bear with grief; but what grievous thing does man not bear? Only may you be well and fare as you wish, and may your affairs be in the hand of God; and they will be, if you hold to him sincerely. And be so good as to send back to us very soon the lady, our common sister, as the common support of the devout and of our weakness; or we will cry out loudly against your “priestess,” through whom we suffer this loss, and call her by her proper name. Who she is you will know by asking her. [Letter 211. To Cyriacus] You honour the devout, I know well, and you do good to the poor. Now is the time for both; for the matter stands thus. Our most honoured and most God-beloved son Sacerdos, our fellow presbyter, is in charge of one of the well-known and well-populated poorhouses, both for piety's sake and because of his zeal for the work. Among the properties that serve the poorhouse are Dirianda and Caserina, which border on the lands of the house and contribute something to the poorhouse by gift of the most honoured Castor. By freeing them from all harassment you will contribute no small share both to the care of the poor and to the recompense for yourself which you know is owed to the pious. And plainly, once you have set out on this benefaction, you will also provide for its future security, so that no one, even if he wished, may do harm to these places, in whatever way your understanding may devise.

I greet you, our young hope, grey-haired in youth; and I wish and pray for you all that is finest. The first of good things you know: always to possess God, and to become God's possession through intimacy with him and ascent toward him; of which I know you will admonish yourself. [Letter 213. To the same] If you expected nothing difficult when you came to philosophy, the beginning was unphilosophical, and I blame those who formed you. But if it was expected: if it did not come, thanks be to God; but if it did come, either endure as you suffer, or know that you are belying your promise.

[Letter 215. To the same] What is terrible for us? Nothing, except to fail of God and of divine things. Let the rest be as God brings it, whether he orders us through the right-hand weapons of righteousness, the kinder ones, or through the left-hand and harsher ones. The steward of our life knows the reasons for these things. Let us fear one thing only: suffering anything unphilosophically. We fed the poor, we loved the brothers, we delighted in psalmody, while it was allowed. We are not permitted this; let us practise some other philosophy; for grace is not poor. Let us be at leisure, contemplate, and purify the mind with divine impressions, which is perhaps higher than what was mentioned before. But we are not so disposed; rather, because we have failed of one thing, we think we have fallen from everything. Not so; but let us still hold to good hope, if we see anything left to us; and let us not be like colts, which, not being used to alarms, grow wild at noises and throw their riders.

… piety, and we have had experience of many men and characters (and experience is the mother of understanding), whereas you are like newly yoked colts, just beginning the contests of God's service (and what is beginning is hotter, and by the zeal of the spirit able to achieve much that is right, and to miss much through ignorance): be willing, then, to come to us, to honour us as old men and respect us as fathers, and to use us as mediators in your dispute with our most venerable brother and fellow presbyter Sacerdos, for he himself is here; so that, settling your affairs with one another, you may serve the bishop, remove the scandal of the many, and, greatest of all, appease God, and not destroy so quickly so great and glorious a thing (I mean your concord and the compacts of life you made in God). [Letter 217. To the same] After the war, the alliance; after the storm, the helmsman; and whereas we ought first to deliberate and then to act, we have reversed the order: after acting, we deliberate. If I had to flatter and make things worse, I would have found many roads of flattery, since that is easier and many succeed at it nowadays. But since doing harm is not our way, especially to a soul newly initiated and just approaching the good, hear the truth. The beginning was unphilosophical; and those who courted you loved you badly, playing their own game under another's mask. If, then, you change even now and heal the sin, perhaps some healing of the wound may come to you, even if with difficulty. But if

you remain in the same state and pride yourself on your evil victory, “Grievous is my wound,” says the divine Scripture; “whence shall I be healed?” For I make your affairs my own. Yet though I am so disposed and write so, if you long to meet, I will not refuse. The good and noble Sacerdos, our fellow presbyter, is my friend, I confess, and may he remain so, and the more because he holds to you. For not even in his complaints did he give up his affection, but made a brotherly reproach rather than a hostile accusation. But I am not so ignorant and rash as to judge a case before hearing both sides (do not suppose that), I who even in that very letter which you condemned as bold (unless you read it carelessly) touched you less than those who inflame you and draw private profit from your petty quarrel. What, then, was my purpose? You may learn it thus. Colt-breakers train colts to colours and noises, and to steep and level ground, not to frighten them but to teach them not to be frightened. With this in mind I made my letter somewhat rough. For the exercises of philosophy are many; and thanks be to God that I found you not unphilosophical, nor wild, but gentle enough and of our own fold, so that you write fairly and long to meet. If, then, you grant us this too, you do better, and we will receive you, be well assured, with a father's eyes. But if the winter hinders you somewhat, meanwhile we greet you with this advice. Prefer nothing, even now, to friendship and concord with your brother Sacerdos (believe me), and think that what has happened is nothing but a trial from the evil one, jealous of your philosophy.