Letters 100.14–106.1

For as the pilots of great ships, when they see an immense flood coming from the deep, meet the foaming waves like hunters meeting a most ferocious beast, and hold them off by setting the prow against them, turning the rudders this way and that, and tightening or slackening the ropes as the blowing of the winds and necessity command; and when the wave subsides, they release the straining fastenings of the steering oars on both sides of the ship, so that, resting a little, they may be ready for the next flood; and when it comes again, they tighten the heads of the oars and spread the blades, so that, the blasts being split this way and that, the labour of both sides may be equal, and what could not be borne all at once may become more bearable when divided: so those who take care of themselves imitate this example, and using the dispensation of the divine words as a rudder they meet the storm and waves of the heretics, holding fast to the law of God as their skill, so that those who had fallen may be raised, and those who stand may continue with firm step, and all in common may be saved by the help of the teaching. For what the steering oar is to the pilot, the law of God is to the soul. Keeping the Lord's Pascha in it, let us prefer nothing in the world to the love of God and neighbour, and let us not change our judgment with the shifting of human fortunes, which turn this way and that. Let us not, if the winds perhaps blow the other way and riches are changed to poverty, height to lowliness, glory to disgrace, suddenly turn into enemies of those whom we once served with shameful flattery because of their power, resisting to their face those whom we thought worthy of veneration, weighing friendship by the times and not by faith, or rather showing hidden enmities in the time of need and coming out of our holes like snakes; so that we are not only ungrateful to those by whose benefits we were sustained, rejoicing if we could hold the name of their clients, but even persecute them to blood like public enemies, trampling on those, cast down and prostrate, whom we formerly looked up to for their riches, crying them out as the worst of all men once their wealth has changed to poverty, praising power and slandering misfortune, honouring or despising a man not according to the nature of things but according to the variety of fortunes; so that those whom we once called lords and patrons we now call rogues and worthless slaves, and our iniquity appears on every side, while we either praise the unworthy or persecute the worthy with slander, imitating what they said reproachfully to blessed Job: 'You have been beaten for few of the things in which you sinned.'

Let us therefore love not uncertain wealth but most steadfast virtue. Let not the hardness of poverty humble us, nor riches lift us up, which are wont to press down and raise up the most foolish of men; but let us govern both according to what is honourable, bearing sad things and glad with an even mind. Care for riches breaks the sweetest sleep, contrives slanders against the innocent, and, when it has gathered boundless wealth, prepares fuel for eternal fires. And when insatiable madness has brooded over the wealth it has sought, avarice is not filled, but despises laws, looks down on the flames of Gehenna, and counts the tribunal of the coming judgment as nothing. Enemies do not fight so much against their foes as riches fight against virtues, unless they are tempered by reason and by mercy toward neighbours. They are preferred to nobility in cities; they give new men an ancient family. The desire for riches can never be satisfied by any riches; the avaricious man is always in want; he knows no measure who lacks what he has as much as what he does not have. Hell is not filled with the dead, but the more it receives, the more it desires; avarice imitates it and cannot be filled, but the more it has, the more it seeks. It thinks all it possesses less than what it desires, always boundless, always immoderate, not quenching the heat of the heart by the greatness of its wealth, devouring at banquets not food but injustice; mixing quarrels and strife in the courts, it gives birth to envy, through which men come to murder. It is not in its right mind, but reels as if drunk, having one measure: always to seek beyond measure. The sea is shut in by shores; ports, whether made by hand or strong by nature, hold back the waves coming from the deep and the rage of swelling floods; but the lust for riches, unless it is bridled by reason, no counsel restrains, no law can soften, no abundance satisfies. It does not blush, it does not dread the coming judgment, but with the desire of having more, as the luxurious and those given to pleasures are wont to exult in embraces and rage with lust, so it fills cities, villages, and country houses with slanders and quarrels. The pursuits of avarice possess islands, seas, lands, shores, roads, and crossings, while, with the desire of having more, it exchanges goods here and there in trade and lays the insatiable foundations of riches by frauds and perjuries.

So, despising madness of this kind, let us seek as riches the worship of God and, as the firmest possessions, the holiness of chastity, adoring the one Godhead of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and believing that the resurrection of the dead is incorruptible and endures for ever. For it cannot be that death should overcome the resurrection that was confirmed by the passion of Christ, who raised the temple of his body incorrupt and enduring for ever. Let us pray for the most pious emperors, and adorn the precepts of the fasts by keeping the law of God; for virtue guards its followers without any compulsion, and lifts the mind that wavers among various thoughts from earthly things to the heights, contemplating not the beauty of bodies but the order of conduct and character, showing it the choirs of angels rejoicing in heaven and teaching it the lightnings of shining disciplines, so that in the present age, like a most valiant athlete, it may endure the blows inflicted and await the glory to come in return for them, by no means subject to vices, but lifting the inner man by desire of itself to things eternal and restraining all the onsets of pleasure by reason, so as to think of what it will be, and, as far as human frailty can bear, to withdraw from care for bodily things, preferring spiritual things to carnal. So, despising even the body itself and the pursuits of present pleasures, it may persuade the body to enter on a harder but better life, so that the body which once served lust may serve chastity in a good freedom, and, drawn back from the precipices, may accept the gentle reins of fasts. For if the weak nature of bodies is without a governor and master and will not obey the commanding mind, it stirs up endless shipwrecks for itself and its governor, and drags him to the foulest lusts and the abyss of pleasures, so that he considers nothing honourable but, fleeing good things, wallows in mud and filth. But virtue, when it has ruled the mind like a charioteer and, standing as it were in the chariot, has checked its onsets and various appetites with the reins of teaching, raises it from low things to the heights, and, showing things invisible and eternal in place of things visible, prepares a dwelling in heaven and makes friends for it of those who, serving in the ministry of God, enjoy spiritual delights, so that what it saw here in an image it may see there in truth, and may behold a brightness greater than the rays of the sun, which comes down to us here in part, so that we may reach from lesser things to greater and, as through letters and syllables, advance to reading, since these need those and those need these. There, when we are joined to the company of the blessed, we shall hear: 'Well done, good and faithful servant; because you were faithful over a few things, I will set you over many; enter into the joy of your Lord.'

Let us begin the fasts of holy Lent on the eleventh day of the month Phamenoth, and the week of the Lord's passion on the sixteenth day of the month Pharmuthi, and end the fasts on the evening of the Sabbath, the twenty-first day of the same month Pharmuthi, and on the following Lord's day, the twenty-second day of the same month, let us celebrate the Pascha. After this let us add the seven weeks of holy Pentecost, remembering the poor, loving God and neighbour, praying for our enemies, speaking kindly to persecutors, raising up the falls of the weak by consolation and mercy, so that the tongue may always resound in the praises of God, so that the just judgments of the church may never be destroyed by irrational leniency and human decisions may not be preferred to the law of God. If we desire his friendship, we shall obtain heavenly glory in Christ Jesus our Lord, through whom and with whom be glory and dominion to God the Father with the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen.

Greet one another with a holy kiss. The brothers who are with me greet you. And you ought to know this, that in place of bishops who have died, these have been appointed in their several places: in the city of Nikiu, Theodosius in place of Heopemptus; at Terenuthis, Arsintheus; in the town of Gerae, Pisozus in place of Eudaemon; at … Museus in place of Apollo; at Athribis, Athanasius in place of Isidore; at Cleopatris, Offellius; in the town of Leto, Appelles in place of Timothy. Write to these, then, and receive letters of communion from them according to custom.

I have heard that my letter reached your hands; but that I have not yet been found worthy of a reply I would by no means lay to the charge of your love; beyond doubt there was some hindrance. So I recognize that I should rather pray the Lord to give your will the means of sending what you have written in reply; for he has already given the means of writing it, since you can do so most easily whenever you wish.

This too has been reported to me; whether I should believe it I doubted, but whether I should write something to you about it I ought not to have doubted. It is briefly this: I have been told that it was suggested to your Charity by some brothers, I do not know who, that I wrote a book against you and sent it to Rome. Know that this is false. I call our God to witness that I have not done it. But if perhaps some things are found in some of my writings in which I am found to have thought otherwise than you, I think you ought to recognize, or, if it cannot be recognized, to believe, that they were not said against you but written by me as they seemed to me. I would say this, however, in such a way that I am not only most ready, if anything in my writings has troubled you, to receive in a brotherly way what you think against it, rejoicing either in my correction or in your very kindness, but I even ask and beg this of you.

O if only it had been allowed, if not by living together, at least as your neighbour, to enjoy you in the Lord in frequent and sweet conversation! But since that has not been granted, I ask you to be eager to keep, and to increase and perfect, this very thing, that we are together in Christ as far as we can be, and not to despise replies, however rare. Greet with my respects our holy brother Paulinian and all the brothers who rejoice with you and in you in the Lord. Remembering us, may you be heard by the Lord in every holy desire, my lord most dear and most longed for, and brother deservedly to be honoured.

At the very moment of departure of our holy son Asterius the subdeacon, your Blessedness's letter reached me, in which you satisfy me that you did not send a book to Rome against my littleness. Nor had I heard that this had been done; but copies of a certain letter, apparently written to me, arrived here through our brother Sisinnius the deacon, in which you urge me to sing a palinode on a certain passage of the apostle and to imitate Stesichorus, who wavered between blaming and praising Helen, so that he who had lost his eyes by disparaging her recovered them by praising her. I confess to your Worthiness plainly that, although the style and the arguments seemed to me yours, I thought I should not rashly trust copies of letters, lest, if I answered and you were hurt, you might justly complain that I ought first to have proved that it was your discourse and only then replied. Added to the delay was the long illness of the holy and venerable Paula. For while we sat for a long time by her in her sickness, we almost forgot your letter, or the letter of the one who wrote under your name, remembering that little verse: 'Music in mourning is an untimely tale.' So, if the letter is yours, write openly or send more accurate copies, so that we may engage in the discussion of the Scriptures without any rancour of heart, and either correct our own error or show that another has criticized us in vain.

Far be it from me to dare to touch anything in your Blessedness's books. It is enough for me to prove my own and not to pluck at others'. Besides, your wisdom knows very well that each is to be fully persuaded in his own mind, and that it is the boasting of a boy, as young men used to do in the past, to seek fame for one's own name by accusing illustrious men. Nor am I so foolish as to think myself injured by the difference of your interpretations, since you are not injured if we have thought the contrary. But this is true reproach among friends, if, not seeing our own wallet, we look at the knapsack of others, as Persius says. It remains that you love one who loves you, and that in the field of the Scriptures you, a young man, do not challenge an old one. We have had our time and have run as far as we could; now, while you run and cover long distances, rest is owed to us; and at the same time, with your pardon and respect for you, so that you may not seem the only one to have quoted something from the poets to me, remember Dares and Entellus, and the common proverb that a tired ox plants its foot more firmly. We have dictated these things in sorrow; would that we might be worthy of your embraces, and by mutual conference either teach or learn something!

Calpurnius, surnamed Lanarius, has sent me his abuse with his usual rashness, and I have learned that through his efforts it has reached Africa too. I have answered it briefly in part and have sent you copies of my little book, intending to send the larger work at the first opportunity when it is convenient. In it I have taken care not to injure anyone's Christian reputation, but only to refute the lies and madness of an ignorant man who raves. Remember me, holy and venerable pope. See how much I love you, that even when provoked I have not wished to answer, and do not believe that it is yours which I might perhaps criticize in another. Brother Communis humbly greets you.

Last year I sent your Worthiness a letter through our brother Asterius the subdeacon, promptly rendering the duty of greeting; I think it has been delivered to you. Now too, through my holy brother Praesidius the deacon, I beg you first to remember me, and next to hold the bearer of this letter commended, to know that he is most dear to me as a brother, and to cherish and support him in whatever need may require; not that, by Christ's gift, he lacks anything, but that he most eagerly seeks the friendship of good men and thinks it the greatest benefit to be joined to them. Why he has sailed to the West you will be able to learn from his own account.

Placed in the monastery, we are tossed by various waves from every side and endure the troubles of our sojourning. But we believe in him who said, 'Take courage; I have overcome the world,' that by his gift and under his protection we shall win the victory over the enemy, the devil. I beg you to greet with my respects our holy and venerable brother, Pope Alypius. The holy brothers who hasten to serve the Lord with us in the monastery greet you warmly. May Christ our almighty God keep you safe and mindful of me, my truly holy lord and pope to be received with honour.

Since I began to write to you and to long for your writings, no better opportunity has ever come my way than that my letter should be brought to you by a servant and most faithful minister of God, very dear to me, such as our son Cyprian the deacon is. Through him I hope for your letter so confidently that in matters of this kind I could hope for nothing more surely. For our son will not lack eagerness in asking for a reply, nor favour in obtaining it, nor care in keeping it, nor promptness in carrying it, nor faithfulness in delivering it. Only, if in any way I deserve it, may the Lord help and be present to your heart and my desire, so that no greater will may hinder your brotherly will.

Since I have now sent two letters and have received none of yours since, I wanted to send the same letters again, believing they had not arrived. And if they did arrive and perhaps yours could not reach me, send again the very writings you have already sent, if they have been kept; if not, dictate again something for me to read, provided you do not mind answering these letters, for which I have been waiting a long time. I also wanted to send even now the first letter, which I had prepared for you while still a presbyter, to be sent through a certain brother of ours, Profuturus, who afterwards became our colleague and has now departed this life; he could not carry it then himself, because, just as he was arranging to set out, he was detained by the burden of the episcopate and then shortly died. I send it so that you may know how long I have been burning for conversation with you, and how much I suffer because the senses of your body, through which my mind might reach your mind, are so far from me, my sweetest brother, to be honoured among the members of the Lord.

In this letter I add that we have since learned that you have translated Job from the Hebrew, though we already had a translation of yours of that prophet, turned from the Greek into Latin, in which you marked with asterisks what is in the Hebrew and missing in the Greek, and with obelisks what is found in the Greek and not in the Hebrew, with such wonderful care that in some places we see stars against single words, showing that these words are in the Hebrew but not in the Greek. But in this later translation, made from the Hebrew, the same faithfulness to the words does not appear. And it disturbs the reader not a little to wonder either why in that first one the asterisks are fixed with such care as to show that even the smallest particles of speech are lacking in the Greek manuscripts which are in the Hebrew, or why in this second one, which is from the Hebrew, less care was taken that these same particles should be found in their places. I wanted to give an example from it, but for the moment I did not have the manuscript translated from the Hebrew. But since you outstrip me in intelligence, I think you understand well enough not only what I have said but also what I meant to say, so that, giving the reason, you may explain what troubles me.

For my part I would rather that you translated for us the Greek canonical Scriptures which are said to be of the seventy translators. For it will be very hard, if your translation begins to be read more often in many churches, that the Latin churches will disagree with the Greek churches, especially since an objector is easily refuted when the Greek book, that is, of a very well-known language, is produced. But if anyone is troubled by something unusual in what was translated from the Hebrew and brings a charge of falsification, one will hardly or never get to the Hebrew testimonies by which the point objected to might be defended. And if one does get to them, who would bear that so many Latin and Greek authorities should be condemned? Add to this that even Hebrews, when consulted, may give a different answer, so that you alone seem necessary, as the one who could refute even them; but before what judge, it would be a wonder if you could find one.

For a certain brother of ours, a bishop, when he had arranged for your translation to be read in the church over which he presides, caused a stir by something in the prophet Jonah which you rendered very differently from what was ingrained in everyone's senses and memory and had been sung through so many successive generations. Such an uproar arose among the people, chiefly because the Greeks argued and inflamed the charge of falsification, that the bishop (the city was Oea) was compelled to ask for the testimony of the Jews. Did they, out of ignorance or malice, answer that what the Greeks and Latins had and said was in the Hebrew manuscripts? What more? The man was compelled to correct it as though it were a mistake, since he did not wish, after great danger, to be left without a congregation. From this it seems to us too that you also may sometimes have been mistaken in some points; and see what this means in writings that cannot be corrected by comparing the testimonies of languages in common use.

We therefore give no small thanks to God for your work in translating the Gospel from the Greek, because, almost everywhere, there is no stumbling when we compare the Greek Scripture. So if anyone contentiously favours an old falsity, he is very easily either taught or refuted when the manuscripts are produced and compared. And if some things, very rarely, rightly cause concern, who is so hard as not readily to forgive a work so useful, which cannot be repaid with enough praise? I wish you would kindly explain why you think that the authority of the Hebrew manuscripts is in many places one thing and that of the Greek, which is called the Septuagint, another. For that version has no small weight, having deserved to be so widely spread, and the apostles used it, as not only the facts themselves show but, I remember, you have also attested. And therefore you would do the greatest service if you would render into accurate Latin that Greek Scripture which the Seventy produced; for in different manuscripts it is so varied that it can hardly be tolerated, and so suspect of there being something different in the Greek that one hesitates to quote or prove anything from it. I thought this letter would be short, but somehow it has become so sweet to me to go on in it, as though I were speaking with you. But I beg you by the Lord not to be reluctant to answer everything and to give me your presence as far as you can.

You send me frequent letters and often press me to answer a certain letter of yours, copies of which reached me, as I have written before, through brother Sisinnius the deacon, without your signature, and which you indicate that you sent first through brother Profuturus and a second time through someone else; and that meanwhile Profuturus was held back from his journey, made a bishop, and taken away by a swift death, while the other, whose name you keep silent, feared the dangers of the sea and changed his plan of sailing. This being so, I cannot sufficiently wonder how that very letter is said to be held by many both at Rome and in Italy, and has not reached me alone, to whom alone it was sent; especially since the same brother Sisinnius said that he found it, among your other treatises, not in Africa, not with you, but on an island in the Adriatic about five years ago.

All suspicion must be removed from friendship, and one should speak with a friend as with another self. Some of my acquaintances, vessels of Christ, of whom there is a great number at Jerusalem and in the holy places, suggested that this was not done by you with a single mind, but seeking praise, petty rumours, and a little glory among the people, so that you might grow at our expense, so that many might know that you challenge and I fear, that you write as a learned man and I keep silent as an ignorant one, and that at last someone had been found to set a limit to my chattering. But I, to confess plainly, first did not wish to answer your Worthiness because I did not clearly believe the letter was yours, nor, as the common proverb says of certain people, a sword smeared with honey; next, I was careful not to seem to answer a bishop of my communion impudently and to criticize some things in the letter of one who criticized me, especially since I judged some things in it heretical;

and finally, so that you might not justly complain and say: 'What? Had you seen my letter and recognized the marks of a known hand in the signature, that you so easily wounded a friend and turned another's malice into an insult to me?' Therefore, as I have written before, either send the same letter signed with your own hand, or stop provoking an old man hiding in his cell. But if you wish to display or exercise your learning, seek young, eloquent, and noble men, of whom there are said to be very many at Rome, who might be able and dare to meet you and to bear the yoke with a bishop in disputing the holy Scriptures. I, once a soldier, now a veteran, ought to praise your victories and those of others, not to fight again myself with a worn-out body; lest, if you often drive me to write, I should recall that story of how Quintus Maximus by his patience broke Hannibal in his youthful exultation. 'Age bears all away, the mind as well; often, I remember, as a boy I laid long days to rest with singing. Now so many songs are forgotten by me; the voice itself now has fled Moeris.' And, to speak rather of the holy Scriptures, that Barzillai the Gileadite, handing over King David's benefits and all his delights to his young son, showed that old age ought not to seek these things nor accept them when offered.

As for your swearing that you did not write a book against me nor send to Rome a book you had not written, but that if some things are perhaps found in your writings that differ from my view, I was not injured by you but you wrote what seemed right to you: I ask you to hear me patiently. You did not write a book. Then how were writings containing your criticism of me brought to me by others? Why does Italy have what you did not write? On what ground do you ask me to answer what you deny having written? Nor am I so dull as to think myself injured if you have thought differently. But if you criticize my sayings at close quarters, demand an account of what I have written, press me to correct what I have written, challenge me to a palinode, and give me back my eyes, in this friendship is wounded, in this the rights of close relationship are violated. So that we may not seem to quarrel like boys and give our supporters or detractors on either side matter for contention, I write this, because I wish to love you purely and as a Christian and to keep nothing in my mind that differs from my lips. For it is not fitting that I, who from youth to this age have toiled in a little monastery with holy brothers, should dare to write anything against a bishop of my communion, and against a bishop whom I began to love before I knew him, who first invited me to friendship, whom I rejoiced to see rising after me in the learning of the Scriptures. Therefore either deny that the book is yours, if perhaps it is not yours, and stop demanding a reply to what you did not write; or, if it is yours, confess it frankly, so that if I write anything in my defence, the fault may lie with you who provoked me, not with me who was compelled to answer.

You add besides that you are ready, if anything in your writings troubles me or I wish to correct it, to receive it in a brotherly way, and that you will not only rejoice in my kindness toward you, but you even beg me to do this very thing. I say again what I feel: you provoke an old man, you goad one who is silent, you seem to make a display of your learning. It does not befit my age to be thought malicious toward one whom I ought rather to favour. And if perverse men find in the Gospels and the prophets what they strive to criticize, do you wonder if in your books, and especially in the exposition of the Scriptures, which are very obscure, some things seem to depart from the straight line? I say this not because I already judge that some things in your works deserve criticism. For I have never given attention to reading them, nor do we have a supply of copies here, apart from the books of your Soliloquies and certain short commentaries on the Psalms; and if I wished to examine these, I would show that they differ, I will not say from me, who am nothing, but from the interpretations of the old Greeks. Farewell, my dearest friend, in age a son, in dignity a father; and, as I ask, see to it that whatever you write to me reaches me first.

Truly the word of the apostle and the prophet has been fulfilled in you: 'Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.' Who would believe that the barbarous tongue of the Getae should seek the Hebrew truth, and that, while the Greeks slumber, or rather quarrel, Germany itself should search the utterances of the Holy Spirit? In truth I have come to know that God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation whoever fears God and works God's righteousness is acceptable to him. Hands long calloused from gripping the sword-hilt, and fingers fitter for handling arrows, are softening to the pen and the reed, and warlike breasts are turned to Christian gentleness. Now we see the prophecy of Isaiah too fulfilled in fact: 'They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and nation shall not take up sword against nation, and they shall learn war no more.' And again in the same prophet: 'The wolf shall feed with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the bull shall feed together, and a little child shall lead them; and the ox and the bear shall feed in common, and their young shall be together, and the lion and the ox shall eat straw'; not so that simplicity passes into fierceness, but so that fierceness learns simplicity.