Letters 128.1–130.1

It is a hard task to write to a little girl who does not understand what you say, whose mind you do not know, and of whose will it is dangerous to make promises, so that, in the words of the opening of a famous orator, there is more hope to be praised in her than achievement. For how can you urge self-restraint on one who longs for cakes, who babbles with a chattering voice on her mother's lap, to whom honey is sweeter than words? Shall she hear the depths of the apostle, who delights rather in old wives' tales? Shall she grasp the riddles of the prophets, when a nurse's frown frightens her? Shall she understand the majesty of the gospel, at whose lightning all mortal sense is dazzled? Shall I urge her to be subject to her parent, when with tender hand she beats her laughing mother? So let our Pacatula take this little letter to read later; meanwhile let her just learn the elements of letters, join syllables, learn nouns, and put verbs together; and so that she may practise these with her tinkling voice, let little cakes of honeyed wine be set before her as prizes, and whatever is sweet to the taste, whatever blooms in flowers, sparkles in gems, charms in dolls, let her hasten to receive. Meanwhile let her also try with tender thumb to draw out threads; let her often break the yarn, so that some day she may not break it; after work let her delight in play, hang on her mother's neck, snatch kisses from her relatives, sing psalms for a reward, love what she is made to recite, so that it may be not a task but a delight, not necessity but will.

Some women, when they have vowed a girl as a future virgin, dress her in a dark tunic and cover her with a dusky little cloak, take away her linen, and allow no gold on her neck or head — truly a good plan, so that she may not learn in tender years to have what she will later be forced to lay aside. Others think the opposite. “For what,” they say, “if she does not have them herself, will she not see others having them? The female sex loves finery, and we know that many women even of notable chastity like to adorn themselves, though for no man, yet for themselves. Rather let her be sated by having them, and see others praised who do not have these things. And it is better that, sated, she despise them, than that, by not having them, she desire to have them.” They say the Lord did something like this with the people of Israel, giving those who craved the meats of Egypt swarms of quails to the point of nausea and vomiting; and that many men of the world more easily do without a pleasure of the body they have experienced than those who from boyhood have not known desire: for the former trample on what they know, the latter long for what they do not know; the former by repenting avoid the snares of sweetness they have fled, the latter, amid the enticements of the flesh and the sweet tickling of the flattering body, find harmful poisons while they think it honey. For, they say, honey drips from the lips of a harlot, which for a time fattens the throats of those who eat, and afterwards is found more bitter than gall. So honey is not offered in the Lord's sacrifices, and wax, the lodging of honey, is despised, while oil pressed from the bitterness of olives is burned in God's temple; and the passover is eaten with bitter herbs, “in the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth,” and whoever has these will suffer persecution in the world. So the prophet too sings mystically: “I sat alone, because I was filled with bitterness.”

What then? Must one run riot in youth so that later luxury may be despised the more strongly? Far from it, they say; for “let each one remain in the calling in which he was called. Was anyone called circumcised” — that is, a virgin — “let him not bring back the foreskin,” that is, let him not seek the skin tunics of marriage with which Adam was clothed when he was cast out of the paradise of virginity. “Was anyone called in uncircumcision” — that is, having a wife and wrapped in the skin of matrimony — “let him not” seek the nakedness of virginity and perpetual chastity, which he has once ceased to have, but let him use his own vessel in sanctification and chastity, drink from his own springs, and not seek the broken cisterns of the brothels, which cannot hold the purest waters of chastity. So the same Paul, discussing virginity and marriage in the same chapter, calls those set in marriage slaves of the flesh, and free those who, without any yoke of marriage, serve the Lord in full freedom. What I say I do not say universally, but treat in part; I speak not of all but of some. And my words are directed to both sexes, not only to the weaker vessel. You are a virgin: why do you delight in the company of a woman? Why do you commit a frail, stitched-together boat to great waves, and climb carelessly into the great danger of an uncertain voyage? You do not know what you desire, yet you join yourself to her as though you had desired before, or — to put it most mildly — as if you were going to desire later. “But that sex is better suited to service.” Then choose an old woman, choose an ugly one, choose one of continence proved in the Lord. Why does a young, pretty, luxurious one delight you? You use the baths, you walk about with glossy skin and ruddy cheeks, you eat meat, you abound in riches, you are wrapped in costly clothes, and you think you sleep safely beside a deadly serpent? Do you not live in the same lodging — at night, that is? But spending whole days in conversation of this kind, why do you sit alone with a woman alone and not with witnesses? Even if you do not sin, you appear to others to sin, so that you are an example to wretches who do wrong on the authority of your name. You too, virgin or widow, why are you held so long by a man's talk? Why are you not afraid when left alone with him? At least let the needs of bowel and bladder compel you to go out, so that in this matter you may leave the man with whom you have behaved more freely than with a brother — you behaved far more modestly with your husband. “But I am asking something about the holy Scriptures.” Ask in public; let your maids hear, let your companions hear. “Everything that is made manifest is light.” A good word does not seek secrecy; rather it delights in its praises and in the witness of many. A fine teacher, who scorns men, despises the brothers, and toils over the secret instruction of one little woman!

I have turned aside a little from the road on account of others, and while I instruct — or rather nurse — the infant Pacatula, I have suddenly taken on the wars of many women who are far from pacified toward me. I will return to my purpose. Let the female sex be joined to its own sex; let her not know — rather let her fear — playing with boys. Let her know no immodest word, and if by chance in the bustle of the running household she hears something shameful, let her not understand it. Let her take her mother's nod for words and her advice for a command. Let her love her as parent, submit to her as mistress, fear her as teacher. When her seventh year has received the little girl, untaught and toothless, and she has begun to blush, to know what to keep silent, to hesitate over what to say, let her learn the Psalter by heart, and until the years of puberty make the books of Solomon, the gospels, the apostles, and the prophets the treasure of her heart. Let her not go out in public too freely, nor always seek the crowds of the churches. Let her have all her delights in her room. Let her never see young men, never curled fops who wound the soul through the ears with the sweetness of their voices. Let the wantonness of maids also be kept away, who are the harder to avoid the more freely they come in, and who teach in secret what they have learned, and violate the shut-in Danae with the talk of the crowd. Let her have a mistress as companion, a governess as guardian, not given to much wine, not, as the apostle says, idle and talkative, but sober, serious, a worker in wool, and speaking only what forms a girl's mind to virtue. For as water in a garden bed follows a finger drawn ahead of it, so a soft and tender age bends either way and is drawn wherever you lead it. Wanton, dandified young men are accustomed to seek access to girls through their nurses by flatteries, affability, and little gifts, and when they have gently entered, to kindle fires from sparks, advance little by little to shamelessness, and prove impossible to stop, bearing out that little verse: “It is hard to rebuke what you allow to become habit.” I am ashamed to say it, and yet it must be said: noble women who could have had nobler suitors are coupled to men of the basest condition and to slaves, and under the name of religion and the shadow of continence sometimes desert their husbands; Helens follow Alexanders and do not fear Menelauses. These things are seen, lamented, and not punished, because the multitude of sinners supplies licence to sin.

Oh shame! The world is falling in ruins, and in us the sins do not fall. The famous city, the head of the Roman empire, has been swallowed by one fire. There is no region that does not have exiles from it. Once sacred churches have collapsed into ashes and embers, and yet we are devoted to avarice. We live as if we would die tomorrow, and we build as if we would always live in this world. Walls shine with gold, ceilings with gold, the capitals of the columns with gold, and naked and hungry before our doors Christ dies in the poor. We read that the high priest Aaron went out to meet the raging flames and with a lighted censer held back the wrath of God; the high priest stood between death and life, and the fire did not dare go beyond his footsteps. God says to Moses: “Let me alone, and I will blot out this people.” When he says “let me alone,” he shows that he is being held back from doing what he threatened; the prayers of his servant were hindering the power of God. Who, do you think, is there under heaven now who could stand against the wrath of God, meet the flames, and say with the apostle: “I wished myself to be accursed for my brothers”? Flocks perish with their shepherds, because as the people, so the priest. Moses spoke with the feeling of compassion: “If you forgive this people, forgive; but if not, blot me out of your book.” He wishes to perish with those who perish and is not content with his own salvation. For “the glory of a king is a multitude of people.” In these times Pacatula was born; amid these rattles she spends her first years, to know tears before laughter, to feel weeping before joy. Scarcely her entrance, and already her exit; she thinks the world has always been like this. She does not know the past, she flees the present, she longs for the future. That I should dictate this in hurried speech, and after the deaths of friends and constant mourning write as an old man to an infant after a long absence, your love compelled me, brother Gaudentius; and I preferred to give a little rather than nothing to one who asked, because in the one case the will is crushed by grief, in the other there would be neglect of friendship.

You ask, Dardanus, noblest of Christians and most Christian of nobles, what the land of promise is which the Jews possessed on returning from Egypt, since it had already been possessed before by their ancestors and so was not promised but restored. For these are the words you use at the end of your letter. In asking this you seem to hold what pleases most of our people: that another land of promise must be sought, of which David too speaks in the psalm: “I believe I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living,” and the Lord in the gospel: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the land.” Certainly David, when he sang this in the Spirit, was in the land of promise; and he did not merely dwell within the borders of Judaea but had become victor over many surrounding nations, which stretched from the torrent of Egypt, which is at Rhinocorura, to the river Euphrates, saying in another place: “Over Idumaea I will stretch out my shoe; foreigners will serve me.” How then did he believe he would receive what he already possessed by victory? And lest he leave any ambiguity for Jewish readers as to what land he longed to see, he shows it in the very saying: “I believe I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living.” Therefore the land of Judaea, which was under his rule, is not the land of the living, that is, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of whom the Lord says in the question of the resurrection: “He is not the God of the dead but of the living,” but the land and region of the dead, of whom he speaks in Ezekiel: “The soul that sins shall die,” and: “The dead will not praise you, Lord, but we who live” — who in the resurrection will go to meet the Lord and Saviour, as the apostle says: “For this we say to you in the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep.” Of them Jeremiah also speaks: “Those who depart shall be written upon the earth.” And what he promises — “I believe I shall see the good things of the Lord” — clearly draws us to a spiritual understanding. For what other good things did the king seek, or what did he lack, who was of such power that Solomon his son, than whom no one in the world was richer, was content with the wealth gained through him? But in the land of the living he sought those good things which eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor have they entered the heart of man, which God has prepared for those who love him. And what is said in the gospel, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the land,” seems contradictory according to the letter. For the possession of land does not belong to the gentle and meek, who often lose even what their parents left them because of their gentleness, but to strong and violent men, most ready for war. Then in the forty-fourth psalm, which under the name of Solomon refers to the mystery of Christ and his church, it is written: “Gird your sword upon your thigh, most mighty. In your beauty and your comeliness go forth, prosper, and reign because of meekness and justice and truth, and your right hand will lead you wonderfully.” He it is who said in another psalm too: “Remember, Lord, David and all his meekness,” and again: “The Lord lifts up the meek,” and more openly in the gospel: “Learn from me, for I am lowly and meek in heart.” In type of him Moses also is written to have been the meekest of all men on the earth.

This, as we have said, is the land of the living, in which good things of the Lord are prepared for holy and meek men, which before the coming of the Lord Saviour in the flesh neither Abraham, nor Isaac, nor Jacob, nor the prophets and other righteous men could attain. So Abraham, though in a different place, is seen with Lazarus in the underworld, and Jacob, a righteous man, says: “Mourning and groaning I shall go down to the underworld.” The blood of Christ is the key of paradise, who says to the thief: “Today you will be with me in paradise.” This, as we have said, is the land of the living, the land of the riches and good things of God, which the first Adam lost and the second found — or rather, what the first lost the second restored — as the apostle says: “Death reigned from Adam to Moses” — under whose person the law is understood — “in the likeness of Adam's transgression, who is a type of the one to come.” Do we want to know more clearly what the land is? Let us read Malachi: “All will call you blessed, says the Lord, for you will be a land of delight,” which in Greek is called more expressively thelētē gē, a land that the saints desire or that pleases God. Isaiah too agrees with these words, saying: “And there will be a man hiding his words, and he will appear in the land of Zion like a glorious river in a thirsty land.” What is the land of Zion in which a glorious river will appear? Surely that of which the same David sings in another psalm: “Glorious things are spoken of you, city of God,” and again: “The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the tents of Jacob.” Does God love those gates that we see turned into ashes and embers? That cannot be persuaded, I will not say to the wise, but not even to fools. I think also that what we read in the sixty-fourth psalm — “You visited the earth and made it drunk; you greatly enriched it. The river of God is full of water; you prepared their food, for so is your preparation. Water its furrows abundantly, multiply its produce; in its showers it will rejoice as it springs up” — fits this sense. For that land is visited by God every day, made drunk, and is full of all riches. From it goes out the river of God, of which it is written: “The rush of the river gladdens the city of God,” which Ezekiel also describes in mystical speech in his account of the temple, on whose banks are trees on both sides, abounding in new fruits each month. Of this land too the wisest of men wrote in Proverbs: “He who works his land will be filled with bread.” But if anyone thinks this is to be understood of this land that we see, which is possessed mostly by sinners, of which it is written, “Cursed is the ground in your works,” let him answer how this sentence can stand: “He who works his land will be filled with bread.” How many work the land and toil at it with the plough, and yet through many hindering causes are worn down by want and poverty! But we must consider what Scripture says: “He who works his land” — that which is properly his own, from which he can never be thrown out; in the same sense it is written: “The ransom of a man's soul is his own riches.” This too you would think false according to the letter: how many are ransomed by the money of others and of friends! The farmers who till this land are the apostles, to whom it is said: “You are the salt of the earth,” and elsewhere: “By your patience you will possess your souls”; one of them, the chosen vessel, said most confidently: “For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building,” and many other things which I do not repeat, lest I seem to blunt the reader's mind and distrust his memory.

Let us also consider this with careful mind, and let the authority of the Scriptures teach us that the saints are not inhabitants of this land, which the Jews think the land of promise, but sojourners and strangers. We read in the person of a righteous man: “I am a sojourner and a stranger, as all my fathers were.” And having long dwelt in the darkness of this land, he groans tearfully and says: “Woe is me, that my sojourning is prolonged; I have dwelt with the inhabitants of Kedar; my soul has long been a sojourner.” Wherever an “inhabitant of the earth” is read, let us consider what comes before, in the middle, and at the end, and it can be clearly proved by the rule of the Scriptures that sinners are always called inhabitants of the earth; of whom there is this example in the Apocalypse of John: “Woe to the inhabitants of the earth.” Abraham, to whom the promise was first made when the Lord said, “To you I will give this land and to your seed,” is said, according to the speech of Stephen, the first martyr in Christ, not to have received even a footprint. For it is written: “Then he went out from the land of the Chaldeans and dwelt in Haran, and from there, after his father died, he moved to the land in which you now dwell; and he gave him no possession in it, not even a footprint, but promised to give it to him as a possession, and to his seed after him.” And lest the reader's silent thought draw him to the understanding that what was not given to the parent is given to the descendants, the chosen vessel says to the Hebrews: “By faith he who is called Abraham obeyed to go out to the place which he was to receive as a possession, and he went out not knowing where he was going. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, co-heirs of the same promise; for he was looking for the city with foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” And again, after speaking of Abel and Enoch, Noah and Sarah, he adds: “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but seeing them from afar and greeting them, and confessing that they were strangers and sojourners on the earth. For those who speak thus show that they are seeking a homeland. And if they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had time to return; but now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly one.” And after many saints in between, he adds at the end: “And all these, having received testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, since God provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect without us. For we have come to Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and many thousands of angels in festal gathering, and the church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven.” I am aware that the unbelief of the Jews does not accept these testimonies, which are nevertheless confirmed by the authority of the Old Testament. This must be said to our own people: that this epistle, which is addressed to the Hebrews, is accepted as the apostle Paul's not only by the churches of the east but by all the church writers of the Greek language of former times, although most think it is Barnabas's or Clement's; and that it makes no difference whose it is, since it is a churchman's and is celebrated daily in the reading of the churches. And if the custom of the Latins does not receive it among the canonical Scriptures, neither do the churches of the Greeks receive the Apocalypse of John with the same freedom; and yet we receive both, following not the custom of this time but the authority of the ancient writers, who often use the testimonies of both, not as they sometimes do those of apocryphal books — as indeed they rarely use examples from pagan literature — but as canonical and ecclesiastical.

Let those answer me who think that this land — which has now been made a land of promise for us by Christ's passion and resurrection — was possessed by the Jewish people after they returned from Egypt: how much did they possess? Surely from Dan to Beersheba, which stretches scarcely a hundred and sixty miles in length. For Scripture testifies that not even David and Solomon, most powerful kings, held more, apart from those whom they received into friendship after victory. And I say this without mentioning the five cities of Palestine, Gaza, Ashkelon, Gath, Ekron, and Ashdod; the Idumaeans too, seventy-five miles from Jerusalem toward the south; and the Arabs and Hagarenes, whom they now call Saracens, in the neighbourhood of the city of Jerusalem. I am ashamed to state the breadth of the land of promise, lest I seem to give the pagans occasion to blaspheme. From Joppa to our little village of Bethlehem is forty-six miles, and after it comes a vast desert full of fierce barbarians, of whom it is said: “You will dwell over against the face of all your brothers,” and whom the most eloquent poet mentions: “and the Barcaei roaming far and wide,” from Barca, a town situated in the desert, whom the Africans now by a corrupted word call Bariciani. These are the ones called by various names according to their localities, and they stretch from Mauretania through Africa, Egypt, Palestine, and Phoenicia, Coele-Syria and Osrhoene, Mesopotamia and Persia, to India. This, Jew, is the length and breadth of your lands; in these you glory; about these you boast in various provinces to the ignorant: “trappings for the crowd — I know you inside and under the skin.”

But if you object that the land of promise is said to be the one contained in the book of Numbers — from the south at the Salt Sea through Sinai and Kadesh-barnea to the torrent of Egypt, which flows into the Great Sea near Rhinocorura; on the west the sea itself, which stretches along Palestine, Phoenicia, Coele-Syria, and Cilicia; on the north the Taurus mountains and Zephyrium as far as Hamath, which is called Epiphania of Syria; on the east through Antioch and the lake of Chinnereth, which is now called Tiberias, and the Jordan, which flows into the Salt Sea, now called the Dead Sea — while beyond the Jordan is the possession of two and a half tribes, Reuben and Gad and half the tribe of Manasseh — I too will admit that these were promised to you, not handed over: if you had kept God's commandments and walked in his precepts, if instead of the almighty God you had not worshipped Baal-peor and the Baals, Beelzebub and Chemosh; because you preferred them to God, you lost everything that had been promised to you. To me too the kingdom of heaven is promised in the gospel, which the Old Testament does not name at all; but if I do not do what is commanded, the fault will not be in him who promises but in me, who did not deserve to receive the promise. Read the books of Joshua and Judges and you will understand into what narrow limits of possession you were confined. Why should I mention the foreigners of various cities whom the Jewish people could not drive out from their cities and homes, when your very metropolis — first Jebus, then Salem, third Jerusalem, and now Aelia — could not drive out the Jebusites, but lived with them as a stumbling-block and an example of vices, so much so that where your temple was built was the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite, and the temple itself was built by eighty thousand stone-cutters and seventy thousand carriers — that is, a hundred and fifty thousand, not counting the overseers of the works — drawn, because of the multitude of uncircumcised living with you, from the pagans?

I do not say this to disparage the land of Judaea, as a heretical slanderer falsely claims, nor to take away the truth of history, which is the foundation of spiritual understanding, but to knock down the arrogance of the Jews, who prefer the narrowness of the synagogue to the breadth of the church. For if they follow only the letter that kills and not the life-giving Spirit, let them show a land of promise flowing with milk and honey; but if they think it was said figuratively for an abundance of all things, we too prefer the land of confession and the land of the living to a land of thorns, since the Lord says to Moses about the casting off of Israel and the taking up of the nations: “Let me alone, that I may blot out this people, and I will make you a great nation,” and the same Father to the Son: “Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance and the ends of the earth as your possession,” and more openly through Isaiah: “It is a small thing for you to be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to gather the dregs” — or the remnants — “of Israel. I have given you as a light to all the nations, that you may be salvation to the whole earth.” From this it is plainly shown that all things of that people went before in image, shadow, and type, and were written for us, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.

You have committed many crimes, Jew; you have served all the nations round about. For what deed? Surely for idolatry. And when you served often, God had mercy on you and sent judges and saviours, who freed you from servitude to the Moabites and Ammonites, the Philistines too and various nations. Last, under the kings, you offended God, and the whole province was destroyed by Babylon's devastation and remained a desert for seventy years. By Cyrus king of the Persians the captivity was released — Ezra and Nehemiah tell this most fully — and the temple was built under Darius, king of the Persians and Medes, by Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel and Jeshua son of Jozadak, the high priest. What you suffered from the Medes, the Egyptians, and the Macedonians I do not count, nor will I remind you of Antiochus Epiphanes, cruellest of all tyrants, nor will I list Gnaeus Pompey, Gabinius, Scaurus, Varus, Cassius, and Sossius, who insulted your cities and especially Jerusalem. Finally, under Vespasian and Titus the city was taken and the temple overthrown. Then the remnants of the city lasted fifty years until the emperor Hadrian. Since the overthrow of the temple, the ruins of both city and temple have remained for a little less than four hundred years. For what so great a crime? You certainly do not worship idols; indeed, serving the Persians and Romans and pressed by the yoke of captivity, you do not know foreign gods. How is it that the most merciful God, who has never forgotten you, is not moved now, through such long spaces of time, by your miseries, to release your captivity and — to speak more truly — send you the Antichrist you expect? For what crime, I say, and what so execrable a wickedness has he turned away his eyes? Do you not know? Remember the voice of your fathers: “His blood be on us and on our children,” and: “Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours,” and: “We have no king but Caesar.” You have what you chose: to the end of the world you will serve Caesar, until the fullness of the nations comes in and so all Israel is saved, so that he who once was the head is turned into the tail.

This, most learned man, who after holding the honour of a double prefecture are now more honoured in Christ, I have dictated for you in a hurried and short night's work, lest I seem to be altogether silent. For at the same time, indeed on the same day, your letter was delivered to me and mine had to be dispatched, so that I had either to keep silent or reply in unpolished speech; the one would have been a matter of modesty, the other of love.

Of all the subjects I have written on from my youth to this age, whether in my own hand or in my secretaries', none has been harder than the present work. For I am to write to Demetrias, a virgin of Christ, who is first in the Roman world in both nobility and wealth; if I say everything that befits her virtues, I shall be thought to flatter; if I leave some things out so that they may not seem incredible, my modesty will do harm to her praises. What then shall I do? What I cannot fulfil, I dare not refuse: so great is the authority of her grandmother and her mother, distinguished women, in commanding, their faith in asking, their perseverance in extorting. For they do not demand of me something new and exceptional, since my talent has often been worn down on subjects of this kind, but only that the testimony of my voice should not be lacking, as far as a man can give it, in setting out the virtues of one of whom (to use the saying of a famous orator) the hope is more to be praised than the reality; although she has surpassed her girlish years in the ardour of her faith, and has begun where it is the mark of perfect and consummate virtue in others to have ended.