Letters 61.1–64.15

It would have been right not to satisfy you by letter at all, since you did not believe your own ears; for you cannot rest in a scrap of paper, you who did not give credit to the living voice. But since Christ gave us in himself an example of perfect humility, giving a kiss to his betrayer and receiving the repentance of the thief on the gibbet, I declare to you in absence what I said to you in person too: that I have read and read Origen as I read Apollinaris and the other commentators, some of whose books the church does not receive; not that I would say that everything contained in their volumes is to be condemned, but I confess that some things are to be rebuked. But since it is my work and study to read many writers, so as to pluck various flowers from very many, not so much to approve all as to choose what is good, I take many in my hand, so as to learn many things from many, according to what is written: 'Reading all things, holding fast what is good.' So I am quite amazed that you wanted to reproach me with the doctrines of Origen, whose error in most matters you are completely ignorant of to this day. Am I a heretic? And why, I ask, do heretics not love me? Are you orthodox? You, who, against your conscience and your tongue that preached otherwise, either signed unwillingly and are a traitor, or willingly and are a heretic? You left Egypt, you left all the provinces in which many defend their sect with brazen face, and chose me to attack, who condemn with public voice everything opposed to the doctrines of the church.

Origen is a heretic: what has that to do with me, who do not deny that he is a heretic in most things? He erred about the resurrection of the body; he erred about the state of souls, about the repentance of the devil, and, what is greater than these, he declared that the Son and the Holy Spirit are the seraphim. If I did not say that he erred, and did not anathematize these things daily, I would be a partner in his error. For we ought not to receive his good things in such a way as to be compelled to accept the bad as well. But the same man also interpreted the Scriptures well in many places, explained the obscure passages of the prophets, and revealed the greatest mysteries of both the New and the Old Testament. If, then, I have translated what is good and either cut out, corrected, or passed over in silence what is bad, am I to be blamed because through me the Latins have his good things and are ignorant of his bad? If this is a crime, let the confessor Hilary be accused, who translated from Greek into Latin the interpretation of the Psalms and the homilies on Job from his books; let Eusebius of Vercelli, of the same confession, be at fault, who turned into our tongue the commentaries of a heretic on all the Psalms, though he translated all the best things and left out the heretical ones. I say nothing of Victorinus of Pettau and the others who followed and reproduced Origen only in the explanation of the Scriptures, lest I seem not so much to defend myself as to look for partners in crime. I will come to you yourself: why do you have copies of his treatises on Job, in which, arguing against the devil and about the stars and heaven, he said things that the church does not receive? Are you alone allowed, 'you most wise skull,' to pass sentence on all Greek and Latin commentators, and, as with a censor's rod, to throw some out of the libraries and admit others, and, when it pleases you, to pronounce me either catholic or heretic, while we are not allowed to reject perverse things and condemn what we have often condemned? Read my books on Ephesians, read my other little works, especially my commentaries on Ecclesiastes, and you will clearly see that from my youth I have never been deterred by anyone's authority into acquiescing in heretical depravity.

It is no small thing to know what you do not know. It is the part of a prudent man to know his own measure, and not, roused by the zeal of the devil, to make the whole world witness to his ignorance. No doubt you want to boast, so as to brag in your own country that I could not answer your eloquence and feared in you the sharpness of Chrysippus. I am held back by Christian modesty and do not wish to open the recesses of my little cell with biting words. Otherwise I would bring forward all your feats of valor and your trophies, sung even by the voices of little children. But I leave these things for others to tell or to laugh at. I, speaking as a Christian with a Christian, beg you, brother, not to wish to be wiser than you are, lest you publish with your pen either your innocence or your simplicity, or at least the things I keep silent about and which others understand though you do not, and make yourself a laughingstock to all by your follies. You learned something else from an early age; you are used to other disciplines. It is not for the same man to test gold coins and the Scriptures, to taste wines and to understand the prophets or apostles. You tear me to pieces; you accuse the holy brother Oceanus of heresy; the judgment of the presbyters Vincent and Paulinian and of brother Eusebius displeases you. You alone are Cato, the most eloquent of the Roman race, who wish to be believed on your own testimony and wisdom. Remember, I beg you, that day when, as I preached on the resurrection and the reality of the body, you jumped up beside me, stamped your foot, and cried out that I was orthodox. After you began to sail and the stench of the bilge reached your innermost brain, then you remembered that we are heretics. What shall I do with you? I believed the letters of the holy presbyter Paulinus, and did not think his judgment about you mistaken; and though, as soon as I received the letter, I perceived that your speech was disjointed, I still thought there was rusticity and simplicity in you rather than madness. I do not blame the holy man, for he preferred to conceal from me what he knew rather than accuse by his letter the humble bearer who was his client; but I blame myself, who trusted another's judgment rather than my own, and, while my eyes saw one thing, believed a scrap of paper about something other than what I saw.

So stop provoking me and burying me under your volumes. Spare your money at least, with which you hire secretaries and copyists and use the same men as writers and supporters, who perhaps praise you so as to make a profit by writing. If you want to exercise your wit, hand yourself over to grammarians and rhetoricians, learn dialectic, be instructed in the schools of the philosophers, so that, when you have learned everything, you may at least then begin to be silent. And yet I am foolish to look for teachers for the teacher of all, and to set a limit to one who does not know how to speak and cannot keep silent. True is that Greek proverb: 'A lyre to an ass.' I think your name too was given you by antiphrasis. For you slumber with your whole mind, and snore not so much in the deepest sleep as in a lethargy. For among the other blasphemies that you uttered with sacrilegious mouth, you dared to say that the mountain in Daniel from which the stone was cut without hands is the devil, and the stone Christ, who took the body of Adam, which had previously clung to the devil through vices, and was born of the virgin, so as to separate man from the mountain, that is, from the devil. O tongue that ought to be cut off and torn into bits and pieces! Would any Christian interpret God the Father almighty as the person of the devil, and stain the ears of the whole world with such a sacrilege? If any catholic, I will not say, but any heretic or pagan ever accepted your interpretation, let what you said be pious; but if the church of Christ has never heard such a wickedness, and through your mouth first he interpreted himself as the mountain who had said, 'I will be like the Most High,' do penance, roll in sackcloth and ashes, and wash away so great a crime with constant tears; if indeed this impiety can be forgiven you, and, according to the error of Origen, you obtain pardon when the devil too will obtain it, who has never been caught blaspheming more than through your mouth. I bore patiently the injury to myself: I could not bear impiety against God. That is why I seem to have written more bitingly at the end of the letter than I had promised; although, after your earlier repentance, in which you begged my pardon, it would be most stupid to have committed again something for which you must do penance. May Christ grant you to hear and be silent, to understand and so to speak.

If I once doubted that the bonds of the spirit are greater than those of bodies, I have now proved it, since your holiness clings to my mind and I am joined to you by the love of Christ. For I speak truly and simply to your most candid heart: the very scrap of paper and the silent strokes of the letters breathe on us the affection of your mind.

As for what you say, that many have been deceived by the error of Origen and that my holy son Oceanus resists their madness, I both grieve and rejoice: that simple people have been tripped up, and that those who err are helped by a learned man. And since you ask the opinion of my littleness, whether, as brother Faustinus holds, he should be rejected entirely, or, as some hold, he should be read (I am on this side), I think Origen should sometimes be read for his learning, just as Tertullian and Novatus, Arnobius and Apollinaris, and some Greek and Latin church writers alike, so that we may choose their good things and avoid the contrary, according to the apostle Paul, who says, 'Test all things; hold fast what is good.' But those who are carried either into excessive love of him or into hatred by the perversity of their temper seem to me to fall under that prophetic curse: 'Woe to those who call good evil and evil good, who make bitter sweet and sweet bitter.' For neither are his perverse doctrines to be accepted because of his learning, nor, because of the perversity of his doctrines, are any useful commentaries he published on the holy Scriptures to be rejected entirely. But if his lovers and detractors pull the rope against each other so contentiously that they seek no middle ground and keep no measure, but either approve or disapprove everything, I would rather choose a pious rusticity than a learned blasphemy. The holy brother Tatian greets you warmly in return.

Your blessedness knows that even at the time when you were silent, my speech never ceased from its duties, and I did not consider what you had failed to do in your administration, but what it was fitting for me to do. And now, having received your gracious letter, I see that I have reaped some fruit from the Gospel reading. For if the woman's frequent petition bent the sentence of the harsh judge, how much more are a father's heartstrings softened by diligent entreaty!

As for your admonition about the canons of the church, we thank you; for 'whom the Lord loves he reproves, and he chastises every son whom he receives.' But know that nothing is dearer to us than to keep the rights of Christ, not to move the boundaries of the fathers, and always to remember the Roman faith praised by the apostle's mouth, in which the church of Alexandria boasts that it shares.

As for the fact that you show great patience toward that wicked heresy, and think that you can correct by your gentleness those who lie in the bowels of the church, many saints are displeased, lest, while you wait for the repentance of a few, the boldness of the reprobate be nourished and the faction grow stronger.

To this day, in the reading of the Old Testament, a veil lies over the face of Moses. He speaks with a glorified face, and the people cannot bear the glory of the speaker. But when we turn to the Lord, the veil will be taken away: the letter that kills dies, the Spirit that gives life is raised up. For the Lord is the Spirit, and the law is spiritual. Hence David too prayed in the psalm: 'Open my eyes, and I will behold wonderful things out of your law.' Is it for oxen that God cares? Certainly not. Much less for the liver of the ox, the ram, and the goats, and the shoulder of the right leg, and the maw in which the dung is digested; two of which the priests receive as food, and the third Phinehas earns as a reward. Of the peace offerings, the fat with which the breast is wrapped and the lobe of the liver are offered on the altar; but the breast itself and the right shoulder are given to Aaron and his sons as a perpetual statute from the sons of Israel. Understanding is in the heart; the dwelling of the heart is in the breast. It is asked where the ruling part of the soul is. Plato puts it in the brain; Christ shows it is in the heart: 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,' and 'Out of the heart come evil thoughts,' and 'Why do you think evil in your hearts?' Pleasure and desire, according to those who discuss natural science, reside in the liver. Its lobe, fluttering in various directions and breaking out through the windows of the eyes, the priests offer to God, so that, after they have said in deed, 'Let your burnt offering be fat,' and have burned up with the fire of the Spirit desire, the seedbed of lust, they may deserve to receive the breast and shoulder as a reward: in the breast, pure thoughts, knowledge of the law, the truth of doctrines; in the shoulder, good works and the fight against the devil and the armed hand, so that what they have conceived in mind they may prove by example. For 'Jesus began to do and to teach.' The little breast itself is called 'of the addition,' or 'chief and excellent,' for the Hebrew tenufah rather means this; according to that saying of Malachi, 'The lips of the priest shall keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law from his mouth.' From this we understand that knowledge of the law and doctrine ought to be pre-eminent in priests, and that such a man should be furnished with the addition of spiritual grace, who can resist those who contradict and have in himself no left-hand work leading to Tartarus, but a right arm set apart, so that the works of the priest, by comparison of his virtues, may be set apart from all men. These things, from the victims and from what is offered on the altar, are given by the Lord to the priests.

Besides, three other members are given to the priests, apart from the firstfruits of the victims, from private slaughter and from the public meat market, where there is no religion but only the necessity of food: the shoulder, the jaw, and the maw. Of the shoulder we have already spoken. The jaw signifies the eloquent and learned man, so that what we have conceived in the breast we may bring forth with the mouth. The maw, the receptacle of food, pierced by the priestly dagger in the Midianite harlot, condemns all human labors and the momentary allurements of the palate by their end in dung, and shows to minds consecrated to God that all we lick and devour is cast into the drain. Hence the apostle too says: 'Food for the belly and the belly for food; but God will destroy both the one and the other'; and, on the contrary, of the self-indulgent: 'whose god is the belly, and whose glory is in their shame.' The people receive in drink the dust of the calf that Israel had worshipped, in contempt of the superstition, so as to learn to despise what they had seen cast into the drain. The priests are commanded not to drink wine or strong drink when about to minister in the temple, lest their hearts be weighed down with drunkenness and surfeiting and the cares of this life; to have no portion in the land except God alone; to be marked by no defect, not with mutilated ears, an injured eye, a flat nose, a lame foot, a changed color of skin, all of which refer to the vices of the soul. For in man the will, not nature, is condemned. If any priest has had an emission of seed, he is forbidden to approach the priestly table; and on the contrary a widow, in whom, as with Sarah, the ways of women have ceased, is received back into her father's house because of her continence and chastity and is fed from the treasury of the temple. But if she has sons, she is given back to her offspring, so that, according to the apostle, provision may be made for those who are widows indeed, and so that she who is supported by the priests' food may be held by no love for another. The neighbor and the hireling are excluded from the priests' feast; the remains of the food are granted to slaves. Already then Phygelus and Hermogenes were being cast out and Onesimus received. The firstfruits of food and of all crops and fruits are offered to the priest, so that, having food and clothing, he may serve the Lord secure and free without any hindrance. The priests receive the firstborn of clean animals, and the price of the unclean. The firstborn of men too are redeemed, and, because the condition of birth is one, all offer the price equally, so moderate and light that neither the rich man swells with pride nor the poor man is weighed down. The temple servants and doorkeepers receive tithes, and in turn offer tithes of the tithes to the priests, being as much less than they as they are greater than the people. Forty-eight cities are set apart for the Levites and priests to live in; six cities of refuge are chosen, beyond the Jordan and within the Jordan, and the end of exile is the death of the high priest. All these things, which my hurried speech has touched on, and whose mysteries I have only knocked at, not opened, belong to all priests. But what great privileges the high priest has, I will say briefly.

'He shall not uncover his head,' it says. He has the mitre and bears the name of God on his forehead; he is adorned with a royal diadem; he has come to the perfect age of Christ; he must always be protected by his glory. 'And he shall not tear his garments,' because they are white, because they are undefiled, because they follow the Lamb and are made of the fleeces of the shorn sheep. Tamar, having lost her chastity, tore her tunic; Caiaphas, having lost the priesthood, tore his garments publicly. 'He shall not go in to any dead soul.' Wherever there is sin, and in sin death, there the high priest will not go. 'The soul that sins, it shall die.' However rich he may be, however powerful, and though he offer a multitude of victims, if he is dead, he is not touched by the high priest, not looked at. But if he revives, and at the Savior's voice comes out of his tomb, and walks freed from the bands of his sins, the high priest will go in to him and make his dwelling there and dine with the one who has risen.

'He shall not defile himself for his father or for his mother.' Affection compels us to do many things, and while we regard the kinship of bodies we offend the Creator of both body and soul. 'He who loves father and mother more than Christ is not worthy of him.' The disciple who wished to go to his father's burial is forbidden by the Savior's command. How many monks, while they pity father and mother, have lost their own souls! If we may not be defiled for father and mother, how much less for brother, sisters, cousins, household, slaves! We are a royal and priestly race. Let us look to that Father who never dies, or who died for us, and who, though living, died, so that he might make us, who were dead, alive. If we have anything of Egypt that the prince of the world can recognize as his own, let us leave it with the cloak to the Egyptian woman who holds it. The young man covered with a linen cloth was following the bound Lord; he would have fallen into the snares if he had not escaped the onset of the pursuers, unencumbered and naked. Let us render to parents what belongs to parents, if indeed they are alive, if they glory that their children who serve God are preferred to themselves.

'And he shall not go out of the holy places, and shall not profane the sanctification of his God.' We shall have to give account even for an idle word, and everything that does not build up the hearers turns to the peril of the speakers. If I do or say anything worthy of blame, I go out of the holy places and profane the name of Christ, in which I flatter myself. How much more the high priest and bishop, who must be without reproach and of such great virtues that he always remains in the holy places and is ready to offer victims for the people, a mediator between men and God, consecrating the flesh of the Lamb with holy mouth, 'because the holy oil of the anointing of his God is upon him'! He does not go out of the holy place, lest he defile the garment he has put on; for as many of us as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. Let us keep the tunic we have received; let us guard the holy thing in the holy place. That dweller in the mountains who was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho was not wounded before he was stripped. Oil is poured on him, a gentle medicine tempered with mercy; and, because his negligence ought to feel pain, he is stung by the sharpness of wine, so that by the oil he may be called to repentance, and by the wine feel the severity of the judge.

'He shall take a virgin as wife; a widow, a divorced woman, and a harlot he shall not take, but a virgin of his own kin; and he shall not defile his seed among the people. I am the Lord, who sanctifies him.' I know that the high priest to whom these precepts are now given is understood by most as Christ, and that the saying, 'He shall not be defiled for father and mother,' is explained of the virgin Mary's childbearing. And the interpretation is much easier of the Lord, who hears in the psalm, 'You are a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek,' and in Zechariah, 'Hear, Jesus, great priest,' and from whom the filthy garments of our sins are taken away, so that he may receive the glory that he had with the Father before the world was.

But lest anyone think that I do violence to Scripture, and love Christ in such a way as to take away the truth of the history, I will interpret in the members what refers to the body, and understand of the servants what is to be fulfilled in the Lord (though the glory of the Lord is the glory of the servants); and, wherever the occasion of the passage allows, I will so discuss the true Light that it may be passed on to those to whom Christ has granted to be lights. The high priest described by the words of Moses shall not marry a widow, a divorced woman, or a harlot (a widow is one whose husband has died; a divorced woman, one who is cast out while her husband lives; a harlot, one open to the lust of many), but, it says, he shall take a wife who is a virgin of his own kin, not a foreigner, lest the grain of noble seed degenerate in bad soil; not a harlot, exposed to many lovers; not a divorced woman, who was unworthy even of her former marriage; not a widow, lest she remember former pleasures; but that soul which has no spot or wrinkle, which, reborn with Christ, is renewed from day to day, of which the apostle says: 'For I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a holy virgin to Christ.' I want the disciple and wife of the high priest to have nothing of the old man. If we have risen with Christ, let us mind the things that are above, forgetting the past and eager for the future. Unhappy Simon, because after baptism he was thinking of his old marriage and had not come to virginal purity, was unworthy of fellowship with Peter.

You have compelled me, Fabiola, by your letters, to write to you about the vestments of Aaron. I have offered more, building a little preface on the food and rewards of the priests and on the observances of the high priest. Having come out of Sodom and hurrying to the mountains, you do not wish to live in the little city of Zoar. Passing beyond the proselytes, going past the Israelites, leaving the Levitical rank, and flying swiftly over the priests, you come to the high priest; and, while you diligently inquire about his vestments and the breastplate, you did not like our company. And you indeed enjoy your longed-for leisure and, perhaps near Babylon, sigh for the fields of Bethlehem; we in Ephrathah, peace at last restored, have heard the infant crying from the manger, and we wish his complaints and little voice to reach your ears.

We read in Exodus of the tabernacle, the table, the lampstand, the altar, the pillars, the curtains, scarlet, fine linen, blue, and purple, various vessels of gold, silver, and bronze; the tabernacle divided into three; twelve loaves placed on the table each week; seven lamps on the lampstand; the altar set out for victims and burnt offerings; bowls, cups, censers, flat dishes, little mortars, pegs, red skins, goats' hair, and incorruptible wood. So many things are offered in the tabernacle of God that no one should despair of salvation: one may present the gold of understanding, another the silver of eloquence, another the voice of bronze. The whole world is described in the mystery of the tabernacle. The first and second courts are open to all, for water and earth are given to all mortals; but into the holy of holies, as into the upper air and heaven, few enter and fly. The twelve loaves signify the circle of twelve months; the seven lamps show the seven wandering stars. And, not to be long (for it is not my purpose now to write about the tabernacle), I will come to the priestly vestments, and, before I search out their mystical meaning, I will first set out simply, in the Jewish manner, what is written; so that, after you have seen the priest clothed and all his adornment has been laid open to your eyes, we may then seek the reasons for each together.

Let us learn first the vestments common to priests and high priests. By linen drawers, which reach to the knee and the back of the knee, the private parts are hidden, and the upper part is tied tightly below the navel, so that, when they are girded up to slaughter victims, drag bulls and rams, carry loads, and are engaged in the duty of ministering, even if they slip and fall and expose their thighs, what is covered may not be seen. For this reason too steps to the altar are forbidden, lest the people below see the private parts of those going up. This kind of garment is called in Hebrew michnase, in Greek περισκελή, and by our people feminalia or breeches reaching to the knees. Josephus relates (for in his time the temple was still standing, and Vespasian and Titus had not yet destroyed Jerusalem, and he was himself of priestly descent; and what is seen with the eyes is understood far better than what is heard with the ear) that these drawers were usually woven of twisted linen for strength, and after being cut out were sewn with a needle; for they could not be made on the loom in this shape.

The second is a linen tunic, the poderes, that is, reaching to the ankles, of double fine linen, which Josephus too calls byssine; it is called kethoneth, that is χιτών, which in Hebrew means 'linen.' It clings to the body and is so close-fitting, with tight sleeves, that there is no fold at all in the garment, and it comes down to the legs. For the reader's ease I will make use of a common word: soldiers usually have linen shirts, which they call camisiae, so fitted to the limbs and tight on the body that they are unencumbered for running or for battle, for aiming the javelin, holding the shield, swinging the sword, and wherever necessity draws them. So the priests too, ready for the service of God, use this tunic, so that, having the beauty of clothing, they may move about with the speed of the unclothed.

The third kind of garment is what they call abnet; we may call it a girdle or belt or sash; the Babylonians call it by a new word, hemian. I give different names so that no one may be mistaken about the name. This girdle is woven round, like the skin of a snake with which it sheds its old age, so that you would think it a long purse. It is woven with a woof of scarlet, purple, and blue and a warp of fine linen, for beauty and strength, and so embroidered with many-threaded art that you would think the various flowers and gems not woven but added by the craftsman's hand. With this belt they bind the linen tunic, of which we spoke above, between the navel and the breast. It is four fingers wide, and hangs down for the most part to the legs; when running and freedom of movement are needed for the sacrifices, it is thrown back over the left shoulder.

The fourth kind of garment is a round cap, such as we see painted on Ulysses, as if a sphere were divided in the middle and one half placed on the head. The Greeks and our people call it a tiara, some a galerus. It has no point at the top and does not cover the whole head down to the hair, but leaves the third part from the forehead uncovered, and is fastened at the back of the head with a band so that it does not easily slip off the head. It is of fine linen and so skilfully covered with a linen cloth that no traces of the needle appear on the outside.

These four garments, namely the drawers, the linen tunic, the girdle woven of purple, scarlet, fine linen, and blue, and the cap we have just described, are used by priests and high priests alike. The remaining four belong properly to the high priests. The first of these is the meil, that is, a tunic reaching to the ankles, all of blue, with sleeves of the same color sewn onto the sides, and open at the top where it is put on over the neck (what is commonly called the capitium), with very strong borders woven into it, so that they do not easily tear. At the bottom, at the feet, there are seventy-two bells and as many pomegranates, woven of the same colors as the girdle above. Between two bells there is one pomegranate, and between two pomegranates one bell, so that each is in the middle of the other. The reason is given: the bells were attached to the garment so that, when the high priest enters the holy of holies, he may go in wholly sounding, since he would die at once if he did not do this.

The sixth garment is what is called in Hebrew ephod; the Seventy call it ἐπωμίς, that is, 'over-the-shoulder'; Aquila ἐπένδυμα, that is, 'over-garment'; we shall give the ephod its own name. And wherever we read 'over-the-shoulder' in Exodus or Leviticus, let us know that among the Hebrews it is called ephod. I remember writing in a certain letter that this is the high priest's vestment, and all Scripture testifies that it is something sacred and fitting only for high priests. And let no one at once object that Samuel, who was a Levite, is written in the first book of Kingdoms to have had, while still a small child, an ephod bad, that is, a linen ephod, since David too is reported to have worn the same before the ark of the Lord. For it is one thing to have one woven of the four colors named above, that is, blue, fine linen, scarlet, and purple, and of gold; another to have a simple linen one, like the priests. Plates of gold, that is, leaves, are beaten to a wonderful thinness; from them threads are cut and twisted with a woof of three colors, blue, scarlet, and purple, and with a warp of fine linen, and a little cloak of variegated beauty is made, dazzling the eyes with its brilliance, like a caracalla but without a hood. Over the breast nothing is woven, and a space is left for the breastplate to come. On each shoulder it has a stone, set and fastened in gold, which in Hebrew are called shoham; by Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion onyxes, by the Seventy emeralds; Josephus calls them sardonyxes, agreeing with the Hebrew and Aquila, to show either the color of the stones or their place of origin. On each stone are six names of the patriarchs by whom the people of Israel is divided: on the right shoulder the elder sons of Jacob are written, on the left the younger, so that the high priest, entering the holy of holies, may carry on his shoulders the people for whom he is to pray to the Lord.