Letters 79.1–81.2

I fear that my attention may be thought ambition, and that in doing what I do after the example of him who says, 'Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart,' I may be said to be seeking glory, and not addressing a widow in distress but worming my way into the royal court and using a letter as a pretext to seek the friendship of the powerful. No one will think so who knows the command, 'You shall not favour the person of the poor in judgement,' lest under the pretext of mercy we judge what is unjust. For each of us must be judged by the weight not of persons but of facts. Wealth does not harm the rich man if he uses it well, and poverty does not make the poor man more commendable if amid squalor and want he does not guard against sin. Both the patriarch Abraham and everyday examples supply us with evidence of each: he was the friend of God amid the greatest riches, while others every day are caught in crimes and pay the penalty to the laws. So we address (whether a poor woman or a rich one, she herself knows, who owns it; for we are not examining her purse but the purity of her soul) a woman whose face we do not know but whose virtues we know; whom report commends to us; whose chastity her youth makes more venerable; who so wept for the death of her young husband that she gave an example of marriage, and so bore it that she believed him to have gone ahead, not to be lost. The greatness of her bereavement was the occasion of her religion. She seeks her Nebridius in such a way as to know that he is present in Christ. Why, then, do we write to one we do not know? There is a threefold reason. The first is that by the duty of the priesthood we love all Christians as sons, and their progress is our glory. The second is that the father of the deceased was bound to me by close friendship. The last and weightiest is that I could refuse nothing to my son Avitus, who asked it; in his frequent letters he outdid the widow who importuned the hard judge, and by setting before me the examples of many to whom I had written before on the same subject he so overwhelmed my reluctance to refuse that I considered more what he wanted than what it befitted me to do.

Another, perhaps, would praise Nebridius because, born of the sister of an empress and brought up in the bosom of his aunt, he was so dear to the most invincible emperor that the emperor sought for him a most noble wife, and by her, as it were a hostage, made Africa, which was at odds with him through civil wars, faithful to himself. For my part, from the very beginning I must proclaim this: as though aware that death was near, amid the splendour of the palace and heights of honour beyond his years, he so lived as to believe he would go to Christ. Sacred history tells that Cornelius, the centurion of the Italian cohort, was so acceptable to God that God sent an angel to him, and that the whole mystery by which Peter was brought from the narrowness of circumcision to the breadth of uncircumcision belonged to his merits; he, the first baptized by the apostle, consecrated the salvation of the Gentiles. And of him it is written: 'There was a man in Caesarea named Cornelius, a centurion of the cohort called the Italian, a devout man who feared God with all his household, giving much alms to the people and praying to God always.' Whatever is said of him, with the name changed, I claim for my Nebridius. He was so devout and such a lover of chastity that he took a wife as a virgin; he so feared God with all his household that, forgetting his rank, he kept company wholly with monks and clergy, and gave such alms among the people that swarms of the poor and the disabled besieged his doors; he certainly prayed to God always in such a way that what was best came to pass for him. 'He was taken away, lest wickedness should change his mind, because his soul was pleasing to God.' So I too can truly make use, concerning him, of the apostle's words: 'In truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons, but in every intention he who fears God and works righteousness is acceptable to him.' The soldier's cloak and belt and troops of attendants did him no harm in his service, because under the dress of one master he was serving another; just as, on the other hand, a cheap cloak, a dark tunic, bodily dirt, and feigned poverty profit others nothing, if they destroy the dignity of their name by their works. We read in the gospel too the Lord's testimony about another centurion: 'Not even in Israel have I found such faith.' And to go back to earlier times: did not Joseph, who gave proofs of his virtues both in poverty and in riches, and who as slave and as master taught the freedom of the soul, become, when he was adorned with royal insignia next to Pharaoh, so dear to God that beyond all the patriarchs he became the father of two tribes? Daniel and the three youths were so set over the works of Babylon and were among the princes of the city that, in the dress of Nebuchadnezzar, they served God in their minds. Mordecai and Esther, amid purple, silk, and gems, overcame pride by humility, and were of such merit that captives commanded their conquerors.

My argument tends to this: to show that my young man found in his connection with royal blood, in abundance of riches, and in the insignia of power, material for virtues, as Ecclesiastes says: 'As wisdom protects, so money protects.' And let us not at once think this contrary to the testimony: 'Truly I say to you, a rich man will hardly enter the kingdom of heaven. And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.' Otherwise Zacchaeus the tax collector, whom Scripture records as very rich, will seem to have been saved against this saying. But how what is impossible with men becomes possible with God the apostle's advice teaches, writing to Timothy: 'Command the rich of this world not to be proud, nor to hope in the uncertainty of riches, but in the living God, who richly gives us all things to enjoy. Let them do good, be rich in good works, give readily, share, lay up for themselves a good foundation for the future, so that they may lay hold of the true life.' We have learned how a camel can enter the eye of a needle: how a crooked animal, laying down the weight of its burdens, takes to itself the wings of a dove, so as to rest in the branches of the tree that grew from the mustard seed. We read in Isaiah of the camels of Midian and Ephah and Sheba carrying gold and incense to the city of the Lord. As a type of these camels, the Ishmaelite merchants bring to the Egyptians myrrh and incense and the resin that grows in Gilead and heals wounds with new skin; and they are so fortunate that they buy and sell Joseph, and their merchandise is the salvation of the world. Aesop's fable too teaches that a belly full of mice cannot get out through a narrow hole.

So my Nebridius, daily turning over the saying, 'Those who wish to become rich fall into temptation and the snare of the devil and many desires,' gave for the use of the poor whatever the emperor's generosity and the insignia of office had given him. For he knew the Lord's command: 'If you wish to be perfect, go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and come, follow me.' And because he could not fulfil this saying, having a wife, little children, and a large household, he made himself friends by means of the mammon of unrighteousness, who might receive him into the eternal dwellings. He did not throw off his burden all at once, as the apostles did when they left their father, their net, and their boat, but in fairness shared his abundance with the need of others, so that afterwards their riches might supply his want. She to whom this little book is written knows that I tell things not known to me but heard, and that I am not repaying some favour to me with my tongue, as Greek writers do. Far from Christians be such a suspicion! Having food and clothing, we are content with these. Where there is a cheap little vegetable, coarse bread, and moderate food and drink, there riches are superfluous, there is no flattery, which above all looks for profit. From this it follows that testimony is trustworthy which has no reasons for lying.

And lest anyone think I praise only almsgiving in Nebridius (though it is a great thing to have practised it, of which it is said, 'As water quenches fire, so alms quenches sin'), I will come to his other virtues, each of which we find in few men. Who has entered the furnace of the king of Babylon without being burned? What young man's cloak has his Egyptian mistress not held? What eunuch's wife bears no children when pleasure is spent? What man would not be terrified by that argument: 'I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and leading me captive to the law of sin which is in my members'? It is marvellous to tell: brought up in the palace, the companion and fellow pupil of the emperors, whose table the world serves and whom lands and seas obey, amid abundance of all things, in the first flower of youth he was so modest that he surpassed a virgin's shame, and gave not even a slight story of indecent rumour against himself. Then, though a relation, companion, and cousin of the wearers of the purple, and educated in the same studies with both (a thing that wins over even the minds of strangers), he was not puffed up with pride, nor did he look down on other men with knitted brow; but, lovable to all, he loved the emperors themselves as brothers, revered them as lords, and confessed that his own safety lay in theirs. Their ministers and the whole order of the palace, which royal ambition throngs, he so bound to himself by charity that those who were his inferiors in rank thought themselves his equals through his kindness. It is hard to outdo glory by virtue and to be loved by those whom you surpass. What widow was not supported by his help? What orphan did not find in him a father? The bishops of the whole East brought him the prayers of the wretched and the wishes of the suffering. Whatever he asked of the emperor was alms for the poor, the ransom of captives, mercy for the afflicted. So the emperors themselves granted it gladly, knowing that the favour was done not to one but to many.

Why do we delay any longer? 'All flesh is grass, and all its glory like the flower of grass.' The earth returned to its earth. He fell asleep in the Lord and was gathered to his fathers, full of days and of light, and nourished in a good old age (for grey hairs in a man are wisdom), and in a short life he fulfilled many times. In his place we have his dearest children; his wife, heir of his chastity, is its reward; little Nebridius shows his father to those who look for him: 'so his eyes, so his hands, so his face.' A spark of his father's vigour shines in the son, and the likeness of character breaking through the mirror of the flesh: 'he turns great spirits in a narrow breast.' His sister is joined with him, a basket of roses and lilies, a blend of ivory and purple. She so shows her father in her face that she inclines rather to beauty; she so paints her mother with a mingled likeness that you recognize both in one body; she is so sweet and honeyed that she is the pride of all her kin. The emperor does not disdain to hold her; the queen is glad to cherish her in her lap. They all vie to snatch her to themselves: she hangs on their necks and clings in the arms of each. Chattering and lisping, she becomes sweeter for her stumbling tongue.

So, Salvina, you have those to bring up in whom you may believe you hold your absent husband. 'Behold, the inheritance of the Lord is sons, the reward the fruit of the womb.' In place of one man you have received two children; the number of your love has increased. Whatever you owed your husband, pay to your children; temper your longing for the absent by love for those present. It is no small thing with God to bring up children well. Hear the apostle admonishing: 'Let a widow be chosen not less than sixty years old, who has been the wife of one husband, having a testimony for good works, if she has brought up children, if she has been hospitable, if she has washed the feet of the saints, if she has given abundantly to the afflicted, if she has followed every good work.' You have learned the list of your virtues, what you owe to your name, by what merits you hold the second rank of chastity. And do not be troubled that a widow of sixty is chosen, and think that young women are rejected by the apostle, and chosen by him who had said to his disciple, 'Let no one despise your youth' (that is, not your continence, but your age). Otherwise all who are widowed before sixty will by this law take husbands. But because he was forming the untaught church of Christ and providing for every order, and especially for the poor, whose care had been entrusted to him with Barnabas, he wishes those to be supported by the church's resources who cannot work with their own hands, who are widows indeed, whom both age and life have proved. Eli the priest offended God by the vices of his children; so, on the contrary, God is pleased by their virtues, 'if they remain in faith and love and holiness with chastity.' O Timothy, keep yourself chaste. Far be it that I should be permitted to suspect anything wrong of you; but it is a duty of affection to warn, beyond what is necessary, an age that is slippery. What I am about to say, understand as said not to you but to the years of girlhood. 'The widow who lives in pleasure is dead while she lives.' This is spoken by the chosen vessel and brought out of that treasure who said confidently, 'Do you seek a proof of Christ who speaks in me?' This is declared by him who in his own person freely confessed the frailty of the human body: 'For the good that I will, I do not do; but the evil that I will not,' and, 'Therefore I chastise my body and bring it into subjection, lest, having preached to others, I myself should be found reprobate.' If he fears, who of us can be secure? If David, the friend of the Lord, and Solomon, his beloved, were overcome as men, so as to give us examples of falling for caution and of repentance for salvation, who would not fear a fall on a slippery road? Far from your banquets be pheasants, fat turtle-doves, the Ionian grouse, and all the birds on which the largest fortunes fly away; and do not think you are not eating meat if you reject the dishes of swine, hares, deer, and four-footed animals. For these things are judged not by the number of feet but by the sweetness of the taste. We know that the apostle said, 'Every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected that is received with thanksgiving.' But the same apostle says, 'It is good not to drink wine and not to eat meat,' and in another place, 'wine, in which is excess.' Every creature of God is good. Let women who are anxious how they may please their husbands hear this. Let those eat meat who serve the flesh, whose heat foams over into intercourse, who, bound to husbands, give their efforts to begetting children. Let those whose wombs carry offspring fill their bowels with meat too. But you, who have buried all pleasures together in your husband's tomb, who have washed away with tears over his bier the face once painted with rouge and white lead, who have laid aside white dress and gilded slippers and taken a dark tunic and black shoes, have need of nothing else but to persevere. Let fasting, pallor, and squalor be your jewels; let no soft feathers cherish your youthful limbs; let no heat of baths inflame the new blood of youth. Hear what a heathen poet sings in the person of a continent widow: 'He who first joined me to himself took away my love; let him have it with him and keep it in the grave.' If so much for the cheapest glass, how much for the most precious pearl? If a Gentile widow, by the common law of nature, condemns all pleasures, what is to be expected of a Christian widow, who owes her chastity not only to him who has died but to him with whom she is to reign?

I beg you, let not general admonitions and words suited to a young woman make you suspect an insult, and think that I write in the spirit of a reproacher rather than of one who fears, whose prayer is that you may not know what I fear. The reputation of chastity in women is a tender thing, and like a most beautiful flower it quickly withers at a light breeze and is spoiled by a slight breath, especially where age too inclines to vice and a husband's authority is lacking, whose shadow is a wife's protection. What is a widow doing among a crowd of household slaves and herds of servants? I do not want her to despise them as servants, but to be modest before them as men. Certainly, if a great house requires these services, let her set over them an old man of honourable character, whose honour may be his mistress's dignity. I know many women who, though they kept their doors shut to the public, did not escape ill repute through their slaves, whom immoderate dress, the sleekness of a well-fed body, an age suited to lust, or a confident swelling of spirit from the consciousness of a secret love made suspect; and this, even when well concealed, often breaks out in public and despises fellow slaves as though they were slaves. Let this be said beyond what is necessary, so that you may keep your heart with all diligence and beware of anything that can be invented about you.

Let no curled steward walk beside you, no actor broken into a woman, no poisoned sweetness of the devil's singer, no plucked and glossy youth. Let nothing of the arts of the stage, nothing soft be joined to you in your service. Have with you choirs of widows and virgins; have the comfort of your own sex; mistresses are judged by the conduct of their maids as well. Certainly, since you have with you a holy mother, and a perpetual virgin, your aunt, clings to your side, you ought not to seek dangerously the company of outsiders when you are safe in the society of your own. Let the divine reading always be in your hands, and your prayers so frequent that all the arrows of thought with which youth is wont to be struck may be driven back by such a shield. It is difficult, or rather impossible, for anyone to be without the first beginnings of the passions, which the Greeks more expressively call propatheiai, and which, to translate word for word, we can call 'fore-passions'; because the incentives to all the vices tickle our minds, and our judgement stands as it were in the middle, either to reject the thoughts or to accept them. So the Lord of nature said in the gospel: 'Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual immorality, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.' From this it is clear, as another book testifies, that the heart of man is inclined to evil from his youth, and that the soul wavers in between the works of the flesh and of the spirit which the apostle Paul lists, grasping now these, now those. For 'no one is born without faults; the best is he who is pressed by the fewest', 'as if you were to find fault with moles scattered on an excellent body.' This is what the mouth of the prophet signifies in other words: 'I was troubled and did not speak'; and in the same book, 'Be angry and do not sin'; and that saying of Archytas of Tarentum to a negligent steward: 'I would have beaten you to death by now, if I were not angry.' 'For the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God.' What is said of one passion let us apply to the others. As to be angry is human and not to carry out anger is Christian, so all flesh indeed desires the things of the flesh and by certain allurements draws the soul to deadly pleasures; but it is ours to quench the heat of pleasure by the greater love of Christ, and to subdue the frisky beast with the bridle of fasting, so that it desires not lust but food, and carries its rider, the Holy Spirit, with a measured and orderly gait.

What is the point of this? That you may know that you are human and, unless you are on guard, subject to human passions. We are all made of the same clay, compacted of the same first elements: the same lust rules in silk and in rags, and neither fears the purple of kings nor spurns the squalor of beggars. It is much better for you to suffer in the stomach than in the mind, to command the body than to serve it, to totter in your step than in your chastity. Nor let the aids of penitence flatter us at once; they are the remedies of the unfortunate. We must beware of a wound that is healed by pain. It is one thing to enter the harbour of salvation with the ship whole and the cargo safe; another to cling naked to a plank and be dashed again and again by the returning waves against the sharpest rocks. Let a widow not know the indulgence of a second marriage, nor be acquainted with the apostle's words, 'It is better to marry than to burn.' Take away what is worse, burning, and marrying will not be a good in itself. Away with the slanders of heretics: we know that marriage is honourable and the bed undefiled. Even Adam, expelled from paradise, had one wife. Lamech, the first, accursed and bloodthirsty and descended from the stock of Cain, divided one rib into two, and at once the punishment of the flood overthrew the nursery of second marriage. Hence that saying of the apostle, who is compelled by fear of sexual immorality to make a concession, writing to Timothy: 'I wish the young women to marry, bear children, be mothers of families, give the adversary no occasion for reproach.' Why he made the concession he adds at once: 'For some have already turned aside after Satan.' From this we understand that he offers not a crown to those who stand but a hand to those who lie fallen. See what second marriages are, which are preferred to brothels, because some have turned aside after Satan. So a young widow who cannot or will not contain herself had better take a husband than the devil.

A fine thing, surely, and much to be desired, which is accepted in comparison with Satan! Jerusalem too once committed fornication and spread her legs for everyone who passed by. In Egypt she was first deflowered, and there her breasts were bruised. And when she had come to the desert and, impatient of the delays of Moses her leader, had said as if maddened by the gadfly of lust, 'These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt,' she received commandments that were not good and ordinances that were very bad, by which she should not live but be punished. What wonder, then, if to wanton widows, of whom the apostle had said in another place, 'When they have grown wanton against Christ they wish to marry, having condemnation, because they have made void their first faith,' he granted the precepts of second marriage, commandments not good and ordinances very bad, allowing a second husband, and a third, and, if they pleased, a twentieth, so that they might know that they had been given not so much husbands as had been cut off from adulterers? These things, my dearest daughter in Christ, I press upon you and repeat often, so that, forgetting what is behind, you may stretch forward to what is ahead, having as models of your order Judith from the Hebrew history and Anna, daughter of Phanuel, from the brightness of the gospel, who spent days and nights in the temple and kept the treasure of chastity by prayers and fasting. So the one, as a type of the church, cut off the devil's head; the other was the first to receive the Saviour of the world, aware of the mysteries to come. This I ask at the end of my letter: that you judge the brevity of this little book to have come not from poverty of speech or barrenness of subject but from the greatness of my modesty, since I fear to press myself at length on ears that do not know me, and I dread the secret judgement of those who read.

I know that a great many of the brothers, moved by a desire for knowledge of the Scriptures, have asked various learned men skilled in Greek to make Origen a Roman and give him to Latin ears. When our brother and colleague, at the request of Bishop Damasus, had translated two homilies on the Song of Songs from Greek into Latin, he wrote such an ornate and splendid preface to that work as to stir in anyone a desire to read Origen and to search him out most eagerly. He said that the words 'The king has brought me into his chamber' fitted Origen's soul, and asserted that, while he surpasses everyone in his other books, in the Song of Songs he has surpassed even himself. In that very preface he promises to bestow on Roman ears both the books on the Song of Songs themselves and very many other works of Origen. But he, as I see, taking pleasure in his own style, pursues something of greater glory, to be the father of the word rather than its translator. We, then, are following a task that he began and approved, but we cannot adorn the words of so great a man with an equal power of eloquence. So I fear that by my fault it may come about that the man whom he rightly judged to be the second teacher of the church, after the apostles, in knowledge and wisdom, may seem far inferior to himself through the poverty of my speech.

Often considering this, I kept silent and did not agree to the brothers who frequently begged me to undertake this work. But your insistence, most faithful brother Macarius, is so great that not even lack of skill can resist it. So, not to endure so stern a creditor any longer, I have given way even against my resolve; on this condition and in this manner, however, that as far as possible in translating I follow the rule of my predecessors, and especially of the man I mentioned above. When he had translated into Latin more than seventy of Origen's little books, which he called homilies, and a number of the tomes written on the apostle, in which a good many stumbling blocks are found in the Greek, he so smoothed and cleansed everything in translating that the Latin reader finds nothing in them at variance with our faith. Him, then, we too follow as far as we can, if not in power of eloquence, at least in the rules of method: taking care, that is, not to put forward those things in Origen's books that are found inconsistent with himself and contradictory. The reason for this inconsistency I have set out for you more fully in the Apology which Pamphilus wrote for the books of Origen, adding a very short book in which, with evident proofs, as I think, I have shown that his books have been corrupted in very many places by heretics and ill-wishers, and especially those you now require me to translate, that is, Peri Archon, which may be called either 'On First Principles' or 'On Principalities'. These are, besides, truly most obscure and most difficult. For there he discusses matters about which the philosophers, having spent their whole lives, were able to find nothing. But our author did what he could to turn to piety the faith in the Creator and the account of creatures which they had dragged into impiety. Wherever, then, we have found in his books something contrary to what he himself had elsewhere piously laid down about the Trinity, we have either passed it over as corrupted and foreign, or set it out according to the rule which we have often found affirmed by him. If, as speaking to the skilled and knowledgeable, he expressed something obscurely while wishing to pass over it briefly, we, to make the passage plainer, have added what we had read more openly on the same subject in his other books, aiming at explanation; yet we have said nothing of our own, but have given back to him his own words, though from other places. I have given this warning in the preface lest slanderers should think they have again found material for accusation. But let perverse and contentious men see to what they do.

Meanwhile we have undertaken so great a labour, if God helps us at your prayers, not to shut the mouths of slanderers (which cannot be done, though perhaps God will do even this), but to provide material for those who wish to advance in the knowledge of things. And I solemnly charge and adjure everyone who is going to copy or read these books, in the sight of God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, by faith in the kingdom to come, by the mystery of the resurrection from the dead, and by the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels (so may he not possess as an eternal inheritance that place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, and where their fire will not be quenched and their worm will not die), that he add nothing to this writing, take nothing away, insert nothing, change nothing, but compare it with the copies from which he wrote, correct it to the letter, and punctuate it, and not keep an uncorrected or unpunctuated manuscript, lest the difficulty of the meaning, if the manuscript is not punctuated, cause greater obscurity for readers.

Your own letter has shown that you stayed long in Rome, and I do not doubt that you have been called back to your homeland by longing for your spiritual parents, you whom your mother's grief kept from going, lest you should grieve more in her presence over what you could hardly bear in absence. As for your complaint that everyone serves his own temper and does not accept our judgement, the Lord is witness to our conscience that since our friendship was restored no rancour has come between us by which we might hurt anyone; on the contrary, we have taken every precaution that not even an accident should be turned into ill will. But what can we do, if everyone thinks he is right to do what he does, and thinks he is biting back rather than biting? True friendship ought not to hide what it feels. A little preface to the books Peri Archon has been sent to me, which I recognized from the style to be yours, in which I am attacked obliquely, or rather openly. With what intention it was written, you must see; how it is understood is plain even to fools. I too, who have very often declaimed on figured themes, could have taken up something of the old art and praised you in your own manner. But far be it from me to imitate what I blame in you. Rather I have so tempered my view as both to escape the charge brought against me and, as far as in me lies, not to hurt a friend, though hurt myself. But I beg you, if in future you wish to follow anyone, be content with your own judgement alone. For what we seek is either good or bad: if good, it needs no one else's help; if bad, a multitude of sinners does not provide a defence for error. I wished to remonstrate with you as a friend rather than, being provoked, to rage in public, so that you may see that I cherish our restored friendship sincerely, and do not, as Plautus says, hold a stone in one hand and offer bread with the other.

My brother Paulinian has not yet returned from our homeland, and I think you will have seen him at Aquileia with the holy father Chromatius. We have also sent the holy presbyter Rufinus, for a certain reason, to Milan by way of Rome, and have asked him to visit you with our good wishes and service; and we have told our other friends the same, that we should not, biting one another, be consumed by one another. It is now for your moderation, and that of your friends, to give no occasion to the impatient, lest you find that not all are like me, able to be pleased with figured praises.