Life of Malchus the Captive Monk

Those who are about to fight a naval battle first, in harbour and on a calm sea, turn the rudders, pull the oars, and make ready the grappling irons and hooks; and they accustom the soldiers ranged along the decks to stand firm on a swaying footing and a slipping step, so that what they have learned in a mock battle they may not dread in a real fight. So I too, who have long been silent (for he made me silent to whom my speech is a punishment), wish first to practise on a small work and, as it were, wipe some of the rust from my tongue, so that I may come to a broader history. For I have resolved (if the Lord gives me life, and if my detractors at least stop pursuing me now that I have fled and shut myself in) to write from the coming of the Saviour to our own age, that is, from the apostles to the dregs of our time: how and through whom the church of Christ was born and grew to maturity, increased through persecutions and was crowned with martyrdoms; and how, after it came to Christian emperors, it became greater in power and riches but less in virtues. But of this elsewhere. Now let us set out the matter at hand.

Maronia is a small village about thirty miles east of Antioch, a city of Syria. After many owners or patrons, while I was staying as a young man in Syria, it passed into the possession of my close friend Pope Evagrius; I name him now to show how I came to know what I am about to write. There was, then, an old man there named Malchus, which we could render in Latin as "king", a Syrian by race and language, a true native of the place. There was also an old woman living with him, very decrepit and evidently close to death. Both were so earnestly devout and so constantly wore down the threshold of the church that you would think them Zechariah and Elizabeth from the Gospel, except that there was no John between them. When I asked the neighbours with some curiosity what bond joined them, whether of marriage, of blood, or of the spirit, all with one voice answered that they were holy and pleasing to God, and I know not what wonderful things. Drawn on by this eagerness, I approached the man, asked him very closely about the facts, and received this account from him.

"My son," he said, "I was a farmer of a small plot at Nisibis, the only child of my parents. When they tried to force me into marriage as the stock of their line and the heir of their household, I answered that I would rather be a monk. With what threats my father and with what coaxing my mother pursued me to make me betray my chastity, this alone shows: I fled both home and parents. And since I could not go east because Persia was near and Roman soldiers were guarding the border, I turned my steps west, carrying some little provision for the road, just enough to keep off want. In short, I came at last to the desert of Chalcis, which lies between Imma and Beroea, rather to the south. There I found monks, put myself under their teaching, earning my food by the labour of my hands and curbing the wantonness of the flesh with fasting. After many years a desire came over me to go to my homeland, to comfort my mother in her widowhood while she was still alive (for I had heard that my father was already dead), and then to sell my small property, give part to the poor, settle part on the monastery, and (why am I ashamed to confess my faithlessness?) keep part back to relieve my own expenses. My abbot began to cry out that it was a temptation of the devil, and that the snares of the ancient enemy lay hidden under the pretext of an honourable thing: this was the dog returning to its vomit. Many monks, he said, had been deceived like this; the devil never shows himself openly. He set before me many examples from the Scriptures, among them how at the beginning he tripped up Adam and Eve too with the hope of divinity. And when he could not persuade me, he fell on his knees and begged me not to desert him, not to destroy myself, not to look back when I had my hand on the plough. Woe is me, wretch that I am! I overcame my adviser with a most evil victory, thinking that he was seeking not my salvation but his own comfort. So he escorted me out of the monastery as if carrying out a corpse, and at the last, saying farewell, he said: 'I see that you are branded with the mark of a son of Satan. I do not ask your reasons, I do not accept excuses. The sheep that goes out of the fold lies open at once to the bites of the wolf.'"

For those travelling from Beroea to Edessa there is a wilderness next to the public road, through which the Saracens wander here and there, never settling. This danger brings travellers together in large companies in those parts, so that by mutual help they may avoid the threatened peril. In my company there were men, women, old people, young people and little children, about seventy in number. And suddenly the Ishmaelites rush upon us, riding horses and camels, their heads long-haired and bound with fillets, their bodies half naked, trailing cloaks and wide boots; quivers hung from their shoulders; brandishing unstrung bows, they carried long spears; for they had come not to fight but to plunder. We are seized, scattered, dragged off in different directions. Meanwhile I, who was to regain my inheritance by a long-delayed return, and was repenting of my decision too late, fell by lot together with another woman into the service of one master. We are led, or rather carried, high up on camels, and across the vast desert, always fearing a fall, we hung rather than sat. Half-raw meat was our food and camels' milk our drink.

At last, having crossed a great river, we reached the inner desert, where, ordered to do reverence to the mistress and her children according to the custom of the people, we bow our necks. Here, as if shut up in prison, I changed my dress, that is, I learned to go naked; for the extremes of the climate allowed nothing but the private parts to be covered. Sheep are given me to pasture, and compared with my troubles I enjoy this comfort, that I see my masters and fellow slaves less often. I seemed to have something of holy Jacob; I recalled Moses; for they too were once shepherds in the desert. I lived on fresh cheese and milk; I prayed continually; I sang the psalms I had learned in the monastery. My captivity delighted me, and I gave thanks to God's judgment that I had found in the desert the monk I was about to lose in my homeland.

O, nothing is ever safe from the devil! O his manifold and unspeakable snares! Even so his envy found me in my hiding. My master, seeing his flock increase and finding no dishonesty in me (for I knew that the Apostle had commanded that masters are to be served faithfully as God), and wishing to reward me so as to make me more loyal to him, gave me that fellow slave of mine, once a captive. When I refused, saying I was a Christian and that it was not lawful for me to take the wife of a living husband (for her husband, captured with us, had been carried off by another master), that implacable master flew into a rage, drew his sword, and began to come at me. And had I not at once stretched out my arms and taken hold of the woman first, he would have shed my blood on the spot. Now night had come, darker than usual and for me far too soon. I lead my new wife into a half-ruined cave; with sorrow as our bridesmaid, each of us loathes the other, and neither says so. Then truly I felt my captivity; and lying on the ground I began to mourn the monk I was losing, saying: "Have I been kept alive for this, wretch that I am? Have my crimes brought me to this, that with my head already turning grey I, a virgin, should become a husband? What good is it to have despised parents, homeland and property for the Lord, if I do the very thing I despised them so as not to do? Unless perhaps I suffer this because I longed for my homeland. What are we to do, my soul? Do we perish or conquer? Do we wait for the hand of the Lord, or are we to be pierced with our own blade? Turn the sword on yourself: your death is more to be feared than the body's. Chastity preserved also has its martyrdom. Let Christ's witness lie unburied in the desert; I will be both my own persecutor and martyr." So speaking, I drew the sword, which glittered even in the darkness, and turning its point against myself I said: "Farewell, unhappy woman; have me as a martyr rather than as a husband." Then she threw herself at my feet and said: "I beg you by Jesus Christ, and I adjure you by the need of this hour, do not shed your blood and make me guilty of it. Or if you wish to die, turn the blade on me first; let us rather be joined in that way. Even if my husband came back to me, I would keep the chastity which captivity has taught me, or I would die rather than lose it. Why do you die so as not to be joined to me? I would die if you wished to be joined to me. Have me then as your wife in chastity, and love the union of the soul more than that of the body. Let our masters think you my husband; let Christ know you as my brother. We shall easily convince them of the marriage when they see us love each other like this." I confess I was astonished; and admiring the woman's virtue, I loved my wife the more. Yet I never looked upon her naked body, never touched her flesh, fearing to lose in peace what I had kept in battle. Many days passed in such a marriage; the marriage had made us dearer to our masters. There was no suspicion of flight; sometimes I was away a whole month in the wilderness as the flock's faithful shepherd.

After a long interval, while I was sitting alone in the desert and seeing nothing but sky and earth, I began to turn things over silently, and among many others I remembered the company of the monks, and above all the face of my father, who had taught me, held me, and lost me. Thinking in this way, I see a column of ants swarming along a narrow path. You could see loads bigger than their bodies. Some were dragging seeds of grass in the pincers of their mouths; others were carrying earth out of pits and keeping out the water with banks. Some, mindful of the coming winter, were cutting off the ends of the seeds they had brought in, so that the moistened earth should not turn their granaries into grass; others, with solemn mourning, were carrying away dead bodies. And what is more remarkable in so great a column, the one going out did not obstruct the one coming in; rather, if they saw one fallen under its bundle and burden, they put their shoulders under it and helped. In short, that day gave me a fine spectacle. Then, remembering Solomon, who sends us to the skill of the ants and rouses sluggish minds by such an example, I began to weary of captivity, to long for the cells of the monastery, and to desire to be like those ants, where all work for the common good, and, since nothing belongs to anyone, all things are everyone's.

When I returned to my lodging the woman met me; I could not hide the sadness of my mind in my face. She asks why I am so downcast. She hears the reasons; I urge flight; she does not reject it. I ask for silence; she gives her word; and in constant whispers we waver between hope and fear. I had in my flock two he-goats of remarkable size; I kill them, make skins of them, and prepare their meat as provision for the road. And early in the evening, when our masters thought we had gone to bed in private, we take to the road, carrying the skins and pieces of meat. When we reached the river, which was ten miles away, we blew up the skins, got on them, and trusted ourselves to the water, paddling gently with our feet, so that the river would carry us downstream and set us out on the other bank far lower than where we had embarked, and our pursuers would lose the track. But meanwhile the meat got wet, and part of it fell away, so that it promised scarcely three days' food. We drink our fill, preparing ourselves for the thirst to come. We run, always looking behind us, and we make progress more by night than by day, both because of the ambushes of the far-roving Saracens and because of the excessive heat of the sun. I tremble, wretch that I am, even as I tell it; and although my whole mind is at ease, my whole body shudders.

On the third day, looking out doubtfully, we see in the distance two men riding camels, coming in haste. At once my mind, foreboding evil, began to think its master was planning death and to see the sun grow black. While we are afraid, and understand that we have been betrayed by our footprints in the sand, a cave appears on our right running far under the earth. So, fearing poisonous creatures (for vipers, basilisks, scorpions and other such creatures, avoiding the heat of the sun, usually seek the shade), we did enter the cave, but at once, at the very entrance, we committed ourselves to a pit on the left, going no further, lest in fleeing death we should run into death; and we reasoned thus: if the Lord helps the wretched, we have safety; if he despises sinners, we have a tomb. What do you think we felt, what terror, when our master and fellow slave stood not far from the cave, and, guided by our footprints, had already come to our hiding place? O death awaited is far heavier than death inflicted! Even now my tongue stammers with effort and fear, and as if my master were shouting, I dare not mutter. He sends the slave to drag us out of the cave; he himself holds the camels and, with drawn sword, waits for us to come. Meanwhile, when the servant had gone in about three or four cubits, and we, from our hiding place, were watching his back (for such is the nature of the eyes that to those who enter the shade from the sun everything is blind), his voice sounds through the cave: "Come out, gallows-birds; come out, you who are to die. Why are you standing there? Why are you delaying? Come out; the master is calling, he is waiting patiently." He was still speaking, and behold, through the darkness we see a lioness spring on the man, strangle him by the throat, and drag him, bloody, inside. Good Jesus, what terror, what joy we had then! We were watching our enemy perish without our master knowing; and he, seeing that the slave was delaying, suspected that two were resisting one. Unable to put off his anger, he came to the cave sword in hand, and, rebuking the slave's sloth with a furious shout, he was seized by the beast before he reached our hiding place. Who would ever believe that before our very face a beast fought for us? But when that fear was removed, a similar death was turning before our eyes, except that it was better to bear the rage of a lion than the anger of a man. We are terrified within; and not daring even to move, we waited for the outcome, amid such perils walled about only by the conscience of our chastity. The lioness, wary of a trap and sensing that she had been seen, took her cub in her mouth early in the morning and carried it out, leaving us the lodging. Still not trusting enough, we did not burst out at once, but waited a long time, and, thinking of going out, we kept picturing meeting her.

When our dread was removed and that day had passed, we came out towards evening, and saw the camels, which because of their great speed are called dromedaries, chewing over food they had eaten and bringing back again what had been sent down into the belly. Mounting them, and refreshed by new provisions, that is, food, we at last on the tenth day came through the desert to a Roman camp. Brought before the tribune, we lay out the matter in order; from there we were sent on to Sabianus, the commander of Mesopotamia, and received the price of the camels. And since that abbot of mine had already fallen asleep in the Lord, I was brought to this place; I gave myself back to the monks and handed her over to the virgins, loving her as a sister, yet not trusting myself to her as to a sister. This the old man Malchus told me when I was a young man. This I, now an old man, have told you; to the chaste I have set out a story of chastity. I urge virgins to guard their chastity. You, tell it to those who come after, that they may know that amid swords, amid deserts and beasts, chastity is never a captive, and that a man devoted to Christ can die but cannot be conquered.