Commonitorium (Instruction)

Whoever you are who, hastening to the rewards of eternal life, desire what will be made everlasting rather than what will perish, learn the way that opens heaven and puts death to flight, that avoids rough ground and runs on a happy path. For we, overcome both by the vices of the flesh and by time, tread the earthly road without grief for it; and amid our mingled prayers this is now our only joy: that what we do not do, others at least may do, so that, since we now spend this lifetime, which flees at once, captured by faithless allurements, wanton, wretched, deceitful, brief, fickle, vain, … alas, the evil source of offences hurls us headlong, you, leaving all these things which will swiftly die, may hold with strong faith the things that will not die. Come then, lend attentive ears and a mind at leisure: life is what I must teach, life is what you must seek. But that the teaching of our little book may be the better, and the course of the song keep to the right paths, it is my will to ask you, almighty God, with heart and voice, and without you, Christ, not even to loose my tongue, you who are wont to take darkness from the blind by restoring light, to put hearing into deaf ears, to drive out the cruel diseases of body and mind, you who in your kindness are wont to loose the mouths of the dumb: in your keeping is the office of our heart and mouth; grant me to understand, grant me to be able to speak, so that your gifts may quicken our tongue, and through you, about you, the speech may be pleasing to you, since at your command the she-ass, speaking with our voice, surpassed all nature in what she was bidden to do,

and the four-footed beast with wondrous speech terrified Balaam as he goaded her back with his spurs; he, at the great and repeated request of the frightened king, preparing dire words against the holy people, could not bring under his own control the tongue that moved, saying one thing with his mouth and desiring another in his heart. For when he was about to curse, he began to bless abundantly, spending on other words a mouth prepared for others. Therefore, unless you, Christ, supply eloquence and understanding, and unless you, Christ, govern the endeavours of the soul, all men will keep their mouths dumb and brute, and even what they can do, this too they will not be able to do. First you must recognize a twofold life, granted by the Lord to man together with reason, so that, since the body is brute with earthly weight, but the soul is quickened by the breath of God, the soul, however spent, would feel no end, while life in this frail body would be brief. The one, the law of birth brings first to all; the other, care obtains by one's own merits. To be born is not ours, nor to live long ours: life can prepare the life that follows. And though we receive both by the Lord's will, and neither comes to us unless God commands it, yet the first is carried downhill with swift turning, the one that follows is given for all time. Into the first we come unknowing, for no reward; the second comes, won by the greatest labour. We are born that we may seek the Lord of heaven and earth and sea, watchful, with all our zeal.

We seek, so that who he is, how great or of what kind, and what he does, we may come to know by true judgment. We know, so that having found him we may worship him with worthy praise; we worship, so that he may grant everlasting life. And we worship not by offering incense, not by pouring out blood, not drenched with wine, not heavy with feasts. Gold, clothing, perfume, cattle, libations, gems, and whatever men think rare or precious, before God lie like worthless masses of earthly weight, like mud, like filth, so without honour. All things are his, whose we confess that we are. Nothing is our own: he possesses it, he gave it. For see, he proclaims by the holy mouth of the prophet: “I do not want your goats, I do not want your calves. The beauty of the field is with me and the glory of heaven; for the world is mine, and what is in the world is mine. Let the vows that are owed be paid to me from a holy heart; let the sacrifice of praise and a pure voice honour me.” Therefore, our reader, you will be able to plead nothing in these admonitions that is hard for you. It is not placed far off, it need not be sought elsewhere; it needs no property, no expense, no price. It is enough that the Lord of the world and Father of all things, in whose decision are good things and evil, who by a greater sense surpasses the words of the one speaking of him, one, incorporeal, holy forever, embracing all things and always one in all, you believe with a devout heart and, believing, call upon with your mouth. But why do I use only bare words in this way, as though there were no admonitions of God on this?

For remember first what was enjoined under the old law, which long ago was written on solid tablets, which grace, given through the Lord Christ, now renews, and which the venerable voice of the gospel sounds forth, so that what stones once held, our hearts might now hold, and faith, twice repeated, might be the richer: “With all your affection and with all your marrow and with all your heart love the Lord your God.” And rightly: for what could you ever pay more justly, bound as you are by such great gifts? He, when you lay as clay among earthly dregs, took from you being mud for all time; he, that you consist of limbs, that you are guided by mind, that you speak with tongue, that you are wise by reason, that you touch with hands, walk with foot, perceive with eyes, hear with ear, smell with nostrils, taste with mouth, supplies before any merit, of his own kindness, as father and as lord of body and soul; and not content with this one gift, by which he furnished you with limbs, he enriched you with senses: he who gave life lavishes the comforts of life, so that it may be endowed for you with every delight. See, for you the heaven hangs, for you the earth spreads out, the air is balanced, the ocean surges; nights and days follow on, and the months of the year; the sun shines, the stars gleam, the moon glows red. Spring pours out soft flowers among varied shoots, summer then ripens the fields heavy with fruit, autumn is soaked with new wine, the olive is very rich, winter, with fires brought near, knows no cold.

To keep off the rains you strengthen the overhanging roofs; with houses set against them you know nothing of the winds; and combing the shaggy back of the wool-bearing sheep you cover your chilled limbs with soft wrappings; nor are light garments of snow-white linen lacking; there are also cloaks of Eastern fleeces: the first the fruitful earth will give back to you when the seed is sown, the second the Seres gather in their tall trees. In short, whatever you have through the whole revolving year, the care of God gives you all of it. The plain is green with harvest, the hill is clothed with the vine, from various trees you reap mellow fruits, and, providently spending effort on a fruitful garden, you take useful vegetables at whatever season you please. You kindle the resinous pine for any light you need; on noble tables the waxen flame flickers. Nor is the earth, made subject to man, bidden to serve him only with earthly things in their various uses: whatever is borne near the clouds, whatever rolls hidden deep in the sea, now with deceiving bait, now with linen woven into nets, by countless arts you seek it here and there. Now for you the fish is drawn from the lowest depths, now birds are snared in the highest air. Dense herds of wild beasts fall before the hunter, struck from afar by javelins or caught in nets. You pursue with steel what lies before you, with dogs you stop what flees, you master with bridles the mouth of the fierce horse. You drive oxen to the curved yokes, she-goats to the milk-pails; sweet honey drips from the wrinkled combs.

You bring out gems from rocks, gold from sands, and with fire you smelt pliant metals from the earth; you pick out the herbs that heal grievous diseases, and diligently by your art you drive out deadly evil. Moreover, that you may take wares from a foreign shore, and give your own to others and seek what belongs to others, you will run over rivers with oars, over seas with sail: you will go long journeys without toil. Or if you fear the sea, you will set carriages moving, and the land will lay itself out to be marked by your wheels. Then if your tossed body seeks soft leisure, moist baths will receive you, dusty as you are; and, stripped of all your clothing in the hollow bath, you will warm your weary limbs in tamed waters. For so many and such great goods won for you by the Lord's gift, what worthy return, then, do you make in devout love? Or with what wealth, with what gifts, could you pay for these, or with how great a service could you repay them? Yet the Lord, whose all things are, does not seek these: it is enough that you, a beloved servant, love the Lord. Then follows the form of the second commandment too, that your neighbour be to you as you are to yourself. I recognize a law that brings salvation with a lasting gift, which provides for all by one single duty. For when the care of another is entrusted to me, it must be that my care likewise is entrusted to another. See, the beast leads beast to fruitful pastures, the glad heifer lows to her own herd. They answer with a murmur, they speak with what voice they can, and in turn the docile tongue is wont to lick.

Nor is what the sea hides beneath its waves without affection, and bird is kind to bird and beast to beast. Then if ever a robber comes out of some throng, the stronger pressing the weak with claw or jaw, whether it be a matter of birds or of beasts, they rally with help gathered from every side, and by running, by herd, by voice, by flight, they wish, even if they cannot, to snatch away their captive companion. And since they so protect one another by nature's gift alone, though they thrive neither in counsel nor in reason, what wonder if, following the Lord's revered commands, mutual care binds man to man, and one skilled in practice, wit, affairs and reason attends as a brother to your advantage as to his own? Hence comes that rightly pleasing saying, which binds the human race in an equal condition: “Do not do to others whatever you do not want done to you, and do to others what you want done to you.” What race of men, what rite, what sex and age, would deny this is right, would deny this is easy? What does this command, narrow as it is, not embrace far and wide? What could be handed down more fully than in this brevity? For I would not wish evil things done to me, just as I desire in turn that good things be done. There is no need of an informer, no teacher is wanted: we know of ourselves what is good and what is evil. You will surely rejoice if someone kindly leads you, when you are travelling by night, into a neighbouring lodging: you too, with care, provide a roof and take in him who will be a traveller late at night;

naked, you wish to be covered with clothing; thirsty, to be called to drink; hungry, to be filled with food: let a like concern, from your own trouble, move you too; share cloaks, cups and food with the wretched. See, when you fall you ask a hand, when grieving comfort, when afraid help, when in doubt counsel: offer these to the grieving, the doubting, the afraid, the falling; in a like case, love, and see that you are loved. Surely you do not want to be accused on a false charge: beware of accusing others on a false charge. You hate the thief: shun theft. You do not want to lose by force what is yours: do nothing by violence. You do not want agreements made with you to waver with uncertain readiness: keep your promised faith with a steadfast heart. You would wish to cut out the tongue that slandered you: take care that no spiteful words of yours brand anyone. When you ask for a loan, you want to receive the money at once: let a ready right hand help him who asks for a loan. You condemn those lifted up with pride: lay aside your swelling; what you shun in the lofty, let the lowly not know from you. Surely if it is a sister, or a mother, or a dear wife, whose life you would not have grave rumour stain, you keep watch, with careful devotion, over their lasting chastity, as son, or brother, or husband: if an adulterer should assail these names you revere, you think the sword not enough for vengeance. Are you not guilty of the same penalty, if you too by stealth set about tempting chaste marriage-beds? Hence it was that the Lord, under the first law, commanded crimes to be weighed with equal punishments:

loss for loss, wound for wound, a tooth torn out to be paid for with a tooth, eyes for eyes. Nor less, so that the bold man who desired to take another's life should give up his own before the judge, and the guilty could not call the judgment wrong, vengeance was decreed for wrongful crimes. And although the grace of Christ has changed these for the better, teaching gentle things rather than violent, yet it is right, whatever the one law or the other commands, whether you repay at once or act with patience. Yet he is the better who rejoices in Christ as avenger, if he keeps for the Lord what the Lord gave him. Therefore by devout prayers and holy deeds accomplish what this present life and the life to come would approve, so that you, whom honour commends as it swiftly flees, everlasting glory may receive after death. For, sure of our admonitions, remember that all the things which fools now think will perish will endure; and believe that souls, the same limbs returning, will take back the very covering of the body. Faces, colour, blood, veins, skin, bones, hair, as they now slip away, so will they come again, not only what stones keep well laid in tombs, or what Arabian dust and perfume, preserving, cover, but, quicker than a word, there will return to be formed into limbs one portion from tombs, one portion from rivers. What the wind wastes with its blowing, what the beast with its bite, what flame has burned up, and what a fall of ruin crushes, all will be present, all will come together from its different places, the part torn by bird or fish, the part by wild beasts,

and what long age now slowly dissolves, the Lord's trumpet will swiftly restore, so that, according to the merits of their deeds, in the same body in which they did good or evil, the flesh, that is, having returned to the motions of the souls, punishment may receive the guilty, and glory the just. But why should you doubt, when the things that go before show you that faith in what is to come may be plain to you? Look at the woods stripped bare by winter's cold now growing luxuriant with leaves that were despaired of. The vine that stood mourning with its shoots shaken off is clothed with leaves, is dressed with fruit. The stalk of corn turns golden with thick ears, the grain that was lately rotting in the ground; and the fields that lay squalid in gloomy sloth laugh gladly with new shoots and glow red with flowers. The year itself, too, enclosed in its various months, has the appearance of death as the seasons change, when spring is driven out by autumn, cold by heat, and, as it is with the affairs of men, this comes and that goes. Yet by this everlasting custom, as long as God allows, it rolls round in alternating office: and while the moving wheel of the long year follows itself, it is born and dies, falls and returns. For our end receives no end, and the death by which we first die dies forever. With motion ever living and sense remaining, every man will live for all time. Man will live: but here tears follow my words; for I think man's lot would have been better thus,

to lay down with the sense of life the sense of punishment and, once born, to become like those never born, than now, with sins ruling through all time, to be dead to life and alive to punishments. For I beg you not to believe, as a shortening of the dire punishment, that the flame that is due swiftly devours the guilty. Look at the hills plunged in everlasting fires, continually burning, yet not diminished; and see the cold springs and the blue rivers always pouring out waters, yet always having them. So the avenging fire will always ravage the wretched, that it may always keep rich fodder for itself. If you think these things false, afterwards you will rightly find them true; but you will escape them as false, if only you fear them as true. Therefore, if everlasting life follows after death, gladdening the just and tormenting the guilty, strive with all your strength and with all your prayers to keep on in the ways that lead aright. Trample down the world, trodden underfoot with the prince of death, and shun trusting wanton delights. [On wantonness] Above all, always despise faces of renown and snatch the judging of them away from your eyes. No one will carry glowing fire with his clothes untouched; no one among the trumpets will fail to take in their sound with his ear; no one among flowers, surrounded by sweet scents, will fail to keep plucking the rose with his nail for his nostrils; no one long thirsty and scorched by a hot sun will bend over cold waters and not drink of them; no one making his way on foot in winter-time will not be sprinkled with rain and soaked.

No one, even within the walls, in time of war lives either quite secure or quite safe. Meeting offers a sight; then the eyes, from the sight, conceive flames and give birth to wickedness, while, as when the fisherman's hook is cast with its deceit, the mind is first caught, then even dies. Woman, alas, first stain of evil! The serpent's guile drove you, and through you man, away from the Lord. You the cause of the good that was snatched away, you the door of death, you quickly deceived, you quickly deceiving. Come then, you who strive to have your breast stained by no blemish and to be pure with a pure mind, as you flee snares, fire, swords and sharp poisons, so will you flee from looking at a much-praised face. I will not now recount, through so many ages, how many peoples the faces of women have ruined. I pass over the Spartan disasters, the Trojan wars, and how near your destruction came through a rape, Rome, when nations under no law of the Lord, nor tamed for life by any admonitions of the saints, were led by a wanton guide where madness drove them, and whatever pleased was also lawful. From the sacred books, I say, from the sacred books learn to how great reproach base love has been. The beauty of Dinah destroyed you, Shechem, as you rushed into excessive love, with your father, with your country. For the brothers, in their devoted care, promised the wrongly violated sister in marriage, and avenged her with the sword. David also, praised in the song of the psalms, a pleasing form brought down from his lofty throne,

when, his crime discovered, he covered his wrongly wanton body with sackcloth and ground it down with ashes. The beauty of Tamar drove two brothers at the same time into the crimes of incest and of the sword. One defiles her, the other avenges the defiled: a vengeance that is just ceases to be dutiful. Solomon himself too, whose wisdom in ancient times was renowned in the whole world, is led into crime, ensnared by forbidden love, placing his base neck under a woman's yoke, and, forgetful of the Lord, the proclamations of praise that had adorned him as a young man rightly forsook him in old age. A form that pleased the king handed you over to death, Haman; a form carried off your head, general Holofernes. That Samson, famed for his wondrous strength, a comely form handed over to the cruel foreigners. He, a holy soldier and victor in so many battles, alas, is wrongly subjected by guile to the company of women, so that, now polluted, since crimes give birth to punishment, he gave kisses to maidens and his back to swords. You too, beloved of the Levite though not his wife, subjected on a mad night to the young men's bed, in zeal for vengeance gave whole tribes to war, content to destroy or to perish, so that Gibeah, with the limbs scattered by the mangled death, made a pyre burned with dire fires. Not if I had a hundred tongues and a hundred mouths could I set out how much a pleasing form does harm. The blessed apostle cries out to the wanton world, giving strict laws even to lawful marriage-beds:

the man possessed by a wife, and the man free who has spurned a wife, do not have the same case in religion. Care for his wife holds back the husband who is entangled; the celibate wishes to have earned God alone. But since the eyes sometimes give way, and everything upright slips at a doubtful fork in the road, if the wicked enemy prepares to stain a pure mind, ever exulting to tempt chaste faith, take up the weapons with which to guard the holy walls of your heart: let the cross be your shield, let the cross be your sword. With suppliant tears, with groaning, prayer, and beaten breast, seek God who brings salvation, night and day. And lest hope little by little coax an easy love, go on drawing back your foot as it slips toward the precipice. For not unknowing do I try to help the wretched: I have suffered all the things I say must be fled. Do you look at beauty? Look rather at the cruel punishments; look at what you praise, look at what you fear, and with inner eyes and true light discern from earth to heaven, and from man to the Lord. Here pleasure is brief, soon to be shut in by a small end; there is a devouring flame of everlasting sulphur. Hear the prophet crying with lofty voice, whether you read the ancient commands or the new: “What praise is in a face? Believe that all flesh is grass, for the glory of the flesh will be like the flower of grass.” For as a blow mows down flowers, heat wears them away, rains confound them, a stronger wind snatches them, so whatever face pleases, time can consume it, and swelling and bruise can despoil it.

And, to say nothing of death itself, which wears all things down, how much is allowed to diseases, fevers, sores? Those whose hair is now white with a dingy whiteness once did not fear comparison with pitch. The cheeks that hang and mourn with ugly wrinkles once displayed a vain beauty to be gazed at. The foot that now totters, trembling in slack skin, scarcely used to leave a mark pressed on the soft ground. Neck, throat, hands, and what all now shudder at, alas, were once to the wretched a cause of madness. The eyes, unsightly now, which a moist humour bathes, once flashed like the glowing torches of the stars. Look at what flowers for a few years and does not remain, and yet its guilt remains in everlasting tears. Therefore you will despise girlish faces and comely forms with head turned aside or bowed. And that you may be wholly pure in heart as in body, so as to make no one guilty by suspicion, take pains with care and, ever provident, wish that no woman be too closely joined to you. The wind will lose its strength if nothing stands in its way; if fuel is lacking, the fire will be in vain. And lest one part only be thought to be urged by these commands to the right ways of life, whatever men learn, let a woman believe it is said to her: this sex too has its merit and its punishments. Let her hate boldly gazing at unknown faces and yet hide herself from known eyes. For eyes playing with ill-mingled laughter often speak flatteringly while the mouth is silent.

And love, like the tears that injury forces to flow, rises from the eyes and seeks the depths of the breast. Therefore by the law of the precept by which young men are warned, by this let a chaste woman flee all men. Now if with a chaste body you have trampled on the body's allurements, shake off the remaining burden of the heart. For there is wont to steal in, from the gall of black poison, envy, mother of manifold crime. [On envy] Unhappy envy, itself doomed to die, prepared death: through it the angel fell from the citadel of high heaven, and while he hastens to drive man from the heavenly kingdom, he himself first deserved to be thrust down into darkness. Hence came the Lord's avenging sentence upon all; this alone is guilty of all the other deaths: this is the madness of war, this the discord of peace, harming itself more than him whom it cruelly wishes to harm. This, through the great crime of his brothers, was to Joseph the cause first of slavery, then of rule. This stained Cain with the blood of his righteous brother; this was nearly the cause of David's death, when, the war already finished by his strength alone, the father-in-law would not have his son-in-law exalted with praise. Driven by it, the labourer of the first hour, groaning, strives to outdo the digger of the eleventh. This at last gave Christ over to the mockery of the cross, while spite carries out the work of unbelief, and the headlong people see with their gaze the signs and miracles, but do not receive them in their heart. To such a degree had wicked envy, with frenzied zeal, turned all from the truth to crime,

so that they did not fail to know, but were unwilling to believe, that then man was to be glorified through the Lord. [On avarice] Remember next to avoid with no lighter care the countless crime of avarice alone. In all the lands which the sun sees, which the seas enclose, which the days come to, which the darkness covers, in whatever world spreads out unknown to us, in all kingdoms, in all peoples, in the minds of the many infected with the disease, this is the root, cause, head, fount and origin of evil. Whatever the Lord had formed for harmless uses, this has ruined by wrongly changing their offices. Why do you complain of dire harbours and raging winds, of seas grim with notorious shipwrecks? The oak cut down in the woods, its timber old with years, if it is no use for beams, put it on the hearth. And, content with your own, if things are born somewhere in a far-off world, believe patiently that they are denied to you. Both the sea's motions and the cruel storms blowing you will look out on, secure, from a safe shore. You have made the use of nature a vice, you misers, so that good things born for good are evil by wrong use. Iron, born from the earth for earthly service, curved in sickles, rigid in ploughshares, for slaughter and dire deaths, the crimes of wars, we arm with pikes, missiles and swords. We received fire to drive off violent cold, to drive off darkness and to cook our food: we began madly to hurl flames onto roofs and to set them under bodies to burn them,

as though crime were too small a crime in plundering, unless the robber carried off wealth spattered with blood, and ultimate force compelled the wretched with various tortures, when they lose what they have, to tell whether anything is hidden. Avarice has made brothers hateful to brothers, and the life of parents loathsome to their children. To fashion false from true, true from false, this cruel vice teaches through countless snares. Through its doing, while, guilty, he held back part of the gold, Ananias passed wholly into death, and not alone; for an equal punishment joined to the wretched man his partner in the crime of foul falsehood. This has made wretched men at the time of death unable to trust their last judgments. Wills are forged; a witness is sought from all sides, bearing falsehood on his lips, keeping the truth down in his breast. Like seals are engraved; the wicked hand learns, alas, to imitate another's handwriting falsely, so that a father is believed to have become another man's father, and a son cannot be his own father's heir. Under its leadership the adulterer, secure among guards, reaches chaste bedchambers by bribes. Men go to every wickedness with minds and hands ready, if you set gold as the price of the crime. Tell me, I beg, what madness so great loosens the reins (wretched man!), that what is already enough for you is not enough? You hasten to join lands to boundless lands, you who are to be shut in the marble of a little sarcophagus? You strive to grow richer by another's loss? What you seize from others will soon be another's.

and in swift course, after you have lost it, you will grieve, as they grieved who held it before you. Do you build immense citadels as though they would never fall, you who will yourself swiftly die? Bright with thin glass, a smooth chamber of varied marbles is adorned for your sleep: as though restful quiet did not come, under roofs joined of wood, to a breast that is truly secure. Surely water offered by cupped palms washes thirsty lips no otherwise than water offered by a hollow gem; and the fasting of a ravenous belly will take in just the same the food that crystal gives and that a plain dish gives. Does not the shaggy sheep offer you cloaks better for driving off the cold of icy winter than the garment which, with metal drawn out into smooth threads, loaded down, breaks your every step? What use to you is a transparent dress, which with its thin covering offers to strangers' eyes the limbs that should be covered? Silver and masses of gold and gleaming gems are from the world and of the world: from here they come, here they stay. You came into life naked, and naked you will return: you had brought nothing with you, you will be able to carry nothing away. Yet you will be able to carry away the world's gifts if you despise them here: send ahead the wealth you will follow, that it may be doubled. For goods kept too closely will soon not be yours; if you do not keep them for yourself, then they will be yours. Gifts which a dying man gives are not gifts: for he gives what is already ceasing to be his. He who, healthy and fearing nothing, with a quiet mind, took from himself while he lived, he is the one who gave.

and what he took from himself will be restored to him better: he who gives perishing things will soon receive them whole. For what is laid up in heaven no thief, no enemy will carry off, no moth or rains or devouring flame will consume; and you will lay up in heaven whatever, for the name of Christ, looking to Christ, you give to the poor. He says, after the mysteries of the flesh he took on: “I am clothed in the naked, I am relieved in the wretched, I am visited in the imprisoned, I am cared for and comforted in the sick, I am helped in the little ones, protected in the widows, and whatever you do or do not do to the wretched, believe that it is done to me, or not done to me.” And lest, being poor, you plead poverty, to give a colour to unjust avarice, if you have not the means which the needy man seeks, not food, nor warm water to refresh him, when the thirsty man asks, a cup of cold water offered in the name of Christ will be able to bring rewards. In this way, as each of you can, comfort the wretched man who asks, and if gifts are lacking, you will give prayers. For before God the will itself will not perish which, if it cannot do good, at least desires good. Hence it was that the Lord with happy admonitions wished all men to be joined by the love of peace, and what he had praised before through the holy prophets he handed down to his disciples with his own mouth, so that nothing unjust, nothing harsh, nothing violent, nothing light, nothing greedy, nothing grievous, nothing fickle, could the love of peace, kept in a chaste heart, either do in deeds or say in words.

Hence the concord of peace holds the whole world together, which is given even to the brutes, as well as to those with reason. And though cold things fight with fiery, soft with hard, moist with dry, slow with swift, it unites every work, by silent governance through unknown causes, in one covenant of peace. So, if you would compare great things with small, the love of peace bridles the people of the body, so that, united under an earthly prince, it may learn to pay its vows together to the King of heaven. Therefore, sinner like me, though far less than I, for I surpass all men in my crimes, love peace when appeased, love peace also when wronged: let peace be in your heart, let peace be in your mouth. Drive out hatred, despise threats, lay aside swelling pride, let no length of time keep your offence alive, so that the sun, as it departs, may leave you keeping the bonds of gentle peace and, as it returns, may find you so.

If you walk by my admonitions, most faithful reader, you tread securely on the dark-blue neck of the serpent. And when Christ the judge is present, you will soon go to meet him, carried through the soft air by gentle winds. Only see that at no time any part of these commands escapes your care. Or if the glory of a windy tongue should move you, which Tullius urges with vain eloquence, but if jest, banquets, talk and pleasure are to be fled, so that you must even be parted from those of your own age, with what zeal will you keep the words of our little book, so as to be joined to God by the merits of your life? The chief labour is to despise flattering praise, which, ambitious, draws men headlong, and always hastens to the inmost parts with silent motion and sits, a bitter plague, in the very vitals. While we want whatever we do to be approved, and no one fails to favour his own vices, the miser with a softened title calls himself thrifty, cruelty is veiled under the name of keenness, and with all our zeal and all our art we strive that whatever we say or do may please. But you, if you wish to be approved by Christ alone, let no glory be sought for you from man. For when brought low, you will soon be exalted, and you will be small for the Lord's sake, great with the Lord. Whatever injury vexes you, be content; to no one, if you have suffered evil, return a like evil. See, Christ prays to the Father for those who tore him, and Stephen prays, and James prays,

while with gentle and great mind, though they suffered the uttermost, they wish to be the cause of punishment to no one. Let no cruel sentence of yours make anyone guilty; do not hasten to punish anyone with austere judgment. You see the slender splinter in your brother's eye, and do not know that there is a beam in your own eyes. Unjustly will he desire to describe the life of another who cannot be the champion of his own. But we, condemned for our vices, persist in them, and what we ourselves rebuke we soon do as well. Believe that deceiving is a sin! The saying stands that says: “The mouth that lies kills the soul with death.” And remember always to have said what will be true, and let your speech not sound out what is not. Besides, put reins on your sweet palate, lest taste rage with its old allurements. Those who possessed the gifts and kingdom of heaven ambitious gluttony made mortal, while we rush more into what is forbidden, and desire what is denied, and what is difficult, this we rather want. Above all, refuse to soak your veins with abundant wine, lest wines suddenly become poisons. As, whenever the dry earth thirsts in too great heat, the earth the skilful farmer prepares for crops, if, before the sun has killed the weeds pulled up, thick clouds water the moist days, at once it will bear thorns and grasses harmful to the harvest, alas, wrongly fertile, the seeds overcome: so bodies that have been given to much wine are lost to good counsel and run riot with vices.

And what will ever be more sordid, what more unsightly, than if drunkenness takes you away from yourself? When the head sways this way and that, and the step totters, the mind refuses sense, the tongue refuses to hold its sound, the drooping eyes close in heavy sleep, you do not know what you are doing, even while you do it. Why should I speak of the heat brought to the steaming face, and words let loose in ill-ordered measures, cups slipping from the hands, and, over the very tables, food mixed with wine often coming back up, and you, through countless motions, as the wounded mind wishes, now rejoicing too much, now weeping too much, and now whirling your swaying limbs in dance, now lifting your arms in wanton choruses? I would cry out: buried in wine and feasts, perhaps even forgetful of your own name, when will devout care to pray to God, who so generously gives you such things, then steal into your mind? How many of the needy could be fed at such great expense, how many glad days would this one day give? But now, while you are full, the hungry poor man wanders round you: you vomit wine, the other scarcely has water. And if perhaps a needy voice asks for food, you will refuse to those who have nothing this which you have to spare. I sense that you have long been saying silently, reader: “True indeed, but what you lay down is hard.” Hard things we are commanded; to climb from earth to heaven, do not think that this stands at little labour. For great is the labour; but great is the reward of the labour. Let him who hopes for rewards flee sloth.

No one will carry off the palm unless he has first contended. The pleasant crown is given only to the victor. Or if the frail honours of the world are sought by you, by what service would you hope to have won a man's favour? Whatever it is that vexes bodies with its various cruelties, while we run through life in the swift race-course, contempt, rains, cold, fasting, quarrels, you will be able to endure with a contented mind, running about the city, going round it all day, scarcely returning home weary at midnight, and at once rising again at first light, that you may be the first to approach the closed doors. And when light sleep on the hard benches has forced you, weary, to lay down your head, he who came later will perhaps go in first, and your foolish complaint will knock at the ears of your friends. Or if your louder voice reaches the lictor, pray that you may go away well pushed back and not badly beaten. But suppose what is rare, that the doorkeeper, won by gold and prayers, at last says, “You may go in.” You go in, smooth of tongue and modest of face, submissive in body: yet none of this helps. Every honour has its price: you will go according to the weight of coin, whether you seek it by papers, or leaves, or tablets. For if the rich hand is idle, the matter is void, and if you give words, you too will carry away words. Look, the honour has smiled on you, which it is always the custom in the ranks to take late indeed, but to lay down quickly. For what you had given, soon another and another will confer: what many desire, no one has held for long.

Suppose, though, that the honour, lasting long, puffs you up and drives you on: will it not, all the same, have an end? Come, suppose that lasting annals mark your name, and a happy year goes by under your title: what use at last is power when it ceases to be? In what is it felt that it was, and has passed away? It is something the age that slowly follows will not know, and if it does know it, what reward will it be to you? But you who devote yourself only to earthly honour and now court men with such great ambition, if you would please Christ the Lord, whose all things are, and moreover earn the kingdom of God, you will set before them the true for the false, the vast for the small, the cheap for the splendid, the lost for the everlasting. What injury, then, will overcome a devoted breast? Will anything be too high? What is hard for you? For nothing is hard when hope follows, and every labour, crowned with honour, comes to its fruit, and to fruit that lasts for all time, which no prodigal, impatient canvasser takes away. You hear the Lord promising new rewards to the just, who will always give better than his promises, things not seen by eyes, not slipped into ears, not even pondered beforehand by sense itself. Now myrrh drips for you from its precious bark, the earth swells with fragrant turf of incense. Add thyme, violets, cassia, melilot and saffron, join white lilies to crimson roses. Since, a sinner, you receive so many gifts in these lands, what good things will you receive in heaven as a saint?

Come, imagine whatever is bright, whatever beautiful, whatever precious, and whatever you think great in the whole world, all this to be given to happy merits: golden roofs, jewelled doorposts and purple floor, and fields always fragrant with spring flowers, rivers full of milk and honey flowing along together. Because these things come up into our minds and are seen with the mind, believe that they will be lower than those goods. Yet do not fear lest, overcome by length of time, you be found unequal to the commands of God. Nothing in it is long, though it is driven on in long revolution, this brief life whose time we now enjoy. All things, weary, look toward their aging end, and already the hour turns on the last day. Look how swiftly death has pressed down the whole world, how many peoples the violence of war has struck down. Not the rough places of dense forest or lofty mountain, not rivers strong with rapid whirlpools, not forts in their positions, not cities safe in their walls, not places cut off by the sea, not grim ones in the wilderness, not hollows, not even caves beneath forbidding rocks, could elude barbarian hands. For many, feigned faith, for many, perjury, for many civic betrayal was the cause of death. Ambushes did much, open violence did much. What was not overcome by strength was overcome by hunger. The unhappy mother fell with her children and her husband; the master, with his slaves, went into slavery. Some lay as food for dogs; for many, the burning roofs that snatched away their life gave them a pyre.

through villages and country houses, through fields and crossroads and all the districts, along every road on this side and that, death, grief, destruction, burning, mourning. All Gaul smoked on a single pyre. Yet why should I count the funerals of a sliding world, which always go on along their accustomed path? Why should I recount how many die in the whole world, when you see your own day hastening on? I pass over how much is allowed to swords, how much to falling buildings, to fire, hail and rivers; how many are destroyed by war, famine and raging diseases, and by the one death that rushes on by various ways; and how many, even in the midst of peace, so that there may be peace, the punishment that is due torments as guilty. Every hour brings us little by little to death: even in this time in which we speak, we are dying beforehand. And through deceiving courses, with silent effort, the end of life presses upon our final days. While food and sleep, while words and cups soothe us, whether you sit at home or travel abroad, and while you do whatever you do or do not do, of its own accord death moves foot after foot, delaying not at all. As a candle set out in the time of blind night to make up for the day by the service of its light is consumed by slow fire while we do not notice, and the devouring flame always hastens to the end: so it is with the affairs of men: whatever is done perishes, and what life draws on for itself both advances and dies. But suppose the spans of a long-lived old age were so long that, yourself unharmed, you looked back on the funerals of the world,

though it come late, yet that end must come which cannot be absent altogether. For the things that are born grow afterwards and grow old, and for those worn out with old age nothing remains but death. He who has lived thrice ten years … and he who has lived … a thousand, once the final end holds them both, surely, at the last moment of death, it is the same. What use is it to have drawn out life, if you cease to live? Or what reward is there in good things, if you are held by evils, … since you are touched by the fruit of enjoyment only while you enjoy it, and this life lives only in the work of living? For what has been is nothing if it ceases to be; and what you do not feel, it is no help that it has been. What use, then, if fasting vexes you, to have loaded your limbs generously with yesterday's food, and, when thirst grips your dry throat today, to have been soaked beforehand with too much …? when the day that will not return snatches away the sense of the things that have run their course in its swift revolution? But we, when the flower of early youth has run its course, now unsteady in step, sight, voice and hand, when it is grief to remember whatever we were, and the nearest things snatch belief away from all that is past, bent and querulous, with body consumed, never does even this life, burdensome as it is, satisfy us enough. Hence it is that, as though far removed from the whole world, we watch whatever perishes in the whole world. Another's death, as if we wretched stayed beneath another sun, warns us of our own death.

Before our eyes and far away alike we are robbed of friends, and grief comes from there through the eyes, from here through the ear. Sweet parents perish as their age declines, and the wife is snatched from her husband's very bosom. Death takes a brother from a brother's embrace, and he perhaps was the younger by birth. Nor is the older age taken away in the order of life, when a father sees the cruel funeral of his son. Yet no one, being wary, believes what he sees, and that what he does not want, he sees he too may suffer. Yet this comes from this: because, our deeds being always unjust, we consider death an everlasting evil, and the punishments the holy law threatens for crimes we believe it gain to receive later. Happy is he who thinks the end of labours lawful, because, fearing beforehand, he has taken care not to fear afterwards. Happy he who can await the great judgment, to be set in motion by a great inquiry, renowned before cities and peoples, with constant mind and serene face, secure about the uprightness of his life, whom a mind well conscious of itself, for sure reasons, makes hold his head unafraid under so great a weight. There will be those once powerful in empire and kingdom, there those conspicuous with fasces and robes of state, whose custom it was to load gold with choice dishes, crystal with Falernian, and couches spread with purple; famous for strength, praised for the gift of beauty, and wrongly trusting in bodily resources; whose belly was their lord, wantonness their prayer, their hope in the present, riches their glory:

who, wretched, neglected even at the point of death to seek the Lord as their eyes were closing, will await punishment, shut away. Do not seek to be taught what punishment: a punishment fitting their deeds awaits them. Continual darkness under blind night will await some; to these … a severe flame will give light. Others, burning with sulphurous fire, will be forced to climb furnaces with torn bodies. Others hard ice, frozen by winter blasts, poured over them with violent stiffness, will bind. And though the nature of gehenna fights so discordantly, the force of the one name is yet varied. Nor could you tell, in punishment so diverse, whether the torment is heavier by fire or by cold. Not as with us here, where, for those slain by earthly death, many crimes receive a single death, since the judge, however cruel in proportion to the deeds, can do no more than snatch away the soul, and, by a kind of gain from crimes, if very many remain, the first vengeance denies punishment to the rest. But there a punishment fitting each one's deeds, following on, will pay out all offences in order. And one body will lie open, member by member, to as many punishments as it could to vices. One law will strike the cruel, another the greedy: deeds will be paid for in one way, things planned in another. The perjured have their punishment, the proud also their own, and the shedding of blood will be another case. The envious, the impatient, the effeminate, the forger, the adulterer, and he who was wholly given to wine, wholly to allurement,

he whose right hand is guilty of slaughter, whose tongue is ready with abuse, the usurper, the boaster, the impious, the unteachable, will pay penalties before the day of judgment, so that the delay of judgment gives not even a small respite from punishment. Serpents will wind round some with sinuous coils, while a chain glowing with fire will wear others away. All things there are full of tears, terror and pain, and there is no voice but what groaning gives. Why should I run on further through the several crimes which will vex the wretched with dire tortures? Since even if you now say anything with a careless mouth, you must give account of your speech. Among these, whoever has denied the Lord of all things, bowing his head to stones and stocks, he is truly wretched, and will be pitied by no one. He alone will receive whatever harms anywhere. Countless worms will live in his dying body, and there will be no end of the smoke the fire gives. But on the other side the company of the gentle and devout, if, though harassed, they did not return evil, if they gave help to the wretched, food to him who asked, affection to those they knew, service to their fathers, will shine with eyes like the flaming sun, their splendid limbs clothed in snow-white robes; and above all those whom, ready in the law of Christ, the nights receive and the days find, each of whom made it his vow never to stain the snow-white garment of baptism in women's beds, chaste not in body only but in the whole heart, and such as I would wish you, my reader, to be,

or those already happy, which is the first glory, who, having overcome the allurements of the light and of the faithless body, seeking the true life, did not fear to pour out their devoted souls for the name of Christ. And this band of saints will include priests and monks withdrawn from the whirlwinds of men, who now, spurning the delights of flattering fame, hope for the rewards of the judgment to come. Leading soft leisure in circumstances free of care, they live well now by their merit, and afterwards better. For they themselves will throng about the King in a dense band, when the Lord stands over the earth as judge, and they will all go wherever the Lamb turns, bathed in true light, the light of God. And their quickened faces will take on so much beauty that they cannot be looked upon by the eyes of beholders. Therefore, when the hollow trumpet has given its terrible call, bearing witness at last to the coming of God, soon the earth, torn apart by long cracks, will lie open, and everywhere flames, lightnings and hail will rush down, the world shaken utterly from its lowest foundations, while all the roads on this side and that are ablaze. Here sad groans, there the devout joys of life: one voice will be in the different throngs. And every father will go swiftly with hastened steps, leading his offspring and his line, and the whole lineage will be led in a continuous train, the forefather being in the middle of those he begot. Nor will I speak to you of famous cities and remote peoples and kingdoms that now are or once were,

peoples not sluggish with cold, nor scorched by the sun, and those whom the rising and the setting day held; but whatever was born from the time of the first world up to the day that will soon be the world's end, the first command will set in one place the souls, just and guilty, from all lands. Yet not one among so many thousands will go from there which has not been counted by its Lord. Soon, mounting the glowing tribunal in the same flesh which he had brought into heaven, glorifying man, all the things that slip by in order through the remaining ages, whatever is done then or hereafter while the law remains, holy in speech, lofty on his throne, terrible to behold, conspicuous, yet scarcely to be looked upon, he will judge. And amid the trails of flame and the sound of trumpets and angelic choirs and the holy army, amid the pallor, weeping, joys, prayers and fears of infants and mothers, youths and old men, the final sentence will be given to the waiting crowd, which will sound from the mouth of the most holy judge: “Go, company of the just, into rest and praise, never to be parted from my kingdom, which the Father, knowing your merit and your future life, gives you now, but as gifts prepared long ago. But you, always contrary to our commands, impious crowd, be shut away in the places of Tartarus. There teeth will give gnashing and eyes weeping, to be tormented in boundless fires.” And yet, so that whatever is commanded may truly remain, this will be the form of the eternal judgment:

glory will hold the just man, death being removed, and the guilty man will not die out of his punishment. These things I ought to have handed down to you by my deeds, reader, so that a life proved might give weight to my words. But since we wretched neglect whatever we are taught, and it is easier to learn than to do, if you commit to your mind, let down through the ear, all the things that are counted out in my writings, I will say it firmly: received into the station of heaven, you will shake off the hard chains of cruel death. And you who were before a son of gehenna will begin to be a son of the most high God. To these one thing remains, without which all things profit nothing: that you believe Christ is from the Father and with the Father; and the Holy Spirit, joined without any difference, so that the three names make up one God. But you, whoever you are who read our little book, whether it is bad or good, be mindful of us. And as often as, having read the poem through, you pray to the Lord Christ, may we always be on your lips. And lest you think I enjoin this with the edge of my lips, or think you may safely pass it over, so may no day pierce you with bitter cares, so may whatever you do wholly please Christ, so may you receive the holy crown from the Lord's hand, as you let not your care for my name depart, so that I, Orientius, who surpass all sinners, may obtain pardon by the prayers of the saints.