Letters 30.1–32.5

It was said to the blessed apostle, ‘Much learning has driven you mad.’ In this the true madness of those appears to whom the wisdom of God, which Paul spoke, was foolishness, because, empty of faith, they did not deserve to understand the wisdom of God, Christ. But I, although by Christ’s favor I am far from the character of those to whose unbelief that teacher of soundness seemed mad, will nevertheless, with the freedom of oneness of heart, which is closer between you and me through oneness of faith, borrow the likeness of the words, not of the mind, and say: Severus, my Severus, much love makes you almost delirious, and toward me, your little one not in age but in understanding, you become foolish through too much affection, like a grandfather toward a late grandson, if I may say so with all respect to your wisdom.

For what should I answer to that request in which you bade that our portraits be painted and sent to you? I beseech you by the bowels of love, what comforts of true love do you seek from empty shapes? What kind of image do you want us to send you, that of the earthly man or of the heavenly? I know that you long for that incorruptible beauty which the heavenly King has loved in you. For no other form of ours can be necessary to you than that to which you yourself were formed, by which you love your neighbor as yourself and wish to excel us in nothing, so that nothing unequal may appear between us. But I am poor and in pain, because I am still crusted with the squalor of the earthly image, and I reproduce more of the first Adam than of the second in fleshly senses and earthly deeds. How shall I dare to paint myself for you, when I am proved by earthly corruption to deny the image of the heavenly? Shame hems me in on both sides: I blush to paint what I am; I dare not paint what I am not. I hate what I am, and I am not what I love. But what will it profit me, wretched man, to hate iniquity and love virtue, when I rather do what I hate, and, slothful, do not labor rather to do what I love? At odds with myself, I am torn by civil war, while the spirit fights against the flesh and the flesh against the spirit, and the law of the body attacks the law of the mind with the law of sin. Unhappy me, who have not digested even by the wood of the cross the poisoned taste of the hostile tree! For in me that ancestral venom from Adam endures, with which the transgressing father infected the whole of his race, so that I, who by natural goodness had the eyes of my mind open to innocence and closed to iniquity, drank in from the unlucky food of the forbidden grove, by a bad choice of good and evil, a deadly wisdom, blinded and badly enlightened at once.

And would that I had at least washed away the crime of forbidden desire by this remedy: that, having received through the harmful taste the knowledge of good and evil, I had chosen the good! Especially since I had heard the saving counsel of God persuading me that, with water and fire, life and death set before me, I should rather put my hand to the water and choose the gift of life. But from the crime of folly the guilt of audacity grew in me, because, though I had received the choice of the good too, I preferred to seek what harmed me. What pardon for sin, then, is available to wretched me, for whom no excuse of ignorance remains? I knew the good, and did evil, when I was equally free to do good, had I not despised the benefit of my soul by a fault of the will, by which I committed what was not expedient while not restraining myself in what was lawful. Therefore I justly lost those eyes of innocence with which I did not see evil, and received in exchange these eyes of iniquity, with which sin is known to the punishment of conscience.

For Scripture declares that the first parents of the human race both saw and did not see. For ‘the woman saw that the tree was good to eat, and pleasing to the eyes to look at.’ ‘She saw,’ it says; so she had eyes. And what does it add next? ‘When they had eaten,’ it says, ‘their eyes were opened.’ So they had been blind. From this we observe that, since blindness and sight of the eyes cannot exist together in the same body, there is surely something blind in us even when we see, and conversely something seeing even in the blind. For this reason I think the Lord said, ‘For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.’ For he came into this world to seek what had perished and to give light again to what had been blinded. Indeed, man, in need of this physician, cries out in the prophet, ‘Lighten my darkness, O Lord.’ For the merciful and compassionate Lord, who has risen as light in the darkness of human blindness to raise up those who are crushed, to loose those in fetters, to give light to the blind, how had he come to blind those who see? Yet in the gospel we are taught that he restored sight to many blind people and took it from no one. But as it is written in the law, ‘I will kill and I will make alive,’ and also in the gospel, that he was set for the fall and the rising of many, so too is this saying: ‘For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see and those who see may become blind.’ So the Lord came that the old things might pass away and new things arise. And what he had said was fulfilled, ‘I will kill and I will make alive,’ because by taking on our old man he put him to death, nailing him to the cross; stripping himself of the flesh, he openly made a show of the principalities and powers, triumphing over them in himself; and he made alive the new man from the resurrection of the dead, ascending on high and setting him in the heavenly places.

So he came that the blind might be enlightened and the seeing blinded: that our eyes which had been opened to transgression might be blinded, and in turn those which had been blinded might be opened. For I am well blind if I do not see sin, and well sighted if I discern righteousness. Pray, then, my brother, that the Lord may work both in me: that he may blind what sees in me, so that I may not see vanity, and enlighten what does not see, so that I may see what is right; that he may kill in me the old man with his deeds, so that my flesh may flourish again in Christ and my youth be renewed like the eagle’s. For this is the change of the right hand of the Most High, when we shall be changed from ourselves into that man who is created according to God, whose image is heavenly, putting off the one who is corrupted according to the desires of error. Let God, I pray, crush the image of this man in me and bring to nothing our image, that is, the earthly, in the city of encompassing, and restore and perfect in us his own image, in which we are not ashamed to be painted, so that, bearing it, we may truly say, ‘My heart and my flesh have failed, God of my heart, and God my portion for ever.’ For when, by the good change which is the right hand of the Most High for man, my heart and my flesh have failed, that is, the acts of my will and the fruits of my flesh, then at last, as one free of bodily bonds and cleansed of my own heart, I may dare to say, ‘God of my heart, and God my portion for ever.’ Would that the word of Simeon in the gospel might be fulfilled in me, that Christ may become for me a fall and a rising: a fall to my outer man and a rising to my inner, so that sin may fall in me, which stands when the soul falls, and that immortal man may rise, who fell when sin rose. For the standing of the outer man is the fall of the inner; and therefore, when the outer man is weakened, the man within is renewed day by day. So the perfect teacher says, ‘When I am weak, then I am strong.’

But thanks be to the Lord, who with a more lasting and living painting has painted our images, not on perishable panels or melting wax, but on the fleshly tablets of your heart, where, keeping us imprinted and conformed to your soul by the unity of faith and grace, you will behold us not only here but also in the eternal age, in an undivided and ever present contemplation. Here too, if your love is so great as to grasp at visible comforts as well, you will be able, through the guiding lines of your mind, to dictate us even to unskilled painters who do not know us, setting before them your memory, in which you hold us painted, as a face to be copied, like the visible faces of sitters. But if perhaps the hand, too ignorant of the art, goes astray in understanding your words, it will paint us unlike to others; yet to you, who always regard and embrace us in your mind, whatever faces its unskill may have painted under our name, we shall still be ourselves in your consciousness.

Brother Victor, among other accounts of your works and desires, told us that for the basilica which you have just built at our Primuliacum, larger than the earlier one, you want a blessing from the sacred relics of the saints, with which your house church may be adorned, as is worthy of your faith and grace. The Lord is witness that, if we had had even a scruple of sacred ash beyond what will be necessary for us to dedicate the basilica that will shortly be completed in the name of the Lord, we would have sent it to your oneness of heart. But since we had no supply of this gift, and he said that you had a rich hope of this same grace from holy Silvia, who had promised you relics of many martyrs from the East, we have found something to send you worthily, both for the sanctification of the basilica and to crown the blessing of the sacred ashes: a part of a particle of the wood of the divine cross. This good thing the blessed Melania brought us from Jerusalem, as a gift of the holy John, bishop there; and she, our common fellow servant, sent it specially to our venerable sister Bassula. But what is given to one of you belongs to both of you, because in both of you one purpose abides, and faith, by which you both run together into the perfect man, cancels sex. Receive, then, from brothers of one heart who long for your fellowship in every good, receive a great gift in a small one, and in a segment of a short splinter almost an atom take a defense for present salvation and a pledge of eternal salvation. Let not your faith be narrowed by fleshly eyes that see small things, but let it see with its inner sight the whole power of the cross in this smallest piece. While you think that you are seeing that wood on which our salvation, on which the Lord of majesty, hung nailed while the world trembled, rejoice with trembling. Let us remember the rocks split at the sight of this cross, and, in emulation at least of the stones, let us split our hearts with the fear of God. Let us consider also the veil of the temple torn by the same mystery of the cross, and understand that the tearing of that veil was put before us so that, hearing the voice of the Lord and the mystery of boundless godliness, we may not harden our hearts but be divided from fleshly things and tear the veil of unbelief, so that, with the face of the heart unveiled, we may see the mysteries of God’s saving gifts.

We do not write this so that you should imitate the setting in which we have enclosed so blessed a thing in a little golden tube. Rather, by such a setting we have imitated your faith, so as to send you your own likeness in the appearance of gold, because we know that you hold within you, like gold tried in fire, the kingdom of God, that is, the faith of the cross, by which the kingdom of heaven is taken by storm. ‘For if,’ he says, ‘we suffer with him, we shall also reign with him.’ And so we have sent you the gift of the saving wood in the Lord, not to strengthen your faith, for you have outrun sight by faith, but because of the merit of that faith, which you received by hearing and prove by deed, so that you might possess in the body also what you hold in the spirit and carry by the strength of your purpose.

But since faith itself seems to require it, I think it not out of place, for it is worth knowing, to tell the particular history, after the time of the passion, of how the cross was uncovered and found. If this is not known, it is easy to see how hard it would be to prove that this wood is from the Lord’s cross, which certainly, if it had come into the hands of the Jews, who took every precaution against faith in Christ, would have been broken up and burned. For those who sealed the tomb would not have been careless in disposing of the cross, nor could they have borne that the passion of him should be honored in a surviving cross, whose resurrection, proved by the tomb emptied after their seals were broken, they cannot bear to see honored. Why then do we now ask where it was hidden? For unless it had lain hidden, especially in those times of persecution which followed the Jewish ill will and almost surpassed its cruelty, it is plain that it would have been destroyed. We can easily guess by conjecture with what violence those who persecuted even the place of the cross would have cut down the cross itself, if they had seen it standing. For the emperor Hadrian, thinking he would destroy the Christian faith by an outrage to the place, consecrated an image of Jupiter on the place of the passion, and Bethlehem was profaned by a shrine of Adonis, so that the root and foundation of the church might, as it were, be removed if idols were worshiped in the places where Christ was born in order to suffer, suffered in order to rise, rose in order to reign as judge, or to judge as king. Wretched me! Even these things the almighty Lord did not refuse to endure for us: that where he had hung crucified for the salvation of the human race, there he should be scorned by the sacrilege of men; and over the cross, at which nature had tottered, when the world shook, the sun fled, and the tombs burst open as the dead were raised, stood the image of a demon, the altar of the image smoked with the burning of cattle, and the name of God was given to statues of the dead, while the God of the living himself, who is also the resurrection of the dead, was blasphemed with the reproach not only of a dead man but of a crucified one. In Bethlehem too, where the ox had known its owner and the donkey its master’s manger, there the princes of men, denying the Savior God, worshiped the shameful loves and deaths of men. Where the Chaldeans, led by a new star of the eternal King, had in supplication adored his cradle with their treasures, there the Romans consecrated barbarous lusts. Where the shepherds, on the night that was lit up, had greeted the newborn Savior with heavenly joy, singing with an army of angels, there harlots mixed with half-men bewailed the lover of Venus. Oh, the grief of it! What human devotion can make up for this impiety? Where the sacred infancy of the newborn Savior had wailed, there the infamous rite of those feigning the laments of Venus howled with lewd mourning, and where the Virgin had given birth, adulterers were worshiped.

This crime of the former age lasted until times close to ours, those of Constantine, who deserved to be the first of Christian princes no more by his own faith than by that of his mother Helena. She, inspired by divine counsel, as the outcome showed, when she came to know Jerusalem, sharing the reign with the title of Augusta, asked him to give her the means of cleansing all the places there impressed with the Lord’s footsteps and marked by memorials of the divine works toward us from every contagion of profane impiety, by destroying the temples and idols, and of restoring them to his religion, so that the church might at last be celebrated in the land of its origin. So, with the ready assent of her son the emperor, the mother Augusta, the treasuries being opened for holy works, drew freely on the whole treasury, and with as much expense and splendor as a queen could command and religion urged, she covered and adorned with basilicas all the places in which the Lord Redeemer had fulfilled for us the saving mysteries of his love by the sacraments of his incarnation, passion, resurrection, and ascension. Among these things it is wonderful that in the basilica of the Ascension, the one spot from which he went up, taken up in a cloud, leading in his flesh our captivity captive, is said to be so hallowed by the divine footsteps that it has never allowed itself to be covered with marble or paved, the soil always spitting out and throwing off whatever hands have tried to lay on it in zeal for adornment. So in the whole space of the basilica it alone remains green with its own turf and preserves the impressed veneration of the divine feet, the sand of the dust trodden by God being both visible and touchable to those who venerate it, so that it can truly be said: ‘We have worshiped where his feet stood.’

But in the history of the cross receive a great and truly divine miracle. That venerable queen, when she came to Jerusalem, carefully and devoutly curious about all the places there and round about that bore divine marks, and eager to drink in with her eyes the faith she had received with devout ears and from Scripture, set about searching most zealously for the cross of the Lord. But what way or means of finding it was there, when no reliable informant could be found, since both the antiquity of the age and the long duration of impious superstition had wiped out the memory and care of religious conscience or observance? Yet, with the Lord himself as witness, who knows all things hidden in the earth and in minds, the faithful woman deserved the Holy Spirit through her devout affection; and under his inspiration, after she had diligently but vainly searched for a thing divinely removed from human knowledge, she strove to be informed at least about the place of the passion. So she sought out not only men of the Christians full of learning and holiness, but also the most expert of the Jews, as informers about their own impiety, in which, poor men, they even glory, and summoned and assembled them in Jerusalem. Then the place was confirmed by the single testimony of all. At once, no doubt urged by the impulse of the revelation she had conceived, she ordered the work of digging to be set going on that very spot; and soon a force of citizens and soldiers alike was assembled and quickly finished the labor of this undertaking, and, against everyone’s hope but in accordance with the queen’s faith alone, when the bosom of the earth had been opened by deep excavation, the secret of the hidden cross lay open. But since three crosses were found together, as they had once stood fixed for the Lord and the robbers, the joy at their discovery began to be confused by anxious doubt, from the just fear of the devout that they might perhaps choose the gibbet of a robber for the cross of the Lord, or desecrate the saving wood by throwing it away as a robber’s stake. The Lord looked on the devout cares of those faithfully anxious, and poured the light of this counsel into her above all, who was the leader of so devout a concern: that she should order someone recently dead to be sought and brought in. No delay: the word was spoken, the corpse was brought in; it is laid down; one of the crosses is brought to it as it lies, and another; but death spurned the wood of the guilty. At last resurrection revealed the Lord’s cross, and at the touch of the saving wood death fled, the dead man was roused and the body raised; and while the living trembled, the dead man stood, and, freed like Lazarus of old from the bands of burial, at once walked about, alive again, among those watching him.

So did not the cross of the Lord, covered for so many ages, hidden from the Jews at the time of the passion, and not revealed to the Gentiles when they built the shrine, though they no doubt dug out earth for the building itself, lie hidden by the divine hand, so that it might be found now, when it was religiously sought? Thus, as befitted the cross of Christ, the cross of Christ was found and proved by the test of resurrection, and soon it was consecrated with fitting splendor. A basilica was built on the place of the passion, gleaming with gilded paneled ceilings and rich with golden altars, which keeps the cross laid up in a secret shrine; and the bishop of that city brings it out every year, when the Lord’s Pasch is kept, for the people to venerate, himself the first of those who venerate it. Nor apart from this day, on which the mystery of the cross itself is celebrated, is it brought out, the very cause of the sacraments, as a kind of emblem of the sacred festival, except sometimes when very devout people ask, who have come on pilgrimage there for this sole purpose, that its showing may be granted them as a reward for their long pilgrimage. This, they say, is obtained only by the favor of the bishop, and only by his gift are these tiny pieces of the sacred wood from that cross given to be had, for a great grace of faith and blessing. And this cross, holding a living power in insensible matter, has so lent its wood from that time to the almost daily prayers of countless people that it feels no loss and remains as if untouched, divided daily for those who take from it and always whole for those who venerate it. But surely it drank this incorruptible power and undiminished solidity from the blood of that flesh which suffered death and did not see corruption. We hope that for you too it will be not only a memorial of blessing but also a seedbed of incorruption, so that the sight of it may kindle your faith with the memory too of that blessed robber, who, with his robbery well turned about, anticipating the long roads of the saints in great labors by the faith of a moment and the moment of a confession, not undeservedly was the first, before the apostles and martyrs themselves, to storm the kingdom prepared for them, as he says, from the beginning, and as a devout robber of heaven carried it off. For seeing Christ crucified, in the likeness of his own punishment, in that state at which even the faith of the disciples was shaken and wavered, he nevertheless confessed him to be the Lord of majesty, as he was, and, asking to be remembered in the kingdom of God, he believed in the glory of the resurrection before the resurrection itself, which the apostles believed after it had happened, not only by seeing but by touching. Yet even they did not doubt the resurrection of the flesh so much as the kind of resurrection, because, of course, those who were to be sent into the whole world to instruct all nations had to receive the faith to be preached not only by their ears but also by their eyes, so that what they had learned more firmly they might teach more steadfastly.

The page left open after these lines of verse enticed my tongue and hand to fill the empty space, and it came to my mind that I had something to write. For I am exceedingly glad that we have shown a likeness of our heart and body, of our works too and our desires, in adding basilicas to the Lord’s sheepfolds at the same time. You, however, at the same time built a baptistery set between two basilicas, so that you surpassed us in the building also of these works that are raised visibly. But thanks to the Lord, who has given us a matter in which we may count it victory even to be beaten. For we win in desire where we are beaten in grace by him whom we set above ourselves in judgment and equal to ourselves in love. You are the one we speak of; you, I say, the greater and better part of us; you our rest, you our joy; in you is the resting place of our head and the dwelling of our mind, which will remain ours not only in the present time but, as we hope and trust in the Lord, for ever, by his gift and in his body and Spirit. So if by the grace of the Lord you do something more, you certainly do it with us, and surely for us.

But in this I fear that, out of that affection of yours for us of which I always complain, you may mix a stumbling block into your works, by which you straighten the crooked places of worldly roads and level the steep ones: that you darken the splendid inscriptions of your devotion in Christ with our names, and insert this unfairness into just labors, so that you pollute a holy place even with the faces of the unrighteous. For Martin is rightly painted in a place of human renewal, he who bore the image of the heavenly man by perfect imitation of Christ, so that those who lay aside in the washing the oldness of the earthly image may meet the likeness of a heavenly soul to imitate. But what place do we have there, who match neither infants in innocence nor men in wisdom, and are set apart from the spotless by malice and from the perfect by weakness? What fellowship, then, has light with darkness? Wolves with lambs? Serpents with doves, that is, we with Martin? Have you not mixed a cup of milk and gall? But it is well that, unlike liquids mixed in one cup, so with men placed together in one place, if they differ in merits, the sweetness of the good is not poisoned by the bitterness of the bad; rather, the opposite happens: the sinner set beside the righteous looks dirtier, and the righteous, compared with the sinner, shines out more. So I am less disturbed by the error of your love, because you have done that blessed man no wrong, but rather contributed to his glory, so that a venerable face was painted opposite a contemptible one, and his splendor, by comparison with darkness, might shine out more clearly, he who outshines with conspicuous brightness even among the splendors of the saints. And indeed, if I did not know that you had made this painting from the lavish zeal of too much love for us, I would accuse you of being malicious and cunning, for having set beside that holy head the persons of our lowliness, dark with the night of our souls, painted on the opposite wall, so as to paint him only, but rather to disfigure us, exposing us, rightly to be spat upon once Martin’s face is seen, to the disgrace of a ridiculous comparison.

But so that, for our sake, this design of yours, which slipped from love while you are deceived by great love for us into a false picture, might not be laughed at, as it truly can and should be, I have obeyed you only so far as to send you verses about this painting of yours, so that the reason of your plan might be shown: that, wholesomely concerned with the instruction of new men, you set before them two images far unlike each other, so that those emerging from the sacred font might see both what to avoid and what to follow. So here it is; if you like, use it: ‘You who wash souls and limbs in the font, behold the roads set before you toward good deeds. Martin stands by, the rule of a perfect life; Paulinus teaches how you may earn pardon. Let sinners look at this one, the blessed at that; let that one be the pattern for saints, this one for the guilty.’ Likewise on the same subject: ‘Severus, rich in wealth for Christ, poor to himself, set up a lovely building for the sacred font. And because he was founding a hall for heavenly deeds, in which men might be renewed by the font and by God, he had painted, under a twin image worthy of the sacraments, so that the man reborn might learn the gifts of life. The revered image of a man bears witness to Martin; the other figure shows the lowly Paulinus. The one arms faith with examples and strong words, so that it may carry off unstained the palms of merit; the other teaches, redeeming his sins with money poured out, that wealth should be cheaper to everyone than his salvation.’

Surely you are now proved not a matter for laughter but rather for approval, if you appear to have painted side by side men so very unlike for this reason alone: that in Martin the form of righteousness and the sum of virtues might be seen, and in us the crushing and confession of a conscience of iniquity; that an example might lie open both to the blessed and to the wretched; that in him courage might have a mirror, and in us sloth a comfort; that those able to fulfill the command by virtues might look at him, and those wishing to bring a remedy to their sins might take comfort in us, because for those bereft of confidence in innocence and bound by the chain of iniquity only redemption, as for captives, can bring help. I beg you, however, not to make my obedience a crime by removing, as you threatened, those verses of yours of light and honeycombs. I beg that you threatened this more out of modesty than in earnest, and that, if you think these should be added, those may remain, so that they may be like little gems among these, giving value to cheap things and setting off the dark with the bright. Indeed, having received permission, I told my tongue, not as the prophet says, to stay in its rest and guard my ways, but rather to break the reins of the guard set over it, while it served you. I love you so much that I would fear sin more from not obeying you than from much talking.

For this reason I have also designed verses for your basilicas, as votive inscriptions for the sacred font. If I seem to have said anything fittingly in them, this too is thanks to brother Victor. Through his eyes and words I have seen everything you have done and are doing in Christ the Lord; and so you will consider him the author of the verses I have also put in about the basilicas, since he dictated the material by his account of your deeds. These, then, will be about the baptistery itself, of whose painting only the earlier ones speak: ‘Here the font that begets souls to be restored drives a living river with divine light. The Holy Spirit descends from heaven into this stream and weds the sacred waters with a heavenly spring; the water conceives God, and from its kindly streams brings forth a holy offspring from eternal seed. Wonderful is the love of God: the sinner is plunged into the waves, and soon emerges from the same water justified. So man, having passed through a happy setting and rising, dies to earthly things and rises to everlasting ones. Guilt perishes, but life returns; the old Adam dies, and a new one is born for eternal dominion. Severus, an indweller of Christ, most chaste in body, mind, and faith, joyfully built this house for God. He himself, too, flourishes wholly as a temple of God with Christ as guest, and bears the Lord, who rejoices in a lowly heart. See, as he worships one Mind under a threefold name, so he has hallowed a threefold work in a holy pile. He gave the people spacious roofs in twin buildings, so that the number might agree with the sacred laws. For as one faith joins the two Testaments, compacted through one lawgiver, God in Christ, so he has placed the font, under a towered roof, between two halls of different height, so that mother church may joyfully receive in twin bosoms the new offspring that the water has brought forth. The double hall, with its roofs, is like the church with its Testaments, but one grace of the font is present to both. The old law confirms the new, the new fulfills the old; in the old is hope, in the new is faith. But the grace of Christ joins old and new; therefore the font is set in the space between. From there the priest, as parent, leads from the sacred font infants white in body, heart, and dress, and, bringing the raw lambs around the festal altars, fills their untried mouths with saving food. From here the older throng rejoices with its comrade band; the fold bleats Alleluia with new choirs.’