Dialogues 1.1–1.15

When Gallus and I had met in one place (a man very dear to me both for the memory of Martin, for he was one of his disciples, and for his own merits), my friend Postumianus came upon us, having returned for our sake from the East, where he had gone three years before, leaving his homeland. We embraced that most loving man and kissed his knees and feet, and after we had walked up and down once or twice as though dazed, weeping in turn for joy, we spread hair cloths on the ground and sat down. Then Postumianus, looking at me, spoke first: “When I was in the remote parts of Egypt, I took a fancy to go on as far as the sea. There I found a merchant ship, loaded with goods and bound for Narbonne, which was getting ready to sail. That same night you seemed to me in my sleep to stand by me, lay hold of me, and draw me to board that ship. Soon, as dawn broke the darkness, when I had risen from the place where I had rested, thinking over my dream, I was suddenly seized with so great a longing for you that I boarded the ship without any delay. On the thirtieth day I landed at Marseilles, and from there I came here on the tenth: so prosperous a voyage attended a devout wish. Only now, you for whose sake I have sailed across so many seas and run across so much land, put everything else aside and give yourself to me to be embraced and enjoyed.” “For my part,” I said, “even while you were staying in Egypt, I was always wholly with you in mind and thought, and love of you possessed me wholly as I thought of you day and night; much less should you suppose that I will now be absent from you for a moment, so as not to hang on your lips, look at you, listen to you, talk with you, with no one at all admitted to our privacy, which this rather remote little cell affords us. For I think you will not mind the presence of our Gallus here, who, as you see, exults with joy at your arrival just as I do.” “Quite right,” said Postumianus. “Gallus shall be kept in our company; though I know him little, yet because he is very dear to you he cannot but be dear to me, especially since he is of Martin’s school. Nor will I mind talking with you as intimately as you wish, as you ask; for I came for this very purpose, that, out of longing for my Sulpicius here” (and he embraced me with both hands) “I might spend myself even in many words.”

“Indeed,” I said, “you have proved well enough what devout love can do, you who for our sake have measured so many seas and so much land, and have come, so to speak, from the very rising of the sun to its setting. Come, then, since we are by ourselves and not busy, and ought to give our time to your talk, I would like you to tell us the whole story of your travels: how faith in Christ flourishes in the East, what the quiet of the saints is like, what the practices of the monks are, and with how many signs and mighty works Christ works in his servants. For certainly, since in these regions, amid the things among which we live, life itself is a weariness to us, we shall gladly hear from you whether Christians may at least live in the desert.” To this Postumianus said: “I will do as I see you wish. But I beg first to hear from you whether all those priests whom I had left here are such as we knew them to be before I set out.” Then I said: “Stop asking about these things, which you either know as well as I do, or, if you do not, it is better not to hear. This I cannot keep silent: not only have those you ask about become no better than you knew them, but that one man who once loved us, in whom we used to find breathing space from their attacks, has been harsher to us than he should have been. I will not say anything too severe against him, since I cultivated him as a friend and loved him even when he was thought an enemy. But as I turned these things over in silent thought, this grief stung me sharply, that we had almost been deprived of the friendship of a wise and religious man. But let us leave these things, which are full of sadness; let us rather hear you, as you promised a while ago.” “So be it,” said Postumianus. When he had said this we were all silent for a little; then he moved the hair cloth he was sitting on nearer to me and began as follows.

“Three years ago, at the time when I said farewell to you, Sulpicius, on leaving here, when we set sail from Narbonne we entered a port of Africa on the fifth day: so prosperous, by God’s will, was the voyage. I wished to go to Carthage, to visit the places of the saints, and above all to pray at the tomb of the martyr Cyprian. On the fifteenth day we returned to port and put out to sea, making for Alexandria, but with the south wind against us we were almost driven onto the Syrtis; the experienced sailors guarded against this and stopped the ship by casting anchors. The mainland was before our eyes, and when we had gone ashore in boats and saw that everything was empty of human cultivation, I went on farther, eager to explore the place. About three miles from the shore I saw a small hut among the sands, whose roof, as Sallust says, was like the keel of a ship, touching the ground and covered with fairly strong planks; not that any force of rain is feared there (that it has ever rained there has never even been heard of), but because the force of the winds is such that, if ever even under a milder sky a little breeze begins to blow, there is a greater shipwreck on that land than on any sea. No shoots, no crops grow there, since the place is unstable and the dry sands give way at every movement of the winds. But where certain headlands turned away from the sea resist the winds, the somewhat firmer ground produces sparse and bristly grass, which is useful enough as pasture for sheep. The inhabitants live on milk; those who are more skillful, or, so to speak, richer, use barley bread. That is the only harvest there, which by the speed of its growth, owing to the nature of the soil, usually escapes the ravages of the raging winds; for it is said to ripen on the thirtieth day after the seed is sown. And the only reason that makes men stay there is that all are free from tribute. For it is the farthest edge of Cyrenaica, next to that desert which lies between Egypt and Africa, through which Cato once led his army when fleeing from Caesar.”

“So I made for that hut which I had seen from a distance. There I find an old man in a garment of skins, turning a hand mill. He greeted us and received us kindly. We explain that we had been cast up on that shore and were held back by the calm of the sea from resuming our course at once; that, having come ashore, as is the way of the human mind, we had wished to learn the nature of the place and the way of life of its inhabitants; that we were Christians, and were asking above all whether there were any Christians in those wildernesses. Then indeed he fell at our knees weeping for joy; kissing us again and again, he invited us to prayer; then he spread sheepskins on the ground and made us recline. He set before us a truly sumptuous lunch: half a barley loaf. We were four, and he was the fifth. He also brought in a bundle of an herb whose name has slipped my memory, which was like mint, rich in leaves, and tasted of honey; we were delighted and filled by its very sweet taste.” At this I smiled and said to my Gallus: “Well, Gallus, how do you like a lunch of a bundle of herbs and half a loaf for five men?” Then he, being very modest, blushing a little as he took my teasing, said: “You are doing as you always do, Sulpicius: you never miss an opportunity, if one is offered, to tease us about our appetite. But it is inhuman of you to compel us Gauls to live by the example of angels; although, such is my zeal for eating, I would believe that even the angels eat. For I am afraid to touch that half barley loaf even by myself. But let that Cyrenian be content with it, for whom hunger is either a necessity or his nature, or lastly these travelers, whose tossing at sea, I suppose, had taken away their appetite. We are far from the sea and, as I have often told you, we are Gauls. But let him rather go on to tell the story of his Cyrenian.”

“Indeed,” said Postumianus, “I will take care from now on not to praise anyone’s abstinence, lest so hard an example utterly offend our Gauls. I had meant to tell also of that Cyrenian’s dinner, and the meals that followed (for we were with him seven days); but I must refrain, lest Gallus think he is being teased. Well, the next day, when some of the inhabitants began to flock to us, we learn that our host was a presbyter, which he had hidden from us with the greatest reserve. Then we went with him to the church, which was about two miles away, hidden from our sight by a hill in between. It was woven of cheap brushwood, not much more pretentious than our host’s tent, in which one could not stand except bent over. When we inquired into the people’s ways, we noticed this admirable thing: they neither buy nor sell anything. What fraud or theft is they do not know. Gold and silver, which mortals think to be the chief things, they neither have nor wish to have. For when I offered that presbyter ten gold coins, he refused them, declaring with deeper wisdom that a church is not built up by gold but rather torn down. We gave him a few garments.”

“When he had kindly accepted these, the sailors called us back to the sea and we left, and after a prosperous voyage reached Alexandria on the seventh day. There shameful conflicts were being waged between the bishops and the monks, on this occasion or for this reason: the priests, gathering together frequently, appeared to have decreed in repeated synods that no one should read or keep the books of Origen, who was held to be a most skilled interpreter of the sacred Scriptures. But the bishops pointed to certain rather mad things written in his books, which his defenders did not dare to defend, but said had rather been fraudulently inserted by heretics; and that therefore, because of the things that were deservedly called into question, the rest should not also be condemned, since the faith of readers could easily make the distinction, so as not to follow what was falsified and yet to keep what was argued in a catholic way. Nor was it any wonder, they said, if heretical fraud had been at work in modern and recently written books, since in certain places it had not been afraid to attack the truth of the Gospel. Against this the bishops resisted the more obstinately and used their power to compel the condemnation of everything, the right along with the wrong, and the author himself with them, because the books which the church had received were more than enough: a reading should be utterly rejected that would do more harm to the foolish than good to the wise. For my part, examining certain things in those books with some care, I liked a great many, but I found some in which there is no doubt that he held wrong views, which his defenders contend are falsified. I wonder that one and the same man could be so different from himself that, in the part in which he is approved, he has no equal since the apostles, but in that in which he is rightly blamed, no one is shown to have erred more shamefully.”

“For when many passages were read out, excerpted by the bishops from his books, which were plainly written against the catholic faith, that passage especially stirred up ill will in which it was read that the Lord Jesus, as he had come in the flesh for the redemption of man, had endured the cross for man’s salvation and tasted death for man’s eternity, so by the same order of passion he would also redeem the devil; because this was in keeping with his goodness and mercy, that he who had restored lost man should also set free the fallen angel. When these and other things of the kind were brought forward by the bishops, a riot arose from party zeal; and since it could not be put down by the authority of the priests, by a perverse precedent the prefect was called in to govern the discipline of the church, and through fear of him the brothers were scattered and the monks driven through various regions, so that by published edicts they were not allowed to settle in any place. What disturbed me greatly was that Jerome, a thoroughly catholic man and most skilled in the sacred law, was thought at first to have followed Origen, and now he especially condemned all his writings. I would not dare to judge anyone; yet very eminent and very learned men were said to differ in this conflict. But whether it is an error, as I think, or a heresy, as is supposed, not only could it not be put down by the many rebukes of the priests, but it could never have spread so widely had it not grown by contention. With such disturbance, then, Alexandria was in turmoil when I arrived. The bishop of that city, indeed, received me very kindly, better than I expected, and tried to keep me with him; but I had no mind to stay where the ill will of the recent disaster to the brothers was still seething. For although they may perhaps seem to have been bound to obey the bishops, that was no reason why so great a multitude living in the confession of Christ should have been afflicted, especially by bishops.”

“So I left there and made for the town of Bethlehem, which is six miles from Jerusalem and sixteen stages from Alexandria. The presbyter Jerome governs the church of that place; for it is a parish of the bishop who holds Jerusalem. Jerome, whom I had already come to know on that earlier pilgrimage of mine, had easily brought me to think that there was no one I should rather seek out. For the man, besides the merit of his faith and the endowment of his virtues, is so trained not only in Latin and Greek but also in Hebrew letters that no one would dare compare himself with him in any branch of knowledge. I would be surprised if he is not known to you too through the many works he has written, since he is read throughout the world.” “To us,” said Gallus, “he is all too well known. For five years ago I read a certain little book of his in which our whole nation of monks is most fiercely attacked and torn to pieces by him. That is why our friend Belgicus sometimes gets very angry, because he said that we are in the habit of eating till we vomit. But I forgive the man, and I think he was speaking of the Eastern monks rather than the Western. For gluttony in the Greeks is greed, in the Gauls it is nature.” Then I said: “You defend your people like a rhetorician, Gallus. But tell me, does that book condemn only this vice in monks?” “Not at all,” he said; “he left out nothing at all that he did not carp at, tear apart, and expose. He attacked especially avarice, and vanity no less. He said much about pride, and not a little about superstition; truly, I will confess, he seems to me to have painted the vices of many.

“But on the familiarities of virgins with monks and even clerics, how true, how strong were his arguments! That is why he is said not to be loved by certain people whom I will not name. For as our Belgicus is angry that we were charged with excessive appetite, so they are said to fume when they read written in that little work: ‘The virgin scorns her unmarried brother and seeks a stranger for a brother.’” At this I said: “You are going too far, Gallus. Take care that someone who recognizes himself in this does not hear you and begin, together with Jerome, not to love you. Since you are a rhetorician, I will not unfittingly warn you with that comic poet’s line: ‘Compliance makes friends, truth breeds hatred.’ Let us rather have your Eastern account again, Postumianus, as you had begun.” “I was,” he said, “as I had begun to say, with Jerome for six months; his continual fight and unending struggle against the wicked has stirred up the hatred of the depraved against him. The heretics hate him, because he does not cease attacking them; the clergy hate him, because he assails their life and crimes; but clearly all good people admire and love him; for those who think him a heretic are mad. I would say truly that the man’s learning is catholic and his doctrine sound: he is always wholly given to reading, wholly to books; he does not rest day or night; he is always either reading or writing something. Had I not fixed it in my mind and promised God first to go into the desert I had set before me, I would not have wished to leave so great a man even for the smallest moment. So, having handed over and entrusted to him everything of mine and all my household, which had followed me against my wish and kept me entangled, I was somehow relieved of a heavy burden and wholly free; I returned to Alexandria, visited the brothers there, and from there pressed on to the Upper Thebaid, that is, to the farthest parts of Egypt. For the wide-open solitudes of the desert there were said to hold a great many monks. It would take long if I wished to tell all that I saw; I will touch on a few things.

“Not far from the desert, next to the Nile, there are many monasteries. For the most part a hundred live in one place; their supreme law is to live under the abbot’s command, to do nothing by their own choice, and to depend in all things on his nod and authority. If any of them conceive in their minds a higher virtue, so as to go off into the desert to lead a solitary life, they leave only with the abbot’s permission. This is their first virtue, to obey another’s command. To those who have gone over to the desert, bread or any other food is supplied by that abbot’s arrangement. As it happened, in the days when I had come there, the abbot had sent bread by two boys to a man who had lately withdrawn to the desert and had set up his tent no more than six miles from the monastery; the elder of the boys was fifteen years old, the younger twelve. As they were returning from there, an asp of extraordinary size met them; they were not at all frightened at meeting it, and when it came before their feet it laid down its dark-blue neck as though charmed by spells. The younger boy took hold of it with his hand, wrapped it in his cloak, and began to carry it. Then, entering the monastery like a conqueror, he went to meet the brothers and, as everyone looked on, opened his cloak and set down the captive beast, not without a swelling of boastfulness. But while the others were praising the children’s faith and power, that abbot, with deeper wisdom, lest their tender age should grow insolent, punished both with rods, rebuking them severely for having themselves made known what the Lord had worked through them. That deed, he said, had been the work not of their faith but of divine power; they should rather learn to serve God in humility and not glory in signs and mighty works, because the consciousness of weakness was better than vanity about powers.

“When that monk heard this, that the little children had been endangered by meeting the serpent and had moreover earned many strokes for overcoming it, he begged the abbot that after this no bread or any food should be sent to him. And now the eighth day had passed since the man of Christ had shut himself in danger of starvation. His limbs were withering with fasting, but his mind, intent on heaven, could not fail; his body was wasting with hunger, but his faith endured firm. Meanwhile that abbot, warned by the Spirit to visit his disciple, and wishing in his devout concern to learn by what means of life the faithful man was being fed, who had refused to have bread supplied him by man, set out himself to seek him. When the monk saw the old man coming from afar, he ran to meet him, gave thanks, and led him to his little cell. When the two had gone in together, they saw a basket of palm leaves, filled with warm bread, fastened to the door and hanging before the doorpost. First the smell of warm bread was noticed, and to the touch it seemed as if it had been taken from the hearth a little before; yet the shape of Egyptian bread was not to be seen. Both were astonished and recognized a heavenly gift. While the monk declared that this had been granted for the abbot’s coming, and the abbot ascribed it rather to the monk’s faith and virtue, the two broke the heavenly bread with great rejoicing. When the old man, after returning to the monastery, had told this to the brothers, so great an ardor seized them all that they hastened in rivalry to go to the desert and the holy solitudes, declaring themselves wretched if they stayed any longer in the community of many, where human company had to be endured.

“In this monastery I saw two old men who were said to have lived there forty years without ever leaving it. I do not think I should pass over a mention of them, since I heard it said in praise of their virtues, both by the testimony of the abbot himself and in the talk of all the brothers, that the sun had never seen one of them eating, nor the other angry.” At this Gallus, looking at me, said: “Oh, if that man of yours (I will not name him) were here now, I would very much like him to hear this example; we have too often found him to be very angry with many people. Yet since, as I hear, he has lately forgiven his enemies, if he heard this he would be more and more confirmed in his purpose by the example, that it is a splendid virtue not to be moved by anger. Nor will I deny that he had just causes for anger; but where the fight is harder, there the crown is more glorious. So I think a certain person, if you recognize him, deserves praise, because when an ungrateful freedman deserted him he pitied rather than pursued the departing man; and he is not angry either with the man by whom the freedman seems to have been drawn away.” And I said: “If Postumianus had not brought forward this example of overcoming anger, I would be very angry at the runaway’s departure; but since it is not permitted to be angry, all mention of these men, which stings us, must be wiped out. Let us rather hear you, Postumianus.” “I will do as you bid, Sulpicius,” he said, “since I see you so eager to listen. But remember that I am not depositing this talk with you without interest: I gladly give what you ask, provided that a little later you do not refuse what I ask.” “We have nothing,” I said, “with which we could repay you a loan, even without interest. But give whatever command you think fit, provided you satisfy our desires as you had begun; for your discourse delights us greatly.” “I will not cheat your eagerness at all,” said Postumianus; “and since you have learned the virtue of one hermit, I will tell you a few more things out of very many.

“So when I had entered the first part of the desert, about twelve miles from the Nile (I had one of the brothers who knew the places as a guide), we came to an old monk living at the foot of a mountain. There, what is very rare in those parts, was a well. He had one ox, whose whole labor was to draw up water by turning a wheel; for the well was said to be about a thousand feet deep or more. There was a garden there, abundant in vegetables, contrary to the nature of the desert, where everything is dry, burned by the heat of the sun, and never bears even a small root of any seed. But for that holy man the labor he shared with his beast and his own industry provided this; for frequent watering gave such richness to the sand that we saw the vegetables of his garden flourishing and bearing wonderfully. On these the ox lived together with its master; and the holy man gave us supper from that plenty too. There I saw, what you Gauls perhaps do not believe, a pot with the vegetables being prepared for our supper boiling without fire: such is the strength of the sun that it would serve any cooks, even for the stews of the Gauls. After supper, as evening was already coming on, he invited us to a palm tree, whose fruit he sometimes used, about two miles away. For these are the only trees in the desert, rare though they are. Whether a skillful antiquity provided them or the nature of the soil produces them I do not know, unless God, foreknowing that the desert would one day be inhabited by saints, prepared them for his servants. For most of those who live within those retreats are fed on the fruit of these trees, since no other plants grow there. So when we came to the tree to which our host’s kindness was taking us, we came upon a lion there. At the sight of it my guide and I trembled, but the holy man went up without hesitation; we followed, though trembling. The beast (you could see it was under God’s command) modestly withdrew a little and stood still while he picked the fruit from the lower branches. And when he held out a hand full of dates, the beast ran up and took them as freely as any tame animal, and when it had eaten, went away. Watching this, and still trembling, we could easily weigh how great was the power of faith in him and how great the weakness in us.

“We saw another equally remarkable man, living in a small hut in which only one person could be received. It was said of him that a she-wolf used to stand by him at supper, and the beast hardly ever failed to come to him at the regular hour of his meal and wait outside the door until he offered the bread left over from his little supper; she used to lick his hand and then, as though her duty were done and her greeting paid, go away. But it happened that the holy man, while seeing off a brother who had come to him, was away rather long and did not return until nightfall. Meanwhile the beast came at her usual suppertime. Sensing that her familiar patron was away, she entered the empty cell, searching inquisitively for where its inhabitant might be. As it happened, a palm-leaf basket with five loaves was hanging close by. Taking one of these, she devoured it, and then, having committed the crime, went away. The hermit, on returning, sees the basket undone and the number of loaves not right: he realizes the loss to his household, and near the threshold recognizes the crumbs of the loaf that had been eaten. And there was no doubt in his suspicion as to who had committed the theft. So when on the following days the beast did not come as usual (doubtless conscious of her bold deed, and avoiding coming to the one she had wronged), the hermit was sorry to be deprived of the comfort of his foster-child. At last, recalled by his prayer, she was there on the seventh day, as before, at his supper. But, so that you could easily see the shame of a penitent, she did not dare to come nearer; with her eyes cast down to the ground in deep shame, she was plainly to be understood as begging for some pardon. The hermit, pitying her confusion, bade her come nearer and stroked her sad head with a gentle hand; then he refreshed his culprit with a double ration of bread. So, having obtained pardon, she put aside her sorrow and resumed her customary duty. See, I beg you, the power of Christ in this too, to whom everything brute is wise, to whom everything savage is gentle. A she-wolf performs a duty, a she-wolf acknowledges the crime of theft, a she-wolf is confounded by a guilty sense of shame; when called she comes, offers her head, and has a sense of the pardon granted her, as she showed shame for her fault. This is your power, Christ; these, Christ, are your miracles. For what your servants work in your name is yours; and in this we groan, that wild beasts sense your majesty while men do not revere it.

“Lest this perhaps seem incredible to anyone, I will mention greater things. The faith of Christ is my witness that I invent nothing, nor will I tell things spread abroad on uncertain authority; I will set out what I have learned through trustworthy men. Many live in the desert without any tents; they call them anchorites. They live on the roots of plants; they never stay in any fixed place, so as not to be often visited by people; they have whatever lodging night forces on them. To one who lived by this custom and rule, two monks from Nitria made their way, though from a very distant region, because he had once been dear and familiar to them in the life of the monastery, and they had heard of his virtues. After searching for him long and hard, in the seventh month they at last found him living in the farthest desert, the one next to Memphis; he was said to have lived in those solitudes for twelve years already. Though he avoided meeting anyone, he did not flee from those he recognized, and did not deny himself to his dearest friends for three days. On the fourth day, when he had gone a little way to escort them as they left, they saw a lioness of extraordinary size coming toward them. Though the beast found three of them, she was in no doubt whom she was seeking; she rolled at the anchorite’s feet, and, lying there with a kind of weeping and lamentation, showed the feeling of one both grieving and pleading. It moved them all, and especially him who understood that he was being sought; they followed her as she went ahead. For by stopping now and then and looking back now and then, she made it easy to understand that she wished the anchorite to follow where she led. In short, they come to the beast’s cave, where the unhappy mother was nursing five cubs, already grown, which, having come out of the mother’s womb with their eyes closed, were held in perpetual blindness. The mother brought them out of the rock one by one and laid them before the anchorite’s feet. Then at last the holy man saw what the beast was asking; and, calling on the name of God, he touched the closed eyes of the cubs with his hand: and at once the blindness was driven away, their eyes opened, and the light so long denied lay open to the beasts. So those brothers, having visited the anchorite they longed for, returned with a very rich reward for their labor, admitted as witnesses of so great a power, having seen the faith of the saint and the glory of Christ, to which they were to testify. I am going to tell a marvel: that after five days the lioness returned to the author of so great a kindness and brought him, as a gift, the skin of an unusual wild animal. The holy man often wore it like a cloak, not disdaining to receive a gift through a beast, of which he understood another to be the real author.