Letters

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–3.5 · 4.1–4.5 · 5.1–6.3 · 7.1–10.3 · 11.1–11.14 · 12.1–13.7 · 13.8–13.28 · 14.1–16.11 · 17.1–19.4 · 20.1–23.3 · 23.4–23.19 · 23.20–23.37 · 23.38–24.10 · 24.11–25.8 · 26.1–28.6 · 29.1–29.14 · 30.1–32.5 · 32.6–32.25 · 33.1–36.4 · 37.1–38.11 · 39.1–39.8 · 40.1–41.3 · 42.1–43.7 · 44.1–46.3 · 47.1–49.15 · 50.1–51.4

1. 1.1Paulinus thanks Sulpicius for his letter and praises him for giving away his property to the poor, in whom Christ is served.
2. 1.2Paulinus urges Sulpicius to disregard the mockery of worldly men, citing many Scriptures on the fate of scoffers and the blessing of the reviled.
3. 1.3Sulpicius should not try to justify himself to worldly critics, since God's foolishness is wiser than men.
4. 1.4Paulinus distinguishes honest inquirers, who should be taught, from hostile critics, who should be avoided like the tares of the parable.
5. 1.5Even a close friend who is an enemy of Christ must be cut off like an offending hand or eye; the world's hatred is to be expected.
6. 1.6Seeking to justify oneself to unbelievers means seeking the world's favor; the critics really oppose Christ's work, as the judgment scene shows.
7. 1.7Let the worldly keep their prosperity and their reputation for wisdom; their wisdom belongs to this generation only.
8. 1.8Christians should welcome reproach for Christ, like the mustard seed that grows stronger when crushed, and should not cast holy things before hostile critics.
9. 1.9Paulinus exhorts Sulpicius as a soldier of Christ to persevere, avoid false teachers and worldly critics, and trust God to complete the work of perfection begun in them.
10. 1.10Paulinus invites Sulpicius to come to him and reports that he was ordained presbyter at Barcelona against his will on Christmas Day, on the condition that he not be bound to that church.
11. 1.11Paulinus asks Sulpicius to come before or after Easter and notes how short the road from Elusa is.
12. 2.1Paulinus welcomes a long-awaited letter and says that love alone makes him the equal of its writer.
13. 2.2Paulinus describes his forced ordination as presbyter and his acceptance of it as God's will, despite his sense of unworthiness.
14. 2.3Paulinus asks Amandus to pray for him and to keep instructing him by letters, since they are one in the body of Christ.
15. 2.4Paulinus asks Amandus to train him for his new pastoral work, since he was born to God through him and will be his shame or joy.
16. 3.1Paulinus thanks Alypius for his letter, seeing in their friendship before meeting the work of God's predestining love.
17. 3.2Paulinus has received five books of Augustine from Alypius, writes to Augustine through him, and sends greetings to Alypius's clergy and monks.
18. 3.3Paulinus sends Alypius a copy of Eusebius's Chronicle, borrowed from Domnio at Rome and to be copied at Carthage through Bishop Aurelius.
19. 3.4Paulinus asks Alypius for his life story and tells his own: baptized by Delphinus at Bordeaux, ordained by Lampius at Barcelona, and claimed by Ambrose as a presbyter of Milan.
20. 3.5Paulinus calls himself a recent convert, asks Alypius's prayers and letters, sends greetings to the African churches and monasteries, and sends a loaf as a token of unity.
21. 4.1Paulinus writes to Augustine for the first time, praising his five books against the Manichees received through Alypius as salt of the earth and a lamp against heresy.
22. 4.2Paulinus calls Augustine's books against the Manichees a Pentateuch, asks for his works against other heretics, and describes his own conversion from worldly learning.
23. 4.3Paulinus, about forty but an infant in faith, asks Augustine, younger but mature, to guide and pray for him.
24. 4.4Paulinus has stripped himself of possessions to cross life's sea and attributes his calling and ordination to God's grace, not his own merit.
25. 4.5Paulinus claims Augustine's brotherhood through Alypius's mediation, greets his community, and sends a loaf as a sign of unity.
26. 5.1Paulinus assures Sulpicius that, though he did not come in person, he came in will and word and in the servants he sent, and praises his love of neighbor.
27. 5.2Sulpicius's desire to visit Paulinus deserves more reward than the Queen of Sheba's journey to Solomon, since he sought nothing for himself.
28. 5.3Sulpicius sought only Christ's love in seeking Paulinus, and Christ will reward him even for honoring an unworthy servant.
29. 5.4Paulinus disclaims Sulpicius's praise, explaining that his own age, weak health, troubles, and rural retirement made his conversion comparatively easy.
30. 5.5Sulpicius's conversion was the greater miracle, since he renounced the world while young, eloquent, wealthy by marriage, and free as a widower.
31. 5.6Sulpicius left his father and his worldly career and eloquence to follow Christ, finding a spiritual mother in his mother-in-law.
32. 5.7Paulinus praises Sulpicius for preferring the foolishness of the cross to worldly wisdom, asks his prayers, and describes his own life of silent retirement.
33. 5.8Paulinus regrets that illness twice stopped Sulpicius from visiting and urges him to make his flesh obey his willing spirit.
34. 5.9Paulinus urges Sulpicius to persevere in his plan to visit and notes that they fell ill and recovered together, as members of one body.
35. 5.10Sulpicius should not grieve over Paulinus's illness; their simultaneous illness and recovery show God's binding unity.
36. 5.11The return of Sulpicius's servants was delayed because Vigilantius fell ill as well; a catechumen with them stayed healthy, being not yet a member of the body.
37. 5.12Recovering but still weak, Paulinus sends this letter to comfort Sulpicius until they can meet.
38. 5.13Paulinus invites Sulpicius to leave his homeland to avoid jealousy, noting that his own distance from Rome has quieted the hostility of some Roman clergy.
39. 5.14Despite the coldness of the bishop of Rome, many Campanian and African bishops showed Paulinus kindness during his illness; Sulpicius should come.
40. 5.15Paulinus longs to welcome Sulpicius and his companions at the shrine of St. Felix at Nola and offers them a place in its monastery and garden.
41. 5.16Paulinus pictures Sulpicius's companions working his garden and the spiritual feasts and psalms they will share at Nola.
42. 5.17Paulinus urges Sulpicius to set out trusting Christ, since the flesh obeys a mind directed by Christ and strength is perfected in weakness.
43. 5.18Paulinus blesses Sulpicius's intended journey with a chain of Scriptural promises of protection.
44. 5.19Paulinus comforts Sulpicius for the sadness of leaving home and closes with blessings and greetings from Therasia and their companions.
45. 5.20Paulinus asks Sulpicius not to call himself Paulinus's servant in letter headings and excuses the length of his letter.
46. 5.21Paulinus sends Sulpicius a loaf as a blessing and a wooden dish as a token of the poverty they should both embrace.
47. 5.22Paulinus asks Sulpicius to arrange the shipment of wine from Narbonne, since his own people have abandoned him.
48. 6.1Paulinus writes again to Augustine, whose earlier letter-bearer has been delayed, because he cannot wait any longer for word from him.
49. 6.2Paulinus says that his love for Augustine, born from reading his works against the Manichees, rests on their union as members of the one body of Christ.
50. 6.3Paulinus wishes to see Augustine in person, commends the letter-bearers Romanus and Agilis to him, and asks for his prayers.
51. 7.1Paulinus tells Romanianus the news, just arrived from Africa, that Aurelius, Alypius, Augustine, Profuturus and Severus are all now bishops.
52. 7.2Paulinus rejoices that Augustine has been consecrated co-bishop of Hippo beside the aged Valerius, as a gift of God against the Donatists and Manichees.
53. 7.3Paulinus hopes Augustine’s preaching will win over Romanianus’s son Licentius, sends five loaves as a blessing, and turns to address Licentius himself.
54. 8.1Paulinus urges Licentius to obey Augustine as father and mother and to become a true pontiff and consul in Christ rather than in worldly office.
55. 8.2Paulinus modestly adds his voice to Augustine’s, saying the credit for Licentius’s conversion will belong to Augustine.
56. 8.3In a poem Paulinus warns Licentius against ambition and public office at Rome and urges him to take Christ’s easy yoke under Augustine’s guidance.
57. 9.1Paulinus chides Amandus for praising him to their common father Delphinus, who has asked him for a spiritual discourse.
58. 9.2Paulinus confesses his spiritual sloth and asks Amandus, who brought him to baptism, to wake Christ asleep in the boat of his heart.
59. 9.3Paulinus interprets the warning not to flee in winter or on a sabbath as a warning against spiritual idleness and barrenness of good works.
60. 9.4Paulinus asks for prayer that he may press on, and allegorizes the deer and the hedgehog of Psalm 104 as swift flight from sin and humble refuge in Christ the rock.
61. 9.5Paulinus applies the deer’s firm feet and horns to steadfastness, flight from sin and good works, and hopes the carnal heart will fail so that God may be his portion.
62. 10.1Paulinus replies to Delphinus, who has asked him for a spiritual discourse, that it is rather the father’s part to lay up treasure for his children.
63. 10.2Paulinus calls himself a barren field that has produced thorns instead of the fruit Delphinus planted.
64. 10.3Paulinus asks Delphinus to intercede for him like the vinedresser who begged a year’s reprieve for the barren fig tree.
65. 11.1Paulinus thanks Sulpicius Severus for his letter and the servants who brought it, and gives thanks that their old friendship has become a spiritual brotherhood.
66. 11.2Paulinus says that true kinship comes from rebirth in Christ, and that Christ’s love has turned his old friendship with Sulpicius into an eternal bond.
67. 11.3Paulinus, abandoned by his relatives and old friends since his conversion, says Sulpicius has become parent, brother and friend to him.
68. 11.4Paulinus says that in Sulpicius alone God has repaid him far more than the family and property he gave up.
69. 11.5Paulinus answers Sulpicius’s remark that “of two in the field one is taken”: both were taken together, since each has been made one in himself and both are one in Christ.
70. 11.6Paulinus reads the two in the field and the two women at the mill as peoples or as the two parts of human nature, and says he and Sulpicius were taken up together by grace.
71. 11.7Paulinus describes Sulpicius as offering himself to God by sacrificing in himself the animals of the law, each standing for a vice overcome.
72. 11.8Continuing the image of the fleece, Paulinus says Christ the shepherd has shorn and watered Sulpicius, and that Christ himself, the shorn Lamb, is both priest and victim.
73. 11.9Paulinus explains that God gives temporal wealth as a fleece to be shorn, so that giving it up for God turns it into eternal reward.
74. 11.10Paulinus teaches that Christ, the true bread and our Passover, cannot be eaten by the idle, and that we must labor now, while there is time, for the soul.
75. 11.11Paulinus praises Sulpicius’s Life of Martin as a worthy work that clothes Christ and will be repaid with immortality.
76. 11.12Paulinus asks for Sulpicius’s prayers and chides him for hesitating to visit Nola for fear of the poverty he professes to admire.
77. 11.13Paulinus tells Sulpicius that a Christian lives by faith, not bread, and that fear of hunger is no reason to avoid a poor friend, as his devotion to Martin shows.
78. 11.14Paulinus urges Sulpicius to come to Nola, saying that he left Ebromagus for paradise, not for a garden, and that those whose possession is God will not lack bread.
79. 12.1Paulinus hesitates between obeying Amandus’s request for long letters and guarding his mouth against much talking.
80. 12.2Paulinus prays for speech and traces God’s work of restoring mankind from Abel and Seth through Noah and Abraham to Christ, who fulfilled the law and the prophets.
81. 12.3Paulinus says that sin had made mankind incurable by human means, so the Creator himself came in the form of a servant and died to remake us.
82. 12.4Paulinus explains that Christ undid pride by humility, and that the Christian must keep the king’s highway between sin and proud presumption, unlike the philosophers.
83. 12.5Paulinus contrasts the failure of the world’s wise men with God’s revelation of the mystery of godliness to the humble, and urges humility after Christ’s pattern.
84. 12.6Paulinus explains that Christ, crucified in the likeness of sinful flesh, broke down the wall of sin between God and man and ended the war of flesh against spirit within each believer.
85. 12.7Paulinus teaches that the Christian dies to the world and humbles himself to God alone, distinguishing a holy pride toward the world from a wicked, flattering humility.
86. 12.8Paulinus reconciles Psalm 131’s humility of heart with its exalting of the soul: humble before God, the soul is lifted to heavenly things, as Paul also teaches.
87. 12.9Paulinus concludes that humility toward God and exaltation of the soul belong together, under Christ’s easy yoke that lifts the soul upward.
88. 12.10Paulinus asks Amandus, a lifelong servant of God, to intercede for him as Moses did for Israel, offering to be blotted out of God’s book.
89. 12.11Paulinus asks Amandus to bind God by such intercession, and closes for lack of paper.
90. 12.12Paulinus commends his freedman Sanemarius to Amandus’s care and asks him to forward an urgent letter on behalf of an elderly presbyter driven from his home.
91. 13.1Paulinus, having heard of Pammachius’s grief, writes to share it, since Christian love requires us to weep with those who weep.
92. 13.2Paulinus explains his late letter by his secluded life and says that a spiritual friendship, begotten by Christ, is complete from the start and makes him present in mind.
93. 13.3Paulinus shares Pammachius’s grief for his wife Paulina and praises him for honoring her death with almsgiving rather than empty pomp.
94. 13.4Paulinus shows from Scripture that mourning and burying the dead are good: Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Rachel, Tobit, Joseph, David, and Jesus himself at Lazarus’s tomb.
95. 13.5Paulinus praises Paulina from the portrait of the good wife in Proverbs and consoles Pammachius that the righteous who die young are at rest.
96. 13.6Paulinus argues from Wisdom 4 that Paulina, though young, was old in holiness, and that God took her early from a wicked world.
97. 13.7Paulinus cites David, who wept for his sick infant but ceased when the child died, while he lamented the dead Absalom, as a lesson on mourning.
98. 13.8Paulinus draws the lesson that we should care for our own journey rather than mourn without end for those who have gone ahead to God.
99. 13.9Paulinus urges that mourning be held within faith, since the dead in Christ are asleep and will rise.
100. 13.10Paulinus urges Pammachius to keep due measure in grief, since Scripture limits bitter mourning and worldly sorrow works death, and he notes that Pammachius’s works show such strength.
101. 13.11Paulinus pictures Pammachius’s funeral banquet for the poor of Rome in St Peter’s basilica as a renewal of Christ’s feeding of the five thousand.
102. 13.12Paulinus says Christ worked in Pammachius’s feeding of the poor and that he will in turn sit at Christ’s banquet with the patriarchs.
103. 13.13Paulinus describes St Peter’s basilica, its nave, aisles and the fountain in its atrium, interpreting the four columns of the fountain as the four Gospels.
104. 13.14Paulinus says Pammachius’s offerings and alms in Paulina’s memory were a sacrifice to God that refreshed both his own spirit and his wife’s soul.
105. 13.15Paulinus contrasts Pammachius’s generosity with the senators who spend their wealth on beast fights and gladiators for the crowd’s applause.
106. 13.16Paulinus contrasts Pammachius, who gives shows for the poor in the church, with givers of games, and with the rich man of the parable tormented for neglecting Lazarus.
107. 13.17Paulinus warns rich men who spend on luxury and despise the poor that they will share the fate of the rich man whose tongue burned in hell.
108. 13.18Paulinus says that Pammachius, who welcomes the poor to his table, is both poor in spirit and rich in God.
109. 13.19Paulinus observes that Scripture leaves the greedy rich men of the Gospels unnamed, as unworthy of remembrance, while God gives salvation to the rich who use their wealth for the poor.
110. 13.20Paulinus shows from Abraham, Job, Joseph of Arimathea and the first Jerusalem church that God approves the rich who share their wealth, since the poor are our brothers by common origin.
111. 13.21Paulinus urges hospitality by the examples of Abraham, who received Christ with the angels, of Lot, saved for preferring his guests even to his daughters, and of Job.
112. 13.22Paulinus says Pammachius is master of his wealth because Christ possesses him, and that he serves Christ in the poor.
113. 13.23Paulinus prays that God will turn Pammachius’s mourning into joy and reward his alms on the day of judgment.
114. 13.24Paulinus tells Pammachius to console himself by anticipating in faith the rewards promised by God’s unchanging truth.
115. 13.25Paulinus rejects pagan teachings on the afterlife, such as transmigration of souls, and grounds Christian hope in Christ’s promise and his bodily resurrection.
116. 13.26Paulinus says the resurrection is certain because the Spirit is God’s pledge in us and Christ’s flesh our pledge in God, Christ bridging the gap between mortal and divine.
117. 13.27Paulinus urges Pammachius on in the Christian race, saying his wife now intercedes for him and enjoys the fruit of his almsgiving.
118. 13.28Paulinus pictures Paulina in glory, enriched by her husband’s alms, and praises her as daughter of Paula, sister of Eustochium and wife of Pammachius.
119. 14.1Paulinus rejoices at news from Cardamas that Delphinus has recovered from illness, which was not unto death but for God’s glory.
120. 14.2Paulinus explains that the patriarchs, Job and Christ himself perfected their strength through weakness and suffering.
121. 14.3Paulinus says the illnesses of the saints both exercise their virtue and warn sinners, and thanks Delphinus for settling the matter of the presbyter Basilius’s house.
122. 14.4Paulinus says that all Capua and its church praised God for the restoration of the presbyter’s house, and that those who returned it have won a place in heaven.
123. 15.1Paulinus rejoices at Cardamas’s news that Amandus is well and that Delphinus has recovered from a long illness.
124. 15.2Paulinus thanks Amandus for helping to restore the presbyter Basilius’s house.
125. 15.3Paulinus asks Amandus to thank the men who returned Basilius’s house without disputing his title, praising their generosity beyond what was owed.
126. 15.4Paulinus jokingly describes how Cardamas, once a drinker, kept the Lenten fasts and drank sparingly at Nola, and asks that a slave be provided for his sickly wife.
127. 16.1Paulinus writes to Iovius by two friends returning home and takes up again his argument that the rescue of their money from shipwreck was God’s doing, not chance.
128. 16.2Paulinus rebukes Iovius for attributing the storm and his safety to fate and chance, and argues against the philosophers that the world is made and governed by God.
129. 16.3Paulinus argues that everything that exists depends on God for its being, that all God made is good, and that what we cannot understand has hidden reasons.
130. 16.4Paulinus argues that chance, fate and fortune are empty names, not powers, mocks their personification in pagan cult, and criticizes Plato’s myth of Necessity and the Fates.
131. 16.5Paulinus teaches that all things come from a good God and that adversities, including storms, are given to exercise us and keep us from careless security.
132. 16.6Paulinus urges the learned Iovius, who has time for all the classical authors, to make time for Christ and to turn his philosophy and eloquence to God’s service.
133. 16.7Paulinus urges Iovius to shun the sweetness of pagan letters and worldly pleasures, which he compares to the Lotus-eaters and the Sirens of Homer.
134. 16.8Paulinus urges Iovius to strip off the burden of possessions, as some philosophers threw away their money, and to cling to the cross as a plank in the world’s shipwreck.
135. 16.9Paulinus asks Iovius only to give himself and his talents to God, saying that knowing God brings self-knowledge, while idolaters lose both.
136. 16.10Paulinus says that the soul subject to God is free and master of its vices, while the soul that ignores God wanders among philosophies and superstitions and ends by worshiping fate.
137. 16.11Paulinus urges Iovius to keep the philosophers’ eloquence as spoils taken from the enemy and to use it for the truth of Christ.
138. 17.1Paulinus complains that Sulpicius has not come to Nola for two years and describes receiving his letter at Rome, at the feast of the apostles, through a servant of Sabinus.
139. 17.2Paulinus explains that the crowds at Rome and then an illness at Nola delayed his reply.
140. 17.3Paulinus sends this letter by the subdeacon Amachius and reminds Sulpicius of his unfulfilled promise to visit the shrine of St Felix at Nola.
141. 17.4Paulinus reproaches Sulpicius for visiting Martin’s Tours often but never keeping his promise to come to Felix at Nola, warning him not to offend so gracious a saint.
142. 18.1Paulinus writes to Victricius of Rouen by his deacon Paschasius, whom he met at Rome at the feast of the apostles and kept for a time at Nola.
143. 18.2Paulinus says that Paschasius’s presence comforted him during an illness, as a good friend is a medicine for the heart.
144. 18.3Paulinus tells how Ursus, Paschasius’s companion, fell gravely ill, was baptized on his sickbed by Paschasius, and recovered through the intercession of St Felix.
145. 18.4Paulinus praises Victricius for bringing Christianity, with churches and monasteries, to the remote coast of the Morini and Nervii in northern Gaul.
146. 18.5Paulinus praises Rouen under Victricius as a new Jerusalem, enriched with relics of the apostles and filled with virgins, widows, continent married couples and singing monks.
147. 18.6Paulinus gives thanks to God for making Victricius a preacher of the gospel and a bishop set like a lamp on a lampstand.
148. 18.7Paulinus recounts how Victricius, a soldier, threw down his arms for Christ, was beaten and condemned, and was freed after his executioner was blinded and his chains fell off.
149. 18.8Paulinus says that Victricius began his Christian life with the perfection of a confessor, and longs to kiss his scars as the marks of Christ’s passion.
150. 18.9Paulinus recalls meeting Victricius at Vienne with Martin and regrets that, still entangled in worldly cares, he did not then recognize him as a living martyr.
151. 18.10Paulinus asks Victricius to remember him at the judgment, when he will be crowned as bishop and confessor and rewarded for the many he has led to God.
152. 19.1Paulinus rejoices that, after nearly two years of silence, Cardamas has brought a letter from Delphinus.
153. 19.2Paulinus thanks God for Delphinus’s letter, laments the unreliable letter-carriers, and confesses that he has not lived up to Delphinus, who baptized him.
154. 19.3Paulinus asks Delphinus to pray that God tend the vines he planted, and interprets the “voluntary rain” of Psalm 68 as Christ, who freely humbled himself to the cross.
155. 19.4Paulinus asks Delphinus to pray that his baptismal grace be kept, and commends Cardamas, formerly a mime and now an exorcist, who kept Nola’s frugal table.
156. 20.1In a second letter Paulinus tells Delphinus that absence in body cannot separate those joined in spirit, and reports that he is well.
157. 20.2Paulinus reports that Anastasius, bishop of Rome, has shown him great kindness, writing to the bishops of Campania on his behalf and inviting him to his anniversary.
158. 20.3Paulinus tells Delphinus of letters from Venerius, new bishop of Milan, and rejoices at the dedication of the new church at Alingo built by Delphinus.
159. 20.4Paulinus tells Delphinus not to wonder at envious opposition to his church building, and to see that a spiritual house is built on Christ.
160. 20.5Paulinus asks Delphinus to pray that Christ cleanse his heart as he cleansed the temple, since Christ has bought us at the price of his blood.
161. 20.6Playing on Delphinus’s name (dolphin), Paulinus calls himself the fish Delphinus caught for Christ, like Peter, and prays to bear the coin of true faith in his mouth.
162. 20.7Paulinus prays to burn with the fire Christ came to kindle, not with the strange fire of worldly desire.
163. 21.1Paulinus begins with the swift Asahel and the six-fingered Philistine giant, whom David, a figure of Christ, overcame.
164. 21.2Paulinus adds the apostle John, who outran Peter to the tomb, as an example of swiftness, and of spreading the gospel and the Revelation.
165. 21.3Paulinus praises John’s Gospel as the last written but the highest, beginning from the eternal Word, and sets out the Son’s and the Spirit’s equality with the Father.
166. 21.4Paulinus shows how the prologue of John refutes Arius, Sabellius, Photinus, Marcion, the Manichees and the Gnostics, and how the Word became flesh without ceasing to be God.
167. 21.5Paulinus praises Cardamas, now a freedman and cleric, for running tirelessly between Bordeaux and Nola with letters in his old age.
168. 21.6Paulinus commends Cardamas to Amandus, praising his new frugality as an exorcist, and asks for prayers for himself and his household.
169. 22.1Paulinus tells Sulpicius that his letter, entrusted to the worldly Marracinus, was brought by the spiritual Sorianus instead, Marracinus having avoided coming to Nola.
170. 22.2Paulinus describes the monks he welcomes, rough-clothed and tonsured, and contrasts their fasting with the drunkenness and luxury of worldly men who despise them.
171. 22.3Paulinus commends Sorianus, explains his teasing of Marracinus, and defends quoting Virgil by Sulpicius’s own example of quoting Virgil and Plautus.
172. 23.1Paulinus tells Sulpicius that his love for him is already full, though his longing grows, and praises him as a fertile field of God sweet with Christ.
173. 23.2Paulinus thanks Sulpicius for sending, besides his letter, a holy companion as bearer, and says that Christ grows to maturity in Sulpicius’s soul.
174. 23.3Paulinus welcomes Victor, the monk sent by Sulpicius, a disciple of Martin and Clarus, who brought letters and cloaks and served him devotedly.
175. 23.4Paulinus confesses that he let the monk Victor serve him, anointing and washing him, so as not to refuse the blessing of his humble service, as Martin had done.
176. 23.5Paulinus tells how he once let Victor wash his feet, after the example of the apostles with Christ, and how Victor’s anointing restored both body and spirit.
177. 23.6Paulinus describes Victor’s cooking of plain monastic porridge of millet, beans and coarse meal, and compares it to the bread of Ezekiel.
178. 23.7Paulinus jokes that Victor’s bean porridge recalls Ezekiel’s bread and Elisha’s pot, and turns this into a meditation on Christ, who took our flesh like a pot to make it food of life.
179. 23.8Paulinus says that under Victor’s hand his store of flour multiplied, like the widow of Zarephath’s jar under Elijah, which he reads as a figure of the church fed by the Word.
180. 23.9Paulinus tells how Victor’s cooking nourished an old peasant newly baptized at Nola, whom he imagines singing a psalm of thanksgiving.
181. 23.10Paulinus tells how Victor cut his hair, and asks for prayer that Christ, as a razor, may shave away his sins and consecrate his life like a Nazirite’s hair.
182. 23.11Paulinus turns to Samson, strong while his Nazirite hair was kept and conquered through a woman, as a warning to subject the flesh to the spirit.
183. 23.12Paulinus applies Samson’s blinding and grinding at the mill to the sinner, who loses the light of reason and becomes like a beast, as Nebuchadnezzar did.
184. 23.13Paulinus describes the sinner as a blindfolded beast turning the devil’s mill, who can be restored by grace if he returns.
185. 23.14Paulinus reads Samson’s killing more enemies in his death than in his life as a figure of Christ’s passion, and expounds the Good Samaritan as Christ healing mankind.
186. 23.15Paulinus explains that Christ, God and man, born of a virgin without sin, redeemed mankind by being unjustly killed by the devil, who therefore lost his claim over believers.
187. 23.16Paulinus interprets Samson’s riddle of the lion and the honey as Christ, the Lion of Judah, who died and rose and gives sweet food, and who “eats” our sins to give us life.
188. 23.17Paulinus applies Samson’s regrowth of hair and his pulling down of the pillars to the penitent Christian who overthrows the devil by putting the flesh to death.
189. 23.18Paulinus recalls the baptismal covenant to die with Christ, and learns from Samson’s blindness to value the eyes of the mind, enlightened by Christ.
190. 23.19Paulinus contrasts the light hair of the saints, Samson and Samuel, with the heavy hair of the wicked, Absalom and Nebuchadnezzar.
191. 23.20Paulinus contrasts Samson’s strength with Absalom’s heavy hair, which he reads as the weight of his sins, the wicked being the devil’s kingdom.
192. 23.21Paulinus says that the Christian whose hair is Christ is light and lifted up, and that Samson needed no bodily eyes because grace gave him inner sight.
193. 23.22Paulinus urges blindness to worldly things, as the psalmist prayed, so that the soul may see God and live above the world.
194. 23.23Paulinus says that long hair, fitting under the veil of the law, is now a burden, and that the shorn head signifies the freedom of the gospel.
195. 23.24Paulinus explains Paul’s teaching that women should keep long hair and a veil, and should not teach in church, interpreting it as protection against the tempter.
196. 23.25Paulinus explains why Paul requires a woman to be veiled when she prays or prophesies: in spiritual exaltation she most needs the protection of humility.
197. 23.26Paulinus urges all to be the numbered hairs of Christ the head, likened to the pure gold of the Song of Songs, on whom God has stamped his image.
198. 23.27Paulinus reads the goats of the Song of Songs as Christ’s flock and the breasts “better than wine” as the grace of the gospel, sweeter than the strictness of the law.
199. 23.28Paulinus compares mature Christians to the black locks of the Bridegroom in the Song of Songs and to the good raven that fed Elijah.
200. 23.29Paulinus notes that the raven and its blackness stand in Scripture both for sin and for grace, and reads the black firs as the saints from whom the church, the ship, is built.
201. 23.30Paulinus extends the image of the firs into an allegory of the Christian soul as a ship, with the cross as its yard and Christ as its mast, sailing past the Sirens to the harbor of salvation.
202. 23.31Paulinus praises the sinful woman who anointed Christ’s feet in the Pharisee’s house, a figure of the church, whose love was her sacrifice.
203. 23.32Paulinus reads the sinful woman as the church of the Gentiles, anointed, washed in tears, and receiving Christ’s body and blood in figure, justified in the Pharisee’s place.
204. 23.33Paulinus contrasts the Pharisee, a figure of the synagogue, with the woman, a figure of the church, and reads the dew on the Bridegroom’s head in the Song of Songs as the saints’ good works.
205. 23.34Paulinus explains that Christ is anointed and fed by works of mercy, and condemns Judas, who objected to the ointment from greed and valued Christ cheaply.
206. 23.35Paulinus urges voluntary poverty, so that the Christian may become precious ointment poured on Christ’s body and break the cords of sin.
207. 23.36Paulinus resolves to imitate the sinful woman’s eager love, seeking Christ’s word from every believer and running to his feet wherever he is found.
208. 23.37Paulinus urges humility and tears like the sinful woman’s, whose kisses of Christ’s feet he reads as the love of the catholic church for her one Bridegroom.
209. 23.38Paulinus longs to kiss and wipe Christ’s feet, rising from the feet to the face, and prays for his unclean lips to be purified like Isaiah’s.
210. 23.39Paulinus contrasts the believing woman, saved by her faith and service, with the unbelieving Pharisee who invited Christ as a mere man.
211. 23.40Paulinus addresses the Pharisee as the Jew who failed to welcome Christ, contrasting him with the sinful woman and with Abraham, who received Christ among his three guests.
212. 23.41Paulinus says that the Gentiles have taken the place of the Jews, as Ephraim was set before Manasseh, but warns, with Paul, against boasting, since God can graft the Jews back in.
213. 23.42Paulinus prefers the sinful woman’s poverty and tears to the Pharisee’s feast, and resolves to love, serve and die with Christ.
214. 23.43Paulinus marvels that Christ shares even his titles with his servants: power, portion, light, bread, vine, mountain and rock.
215. 23.44Paulinus explains that man, deceived by the devil, was punished only for a time, while the devil, the author of sin, is punished forever, and that God became man to defeat the devil through the nature he had deceived.
216. 23.45Paulinus asks how he can repay Christ for his incarnation and passion, and answers that only love can be given in return.
217. 23.46Paulinus says no one can repay God, not even the apostles, but God asks only for love, which is in everyone’s power to give.
218. 23.47Paulinus closes by saying that God is loved in our love for one another, and that in his love for Sulpicius alone he is perfect.
219. 24.1Paulinus reproaches Sulpicius Severus for praising him too highly and blaming himself for not selling one small estate, which in fact he holds for the church.
220. 24.2God distributes different gifts among the members of Christ’s body; Sulpicius shares both in the perfection of the patriarchs who possessed without being possessed and in the gospel perfection of those who sell.
221. 24.3Paulinus argues that Sulpicius, holding his house for strangers and the poor as a tenant of the Lord, is as perfect in what he keeps as in what he sold.
222. 24.4Paulinus judges Sulpicius’s detachment while still owning property to be a stronger faith than the outright sale by those who distrusted their own weakness.
223. 24.5Selling all is only the beginning of perfection; the harder command is ‘come, follow me,’ so Paulinus asks for concern rather than congratulation.
224. 24.6What is truly ours to give God is heart, soul, and body offered freely, so that we may recover paradise.
225. 24.7Renouncing possessions is the entrance to the race, not its end, as an athlete or swimmer strips only to begin.
226. 24.8Jacob’s sending his goods ahead and wrestling alone with God until blessed figures the Christian who lets go of hindrances and struggles to hold Christ.
227. 24.9The Christian must keep chaste and follow Christ, who came down to restore the divine likeness lost in Adam, and must above all guard his heart.
228. 24.10Paulinus describes the inner war of the two laws and the need for God’s grace, by which alone the branches remain fruitful in the vine.
229. 24.11Christ’s fire and pruning hook clear the soul for a new crop, and his call to ‘be still’ means freedom from worldly affairs in order to be occupied with God.
230. 24.12Newness of life means exchanging old pursuits for new and changing masters, from sin to righteousness.
231. 24.13The Christian’s struggle is against spiritual powers that use the world’s allurements, the devil’s snares, and the vices within.
232. 24.14Weak in himself, the Christian is armed from Christ’s armory, with Paul as armor bearer providing the armor of God described in Ephesians.
233. 24.15Paul teaches the Christian to run so that all may win together, since in Christ’s one body there is no loser.
234. 24.16Within us the spirit is our friend and the flesh our enemy, whose flattering kisses are like Judas’s; yet Christ returned love for that hatred.
235. 24.17In Christ one conquers by yielding, giving up the cloak, loving enemies, and selling for the poor, as Christ conquered by being judged and dying.
236. 24.18Paulinus asks why one must ‘be still’ to see God, when all, even pagans and busy men, already see from creation that God exists.
237. 24.19That God exists all can see, but that God is in Christ is seen only by those freed from earthly cares, since the incarnation is foolishness to the world.
238. 24.20Selling goods only prepares the price of the pearl and clears the ground for building; once cleared, the heart reveals its hidden sins.
239. 24.21Christ’s call to perfection is a counsel to free will; to follow him is to walk as he walked, fulfilling the law by a faith that roots out sin from the heart.
240. 24.22Paulinus asks Sulpicius not to praise him as perfect but to fear and pray for him, since he is only beginning the road.
241. 24.23Paulinus asks for prayer that God give victory over flesh, devil, and death, as Abraham overcame the four kings by the figure of the cross, the T of three hundred.
242. 25.1Paulinus writes, through his friend Victor, to the soldier Crispinianus, urging him to leave Caesar’s service for Christ’s.
243. 25.2Nothing, neither family nor homeland nor honors nor riches, may be preferred to God, as Scripture’s warnings against the rich show.
244. 25.3Paulinus urges Crispinianus to abandon soldiering, which makes a man either a victim or a shedder of blood, since one cannot serve both Christ and Caesar.
245. 25.4Paulinus urges Crispinianus to serve Christ, the eternal commander, and to flee the love of gold that Scripture condemns.
246. 25.5Paulinus answers the excuse of youth and future marriage: conversion must not be delayed, and the only good violence is seizing the kingdom of heaven.
247. 25.6Youth passes like grass; the prophet longs instead for the eternal dwellings of the risen body.
248. 25.7Following Paul, Paulinus advises the unmarried soldier not to marry, since marriage, though not condemned, brings heavy cares.
249. 25.8Paulinus invites Crispinianus to become Christ’s companion and have God as his protector, in place of military promotion.
250. 26.1Paulinus greets a hermit living by a stream, of whom he has heard through Victor, and his brother, a deacon who supplies him with food like Elijah’s ravens.
251. 26.2The two brothers serve each other, the hermit with prayer and fasting and the deacon with bodily food, which even Christ’s words show the flesh needs.
252. 26.3The hermit’s bodily need gives the deacon the occasion of merit, as Paul’s teaching on mutual supply shows.
253. 26.4The deacon and the hermit together mirror the Lord teaching in the temple and John in the wilderness, both free and both servants.
254. 26.5Paulinus asks the two brothers to pray for him, since God gives sinners the friendship of saints so that their intercession may win pardon.
255. 27.1Paulinus rejoices at the arrival of several friends, Postumianus, Theridius, Virinus, and Sorianus, bringing letters from Sulpicius.
256. 27.2Paulinus answers Sulpicius’s complaint that he took certain friends from him: he had in fact sent them to meet Sulpicius, and they returned overjoyed.
257. 27.3The friends report Sulpicius’s humble and generous life, in which Martin and Clarus live again, and the young disciples who revere him as master and father.
258. 27.4Paulinus asks Sulpicius to set his young disciples praying for him.
259. 28.1Paulinus sends back Victor, the tireless courier of their letters, blessing his feet, and prays that Christ’s fire may purify rather than punish him.
260. 28.2Paulinus prays that their work may stand the fire, being founded on Christ, who is the foundation, tower, gate, bread, and city of the heavenly Jerusalem.
261. 28.3Paulinus explains why he kept Victor through spring and summer, and proposes that Sulpicius keep him for the winter.
262. 28.4Paulinus calls himself lukewarm and wonders at Sulpicius’s appetite for his writings, which he has asked for again.
263. 28.5Paulinus, no historian himself, has passed Sulpicius’s chronological questions to the learned presbyter Rufinus, companion of Melania.
264. 28.6Paulinus sends Sulpicius a birthday poem for his patron Felix and his panegyric of Theodosius written at Endelechius’s request.
265. 29.1Paulinus thanks Sulpicius for cloaks of camel’s hair, which recall Elijah, John, and David’s sackcloth, and teach that the soul’s garment is fasting from sin.
266. 29.2The camel of the gospel recalls the humble tax collector, who passed through the needle’s eye of humility, while the boasting Pharisee could not.
267. 29.3The cross is the needle that mends the soul; the cloaks, like the dung for the barren fig tree or Job’s dunghill, foster the humility that God exalts.
268. 29.4Even keeping the commandments earns no credit; one must confess oneself unprofitable and, like the Ninevites, forestall God’s judgment by repentance.
269. 29.5In return Paulinus sends a lambswool tunic given him by Melania, which he has worn first to share in its blessing.
270. 29.6Victor arrived just as Melania returned from Jerusalem after twenty-five years, and Paulinus pauses to describe her as a counterpart to Sulpicius’s Life of Martin.
271. 29.7Paulinus justifies beginning Melania’s praise with her noble ancestry by Luke’s account of John the Baptist’s priestly parents and the genealogies of Christ.
272. 29.8Melania, granddaughter of the consul Marcellinus, married young and lost her husband and two sons within a year, a chastisement through which God led her to devotion.
273. 29.9Like Hannah offering Samuel and Abraham offering Isaac, Melania gave her only son wholly to Christ, and was rewarded by seeing him again.
274. 29.10Overcoming the opposition of her noble kin, Melania sailed from Rome to Jerusalem to live as a pilgrim.
275. 29.11Under the Arian emperor Valens, Melania sheltered persecuted Nicene confessors, faced the judge fearlessly, and fed five thousand hidden monks for three days.
276. 29.12Melania arrived at Nola in rags on a poor horse, escorted by her richly dressed senatorial family, who honored her poverty.
277. 29.13Paulinus’s small guesthouse held Melania’s party; he describes her ascetic life and prays that she may remain unchanged amid Rome, like the exiles by the rivers of Babylon.
278. 29.14Paulinus read Sulpicius’s Life of Martin to Melania and to bishop Nicetas of Dacia, and hopes Sulpicius’s merits will help him at the judgment.
279. 30.1Paulinus playfully tells Sulpicius Severus that excessive love has made him foolish.
280. 30.2Paulinus declines to send his portrait: he still bears the image of the earthly Adam, torn between flesh and spirit, and is ashamed to paint either what he is or what he is not.
281. 30.3Knowing good and evil, Paulinus confesses that he chose evil freely and so lost the eyes of innocence.
282. 30.4Adam and Eve both saw and were blind; Christ came to blind the eyes of sin and open the eyes of innocence, killing the old man on the cross and raising the new.
283. 30.5Paulinus asks Sulpicius to pray that God blind his eyes to vanity, kill the old man, and paint in him the heavenly image, the only portrait worth having.
284. 30.6Christ has already painted their images on Sulpicius’s heart, from which he may, if he wishes, dictate a likeness to any painter.
285. 31.1Having no spare relics for Sulpicius’s new basilica at Primuliacum, Paulinus sends a splinter of the true cross, brought by Melania from bishop John of Jerusalem.
286. 31.2The gold case reflects Sulpicius’s faith, tried like gold; the relic is sent not to strengthen that faith but as its reward.
287. 31.3Paulinus explains why the cross had to be hidden: the Jews would have destroyed it, and Hadrian desecrated Golgotha with a statue of Jupiter and Bethlehem with a shrine of Adonis.
288. 31.4Helena, with Constantine’s support, cleansed the holy places and built basilicas; at the Ascension the spot of Christ’s last footprints refuses all paving.
289. 31.5Helena, guided by the Spirit and by informants, dug at the site of the passion and found three crosses; the Lord’s was identified when it raised a dead man.
290. 31.6The cross, now kept in the basilica at Jerusalem and shown at Easter, gives pieces without diminishing; Paulinus hopes the relic will remind Sulpicius of the penitent thief.
291. 32.1Paulinus rejoices that he and Sulpicius have both built basilicas, Sulpicius also a baptistery between two of them, and counts Sulpicius’s greater work as his own.
292. 32.2Paulinus protests that Sulpicius has had his portrait painted opposite Martin’s in the baptistery, though the contrast only magnifies Martin.
293. 32.3Paulinus sends verses for the baptistery explaining the paired portraits: Martin as the model of the perfect, Paulinus as the model of the penitent.
294. 32.4The paired portraits serve both the perfect and the penitent; Paulinus begs Sulpicius not to remove his own verses in favor of Paulinus’s.
295. 32.5Paulinus sends verses for Sulpicius’s baptistery, set between two basilicas as the font of grace between the two Testaments, from which the newly baptized go to the altar.
296. 32.6Paulinus sends two verse epitaphs for Clarus, Martin’s disciple, buried under the altar of Sulpicius’s church, asking his intercession for Paulinus and Therasia.
297. 32.7Paulinus suggests placing the relic of the cross with the martyrs’ relics under the altar of Sulpicius’s new basilica, and sends verses for it.
298. 32.8If Sulpicius prefers to keep the relic of the cross at hand for daily use, Paulinus offers an inscription for an altar holding only apostolic and martyr relics.
299. 32.9Paulinus mocks his own verses, which Sulpicius may inscribe at his peril, and explains that Victor is carrying verses and pictures of the Nola basilicas too.
300. 32.10Paulinus describes his new basilica at Nola, added to Felix’s four, with relics under the altar and an apse mosaic of the Trinity, the cross, and the four evangelists as rivers.
301. 32.11The inscription records that a splinter of the cross from Melania is laid with the apostles’ relics beneath the altar at Nola.
302. 32.12Paulinus describes the porticoes and side chapels of the new basilica and sends verse inscriptions for its doors.
303. 32.13The new basilica faces Felix’s tomb rather than east, and opens into the old basilica through three arches, symbolizing faith in the Trinity.
304. 32.14Paulinus quotes the verses painted over two crosses flanking the entrance.
305. 32.15Paulinus quotes the inscriptions on the arches joining the old and new basilicas, which liken their union to Christ’s breaking down the dividing wall.
306. 32.16Inscriptions mark one sacristy for liturgical vessels and the other for reading Scripture.
307. 32.17Paulinus sends the apse picture and inscriptions for his basilica at Fundi, depicting Christ as the lamb and judge, with relics of Andrew, Luke, Nazarius, Protasius, and Gervasius.
308. 32.18Earthly buildings raised in faith become heavenly dwellings, as the centurion who built a synagogue was rewarded.
309. 32.19Giving to the poor is not generosity but the shrewdest trade, lending to Christ at an interest the law forbids among men.
310. 32.20Christ, the Judge, accepts the ‘bribe’ of mercy; he is found and touched in every poor person.
311. 32.21Alms are a spiritual commerce: the rich provide for the poor now, and the poor will receive the rich into the eternal dwellings.
312. 32.22Their churches are built on Christ the cornerstone, at the cost of faith, but only the Lord builds and guards the house.
313. 32.23Paulinus prays that God build within them the house not made with hands, on Christ the rock, and not with the straw of Egypt’s slavery.
314. 32.24Let us build with the gold, silver, and precious stones of faith and works, in the peace of Solomon’s temple, free of the hammers of worldly care.
315. 32.25Christ must often cleanse the temple of the heart and, as at the pool of Bethesda, heal the soul’s diseases and lead it to the house not made with hands.
316. 33.1Paulinus thanks a correspondent for a letter brought by Victor, in which the treasure of his heart appeared.
317. 33.2Paulinus protests that he has neither the talent nor the learning his correspondent expects of him; the letter breaks off.
318. 34.1In a sermon on the church’s alms table, Paulinus warns that, like an empty manger, a neglected table for the poor brings loss of soul.
319. 34.2The church’s alms table is God’s bank: giving to the poor is lending to the Lord, as Scripture and the parable of the talents teach.
320. 34.3Paulinus contrasts the good and the wicked servants of the parable and holds up the widow who gave her two mites as the model of heavenly greed.
321. 34.4All we have is God’s gift, and we ourselves were bought by Christ’s blood; giving to the poor returns his gifts so that he may reward us.
322. 34.5God, who needs nothing, opens his treasuries and becomes debtor of his own gifts so as to repay his givers abundantly.
323. 34.6God made some poor to test the rich; the poor at the door are Christ’s guests, and the rich man and Lazarus show that the reckoning will be reversed.
324. 34.7While there is time, the Christian must not come empty to church, lest the prayers of the poor turn into complaints before God, the father of orphans.
325. 34.8Love of oneself alone is iniquity; care for the poor is a holy avarice, the root of good things, yielding a hundredfold.
326. 34.9The devil lies in wait on every road, and life in this world is full of dangers, so one needs the protection of many prayers.
327. 34.10The poor whom one feeds and clothes become a multitude praying for their benefactor, a safeguard in time of need.
328. 35.1Grieving the spiritual neglect of his dead brother, Paulinus asks his spiritual father to pray for the brother’s soul and for himself.
329. 36.1Paulinus praises the brevity and sweetness of Amandus’s letter, which, like a drop of honey or a mustard seed, holds great value.
330. 36.2Paulinus asks Amandus to pray for the soul of his brother, who died more mindful of worldly affairs than of his salvation.
331. 36.3Paulinus asks prayer that he may not die in his sins, but may agree with God’s word while there is time, lest he be condemned like the fool with dead faith.
332. 36.4True peace is Christ’s, who joins God and man in himself and, where body and soul agree, dwells with the Father and Spirit in the heart.
333. 37.1Paulinus thanks Victricius for his letter, brought by Candidianus, and laments that his sins kept Victricius from coming on to Nola from Rome.
334. 37.2Paulinus wishes Victricius had come as a physician to the sick; Christ’s medicine, his assumption of our flesh, is still at work against sin in him.
335. 37.3Paulinus asks Victricius’s prayers against his enemies, confessing that he does not even what he owes, unlike Paul, who gave beyond what was owed.
336. 37.4Paulinus praises Victricius for enduring false accusers unharmed, defended by Christ, and for preaching Christ crucified in Paul’s way.
337. 37.5Paulinus affirms that Victricius teaches the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity: one divinity in three distinct, equal persons.
338. 37.6Victricius confesses Christ truly God and truly man, with a human rational soul and mind, against Apollinaris, for only a whole assumption brings full salvation.
339. 37.7Victricius’s trial has won him glory, like Paul’s sufferings, and advanced the gospel, since his life proves his faith.
340. 38.1Paulinus praises Aper’s confession of Christ crucified as God and reassures him that, though untaught, he possesses true wisdom, as Paul counted worldly learning as dung.
341. 38.2Paulinus congratulates Aper on being hated by the world since his conversion, a sign that he is a true imitator of Christ.
342. 38.3Christ, who has suffered in all his saints from Abel onward, is the one the world hates in Aper; humility in Christ reverses Adam’s pride.
343. 38.4The battle is the Lord’s; let Christians answer their detractors with silence and patience, and Christ will fight and cast out the devil.
344. 38.5The right response to detractors is the humility of sackcloth and fasting, and refutation by life rather than words.
345. 38.6Let the worldly keep their goods; Christians glory in Christ crucified, and the conversions the world mocks are God’s work, which alone changes a man.
346. 38.7God multiplies signs as judgment nears; Aper’s conversion, being a learned man’s, is clear proof of the power of God, who casts down and lifts up.
347. 38.8Aper, once a formidable advocate and judge, has been humbled and enriched in Christ, his bull’s neck bowed to Christ’s yoke.
348. 38.9Paulinus longs to see Aper (‘Boar’), transformed from a forest boar into a lamb of God armed with the two Testaments.
349. 38.10Aper now judges himself and lives in country seclusion, preparing to serve the church in the office to which he has been called.
350. 38.11Paulinus asks Aper’s prayers and letters, and urges him to serve God with the same zeal he once gave to worldly ambition.
351. 39.1Paulinus calls Aper and Amanda his richest estate, already yielding thirtyfold in their married continence and promising a hundredfold in their virgin child.
352. 39.2Property and children are not hindrances but material for virtue; Scripture draws spiritual lessons from farming and nature.
353. 39.3Paulinus urges Aper to cultivate his soul as Christ’s field, with prayer, Scripture, the cross, and the fear of God.
354. 39.4Paulinus, comparing himself to his little cabbage garden, confesses that he has lost the apostolic salt and needs their prayers.
355. 39.5Paulinus asks prayers that the pests of sin may not devour the word sown in him within the Catholic church.
356. 39.6Paulinus prays that Christ, the gardener, guard the garden of his soul from the four passions, figured by Joel’s four pests.
357. 39.7Paulinus interprets Joel’s four pests as stages of a sinful thought, from a passing temptation to an ingrained vice.
358. 39.8Paulinus apologizes for his long letter, trusting their love to forgive him.
359. 40.1There is a time for everything; after a long fast from their letters, Paulinus has been fed by one from Sanctus and longs for more.
360. 40.2Paulinus’s former worldly friendship with Sanctus has become a love in Christ, as strong as death, and Sanctus has been the first to show it.
361. 40.3Paulinus thanks Sanctus for writing again, with Amandus, asks their prayers, and begs them not to praise him.
362. 40.4Paulinus calls for contrition and tears like Jeremiah’s and David’s over sins that have overwhelmed him, trusting in Christ, who heals and frees.
363. 40.5In Christ the times of killing and healing, destroying and building coincide: he kills the sinner in us to make us alive.
364. 40.6Paulinus, old in years but a beginner in the spiritual life, interprets the pelican, the night-owl, and the lone sparrow of Psalm 102, drawing on a learned informant.
365. 40.7The penitent who withdraws to fight sin is the pelican that kills serpents; when victorious, he becomes the owl that sees in the world’s darkness.
366. 40.8The lone sparrow on the housetop is Christ, Wisdom, who fell and rose; the penitent who follows him attains the height of perfection.
367. 40.9Even those raised to perfection must not look back or fly down to the world’s snares, but run to the fragrance of Christ, minding the things above.
368. 40.10Victory over the spiritual enemy belongs to Christ alone, so any good seen in Paulinus is God’s gift, and Sanctus’s praise is really faith in God’s power.
369. 40.11Selling one’s goods is only the start; the harder task is to sell one’s inner self and follow Christ, lest pride in poverty undo the gain.
370. 40.12Paulinus warns of the eternal punishment of hell, from which only Christ, the mighty Lord, delivers, and asks Sanctus’s prayers.
371. 41.1Paulinus thanks Sanctus for the hymns he sent and, recalling the wise and foolish virgins, prays that their souls may be both virgin and fruitful.
372. 41.2The five wise and five foolish virgins are the five senses of each person, kept chaste and fruitful or slack and barren; the foolish virgin is the wisdom of the flesh.
373. 41.3Paulinus prays that Christ may be their head and their oil, and closes, fearing to weary Sanctus and Amandus.
374. 42.1Paulinus thanks a bishop he has never met for his letter, which has given him at once the sweetness of an old friendship.
375. 42.2Paulinus praises Florentius as a shepherd chosen by Christ, who is both Lamb and Shepherd, God and man.
376. 42.3Paulinus prays that God, who made Florentius a fisher of men and shepherd, will keep him mindful of Paulinus in his prayers and offerings.
377. 42.4Paulinus hopes to follow in Florentius’s footsteps to Christ, the rock that followed Israel, founds the house, and poured out water and blood.
378. 42.5Paulinus apologizes for his long letter and asks Florentius to forgive him and offer sacrifice for him as Job did for his friends.
379. 43.1Paulinus explains that Victor’s return was delayed by winter, a grave illness, and the feast of the apostles.
380. 43.2Paulinus explains the varying length of his letters to Severus and asks that Victor’s lateness be blamed on him; Victor recovered through Severus’s prayers.
381. 43.3Paulinus declines to explain the blessings of Jacob that Desiderius asked about, urging him to seek the understanding from God himself.
382. 43.4Like the barren fig tree Christ cursed, Paulinus has disappointed Desiderius; he asks him to curse not himself but his barrenness, so that he may bear fruit.
383. 43.5Mark’s note that it was not the season for figs shows that the fig tree was a figure: Christ sought the fruit of faith from the synagogue and received gall and vinegar.
384. 43.6Paulinus asks Desiderius to pray that he be given time to repent and bear fruit at every season, like the fig tree spared another year.
385. 43.7Christ, who knew the seasons, sought fruit out of season to teach that a Christian must be ready to bear fruit for God at all times.
386. 44.1Overwhelmed by Aper’s rich letter, which he cannot repay, Paulinus asks Christ to pay his debt and bless Aper.
387. 44.2Paulinus rejoices in Aper’s letter as in great spoil, for it reveals a heart full of faith, love, and longing for God.
388. 44.3Aper’s letter shows his vices dashed against Christ, Christ resting in his heart, and his wife joined to him in continence after the pattern of Christ and the church.
389. 44.4Aper and Amanda remain married but live in continence; Amanda manages their property and gives alms so that Aper may be free for the service of the church, like the valiant woman of Proverbs.
390. 44.5Paulinus prays that Aper’s children may be fed on divine wisdom and grow up like the sons of the prophets and the faithful sons of Aaron.
391. 44.6Only the fire of Christ may burn on the heart’s altar; Paulinus asks Aper and his household to water his barren garden with prayer.
392. 44.7Paulinus asks prayer that God make his barren soul fruitful, through the dung of humility, like the fig tree spared by the farmer’s intercession.
393. 45.1Paulinus received Augustine’s letter through the deacon Quintus at Rome, where he had gone for the feast of the apostles, and read it at leisure at Formiae.
394. 45.2Paulinus thanks Augustine for his understanding of Melania’s tears at her son’s death: she wept less for his death than because he died before renouncing worldly rank.
395. 45.3Melania’s son, though a senator, died meek and generous, and his family now bears his blessing; Paulinus defers to Augustine’s praise of Melania.
396. 45.4Before answering Augustine’s question on the life of the blessed, Paulinus asks to learn how to die to the world as Augustine has.
397. 45.5Love, strong as death, makes us die to the world in Christ’s death, so that we may share his resurrection and praise God for ever in his house.
398. 45.6Paulinus suggests that the risen saints, with real though spiritual bodies like Christ’s, will praise God with tongues and voices, perhaps in the unspeakable language of angels.
399. 45.7Paulinus asks Augustine how angels and the blessed speak, whether ‘tongues of angels’ means a real angelic language or merely kinds of speech.
400. 45.8Paulinus excuses the haste of his reply, demanded by Quintus, who was eager to return to Augustine.
401. 46.1Paulinus is refreshed by Rufinus’s short letter but saddened by his anxious, uncertain stay in Rome.
402. 46.2Paulinus welcomes Rufinus’s advice to study Greek, but admits his translation of Clement was partly guesswork and he needs a teacher.
403. 46.3Prompted by reading Jacob’s blessing of Judah, Paulinus asks Rufinus to explain the blessings of the patriarchs, especially the foal bound to the vine.
404. 47.1Paulinus sends a letter to Rufinus by Cerealis, hoping Cerealis will stay as his disciple, and that Rufinus will visit Nola before returning East.
405. 47.2Paulinus asks Rufinus, who has already explained Judah’s blessing in a threefold sense, to explain the blessings of the other eleven patriarchs.
406. 48.1A fragment praising eight contemporary bishops of Gaul as worthy guardians of the faith.
407. 49.1Paulinus tells how a grain ship of Secundinianus, caught in a winter storm off Sardinia, lost its crew and was swept out to sea with only an old bilge-man aboard.
408. 49.2Alone for six days without food, the old sailor was visited by Christ, who strengthened him, had him cut the mast, and named him Victor; he was later baptized under that name.
409. 49.3Angels sailed the ship, and Christ himself, sometimes in the likeness of St. Felix, steered it and comforted the old man.
410. 49.4Christ, present in his saints, cherished this catechumen, for he loves all his creatures and wills every man to be saved.
411. 49.5Christ heard the poor sailor’s cry, as in the psalms, calmed the sea, and fed him, showing in one man the mercy he has for all.
412. 49.6Christ let the old man sleep at night but keep watch by day, teaching the balance of rest and vigilance that he asks of all Christians.
413. 49.7For twenty-three days the old man survived alone at sea, plainly kept alive by God, like Noah in the ark.
414. 49.8The ship drifted past Rome, Campania, Africa, and Sicily, and on the twenty-third day reached Lucania, where fishermen towed it into harbor; Paulinus contrasts it with the pagan legends of the Argo and of Asclepius’s ship.
415. 49.9Rather than pagan fables, Scripture supplies true parallels: Noah’s ark, Jonah’s ship of Tarshish, and Paul’s ship.
416. 49.10The ship mirrors Noah’s ark, an image of the church, and surpasses Jonah’s ship, since all were lost but one; it is also like the whale that carried Jonah safely.
417. 49.11Paul’s shipwreck and the new ship that carried the saved to Rome figure baptism and the church; the old sailor’s rescue shows God’s care for the humble.
418. 49.12Paulinus asks whether worldly rank compares with the honor shown to this poor old sailor, who, like Israel, Moses, and John, saw Christ and received a new name.
419. 49.13The old man’s favor came by grace, not works; simple and innocent, he has now been baptized.
420. 49.14Paulinus sends the old man to Macarius as a living relic, more worthy of reverence than the holy places of Jerusalem, since Christ himself touched him.
421. 49.15Paulinus asks Macarius to help Secundinianus recover the ship’s cargo, stolen when it beached by the steward of the senator Postumianus, while asking leniency for the thief.
422. 50.1In haste, Paulinus puts a few questions on Scripture to Augustine.
423. 50.2Paulinus asks the meaning of Ps 16:3–4 (15 in the Latin) and suggests that the ‘saints on earth’ are the Jews holy only by descent, like the self-righteous Pharisee.
424. 50.3The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector shows that God rejects self-righteousness and justifies the humble by faith, as Paul says of the Jews who sought their own righteousness.
425. 50.4God made his will wonderful among Israel by the law and by the incarnation and miracles of Christ, yet their unbelief multiplied their infirmities.
426. 50.5Paulinus asks whether ‘afterward they made haste’ means haste to repentance, as at Pentecost, or haste to demand Christ’s crucifixion.
427. 50.6Paulinus asks the meaning of Ps 17:14 (16 in the Latin), which some psalters read as ‘filled with pork’ and others ‘filled with sons.’
428. 50.7Paulinus asks why Ps 59 (58 in the Latin) prays that the Jews not be killed ‘lest they forget your law,’ and suggests reasons, including the elect of Israel sealed in Revelation.
429. 50.8Paulinus asks the meaning of the ‘crown of the hair’ and ‘the tongue of your dogs’ in Ps 68 (67 in the Latin).
430. 50.9Paulinus asks Augustine to distinguish apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers in Eph 4:11, especially pastors from teachers.
431. 50.10Paulinus asks how supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings in 1 Tim 2:1 differ.
432. 50.11Paulinus asks how, according to Rom 11:28, the Jews can be both enemies for the Gentiles’ sake and beloved for the fathers’ sake, and how they can be beloved yet perish.
433. 50.12Paulinus asks what ‘the religion of angels’ in Col 2:18 means, and suggests it refers to heretics teaching visions they have not seen.
434. 50.13Paulinus asks Augustine to explain Col 2:21–23, puzzled that Paul ascribes a show of wisdom and humility to false teachers and that ‘not sparing the body’ sits beside ‘satisfying the flesh.’
435. 50.14Paulinus asks Augustine to resend or rewrite a short letter on the resurrection body that he had written him earlier.
436. 50.15Paulinus asks why the risen Christ, in the same body, was sometimes not recognized by those who knew him.
437. 50.16Paulinus suggests that Christ’s ‘Do not touch me’ refers to Mary Magdalene’s not yet having grasped by faith that he is God.
438. 50.17Paulinus asks whether Simeon’s sword means a passion of Mary or her grief at the cross, and reads Christ’s giving her to John as showing she had no other son.
439. 50.18Paulinus suggests that the sword through Mary’s soul is the word of God, sharper than any sword, and asks Augustine how it served to reveal the thoughts of many hearts.
440. 51.1Paulinus thanks God for monks sent by Honoratus of Lérins, who brought news that Eucherius and Galla are well.
441. 51.2Knowing that Eucherius and Galla live on Lero near Honoratus’s island of Lerinum, Paulinus sends this letter by the monks.
442. 51.3Paulinus hopes for replies but trusts that their friendship, joined by God, endures even in silence.
443. 51.4Paulinus blesses Eucherius and Galla and their children dedicated to God.