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Letter CVII.
To Laeta.
Laeta, the daughter-in-law of Paula, having written from
Rome to ask Jerome how she ought to bring up her infant daughter (also
called Paula) as a virgin consecrated to Christ, Jerome now instructs
her in detail as to the child’s training and education. Feeling
some doubt, however, as to whether the scheme proposed by him will be
practicable at Rome, he advises Laeta in case of difficulty to send
Paula to Bethlehem where she will be under the care of her grandmother
and aunt, the elder Paula and Eustochium. Laeta subsequently accepted
Jerome’s advice and sent the child to Bethlehem where she
eventually succeeded Eustochium as head of the nunnery founded by her
grandmother. The date of the letter is 403 a.d.
1. The apostle Paul writing to the Corinthians and
instructing in sacred discipline a church still untaught in Christ has
among other commandments laid down also this: “The woman which
hath an husband that believeth not, and if he be pleased to dwell with
her, let her not leave him. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified
by the believing wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the
believing husband; else were your children unclean but now are they
holy.”2663
Should any person have supposed
hitherto that the bonds of discipline are too far relaxed and that too
great indulgence is conceded by the teacher, let him look at the house
of your father, a man of the highest distinction and learning, but one
still walking in darkness; and he will perceive as the result of the
apostle’s counsel sweet fruit growing from a bitter stock and
precious balsams exhaled from common canes. You yourself are the
offspring of a mixed marriage; but the parents of Paula—you and
my friend Toxotius—are both Christians. Who could have believed
that to the heathen pontiff Albinus should be born—in answer to a
mother’s vows—a Christian granddaughter; that a delighted
grandfather should hear from the little one’s faltering lips
Christ’s Alleluia, and that in his old age he should nurse in his
bosom one of God’s own virgins? Our expectations have been fully
gratified. The one unbeliever is sanctified by his holy and believing
family. For, when a man is surrounded by a believing crowd of children
and grandchildren, he is as good as
a candidate for the faith. I for my part think that, had he possessed
so many Christian kinsfolk when he was a young man, he might then have
been brought to believe in Christ. For though he may spit upon my
letter and laugh at it, and though he may call me a fool or a madman,
his son-in-law did the same before he came to believe. Christians are
not born but made. For all its gilding the Capitol is beginning to look
dingy. Every temple in Rome is covered with soot and cobwebs. The city
is stirred to its depths and the people pour past their half-ruined
shrines to visit the tombs of the martyrs. The belief which has not
been accorded to conviction may come to be extorted by very shame.
2. I speak thus to you, Laeta my most devout daughter in
Christ, to teach you not to despair of your father’s salvation.
My hope is that the same faith which has gained you your daughter may
win your father too, and that so you may be able to rejoice over
blessings bestowed upon your entire family. You know the Lord’s
promise: “The things which are impossible with men are possible
with God.”2664
It is never too
late to mend. The robber passed even from the cross to paradise.2665
Nebuchadnezzar also, the king of Babylon,
recovered his reason, even after he had been made like the beasts in
body and in heart and had been compelled to live with the brutes in the
wilderness.2666
And to pass over such old stories
which to unbelievers may well seem incredible, did not your own kinsman
Gracchus whose name betokens his patrician origin, when a few years
back he held the prefecture of the City, overthrow, break in pieces,
and shake to pieces the grotto of Mithras2667
| 2667 The Persian
sun-god, at this time one of the most popular deities of the Roman
pantheon. Gracchus appears to have done this as Urban Prætor, A.
C. 378. | and all the dreadful images therein?
Those I mean by which the worshippers were initiated as Raven,
Bridegroom, Soldier, Lion, Perseus, Sun, Crab, and Father? Did he not,
I repeat, destroy these and then, sending them before him as hostages,
obtain for himself Christian baptism?
Even in Rome itself paganism is left in solitude. They
who once were the gods of the nations remain under their lonely roofs
with horned-owls and birds of night. The standards of the military are
emblazoned with the sign of the Cross. The emperor’s robes of
purple and his diadem sparkling with jewels are ornamented with
representations of the shameful yet saving gibbet. Already the Egyptian
Serapis has been made a Christian;2668
| 2668 In the year 389
a.d. the temple of Serapis at Alexandria had
been pulled down and a Christian church built upon its site. | while at
Gaza Marnas2669
| 2669 Elsewhere (Life of
Hilarion § 20) Jerome relates an extraordinary story about the
discomfiture of this ‘demon.’ | mourns in confinement and every
moment expects to see his temple overturned. From India, from Persia,
from Ethiopia we daily welcome monks in crowds. The Armenian bowman has
laid aside his quiver, the Huns learn the psalter, the chilly Scythians
are warmed with the glow of the faith. The Getæ,2670
ruddy and yellow-haired, carry
tent-churches about with their armies: and perhaps their success in
fighting against us may be due to the fact that they believe in the
same religion.
3. I have nearly wandered into a new subject, and while
I have kept my wheel going, my hands have been moulding a flagon when
it has been my object to frame an ewer.2671
| 2671 Cf. Hor. A.P., 21,
22. Amphora caepit Institui: currente rota cur urceus exit? | For, in answer to your prayers and those
of the saintly Marcella, I wish to address you as a mother and to
instruct you how to bring up our dear Paula, who has been consecrated
to Christ before her birth and vowed to His service before her
conception. Thus in our own day we have seen repeated the story told us
in the Prophets,2672
| 2672 The books of
Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings are called in the Hebrew Bible the
Former Prophets. | of Hannah, who
though at first barren afterwards became fruitful. You have exchanged a
fertility bound up with sorrow for offspring which shall never die. For
I am confident that having given to the Lord your first-born you will
be the mother of sons. It is the first-born that is offered under the
Law.2673
Samuel and Samson are both instances
of this, as is also John the Baptist who when Mary came in leaped for
joy.2674
For he heard the Lord speaking by the
mouth of the Virgin and desired to break from his mother’s womb
to meet Him. As then Paula has been born in answer to a promise, her
parents should give her a training suitable to her birth. Samuel, as
you know, was nurtured in the Temple, and John was trained in the
wilderness. The first as a Nazarite wore his hair long, drank neither
wine nor strong drink, and even in his childhood talked with God. The
second shunned cities, wore a leathern girdle, and had for his meat
locusts and wild honey.2675
Moreover, to
typify that penitence which he was to preach, he was clothed in the
spoils of the hump-backed camel.2676
| 2676 Cf. Letter LXXIX.
§ 3. Apparently Jerome means that the difficulty of penitence is
as great as that of the camel passing through the eye of a needle.
John, he implies, by wearing the camel’s hair shows that he has
surmounted this. |
4. Thus must a soul be educated which is to be a temple
of God. It must learn to hear nothing and to say nothing but what
belongs to the fear of God. It must have no understanding of unclean words, and no knowledge of
the world’s songs. Its tongue must be steeped while still tender
in the sweetness of the psalms. Boys with their wanton thoughts must be
kept from Paula: even her maids and female attendants must be separated
from worldly associates. For if they have learned some mischief they
may teach more. Get for her a set of letters made of boxwood or of
ivory and called each by its proper name. Let her play with these, so
that even her play may teach her something. And not only make her grasp
the right order of the letters and see that she forms their names into
a rhyme, but constantly disarrange their order and put the last letters
in the middle and the middle ones at the beginning that she may know
them all by sight as well as by sound. Moreover, so soon as she begins
to use the style upon the wax, and her hand is still faltering, either
guide her soft fingers by laying your hand upon hers, or else have
simple copies cut upon a tablet; so that her efforts confined within
these limits may keep to the lines traced out for her and not stray
outside of these. Offer prizes for good spelling and draw her onwards
with little gifts such as children of her age delight in. And let her
have companions in her lessons to excite emulation in her, that she may
be stimulated when she sees them praised. You must not scold her if she
is slow to learn but must employ praise to excite her mind, so that she
may be glad when she excels others and sorry when she is excelled by
them. Above all you must take care not to make her lessons distasteful
to her lest a dislike for them conceived in childhood may continue into
her maturer years. The very words which she tries bit by bit to put
together and to pronounce ought not to be chance ones, but names
specially fixed upon and heaped together for the purpose, those for
example of the prophets or the apostles or the list of patriarchs from
Adam downwards as it is given by Matthew and Luke. In this way while
her tongue will be well-trained, her memory will be likewise developed.
Again, you must choose for her a master of approved years, life, and
learning. A man of culture will not, I think, blush to do for a
kinswoman or a highborn virgin what Aristotle did for Philip’s
son when, descending to the level of an usher, he consented to teach
him his letters.2677
| 2677 Quintilian,
Inst. I. 1. | Things must
not be despised as of small account in the absence of which great
results cannot be achieved. The very rudiments and first beginnings of
knowledge sound differently in the mouth of an educated man and of an
uneducated. Accordingly you must see that the child is not led away by
the silly coaxing of women to form a habit of shortening long words or
of decking herself with gold and purple. Of these habits one will spoil
her conversation and the other her character. She must not therefore
learn as a child what afterwards she will have to unlearn. The
eloquence of the Gracchi is said to have been largely due to the way in
which from their earliest years their mother spoke to them.2678
Hortensius2679
| 2679 The contemporary
and rival of Cicero. | became an orator while still on his
father’s lap. Early impressions are hard to eradicate from the
mind. When once wool has been dyed purple who can restore it to its
previous whiteness? An unused jar long retains the taste and smell of
that with which it is first filled.2680
| 2680 Horace, Epist. I.
ii. 69. | Grecian
history tells us that the imperious Alexander who was lord of the whole
world could not rid himself of the tricks of manner and gait which in
his childhood he had caught from his governor Leonides.2681
We are always ready to imitate what is
evil; and faults are quickly copied where virtues appear inattainable.
Paula’s nurse must not be intemperate, or loose, or given to
gossip. Her bearer must be respectable, and her foster-father of grave
demeanour. When she sees her grandfather, she must leap upon his
breast, put her arms round his neck, and, whether he likes it or not,
sing Alleluia in his ears. She may be fondled by her grandmother, may
smile at her father to shew that she recognizes him, and may so endear
herself to everyone, as to make the whole family rejoice in the
possession of such a rosebud. She should be told at once whom she has
for her other grandmother and whom for her aunt; and she ought also to
learn in what army it is that she is enrolled as a recruit, and what
Captain it is under whose banner she is called to serve. Let her long
to be with the absent ones and encourage her to make playful threats of
leaving you for them.
5. Let her very dress and garb remind her to Whom she is
promised. Do not pierce her ears or paint her face consecrated to
Christ with white lead or rouge. Do not hang gold or pearls about her
neck or load her head with jewels, or by reddening her hair make it
suggest the fires of gehenna. Let her pearls be of another kind and
such that she may sell them hereafter and buy in their place the pearl
that is “of great price.”2682
In days gone by a lady of rank,
Prætextata by name, at the bidding of her husband Hymettius, the
uncle of Eustochium, altered that virgin’s dress and appearance
and arranged her neglected hair after the manner of the world, desiring
to overcome the resolution of the virgin herself and the expressed
wishes of her mother. But lo in the
same night it befell her that an angel came to her in her dreams. With
terrible looks he menaced punishment and broke silence with these
words, ‘Have you presumed to put your husband’s commands
before those of Christ? Have you presumed to lay sacrilegious hands
upon the head of one who is God’s virgin? Those hands shall
forthwith wither that you may know by torment what you have done, and
at the end of five months you shall be carried off to hell.2683
And farther, if you persist still in
your wickedness, you shall be bereaved both of your husband and of your
children.’ All of which came to pass in due time, a speedy death
marking the penitence too long delayed of the unhappy woman. So
terribly does Christ punish those who violate His temple,2684
and so jealously does He defend His
precious jewels. I have related this story here not from any desire to
exult over the misfortunes of the unhappy, but to warn you that you
must with much fear and carefulness keep the vow which you have made to
God.
6. We read of Eli the priest that he became displeasing
to God on account of the sins of his children;2685
and we are told that a man may not be
made a bishop if his sons are loose and disorderly.2686
On the other hand it is written of the
woman that “she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue
in faith and charity and holiness with chastity.”2687
| 2687 1 Tim. ii. 15 A.V. has ‘sobriety’ for
‘chastity’ but Jerome deliberately prefers the latter
word. | If then parents are responsible for
their children when these are of ripe age and independent; how much
more must they be responsible for them when, still unweaned and weak,
they cannot, in the Lord’s words, “discern between their
right hand and their left:”2688
—when, that is to say, they
cannot yet distinguish good from evil? If you take precautions to save
your daughter from the bite of a viper, why are you not equally careful
to shield her from “the hammer of the whole earth”?2689
to prevent her from drinking of the
golden cup of Babylon? to keep her from going out with Dinah to see the
daughters of a strange land?2690
to save her from
the tripping dance and from the trailing robe? No one administers drugs
till he has rubbed the rim of the cup with honey;2691
| 2691 Lucretius, I. 936,
sqq. | so, the better to deceive us, vice puts
on the mien and the semblance of virtue. Why then, you will say, do we
read:—“the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father,
neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son,” but
“the soul that sinneth it shall die”?2692
The passage, I answer, refers to those
who have discretion, such as he of whom his parents said in the
gospel:—“he is of age…he shall speak for
himself.”2693
While the son
is a child and thinks as a child and until he comes to years of
discretion to choose between the two roads to which the letter of
Pythagoras points,2694
| 2694 The letter Y used
by Pythagoras to symbolize the diverging paths of good and evil. Cf.
Persius. iii. 56. | his parents are
responsible for his actions whether these be good or bad. But perhaps
you imagine that, if they are not baptized, the children of Christians
are liable for their own sins; and that no guilt attaches to parents
who withhold from baptism those who by reason of their tender age can
offer no objection to it. The truth is that, as baptism ensures the
salvation of the child, this in turn brings advantage to the parents.
Whether you would offer your child or not lay within your choice, but
now that you have offered her, you neglect her at your peril. I speak
generally for in your case you have no discretion, having offered your
child even before her conception. He who offers a victim that is lame
or maimed or marked with any blemish is held guilty of sacrilege.2695
How much more then shall she be punished
who makes ready for the embraces of the king a portion of her own body
and the purity of a stainless soul, and then proves negligent of this
her offering?
7. When Paula comes to be a little older and to increase
like her Spouse in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and man,2696
let her go with her parents to the
temple of her true Father but let her not come out of the temple with
them. Let them seek her upon the world’s highway amid the crowds
and the throng of their kinsfolk, and let them find her nowhere but in
the shrine of the scriptures,2697
questioning
the prophets and the apostles on the meaning of that spiritual marriage
to which she is vowed. Let her imitate the retirement of Mary whom
Gabriel found alone in her chamber and who was frightened,2698
it would appear, by seeing a man
there. Let the child emulate her of whom it is written that “the
king’s daughter is all glorious within.”2699
Wounded with love’s arrow let her
say to her beloved, “the king hath brought me into his
chambers.”2700
At no time let her
go abroad, lest the watchmen find her that go about the city, and lest
they smite and wound her and take away from her the veil of her
chastity,2701
and leave her naked in her blood.2702
Nay rather when one knocketh at her
door2703
let her say: “I am a wall and my
breasts like towers.2704
I have washed my feet; how shall I defile
them?”2705
8. Let her not take her food with others, that is, at
her parents’ table; lest she see dishes she may long for. Some, I
know, hold it a greater virtue to disdain a pleasure which is actually
before them, but I think it a safer self-restraint to shun what must
needs attract you. Once as a boy at school I met the words: ‘It
is ill blaming what you allow to become a habit.’2706
| 2706 Again quoted in
Letter CXXVIII. § 4. | Let her learn even now not to drink wine
“wherein is excess.”2707
But as,
before children come to a robust age, abstinence is dangerous and
trying to their tender frames, let her have baths if she require them,
and let her take a little wine for her stomach’s sake.2708
Let her also be supported on a flesh
diet, lest her feet fail her before they commence to run their course.
But I say this by way of concession not by way of command; because I
fear to weaken her, not because I wish to teach her self-indulgence.
Besides why should not a Christian virgin do wholly what others do in
part? The superstitious Jews reject certain animals and products as
articles of food, while among the Indians the Brahmans and among the
Egyptians the Gymnosophists subsist altogether on porridge, rice, and
apples. If mere glass repays so much labour, must not a pearl be worth
more labour still?2709
Paula has been
born in response to a vow. Let her life be as the lives of those who
were born under the same conditions. If the grace accorded is in both
cases the same, the pains bestowed ought to be so too. Let her be deaf
to the sound of the organ, and not know even the uses of the pipe, the
lyre, and the cithern.
9. And let it be her task daily to bring to you the
flowers which she has culled from scripture. Let her learn by heart so
many verses in the Greek, but let her be instructed in the Latin also.
For, if the tender lips are not from the first shaped to this, the
tongue is spoiled by a foreign accent and its native speech debased by
alien elements. You must yourself be her mistress, a model on which she
may form her childish conduct. Never either in you nor in her father
let her see what she cannot imitate without sin. Remember both of you
that you are the parents of a consecrated virgin, and that your example
will teach her more than your precepts. Flowers are quick to fade and a
baleful wind soon withers the violet, the lily, and the crocus. Let her
never appear in public unless accompanied by you. Let her never visit a
church or a martyr’s shrine unless with her mother. Let no young
man greet her with smiles; no dandy with curled hair pay compliments to
her. If our little virgin goes to keep solemn eves and all-night
vigils, let her not stir a hair’s breadth from her mother’s
side. She must not single out one of her maids to make her a special
favourite or a confidante. What she says to one all ought to know. Let
her choose for a companion not a handsome well-dressed girl, able to
warble a song with liquid notes but one pale and serious, sombrely
attired and with the hue of melancholy. Let her take as her model some
aged virgin of approved faith, character, and chastity, apt to instruct
her by word and by example. She ought to rise at night to recite
prayers and psalms; to sing hymns in the morning; at the third, sixth,
and ninth hours to take her place in the line to do battle for Christ;
and, lastly, to kindle her lamp and to offer her evening sacrifice.2710
| 2710 See note on Letter
XXII. § 37. | In these occupations let her pass the day,
and when night comes let it find her still engaged in them. Let reading
follow prayer with her, and prayer again succeed to reading. Time will
seem short when employed on tasks so many and so varied.
10. Let her learn too how to spin wool, to hold the
distaff, to put the basket in her lap, to turn the spinning wheel and
to shape the yarn with her thumb. Let her put away with disdain silken
fabrics, Chinese fleeces,2711
| 2711 A Virgilian
expression, 9, II., 121. | and gold
brocades: the clothing which she makes for herself should keep out the
cold and not expose the body which it professes to cover. Let her food
be herbs and wheaten bread2712
| 2712 Simila, but
as elsewhere (L. 52, 6) this is spoken of as a luxury, perhaps we
should read similia = ‘and such like.’ | with now and
then one or two small fishes. And that I may not waste more time in
giving precepts for the regulation of appetite (a subject I have
treated more at length elsewhere)2713
| 2713 Jerome refers to
his second book against Jovinian. | let her
meals always leave her hungry and able on the moment to begin reading
or chanting. I strongly disapprove—especially for those of tender
years—of long and immoderate fasts in which week is added to week
and even oil and apples are forbidden as food. I have learned by
experience that the ass toiling along the high way makes for an inn
when it is weary.2714
| 2714 Cf. the dying
words of S. Francis (which have a similar reference) ‘I have
sinned against my brother the ass.’ | Our abstinence
may turn to glutting, like that of the worshippers of Isis and of
Cybele who gobble up pheasants and turtle-doves piping hot that their
teeth may not violate the gifts of Ceres.2715
If perpetual fasting is allowed, it must be so regulated that those who
have a long journey before them may hold out all through; and we must
take care that we do not, after starting well, fall halfway. However in
Lent, as I have written before now, those who practise self-denial should spread every stitch
of canvas, and the charioteer should for once slacken the reins and
increase the speed of his horses. Yet there will be one rule for those
who live in the world and another for virgins and monks. The layman in
Lent consumes the coats of his stomach, and living like a snail on his
own juices makes ready a paunch for rich foods and feasting to come.
But with the virgin and the monk the case is different; for, when these
give the rein to their steeds, they have to remember that for them the
race knows of no intermission. An effort made only for a limited time
may well be severe, but one that has no such limit must be more
moderate. For whereas in the first case we can recover our breath when
the race is over, in the last we have to go on continually and without
stopping.
11. When you go a short way into the country, do not
leave your daughter behind you. Leave her no power or capacity of
living without you, and let her feel frightened when she is left to
herself. Let her not converse with people of the world or associate
with virgins indifferent to their vows. Let her not be present at the
weddings of your slaves and let her take no part in the noisy games of
the household. As regards the use of the bath, I know that some are
content with saying that a Christian virgin should not bathe along with
eunuchs or with married women, with the former because they are still
men, at all events in mind, and with the latter because women with
child offer a revolting spectacle. For myself, however, I wholly
disapprove of baths for a virgin of full age. Such an one should blush
and feel overcome at the idea of seeing herself undressed. By vigils
and fasts she mortifies her body and brings it into subjection. By a
cold chastity she seeks to put out the flame of lust and to quench the
hot desires of youth. And by a deliberate squalor she makes haste to
spoil her natural good looks. Why, then, should she add fuel to a
sleeping fire by taking baths?
12. Let her treasures be not silks or gems but
manuscripts of the holy scriptures; and in these let her think less of
gilding, and Babylonian parchment, and arabesque patterns,2716
| 2716 Vermiculata
pictura. | than of correctness and accurate
punctuation. Let her begin by learning the psalter, and then let her
gather rules of life out of the proverbs of Solomon. From the Preacher
let her gain the habit of despising the world and its vanities.2717
| 2717 Jerome tells us
that he read the book with Blaesilla for this purpose. | Let her follow the example set in Job
of virtue and of patience. Then let her pass on to the gospels never to
be laid aside when once they have been taken in hand. Let her also
drink in with a willing heart the Acts of the Apostles and the
Epistles. As soon as she has enriched the storehouse of her mind with
these treasures, let her commit to memory the prophets, the
heptateuch,2718
| 2718 i.e.
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges. | the books of Kings and of
Chronicles, the rolls also of Ezra and Esther. When she has done all
these she may safely read the Song of Songs but not before: for, were
she to read it at the beginning, she would fail to perceive that,
though it is written in fleshly words, it is a marriage song of a
spiritual bridal. And not understanding this she would suffer hurt from
it. Let her avoid all apocryphal writings, and if she is led to read
such not by the truth of the doctrines which they contain but out of
respect for the miracles contained in them; let her understand that
they are not really written by those to whom they are ascribed, that
many faulty elements have been introduced into them, and that it
requires infinite discretion to look for gold in the midst of dirt.
Cyprian’s writings let her have always in her hands. The letters
of Athanasius2719
| 2719 Of these a large
number are still extant. Over twenty of them are “festal
epistles” announcing to the churches the correct day on which to
celebrate Easter. | and the
treatises of Hilary2720
| 2720 These include
commentaries on many parts of Scripture and a work on the Trinity. | she may go
through without fear of stumbling. Let her take pleasure in the works
and wits of all in whose books a due regard for the faith is not
neglected. But if she reads the works of others let it be rather to
judge them than to follow them.
13. You will answer, ‘How shall I, a woman of the
world, living at Rome, surrounded by a crowd, be able to observe all
these injunctions?’ In that case do not undertake a burthen to
which you are not equal. When you have weaned Paula as Isaac was weaned
and when you have clothed her as Samuel was clothed, send her to her
grandmother and aunt; give up this most precious of gems, to be placed
in Mary’s chamber and to rest in the cradle where the infant
Jesus cried. Let her be brought up in a monastery, let her be one amid
companies of virgins, let her learn to avoid swearing, let her regard
lying as sacrilege, let her be ignorant of the world, let her live the
angelic life, while in the flesh let her be without the flesh, and let
her suppose that all human beings are like herself. To say nothing of
its other advantages this course will free you from the difficult task
of minding her, and from the responsibility of guardianship. It is
better to regret her absence than to be for ever trembling for her. For
you cannot but tremble as you watch what she says and to whom she says it, to whom she bows
and whom she likes best to see. Hand her over to Eustochium while she
is still but an infant and her every cry is a prayer for you. She will
thus become her companion in holiness now as well as her successor
hereafter. Let her gaze upon and love, let her “from her earliest
years admire”2721
| 2721 Virgil, A. viii.
507. | one whose
language and gait and dress are an education in virtue.2722
Let her sit in the lap of her
grandmother, and let this latter repeat to her granddaughter the
lessons that she once bestowed upon her own child. Long experience has
shewn Paula how to rear, to preserve, and to instruct virgins; and
daily inwoven in her crown is the mystic century which betokens the
highest chastity.2723
| 2723 The number 100
denotes virginity to which in her own person Paula could have no claim.
See note on Letter XLVIII. § 2. | O happy
virgin! happy Paula, daughter of Toxotius, who through the virtues of
her grandmother and aunt is nobler in holiness than she is in lineage!
Yes, Laeta: were it possible for you with your own eyes to see your
mother-in-law and your sister, and to realize the mighty souls which
animate their small bodies; such is your innate thirst for chastity
that I cannot doubt but that you would go to them even before your
daughter, and would emancipate yourself from God’s first decree
of the Law2724
to put yourself under His second
dispensation of the Gospel.2725
You would count
as nothing your desire for other offspring and would offer up yourself
to the service of God. But because “there is a time to embrace,
and a time to refrain from embracing,”2726
and because “the wife hath not
power of her own body,”2727
and because
the apostle says “Let every man abide in the same calling wherein
he was called”2728
in the Lord,
and because he that is under the yoke ought so to run as not to leave
his companion in the mire, I counsel you to pay back to the full in
your offspring what meantime you defer paying in your own person. When
Hannah had once offered in the tabernacle the son whom she had vowed to
God she never took him back; for she thought it unbecoming that one who
was to be a prophet should grow up in the same house with her who still
desired to have other children. Accordingly after she had conceived him
and given him birth, she did not venture to come to the temple alone or
to appear before the Lord empty, but first paid to Him what she owed;
and then, when she had offered up that great sacrifice, she returned
home and because she had borne her firstborn for God, she was given
five children for herself.2729
Do you marvel
at the happiness of that holy woman? Imitate her faith. Moreover, if
you will only send Paula, I promise to be myself both a tutor and a
foster father to her. Old as I am I will carry her on my shoulders and
train her stammering lips; and my charge will be a far grander one than
that of the worldly philosopher;2730
| 2730 The allusion is to
Aristotle who was tutor to Alexander, King of Macedon. | for while
he only taught a King of Macedon who was one day to die of Babylonian
poison, I shall instruct the handmaid and spouse of Christ who must one
day be offered to her Lord in heaven.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
