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| To Heliodorus.
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Letter
LX. To Heliodorus.
One of Jerome’s finest letters, written to console
his old friend, Heliodorus, now Bp. of Altinum, for the loss of his
nephew Nepotian who had died of fever a short time previously. Jerome
tries to soothe his friend’s grief (1) by contrasting pagan
despair or resignation with Christian hope, (2) by an eulogy of the
departed both as man and presbyter, and (3) by a review of the evils
which then beset the Empire and from which, as he contended, Nepotian
had been removed. The letter is marked throughout with deep and sincere
feeling. Its date is 396 a.d.
1. Small wits cannot grapple large themes but venturing
beyond their strength fail in the very attempt; and, the greater a
subject is, the more completely is he overwhelmed who cannot find words
to unfold its grandeur. Nepotian who was mine and yours and
ours—or rather who was Christ’s and because Christ’s
all the more ours—has forsaken us his elders so that we are
smitten with pangs of regret and overcome with a grief which is past
bearing. We supposed him our heir, yet now his corpse is all that is
ours. For whom shall my intellect now labour? Whom shall my poor letters desire to please? Where is he,
the impeller of my work, whose voice was sweeter than a swan’s
last song? My mind is dazed, my hand trembles, a mist covers my eyes,
stammering seizes my tongue. Whatever my words, they seem as good as
unspoken seeing that he no longer hears them. My very pen seems to feel
his loss, my very wax tablet looks dull and sad; the one is covered
with rust, the other with mould. As often as I try to express myself in
words and to scatter the flowers of this encomium upon his tomb, my
eyes fill with tears, my grief returns, and I can think of nothing but
his death. It was a custom in former days for children over the dead
bodies of their parents publicly to proclaim their praises and (as when
pathetic songs are sung) to draw tears from the eyes and sighs from the
breasts of those who heard them. But in our case, behold, the order of
things is changed: to deal us this blow nature has forfeited her
rights. For the respect which the young man should have paid to his
elders, we his elders are paying to him.
2. What shall I do then? Shall I join my tears to yours?
The apostle forbids me for he speaks of dead Christians as “them
which are asleep.”1805
So too in the
gospel the Lord says, “the damsel is not dead but
sleepeth,”1806
and Lazarus when
he is raised from the dead is said to have been asleep.1807
No, I will be glad and rejoice that
“speedily he was taken away lest that wickedness should alter his
understanding” for “his soul pleased the Lord.”1808
But though I am loth to give way and
combat my feelings, tears flow down my cheeks, and in spite of the
teachings of virtue and the hope of the resurrection a passion of
regret crushes my too yielding mind. O death that dividest brothers
knit together in love, how cruel, how ruthless thou art so to sunder
them! “The Lord hath fetched a burning wind that cometh up from
the wilderness: which hath dried thy veins and hath made thy well
spring desolate.”1809
Thou didst
swallow up our Jonah, but even in thy belly He still lived. Thou didst
carry Him as one dead, that the world’s storm might be stilled
and our Nineveh saved by His preaching. He, yes He, conquered thee, He
slew thee, that fugitive prophet who left His home, gave up His
inheritance and surrendered his dear life into the hands of those who
sought it. He it was who of old threatened thee in Hosea: “O
death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy
destruction.”1810
By His death thou
art dead; by His death we live. Thou hast swallowed up and thou art
swallowed up. Whilst thou art smitten with a longing for the body
assumed by Him, and whilst thy greedy jaws fancy it a prey, thy inward
parts are wounded with hooked fangs.
3. To Thee, O Saviour Christ, do we Thy creatures offer
thanks that, when Thou wast slain, Thou didst slay our mighty
adversary. Before Thy coming was there any being more miserable than
man who cowering at the dread prospect of eternal death did but receive
life that he might perish! For “death reigned from Adam to Moses
even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s
transgression.”1811
If Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob be in hell, who can be in the kingdom of heaven? If
Thy friends—even those who had not sinned themselves—were
yet for the sins of another liable to the punishment of offending Adam,
what must we think of those who have said in their hearts “There
is no God;” who “are corrupt and abominable”1812
in their self-will, and of whom it is
said “they are gone out of the way, they are become unprofitable;
there is none that doeth good, no not one”?1813
Even if Lazarus is seen in
Abraham’s bosom and in a place of refreshment, still the lower
regions cannot be compared with the kingdom of heaven. Before
Christ’s coming Abraham is in the lower regions: after
Christ’s coming the robber is in paradise. And therefore at His
rising again “many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and
were seen in the heavenly Jerusalem.”1814
Then was fulfilled the saying:
“Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ
shall give thee light.”1815
John the Baptist
cries in the desert: “repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at
hand.”1816
For “from the days of John
the Baptist the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent
take it by force.”1817
The flaming
sword that keeps the way of paradise and the cherubim that are
stationed at its doors1818
are alike
quenched and unloosed by the blood of Christ.1819
| 1819 Cf. Letter XXXIX.
§ 4. | It is not surprising that this should be
promised us in the resurrection: for as many of us as living in the
flesh do not live after the flesh,1820
have our
citizenship in heaven,1821
and while we
are still here on earth we are told that “the kingdom of heaven
is within us.”1822
4. Moreover before the resurrection of Christ God was
“known in Judah” only and “His name was great in
Israel” alone.1823
And they who
knew Him were despite their knowledge dragged down to hell. Where in
those days were the inhabitants of the globe from India to Britain,
from the frozen zone of the North to the burning heat of the Atlantic
ocean? Where were the countless
peoples of the world? Where the great multitudes?
Unlike in tongue, unlike in dress and arms?1824
They were crushed like fishes and locusts, like flies and gnats. For
apart from knowledge of his Creator every man is but a brute. But now
the voices and writings of all nations proclaim the passion and the
resurrection of Christ. I say nothing of the Jews, the Greeks, and the
Romans, peoples which the Lord has dedicated to His faith by the title
written on His cross.1825
The immortality
of the soul and its continuance after the dissolution of the
body—truths of which Pythagoras dreamed, which Democritus refused
to believe, and which Socrates discussed in prison to console himself
for the sentence passed upon him—are now the familiar themes of
Indian and of Persian, of Goth and of Egyptian. The fierce Bessians1826
and the throng of skinclad savages who
used to offer human sacrifices in honour of the dead have broken out of
their harsh discord into the sweet music of the cross and Christ is the
one cry of the whole world.
5. What can we do, my soul? Whither must we turn? What
must we take up first? What must we pass over? Have you forgotten the
precepts of the rhetoricians? Are you so preoccupied with grief, so
overcome with tears, so hindered with sobs, that you forget all logical
sequence? Where are the studies you have pursued from your childhood?
Where is that saying of Anaxagoras and Telamon (which you have always
commended) “I knew myself to have begotten a mortal”?1827
| 1827 The words are
quoted by Cicero (T. Q. iii. 13) apparently from the Telamon of Ennius.
They are ascribed to Anaxagoras by Diog. Laert. | I have read the books of Crantor which
he wrote to soothe his grief and which Cicero has imitated.1828
| 1828 In his De
consolatione of which only a few fragments remain. | I have read the consolatory writings
of Plato, Diogenes, Clitomachus, Carneades, Posidonius, who at
different times strove by book or letter to lessen the grief of various
persons. Consequently, were my own wit to dry up, it could be watered
anew from the fountains which these have opened. They set before us
examples without number; and particularly those of Pericles and of
Socrates’s pupil Xenophon. The former of these after the loss of
his two sons put on a garland and delivered a harangue;1829
while the latter, on hearing when he
was offering sacrifice that his son had been slain in war, is said to
have laid down his garland; and then, on learning that he had fallen
fighting bravely, is said to have put it on his head again. What shall
I say of those Roman generals whose heroic virtues glitter like stars
on the pages of Latin history? Pulvillus was dedicating the capitol1830
| 1830 In the first year
of the Republic. Acc. to Livy (ii. 8) his son was not really dead. | when receiving the news of his
son’s sudden death, he gave orders that the funeral should take
place without him. Lucius Paullus1831
entered
the city in triumph in the week which intervened between the funerals
of his two sons. I pass over the Maximi, the Catos, the Galli, the
Pisos, the Bruti, the Scævolas, the Metelli, the Scauri, the
Marii, the Crassi, the Marcelli, the Aufidii, men who shewed equal
fortitude in sorrow and war, and whose bereavements Tully has set forth
in his book Of consolation. I pass them over lest I should seem
to have chosen the words and woes of others in preference to my own.
Yet even these instances may suffice to ensure us mortification if our
faith fails to surpass the achievements of unbelief.
6. Let me come then to my proper subject. I will not
beat my breast with Jacob and with David for sons dying in the Law, but
I will receive them rising again with Christ in the Gospel. The
Jew’s mourning is the Christian’s joy. “Weeping may
endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning.”1832
“The night is far spent, the day
is at hand.”1833
Accordingly
when Moses dies, mourning is made for him,1834
but when Joshua is buried, it is
without tears or funeral pomp.1835
All that can
be drawn from scripture on the subject of lamentation I have briefly
set forth in the letter of consolation which I addressed to Paula at
Rome.1836
Now I must take another path to arrive
at the same goal. Otherwise I shall seem to be walking anew in a track
once beaten but now long disused.
7. We know indeed that our Nepotian is with Christ and
that he has joined the choirs of the saints. What here with us he
groped after on earth afar off and sought for to the best of his
judgment, there he sees nigh at hand, so that he can say: “as we
have heard so have we seen in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the
city of our God.”1837
Still we
cannot bear the feeling of his absence, and grieve, if not for him, for
ourselves. The greater the happiness which he enjoys, the deeper the
sorrow in which the loss of a blessing so great plunges us. The sisters
of Lazarus could not help weeping for him, although they knew that he
would rise again. And the Saviour himself—to shew that he
possessed true human feeling—mourned for him whom He was about to
raise.1838
His apostle also, though he
says: “I desire to depart and to be with Christ,”1839
and elsewhere “to me to live is Christ and to die is
gain,”1840
thanks God that Epaphras1841
(who had been “sick nigh unto
death”) has been given back to him that he might not have sorrow
upon sorrow.1842
Words prompted not by the fear
that springs of unbelief but by the passionate regret that comes of
true affection. How much more deeply must you who were to Nepotian both
uncle and bishop, (that is, a father both in the flesh and in the
spirit), deplore the loss of one so dear, as though your heart were
torn from you. Set a limit, I pray you, to your sorrow and remember the
saying “in nothing overmuch.”1843
| 1843 μηδέν ἄγαν,
ne quid nimis. A saying of one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece, 6th
cent. b.c. See Grote iv. 127. | Bind up for a little while your wound
and listen to the praises of one in whose virtue you have always
delighted. Do not grieve that you have lost such a paragon: rejoice
rather that he has once been yours. As on a small tablet men depict the
configuration of the earth, so in this little scroll of mine you may
see his virtues if not fully depicted at least sketched in outline. I
beg that you will take the will for the performance.
8. The advice of the rhetoricians in such cases is that
you should first search out the remote ancestors of the person to be
eulogized and recount their exploits, and then come gradually to your
hero; so as to make him more illustrious by the virtues of his
forefathers, and to show either that he is a worthy successor of good
men, or that he has conferred lustre upon a lineage in itself obscure.
But as my duty is to sing the praises of the soul, I will not dwell
upon those fleshly advantages which Nepotian for his part always
despised. Nor will I boast of his family, that is of the good points
belonging not to him but to others; for even those holy men Abraham and
Isaac had for sons the sinners Ishmael and Esau. And on the other hand
Jephthah who is reckoned by the apostle in the roll of the righteous1844
is the son of a harlot.1845
It is said “the soul that sinneth,
it shall die.”1846
The soul
therefore that has not sinned shall live. Neither the virtues nor the
vices of parents are imputed to their children. God takes account of us
only from the time when we are born anew in Christ. Paul, the
persecutor of the church, who is in the morning the ravening wolf of
Benjamin,1847
in the evening “gave
food,”1848
| 1848 Dedit escam.
This is the reading of the LXX. The Vulgate, like the A.V., has
“shall divide the spoil.” Compare Letter LXIX. 6. | that is yields himself up to
the sheep Ananias.1849
Let us
likewise reckon our Nepotian a crying babe and an untutored child who
has been born to us in a moment fresh from the waters of Jordan.
9. Another would perhaps describe how for his salvation
you left the east and the desert and how you soothed me your dearest
comrade by holding out hopes of a return: and all this that you might
save, if possible, both your sister, then a widow with one little
child, or, should she reject your counsels, at any rate your sweet
little nephew. It was of him that I once used the prophetic words:
“though your little nephew cling to your neck.”1850
Another, I say, would relate how while
Nepotian was still in the service of the court, beneath his uniform and
his brilliantly white linen,1851
| 1851 For other allusions
to a Roman officer’s uniform see Letters LXXIX. § 2 and
CXVIII. § 1. | his skin was
chafed with sackcloth; how, while standing before the powers of this
world, his lips were discoloured with fasting; how still in the uniform
of one master he served another; and how he wore the sword-belt only
that he might succour widows and wards, the afflicted and the unhappy.
For my part I dislike men to delay the complete dedication of
themselves to God. When I read of the centurion Cornelius1852
that he was a just man I immediately
hear of his baptism.
10. Still we may approve these things as the swathing
bands of an infant faith. He who has been a loyal soldier under a
strange banner is sure to deserve the laurel when he comes to serve his
own king. When Nepotian laid aside his baldrick and changed his dress,
he bestowed upon the poor all the pay that he had received. For he had
read the words: “if thou wilt be perfect, sell that thou hast,
and give to the poor and follow me,”1853
and again: “ye cannot serve two
masters, God and Mammon.”1854
He kept
nothing for himself but a common tunic and cloak to cover him and to
keep out the cold. Made in the fashion of his province his attire was
not remarkable either for elegance or for squalor. He burned daily to
make his way to the monasteries of Egypt, or to visit the communities
of Mesopotamia, or at least to live a lonely life in the Dalmatian
islands,1855
| 1855 Like Bonosus
(Letter III. 4). | separated from the mainland only by
the strait of Altinum. But he had not the heart to forsake his
episcopal uncle in whom he beheld a pattern of many virtues and from
whom he could take lessons without going abroad. In one and the same
person he both found a monk to imitate and a bishop to revere. What so
often happens did not happen here. Constant intimacy did not produce
familiarity, nor did familiarity breed contempt. He revered him as a
father and every day admired him for some new virtue. To be brief, he
became a clergyman, and after passing through the usual stages was
ordained a presbyter. Good Jesus!
how he sighed and groaned! how he fasted and fled the eyes of all! For
the first and only time he was angry with his uncle, complaining that
the burthen laid upon him was too heavy for him and that his youth
unfitted him for the priesthood. But the more he struggled against it,
the more he drew to himself the hearts of all: his refusal did but
prove him worthy of an office which he was reluctant to assume, and all
the more worthy because he declared himself unworthy. We too in our day
have our Timothy; we too have seen that wisdom which is as good as gray
hairs;1856
our Moses has chosen an elder whom
he has known to be an elder indeed.1857
Nepotian
regarded the clerical state less as an honour than a burthen. He made
it his first care to silence envy by humility, and his next to give no
cause for scandal that such as assailed his youth might marvel at his
continence. He helped the poor, visited the sick, stirred men up to
hospitality, soothed them with soft words, rejoiced with those who
rejoiced and wept with those who wept.1858
He was a staff to the blind, food to
the hungry, hope to the dejected, consolation to the bereaved. Each
single virtue was as conspicuous in him as if he possessed no other.
Among his fellow-presbyters while ever foremost in work, he was ever
satisfied with the lowest place. Any good that he did he ascribed to
his uncle: but if the result did not correspond to his expectations, he
would say that his uncle knew nothing of it, that it was his own
mistake. In public he recognized him as a bishop; at home he looked
upon him as a father. The seriousness of his disposition was mitigated
by a cheerful expression. But while his laughter was joyous it was
never loud. Christ’s virgins and widows he honoured as mothers
and exhorted as sisters “with all purity.”1859
When he returned home he used to leave
the clergyman outside and to give himself over to the hard rule of a
monk. Frequent in supplication and watchful in prayer he would offer
his tears not to man but to God. His fasts he regulated—as a
driver does the pace of his horses—according to the weariness or
vigour of his body. When at his uncle’s table he would just taste
what was set before him, so as to avoid superstition and yet to
preserve self-control. In conversing at entertainments his habit was to
propose some topic from scripture, to listen modestly, to answer
diffidently, to support the right, to refute the wrong, but both
without bitterness; to instruct his opponent rather than to vanquish
him. Such was the ingenuous modesty which adorned his youth that he
would frankly confess from what sources his several arguments came; and
in this way, while disclaiming a reputation for learning, he came to be
held most learned. This he would say is the opinion of Tertullian, that
of Cyprian; this of Lactantius, that of Hilary; to this effect speaks
Minucius Felix, thus Victorinus, after this manner Arnobius. Myself too
he would sometimes quote, for he loved me because of my intimacy with
his uncle. Indeed by constant reading and long-continued meditation he
had made his breast a library of Christ.
11. How often in letters from beyond the sea he urged me
to write something to him! How often he reminded me of the man in the
gospel who sought help by night1860
and of the
widow who importuned the cruel judge!1861
And when I silently ignored his request
and made my petitioner blush by blushing to reply, he put forward his
uncle to enforce his suit, knowing that as the boon was for another he
would more readily ask it, and that as I held his episcopal office in
respect he would more easily obtain it. Accordingly I did what he
wished and in a brief essay1862
dedicated our
mutual friendship to everlasting remembrance. On receiving this
Nepotian boasted that he was richer than Crœsus and wealthier than
Darius. He held it in his hands, devoured it with his eyes, kept it in
his bosom, repeated it with his lips. And often when he unrolled it
upon his couch, he fell asleep with the cherished page upon his breast.
When a stranger came or a friend, he rejoiced to let them know my
witness to him. The deficiencies of my little book he made good by
careful punctuation and varied emphasis, so that when it was read aloud
it was always he not I who seemed to please or to displease. Whence
came such zeal, if not from the love of God? Whence came such untiring
study of Christ’s law, if not from a yearning for Him who gave
it? Let others add coin to coin till their purses are chock-full; let
others demean themselves to sponge on married ladies; let them be
richer as monks than they were as men of the world; let them possess
wealth in the service of a poor Christ such as they never had in the
service of a rich devil; let the church lose breath at the opulence of
men who in the world were beggars. Our Nepotian spurns gold and begs
only for written books. But while he despises himself in the flesh and
walks abroad more splendid than ever in his poverty, he still seeks out
everything that may adorn the church.
12. In comparison with what has gone before what I am
now about to say may appear trivial, but even in trifles the same spirit makes
itself manifest. For as we admire the Creator not only as the framer of
heaven and earth, of sun and ocean, of elephants, camels, horses, oxen,
pards, bears, and lions; but also as the maker of the most tiny
creatures, ants, gnats, flies, worms, and the like, whose shapes we
know better than their names, and as in all alike we revere the same
creative skill; so the mind that is given to Christ shews the same
earnestness in things of small as of great importance, knowing that it
must render an account of every idle word.1863
Nepotian took pains to keep the altar
bright, the church walls free from soot and the pavement duly swept. He
saw that the doorkeeper was constantly at his post, that the
doorhangings were in their places, the sanctuary clean and the vessels
shining. The careful reverence that he shewed to every rite led him to
neglect no duty small or great. Whenever you looked for him in church
you found him there.
In Quintus Fabius1864
| 1864 Jerome here
confounds two distinct persons: C. Fabius Pictor was the painter; his
grandson Q. Fabius the historian. | antiquity
admired a nobleman and the author of a history of Rome, yet his
paintings gained him more renown than his writings. Our own Bezaleel1865
also and Hiram, the son of a Tyrian
woman,1866
are spoken of in scripture as
filled with wisdom and the spirit of God because they framed, the one
the furniture of the tabernacle, the other that of the temple. For, as
it is with fertile tillage-fields and rich plough-lands which at times
go out into redundant growths of stalk or ear, so is it with
distinguished talents and a mind filled with virtue. They are sure to
overflow into elegant and varied accomplishments. Accordingly among the
Greeks we hear of a philosopher1867
| 1867 Hippias of Elis.
See Cic. Or. iii. 32. | who used
to boast that everything he wore down to his cloak and ring was made by
himself. We may pass the same eulogy on our friend, for he adorned both
the basilicas of the church and the halls1868
of the martyrs with sketches of
flowers, foliage, and vine-tendrils, so that everything attractive in
the church, whether made so by its position or by its appearance, bore
witness to the labour and zeal of the presbyter set over it.
13. Go on blessed in thy goodness! What kind of ending
should we expect after such a beginning! Ah! hapless plight of mortal
men and vanity of all life that is not lived in Christ! Why, O my
words, do you shrink back? Why do you shift and turn? I fear to come to
the end, as if I could put off his death or make his life longer.
“All flesh is as grass and all the glory of man as the flower of
grass.”1869
Where now are
that handsome face and dignified figure with which as with a fair
garment his beautiful soul was clothed? The lily began to wither, alas!
when the south wind blew, and the purple violet slowly faded into
paleness. Yet while he burned with fever and while the fire of sickness
was drying up the fountains of his veins, gasping and weary he still
tried to comfort his sorrowing uncle. His countenance shone with
gladness, and while all around him wept he and he only smiled. He flung
aside his cloak, put out his hand, saw what others failed to see, and
even tried to rise that he might welcome new comers. You would have
thought that he was starting on a journey instead of dying and that in
place of leaving all his friends behind him he was merely passing from
some to others.1870
| 1870 A similar phrase
occurs in Letter CXVIII. § 4. | Tears roll down
my cheeks and, however much I steel my mind, I cannot disguise the
grief that I feel. Who could suppose that at such an hour he would
remember his intimacy with me, and that while he struggled for life he
would recall the sweetness of study? Yet grasping his uncle’s
hand he said to him: “Send this tunic that I wore in the service
of Christ to my dear friend, my father in age, but my brother in
office, and transfer the affection hitherto claimed by your nephew to
one who is as dear to you as he is to me.” With these words he
passed away holding his uncle’s hand and with my name upon his
lips.
14. I know how unwilling you were to prove the affection
of your people at such a cost, and that you would have preferred to win
your countrymen’s love while retaining your happiness. Such
expressions of feeling, pleasant as they are when all goes well, are
doubly welcome in time of sorrow. All Altinum, all Italy mourned
Nepotian. The earth received his body; his soul was given back to
Christ. You lost a nephew, the church a priest. He who should have
followed you went before you. To the office which you held, he in the
judgment of all deserved to succeed. And so one family has had the
honour of producing two bishops, the first to be congratulated because
he has held the office, the second to be lamented because he has been
taken away too soon to hold it. Plato thinks that a wise man’s
whole life ought to be a meditation of death;1871
| 1871 Plato, Phædo
xii. Cic. T. Q. 1. 31. | and philosophers praise the sentiment
and extol it to the skies. But much more full of power are the words of
the apostle: “I die daily through your glory.”1872
For to have an ideal is one thing, to
realize it another. It is one thing to live so as to die, another to
die so as to live. The sage and
Christian must both of them die: but the one always dies out of his
glory, the other into it. Therefore we also should consider beforehand
the end which must one day overtake us and which, whether we wish it or
not, cannot be very far distant. For though we should live nine hundred
years or more, as men did before the deluge, and though the days of
Methuselah1873
should be granted us, yet that
long space of time, when once it should have passed away and come to an
end, would be as nothing. For to the man who has lived ten years and to
him who has lived a thousand, when once the end of life comes and
death’s inexorable doom, all the past whether long or short is
just the same; except that the older a man is, the heavier is the load
of sin that he has to take with him.
First hapless mortals lose from out their life
The fairest days: disease and age come next;
And lastly cruel death doth claim his prey.1874
| 1874 Virg. G. iii.
66–68. |
The poet Nævius too says that
Mortals must many woes perforce endure.
Accordingly antiquity has feigned that Niobe because of
her much weeping was turned to stone and that other women were
metamorphosed into beasts. Hesiod also bewails men’s birthdays
and rejoices in their deaths, and Ennius wisely says:
The mob has one advantage o’er its king:
For it may weep while tears for him are shame.
If a king may not weep, neither may a bishop; indeed a bishop has
still less license than a king. For the king rules over unwilling
subjects, the bishop over willing ones. The king compels submission by
terror; the bishop exercises lordship by becoming a servant. The king
guards men’s bodies till they die; the bishop saves their souls
for life eternal. The eyes of all are turned upon you. Your house is
set on a watchtower; your life fixes for others the limits of their
self-control. Whatever you do, all think that they may do the same. Do
not so commit yourself that those who seek ground for cavil may be
thought to have rightly assailed you, or that those who are eager to
imitate you may be forced to do wrong. Overcome as much as you
can—nay even more than you can—the sensitiveness of your
mind and check the copious flow of your tears. Else your deep affection
for your nephew may be construed by unbelievers as indicating despair
of God. You must regretim not as dead but as absent. You must seem to
be looking for him rather than have lost him.
15. But why do I try to heal a sorrow which has already,
I suppose, been assuaged by time and reason? Why do I not rather unfold
to you—they are not far to seek—the miseries of our rulers
and the calamities of our time? He who has lost the light of life is
not so much to be pitied as he is to be congratulated who has escaped
from such great evils. Constantius,1875
the
patron of the Arian heresy, was hurrying to do battle with his enemy1876
when he died at the village of Mopsus
and to his great vexation left the empire to his foe. Julian1877
, the betrayer of his own soul, the
murderer of a Christian army, felt in Media the hand of the Christ whom
he had previously denied in Gaul. Desiring to annex new territories to
Rome, he did but lose annexations previously made. Jovian1878
had but just tasted the sweets of
sovereignty when a coal-fire suffocated him: a good instance of the
transitoriness of human power. Valentinian1879
died of a broken blood vessel, the
land of his birth laid waste, and his country unavenged. His brother
Valens1880
defeated in Thrace by the Goths,
was buried where he died. Gratian, betrayed by his army and refused
admittance by the cities on his line of march, became the
laughing-stock of his foe; and your walls, Lyons, still bear the marks
of that bloody hand.1881
| 1881 Died 383 a.d. by the hand of Andragathius. | Valentinian
was yet a youth—I may say, a mere boy—when, after flight
and exile and the recovery of his power by bloodshed, he was put to
death1882
| 1882 Strangled by
Arbogastes at Vienne, 392 a.d. | not far from the city which had
witnessed his brother’s end. And not only so but his lifeless
body was gibbeted to do him shame. What shall I say of Procopius, of
Maximus, of Eugenius,1883
| 1883 Aspirants to
the purple who were put to death, the first by Valens, the second and
third by Theodosius. | who while
they held sovereign sway were a terror to the nations, yet stood one
and all as prisoners in the presence of their conquerors,
and—cruellest wound of all to the great and powerful—felt
the pang of an ignominious slavery before they fell by the edge of the
sword.
16. Some one may say: such is the lot of kings:
The lightning ever smites the mountain-tops.1884
| 1884 Hor. C. II. x.
11, 12. |
I will come therefore to persons of private position,
and in speaking of these I will not go farther back than the last two
years. In fact I will content myself—omitting all
others—with recounting the respective fates of three recent
consulars. Abundantius is a beggared exile at Pityus.1885
| 1885 Banished by
Eutropius who had owed his advancement to him. | The head of Rufinus has been carried on a pike to Constantinople, and
his severed hand has begged alms from door to door to shame his
insatiable greed.1886
| 1886 The prime
minister of Theodosius I. Shortly after the accession of Arcadius
Gainas the Goth procured his assassination. | Timasius,1887
| 1887 One of the
generals of Theodosius I., banished to the Oasis at the instigation of
Eutropius. | hurled suddenly from a position of
the highest rank thinks it an escape that he is allowed to live in
obscurity at Assa. I am describing not the misfortunes of an unhappy
few but the thread upon which human fortunes as a whole depend. I
shudder when I think of the catastrophes of our time. For twenty years
and more the blood of Romans has been shed daily between Constantinople
and the Julian Alps. Scythia, Thrace, Macedonia, Dardania, Dacia,
Thessaly, Achaia, Epirus, Dalmatia, the Pannonias—each and all of
these have been sacked and pillaged and plundered by Goths and
Sarmatians, Quades and Alans, Huns and Vandals and Marchmen. How many
of God’s matrons and virgins, virtuous and noble ladies, have
been made the sport of these brutes! Bishops have been made captive,
priests and those in minor orders have been put to death. Churches have
been overthrown, horses have been stalled by the altars of Christ, the
relics of martyrs have been dug up.
Mourning and fear abound on every side
And death appears in countless shapes and forms.1888
The Roman world is falling: yet we hold up our heads
instead of bowing them. What courage, think you, have the Corinthians
now, or the Athenians or the Lacedæmonians or the Arcadians, or
any of the Greeks over whom the barbarians bear sway? I have mentioned
only a few cities, but these once the capitals of no mean states. The
East, it is true, seemed to be safe from all such evils: and if men
were panic-stricken here, it was only because of bad news from other
parts. But lo! in the year just gone by the wolves (no longer of Arabia
but of the whole North1889
| 1889 i.e. the
Huns have taken the place of the Chaldæans described in Hab. i. 8,
LXX. | ) were let
loose upon us from the remotest fastnesses of Caucasus and in a short
time overran these great provinces. What a number of monasteries they
captured! What many rivers they caused to run red with blood! They laid
siege to Antioch and invested other cities on the Halys, the Cydnus,
the Orontes, and the Euphrates. They carried off troops of captives.
Arabia, Phenicia, Palestine and Egypt, in their terror fancied
themselves already enslaved.
Had I a hundred tongues, a hundred lips,
A throat of iron and a chest of brass,
I could not tell men’s countless sufferings.1890
And indeed it is not my purpose to write a history: I only wish to
shed a few tears over your sorrows and mine. For the rest, to treat
such themes as they deserve, Thucydides and Sallust would be as good as
dumb.
17. Nepotian is happy who neither sees these things nor
hears them. We are unhappy, for either we suffer ourselves or we see
our brethren suffer. Yet we desire to live, and regard those beyond the
reach of these evils as miserable rather than blessed. We have long
felt that God is angry, yet we do not try to appease Him. It is our
sins which make the barbarians strong, it is our vices which vanquish
Rome’s soldiers: and, as if there were here too little material
for carnage, civil wars have made almost greater havoc among us than
the swords of foreign foes. Miserable must those Israelites have been
compared with whom Nebuchadnezzar was called God’s servant.1891
Unhappy too are we who are so
displeasing to God that He uses the fury of the barbarians to execute
His wrath against us. Still when Hezekiah repented, one hundred and
eighty-five thousand Assyrians were destroyed in one night by a single
angel.1892
When Jehosaphat sang the praises
of the Lord, the Lord gave His worshipper the victory.1893
Again when Moses fought against
Amalek, it was not with the sword but with prayer that he prevailed.1894
Therefore, if we wish to be lifted up,
we must first prostrate ourselves. Alas! for our shame and folly
reaching even to unbelief! Rome’s army, once victor and lord of
the world, now trembles with terror at the sight of the foe and accepts
defeat from men who cannot walk afoot and fancy themselves dead if once
they are unhorsed.1895
| 1895 Jornandes
corroborates the account of the Huns here given by Jerome. | We do not
understand the prophet’s words: “One thousand shall flee at
the rebuke of one.”1896
We do not cut
away the causes of the disease, as we must do to remove the disease
itself. Else we should soon see the enemies’ arrows give way to
our javelins, their caps to our helmets, their palfreys to our
chargers.
18. But I have gone beyond the office of a consoler, and
while forbidding you to weep for one dead man I have myself mourned the
dead of the whole world. Xerxes the mighty king who rased mountains and
filled up seas, looking from high ground upon the untold host, the
countless army before him, is said1897
| 1897 Herod. vii. cc.
45, 46. | to have
wept at the thought that in a hundred years not one of those whom he
then saw would be alive. Oh! if we could but get up into a watch-tower
so high that from it we might behold the whole earth spread out under
our feet, then I would shew you the wreck of a world, nation warring against nation
and kingdom in collision with kingdom; some men tortured, others put to
the sword, others swallowed up by the waves, some dragged away into
slavery; here a wedding, there a funeral; men born here, men dying
there; some living in affluence, others begging their bread; and not
the army of Xerxes, great as that was, but all the inhabitants of the
world alive now but destined soon to pass away. Language is inadequate
to a theme so vast and all that I can say must fall short of the
reality.
19. Let us return then to ourselves and coming down from
the skies let us look for a few moments upon what more nearly concerns
us. Are you conscious, I would ask, of the stages of your growth? Can
you fix the time when you became a babe, a boy, a youth, an adult, an
old man? Every day we are changing, every day we are dying, and yet we
fancy ourselves eternal. The very moments that I spend in dictation, in
writing, in reading over what I write, and in correcting it, are so
much taken from my life. Every dot that my secretary makes is so much
gone from my allotted time. We write letters and reply to those of
others, our missives cross the sea, and, as the vessel ploughs its
furrow through wave after wave, the moments which we have to live
vanish one by one. Our only gain is that we are thus knit together in
the love of Christ. “Charity suffereth long and is kind; charity
envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up; beareth all
things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
Charity never faileth.”1898
| 1898 1 Cor. xiii. 4, 7, 8. | It lives
always in the heart, and thus our Nepotian though absent is still
present, and widely sundered though we are has a hand to offer to each.
Yes, in him we have a hostage for mutual charity. Let us then be joined
together in spirit, let us bind ourselves each to each in affection and
let us who have lost a son shew the same fortitude with which the
blessed pope Chromatius1899
bore the loss
of a brother. Let every page that we write echo his name, let all our
letters ring with it. If we can no longer clasp him to our hearts, let
us hold him fast in memory; and if we can no longer speak with him, let
us never cease to speak of him.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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