On his Sister Gorgonia.

The exact date of this Oration is uncertain.  It is certainly (§23) later than the death of Cæsarius, a.d. 369, and previous to the death of their father, a.d. 374.  So much we gather from the Oration itself, and the references made by some authors to a poem of S. Gregory do not add anything certain to our knowledge (Poem. Hist. I. 1. v.v. 108, 227).  The place in which it was delivered is, almost without doubt, the city in which her married life had been spent.  The public details of that life are familiar to the audience.  Gorgonia’s parents, and the speaker himself, although known to them, are not spoken of in terms implying intimacy such as we find in Orations known to have been delivered at Nazianzus.  The spiritual father and confidant of Gorgonia is present, certainly in a position of authority, probably seated in the Episcopal throne.  The husband of Gorgonia (Epitaph. 24) was named Alypius.  His home, as Clémencet and Benoît agree, on the authority of Elias, was at Iconium, of which city, at the time, Faustinus was bishop.  The names of Gorgonia’s two sons are unknown.  Elias states that they both became bishops.  S. Gregory mentions her three daughters, Alypiana, Eugenia, and Nonna, in his will.  The oration is marked by an eloquence, piety, and tender feeling which make it a worthy companion of that on Cæsarius.

Funeral Oration on his Sister Gorgonia.

1.  In praising my sister, I shall pay honour to one of my own family; yet my praise will not be false, because it is given to a relation, but, because it is true, will be worthy of commendation, and its truth is based not only upon its justice, but upon well-known facts.  For, even if I wished, I should not be permitted to be partial; since everyone who hears me stands, like a skilful critic, between my oration and the truth, to discountenance exaggeration, yet, if he be a man of justice, demanding what is really due.  So that my fear is not of outrunning the truth, but, on the contrary, of falling short of it, and lessening her just repute by the extreme inadequacy of my panegyric; for it is a hard task to match her excellences with suitable action and words.  Let us not then be so unjust as to praise every characteristic of other folk, and disparage really valuable qualities because they are our own, so as to make some men gain by their absence of kindred with us, while others suffer for their relationship.  For justice would be violated alike by the praise of the one and the neglect of the other, whereas if we make the truth our standard and rule, and look to her alone, disregarding all the objects of the vulgar and the mean, we shall praise or pass over everything according to its merits.

2.  Yet it would be most unreasonable of all, if, while we refuse to regard it as a righteous thing to defraud, insult, accuse, or treat unjustly in any way, great or small, those who are our kindred, and consider wrong done to those nearest to us the worst of all; we were yet to imagine that it would be an act of justice to deprive them of such an oration as is due most of all to the good, and spend more words upon those who are evil, and beg for indulgent treatment, than on those who are excellent and merely claim their due.  For if we are not prevented, as would be far more just, from praising men who have lived outside our own circle, because we do not know and cannot personally testify to their merits, shall we be prevented from praising those whom we do know, because of our friendship, or the envy of the multitude, and especially those who have departed hence, whom it is too late to ingratiate ourselves with, since they have escaped, amongst all other things, from the reach of praise or blame.

3.  Having now made a sufficient defence on these points, and shown how necessary it is for me to be the speaker, come, let me proceed with my eulogy, rejecting all daintiness and elegance of style (for she whom we are praising was unadorned and the absence of ornament was to her, beauty), and yet performing, as a most indispensable debt, all those funeral rites which are her due, and further instructing everyone in a zealous imitation of the same virtue, since it is my object in every word and action to promote the perfection of those committed to my charge.  The task of praising the country and family of our departed one I leave to another, more scrupulous in adhering to the rules of eulogy; nor will he lack many fair topics, if he wish to deck her with external ornaments, as men deck a splendid and beautiful form with gold and precious stones, and the artistic devices of the craftsman; which, while they accentuate ugliness by their contrast, can add no attractiveness to the beauty which surpasses them.  For my part, I will only conform to such rules so far as to allude to our common parents, for it would not be reverent to pass unnoticed the great blessing of having such parents and teachers, and then speedily direct my attention to herself, without further taxing the patience of those who are eager to learn what manner of woman she was.

4.  Who is there who knows not the Abraham and Sarah of these our latter days, Gregory and Nonna his wife?  For it is not well to omit the incitement to virtue of mentioning their names.  He has been justified by faith, she has dwelt with him who is faithful; he beyond all hope has been the father of many nations,³⁰⁰⁴

3004 Rom. iv. 18.

3005 His father’s gods.  These words, together with the reference to idols and idolators in § 5 and the lines (Poem, Hist. I. i. 123–4, tome 2. p. 636) ὑπ᾽ εἰδώλοις πάρος ἦεν ζώων have led some writers (esp. Ullmann and Clericus) to attribute the worship of idols to the Hypsistarii, and Clémencet points out that ζώων is only the Ep. and Ion. partic. of ζάω, and does not mean “of animals.”  The weakness of a reliance on a poetical expression is shown in Dict. Christ. Biog.  Here the words are the mystical application of the actual experience of Abraham, and ἐίδωλον does not necessarily connote material idols.  It is applied by S. Greg. Nyssen, Orat. funebr. de Placilla, p. 965. B (ed. 1615) to the worship of Jesus Christ by the Arians.  Cf. Introd. to Orat. xviii.

3006 Gen. xii. 1; Heb. xi. 8.

5.  This good shepherd was the result of his wife’s prayers and guidance, and it was from her that he learned his ideal of a good shepherd’s life.  He generously fled from his idols, and afterwards even put demons to flight; he never consented to eat salt with idolators:  united together with a bond of one honour, of one mind, of one soul, concerned as much with virtue and fellowship with God as with the flesh; equal in length of life and hoary hairs, equal in prudence and brilliancy, rivals of each other, soaring beyond all the rest, possessed in few respects by the flesh, and translated in spirit, even before dissolution:  possessing not the world, and yet possessing it, by at once despising and rightly valuing it:  forsaking riches and yet being rich through their noble pursuits; rejecting things here, and purchasing instead the things yonder:  possessed of a scanty remnant of this life, left over from their piety, but of an abundant and long life for which they have laboured. I will say but one word more about them:  they have been rightly and fairly assigned, each to either sex; he is the ornament of men, she of women, and not only the ornament but the pattern of virtue.

6.  From them Gorgonia derived both her existence and her reputation; they sowed in her the seeds of piety, they were the source of her fair life, and of her happy departure with better hopes.  Fair privileges these, and such as are not easily attained by many of those who plume themselves highly upon their noble birth, and are proud of their ancestry.  But, if I must treat of her case in a more philosophic and lofty strain, Gorgonia’s native land was Jerusalem above,³⁰⁰⁷

3007 Heb. xii. 22, 23.

7.  This is what I know upon these points:  and therefore it is that I both am aware and assert that her soul was more noble than those of the East,³⁰⁰⁸

3008 Job i. 3.

8.  In modesty she so greatly excelled, and so far surpassed, those of her own day, to say nothing of those of old time who have been illustrious for modesty, that, in regard to the two divisions of the life of all, that is, the married and the unmarried state, the latter being higher and more divine, though more difficult and dangerous, while the former is more humble and more safe, she was able to avoid the disadvantages of each, and to select and combine all that is best in both, namely, the elevation of the one and the security of the other, thus becoming modest without pride, blending the excellence of the married with that of the unmarried state, and proving that neither of them absolutely binds us to, or separates us from, God or the world (so that the one from its own nature must be utterly avoided, and the other altogether praised):  but that it is mind which nobly presides over wedlock and maidenhood, and arranges and works upon them as the raw material of virtue under the master-hand of reason.  For though she had entered upon a carnal union, she was not therefore separated from the spirit, nor, because her husband was her head, did she ignore her first Head:  but, performing those few ministrations due to the world and nature, according to the will of the law of the flesh, or rather of Him who gave to the flesh these laws, she consecrated herself entirely to God.  But what is most excellent and honourable, she also won over her husband to her side, and made of him a good fellow-servant, instead of an unreasonable master.  And not only so, but she further made the fruit of her body, her children and her children’s children, to be the fruit of her spirit, dedicating to God not her single soul, but the whole family and household, and making wedlock illustrious through her own acceptability in wedlock, and the fair harvest she had reaped thereby; presenting herself, as long as she lived, as an example to her offspring of all that was good, and when summoned hence, leaving her will behind her, as a silent exhortation to her house.

9.  The divine Solomon, in his instructive wisdom, I mean his Proverbs, praises the woman³⁰⁰⁹

3009 Prov. xxxi. 10.

10.  Here, if you will, is another point of her excellence:  one of which neither she nor any truly modest and decorous woman thinks anything:  but which we have been made to think much of, by those who are too fond of ornament and display, and refuse to listen to instruction on such matters.  She was never adorned with gold wrought into artistic forms of surpassing beauty, nor flaxen tresses, fully or partially displayed, nor spiral curls, nor dishonouring designs of men who construct erections on the honourable head, nor costly folds of flowing and transparent robes, nor graces of brilliant stones, which color the neighbouring air, and cast a glow upon the form; nor the arts and witcheries of the painter, nor that cheap beauty of the infernal creator who works against the Divine, hiding with his treacherous pigments the creation of God, and putting it to shame with his honour, and setting before eager eyes the imitation of an harlot instead of the form of God, so that this bastard beauty may steal away that image which should be kept for God and for the world to come.  But though she was aware of the many and various external ornaments of women, yet none of them was more precious to her than her own character, and the brilliancy stored up within.  One red tint was dear to her, the blush of modesty; one white one, the sign of temperance:  but pigments and pencillings, and living pictures, and flowing lines of beauty, she left to women of the stage and of the streets, and to all who think it a shame and a reproach to be ashamed.

11.  Enough of such topics.  Of her prudence and piety no adequate account can be given, nor many examples found besides those of her natural and spiritual parents, who were her only models, and of whose virtue she in no wise fell short, with this single exception most readily admitted, that they, as she both knew and acknowledged, were the source of her goodness, and the root of her own illumination.  What could be keener than the intellect of her who was recognized as a common adviser not only by those of her family, those of the same people and of the one fold, but even by all men round about, who treated her counsels and advice as a law not to be broken?  What more sagacious than her words?  What more prudent than her silence?  Having mentioned silence, I will proceed to that which was most characteristic of her, most becoming to women, and most serviceable to these times.  Who had a fuller knowledge of the things of God, both from the Divine oracles, and from her own understanding?  But who was less ready to speak, confining herself within the due limits of women?  Moreover, as was the bounden duty of a woman who has learned true piety, and that which is the only honourable object of insatiate desire, who, as she, adorned temples with offerings, both others and this one, which will hardly, now she is gone, be so adorned again?  Or rather, who so presented herself to God as a living temple?  Who again paid such honor to Priests, especially to him who was her fellow soldier and teacher of piety, whose are the good seeds, and the pair of children consecrated to God.

12.  Who opened her house to those who live according to God with a more graceful and bountiful welcome?  And, which is greater than this, who bade them welcome with such modesty and godly greetings?  Further, who showed a mind more unmoved in sufferings?  Whose soul was more sympathetic to those in trouble?  Whose hand more liberal to those in want?  I should not hesitate to honour her with the words of Job:  Her door was opened to all comers; the stranger did not lodge in the street.  She was eyes to the blind, feet to the lame, a mother to the orphan.³⁰¹⁰

3010 Job xxix. 15; xxxi. 32.

3011 Ps. cxii. 9.

13.  But amid these tokens of incredible magnanimity, she did not surrender her body to luxury, and unrestrained pleasures of the appetite, that raging and tearing dog, as though presuming upon her acts of benevolence, as most men do, who redeem their luxury by compassion to the poor, and instead of healing evil with good, receive evil as a recompense for their good deeds.  Nor did she, while subduing her dust³⁰¹²

3012 Her dust, i.e. her body.

14.  O untended body, and squalid garments, whose only flower is virtue!  O soul, clinging to the body, when reduced almost to an immaterial state through lack of food; or rather, when the body had been mortified by force, even before dissolution, that the soul might attain to freedom, and escape the entanglements of the senses!  O nights of vigil, and psalmody, and standing which lasts from one day to another!  O David, whose strains never seem tedious to faithful souls!  O tender limbs, flung upon the earth and, contrary to nature, growing hard!  O fountains of tears, sowing in affliction that they might reap in joy.³⁰¹³

3013 Ps. cxxvi. 5.

15.  Oh! how am I to count up all her traits, or pass over most of them without injury to those who know them not?  Here however it is right to subjoin the rewards of her piety, for indeed I take it that you, who knew her life well, have long been eager and desirous to find in my speech not only things present, or her joys yonder, beyond the conception and hearing and sight of man, but also those which the righteous Rewarder bestowed upon her here:  a matter which often tends to the edification of unbelievers, who from small things attain to faith in those which are great, and from things which are seen to those which are not seen.  I will mention then some facts which are generally notorious, others which have been from most men kept secret; and that because her Christian principle made a point of not making a display of her [Divine] favours.  You know how her maddened mules ran away with her carriage, and unfortunately overturned it, how horribly she was dragged along, and seriously injured, to the scandal of unbelievers at the permission of such accidents to the righteous, and how quickly their unbelief was corrected:  for, all crushed and bruised as she was, in bones and limbs, alike in those exposed and in those out of sight, she would have none of any physician, except Him Who had permitted it; both because she shrunk from the inspection and the hands of men, preserving, even in suffering, her modesty, and also awaiting her justification from Him Who allowed this to happen, so that she owed her preservation to none other than to Him:  with the result that men were no less struck by her unhoped-for recovery than by her misfortune, and concluded that the tragedy had happened for her glorification through sufferings, the suffering being human, the recovery superhuman, and giving a lesson to those who come after, exhibiting in a high degree faith in the midst of suffering, and patience under calamity, but in a still higher degree the kindness of God to them that are such as she.  For to the beautiful promise to the righteous “though he fall, he shall not be utterly broken,”³⁰¹⁴

3014 Ps. xxxvii. 24.

3015 Ib. cxlvi. 8 (LXX.).

16.  O remarkable and wonderful disaster!  O injury more noble than security!  O prophecy, “He hath smitten, and He will bind us up, and revive us, and after three days He will raise us up,”³⁰¹⁶

3016 Hos. vi. 1, 2.

3017 O best, &c.  Faustinus, bishop of Iconium, must have been present, and S. Gregory, having asked his permission to relate the incident, looks towards him awaiting some sign of his assent.

17.  She was sick in body, and dangerously ill of an extraordinary and malignant disease, her whole frame was incessantly fevered, her blood at one time agitated and boiling, then curdling with coma, incredible pallor, and paralysis of mind and limbs:  and this not at long intervals, but sometimes very frequently.  Its virulence seemed beyond human aid; the skill of physicians, who carefully examined the case, both singly and in consultation, was of no avail; nor the tears of her parents, which often have great power, nor public supplications and intercessions, in which all the people joined as earnestly as if for their own preservation:  for her safety was the safety of all, as, on the contrary, her suffering and sickness was a common misfortune.

18.  What then did this great soul, worthy offspring of the greatest, and what was the medicine for her disorder, for we have now come to the great secret?  Despairing of all other aid, she betook herself to the Physician of all, and awaiting the silent hours of night, during a slight intermission of the disease, she approached the altar with faith, and, calling upon Him Who is honoured thereon, with a mighty cry, and every kind of invocation, calling to mind all His former works of power, and well she knew those both of ancient and of later days, at last she ventured on an act of pious and splendid effrontery:  she imitated the woman whose fountain of blood was dried up by the hem of Christ’s garment.³⁰¹⁸

3018 S. Matt. ix. 20.

3019 S. Luke vii. 38.

3020 Antitypes, i.e. the reserved Sacrament.

19.  Such was her life.  Most of its details I have left untold, lest my speech should grow to undue proportions, and lest I should seem to be too greedy for her fair fame:  but perhaps we should be wronging her holy and illustrious death, did we not mention some of its excellences; especially as she so longed for and desired it.  I will do so therefore, as concisely as I can.  She longed for her dissolution, for indeed she had great boldness towards Him who called her, and preferred to be with Christ, beyond all things on earth.³⁰²¹

3021 Phil. i. 23.

20.  She had recently obtained the blessing of cleansing and perfection, which we have all received from God as a common gift and foundation of our new³⁰²²

3022 δευτέρον, lit. “second.”

3023 Ps. cxlv. 19.

21.  And now when she had all things to her mind, and nothing was lacking of her desires, and the appointed time drew nigh, being thus prepared for death and departure, she fulfilled the law which prevails in such matters, and took to her bed.  After many injunctions to her husband, her children, and her friends, as was to be expected from one who was full of conjugal, maternal, and brotherly love, and after making her last day a day of solemn festival with brilliant discourse upon the things above, she fell asleep, full not of the days of man, for which she had no desire, knowing them to be evil for her, and mainly occupied with our dust and wanderings, but more exceedingly full of the days of God, than I imagine any one even of those who have departed in a wealth of hoary hairs, and have numbered many terms of years.  Thus she was set free, or, it is better to say, taken to God, or flew away, or changed her abode, or anticipated by a little the departure of her body.

22.  Yet what was I on the point of omitting?  But perhaps thou, who art her spiritual father, wouldst not have allowed me, and hast carefully concealed the wonder, and made it known to me.  It is a great point for her distinction, and in our memory of her virtue, and regret for her departure.  But trembling and tears have seized upon me, at the recollection of the wonder.  She was just passing away, and at her last breath, surrounded by a group of relatives and friends performing the last offices of kindness, while her aged mother bent over her, with her soul convulsed with envy of her departure, anguish and affection being blended in the minds of all.  Some longed to hear some burning word to be branded in their recollection; others were eager to speak, yet no one dared; for tears were mute and the pangs of grief unconsoled, since it seemed sacrilegious, to think that mourning could be an honour to one who was thus passing away.  So there was solemn silence, as if her death had been a religious ceremony.  There she lay, to all appearance, breathless, motionless, speechless; the stillness of her body seemed paralysis, as though the organs of speech were dead, after that which could move them was gone.  But as her pastor, who in this wonderful scene, was carefully watching her, perceived that her lips were gently moving, and placed his ear to them, which his disposition and sympathy emboldened him to do,—but do you expound the meaning of this mysterious calm, for no one can disbelieve it on your word!  Under her breath she was repeating a psalm—the last words of a psalm—to say the truth, a testimony to the boldness with which she was departing, and blessed is he who can fall asleep with these words, “I will lay me down in peace, and take my rest.”³⁰²⁴

3024 Ps. iv. 8.

3025 Ib. cxxvii. 2.

23.  Better, I know well, and far more precious than eye can see, is thy present lot, the song of them that keep holy-day,³⁰²⁶

3026 Ib. xlii. 4.

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