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| Chapter V. Of the death of the old man Heron.
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Chapter V.
Of the death of the old man Heron.
And to support this
judgment delivered of old by the blessed Antony and the other fathers
by a modern instance, as we promised to do, remember what you lately
saw happen before your very eyes, I mean, how the old man
Heron,1176
| 1176 Gazæus thinks
that this is a different person from the man of the same name mentioned
by Palladius, Hist. Laus. c. xxxii. | only a very few
days ago was cast down by an illusion of the devil from the heights to
the depths, a man whom we remember to have lived for fifty years in
this desert and to have preserved a strict continence with especial
severity, and who aimed at the secrecy of solitude with marvellous
fervour beyond all those who dwell here. By what device then or by what
method was he deluded by the deceiver after so many labours, and
falling by a most grievous downfall struck with profound grief all
those who live in this desert? Was it not because, having too little of
the virtue of discretion he preferred to be guided by his own judgment
rather than to obey the counsels and conference of the brethren and the
regulations of the elders? Since he ever practised incessant abstinence
and fasting with such severity, and persisted in the secrecy of
solitude and a monastic cell so constantly that not even the observance
of the Easter festival could ever persuade him to join in the feast
with the brethren: when in accordance with the annual observance, all
the brethren remained in the church and he alone would not join them
for fear lest he might seem to relax in some degree from his purpose by
taking only a little pulse. And deceived by this presumption he
received with the utmost reverence an angel of Satan as an angel of
light and with blind slavishness obeyed his commands and cast himself
down a well, so deep that the eye could not pierce its depths, nothing
doubting of the promise of the angel who had assured him that the
merits of his virtues and labours were such that he could not possibly
run any risk. And that he might prove the truth of this most certainly
by experimenting on his own safety, in the dead of night he was deluded
enough to cast himself into the above mentioned well, to prove indeed
the great merit of his virtue if he should come out thence unhurt. And
when by great efforts on the part of the brethren he had been got out
already almost dead, on the third day afterward he expired, and what
was still worse, persisted in his obstinate delusion so that not even
the experience of his death could persuade him that he had been
deceived by the craft of devils. Wherefore in spite of the merits of
his great labours and the number of years which he had spent in the
desert those who with compassion and the greatest kindness pitied his
end, could hardly obtain from Abbot Paphnutius1177
| 1177 On Paphnutius see
the note on III. i. | that he should not be reckoned among
suicides, and be deemed unworthy of the memorial and oblation for those
at rest.1178
| 1178
Pausantium, i.e., those at rest. The word is used for the
departed in a similar way in the 6th Canon of the Council of Aurelia
(Orleans) a.d. 511. “Quando
recitantur pausantium nomina.” And the phrase “Pausat in
pace” is occasionally found in sepulchral inscriptions. Inscr.
Boldetti Cimeter. p. 399; Inscr. Maff. Gall. Antiq. p. 55. | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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