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| Preface.
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Preface.
Although many of the
saints who are taught by your example can scarcely emulate the
greatness of your perfection, with which you shine like great
luminaries with marvellous brightness in this world, yet still you, O
holy brothers Honoratus and Eucherius,1682
| 1682 On Honoratus and
Eucherius, see the Introduction, p. 189. | are so stirred by the great glory of
those splendid men from whom we received the first principles of
monasticism, that one of you, presiding as he does over a large
monastery of the brethren, is hoping that his congregation, which
learns a lesson from the daily sight of your saintly life, may be
instructed in the precepts of those fathers, while the other has been
anxious to make his way to Egypt to be edified by the sight of these in
the flesh, that he might leave this province that is frozen as it were
with the cold of Gaul, and like some pure turtle dove fly to those
lands on which the sun of righteousness looks and to which it
approaches nearest, and which abound with the ripe fruits of virtues.
As a matter of course the greatness of my love wrings this from me;
viz., that considering the desire of the one and the labour of the
other, I should not decline the danger and peril of writing, if only to
the one there may be added authority among his children, and from the
other may be removed the necessity for so risky a journey. Further
since neither the Institutes of the Cœnobia which we
wrote to the best of our ability in twelve books for Bishop Castor of
blessed memory, nor the ten Conferences of the fathers living in the
desert of Scete, which we composed somehow or other at the bidding of
Saints Helladius and Leontius the Bishops,1683
| 1683 Cf. the Preface
to Conference I. | were able to satisfy your faith and
zeal, now in order that the reason for our journey may be also known, I
have thought that seven Conferences of the three fathers whom we first
saw living in another desert, might be written in the same style and
dedicated to you, in which whatever has been in our previous works
perhaps obscurely explained or even omitted on the subject of
perfection, may be supplied. But if even this is not enough to satisfy
the holy thirst of your desires, seven other Conferences, which are to
be sent to the holy brethren living in the islands of the
Stœchades,1684
| 1684 A group of
islands off the coast of France opposite Marseilles; mentioned by
Pliny, H. N. III. V., now known as Les Isles
d’Hieres. | will, I fancy,
satisfy your wants and your ardour.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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