Against Vigilantius

Oh horror! He is said to have as partners in his crime certain bishops: if indeed they are to be called bishops who ordain no deacons unless they have first taken wives: trusting chastity in no unmarried man, indeed showing how holily they themselves live, since they entertain evil suspicions of all others: and unless they see the wives of clerics pregnant, and infants crying in their mothers' arms, they do not bestow the sacraments of Christ. What shall the Churches of the East do? What of Egypt and the Apostolic See, which receive as clerics either virgins or the continent: or, if they have had wives, cease to be husbands?

This is what Dormitantius has taught, giving free rein to lust, and doubling by his exhortations the natural fervor of the flesh which usually burns in youth; nay rather extinguishing it by intercourse with women: so that there is nothing to distinguish us from swine, nothing to differentiate us from brute beasts, nothing from horses, of whom it is written: They have become as horses maddened after females: every man neighed after his neighbor's wife. This is what the Holy Spirit says through David: Be ye not like the horse and the mule, which have no understanding. And again concerning Dormitantius and his companions: With bit and bridle bind fast their jaws, who come not near unto Thee.

But it is now time that, setting down his own words, we should attempt to answer each in turn. For it may happen that some malicious critic will again say that I have invented the matter, to which I answer with a rhetorical declamation, as in that piece I wrote to Gaul, of a mother and daughter at odds with one another. The authors of this little dictation of mine are the holy priests Riparius and Desiderius, who write that their parishes have been defiled by this man's neighborhood, and who sent me his books by our brother Sisinnius—books which he had vomited forth while snoring amid his drunken carousal. And they assert that there have been found some who, favoring their own vices, assent to his blasphemies.

He is indeed unskilled both in words and in learning, and inflamed of speech; he cannot even defend true things: but on account of worldly men and little women burdened with sins, always learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth, I will answer his nonsense in one small night's labor, lest I seem to have spurned the letters of the holy men who begged me to do this.

No wonder he answers to his own stock, being born of the seed of robbers and of the Convenae (whom Cn. Pompey, after subduing Spain, and hastening to return for his triumph, brought down from the ridges of the Pyrenees and gathered into one town: whence the city of the Convenae took its name), so that up to this day he plays the brigand against the Church of God, and, descending from the Vectones, the Arrebaci, and the Celtiberi, assaults the Churches of Gaul, bearing not at all the standard of the cross, but the ensign of the devil. Pompey did this same thing also in the regions of the East: so that, having subdued the Cilician and Isaurian pirates and robbers, he founded a city bearing his own name between Cilicia and Isauria. But this city today keeps the ordinances of its founders, and no Dormitantius has arisen in it.

The Gauls endure a homegrown enemy, and behold a man of disturbed mind, one who ought to be bound with the chains of Hippocrates, sitting in the Church, and among his other words of blasphemy saying even this: "What need is there for you not only to honor with such great honor, but even to adore, that I-know-not-what, which you cherish by carrying it about in a small vessel?" And again in the same book: "Why do you kiss with adoration dust wrapped in a linen cloth? And in what follows: "We see something close to the rite of the heathen introduced into the Churches under the pretext of religion—while the sun is still shining, heaps of candles are lit, and everywhere some little dust or other, wrapped in a small precious vessel with linen, is kissed and adored.

Men of this sort pay great honor to the most blessed martyrs, whom they think ought to be illuminated by the vilest little candles; whom the Lamb, who is in the midst of the throne with all the brightness of His majesty, illuminates."

For who, O insane head, has ever adored the martyrs? Who has thought a man to be God? Did not Paul and Barnabas, when the Lycaonians thought them to be Jupiter and Mercury, and wished to offer sacrifices to them, rend their garments and declare themselves to be men? Not because they were not better than those dead men Jupiter and Mercury of old, but because, under the error of paganism, honor due to God was being paid to them. This we also read of Peter, who lifted up Cornelius, who wished to worship him, and said: Rise up; for I also am a man. And you dare to say: "That I-know-not-what which you cherish by carrying it about in a small vessel?" What that "I-know-not-what" is, I desire to know.

"Explain more clearly, that you may blaspheme with full liberty, that 'I-know-not-what little dust' wrapped in a small precious vessel with linen." It pains him that the relics of the martyrs are covered with a precious veil, and are not bound up in rags or sackcloth, or thrown upon a dunghill; so that Vigilantius alone, drunk and sleeping, may be adored. Are we then sacrilegious when we enter the basilicas of the Apostles? Was the Emperor Constantius sacrilegious, who translated to Constantinople the holy relics of Andrew, Luke, and Timothy, at which the demons roar, and the very indwellers of Vigilantius confess that they feel their presence? Must the Emperor Arcadius now also be called sacrilegious, who after so long a time translated the bones of the blessed Samuel from Judea into Thrace? Are all the bishops to be judged not only sacrilegious, but also foolish, who carried a thing so vile and crumbled ashes in silk and in a golden vessel?

Foolish were all the peoples of all the Churches, who ran to meet the holy relics, and received them with such joy, as though they beheld a present and living prophet—whence from Palestine even to Chalcedon the swarms of peoples were joined together, and with one voice resounded in the praises of Christ? Doubtless they were adoring Samuel, and not Christ, whose Levite and prophet Samuel was. You suppose him dead, and therefore you blaspheme. Read the Gospel: The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob: He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

If then they live, they are not shut up, according to you, in a decent prison.

For you say that either in the bosom of Abraham, or in the place of refreshment, or beneath the altar of God, the souls of the apostles and martyrs have taken up their seat, and cannot from their own tombs be present wheresoever they wish. They are, forsooth, of senatorial rank; and are not shut up among murderers in a most foul prison, but are confined in a free and honorable custody in the Isles of the Blessed and in the Elysian Fields. Will you set laws for God? Will you cast chains upon the apostles, so that they are kept in custody until the day of judgment, and are not with their Lord, of whom it is written: They follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth? If the Lamb is everywhere, then those also who are with the Lamb must be believed to be everywhere.

And while the devil and the demons roam throughout the whole world, and with exceeding swiftness are present everywhere, shall the martyrs, after the shedding of their blood, be shut up enclosed in a chest, and be unable to come forth from it? You say in your little book that while we live we can pray for one another mutually; but after we have died, no one's prayer for another is to be heard: especially since the martyrs, entreating vengeance for their own blood, have not been able to obtain it. If the apostles and martyrs, while still established in the body, can pray for others, when they ought still to be anxious for themselves, how much more after their crowns, victories, and triumphs? One man, Moses, obtains pardon from God for six hundred thousand armed men: and Stephen, an imitator of his Lord, and the first martyr in Christ, begs pardon for his persecutors; and after they have begun to be with Christ, will they be less able?

Paul the apostle says that two hundred and seventy-six souls were granted to him in the ship; and after he begins to be dissolved and to be with Christ, will he then keep his mouth shut, and be unable to utter a sound for those who throughout the whole world have believed in his Gospel? Will Vigilantius, the living dog, be better than that dead lion? I would rightly propose this from Ecclesiastes, if I confessed Paul to be dead in spirit. In short, the saints are not called dead, but sleeping. Whence also Lazarus, who was about to rise again, is said to have slept. And the Apostle forbids the Thessalonians to grieve over those who sleep. You, waking, sleep; and, sleeping, you write: and you propose to me an apocryphal book, read under the name of Esdras by you and those like you: where it is written that after death no one dares to pray for others: which book I have never read.

For what need is there to take into one's hands what the Church does not receive? Unless perhaps you bring forward to me the Balsamus, and Barbelus, and the Treasure of Mani, and the ridiculous name of Leusiboras: and, because you dwell at the roots of the Pyrenees, and are a neighbor to Iberia, you follow the incredible monstrosities of Basilides, that most ancient heretic of unlearned knowledge, and propose what is condemned by the authority of the whole world. For in your little Commentary, as if it made for you, you take a testimony from Solomon which Solomon by no means wrote: so that, having your other Esdras, you may have also your other Solomon: and if it please you, read also the fabricated revelations of all the patriarchs and prophets: and when you have learned them, sing them among the women's weaving-rooms, nay rather set them forth to be read in your taverns: that through these old wives' tales you may the more easily provoke the unlearned crowd to drink.

We light candles, however, not amid clear daylight, as you falsely charge in your calumny: but that we may temper the darkness of night with this consolation; and that we may keep watch by the light, lest we, blind, sleep in darkness along with you. But if some, through the inexperience and simplicity of worldly men, or certainly of religious women, of whom we can truly say: I confess they have zeal for God, but not according to knowledge, do this in honor of the Martyrs, what do you lose thereby? The apostles too once complained that the ointment was being wasted; but they were rebuked by the voice of the Lord. For neither did Christ need the ointment, nor do the martyrs need the light of candles: and yet that woman did this in honor of Christ, and the devotion of her mind is accepted. And whoever light candles have their reward according to their faith, as the Apostle says: Let every man abound in his own sense. Do you call men of this kind idolaters?

I do not deny that all of us who believe in Christ have come from the error of idolatry. For we are not born, but reborn, Christians. And because we once worshipped idols, must we now not worship God, lest we seem to venerate him with a like honor as the idols? That was done for idols, and is therefore to be detested: this is done for martyrs, and is therefore to be accepted. For even without relics of martyrs, throughout all the Churches of the East, when the Gospel is to be read, lamps are lit, though the sun is already shining red: certainly not to drive away darkness, but to show a sign of joy. Hence also those virgins of the Gospel always have their lamps lit. And to the apostles it is said: Let your loins be girded, and lamps burning in your hands.

And of John the Baptist: He was a burning and shining lamp: so that under the type of bodily light that light might be shown, of which we read in the Psalter: Thy word, O Lord, is a lamp to my feet, and a light unto my paths.

Does the Roman bishop, then, act wrongly, who over the dead bones of Peter and Paul—venerable bones according to us, according to you vile dust—offers sacrifices to the Lord, and considers their tombs to be the altars of Christ? And not the bishops of one city only, but of the whole world err, who, despising the tavern-keeper Vigilantius, enter the basilicas of the dead, in which lies, wrapped in linen, I know not what vilest dust and ashes: so that, being polluted, they may pollute everything; and as if they were Pharisaic sepulchers, whitened outside while within full of unclean ash, everything reeks and is filthy. And after this, vomiting up muddy filth from the pit of his breast, he goes on to say: "Do the souls of the martyrs, then, love their own ashes, and fly around them, and are always present, lest perhaps, if some petitioner should come, they might be unable to hear him, being absent? O monstrosity that ought to be carried off to the farthest ends of the earth!

You mock the relics of martyrs, and along with Eunomius, the author of this heresy, you construct a calumny against the Churches of Christ: nor are you deterred by such fellowship, that you speak the same things against us that he speaks against the Church? For all his followers do not enter the basilicas of apostles and martyrs, so that, forsooth, they may worship the dead Eunomius, whose books they consider of greater authority than the Gospels; and they believe the light of truth is in him: just as other heresies contend that the Paraclete came into Montanus, and say that Mani himself is the Paraclete.

Against your heresy, which once burst forth against the Church (lest even in this you glory as the discoverer of a new crime), Tertullian, a most learned man, wrote a notable volume, which he calls the Scorpiace, a most fitting name: because with a curved sting it spreads poison into the body of the Church—poison which was once called the Cainite heresy, and, having slept or lain buried for a long time, has now been roused up again in Dormitantius. I wonder that you do not say that martyrdoms ought never to have been undertaken at all, since God, who does not seek the blood of goats and bulls, requires still less the blood of men. Though you have not said this—indeed even if you have not said it, you are to be regarded as though you had said it. For you who assert that the relics of martyrs are to be trampled underfoot, forbid the shedding of blood that is worthy of no honor.

Concerning the vigils and all-night watches frequently held in the basilicas of the martyrs, I answered briefly in another letter, which I had written to the holy presbyter Riparius almost two years before this. But if you think these vigils are to be rejected on the ground that we might seem to celebrate Easter too often, and not keep the solemn vigils only once a year: then sacrifices ought not to be offered to Christ on the Lord's Day either, lest we seem to celebrate too often the Passover of the Lord's resurrection, and begin to have not one Passover, but many. But the error and fault of young men and of the vilest women, which is often detected happening at night, is not to be imputed to religious men: because such a thing is often proved to happen even at the vigils of Easter, and yet the fault of a few does not prejudice religion; for such people, even without vigils, can go astray either in their own homes or in others'.

The betrayal of Judas did not destroy the faith of the apostles. So too the evil vigils kept by others will not destroy our vigils; rather, those who sleep for the sake of lust ought to be compelled to keep watch for the sake of chastity. For what is good to have done once cannot become evil if done more often; or if some fault is to be avoided, it is not culpable because it is done often, but because on some occasion it is done wrongly. Let us therefore not keep vigil on the days of Easter, lest the long-awaited desires of adulterers be fulfilled; lest the wife find an occasion for sinning, lest she be unable to be locked away by her husband's key. Whatever is rarer is more ardently sought after.

I cannot go through everything contained in the letters of the holy presbyters; I will bring forward some points from his little pamphlets. He argues against the signs and miracles that occur in the basilicas of the martyrs, and says that they profit unbelievers, not believers, as if the question now were for whom they are done, and not by what power they are done. Granted that they are signs for unbelievers, since, refusing to believe speech and teaching, they are led to faith by signs—the Lord too worked signs for unbelievers, and yet the Lord's signs are not to be belittled because those people were unbelieving; rather they will be a greater cause for admiration, because they were of such power that they even tamed the hardest minds and compelled them to faith. So do not tell me, "these are signs for unbelievers"; rather answer how, in the vilest dust and I know not what ashes, there is such a presence of signs and powers.

I sense it, I sense it, most wretched of mortals, what it is you grieve over, what it is you fear. That unclean spirit, which forces you to write these things, has often been tortured by this vilest dust—indeed is tortured by it today—and though it dissembles its wounds in you, it confesses them in others. Unless perhaps, in the manner of impious pagans, of Porphyry and Eunomius, you contrive that these are demonic tricks, and that demons are not truly crying out, but feigning their own torments.

I give you counsel: enter the basilicas of the martyrs, and you will sometime be purged; you will find there many companions of yours, and you will be burned not by the candles of the martyrs, which displease you, but by invisible flames, and then you will confess what you now deny, and you, who speak in Vigilantius, will freely proclaim your true name—that you are either Mercury, on account of greed for money, or Nocturnus, according to the Amphitryon of Plautus, during whose sleep, in the adultery of Alcmena, Jupiter joined together two nights, that Hercules of great strength might be born; or else Father Bacchus, for drunkenness and for the tankard hanging from his shoulders, and for his ever-reddened face, foaming lips, and unbridled abuse.

Hence also in this province, when a sudden earthquake, in the middle of the night, roused everyone from sleep, you, most prudent and wisest of mortals, prayed naked, and told us about Adam and Eve in paradise: and they indeed, their eyes opened, blushed to see themselves naked, and covered their private parts with the leaves of trees; but you, naked both of tunic and of faith, and terrified by sudden fear, and having something of nocturnal drunkenness about you, thrust the obscene part of your body before the eyes of the saints, so as to demonstrate your prudence. Such are the adversaries the Church has: these are the leaders who fight against the blood of martyrs; orators of this kind thunder against the apostles, indeed such rabid dogs bark against the disciples of Christ.

I confess my own fear, lest perhaps it descend from superstition. When I have been angry, and have thought something evil in my mind, and a nighttime phantasm has deluded me, I do not dare enter the basilicas of the martyrs: so entirely do I tremble, both in body and in soul. You will perhaps laugh, and mock the ravings of little women. I am not ashamed of the faith of those women who were the first to see the risen Lord, who were sent to the apostles, who were entrusted, in the person of the mother of the Lord Savior, to the holy apostles. You may belch forth with worldly men; I will fast with women—indeed with religious men, who display chastity in their countenance, and who, bearing pallid faces from continual continence, show forth the modesty of Christ.

You seem to me to grieve over another thing as well: that if continence and sobriety and fasting should take root among the Gauls, your taverns might not have their profits, and you might not be able to carry on your vigils of the devil and your drunken feasts all night long. Moreover, it has been reported to me in these same letters that, contrary to the authority of the apostle Paul—indeed of Peter, John, and James, who gave their right hands to Paul and Barnabas in token of fellowship, and charged them to be mindful of the poor—you forbid that any relief of funds be sent to Jerusalem for the use of the saints. Doubtless if I answer these things, you will immediately bark that I am pleading my own case, since I have bestowed such largess upon everyone that, had you not come to Jerusalem and poured out your own money or that of your patrons, we would all have been in danger of starvation.

I say only what the blessed apostle Paul says in nearly all his epistles, and enjoins upon the Churches of the Gentiles: that on the first day of the week, that is, on the Lord's Day, everyone should make a collection, to be sent to Jerusalem for the relief of the saints, either through his own disciples or through whomever they themselves should approve; and, if it be worthy, he himself would either send it or carry what had been collected. In the Acts of the Apostles also, speaking to the governor Felix, he says: After many years, I came to bring alms to my nation, and offerings and vows, in which they found me purified in the temple. Could he not, in some other part of the world, and in the Churches which he was instructing in their newborn faith, distribute what he had received from others?

But he wished to give to the poor of the holy places, who, leaving behind their little worldly means for the sake of Christ, had turned with their whole mind to the service of the Lord. It would take too long now, were I to wish to go through all his testimonies in all his epistles, in which he pursues this matter, and hastens with his whole mind, that money be sent to Jerusalem and to the holy places for believers there: not for avarice, but for refreshment; not to gather riches, but to sustain the weakness of the frail body, and to ward off cold and hunger.

This custom persists to this day in Judea, not only among us but also among the Hebrews, so that those who meditate in the law of the Lord day and night, and have no father on earth but God alone, are supported by the ministrations of the synagogues and of the whole world; on the basis of equality, to be sure, not so that some have refreshment and others tribulation, but so that the abundance of some may sustain the want of others.

You will answer, that each one can do this in his own country: nor will there be lacking poor people, who ought to be sustained by the Church's wealth. Nor do we deny that alms are to be extended to all the poor, even to Jews and Samaritans, if there be such abundance of generosity. But the Apostle teaches that alms are indeed to be given to all, but especially to those of the household of faith. Of these the Savior also spoke in the Gospel: Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of iniquity, that they may receive you into everlasting habitations. Can those poor, among whose rags and filth of body burning lust holds sway, possess everlasting habitations, who possess neither the present nor the future? For it is not simply the poor, but the poor in spirit who are called blessed: of whom it is written: Blessed is he who understands concerning the needy and the poor: in the evil day the Lord shall deliver him.

In sustaining the common poor there is need not at all of understanding, but of almsgiving. In holy poor there is blessedness of understanding, so that one gives to him who is ashamed to receive: and when he has received, he grieves: reaping carnal things, and sowing spiritual things. But as for his assertion that those do better who use their own goods, and little by little distribute the fruits of their possessions to the poor, than those who, having sold their possessions, bestow all at once, it is answered to him not by me, but by the Lord: If you would be perfect, go, sell all that you have, and give to the poor: and come, follow me. He speaks to one who wishes to be perfect, who along with the apostles leaves father, boat, and net. This man whom you praise is a second or third degree, which we too accept, provided we know that the first is to be preferred to the second and third.

Nor are monks to be deterred from their pursuit by you with your viper's tongue and most savage bite, concerning whom you argue, and say: If all shut themselves away, and are in solitude, who will attend the churches? Who will win over secular men? Who will be able to exhort sinners to virtues? For in this way, if all were fools like you, who could be wise? And virginity would not be approved. For if all were virgins, there would be no marriages: the human race would perish: infants would not cry in their cradles; midwives would beg without wages: and in the harshest cold, alone and shrunken, Dormitantius would keep vigil in his little bed. Virtue is rare and is not sought after by many. And would that all were what the few are, of whom it is said: Many are called, few are chosen; the prisons would be empty.

But the monk holds the office not of a teacher, but of a mourner: one who laments either himself or the world, and fearfully awaits the coming of the Lord: who, knowing his own weakness, and the fragile vessel he carries, fears to strike it, lest he stumble and fall and be broken. Whence he also avoids the sight of women, and especially of young girls, and is so much his own chastiser that he fears even things which are safe.

Why, you will say, do you go off to the desert? Clearly, that I may not hear you, may not see you: that I may not be moved by your madness; that I may not suffer your wars; lest the eye of a harlot capture me; lest a most beautiful form lead me into unlawful embraces. You will answer: this is not to fight, but to flee. Stand in the battle line, armed resist your adversaries: so that, after you have conquered, you may be crowned. I confess my weakness. I do not wish to fight in hope of victory, lest I sometime lose the victory. If I flee, I have avoided the sword: if I stand, either I must conquer, or fall. But what need is there to abandon what is certain, and pursue what is uncertain? Death must be avoided either by shield or by feet. You, who fight, can both be overcome and conquer.

I, when I flee, do not conquer in the very fact of fleeing: but I flee for this reason, that I may not be conquered. There is no safety in sleeping next to a serpent. It may happen that it does not bite me; yet it may happen that at some time it does bite me. We call mothers sisters and daughters, and we are not ashamed to cloak our vices with names of piety. What is a monk doing in the cells of women? What do private and solitary conversations mean, and eyes that flee witnesses? Holy love has no impatience. What we have said of lust, let us apply also to avarice, and to all vices which are avoided by solitude. And for this reason we shun the crowds of cities, lest we be compelled to do what nature compels us less to do than will does.

These things, as I have said, I dictated at the request of holy presbyters, in the space of one night's lamp-labor, with brother Sisinnius hastening greatly, and hurrying to Egypt for the relief of the Saints: otherwise the matter itself had such open blasphemy in it that it demanded rather the indignation of the writer than a multitude of testimonies. But if Dormitantius should again keep vigil against me in his slanders, and with that same blasphemous mouth with which he tears apart apostles and martyrs should think that I too must be reviled, I shall not keep watch for him with a brief little lamp-vigil, but through the whole night, for him and his companions—nay rather his disciples or masters—who think that husbands are unworthy of Christ's ministry unless they have seen the wombs of their wives swollen.