Letters 21 to 30: To Eustochium and Marcella

« Hearken, O daughter, and see, and incline thy ear: and forget thy people and thy father's house; and the king shall desire thy beauty ». In the forty-fourth Psalm God speaks to the human soul, that after the example of Abraham, going out from her land and from her kindred, she may leave the Chaldeans, who are interpreted as it were demons, and dwell in the region of the living, which elsewhere the Prophet sighs for, saying: « I believe to see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living ». But it is not enough for you to go out from your land, unless you forget your people and your father's house, so that, the flesh being despised, you may be joined to the embraces of the Bridegroom. « Look not back, » he says, « neither stay thou in all the country about: but save thyself in the mountain, lest thou be also consumed ».

It does not profit one who has laid hand to the plow to look back, nor to return home from the field, nor after the tunic of Christ to go down to the housetop to take up another garment. A great marvel: the Father exhorts the daughter not to remember her father. « You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will do », it is said to the Jews. And elsewhere: « He that committeth sin is of the devil ». Begotten first of such a parent, we are black; and after penitence, not yet having ascended to the summit of virtue, we say: I am black, but beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem. I have gone out from the house of my infancy, I have forgotten my father, I am reborn in Christ. What reward do I receive for this? There follows: And the king shall desire thy beauty. This therefore is that great Sacrament.

For this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be both—now no longer, as there, one flesh, but one spirit. Your Bridegroom is not arrogant, not proud; he has taken an Ethiopian woman to wife: as soon as you wish to hear the wisdom of the true Solomon, and come to him, he will confess to you all that he knows, and the king will bring you into his chamber, and, wonderfully, your color being changed, that saying will suit you: Who is this that goeth up made white?

2. These things, my Lady Eustochium, I write for this reason (for I ought to call her Lady who is the bride of my Lord), that from the very beginning of the reading you might know that I am not now going to speak the praise of Virginity, which you have proved to be the best thing and have attained; nor am I going to enumerate the troubles of marriage—how the womb swells, the infant cries, the concubine torments, the care of the household presses, and how death at the last cuts off all things that are thought to be goods. For married women too have their own order, honorable marriage, and an undefiled bed; but that you might understand that, going out from Sodom, you must fear the example of Lot's wife. For there is no flattery in this little book. For a flatterer is a smooth enemy.

There will be no pomp of rhetorical speech, which would set you even among the Angels, and, the blessedness of Virginity having been set forth, would subject the world to your feet.

3. I do not wish pride to come to you from your resolve, but fear. You walk laden with gold; the robber is to be avoided by you. This life is a race-course for mortals; here we contend, that elsewhere we may be crowned. No one walks safely among serpents and scorpions. And my sword, says the Lord, is made drunk in heaven, and do you think there is peace on earth, which brings forth briars and thorns, which the serpent devours? We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers of this world, and the rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual wickedness in high places. We are surrounded by great battalions of enemies; all things are full of foes. Frail flesh, soon to be ashes, fights alone against many.

But when it shall have been dissolved, the prince of this world will come and find nothing of sin in it; then securely you shall hear through the Prophet: Thou shalt not be afraid of the terror of the night, of the arrow that flieth in the day, of the business that walketh about in the dark, of invasion, or of the noonday devil. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. But if the multitude of them troubles you, and at each incitement of vices you begin to burn, and your thought says to you: what shall we do?

Elisha will answer you: Fear not, for there are more with us than with them, and he will pray and say: Lord, open the eyes of thy servant, that she may see: and your eyes being opened you will see a fiery chariot, which, after the example of Elijah, will lift you up to the stars; and then joyfully you will sing: Our soul hath been delivered as a sparrow out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are delivered.

4. As long as we are held in this frail body, as long as we have this treasure in earthen vessels, and the spirit lusteth against the flesh, and the flesh against the spirit, there is no certain victory. Our adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour, goeth about. Thou hast appointed darkness, says David, and it is night: in it shall all the beasts of the wood creep forth. The young lions roaring after their prey, and seeking their meat from God.

The devil does not seek unfaithful men, not those who are without, and whose flesh the king of the Assyrians burns in the pot: he hastens to snatch from the Church of Christ. His food, according to Habakkuk, is choice. He desires to overturn Job, and, Judas having been devoured, he seeks power to sift the Apostles. The Savior came not to send peace upon the earth, but a sword. Lucifer, who used to rise in the morning, has fallen; and he who was nourished in the Paradise of delights deserved to hear: If thou be exalted as an eagle, thence I will bring thee down, says the Lord (Abdiae. 4). For he had said in his heart: I will set my throne above the stars of heaven, and I will be like the Most High. Whence daily to those who descend by the ladder of Jacob's dream, God speaks: I have said, you are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High. But you shall die like men, and shall fall like one of the princes.

For the devil, the first, fell; and although God stands in the congregation of the gods, and in the midst discerns the gods, the Apostle writes to those who cease to be gods: For whereas there is among you envying and contention, are you not carnal, and walk according to man?

5. If the Apostle, a vessel of election, and separated unto the Gospel of Christ, on account of the goads of the flesh and the incitements of vices, chastises his body and brings it into subjection, lest, while preaching to others, he himself should be found a castaway; and yet sees another law in his members warring against the law of his mind, and himself led captive under the law of sin—if, after nakedness, fastings, hunger, prison, scourges, torments, turning back upon himself he cries out: Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death—do you think you ought to be secure?

Beware, I beseech you, lest at some time God say of you: The virgin of Israel is fallen, and there is none to raise her up. I will speak boldly: though God can do all things, he cannot raise up a virgin after her fall. He is able indeed to free her from punishment, but he will not crown the corrupted. Let us fear that Prophecy, lest it be fulfilled even in us: The fair virgins shall faint. Observe what is said: even the good virgins shall faint; because there are evil virgins also. Whosoever, he says, shall look on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart. Virginity, then, perishes even in the mind. These are the evil virgins, virgins in flesh, not in spirit: foolish virgins, who, having no oil, are shut out from the Bridegroom.

6. But if even those who are virgins are yet, on account of other faults, not saved by the virginity of their bodies: what shall become of those who have prostituted the members of Christ, and have turned the temple of the Holy Spirit into a brothel? Straightway they will hear: Come down, sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon: sit on the ground, there is no throne for the daughter of the Chaldeans: no more shalt thou be called tender and delicate. Take the millstones, grind meal, uncover thy locks, make bare the leg, pass over the rivers, thy shame shall be uncovered, thine reproach shall be seen.

And this after the marriage-chambers of the Son of God, after the kisses of the Brother and the Bridegroom, she of whom once the prophetic word sang: The queen stood at thy right hand, in gilded clothing, surrounded with variety, shall be stripped naked; and her hinder parts shall be set before her own face: she shall sit by the waters of the wilderness, her vessel laid aside, and shall spread her feet to every one that passeth by, and shall be defiled even to the crown of her head. It would have been better to have undergone the marriage of a man, to have walked along level ground, than, reaching for higher things, to fall into the depth of hell. Let not, I beseech thee, the faithful city, Sion, become a harlot, lest after the lodging of the Trinity, demons dance there, and sirens and hedgehogs build their nests.

Let not the girdle of the breast be loosed; but as soon as lust has tickled the sense, or the flattering fire of pleasure has poured its sweet heat over us, let us break forth into the cry: The Lord is my helper, I will not fear what flesh can do unto me. When the inner man begins to waver a little between vices and virtues, say: Why art thou sad, my soul, and why dost thou disquiet me? Hope in the Lord, for I will yet confess to him, the salvation of my countenance, and my God. I would not have thee allow thoughts to grow. Let nothing of Babylon, nothing of confusion, increase in thee. While the enemy is small, slay him: let wickedness be crushed in the seed, lest the tares grow. Hear the Psalmist saying: O daughter of Babylon, wretched one, blessed is he who shall repay thee thy recompense which thou hast repaid unto us. Blessed is he who shall take and dash thy little ones against the rock.

For since it is impossible that the innate heat of the marrow should not rush upon the sense of man, he is praised, he is proclaimed blessed, who, as soon as he begins to think base thoughts, immediately kills the thoughts, and dashes them against the rock: and the rock is Christ.

7. O how often, when I myself was placed in the desert, and in that vast solitude which, scorched by the heat of the sun, furnishes a horrid dwelling-place for monks, did I imagine myself among the delights of Rome! I sat alone, because I was filled with bitterness. My disfigured limbs bristled with sackcloth, and my squalid skin had taken on the filth of Ethiopian flesh. Daily tears, daily groans; and if sleep, pressing hard upon me despite my resistance, overcame me, I would dash my bare bones, scarcely holding together, against the naked ground. Of food and drink I say nothing, since even sick monks use only cold water, and to have taken anything cooked is a luxury.

I, then, who out of fear of hell had condemned myself to such a prison, companion only of scorpions and wild beasts, was often present, in fancy, at dances of maidens. My face was pale with fasting, and my mind burned with desire in a body grown cold, and though the man was already dead beforehand in his own flesh, the fires of lust alone still boiled up before him. Therefore, destitute of all help, I used to lie at the feet of Jesus, watering them with tears, wiping them with my hair; and I subdued my resisting flesh by weeks of fasting. I am not ashamed to confess the misery of my unhappiness; rather I lament that I am not now what I was then. I remember that, crying out, I often joined day to night, nor ceased from beating my breast until, at the Lord's rebuke, tranquility returned. I feared even my own little cell, as though it were privy to my thoughts. Angry with myself, and stern, I would go alone into the deserts.

Wherever I saw hollow valleys, rugged mountains, steep cliffs, there was the place of my prayer, there the torture-house of this most wretched flesh; and, as the Lord himself is my witness, after many tears, after eyes fixed upon heaven, I sometimes seemed to myself to be among the companies of the angels, and joyful and rejoicing I would sing: We will run after thee, to the odor of thine ointments.

8. But if those men endure this, who, with wasted body, are assailed by thoughts alone, what does a girl suffer who enjoys delicacies? Surely that word of the Apostle: Living, she is dead. If, then, there can be any counsel in me, if experience is to be trusted, this I first advise, this I solemnly urge, that the bride of Christ flee wine as poison. This is the first weapon of demons against youth. Not so does avarice shake us, does pride puff us up, does ambition delight us. We can easily be free of other vices; this enemy is shut up within us.

Wherever we go, we carry the enemy with us. Wine and youth are a twofold fire of pleasure. Why do we add oil to the flame? Why do we furnish fuel of fires to a body already burning? Paul says to Timothy: No longer, he says, drink water only, but use a little wine, for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities. See for what reasons the drinking of wine is permitted: that pain of the stomach and frequent infirmity might be healed by it. And lest we should perhaps flatter ourselves concerning our ailments, he commanded that only a little be taken, by the counsel rather of a physician than of an apostle: although the Apostle too is a spiritual physician: and lest Timothy, overcome by weakness, should not be able to fulfil the labors of preaching the Gospel: otherwise he remembered that he himself had said: Wine, wherein is luxury. And: It is good for a man not to drink wine, and not to eat flesh. Noah drank wine, and was drunken.

After the Flood, the world still being rude, and the vine then first planted, perhaps he did not know that wine could make one drunk. And, that thou mayest understand the mystery of Scripture in all things—for indeed the pearl is the word of God, and can be pierced from every side—after the drunkenness there followed the uncovering of the thighs, lust joined to excess. For first the belly is distended, and thus the other members are aroused. For the people ate, and drank, and rose up to play. Lot, the friend of God, was saved on the mountain, and out of so many thousands of the people found alone just, is made drunk by his own daughters; and although they thought the race of men had perished, and did this more out of desire for children than of lust, yet they knew that a just man would not do this unless drunk.

In the end, he did not know what he had done; and although there was no will in the crime, yet the error was in the fault. From this were born the Moabites and Ammonites, enemies of Israel, who, even to the fourteenth generation, and forever, do not enter into the Church of God.

9. When Elijah was fleeing from Jezebel, and lay exhausted under an oak tree in the wilderness, an angel came to him and roused him, and it was said to him: Arise and eat. He looked, and behold, at his head a hearth cake, and a vessel of water. Could not God indeed have sent seasoned wine and choice meats, and flesh prepared with pounding? Elisha invites the sons of the prophets to a meal, and, feeding them with wild herbs, hears the consonant cry of those dining: Death in the pot.

The man of God was not angry with the cooks, for he had no habit of a richer table, but by casting in flour from above, he sweetened the bitterness: by the same power of the spirit by which Moses had changed Marah into sweetness. And also those who had come to seize him, blinded alike in eyes and mind, when he had led them unknowing into Samaria, listen to what manner of feast he commanded them to be refreshed with: Set before them, he says, bread and water; let them eat, and drink, and be sent back to their master. To Daniel too a more sumptuous table could have been sent from the royal dishes; but Habakkuk brings him a reaper's meal, a rustic one, I think. And therefore he was called a man of desires, because he did not eat the bread of desire, nor drink the wine of concupiscence.

10. Innumerable are the divine responses from the Scriptures which condemn gluttony and approve simple foods.

But since it is not now my purpose to discourse on fasting, and to pursue all things belonging to its own title and volume, let these few examples out of many suffice. Otherwise, by the pattern of these, thou canst gather for thyself how the first man, from paradise, obedient rather to his belly than to God, was cast down into this vale of tears. And Satan himself tempted the Lord with hunger in the desert. And the Apostle cries out: Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both this and them. And of the luxurious, whose god is their belly (Philipp. 3). For each man worships that which he loves. Whence careful provision must be made, that hunger may lead back those whom fullness drove out of paradise.

11. But if thou wilt answer that thou, born of noble stock, always amid delights, always upon feathers, canst not abstain from wine and richer foods, nor live by such strict laws, I will answer: Live then by thy own law, since thou canst not live by God's. Not that God, the Creator and Lord of the universe, delights in the rumbling of our intestines and the emptiness of the belly, and in the burning of the lungs; but because purity cannot otherwise be safe. Job, dear to God, and by his own testimony blameless and simple, hear what he suspects of the devil: "His strength is in his loins, and his power is in the navel of his belly". Decently have the genital parts of man and woman been given other names. Whence also of the loins of David it is promised that one shall sit upon his throne. And seventy-five souls entered into Egypt, who came out of the thigh of Jacob.

But after the Lord wrestled with him, and the breadth of his thigh withered, he ceased from the work of begetting children. And he who is to keep the Passover is commanded to do it with loins girded and mortified. And to Job God says: "Gird up now thy loins like a man". And John is girded with a leathern girdle, and the Apostles are bidden to hold the lamps of the Gospel with loins girded. But of Jerusalem, which, sprinkled with blood, is found in the field of error, it is said in Ezekiel: "Thy navel was not cut". Therefore all the strength of the devil against men is in the loins: all his might against women is in the navel.

12. Wilt thou know that it is as we say? Take examples: Samson, stronger than a lion and harder than stone, who alone and unarmed pursued a thousand armed men, grows soft in the embraces of Delilah.

David, chosen according to the heart of the Lord, and who had often sung with his own mouth of the holy Christ who was to come, after walking upon the roof of his house, being captivated by the nakedness of Bathsheba, joined murder to adultery. Here—And note this briefly—no gaze is safe, even in one's own house. Wherefore, repenting, he speaks to the Lord: "Against thee only have I sinned, and done evil before thee". For he was a king, and feared no other man. Solomon, through whom Wisdom herself sang, who discoursed from the cedar of Lebanon even to the hyssop that springs out of the wall, fell away from the Lord, because he was a lover of women. And lest anyone should trust in nearness of blood, Amnon burned with unlawful passion for Tamar his sister.

13. It shames me to say how many virgins fall daily, how many the mother Church loses from her own bosom, over which stars the proud enemy sets his throne: how many rocks he hollows out, and the serpent dwells in their crevices. You may see many widows, before ever they were brides, hiding their unhappy conscience only with a false garment. Whom, unless the swelling of the womb and the crying of infants betray them, walk with head erect and playful step. Others indeed anticipate barrenness, and commit murder of a man not yet even sown. Some, when they have felt themselves conceived in sin, contrive poisons of abortion, and often, themselves dying along with the child, are carried down to hell guilty of three crimes: murderers of themselves, adulteresses against Christ, and murderers of their child not yet born. These are they who are wont to say: "All things are clean to the clean". My conscience is enough for me. God desires a clean heart. Why should I abstain from foods which God created for use?

And if at any time they wish to appear witty and festive, when they have gorged themselves with wine, joining sacrilege to drunkenness, they say: Far be it from me that I should abstain from the Blood of Christ. And whomever they see pale and sad, they call wretched, and a Manichaean: and consequently—for on such a view fasting is heresy. These are they who walk notably through the public streets, and by furtive glances of the eyes draw after them troops of young men, who ever hear through the Prophet: "Thou hast gotten thee the face of a harlot, thou art shameless". Only a thin purple stripe on the garment, and it loosely worn, so that the hair may fall down, the head bound up, the slipper cheaper, and over the shoulders a hyacinth-colored mantle fluttering with its maphorion; the sleeves girded and clinging to the arms, and the gait made with loosened knees. This is, among such women, the whole of virginity.

Let them have admirers of this sort of their own, that under the name of virgin they may perish more profitably. We are not glad to please such as these.

14. It shames me to say—alas the shame! Sad, but true—whence did the plague of the "Agapetae" enter into the Churches? Whence without marriages another name for wives? Nay whence a new kind of concubines? I will say more: whence unmarried harlots? They are kept in the same house, one bedchamber, often even the same little bed, and they call us suspicious if we think anything of it. A brother deserts his virgin sister, a virgin spurns her celibate brother, seeks a stranger as brother, and while they pretend to be of the same profession, they seek the spiritual solace of strangers, that they may have carnal commerce at home. Solomon in Proverbs scorns men of this sort, saying: “Shall a man bind fire in his bosom, and his garments not be burned? Or shall he walk upon coals of fire, and his feet not be burned”?

15. Having therefore exploded and banished these who do not wish to be virgins, but to seem so, now all my discourse is directed to you, who, the more you have begun to be the first noble virgin of the city of Rome, the more you must labor, lest you lack both present goods and future ones. And indeed you have learned by a household example the troubles of marriage and the uncertainty of wedlock, since your sister Blæsilla, older in age but lesser in resolve, after taking a husband, was widowed in the seventh month. O unhappy human condition, ignorant of the future: she lost both the crown of virginity and the pleasure of marriage. And although widowhood holds the second degree of chastity, yet how many crosses do you suppose she endures moment by moment, seeing daily in her sister what she herself has lost, and, having more difficultly experienced the lack of pleasure, having a lesser reward of continence? Yet let her too be secure, let her be joyful.

The hundredfold and the sixtyfold fruit are from one seed of chastity.

16. I do not want you to have the company of matrons: I do not want you to go to the houses of the nobility: I do not want you frequently to see what, despising, you wished to be a virgin. Thus little women are wont to applaud themselves concerning men who are judges, and placed in some dignity. If the ambition of those who pay their respects rushes to the wife of the Emperor, why do you do injury to your husband? Why do you, the bride of God, hasten to the wife of a man? Learn in this matter a holy pride: know that you are better than they.

Nor indeed do I wish you only to avoid the meetings of those who are puffed up by the honors of their husbands, whom troops of eunuchs hedge about, and in whose garments gold metals drawn out into thread are woven; but flee also those whom necessity, not will, has made widows: not that they ought to have wished for the death of their husbands; but that they did not gladly accept the occasion given for chastity. But now, with only the garment changed, the former ambition is not changed. There precedes a row of half-men, litters of the Bastarnae; and with reddening cheeks, the stuffed skin is stretched out, so that you might think they have not lost husbands, but are seeking them. The house is full of flatterers, full of banquets. The clergy themselves, who ought to be masters of doctrine and of fear alike, kiss the heads of matrons, and with hand outstretched, so that you might think they wished to bless them, if you did not know better, they accept the price of the greeting.

Meanwhile those women, who have seen that priests need their patronage, are lifted up into pride: and because, having experienced the domination of husbands, they prefer the freedom of widowhood, they are called chaste, and Nuns, and after a doubtful supper, they dream themselves Apostles.

17. Let those be your companions whom fasts have made thin, whose faces are pale, whom age and life alike have proved, who daily sing in their hearts: “Where dost thou feed? Where dost thou lie at noon”? Who say from affection: “I desire to be dissolved, and to be with Christ”. Be subject to your parents: imitate your Bridegroom. Let your going forth in public be rare; seek for yourself martyrs in your own chamber. There will never lack an occasion for going out, if you are always ready to go out only when necessary. Let your food be moderate, and never let your belly be filled. For there are many who, while sober with wine, are drunk with abundance of food.

When you rise at night to pray, let it not be indigestion that causes belching, but emptiness. Read frequently, learn as much as possible. Let sleep steal upon you while holding the book, and let the sacred page receive your falling face. Let your fasts be daily, and your refreshment shun satiety. It profits nothing, after two or three days have passed, to carry an empty stomach, if the fast is equally overwhelmed, if it is compensated for, by satiety. At once the mind, replenished, grows sluggish, and the watered ground sprouts the thorns of lust. If ever you feel the outer man sighing for the flower of youth, and, having taken food, when the sweet pageant of desires shakes you as you lie composed upon your bed, seize the shield of faith, in which the fiery arrows of the devil are quenched. “All adulterers, their hearts are like an oven”.

But you, accompanying the footsteps of Christ, and intent upon his words, say: “Was not our heart burning within us in the way, while Jesus opened to us the Scriptures”? And this: “Thy word is exceedingly fiery, and thy servant hath loved it”. It is difficult for the human soul not to love something, and it is necessary that our mind be drawn into some affections or others. The love of the flesh is overcome by the love of the spirit. Desire is quenched by desire. Whatever is diminished on the one side, grows on the other. Rather, always repeat, and say over your bed: “In the nights I sought him whom my soul loved”. “Mortify, therefore,” says the Apostle, “your members which are upon the earth”. Whence also he himself afterward said confidently: “I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me”. He who mortifies his members, and walks in the image, does not fear to say: “I am become like a bottle in the frost”.

Whatever moisture of lust was in me has been boiled away; and: “My knees are weakened through fasting;” and: “I forgot to eat my bread. By reason of the voice of my groaning, my bone hath cleaved to my flesh”.

18. Be a cicada of the nights. Wash your bed every night, water your couch with your tears. Watch, and be like a sparrow alone upon the housetop. Sing with the spirit, sing with the understanding also: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: who is merciful to all thy iniquities: Who healeth all thy infirmities, and redeemeth thy life from corruption”. And which of us can say from the heart: “For I did eat ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping”? Should one not weep, not groan, when the serpent again invites me to forbidden foods? When, cast out from the paradise of Virginity, he wishes to clothe us with garments of skins, which Elias, returning to paradise, cast off upon the earth?

What have I to do with pleasure, which quickly perishes? What have I to do with this sweet and deadly song of the sirens? I do not wish you to be subject to that sentence by which condemnation was brought upon man: “In sorrow and in anxieties shalt thou bring forth”. That is woman’s law, not mine: “and thy turning shall be to thy husband.” Let her turning be to a husband, who does not have Christ for her man. And at last, “thou shalt die the death.” That is the end of marriage; my resolve is without sex. Let married women have their own time and title. To me virginity is dedicated in Mary and Christ.

19. Someone may say: And do you dare to detract from marriage, which has been blessed by God? It is not to detract from marriage, when virginity is set before it. No one compares evil with good. Let married women too glory, since they are second to virgins. “Increase,” he says, “and multiply, and fill the earth”.

Let him increase and multiply, who is to fill the earth. Your host is in the heavens. “Increase and multiply”—this edict is fulfilled after paradise and nakedness, and the fig leaves that presaged the itch of marriage. Let him marry and be given in marriage, who eats his bread in the sweat of his face, whose earth brings forth thorns and thistles, and whose grass is choked with briers. My seed is fruitful with a hundredfold crop. “Not all receive the word of God, but they to whom it is given”. Let necessity make another a eunuch, let will make me one. “A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing: a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather”. After the sons of Abraham were begotten from the hardness of the nations, “the holy stones began to be rolled upon the earth”. For indeed the whirlwinds of this world pass by, and in the chariot of God they roll with the swiftness of wheels.

Let those sew tunics who have lost the seamless tunic from above, whom the wailing of infants delights, weeping with tears at the very outset of light because they were born. Eve was a virgin in paradise; after the garments of skin, marriage took its beginning. Your region is paradise. Keep what you were born as, and say: “Return, O my soul, into thy rest”. And that you may know that virginity belongs to nature, marriage to sin: flesh is born a virgin from marriage, and rendering in the fruit what it had lost in the root. “A rod shall come forth out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of his root”. The rod is the Mother of the Lord, simple, pure, sincere, with no shoot from without clinging to her, and fruitful, after the likeness of God, by union. The flower of the rod is Christ, saying: “I am the flower of the field, and the lily of the valleys”.

He is also proclaimed in another place a stone cut out of the mountain without hands, the Prophet signifying that a virgin was to be born of a Virgin. For hands are taken for the work of marriage, as here: “His left hand is under my head, and his right hand shall embrace me”. With this sense agrees also the fact that the animals brought into Noah’s Ark two by two are unclean: for an unequal number is clean. And Moses and Joshua son of Nun are commanded to go with bare feet into the holy Land. And the disciples are sent to preach the new Gospel without the burden of shoes and the bonds of hides. And the soldiers, when the garments of Jesus were divided by lot, had no sandals to take away. For the Lord could not have what he had forbidden to his servants.

20. I praise marriage, I praise wedlock, but because they beget virgins for me: therefore, from thorns a rose, from earth gold, from a shell a pearl.

Shall he who plows, plow all day long? Shall he not also rejoice in the fruit of his labor? Marriages are the more honored, when what is born of them is more loved. Why do you, a mother, envy your daughter? She was nourished by your milk, raised at your breast, grew up in your bosom. You with diligent devotion kept her a virgin. Are you indignant that she did not wish to be the wife of a soldier, but of a king? She has bestowed a great favor upon you. You have begun to be the mother-in-law of God. “Concerning virgins,” says the Apostle, “I have no commandment of the Lord”. Why? Because he too, that he might be a virgin, was not so by command, but by his own will. Nor should those be heeded who invent that he had a wife, when, discussing continence and urging perpetual chastity, he added: “But I would that all men were even as I myself”.

And below: “But I say to the unmarried and to widows: it is good for them if they so remain, even as I.” And in another place: “Have we not power to lead about wives, as also the rest of the Apostles”? Why then does he have no commandment of the Lord about Virginity? Because it is of greater merit, that which is not compelled but offered. Because, if Virginity had been commanded, marriage would seem to have been taken away: and it would have been very harsh to force something against nature, and to extort from men the life of Angels, and in a certain way to condemn what had been established.

21. There was another kind of happiness in the old Law. There it is said: “Blessed is he who has seed in Sion, and household in Jerusalem.” And: “cursed is the barren woman who did not bear”. And: “your sons like new olive-shoots around your table”. And there is the promise of riches. And, “there shall be no weak one among your tribes”.

Now it is said, lest you think yourself a dry tree: you have a place for sons and daughters, an everlasting place in the heavens. Now the poor are blessed, and Lazarus is preferred to the rich man clothed in purple. Now he who is weak is stronger. The world was empty: and, to say nothing of types, the only blessing was that of children. For this reason Abraham, already old, is joined to Cetura: and Jacob is bought back with mandrakes: and beautiful Rachel, as a figure of the Church, laments her closed womb. But gradually, as the harvest increased, the reaper was sent in. Elias was a virgin, Eliseus a virgin, the sons of the Prophets many virgins. To Jeremiah it is said: “And you shall not take a wife”. Sanctified in the womb, with captivity near at hand, he is forbidden to take a wife. The Apostle says the same thing in other words: “I think this to be good on account of the present necessity, because it is good for a man to be so”.

What is this necessity, which takes away the joys of marriage? “The time is short: it remains that they that have wives be as though they had none”. Nabuchodonosor is near at hand. The lion has stirred from his den. To what end should marriages serve so most proud a king? To what end the little ones, whom the Prophet laments, saying: “The tongue of the infant cleaved to the roof of his mouth for thirst. The little ones asked for bread, and there was none to break it for them”. Therefore, as we have said, this good of continence was found only in men, and Eve continually bore children in sorrow. But after the Virgin conceived in the womb, and bore for us a child, “whose government is upon his shoulder”, God, mighty, the father of the world to come, the curse was loosed. Death came through Eve: life through Mary. And therefore the gift of virginity flowed more richly upon women, because it began from a woman.

As soon as the Son of God entered upon the earth, he instituted for himself a new household, so that he who was adored by Angels in heaven might have Angels also on earth. Then Judith, in her continence, cut off the head of Holofernes (Judith 13). Then Aman, whose name is interpreted “iniquity,” was burned with his own fire (Esther 15). Then James and John, leaving their father, their net, their boat, followed the Saviour; leaving behind alike the affection of blood, the bonds of the world, and the care of the household. Then for the first time was heard: “Whoever wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” For no soldier goes to battle with a wife. To the disciple wishing to go and bury his father, it is not permitted. The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests where they may rest: but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.

Lest perhaps you be saddened, if you remain in narrow straits. “He who is without a wife is anxious about the things that are the Lord’s, how he may please the Lord. But he who is with a wife is anxious about the things of the world, how he may please his wife. The woman and the virgin are divided. She who is not married thinks on the things of the Lord, that she may be holy in body and in spirit”. For she who is married thinks on the things of the world, how she may please her husband.

22. How many troubles marriages have, and with how many cares they are bound, I think I have briefly expressed in that book which I published against Helvidius on the perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Mary. To repeat the same things now would be too long; and if anyone wishes, he may draw from that little spring.

But lest I seem to have omitted it entirely, I will now say this: that since the Apostle bids us pray without ceasing, and he who renders the marriage debt cannot pray, either we pray always, and are virgins: or we cease to pray, that we may serve marriage. “And if a virgin marry,” he says, “she does not sin: nevertheless such shall have tribulation of the flesh”. And at the beginning of the little book I stated beforehand that I would say either nothing at all, or little, about the trials of marriage: and now I remind you of the same, that if it pleases you to know how many troubles the free virgin has, and how many bonds the wife is bound by, you may read Tertullian’s letter to his friend the Philosopher, and other little books on Virginity, and the excellent volume of blessed Cyprian, and what Pope Damasus composed on this subject, in verse and in prose; and the little works which our Ambrose recently wrote to his Sister.

In these he has poured himself out with such eloquence, that whatever pertains to the praises of virgins he has sought out, expressed, and set in order.

23. We must proceed by a different path. We do not merely extol virginity, but we guard it. Nor is it enough to know that it is good, unless what has been chosen be more carefully kept: because the former belongs to judgment, the latter to labor: and the former is common to many, the latter to few. “He who shall persevere,” he says, “to the end, he shall be saved”. And, “many are called, but few are chosen”. Therefore I adjure you before God, and Christ Jesus, and his elect Angels, that you guard what you have begun, lest you readily bring forth into public the vessels of the Lord’s temple, which it has been granted to the Priests alone to see; lest any profane person gaze upon the sanctuary of God. Oza, touching the Ark which he was not permitted to touch, was struck down by sudden death.

For not even the golden and silver vessel was so dear to God as the temple of the virginal body. The shadow has gone before; now is the truth. You indeed speak simply, and in your kindliness do not despise strangers, but unchaste eyes see otherwise. They do not know how to consider the beauty of souls, but of bodies.

Ezechias shows the treasure of God to the Assyrians: but the Assyrians ought not to have seen what they coveted. At length, Judea being shaken by repeated wars, the vessels of the Lord were first captured and carried away. Amid feasts and troops of concubines (since it is the crowning vice to defile what is honorable), Balthasar drinks from the sacred bowls.

24. Do not incline thine ear to words of malice. For often, speaking something unbecoming, they test the judgment of the mind, whether thou, a virgin, dost willingly listen to what is said, whether thou art relaxed at any ridiculous things: whatever thou hast said, they praise; whatever thou hast denied, they deny: they call thee witty and holy, and one in whom there is no guile: Behold, truly a handmaid of Christ, they say: behold, all simplicity. Not like that woman, rough, foul, rustic, dreadful, who perhaps had no husband for this reason, because she could not find one. We are led by a natural evil.

We gladly favor our flatterers, and although we reply that we are unworthy, and a hot blush spreads over our face; yet inwardly the soul rejoices at its own praise. The bride of Christ is the Ark of the Testament, gilded within and without, keeper of the law of the Lord. As in it there was nothing else but the tables of the Testament, so in thee let there be no thought from without. Upon this mercy-seat, as upon the Cherubim, the Lord wishes to sit. He sends His disciples, that He may sit in thee as upon the colt of an ass, that He may loose thee from worldly cares, that leaving behind the straw and bricks of Egypt, thou mayest follow Moses into the wilderness, and enter the land of promise. Let there be no one to hinder—not mother, not sister, not kinswoman, not brother: the Lord has need of thee.

But if they wish to hinder, let them fear the scourges of Pharaoh, who, unwilling to let go the people of God to worship, suffered those things which are written. Jesus, entering the Temple, cast out those things which were not of the Temple. For God is a jealous God, and does not wish His Father's house to become a den of thieves. Otherwise, where money is counted, where there are cages of doves, and simplicity is slain, where in the virginal breast the care of worldly business boils, at once the veil of the Temple is torn; the Bridegroom rises up in anger, and says: "Your house shall be left unto you desolate". Read the Gospel, and see how Mary, sitting at the feet of the Lord, is preferred to the diligence of Martha.

And certainly Martha, by the diligent office of hospitality, was preparing a banquet for the Lord and His disciples, to whom Jesus said, "Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: but few things are needful, or one: Mary hath chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her". Be thou too a Mary; prefer teaching to meals. Let thy sisters run about, and seek how they may receive Christ as guest. Do thou, once for all having cast off the burden of the world, sit at the feet of the Lord, and say: "I have found him whom my soul sought: I will hold him, and will not let him go": and let Him answer: "One is my dove, my perfect one: one to her mother, chosen to her that bore her", namely, the heavenly Jerusalem.

25. Let the secrets of thy chamber always keep thee; let the Bridegroom always play with thee within.

Thou prayest, thou speakest to the Bridegroom; thou readest, He speaks to thee: and when sleep has overcome thee, He will come behind the wall, and put forth His hand through the opening, and touch thy belly: and, awakened, thou shalt rise up, and say: "I am wounded with love": and again thou shalt hear from Him, "A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse: a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed". Beware lest thou go forth from the house, and wish to see the daughters of a foreign land, although thou hast the Patriarchs for brothers, and Israel as father by descent: Dinah went out and was corrupted. I do not wish thee to seek the Bridegroom through the streets. I do not wish thee to go about the corners of the city, though thou say: "I will rise, and go about the city, and in the market and in the streets will I seek him whom my soul loved"; and thou ask: "Have ye seen him whom my soul loved"? No one will deign to answer thee.

The Bridegroom cannot be found in the streets. "Narrow and strait is the way that leadeth unto life". Then it follows: "I sought him, and found him not; I called him, and he answered me not". And would that not to have found him were enough! Thou shalt be wounded, thou shalt be stripped, and, groaning, thou shalt tell: "The watchmen that go about the city found me: they smote me, and wounded me; they took away my veil from me". But if she who had said, "I sleep, and my heart watcheth", suffers this in going out, and "a bundle of myrrh is my kinsman unto me, he shall abide between my breasts"—what shall become of us, who are still but young girls; who remain outside while the bride enters with the Bridegroom? Jesus is jealous; He does not wish thy face to be seen by others.

Though thou make excuse, and plead that thy face was covered with a veil, and say, "I sought thee there, and I said: Tell me, whom my soul loved, where thou feedest, where thou liest down at noon, lest I become as one covered over the flocks of thy companions", He will be indignant, will swell with anger, and will say: "If thou know not thyself, O fair one among women, go forth in the footsteps of the flocks, and feed thy goats beside the tabernacles of the shepherds." Though thou be fair, and thy beauty be loved by the Bridegroom above all women, yet unless thou know thyself, and keep thy heart with all watchfulness; unless thou flee the eyes of young men, thou shalt go forth from my bedchamber, and shalt feed the goats which are to be set on the left hand.

26. Therefore, my Eustochium—daughter, mistress, fellow-servant, sister (for one name belongs to age, another to merit, another to religion, but this one to love)—hear Isaiah speaking: "My people, enter into thy chamber.

Shut thy door, hide thyself a little while, until the wrath of the Lord pass by". Let the foolish virgins wander abroad; be thou within with the Bridegroom; for if thou shalt shut the door, and, according to the precept of the Gospel, shalt pray to thy Father in secret, He will come, and knock, and say: "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock. If any man shall open to me, I will come in, and will sup with him, and he with me", and thou, at once anxious, wilt answer: "The voice of my kinsman knocking: open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled". Nor is it fitting that thou say: "I have put off my garment, how shall I put it on?

I have washed my feet, how shall I defile them?" Rise up at once, and open, lest, while thou delayest, He pass by, and afterward thou lament, and say: "I opened to my kinsman, my kinsman had passed away." For what need is there that the doors of thy heart be closed to the Bridegroom? Let them stand open to Christ, closed to the devil, according to that word: "If the spirit of him that hath power ascend against thee, leave not thy place". Daniel remained in his upper chamber, on the higher floor (for he could not remain in a low place); he had windows open toward Jerusalem. Do thou also keep windows open, but such that light may enter, whence thou mayest see the city of the Lord. Do not open those windows of which it is said: "Death has entered through your windows".

27. This also thou must guard against most carefully: that thou be not seized by the ardor of vain glory. "How," says Jesus, "can ye believe, receiving glory from men"?

See what an evil it is, that he who has it cannot believe. But let us say: "For thou art my glory". And: "He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord". And: "If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ". And: "But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world." And that word: "In thee shall we be praised all the day, in the Lord shall my soul be praised". When thou givest alms, let God alone see. When thou fastest, let thy face be joyful. Let thy garment be neither too clean nor squalid, and marked by no peculiarity; lest the crowd of passers-by stop to meet thee, and thou be pointed at with the finger. A brother has died, a sister's little body must be carried out for burial: beware lest, while thou doest this too often, thou thyself die.

Neither wish to seem too religious, nor more humble than is necessary, lest by fleeing glory thou seek it. For many, avoiding witnesses of their poverty, mercy, and fasting, desire to please by this very thing, that they scorn to please: and, wondrously, praise, while it is avoided, is sought after. Of the other disturbances by which the mind of man rejoices, sickens, hopes, and fears, I find many strangers to them. Of this fault there are very few indeed who are free: and he is best who, as it were in a fair body, is sprinkled but rarely with the filth of blemishes. Nor indeed do I warn thee not to boast of riches, not to vaunt thyself of nobility of birth, not to set thyself above others. I know thy humility: I know that thou sayest from the heart: "Lord, my heart is not exalted, neither are mine eyes lifted up". I know that in thee, and in thy mother, that pride by which the devil fell has utterly no place.

Wherefore it would be superfluous to write to thee about this. For it is most foolish to teach what he whom thou wouldst teach already knows. But lest this very thing beget in thee vainglory, that thou hast despised the vainglory of the world; lest a silent thought steal in, that because thou hast ceased to please in gilded garments, thou try to please in squalid ones: and if ever thou come into an assembly of brothers or sisters, thou sit humbly, thou judge thyself unworthy of a footstool. Do not lower thy voice deliberately, as if worn out with fasting; and, imitating the gait of one fainting, lean upon another's shoulders. For there are some women who disfigure their faces, that they may appear to men as fasting; who, as soon as they see anyone, sigh, lower their brow, and, with covered face, scarcely leave one eye free to see. Their garment is dark, their girdle sackcloth, their hands and feet unwashed; only the belly, because it cannot be seen, seethes with food.

To these that Psalm is daily sung: "The Lord will scatter the bones of them that please themselves". Others, in male attire, with changed garb, blush to be women, as they were born; they cut their hair, and shamelessly lift up eunuch-like faces. There are those who clothe themselves in hair shirts and fashioned cowls, that they may return to infancy, imitating owls and screech-owls.

28. But lest I seem to dispute so much about women, flee also men whom thou seest chained, who, contrary to the Apostle, have womanish hair, a goat's beard, a black cloak, and bare feet enduring the cold. All these are the devices of the devil. Such a one was once Antimus; such a one lately Sophronius, whom Rome bewailed. Who, after they have entered the houses of the nobles, and deceived weak women laden with sins, ever learning, and never coming to the knowledge of the truth, feign sadness; and, as it were prolonging long fasts, drag them out with stolen meals by night.

It shames me to tell the rest, lest I seem rather to be railing than admonishing.

There are others (I speak of men of my own order) who seek the priesthood and the deaconate for this reason, that they may see women more freely. All their care is for their garments, whether they smell sweetly, whether their shoe, of loose leather, does not wrinkle. Their hair is curled with the mark of the curling-iron; their fingers gleam with rings; and lest a damper road splash their feet, they scarcely set the tips of their footsteps down. When thou seest such men, reckon them rather bridegrooms than clergy. Certain men have devoted all their zeal and life to this, that they may know the names, houses, and manners of matrons. Of these I will briefly and concisely describe one, who is the prince of this art: that, the master being known, thou mayest more easily recognize the disciples.

He rises hastily with the sun; the order of his morning calls is arranged; shortcuts of the streets are sought out; and the tiresome old man makes his way almost up to the very bedchambers of those still sleeping. If he sees a cushion, if an elegant napkin, if any piece of household furniture, he praises it, admires it, handles it, and, complaining that he lacks such things, does not so much obtain it as extort it: because each woman fears to offend the courier of the city. To this man chastity is an enemy, fasting an enemy: he judges his dinner by its savory smells and by a fattened game-bird, which in common speech is called "pipizo."

A barbarous and shameless mouth, always armed for insults. Wherever you turn, it is foremost in your face. Whatever new thing has been noised abroad, it is either the author or the amplifier of the rumor. The horses are changed every hour, so sleek and so spirited that you would think it the very brother of the Thracian king's horse.

29. The cunning enemy fights with various snares. The serpent was wiser than all the beasts which the Lord had made upon the earth. Whence also the Apostle says: We are not ignorant of his devices. Neither affected squalor nor exquisite elegance befits a Christian. If you are ignorant of anything, if you doubt anything in the Scriptures, ask him whose life commends him, whose age excuses him, whose reputation does not condemn him; who can say, "For I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ".

Or if there is no one who can explain it, It is better to be safely ignorant of something than to learn it with danger. Remember that you walk in the midst of snares: and many veteran virgins of unquestioned chastity have lost the crown from their hands at the very threshold of death. If there are any little maidservants who are companions of your resolve, do not exalt yourself over them, lest you become like a mistress to them. You have begun to have one Bridegroom; you sing psalms together, you receive the body of Christ together—why then should your table be different? Let others also be provoked to emulation. Let the honor of virgins be an invitation to the rest. But if you perceive that any is weaker in faith, receive her, console her, coax her, and make her chastity your own gain. If any pretends to virginity while fleeing servitude, read plainly to her the Apostle: "It is better to marry than to burn".

But as for those virgins and widows who go about idle and curious through the houses of married women, who, with the shamelessness of their brows worn thin, outdo the parasites of mimes, cast them off as pests. "Evil communications corrupt good manners". They have no care but for the belly, and for what is next to the belly. Such women are wont to exhort and say: My dear, use what is yours, and live while you live: do you keep it for your children? Given to wine and wantonness, they insinuate every kind of evil, and soften even iron minds to delights. "And when they have grown wanton against Christ, they wish to marry, having damnation, because they have made void their first faith". Do not wish to seem to yourself too eloquent, nor sportive with lyric songs, playing at meter. Do not, in your daintiness, imitate the languid affectation of married women, who now with clenched teeth, now with loosened lips, moderate a stammering tongue to half-formed words, thinking everything rustic that is natural.

So much do they delight even in the adultery of the tongue: "For what fellowship has light with darkness? What agreement has Christ with Belial?" What has Horace to do with the Psalter? Virgil with the Gospels? Cicero with the Apostle? Is not a brother scandalized if he sees you reclining in an idol's temple? And though all things are clean to the clean, and nothing is to be rejected which is received with thanksgiving, still we ought not to drink together the cup of Christ and the cup of demons. Let me relate to you the story of my own unhappiness.

30. When many years ago, for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, I had cut myself off from home, parents, sister, kinsfolk, and—harder than all these—from the habit of more sumptuous food, and was setting out to do battle at Jerusalem, I simply could not bring myself to part with the library which I had gathered for myself at Rome with great zeal and labor.

And so, wretched man that I was, I would fast, only to read Cicero afterward. After many nightly vigils, after tears which the recollection of my past sins drew up from the depths of my heart, I would take Plautus into my hands. If ever, coming back to myself, I began to read the Prophets, their unpolished style repelled me; and because with my blind eyes I could not see the light, I thought the fault was not in my eyes but in the sun. While the ancient serpent thus mocked me, about the middle of Lent a fever attacked my weakened body, seeping into my very marrow: and without any rest (a thing scarcely credible to relate) it so fed upon my unhappy limbs that scarcely anything but bones was left me.

Meanwhile preparations for my funeral were being made, and the vital warmth of my soul, while my whole body was already growing cold, throbbed faintly only in my poor warm breast: when suddenly, caught up in the spirit, I was dragged before the judgment seat of the Judge; where there was so much light, and such brightness radiating from those who stood around, that, thrown down upon the ground, I did not dare to look up. Being asked of my condition, I replied that I was a Christian. And He who presided said: Thou liest, thou art a Ciceronian, not a Christian: for where thy treasure is, there is thy heart also. At once I fell silent, and amid the blows (for he had ordered me to be scourged) I was tormented still more by the fire of conscience, turning over in my mind that verse: "But in hell who shall give thee thanks?" Yet I began to cry out and wailing to say: Have mercy on me, Lord, have mercy on me. This cry resounded amid the lashes.

At length those who stood by, falling at the knees of Him who presided, entreated that he would grant pardon to my youth, and give place for repentance to my error, on the understanding that he would exact the penalty afterward, if ever I should read the books of Gentile literature again. I, who in so great a strait would have been willing to promise even greater things, began to swear an oath, and calling upon His name, to say: Lord, if ever I possess worldly books, if ever I read them, I have denied Thee. Dismissed after these words of oath, I returned to the world above; and to the amazement of all, I opened my eyes, so drenched with a flood of tears that even the incredulous might believe me from my grief. And indeed this was no mere slumber, nor idle dreams by which we are often deluded.

Witness is that tribunal before which I lay prostrate, witness is that grim judgment which I feared: so may it never be my lot to fall into such an inquiry again. I confess that my shoulders were black and blue, that I felt the stripes after my sleep, and that from then on I read the things of God with as much zeal as I had before given to the things of men.

31. You must also avoid the evil of avarice—not merely so as not to covet what belongs to another (for this the public laws themselves punish), but so that you do not keep for yourself what is yours yet is, in truth, foreign to you. "If," he says, "you have not been faithful in that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own?" The weight of gold and silver is foreign to us; our own possession is spiritual: of which it is said elsewhere: "The redemption of a man's soul is his own riches".

"No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will endure the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon", that is, "riches." For in the Syrian tongue of the Gentiles, riches are called Mammon. Anxiety about sustenance is a thorn to faith. The root of avarice is care for worldly things. But you say: I am a delicate girl, and cannot labor with my hands. If I come to old age, if I begin to fall ill, who will have pity on me? Hear Jesus speaking to the Apostles: "Be not anxious in your hearts what you shall eat, nor for your body, what you shall put on. Is not the soul more than food, and the body more than raiment? Behold the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns, and your heavenly Father feeds them" (—sic). If clothing is lacking, let the lilies be set before you. If you hunger, hear that the poor and hungry are blessed.

If any pain afflicts you, read: "Wherefore I take pleasure in my infirmities." And, "there was given to me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to buffet me", lest I be exalted. Rejoice in all the judgments of God. "For the daughters of Judah rejoiced because of all thy judgments, O Lord." Let that word ever sound on your lips: "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return". And: "We brought nothing into this world, and neither can we carry anything out."

32. But now you may see very many women stuffing their wardrobes with garments, changing their tunics daily, and yet unable to get the better of the moths. She who is more devout wears out one garment, and yet drags cloths from chests still full. Parchments are dyed purple. Gold is melted into lettering, books are clothed in gems, and Christ lies naked and dying before their doors. When they stretch out a hand to the needy, they sound a trumpet.

When they invite to a love-feast, a herald is hired. I lately saw (I withhold the name, lest you think this a satire) a most noble Roman lady in the Basilica of Blessed Peter, with eunuchs going before her, distributing single coins to the poor with her own hand, so that she might be thought the more devout. Meanwhile as it is very easy to know from experience a certain old woman, bent with years and rags, ran ahead so as to receive a second coin: and when her turn had come round, a fist was given her instead of a penny, and blood was shed—the price of so great a crime. The root of all evils is avarice, and for this reason it is called by the Apostle the service of idols. Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you. The Lord will not let the just soul die of hunger.

"I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the just forsaken, nor his seed seeking bread". Elijah is fed by ravens ministering to him. The widow of Sarepta, herself about to die that very night with her sons, feeds the hungry Prophet: and wonderfully, with her jar kept full, she who was to be fed instead feeds him who had come to be fed. Peter the Apostle says: "Silver and gold I have none; but what I have, this I give thee. In the name of the Lord Jesus, rise up and walk". But now many, though they say nothing aloud, speak by their deeds: Faith and mercy I have none: but what I have, silver and gold, this I will not give thee. "But having food and raiment, with these let us be content". Hear what Jacob asks in his prayer: "If the Lord be with me, and keep me in this way which I go, and give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on".

He asked only for necessities: and after twenty years he returned to the land of Canaan a rich lord, and a still richer father. Endless examples from the Scriptures are ready at hand to teach that avarice must be shunned.

33. But since something has now been said of this in part (and the fuller treatment is reserved, if Christ grant it, for its own volume), let us relate what happened not many years ago at Nitria. A certain one of the brethren, more thrifty than covetous, and not knowing that the Lord had been sold for thirty pieces of silver, left behind at his death a hundred solidi which he had earned by weaving linen. A council was held among the monks (for in that same place about five thousand dwelt in separate cells) as to what should be done. Some said the money should be distributed to the poor; others, that it should be given to the Church; some, that it should be sent back to his relatives.

But Macarius, and Pambo, and Isidore, and the rest whom they call the Fathers, the Holy Spirit speaking in them, decreed that it should be buried with its owner, saying: "Thy money perish with thee." Nor let anyone think this was done cruelly: so great a terror seized all through the whole of Egypt, that to have left behind even one solidus was reckoned a crime.

34. And since we have made mention of monks, and I know you gladly hear what is holy, lend your ear for a little while. There are three kinds of monks in Egypt. One, the Cenobites, whom they in the native tongue call Sauches, we may call those living in common. The second, the Anchorites, who dwell alone in the deserts; and are so named from the fact that they have withdrawn far from men. The third kind is that which they call Remoboth, the worst and most neglected sort, and which in our province is either the only kind or the first to appear.

These live together two or three, or not many more, at their own will and under their own control: and from what they have earned by their labor, they contribute shares in common, so as to have a common table. They dwell for the most part in towns and villages: and as though holiness were a craft, not a way of life, whatever they sell fetches a higher price. Among them there are frequent quarrels: because, living on their own provisions, they will not suffer themselves to be subject to anyone. Indeed, they are wont to vie with one another in fasting; and they make a contest of what should be secret, for the sake of victory. Among them everything is affected: loose sleeves, baggy boots, coarser garments, frequent sighs; visits to virgins, disparagement of the clergy: and if ever a feast day comes, they gorge themselves to the point of vomiting.

35. These, then, as certain pests, having been driven out, let us come to those who are more numerous, and dwell in common, that is, whom we said are called Cœnobites. The first bond of confederation among them is to obey their superiors, and to do whatever they command. They are divided into decuries and centuries, so that one man presides over nine men as the tenth. And again, one over a hundred has ten superiors under him. They remain separated in distinct cells. Until the ninth hour, as is established custom, no one goes to another, except those Deans whom we mentioned, so that if anyone happens to waver with troubling thoughts, he may be consoled by their conversation. After the ninth hour they gather together in common; Psalms resound, Scriptures are recited according to custom. And when the prayers are finished, and all are seated, the one in the middle, whom they call Father, begins to discourse.

While he speaks, such silence prevails that no one dares to look at another, no one dares even to clear his throat. The praise of the speaker is in the weeping of the hearers. Tears silently roll down their faces, and grief does not even break out into sobs. But when he begins to announce the kingdom of Christ, and the future blessedness, and the glory that is to come, you would see all of them, with a restrained sigh and eyes lifted to heaven, saying within themselves: "Who will give me wings like a dove, and I will fly away, and be at rest"? After this the assembly is dismissed, and each decury goes with its own father to the tables, at which they serve in turn week by week. There is no noise at meals; no one speaks while eating. They live on bread, legumes, and vegetables, seasoned only with salt.

Wine is given only to the elders, who often share a meal with the little ones, so that the exhausted age of the one may be sustained, and the beginning age of the other not be broken. Then they rise together, and after a hymn is said, return to their cells: there, until evening, each one converses with his companions, and says: Have you seen this one and that one? How great is the grace in him? How great his silence? How measured his gait? If they see anyone weak, they console him; if anyone fervent in the love of God, they exhort him to zeal. And because at night, apart from the public prayers, each one keeps watch alone in his cell, they go around the cells of each, and with ear applied, diligently discover what they are doing. Whomever they find slower, they do not rebuke; but pretending not to notice what they know, they visit him more often, and, beginning first themselves, provoke him rather to pray than compel him.

The day's set task, when handed over to the Dean, is brought to the Steward, who himself, every month, renders account to the Father of all with great trembling. By him also, when meals have been prepared, they are tasted beforehand; and since no one is allowed to say: I have no tunic and cloak and woven mats of rushes, he so regulates everything that no one asks for anything, and no one lacks anything. But if anyone begins to fall ill, he is transferred to a wider chamber, and is tended with such care by the elders that he misses neither the delights of cities nor a mother's affection. On the Lord's days they devote themselves only to prayer and readings, which indeed they also do at every time when their little tasks are finished. Every day something is learned from the Scriptures. The fast is equal throughout the whole year, except for Lent, in which alone a stricter way of life is permitted.

From Pentecost, suppers are changed into midday meals, so that both the tradition of the Church may be satisfied, and they do not burden the stomach with a double meal. Such men Philo, the imitator of Platonic discourse, and such Josephus, the Greek Livy, in the second history of the Jewish captivity, reports the Essenes to be.

36. But since now, writing about Virgins, I have almost superfluously discoursed about Monks, I shall come to the third kind, whom they call Anchorites; who, going out even from the Cœnobia, carry nothing more into the desert except bread and salt. The founder of this life was Paul, its illustrator Antony; and, to ascend to higher things, its prince was John the Baptist. Such a man indeed the Prophet Jeremiah also describes, saying: "It is good for a man when he has borne the yoke from his youth.

He shall sit alone and be silent, because he has taken up the yoke upon himself, and he shall give his cheek to him who strikes him; he shall be filled with reproaches, for the Lord will not cast off forever". Their labor and manner of life in the flesh, yet not according to the flesh, I will explain at another time, if you wish. Now let me return to my proposed subject, since, while discoursing on avarice, I came to speak of Monks. Setting their examples before you, I say not merely gold and silver and other riches, but despising even earth and heaven itself, and joined to Christ, you shall sing: "The Lord is my portion."

37. After this, although the Apostle bids us pray always, and even sleep itself is prayer to the saints, yet we ought to have set hours of prayer, so that if perhaps we are detained by some occupation, the time itself may remind us of our duty.

The third hour, the sixth, the ninth, dawn also, and evening—there is no one who does not know these. Nor should food be taken except with prayer first offered; nor should one rise from the table without giving thanks to the Creator. At night one must rise twice or three times, and go over what we retain in memory from the Scriptures. Let prayer arm those going out from lodging; let prayer meet those returning from the street before they sit down; let not the little body rest until the soul has been fed. At every act, at every step, let the hand trace the Lord's cross. Detract from no one, and place no stumbling block against a son of your mother. Who are you, to judge another's servant? "He stands or falls to his own Lord. But he shall stand, for God is able to make him stand". Nor, if you have fasted two or three days, think yourself better than those who do not fast.

You fast, and grow angry; he eats, and is gentle in countenance. You digest the vexation of mind and the hunger of the stomach through quarreling; he is fed more moderately, and gives thanks to God. Whence Isaiah cries out daily: "This is not the fast that I have chosen, says the Lord". And again: "In the days of your fasts your own wills are found, and you drive all who are under your power. You fast for strife and debate, and you strike the humble with your fist". To what end do you fast for me? What kind of fast can that be, whose anger not merely nightfall interrupts, but which even the whole moon's course leaves unresolved? Considering yourself, glory not in another's ruin, but in your own work.

38. Do not set before yourself the examples of those women who, taking care of the flesh, reckon up the income of their possessions and the daily expenses of their household.

For neither were the eleven Apostles broken by the betrayal of Judas; nor, when Phygelus and Alexander made shipwreck, did the rest halt in the course of faith. Nor should you say, such a one and such a one enjoys her possessions; she is honored by men; brothers and sisters gather to her. Has she therefore ceased to be a virgin? First, it is doubtful whether such a one is a virgin at all. "For God does not see as man sees. Man sees the face, but God sees the heart". Then, even if she is a virgin in body, whether she is a virgin in spirit, I do not know. But the Apostle thus defined a virgin: that she be holy in body and in spirit. In the end, let her keep her own glory. Let her overcome Paul's judgment, enjoy delights, and live so. Let us follow the examples of the better. Set before yourself the blessed Mary, who was of such purity that she deserved to be the Mother of the Lord.

To whom, when the angel Gabriel had come down in the appearance of a man, saying: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you, she, dismayed and terrified, could not answer. For she had never been greeted by a man. At last she learns and speaks with the messenger. And she who had feared a man converses fearlessly with an angel. You too can be Mother of the Lord. Take to yourself a great, new scroll, and write on it with a man's pen; swiftly take away the spoils; and after you have gone in to the Prophetess, and have conceived in the womb, and have brought forth a son, say: "From fear of you, O Lord, we have conceived, and been in pain, and have brought forth the spirit of your salvation, which we have wrought upon the earth". Then your son will also answer you, and say: Behold my mother and my brothers.

And, wondrously, he whom you had a little before described in the breadth of your breast, whom you had signed with a pen in the newness of your heart, after he has taken spoils from the enemies, after he has stripped principalities and powers and nailed them to the cross, having been conceived grows up, and, having become greater, begins to take you, out of a mother, as his bride. A great labor, but a great reward, to be what the Martyrs are, what the Apostles are, what Christ is. All these things indeed profit only when done within the Church: when in one house we celebrate the Passover; if we enter the Ark with Noah; if, when Jericho is struck down, Rahab the harlot, being justified, holds us within her walls. But as for virgins, such as are said to exist among various heresies, and among the most impure Manichaeans, they are to be reckoned harlots, not virgins. For if the author of their body is the devil, how can they honor the handiwork of their enemy?

But because they know the name "virgin" to be glorious, they cover wolves under sheep's skins. Antichrist counterfeits Christ; and they clothe the vileness of their life with the false honor of a name. Rejoice, sister; rejoice, daughter; rejoice, my virgin: for what others feign, you have truly begun to be.

39. All these things which we have set forth will seem harsh to her who does not love Christ. But whoever has counted all the pomp of the world as refuse, and has reckoned all things under the sun as vain, that she may gain Christ; who has died together with her Lord, and has risen again, and has crucified the flesh with its vices and desires, will freely proclaim: "Who shall separate us from the love of God?

Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?" And again: "I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor strength, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord". The Son of God, for our salvation, was made the son of man. For nine months he waits in the womb to be born, endures loathsome conditions, comes forth bloody, is wrapped in swaddling clothes, is soothed with caresses: and he who encloses the world in his fist is confined within the narrow limits of a manger. I say nothing of the fact that until his thirtieth year he was of no repute, content with the poverty of his parents; he is scourged, and is silent; he is crucified, and prays for those who crucify him. "What then shall I render to the Lord for all that he has rendered to me?

I will take the cup of salvation, and will call upon the name of the Lord. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints". This is the only worthy repayment, when blood is repaid with blood; and we, redeemed by the blood of Christ, gladly die for our Redeemer. Which of the saints was ever crowned without a struggle? The righteous Abel is slain; Abraham risks losing his wife. And lest I extend this into an immense volume, seek and you will find that each one endured adversities. Solomon alone lived in delights, and perhaps for that reason he fell. "For whom the Lord loves, he chastens. And he scourges every son whom he receives". Is it not better to struggle for a short time, to bear the rampart, to take up arms, to grow weary under the breastplate, and afterward to rejoice as victor, than through the impatience of one hour to be a slave forever?

40. Nothing is hard to those who love; no labor is difficult to one who desires.

Consider how much Jacob endured for Rachel, his betrothed wife. "And Jacob served, says Scripture, seven years for Rachel. And they seemed to him but a few days, because he loved her." Whence he himself afterward records: In the day I was burned with heat, and with frost by night. Let us too love Christ, and always seek his embraces, and everything difficult will easily seem so; we shall think all things that are long to be brief; and wounded by his dart, through the moments of the hours we shall say: "Woe is me, that my sojourning is prolonged". "For the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come, that shall be revealed in us". "Because tribulation worketh patience; and patience, trial; and trial, hope; and hope confoundeth not". When what you endure seems heavy to you, read Paul's second Epistle to the Corinthians: "In labours more abundant; in prisons more frequent; in stripes above measure; in deaths often.

Of the Jews five times did I receive forty stripes save one: thrice was I beaten with rods: once I was stoned: thrice I suffered shipwreck: a night and a day I was in the depth of the sea. In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils from my own nation, in perils from the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren: in labour and painfulness, in much watchings, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness". Which of us can claim for himself even the smallest portion of this catalogue of virtues? On account of which he afterward confidently said: "I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of justice, which the Lord, the just judge, will render to me on that day".

If the food is somewhat unsavory, we are grieved: and we think we are conferring some benefit on God when we drink wine more diluted with water. The cup is broken, the table is overturned; blows resound, and lukewarm water is avenged with blood. "The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force". Unless you use force, you will not seize the kingdoms of heaven. Unless you knock importunately, you will not receive the bread of the Sacrament. Does it not seem violence to you, when flesh desires to be what God is: and climbs to that place whence Angels fell, so as to judge Angels?

41. Come forth, I beg, for a little while from the prison, and paint before your eyes the reward of your present labor, which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man. What sort of day will that be, when Mary the Mother of the Lord shall come to meet you, escorted by choirs of virgins?

When, after the Red Sea, with Pharaoh submerged along with his army, Mary the sister of Aaron, holding a timbrel in her hand, shall sing before those who are to respond: "Let us sing to the Lord, for he is gloriously magnified: the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea". Then Thecla will fly joyfully into your embraces. Then the Bridegroom himself will come to meet you, and will say: "Arise, come, my neighbor, my beautiful one, my dove, for behold the winter is past, the rain is over and gone". Then the Angels too will marvel, and will say: "Who is this that looks forth as the morning, fair as the moon, bright as the sun"? The daughters will see you, and will praise you, and the queens and concubines will proclaim your blessedness. From this side too another chorus of chastity will come to meet you: Sarah will come with the married women; Anna the daughter of Phanuel with the widows. In different flocks your mothers of flesh and of spirit will be present.

The one will rejoice, that she bore you: the other will exult, that she taught you. Then truly the Lord will ascend upon the ass, and enter the heavenly Jerusalem. Then the little ones, of whom the Savior speaks in Isaiah: "Behold I and my children whom God has given me", lifting up the palms of victory, will sing with one accord: "Hosanna in the highest: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, hosanna in the highest". Then the hundred forty-four thousand, in the sight of the throne and of the elders, will hold harps, and will sing a new Song. And no one will be able to say that Song, except the number appointed. "These are they who have not been defiled with women: for they remain virgins. These are they who follow the Lamb withersoever he goes".

As often as the vain ambition of the world delights you: as often as you see anything glorious in the world, pass over in mind to paradise: begin to be what you shall be, and you will hear from your Bridegroom: "Set me as a seal upon your heart; as a seal upon your arm", and, fortified equally in body and mind, you will cry out, and say: "Many waters could not quench love, neither shall the floods drown it".

When about the third hour of today we had begun to read the seventy-second Psalm, that is, the beginning of the third book, and were compelled to explain that part of the title itself belongs to the end of the second book, part to the beginning of the third book: namely, that "the hymns of David, the son of Jesse, are ended" was the end of the former; and "A Psalm of Asaph" the beginning of what follows; and we had come to the place where the just man says: "If I said, I will speak thus, behold I should have condemned the generation of thy children", which in the Latin manuscripts we do not have so expressed: suddenly it was announced to us that the most holy Lea had departed from the body. And there I saw you turn pale, so that truly there is scarce a soul, or none, that does not burst forth in sorrow when the earthen vessel is broken.

And you indeed grieved, not because you were uncertain of her future, but because you had not paid the sad tribute due to a funeral. Finally, in the midst of our conversation, we learned again that her remains had already been carried to Ostia.

2. You ask, to what purpose is this recital? I will answer you in the Apostle's words, "much every way." First, because she is to be attended by the joys of all, who, having trodden down the devil, has already received the crown of security. Second, that her life may be briefly set forth. Third, that we may show that a Consul-designate, in the very act of removing his shoes, is now in Tartarus. And indeed the manner of life of our Lea, who could set it forth with worthy praise?

That she was so wholly turned to the Lord, that from the mistress of a household she became the head of a Monastery, the mother of virgins: that after the softness of her garments she wore out her limbs with sackcloth: that she spent sleepless nights in prayers: and taught her companions more by example than by words. She was of such and so subdued humility, that she who was once mistress of many was thought the handmaid of all: except that she was the more truly the handmaid of Christ, in that she was not thought the mistress of men. Unkempt garment, cheap food, neglected head: yet in such a way that, while doing all these things, she avoided display of any of them, lest she receive her reward in this present age.

3. Now therefore, for a brief labor she enjoys eternal blessedness; she is received by choirs of Angels, cherished in the bosom of Abraham, and, together with the once poor Lazarus, sees the rich man in his purple, and the Consul—not in his robe of state but in mourning garb—seeking a drop from the tip of a finger. O what a change of affairs! He who but a few days ago was preceded by the summits of every dignity, who ascended the Capitoline heights as if triumphing over conquered enemies, whom the Roman people received with a kind of applause and dancing, at whose death the whole city was moved, now lies desolate and naked, not in the milk-white palace of heaven, as his unhappy wife falsely claims, but confined in filthy darkness. But she, whom the seclusion of a single chamber enclosed, who seemed poor and slight, whose life was thought madness, follows Christ, and says: "As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of our God", and the rest.

4. Wherefore I admonish, and weeping and groaning I bear witness, that while we run the way of this world, we should not be clothed with two tunics, that is, with a double faith: that we not be weighed down by the leather of shoes, namely dead works: that the purse of riches not press us down toward the earth: that we not seek the aid of the staff, that is, of worldly power: that we not wish to have both Christ and the world at once; but that for brief and transitory things, eternal ones may succeed: and since we die daily (I speak according to the body), let us not think ourselves, among the rest, enduring forever, so that we may be able to be enduring forever.

Let no one reprove me, because in my Letters I either praise or blame certain persons; since, both in reproving the wicked, there is correction of the rest, and in proclaiming the best, the zeal of the good toward virtue is stirred up. The day before yesterday I had said some things of Lea of blessed memory: at once it pricked my mind, and it occurred to me that we ought not be silent about a Virgin, who have spoken of the second order of chastity. Therefore the life of our Asella must be briefly set forth; concerning whom I beg you not to read this Letter to her: for she is burdened by her own praises: but rather deign to read these things to those who are young girls, that, forming themselves upon her example, they may consider her manner of life as the rule of a perfect life.

2. I pass over the fact that she is blessed in her mother's womb, before she is born: that in a vessel of shining glass, and clearer than any mirror, she is delivered a virgin to her father in a dream. That while still wrapped in the swaddling clothes of infancy, and scarcely exceeding her tenth year of age, she is consecrated to the honor of future blessedness. Let all that was before labor be counted as grace: although God, foreknowing the future, both sanctifies Jeremiah in the womb; and makes John exult in his mother's belly; and sets apart Paul, before the foundation of the world, unto the Gospel of his Son.

3. I come to those things which after her twelfth year she chose, seized, held to, began, and fulfilled by her own sweat. Shut within the narrow confines of a single cell, she enjoyed the breadth of Paradise. The same ground of earth served as both the place of prayer and of rest. She held fasting as play, and hunger in place of refreshment.

And since it was not desire of eating but human weakness that drew her to food, with bread and salt and cold water she stirred up her hunger more than she quenched it. And because I have almost forgotten what I ought to have said at the beginning: When first she took up this resolve, she sold, without her parents' consent, the gold of her neck, which the common people indeed call a "necklace" (Murenula); which, the metal drawn out into small rods, is woven in a chain of winding order; and putting on the somber-colored tunic which she could not obtain from her mother, by a pious beginning of her enterprise she suddenly consecrated herself to the Lord, so that all her kindred might understand that nothing else could be wrung from her who had already condemned the world in her garments.

4. But, as we had begun to say, she always conducted herself so moderately, and kept herself so within the secrets of her chamber, that she never set foot in public, never knew the address of a man. And what is more to be wondered at, she loved her virgin sister rather than saw her. She worked with her own hands, knowing it is written: "He who does not work, let him not eat". She spoke to her Bridegroom either in prayer or in psalm-singing. She would go, scarcely seen, to the thresholds of the Martyrs. And though she rejoiced in her resolve, she exulted the more vehemently in this, that no one recognized her. And though throughout the whole year she was sustained by continual fasting, remaining thus for two or three days at a time, then indeed in Lent she would set the sails of her vessel, joining together nearly all the weeks with a joyful countenance.

And what perhaps is impossible for men to believe, but is possible with God's grace, she reached the age of fifty in such a way that she suffered no pain of stomach, was not racked by any injury of the bowels; the dry ground did not bruise her limbs as she lay upon it; her skin, roughened by sackcloth, contracted no stench or foulness: but sound in body, sounder in soul, she thought solitude a delight, and in the tumultuous city found the desert of the Monks.

5. And these things indeed you know better, from whom we have learned but a little; and whose eyes have seen the hardness, like that on the knees of camels, that had formed on that holy little body from frequency of prayer. What we can know, we set forth. Nothing is more pleasant than her severity, nothing more severe than her pleasantness, nothing sadder than her sweetness, nothing sweeter than her sadness. Such is the pallor on her face, that though it indicates continence, it does not smell of ostentation.

Her speech is silent, and her silence speaks. Her gait is neither hasty nor slow. Her dress is always the same. Her tidiness is neglected, and in her unadorned garment, her adornment is without adornment. By the mere consistency of her life alone she has deserved that, in a City of pomp, wantonness, and delights, in which it is misery to be humble, both the good praise her, and the bad dare not detract from her. Let widows and virgins imitate her, married women honor her, the guilty fear her, Priests look up to her.

While reading the ninetieth Psalm, at that place where it is written: "He who dwells in the help of the Most High shall abide in the protection of the God of heaven," I had said that among the Hebrews, in place of "God of heaven," SADDAI is set down, which Aquila renders ἱκανὸν, which we can understand as robust and sufficient for accomplishing all things: and that it is one of ten Names by which God is called among the Hebrews. Straightway you most eagerly requested that I should set out for you all the names together with their interpretation. I will do what you asked.

The first Name of God is EL, which the Seventy translate as "God," Aquila, expressing its etymology, as ἰσχυρὸν, that is, "strong."

Then ELOIM and ELOE, which likewise is called "God."

The fourth is SABAOTH, which the Seventy rendered "of powers," Aquila, "of hosts."

The fifth is ELION, which we call "the Most High."

The sixth is Eser ieje, which is read in Exodus: "He who is, has sent me." The seventh is ADONAI, which we generally call "Lord."

The eighth is IA, which is applied only to God: and it also sounds in the final syllable of ALLELUIA.

The ninth is the τετράγραμμον, which they considered ἀνεκφώνητον, that is, ineffable, which is written with these letters, JOD, HE, VAV, HE. Some, not understanding this, because of the similarity of the letters, when they have found it in Greek books, have been accustomed to read it as ΠΙΠΙ.

The tenth, which was mentioned above, is SADDAI, and in Ezekiel it is set down untranslated. We ought to know, moreover, that ELOIM is of common number, since both the one God is so called and many gods; in the same way heaven also is called both "heaven" and "heavens," that is, SAMAIM.

Whence also the Interpreters often vary, an example of which we can have in our own language: Athens, Thebes, Salona.

Recently, when we were together, not by letter, as you had been accustomed before, but present in person, you asked what those words, which we do not have expressed from Hebrew into Latin, sound like among their own people; and why they are set down without interpretation, as is the case with Alleluia, Amen, Maran atha, Ephod, and the rest of that kind, which you recalled as scattered throughout the Scriptures.

2. To this I, since I am constrained by the narrowness of dictation, reply briefly: that whether the Seventy Translators or the Apostles took care of this, it was so that, since the first Church had been gathered from the Jews, they might introduce nothing new to the scandal of believers: but might hand down things just as they had absorbed them from childhood. But afterward, when the discourse of the Gospel had been spread abroad to all nations, it was not possible for what had once been received to be changed.

Although Origen also asserts this in his books, which are called ἐξηγητικοὺς, that because of the native idiom peculiar to each language, things cannot sound the same among others as they were said among their own people; and that it is much better to leave them uninterpreted than to weaken their force by interpretation.

3. Therefore ALLELUIA is rendered, "Praise the Lord," for JA is indeed one of the ten names of God among the Hebrews. And in that Psalm where we read: "Praise the Lord, for the Psalm is good"; among the Hebrews it is read, Alleluia chi tob zammer.

4. AMEN, however, Aquila renders πεπιστωμένως, which we can say as "faithfully," the adverb being drawn from the noun of faith, Amen. The Seventy render it γένοιτο, that is, "let it be done." Whence also at the end of the books (for the Psalter among the Hebrews is divided into five volumes) they translated "let it be done, let it be done": which in the Hebrew is read Amen amen, so that thereby the things said above may truly be confirmed.

Whence Paul also asserts that no one can answer Amen, that is, confirm what has been preached, unless he has understood the preaching. Maran atha is more Syriac than Hebrew, although from the boundary of both languages it also sounds somewhat Hebrew, and it is interpreted, "Our Lord has come"; so that the sense is: "If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema", and that being completed, then it is added: "Our Lord has come": because it would be superfluous to wish to contend with stubborn hatred against him whose coming is already established.

5. I would like to write to you something also about the Diapsalm, which among the Hebrews is written SELA: and about Ephod, and about that which is found in the title of a certain Psalm: Pro aieleth, and other things of this sort; except that I would both exceed the measure proper to an epistolary style, and questions deferred further ought rather to make you more eager.

For the proverb is well-worn: that goods offered freely tend to stink in one's estimation. Whence I too deliberately keep silent about things to be said, so that you may wish to hear more eagerly what has been left unsaid.

After my earlier letter, in which I had briefly touched upon a few Hebrew words, it was suddenly reported to me that certain little men were zealously disparaging me for having attempted to correct certain things in the Gospels against the authority of the ancients and the opinion of the whole world. Though I could rightly disdain them (for the ass plays the lyre to no purpose), yet lest they charge me with pride, as they are wont to do, let them have this answer: that I was not so dull of heart, nor of such crass rusticity (which they alone hold to be sanctity, claiming to be disciples of fishermen, as though they were holy for this reason, that they knew nothing), that I should think anything in the Lord's words either needed correcting or was not divinely inspired; but rather I wished to call back to the Greek original—from which they themselves do not deny that translation was made—the faultiness of the Latin manuscripts, which is proven by the diversity found among all the copies.

If the water of the purest spring displeases them, let them drink the muddy little streams; and let them cast aside, in reading the Scriptures, the diligence which they apply to knowing the haunts of birds and the depths where shellfish are found; and let them be simple in this matter only, so as to imagine that the words of Christ are rustic—words over which, through so many ages now, the talents of so many great men have labored, so that they have rather guessed at the meaning of each single word than expressed it fully. Let them accuse the Apostle of ignorance, who is said to have gone mad because of too much learning.

2. I know that when you read these things, you will wrinkle your brow, and again fear my frankness as a seedbed of quarrels; and you would wish, if it were possible, to press your finger against my mouth, lest I dare say what others do not blush to do. I ask, what have I said freely?

Have I depicted engraved idols on serving-dishes? Have I, amid Christian feasts, woven in the embraces of Bacchus and Satyrs before virginal eyes? Or has any bitterer speech ever struck anyone from me? Have I grieved that the poor become rich? Have I reproached hereditary burial-places? I, wretched man, said one thing only—that virgins ought more often to be with women than with men—and I have offended the eyes of the whole city, I am marked by the fingers of all. "They that hate me without cause are multiplied above the hairs of my head", and yet you think I shall say anything further?

3. But lest Flaccus laugh at me: "The jar began to be fashioned as an amphora, while the wheel was running; why does a mere pitcher come out?"—I return to our two-footed little asses; and I sound the trumpet in their ear rather than the lyre. Let them read, "rejoicing in hope, serving the time"; let us read, "rejoicing in hope, serving the Lord".

Let them think that an accusation against a Presbyter ought altogether to be received; let us read, "Against a Presbyter receive not an accusation, except under two or three witnesses; but them that sin rebuke before all". Let it please them, "a human saying and worthy of all acceptance"; let us err with the Greeks, that is, with the Apostle, who spoke in Greek: "A faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptance." In the end, let them delight in Gallic geldings; as for us, let that little ass of Zechariah delight us, loosed from its bonds and prepared for the service of the Savior, which, after it had offered its back to the Lord, began to echo the prophecy of Isaiah: "Blessed is he that sows beside every water, where the ox and the ass tread".

Things that have been received must be repaid with interest; and a stout delay breeds interest. You had demanded my opinion about the Diapsalm; I pleaded the brevity proper to a letter, and I put forward as an excuse that the matter could not be explained through a book's worth of writing. But what good does this do against my taskmaster? My silence only stirs up in you a greater desire. So, lest I draw you along any longer, take a few words in place of many.

2. Some have said that the Diapsalm is a change of meter; others, a pause for breath; some, the beginning of another sense. There are those who think it a distinction of rhythm; and since Psalms at that time were sung with the voice joined to an instrument, they suppose it a silence marking some musical variation.

To me none of these seem right; since Aquila, who is the most diligent explicator of Hebrew words, has always translated SELA—that is, Diapsalm, which is written from Samech, Lamed, He—as "always": and we find "Diapsalm" placed even at the end of Psalms, as in the third: "You have broken the teeth of sinners: salvation is of the Lord, and your blessing is upon your people, sela," that is, "forever." And in the twenty-third: "Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory, forever." On the other hand, in Psalms of many verses it is not found at all: namely in the thirty-sixth, and the seventy-seventh, and the hundred and eighteenth. Again, a certain Psalm is distinguished from a Canticle by the Diapsalm: since certainly, if, as some think, the Diapsalm is the beginning of silence, a Canticle could not be a matter of silence.

3. From which we observe that this word connects equally what precedes and what follows, or at least shows that what has been said is everlasting; as is that in the third Psalm: "Many say to my soul, There is no salvation for him in his God, forever." And again: "I cried to the Lord with my voice, and he heard me out of his holy mountain, forever." And in the fourth: "How long will you love vanity, and seek after a lie? Forever." And again, "The things you say in your hearts, and are pricked in your beds, forever." And in Habakkuk: "God will come from the south, and the Holy One from mount Pharan, forever." And below: "The oaths to the tribes, which you have spoken, forever".

4. We ought moreover to know that among the Hebrews, at the end of books, one of three words is customarily appended, so that they write either AMEN, or SELA, or SALOM, which expresses "peace." Whence also Solomon is called "peaceful." Therefore, just as we are accustomed, upon completing our little works, to insert in the middle, for the sake of distinguishing the following matter, "The End," or "Farewell," or something of that kind; so also the Hebrews, that what has been written might be confirmed, are accustomed to do this, so that they say AMEN, or "forever," so as to commemorate what has been written, and set down SELA; or they declare things brought to a happy conclusion, noting "peace" at the very end.

5. These things I have drawn from the innermost spring of the Hebrews, not pursuing the little streams of opinions, nor frightened by the variety of errors with which the whole world is filled: but desiring both to know and to teach what is true.

But if it does not seem burdensome to you, I will interpret word for word what Origen thought about the Diapsalm, so that, since you scorn the new must, you may at least be guided by the authority of the old wine.

6. Often inquiring into the causes why in certain Psalms the Diapsalma is interposed, I have observed most diligently in the Hebrew, and compared it with the Greek, and I have found that wherever the Hebrew tongue has SELA, the Greek always has, or something of this kind, and there the Septuagint, and Theodotion, and Symmachus have translated it Diapsalma. Nor indeed does it harm to confirm what we say by examples.

In the seventy-fourth Psalm, whose beginning is: "We will confess to thee, O God, we will confess, and we will call upon thy name; after that, "I have confirmed its pillars," in the Septuagint, and Theodotion, and Symmachus there is Diapsalma; in place of which, in Aquila, "I have weighed its pillars, forever." But in the Fifth Edition: "I am he who has prepared its pillars, forever." But in the Sixth: "I have made its pillars firm continually." Moreover in the Hebrew it has after AMUDA, that is, its pillars, SELA. And again in the seventy-fifth, whose beginning is: "God is known in Judea"; we find in the Septuagint and Theodotion, after "shield and spear, and war, Diapsalma." In Symmachus, after "buckler and sword and war," likewise Diapsalma.

In place of which, in Aquila, after "buckler and sword and war, forever." In the Fifth Edition, after "shield and lance and war, forever." But in the Sixth, after "shield and sword and war, unto the end." And again in the Hebrew it was after UMALAMA, that is, and war, SELA. And in the same Psalm after that place, "that he might save the meek of the earth, Diapsalma": in Symmachus likewise Diapsalma: and in Aquila, forever: and also in the Fifth. But in the Sixth, unto the end. And in the Hebrew it was after Anie ares, that is, the meek of the earth, SELA. And thus, when we had found such an opinion in each Edition, we have noted these things. But whether those who translated Diapsalma perceived some change of musical melody, or of rhythm, or understood something else, I leave to your judgment.

7. Thus far Origen, whose ignorance in this discussion I have preferred, at least, to follow, rather than have the foolish knowledge of those who know nothing.

It is the office of a letter to write something about household matters, or about daily conversation, and, in a certain manner, for those who are absent to become present to one another, while they announce mutually what they wish, or what has been done: although sometimes such a banquet of familiar talk may also be seasoned with the salt of learning. But you, while wholly occupied in treatises, write me nothing except what torments me, and compels me to read the Scriptures. Finally, yesterday, having proposed a most notorious question, you demanded that I write back at once what I thought. As though indeed I held the chair of the Pharisees, so that as often as there is a dispute about Hebrew words, I should be sought as arbiter and umpire of the strife. Letters are not sweet which do not smell of pastry, which Apicius has not seasoned, in which there is no whiff of the authority of the masters of this age.

But since the bearer and messenger of our conversation hastens to return, I shall speak this great matter more quickly than I have leisure for: although in one disputing about the Holy Scriptures, words are not so necessary as the sense. But if you seek eloquence, Demosthenes is to be read, or Cicero: if divine mysteries, our own books, which do not resound well from Hebrew into Latin, must be looked into.

2. At the head of your letter you had set down, What is meant by what is written in the first Book of Kings: "And Samuel the boy ministered before the face of the Lord, girded with an Ephod bad, and he had a small mantle, which his mother had made for him: and she brought it to him from day to day, when she went up with her husband to offer the sacrifice of days". And so you ask what Ephod bad is, with which the future Prophet is girded, whether it is a girdle, or, as some think, a censer, or some kind of garment.

And if it is a garment, how is it girded? And why, after the Ephod itself, is bad joined to it? You write too that you have read in what follows: "There came a man of God to Eli, and said to him: Thus says the Lord: I plainly revealed myself to the house of your father, out of all the tribes of Israel, when they were in the land of Egypt serving in the house of Pharaoh, and I chose the house of your father out of all the tribes of Israel for myself unto priesthood, that they might go up to my altar, and burn incense, and carry the Ephod": and, having pursued the whole order of the book, you have also taken an example from that place where Doeg the Idumean, by the king's command, killed the priests.

"And Doeg the Syrian turned," says the Scripture, "and put to death the priests of the Lord himself: and he killed on that day three hundred and five men", or (as it is read in the Hebrew) eighty-five, all who wore the Ephod: and he struck Nob the city of the priests with the edge of the sword, from man to woman, from infant to suckling, and ox, and ass, and sheep with the edge of the sword. And there was saved one son of Abimelech son of Ahitub; and his name was Abiathar, and he fled after David.

3. I cannot refrain from anticipating with my answer the order of the problem, where we now read: "And all who wore the Ephod": in the Hebrew it has, those wearing the Ephod bad. Why I have said this you will learn in what follows.

You added also what follows: "And it came to pass, when Abiathar son of Ahimelech fled to David, that he went down with David to Keilah, having the Ephod in his hand: and it was reported to Saul that David had come to Keilah": where, when the king's coming and the siege of the city were feared, David said to Abiathar, "Bring the Ephod of the Lord." These things, excerpted from the Book of Kings and set forth, you then passed on to the volume of Judges, in which it is written that Micah of Mount Ephraim restored to his mother a thousand one hundred shekels of silver, which she had vowed; and that she made from it a graven image and a molten image. And you add that these are afterward called Ephod and Teraphim, whereas surely, if it is a girdle, or a kind of garment, it cannot be a graven or molten thing.

I recognize the error of almost all the Latins, who think that Ephod and Teraphim, which are named afterward, were cast from that silver which she had given to Micah's mother; whereas the Scripture relates thus: "And his mother took"—no doubt Micah's—"the silver, and gave it to the founder, and he made it a graven and a molten thing. And it was in the house of Micah; and Micah had a house of God; and he made an Ephod and Teraphim, and consecrated one of his sons, and he became a priest to him" (Judges 17:4-5). But if you think that those things which were called above graven and molten are afterward named Ephod and Teraphim, learn that they are not the same. For after the mother's idol, which is called graven and molten, Micah made an Ephod and Teraphim, as is proved from what follows.

"And the five men who had gone to spy out the land answered and said to their brothers: Know that there is in these houses an Ephod and Teraphim and a graven and molten thing". And after many things which you have passed over in between: "And the five men went up," it says, "and rushed in there, and took the graven and molten thing, the Ephod and Teraphim. And six hundred men who were girded with weapons of war entered the house of Micah, and took the graven and molten thing, the Ephod and Teraphim." He therefore refutes the opinion of those who, in order to make the question insoluble, have thought the Ephod to be of silver. Note this briefly, that it is never named except in connection with priesthood. For Samuel too, who is recorded to have been girded with it, was a Levite, and the priests of Nob wore this insignia of their dignity.

And (what is not found in the Latin manuscripts) when David, fleeing from Saul, came to Ahimelech, and asked for a sword, saying: "See if there is at hand a spear and a sword, since I did not bring away my sword and my weapons in my hand: and the priest answering said: Behold the sword of Goliath the foreigner, whom you struck down in the valley of the Terebinth, and here it is wrapped in a cloth behind the Ephod in the sanctuary": certainly the Ephod was kept stored away. This too, which we have now set down, where it is read "graven and molten"; although it is an idol, yet because through error it was thought to be religion, for its veneration, just as for the service of God, an insigne of Ephod and Teraphim is made.

4. What Teraphim is, we shall pursue, if there be space for dictation. Now, meanwhile, we must explain, as we began, concerning the Ephod.

In Exodus, where Moses is commanded to order that priestly vestments be made, after other things it is read: "And these are the robes which they shall make: a breastplate, and a superhumeral, and tunics κοσυμβωτάς, and a mitre, and a girdle". Where we have put "superhumeral," the Seventy Interpreters translated in Greek ἐπωμίδα, evidently because a garment of this kind comes upon the shoulders. Then it is joined: "And these shall take gold, and hyacinth, and scarlet, and purple, and fine twined linen, and they shall make the superhumeral of fine twined linen, a work of varied weaving." What more? The whole book of Exodus is full of this kind of vestment. For at the end of the same volume it is written: "And every wise man among the workers made the robes of the saints, which are Aaron the priest's, as the Lord commanded Moses. And they made the superhumeral of gold, and hyacinth, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen".

But because in Exodus this kind of vestment is only commanded to be made, and afterward it is reported to have been made, yet Aaron is not thereby vested; in Leviticus it is explained how he was clothed with the priestly vestments. "And Moses brought Aaron and his sons near, and washed them with water, and clothed him with a ὑποδύτην," which we can interpret as an under-tunic, or the tunic with which he was clothed beneath. "And he put upon him the superhumeral," it says, "and girded him according to the workmanship of the superhumeral, and bound it upon him". You see, then, that Aaron is girded with this superhumeral, just as Samuel was girded with that Ephod bad, whatever that was. But lest I draw you out at greater length, hold this opinion: wherever in the Seventy Interpreters, that is, in our codices, ἐπωμὶς, that is, "superhumeral," is read, in the Hebrew it is written Ephod.

Why they chose to translate it in some places, and leave it untranslated in others, is not for me to judge, since they have done this very thing in many instances: so that, having rendered the same word differently in different places, at last, wearied by the variety of translation, they set down the Hebrew words themselves. But Aquila called what they called ὑποδύτην and ἐπωμίδα, ἔνδυμα and ἐπένδυμα, that is, "garment" and "over-garment." That is, ἔνδυμα, which in the Hebrew tongue is called MAIL, signifies the under tunic; but ἐπένδυμα, that is, ἐπωμὶς, which in Hebrew is called EPHOD, signifies the upper mantle, by which the whole priestly array is covered.

5. You may perhaps ask, if Ephod is a priestly mantle, why in certain places bar is added. Hearing "bar," I cannot restrain laughter. For since among the Hebrews it is said bad, and it is manifest that the Seventy Interpreters themselves so translated it, an error has prevailed, so that bar was written for bad. Now BAD in the Hebrew language means linen, though linen is more expressively rendered by PHESTHA.

Thus, where we read: "And make them linen breeches, to cover the nakedness of the flesh, from the loins even to the thighs", in the Hebrew, for "linen," bad is put. With this kind of garment was also clothed that man who is shown to Daniel: "And I lifted up my eyes, and looked, and behold, a man clothed in baddim", by which plural number linen garments are designated. And for this reason Samuel and the eighty-five priestly men are reported to have worn a linen Ephod, because the High Priest alone had the privilege of being clothed with an Ephod not of linen, but (as Scripture recalls) woven of gold, hyacinth, purple, scarlet, and fine linen. The rest had an Ephod not distinguished by that variety, nor adorned with the twelve stones which rested on each shoulder, but linen and plain, and of the purest whiteness throughout.

6. But since above I had promised that, if there were space for dictation, I would also briefly discuss Theraphim, and since no interrupter has come along meanwhile, know that Theraphim is interpreted by Aquila as μορφώματα, which we may call "figures" or "figurations." For in that passage, when Saul sent messengers to seize David, and they answered that he was gravely ill, he sent again, saying: "Bring him to me in the bed, that I may kill him: and the messengers came, and behold, there were cenotaphs in the bed": for "cenotaphs," in the Hebrew Theraphim, that is, μορφώματα, is put; and it is not the liver of goats, as our codices have it, but a cushion sewn from goatskin, which with its unshorn hair would counterfeit, wrapped in the bed, the head of a man.

But that I may explain the truth of both languages equally: in Hosea God threatens that He will take away all grace from the fornicating people, saying that "for many days the children of Israel shall sit without king, and without prince, without sacrifice, and without altar, and without priesthood, and manifestations" (Hosea 3. 4). For "priesthood and manifestations," in the Hebrew it is, "without Ephod, and without Theraphim," as Theodotion and Symmachus translated. From which we understand that in "Ephod," according also to the Seventy, who translated the sense rather than the words, priesthood is meant; but in "Theraphim," that is, figurations or figures, various works which are called Theraphim are to be understood. For also in Exodus and in other places, where the garments woven with embroidered art are described, the work is described as "the work of Cherubim," that is, made varied and adorned; yet in such a way that "Cherubim" does not have the letter vau: because wherever it is written with this letter, it signifies living creatures rather than works.

According to this sense, therefore, Micah too is shown to have made, along with the priestly vestment, the other ornaments pertaining to the priesthood, by means of Theraphim.

7. How I wish I could now explain to you the whole priestly attire, and through each kind of garment show forth the divine mysteries! But since even in this we have exceeded the brevity of a letter, and Josephus and Philo, most learned men among the Jews, and many of our own writers have treated this matter most fully, you shall hear me, as they say, through their voice: whatever else you wish, in the future let questioner and answerer be present together, so that if perchance we do not know something, it may die in a faithful ear, without witness, without judge. If our common mother is well, I rejoice, and I pray the Lord that she may be well.

We, as you know, detained by the reading of the Hebrews, have contracted a certain rust upon our Latin speech, to such a degree that even when we speak, a kind of un-Latin harshness intrudes. Wherefore forgive the dryness; and, as the Apostle says, if I am unskilled in speech, yet not in knowledge. He lacked neither the one nor the other, and humbly disclaimed the one. We lack both; for we have lost what as boys we had found pleasing, nor have we attained the knowledge we desired, like the fable of Aesop's dog, losing even the lesser things while pursuing the greater.

The day before yesterday, when I was attempting to explain to you the hundred and eighteenth Psalm, and was saying that the whole subject of morals is comprised in it; and how, just as the philosophers are wont to divide their disputations into Physics, Ethics, and Logic, so too the divine sayings either discourse concerning nature, as in Genesis and Ecclesiastes, or concerning morals, as in Proverbs and scattered throughout all the books, or concerning Logic, for which our writers claim for themselves the term "Theoricon," as in the Song of Songs and in the Gospels (although the Apostle often proposes, assumes, confirms, and concludes matters which properly belong to the art of dialectic)—you asked most eagerly what the Hebrew letters, which seemed to be inserted into the Psalm we were reading, meant.

2. I answered that it was composed according to the order of the letters, namely that from the first letter, which among them is called Aleph, eight verses would begin.

Again, from the following letter Beth, the same number of verses would take their beginning; and afterward from Gemel the same number would be completed; and so on up to Thau, which among them is the last letter, the Psalm is written; and from each single element, according to their interpretations, what follows ought to be understood. Again and again you begged that I tell you the interpretations of each of the letters. I did tell you, I confess; but because, on account of the barbarism of the language, memory of all that we said slips away, you desire that a little commentary be made, so that if perhaps you should stumble at some point, reading may console the forgetting.

3. But before I discuss the individual letters, you ought to know that four Psalms begin according to the order of the Hebrew elements: the hundred and tenth, and the hundred and eleventh, and this one of which we now write, and the hundred and forty-fourth.

But you should know that in the earlier Psalms, single verses, consisting of iambic trimeter, are attached to single letters. The later ones, however, consist of iambic tetrameter, as is also written the Canticle of Deuteronomy. In the hundred and eighteenth Psalm, eight verses follow each letter. In the hundred and forty-fourth Psalm, to each single letter two single verses are assigned. There are those who think other Psalms also begin in this order, but their opinion is false. You also have in the Lamentations of Jeremiah four alphabets, of which the first two are written in Sapphic meter: because a heroic comma concludes the three verses which are joined together and begin from only one letter. But the third alphabet is written in trimeter, and from three letters, but the same three letters, three verses begin. The fourth alphabet is like the first and second. The Proverbs of Solomon also close with an alphabet at the end, which is reckoned in iambic tetrameter, from that place where it says: "A virtuous woman who shall find?" 4.

But just as in these letters of ours no one can proceed to read and weave together words unless he has first begun with the elements, so too in the divine Scriptures we cannot know the greater things unless we have had the beginning of Ethics, according to that which the Prophet says: "From Thy commandments I have understood"; which evidently means that after works one begins to have knowledge of the secrets. But now what you asked must be fulfilled, that the interpretation attached to each element may signify its meaning. 5. Aleph is interpreted "doctrine." Beth, "house." Gemel, "fullness." Deleth, "of the tablets." Vau and Zai, "this." Heth, "life." Tet, "good." Iod, "beginning." Caph, "hand." Lamed, "discipline," or "of the heart." Mem, "from them." Nun, "everlasting." Samech, "help." Ain, "spring" or "eye." Phe, "mouth"—understand it as derived from "os, oris" (mouth), not "os, ossis" (bone), lest you be deceived by the ambiguity of the letters. Sade, "justice." Coph, "calling." Res, "of the head." Sen, "of the teeth." Thau, "signs." 6.

After the interpretation of the elements, the order of understanding must be given. Aleph, Beth, Gemel, Deleth is the first connection: "doctrine, house, fullness, of the tablets"; namely, that the doctrine of the Church, which is the house of God, is found in the fullness of the divine books. 7. The second connection is He, Vau, Zai, Heth: "this, and, this, life." For what other life can there be without the knowledge of the Scriptures, through which even Christ Himself is known, who is the life of believers? 8. The third connection has Tet, Iod: "good beginning": because although now we know all things that are written, yet we know in part, and we prophesy in part; and now we see through a glass in an enigma. But when we shall have deserved to be with Christ, and shall have become like the Angels, then the teaching of books shall cease, and then we shall see face to face the good beginning as it.

The fourth connection is Caph, Lamed: "hand, discipline," or "of the heart." The hand is understood in work; the heart and discipline are interpreted in understanding: because we can do nothing unless we first know what must be done. 10. The fifth connection is Mem, Nun, Samech: "from them, everlasting, help." This needs no explanation, but is clearer than all light, that eternal aid is ministered from the Scriptures. 11. The sixth connection has Ain, Phe, Sade: "spring or eye, of the mouth, of justice"; according to what we explained in the third number. 12. The seventh connection, which is also the last—for even in this very number seven there is a mystical understanding—is Coph, Res, Sen, Thau: "calling, of the head, of the teeth, signs." Through the teeth articulate speech is uttered, and by these signs one arrives at the Head of all things, who is Christ, through whom one comes to the everlasting kingdom. 13. I beg you, what is more sacred than this mystery? What is sweeter than this delight?

What foods, what honeys are sweeter than to know the wisdom of God, and to enter into His hidden things, and to gaze upon the mind of the Creator, and to learn the sayings of the Lord your God—sayings which are mocked by the wise men of this world—full of spiritual wisdom? Let others have, if they wish, their riches; let them drink from jeweled cups, gleam in silk, delight in the applause of the people; and through their various pleasures let them be unable to overcome their own riches. Let our riches be to meditate in the law of the Lord day and night, to knock at a door that is not open, to receive the bread of the Trinity, and, with the Lord going before, to trample the waves of the world underfoot. 14. Greet Blaesilla and Eustochium, our little recruits. Greet Feliciana, blessed indeed both in the flesh and in the virginity of the spirit.

Greet the remaining choir of chastity, and your own household Church, for which I fear even those things that seem safe; lest, while the master of the house sleeps, the enemy man sow tares upon it: although they may even dare to say, I am a strong city, a city that is not besieged. No one, while a hostile army lays siege, is secure. No one, as the blessed Cyprian says, who is very near to danger, is safe enough. Give a copy of this Letter, if she should wish to receive it, to our φιλοπονωτάτη (that is, most zealous of favor) Marcella. And remember me, I beg you, that our Lord Jesus Christ may swiftly crush Satan under our feet.