Works (CSEL) 17 part 12/16

For the turtledove is reported, when it has been widowed by the loss of its own mate, to be so weary of the marriage-bed and the name of wedlock that it endures rather to pass away by death, since its mate was both unfaithful with regard to permanence and bitter with regard to grace—a mate who begot more of grief by its death than of sweetness by its love. And so it refuses to repeat the union, nor does it dissolve the rights of chastity or the covenants of a husband once snatched away; to him alone it reserves its love, for him it keeps the name of wife. Learn, O women, how great is the grace of widowhood, which is proclaimed even among birds. Who, then, gave these laws to the turtledove? If I seek a man, I do not find one. For no man dared, since not even Paul dared to prescribe laws of widowhood to be kept. In short, the persecutor—

'I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, be mothers of families, give no occasion to the adversary'; and elsewhere: 'It is good for them if they so remain'; 'but if they cannot contain, let them marry, for it is better to marry than to burn.' Paul wishes in women what perseveres in turtledoves. And elsewhere he exhorts the younger ones to marry, because our women can scarcely fulfil the chastity of turtledoves. Therefore God infused this affection into turtledoves, gave them this virtue of continence—He who alone can prescribe what all may follow. The turtledove is not inflamed by the flower of youth, is not tempted by the enticement of opportunity; the turtledove knows not how to make void its first faith, because it knows how to preserve the chastity promised by the authority and lot of wedlock.

We have spoken of the widowhood of birds, and that this virtue first arose from them; now let us speak of integrity, which is asserted indeed to be present in very many birds, so that it can be detected even in vultures. For vultures are said not to indulge in coition or to be mingled by any conjugal practice and by the lot of nuptial coupling, and so to conceive without any seed of males and to generate without union, and that their young, sprung from these, advance to a great age in long life, so that the span of their life is prolonged even up to a hundred years, nor does the boundary of a narrow lifespan easily overtake them.

What do those say who are wont to laugh at our mysteries, when they hear that a virgin gave birth, and deem the childbirth of an unwed woman—whose modesty no intercourse of a man had violated—impossible? Is that judged impossible in the Mother of God which it is not denied that vultures can do? A bird gives birth without a male, and no one refutes it; and because Mary, betrothed, gave birth, they raise a question against her modesty. Do we not observe that the Lord, from nature itself, sent forth beforehand very many examples by which He might prove the beauty of the incarnation He took on and establish its truth? Now then let me set forth which birds seem to manage, as it were, a kind of commonwealth and to pass the time of this life under laws.

Hence there comes to mind the usage of a commonwealth: that the laws should be common to all and observed by a common devotion, that all be held by one bond, that there be no right belonging to one which another may understand to be unlawful for himself, but that what is lawful be lawful for all and what is not lawful be unlawful for all; that there be also a common reverence for the fathers, by whose counsel the commonwealth is governed; a common dwelling of the city for all, a common duty of social life; that one rule be prescribed for all, that there be one counsel. These things are great—but how much more excellent are they among the bees, which alone, in the whole kind of living creatures, have an offspring common to all, all inhabit one dwelling, all are enclosed within the threshold of one fatherland.

Common to all is the labor, common the food, common to all the work, common the use and enjoyment, common the flight—why say more?—common to all the generation; and you would find the integrity of a virginal body common to all, since they neither mingle among themselves in any coition nor are loosened by lust nor are shaken by the pains of childbirth, and suddenly they send forth a very great swarm of children, gathering their offspring with their mouth from leaves and herbs. They themselves appoint for themselves a king, they themselves create their peoples, and although they are placed under a king, yet they are free. For the king both holds his prerogative and the affection of faithful devotion, because they both love the king as coming from themselves and honor him with so great a swarm.

But the king is not led forth by lot, because in a lot there is chance, not judgment, and often, by the irrational fall of the lot, the very last is preferred to the better; nor is he marked out by the common clamor of an inexperienced multitude, which does not weigh the merits of virtue but ransacks for the profits of public advantage in its kings, and wavers in the uncertainty of fickleness; nor does he sit upon royal thrones by the privilege of succession and birth, since one ignorant of public conduct cannot be cautious and learned. Add the flatteries and the delights which, ingrained in tender ages, are wont to enervate even a keen disposition; then the schooling of eunuchs, of whom most incline the king's mind rather to their own gain than to the public use.

But for the bees the king is fashioned by nature with clear marks, so that he excels in size of body and in beauty, and then in that which is foremost in a king—in his character. For although he has a sting, yet he does not use it for vengeance. For there are laws of nature not written in letters but impressed upon manners, that those who are accustomed to the greatest power should be gentler in punishing. But even those bees which have not obeyed the king's laws fine themselves by penitent self-condemnation, so that they die upon the wound of their own sting. This the peoples of the Persians are said to observe even today, that for the price of an offense they themselves carry out upon themselves the sentence of their own death.

And so none reverence their king with so great a devotion of reverence—not the Persians, who have most grievous laws upon their subjects, not the Indians, not the peoples of the Sarmatians—as the bees, so that none dare go out from the hives, nor go forth to any pasture, unless the king has first gone out and claimed for himself the principate of the flight. And the procession is through fragrant fields, where gardens breathe with flowers, where the stream flees through the grass, where the pleasant places of the banks: there is the brisk sport of youth, there the field-exercise, there the relaxation of cares. The work itself is sweet. From the flowers, from the sweet herbs, the first foundations of the camp are laid. For what else is the honeycomb but a kind of likeness of a camp?

In short, from these stalls of the bees the drone is kept away. What four-square camp can have as much of art and grace as these wattled cells of fruits, in which the small and round little cells are mutually supported by one another? What architect taught them to compose hexagons with an indistinguishable equality of the sides of the cells, and to hang slender waxes between the partitions of the houses, to pack the honey, and to distend the granaries interwoven with flowers with a certain nectar?

You may behold them all contending over their duty: some keep watch in seeking food, some apply anxious guard, some explore the coming rains and watch for the gathering of the clouds, some shape waxes from the flowers, some gather with their mouth the dew poured upon the flowers—yet none lies in wait for the labors of others or seeks its livelihood by plunder. And would that they did not fear the snares of plunderers! Yet they have their stings and pour forth poison amid the honey, if they are provoked, and lay down their lives in the wound in the ardor of vengeance. So in the midst of the camp's hollows that moisture of dew is poured in and little by little, in the progress of time, is forced into honey, when it has been liquid from the beginning, and by the coalescing of the wax and the scent of the flowers it begins to breathe forth the sweetness of honey.

Deservedly does Scripture proclaim the bee as a good worker, saying: 'Go to the bee and see how she is a worker'; and it earns also a work as venerable as it is, whose labor both kings and ordinary men take for their health; for it is desirable to all and renowned. Do you hear what the prophet says? He indeed sends you to follow the example of that little bee, to imitate its work. You see how laborious, how pleasing it is. Its fruit is desired and sought by all, nor is it distinguished according to the diversity of persons, but with its undiscriminating grace it grows sweet with equal sweetness for kings and for ordinary men alike. And it serves not only for pleasure but also for health. It sweetens the throat and heals wounds, and it pours its medicine also into inward ulcers.

And so, although the bee is weak in strength, it is strong in the vigor of wisdom and in love of virtue. In short, they defend their king with the highest protection and think it beautiful to perish for him. While the king is safe, they know not how to change their resolve; when he is lost, they abandon their precious purpose and the now superfluous faithfulness of their office, and they themselves plunder the honey they had gathered, because he who held the principate of the office has been slain. And so, whereas other birds scarcely produce single offspring in a year, the bees create twins and outweigh the rest with a double fecundity. Let us now consider what it means that He said: 'Let the waters bring forth reptiles of living souls and flying things that fly above the earth according to their kind and beneath the firmament of heaven.'

Why He said 'above the earth' is certain, because they take their food from the earth, the image; but in what way 'beneath the firmament of heaven,' since eagles fly beyond the other birds and yet not even they fly beneath the firmament of heaven? But because in Greek it is called ouranos (οὐρανός), which in Latin we call 'heaven,' and ouranos is invisible, from tou horasthai (τοῦ ὁρᾶσθαι), that is, from 'seeing'—therefore, because the air is transparent and purer for seeing, He called the kinds of living creatures that flit in the air. Nor let it disturb you that He said 'beneath the firmament of heaven.' He did not here use 'firmament' properly, but improperly, in that, by comparison with that aethereal body, even this air, which we can comprehend with our eyes, being as it were thick and denser, holds the place of a firmament.

Now, since we have said which are the flying creatures, what nature or grace they have—and these few out of many, for there is no leisure to describe them all, since they are similar and of the same invisible kind—nevertheless let us consider what diversity the birds themselves have among one another. For we find the feet of the crow as it were separated and divided by certain distant toes; the feet of the raven too and of chickens otherwise formed by nature; the feet of birds that feed on flesh as it were curved, and that, prepared as it were for prey. Those more graceful, which have the use and habit of swimming, have broad feet and those toes of the feet coupled and joined to one another by a certain membrane.

In this the admirable reason of nature is evident, so that those birds may be supported with a usage suited to flying or to seizing food, and these may have aids fitted for swimming, whereby they may better float upon the waters and, as if by certain oars, may rule the streams of the waters with their feet made broader by the extension of that membrane. The swan, too—why it uses a longer neck is plain: because, since it is a little sluggish in body and cannot easily penetrate the lower parts of the waters, it stretches out its neck for prey, so that, going before as it were ahead of the rest of the body, it may snatch the food it has found and dig it up from the deep. Add this, that a sweeter and more melodious strain is distinguished through its long neck and, by longer exercise, resounds far purer.

How sweet too is the song in the tiny throat of the cicadas, by whose songs the groves are split in the midst of the heat, in that they are more melodious in the noonday heats, because at that time they draw in a purer air with their breath, the clearer do their songs resound. Nor do the bees themselves sing anything unpleasant; for they have a pleasing sweetness in that hoarse murmur of their voice, which we ourselves seem at first to have imitated rather sluggishly with the broken sound of trumpets—by which din nothing is reckoned more apt for rousing spirits into vigor. And this grace remains to them, though most of them are reported to have no lung nor function and use of breathing at all, but to feed on the airy breath.

In short, if anyone pours oil over them, they are quickly killed, because, their pores being obstructed, they cannot draw in that airy breath; and immediately, if anyone pours vinegar over them, they recover, because the force of the vinegar, by its moisture, quickly opens those pores which were obstructed by the clotting of the oil. And since we are speaking of flying creatures, we do not think it foreign to embrace those things which history relates concerning the Indian worm, or the account of those who were able to see it. This horned worm is reported first to be converted into the appearance of a cabbage-stalk and to be changed into the same nature, then by a certain progress to become a 'bombylius.' Nor yet does it keep that form and figure, but with loose and broader leaves it seems to assume wings.

From these leaves the Seres comb out that soft fleece, which the rich have claimed for their own uses. Whence the Lord also says: 'What went ye out into the desert to see? A man clothed in soft garments? Behold, they that wear soft things are in the houses of kings.' The chameleon too is said to counterfeit diverse appearances with its varying color. Hares certainly—as we have easily learned at close hand—it is not doubted grow white in winter and return to their own color afterward in summer. These things I have but tasted, that these examples too may provoke us to the faith of that transformation which is to come in the resurrection—yet so that we declare that transformation which the Apostle clearly expressed, saying: 'We shall all indeed rise again, but we shall not all be changed.' And further on he says:

'And the dead shall rise incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.' For very many, interpreting a kind and forms of transformation which they have not received, have by no means been free from the unfitting usurpation of an undue presumption. The Phoenix too, a bird, is said to dwell in the regions of Arabia and to prolong its long-lived age up to five hundred years. When it perceives that the end of its life is at hand, it makes for itself a casket of frankincense and myrrh and other spices, into which, its life's span being fulfilled, it enters and dies.

From the moisture of its flesh a worm arises and little by little grows up, and in the course of an appointed time puts on the oarage of wings and is restored into the form and figure of the bird above. Let this bird, then, teach by its own example to believe in the resurrection—it which, without example and without the perception of reason, of itself renews for itself the tokens of resurrection. And surely the birds are for the sake of man, not man for the sake of the bird. Let it be for us, then, an example that the Author and Creator of birds does not suffer His saints to perish forever—He who, not suffering a single bird to perish, willed it, rising again, to be propagated by its own seed.

Who, then, announces to this bird the day of its death, that it should make for itself a casket and fill it with good odors and enter into it and die there, where by the pleasing odors the stench of the funeral can be abolished? Do you also, O man, make for yourself a casket: putting off the old man with his deeds, put on the new. Your casket, your sheath, is Christ, who protects you and hides you in the evil day. Do you wish to know that He is a sheath of protection? 'In my quiver,' He says, 'I have protected him.' Your casket, then, is faith; fill it with the good odors of your virtues, that is, of chastity, mercy, and justice, and enter wholly into the very inner sanctuaries of faith, fragrant with the sweet odor of excellent deeds.

Let the close of this life find you clothed with that faith, so that your bones may be made fat and may be like a watered garden, whose green things are quickly awakened. Know, then, the day of your death, as Paul also knew it, who says: 'I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. There is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.' He therefore entered into his casket like a good phoenix, which he filled with the good odor of martyrdom.

I will question you, and do you answer me: whence have the vultures grown accustomed to announce by certain signs the death of men, by what indication they are taught and instructed, so that, when opposing battle-lines draw up a lamentable war among themselves, the foretelling birds follow in a great column and thereby signify that a multitude of men is destined to fall in war, the future prey of the vultures? This indeed they seem to gather by some reasoning from the appearance of human marshalling. The divine grace has penetrated even to the locust, which, when with a packed column it has occupied the breadth of any region, first spares the unharmed dwelling and does not devour the fruits with inhospitable incursion, unless it has received the sign of the divine command.

For just as we read in Exodus, so too does this creature carry out the heavenly retribution for the offense given, as the dutiful servant of a righteous vengeance. The bird called the seleucis devours it — for by this Greek name the bird is named — being given as a remedy against the evils which the locust is wont to bring. To this bird the Creator gave an insatiable nature for devouring, so that by its unsatisfiable feeding it might wipe out the plague of which we spoke above. But what is this? While we draw out our discourse, behold, already the birds of the night are flying around you, and at that very moment in which they admonish that the sermon must be ended, they also prompt that mention should be made of themselves.

The various birds, which the evening compels to withdraw before the night, seek again their roosts and hide themselves in their lurking-places, accompanying the setting of the day with melodious song, lest creation should depart unmindful of the thanksgivings by which every creature praises its Creator together. The night too has its own songs, by which it is wont to soothe the watches of men; the owl too has its calls. But what shall I say of the nightingale, who, an ever-wakeful guardian, when she warms her eggs in a certain fold and bosom of her body, beguiles the sleepless toil of the long night with the sweetness of her singing, so that it seems to me that this is her chief intention: that she may quicken the eggs she warms no less by sweeter melodies than by the warmth of her body?

Imitating her, that poor but chaste woman, drawing along with her arm the chiseled stone of the mill, that bread might not be lacking as nourishment for her little ones, soothes with nocturnal song the sorrowful feeling of her poverty; and although she cannot imitate the sweetness of the nightingale, yet she imitates her in the diligence of her devotion. The owl itself, how with the great and grey pupils of its eyes it does not feel the dread of the dark gloom of night, and the more obscure the night has been, so much the more, contrary to the habit of all other birds, it carries on its flights unhindered; but when day has arisen and the splendor of the sun is poured around, its sight is dulled, as though it were straying amid a kind of darkness.

By which sign it declares that there are some who, though they have eyes to see, are not wont to see, and who use the office of their sight in the darkness. I speak of the eyes of the heart, which the wise of this world possess and yet do not see; in the light they discern nothing, in the darkness they walk, while they pry into the shadowy things of demons and believe that they see the heights of heaven, mapping out the world with a measuring-rod, computing the very measure of the air; but moreover, having strayed from the faith, they are entangled in the darkness of perpetual blindness, having close at hand the day of Christ and the light of the Church, and yet seeing nothing they open their mouth as though knowing all things — sharp toward vanities, dull toward eternal things, and by the winding maze of long disputation betraying the blindness of their own knowledge.

And so, while they desire to flit about with subtle discourses, they vanish in the light like owls. The bat, an ignoble animal, takes its name from the evening. It is also a flying creature, and yet at the same time a quadruped, and uses teeth such as you would not commonly find in other birds. It does not bring forth eggs, as the quadrupeds do, but living young. It flits about in the air after the manner of birds, but it is wont to be enveloped at the dusk of evening. It flies, however, not by any feathers, but supported by the oarage of its own membrane, by which, suspended, it is carried about and given motion as though by the flight of wings. This base creature also has this trait, that they cling to one another in turn and hang as in the likeness of a cluster of grapes from some place, and, if the very last of them lets go, they are all loosened.

This happens by a certain gift of charity, which is found with difficulty among the men of this world. There is also the crowing of the cock, sweet in the night — not only sweet, but also useful — which, like a good housemate, both rouses the sleeper and admonishes the anxious and consoles the traveler, attesting by its tuneful signal the progress of the night.

At its crowing the robber leaves off his ambushes; at it the morning-star itself, aroused, rises and lights up the sky; at its crowing the trembling sailor lays aside his sadness, and every storm and tempest, again and again stirred up by the evening blasts, grows gentle; at its crowing the devout affection leaps up to prayer and renews also the duty of reading; at its crowing, finally, the very rock of the Church washes away its fault, which by denying it had contracted before the cock had crowed. At its song hope returns to all, the discomfort of the sick is relieved, the pain of wounds is lessened, the burning of fevers is soothed, faith returns to the fallen, Jesus looks upon the wavering, corrects the erring. At last He looked upon Peter, and at once the error departed, the denial was driven out, confession followed.

That this did not happen by chance, but by the Lord's sentence, the Scripture reading teaches. For thus it is written, that Jesus said to Simon: The cock shall not crow before thou hast thrice denied me. Rightly is Peter strong in the day, by night he is troubled, and before the cock-crow he falls — and he falls a third time, that you may know he slipped not by an ill-considered pouring-out of speech, but was troubled also by a wavering of mind. Yet that same man becomes stronger after the cock-crow, and not unworthy that Christ should look upon him; for the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous. He recognized that the remedy had come, after which he could now no longer err, and, changed from error into virtue, he wept most bitterly, that with his tears he might wash away his error. Look also upon us, Lord Jesus, that we too may recognize our own faults.

Let us loose our fault with pious weeping, let us merit the pardon of our sins. Therefore I deliberately drew out my discourse, that for us also the cock might crow and come to our aid as we speak, so that if any fault should creep in by way of a word, Thou, O Christ, mightest forgive the fault. Grant, I pray, the tears of Peter; I do not want the gladness of the sinner. The Hebrews wept, and through the sea, as the waves parted, they were set free. Pharaoh rejoiced that he held the Hebrews shut in, and, plunged into the sea with his people, he perished. Judas also exulted at the wage of his betrayal, but he strangled himself with the noose of that very wage. Peter wept over his error and merited that he should blot out the errors of others.

But now it is the time at which we ought to end and close our discourse — it is the time at which silence is better, or the discourse has spent itself; it is the time at which pardon is celebrated. For us too let this mystical cock sing in the holy rites, since the cock of Peter has crowed in our discourse. Let Peter weep for us, who wept well for himself, and let him turn the merciful face of Christ toward us. Let the Passion of the Lord Jesus draw near, which daily forgives our sins and works the gift of remission. The good Lord does not wish to send away the fasting, lest any faint on the way. If He says:

I have compassion on this multitude, because they have continued with me three days now and have nothing to eat, and I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint on the way — He whose preparation Mary, intent upon His word, refused as to the furnishings of a banquet: how much more ought we to consider that not many are they who live in the word of God, and therefore the refreshment of the body is the more desired. Surely this our day after is more laborious than that three days' span. And therefore we who have sported with the birds, who have crowed with the cock, let us now sing the mysteries of the Lord, and let the eagles of sinners, renewed by the washing, come together to the body of Jesus; for now that great whale has given us back the true Jonah, and let us rejoice that evening has come for us, and let it become morning, the sixth day. THE SIXTH DAY.

This is the sixth day, on which the origin of the world's creation is brought to a close, and therefore also the end of our discourse — which we undertook with greater difficulty at the beginnings of things — is being prepared. And although it has gone forward for us through five days now with no slight labor, yet on this present day it grows with the greater interest of cares, because in this day there is both the peril of the previous days and the sum of the whole contest.

For indeed, if in the playing of lyres or in songs and in the frequent contests of athletes — and these often very great spectacles — the earlier days nonetheless pass without any loss of the crown, while the last day holds the lot of the crown, on which there is both the peril of deciding and the disgrace of yielding and the prize of winning: how much more, in this so great contest of wisdom, in which we are engaged on behalf not of a few but of all, since today a kind of crown of the struggle goes forth for us, does a greater anxiety wring us, lest we both pour away the labor of the previous days and undergo the shame of the present one. For the condition of speaking is not the same as that of singing and wrestling, since in those the loss is one of mere stumbling, but in this it is a falling unto death.

There, if you err, it is the disdain of the spectators; the coldness of the listeners is the loss. Stand by me therefore as judges of the crown, and enter with me into this great and admirable theater of the whole visible creation. For indeed, if he who acts as guide makes sport of the arrival of guests, while he leads them around the whole circuit of the city, pointing out each of the more excellent works, places no slight obligation of gratitude — how much more ought you without disdain to receive that, by which, as though by a certain hand of discourse, through this fellowship I lead you around in our homeland, and point out the appearances and kinds of the several things, desiring to gather from them all how much more abundant a grace the Creator of all bestows upon you than upon the universe.

To you therefore this crown is set forth; you today I desire to crown by your own judgment. For we do not demand the withering garlands after the manner of athletes, but the green and living verdict of your holiness, by which you may decide that divine providence indeed penetrates through all creatures, but that with the rest you have in common the fellowship of bodily frailty, yet that before the rest you stand fast by the virtue of the soul, which alone has nothing in common with the rest. Now come, let us speak of the natures of the beasts and of the generation of man. For I have long since heard some whispering and saying: How long do we learn the things of others and not know our own? How long are we taught knowledge concerning the rest of living creatures and are ignorant of our very selves? Let him speak that which may profit me, that I may know myself.