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I. Jerome wished to write an ecclesiastical history. Those who are about to fight a naval battle first, while in port and on a calm sea, turn the rudders, ply the oars, and make ready their iron grappling-hooks; and the soldier, set in his place along the decks, with foot poised and step that slips beneath him, learns to stand firm, so that what he has learned in a mock battle he may not fear in a real contest. So I too, who have long kept silence (for he made me hold my peace to whom my speech is a torment), wish first to be exercised on a small work, and as it were to wipe off a certain rust from my tongue, that I may be able to come to a broader history. For I have resolved to write (if only the Lord shall grant me life;
and if those who slander me cease at least to pursue me as I flee and shut myself away) a history from the coming of the Saviour down to our own age, that is, from the apostles down to the dregs of our own time: how, and by whom, the Church of Christ was born and grew up, increased amid persecutions and was crowned with martyrdoms; and how, after it came to Christian emperors, it became indeed greater in power and riches, but less in virtues. But this another time. Now let us unfold what lies immediately before us. II. While still a youth, Jerome was staying in Syria. About thirty miles from Antioch, a city of Syria, there lies toward the east a not very large hamlet called Maronia.
Here, after many owners and patrons, while I was staying as a youth in Syria, the place passed into the possession of my kinsman, the bishop Evagrius. I have named him now for this reason, that I might show from where I learned what I am about to write. There dwelt there a certain old man named Malchus, whom we may call in Latin 'king,' a Syrian by race and tongue, indeed a true native of that very place. There was also in his household a woman, very decrepit and already near to death. Both were so devoutly religious, and so wore down the threshold of the church, that you would have believed them to be Zechariah and Elizabeth of the Gospel—except that John was not between them.
When I inquired curiously of the neighbours about them—what their bond was, of marriage, of blood, or of the spirit—they all with one voice answered that they were holy, pleasing to God, and something marvellous which I cannot tell. Enticed by this curiosity, I approached the man, and questioning him more closely, I received from him the truth of the matter as follows. III. The story of Malchus. 'I,' he said, 'my son, was a farmer of a little field at Nisibis, an only child to my parents. When they tried to force me to marriage, as the offshoot of their stock and heir of the family, I answered that I would rather be a monk. With what threats my father, with what blandishments my mother pursued me, that I should betray my chastity, this one thing alone is proof: that I fled both home and parents.
And because I could not go eastward on account of neighbouring Persia and the guard of the Roman soldiers, I turned my steps westward, carrying some small provision for the journey, just enough to keep me from want. Why say more? At last I came to the desert of Chalcis, which lies between Immae and Beroea, rather toward the south. There, finding monks, I gave myself over to their direction, seeking my livelihood by the labour of my hands and curbing the wantonness of the flesh by fasting.
After many years a thought came upon me that I should go back to my homeland and, while my mother was still living (for I had already heard that my father was dead), comfort her widowhood, and then, having sold my little property, give part to the poor, settle part upon the monastery, and—why am I ashamed to confess my faithlessness?—reserve part for the relief of my own expenses. On this account my abbot began to cry out that it was a temptation of the devil, and that under the occasion of an honourable matter the cunning of the ancient enemy lay hidden. This, he said, was the dog returning to its vomit; thus many monks had been deceived; the devil never betrays himself with open face.
He set before me very many examples from the Scriptures, among them this: that in the beginning he had supplanted Adam and Eve also by the hope of becoming divine. And when he could not persuade me, he fell upon his knees and besought me not to forsake him, not to ruin myself, not to look back behind me while holding the plough. Woe to me, wretched man! I overcame my admonisher, reckoning—by a most disastrous victory—that he sought not my salvation but his own comfort. So he escorted me out of the monastery as though bearing a corpse to the grave, and at last, bidding me farewell, he said: 'I see, my son, that you are branded with the mark of Satan. I ask no reasons; I accept no excuses. The sheep that goes out from the fold lies at once exposed to the bites of the wolf.' IV. He is carried off captive.
As one journeys from Beroea to Edessa, there lies near the public road a wilderness through which the Saracens, ever with shifting dwellings, wander hither and thither. This dread gathers a throng of travellers in those places, that the imminent danger may be averted by mutual aid. In my company were men, women, old men, young men, little children, about seventy in number. And lo, suddenly Ishmaelites mounted on horses and camels rushed upon us, with hair flowing and bound with fillets, and bodies half naked, dragging cloaks and broad boots. Quivers hung from their shoulders, and brandishing loose bows they carried long spears. For they had come not to fight but to plunder. We are seized, scattered, dragged off in different directions.
Meanwhile I, by a long reversal of fortune now become a hereditary chattel, repenting too late of my own resolve, am allotted along with another poor woman into the service of one master. We are led—nay rather carried aloft on camels—and through the vast desert, ever dreading a fall, we cling rather than sit. Half-raw flesh was our food, and the milk of camels our drink. V. He is bidden to tend the sheep. At last, having crossed a great river, we came to the inner wilderness, where, ordered after the custom of that people to adore the master's wife and children, we bowed our necks. Here, as though shut up in prison, with changed garb—that is, naked—I learn to walk about; for the harshness of the climate allowed nothing else to be veiled save the parts of shame.
The sheep are handed over to me to tend, and in comparison with worse evils I enjoy this comfort, that I see my masters and fellow-slaves but rarely. I seemed to myself to have something of holy Jacob; I remembered Moses, who themselves too were once shepherds of flocks in the desert. I fed on fresh cheese and milk. I prayed continually and sang the psalms which I had learned in the monastery. My captivity delighted me, and I gave thanks to the judgement of God, that the monk whom I was about to lose in my homeland I had found again in the desert. VI. He is compelled to take a fellow-slave as wife. The virtue of the captive woman. O nothing is ever safe with the devil! O how manifold and unspeakable are his snares! Thus even in my hiding-place envy found me out.
The master, seeing his flock increase and finding in me no fraud (for I knew that the Apostle had commanded slaves to serve their masters faithfully as though serving God) and wishing to reward me, in order to bind me more closely to himself, gave me as wife that fellow-slave who had once been captured along with me. And when I refused and said that I was a Christian, and that it was not lawful for me to take to wife one whose husband was living (for indeed her husband had been carried off by another master, having been captured with us), that implacable master, turned to fury, drew his sword and began to come at me. And had I not hastily forestalled him by holding the woman with my arm, he would have shed my blood on the spot. Now there had come a night darker than usual, and to me all too soon ripe.
I lead my new bride into a half-ruined cave, and with sorrow as our bridesmaid, we each loathe the other, yet do not say so. Then truly I felt my captivity, and prostrate on the ground I began to lament the monk whom I was losing, saying: 'Was I, wretch, kept alive for this? Have my sins brought me to this, that with my head now growing grey I, a maiden, should be made a husband? What does it profit to have despised parents, homeland, and household goods for the Lord, if I do this very thing for the sake of which, that I might not do it, I despised those things?—unless perhaps I endure these things for this reason, that I longed for my homeland. What are we doing, O my soul? Do we perish or do we conquer? Do we await the hand of the Lord, or pierce ourselves with our own blade? Turn the sword against yourself! Your death is more to be feared than that of the body.
Chastity preserved has too its own martyrdom. Let the witness of Christ lie unburied in the desert. I myself will be to myself both persecutor and martyr!' Having spoken thus, I drew forth the sword gleaming in the darkness, and turning its point against myself I said, 'Farewell, unhappy woman; have me rather as a martyr than as a husband.' Then she, falling at my feet, said: 'I beseech you by Jesus, I beg you by the urgency of this hour, do not pour out your blood unto my guilt. Or if you wish to die, first turn the blade against me. Let us rather be joined to each other thus. Even if my husband should return to me, I would keep the chastity which captivity has taught me, or would die before I lost it. Why do you die, that you may not be joined to me?
I would die, if you wished to be joined to me. Have me then as a wife of chastity, and love rather the bond of the soul than that of the body. Let our masters suppose me your husband; let Christ know me as your brother. We shall easily persuade them of our marriage, when they see us love each other so.' I confess: I was astounded, and admiring the virtue of the woman I loved her the more as my wife. Yet never did I gaze upon her naked body, never did I touch her flesh, fearing to lose in peace what I had preserved in battle. Very many days pass in such a marriage. Our wedding had made us more pleasing to our masters. There was no suspicion of flight; and at times for a whole month I would go off, a faithful shepherd of the flock, through the wilderness. VII. He is roused by the example of the ants.
After a long interval, while I sat alone in the desert and saw nothing but the sky and the earth, I began to turn things over silently within myself, and among many things to recall also the fellowship of the monks, and most of all the face of my father—he who had taught me, held me back, and ruined me. And as I was thus musing, I behold a band of ants swarming along a narrow path. I see them carrying loads larger than their own bodies. Some with the pincers of their mouths were dragging certain seeds of plants; others were casting out earth from the hollows and walling off the channels of water with mounds. Mindful of the winter to come, lest the moistened earth should turn the granaries' store into sprouting grain, they were nipping off the seeds they had brought in; others in busy mourning were bearing the bodies of the dead. And what is more marvellous in so great a column: those going out did not block those coming in;
nay rather, if they had seen any one fall beneath its burden and load, they would put their shoulders underneath and help it. Why say more? That day afforded me a fair spectacle. Recalling from it Solomon, who sends us to the diligence of the ant and rouses sluggish minds by such an example, I began to grow weary of my captivity and to long for the cells of the monastery, and to desire the likeness of those ants, where labour is for the common good, and where, since nothing is anyone's own, all things belong to all. VIII. He flees. As he returns to his sleeping-place, his wife meets him. I could not hide the sadness of my mind by my face. She asks why I am downcast. She hears the reasons. I urge flight; she does not spurn it. I beg for silence;
she gives her pledge, and with continual whispering we waver, in mid-course between hope and fear. There were in my flock two he-goats of marvellous size. Having killed these, I make wineskins of them and prepare their flesh for the journey. And at the first evening, while our masters supposed that we were secretly going to bed, we set out on the road, carrying the skins and part of the meat. And when we had come to the river (for it was ten miles away), inflating the skins and mounting upon them, we entrusted ourselves to the waters, gently paddling with our feet beneath, so that, the river carrying us downstream and setting us out on the other bank much farther than where we had embarked, those following might lose our track. But meanwhile the soaked meat, partly slipping away, scarcely promised us food for three days.
We drink to satiety, preparing ourselves against the thirst to come. We run, ever looking back over our shoulder, and make more progress by night than by day, either because of the ambushes of the widely roaming Saracens, or because of the excessive heat of the sun. I shudder, wretch, even in the telling, and though wholly secure in mind, yet with my whole body I shiver with dread. IX. The master overtakes the fugitive. After the third day, with doubtful gaze we look back and see far off two men sitting on camels coming swiftly. Straightway the mind, foreboding evil, thinks it is the master, meditates death, sees the sun growing black. And while we fear, and perceive that we are betrayed by our tracks across the sands, there is offered to the right a cave penetrating far beneath the earth.
Therefore, fearing venomous creatures (for vipers, basilisks, scorpions, and other such things, fleeing the heat of the sun, are wont to seek the shade), we do indeed enter the cave. But at once, right at the entrance, we trust ourselves to a hollow on the left, going no farther, lest, while fleeing death, we should run into death; and reckoning this with ourselves: if the Lord helps the wretched, we have salvation; if He despises sinners, we have a tomb. What think you was our state of mind, what terror, when not far before the cave stood the master and the fellow-slave, and, with our footprints as their guide, had now come to the hiding-place? O how much heavier is death awaited than death inflicted!
Again, with labour and fear, my tongue stammers, and as though the master were shouting, I dare not speak. He sends his slave to drag us out of the cave. He himself holds the camels and, with drawn sword, awaits our coming. Meanwhile, when the servant had advanced about three or four cubits, and we from our hiding watched his back (for such is the nature of the eyes, that to those entering from the sunlight all things are blind), a voice sounds through the cavern: 'Come out, gallows-birds, come out, you who are to die! Why do you stand, why do you delay? Come out! The master calls you.' He was still speaking—and behold, through the darkness we see a lioness fall upon the man and, his throat throttled, drag him bleeding within. Good Jesus, what terror, what joy was then ours!
We watched our enemy perish while the master knew nothing of it. When he saw that the man delayed, suspecting that two were resisting one, and unable also to defer his wrath, just as he held the sword, he came to the cave and, rebuking with raging shouts the sloth of his slave, was himself seized by the beast before he reached our hiding-place. Who would ever believe that before our face a beast should fight on our behalf? But with that dread removed, a like destruction hovered before our eyes, except that it was safer to endure the lion's fury than the wrath of men. We tremble within and, not daring even to move, await the outcome of the matter amid such great perils, fenced about only by the consciousness of chastity as by a wall.
The lioness, wary of ambush and sensing that she had been seen, seized her cub in her teeth and carried it off in the morning, yielding to us the lodging. Yet not trusting enough, we did not at once rush out, but waited a long while, and even as we thought of going forth, we ever pictured to ourselves her coming to meet us. X. Freed from danger, he returns to the monks. The terror therefore removed, and that day passed, we go out toward evening. And we found the camels—which on account of their great speed they call dromedaries—rolling the food eaten before in their mouths, and, once sent down into the belly, drawing it back up again. Having mounted these, and refreshed with new provisions, on the tenth day at last we came through the desert to the Roman camp, and, presented to the tribune, we lay open the order of the affair.
Thence sent on to Sabinianus, the duke of Mesopotamia, we received the price of the camels. And because that abbot of mine had already fallen asleep in the Lord, conveyed back to these regions I restore myself to the monks. This woman I hand over to the virgins, loving her as a sister, yet not trusting myself to her as to a sister.' These things the old man Malchus related to me when I was a youth. These things I have told you in my old age. To the chaste I set forth a history of chastity. I exhort virgins to guard their virginity. Do you tell it to those who come after, that they may know that, amid swords, amid deserts and wild beasts, chastity is never a captive, and that a man given over to Christ can die, but cannot be overcome.