勞蘇之史 第 1 章 第 6/7 段

I came to know one named Hosia, a most venerable woman in all respects;

and her sister Adolia, who lived not worthily of this one, but worthily of her own power.

I came to know also Basianilla, wife of Candidianus the general, who eagerly and reverently practised virtue, and is even now still strenuously engaged in the contests;

and Photina, a virgin most venerable to the highest degree, daughter of Theoctistus the presbyter of Laodicea.

I met also in Antioch a most venerable woman who held converse with God, the deaconess Sabiniana, aunt of John, the bishop of Constantinople.

I saw also in Rome the good Asella the virgin, grown old in the monastery, a most gentle woman, who endured community life.

Among these I beheld men and women newly catechized;

I beheld also Avita, worthy of God, together with her husband Apronianus and their daughter Eunomia, well-pleasing to God, so that they openly transferred to the virtuous and self-controlled way of life, being deemed worthy in these things also of falling asleep in Christ, freed from all sin and having come within knowledge, leaving their life behind in good remembrance.] Concerning Julian. [I have heard concerning a certain Julian in the regions of the Edessenes, a man most ascetic;

who, having so excessively wasted away his poor flesh, carried about only bones and skin.

This man at the very end of his life was deemed worthy of the honour of the gift of healings.] Concerning Adolius. I came to know again a certain man at Jerusalem named Adolius, a Tarsian by birth, who, having arrived in Jerusalem, travelled an exceedingly untrodden road—not the one that most of us walked, but cutting out for himself some strange manner of life;

for he practised asceticism beyond what is human, so that even the demons themselves, shuddering at his severity, did not dare to approach him.

For in Lent he ate every five days, but the rest of the whole time, every other day.

And this was his great deed:

he would continue standing, singing psalms, and praying at the hill of the Ascension, whence Jesus was taken up;

and whether it snowed or rained or froze, he remained unmoved.

Having fulfilled his accustomed time, with a waking-mallet he would knock at all the cells, gathering them to the houses of prayer, and in each house singing with them one or two antiphons, and praying together; thus he would go off before daybreak to his own cell—so that in truth the brothers would often strip off and wring out his garments as from a washtub, and put others on him.

Thus having rested again until the hour of psalmody, he kept vigil until evening.

And this then is the virtue of Adolius the Tarsian, who was perfected in Jerusalem and there fell asleep.

Concerning Innocent. The story of the blessed Innocent the presbyter of the Mount of Olives you have heard from many, but none the less you shall hear it also from us who lived with him three years.

This man was simple in the extreme;

having become one of the notables in the palace under the early reign of the emperor Constantius, he renounced [the world], setting out from married life, in which he also had a son named Paul, serving as a domesticus (household officer) in the army.

When this son sinned against a presbyter's daughter, Innocent cursed his own son, beseeching God and saying: "Lord, give him such a spirit that his poor flesh may never again find opportunity to sin;

deeming it better that he should box with a demon than [give himself over] to licentiousness.

And he is even now on the Mount of Olives, wearing irons and being chastised by the spirit.

This Innocent—what a merciful man he was, I shall appear an idle babbler in relating the truth—how he would often steal from the brothers and give to those in need.

He was guileless and simple to an extraordinary degree, and was deemed worthy of a gift against demons.

Among these instances, once a young man was brought to him in our sight, seized by a spirit and by paralysis, so that I, beholding him, wished outright to drive away the mother of the one who had been brought, despairing of the cure.

Now it happened that in the meantime the old man, coming, beheld her standing there weeping and lamenting over the indescribable calamity of her son.

And having prayed over him from the third hour until the ninth hour, he gave the young man back whole to his mother that same day, having driven out his paralysis and the demon;

and such was his paralysis that the boy spat upon his own back, so contorted was he.

A certain old woman having lost a sheep came to him weeping;

and following her he said:

He led him to the places around the Lazarium (the tomb of Lazarus).

But the young men who had stolen it, anticipating [him], had slaughtered it.

Now while he prayed, no one confessing, and the meat being hidden in the vineyard, a raven came from somewhere and stood by, and taking a scrap, went off again.

And the blessed one, taking heed, found the slaughtered animal;

and thus the young men who had slaughtered it, falling before him, confessed, being required to pay the worthy price.

Concerning Philoromus. [We met in Galatia and spent a long time with the presbyter Philoromus, a man most ascetic and most enduring;

who sprang from a slave mother but a free father;

yet he displayed such nobility in his life according to Christ that even the unconquerable [nobles] in lineage revered his life and virtue.

This man renounced [the world] in the days of Julian the ill-named emperor, and conversed with him with boldness.

Julian ordered him to be shaved and to be cuffed by slave-boys;

but he, enduring the treatment, even gave him thanks, as he himself related to us.

Against him in the beginning the war of fornication and of gluttony set itself;

This man, warred upon in various ways by the spirits of wickedness, endured in a single monastery forty years.

He used to relate: "For thirty-two years I have touched no fruit."

Of him the blessed Basil the bishop took great care, delighting in his austerity and severity;

and even now he has not departed from the reed-pen and the writing-tablet for copying, being about his eightieth year.

This man said: "From the time I was initiated [in the mysteries] and born again until this present day, I have not eaten another's bread as a gift, but from my own labours;

so that he convinced us, as before God, that he had given two hundred and fifty gold coins from the work of his own hands to the maimed, never having wronged anyone.

He went on foot all the way to Rome itself, to pray at the martyr-shrine of the blessed Peter;

and he reached as far as Alexandria, to pray at the martyr-shrine of Mark.

†He came† also a second time to Jerusalem, going on his own feet and providing for himself out of his own resources.

This man used to say: "I do not remember ever departing in mind from my God."] Concerning the aged Melania. The thrice-blessed Melania was Spanish by race, that is to say a Roman;

she was the daughter of Marcellinus the ex-consul, and the wife of a certain man of high rank, whose name I do not well remember.

Having been widowed in her twenty-second year, she was deemed worthy of divine love, and having said nothing to anyone—for she was prevented—in the times when Valens held rule in the empire, having had a guardian appointed for her son, and taking all her movable property and putting it on a ship, with select servants and women she sailed swiftly down to Alexandria.

And she spent time with them for half a year, going around the desert and visiting all the holy ones;

whom she followed, ministering to them out of her own means.

And when the attendants were forbidden [to serve them]—for, as they related, they had met with Saint Pisimius and Isidore and Paphnutius and Ammonius—she herself, taking a boy's hooded cloak, used to bring them in the evenings the things needed for their use.

But the governor of Palestine, learning of it, and wishing to fill his own pocket, expected to extort money from her;

and seizing her, he cast her into prison, not knowing her [noble] free birth.

"I am the daughter of so-and-so, and the wife of so-and-so;

but of Christ I am a slave (handmaid)."

"And do not despise the meanness of my dress;

for I am able, if I wish, to exalt myself, and you cannot in this matter extort from me, nor take any of my goods."

"So then, lest unwittingly you fall into accusations, I have made this clear to you;

for against the senseless one must, as with a hawk, employ a touch of hauteur."

Then the judge, having learned [the truth], both apologized and did obeisance to her, and ordered that she might consort with the holy ones unhindered.

She, after the recall of these [exiled fathers], having built a monastery in Jerusalem, spent twenty-seven years there, having a community of fifty virgins.

With her lived also the most noble and like-minded and most steadfast Rufinus, from Italy, from the city of Aquileia, later deemed worthy of the presbyterate;

than whom none more learned or more equitable was to be found among men.

[They went] to Jerusalem for the sake of prayer; bishops, monks and virgins—at their own expense they edified all who came, and they healed the schism concerning Paulinus, amounting to some four hundred monks; and

Concerning Chronius and Paphnutius.

A certain man named Chronius, from the village called Phoenice, having measured off from his own village—which was near the desert—fifteen thousand paces counted by his right foot, prayed there and dug a well;

and finding excellent water at a depth of seven fathoms, he built himself there a small lodging.

And from the day he enthroned himself in that abode, he vowed to God never to return again to an inhabited place.

After a few years had passed, he was deemed worthy of the presbyterate, a brotherhood of about two hundred men having gathered around him.

This then is recounted as the virtue of his asceticism: that for sixty years he served at the altar as a priest, he did not go out of the desert, nor did he eat bread apart from the work of his own hands.

With him dwelt a certain James, from among his neighbours, surnamed "the Lame," most gnostic (spiritually discerning) to the highest degree.

Both were acquaintances of the blessed Antony.

Now one day Paphnutius, surnamed Kephalas, also came running together [with them]; he had the gift of knowledge of the divine Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, interpreting them all without having read the Scriptures, and he was so meek that his prophetic virtue was concealed;

of whom it is related that for eighty years he did not have two tunics at one time.

Meeting with these men, I and the blessed Evagrius and Albanius sought to learn the causes of brothers who stumble, or even fall away, or err in the proper [monastic] life.

For it happened in those days that Chaeremon the ascetic died sitting, and was found dead in his seat, holding his handiwork in his hands.

It happened also that another brother, while digging a well, was buried by the well;

and that another, coming down from Scetis, died from lack of water;

among which were also the cases of Stephen, who fell into shameful debauchery, and of Eucarpius, and the case of Heron the Alexandrian, and the case of Valens the Palestinian, and the case of Ptolemy the Egyptian in Scetis.

We inquired then what was the cause that men living thus in the wilderness, some of them were deceived in their minds, and others broken apart by licentiousness.

Paphnutius the most gnostic gave us this answer: that all things that happen are divided into two—into God's good pleasure (eudokia) and His permission (synchoresis, sufferance).

As many things, then, as come about according to virtue unto the glory of God, these come about by God's good pleasure;

but as many again as are harmful and dangerous and full of mishap and conducive to falling, these come about according to God's permission.

And the permission comes about with reason (on a rational ground);

for it is impossible for one who thinks rightly and lives rightly to fall into the disgraces of shame or the error of demons.

As many, then, as with a corrupted aim—through the disease of men-pleasing and self-willed reasonings—seem to pursue virtue, these also fall into errors, God abandoning them for their own benefit, that through the abandonment, perceiving the change wrought by the alteration, they may set right either their purpose or their practice.

For sometimes the purpose sins, when it arises from an evil aim;

and sometimes also the practice [sins], when it is done corruptly or not in the manner in which it ought.

This is what often happens: that the licentious man with a corrupted aim performs almsgiving toward young women for a shameful end—a reasonable act, in that he gives help to her as an orphan, alone, and ascetic.

And it happens also that one performs almsgiving with a right aim toward the sick, or the aged, or those fallen from wealth, but sparingly and with grumbling, so that the aim is right but the practice unworthy of the aim;

for the merciful man ought to show mercy with cheerfulness and ungrudgingly.

In many souls—in some there is natural aptitude of intellect, in others fitness for asceticism.

But when neither the practice nor the natural gift is exercised for the good itself, and those who possess such advantages do not ascribe them to God the giver of good things, but to their own choice and natural ability and competence, such persons, being abandoned, are taken either into shameful deeds or into shameful passion and disgrace, and through the humiliation and shame that follow, they gently rub off the conceit they had over their supposed virtue.

For since the man puffed up over his natural gift of words, being exalted, does not ascribe to God the gift nor the supply of knowledge, but to his own asceticism or nature, God withdraws from him the angel of [His] providence;

and when this [angel] has turned away, the one exalted over his natural gift, being overpowered by the adversary, falls into licentiousness through pride, so that, the witness of his self-control being taken away, the things said by such men become unworthy of credence, the devout fleeing the teaching from such a mouth as from a spring containing leeches;

so that the written word is fulfilled:

"But to the sinner God said:

Why do you declare my statutes, and take up my covenant in your mouth?" For truly the souls of those subject to passion resemble different springs;

the gluttons and wine-lovers resemble miry springs;

the avaricious and grasping resemble springs that contain frogs;

but the envious and proud, who yet have aptitude for knowledge, resemble springs that breed serpents, in which the word always stagnates, and from which no one gladly draws because of the bitterness of their character.

For without kindness, knowledge is useless;

and if such a one sets himself right, laying aside the cause of the abandonment—that is, the conceit—and takes up humble-mindedness and recognizes his own measure, neither exalting himself against anyone, and giving thanks to God, the witnessed knowledge returns to him again.

For spiritual words that do not have a venerable and sober life galloping alongside them are wind-blasted ears of grain, having the outward form but robbed of the nourishing [grain].

Every fall, then—whether through the tongue, or through sense, or through action, or through the whole body—comes about by abandonment in proportion to one's pride, God sparing those who are abandoned.

For if, along with licentiousness, the Lord also bears witness to their natural gift by the supply of words, pride makes them into demons, exalted together with uncleanness.

And these things too those men used to tell us:

"Whenever you see," he said, "someone harsh in life but persuasive in word, remember the demon who conversed with Christ from the holy Scripture, and the testimony that says:

'Now the serpent was the most subtle of all the beasts upon the earth';

it became a cause of harm, since no other virtue ran together with it.

For unless the kinship of life runs together with the truth of words, it is bread without salt according to Job, which can by no means be eaten, or, if eaten, will lead those who eat it into ill health;

for he says: 'Shall bread be eaten without salt? And is there taste in empty words not filled with the testimony of works?' Of the abandonments, then, the causes are: one is for the sake of a hidden virtue, that it may be made manifest, as in the case of Job, God giving him an oracle and saying:

'Do not reject my judgment, nor think that I have dealt with you otherwise than that you might be shown to be righteous.

For to me you were known, to Him who sees the hidden things; but since you were unknown to men, who supposed that you served me because of your wealth, I brought on the calamity, I reaped away the wealth, that I might show them your thankful love of wisdom (philosophy);'

and another [cause of abandonment] is for the averting of pride, as in the case of Paul;

for Paul was abandoned [to be] cast about by calamities and buffetings and various afflictions, and said:

'There was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to buffet me, lest I should be exalted overmuch;'

lest, along with the miracles, the relief and the abundance and the honour accruing to him should cast him, slackened, into a devilish conceit.

The paralytic too was abandoned because of sin, as Jesus says:

'Behold, you have become whole; sin no more.'

Judas too was abandoned, having preferred silver to the Word; wherefore also he hanged himself.

Esau too was abandoned and fell into licentiousness, having preferred the dung of his bowels to his father's blessing.

So that Paul, perceiving all these things, said concerning some:

'Since they did not approve of having God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do the things which are not fitting;'

and concerning certain others who seem to have knowledge of God but with a corrupted disposition:

'For since, knowing God, they did not glorify Him as God or give thanks, God gave them over to passions of dishonour;'

so that from this we know that it is impossible for anyone to fall into licentiousness unless he has been abandoned by the providence of God.

who displayed such great self-control of asceticism as to surpass all others.

For having lived twenty-five years, he partook [of food] only on the Lord's days and on the Sabbath, standing the nights and singing psalms.

With him, as with a queen-bee, the multitude of the brotherhood dwelt around in the midst, and I too dwelt with him, and thus he peopled the mountain as a city;

and there one could see various ways of life.

This Elpidius, once when he was singing psalms at night and we were singing with him, a scorpion stung him;

but he, having trodden on it, did not even move from the posture of his stance, disregarding the pain caused by the scorpion.

And when a certain brother one day was holding a cutting from a vine-shoot, he took it while sitting by the edge of the mountain and heaped earth on it as one planting, although it was not the season;

and it grew to such a size and became a vine, so as to shade the church.

With him was also perfected a certain notable man Aenesius, and his brother Eustathius.

He advanced to such a degree of dispassion, his body so dried up, that the sun shone through his bones.

A narrative is related by his diligent disciples that he never turned to the west, because the mountain towered up high at the door of his cave;

nor did he ever see the sun after the sixth hour when it had passed overhead and was inclining toward the west, nor the stars rising in the western regions, for twenty-five years;

from the time he entered the cave he did not go down from the mountain until he was buried.

Concerning Sisinnius. [A disciple of this Elpidius was one named Sisinnius, who sprang from a servile lot but was free in respect of the faith, a Cappadocian by race;

for it is necessary to indicate these things too, to the glory of Christ who ennobles us and leads us to the true nobility.

This man, having spent six or seven years with Elpidius, afterwards shut himself up in a tomb, and for three years continued in the tomb in prayers, neither by night nor by day sitting down, nor lying down, nor walking outside.

This man was deemed worthy of a gift against demons.

And now, having returned to his homeland, he was deemed worthy of the presbyterate, gathering a brotherhood of men and women, by his venerable manner of life both driving out the male [lust] of his own desire and muzzling by self-control the female [softness] of the women, so that the written word was fulfilled:

'In Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female.'

He is also hospitable, although he is without possessions, to the reproof of the wealthy who do not share.] Concerning Gaddanas. I came to know a certain Palestinian elder named Gaddanas, who lived the homeless (open-air) life in the regions about the Jordan.

And such a thing happened:

as [an assailant] raised his sword and intended to draw it against Gaddanas, the hand of the one who had bared the sword withered, the sword falling from the right hand of him who held it.

Concerning Elias. Elias again, living the solitary life in the same regions, dwelt in a cave, being of a most venerable and lawful (well-ordered) life.

This man, one day when very many brothers had come upon him—for the place was a thoroughfare—ran short of bread.

And he assured us: "Being faint in the matter, on entering the cell I found three loaves;

and when twenty had eaten to satisfaction from them, one was left over, with which I made do for twenty-five days."

Concerning Sabas. [A certain man named Sabas, a layman, by race a Jerichoan, having a wife, became such a lover of monks that he would go round among the cells and the desert by night, and at each abode would set out one bushel of dates and a sufficiency of vegetables, because the ascetics about the Jordan did not eat bread.

To him one day a lion met, and overtaking him from a distance of one mile, pushed and threw him down, and taking the ass, departed.] Concerning Abramius. A certain Abramius was by race an Egyptian, having lived a most rough and savage life in the desert.

Being smitten in his mind by untimely self-conceit, he came into the church and contended with the presbyters, saying: "I was ordained a presbyter by Christ this very night, so receive me as one exercising the priesthood."

The fathers, separating him from the desert and leading him to a coarser and more indifferent (less rigorous) way of life, cured him of his pride, bringing him to a knowledge of his own weakness, having been made the sport of the demon.

Further concerning the holy Melania. Concerning the wondrous and holy Melania I have narrated briefly and earlier, but none the less I shall now weave into the account the remaining things.

As for how much substance she consumed in her divine zeal, burning it up as with fire, it is not for me to relate, but rather for those who dwell in Persia.

For of her beneficence no one missed out—not east, not west, not north, not south.

For during thirty-seven years she lived in voluntary exile (as a stranger), and out of her own resources gave aid to churches and monasteries and strangers and prisons, the funds being supplied to her by her kinsfolk and by her own son and by her own stewards.

She, having persevered so long in her pilgrimage, did not acquire even a span of land, nor was she drawn away by longing for her son, nor did the yearning for her only-begotten son divide her from love toward Christ;

but rather, by her prayers, her younger [descendant] advanced to the height of education and character, and to an illustrious marriage, and attained worldly dignities;

After many years, then, hearing concerning the state of her granddaughter—that she had married and was minded to renounce [the world]—and fearing lest they should be torn apart by evil teaching or heresy or evil living, the old woman of sixty years cast herself onto a ship, and sailing from Caesarea, in twenty days arrived at Rome.

And meeting there with the most blessed and notable man Apronianus, who was a pagan (Greek), she catechized him and made him a Christian, persuading him also to live continently with his own wife, this woman's cousin, named Avita.

And having confirmed her own granddaughter Melania together with her husband Pinianus, and having catechized Albina her own daughter-in-law, the wife of her son, and having prepared all these to sell off their possessions, she led them out of Rome and brought them to the venerable and serene harbour of [the monastic] life.

And thus she fought as with wild beasts against all the senators and free-women who tried to hinder her in the renunciation of the rest of the households.

"Children, it is written four hundred years ago that 'It is the last hour';

she led [them] to the monastic life.

And having catechized Publicola the younger son too, she led him to Sicily;

and having sold off all the rest of her property and taken the proceeds, she came to Jerusalem;

and having distributed her substance within forty days, she fell asleep in a good old age and in deepest meekness, leaving behind also a monastery in Jerusalem and the funds for its [upkeep].

And as all these had departed from Rome, a certain barbarian storm—the one long ago foretold in prophecies—came upon Rome, and did not spare even the bronze statues in the marketplace, but plundering everything, delivered it to destruction with barbarian madness;

so that Rome, which had been beautified for twelve hundred years, became a ruin.

Then those who had been catechized and those who had opposed the catechizing glorified God, who by the reversal of circumstances had convinced the unbelievers that, when all others had been taken captive, these households alone were saved, having become whole burnt-offerings to the Lord by the zeal of Melania.

It happened that we were travelling together from Aelia (Jerusalem) to Egypt, escorting the blessed Silvania the virgin, sister-in-law of Rufinus the ex-prefect;

among whom was with us also Jovinus, at that time a deacon but now bishop of the church of Ascalon, a devout and learned man.

A most violent heat, then, having seized us, and we having arrived at Pelusium, Jovinus happened to take a basin and wash his hands and feet, [scooping] with his fist most cold water, and after washing, to rest on a piece of leather thrown upon the ground.

She, coming up like a wise mother to a genuine son, rebuked his softness, saying:

"How dare you, being of this age, while your blood is still boiling, so to pamper your flesh, not perceiving the harms born from it? Take courage, take courage, for I am in my sixtieth year of age; apart from the tips of my hands, neither has my foot touched water, nor my face, nor any one of my members, although I have been seized by various sicknesses, and being pressed by the physicians I would not consent to render to the flesh its custom; I have not rested upon a bed, nor have I travelled anywhere in a litter."

She, having become most learned, or rather loving the word, turned nights into days, going through every writing of the ancient commentators;

among which she went through three million lines of Origen, and two hundred and fifty thousand lines of Gregory and Stephen and Pierius and Basil and certain other most diligent writers;

not casually nor by chance going through them, but laboriously going through each book seven or eight times.

Concerning Olympias. Following in the footsteps and track of this woman, the most venerable and most zealous Olympias walked, and followed her resolve;