"Nothing is cast against me except my sex, and this would never be cast against me except when Paula sets out for Jerusalem." And again, he says: "Before I knew the household of holy Paula, the zeal of the whole city was in accord about me; in the judgment of almost all I was deemed worthy of the highest priesthood; but I know that one comes to the kingdoms of heaven through good report and ill." When, I say, I brought back to mind this injury of detraction against so great a man, I plucked from it no small consolation, saying: "Oh, if my rivals could find so great a cause of suspicion in me, with how great detraction would they oppress me! But now, since by divine mercy I have been freed from this suspicion, how, since the capacity for perpetrating this baseness has been taken away, does the suspicion remain?
What is this most shameless and novel accusation?" For this matter so removes among all every suspicion of this baseness, that whoever strive to guard women more diligently set eunuchs over them, as the sacred history relates concerning Esther and the other maidens of King Ahasuerus. We read too of that powerful eunuch of Queen Candace, that he presided over all her treasures; to convert and baptize whom the apostle Philip was directed by an angel. For such men have always attained the more of dignity and familiarity among modest and honorable women, the further they stood from this suspicion.
For utterly removing this, the Ecclesiastical History, book six, relates that Origen, that greatest philosopher of the Christians, when he intended to instruct women too in holy doctrine, laid hands upon himself. Yet I thought that in this divine mercy had been more favorable to me than to him, in that what he is believed to have done less providently, and thereby to have incurred no small crime, this another's fault wrought in me, so as to prepare me free for a similar work, and with so much less pain as it was briefer and sudden, since, overwhelmed by sleep, when they laid hands on me I felt almost nothing of pain;
but what I then perhaps suffered less from the wound, I am now longer punished for by detraction, and am more tortured by the loss of my reputation than by the diminution of my body, just as it is written: "A good name is better than great riches." And as blessed Augustine recalls in a certain sermon On the Life and Conduct of Clerics: "He who, trusting in his own conscience, neglects his reputation, is cruel." The same above: "We provide," he says, "good things, as the Apostle says, not only before God but also before men. For our own sake our conscience suffices us; for your sake our reputation ought not to be polluted, but to be strong among you... Two things there are: conscience and reputation.
Conscience is for yourself, reputation for your neighbor." But what would the envy of these men cast against Christ Himself, or against His members — namely the prophets as well as the apostles or the other holy fathers — if it had existed in their times, when, that is, they saw them, whole in body, joined to women in especially familiar converse? Whence blessed Augustine too, in the book On the Work of Monks, shows that women themselves clung as inseparable companions to the Lord Jesus Christ and to the apostles, so as even to go forth with them to the preaching.
"For to this end," he says, "faithful women too, having earthly substance, went with them and ministered to them of their substance, so that they should lack none of those things which pertain to the substance of this life... And whoever thinks it was not done by the apostles, that women of holy converse went about with them wherever they preached the gospel, let him hear the gospel, and recognize how they did this by the example of the Lord Himself... For in the gospel it is written: Afterward He Himself journeyed through the cities and villages, preaching and evangelizing the kingdom of God, and the twelve with Him, and certain women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities:
Mary called Magdalene, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others who ministered to Him of their means." And Leo the Ninth, against the epistle of Parmenian concerning the monastery of Studius: "We altogether profess," he says, "that it is not lawful for a bishop, presbyter, deacon, or subdeacon to cast off his own wife, on the pretext of religion, from his care, so as not to bestow on her food and clothing — yet not so that he should lie with her carnally. So too we read that the holy apostles acted, blessed Paul saying: Have we not power to lead about a sister, a woman, as also the brethren of the Lord and Cephas? See, you fool, that he did not say: Have we not power to embrace a sister, a woman, but: to lead about;
That is to say, they were supported by these women out of the reward of their preaching, yet there was nonetheless thereafter no carnal marriage between them. That very Pharisee, who said within himself concerning the Lord, 'This man, if he were a prophet, would surely know who and what manner of woman this is that touches him, for she is a sinner,' could—so far as human judgment is concerned—have conceived a far more plausible suspicion of foulness about the Lord than these men can about us; or those who saw His mother entrusted to a young man, or saw the prophets above all lodging and consorting with widows, could draw from that a far more probable suspicion.
What, moreover, would these detractors of ours have said, if they had beheld that captive monk Malchus, of whom the blessed Jerome writes, living in the very same dwelling together with his wife? How great a crime they would have reckoned that, which that distinguished doctor, when he had seen it, most highly commending it, says: 'There was there a certain old man named Malchus... a native of that place, and an aged woman likewise in his dwelling... both zealous in religion, and so wearing down the threshold of the church that you would believe them to be Zacharias and Elizabeth of the Gospel, save that John was not between them.' Why, finally, do they not refrain from detraction of the holy fathers, whom we often read of, or even have seen, founding monasteries of women as well and ministering to them;
after the example indeed of the seven deacons, whom the apostles set in their own stead over the tables and over the care of the women? For the weaker sex so needs the help of the stronger that the Apostle always appoints the man to be, as it were, the head over the woman; in token of which thing also he commands her always to keep her head veiled. Hence I marvel not a little that these customs have long since taken root in monasteries, namely that, just as abbots are set over men, so abbesses are set over women, and that women as well as men bind themselves by profession of the same Rule, in which nevertheless very many things are contained that can in no way be fulfilled by women, whether superiors or subjects.
In very many places too, with the natural order overturned, we behold these abbesses and nuns lording it over the very clergy, to whom the people are subject, and being able the more easily to lead them into wicked desires the more authority they have over them, and to exercise over them that most grievous yoke; considering which, the well-known satirist says, 'Nothing is more intolerable than a wealthy woman.' Often pondering this within myself, I had resolved to provide for those sisters and to take charge of them as far as I was permitted, and that they might revere me the more, to watch over them by my bodily presence also, and thus the more to come to the aid of their needs.
And since now a more frequent and greater persecution from sons afflicted me than once from brethren, I thought to flee back to them from the heat of this tempest as to a certain harbour of tranquillity, and there to breathe a little, and to gain at least some fruit among them, since I gained none among the monks; and that this would be to me the more wholesome the more it was needful for their weakness. But now Satan has so hindered me that I find no place where I may rest or even live, but, wandering and a fugitive, after the likeness of the accursed Cain, I am carried about everywhere; whom, as I mentioned above, 'fightings without, fears within' ceaselessly torment—nay rather, both without and within, fightings alike and fears;
and a far more dangerous and frequent persecution from sons rages against me than from enemies. For these I have ever present, and continually I endure their snares. The violence of enemies I see threatening peril to my body, if I go forth from the cloister; but within the cloister I unceasingly endure the contrivances, as violent as they are deceitful, of the sons—that is, of the monks entrusted to me as to an abbot, that is, as to a father.
O how often they attempted to destroy me by poison, as was also done to the blessed Benedict! And as if this very cause, by which he forsook his perverse sons, plainly urged me by the example of so great a father to do the same, lest, exposing myself to certain peril, I should be found a rash tempter of God rather than a lover of Him—nay, a slayer of my very self. But while I provided for myself as much as I could against such daily snares of theirs in the administering of food or drink, they sought to poison me in the very sacrifice of the altar, having mingled poison, namely, into the chalice.
On a certain day too, when I had come to Nantes to visit the count in his sickness, and was lodged there in the house of a certain brother of mine by blood, they contrived to kill me by poison through that very servant who was in our retinue—where, namely, they believed I would be less on my guard against such a contrivance. But it then came to pass by divine ordinance that, since I did not partake of the food prepared for me, a certain brother among the monks whom I had brought with me, having through ignorance eaten of this food, fell dead there; and that servant who had presumed this fled away, terrified as much by his own conscience as by the testimony of the deed itself.
Thenceforth, therefore, their wickedness being made manifest to all, I began openly, as far as I could, to avoid their snares, and now to withdraw myself from the assembly of the abbey and to dwell in small cells with a few companions. And if they had any forewarning that I was about to pass somewhere, they would set robbers, bribed with money, upon the roads or paths to slay me. But while I was laboring amid these perils, by chance one day, as I was thrown from our mount, the hand of the Lord violently dashed me down, breaking, namely, the bone of my neck. And this fracture afflicted and weakened me far more than the former wound.
At one time, restraining their untamed rebellion by excommunication, I compelled certain of them, those whom I most dreaded, to promise me publicly by their faith or by oath that they would thenceforth depart altogether from the abbey and would no longer disturb me in any way. But these men, publicly and most shamelessly violating both the faith they had given and the oaths they had made, were at length, by the authority of the Roman pontiff Innocent, through a legate appointed for this purpose, compelled in the presence of the count and the bishops to swear this very thing and many others besides; and not even so did they yet rest.
But recently, when, having cast out those whom I mentioned before, I had returned to the assembly of the abbey and committed myself to the remaining brethren, whom I less suspected, I found these far worse than the others; for, plotting against my throat now not with poison but with the sword, I scarcely escaped them under the escort of a certain noble of the land. In which peril I still labor even now, and daily I imagine, as it were, a sword hanging over my neck, so that amid the banquets I scarcely breathe—even as is read of that man who, when he most accounted the power and gathered wealth of the tyrant Dionysius to be blessedness, beholding a sword secretly suspended over himself by a thread, was taught what felicity attends earthly power.
This too I myself now ceaselessly experience, having been promoted from a poor monk into an abbot—so much the more wretched the wealthier I have become; that even by my example the ambition of those who of their own accord seek this office may be reined in. Let this, most beloved brother in Christ and most intimate companion through our shared life, suffice for me to have written to you of the history of my calamities, in which I labor continually as it were from the cradle, for your desolation and for the injury inflicted upon you: that, as I premised at the beginning of the letter, you may judge your oppression, in comparison with mine, to be either nothing or slight, and may bear it the more patiently the smaller you consider it;
ever taking for consolation that which the Lord foretold to His members concerning the members of the devil: 'If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If the world hate you, know that it hated me before you. If you had been of the world, the world would love its own.' And: 'All,' says the Apostle, 'who will live godly in Christ shall suffer persecution.' And elsewhere: 'Or do I seek to please men? If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.' And the Psalmist: 'They are confounded,' he says, 'who please men, for God has despised them.' Which things the blessed Jerome diligently heeding—whose heir I see myself to be chiefly in the insults of detractions—writing to Nepotian says:
'If I yet pleased men,' says the Apostle, 'I should not be the servant of Christ.' He ceases to please men, and is made the servant of Christ.' The same, writing to Asella concerning feigned friends: 'I give thanks to my God that I am worthy to be one whom the world hates,' and to Heliodorus the monk: 'You err, brother, you err, if you think that a Christian ever does not suffer persecution. Our adversary, like a roaring lion, goes about seeking to devour, and do you think there is peace? He sits in ambush among the rich, etc.' Encouraged therefore by these teachings and examples, let us bear these things the more securely the more injuriously they befall. And if they do not avail us toward merit, let us not doubt that they avail at least toward some purgation;
and since all things are brought about by divine ordinance, in this at least let every one of the faithful console himself in all pressure: that the supreme goodness of God never permits anything to be done out of order, and that whatever is done perversely He Himself brings to a most excellent end; whence also it is rightly said to Him concerning all things, 'Thy will be done.' How great, finally, is that consolation of those who love God which comes from apostolic authority, by which he says: 'We know that to those who love God all things work together for good, etc.'! Which the wisest of the wise diligently heeded when in Proverbs he said:
'Whatever shall happen to the just man shall not grieve him.' By which he plainly shows that all those depart from righteousness who, on account of any grievance of their own, are angered at those things which they do not doubt are brought about toward them by divine dispensation, and who subject themselves to their own will rather than to the divine, and who with hidden desires resist that which is sounded in the words, 'Thy will be done,' preferring their own will to the divine. Farewell.