書信集 第 1 章 第 1/7 段

I. RURICIUS TO HIS OWN ESPECIAL LORD AND PATRON IN CHRIST THE LORD, BISHOP FAUSTUS.

Long ago, my venerable lord and most blessed priest, I came to know you through the proclamation of your most celebrated fame; long ago, by the inpouring of devoted love and longing, I gaze upon you with those eyes of the heart with which you deign to write, yet none the less I hasten also to behold you with bodily eyes—if by any means, through your intercession, I might break the bonds of my sins, and, having received the wings of that dove, fly away from the snares of the hunters and, set at rest with you, repose in the law of the Lord; so that I might quench the thirst which I conceived by reading your little works, drawing more abundantly, in your very presence, from the source whence they flowed; so that the little fire of charity, which you kindled into a fervent blaze in the lukewarm and slumbering embers of my soul, might be strengthened into a living flame by the fodder of the Scriptures brought forth from its dense thicket—a flame which, lit by the speech of your holy mouth, after its wonted manner, might exert in the breast of a sinner the force of its mighty nature, warming what is cold, illumining what is dark, and consuming the thorns of my crimes.

My soul has cleaved to you, O excellent teacher, in following after you. But let your prayers help me, that I may be able—the deeds of earth despised—to pant after the things of heaven; for the body which is corrupted weighs down the soul, so that it cannot incline its ear to the divine oracles; that, forgetting my father's house and obeying the command of him who calls, I may depart from my own land and kindred, and may rather long for that land which is shown to me. For our littleness is not yet strong enough to expel the fear of its liable condition and to lay open hearts cleansed for perfect charity, that, leaving present things, we may seek eternal things, and, having cast out the bondwoman (the heir), may as free men obtain the paternal inheritance.

Wherefore I hope, my lord, that you will pray unceasingly for me, and that, as often as you deign to drench the dryness of my soil with the rain of your eloquence, you will supply me—not, as you have just now done while still unaware of my weakness, with delicate and sweet food, but with sterner fare suited to my sickness, since delicacies do not profit a fool; and that thereafter you will lend a censorious assent to my betrayers, who, after the manner of human disposition, hindered by excessive affection and turning aside from the truth of judgment, fall into falsehood out of love. Indeed, let your holiness not fear that the right hand of one who soothes is more welcome to my wounds than that of one who cuts, since I now feel, by the Lord's gift, that they can neither be healed by me and yet have grievously festered.

And therefore I choose that the righteous man should correct me with the rebuke of mercy, rather than that the sinner's oil should anoint my head. With suppliant prayer, then, I beseech you, that out of that treasury of your inner chambers, from which you are wont to bring forth things new and old, you would send—being a most skilled physician, who daily, with the aid of God's grace, heal the countless and varied sicknesses of the ailing—to my sickness also the medicines which you know to be fitting. II. RURICIUS TO HIS OWN ESPECIAL LORD AND PATRON IN CHRIST THE LORD, BISHOP FAUSTUS. So far have impious negligence and negligent impiety possessed me hitherto, that I know not, my lord, what chiefly to accuse in myself, nor do I find what first to excuse in myself.

For if I should attempt to put forward any argument to excuse my excuses in my sins, I would add sin to sin without recollection of the judgment, so that I would weigh myself down with a double and greater offense; so that I, who am guilty of tardiness, would begin to be guilty of falsehood as well, and would extend my crime even to wronging man—now awaiting only a paternal sentence for the fault of sloth, but subjecting myself to the divine sentence for the vengeance of falsehood; especially since a true confession earns indulgence, and a false excuse earns offense. I prefer therefore to ask pardon by a confession as simple as it is suppliant, rather than to double my sins. You have me then, best of fathers, excellent shepherd, as the willing confessor of my own fault.

You have in the disciple's error something to correct, and in the little sheep's sickness something to heal. And it is in your power and judgment whether you wish to cut away the rottenness of my ulcer with the rigor of iron, or to cure it with the gentleness of medicines. Yet I, whichever cure you may choose, will embrace it undismayed, nor will I shun the stroke of a father's right hand, provided I obtain a portion of the promised inheritance; nor will I consider what punishment may be mine in the scourge, but whom I may have *** in the testament. For it is better for me to weep over a father than to be cast off, despised, by a father; since the affection of parents constrains in order to correct, not persists in order to punish, nor does the arrogance of the proud man bring them so much grief as the humility of the one who confesses brings them joy.

Thus that most indulgent father of the Gospel received with a glad embrace the son who had squandered the substance entrusted to him, more ready to rejoice over his return than to charge him with his fall. In short, his crimes are not cast in his teeth, neither his riotous living nor his destitution; the mere return of the convert makes up for all losses, since beyond all doubt the father's joy at his return was greater than his loss of goods. So he whom his departure had made guilty, his coming back made innocent, and mercy suffices for the heir. Nay more, the pardon of the father's clemency alone does not suffice—that he cherishes him in his arms, that he soothes him with grace—unless he also multiplies lavish gifts. He gives a ring, lest the son should again depart from the father, drawn away by faithlessness.

He gives shoes for his feet, that he may more easily despise the rough and hard things of the steep road. He gives also that very first robe which he had lost, that, having received him back from death, he might bestow upon him his former immortality. The calf too is given to the younger son on his return, which had been given as a lamb to the elder when he was setting out from Egypt, since the Father himself leads forth out of Egypt. Imitating the faith of so great a parent, hand over to sinners your aid, grant pardon to those who strive, bestow intercession; and to the son who confesses not only grant pardon yourself, but yourself plead for pardon, that the one whom in a foreign land you call free, you may behold set free in his own.

And let him who through himself lost the Lord's bounty, through you be counted worthy to attain liberty, nor let him be separated from your comfort, who is set apart for the reward. III. RURICIUS TO HIS MOST DEVOTED AND EVER MAGNIFICENT SON HESPERIUS. Affection has opened to me an approach for writing to your accord, which inexperience had blocked—affection, and that mistress of all things, love, through which rigid things are bent, stony things softened, swelling things subsided, harsh things soothed, gentle things made to swell, savage things tamed, mild things made savage, calm things kindled, dull things sharpened, foreign things made to rule, monstrous things appeased—which, working its work even in me, unbarred a tongueless mouth, drawing me forth from the safest recess of silence.

and compels me, in a life already old, to undergo new things—namely a public and fearful judgment—so that I, who hitherto followed that ancient maxim by which it is said that it is often better to keep silent than to speak, and would rather conceal my ignorance by the silence of modesty than impudently put it forth in unpolished speech, now—as unmindful of my custom as forgetful of my rusticity, as if suddenly changed from an Arion into an Orpheus—should wish, with a chattering mouth, to present myself to your most eloquent ears, not so much officiously as injuriously, while I both attempt unknown things and presume upon things unaccustomed.

But you will, I suppose, grant pardon to one who comes out of the bond of a necessary necessity; for a breast conscious of mutual feeling recognizes what love claims for itself by natural power in the minds of mortals. Therefore, lest by lingering longer over excuse we so prolong the page that our too-unpolished speech should offer you not only no ***, but even an unordered abundance of weariness, we now burst forth into the voice of devotion and pour out the words of our longings, commending to you our pledge, your deposit, by the reception of whom you have taken us. For to you I have entrusted the hope of my posterity, to you the comfort and solace of the present life and, if the Godhead grants it, of the life to come; to you alone I have committed all my prayers.

I have chosen you as the drawer-out and shaper of noble little stones, you as the searcher of gold, you as the discoverer of hidden water—you who know how to restore to their proper nobility the gems hidden in stones, which assuredly, amid such confusion of things, would lose their nobility if they had no one to point them out. Gold too, mixed with worthless sands, unless it is washed in waters and refined in fires by the craftsman's skill, can keep neither its splendor nor its worth. The enclosed veins of flowing waters and the channel of a stream covered over with earth, unless the diligent industry of one who seeks them out clears away the rubble, the wave of the spring will not flow.

So too the still-tender edge of the senses, beset by the cloud of ignorance as by the thickness of a rough rust, unless it is cleansed by the constant file of a teacher, cannot of itself grow bright. It is yours, then, now—yours in all these things—to answer both your reputation and likewise our judgment, lest either you should seem to have presumed unlawfully, or we to have chosen inconsiderately. IV. RURICIUS TO HIS MOST DEVOTED AND EVER MAGNIFICENT SON HESPERIUS. I have received the writings of your accord, sprinkled as much with grace as with eloquence, as much with love as with charm, as much with salt as with honey, in which there was lacking nothing of sweetness nor of savor. Though they excel with every art of speech and reasoning, yet they seem to differ from themselves in judgment alone.

For while you hasten to grant to my poor little pages—not suited to praise, but fitted by the ineptitude of rusticity for blame—more than they merit, and follow either the flow of declamation or the affection of one who is diligent, you have turned aside from the standard of right judgment. To which thing I judge that your perfection has descended, not by the fault of ignorance, but by deliberate counsel, for a threefold cause: that in a slight subject you might display both the keenness of your genius and the fluency of your speech and the abundance of your discourse.

Just as in a barren and idle sod the husbandman's strenuousness appears the more, when either he tames the rebellion of the clinging clods by the oft-repeated pressure of the plowshare, or he fertilizes excessive dryness by the spreading of dung, so that industry may produce that abundance of fruits which the nature of the soil denies—so too you have enriched the poverty of my letter with the richness of your eloquence, so that it may be, if you suppress it, praiseworthy when you speak, but if indeed you bring it forth, may strike shame both into me for false praise and into you for error of judgment. And therefore, since you have willed my unskillfulness to be the work of your modesty, beware lest, when we do not correspond to your heralding, your choice be endangered.

And so, if you trust me at all, if you take any thought for us both, hide away this volume unworthy of memory, most worthy of oblivion—if you wish both me, at your discretion, to obtain the fame of an orator, and you to obtain the character of an approved judge. V. RURICIUS TO HIS MOST DEVOTED AND EVER MAGNIFICENT SON HESPERIUS. You had promised, dearest son, that you would send me some little flowers from the little branch which you had undertaken to transfer and graft from bitterness into a domestic flavor, by whose fragrance I might learn what hope I ought to entertain of my hope—whether the very flowers, or again the buds themselves, promised by the quality of their fruit, and whether that same fruit could, by your refining, grow mild and satisfy the hearts of hearers with the sweet food of eloquence.

But because—I know not for what cause—you have put off doing this, I have found an opportune time for admonishing you, in which, in the harmony of the world, all living creatures alike—dumb beasts and tongueless ones, those that walk, that fly, and that creep—each in their own ways, with their own hissings, each with their own voices, even with discordant sound or differing mouth, yet with equal affection, as it were with one concert, burst forth into the praise of their own Author, and betray that they perceive the power which they cannot utter.

For at this season the whole world's appearance is renewed and restored, and whatever in it was hitherto squalid with neglect, troubled with cold, congealed with ice, deformed with bareness, deadened with dryness, emerges in the likeness of a resurrection, so that human frailty may learn to know the invisible from the visible and things to come from things present, and, despair laid aside, may receive the hope of a better age to come. Now too the earth, its veins closed up by barren rigor, married, as it were by a manly seed conceived in springtime, by hidden passages loosens its veins for birth. And hence it produces all things—what is sweet to delight, what is sweet to eat, what is useful for use, what is necessary for sustenance, what is pleasant to the sight, what is grateful to the smell, what is soft to the touch.

Indeed, this is that very temperate season which, embracing in a kind of bosom the substance of the new-born world—still tender, as it were in its cradle—nursed it as a most gentle foster-mother, lest the summer heat should scorch the substance hardened by no toil, or the winter cold extinguish it, or the blasts of the winds carry it away. Your undertaking therefore has a most fitting time, in which the soul, its sloth at last detested, may sharpen the dullness of its heart and, if it cannot declaim among men, may at least hasten to cry out among the cattle or to chatter among the birds. VI. RURICIUS TO THE HOLY AND MOST DEVOUT LORD FATHER, THE PRESBYTER NEPOTIANUS.

The books which your holiness sent I have received—illustrious in eloquence, perfect in knowledge, sound in doctrine, clear in purity of faith; which, rich in the abundance of sacred testimonies, eminent in authority, shining with light, easily both illumine the minds of the faithful and lay bare the errors of the faithless and refute them. Lured rather than refreshed by a very slight taste of them, I was unable, because of the cares of the world, to reach satiety. For just as the stomach, when it is parched by the heat of fevers, neither receives the sweet foods once offered to it nor seeks those taken away, so too the mind, worn out with worldly anxieties and cares, neither desires spiritual banquets when they are absent, nor partakes of them when set before it, nor perceives them when poured in.

Though these things are thus with me, you nevertheless have both proved the affection of a devoted parent and have fulfilled the ministry of a solicitous master and the office of a diligent physician, in that you sent fitting medicines to one laboring under such weariness. By which, even though, on account of my negligence, I am unable to obtain health, you nevertheless will receive a reward from the just rewarder, who is wont to render kindly thanks even on behalf of the ungrateful. Of these aforesaid books, therefore, one, as you commanded, I have kept; the other I have sent back, which you will know to be that of holy Hilary, prelate of the city of Poitiers. And because you had so directed, I have taken care to indicate it.

But this one that I have retained, since you permit it, I have arranged to copy out, so that what we cannot commit to memory we may at least take care to consign to the page. VII. RURICIUS TO HIS OWN ESPECIAL LORD AND PATRON IN CHRIST, BISHOP BASSULUS. How much your holy devotion and devout holiness deign to love me, you prove by manifold affection, in that you send me things to be read and correct things neglected, by loving provoke love, and what you proclaim in words you teach by examples.

But since your seed does not thrive in barren and thorny ground, inasmuch as it is choked by the briars growing over it—lest the Lord of the vineyard should bid me, like that unfruitful fig tree which he so long awaits in vain, to be cut down—do you defer the harsher sentence by your prayers, until, by the richness of your teaching as by dung, the unfruitful bitterness may grow sweet.

But since with me my offenses are more than my words, and I cannot expiate my deeds by speeches, I at least pay the homage of a letter, and signify that I have sent back the book which you had lent; and another of yours likewise—if it is no longer needed—I hope you will bid to be returned by the bearer of these; and at the same time, if, God being favorable, you are to come to the festival of the saints at Gourdon, that you would let me know by those returning. VIII. RURICIUS TO HIS OWN ESPECIAL LORD AND PATRON IN CHRIST THE LORD, BISHOP SIDONIUS. I recall having often heard you proclaim that we can in no way be cleansed from our iniquities unless we have confessed our crimes with a conscience that pricks us.

For who, I will not say can obtain, but can even seek indulgence, unless he joins confession to lamentation, since error requires indulgence, and indulgence does not require error? Knowing this to be most true, I have not delayed to disclose to your devotion my misdeed recently committed, lest that which, while I now reveal it, looks toward pardon, should afterward, while I keep silent, pertain to guilt. But now let us bring the very deceit into the open. I declare myself guilty before you of theft, and I pronounce that I have unlawfully presumed upon your deposit while you were unaware. Yet, that I should commit this, you yourselves gave the occasion of perpetrating the deed, either tempting me as one covetous, or wishing to instruct me as one untaught.

For the book which you had bidden me receive from my brother Leontius, I confess that I have copied out. If you approve this, acknowledge it; if you charge it against me, forgive it, since a complaint is joined to the confession. For first the will impelled me to read it, then it itself extorted that it should be copied. For when I had as yet sipped but a little of its banquet, it so enticed me with the taste of its alluring savor that, an imitator in a manner of our first parent, suddenly despising my Lord, I strove to reach satiety, and listened rather to the counsel of the persuader than to the command of the ruler. For, to make manifest all the secrets of my breast, I seemed to myself to hear the words of the very book exhorting me: why do you delay, ingrate, why do you hesitate?

You know our common Lord's will toward you, with which by diverse occasions he strives to file you smooth, and which the good shepherd is wont to thrust spiritual foods upon you even against your will. Believe me, he will charge against you more if you defer than if you copy, since he is wont to favor the eager, not to begrudge them. By these and such silent addresses I cast myself, willing and at the same time compelled, of my own accord into its bonds; I hastened eagerly to transcribe it—which now, whether I ought to return it transcribed, as it is, or ready prepared, hangs upon your decision. Yet I will gladly accept whatever penalty you impose, since I believe your decree to be my remedy, and I count your sentence to be a medicine, not a punishment. IX.

RURICIUS TO HIS ESPECIAL LORD AND PATRON IN CHRIST THE LORD, SIDONIUS. So has your devotion's recent preaching and ancient love enticed me, that I dare often to do injury to your ears with my ineptitudes, while I desire to touch upon your discipline as far as is granted to a barren little wit. Although to attain it is a great and difficult thing, yet to follow it is fair and sublime, since not only the attainment of the highest things, but even the very imitation of them, is to be praised; for scarcely ever does anyone wholly lack a portion of that thing toward which he has striven to climb and to come.

I long therefore, my lord, I say, I long to be refreshed by your foods, to drink from your fountain, to be filled with your banquets, to be fattened with your feasts; which, if anyone, while you distribute them, has not merely tasted them with the tip of his lips, but, as a guest desiring them with all the inward parts of his soul, has swallowed them and afterward hidden them away in the depth of his breast to be ruminated, he will begin to burst forth in continual eructations into the praise of the Lord Almighty—full in heart, fasting in mouth—while, satisfied, he hungers, and, hungering, is satisfied, to be the more filled in the regeneration. Nor can that food be lacking whose nourishment is in the Word.

That I may therefore be counted worthy to be a partaker of these delights, obtain it by your patronage, and come as helpers to me who am striving beyond the measure of my strength; and at the same time, that I may not be found a stranger to the sheepfold entrusted to you, pray, and bring back the straying sheep from the pastures of the world to the Lord's folds, since I trust that, by your intercessions, he can become a lamb who has been counted worthy to be your disciple. X. RURICIUS TO LUPUS, HIS OWN HEART. I have received the letter of your magnanimity, in which you deign to excuse yourself that the scarcity of a carrier causes you to bedew me too rarely with the dew of your eloquence, and at the same time you indicate that you wonder why, though a frequency of them is at my disposal, and an abundance of well-arranged words is not lacking, I should so often decline to write to you.

But this, I do not doubt, you have boasted by way of irony, as is the eloquence of your wit, since you yourself abound in letter-carriers and know that I labor with poverty of speech and the barrenness of a meager wit, as one who in the summer months sweats out, rather than makes flow, the course of a parched vein. You added too that, just as Patroclus to Achilles, or Theseus to Hercules, or Pirithous to Theseus, so you ought to be joined to me.

In these fables and deeds of our ancestors we ought to receive, not the prerogative of persons, but the comparison of love, so that, recalling the names of friends, we may follow their examples, and, transferring their titles to ourselves, may compare their merits; and, plucking from their deeds whatever is magnificent and honorable, may usefully adapt them to our own life; and may serve one another in pure charity, not in dyed flattery; and may strive that what the falsehood of those poets feigned in the friendships of those men, the truth of our souls may carry out in us, so that, while we seem to imitate ancient things, we may leave behind things to be imitated, and, praising the deeds of our elders, may be praised by posterity.

This, then, my lord, is the flame of my heart, which—trusting your persuasion more than my own conscience—I have dictated briefly and hurriedly while the messenger was in haste; and your skill and integrity, if it consults the modesty of a friend, will either conceal or take care to amend it. XI. RURICIUS TO HIS EXALTED AND EVER-MAGNIFICENT LORD, HIS BROTHER FREDA.

Since you wished that the trifles of even my wilderness should be joined to the loveliness of your grove, I have sent, as you enjoined, fir saplings that will please not by their appearance but by their height, marvellous not for their fruits but for the foreignness of their origin, not apt for use but delightful in their charm—plants which, when they have taken root, by the density of their shade will furnish in summer the coolness of the ocean of the Cévennes; and this among those most splendid trees of diverse kinds, distinguished alike for beauty and usefulness, rich with their burden, varied with blossom, fragrant with scent. For there your industry has gathered what the nature of the soil did not bring forth.

For—to pass over from sight the redness of roses, the whiteness of lilies, the perpetual greenness of the laurel and other things of this kind, since precious things often grow cheap through abundance and daily plenty breeds disdain—there too have been gathered the exotic sweetnesses of grasses, shoots and shrubs, blooming to the sight and to use. But what there is first to be praised or wondered at, where even the intemperance of the season is tempered? For there the heat of scorching summer is driven off as much by the coolness of shade as of waters, while the harshness of winter is so little felt that, to those set within it, the mildness of the air and the song of birds give the very image of spring.

But why do I, forgetful of my own want of skill, strive with poor speech, my lord, to describe or recount the riches and delights of your estate, to whose praise even greater talents would yield? Grant therefore pardon to my presumption, which you yourselves wrung from me; for it is your own regard that compels me to become wordy in your ears, trusting that a longer letter, if it should displease my lords by its manner of address, would please you by its affection, when you understand that it is copious not for the charm of eloquence but for love of you; and likewise because I knew that your Highness reproves in your friends more the modesty of silence than the talkative boldness of familiarity. XII. RURICIUS TO CELSUS, LORD OF HIS HEART.

I tremble to open my tongueless mouth in your praise, to which I know that even greater talents rightly yield. For what shall I first recall in praise of your affection or your regard, you who have bestowed on me all the delights of the countryside, of character, and—what is greater than all these—of love; or surely, if anything of these was lacking, it must be charged to the times, not laid to our account. For with you I found everything that the heart holds dear, that the world holds famous, and you have cheated me of no pleasure whatever. Indeed, you have made the very wilderness of my little lodging desirable to me by your nearness. And for this reason I rejoice the more to be your neighbour, since he is not wholly bad who is joined to the good.

But lest a too-long discourse, by its very ineptitude, breed in us distaste, I bid a most ample farewell; and I make known that I have sent, as you bade, a glassmaker, whose work should imitate love by its lustre, not by its fragility—so that the affection which was left to us by our parents, handed down by our master, and confirmed by the sharing of life, may be polished by prosperity, and by adversity be broken by no storm of whirlwinds at all.

For just as the precious purity of gold and silver, if it has been corrupted by the admixture of bronze or lead or any other baser material, unless it be purged by the testing of fire, can have neither its natural splendour nor its sound—for it renders neither brightness to the sight nor ringing to the hearing, but resounds the more hoarsely if struck, and harshly... This thought, then, best of brothers, not my own but the Lord's, let us regard and follow alike, and so govern our life in mid-course with the Lord himself as our pilot that, although fair weather smile upon us, a more favourable breeze invite, and a calm sea allure, yet, knowing that that flat plain of the sea below can suddenly rise up like mountains, we may by no means suffer our ship to be driven into the deep, where either a tempest may break it apart or a wave engulf it.

XIII. RURICIUS TO CELSUS, LORD OF HIS HEART. I have received the letter of your brotherhood, which brought me no small disquiet. For I fear lest you may have understood my poor little letters otherwise than they were sent by me, and that on this account you seem to mark me, as it were, for rash presumption, while you ask me to pray for you and to admonish you often. Should I, best of brothers, dare to chastise you—I who cannot chastise myself? Should I chastise you, you who look upon me, still tossing in the whirlwinds of the world as in a sea's surges in an unsteady skiff, as though from a loftier watchtower or a more eminent hill? Should I chastise you, you who, with the Lord as your pilot, ... to the harbour of pardon through the indulgence of penance?