Letter 1

1. You have often asked me, dearest Innocentius, not to keep silent about the marvel of that event which fell within our own age. When I refused, both modestly and truthfully — as I now find by experience — and despaired of being able to do it, whether because all human speech is inferior to praise that is heavenly, or because idleness, like a kind of rust upon the mind, had blunted even the small talent I once had for eloquence, you on the contrary argued that in the things of God one ought not to look at the possibility but at the spirit, and that he who had believed in the Word could never run short of words.

2. What, then, am I to do? What I cannot accomplish I do not dare to refuse. As an untaught passenger I am set aboard a freighting ship, and a man who has never yet handled an oar even on a lake is entrusted to the roaring of the Black Sea. Now, with the land slipping out of sight, there is sky on every side and on every side the deep; now the waves bristle in darkness, and through the blind night of the storm-clouds the foaming billows turn white. You urge me to spread the swelling sails to the mast, to pay out the ropes, to steer the helm. I now obey your command, and because love can do all things, I will trust — with the Holy Spirit speeding my course — and find comfort either way: if the tide drives me to the harbour I long for, I shall be reckoned a pilot; but if my rough speech runs aground amid the harsh windings of my discourse, you may perhaps look for skill, yet you will certainly not be able to demand goodwill.

3. Vercellae, then, is a city of Liguria, set not far from the roots of the Alps, once powerful, now half in ruins and thinly inhabited. When the consular governor was visiting it, as is the custom, a certain poor woman was brought before him together with the man charged as her adulterer — for that was the accusation her husband had laid — and he had her shut up in the dreadful horror of prison. Not long after, when the bloody iron claw was tearing at her bruised flesh and pain was searching for the truth in her furrowed sides, the most wretched young man, wishing to escape long torments by a quick death, lied against his own blood and so accused another; and he alone of all seemed to deserve, miserably, the blow that fell on him, because he left the innocent woman no ground on which to deny the charge. But the woman, braver than her sex, when the rack stretched her body and bonds bound behind her back the hands fouled with the filth of the prison, looked up to heaven with the eyes that the torturer alone could not bind, and with tears rolling down her face she said: "You are my witness, Lord Jesus, from whom nothing is hidden, who search the reins and the heart, that it is not in order to escape death that I refuse to deny. But you, most wretched man, if you are in haste to die, why do you destroy two innocent people? I too desire to die, I too desire to put off this hated body — but not as an adulteress. I offer my throat, I receive without flinching the flashing blade, I will carry away with me only my innocence. No one truly dies who is killed only to live."

4. So the consular governor, his eyes glutted with blood, like a wild beast that, having once tasted blood, forever thirsts for it, ordered the torments to be doubled, and, gnashing his teeth in fury, threatened a punishment like the executioner's own unless the weaker sex confessed what manly strength had not been able to keep silent.

5. Come to her help, Lord Jesus! How many forms of torture were devised against this one creature of yours! Her hair is bound to a stake, and when her whole body has been tied yet more tightly to the rack, fire is set close to her feet; the executioner gores both her sides, and no respite is granted even to her breasts — yet the woman remains unmoved, and, her spirit cut off from the body's pain, while she enjoys the good of a clear conscience, she forbids the torments to rage about her. The cruel judge rises up as though defeated; she begs help of the Lord. Her limbs are wrenched from their joints; she lifts her eyes to heaven. Another man confesses to the common crime; she, on his behalf, denies it, and at her own peril she defends the other who stands in peril.

6. Meanwhile her one voice: "Strike, burn, tear me apart; I did not do it. If my words win no belief, a day will come that will weigh this charge with care; I shall have my own Judge." By now the weary torturer was sighing in his groans, and there was no room left for a fresh wound; by now his cruelty was beaten, and he shuddered at the body he had mangled. At once the consular, roused to anger, said: "Why do you wonder, you who stand around, that the woman would rather be tortured than die? Adultery surely cannot be committed without two parties, and I hold it more credible that a guilty defendant should deny a crime than that an innocent young man should confess to one."

7. So the same sentence was pronounced upon both, and the executioner dragged the condemned away. The whole people poured out to the spectacle, and just as though the city were thought to be moving house, the crowd burst through the crammed gates and pressed thick together. And indeed the most wretched young man's head was struck off by the sword at the very first stroke, and his headless corpse rolled in its own blood. But when it came to the woman, and she had bent her knees to the ground and the flashing sword was raised over her trembling neck, and the executioner had hurled his practised right arm forward with all his strength — at the first touch of the body the deadly point halted, and, lightly grazing the skin, it drew only the blood of a slight scratch. The slayer was terrified at his own feeble hand and, marvelling at his beaten right arm as the sword seemed to wilt, he swung it round for a second blow. Once more the blade slid limply onto the woman and, as if the steel feared to touch the accused, it lay numb and harmless about her neck. And so the lictor, raging and gasping, twisted his cloak back over her neck, and, while he was summoning all his strength, he shook to the ground the brooch that bit at the edges of the mantle; unaware of it, he poised the sword for the wound — when the woman said: "There, the gold has fallen from your shoulder. Pick up what cost so much labour to earn, so that it is not lost."

8. I ask: what is this composure? She does not fear the death hanging over her, she rejoices when struck, the executioner turns pale; her eyes, which do not see the sword, see only the brooch, and, as if it were too little that she had no dread of her own destruction, she did a kindness to the man who raged against her. And now a third stroke: the mystery of the Trinity had been thwarted. Now the guard, terrified and unable to believe in his own steel, fitted the point to her throat, so that, since he could not cut, the sword might at least be buried in the body by the pressure of his hand. O thing unheard of in all the ages! — the sword bends back to its hilt and, as though looking up at its master in defeat, confessed that it could not strike.

9. Here, here let the example of the three young men come to me, who amid the cold globes of flame sent up hymns instead of weeping, and around whose loose trousers and holy hair the fire played without harm. Here let the story of blessed Daniel be recalled, beside whom the mouths of the lions, with fawning tails, feared their own prey. Now let noble Susanna, famous for her faith, enter the minds of all — she who, condemned by an unjust verdict, was saved when the Holy Spirit filled a young boy. See, the Lord's mercy is not unlike in both cases: the one was set free through the judge, that she might not come to the sword; this one, condemned by the judge, was acquitted through the sword.

10. At last, then, the people armed themselves to deliver the woman. Every age, every sex put the executioner to flight, and as they gathered into a circle, almost no one could believe what he had seen. The neighbouring city is thrown into alarm at such news, and the whole troop of lictors masses together. From among them the one whose charge it was to oversee the condemned burst out into their midst and, fouling his filthy grey hair with a covering of dust, said: "It is my head, citizens, that you seek; you give me as a substitute for her! If you are merciful, if you are clement, if you wish to save the condemned woman, then surely I, who am innocent, ought not to perish." At this the people's heart was shaken with weeping, and a mournful numbness crept over them all; and, by a strange change of will, what before they had defended out of devotion now seemed a kind of devotion — to let her be put to death.

11. So a new sword, a new slayer is brought up. The victim stands, protected only by the favour of Christ. Struck once, she is shaken; assailed a second time, she trembles; wounded a third time, she falls — and, O majesty of divine power to be exalted! — she who before had been struck a fourth time and yet was unhurt now seemed to die a little, only so that no innocent man should perish in her place.

12. The clergy, whose office it was, wrapped the blood-stained corpse in linen, and, building up the hollowed ground with stones, prepared a tomb as the custom is. The sun in its hastened course sought its setting, and night came on to hide the Lord's mercy. Suddenly the woman's breast throbs, and as her eyes searched for the light her body quickened back to life: now she breathes, now she sees, now she is raised up and speaks, now she can break out into that cry: "The Lord is my helper; I will not fear what man may do to me."

13. Meanwhile a certain old woman, who was supported by the resources of the Church, gave back to heaven the spirit that was owed, and, as if by design in the running order of events, her body was laid in the tomb as a substitute. While the light was still uncertain, the devil came in the person of a lictor, looking for the corpse of the slain woman, and asked to be shown the grave; he supposes her to be living, and marvels that she could have died. The fresh turf is shown by the clergy, and the earth lately heaped up is flung back at him with these words as he demands it: "Of course — dig up the bones already buried, make fresh war upon the tomb, and if that is too little, tear her limbs to pieces to be mangled by birds and beasts; one struck seven times must suffer something more than death."

14. Confounded by such odium, the executioner withdrew, and the woman was secretly tended at home; and, lest the frequent coming and going of a doctor to the church should open a path to suspicion, she was sent off with her hair cut short, together with some virgins, to a more secluded little farm. There, little by little, with her dress changed to a man's garb, the wound closed into a scar. And — O truly, the height of justice is the height of malice! — after such great miracles, the laws still rage against her.

15. See where the sequence of events has drawn me on! For now we have come to the name of our own Evagrius. If I should suppose that I am able to speak of the labour he undertook for Christ, I would have no wisdom; if I should wish to keep wholly silent, I could not, for my voice breaks out into joy. For who is able to celebrate with worthy praise that he rescued Auxentius, brooding over Milan, all but buried by this man's vigilance before he was dead; that the bishop of Rome, already almost caught in the snares of faction, both conquered his adversaries and yet did no harm to the men he had overcome?

But of this I myself, shut out by the narrow limits of space, say nothing, and I leave it to be recorded by others after me.

I content myself only with the end of the present matter: by his diligence he approached the emperor, wearied him with prayers, softened him by the justice of the cause, and won him over by his earnest care, so that he might restore to liberty the woman who had been restored to life.