Letter 13

It is now several years since, while the wound was yet fresh, I consoled Paula, that venerable woman, upon the falling asleep of Blesilla. The circuit of the fourth summer is rolling round since, in writing to Heliodorus the bishop the epitaph of Nepotian, I spent in that grief whatever strength I could have. About two years ago I gave my Pammachius a short letter on the sudden departure of Paulina, blushing to say much to so eloquent a man and to thrust his own back upon him, lest I should seem not so much to console a friend as, by foolish vainglory, to instruct a perfect man. Now, my son Oceanus, you lay a debt upon one willing and even seeking it of his own accord, that, on account of the novelty of her virtues, I should make old matter new. For in those former cases the affection of a parent, or the mourning of an uncle, or the longing of a husband had to be tempered, and, according to the diversity of the persons, a different medicine from the Scriptures had to be applied.

At present you hand over to me Fabiola, the praise of Christians, the marvel of the heathen, the mourning of the poor, the consolation of the monks. Whatever I first take up, it grows cheap by comparison with what follows. Shall I proclaim her fasting? Her almsgiving outstrips it. Shall I praise her humility? Greater is the ardour of her faith. Shall I tell of her sought-out squalor, and, to the condemnation of silken garments, the plebeian dress and servile clothing she chose? It is more to have laid aside pride than dress. We part with arrogance more hardly than with gold and gems. For when these are cast away, we sometimes swell with a vainglorious squalor and offer our marketable poverty to the breath of the crowd. Virtue concealed, and cherished in the secret of conscience, looks to God alone as judge. Hence she is to be extolled by me with new proclamations, and, the order of the rhetoricians passed over, the whole must be taken up from the cradles of her conversion and penitence. Another, perhaps, mindful of the schools, would bring forward Quintus Maximus, The one man who by delaying restored our state to us, and the whole house of the Fabii; he would tell of battles, describe combats, and boast that Fabiola came through so many degrees of nobility, so as to display in the roots what he could not in the branch. I, the lover of the lodging at Bethlehem and of the Lord's manger, in which the virgin mother brought forth God as an infant, will produce the handmaid of Christ not from the nobility of ancient history but from the humility of the Church.

And because at the very outset a kind of rock and storm of her detractors is set against me — that, having drawn a second marriage by lot, she first left the prior one — I will not praise her conversion until I have absolved her of the charge. So great are the vices her first husband is said to have had that not even a harlot or a cheap slave could endure them. If I should choose to tell them, I should destroy the virtue of the woman, who preferred to undergo the blame of divorce rather than defame a certain part of her own body and uncover its stains. This only will I bring forward, which is enough for a modest and Christian matron. The Lord commanded that a wife ought not to be put away except for the cause of fornication, and that, if she be put away, she should remain unmarried. Whatever is enjoined upon men consequently redounds upon women too. For an adulterous wife is not to be put away while an adulterous husband is to be kept. If anyone is joined to a harlot, he makes one body; therefore she also who is joined to a fornicator and an impure man becomes one body with him. The laws of the Caesars are one thing, the laws of Christ another; Papinian commands one thing, our Paul another. Among them the reins of chastity are loosened for men, and, condemning only defilement and adultery, lust is permitted everywhere, through brothels and serving-maids, as though it were rank that made the fault, not pleasure. Among us, what is not lawful for women is equally not lawful for men, and the same servitude is reckoned on an equal footing. She put away, then, as they say, a vicious man; she put away one guilty of this and that crime; she put away — I almost said what the neighbourhood proclaimed and the wife alone did not betray. But if it is objected, why, the husband being divorced, she did not remain unmarried, I will readily confess the fault, provided that I report the necessity. It is better, says the Apostle, to marry than to burn. She was young; she could not keep her widowhood. She saw another law in her members warring against the law of her mind, and herself bound and captive being dragged to union. She thought it better openly to confess her weakness and to undergo a kind of shadow of a wretched marriage than, under the glory of having had one husband, to practise harlotry. The same Apostle wishes young widows to marry, to bear children, to give no occasion for the sake of reviling. And straightway he sets forth why he wishes this: For some are already turned aside after Satan. Therefore Fabiola too, because she had persuaded herself and thought her husband lawfully put away by her, and did not know the rigour of the Gospel, in which all pretext of marrying, the husbands living, is cut off from Christian women, while she shunned many wounds of the devil, incautiously received one.

But why do I linger over things abolished and old, seeking to excuse a fault whose penitence she herself has confessed? Who would believe this — that after the death of her second husband, having returned to herself, at the time when negligent widows, the yoke of servitude shaken off, are wont to conduct themselves more freely, to frequent the baths, to flit through the streets, to carry about a harlot's countenance, she should put on sackcloth, publicly confess her error, and, with all Rome looking on, before the day of Passover, in the basilica that was once Lateranus's — who was beheaded by the sword of Caesar — should stand in the rank of the penitents, while the bishop and the presbyters and all the people wept together, and submit her scattered hair, her pallid face, her squalid hands, her dirty neck? What sins does that weeping not purge? What inveterate stains do these laments not wash away? Peter blotted out his threefold denial by a threefold confession. The fraternal prayers corrected Aaron's sacrilege and the head of the calf cast out of gold. The seven days' fast amended the homicide and adultery alike of David, a holy and most gentle man. He lay on the ground, he rolled in the ashes, and, forgetful of his royal power, sought light in the darkness, and, looking to him alone whom he had offended, said with weeping voice: Against you only have I sinned, and done evil before you; and: Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and strengthen me with a princely spirit. And so it came to pass that he who had first taught me by his virtues how, standing, I might not fall, taught me by his penitence how, falling, I might rise again. What so impious do we read among the kings as Ahab, of whom Scripture says: There was no other like Ahab, who was sold to do evil in the sight of the Lord. When this man had been rebuked by Elijah for the blood of Naboth, and had heard the wrath of the Lord through the prophet: You have killed, and moreover you have taken possession; and: Behold, I will bring evils upon you, and I will reap away your posterity, and the rest — he rent his garments, and covered his flesh with sackcloth, and fasted in sackcloth, and walked with his head bowed. Then came the word of the Lord to Elijah the Tishbite, saying: Have you not seen the humility of Ahab before me? Because, then, he has humbled himself in the fear of me, I will not bring the evil in his days. O happy penitence, which drew to herself the eyes of God, which by confession of her error changed the raging sentence of the Lord! This same thing we read that Manasseh did in the Chronicles, and Nineveh in the prophet, and the publican too in the Gospel — of whom the first deserved to receive not only pardon but a kingdom, the second broke the impending wrath of God, the third, beating his breast with his fists, would not lift his eyes to heaven, and departed far more justified by the humble confession of his vices than the Pharisee by the proud boasting of his virtues. This is not the place to preach penitence, and, as if writing against Montanus and Novatus, to say that it is the propitiable victim of the Lord, and that the sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit, and: I prefer the penitence of the sinner to his death; and: Arise, arise, Jerusalem; and many other things which the trumpets of the prophets sound.

This one thing I will say, which is both useful to readers and suited to the present case. She was not ashamed before the Lord on earth, and he will not be ashamed of her in heaven. She laid bare her wound to all, and weeping Rome beheld the scar on her discoloured body. She had her sides unstitched, her head bare, her mouth closed. She did not enter the church of the Lord, but, like Miriam the sister of Moses, sat apart outside the camp, that she whom the priest had cast out he might himself recall. She came down from the throne of her delights, took the millstone, ground meal, and with unshod feet passed over the floods of tears. She sat upon the fire of coals; these were her helpers. She struck the face by which she had pleased her second husband; she hated gems; she could not bear to look upon linen; she fled ornaments. So she grieved as though she had committed adultery, and with many expenditures of remedies desired to heal one wound.

We have lingered long on her penitence, in which we have settled as in shallow places, that a greater field of her praises, without any hindrance, might open before us. Received under the eyes of the whole Church into communion, what did she do? Did she, forsooth, in the good day forget her ills, and after shipwreck wish again to try the perils of sailing? Nay rather, the whole fortune she could have — and it was very ample, answering to her birth — she broke up and sold, and, gathered into money, prepared it for the uses of the poor. And first of all she established a hospital, in which she might gather the sick from the streets and refresh the limbs of the wretched, worn out by sickness and want. Shall I now describe the various calamities of men — the mutilated noses, the gouged eyes, the half-burned feet, the livid hands, the swollen bellies, the wasted thighs, the bloated legs, and the little worms swarming in the eaten and putrid flesh? How often did she carry on her own shoulders those consumed by jaundice and filth! How often did she wash the festering matter of wounds which another could not bear to look at! She furnished food with her own hand, and watered the breathing corpse with little sips. I know that many rich and religious people, on account of the weakness of their stomach, exercise mercy of this kind through the services of others, and are merciful with money, not with the hand. These indeed I do not blame, and I by no means interpret tenderness of mind as unbelief; but as I grant pardon to the weakness of the stomach, so I bear to heaven with my praises the ardour of a perfect mind. This great faith despises such things; it knows what the rich man in purple once failed to do for Lazarus, and to what retribution that proud mind was condemned. He whom we despise, whom we cannot bear to see, at whose sight a vomiting bursts from us, is like ourselves, formed of the same clay with us, compacted of the same elements. Whatever he suffers, we too can suffer. Let us reckon his wounds our own, and all hardness of mind toward another will be broken by a merciful thought toward ourselves. Not if I had a hundred tongues and a hundred mouths, a voice of iron, could I run through all the names of the diseases which Fabiola turned into such great refreshments for the wretched, that many of the poor in health envied the sick. And yet she was of like generosity toward clerics and monks and virgins — what monastery was not sustained by her wealth? Whom, naked and bedridden, did the garments of Fabiola not cover? Upon whom of the needy did her headlong and hasty bounty not pour itself out? Rome was too narrow for her mercy; she traversed the islands, therefore. She went round the Tuscan sea and the province of the Volsci, and the hidden bays of the curving shores, in which the choirs of monks are settled, either in her own person or by a bounty sent through faithful and holy men.

Hence suddenly, and against the expectation of all, she sailed to Jerusalem, where, received by the concourse of many, she for a little while used our hospitality; and recalling that companionship, I seem to myself still to see what I saw. Good Jesus, with what fervour, with what zeal she was intent upon the divine volumes, and, as if desiring to satisfy a kind of hunger, she ran through the prophets, the gospels, and the psalms, proposing questions and storing up their solutions in the little cabinet of her breast! Nor indeed was she satisfied with the desire of hearing, but, adding knowledge, she added grief, and, as if you were to add oil to a flame, she took the fuel of a greater ardour. One day, when we held the Numbers in the hands of Moses, and she modestly asked me what was meant by so great a heap of names, why the several tribes were variously joined in some places and in others, how Balaam the soothsayer so prophesied the future mysteries of Christ that hardly any of the prophets foretold of him so openly, I answered as I could, and seemed to satisfy her inquiry. Turning over the book, then, she came to that place where the catalogue is described of all the stations through which the people, going out of Egypt, came as far as the streams of the Jordan. And when she asked the causes and reasons of each, in some I hesitated, in others I ran with unstumbling foot, in most I simply confessed my ignorance. But then she began to press me the more, and, as if it were not lawful for me not to know what I did not know, to expostulate and to say that she was unworthy of such great mysteries. Why say more? The shame of refusing wrung from me a promise of a proper work of this kind of little discussion for her, which up to the present time, as I now understand, by the will of the Lord deferred, is rendered to her memory, so that, clothed in the priestly garments of the former volume to herself, she may rejoice that through the wilderness of this world she has at last come to the land of promise.

But let us pursue what we began. While we were seeking a dwelling worthy of so great a woman, since she so desired solitude that she would not be without the lodging of Mary, behold, suddenly, as the messengers ran to and fro, the whole East trembled: that from the farthest Maeotis, between the icy Tanais and the savage peoples of the Massagetae, where the barriers of Alexander hold back the wild nations by the cliffs of the Caucasus, swarms of Huns had burst forth, which, flitting hither and thither on their swift horses, filled all things alike with slaughter and terror. The Roman army was then away, and was held in Italy by the civil wars. Herodotus relates that this nation, under Darius king of the Medes, held the East captive for twenty years, and exacted an annual tribute from the Egyptians and the Ethiopians. May Jesus turn such beasts away henceforth from the Roman world! Unlooked-for, they were everywhere present, and, outstripping report by their speed, they spared neither religion, nor dignity, nor age, nor wailing infancy. Those who had but lately begun to live were forced to die, and, not knowing their own evil, laughed amid the hands and weapons of the enemy. The rumour was consistent among all that they were making for Jerusalem, and that out of excessive greed for gold they were rushing to this city. At Antioch the walls, neglected through the carelessness of peace, were being repaired; Tyre, wishing to break off the island from the mainland, sought its ancient site. Then we too were compelled to fit out ships, to be on the shore, to guard against the coming of the enemy, and, while the winds raged, to fear the barbarians more than shipwreck — providing not so much for our own safety as for the chastity of the virgins. There was at that time a certain dissension among us, and domestic wars surpassed the battle of the barbarians. As for us, our seats, now fixed, and the long-rooted longing for the holy places held us in the East; but she, because she was all in her baggage and a pilgrim in all the world, returned to her native land, that she might live poor there where she had been rich, dwelling in another's house, who had before had many guests, and — that I may not draw out my discourse too long — that in the sight of the city of Rome she might distribute to the poor what she had sold with that very city as witness.

We grieve only for this, that we have lost from the holy places the most precious necklace. Rome received back what she had lost, and the saucy and slanderous tongue of the heathen was confuted by the testimony of their own eyes. Let others praise her mercy, her humility, her faith: I will praise rather the ardour of her mind. She held by heart the book in which, as a young man, I once exhorted Heliodorus to the desert, and, beholding the walls of Rome, she lamented that she was shut in. Forgetful of her sex, unmindful of her frailty, and desirous only of solitude, she was there where she dwelt in mind. She could not be held by the counsels of her friends: so eager was she to burst out of the city as out of fetters. She called the management of money and the cautious distribution of it a kind of unbelief. She wished not to give alms to others, but, having poured out her own equally, herself to receive alms for Christ. So she hastened, so impatient was she of delays, that you would have believed she was about to set out. And so, while she is ever preparing, death could not find her unprepared.

Amid the praises of the woman, suddenly my Pammachius rises before me. Paulina sleeps, that he himself may watch; she goes before her husband, that she may leave him behind a servant to Christ. He is the heir of his wife, and others are the possessors of the inheritance. A man and a woman vied which should pitch a tent in the harbour of Abraham, and this was the contest between the two, which should surpass in humanity. Each conquered, and each was conquered. Both confess themselves vanquished and victors, while what one desired, both accomplished. They join their wealth, they unite their wills, so that what rivalry would have scattered, concord might increase. No sooner said than done: a hospice is bought, and to the hospice the throng runs together. For there is no labour in Jacob, nor grief in Israel. They bring across the seas those whom the land may receive into its bosom. Rome sends hastening on those whom, about to sail, the soft shore may cherish. What Publius once did in the island of Malta toward one apostle — and, that I may give no place to contradiction, in one ship — this these do both frequently and toward many. Nor is the need of the poor alone sustained, but a bounty inclined toward all provides something even for those who have. The whole world alike has heard of the guest-house situated in the harbour of Rome. In one summer Britain learned what Egypt and Parthia had recognized in the spring.

What is written, To those who fear the Lord all things work together for good, we saw proved at the death of so great a woman. By a kind of presage of things to come, she had written to many monks, that they should come and release her, labouring under a heavy burden, and that she should make to herself friends of the unrighteous mammon, who might receive her into the everlasting tabernacles. They came, they were made her friends: she fell asleep — which she wished — and, her baggage at last laid down, flew lighter to heaven. How great a marvel Fabiola, living, was to Rome, she showed in death. She had not yet breathed out her spirit, had not yet rendered her soul, owed to Christ, And already flying rumour, the herald of so great a grief, was gathering the peoples of the whole city to her funeral. Psalms resounded, and the gilded roofs of the temples were shaken by the alleluia echoing on high. Here a choir of young men, there of old, who in song bear the praises and the deeds of the woman. Not so did Furius triumph over the Gauls, not so Papirius over the Samnites, not so Scipio over Numantia, not so Pompey over the nations of Pontus. They conquered bodies; she subdued spiritual wickednesses. I hear that neither the streets, nor the porticoes, nor the roofs overhanging from above, could hold the troops of those who went before and the surging multitude that looked on at her funeral in companies. Then Rome beheld her own peoples in one: all favoured themselves in the glory of the penitent. Nor is it any wonder if men exulted over the salvation of her over whose conversion the angels rejoiced in heaven.

This, Fabiola, is the aged gift of my talent that I have given you, these offerings of my duties. We have praised virgins, widows, and married women whose garments have ever been white, who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. Happy the proclamation that is stained by no defilement of the whole life! Far off be malice, let envy depart. If the householder is good, why is our eye evil? She who had fallen among robbers was carried back on the shoulders of Christ. There are many mansions with the Father. Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. To whom more is forgiven, he loves the more.