Letter 15

A certain brother from Gaul told me that he had a sister, a virgin, and a mother, a widow, who, dwelling in the same city in separate cells, had taken to themselves certain clerics as patrons, either because of the loneliness of lodging alone or to guard their little fortunes, so that they were joined to strangers with greater disgrace than they had been separated from each other. And when I groaned, and signified by silence far more than by speaking, he said: "I beg you, rebuke them by a letter of yours, and call them back to concord, that the mother may acknowledge the daughter, the daughter the mother." To whom I said: "You enjoin upon me an excellent province, that I, a stranger, should reconcile those whom a son and a brother could not — as though I held an episcopal chair and were not shut up in a cell and removed far from the crowds, either lamenting my past faults or striving to avoid the present ones. But it is also unfitting to lie hidden in body and to wander through the world by the tongue." And he: "You are too fearful," he said; "where is that former firmness in which, rubbing the city down with much salt, you reported something Lucilian?" "This is the very thing," I say, "that drives me off and does not allow me to part my lips. For after, by reproving crimes, I became a criminal myself, and, according to the well-worn proverb of the common people, with all swearing and denying — 'You love me, and I neither believe it nor touch it' — and the very walls echoed back curses against me, And they who drank wine sang against me, compelled by this evil I learned to keep silence, thinking it better to set a guard upon my mouth and a fortified door upon my lips than to incline my heart to words of malice and, while I carp at vices, to fall into the vice of detraction." When I had said this, he replied: "It is not detraction to speak the truth, nor does private rebuke make general doctrine, since either rare or none is he who falls under the guilt of this fault. I beg you, then, not to suffer me, worn out by so long a journey, to have come in vain. For the Lord knows that, after seeing the holy places, I had this for my chief cause: that by your letters you should restore me to my sister and my mother." And I said: "Now, now I will do what you wish; for the letter is for those across the sea, and a discourse specially dictated can find few whom it may sting. But I warn you to keep this discourse secret. And when you have carried it as provision for the road, if it be heard, let us rejoice together; but if it be despised — which I rather think — I shall have lost my words, you the length of your journey."

First I wish you to know, sister and daughter, that I do not write for this reason, because I suspect anything about you, but, that others may not suspect, I pray for your concord. Otherwise — which God forbid! — if I judged that you had clung together by the glue of sin, I would never write, and I would know that I was telling a tale to the deaf. Next, I beseech this, that, if I write anything rather sharp, you should think it the part not so much of my austerity as of the disease. Rotten flesh is cured with the knife and the cautery, poisons are driven out with the serpent's antidote; what pains enough is expelled by a greater pain. Lastly I say this, that, even if the conscience has no wound, yet the reputation has disgrace. Mother and daughter, names of piety, words of duty, bonds of nature, and the second confederation after God — it is no praise if you love one another; it is a crime that you hate. The Lord Jesus was subject to his parents: he reverenced the mother whose father he himself was, he honoured the foster-father whom he had nourished, and he remembered that he had been carried in the womb of the one, in the arms of the other. Hence too, hanging on the cross, he commends his parent to a disciple, the parent whom he had never dismissed before the cross.

But you, daughter — for now I cease to speak to the mother, whom perhaps age and weakness and loneliness make excusable — you, I say, daughter, do you judge her house narrow whose womb was not narrow for you? You lived ten months shut in her womb, and do you not endure one day in one chamber with your mother? Or can you not bear her eyes, and, because she who bore you, who nourished you and brought you to this age, understands all your motions as by torches, do you flee a witness of your own household? If you are a virgin, why do you fear diligent guardianship? If corrupted, why do you not marry openly? The second plank after shipwreck is, where you have begun ill, at least to temper it by this remedy. Nor indeed do I say this to take away penitence after sin, so that what began ill should persist ill, but because in a union of this kind I despair of a separation. Otherwise, if you should migrate to your mother after your fall, you could more easily mourn with her what you lost by her absence. But if you are still whole and have not lost, keep it, lest you lose. What need is there for you to dwell in that house in which you have it necessary daily either to perish or to conquer? Does any mortal take his sleep secure next to a viper? Even if it does not strike, certainly it disturbs. It is safer not to be able to perish than, next to peril, not to have perished; in the one is tranquillity, in the other steering; there we rejoice, here we escape.

But perhaps you will answer: "My mother is not of good character; she desires the things of the world, she loves riches, she is ignorant of fasting, she smears her eyes with antimony, she wishes to go out adorned, and she harms my resolve, nor can I live with one of this kind." First indeed, even if she is such as you allege, you will have a greater reward if you do not forsake one such. She carried you long, she nourished you long, and bore with the more difficult ways of your infancy with coaxing affection. She washed the filth of your swaddling-clothes and was often defiled with unclean dung. She sat by you when sick, and what loathings she had borne for your sake she suffered for you also. She brought you to this age; she taught you to love Christ. Let her way of life not displease you, who consecrated you a virgin to your Bridegroom. But if she cannot be borne, and you flee her delicacies and, as you are wont commonly to say, your mother is worldly, you have other virgins, you have the holy choir of chastity. Why, forsaking your mother, do you choose him who perhaps left his own sister and mother? She is difficult, but he is easy; she is quarrelsome, he is placable. I ask whether you followed him or found him afterward. If you followed him, it is manifest why you left your mother; if you found him afterward, you show what you could not find in your mother's lodging. A harsh teacher, and wounding me with my own sword: He who walks simply, he says, walks confidently. I would be silent if my conscience bit me back, and I would not reprove my own crime in others, nor see another's mote through the beam of my own eye. But now, since, dwelling far off among brethren and enjoying their fellowship, I both rarely see and am seen honourably under witnesses, it is most shameless that you do not follow the modesty of him whose example you testify that you follow. But if you say: "My conscience is enough for me too; I have God as judge, who is the witness of my life; I do not care what men say" — hear the Apostle writing: Providing things good not only before God but also before men. If anyone carps at you because you are a Christian, because you are a virgin, because you have therefore left your mother to live in a monastery among virgins, do not care; such detraction is your praise. Where it is not luxury that is carped at in a virgin of God, but hardness, that cruelty is piety. For you prefer to your mother him whom you are bidden to prefer even to your own soul. And if she too prefer him, she will feel you to be both a daughter and a sister.

What then? Is it a crime to have the companionship of a holy man? You drag me into court by the throat, that I should either prove what I do not wish, or undergo the ill-will of many. A holy man never separates a daughter from a mother; he respects both, he venerates both. However holy the daughter may be, a widowed mother is a sign of chastity. If that certain someone is your contemporary, let him honour your mother as his own; if older, let him love you as a daughter and subject you to a parent's discipline. It is not expedient for the reputation of both that you love him more than your mother, lest he seem to choose in you not affection but age. And I would say this even if you had not a brother who is a monk, if you lacked the protections of your household; but now — alas! — between a mother and a brother, and a widowed mother and a brother who is a monk, why does a stranger thrust himself in? It is good indeed that you should know yourself both a daughter and a sister; but if you cannot do both, and the mother is rejected as harsh, let at least the brother please. If the brother is rather rough, let her be gentler who bore you. Why do you turn pale? Why do you seethe? Why do you suffuse your face with a blush, and, with quivering lips, testify to the impatience of your breast? Nothing surpasses the love of a mother and a brother except the affection of a wife alone.

I hear, besides, that you go about the suburbs, the pleasant places of country houses, with relations and kinsfolk and men of that kind. Nor do I doubt that it is either a cousin or a sister to whose solace you are led as an attendant of a new kind — for far be it that, however near and kindred they be, I should suspect you of seeking the company of men — I beg you, then, virgin, to answer me: do you go alone in the company of your kinsfolk, or with your lover? However shameless you may be, you will not dare to thrust him upon the eyes of worldlings. For if you do this, the whole household will sing of you and him, all men's fingers will mark you out, and even the sister or relation or cousin who, in flattery of you, call him in your presence "holy" and "father," if he turns himself a little aside, will laugh at the monstrous husband. But if you go alone — which I rather think — surely among young servants, among married women and women about to marry, among wanton girls and long-haired and linen-clad young men, you, a girl in dark clothing, will walk. Some little bearded fellow will give you his hand, will support you when weary, and, with pressed fingers, will either be tempted or will tempt. There will be a banquet for you among men and matrons: you will await another's kisses, foretasted foods, and, without scandal to yourself, will admire silken and gilded garments on others. At the very banquet too, that you may eat meat, you are as if compelled against your will; that you may drink wine, the creature of God is praised; that you may wash in the baths, squalor is disparaged; and all will cry out that you, when you have done anything of what they urge, drawing back from it, are pure, simple, a mistress, and truly noble. Meanwhile some singer will sound at the table, and, among the psalms running with sweet modulation, since he will not dare to look at other men's wives, he will more often glance back at you, who have no guardian. He will speak by nods, and whatever he fears to say he will signify by his feelings. Amid these and so great allurements of pleasures, lust tames even iron minds, which suffers a greater hunger in virgins, since it thinks everything sweeter that it does not know. The fables of the heathen tell that by the songs of the Sirens sailors were dashed headlong onto the rocks, and that to the cithara of Orpheus the trees and beasts and the hardness of flint were softened. With difficulty is chastity preserved amid feasts. A gleaming skin displays a filthy mind.

As a boy I read in the schools — and we have beheld bronzes breathing in the public squares — that someone, scarcely clinging to his bones, burned with unlawful loves, and was deprived of life before the disease. What will you do, a girl of sound body, dainty, plump, ruddy, seething amid meats, amid wines and baths, next to married women, next to young men? Even if, when asked, you do not yield, yet you may think it a testimony to your beauty if you are asked. A lustful mind pursues the honourable more ardently, and suspects what is not allowed to be sweeter. The very cheap and dark dress is a sign of a silent mind, if it has no wrinkle, if it is dragged along the ground that you may seem taller, if the tunic is deliberately unstitched that something within may appear, and it covers what is foul and uncovers what is comely. The walker's little black and gleaming shoe too, by its creaking, calls young men to her. The breasts are compressed with bands, and the chest is bound more tightly with a crisping girdle. The hair flows down either onto the forehead or onto the ears. Sometimes the cloak falls, to bare the white shoulders, and, as though she had not wished to be seen, she hastily hides what she willingly drew back. And when in public she covers her face as if out of modesty, with a harlot's art she shows that alone which, being shown, can please the more.

You will answer: "Whence do you know me? And how do you cast your eyes upon me from so far?" Your brother's tears told me this, and his unbearable sobs at every moment. And would that he had lied, and had said this fearing it rather than charging it! But believe me, sister: no one who lies weeps. He grieves that a young man is preferred to him — not indeed long-haired, not of silken garments, but a fop and dainty in squalor — who himself seals the money-bag, holds the weaving-room, distributes the wool-tasks, rules the household, buys whatever is needed from the market, steward and master and forestalling the little duties of the servants, whom all the servants gnaw at, and whatever the mistress has not given, they cry out that he has filched. The race of servants is querulous, and however much you give them, it is always too little for them. For they do not consider out of how much, but how much is given, and they console their grief only by detractions, since that is what they can do. One calls him a parasite, another an impostor, this one a legacy-hunter, another by whatever new name. They boast that he himself sits by the little bed, applies the midwives to her when sick, carries the chamber-pot, warms the linen, folds the bands. Men more easily believe evil, and whatever is invented at home becomes rumour in public. Nor wonder if maids and servants invent these things about you, when the mother too complains of this very thing, and the brother.

Do, then, what I advise, what I entreat: that first you be reconciled to your mother, and then, if that cannot be done, at least to your brother. Or, if you abhor these names so dear as hostile, separate from him whom you are said to have preferred to your own. But if you cannot do even this — for you would return to your own if you could forsake him — at least use your companion more honourably. Let your houses be separated, and your table divided, lest slanderous men, since you dwell under one little roof, charge you also with having a bed in common. You can both have, for your needs, such solace as you wished, and in some part be free of public infamy — although the stain must be guarded against which, according to Jeremiah, can be washed out with no nitre, no fuller's herb. When you wish him to see you — and he will visit — call in witnesses: friends, freedmen, servants. A good conscience will flee the eyes of no one. Let him enter undismayed, let him go out secure. Silent eyes and silent speech and the bearing of the whole body sometimes speak either trepidation or security. Open your ears, I beg, and hear the outcry of the whole city. Already you have lost your own names, and have taken surnames from each other in turn: you are called his, and he is yours. This the mother hears, and the brother, and they are ready and they pray you to divide yourselves for them, and to make the private infamy of your union a common praise. Be with your mother, let him be with the brother. You will more boldly love your brother's companion: more honourably will the mother love her son's friend than her daughter's. But if you will not, if with wrinkled brow you despise my admonitions, this letter will proclaim to you with free voice: Why do you besiege another's servant? Why do you make a minister of Christ your servant? Look at the people, behold the faces of each. He reads in the church and all gaze upon you — except that with almost conjugal license you glory in your infamy, nor can you now be content with secret disgrace; you call wantonness liberty. The face of a harlot has come to be yours; you know not how to blush.

Again you cry out that I am malignant, again suspicious, again a rumour-monger. Am I suspicious, am I malevolent — I who, as I said at the beginning of the letter, wrote for this reason, because I did not suspect — or you, negligent, dissolute, a despiser, who, being twenty-five years old, have so shut up in your arms, as in a net, a young man not yet well-bearded? An excellent tutor indeed, to admonish you, to terrify you with the harshness of his brow, and, although in no age is lust safe, yet at least with gray head to defend you from open disgrace! It will come, it will come, the time — the day glides on while you do not know it — and this pretty fellow of yours, because women quickly grow old, especially those who are near men, will find either a richer or a younger one. Then you will repent your obstinacy, when you have lost both your property and your reputation, when what had been ill joined will be well divided — unless perhaps you are secure, and, the love of so long a time growing strong, do not fear separation.

You too, mother, who because of your age do not fear curses, do not wish to be avenged in such a way that you sin. Let your daughter rather learn from you to be separated than you from her to be disjoined. You have a son and a daughter and a son-in-law — nay, a companion of your daughter; why do you seek the solace of strangers and rouse fires already lulled? It is more honourable for you at least to bear with your daughter's fault than to seek occasion for your own. Let your son the monk be with you, the protection of piety and widowhood. What place has a stranger with you, especially in that house which could not hold a son and a daughter? You are now of such an age that you could have grandchildren by your daughter. Invite both to yourself. Let her who went out alone return with a man — I said a man, not a husband; let no one slander me: I meant to signify the sex, not marriage — or, if she blushes and draws back and thinks the house in which she was born narrow, do you go to her little lodging. Although it be cramped, it can more easily hold a mother and a brother than a stranger, with whom certainly she could not remain in one chamber. Let there be in one house two women, two men. But if that third man too, your nurse-of-old-age, will not depart, and stirs up seditions and tumults, let there be a pair, let there be a team of three: your brother and son will furnish them both a sister and a mother. Let others call him stepfather and son-in-law; let him call her foster-mother and sister.

These things I dictated in rapid speech for a brief little night's work, wishing to satisfy the longing of him who asked, and exercising myself as if upon a subject for the schools — for that very day, in the morning, he was knocking at my door who was about to set out — and at the same time, to show my detractors that I too can say whatever comes to my mouth. Hence too I have touched briefly on a few things from the Scriptures, and have not woven my discourse, as I am wont to do in other books, with their flowers. The composition is extemporary, and so poured forth by the light of a little lamp, with such facility, that the hands of the secretaries could not keep pace with my tongue, and the volubility of my speech overwhelmed their signs and shorthand. This I have said for this reason, that whoever does not pardon my talent may pardon at least the time.