Letter 17

Often and much do you demand, Principia, virgin of Christ, that I should recall in writing the memory of the holy woman Marcella, and describe, for others too to know and imitate, the good which we long enjoyed. And I grieve enough that you exhort one running of his own accord, and think that I, who would not yield even to you in love for her, and who receive far more benefit than I bestow in the remembrance of such great virtues, have need of entreaty. For that I have hitherto kept silence and passed over two years in silence was not, as you ill suppose, the part of indifference, but of an incredible sorrow, which so oppressed my mind that I judged it better at present to be silent than to say nothing worthy of her praises. Nor will I praise your Marcella — nay, mine, and, to speak more truly, ours, and the renowned glory of all the saints, and especially of the city of Rome — by the rules of the rhetoricians, so as to set forth her illustrious family, the glory of high blood, and the pedigrees running down through consuls and praetorian prefects. I will praise nothing in her except what is her own, and the nobler in this, that, having despised wealth and nobility, she became nobler by poverty and humility.

Bereaved by the death of her father, she was also deprived of her husband in the seventh month after her marriage. And when Cerealis, whose name is famous among the consuls, sought her hand somewhat too ambitiously, on account of her age and the antiquity of her family and her remarkable beauty of body — which is wont especially to please men — and her remarkable temperance, and, being aged, promised her his wealth and wished to transfer the gift to her not as to a wife but as to a daughter, and when her mother Albina of her own accord desired so distinguished a protection for the widowhood of the house, she answered: "If I wished to marry, and did not desire to dedicate myself to perpetual chastity, I should seek a husband, not an inheritance." And when he urged that old men too can live long and young men quickly die, she gracefully jested: "A young man indeed can quickly die, but an old man cannot live long." Rejected by this saying, he was an example to the rest, that they should despair of her marriage. We read in the Gospel according to Luke: And there was Anna a prophetess, daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher; and she was of advanced age in many days. And she had lived with her husband seven years from her virginity, and was a widow of eighty-four years, and did not depart from the temple, serving with fastings and prayers night and day. Nor is it any wonder if she deserved to see the Saviour whom she sought with so great labour. Let us compare seven years with seven months, to hope for Christ and to hold him, to confess him born and to believe in him crucified, not to deny him as a little one and to rejoice in him as a man reigning: I make no difference between holy women, as some have foolishly been wont to do among holy men and the chiefs of the churches; but my assertion tends to this, that of those whose labour is one, the reward also is one.

It is difficult, in a slanderous city, and in a town in which there was once the people of the whole world and the palm of the vices — if they disparaged the honourable and stained the pure and clean — not to draw upon oneself some tale of sinister rumour. Hence the prophet wishes for, rather than presumes, as for a most difficult and almost impossible thing, saying: Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord, calling undefiled in the way of this world those whom no obscene breath of rumour has stained, who have not received reproach against their neighbours. Of whom the Saviour too in the Gospel: Be, he says, well-disposed — or well-thinking — toward your adversary while you are with him in the way. Who ever heard of this woman anything that would displease, so as to believe it? Who believed it, so as not rather to condemn himself of malignity and infamy? By her first the heathen were confounded, when it became plain to all what Christian widowhood was, which she promised both by her conscience and by her dress. For they are wont to paint their faces with rouge and white lead, to gleam in silken garments, to glitter with gems, to carry gold on their necks, and from their pierced ears to hang the most precious grains of the Red Sea, to reek of musk, and at last to rejoice that they have been freed from the dominion of husbands, and to seek others, not whom, according to God's sentence, they may serve, but whom they may command. Hence too they choose poor men, that they may seem to have only the name of husbands, who may patiently endure rivals, and, if they have muttered, are to be thrown out at once. Our widow used such garments as kept off the cold, not bared the limbs, refusing gold even to the signet of a ring, and laying it up rather in the bellies of the needy than in purses. Nowhere without her mother; she saw none of the clerics and monks — as the need of a great house sometimes required — without witnesses. She always had in her company virgins and widows, and these grave women, knowing that from the wantonness of the maids the manners of the mistresses are often judged, and that each is delighted by the company of such as she herself is.

Her ardour for the divine Scriptures was incredible, and she ever sang: In my heart have I hidden your words, that I may not sin against you, and that saying about the perfect man: And his will is in the law of the Lord, and in his law will he meditate day and night, understanding the meditation of the law not as repeating what is written, as the Pharisees of the Jews suppose, but as in works, according to that apostolic saying: Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all things to the glory of the Lord, and the prophet's words, saying: From your commandments I understood, so that, after she had fulfilled the commandments, she should then know herself to merit the understanding of the Scriptures. Which we read elsewhere too: That Jesus began to do and to teach. For however distinguished a doctrine, it blushes when its own conscience reproves it, and in vain does the tongue preach poverty and teach almsgiving when one swells with the riches of Croesus and, covered with a cheap little cloak, fights against the moths of silken garments. Moderate fastings, abstinence from flesh, the smell rather than the taste of wine on account of her stomach and frequent infirmities. Rarely did she go out into public, and especially she avoided the houses of noble matrons, lest she should be compelled to see what she had despised, celebrating the basilicas of the apostles and martyrs with secret prayers, and shunning the throng of the peoples. To her mother she was so obedient that sometimes she did what she did not wish. For when her mother loved her own blood, and wished, having no children or grandchildren, that all should be conferred upon her brother's children, while Marcella chose the poor, yet she could not go against her mother, and yielded her necklaces and whatever furniture there was to wealthy relations destined to perish, wishing rather to lose money than to sadden her parent's mind.

No noble woman at Rome at that time had known the profession of the monks, nor dared, on account of the novelty of the thing, to assume a name then accounted disgraceful and cheap among the peoples. She learned, from the priests of Alexandria, and from Pope Athanasius and afterward Peter — who, fleeing the persecution of the Arian heresy, had taken refuge at Rome as in the safest harbour of their communion — the life of the blessed Antony, then still living, and the monasteries of Pachomius in the Thebaid, and the discipline of virgins and widows; nor did she blush to profess what she had learned to be pleasing to Christ. Many years after, Sophronia imitated her, and others, to whom that saying of Ennius can most rightly be applied: Would that not in the Pelian grove. Of her friendship the venerable Paula enjoyed; in her chamber Eustochium, the glory of virginity, was nurtured, so that it is easy to reckon what the teacher was, where the pupils were such. The unbelieving reader will perhaps laugh at me for lingering in the praises of weak women; but if he recall the holy women, the companions of the Lord and Saviour, who ministered to him of their substance, and the three Marys standing before the cross, and Mary Magdalene in particular, who, for her diligence and the ardour of her faith, received the name "towered," and first, before the apostles, deserved to see Christ rising again, he will condemn himself of pride rather than us of folly, who judge of virtues not by sex but by mind. Hence too Jesus loved John the evangelist most, who, on account of the nobility of his birth, was known to the high priest and did not fear the snares of the Jews, so much so that he brought Peter into the hall, and alone of the apostles stood before the cross, and received the Saviour's mother into his own keeping, that a virgin son might receive, as the inheritance of the virgin Lord, the virgin mother.

For very many years, then, she so passed her age that she saw herself an old woman before she remembered that she had been a young one, praising that Platonic saying, who had said that philosophy is a meditation on death. Hence our Apostle too: I die daily by your salvation; and the Lord, according to the ancient copies: Unless a man take up his cross daily and follow me, he cannot be my disciple; and long before, through the prophet, the Holy Spirit: For your sake we are put to death all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter; and after many ages that sentence: Remember always the day of death, and you shall never sin; and the precept of the most eloquent satirist: Live mindful of death; the hour flies; this that I speak is already gone. So then — as we had begun to say — she led her age and lived so as always to believe herself about to die. So she was clothed in garments that she might remember the sepulchre, offering a reasonable, living sacrifice, pleasing to God.

Finally, when ecclesiastical necessity had drawn me too to Rome with the holy bishops Paulinus and Epiphanius — of whom the one ruled the church of Antioch in Syria, the other that of Salamis in Cyprus — and I was modestly shunning the eyes of noble women, she so acted, according to the Apostle, in season and out of season, that her diligence overcame my reserve. And because I was then reckoned of some name in the study of the Scriptures, she never met me but that she asked something of the Scriptures, nor did she at once acquiesce, but raised questions on the other side, not that she might contend, but that by asking she might learn the solutions of those things which she understood could be objected. What of virtue, of talent, of holiness, of purity I found in her, I fear to say, lest I exceed the credit of belief and strike a greater grief into you, recalling how great a good you have lost. This only will I say, that whatever in me had been gathered by long study and turned, as it were, into nature by daily meditation, this she tasted, this she learned and possessed, so that after my perfecting, if any contention arose over some testimony of the Scriptures, recourse was had to her as judge. And because she was very prudent and knew that which the philosophers call to prepon — that is, the becoming, what you should do — when asked she so answered that she said even her own things were not her own, but either mine or some other's, so that in the very thing she taught she confessed herself a pupil — for she knew it was said by the Apostle: But I do not permit a woman to teach — lest she should seem to do an injury to the male sex, and sometimes to priests inquiring about obscure and ambiguous matters.

In our place we heard that you at once clung to her companionship, and never departed from her even a nail's breadth, as it is said, using the same house, the same chamber, one bed, and that it became known to all the most distinguished in the city that you had found a mother and she a daughter. A suburban field was for you instead of a monastery, and the country chosen for its solitude. And you lived so for a long time, that by the imitation of you and the conduct of many we rejoiced that Rome had been made a Jerusalem. The monasteries of virgins were frequent, the multitude of monks innumerable, so that, on account of the throng of those serving God, what before had been a disgrace was afterward a glory. Meanwhile we consoled the absence of one another with mutual addresses, and what we could not in the flesh we rendered in the spirit. Always our letters met, surpassed, anticipated one another with services and greetings. She lost not much who was joined to me by continual letters.

In this tranquillity and service of the Lord, a heretical storm, arising in these provinces, disturbed everything, and was roused to such a fury that it spared neither itself nor any of the good. And as if it were too little to have stirred up all things here, it brought a ship full of blasphemies into the harbour of Rome, and straightway the dish found its cover, and muddy footsteps mingled with mire the purest fountain of the Roman faith. Nor is it any wonder if in the streets and in the market-place of wares a painted soothsayer beats the buttocks of fools and, with twisted cudgel, knocks out the teeth of those who bite, when the venomous and filthy doctrine found at Rome those whom it might draw in. Then the infamous translation of the books On First Principles; then a disciple Olbius, truly of his name, had he not stumbled against such a master; then the fiery contradiction of our men, and the troubled school of the Pharisees. Then the holy Marcella, who had long shut her eyes, lest she should be thought to do anything through rivalry, after she perceived that the faith praised by the apostolic mouth was being violated in very many — so that the heretic drew even some priests and monks, and especially men of the world, into assent to himself, and mocked the simplicity of the bishop, who judged others by his own disposition — publicly resisted, choosing rather to please God than men.

The Saviour praises in the Gospel the steward of iniquity, because he had acted prudently — against his master indeed, yet for himself. The heretics, seeing the greatest fires kindled from a small spark, and that the flame long laid beneath had now reached the rooftops and could not be hidden — what had deceived many — ask for and obtain ecclesiastical letters, that, communicating with the Church, they might seem to depart. Not much time in between, there succeeds to the pontificate that distinguished man Anastasius, whom Rome did not long deserve to have, lest the head of the world should be beheaded under such a bishop; nay rather, he was for this reason snatched away and translated, lest he should try by his prayers to bend a sentence once passed, the Lord saying to Jeremiah: Pray not for this people, neither make supplication for them for good; for if they fast, I will not hear their prayers, and if they offer holocausts and victims, I will not receive them; for by sword, famine, and pestilence I will consume them. You may say: "To what does this tend?" To the praise of Marcella. This was the beginning of the damnation of the heretics, when she brings forward witnesses who had first been instructed by them and afterward knit together by the heretic's error; when she shows the multitude of the deceived; when she presses the impious volumes On First Principles, which, corrected by the hand of a scorpion, are pointed out; when the heretics, summoned by frequent letters to defend themselves, dared not come, and so great was the force of conscience that they preferred to be condemned in their absence rather than convicted present. Of this so glorious victory the origin is Marcella, and you the head and cause of these goods — you who know that I narrate true things, who know that I say scarcely a few of many, lest the odious repetition should make the reader loathe it, and I should seem, among the malevolent, under the occasion of praising another, to vent my own spleen. I will pass to the rest.

The whirlwind, passing over from the western parts to the East, threatened very many with great shipwrecks. Then was fulfilled: Do you think that, when the Son of man comes, he shall find faith on the earth? The charity of many being grown cold, the few who loved the truth of the faith were joined to our side, whose head was publicly sought, against whom all resources were prepared, so that Barnabas too was led into that dissimulation — nay, that open parricide, which he committed not by his strength but by his will. But behold, the whole storm, the Lord blowing, was destroyed, and the prophetic oracle fulfilled: You shall take away their spirit, and they shall fail and return to their dust. In that day all their thoughts shall perish; and that of the Gospel: Fool, this night your soul is taken from you; but what you have prepared, whose shall it be?

While these things are doing in Jebus, a terrible rumour is brought from the West, that Rome was besieged, and the safety of the citizens redeemed with gold, and that, despoiled, they were surrounded again, so that after their substance they should lose their lives also. My voice sticks, and sobs interrupt the words as I dictate. The city is taken which took the whole world — nay, it perishes by famine before the sword, and scarcely a few were found to be taken. The rage of the starving broke out to unspeakable foods, and they tore one another's limbs, while the mother did not spare the wailing infant and received again into her womb him whom a little before she had brought forth. By night Moab was taken, by night its wall fell. O God, the nations have come into your inheritance, they have polluted your holy temple, they have made Jerusalem a place for the keeping of fruit, they have made the corpses of your servants meat for the birds of heaven, the flesh of your saints for the beasts of the earth. They have poured out their blood like water round about Jerusalem, and there was none to bury them. Who could unfold in speech the destruction of that night, the deaths, or could equal the grief with tears? An ancient city falls, that ruled for many years; everywhere along the streets are scattered lifeless bodies, and throughout the houses, and on every side the image of death.

While meanwhile, amid such confusion of things, the bloody victor enters the house of Marcella too — Let it be lawful for me to speak what I have heard, nay, to relate what holy men saw, who were present and took part, who say that you too were joined with her in the peril — she is said to have received those who entered with undismayed face; and when gold and buried wealth were demanded of her, and she pleaded her cheap tunic in excuse, yet she did not gain credence for her voluntary poverty. Beaten with cudgels and scourges, they say she felt not the torments, but, prostrate, pleaded this with tears, this at their feet — that they should not separate you from her company, that her youth should not endure what an aged age could not fear. Christ softened the hard hearts, and amid the bloody swords piety found a place. And when the barbarians had led both her and you to the basilica of the blessed Paul, that it might show you either safety or a sepulchre, she is said to have broken out into such gladness that she gave thanks to God, that he had kept you whole for her, that captivity had not made her poor, but found her so, that she lacked daily food, that, filled with Christ, she felt not hunger, that she spoke both with voice and deed: Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. As it seemed good to the Lord, so was it done. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

After some months, sound, whole, with a vigorous little body, she fell asleep in the Lord, and left you the heir of her little poverty — nay, through you the poor — closing her eyes in your hands, rendering her spirit in your kisses, while amid your tears she smiled with the conscience of a good life and the rewards of things to come. These things to you, venerable Marcella, and these things to you, Principia, my daughter, I have dictated in one short night's work, not with the elegance of eloquence but with the will of a mind most grateful toward you, desiring to please both God and my readers.