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Now that I am going to relate the precepts of that excellent and
remarkable man, Abbot Pinufius, on the end of penitence, I fancy that I can
dispose of a very large part of my material, if out of consideration lest I
weary my reader, I here pass over in silence the praise of his humility,
which I touched on in a brief discourse in the fourth book of the
Institutes, which was entitled "Of the rules to be observed by
renunciants," especially as many who have no knowledge of that work, may
happen to read this, and then all the authority of the utterances will be
weakened if there is no account of the virtues of the speaker. For this man
when he was presiding as Abbot and Presbyter over a large coenobium not far
from Panephysis, a city, as was there said, of Egypt, and when all that
province had praised him to the skies for his virtues and miracles, so that
he already seemed to himself to have received the reward of his labours in
the remuneration of the praise of men, as he was afraid lest the emptiness
of popular favour, which he especially disliked, might interfere with the
fruits of an eternal reward, he secretly fled from his monastery and made
his way to the furthest recesses of the monks of Tabennae, where he
chose not the solitude of the desert, not that freedom from care of which
the life of one alone affords, which even those who are imperfect and who
cannot endure the effort which obedience requires in the coenobium,
sometimes seek after with proud presumption, but he chose to submit himself
to a most famous monastery. Where, however, that might not be betrayed by
any signs of his dress, he clothed himself in a secular garb, and lay
before the doors with tears, as is the custom there, for many days, and
clinging to the knees of all after being daily repulsed by those who to
test his purpose said that now in extreme old age he was seeking this holy
life not in sincerity, but driven by the lack of food, at last he obtained
admission, and there he was told off to help a young brother who had been
given the charge of a garden, and when he not only fulfilled with such
marvellous and holy humility everything which his chief ordered him or
which the care of the work entrusted to him demanded, but also performed in
stealthy labour by night certain necessary offices which were avoided by
the rest out of disgust for them, so that when morning dawned, all the
congregation was delighted at such useful works but knew not their author;
and when he had passed nearly three years there rejoicing in the labours,
which he had desired, but to which he was so unfairly subjected, it
happened that a certain brother known to him came there from the same parts
of Egypt from which he himself had come. And this man for a time hesitated
because the meanness of his clothes and of his office prevented him from
readily recognizing him at once, but after looking very closely at him,
fell at his feet, and first astonished all the brethren, and afterwards,
when he betrayed his name, which the fame of his special sanctity had made
known to them also, he smote them with sorrow and compunction because they
had told off a man of his virtues and a priest to such mean offices. But
he, shedding copious tears, and charging the accident of his betrayal to
the serious envy of the devil, was brought in honourable custody by his
brethren surrounding him to the monastery; and after that he had stayed
there for a short time, he was once more troubled by the respect shown to
his dignity and rank, and stealthily embarked on board ship and sailed to
the Palestinian province of Syria, where he was received as a beginner and
a novice in the house of that monastery in which we were living, and was
charged by the Abbot to stop in our cell. But not even there could his
virtues and merits long remain secret. For he was discovered and betrayed
in the same way, and brought back to his own monastery with the utmost
honour and respect.
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