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THE obligation, which was promised to the blessed Pope Castor in the
preface to those volumes which with God's help I composed in twelve books
on the Institutes of the Coenobia, and the remedies for the eight principal
faults, has now been, as far as my feeble ability permitted, satisfied. I
should certainly like to see what was the opinion fairly arrived at on this
work both by his judgment and yours, whether, on a matter so profound and
so lofty, and one which has never yet been made the subject of a treatise,
we have produced anything worthy of your notice, and of the eager desire of
all the holy brethren. But now as the aforesaid Bishop has left us and
departed to Christ, meanwhile these ten Conferences of the grandest of the
fathers, viz., the Anchorites who dwelt in the desert of Scete, which he,
fired with an incomparable desire for saintliness, had bidden me write for
him in the same style (not considering the greatness of his affection, what
a burden he placed on shoulders too weak to bear it)--these Conferences I
have thought good to dedicate to you in particular, O blessed Pope,
Leontius, and the holy brother Helladius. For one of you was united
to him whom I have mentioned, by the ties of brotherhood, and the rank of
the priesthood, and (what is more to the point) by fervour in sacred study,
and so has an hereditary right to demand the debt due to his brother: while
the other has ventured to follow the sublime customs of the Anchorites, not
like some others, presumptuously on his own account, but seizing at the
inspiration of the Holy Ghost, on the right path of doctrine almost before
he had been taught and choosing to learn not so much from his own ideas as
from their traditions. Wherein just as I had anchored in the harbour of
Silence, a wide sea opens out before me, so that I must venture to hand
down for posterity some of the Institutes and teaching of these great men.
For the bark of my slender abilities will be exposed to the dangers of a
longer voyage on the deep, in proportion as the Anchorite's life is grander
that that of the Coenobium, and the contemplation of God, to which those
inestimable men ever devoted themselves, more sublime than ordinary
practical life. It is yours therefore to assist our efforts by your pious
prayers for fear lest so sacred a subject that is to be treated in an
untried by faithful manner, should be imperilled by us, or lest our
simplicity should lose itself in the depths of the subject matter. Let us
therefore pass from what is visible to the eye and the external mode of
life of the monks, of which we treated in the former books, to the life of
the inner man, which is hidden from view; and from the system of the
canonical prayers, let our discourse mount to that continuance in unceasing
prayer, which the Apostle enjoins, that whoever has through reading our
former work already spiritually gained the name of Jacob by ousting his
carnal faults, may now by the reception of the Institutes which are not
mine but the fathers', mount by a pure insight to the merits and (so to
speak) the dignity of Israel, and in the same was be taught what it is that
he should observe on these lofty heights of perfection. And so may your
prayers gain from Him, How has deemed us worthy both to see them and to
learn from them and to dwell with them, that He will vouchsafe to grant us
a perfect recollection of their teaching, and a ready tongue to tell it,
that we may explain them as beautifully and as exactly as we received them
from them and may succeed in setting before you the men themselves
incorporated, as it were, in their own Institutes, and what is more to the
point, speaking in the Latin tongue. Of this however we wish above all to
advertise the reader of these Conferences as well of our earlier works,
that if there chances to be anything herein which by reason of his
condition and the character of his profession, or owing to custom and the
common mode of life seems to him either impossible or very difficult, he
should measure it not by the limits of his own powers but by the worth and
perfection of the speakers, whose zeal and purpose he should first
consider, as they were truly dead to this worldly life, and so hampered by
no feelings for their kinsmen according to the flesh, and by no ties of
worldly occupations. Next let him bear in mind the character of the country
in which they dwelt, how they lived in a vast desert, and were cut off from
intercourse with all their fellow-men, and thus were able to have their
minds enlightened, and to contemplate, and utter those things which perhaps
will seem impossibilities to the uninitiated and uninstructed, because of
their way of life and the commonplace character of their habits. But if any
one wants to give a true opinion of this matter, and is anxious to try
whether such perfection ca be attained, let him first endeavour to make
their purpose his own, with the same zeal and the same mode of life, and
then in the end he will find that those things which used to seem beyond
the powers of men, are not only possible, but really delightful. But now
let us proceed at once to their Conferences and Institutes.
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