the commissioned letter might neither be denied to friendship when written, nor subjected to your censure when read.
2. Let us put that aside. You command that another copious page be sent. The will to obey is present in one eager to comply, but the occasions are lacking. For a mere greeting, unless some business of active substance accompanies it, is brief enough; and he who stretches it with unnecessary words swerves off course from the straight path of Sallust, who blamed Catiline for possessing "eloquence enough, wisdom too little." So having said hello, I promptly say farewell. Pray for me.
3. But all is well, all is well -- for just as I was about to fold up this sheet, a subject chanced to present itself, about which if my joy or my indignation holds itself in check any longer, I shall judge myself worthy of the insult I have received. You have fallen into my hands, master -- and I do not merely exult, I positively gloat -- you have fallen, and as just the sort of person my longing has been expecting for a very long time now. I rather wonder whether you came unwillingly, though you certainly looked unwilling, since it was by your design, or at the very least your acquiescence, that I was left ungreeted by your books -- and what is far more insulting, when they passed through the territory of Clermont, they grazed not only my walls but my very sides.
4. Were you perhaps afraid we would envy your writings? But by God's grace, that is the vice to which I am least addicted. And even if I were as subject to it as to others, the despair of matching your achievement would in any case remove any impulse to rivalry. Or did you fear the raised eyebrow of a difficult and stern critic? What mortal possesses such arrogance, such swollen pride, as not to greet even your tepid works with the most fervent praise?
5. Or did you take care to disdain and neglect me because you looked down on a younger man? I can scarcely believe that. Or because an unlearned one? That I accept more readily -- yet in such a way that, though I may not know how to compose, I do know how to listen. For even those who have attended the chariot races in the Circus pronounce judgment on the teams. Or were we perhaps at odds, such that I might be thought likely to disparage any books you published? On the contrary, with God's help, not even enemies could pretend that the friendship between us is slight.
6. "Where is all this leading?" you ask. I shall now reveal both what I am glad to have discovered and what I resent your having concealed. I have read your volumes, which Bishop Riochatus -- monk as well as bishop, a man twice a pilgrim from this world -- is carrying back to your people in Britain on your behalf, under that name which is now truly fortunate in the present, a man who does not grow old and who, not destined to fail the living, will after burial become his own survivor through the very works he has written. This venerable man, then, while staying at our city until the storm of the roused nations should die down -- a monstrous tempest that had been howling on every side -- uncovered the rest of your gifts in such a way that he most urbanely concealed what he carried that was most precious, declining to illuminate my thorns with your flowers.
7. But after two months or more, when certain travelers reported that the man, now departed (all too quickly even by our reckoning), was secretly carrying in sealed bundles the treasures of a sacred treasury, I sent swift horses in pursuit of the departing guest -- horses that could easily have devoured the distance of a day's journey -- and flung myself with a kiss upon the throat of the captured bandit: a human jest performed with the gesture of a beast, as when a tigress robbed of her cubs, her neck about to shake off any pursuer, springs upon the Parthian raider with flying paw.
8. What more? I clasp the knees of my captured host, halt his beasts, tie the reins, undo the baggage, find the volume I sought, bring it forth, read it through, and excerpt it, tearing great chapters from greater wholes. The nimble shorthand of my secretaries also granted a certain hasty compendium to one who must soon depart, for they captured in signs what they could not hold in letters. With what tears we were drenched, watered in turn by mutual weeping, when we were separated after many a renewed embrace -- this would be long to tell and scarcely matters. What suffices for my triumphal joy: I carried myself home laden with the spoils of love and in possession of spiritual plunder.
9. You now ask what I think of my booty? I would prefer not to reveal it yet, so that you might hang longer in suspense. For I would avenge myself more fully if I kept silent about what I felt. But you are not vainly proud either, since you understand that you possess the power of speaking in such a way as to wring from your reader, whether reluctant or willing, the force of pleasure that compels the necessity of praise. Hear, then, what an injured man judges concerning your writings.
10. I have read a work of supreme labor: manifold, keen, sublime, organized by topics and packed with examples, divided in two parts under the framework of a dialogue, and in four parts according to the arrangement of its themes. You had written many passages with ardor, more with magnificence; some with simplicity but without crudeness, others with subtlety but without guile; weighty matters with maturity, profound ones with care, uncertain ones with confidence, complex arguments in the manner of formal disputation; some things severely, some gently -- all with moral authority, with learning, with power, with the highest eloquence.
11. And so, having followed you through so many varieties of narration across the full field of your wide-ranging composition, I easily perceived nothing in the eloquence or genius of any other writer that could match yours. That I judge truly you may well believe, since even when offended I judge no differently. In short, the speech of one who is absent, so far as I can tell, is incapable of further growth -- unless, perhaps, the voice, the gesture, the bearing, and the modesty of the author speaking in person might add something.
12. And so, an artist endowed with such gifts of mind and letters, you have wed yourself, my lord bishop, to a beautiful woman -- but one who, with the sanction of Deuteronomy, marries for the second time. You first beheld her, while still a young man, amid the battle lines of the enemy, and there, having fallen in love with her on the opposing side, you seized her with the arm of desire, undeterred by the warriors standing in your way. She is, of course, Philosophy -- violently torn from the ranks of sacrilegious arts, her head shorn of the superfluous religion and the brow of worldly knowledge, the wrinkles of her ancient garments stripped away -- that is, the twists of grim dialectic that veiled falsehoods of conduct and unlawful things -- and, now purified, she joined her limbs to yours in a mystical embrace.
13. She has been your attendant from your earliest years, your inseparable companion at your side, whether you trained in the urban arena or were worn down in remote solitudes, your partner in the academy and in the monastery alike; with you she renounces worldly disciplines, with you she proclaims the heavenly. Whoever provokes you in this union will discover that the Academy of Plato fights in the service of the Church of Christ, and that your philosophy is of a nobler kind: asserting, first of all, the ineffable Wisdom of God the Father together with the eternity of the Holy Spirit.
14. And furthermore, you do not grow your hair long or glory in a cloak and staff as if they were the emblems of the sophist, nor do you affect the pride that comes from distinctive clothing -- neither pomp in splendor nor vanity in squalor. Nor do you emulate overmuch what is painted in the gymnasia and the curved prytanea of the Areopagus: Speusippus with his bent neck, Aratus with his stooped shoulders, Zeno with furrowed brow, Epicurus with skin stretched tight, Diogenes with flowing beard, Socrates with falling hair, Aristotle with arm extended, Xenocrates with leg drawn up, Heraclitus with eyes closed in weeping, Democritus with lips parted in laughter, Chrysippus with fingers clenched to indicate numbers, Euclid with fingers spread to show measures, Cleanthes with both hands worn from each.
15. Rather, whoever takes you on will find that the Stoics, Cynics, and Peripatetics -- the very founders of their heresies -- are shaken by their own weapons and their own siege-engines. For their followers, should they resist Christian doctrine and understanding, will soon find themselves -- with you as their teacher -- bound by their own familiar coils, headlong entangled in their own nets, while the barbed syllogisms of your propositions hook the slippery tongue of prevaricators. You bind up their slick arguments in chains of categorical logic, in the manner of skilled physicians who, when reason requires, prepare even from the serpent a remedy against its poison.
16. But all this belongs in our time only to the contemplation of your conscience and the power of your learning. For who could follow in your footsteps with equal stride, to whom alone it has been granted to speak better than you were taught and to live better than you speak? Therefore all good men will rightly celebrate you as most blessed above all others in your generation -- you whose life and deeds have brought double renown to your words, so that, since your years are now counted on the right hand, celebrated in your own age, to be longed for in the next, and praiseworthy in both kinds of endeavor, you shall depart leaving yourself to strangers and your possessions to those nearest you. Deign to remember me, my lord bishop.
epistula iniuncta nec negaretur scripta amicitiae nec subderetur lecta censurae.
2. ista omittamus. mitti paginam copiosam denuo iubes. parere properanti adsunt vota, causae absunt. nam salutatio, nisi negotium aliquod activa deportet materia, succincta est; quam qui porrigit verbis non necessariis, a regula Sallustiani tramitis detortus exorbitat, qui Catilinam culpat habuisse satis eloquentiae sapientiae parum. unde ave dicto mox vale dicimus. orate pro nobis.
3. sed bene est, bene est, quia chartulam iam iamque complicaturo res forte succurrit, de qua exprobranda si diutius vel laetitia sese mea vel ira cohibuerit, ipse me accepta dignum contumelia iudicabo. venisti, magister, in manus meas (nec exulto tantum, verum insulto), venisti, et quidem talis, qualem abhinc longo iamdiu tempore desideria nostra praestolabantur. dubito sane utrum et invitus, at certe similis invito, quippe quo providente vel, si tamen hoc nimis abnuis, adquiescente sim tuis libris insalutatus hisque, quod multo est iniuriosius, territorium Arvernum cum praeterirent, non solum moenia mea, verum etiam latera radentibus.
4. an verebare, ne tuis dictis invideremus? sed dei indultu vitio nulli minus addicimur; cui si ita ut ceteris a mea parte subiaceretur, sic quoque auferret congrediendi aemulationem desperatio consequendi. an supercilium tamquam difficilis ac rigidi plosoris extimescebas? ecquaenam est cuiquam peritiae cervix tanta quive hydrops, ut etiam tepida vestra non ferventissimis laudibus prosequatur?
5. an ideo me fastidiendum negligendumque curasti, quia contemneres iuniorem? quod parum credo. an quia indoctum? quod magis fero, ita tamen, ut qui dicere ignorem, non et audire; quia et qui Circensibus ludis adfuerunt, sententiam de curribus non ferunt. an aliquo casu dissidebamus, ut putaremur his quos edidissetis libellis derogaturi? atqui praesule deo tenues nobis esse amicitias nec inimici fingere queunt.
6. 'ista quorsum?' inquis. ecce iam pando, vel quid indagasse me gaudeam vel quid te celasse succenseam. legi volumina tua, quae Riochatus antistes ac monachus atque istius mundi bis peregrinus Britannis tuis pro te reportat, illo iam in praesentiarum fausto potius, qui non senescit quique viventibus non defuturus post sepulturam fiet per ipsa quae scripsit sibi superstes. igitur hic ipse venerabilis apud oppidum nostrum cum moraretur, donec gentium concitatarum procella defremeret, cuius immanis hinc et hinc turbo tunc inhorruerat, sic reliqua dona vestra detexit, ut perurbane quae praestantiora portabat operuerit, spinas meas illustrare dissimulans tuis floribus.
7. sed post duos aut his amplius menses sic quoque a nobis cito profectum cum quipiam prodidissent de viatoribus mysticae gazae clausis involucris clam ferre thesauros, pernicibus equis insecutus abeuntem, qui facile possent itineris pridiani spatia praevertere, osculo in fauces occupati latronis insilui, humano ioco, gestu ferino, veluti si excussura quemcumque catulorum Parthi colla raptoris pede volatili tigris orbata superemicet.
8. quid multa? capti hospitis genua complector iumenta sisto, frena ligo sarcinas solvo, quaesitum volumen invenio produco, lectito excerpo maxima ex magnis capita defrustans. tribuit et quoddam dictare celeranti scribarum sequacitas saltuosa compendium, qui comprehendebant signis quod litteris non tenebant. quibus lacrimis sane maduerimus mutuo vicissim fletu rigati, tunc cum ab amplexu saepe repetito separaremur, longum est dixisse nec refert; quod triumphali sufficit gaudio, spoliis onustum caritatis et spiritalis compotem praedae me domum rettuli.
9. quaeris nunc, quid de manubiis meis iudicem; nollem adhuc prodere, quo diuturnius expectatione penderes; plus me enim ulciscerer, si quod sensi tacerem. sed iam nec ipse frustra superbis, utpote intellegens tibi inesse virtutem sic perorandi, ut lectori tuo seu reluctanti seu voluntario vis voluptatis excudat praeconii necessitatem. proinde accipe, quid super scriptis tuis et iniuriam passi censeamus.
10. legimus opus operosissimum multiplex, acre sublime, digestum titulis exemplisque congestum, bipertitum sub dialogi schemate, sub causarum themate quadripertitum. scripseras autem plurima ardenter plura pompose; simpliciter ista nec rustice; argute illa nec callide; gravia mature profunda sollicite, dubia constanter argumentosa disputatorie, quaedam severe quaepiam blande, cuncta moraliter lecte, potenter eloquentissime.
11. itaque per tanta te genera narrandi toto latissimae dictationis campo secutus nil in facundia ceterorum, nil in ingeniis facile perspexi iuxta politum. quae me vera sentire satis approbas, cum nec offensus aliter iudico. denique absentis oratio, quantum opinamur, plus nequit crescere, nisi forsitan aliquid his addat coram loquentis auctoris vox manus, motus pudor.
12. artifex igitur his animi litterarumque dotibus praeditus mulierem pulchram sed illam deuteronomio astipulante nubentem, domine papa, tibi iugasti; quam tu adhuc iuvenis inter hostiles conspicatus catervas, atque illic in acie contrariae partis adamatam, nil per obstantes repulsus proeliatores, desiderii brachio vincente rapuisti, philosophiam scilicet, quae violenter e numero sacrilegarum artium exempta raso capillo superfluae religionis ac supercilio scientiae saecularis amputatisque pervetustarum vestium rugis, id est tristis dialecticae flexibus falsa morum et illicita velantibus, mystico amplexu iam defaecata tecum membra coniunxit.
13. haec ab annis vestra iamdudum pedisequa primoribus, haec tuo lateri comes inseparabilis, sive in palaestris exerceris urbanis sive in abstrusis macerarere solitudinibus, haec Athenaei consors, haec monasterii, tecum mundanas abdicat, tecum supernas praedicat disciplinas. huic copulatum te matrimonio qui lacessiverit, sentiet ecclesiae Christi Platonis academiam militare teque nobilius philosophari; primum ineffabilem dei patris asserere cum sancti spiritus aeternitate sapientiam;
14. tum praeterea non caesariem pascere neque pallio aut clava velut sophisticis insignibus gloriari aut affectare de vestium discretione superbiam, nitore pompam, squalore iactantiam neque te satis hoc aemulari, quod per gymnasia pingantur Areopagitica vel prytanea curva cervice Speusippus Aratus panda, Zenon fronte contracta Epicurus cute distenta, Diogenes barba comante Socrates coma cadente, Aristoteles brachio exerto Xenocrates crure collecto, Heraclitus fletu oculis clausis Democritus risu labris apertis, Chrysippus digitis propter numerorum indicia constrictis, Euclides propter mensurarum spatia laxatis, Cleanthes propter utrumque corrosis.
15. quin potius experietur, quisque conflixerit, Stoicos Cynicos Peripateticos haeresiarchas propriis armis, propriis quoque concuti machinamentis. nam sectatores eorum, Christiano dogmati ac sensui si repugnaverint, mox te magistro ligati vernaculis implicaturis in retia sua praecipites implagabuntur, syllogismis tuae propositionis uncatis volubilem tergiversantum linguam inhamantibus, dum spiris categoricis lubricas quaestiones tu potius innodas acrium more medicorum, qui remedium contra venena, cum ratio compellit, et de serpente conficiunt.
16. sed hoc temporibus istis sub tuae tantum vel contemplatione conscientiae vel virtute doctrinae. nam quis aequali vestigia tua gressu sequatur, cui datum est soli loqui melius quam didiceris, vivere melius quam loquaris? quocirca merito te beatissimum boni omnes idque supra omnes tua tempestate concelebrabunt, cuius ita dictis vita factisque dupliciter inclaruit, ut, quando quidem tuos annos iam dextra numeraverit, saeculo praedicatus tuo, desiderandus alieno, utraque laudabilis actione, decedas te relicturus externis, tua proximis. memor nostri esse dignare, domine papa.
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the commissioned letter might neither be denied to friendship when written, nor subjected to your censure when read.
2. Let us put that aside. You command that another copious page be sent. The will to obey is present in one eager to comply, but the occasions are lacking. For a mere greeting, unless some business of active substance accompanies it, is brief enough; and he who stretches it with unnecessary words swerves off course from the straight path of Sallust, who blamed Catiline for possessing "eloquence enough, wisdom too little." So having said hello, I promptly say farewell. Pray for me.
3. But all is well, all is well -- for just as I was about to fold up this sheet, a subject chanced to present itself, about which if my joy or my indignation holds itself in check any longer, I shall judge myself worthy of the insult I have received. You have fallen into my hands, master -- and I do not merely exult, I positively gloat -- you have fallen, and as just the sort of person my longing has been expecting for a very long time now. I rather wonder whether you came unwillingly, though you certainly looked unwilling, since it was by your design, or at the very least your acquiescence, that I was left ungreeted by your books -- and what is far more insulting, when they passed through the territory of Clermont, they grazed not only my walls but my very sides.
4. Were you perhaps afraid we would envy your writings? But by God's grace, that is the vice to which I am least addicted. And even if I were as subject to it as to others, the despair of matching your achievement would in any case remove any impulse to rivalry. Or did you fear the raised eyebrow of a difficult and stern critic? What mortal possesses such arrogance, such swollen pride, as not to greet even your tepid works with the most fervent praise?
5. Or did you take care to disdain and neglect me because you looked down on a younger man? I can scarcely believe that. Or because an unlearned one? That I accept more readily -- yet in such a way that, though I may not know how to compose, I do know how to listen. For even those who have attended the chariot races in the Circus pronounce judgment on the teams. Or were we perhaps at odds, such that I might be thought likely to disparage any books you published? On the contrary, with God's help, not even enemies could pretend that the friendship between us is slight.
6. "Where is all this leading?" you ask. I shall now reveal both what I am glad to have discovered and what I resent your having concealed. I have read your volumes, which Bishop Riochatus -- monk as well as bishop, a man twice a pilgrim from this world -- is carrying back to your people in Britain on your behalf, under that name which is now truly fortunate in the present, a man who does not grow old and who, not destined to fail the living, will after burial become his own survivor through the very works he has written. This venerable man, then, while staying at our city until the storm of the roused nations should die down -- a monstrous tempest that had been howling on every side -- uncovered the rest of your gifts in such a way that he most urbanely concealed what he carried that was most precious, declining to illuminate my thorns with your flowers.
7. But after two months or more, when certain travelers reported that the man, now departed (all too quickly even by our reckoning), was secretly carrying in sealed bundles the treasures of a sacred treasury, I sent swift horses in pursuit of the departing guest -- horses that could easily have devoured the distance of a day's journey -- and flung myself with a kiss upon the throat of the captured bandit: a human jest performed with the gesture of a beast, as when a tigress robbed of her cubs, her neck about to shake off any pursuer, springs upon the Parthian raider with flying paw.
8. What more? I clasp the knees of my captured host, halt his beasts, tie the reins, undo the baggage, find the volume I sought, bring it forth, read it through, and excerpt it, tearing great chapters from greater wholes. The nimble shorthand of my secretaries also granted a certain hasty compendium to one who must soon depart, for they captured in signs what they could not hold in letters. With what tears we were drenched, watered in turn by mutual weeping, when we were separated after many a renewed embrace -- this would be long to tell and scarcely matters. What suffices for my triumphal joy: I carried myself home laden with the spoils of love and in possession of spiritual plunder.
9. You now ask what I think of my booty? I would prefer not to reveal it yet, so that you might hang longer in suspense. For I would avenge myself more fully if I kept silent about what I felt. But you are not vainly proud either, since you understand that you possess the power of speaking in such a way as to wring from your reader, whether reluctant or willing, the force of pleasure that compels the necessity of praise. Hear, then, what an injured man judges concerning your writings.
10. I have read a work of supreme labor: manifold, keen, sublime, organized by topics and packed with examples, divided in two parts under the framework of a dialogue, and in four parts according to the arrangement of its themes. You had written many passages with ardor, more with magnificence; some with simplicity but without crudeness, others with subtlety but without guile; weighty matters with maturity, profound ones with care, uncertain ones with confidence, complex arguments in the manner of formal disputation; some things severely, some gently -- all with moral authority, with learning, with power, with the highest eloquence.
11. And so, having followed you through so many varieties of narration across the full field of your wide-ranging composition, I easily perceived nothing in the eloquence or genius of any other writer that could match yours. That I judge truly you may well believe, since even when offended I judge no differently. In short, the speech of one who is absent, so far as I can tell, is incapable of further growth -- unless, perhaps, the voice, the gesture, the bearing, and the modesty of the author speaking in person might add something.
12. And so, an artist endowed with such gifts of mind and letters, you have wed yourself, my lord bishop, to a beautiful woman -- but one who, with the sanction of Deuteronomy, marries for the second time. You first beheld her, while still a young man, amid the battle lines of the enemy, and there, having fallen in love with her on the opposing side, you seized her with the arm of desire, undeterred by the warriors standing in your way. She is, of course, Philosophy -- violently torn from the ranks of sacrilegious arts, her head shorn of the superfluous religion and the brow of worldly knowledge, the wrinkles of her ancient garments stripped away -- that is, the twists of grim dialectic that veiled falsehoods of conduct and unlawful things -- and, now purified, she joined her limbs to yours in a mystical embrace.
13. She has been your attendant from your earliest years, your inseparable companion at your side, whether you trained in the urban arena or were worn down in remote solitudes, your partner in the academy and in the monastery alike; with you she renounces worldly disciplines, with you she proclaims the heavenly. Whoever provokes you in this union will discover that the Academy of Plato fights in the service of the Church of Christ, and that your philosophy is of a nobler kind: asserting, first of all, the ineffable Wisdom of God the Father together with the eternity of the Holy Spirit.
14. And furthermore, you do not grow your hair long or glory in a cloak and staff as if they were the emblems of the sophist, nor do you affect the pride that comes from distinctive clothing -- neither pomp in splendor nor vanity in squalor. Nor do you emulate overmuch what is painted in the gymnasia and the curved prytanea of the Areopagus: Speusippus with his bent neck, Aratus with his stooped shoulders, Zeno with furrowed brow, Epicurus with skin stretched tight, Diogenes with flowing beard, Socrates with falling hair, Aristotle with arm extended, Xenocrates with leg drawn up, Heraclitus with eyes closed in weeping, Democritus with lips parted in laughter, Chrysippus with fingers clenched to indicate numbers, Euclid with fingers spread to show measures, Cleanthes with both hands worn from each.
15. Rather, whoever takes you on will find that the Stoics, Cynics, and Peripatetics -- the very founders of their heresies -- are shaken by their own weapons and their own siege-engines. For their followers, should they resist Christian doctrine and understanding, will soon find themselves -- with you as their teacher -- bound by their own familiar coils, headlong entangled in their own nets, while the barbed syllogisms of your propositions hook the slippery tongue of prevaricators. You bind up their slick arguments in chains of categorical logic, in the manner of skilled physicians who, when reason requires, prepare even from the serpent a remedy against its poison.
16. But all this belongs in our time only to the contemplation of your conscience and the power of your learning. For who could follow in your footsteps with equal stride, to whom alone it has been granted to speak better than you were taught and to live better than you speak? Therefore all good men will rightly celebrate you as most blessed above all others in your generation -- you whose life and deeds have brought double renown to your words, so that, since your years are now counted on the right hand, celebrated in your own age, to be longed for in the next, and praiseworthy in both kinds of endeavor, you shall depart leaving yourself to strangers and your possessions to those nearest you. Deign to remember me, my lord bishop.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.