which, however, in Gregory, did not seem acquired by labor, but innate and inborn. Such was the fame of holiness that most happily united those most learned Fathers of the Church, whom the sanctity of their character and the integrity of their life, the love of solitude and of letters, the pursuit of truth, the singular praise of eloquence, the labors endured for Christ in the episcopal office, and the efforts exhausted for the protection of religion, had joined together; they were, as it were, conspired in this with a mutual spirit, so that in our studies we might not err—one might establish for us laws which we could safely follow, and the other might provide for us a subject of study full of piety.
ADMONITION REGARDING THE FOLLOWING LIFE
Written by Gregory the Presbyter.
Who this Gregory is, many have investigated and disputed; but nothing certain has been handed down regarding his person or his age. Bollandus, Vossius, and others ascribe this Life to George, the presbyter of Caesarea in Cappadocia, who delivered an oration in praise of the Nicene Fathers. But as to the time when this George lived, authors do not agree among themselves. Bollandus, indeed, thinks he lived at the beginning of the seventh century; Vossius, however, whom Henschenius and Papebrochius favor, attempts to prove that he flourished around the middle of the tenth century, but in vain; nor does this debate concern us, since it cannot be concluded by any probable reasoning that our George is the biographer of Gregory the Theologian. Meanwhile, although the time when his Life was written is not clear, it is certain that it was well-known to the learned of the tenth century, as is sufficiently stated by the oration recited at the beginning of that century during the first translation of the holy doctor, which commends this life of his thus: "This man, therefore (he speaks of the Theologian), as the Life written about him makes manifest to those desiring to learn, obtained Cappadocia as his native soil." It is evident from this that this Life had already been published long before, and was widely circulated at that time. It was read in a great assembly of the Church, in place of a eulogy, at the command of the bishop, as the words of the opening indicate. Adrian Baillet wrongly suspects that it was adorned for the sake of the translation carried out in the tenth century, since this cannot be gathered from even the slightest proofs. Soon after it was published, it was quickly translated from Greek into Latin; but its interpretation has not reached us, regarding which Billius published the following: "A certain Anastasius first translated this Life of Gregory, some sixty years more or less after the year nine hundred after the birth of Christ, although quite barbarously, as I saw noted in a certain manuscript book of the Dionysian library." Yet Billius could have noticed, as Combefis observes, that this is Anastasius the Librarian, who rendered many other Greek monuments into Latin, and not so barbarously that his work should be disregarded or be useless. That Anastasius lived in the ninth century; hence it is rightly conjectured that, since he is the author of the interpretation, the Life of Gregory must have been written at least in the eighth century.
LIFE OF OUR HOLY FATHER GREGORY THE THEOLOGIAN, BISHOP OF NAZIANZUS
Composed in Greek by Gregory the Presbyter
A To a spiritual feast of discourses, O men and audience, the illustrious Gregory, who has earned the epithet "Theologian," invites us. He himself is set before us as an exquisite confection, which is beyond material, and as delights superior to all corruption. And let it not seem a wonder to you that I have progressed to such a degree of boldness as to have cast aside the memory of my own weakness and the magnificence of his genius and character—he who, because of the inaccessibility of his virtue, has until this very day been honored by all with near-silence, nor has anyone yet appeared who sets forth his life and has transmitted to us, his descendants, in a certain series and order, the things he did brilliantly and his virtues, just as he himself did when he took upon himself the entire subject of the life of Basil the Great and other blessed bishops and martyrs.
B But first, it was not possible for me to oppose my venerable Father, who is sitting here with us, as he demanded this discourse like some other debt, and—with paternal and masterly authority—kept urging me to celebrate the praises of holy Gregory, commanding that I comply with his will and warning that otherwise he would grant no [remission...]. C D
and was demanding the reward for the birth and education he had bestowed upon me. Furthermore, it does not seem to me pious or right to take no account of such great virtue, which, if set before human life, might perhaps provoke many to emulation, and would not suffer virtue itself to slip away and vanish, since it is B constantly kept fresh by daily discourse.
Come then, putting aside all delay, with the first-fruits of my speech, as if with some freshly gathered fruits, let me crown the Theologian; a crown which, if it be unequal to his merit and dignity, is at least not inferior to our own powers and the alacrity of our spirit. And I think it will be that that man—just as he is perfect in all things—will also receive this praise of ours with an even temper; for even the stammering prattle of infants, proceeding from a most simple mind, is usually more pleasing to parents than the C more robust discourses of adults and their heavy, ornate orations. Moreover, even the honor of words will fit him most beautifully. For whatever each person delights in, in that, surely, does he also joyfully take honor. And since, while still leading his bodily life, he preferred the studies of doctrine and eloquence to all wealth and faculties, and embraced and pursued wisdom with love, and was kept by it, as it is in Proverbs, who could possibly doubt that now, too—when he has left human affairs and exchanged his present life for that pure one so close to the intellect—he D more eagerly rejoices and exults in prayers?
But I beseech you, O holy gathering, not to count on searching out and investigating the multitude of his virtues with too great accuracy and precision. In the first place, because such are not my powers that I could either promise this myself or that you should demand it of me. Then, because no one has left us a record of his life written in letters; but I am like the masons who gather his life here and there from his own writings, who, after they have gradually brought together the stones, only then arrange them all for the building and completion of one and the same house.
The beginning of the oration
The beginning of the oration, then, we shall draw from where it is most fitting to begin. His country was the second Cappadocia, his city Nazianzus: which has become so much more renowned through him that, because of him, it has carried its fame even to the distant ends of the earth. For Pella is not more celebrated for Alexander, nor were the Persians raised to such a magnitude of glory and splendor because of Cyrus, as this city is because of the great Gregory. So that it seems to me that it even claims for itself the foster-mother's rewards because of the virtue of this holy man.
A For this reason, I believe that the reward for that education has been abundantly paid back, since it has been rendered equally illustrious among the Indians and the Britons, who are diametrically opposed to one another.
He was born of noble and righteous parents, who were more closely united by purity of soul than by the bond of the body. The father, B resembling a certain Abraham, left behind his ancestral land and idols and migrated to the practice of piety; having shaken off the superstition and imposture of the Hypsistarians, he shone forth as a sincere disciple of divine grace, at first a sheep, but later established as a skilled shepherd of the Nazianzen Church. The mother, too, was holy and traced her origin back to holy ancestors; having inherited piety along with other goods, and burning with a desire for a male child, she besought God, the author of such benefits, that she might obtain her desire. Even before conception (O incredible faith! O fervor of soul worthy to be proclaimed!), C she vowed that she would offer to Him the son who would be born, just as Anna offered Samuel. What, then, does He who fulfills the will of those who fear Him do? Through a nocturnal vision He showed her the child before he was even conceived, revealing his appearance and his name. Not long after he was brought into the light, she consecrated him to God, surpassing the pains of childbirth with the alacrity of faith, and overcoming feminine frailty with the magnificence of her offering.
When the boy was imbued with the habits of his parents, he excelled all his peers in the excellence of his nature and the dexterity of his mind to such a degree that his tender age was no impediment to his acquiring the habits D and learning of those who were fully grown. Indeed, he utterly despised games, childish antics, races, and dances as useless things that brought delay to the study of better things; for as a foul odor present ruins the sweetness of ointment, so does the presence of base things hinder the attainment of virtue. When he had already grown in age and was inflamed with a love for literature, he set out for Caesarea, and there, having met with the most excellent teachers and gathered no small amount of learning, he sailed to Palestine—not to learn the ways of the rhetoricians, but the elegance of words and the art of oratory. From there he arrived at Alexandria, which is situated by the Pharos, in order that he might study many cities and the prudence of many men, for the sake of gathering wisdom, as a certain wise man said. Having reaped the greatest benefit from that city as well, he finally sought Athens, the parent of letters, traveling by an Aeginetan ship.
A Thus, as he was navigating the Parthenian Sea at a turbulent and unpropitious time, a most violent wind suddenly arose, bringing the greatest danger to his life. Darkness covered the sea, the air, and the sky—no less unbearable than the ninth plague of the Egyptians. While everyone else was lamenting their physical death, he alone feared the total destruction of his soul. For he had not yet been sealed by baptism, and death in the waters was anticipating his salvation through the waters. What, then, does that great man do—he who, even before his regeneration, had already fashioned himself according to the truth? Rending his garment, he terrifies all his shipmates with cries and lamentations, so that there was no one who, setting aside all concern for himself, did not join him in his mourning. He, for his part, reminding God of all His miracles which He had performed in Egypt, and in the desert, and in many places on land and sea (such as the parting of the Red Sea and its subsequent flooding; how He drew water from the rock as from a spring, and sweetened Mara; how He defeated the Amalekites with unarmed hands that prefigured the cross; how He brought down the walls of Jericho without siege engines; how He saved the prophet from the belly of the whale; and all the other things contained in the sacred books), B and at the same time promising that if he were delivered from the peril of the sea and attained his desire for baptism, he would consecrate himself to the One who had saved him; he bends towards Himself, through his supplications, the One who is merciful and quick to grant requests by the gentleness of His nature. And the surge immediately subsided; the gale was transformed into a breeze, and the sea, which until then had been wild, was calmed. He was in these circumstances. C But his parents, through a dream, were made aware of the trouble befallen their son; and as parents (for what need is there to say more?), they besought God with prayers and tears to bring aid to their son who was in peril on the sea. Immediately after their prayer, they saw in their sleep their son holding under his power a certain fury-like, punishing demon that was threatening him with destruction. When he had returned home and heard these things from his parents' account, he offered praise and thanks to the Savior. But this was later. Among those sailing in the same ship, a certain young man, who was very dear to him, saw in the middle of the night, at the height of the danger, the blessed man's mother boarding the sea, laying hold of the ship, D and dragging it toward the dry land. Once this vision was revealed and recounted, a calm immediately followed, and all...
those sailing together fled with faith to the God of Gregory, acknowledging and confessing Him to be the deliverer from such a A great danger. And in what way does this yield to the miracle of the great Elijah? For he, opposing the idol-madness of the Sidonian queen, and having consumed the sacrifice with strange and heavenly fire, led Israel into the faith of the true God; so that the people, seized by wonder, said: "Truly the Lord God, this is God." Such was Gregory, through his unexpected salvation from the storm, leading those who were held by various and manifold errors to the one path of faith.
When, however, he betook himself to Greece and the noble and flourishing city of Athens, what need is there to report with what joy he was received, immediately judged most excellent in letters by both teachers and students? Not much time had passed when that great Basil arrived in Athens from Byzantium, for the sake of the same learning. And so they contracted a familiarity of life and a bond of living together. Furthermore, from their mutual conjunction and the concord of their souls, it can hardly be expressed in speech what advantage redounded to both. For he who is alone, although he may have understood something by the keenness of his mind, nevertheless trusts himself but little, and therefore goes about looking for someone with whom he may be supported and confirmed. But when two, by one conspiration of soul, have coalesced, as it were, into one cupidity for learning, and lean upon mutual support, they find—to be sure—two persons in themselves, namely both of him who finds the truth and of him who confirms it.
And, that I may be brief, a certain C glorious pair of friends is formed. For they were both illuminated by one and the same faith, and they blazed with an equal love of virtue, running with concordant motion; and just as plowmen or farmers, with equal readiness of soul, they cut and sowed the field of wisdom, and gathered in a manifold harvest. In fortitude, indeed, and in constancy in enduring adverse circumstances, they surpassed almost all their peers. For this is almost the vice of the young, that, just as colts are troubled and annoyed by the noises and shadows of horses, so they too are troubled and annoyed by sudden adverse events. They, on the contrary, were of such firmness that they received those things which often happened suddenly and contrary to custom with tranquil and unmoved souls: so much so that even when an earthquake invaded Greece, they were found by all to be brave and excelling in greatness of soul, and worthy to use the prophetic words: *Therefore we will not fear, while the earth shall be troubled* 88.
A They practiced frugality from their youth, content with the bare necessities of life, like Elijah and John who lived off the fruits of trees; but as for all that makes for luxury and the indulgence of the belly, they spat it all out, bidding farewell to pleasures. For what need I say of their chastity, which preserved them pure and holy to God throughout the whole course of their life? So much so that, in this regard, even that famous Xenocrates and Polemon are almost forced to yield to them. Of whom the former, with a harlot sleeping by his side, remained unmoved; while the latter was almost unapproachable to those from the brothels, who greatly feared the severity of the philosopher. Did these men, then, achieve so much in these virtues, while caring less for justice and non-possession? B By no means; but even here, imitating Aristides, not buying money with virtue, nor turning philosophy into a means of gain, they were freely kind to all alike, avoiding both deficiency and excess, and remaining within the bounds of what is noble. And so great was their abundance of non-possession, C and D
A they were so far lifted above Antisthenes, Diogenes, and Crates, that their praises and magnificent titles were held to be mere trifles. For they were no less disdainful of wealth than they were, but meanwhile they kept ostentation and the pursuit of empty fame at a distance—vices by which those marvelous dogs were held, debasing and trampling upon the gravity of philosophy with their public proclamations and their contempt for the rest of mankind. For, first of all, they did not well pursue what is good, since it was more a display than a passion for the good.
But what need is there to speak further of prudence and wisdom? Since their whole life was one single meditation, and their desire for its attainment was stretched out night and day, just like those who dig for treasure, to use the words of the blessed Job. For those noble men knew well that the labor expended in meditation beforehand delivers its own strength in the persistence and the abundance and fullness of knowledge. Thus it came about that they surpassed not only their contemporaries but also many of their elders in the splendor of their names, both on account of their labor and industry and the goodness of their nature, and because they applied themselves only to honorable and praiseworthy things. In the whole of grammar, nothing at all escaped them: not the knowledge of meters, not poetic goals and tropes, not the abundance of history, not the purity of political speech. In rhetoric, moreover, they held such a method that, while gathering the elegance of words, they avoided falsehood and the desire for lying. Furthermore, they grasped philosophy—both that which concerns morals and that which deals with dogma, as well as medical indications and reasoning—not merely to the extent of a liberal education, so that they were not merely superior to the unlearned, but they were like certain instructors and most excellent teachers. In music, they so arranged themselves that, by learning whatever in it is ancient and harmonious, they softened that part of the soul in which the heat of anger and unbridled impulse exists, while whatever leads to pleasure they banished to the theaters. As for the calculations of numbers, the equity of geometry, and the position and motion of the stars, they were educated like new Moseses and Daniels, not being led by these things, but rather, according to what is written, B taking every thought captive into the obedience of Christ; C making this the beauty and the covering of the first wisdom. And through all things, so to speak, they walked, both the better and the worse, so that they knew how to flee from some and to choose others with discernment. For I praise the one who said, even though he stands outside our own courtyard: "For it is not D dishonorable to know something of what is not good"
rather, the remedy for them comes from this, at least for those who receive what is said not with envy, but with a candid and benevolent mind."
A But what has happened to me, O friends? For as my speech progressed, it carried away the speaker, like a horse with its rider, and placed me in the praises of the blessed Basil. Therefore, pausing briefly, I will restrain my speech as if with some reins, and I will check its boldness, so that it is not carried further headlong. For those who desire things beyond their strength fail to attain even moderate things. For while Basil, having successfully concluded his noble negotiation, returned B home, Gregory was held fast by the eager youth of Athens, who granted him no opportunity to depart, and fervently begged and besought him to take up the teaching office and to accept the sophistic chair. For a little while, out of respect for the favor shown to him by them, he remained. But a little later, having entreated all the friends he had in that city, and having persuaded them that his departure to his parents was necessary—for he had already completed his thirtieth year in his studies—he thus restored himself to his homeland.
And first, he receives divine baptism, he who had already been illuminated beforehand by the power [of the Spirit]; and he sets for himself a law never to swear, as long as he should live in this life: which he kept even to his very last day. Then, to satisfy the desire of his parents and friends who longed to hear him speak—for he himself had no conceit about this—he performs this duty as well. But when those same people were the ones urging him to involve himself in public and private evils (for thus I name the splendor of earthly things), he himself took counsel for himself, that, just as he had promised when he was in danger of his life, he should offer himself to God, and, separated from the world, be joined in life’s custom with Him who alone is most pure, and by keeping company with the sacred books, draw thence the illumination of the truth. And this he continued to do, choosing to be a monk instead of a worldly man, and a pauper instead of a seeker of gain.
D Often, indeed, it happened to him that he saw Christ clearly in dreams and in nightly meditation, as the holy Scripture says, receiving this as a reward for his purity. For "Blessed," he says, "are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" (Matt. v, 8). For the Lord calls him pure, such as was the great Gregory, who had abandoned cities, marketplaces, theaters, and the vanity of the sophists,
A the stubbornness of princes and magistrates, the iniquitous distortions of cases by judges, the quarrels of litigants, the lies of rhetoricians, the snares of thieves, the insatiable greed of merchants, the oaths of tavern-keepers, the arrogance of the wealthy, the frauds and crimes of the poor, gluttony, drunkenness, fleeting and fragile glory, magnificent garments, extraordinary furniture made of gold and silver, houses distinguished by painting and marble slabs and adorned with mosaics, and all other things which disturb the purity of the soul and bar the entrance to the most pure light. Such was Gregory to us in his youth.
Posteaquam autem pater filium, quem, invitum et repugnantem ægreque cedentem, presbyterum creaverat, præsulem quoque instituere aggressus est, quid facit? Ab Ecclesia clam se proripit, B curas, mentem humi detorquentes ac deprimentes, effugiat, atque in Pontum profectus, cum egregio illo Basilio philosophatur. Nam cum simul in litteris instituti, atque ad breve tempus alter ab altero distracti fuissent, ad se invicem rursus accurrerunt, nempe et morum concordia, et mutua pollicitatione impulsi ac incitati: adeo ut in ipsis dictum illud impleretur: Ubi duo vel tres in nomine meo congregati fuerint, illic sum in medio eorum 95.
Hic porro commorantes, et mutua exstimulatione C virtutem augebant, et vitæ monasticæ leges iis Deoque devotis hominibus, atque a mundi societate disjunctis, ferebant, Lycurgi legibus pacatiores, Solonis graviores, Minois æquiores. Imo vero, ut de his viris sublimius aliquid dicam, Mosem imitantur, nubeque obtecti, atque, ut a tumultuaria et turbulenta hac vita procul se removerent, in montem secedentes, legislatoris officio fungebantur. At vero pater, et canitie, et curis gravis, ac præterea Cæsarii filii luctu mæstus et afflictus, solitudinem non ferens, gravibus nec mutire in contrarium sinentibus litteris Gregorio suadet reditum. Ipse igitur formidolosum esse ratus patri non obsequi, præsertim sacerdoti, et natu grandi, ad reditum se accingit, partim invitus, partim æquo animo ac lubenti. Ut enim tranquillæ vitæ amor eum, ut in Ponto maneret, hortabatur: ita eumdem altera ex D parte pietas trahebat, inserviendum patri esse præscribens.
Cum autem Cæsarius, cui provincia maxima
A entrusted, and the care of the treasures, having been appointed supervisor of the public funds, ended his life during the time of his administration; and according to the laws it was necessary that the father be declared heir to the son’s estate, and that the lawsuits of those bringing charges against the deceased be transferred to himself, it happened that the Great Gregory was embroiled in much turmoil. Indeed, very many people, like dogs running to their prey, thought they would seize the property of the deceased with no one to stop them. B Now the father, broken by both old age and disease—for he had already completed ninety years of life—was not able to endure the tumult and vexations of the courts; and so the whole burden of cares devolved upon him. But the duty toward parents lightened the burdens, bringing the hope of those rewards which have been promised to those who honor their parents dutifully and piously.
There happened also something of this sort from the Arian heresy, which, through the spirits of wickedness, was overwhelming the Church. Many of the bishops of the cities were sent into exile, and were subjected to manifold tortures and slanders; priests and vast multitudes of the people were distressed in the open air, having neither houses of prayer, nor enjoying the justice of the laws on an equal footing with the impious, since the heresy had seized upon almost all the ends of the earth, and was emboldened by the imperial hand and by impiety. Thus, freedom of action was given to the destructive shepherds, who, covering the wolf with a gentle fleece, proceeded to drive out the faithful bishops, who were worthy of Christ, the first shepherd. C Accordingly, some being struck with fear, others softened by flatteries or overcome by money, and others still being deceived by the simplicity of their characters, accepted the bait of the heresy, being joined to the adversaries by their own handwritten signatures and by communion. Among this number was the father of this blessed man, who through simplicity of mind had fallen into the hook. When the monks of the region could not endure this act of his, they separated themselves from his communion; and at the same time a not insignificant portion of the people departed with them, having openly followed the authority of the monks.
What then does the servant of God do? D First, he applied himself to appeasing God with prayers and all-night vigils, that He might grant a release from the evil and that healing might come to the division; he imposed upon himself a silence of speech, and in this way showed his mournful state. Afterward, having admonished his father to seek forgiveness for his fault,
exhorts: and brings those who had withdrawn to consensus and concord: and thus restores its ornament to the Church, moving both parties by the veneration of himself, namely the father and the pious flock. Moreover, he exhilarates the celebration with prayers held for peace, gluing together the distracted and divided members, and bringing forgetfulness of the disease with the speed of healing. A certain Crates the Theban is said to have been accustomed to visit dissenting houses, and to settle controversies with gentle and peaceful words. But this one of ours is far superior; for he did not restore concord to certain individuals privately, as he did, but to the whole fatherland: and what is greatest, he did not offer himself as an arbiter to those B A C D contending about money or injuries (where very often even a light exhortation easily avails), but to those fighting about the faith, where the zeal for wrangling is wont to equal the magnitude of the matter, and therefore however prudent and learned an oration may be, it profits little and with difficulty in composing dissensions.
Indeed, after the perversity and dissolute sloth of Christians, through contempt of God and his commandments, laboring as if with a certain disease, and raging with it, raised up for us an emperor hostile to Christ (I speak of Julian the tyrant, who strove to overcome the ancestral faith and virtue of Constantine the Great with contrary vices, and for that reason to despoil Christians of all protections of the law, not indeed by promulgating a public edict of persecution of Christians, but by his will, and by those things which he silently perpetrated against them, forbidding them profane learning and doctrine). B C D Therefore the equanimity of God, which had permitted the nefarious and execrable man to be carried away and to grow insolent for too long, after it perceived that his wickedness could be broken by no repentance at all, brandishing the sword, exacted the punishments which his impiety deserved, cutting off his barbarian and beastly life in the borders of the barbarians. Soon the great Gregory lacerates his crime and impiety with an invective oration, and exposing the Sybaritic obscenities of the Greeks, and the old fables, and the error of manifold divinity, and placing them before the eyes of all, proposed a common mockery to sensible men. But why do I attempt to diminish and disgrace the great and lofty praises of this man with the brevity of an oration, and clearly to go in the opposite direction than the plan of the oration allows, and that at the time of praise (in which it is especially to be labored, when it is necessary to admire the one to be praised, while encountering invective orations in the discourse of deeds done, then D
A plinthos [/A] of the history and the harmony, and how much power he had in speaking?
But toward the wondrous law of the tyrant, which commanded that Christians must not be initiated into the Hellenic disciplines, see, I pray, the wisdom of the blessed man. Using heroic and iambic verses, and elegiac, and trimeter, and many others, as well as the character of tragedy and comedy, and every form of writing, he stamped—one might say—every kind of education into his own discourses, establishing pious themes everywhere: whether praise of virtue, or purification of soul and body, or theology, or prayers, or such-like things written in meter; fleeing entirely from indecency and the trifles of myths, and the marvels of the gods, as was fitting, and establishing B a most wise instruction for Christians. So that the law of the impious and lawless one, who begrudged Christians their education, received no benefit, but rather he was overcome and indeed suffered loss. For such is envy: while harming those envied but little or nothing at all, it greatly wounds those who give birth to it.
Now, while Gregory himself was still residing at Athens, he met with Julian, who was still only a youth and not yet elevated to the empire, but still attending the masters; and he pointed out to his friends long beforehand that the boy would be guileful, faithless, impious, and prone to every vice, predicting what he would become. C He took as evidence of his character his disturbed bearing, his petulant laughter, his beast-like gaze, and his whole body, which was unstable and restless; his impulses full of folly, and his conversations full of impiety, even if they were disguised under the pretext of an exercise; and the fact that he embraced the wicked while despising the praisers and cultivators of virtue. Seeing these things, he predicted to everyone that his most evil eruption and manifestation would eventually come to pass. For pure natures have a wondrous faculty for conjecturing the future, and by the sagacity and cleverness of their intellect, they track what is to come from even obscure signs. And indeed, that wicked man was exposed, having acted unjustly and wickedly in vain, and having stored up for himself nothing other than material for punishment.
Gregory, however, not long after this time, D began his struggle against the heretics*
A when they were ravaging the region of Caesarea. Eusebius, a pious man, was still holding the helm of the metropolis, but he was at enmity with the great Basil, who was a presbyter and leading a philosophical life in Pontus. Fearing the conspiracy of the heretics and the assault of their leader, against whom he was unable to marshal a front (for he was, though a man of venerable life, yet unskilled and inexperienced in theology), he wrote to Basil, that shining star. He implored him to disregard the enmity, and, considering the danger to their souls, to bring swift relief to the Church of the metropolis without any delay, promising at the same time that he would be present and would join him in the alliance of war. By this entreaty he impelled that excellent leader to undertake the battle. Having himself set out, and having undertaken the expedition with him, he broke into the fortress and stronghold of the heretics, and, having cut to pieces and dissolved the doctrines of the impious ones, he raised a trophy together with Basil, the enemies having turned to flight in the consciousness of their own cowardice and weakness.
Such are the works that God accomplishes through His servants; for when He sees the iniquity of men growing and overflowing beyond measure, moved by compassion for his most precious creation, He rouses men who are perfect in all the measures of virtue, providing help and correction for those in danger, so that the lack of support and assistance might not cause the human race to contract harm and succumb. This is just what He did then, raising these men up and placing them in the midst like a rennet cast into milk; and so He bound together in one friendship and concord those who were widely separated by manifold wickedness and impiety.
C Not much time had elapsed when the aforementioned prelate of that Church migrated to the better life. Then a great labor had to be undertaken by Gregory, writing both privately to some and publicly to all the citizens of the city, and in the name of his father and his own, persuading them to enthrone Basil in the archiepiscopate. This too was done nobly and perfectly. For he did not undertake this task to serve the interests of a friend, but to look to the public utility. He knew clearly, he well knew the minister worthy of the Holy Spirit; for this reason he did not remit his effort until he had brought to an end what he had rightly proposed, just as he did indeed bring it to pass. And so Basil held the helm of the Caesareans. But with envy and the desire for domination increasing, Cappadocia, which until that time was known as one, was divided into two, and Tyana was separated from Caesarea, so that from then on it was contended for by both, and they disputed over the towns.
A of which each of them ought to be the master. Much contention arose from this, having as its pretext, indeed, the faith and the supposed care of souls, but in its zeal, avarice and the lust for power, while men attempted to hide their base deeds under honorable names.
But the great Basil, being innovated against and deprived of his own B territories, conceived the plan of establishing a bishop in Sasima, so that by making the schism common property, he might heal the loss he had sustained from elsewhere; and at the same time, by populating the region with bishops, he might better provide for the administration of the Churches. No one, therefore, seemed to Basil more useful than Gregory, and more capable of taking hold of the newly-created bishopric. Having deliberated this with the father of the admirable man, he brought force to bear in the ordination of the man; and the task was brought to an end. But he, as we have often said, having his goal set on stillness and freedom from affairs, was grieved and distressed, thinking it necessary to attend to himself and to live in retirement. Furthermore, the place itself—I mean Sasima—was unsuitable for him, being filled with turbulence and urban noise-making. For it lay in the middle of a C royal road, and having the staging posts of the public thoroughfare, it was shaken by those passing through, bringing much annoyance to those who love stillness, and providing almost no enjoyment or benefit whatsoever. Seeing these things, he fled to a retreat for the sick, easing the difficulty and gravity of their disease with ministry and fatherly words, and designated that time as an exercise ground for philosophy. It is said, therefore, that he neither performed the offering nor the ordination, nor anything else of those things which are customary for bishops, in Sasima, but immediately upon his ordination, he conceived the thought of flight.
But his father was long and much begging him to keep Sasima. But since he could not attain his purpose, he did a second thing, that he should take upon himself the care of the Church of Nazianzus in his stead. And he did this not only by admonition, but already
also joining in a certain imprecation, arising from the contempt of his extreme old age. But A he, seeking at once for himself a life unencumbered by distractions, and judging it a matter of great moment to conform to his father’s will, addresses him in these words: “Father, although the things you command are burdensome to me, yet for your sake I do not refuse them. I undertake the care of Nazianzus. Yet, let your holy and god-beloved wisdom know that it is in no way possible for me, when you have been removed from this life, to remain in charge of the Church.” Anticipating him, therefore, the father said: “To me, my son, while I am alive, be a staff, supporting my old age and upheld by paternal prayers. But when I am departed, dispose of matters as you may see fit.” B Having heard these things, he remained, tending to his aged parents in the best way possible; for his father was already approaching his hundredth year, and his mother was but little short of that same age, both of them, as is natural, having need of great care and rest. Especially now that Caesarius had passed from this life, and Gorgonia, that most holy woman among women, his sister, both of them having been translated to the ageless life and endless blessedness, whom he also honored with funeral orations; thus, he being left alone and serving as the solace of their old age, the medicine for their infirmities—a better succession, if it be permitted so to speak, of pious parents—and an abundant glory for their ancestors, so as to extend their memory and to prolong it along with the stable state of the world. For who ever presided over a household with greater praise of piety, managing the house with knowledge and godliness, like some excellent C steward, distributing to each what was fitting—to kinsmen, friends, servants, guests—and thus in turn administering the affairs of the Church, so that the method of shepherding his flock was set forth for all as if by a true master’s rule? Aptly, indeed, has it been said by the divine Paul: *If one does not know how to preside over his own house, how will he have a care for the Church of God?* (I Tim. III, 5). For he who has guided one man with wisdom, this man, surely, would also be able to save a household; and he who saves a household, may also save a Church; and he who saves a Church, a city as well. For a household is a certain compressed commonwealth; and a city would be a more perfect description, as it were, of a household. For it is of the same knowledge to save many, or few, or one; and such things do not differ from one another in their nature and whole, but only in their quantity.
Truly, when Gregory the father (for so he himself D
was called) had departed this life, he honored him with funeral orations; and he praised his mother Nonna, who was beloved of God, while she was yet living—doing what was holy, and as it befits one who loves his father and mother, and loves Christ—and he took care of her, as she was in widowhood and deep old age, and in need of help and rest; and after her passing, he withdrew from the Church. He reached Seleucia and resided in the maiden’s chamber A of the all-pure Thecla, giving time for a bishop to be appointed for Nazianzus. But when he returned and found things in the same state, with no shepherd having been appointed, and the people beseeching him with tears, he was not swayed by their request, but remained unyielding, no less unshaken than an oak tree B against the gusts of wind.
But I shall now tell you of something that almost escaped my memory, which is a matter of great importance, and of no less praise for him than benefit for you. For everything good and worth emulating is surely beneficial, and that which is worth emulating is productive of virtue; and virtue leads its followers toward God. The great Basil, observing his brethren, who were afflicted with leprosy, to be truly pitiable and worthy of compassion, yet very far from being pitied—and since, due to ignorance and inhumanity, they were regarded by the multitude as a curse, a pollution, and an abomination—was moved to an understanding of their common nature. He set forth a godly plan, worthy of the brotherly love that characterized him. Having built spacious houses and established annual revenues, which he had procured from the wealthy and affluent by his skillful oratory, urging them to contribute, and having called them to the task with wise words, he gathered all the weak together into one place, naming these houses for C the poor. Of these, Gregory was a coworker and a fellow-combatant, as his discourse on the love of the poor reveals, showing how great was the zeal he exerted alongside the great Basil for this cause, demonstrating the care of the poor to be the greatest of the commandments, and worthy of the greatness and philanthropy of God. But let this suffice, that so great a feat might not seem to have been overlooked.
But when the Arian heresy had long been oppressing the Church, and with imperial hand was destroying the fortifications of God—by enticing the simpler folk toward impiety, and dogma-tizing the Father as the great God, the Son as small, and the Holy Spirit as a creature—there sprang up, as if it were a newly sprouted head of a hydra, the heresy of the Pneumatomachi, which regarding the D Son was well-disposed and considered him equal
to the Father, but blasphemed against the Holy Spirit, and this in two ways. For some openly dogmatized that he was a creature, while others dogmatized that he was neither a creature nor God, but rather free; whom he [Gregory] called Semi-Arians, imposing upon them a name consistent and appropriate to their opinion, inasmuch as they honored the Son but at the same time disparaged the Holy Spirit. A Since contention of this sort was spreading throughout the whole Roman Empire, and prevailing and obtaining force especially in Byzantium, God, taking pity on those who were being extinguished by this pestilential doctrine, stirred up the holy spirit of Gregory the Theologian, and said to him, as if to Moses: *Seeing I have seen the affliction of my people which is in Egypt* (now Egypt in the Hebrew tongue signifies darkness, and here it signifies the gloom of the heresies that had taken hold), *and I have heard their groaning, and have come down to deliver them. Depart now, therefore, I will send thee into Egypt.* Moved by this exhortation, and filled with the power B of the Holy Spirit, he sends him to Byzantium, that he might fight for the Spirit. He at once, with that great luminary Basil providing a torch, as it were, to his desire and alacrity, and anointing him for the spiritual contests, and with many other bishops and faithful citizens of the Queen of Cities earnestly entreating him to show himself a defender against the evils for those in need of aid, arrived at Constantinople, possessing nothing of earthly substance, luxury, or wealth, but full of the Spirit. C Being received by certain ones who were joined to him by bonds of kinship and piety, he found the Church—to use the prophet’s words—like a mast on a mountain or a sign on a hill, small and easily numbered, and hidden because all liberty of speech had been taken away from pious men by the one who held imperial power, and all the holy houses had been seized and forcibly occupied. Only the holy church of Anastasia was open to the orthodox; perhaps even this was held in no account because of the smallness of its circuit, as those who have seen its ancient sanctuary would understand. D Immediately, therefore, like a certain David, he prepares himself for battle, and with his sling, the firmness of his arguments, he strikes the dogmas of the aliens, stone-like, and faithfully restores liberty of speech to the pious, day by day gaining new accessions to his forces and leading captive to God those who had wickedly risen up against the truth. A very short space of time having elapsed, he brought about such an increase in the multitude that no comparison could be made with the previous state of affairs; and here the sacred scripture finds its fulfillment: *The house of David went on and grew stronger, but the house of Saul was on the way to ruin.*
ἐπο- A ρεύετο, καὶ ἠσθένει. Ἦν ὁρᾷν οὖν ποικίλην τινὰ τῶν σωζομένων τὴν εὐταξίαν. Οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἤδη ἐσαγηνεύθησαν, οἱ δὲ ἔμελλον· οἱ δὲ, ἤδη τελειωθέντες, ἄλλων ἦσαν θηρευταὶ καὶ διδάσκαλοι. Ἐπὶ τούτοις τίς ἂν ἕτερος ἤνεγκε τῶν μὲν Ἀρειανῶν τὴν ὀργὴν, τῶν δὲ πέλας τὴν βασκανίαν; Οἵτινες, δέον ἐπικουρεῖν, καὶ ἀγωνιζομένῳ συναγωνίζεσθαι, τοῖς κατορθώμασιν αὐτοῦ ἐδυσχέραινον, ἔξαμμα τοῦ φθόνου τῆς Ἐκκλησίας ποιούμενοι τὴν ἐπίδοσιν, καὶ τοῖς ἴσοις κρατεῖν οὐκ ἰσχύοντες, ἢ οὐ βουλόμενοι κακίᾳ τὴν ἀρετὴν ὑπερβαλεῖν ἡμιλλήθησαν.
Οὔπω δὲ τούτου λωφήσαντος τοῦ κακοῦ, ἐπιφύεται B Σύρος Ἀπολλινάριος, ἰδίαν τινὰ καινίζων κακοδοξίαν. Τὴν γὰρ ἐνανθρώπησιν ἀληθῆ μὴ δοξάζων, σαρκὸς πρόσληψιν καὶ ψυχῆς ἀλόγου μόνην ἐδίδασκε, ψυχῆς νοερᾶς τὴν οἰκονομίαν ἀποτεμνόμενος. Ἐλλόγιμος δὲ ὢν τὴν τῶν Ἑλλήνων παίδευσιν, κλέπτει πολλοὺς τῇ ποικιλίᾳ τῶν λόγων. Παρῆσαν οὖν ἀπανταχοῦ γῆς μαθηταὶ τῆς αἱρέσεως, ἕλκοντες τοὺς ἀμαθεῖς, ὥσπερ ἀγκίστροις εἰς τὴν ἀπώλειαν. Αὖθις οὖν ἀγῶνι δυσμάχῳ συνείχετο, ἐλέγχων, ἐπιτιμῶν, παρακαλῶν, τοὺς μὲν ἐν τῇ πίστει διαφυλάττων, τοὺς δὲ ἐπανάγων, ὅθεν ἐξέπεσον. Οἷα δ' οὖν πέφυκε συμπίπτειν ἐν τοῖς τοιούτοις, ἡ τῆς τελείας ὁμολογία σαρκώσεως εἰς δύο υἱοὺς ἐνομίσθη τοῖς ἀπαιδεύτοις διαίρεσις. Ἀεὶ οὖν τῷ δήμῳ προσκαθεζομένων τῶν φοιτητῶν Ἀπολλιναρίου, καὶ ταῦτα τοῦ ὁσίου κατηγορούντων, ἴσχυσεν ἡ ἐπήρεια. Ῥανὶς γὰρ ἐνδελεχοῦσα κοιλαίνει πέτραν. Καὶ ἐπειδὴ τὰ τοιαῦτα τῆς τῶν πολλῶν ἀκοῆς ὑψηλότερα, μὴ δυναμένων συνιέναι τῆς οἰκονομίας τὸ βάθος, λύκοι μὲν ἐπιστεύοντο· C ὁ δὲ ποιμὴν ὑπῆρχεν ἐν ὑποψίᾳ, τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἐκπαιδεύων. Οἱ οὖν τῆς Ἀρείου δόξης ὑπέρμαχοι, ὥσπερ σύες ἄγριοι κατὰ τοῦ ὁσίου πάλαι τὴν ὀργὴν παραθήγοντες, προσλαβόντες δὲ καὶ τὴν ἐπαναστᾶσαν αὐτῷ ταραχὴν καὶ συκοφαντίαν ἐκ τῶν δοξαζόντων τὰ Ἀπολλιναρίου, ἐξάψαντες τὸν δῆμον ψευδέσι λόγοις, λίθοις μὲν τὸν ἄνδρα κατέλευσαν, ὡς ποτε Ἰουδαῖοι τὸν Στέφανον· πλήν γε ἄστοχοι αὐτῶν γεγόνασι αἱ βολαί, Θεοῦ σκέποντος τὸν ἑαυτοῦ πρόμαχον.
Συλλαβόμενοι δὲ αὐτὸν, τῷ τοῦ ὑπατικοῦ παρέστησαν βήματι, ὡς τινα ταραχῶν καὶ στάσεων αἴτιον. Ὢ τῆς ἀναλγησίας! ὢ ἰσχύος τοῦ ψεύδους, εἰ Γρηγόριος περὶ τοιούτων ἐκρίνετο, ὁ καὶ τῆς τῶν ἄλλων ὀργῆς τε καὶ ἀταξίας ἐπιώτατος ἰατρός, ὁ τῆς εἰρήνης βραβευτής, ὁ Χριστοῦ μαθητής, τοῦ πρᾴου καὶ ταπεινοῦ καὶ νομοθετοῦντος D τὴν ἐπιείκειαν! Αὐτὸς δὲ, καίπερ [alt-version omitted]
καίπερ A τηλικούτοις χαλεποῖς συνεχόμενος, ἐκεῖνα ἐφρόνει τε καὶ ἐφθέγγετο· Ἕνεκεν τοῦ ὀνόματός σου, Χριστέ· Ἐὰν καὶ πορευθῶ ἐν μέσῳ σκιᾶς θανάτου, οὐ φοβηθήσομαι κακά, ὅτι σὺ μετ᾿ ἐμοῦ εἶ. Κἀντεῦθεν γοῦν μαστίγων καὶ αἰκίας χωρὶς ἀπελύετο, μάρτυς ἄνευ κινδύνων, καὶ δίχα μωλώπων στεφανηφόρος, τοσοῦτον μόνον εἰσενεγκών, ὅσον ὑπομεῖναι τῇ προαιρέσει, ἃ μὴ παθεῖν Χριστὸς συνεχώρησε.
Τοιούτοις οὖν B διαλάμψας ἀγῶσιν, ἤδη πᾶσιν ὑπῆρχε καταφανής· ζηλωτὸς μὲν τῇ παρρησίᾳ τῆς ἀληθείας, ζηλωτὸς δὲ τῇ ἀρετῇ καὶ τοῖς τοσούτοις πόνοις· ἀπόβλεπτος δὲ τῷ πλήθει τῆς Ἐκκλησίας. Ὥστε καὶ Πέτρον, ἐπίσκοπον ὄντα τῆς Ἀλεξανδρέων μεγαλοπόλεως, Ἀθανασίου τοῦ πάνυ τὴν ποιμαντικὴν ἐκδεξάμενον, ἐπιστεῖλαι Γρηγορίῳ τῷ μεγάλῳ τὴν Κωνσταντίνου πόλεως ἀρχὴν βεβαιοῦντα. Καὶ λίαν γε ὀρθῶς καὶ δικαίως, τοῦτον ἐπίσκοπον εἶναι, τὸν τοὺς πόνους προεισενεγκόντα τοῦ ἀξιώματος, καὶ μισθὸν ἱδρώτων τὸν θρόνον, ἀλλὰ μὴ χάριν ἀνθρωπίνην ἀπενεγκάμενον. Τὸ μὲν οὖν πλῆθος τῶν πεπραγμένων αὐτῷ ἀθρόως, ἐπεισιόν μου τῇ διανοίᾳ, συγχεῖ τὴν ἀκολουθίαν, καὶ καθάπερ ἐν κυμάτων ἐπαναστάσει τῶν δευτέρων ἡ φορὰ καλύπτει τὰ φθάσαντα. Ἀλλ᾿ οὖν ἅπαξ καταστὰς εἰς τὸν λόγον, οὐ προαποστήσομαι τοῦ τέλους, τὸν Γρηγορίου Θεὸν λαμβάνων τῆς ἀσθενείας ἐπίκουρον, καὶ εἰς τὸ σύγγνωμεν ἀφορῶν τῆς ὑμετέρας ἐπιεικείας.
C Ἐγένετό τις ἐν τῇ βασιλίδι Μάξιμος, τὸ γένος Αἰγύπτιος, τὸν τρόπον βάρβαρος, Ἰαννῆς τις νέος, οἷον κατὰ τοῦ Μωϋσέως Γρηγορίῳ παραταττόμενος· οὗτος φιλόσοφος ὢν κυνικὸς τῇ βακτηρίᾳ, καὶ τῇ κόμῃ, καὶ τῷ τρίβωνι σεμνυνόμενος, καὶ μέχρι τούτου ἔχων τὸ φιλοσοφεῖν· τὴν δὲ γαστριμαργίαν, καὶ τὴν πλεονεξίαν, καὶ τὴν ἀναίδειαν κύων μᾶλλον ἢ κυνικὸς, καὶ τῶν Ἀντισθένους γνωρίμων ἀντίθετος· καὶ οἷον τὸν Νάβαλ, ἀκούομεν προσελθὼν τῷ ἱερῷ ποιμένι, καὶ παρ' αὐτοῦ κατηχηθείς, μεταμαθὼν τὴν ἀθεΐαν, μέρος τῆς Ἐκκλησίας καθίσταται, ἀναγεννηθεὶς τῷ βαπτίσματι. Εὐλάβειαν δὲ ὑποκρινόμενος, ὁμορόφιος D καὶ ὁμοτράπεζος τοῦ ἀρχιερέως καθίσταται, πάντα αὐτῷ εἶναι νομιζόμενος, γνήσιος ὑπηρέτης, λόγων ἐπαινέτης, ἐν τοῖς Χριστιανοῖς, οὐ φαυλότατος. Ὡς δὲ πεῖραν
πεῖραν A τοῦ χρόνου διδοὺς, ἄξιος ἐνομίσθη τοῦ βήματος, τηνικαῦτα τῷ κλήρῳ ἐγκαταλέγεται· καὶ τὸν Ἰούδαν ζηλώσας, ἀπόστασιν ἐννοεῖ κατὰ τοῦ διδασκάλου ἐπιστρατεύων, συνεργῷ χρώμενος τινι πρεσβυτέρῳ τῆς Ἐκκλησίας, ὃς, μηδὲ ἐπιτιμηθεὶς πώποτε, ἀλλὰ καὶ λίαν ἐν τοῖς τιμίοις ὑπάρχων, τῷ Μαξίμῳ τὸ δράμα συνεσκευώρει. Τὸ δὲ ἦν ἐπίσκοπον καταστῆσαι τοῦ Βυζαντίου τὸν Μάξιμον. Ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ χρυσίου ἔδει πρὸς τὰ τοιαῦτα, πόθεν ὁ πόρος, ἀκούσατε. Πρεσβύτερος τις νησιώτης ἐκ Θάσσου, τῷ Βυζαντίῳ προσορμισθεὶς, ἐκόμιζε χρήματα, πλάκας μαρμάρου Προκονησίας ἐμπορευσόμενος. Τοῦτον ἑλόντες, καὶ ὑποσχέσεσι δελεάσαντες (εὔπιστον γὰρ ἡ κουφότης πρὸς ἀπάτην καθίσταται), λαμβάνουσι τὸ χρυσίον τῆς κακουργίας συνέμπορον, καὶ πέμψαντες εἰς τὴν Ἀλεξάνδρειαν, πείθουσι B τὸν Πέτρον ἀποστεῖλαι ἄνδρας χειροτονῆσαι τὸν Μάξιμον.
Καὶ δὴ θάττον λόγου ταῦτα ἐπράττετο. Παρῆσαν ἀπ' Αἰγύπτου οἱ τὴν ἐπισκοπὴν δώσοντες. Οὗτος ὁ Πέτρος ἐκεῖνος, ὁ πρὶν μὲν Γρηγόριον ἐνθρονίσας, νῦν δὲ χειροτονῶν Μάξιμον, καὶ οὐδὲ τὸ ἑαυτοῦ γράμμα δυσωπηθείς, εἰ μή τι τὴν ἀρετὴν τοῦ ἀνδρὸς καὶ τὸ κλέος. Ὡς δ' οὖν ἦχον οἱ παρ' αὐτοῦ σταλέντες, ὄρθρος ἦν, καὶ αὐτοὶ παρῆσαν εἴσω τῆς ἐκκλησίας, οὗ τῷ ποιμένι ταῦτα γνωρίσαντες, οὐ πρεσβυτέροις, οὐ κλήρῳ, οὐ τῶν ἐν τέλει τινί, οὐ λαῷ πιστῷ, ἀλλ' αὐτίκα τῆς χειροτονίας εἴχοντο. Ἀκοῆς δὲ γενομένης ἀθρόως, παρῆσαν ἱερεῖς, κλῆρος, λαὸς ἔκκριτος, αἱρετικῶν σμῆνος. Πάντες γὰρ C ἐχθροί τε ὁμοίως καὶ φίλοι ὑπὸ μανίας ἀνήφθησαν, τὴν ἀταξίαν αὐτῶν καὶ τὴν μοχθηρίαν καταπλαγέντες. Κακία γὰρ ἄμαχος καὶ τοὺς ἐχθροὺς πολλάκις τοῦ πάσχοντος πρὸς ἄμυναν διανίστησιν. Ὡς δ' ὑπ' ἀνάγκης ἀνήνυτα ἦν αὐτῶν τὰ βουλεύματα (ἡ γὰρ προπέτεια τὸν δῆμον αὐτοῖς ὑπετείχισε), τί δρῶσιν; Ἐξελθόντες τῆς ἐκκλησίας, εἰς οἶκον ἀφικνοῦνται χοραύλου τινός, κἀκεῖ χειροτονοῦσι τὸν Μάξιμον, συνεργοὺς ἔχοντες τινὰς τοῦ λαοῦ καὶ συλλήπτορας, ἐπ' αἰτίαις ἀταξίας τῆς Ἐκκλησίας ἐκβεβλημένους. Χαίρουσι γὰρ οἱ τοιοῦτοι ταῖς αἰφνιδίοις μεταβολαῖς, πρὸς μὲν τὰ καθεστηκότα τῶν πραγμάτων ἀπεχθανόμενοι, ἀεὶ δὲ καινοτομίας ἐρῶντες. Ἡ δ' οὖν πόλις θυμῷ ζέουσα, τί ἄν τις λέγοι, ὁπόσης λοιδορίας τοῦ Μαξίμου κατεχέον, μεμφόμενοι καὶ αὐτῷ Γρηγορίῳ, D ὁπόσης εὐνοίας τὸν Μάξιμον καὶ παρρησίας καταστῆναι.
καταστῆναι. A The city, boiling with rage—who could even say how much reproach it heaped upon Maximus?—was also displeased with Gregory himself, for having embraced such an impious man with such great benevolence and intimacy. Thus, the situation had reached the point where he himself was compelled to undergo the labor of cleansing the ulcerated spirits of the multitude with the medicine of his oratory. And therefore, to soothe them, he addressed them thus:
"Do not, O men, be angry with me, your father. For if I am guilty of an offense because I showed myself kind and generous toward him, since I did not foresee his malice, what then must he be, who used my kindness and benefit to repay me with this sort of gratitude: plotting against my life? For it should not be considered a crime not to have foreseen deceit; this belongs to God alone. Furthermore, we are commanded by the prescription of the law to open our hearts to everyone, and to embrace and protect with fatherly affection and benevolence those who are endowed with faith. For Him who comes to me, Christ says, I will not cast out. It was a great thing to me that Maximus should have come from the superstition of the Greeks to baptism, and worship the Trinity in place of Hercules. It was a great thing to me that he was a man aspiring to virtue, even if in the final events he clearly showed the hypocrisy of his former life. But it is not for us to judge these things. For we do not penetrate the thoughts of men, nor do we have a clear view of future events, unless this be granted to us by the most wise counsel and gift of God. For we look at the face, but God looks into the heart itself, as you have heard." By this speech the anger of the multitude was calmed and repressed, and they were attached to the bishop with even greater benevolence.
C Now, when the Emperor Theodosius, who derived his lineage from Spain, had crossed into Macedonia with his army and was waging war against certain Western barbarians, Maximus, taking along a troop of Egyptian bishops—those who had designated him as a priest—set out for Thessalonica. He approached the Emperor and asked him for the bishopric of the imperial city. Since he had nothing to rely upon in the laws and ecclesiastical sanctions, he sought to claim the priesthood by imperial edict, as one who had purposed in his mind to act not as a priest, but as a tyrant. But they were ejected from there, the Emperor pursuing them with anger and vehement threats. What, then, did Maximus do (for ambition can scarcely be broken or conquered)? He sailed to Alexandria, and having enticed certain of Peter's household with gold by the same tricks, he attacked him also with equal wickedness. "Either," he said, "secure for me the bishopric of the imperial city, or I will not refrain from your own." And truly the bold deed of the man would have ended in open evil, had not the prefect of Alexandria, for fear of sedition and bloodshed, D sent him away from the city.
And indeed he received the rewards worthy of his audacity. A
But Gregory, pressed by the multitude of his labors and worn out and debilitated by various cares, was preparing for an return to his homeland. He addressed some final words to the people, exhorting them to keep the faith they had received and to cultivate the virtue he had shown them both by deed and by word. When the clergy and the people heard this, a single cry was raised by all, lamenting the departure of their shepherd. It was a miserable sight to behold: men and women, youths and elders, the learned and the unlearned, rulers and private citizens—all gripped by a harmonious weeping, unable to bear their bereavement, so much so that one of them, lifting his voice, dared to say, "O Father, you are casting out the Trinity along with yourself." Upon hearing this cry, the noble man checked his desire to depart and pledged to remain with them until the arrival of the bishops—whose coming was in hope and expectation—who would choose someone worthy of the bishopric, who would free him from his anxieties and grant him leave to depart. B And so they were dismissed, doubting nothing at all, as they trusted in the gravity and constancy of his character, which fulfilled the pledge of his promise, even though it was not confirmed by any oath.
When the dangers had been repelled and peace was restored to affairs, the dogma of the Trinity shone forth once again, and by the teaching and labors of the blessed man, the faith was extended to all. He cultivated it most beautifully, in a manner more excellent than that of the agriculture of Noah 10 which could be compared with it. For while cultivating the field of the Church, he plowed some souls as if with a plow, freeing them from the thorns of impiety; others he leveled—to use the word of the prophet 11—and into others he sowed the divine word. C Some were just then sprouting and taking root; others were already growing green and being girded, as it were, with joints; others were being formed into stalks; others were ripening and were more ready for the harvest; some were on the threshing floor, others in a stack; others, that they might be purified for Christ, were casting off the vile and worthless chaff of dogmas by means of winnowing; others were already worthy of the barns at home; and others, finally, were already bread fully prepared. For this is the end of agriculture, since it has the consumption of food as its goal, and for this reason it undertakes labors and gathers the harvest with a ready spirit. D And the labor of the man of God was thus great, so...
A much was he zealous for the salvation of many. Yet the enjoyment of it was not the same. For he did not partake of the fruits like a farmer; rather, he was generous without charge, sowing his labors indeed, but establishing for himself the Gospel without cost. From this it followed that he was loved more, and, being loved, was heard more, and brought more souls to God—not striking them with anger, but rooting out ignorance and boorishness with gentleness, and bringing a healthy state to their souls by means of his discourse. For some were captivated by the sweetness of his speech; others embraced the precision of his dogmas; others yielded to the man’s labors and endurance; others held his meekness in veneration; others were bound more closely to him by his simple, unstudied, and philosophical way of life; others, as having summoned him, cherished him like a prize, defending their own judgment and opinion in him. B And what is greater in his sagacity is that he did not entrust everything to everyone, but rather estimated the strength of each, just as a most excellent physician explores the condition of the sick, distributing the medicine appropriate to each person’s malady, and adhering to the principle of neither entrusting the most perfect mysteries to profane or infirm ears, nor keeping anything hidden from those who were perfect, as if begrudging them their benefit. Some he rebuked publicly, such as those whom it was necessary to impel toward repentance through shame; to others, he privately pointed out their errors. Some he reprimanded, when he judged it to be in their interest; others, to the contrary, whom he saw fulfilling their duty, he praised paternally and solicitously. For he did not do this in order to soothe them with adulation, but to pave the way for virtue and to advance them toward greater things through the approval of their right actions. For it is in this respect that rhetoric differs from philosophy. The former is wont to creep into the benevolence of others through base and huckster-like flattery and praise; the latter, on the other hand, looking toward their benefit, sweetens the discourse with praises as if with honey, and through the pleasure of the praises draws the listeners toward virtue.
Furthermore, he excelled so much in the sublimity of dogma and in theology that, although very many men renowned for the praise of their learning have labored in theological matters in various ages, he alone, after John the Evangelist, has been distinguished by the name of Theologian, and has obtained this surname as if it were his own and peculiar to him. And just as he had gathered every other virtue and praise within the bosom of his soul, so too was the grace of prophesying for the future not lacking in him. Nor, indeed, I well know, do you doubt this, all you who feast upon the wisdom of the man.
A It is fitting, however, for his writings and this history of his deeds to be adorned by his own words. The discourse runs as follows, taken from the speech delivered in the presence of the one hundred and fifty bishops:
"Such was this flock some time ago, and such it is now; even thus it is thriving and expanding. And if it has not yet reached perfection, it is at least progressing toward it through gradual additions; and I prophesy that it will continue to progress. This the Holy Spirit foretells to me, if I have any skill in prophecy and can see what lies ahead."
And not long after, that which was prophesied was fulfilled, the Church having imitated the sand of the sea in its multitude, B and the wonder of the prophecy confirmed the miracle of its outcome.
When the pious Theodosius, who has already been mentioned by us, was proclaimed emperor, and the free light of the Church shone forth, what need is there to recount how many public gatherings he cheered with his speeches, how many orthodox he calmed in their anger—those who were competing to pay back the heretics for the perversity and injuries they had formerly used, and who, with the changes of time, were contending to afflict with the same troubles those by whom they had been oppressed and tortured when they were in power? C What, then, did the blessed man say? "Christ does not ask for these things, O my flock, nor does the Gospel teach us thus. This is the time to bring back those who have wandered. Let them be taught to know their sins; let them fall at the Lord's feet; let them declare their impiety and be reunited with the flock. This I consider my vengeance: that those who have done wrong be saved, and confess that the things they previously persecuted are good. Be patient, my children. A man who is patient abounds in understanding. D Do well to those who hate you, and forgive them their offenses completely. But if anger still boils up excessively, and the passion is hard to restrain, let there be a second course from you. Leave these things to Christ, and commit them to the tribunal there. For vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." By such words he persuaded them to maintain peace.
When that war which had been waged against the western barbarians had quieted down, and had turned out as the emperor desired—he having exacted from them the punishment their audacity deserved, having taken captives, and having imposed tribute upon the defeated—he happened to arrive at the imperial city, elated and exultant in his triumphs.
A And then, receiving the high priest Gregory B with honor and in a manner worthy of his labors, he declared with more extensive discourse the readiness of his own will towards him, and finally said: "O Father, to you and to your toils God entrusts the Church through me. Behold, I deliver to you the holy house and the throne." The blessed Gregory, filled with wonderful joy, having greeted the emperor and rewarded him with prayers and good wishes, departed from the palace. But the Arians (for until this time they had held the holy house) prepared a band of assassins, determining to fight for it against the blessed man with arms. And they were indeed entreating the emperor not to allow the house to be taken away from them, fearing to oppose his power; yet they were threatening death to the pious man and those with him, being armed publicly, and having secretly instructed someone to approach the high priest and pierce his breast with a sword. Such was the conspiracy of the enemies.
When it was morning, the people of God, together with the shepherd, went to recover the holy house; there was much clamor and disturbance, no less than if a city were being besieged by the assault of enemies, with many armed men standing in the streets and in two-story and three-story houses, and with the loud wailing of women and children mingling therein. The emperor also entered the temple together with the blessed Gregory. But as many things are wont to happen in human affairs, it became dark at dawn, a cloud having passed under the sun's disc. And the occurrence, being foreign to a festival and cheerfulness of this kind, made the Arians all the more cheerful, as if God were not pleased with the transfer of the house; but intolerable grief tortured the souls of the faithful. But as soon as the bishop and the emperor entered within the sacred doors, C and all raised up one and the same voice of praise, and stretched out their hands with tears, immediately, by the providence of God, the cloud having been withdrawn, the shining rays of the sun bathed the holy house with splendor; and as the air became illuminated, men transformed the sadness of their minds into joy, and began to beseech and adjure the emperor to install the bishop upon the throne. But Gregory, since he shrank from that seat, and could not, because of his asceticism and the infirmity of his body, raise his voice in such a multitude of men, addressed the multitude through someone with these words: D "O children, now is the time to be mindful of the benefit, and to give thanks for what the Trinity has bestowed upon us. As for the throne, let us defer it to another time." These things he...
A said, and the people, receiving them, were calmed; but the emperor was struck with wonder at the man’s modesty. And thus the assembly was dissolved, Christ providing the greatest joy and security, so that both the preparation of arms and the fervor of fury were quieted; and only one sword that had been drawn was, without the shedding of any blood, replaced in its scabbard.
However, he was not permitted to avoid being established upon the throne to the end. For although he did not wish it, and strongly refused, yet a multitude of high priests established him in the seats of the prelacy. But these things [took place] a little later. Now, the emperor rejoiced in the man, bestowing upon him the honor and respect of a father. For indeed, even if the man was devoid of learning, he was pious and gentle, if anyone ever was. He himself, however, thinking it better to be at leisure for God than to be among the favors of the emperor, did not frequently converse in the imperial palaces. Observing that those who stood by the emperor were sick with greed, and that they accepted those who brought gifts, while greatly despising those who were like himself, he for this reason gave his attention to prayers, vigils, and teachings, and to the healing and visiting of the sick, cleansing himself and his flock for God through these things. Sometimes he would even withdraw to the countryside, longing for quiet and healing the constant strain of his labors by this means, so that his body might not faint before the labors that were to follow. He would go to the imperial courts only at long intervals, having well and fittingly pondered the saying in the Proverbs: B "Rarely bring your foot into your friend’s house, lest, when he is sated with you, he should hate you."
Having been appointed pastor of so great a Church, and having received both revenues and a multitude of treasures of every kind, he did not add to his own possessions even a single drachma from them; although, had he wished it, it would have been possible for him to acquire an abundance of talents. He sought no accounting of revenues and administration from those who managed the affairs of the Church, nor any inventory of sacred vessels, considering this work to be that of hucksters rather than churchmen, and of prefects rather than bishops. By these things he trained all men to offer to God the purity of their conscience, rather than to endeavor to justify their administration of their office to men, D while being brought to account.
Finally, broken by the persistence of his labors, by old age, and by illness, he was lying on his pallet, suffering from disease. And truly, a great multitude of the people suddenly entered the chamber where he lay. But he, as is wont to happen to those who are disturbed by some noise, turning his feet from the pallet, sat thus upon the ground; what...
the arrival of these men might mean. They, having given thanks A to God for what had occurred, and having prayed for the safety of the Emperor, for the recovery of the church and other holy houses, and for the Church of the orthodox—declaring the shepherd to be the author and architect of all these things—departed joyfully. A certain youth, however, remained behind, and clutching the feet of the blessed man with his own hands, with laments and tears implored the blessed one to forgive him for his transgression. When he inquired what this meant, he gave no answer, save to weep and to ask for pardon. Then one of those standing by said: "This, O father, is your assassin, who, induced by the malice of certain persons, was about to drive a sword into your heart, had not Christ clearly stood by to assist you. As far as their will was concerned, the deed was perpetrated. Therefore, now he falls at your feet and cries out, moved by penitence for the crime he had undertaken." Immediately the Father, as it was fitting for a father to do, addressed the youth thus: "May Christ be propitious to you, O dearest one, and may He Himself, who also delivered me, grant you pardon. I ask only this of you for the excuse and purgation of your crime: that you abjure the heresy, become my own, approach God, and serve Him with a sincere and voluntary service." The city, therefore, having heard of the forbearance of his reply, was inflamed with even greater love toward him. B
Now, at that time, from all the Roman Empire, except for Egypt and the western regions, a holy synod of one hundred and fifty bishops was assembled, both to appoint a faithful high priest for the imperial city and to oust those heresies which, in the meantime, while the Arians held power, had sprung up and rooted themselves in the Church by the decree of the ecumenical council. Regarding those things that pertained to the overthrow of the heresies, the great Gregory had long since prepared the way, driving them off like insidious beasts from the fold of the Church; and even in the presence of the holy synod itself, he contended with equal zeal alongside the others. The holy synod enthroned him, having as its leader the great shepherd of the Antiochenes, Meletius, a man pious in faith, who during the time of the Arian power had been driven from the Church and, having been exhausted by many calamities, had been subjected to long-term exile; and what need is there to recount what sort of character he possessed? For he was the same: both gentle and capable and effective in conducting affairs, temperate, just, brave, wise, and polished with every kind of virtue. C By his counsel and exhortation, Gregory’s bishopric of the imperial city was confirmed by the decree of the council. He himself, however, although otherwise D alien to the episcopacy, yet because of his longing for the flock, and because he thought that if he held [the see of] the imperial city, he would be able to settle the strifes circling around the inhabited world, as if from a watchtower...
and bring to unity with both hands the Churches that were divided, he chose to accept the bishopric. But when the holy Meletius ended his life in the imperial city, he was given a funeral procession so honorable and glorious that the whole city poured out for him and shed a great abundance of tears, and it was then especially that the magnitude of the city's population was known. Once again, contention began over the throne, and the bishops entered into a struggle against one another. For some, judging that what had been decided by their votes was just, wanted those things to remain firm; others opposed what had already been rightly decreed. But Gregory, since he had once accepted the chair, defended it, using such words toward them as these: "I, holy and venerable pastors, first refused to accept the leadership of the imperial city; and even if by my labors and sweat this Church here was built up and increased, it was enough for me to treasure these things for God, waiting for the reward from Him. But since the longing for the flock and your common vote compelled me to accept the chair, it does not seem to me that you are now acting rightly in this, overturning your own decisions—not to mention that you are not even in agreement among yourselves; but to some, it seems that what was already established should remain valid, while to others it seems otherwise. And truly, these things are not said by me because I seek wealth or a lofty chair, or desire to be called bishop of the imperial city. But first, to bear the orphanhood of my children with a calm mind is very difficult, and is a state of mind for someone mindless or stupid. Next, it is to be feared that you might seem by some envy or levity to change things recently decreed. But if the present state of affairs prevails among you, and what was established not long ago is despised as stale, I resign from the bishopric without grief. Take counsel, conduct your affairs and whatever has come into your mind. To me, solitude was dear in the past and is so now. For those who take away the throne will not therefore cut me off from God." B C
Having said these things, and feeling that the many were eager for the setting up of another, he left the house where he was staying and looked for another far from the Church, fleeing the tumults and the annoyances of the crowds. Many of the people, therefore, flocked there, weeping, supplicating, and entreating him to have mercy on the flock which he had nourished and increased with such great labors and sweat. "Grant this favor," they said, "to those dearest to you, and to us upon whom you have already spent the vigor of your life, bestow also what remains of it; so that we might have your body as a relic, we who have been enlightened by your teaching." To these, as one who loves his children D
the father was indeed softened, A but he was at a loss as to what he should do, and he implored God to dispose of things as was fitting. While matters were in this state, bishops arrived who had been called to Byzantium from both Egypt and Macedonia, while the aforementioned synod was still gathered in the city. And indeed they, since blessed Gregory had been placed upon the throne without their consent, being obsessed by human emotion, opposed the decree: not that they bore him any hatred (as they confirmed to him by secret missives), B but that they might take vengeance on those who had promoted him, as they had bestowed the episcopal see upon Gregory without their opinion. But the blessed man, when all the bishops had gathered together for this purpose, stood in the midst of the assembly and spoke as follows:
"Men, fellow-pastors of the holy flock of Christ, it would be shameful and entirely alien to you if, while you teach others peace, you yourselves should stir up an internal war among you. For how would you persuade others to concord, while you yourselves disagree concerning your own opinions and decrees? But I beseech you by the Trinity itself, that you conduct your affairs among yourselves in a noble and peaceful manner. But if I am, in any way, the cause of dissension among you, I do not surpass the prophet Jonah in integrity of life. Cast me into the sea, C and the storm of tumults will cease from among you. Whatever seems good to you, although I am immune from guilt, I will gladly endure for the sake of your concord. Drive me from the throne, cast me out of the city. Only love the truth and peace, as Zechariah says. Farewell, holy pastors, and remembering my labors, do not cease."
Having spoken these things, a certain shame possessed them, being pricked by his words. Then he, intending to go into Cappadocia, departed from the council, affected simultaneously by pleasure and sorrow: the former because he had found a respite from his labors, the latter on account of the flock, as to how he might abandon it. D Going then into the palace, he asked a favor of the Emperor, having first addressed him with these words: "May Christ, O Emperor, reward you in the day of retribution for your merits toward the Church. But do not be burdened, most powerful prince, to grant the favor which I now ask of you. I am not a suppliant to you for money; nor do I covet precious coverings for altars, nor am I seeking dignities for my relatives; but I beseech you that I might be freed from my labors. Let envy also cease; let the bishops cultivate peace, and do you most especially strive for this matter; suppress the war of the priests, you who have checked the audacity of the barbarians; the greatest trophies of your power in one
thing, namely, the concord of the bishops. This is the gift I ask of you; this last favor grant me." A Having admired what was said, both the Emperor and those of the senatorial rank, as if consumed by a violent longing for him, released him with difficulty, having granted him his departure.
While he was still tarrying in the capital, a certain Nectarius, born in the Cilician city of Tarsus, was established as bishop of that Church by the synod. But Gregory, having summoned the clergy and the most distinguished among the people, and having exhorted them to keep the deposit of the faith and to perform the commandments of God, after embracing them and drawing many tears from all, set out on his journey. He came to Arianzus, a village of Cappadocia, which he possessed B by paternal inheritance, having come down to it. Much time having passed since Basil the Great had migrated from this life to God, having exchanged these present things for a more sublime life, after writing the funeral oration in his praise, he went to the holy metropolis of the Caesareans; and having addressed the discourse to the Church, he returned home.
And since he had been a long time away from his fatherland because of his stay in the capital (for report says he spent twelve years in Byzantium), it happened that some of the disciples of Apollinarius in the second province of the Cappadocians seduced many with the speeches of their impiety, and advanced to such a degree of audacity C that they even ordained bishops in that region, not sparing even Nazianzus itself. He, however, purged Nazianzus of such a pollution as quickly as possible; but though he was earnestly entreated to preside over his fatherland, he would not accept the episcopacy (for he was marvelously pursuing a quiet life); but he established a certain Eulalius as shepherd of Nazianzus, whom he held in great esteem, as one who honored him and was of a moderate character. He himself, being constrained by infirmity, found refreshment at Arianzus.
When he was no longer able to travel, he wrote to the presbyter Cledonius, a godly man and a true servant of God, and to certain others, that they should not receive the plague of the heresy D and that they should guard the deposit.
A and to reject those of the Apollinarians, as lawless and alien to the Catholic Church. And he did not stop at using mere protest against them, but wrote more extensively, overturning and crushing the individual, abortive heads of the impiety of Apollinarius, as is clearly shown both by those two letters to Cledonius, and no less by the poetic discourses which he left behind. Regarding the poetic works I mentioned earlier, he had a twofold purpose: first, to expose as childish and powerless the lawless decree of the tyrant Julian, which forbade Christians from the study of Greek literature; and second, because he saw that Apollinarius had woven many books in various kinds of verse, and through them—as he was a learned man and gifted in speech—had enticed many into his heresy, he deemed it necessary, while resting in Arianzo after his return and leading a life of leisure—free, as it were, from worldly affairs—to apply himself to the composition of verse; and from this is gathered the copious material for this present account.
B When he had spent some time there in solitude, having purified his life through philosophy and applied his mind to a higher contemplation, he exchanged this perishable life in his advanced old age for the better and more sublime state of things, of which even the faint shadows can scarcely be found here. I, for my part, have performed the duty of honoring Gregory to the best of my ability, as far as it concerned me, to satisfy the wishes of the good Father and of those who were eager to hear his life, and so that we might have a certain small description of his life briefly comprised. For to set forth all his praises and the ornaments of his life, or to treat them according to the dignity of the subject, would be so difficult and arduous that I do not know if even those who have attained the highest praise of erudition could accomplish it. But you, blessed Father, and inspector and witness of that true tabernacle (Hebr. viii, 2), where there is the voice of rejoicing and salvation (Ps. cxvii, 15) of those praising God, both angels and saints, be mindful of your Gregory, who labored on this C little oration for you. For although I fall short of the power that would be worthy, while speaking these things about you, nevertheless you will not blame my readiness. For that is your own sacred voice, saying that to God that which is according to one's power is acceptable.
SELECT TESTIMONIA OF THE ANCIENTS AND MODERNS. SELECT TESTIMONIA OF THE ANCIENTS. IN PRAISE OF SAINT GREGORY.
A Ex Basilio (epist. 8). A vessel of election, and a deep well; I mean the mouth of Christ, Gregory.
Ex Hieronymo, *Catalogo script. eccles.*, n. CXVII, tom. IV, part. II, pag. 126. Gregory, first Bishop of Sasima, then of Nazianzus, a most eloquent man, my teacher, from whom I learned the explanation of the Scriptures, composed all his works, numbering thirty thousand lines, among which are these: *On the Death of his brother Caesarius*; *Praises of the Maccabees*; *Praises of Athanasius*; *Praises of Maximus the Philosopher*, who returned after his exile, which some, under a false name, attributed to Heron, because there is another book containing a vituperation of the same Maximus; as if it were not permitted to one and the same person to both praise and vituperate at different times. And a book in hexameter verse, of Virginity and Marriage arguing against each other. One book *Against Eunomius*; one book *On the Holy Spirit*; two books *Against the Emperor Julian*. He followed Polemon in his style of speaking: and while living, ordaining himself bishop in his own place, he practiced the life of a monk in the country. And he died almost three years ago, under the Emperor Theodosius.
Ex Rufino, *Prologo in orat. Gregorii, quas Latine reddidit*. Gregory, a man incomparable in all things, clear in word and deed, provided a most brilliant light of the knowledge of Christ to the Churches, while he taught what he practiced, nor did he condemn himself by doing the contrary of what he taught. And after much intervening text: Of this man, neither is his life more acceptable nor more holy, nor his eloquence more clear nor more illustrious, nor his faith more pure nor more correct, nor his knowledge more full nor more perfect in being able to be found, seeing he is the only one whose faith parties and schools—even those divided among themselves (as usually happens)—could dispute; but he has obtained this merit before the Lord and the Churches of God, that whoever has dared to gainsay his doctrine in anything, is by that very fact proved to be a heretic. For it is a manifest sign that a man is not of the right faith who does not agree with Gregory in faith.
Ex Theodoro Studita, *Iamb. LXVII*, pag. 766, *edit. Sirmondi*. B Thou who with powerful voice didst thunder forth Oracles, divine, the whole world heard: And destroying all heresies at the root, Your discourse strengthened the whole world.
*Idem ibid. Antirrhetico II adversus Iconomachos*, pag. 123. We shall certainly hear the very coryphaei of the Fathers, Gregory the Theologian . . . Basil also the Great.
Ex Suida, *Lexic. tom. I*, pag. 496. Gregory, Bishop of Nazianzus (Nazianzus being a station in Cappadocia), a most eloquent man, the closest friend of Basil, Bishop of the city of Caesarea in Cappadocia. He flourished not only in the praise of grammar and poetry, but practiced philosophy far more, and was distinguished in the art of oratory. He composed a great many things in prose. For he put together his works to the number of thirty thousand lines, among which are these: *On the death of his brother Caesarius*, a funeral oration *on the death of his father*, another *at the funeral of his sister Gorgonia*, *On the love of the poor*, *Praises of the Maccabees*, *of Cyprian*, *of Athanasius*, *of Heron the philosopher*, two orations *Against Julian*, one book *On the Holy Spirit*, ten *panegyrical orations*, and many others known to everyone. In his style of writing he followed Polemon of Laodicea, who taught rhetoric in C Smyrna, and was the teacher of the orator Aristides. Another:
book in hexameters, in which virginity and married life discourse with one another, as well as works on other subjects in all sorts of different meters, which amount to thirty thousand verses.
The Arian Philostorgius also makes mention of this Gregory in his own history, saying: "At that time, Gregory was flourishing in the city of Nazianzus—Nazianzus being a station in Cappadocia—Basil in the city of Caesarea in Cappadocia, and Apollinarius in Laodicea in Syria. These three men were at that time champions of the *homoousion*, that is, the consubstantial, against those who professed that the essence of the Son was different from the essence of the Father; and they far excelled all who, before or after, down to my own age, undertook the defense of that same sect, so much so that even Athanasius was esteemed a mere boy in comparison to them. For they had attained the greatest height of secular learning, B and in the Holy Scriptures they had no common experience regarding what was suitable for reading and ready recall, and this was especially true of Gregory. Each of them was indeed most capable in his own style of writing. Apollinarius excelled in the commentary style; Basil was remarkably distinguished in panegyric; but as for Gregory, although he was disciplined in both, his discourse tended even more toward prose composition. And just as he was grander and fuller than Apollinarius in speaking, so in turn he was more stable [or: firmer] than Basil. Furthermore, their skill in both speaking and writing was so great, and their characters were so composed, that even by their mere appearance they could most easily attract most people to themselves. Thus, partly by the sight of them, partly by their discourses, and partly by the treatises they published, they drew to their side and into their intimacy those who were more easily captured by any of these means." C Such things Philostorgius, even though an Arian, recorded concerning them in passing.
Furthermore, while Gregory was still alive, he appointed a bishop to the church of Nazianzus in his place and led a monastic life in the country. Having reached the age of ninety years and more, in the thirteenth year of the reign of Theodosius, he departed this life, having suffered one thing unworthy of his virtue: that he was expelled from the throne of the imperial city, and that men of inferior quality were preferred to one who surpassed all in virtue and the brilliance of his life.
From Simeon Metaphrastes
D This great Gregory the Theologian set forth his own life in those funeral orations in which he honors Basil the Great, his father Gregory, his brother Caesarius, and his sister Gorgonia. And therefore those who have written his life have taken the substance of their account from no other source than his own works. This one thing must necessarily be stated: if it was necessary for there to exist among men a certain image and column consisting of all the virtues, it was Gregory. For when he had surpassed in the brilliance of his life those who flourished in the praise of action, he progressed further in contemplation, so that all others yielded to him in the praise of wisdom and doctrine, as much in that which concerns words as in that which concerns the dogmas of the faith. Whence he also obtained the surname of Theologian. As for his physical form, he was of middling stature, slightly pale, yet not without grace, his nose depressed, his eyebrows stretched in a straight line, his expression mild and sweet, his one eye, namely the right, somewhat sad, which even a scar...
A contracted into a certain shape, without a long beard (he was bald), he had white hair, yet thick on the top. Where he was not bald (for the parts under the beard showed as if smeared with smoke).
*Canon concerning Saint Basil, from the Bollandist Appendix to the volume of June II, Ode VII.*
O most holy union of minds, and sacred fellowship! You who are like one single and indivisible soul in two bodies, Basil in Gregory, united by divine love, and Gregory in Basil; pray now to Christ for our flock.
I could have appended to these the testimonies of Haimo of Halberstadt, in chapter 4, book X of his *Ecclesiastical History*; of Ado of Vienne in his *Chronicle* of the sixth age; of Godfrey of Viterbo in the sixth part of his *Chronicle*, where he speaks of Julian; of Petrus de Natalibus in his *Catalog of Saints*, book II, chapter 69; of Pietro Crinito, book VII, chapter 4, *De honesta disciplina*; of Trithemius in his work *On Ecclesiastical Writers*; of Mantuanus, book I, *Fasti*; and of Sabellicus in his seventh *Ennead*, book X. But because all these could draw from no other source than those whom we have cited above, I saw no reason why I should repeatedly serve you the same warmed-over cabbage. Therefore, I shall put an end here, but not before I have rendered into Latin, as best I could, the epigram of Psellus, a Greek writer, concerning our Nazianzen, and, by way of a finial, have added the judgment of the great Erasmus himself on the same.
EPIGRAM OF PSELLUS
Let us sing of the immortal glory of divine wisdom, Gregory, under whose leadership the new Rome flourished. He excelled in the powers of eloquence and the refinement of language: he brought forth mellifluous sounds from a sweet mouth. The greatest praise for the doctrine of both realms shone in him, whether you wish to call them profane dogmas or sacred ones. O hail, most dear partner of virginity, which dwells first in the highest divinity, then in the angelic choirs, and in the pure embraces of men: and joyously and constantly warms your bed. B Hail, pillar of the Christian people, greatest defender of the race; bearing the divinity of the Triad in your Stentorian voice. Hail, most certain plague of heretical madness, by which the Libyan and the Macedonian simultaneously fall, and you who destroy Arius, by whose horrible and Stygian fury the most holy Triad was rent. Hail, priest of doctrine, and sole care of the Muses, glory of eloquence and rhetoric. Mourning dancer, you who are filled with the divinity of the Triad, you proclaim Him also to all who are born of the earth.
THE JUDGMENT OF ERASMUS ON GREGORY NAZIANZEN
*Epistle prefixed to the edition of Claudius Chevallonius, 1532.*In Gregory Nazianzen, piety almost competes on equal terms with eloquence; but he loves meaningful subtleties, which are the more difficult to render into Latin because most of them reside in the very wording. Indeed, his entire phraseology approaches somewhat the structure of Isocrates. Add to this that he willingly and frequently philosophizes about divine things, which can scarcely be explained in any human words. His brother Basil encompasses, with a certain sweet and unaffected flow of diction, both piety and learning, and acuteness, wherever the matter demands, and clarity, and pleasantness, and any other virtue that anyone could desire in a Christian orator. John Chrysostom was the associate of Basil’s more sincere life, as in letters, so also in profession, and (if I may say so) his Achates, and almost everything he wrote, he accommodated to the popular grasp, C and for that reason he is both more fluid and simpler; and he preferred to walk in common places rather than to dwell upon the most difficult questions. One age brought forth these three men among the Greeks, equals in piety and not unequal in erudition, but dissimilar in the character of their diction. If you wish to compare them with our own, Chrysostom is not unlike Augustine; Gregory, unlike Ambrose, who, if he had written in Greek, would have provided much trouble for a translator. Whom I should compare to Basil, I do not yet find, unless there be someone who combines the knowledge of the Scriptures, which Jerome possessed, with the happy facility of Lactantius. Me, certainly, the subtlety of the diction, the sublimity of the subject matter, and the rather obscure allusions have always deterred from translating Gregory. That province, with a certain extraordinary ardor of piety, our Bilibaldus took upon himself, and for whom he died.
*Of those who among the ancient authors remembered Nazianzen and brought forth testimonies from his writings.*
There has existed hardly any writer in all of Greece—I speak of ecclesiastical ones—who has not made a most honorific mention of Gregory, and brought forth testimonies from his works. Damascenus certainly, not content to confirm his own writings with his (Gregory’s) authority time and again, D has compiled him in six hundred places in such a way that he has been accustomed to weave a good part of his books on the Orthodox faith from his books, transferring whole periods into his own volumes without changing any words. This is what I had determined to make clear by producing certain passages, had I not discovered it to be so frequent on his part that, at first glance, the theft is detected.
A What am I to say of Theodoret, who also affected the very manner of the Theologian? This is most clearly evident from the single chapter of the fourth book of his *Haereticarum Fabularum*, where he compiled his discourse from various writings of Gregory. For when speaking of Nestorius, he says: "Changing from one land to another, like some Egyptian plague, he attacked the great city of the Antiochenes; in this city, having partaken moderately of liberal speech..., he stole into the Church of God." And a little further down: "From here on, for me, the dramas, of which the whole earth and sea are nearly full." Are not these two passages transcribed word-for-word from the Athanasian oration of Gregory? Again, these words: "He is entrusted with the presidency of the orthodox Catholic Church at Constantinople, and no less that of the entire inhabited world," are the very words of Gregory, although I do not recall the place at the moment. He expresses this with other words in the *Basiliad*: "Through the one city of Caesarea, to flash upon the whole world." Now, since the same Theod. says in the same place, "For when he had taken that greatest throne, having seized control of the priesthood like some tyranny," he undoubtedly received these from Gregory, in whose Athanasian [oration] these words are: "For it is not mine to seize the throne, as do tyrants, or some strange inheritance." Again, those words: "For the most part staying at home, occupied with books, and spending time alone in quiet," are taken from his oration against the Arians. But enough of this. B However, the extent of the reputation and authority his monuments held in the universal Church cannot be demonstrated by any argument more clearly than the fact that the Latins could not bear to be without them for even a moment, but took care that they be immediately transferred into Latin, and illustrated their own books with his testimonies. We, omitting the rest, shall bring forward only the beacons themselves.
Jerome [(46)] makes him his teacher in the *Catalogus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum* and in his first *Apologia* against Rufinus: "Is an injury done to you," he says, "because I have followed Apollinaris and Didymus for your sake? Could I not have named Gregory, a most eloquent man, in that letter? Who among the Latins is his equal? I glory and exult in him as my master." He seems to call Gregory inferior among the Latins in order to note Rufinus: who, although he himself was most eloquent among his own, had conducted himself poorly in the translation of some of his orations, and had not replied successfully enough to such great eloquence.
The same Jerome [(47)], explaining that passage in Eph. V, 32, *This is a great sacrament; but I, etc.*, says: "Gregory Nazianzen, a man highly eloquent, and excellently learned in the Scriptures, when discussing this passage with me, used to say: 'See how great the sacrament of this chapter is, so that the Apostle applies it to Christ and the Church,' not asserting it himself as the dignity of the testimony demanded, but having said in a certain way: 'I know that this place is full of ineffable sacraments, and the divine heart seeks an interpreter.'" C
Augustine [(48)] in epistle CXLVII to Fortunatianus, after citing certain passages from Athanasius, says: "Gregory also, the holy bishop of the Orient, most openly says that God, invisible by nature, when He appeared to the fathers, as to Moses, with whom He spoke face to face, could have been seen by the assumption of the disposition of some visible material, while His invisibility was preserved." He cites Ambrose thereafter.
The same [(49)] in book I *Contra Julianum Pelagianum*, concerning original sin, after citing the bishops of the West, speaks thus of Gregory Nazianzen, whom he names first among the bishops of the Orient: "But there will not be lacking to you an illustrious bishop of great name and most celebrated fame, even from the parts of the Orient, whose eloquence, by merit of great grace, has shone everywhere, even being translated into the Latin tongue. Let holy Gregory, therefore, sit with these Fathers (the Latins, that is), and with them suffer the empty envy of your accusation, provided that, while with them, he brings forth his own medicinal sentence against your novelty-seeking plague. Listen, therefore, to what he says: 'May the image of God purge the stain of bodily inundation, and lift up to itself the flesh joined to the Word of God by its wings.' And although," etc. He cites later from the oration *De baptismo*: "Does the authority of the Oriental bishops in the one Gregory seem small to you? He is indeed such a person, that neither would he say this if it were not a matter most known to all by Christian faith, nor would those who hold him so bright and venerable acknowledge it, unless they recognized these things as spoken by him from the rule of the most known truth." The same in book II against the same, p. 530, cites and explains Nazianzen from the book *Apologeticus*. And in the book *De dono perseverantiae* cap. 19, he brings forward testimony from the oration *In Pentecosten*: where, however, for 'he will pray,' it should have been translated 'we will pray.' D
Pope Gregory [(50)], in the prologue to the third part of the *Pastoral Care*, cites our Theologian thus: "As Gregory Nazianzen of reverend memory taught long before us, 'Not one and the same exhortation is suitable for all, because an equal quality of morals does not bind all.'" These words are of our Gregory from his *Apologeticus*.
Pope Leo [(51)], honored by the title 'the Great,' who undertook the pontificate around the year of our Lord 441, in epistle CXXXIV to Leo Augustus against the blasphemies of Nestorius and Eutyches, cites these words of holy Gregory, bishop of Nazianzus, in his homily *De Epiphania*: "When, therefore, God had proceeded from the Virgin, in the human nature which He had assumed, existing as one of two things mutually contrary to each other, in flesh and
spirit, the one being assumed into God, the other contributing by the grace of deity." Below, he says: "He was indeed sent, but as man. For a double nature existed in Him." Hence, finally, He labored from travel, and hence He hungered, and thirsted, and was sorrowful, and wept, by the law of human body. B He afterwards cites Basil, Bishop of Cappadocia.
Vincent of Lérins, toward the end of the book which he learnedly wrote against profane novelties, writes that the writings of the Nazianzen were read at the Council of Ephesus, held in his time against Nestorius. "There were also added," he says, "those luminaries of Cappadocia: the holy Gregory, bishop and confessor from Nazianzus or Nazianzo; and the holy Basil, bishop of Cæsarea in Cappadocia."
However, what was read from the Nazianzen in that council is related by Rusticus the Deacon against the Acephali, where he discusses the distinction between "One" and "Oneness," "Another" and "Other." "It (the Ephesian Council, clearly) confirmed its dogmas," he says, "amidst the readings of the blessed Gregory Nazianzen, speaking thus: 'Another indeed, and Other, from which is the Savior: since the invisible is not the same as the visible, and that which is intemporal as that which is subtemporal.'" Which words are taken from the first epistle to Cledonius, which he cites in the same book in several places; and he also asserts that heretics (since they leave nothing unattempted and uncorrupted), and especially the Nestorians, attempted to distort certain sentiments of the Nazianzen for the confirmation of their own error. For thus a heretic, who is introduced speaking there, objects: "The man whom the Apostle divided as if into two, the holy-memory Gregory calls one in all ways, lest by comparing him to Christ, he might seem to affirm two Christs," etc. And afterwards: "The Apostle said somewhere: 'For how much did those who are outside,'" etc. There follows an explanation of the passages of Paul and the Nazianzen. For there, against the heretics, that sentiment of the Theologian is explained at length: "Thus from two natures is Christ, just as man is from soul and body." For the heretic was proposing the former as standing in between, as if from its own parts, just as he did some others, which Rusticus himself explains in the same book in more detail.
C Gelasius, on the two natures in Christ against Eutyches and Nestorius, citing the testimonies of many ancient theologians, such as Ignatius, Eustathius, Hippolytus, Athanasius, and Eusebius Pamphili, also praises these from Gregory Nazianzen in his *Nativity of the Lord* (53): "Christ was twofold, man indeed in what He appeared, but God in what He did not appear, eating indeed as man truly and just as we do. For He had a passibility of flesh similar to ours." In the same place, he also brings forward many things from his former epistle to Cledonius, just as he also does from the epistle to Nectarius.
John, the Roman Bishop, responding to the three questions of Emperor Justinian in order to prove that Christ is one of the persons of the Trinity, after Augustine, cites these words of Gregory Nazianzen from his sermon on the Epiphany (54): "When I say God, we are utterly illuminated by one light simultaneously and by three; one indeed according to the properties or substances of each, as it pleases some to say, or persons (for nothing should be disagreed upon due to a diversity of vocabulary, since the diversity of names leads to the same sense and understanding), but one according to substance, or the reason of deity. It is divided, therefore, so to speak, indivisibly, and is joined divisibly; one is the deity in three."
Justinian the Emperor, in his *Edict against the Three Chapters*, in order to assert two natures and the unity of person in Christ, names the holy Gregory the Theologian again and again (*Concil. tom. V*, p. 695, 698).
Saint Theodore the Studite brings forward the testimonies of Gregory in many places (55), either for the patronage of his own opinion, or to vindicate the words of the holy doctor from the perverse interpretations of heretics. Thus in *Antirrhetico II against the Iconoclasts* (*tom. V Oper. Sirmondi*, p. 107). Item, ibid. pp. 125, 126, 127. Item in *Refutation of Impious Poems*, p. 193. Again *Against the Iconoclasts*, ch. vi and vii, pp. 213 et seq. Again in *Epist. lib. II, epist. xxxvi*, p. 445. And finally *epist. CLIV*, p. 623.
Of the works and writings of the Nazianzen
D Everything that is inscribed with the name of the Nazianzen is beyond controversy his, except for the paraphrase of Ecclesiastes, which is falsely attributed to him, as we have taught in the argument derived from Jerome; and the commentary on Ezekiel, which is either not his or certainly not edited by him.
Two of his orations exist, rendered into Latin by Rufinus, which are not in the Greek copy. (Billius wrongly attributed these orations to Gregory, as we noted in the preface.)
From his learned homily on the saying in the Gospel, it appears he composed many others of that kind: as it is certain that he preached to the people often from the pulpit at Nazianzus and Constantinople and elsewhere. And perhaps he published commentaries on the holy books, and he seems to have illustrated the Epistle of Paul to the Philippians in his writings. For at the end of the *Anathema of the Morals* of Cyril, it is read thus: "Of the holy Bishop Gregory on the Epistle to the Philippians." And this fragment is ascribed here: "Let this be understood," he says, "what is also in Christ Jesus, who, when He was in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal to God: but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant." "What is poorer in God than the form of a servant? What is more humble in the King of all, than to come of His own accord to the communion of our poor nature? The King of kings and Lord of lords puts on the form of a servant: index o…
PREFACES OF JAMES BILLIUS
is clothed in the form of a servant: the Judge of all becomes subject to the powers of a creature: the Lord is laid in a cave; He who contains all things finds no place in the inn, but is thrown into a manger for beasts; the pure and immaculate One takes on the filth of human nature, and passing through our poverty in all things, comes even to the experience of death. Consider the measure of this voluntary poverty: Life tastes death; the Judge is led to judgment; the Lord of all existing things is submitted to the sentence of a judge; the King of all virtues, which are beyond the world, does not reject the hands of lictors. A Such things there from the bishop Gregory, which our Nazianzen might appear to be, when straightway another testimony is submitted from Basil the Great concerning the fruit of Christ’s passion. But Nyssen and the Neocaesarean, so far as I know, have written nothing on this Epistle to Paul.
Baptista Guarinus, son of the most learned Guarini, is said to have translated into Latin the orations of Gregory Nazianzen to Christ and Mary in the appendix: the catalogues of ecclesiastical writers of Trithemius and the Library of Lycosthenes, as also the blessed Rhenanus, [mention] two epistles of the same to Themistius. But these have not yet been able to fall into my hands, either in Greek or in Latin. B
These are the things which Billius collected and adorned for the praise and illustration of the eminent Doctor. We have added a few things, either unknown to Billius or not yet brought to light. It remains now that we append here the prefaces of Billius, Leuvenklaius, Genebrardus, and others who have applied their hand to the works of Gregory. Perhaps it might have been permitted to omit the letter of Billius addressed to Cardinal Charles of Lorraine and prefixed to the previous edition. But out of reverence for such a man, we have decided to connect the booklet, in which he so elegantly describes and so bitterly laments the calamitous storms of his own age, with the other monuments of his genius, especially so that we do not allow the reader to miss the slightest thing even from the ancient editions.
TO THE MOST REVEREND FATHER IN CHRIST AND LORD, LORD CHARLES, CARDINAL OF LORRAINE, AND MOST ILLUSTRIOUS PRINCE, JAMES BILLIUS, ABBOT OF ST. MICHAEL IN EREMO, SENDS GREETINGS.
That which that leader of all philosophy, Plato (56), says, that the extreme of high and unbridled liberty is a follower of ultimate servitude, which also Hippocrates (57) says is true of the conditions of bodies brought to the extreme of goodness—that they are dangerous: this in our Christian republic, every one of us, not without the greatest grief of all pious men, experiences in this miserable tempest. For if anyone were to compare that flourishing state, in which religion existed within the memory of the Fathers, with that which we see in these most lost times, he would surely find that as far as the East is from the West (23), so great is the difference between the two states. Nor, in a matter so manifest, do I think there is need of a long speech. C It is rather to be lamented and groaned over that we have not been able to hold so famous an inheritance received from our ancestors. But surely it is true, as the saying goes, that satiety is the mother of contumely and insolence.
We, overwhelmed by prosperity as if by a certain nectar, were ignorant of our own goods, nor were we able to swallow (59) the great wealth, as Pindar (58) says of Tantalus: and the same thing happened to us which we read formerly happened often to the Jews, who as soon as they were fattened, gorged, and dilated, they straightway kicked (24), so that what that Appius used to say about the Romans, that business could be committed to them better than leisure, may not undeservedly be turned against us, and the Church may aptly use these words of Hezekiah: Behold, in peace my bitterness was most bitter (25). In such tranquility, sleep crept upon those who sat at the helm of the Church. Not to apply themselves to the study of sacred letters, not to feed the people committed to them with life-giving doctrine, not to shine before the rest by integrity of life and holiness; but either to sleep, or to watch only for themselves—and indeed to watch in such a way that it would have been better to sleep soundly. What kind of governor, such are the pilots, such the sailors, such the guards; and, as Scripture says, like priest, like people (26), of evil seed an evil harvest, of evil masters evil disciples, a bad expression of a bad example. We have all turned aside, we have become worthless (27). The shepherds grew languid through sloth: the people had such shepherds as they deserved.
D Meanwhile our wily enemy, (59*) "who scratches and licks the itch and festering ulcers of this lower world, who where there is any vice or corruption, sits by the corpses and handles the rot," while the shepherds were ceasing in their duty, crept secretly into the field of the Lord and oversowed cockle (28), and by the most just judgment of God stirred up such a storm and perturbation of all things, that since the foundations of our religion were laid, scarcely any greater or more bitter disaster has existed: and in order to make a greater slaughter in the camps of God, he thought to put on the mask of an angel of light, so that the more secretly, by so much more harmfully and perniciously might he sow his virus.
He instilled it into simpler minds. Under this mask, he so confounded A all things and tossed them up and down, that we have almost fallen back into ancient chaos, and have become as if in the beginning when God did not rule over us, nor was His name invoked upon us (Isa. lxiii, 19). Charity seems to have bid a long farewell to the earth; all reins have been loosed for wickedness and impudence. Everything is full of hatred, wrangling, and cursing; full of malice and virulent contention. There is no distinction between friends and enemies. No one examines himself more closely, but thinks his own safety is secured while he attacks others with every bitterness and acerbity of spirit. "Goods perish," as our Gregory says (60), "evils are naked and open; the navigation is in the night, the beacon is nowhere, Christ sleeps." Charity growing cold, or rather being extinguished, iniquity abounds in the world (Matt. xxiv, 12). Furthermore, since iniquity is overflowing and growing to an immense size, it is no wonder that the avenging sword of God and those burning arrows (Ps. vii, 17) should fall upon us.
Therefore, I do not know if we might not more fittingly apply to our own time what Epiphanius (61) once said about his own age because of the same cause: "It is to be wondered at in this time, and not to be wondered at. To be wondered at, because in our century all things are being fulfilled; but not to be wondered at, because it is necessary that they be fulfilled." And after a few words interposed: "Whither has the mind of man, prone to evil from his youth, progressed? What parts of the faith has it not lost? In what disputations has not the perversity of counsel disturbed what is useful?" For what else? Does not that most holy man seem to point, as it were with his finger, to this most lamentable age, in which either new dogmas are brought forward daily, or those already suppressed and buried long ago are recalled to the light? For Satan was not content with using lesser weapons against us, unless he also fetched poisons, as he says, from heaven, and, from the most wholesome fountains of life corrupted by himself, offered us death—that arrow flying by day (Ps. xc, 6), that is, so that through heretics in the understanding of the holy Scriptures, he might wound the Church.
Hence those many and so dissected sects, which he scatters throughout the whole Christian world by his satellites, who would that they themselves were less prodigies regarding their own salvation and that of others! Would that they would repress that pride and arrogance of theirs, and would not prefer to condemn all antiquity to blindness and ignorance rather than confess their own error! But this, above all, self-love—the surest parent of all heresies—possesses: that it absolutely tears away the eyes and all sense of the disease from those who are infected with this vice, and indeed affects them in the same way as Seneca (62) writes that his foolish Harpaste suffered, who, when she B had ceased to see, nevertheless did not know she was blind, but laid it to the dark house, and said she wished to move elsewhere. From which it follows that they cannot yield to anyone at all, but so desperately love and embrace the figments of their own brain that they would rather be torn from their own bowels than be drawn away from an opinion once conceived. (63) Thus the lost destroy, and the depraved infuse the error of their depravity, and prepare to scatter their virus in every direction: so that not without reason does that Cyprian bishop (64) call them "exciters of the sheep and disturbers of the doves, and chasers of the lambs and nurslings of Christ." Thus the impure enemy tries in every way to take away and root out from the root the entire fruit of that memorable punishment which Christ endured on the cross, so that He might gather into one (Joan. x, 52) the children of God who were dispersed. For nothing afflicts and tortures Him more gravely than the peace and concord of others, of which He sees Himself to be devoid through His own wickedness. There is nothing He seeks more greedily, and in which He labors more vehemently, than to extort from us that noble legacy of love and benevolence which Christ left to His Church by testament. And therefore He sows every contention He can in the house of God, and, as Jerome said regarding death (65), "He divides brothers, and cruelly and harshly dissociates the dearest names among themselves."
These things, alas, we do not now draw in with our ears, but with our very eyes: we do not now read, but we feel, and how great a "most evil of demons," to use the word of Euripides, heresy is, we know not so much from the memory of annals, but from our own calamities. We see many and grave storms of heresies indeed described in the monuments of the ancients; but those which we ourselves perceive and feel affect us much more gravely. For as things set at a distance from the eyes appear much smaller than those which are viewed at a closer interval, in the same way it cannot be but that a present calamity brands upon us much more grave grief than those which we gaze upon in the books of historians as if painted on a tablet. And surely it was just that we, who neglected to be instructed by the most sad examples of our neighbors, should at last be proposed as an example to others, and that the rest should take from us a document, what was to be feared in the same cause. And would that we were made better, at least by blows, as the Phrygians, and indeed when repeated again and thirdly, and not rather be numbed to such hard wounds. But, which can scarcely be said without tears, we seem to have grown callous to the sense of pain. For we are dissipated, as the Prophet says, and not pricked. The Lord struck us, and we did not grieve; He wore us out, and we refused to receive correction.
A If wild beasts ever escape from traps, they diligently flee from all those places where they suspect there to be snares; but we, dull and foolish, strike against the same stone every day, and like moths, we offer our bodies, already burned so many times and almost scorched, to the flames once again.
For how many are there who, in such a dense array of calamities, adopt a better mind, and conceive, and as it were bring forth, a spirit of salvation? We all almost insist upon the same footsteps, we indulge in our vices, we cling to them tooth and nail, and we heap them up daily with new flagrant acts, nor, to speak with the lyric poet (66), do we allow our wickedness to cause the angry Jupiter to lay down his thunderbolts. We bewail this bitterness of circumstances, we accuse this unhappiness of our time, of which we ourselves are the sole builders and architects. We murmur against the scourges, we who deserve the strokes of scorpions. We grieve that all things are inflamed with more than feral hatreds, and yet we do not care to be reconciled with God. As if indeed a certain peace could coalesce between those who have turned themselves away from the God of peace; and as if those could hold the members who, according to the Apostle (38), do not hold the head. For as in a circle, the further lines are drawn from the center, the further they are separated from each other by greater intervals, so in the same way, the further each person departs from God, the more he is removed from brotherly charity, nay, even from himself.
What shall I say of those who have nefariously cut themselves off from the body of the Church, who have rent into infinite parts that seamless garment of Christ, which even the most savage butchers had spared, and who are carried headlong with such madness that, just as the salamander lives in fire, so they live in dissensions and deadly conflicts, and seem to have conspired against the public concord of the world? B ‹(67) Unless they hated peace, they would certainly have remained in unity.› In the midst of extreme misery, they either feign, or by an error of opinion fabricate for themselves, a certain most pleasant tranquility in the greatest perturbation. They rejoice to be outside the ark, and congratulate themselves as if on certain salvation. Thus, indeed, some sick people judge that they will be nowhere more quiet than in their own beds. The wretched ones do not refuse to perish, provided they drag others into the same destruction with them. And if they do not say it with their mouths, they shout it in deed, as that man says in the tragic poet (68): "May this very house of the illustrious Pelops, powerful as it is, fall even on me, provided it falls upon my brother."
Therefore those who not so long ago (such was the artifice of simulation in them) seemed to most to breathe nothing but peace and concord, the same men now with an open front show themselves to be, both to the kingdom, Paris-like, and to every excellent man, Phalaris-like, and even to men of the sacred order, more than C tigers. They made a show of a certain zeal for Christ, whose admirable temple they disturb, they plunder his patrimony, they behead his ministers. They affirm to the King, whose authority and rule they claimed in almost alternate words to be sacrosanct, that they are storming cities by force and arms, collecting tributes, and even striving to extort the scepter itself, if they can. The people, for whose sake—the popular men, that is—they testified that they were being drawn unwillingly to arms the previous year, are being stripped of all their fortunes through the most cruel robbery, and a most grievous tyranny has been imposed upon them for the promised liberty; for a wooden yoke, they have imposed an iron one. And from where were we to recognize thieves, if they did not steal, and slaughter, and destroy? From where, if not from where they thirst for blood? From where the offspring of vipers (41), if not from where they gnaw their own mother? From where, if not from where they were devastating that most beautiful vineyard (42) like wild boars? From where the whelps of a roaring lion (43), if not from where they devour everyone in their path? From where, in short, the children of him who was a murderer from the very beginning of things (44), if not from where they fed on blood and every kind of ferocity?
Who can interpret whether they undertook a more unjust war, or are waging it more cruelly and rapaciously? With what wealth can these abysses, with what blood can these leeches—before whom, to use the words of Scripture, blood is as nothing (45)—be filled? They certainly have a place in their confusion to boast. They have conquered all the heretics of all ages. They have conquered in impudence, in wickedness, in importunity, in rapacity, in cruelty. Not by building, like the Babylonian architects (46), but by devastating, overturning, burning, do they strive to celebrate their name and to leave an immortal memory of themselves to posterity. Although, will posterity ever believe that such fury existed in French men, and those who sell themselves under the title of a purified religion? They will not believe it; they will cry out that an imposture has been practiced upon them, unless they see the manifest monuments of such madness in the ruins of the churches. To me, indeed, it has happened to experience in abundance, not only in public but also in private calamity, that there was nothing in them—I will not say of a Christian—but not even of a man. For, to pass over the devastation of the island of Rez (in which, as long as we were the superiors, it was permitted for them to live according to their own rite, and to enjoy their faculties freely and peaceably: but as soon as the treachery of neighboring La Rochelle gave birth to that basilisk which it had been hatching for so many years, immediately flames were thrown into the churches, and hands were laid upon our fortunes and upon all our domestic goods that they were able to seize), who could lament the destruction of our monastery of Saint-Michel with an oration as tragic as the atrocity of the deed requires?
That house was most ancient and most illustrious, and by the very appearance of its structure it also D maintained a certain religion.
It instilled terror in the spectators. To many A in their calamity, it had been a solace, a refuge and a protection for those who were exiles for the sake of piety, and as I may say with Job, it had generally been an eye to the blind, a foot to the lame, a mother to the poor. But its chief glory was that in this deluge of souls, it alone, like the ark of Noah, had felt the full force of the flood not at all. Twice besieged, twice had it triumphed over its enemies.
Alas! too happy, if only the keels of the English had never touched our shores. For as soon as the people of La Rochelle received from the English bronze engines of huge magnitude in exchange for wine and salt and other things necessary for the use of life, immediately a third expedition was undertaken against our house. Enemies came running from everywhere, from towns and villages, from the islands—good God, with what savage countenances, with what impotent fury, with what unheard-of madness of spirits! At first, indeed, our men lacked neither courage to resist nor strength. But after those huge cannons began to tear down all the fortifications and to strike the very walls themselves, they preferred to await whatever outcome God might have willed, rather than to have any word of surrender with those whom they knew most certainly would perform whatever they had promised with nothing but Punic faith. Therefore, on the Ides of January—the day which the defection of La Rochelle in the previous year rendered baleful for the whole of Gaul—the enemy, breaking in through the shattered parts of the wall, dealt out an indiscriminate slaughter of monks, of my household, and of the country people. Yet the night coming on would have brought a wished-for end to the slaughter, if our men had had to deal with enemies who were accustomed to show the ferocity of their spirits only in the first tumults of an assault. But it was a matter of dealing with monsters, with furies, with the most terrible enemies of all humanity.
Therefore on the day following, when by the quiet of the night the anger ought to have cooled, they pursued the slaughters that had been begun, and they killed those who were scattered throughout the temple and everywhere in the house, imploring in vain a mercy which was not to be found in those iron hearts. Many, with whom there had been an agreement about paying a price for their lives, were immediately slaughtered by the command of the leaders, against the law of war and every divine right. For many, too, their necks were broken by the noose at the importunate lust of the victor. Soon the house was plundered and burned; the village also was plundered, and in truth so inhumanly that for the widows and orphans—of whom it now almost solely consists—nothing is left but the most bitter famine and tears. But O blessed are they who for the sake of Christ (for He too, that He might heap us with true and eternal riches, lived in poverty) bear the shipwreck of their possessions with a calm mind! But far more blessed are they who have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb, and for whom there was no other cause of death than that they would not acknowledge a harlot as a bride, nor the seed of Canaan as the seed of Judah, nor Absalom or Jeroboam or Tabrimmon [Tabeel] as the legitimate prince. But you, O miserable daughter of Babylon, you mad executioner, you daughter of death, dwelling in the midst of the shadow of death, what have you done? Where is your victory? By destroying, you have fallen; by ruining, you have perished. They have heaven, those to whom you begrudged the earth; they have a fatherland, those to whom you begrudged exile. O blessed souls, how precious in the sight of the Lord is your passing, from the mire of filth to a place of pasture, from a desert land, trackless and waterless, to a land flowing with milk and honey, from a torrent of bitterness to a torrent of delight, from fire and water to refreshment! How sweet it is for you to be in the company of the Lamb, to enjoy Christ, to rest under the wings of that great hen, to fear now no longer any scandals, no blade of swords, no snares of hunters, no force of cannons! How glorious is the kind of transaction, to receive the kingdom of heaven in exchange for a few drops of blood, a treasure for coals, a pearl for offal!
But truly (that the letter might not be carried along beyond its course) neither our house nor the thousands of temples in this kingdom would have burned, if it had not been permitted for too long a time for those foxes that destroy the vineyards to have their dens, for those wasps to have their honeycombs [(69)], that is, for heretics to have their churches. Hence that most grave complaint in Basil the Great: "They baptize," he says [(70)], "they bury the dead, they visit the sick," etc. Who here would not groan? Who would not require a fountain of tears with Jeremiah [*], that he might pursue such a calamity with an equal weeping? For here the whole force of the evil C is situated. For when altar is raised against altar, and a harlot is introduced in place of the true bride, all the weak begin to doubt which they should acknowledge as the true spouse; and they say almost the same thing that Tully [cites] from the tragedy: *Ποῦ σκάφος τὸ τῶν Ἀτρειδῶν;* From which it follows that they sit as if on two stools, and—what antiquity feigned about the Dioscuri—that they are now among the gods above, now among the dead below: and with a certain jumpy levity they betake themselves now to these, now to those. Now they follow the God of Israel, now Baal; now they eat from the table of the Lord, now from the table of Jezebel—or rather, of demons; now they feed on the bread of sons or rather of angels, now on the husks of swine and those bitter herbs which are cooked in the pot of death; now D they drink of the Jordan, now of Mara, of Amana and Pharphar, rivers of Damascus; now they draw waters from the springs of the Savior, now from broken cisterns. And just as there are certain animals, which live in both elements, and for that reason are called by the Greeks *amphibia* [amphibians], and certain monsters sometimes exist, showing a human form in one part of the body and a beastly one in the other; in the same way they themselves are neither plainly orthodox, nor openly heretics, but hold a certain middle condition between both. Thus they either become mute with Zechariah, or they begin to sink with the doubting Peter,
and are surely destined to perish, unless Christ takes them by the hand and draws them back into the boat.
There are others who, although they abhor all heresy, are nevertheless as ashamed of orthodoxy as if they were guilty of it; they desert the defense of the truth, and, so that they may not stir up hatred against themselves among men, they let impious blasphemies against God pass by with deaf ears: acting as if confession with the mouth for salvation were not as necessary as believing in the heart for righteousness. To these are added those who prepare a way for themselves to win the favor of their adversaries, and who make them their friends, so that if they should ever fail, they might receive them into their own tabernacles. These are to be held in not much higher esteem than the wicked who hide wolves under sheep’s clothing; their voice is indeed the voice of Jacob, but their hands and their intentions are those of Esau; they are in the body of the Church just as Sinon was in the city of Troy, or as Judas was at the Supper. There is no one who can grasp in words the great ruin which these men, with their crafty counsels, daily bring upon the Christian commonwealth. They achieve more with their arts than all the iron and all the might of weaponry. And therefore, to the scandal of the whole world, it is permitted to them by their masters to feign the religion which they hate worse than death, to attend the temples of the orthodox, to take part in sacred rites, and to do all other things which their sect detests, provided that by this simulation they promote their faction. Here, indeed, there occurs to me that story of Augustus, who, out of all the household goods which a certain Roman had left behind when he died, overwhelmed by immense debt, saw fit to purchase only his bed, saying that it could not be but that he was a very fine man who could sleep soundly while burdened by such a mountain of debt. For in a similar way, it must be that those who rest secure in so great a wickedness possess consciences that are, as he says, secured by iron strength and triple brass. C
There is another class of men whose salvation hangs by a slight and extreme hope, and is so near to being despaired of, that they seem to have need not so much of a healer as of Christ, who raises the dead. I speak of those whom the Apostle calls by the most fitting name, apēlgēkotas [past feeling], who, just as the inhabitants near the cataracts of the Nile grow deaf to the roar of the rushing river, so do they, broken and exhausted by the weariness of perpetual disputations, turn away altogether from every religion and plant their seat in the pestilent chair of mockers. Far from being moved by this confusion of all things, they actually make a rich harvest of laughter out of public calamities. They hold all those who are seriously affected for the sake of the Church to be fools and madmen, and say that they are squabbling and wrangling among themselves over goat's wool. They think they have found a shortcut to tranquility, and by its benefit seek to free themselves from most grievous servitude D and boast that they are vindicated, denying Him who bought them, and bringing upon themselves swift destruction. They perish with laughter, and by jesting they summon for themselves serious ruin. These are the true giants who launch blasphemous tongues into heaven, and provoke the almighty God in an impious war: whom one might not unfairly say are already in the property of Satan, inasmuch as they have entered into eternal enmities with the only One who could heal them. We can compare them, no less than Epiphanius compares the Anomoeans, to a corrupted virgin who is blind, deaf, and mute: whose corruption no one ignores, yet when asked by whom she was corrupted, she does not hear, because she is deaf; nor has she seen him, because she is blind; nor can she speak, because she is mute.
However, why do I call them mute, they who do not now, as once before, keep their impiety locked in their breast, nor pour it out in corners as happened recently, but in the eyes and full view of all, vomit it from their foul mouths, and open gates not to righteousness, but to atheism? If it pleases the powers above, these men even bring forth the Scriptures, which they mock, and they profess not that they are acting seriously, but that they merely wish to dispute: and they kiss Christ, the better to betray Him; that is, they allege sacred doctrine so that they may overturn it. The harvest of these men in this storm is so great, that it is not without cause that it has become a proverb among our people: "Noxious weeds grow quickly; weak trees are overturned by the onset of a whirlwind." But although no pestilence more mortal can be devised by the most hostile enemy of our kind than heresy, yet from it this advantage is gained, that it is made clear who are the honest, and who the dissembling and adulterated Christians. "It is necessary," says the Apostle, "that there be heresies, that those who are approved may be made manifest." In calm and peaceful conditions, the brave and generous soldier cannot be distinguished from the cowardly and timid one. But once war has broken out, the difference between the two is easily perceived. The one immediately throws down his shield and turns tail in flight; the other offers himself to all dangers with a great and fearless soul. How many men have we seen in these past years, who, although they had carried the appearance of orthodoxy throughout their whole lives, at the first shadows of night were offended in Christ, and having abandoned God, fled, or rather, deserted? And those who seemed, as the saying goes, to be fixed in the Church with a nail stronger than iron, and who showed themselves ready to be a wall for Israel, were they not the very first to fall most foully?
This good, therefore, has heresy brought about: that it has both exposed their simulation and declared the constancy and greatness of soul of the good. It has been, therefore, like a certain Lydian stone, distinguishing true gold from the false, and like fire separating contrary matters.
A Finally, it is like the wind and the rain, by which it becomes clear who have laid the foundations of their faith upon shifting sand, and who upon the firm rock. In happy times, among a crowd of flatterers, sincere friends lie hidden; in summer, it is not easily discerned which parts of a wall or roof are defective, and which are free from fault; in a calm sea, it is hard to distinguish which part of a ship is sound and which threatens shipwreck. But when matters are afflicted, and winter has set in, and a storm is pressing, the danger is immediately apparent, and all doubt is removed. The true Christian is discerned in uncertain circumstances: in winter he does not fall, but stands with a firmer step than before, and is strengthened by the very dangers, and as the poet elegantly says, “He draws strength and spirit from the iron itself.” And just as extraordinary gems shine more brightly in the darkness of night than in broad daylight, so he provides brighter testimonials of his piety in the gloom of persecution. Even if he sees tares in the Church, he does not for that reason desert the Church. He knows that the harvest must be awaited: for otherwise, there is the danger that the wheat might be uprooted along with the tares. He indeed grieves that noxious herbs sprout in the good field, but he does not rashly and proudly arrogate to himself what is reserved for the Son of God alone, namely, to separate the tares from the wheat, and to cleanse the threshing floor. He knows that they can indeed be in the threshing floor, B but they cannot be in the granary. As often as he sees heresies arising, just so often does he feel that an occasion is offered to him to demonstrate his virtue and constancy.
What then shall we say of those who, having the greatest power to help the Church, while they consult their own present ease, or, what is more wicked, are afraid of displeasing men, present themselves as idle spectators of this sacred war, and do not care to bring one drop of water to extinguish a fire of this kind? But to pass over these and return to my intended theme, it was an outstanding and singular benefit of Christ towards us that He foretold that heresies would come, so that we might fortify the citadel of our souls long before against them, as against a most hostile and cruel enemy. There is added also that, and indeed the greatest, consolation, when we reflect that from the very cradle of the Church until this age there has hardly been any time in which it did not have to struggle against the enemies of the faith: so that it is not without cause that it is called the militant Church. Not even the golden age was immune from such waves. It too had its Hymenaeuses and Alexanders, its Nicolauses and Cerinthuses, who attempted to crush and remove from the midst [the Church] which had scarcely been brought into the light and was still nursing. Scarcely had it emerged from these waves, when it began to be tossed by other storms one after another. "Often," it says, "they have attacked me from my youth," but what follows? "They could not overcome me." Against me not even the gates of hell have prevailed, nor shall they ever prevail. C Why then should the faith of anyone waver because of heresies, which, if they did not exist, Christ's words would not hold true, and truth itself would not be proved against falsehood? Did not Christ, lest unexpected evils should perturb us, foretell that false Christs and false prophets would arise, and that they would perform such miracles that, if possible, even the elect would be led into error? So that whoever wonders that there are heresies, the same person appears to wonder at nothing other than a thing predicted by Christ so long before being represented. What of the fact that it is generally expedient for heresies to arise, so that the dormant zeal for piety might be renewed, that discipline of morals which had collapsed and was nearly destroyed might be raised up and restored, and finally, as Augustine says, that the sloth of men might be shaken off? Certainly, with Themistocles, we may say with good right, "We would have perished, had we not perished." We were so oppressed by such lethargy that we could not be awakened except by this very harsh rod, and recalled from inertia to labor and the study of doctrine. This tempest, therefore, has produced for us innumerable heroes, who, partly by the example of an excellent and most approved life, and partly by their most learned lucubrations, have most acrimoniously defended the Church against the furious onslaughts of the heretics. These men, indeed, I myself, according as their singular piety and virtue deserve, uniquely admire and D I deem worthy of immortal praise: for, seeing that they contribute all the riches of their genius and doctrine to the adornment of the temple of God, which is the Church, they fear no hatred of men, no envy, and dread no threats or snares of enemies, provided that they keep the Christian commonwealth pure and entire from all error. O what labor and work, for which the prophet promises such a reward: "They shall shine," he says, "as the splendor of the firmament, and as the stars for all eternity."
With how much consolation, therefore, should the Christian heart be suffused when it sees the most sorrowful image of this tempest so vividly depicted in the monuments of the ancients, that in their person our own situation seems to be acted out? For if that consolation is usually most pleasing to the sick man which is brought by him who has at some time struggled with the same kind of disease, what reason can there be why the grief of a Christian man should not be mitigated by great consolation in this most grievous calamity, when he turns the eyes of his mind to ancient ages, and as it were converses with the most holy men who were engaged in the same bitterness of affairs? For when he reads that they, by the kindness of God, were at length extracted from so many and such great afflictions, will he yet impiously think, either of the power of the most high God or of His love towards us, that either His hand has been shortened, so that He can no longer save, or that His charity towards us has grown cold? What may happen to others in the reading of books of this kind, I...
A certainly cannot affirm; for my own part, I can say that for the most part it has been a source of great solace and utility. Hence it came about that, by joining the Greeks with the Latins, I at last chanced upon that noble pair of friends—I mean Basil the Great and Gregory Nazianzen; in whose writings so much true piety, so much doctrine and eloquence shines forth, that I do not know if there can be found among Greeks or Latins those who have coupled more erudition with a greater faculty of speech.
Certainly, the Nazianzen has so affected me with his grave and sublime style of writing that I have always derived incredible pleasure from reading him. Wherefore, it had long been a source of no small grief to me that so great a man was handled by the hands of men less frequently than his singular eloquence and doctrine deserved. When I had understood the cause of this matter to be that he was so endowed with Latinity that he could be of little help to the studies of theologians, I undertook the task—useful, I know not for theological matters, but certainly for me quite arduous and difficult—of translating this author so that, if he did not emerge more elegant, he would at least emerge less obscure into the light. I could certainly have occupied myself with more pleasant and, for me, far graver subjects of writing, but the zeal for public utility prevailed, to which every good man ought to serve for his own part. Nor do I wish to raise up or disparage the labors of those who sweated in this workshop before me, to whose eloquence and the praise of whose doctrine I feel that I can reach not at all, and I candidly confess it. This much only will I say: that they, addicted to graver studies and perhaps not engaging in this translation unless for the sake of recreating the mind, departed from the author’s meaning in so many places that I cannot persuade myself there will be anyone who would say this second version has been useless and superfluous. Furthermore, when I was considering within myself to whose name I should primarily consecrate this labor, you alone immediately occurred to me, to whom it seemed it ought worthily to be inscribed for many reasons:
First, because if we look at the persons themselves, to whom, I ask, could this volume of so excellent, most erudite, and primarily eloquent a bishop more congruously be offered than to an archbishop and cardinal, endowed with singular virtue, doctrine, and a rare and exquisite faculty of speaking? Then, since you have always embraced with your kindness and courtesy all those who strive to deserve well of letters, and have aided and elevated them in whatever way you could; truly, letters themselves yearn to take refuge in your bosom, as in that of a most excellent parent and patron: not so much that they might illustrate you (for the Ocean has no need of water), as that they themselves might draw splendor from your most illustrious name. Added to this are your many and notable benefits toward some of my own people, whom, since I love them as much as life itself, I believe I owe no less gratitude to your greatness than if you had bestowed these upon me myself. But I acknowledge myself bound to you by no name, B more than by the cause of the Church, the most Christian King, and this entire most afflicted kingdom, for which you exert yourself with such solicitude of mind, whose cares and sorrows you take upon yourself, and to which, finally, you refer all your studies, such that the remaining parts might be preserved, while the putrid limbs are amputated (since indeed they neither wish to be healed, nor can they be retained without certain ruin of the body). But who does not see how great a labor you must endure, how great a struggle you must undergo, that you might dissipate the counsels of so many Ahithophels lurking under the fox; and while others perform excellent service to the republic in open war, you, meanwhile, provide that it suffer no detriment from hidden enemies? It is indeed altogether grave and burdensome for one who has settled himself from the tumults of public affairs to the tranquility of studies and life (the sweetness of which no one knows, unless he has tasted it), to be driven from this, as if from a certain paradise of quiet, and to be dragged to the administration of public affairs, filled with so many annoyances, and exposed to the hatreds and envy of so many men.
Verily, it is for a man who is truly Christian, with Paul, to seek not what is useful to himself, but what is useful to many 67. And your distinguished prudence sufficiently observes that those manifold gifts of every kind with which the Lord has adorned you were not entrusted to you so that you might keep them wrapped in a shroud and hidden away, or hide them in the earth; but so that you might increase and amplify them at great interest, and so that, like that fabled Atlas, you might take care to support and sustain with all your strength the Church, which is called the kingdom of heaven by Christ 68, and which has admitted you into the number of its cardinals. This, indeed, you do with the utmost zeal: and because you do so, for that reason you have stirred up the hatred of all the wicked against you. For who is there today an enemy of the fatherland and the faith who does not also at the same time pursue you with most bitter hatred? What famous pamphlet has appeared in these nine years, in which the fame of your name has not been lacerated by perpetual and foulest insults? Although, what wonder is it that you are assailed by virulent tongues, when both Elias was called the disturber of Israel, and the apostles drunkards, and Paul insane, and the father of the family himself Beelzebub? But, by the immortal God, what can reach your praise more illustriously than the fact that you have the same enemies as Christ, as religion, as the fatherland, as all good men? That you are displeasing to those whom no one can please without perfidy? That you are torn by every kind of insult by those who previously tore the Church—or rather, themselves—from the Church? You avenge yourself upon them, by Hercules, in the best way, when you despise their most impure curses, and allow those most foul tongues, which have not learned to speak well, to speak ill. For the wretched are destroyed when they see that you are no more moved by their calumnies than Indian elephants are moved by the bites of fleas. Most grave are the unjust towards you...
A whom they have attempted to cast down from your high rank of authority and render hateful to all men, even while they see that you stand and flourish, and that you are the Palladium of our France.
Wherefore, regarding these night-owls, who because they do evil justly hate the light, and gnaw only in shadows, ignore them with a brave spirit; and in that most noble duty which your languishing fatherland, like a physician, has imposed upon you, persevere with constancy. Resist those doctors who, not so much through inexperience as through malice, strive to cover our wound—not yet suppurated and healed—with a scar, and to conceal the fire with deceitful ash, by which all of Gaul may soon be set ablaze again. Observe the Canaanites living in the midst of Israel. Fight the good fight: 69 battle with counsel, authority, and all resources against those who have already brought so many disasters upon the fatherland that it would be folly to hope that the republic could be safe while they remain. Let those who wish remain in Ziklag; let even the slothful stand by the baggage: do not give sleep to your eyes nor slumber to your eyelids 70 until, like David, you have overtaken the Amalekites 71 who exult in the spoils of the kingdom, and have so crushed them that we may see not merely a light shadow and empty phantom of peace, but a true and solid peace.
But why do I say these things to you? As if you were in need of my exhortation, or that of anyone else, you who run of your own accord, and like those kine of the Philistines 72 bearing the ark of God, proceed straight forward, turning neither to the right nor the left. B In this, you surely recall all your other most illustrious brother princes, but especially that incomparable hero—that thunderbolt of war, that chariot and charioteer of Israel, 73 and beyond doubt the brazen wall 74 of the house of God—that martial Francis, I say, who together waged the wars of both the Lord and his king, swifter than an eagle, stronger than a lion, firmer than a rock, full of victories and triumphs. Whose singular and almost divine virtue, had it not brought incredible terror to his enemies, would never surely have led them to bind themselves to so nefarious a parricide, nor so often C to have extinguished the star of Gaul. Had he been some actor, or some Proteus, or a reed shaken by the wind, 75 he might perhaps still be living in this mire of dregs, but base and inglorious, and like those who prefer to love their life in the world rather than to keep it for eternal life. 76 Because this was not to be, he was snatched from us by supreme wickedness: yet in such a way that, just as Elijah left his mantle, 77 or, to use a more apt example, as Judas Maccabaeus left Jonathan, 78 so he left to us his brother Aumale, that most excellent leader of war, who walks in the same footsteps toward the same immortality, and now proceeds against the German Harpies (who fix their fierce claws into the wounds of France, pour vinegar instead of oil, and draw away from it, now almost bloodless, whatever blood remains) with the strength of his soldiers, so prepared in spirit that, even if in this crisis of war his life must be laid down, he deems that he will have acted well, provided he averts such pests from the neck of the fatherland.
Proceed, therefore, most ample Cardinal, with your most brave brother, to cherish a senescent Gaul, and, as the Greeks say, to *antipelargein* (requite). As for our Nazianzen translation, although I was not unaware that it is hardly worthy to appear in your name, and was for that reason held back by some shame from approaching you with so small a gift, yet your perpetual kindness and prone will toward all scholars made me banish this fear, when I considered with myself that it is the way of great princes not less gladly to receive small things than to give great ones, and to the gods, as one said in a similar cause, 75 not only incense but also salted meal is offered. Accept therefore with a grateful and willing heart this gift, whatever it is, most illustrious Cardinal; and if by any importunate interruption of yours I have caused some delay to public advantages, I beg you to forgive me. May the Lord Jesus preserve you as safe as possible for His Church. Nantes, the 15th of the Kalends of January, in the year after the saving birth one thousand five hundred and sixty-nine.
D The same to the same, most illustrious prelate of the Gallican Church and most noble prince.
You manage the affairs of Heaven, and you manage the affairs of the kingdom, Like a river divided in two directions. God has a faithful servant, and the ruler has a faithful one, Faith has a faithful champion, the fatherland has a buttress. And your study is virtue, and to strike down those Who cut the body of Christ, and the blood-loving wolves. Therefore, if you are hated by all the most wicked, It is no wonder; for wolves hate dogs.
A Nor is it a wonder that envy stretches its malignant eye against your virtue; envy is always an enemy to what is good. Do you wish that envious men should pine away, and that the hostile tribes of heretics should be overwhelmed with grievous pains? Fight with pious speech; bring aid to the king; possess every kind of virtue, as you have done before. Then indeed envy will consume the envious; and you shall see your adversaries feeding upon their own self-slaughtering madness.
Another by the same
The choir of the gods once gave Pandora to mortals; but to us, the Almighty has given Pandorus. The former they sent—it seems—to the ruin of mortals, for it is fitting that wicked gods send pernicious gifts. This one, however, is for the certain benefit of our race; for God, being good, bestows His gifts as things that are useful. Nine sisters embrace your head, and these generate the races of the Graces, stripped of their robes. Gregory himself, through me, knows the holy favor, that he has found in you an Ausonian Hermes. For in times past he dwelt in lands of barbarian tongues, but now he possesses Roman tents through you.
In the Nazianzen translation of Dom Jacques Billi, Abbot of Saint-Michel, by his brother, Vincent Billi, Abbot of Saint-Vincent
Gregory, once put to flight from his native soil, had arrived as an exile at the Western shores. Some received the man, but those who spoke with a stammering tongue taught him, in turn, to speak with a stammer. His brother felt for the exile, and taught him, at his request, to sound his words more smoothly in the Ausonian manner. Now Gregory marvels, and doubts whether, from this point on, he ought to call himself a Pelasgian or a Latin.
Genebrard, Theologian of Paris, to Dom Jacques Billi, Abbot, a man most learned in the three languages, translator of Gregory of Nazianzus
The naked crown of the three Graces and the Pierian Muses salutes you with our voice on account of Gregory. Furthermore, Gregory himself, grateful for such a great gift, gives the highest thanks with the host of heaven. For when he once wandered in barbarian fields, now, through your art, he holds the Latin kingdoms.
An epigram of Jean Chatard of Aquipersana to his patron, Dom Jacques Billi, the most noble Abbot of Saint-Michel in the Hermitage, and most faithful translator of Bishop Gregory of Nazianzus
As the offspring C of Tobias restored light to his most beloved father, so you have restored light to Gregory. He, indeed, restored it by driving the mist from his father's eyes, but you have restored it to the whole body of Gregory. For just as a swallow had foully blinded the former, so a previous translation full of errors had blinded this one. But you, beyond this, restore his voice along with his light, so that his words now sound Latin along with the Greek. Thus through you (two illustrious miracles) he who was recently blind and speechless now sees and speaks. Do you wish me to relate a greater thing? He who was once buried as if in darkness now shines in the whole world.
By the same Chatard, to the reader
Joseph, squalid in a dark prison, was hardly worthy of the king’s sight and address. But, led forth from there, the foul squalor removed, he became worthy of the love of prince and people. So too, Gregory, while he lay sordid and neglected before, was unworthy to be read. For no page was free from grievous faults, and individual words gave forth a sound without sense. But for you, he is presented pure, purer than any gold, as soon as he has come into the hands of a learned Biblical scholar. Now, worthy of the eyes of kings and of the highest honor, D he is worthy to fly through the mouths of all men. Billi, and this he accomplished willingly with great labor, alone, that which many could not do together. This is a work performed than which there is no greater, and which preserves the many riches of genius for you: from these fruits, candid reader, you can easily know him, just as you can know the tawny lion by his claw. The deceased Bishop knows—marvelous to say—and lives again now by the aid of another bishop. And thus, he who once flourished only in Greece, now flourishes also throughout all Ausonia.
JACOBUS BILLIUS, ABBOT OF ST. MICHAEL IN THE DESERT, TO THE PIOUS READER
You have here, pious Reader, that preeminent doctor of the Eastern Church, Gregory, bestowed upon you by us in the Latin tongue: and may you derive as much fruit from reading him as it has been a labor and burden for us to undergo in translating him. For it is scarcely credible to anyone how unwillingly this author wanders among us, unless he has made trial of this matter himself. Yet I must beg of you that you do not judge me to be marked by some excessively idle sloth, as if I had, as they say, done work already finished, and did it again without great expenditure of time; nor may you judge me to be of a lack of fairness, as one who has stepped into the labors of others and attempted to snatch from them the proof of well-deserved praise. Both of these things I shall easily obtain from you, I believe, if only you have as much leisure from your more serious A studies as to be able to examine the translation of those who preceded me in this task together with ours, and to test both by the Greek exemplar, as if by a Lydian stone. If you do this, I truly do not doubt that you will think that this labor of ours was not only not vain and superfluous, but even nearly necessary. I attack no one; I traduce the errors of no one. It is a barbarian thing to seek the praise of talent and learning by carping at the labors of others. I deem him to be a monster, not a man, who desires not to favor the pious endeavors and studies of others, but rather to carp at them and cruelly prefers to expose their lapses and hold them up to the eyes of all, than to cover them with fraternal affection, or at least to excuse them. But just as it must be regarded as wicked above all else to seek to grow through the attacking and demeaning of another's works, and to seek to build for oneself an approach to human fame, so also, when the cause of public convenience demands it, no one should be faulted for revising a matter previously handled by others, and as it were calling it back to the anvil. For indeed, he arrogates too much to himself who considers that he is being insulted if someone dares to edit and polish what he himself has written, or even to apply a second hand to the same material if it seems to be in the interest of letters: provided that those two foulest pests, envy and the desire to carp, are kept at a distance. Since this has hitherto been permitted in every kind of writing (for not without reason is it said in the Greek proverb, δευτέρας φροντίδας σοφωτέρας εἶναι, "second thoughts are wiser"), it must be granted much more justly in translations; the abundance and diversity of which, if they produce no other utility, certainly bring this advantage: that from the collation of many interpreters the author's meaning shines forth more clearly. Thus we see it has been willingly done by those ancient doctors of the Church, that besides that noble authority of the seventy, they would often consult Aquila also, and Symmachus, and Theodotion: B so that if any murkiness might arise for them, it could be dispelled by such a collation.
As far as I am concerned, I could have spent this time, which was given to the Gregorian version, on far more pleasant and agreeable studies for me: but I thought it necessary to yield to the counsel and authority of certain men who indeed promised me with certainty that some light would be added to this most learned man—who is otherwise too obscure among the Latins, as they said, and, as Jerome speaks, strange to himself—through this translation of ours. I therefore took up this province, which, I know not if it be useful, was at least so grave and burdensome to me that I thought more than once to break off the work I had begun and doom it to perpetual darkness. For if I had properly explored my own strength, and if, as the Lord in the Gospel admonishes, I had calculated the necessary expenses for a matter of this kind*, if I had reflected in my mind upon the total difficulty of the work, my constitution that is more than glass, and the poverty of my learning, I would never, so help me God, have applied my hand to this translation. But true is the sentiment of Thucydides: C *Αμαθία θράσος, ὁ λογισμὸς δ' ἔκνον φέρει* (“Ignorance brings boldness, while reflection brings hesitation”). Nor was it without reason that the *Γνῶθι σεαυτόν* (“Know thyself”) was held in such high value by learned antiquity that it considered it to be attributable not to any mortal, but to God, and the wisest of the gods. And I feel that the exact same thing has happened to me that usually happens to those who are unaccustomed to seafaring; they who enter a ship with wonderful pleasure of mind when the sight of land grows pleasing from the sea, and joyfully and eagerly scan the shores, until, carried into the deep, and with all that appearance of charm now withdrawn, they fall into the most grievous headaches and are miserably vexed by nausea. For in this same manner, I myself, being lured and baited by the ease of the first approach in this translation, when I had run through one or two heats with a certain youthful ardor of mind and headlong impulse, I suddenly found everything slippery and deceptive to the step, and so rough and craggy, that I could neither turn back out of shame, nor proceed without danger. So much did rashness prevail in me, which, no less than drunkenness, commands one to hold hopes as certain, and thrusts one, unarmed, into battle! For I confess that I was indeed unarmed, as far as it pertains to being able to contend in a struggle of eloquence with so great a Milo as is our Gregory, and to represent his extraordinary gifts in Latin speech. And I know not if anyone exists who is endowed with such faculty of speech and abundance of words, who could bring such rich and profuse wealth of eloquence over from Greece into Latium.
A For since no language is so destitute and barren that it does not possess very many words which cannot be transferred into another language without burdensome circumlocution and the loss of elegance, what will the interpreter do in this case with an author who, in a most copious and without doubt the wealthiest of all languages, gathers the subtleties of words from every side? It is as if, as many such local terms as he has sprinkled into his discourse, he had fixed as many crosses for the interpreter. What shall I say of those long-winded periods, which, while they bring no small amount of grace and ornament to Greek speech because of their ease of connectivity, yet when they are rendered into Latin, hold the reader's mind in suspense for too long, and are not passed over without a certain weariness? Moreover, those very brief allusions that are scattered everywhere throughout the entire work—how attentive, how diligent, how much an interpreter not only of extensive reading but also of a certain fortunate memory do they require! Inasmuch as these, when either ignored or passed over through negligence, sometimes cast such shadows for the interpreter that, like a parrot, he knows not what he is saying, and to use the words of Job, he "swims in other waters" B and fancies himself to be in a foreign sky. From this, it is sufficiently apparent with what resources he ought to be equipped who desires to provide a specimen of himself in translating such writings. Added to this is the fact that Gregory possesses a certain peculiar phrasis, most eloquent indeed and especially learned, but one which very often grazes the eyes, even of the most clear-sighted of interpreters, so that unless he has applied the utmost care and attention, just as that Ixion embraced a cloud instead of the beloved Juno, he himself might embrace nothing but a light and empty shadow of words in place of the author's true meaning. For as Plato writes that the statues of Daedalus were accustomed to take flight unless they were bound with the strongest chains, so the genuine meaning of the Theologian slips from the hands of the interpreter unless it be bound with the closest attention and diligence. When all these things had tormented me in wondrous ways, that which tormented my soul far more severely was that the Hervagius codex, which was the only one I had at hand, teemed with so many and such foul errors that one Hercules would not suffice to cleanse this Augean stable. No speech, no page, almost, was free of the most grievous faults; it was a plague "all-devouring," so to speak. Therefore, since physicians forbid one to apply a healing hand to desperate diseases, I myself thought there was no reason why I should longer consume myself in vain labor upon such a corrupt and incurable codex.
Meanwhile, therefore, I commanded myself to rest from the project I had begun, until I was informed by a certain friend C that there were many and most corrected copies in the library of the most illustrious Queen, by whose help and assistance I might be able to bring medicine to wounds otherwise incurable. Overjoyed at this news more than can be expressed, through that most learned and humane man, Ludovicus Rusaeus, the royal confessor, I obtained from the Queen without much difficulty that I might be allowed to remove one codex (for she did not permit more at once) from her library with me. I therefore took an ample codex written in capital letters, bearing such antiquity that it seemed as if it had been written in the very age of Gregory himself: it contained all his works, besides his letters and verses. When I had read it through with incredible speed in a very few days, and had thereby restored to their integrity countless passages which had been read erroneously in the printed edition, I immediately had to refer it back to Athens (for by what other name should I call that incomparable treasury of all good literature?) so that I might again remove another copy from there. In this one there were only sixteen orations, illustrated by the most learned commentaries of Nicetas Serronius, with certain explanations by Psellus also woven into the more obscure places of the second oration, *On the Pasch*. When I was permitted to use this volume according to my own judgment, I set myself to prepare for the Roman tongue not only the things I had begun and had abandoned as if they were beyond hope, but also those things which Nicetas had commented upon. For I thought it would not be foreign to the public interest if the commentator spoke in Latin, since he himself, being a Greek, had seen fit to interpret the Greek man. D That I did not translate *all* his commentaries into their entirety, but only those which he had published on the panegyric orations, I did this not so much for the sake of avoiding labor as from the fear that this excessive zeal of ours might bring you more annoyance than benefit. And so I tempered the task in such a way that I made those commentaries which seemed to tend rather toward the explanation of the subject matter than of the words entirely Latin: but from those which did not so much explain the things themselves as express the words of the discourse in other words, I excerpted only the most useful parts and reduced them to the form of scholia. Where, if anything occurred to me which seemed capable of being not unsuitably added to Nicetas’ exposition, I did not hesitate to insert that also: however, an asterisk was almost always fixed to it, so that our own words might be more easily distinguished from those of Nicetas. I trust that this plan of ours will be easily approved by you. And here too I found it to be true what is said in the Greek proverb (76), *Πόνος πόνῳ πόνον φέρει*. For just as that first labor of the Gregorian version compelled me to undertake a second labor, that is, to exhibit Nicetas to Latin ears, so this second labor, like a certain Eurystheus, imposed on me the necessity of undertaking a new labor. For it came to mind that I must take care that this labor of ours would not be inconsistent with itself, if, in certain orations, partly...
by a shorter exposition, and partly by an entire commentary, the rest were to emerge like spurious works without any accompaniment of annotations, when they nevertheless undoubtedly requested some light of explanation in many places. For I confess frankly and without any affectation of words that there is such a difference between the Greek Nazianzen and our version, that if the matter comes to a contention, this translation can no more stand up to his splendor than an owl can to the meridian rays of the sun. But since Christ valued those two mites of the poor widow more than the very abundant gifts of the rich, which were nothing more than the A surpluses of wealth, and, to use a word of Plautus, certain off-cuts, surely it ought to be acceptable to you as well—for it is allowed to use the words of our Gregory here. For it would be a completely unfair return for me to receive from you, if, for so much labor undertaken for your sake, you should offer nothing other than disparagement of our work instead of gratitude. For it is far more equitable and more worthy of a Christian man to overlook certain errors on account of many well-said things, than to lacerate the whole work because of certain errors, and to imitate the dung beetles, which, finding no pleasure in perfumes, pursue rot. Although I do not ask so much that you overlook our errors and lapses, as that you refrain from disparagement and calumny. By admonishing or even correcting those things in which we seem to have erred, you will do a thing both not ungrateful to me and useful to others; by barking and slandering, you will neither benefit others, and you will bind yourself in a grave crime. For when Christ forbids us to requite even those from whom injury has arisen to us, how much more atrocious is the punishment that awaits those who hunt down with a rabid tooth those who deserve well of them, or at least study to deserve so? From which vice I wish that God may always keep you safe. Farewell, best Reader, and take this our labor in good part.
JAMES BILLIUS TO THE READERS, GREETING (77).
Most rightly and most wisely Sirach says: *Do not contend against the flow of the river* 81. I would have subjoined—not absurdly, nor against nature and disposition. Moreover, I do not bring this forward rashly from conjecture, nor taught by the examples of others; for by experience itself I have learned C how vain and unfair it is to draw back the mind from useful and friendly studies and to turn it unwillingly to another way of life.
Since I had already for three years frequented the schools at home, and was considered sufficiently instructed in the rudiments of my country by the judgment of others, I was sent to Lutetia, so that, as a companion and participant in a more perfect education, I might reap a greater fruit and utility from my studies. Therefore, I immediately delivered myself willingly to those teaching in Latin, and a little later, in Greek. And indeed, within a short time, if not beyond measure and admiration, at least I progressed so much in both languages, that, far be it from me
A to say anything boastful, neither my parents had cause to regret the expense incurred for me, nor the instructors and teachers who labored for my education. After I had remained in the schools there for six whole years, my father summoned me, and having kept me with him for a short time, he sent me to Poitiers, a city which in those days was deemed the most distinguished and flourishing in all of Gaul for the science of jurisprudence.
Who could express in words what pleasure and what joy it was for me to be enrolled in the society of those who cultivate law and justice? For this is a fault common to the young, that, sated with what they are accustomed to, they always grasp at the new and pursue it with all their strength. But the allurements of this pleasure soon vanished. Once I was imbued with the first elements of the laws (for Themis does not reveal her mysteries unless one is first initiated), I was admitted as if having crossed the threshold; but to me, penetrating into the interior, all things appeared so harsh, so arduous, and so inaccessible beyond my expectation, that I could by no means forgive myself for having come to Poitiers, and I called that city a seat of hollow happiness. Yet, forcing my own nature, I attempted with all my might to proceed further, and, according to that saying of the Apostle, to extend myself towards those things which were before. B But what did that struggle of mind profit me? I did not attain to the practiced science of law; nay, even that former instruction of mine suffered great detriment. For jurisprudence not only deceived my hope, but almost everything that I had acquired in that great city also slipped away. And nearly the same thing happened to me as to those whose palate is vitiated: if you offer them some food, they take it hard; then, whatever else you set before them, they reject and spurn alike. Thus, with the hope of jurisprudence removed and being ill-affected towards it, we equally turned away from and abhorred all letters, disdainful of any kind of learning.
Having thus said a long farewell to the study of C letters, I gave myself over entirely to delights and carousing, serving indolence and pleasure in every way, frequenting playing-fields instead of museums, until, through a depraved and immoderate habit of living, I fell into a grave and stubborn illness, which kept me lying in bed for four months and nearly finished me. The disease subsiding and the fever being put to flight, I was placed in a vehicle—for I could not ride on horseback for excessive weakness—and was carried back to my father's house. There I had need of much time, not a little care, and the art of physicians so that my lost health might be restored. D Scarcely, however, was I recreated from the illness and my physical strength repaired, when my father, with continuous discourses, spurred me on to the study of letters: for although he was illiterate, he was certainly a most loving and fervent praiser of men of letters, if ever anyone was. To whom, among other things, I replied that I was prepared to cultivate higher sciences,
A but that I begged off from the study of law alone, as I was quite alien and entirely unsuited to it, having wasted two years upon it to no purpose. But since one of my own kin insisted, I was forced to yield and again to embrace and attend to that most burdensome profession, as I wish I had never done.
For having been drawn away from the things to which I was more naturally inclined to those which were not my own, I wasted seventeen months in Orléans to no useful end, acting like a madman along with my contemporaries—and, to sum it up quickly, having a craze for play instead of study, and being wallowing in the pleasures of the body. My father, having learned of my situation, and being utterly repentant for the fact that he had forced me against my will to return to the study of law, immediately commanded me to return to him as quickly as possible, so that he might curb my unruly impulses, which were poured out into every kind of nonsense, and bind them, as it were, with certain fetters. B
Then, indeed, awakened as if from a deep sleep, and having come to a realization of the time I had so wretchedly wasted, and grasping the thought of my whole youth spent in vanity, I was seized by great grief and decided to be reconciled with literature and to occupy myself with it. Therefore, spending my nights and days with books, and constantly spurring myself on to this task, in a short time I gathered some moderate power in the liberal arts. That the proverb is true, which says that all things can be acquired by toil and care, I learned both in the Italian language and much more in the Greek. For this [language], which had utterly slipped away and was swallowed in the depths of oblivion, I recovered again with great labor, God alone aiding me, at least so far as to be able to understand Greek authors in some way or other, and not altogether to have need of an interpreter. C
When my father had ended his life in a good old age and had paid the necessary tribute to nature, since there were many things that were disturbing my mind and forcibly tearing me away from the love of learning which I cherished, I could not endure being tyrannized, and moving about in the midst of worldly business. For this reason, leaving all my relatives unaware, I fled as fast as I could to Avignon. There, after having wrestled with a certain long illness—and having at last overcome it—I applied myself to books, and wore myself out with the labor of learning.
While I was in these circumstances, and was zealously pursuing my studies, by some good fortune I became acquainted with Pierre Galisard, the leader of the theologians there, whose friendship I shall never cease counting as part of my happiness. For may it never be that I should become so mad as to be unmindful of that honorable man, and to let slip from my mind the benefits with which he heaped upon me. D For he brought me back from my wandering and disorderly study to the right path; and, if it is permissible for me to say that [phrase] of Aeschylus, when I was yet an infant
B he rendered me sensible and prudent. So great was his kindness toward me that he would frequently put aside what he had in his hands to attend to me, and he would prefer things that were for my benefit over his own personal studies. I visited him, therefore, as much and as often as I pleased, and I spent the greater part of the day with him, always returning richer in many and varied branches of learning.
He was a man adorned with almost every kind of doctrine, and while he gladly taught many things, he taught rhetoric with even greater willingness, for he possessed the greatest experience in it. Yet, so as not to depart entirely from theology, in which he was a master, he would point out for examination the precepts of the oratorical art, as we discussed them, within the interpreters of Holy Scripture and those who have constructed pious themes for their discourses. He used to praise and point these out in all others who had won a name for themselves by the power and elegance of their speech, but especially in Gregory of Nazianzus, whose eloquence and sublimity in speaking he admired above all else. C The reading of Gregory's works, however, caused him no small annoyance. For he was greatly pained by an interpretation filled with obscurity, which, being faulty in many places, cast shadows over a most learned man like a cloud, obscuring not only his eloquence but even the very sense of what had been written. Sometimes, therefore, he would indignantly throw the book onto the floor; at other times he would demand of me that I should render and explain more accurately and clearly those things that seemed obscure. Finally, when the entire translation began to sicken him, he asked me to lend a second hand to Gregory and to place that burden upon my own shoulders, having an eye to the public good. But I, partly conscious of my own weakness—which he himself, through his excessive benevolence toward me, had not perceived—and partly fearing and shunning the arduousness of the work, and because my mind was then intent upon other things, could by no means be swayed by his pleas; but I remained steadfast in the things I had once proposed and held in my grasp. Having spent no small amount of time there, I returned home.
Having been struck thereafter by many and diverse wounds, as soon as, finding some remission and leisure through the mercy of God, I was relieved of more pressing matters, I then, in the absence of a better translator, set myself to the task and applied myself to it with the greatest alacrity and diligence. But not long after, I realized, wretch that I am, that I had taken up a burden beyond my strength, and I greatly blamed myself for this daring undertaking. For at first, just as I was setting sail from the harbor, everything seemed serene and tranquil to me, so that I even congratulated myself on the project. But as I was carried further out, such a tempest and so grave a storm tossed me that shipwreck was imminent. And I would certainly have perished and sunk, had not some corrected books of the most august queen brought me back, already swept away by the waves. With those aids coming to me, I was then able to cut through the waves, albeit with much sweat, and to cross the sea of translation. D
PREFACE OF JOHANNES LEUNCLAVIUS
A I would have valued it highly to find a printer who was willing to publish the Greek Gregory along with the Latin version, so that I might share with him those emendations which I received from the queen’s manuscripts. But since it was not my lot to encounter such a one, what remains is that I publish the Latin. If it be measured against the eloquence and dignity of Gregory’s diction, I do not doubt that it will be rejected as of no value; but if it be judged according to the measure of my own powers, it will perhaps not appear negligible. It is the mark of a fair-minded man to demand only what is within one’s power, and to seek nothing beyond. Farewell, dear friends, and judge our labor, whatever its quality, with kindness.
TO THE MOST REVEREND AND ILLUSTRIOUS PRINCE, LORD JOHANNES, BISHOP OF MÜNSTER, OSNABRÜCK, AND PADERBORN, OF THE NOBLE LINE OF THE COUNTS OF HOYA, HIS MOST CLEMENT LORD, UPON HIS OWN EDITION OF GREGORY NAZIANZEN. PROEMIUM.
Among other things, most reverend and illustrious Prince, which from my earliest years have been my delight and love, I confess that I have always been, by a certain hidden and incredible inclination of nature, a student of letters as well as of Greek antiquity; for I noticed that in this language were contained the most ample treasures of every kind of learning and wisdom. Using this, I saw that those ancient philosophers, as well as their more recent interpreters who called themselves successors of the Platonic school at Athens, had enclosed in literary monuments everything that can be taught regarding the art of dialectic, oratory, civil prudence, ethics, natural philosophy, and the geometric and astronomical sciences. B I saw that in it the histories of the greatest events throughout the world were encompassed; that in it the secrets of the art of medicine were committed to memory; that in it the most accurate disputations of the illustrious men of the ancient Church regarding sacred things were set forth; and finally, that in it the books of the civil law, which we use, were so transcribed that many passages, otherwise most obscure, receive a singular light from the Greek interpretation. This last point, indeed, can be sufficiently perceived from certain books published thus far; yet it will appear much more clearly when the most comprehensive epitome of the sixty books of the *Basilica*, which I obtained from that most illustrious man, Joannes Sambucus, who is of the imperial household and a man most friendly to me, shall have been brought to light by our labor.
After I began to understand in my youth that letters were contained in Greek, I so devoted myself to the study of that language that I would not let any time pass in which I did not make some progress in mastering it. When, with this modest diligence of mine, I had finally acquired C, in the judgment of others as well, the use of it, and was stirred by a certain liberal desire of the spirit and—I will confess the truth—by an honest ambition, I decided to apply my whole strength to this task: that if there were any books of the ancient Greeks which had not yet been translated into the Latin tongue, or which, lurking in the darkness of libraries, had not yet received the favor of the light, they might, through my study, put on a Latin garment and, adorned by it, be displayed for the eyes of men in public. In this way I hoped that I would not spend this life in the manner of a slothful beast, but that I would bring some benefit to the world of literature, which I had cultivated from boyhood by the authority and command of those close to me; and that I would prepare for myself an enviable reputation for my name among good men.
Therefore, that I might pursue this undertaking of mine the more successfully, I moved to this most famous city, which, for the workshops of its distinguished printers, is deservedly celebrated—not just in our Germany, but far and wide throughout all of Europe. While I have been vigilant here in publishing certain excellent monuments of the ancients, this is now my fifth year D (what the fruit of this has been for the public, I know not), and this has certainly not been without my own greatest labors and struggles, which have hitherto been endured, occasionally with some detriment to my health. Among other writers, however, whom I judged to be selected by certain discernment to be augmented by the addition of as yet unpublished books and to be transcribed into the Latin language, our Gregory here easily takes the first place, to whom, on account of his supreme knowledge of divine things, the title of "Theologian" was granted in a special way, second only to John the Apostle among the ancient doctors. His most illustrious monuments of genius, which have indeed appeared in print—
A rant, for I saw that they were being handled by the translator in such a miserable fashion that (not to say anything harsher) they were read with little profit to men, although otherwise they are most useful—I began at length, at the urging of friends who grieved for the sake of such a man speaking so barbarously among us, to turn my mind to his interpretation. This was done four full years ago, which I can demonstrate by the testimonies of those most illustrious men, Guillelmus Canterus and Martinus Crusius, and most of the teachers of this academy.
When, however, I had fully resolved in my mind to do this, I thought that I must labor on this work in such a way that it would both satisfy the expectation of readers and bring its author's books—those which were still kept locked up in the prisons of libraries—into the light. That some period of time was necessary to accomplish this task can easily be recognized by anyone. Meanwhile, in Gaul, the most learned man, Jacobus Billius, archimandrite of St. Michael, grieving just as I did for the bitter lot of Gregory, undertook the same labor of adorning his writings, and in fact at the same time as I did. When I became certain of this from the letters of our Canterus, although I had already written out many orations in Latin, I thought to withdraw my hand from the tablet (as they say), because I was glad that that author, who suffered himself to be translated into another language so unwillingly, was finally coming into the hands of men through another’s labor. Nor were there wanting other certain writings about which I could promise myself a sure laurel, especially those hitherto entirely unknown, and yet highly useful.
Verily, when subsequently the labor of Billius was published, I saw sufficiently how many things, previously unseen, which he himself had lacked, I had gathered here and there; I thought it by no means to be permitted that good men and lovers of Nazianzen should be defrauded of an excellent treasure. I did this all the more willingly because, having obtained the nineteen books of the commentaries of Elias, Archbishop of Crete, upon Nazianzen, I oversaw that I could use them as guides with great utility for eliciting the hidden meanings of Nazianzen in most places. Nor, furthermore, was it a small thing to have so many excellent copies of Nazianzen’s writings, written by hand many centuries ago. For even if I grant that Billius also received very ancient books from his queen’s library, as the matter itself shows, yet you may see that we have used much more sound ones, even from the fact that not only are the things which Billius notes to be found in ours; but also, whole long passages are everywhere missing in the Billian version, which our copies supply. This will be evident from our Annotations on Nazianzen, which we shall provide to the reader at the end of the third volume.
Among other copies, however, which we have used, two especially deserve to be celebrated. One of them was written by the hand of Choniates Acominatus some centuries ago, he who has embraced the deeds of the Byzantine emperors in many books, which B Hieronymus Wolfius, a most illustrious man, published in Greek and Latin from his own interpretation. That I am not in the least mistaken in this, I can prove by two arguments. First, Choniates himself in a certain place ascribed this verse: Θεοῦ τὸ δῶρον, καὶ πόνος Χωνιάτου. By which verse, any observer can grasp that the thing itself is a gift of God, but the labor of the writing is owed to Choniates. Next, after his custom, he prefixed certain epigrams, written in iambic senarii, to the orations of Nazianzen: which he also did in his history, as the Wolfian edition demonstrates. We have inserted these, explained in Latin, in their proper places, intending to provide the Greek in the annotations, from which Choniates can be clearly recognized. In the same book B at the end, a fragment of public documents is seen, to which Emperor John Cantacuzenus subscribed in red ink, according to custom, with the following also in a long series of subscriptions of prelates: Callistus, Patriarch of Byzantium; Philotheus of Heraclea, who calls himself President of the Super-eminent, and Exarch of all Thrace and Macedonia; Gregory of Thessalonica, Exarch of all Thessaly; Macarius of Philadelphia, Exarch of all Lydia, who also calls himself the Catholic Judge of the Romans: and finally many others, whose names and titles it would be tedious to relate.
The other copy seems to be even far more ancient than this. In the elegance of its letters, indeed, it excels in many C ways, to which the integrity of the writing clearly corresponds: for it is written with such diligence that not a single word is found written incorrectly in it. The power to use it was kindly granted to me by the doctors of the Basilian academy, men preeminent in both supreme erudition and exceptional humanity, whose library stands in the public place. It is known that it was brought here 150 years ago, at the time of the Council of Basel, and has since been kept with great veneration. Pictures are interspersed throughout, by which the dress and habit of the Greeks are elegantly expressed. The image of Gregory is contained in the same, fashioned so exactly as Simeon Metaphrastes described both the lineaments of his face and the form of his other members, whose words upon the Life of Nazianzen will follow below. Relying on these copies, therefore, we have corrected many depraved things, and restored the mutilated to their integrity.
Concerning the commentaries of Elias, I shall say nothing else, unless that the work itself will abundantly demonstrate its own goodness. That man was certainly—whenever he lived (for nothing is known to us concerning this)—a most great philosopher and theologian, who had most diligently read the books of all philosophers, poets, orators, historians, and others, both ancient and modern, especially the Platonists, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, and the others: that which can easily be detected from the treatment of the common theses, which he inserted in many places, most beautiful and filled with excellent doctrine. Nothing in the commentary on the ora-
-Ation on the Right Manner of Discussing God, which we have placed second in order, can be read more perfectly or with more erudition. And he wrote everything in a phrase that is truly very elegant, polished, and by no means barbarous, such as is the style of the Greeks who lived in the succeeding centuries; from which one may estimate that this Elias of ours is not so very recent, but lived many centuries ago.
The reading of his commentaries will also be made more pleasurable by the fact that they contain certain fragments of ancient writers whose complete books we do not possess today. Among others is that great Maximus, whose commentary on the writings of Dionysius was published in Paris. There exists also of the same author, among the Greeks, an interpretation of the divine liturgy, still extant. The book to Thalassius, written by the same, is cited by Michael Glycas, whose Annals, as yet unpublished, we are currently translating: and likewise a Catechesis, or Chapters on Divine Dogmas, of which books our Elias also makes mention. Elias also indicates in many places that he had elsewhere explained other orations of Nazianzen in perpetual commentaries. Wherefore it may appear that Nicetas Serronius, and Gregory Palamas, and others have ploughed with his heifer; that thefts were committed, in many places, can be detected. He cites here and there certain verses from the poems of Nazianzen, which, since they were entirely absent from the published versions, we checked against our manuscript books of the poems, and we discovered all of them; which I would believe happened by divine providence, so that at the time when I had acquired those works of Nazianzen, I could conveniently use the testimony of a certain man, lest anyone deny B that they were his. Something similar happened to me regarding Caesarius, the natural brother of Nazianzen. Divine bounty offered him to me four years ago; and though I was somewhat doubtful about the writing, because I had heard that Caesarius was occupied with court business and the duties of a questor, and that he had been early removed from human affairs in the funeral oration of his brother Gregory: behold, last year I find a witness, Glycas, who cites verbatim some things from those very dialogues of Caesarius, which now for the first time we subjoin in the third volume of our monumenta of Gregory.
As for what must also be added regarding Elias, I truly believe he was a man of the time when Crete was occupied by the Saracens and taken from the Byzantine emperors, namely, plus or minus six hundred years from our age. For he writes in the proemium prefixed to his commentaries that this work was elaborated by him in exile, which exile indeed seems to coincide with those very years of Saracen cruelty.
When we saw that the books of Nazianzen could be thus both polished and augmented by so many such writings, so that they were little removed from the perfection we require in editions of ancient monuments, not content with Billius’s labor, we turned our mind anew to our original plan. And lest anyone think that what we promise concerning the perfection of the works of Nazianzen is A said rashly and vainly, according to the fashion now prevalent, by which an impostor is imposed upon the buyer, it is my pleasure to subjoin here a few things, from which the reader may understand that we speak the truth and may perceive the reasoning behind our edition.
Immediately from the beginning of his proemium, Elias hands down that only LII orations or commentaries (for the word *logos* is generally used by the ancients for any writing or treatise) were published by Nazianzen, among which certain epistles should be referred, of the kind which he wrote to Nectarius, Evagrius, and Cledonius. When this statement of Elias had settled deep in my mind, I noticed that I was liberated, first, from that opinion which I see Billius followed. For he thinks that Gregory undoubtedly published more orations of this kind for the people, such as the one in which he explains the saying of Christ from the Gospel of Matthew. If that were true, we would have to search libraries, so that we might bring forth those orations, if not all, at least most of them, for public use. But in all this labor and trouble, this one word of Elias relieves me, and I believe there will be no one who would withhold faith from it.
Having considered this first, I next began to direct the keenness of my mind to making a judgment regarding those orations, as many as existed: that I might see whether they were all genuine offspring of this author, or whether something supposititious was lurking under his name. In this censorship, I detect that in two writings, Billius had observed before me that which is the case, namely that they should by no means be attributed to Nazianzen; but in a third, he himself, as well as all others up to now, has been deceived. The first two are: a metaphrasis on Ecclesiastes, which by the testimony of Jerome is by Gregory of Neocaesarea; and an annotation on the prophet Ezekiel, which is so far from being Nazianzen’s that it could scarcely be attributed to a man of moderate learning. I thought the metaphrasis should be retained because we believed Elias, perhaps led by a common error, had numbered it among the books of Gregory: even if that were true, it should seem strange to no one, since, while Gregory was scarcely dead, the title of the oration was changed to Heron, as Jerome, a contemporary of Gregory, warns. But if in this way B the reader is not satisfied, it remains that we promise that we will investigate with all diligence a genuine writing of Gregory, to be substituted in its place. We decided to cast out the annotation on Ezekiel entirely from our edition, as being spurious: so that some genuine writing of Gregory might occupy its place, by diligently unrolling ancient books, we finally attained that which we desired. For in a hand-transcribed book of Choniates, we found a panegyrical oration of Gregory, delivered in honor of the witnesses of the truth, representing the fury of the Arians graphically: which, that it is without any doubt from this author, both the character of the speaking and the appearance of the things themselves show. Finally, the third writing, of which I just now made mention, is an Exhortation to a virgin. This
A has been classed among the orations up to this point, and attributed to Nazianzen; to the latter I am little opposed, but the former I declare to be altogether wrongly done. For if there is any system of rhythms, such as Aurelius Augustine hands down in his book *De Musica*, and as is indeed consistent with their use by the ancients (making mention of it as both Aristotle and Athenaeus and others do), I would grant indeed that this writing is Nazianzen's, just as Choniatas also believed, and as the most ancient copies testify; but I wish it to be referred not among the orations, but among the poems. For the whole consists of mere rhythms, as the thing itself declares: *Virgin, bride of Christ,* *Glorify your bridegroom;* *Always purify yourself* *In discourse and in wisdom*, etc. This, although it has been detected by no one among us so far, I found noted in my most ancient book of the poems of Nazianzen in a few words, which I shall bring forward in Latin: "In this writing, Gregory imitates the Syracusan, who alone of the poets used rhythms and cola, with all other poetic reason of composing verses neglected." The error arose from the ambiguity of the word *logos*, which is found here and there in the lemmata of books. For it does not signify an oration only, as we have already warned before, but in general any dissertation or writing whatsoever. From which it happens that our Elias calls the poems of Gregory "metrical discourses." In this way, with certain things cut out and the oration *On the Martyrs* restored, we have fifty-two treatises of Nazianzen, which number Elias has handed down to memory as the complete one. Wherefore, there is nothing more here that we might desire.
Follow the epistles, which we have augmented by only one added from manuscripts: we shall add more at some time, which we could not obtain at this time, although we are not ignorant of where they remain. The poems, however, now grow so much by our study that those now appearing equal the magnitude of those previously edited in the number of verses, and far surpass them in goodness and piety. There remains one book against Apollinaris, written in verses by Gregory, which is still extant at Rome in the Vatican library, to have which transcribed we have long ago given effort, intending to spend even some expense, but in vain. Wherefore this writing will be searched for by us at another time, when we undertake a journey into Italy (if it shall have pleased God). For in the same Vatican we have received that two extreme treatises of Gregory remain in Greek, of which one is on the faith, the other on the Nicene faith: which we read now only translated into Latin by Rufinus.
From this our commemoration, the reader can understand that it is not out of place that we have said that this edition approaches most closely to the perfection of the works of Gregory. Indeed, it seemed good for certain reasons to distribute them into three volumes in all, of which the first contains twenty orations with the commentaries of Elias, and the whole is owed to our industry, who B have transcribed the rest of the thirty-two orations with the epistles and poems edited thus far from the Greek into the Latin tongue. We obtained all these from the Billian edition, lest, by weaving again what had been turned before, we might seem to be doing what was already done. Into the third and final volume, which is likewise ours in its entirety, we refer those poems of Gregory which are now for the first time given to the light by us; furthermore, we add Nicetas’ commentary on the sentiments of Gregory, included by terms of four lines and single lines, and the outstanding book of Psellus, a Christian philosopher, on the understanding of difficult passages in Nazianzen. Added to these is also Caesarius, the own brother of Nazianzen, of whose writings nothing at all had previously appeared. I have thought his Dialogues were especially to be added to the writings of Gregory for the reason that in them Caesarius introduced his brother Gregory, being questioned by himself, by Leontius, by Gregory of Nyssa, by Domnus, and by other friends, and answering them concerning the weightiest questions for four whole days. To this we also subjoin Annotations on the scripts of Gregory, in which is contained a variety of readings, and the necessary Index.
Why, however, we have not followed the order prescribed by Billius in arranging the orations, there are many reasons, and those grave ones. For there are two classes of orations of Nazianzen in all. The time of some, in which they were either written or pronounced, can be known; of others, it cannot. Of the first class are: the orations *On peace*, *Against Maximus*, *To Basil* and *To his father* in a few instances, the *purging of his flight into Pontus*, most of the *funeral orations*, and others. Of the second: the orations *To the Eunomians*, *On the right manner of discoursing about God*, *On the right opinion of doctrine*, the two *On the Son*, *On the Holy Spirit*, *On the moderate manner of debating*, *On the Maccabees*, and many others. Since this is so, a certain account of time cannot be held in the series of the arrangement; as indeed it was not even accurately held by Billius, if we consider the matter rightly. For by reason of time (if indeed we believe Elias of Crete and Nicetas Serronius), the first should have been—not that in which he prolixly purges his flight into Pontus, but the other, whose inscription notes that it was delivered to those who had called him at the beginning, nor came they after the office of elder had been committed to him. D For it was pronounced at that time when he was first made a priest; and according to this action he fled into Pontus, from which flight having returned, he delivered the oration *On Pascha and on the lateness* (which for this reason will claim the second place for itself), and having said that, he wrote at his leisure the purgation of the Pontic flight. Now Billius placed that oration, which was pronounced at the election of the prelate of the Doarenses, Eulalius, after the one which was delivered in the council of the 150 bishops. And yet the former was spoken while Basil was still alive, the latter long after he had been removed from human affairs. The funeral oration on Basil was the last of all, whether one considers the writing or its recitation, pronounced at Caesarea of Cappadocia in his extreme old age, when, having left Constantinople, Gregory was returning to his home. But these occupy a place among...
the earlier A works, and his authority, which had already fallen into contempt with many, was restored. You also have the see of Paderborn, in which the same Charlemagne, having conquered the Saxon nation, established a bishopric. Finally, you have Osnabrück, the first of all the sees of Christian bishops in Saxony, fortified by the authority of the same emperor: in whose immunities, which they call privileges, something truly deserving of mention for all posterity is contained.
Considering these things with myself, it seemed best to grant the first place in our edition to those orations which our noble Elias, hitherto unknown, had most excellently interpreted; and to append others after them, rendered into Latin dress by the labor of Billius. But why I should send this work, completed after no small space of time and with truly great labor, to your most reverend excellence, most illustrious Prince, I am moved by various and indeed weighty reasons. First, I thought that the works of such a renowned bishop ought to be offered to no one more rightly than to a bishop who is likewise renowned. Next, I wished to select a patron and censor for myself who was cultivated in literature, contrary to the custom of most, who do not fear to dedicate their labors to men utterly ignorant of letters.
When I considered this truly, there did not occur to me in the entire empire of our nation any one of the foremost men whom I would prefer to your illustrious excellence. For not only is the exceptional praise of learning attributed to you by the consensus of all, but you also use languages, which rightfully merit the admiration of most throughout all Europe, in a truly elegant manner. Added to this is the fact that you preside with power and authority over that region from which my own ancestral and paternal origin is derived. For you hold supreme power and authority in western Saxony, which in the recent designation is called Westphalia, although its true and ancient name is Saxony, just as Cranzius the Saxon repeatedly inculcates in his histories. You have the bishopric of Münster, called Mimigernaford by our ancestors, which was established in the third place in Saxony through the dedication of the Emperor Caesar Charlemagne Augustus. Its dignity was always great, which can be estimated even from the fact that when, at one time, the Archbishop of Bremen sought it, he did not obtain it until he had placed the archbishopric after it, and received it *in commendam* (as they spoke in the barbaric fashion of previous years). You are, however, prefect of this region by the best of rights, whether due to your distinguished wisdom or the ancient merits of your most noble family. For Otho, the 41st bishop of Münster, Count of Hoyel, your kinsman, having subdued the Count of Tecklenburg and others who had invaded the Church’s possessions righteously and unrighteously, left behind an D immortal name among his own people (to use the words of the historian himself) on account of the territories added to the diocese, B and restored his authority, which had already fallen into contempt with many.
It is well, however, for certain reasons to set down in this place the very words of the Carolingian constitution, which even today remain inscribed in public documents. "To the same bishop," says that great Emperor Charles, "and to his successors, we grant perpetual liberty, and immunity from all royal authority: unless it happens that the Emperor of the Romans and the King of the Greeks arrange to form marital alliances between their children. Then indeed the bishop of that Church, with expenses provided by the king or emperor, shall assume both the labor and the honor of that embassy. And for that reason we decree that in that same place, schools of Greek and Latin shall remain forever by our ordinance: and we trust that clerks skilled in both languages will never be lacking."
Moved by this precedent of our ancestors, our lord, Emperor Caesar Maximilian II Augustus, without a doubt last year wished that his daughter, betrothed to the greatest of Christian kings, should be escorted especially by you: in the fulfillment of which duty you earned great praise for diligence and prudence. If we wish to judge the matter rightly, no one has had greater power in those regions for many years; a prosperity which all good men acknowledge is due to your exceptional virtue, and they congratulate you on it. That you may count me among their number, and that you might receive this acclamation of mine as it were kindly, I ask again and again. Perhaps an opportunity will be offered to me at some time to demonstrate, by a more illustrious argument, the veneration in which my soul holds your excellence. Meanwhile, I ask most earnestly that you hold the effort of serving the public good in this way, which has been in my mind for many years, as not only welcome and worthy of approval, as I trust you will certainly do, but that you encourage it with your favor and kindness more than it is pleasant to experience through exhausting and grave burdens. Farewell, most illustrious Prince, and receive me, as I commit myself through this work to your most reverend excellence, into the number of those whom you deem worthy of your grace and benevolence.
TO GREGORY OF NAZIANZUS
JOANNES LEUVENKLAIUS.Γρηγορίοιο λόγους, μέγα χρῆμα καὶ 'Αττικοεργὲς Ατρεκέως, ἐν ἐμῆς ἡνίκα χερσὶν ἔχω· Gregorii quoties Hyblæ redolentia nectar In manibus verso scripta diserta meis:
A I am not greatly struck by the orators whom once the city of Athens held, those masters of alluring eloquence; for, as I read the poems of Gregory, no desire for the Maeonian bard remains. As gold is to bronze, and silver to lead, and as the things of earth are inferior to the things of heaven, so has Gregory, with the prize already won, surpassed the ancient poets in his verses, and the orators in his speeches.
*Other.*
The Cappadocian land, once half-barbarous, surpassed the very Attic Athens, since Basil and Gregory, those most learned men, brought the sweet-sounding eloquence of the Cecropians and all the ornaments of whole Greece to their own Cappadocian land, like victors. Who, then, would not call you blessed for your noble offspring, Cappadocian land, mother of illustrious men?
*On Caesarius, by the same.*
When the force of an earthquake shook the city of Nicaea, Caesarius lay pressed down by the weight upon the earth. But God brought him safe from his hidden place, and gave him longer space for life thereafter. Similar fate overtook his works, when Caesarius had died an untimely death. And yet these too, the care of Leontonychus brings forth by divine favor, having been half-buried before.
B Hail once and twice, you who were hidden twice in the caverns of the earth, and twice recalled to the light by the gift of God. These writings Leontonychus inscribed for Caesarius and Gregory, those blessed brothers.
*On Elias, Metropolitan of Crete. By the same.*
To search out the dark meanings of the divine books of Gregory was before a thing full of great labor, until Elias the Cretan appeared, an expert interpreter of Gregory’s speeches. He whom I now, Leontonychus, bring back to the light, though he was hitherto unknown to all mortals. Receive this treasure of wisdom, containing auspicious doctrines, you who love to know many and noble things.
*Of Scipio Carteromachus. Translated by Leuvenklaius.*
Gregory taught that the Muses inspire divine poems more than the Chian bard. Or rather, Homer spoke everything under the Muses, but a more divine breath blew upon Gregory.
C Joannes Leuvenklaius sends greetings to Jacobus Billius, a man of distinction.
It is now the fourth year, Jacobus Billius, since I first applied my mind to the interpretation of the most excellent writings of Gregory of Nazianzus, at the urging of friends, and for nearly the same reasons which, if I am not mistaken, you write also moved you to the same undertaking at that time. Now, since I had finished a goodly number of orations along with those of Elias, the Cretan prelate and distinguished philosopher, D I thought it good to relax from theological commentaries, because of a certain weariness that had crept in from the continuous writing of some months, and to take up some other labor. When I had finished this, it seemed that the former work, as if renewed, could be brought to completion with greater fruit for others and more pleasure for myself. And, moreover, as some things concerning the Nazianzen...
were as yet unpublished, and while I was busy with these, I preferred to be occupied with another type of translation, so that I might return better prepared to the Nazianzen; thus, in the meantime, I published a work on Xenophon, and I translated the fifteen orations of Gregory of Nyssa on the Song of Songs, and the Chronicle of Constantine Manasses. While my mind was occupied with polishing all these, and was readily preparing itself entirely for the elaboration of the intended translation of Gregory, our Theologian conveniently appeared, adorned in a Latin robe, by your constant vigils. This circumstance was not only not troublesome to my mind—as usually happens to most people, who, finding it difficult to bear, act as if they were obscuring the lights of others—but it was even a pleasure, especially after I saw, upon inspecting the book, that it had been translated by you elegantly and not without judgment. Truly, when I subsequently compared your work with those things which I myself had translated into the Latin tongue—in the nineteen orations clearly explained by Elias of Crete—I noticed that many things, on account of the various readings of our most ancient manuscripts as well as the very acute explanations of Elias, were translated by me in a way very different from what was found in your books. I thought it would be of little trouble to you if, in this part, I were to replace your work with my own, joined with the commentaries of Elias; as for the rest, however, which you had translated successfully and studiously, partly aided by the work of Nicetas and partly by your own hand, I would retain it for our edition of the Nazianzen precisely as you had done it. And I was the more confident A that this could be done by me without any envy, because I had already obtained some writings of the Nazianzen which had not yet, to my knowledge, been made public, on which I thought it better to expend labor than to rework what had been previously elaborated, as if it were apart from the subject. There were added thereafter some other things, collected from here and there, partly by our own industry, and partly with the help of friends, which also seemed necessarily to be brought to light along with the Nazianzen. In this category we shall exhibit in the third volume the commentary of Nicetas on the sentences contained in single and quadruple verses, the book of Psellus on the understanding of the difficult passages of the Nazianzen, and the four dialogues of Caesarius, brother of the Nazianzen: not to mention the restorations of many passages, which I owe to the study of several books of venerable antiquity that I collected and compared. Wherefore, I for my part promise myself that you, as a wise and learned man, will interpret our intention in the best light. For envy ought to be absent from every class of men, but especially from the learned: for whom it is proper that nothing be held more sacred than that they themselves should strive with all their might to aid the republic, and not only should they not hinder others pursuing the same endeavor by some sort of spite, but they should even eagerly encourage them with benevolent exhortations. I would speak at greater length on this matter, were I not confident that you will approve of this edition, and that you will also willingly acknowledge that it is joined here not so much with the propagation of my fame (for I have little regard for that, but rather for the public utility), as with your own honor and dignity: which all good men, and those who are devoted to the monuments of the Nazianzen, will deservedly love on account of your conversion of so many orations and poems. Farewell. Basel, the third nones of January, in the year of our Lord 1571. B C
TO THE ORTHODOX READER, JACQUES BILLY SENDS GREETINGS.
Since I had seen in our Basel edition of Gregory that John Leuvenklaius had translated several orations, explained by the commentaries of Elias, and had moreover added certain annotations at the end of the work, in which—seeking, as it were, a laurel wreath in a honey-cake—he noted if there were anything in which he thought the author’s meaning had not been sufficiently grasped by him, and that not so much by his own talent as by the footsteps of Elias and some other Greek scholiast, it can hardly be said how gladly and with what cheerful spirit he brings this forward. I, for my part, could not think otherwise D than that he, who had shown himself so studious and diligent in noting and publishing the errors of others, had likewise displayed in those things which he himself translated the highest degree of learning and industry, AND BEYOND ALL THE DARTS OF CRITICISM. But yet, since I knew it to be generally brought about by nature that those who gladly occupy themselves in judging and criticizing the writings of others sometimes go blind in their own, it came into my mind to test whether I myself could return the favor to him in this kind, WITH THE SAME MEASURE, to use the word of Hesiod. For I did not imagine—I do not say that anyone else, but—not even Leuvenklaius himself would take it with a troubled mind if I were to apply to him the same right which he had taken upon himself toward me. Moreover, it was my pleasure to make a trial of this matter, not from all that he has translated from this author (for that would have been too long, and I had no desire to spend good hours so ill), but from a single small work, and indeed from that which was the frontispiece of the entire volume: so that, therefore, it seemed little likely to me that many things could be offended there which would fail to satisfy even a morose reader: for if there is any talent in any man, if there is any industry and diligence, it usually shines forth most of all at the beginning of a work; nor does almost anyone, unless he is clearly stupid, begin to slumber so quickly, much less to snore. Having, therefore, read this Life with the closest attention, and having compared his translation with it, I was suddenly affected with great wonder indeed. For, in truth, to speak with our Gregory, I have found things INCREDIBLE. For, to pass over the verses themselves, which were not well (as Gorgias used to say of Plato), but completely VERY POORLY IAMBIC, and everywhere LAWLESS, I found him, who so studiously explores the stumbling blocks of others, at the very threshold, more than
PROOEMIA FED. MORELLI
a hundred times, not slightly offending, but most disgracefully falling, who, if by chance he finds in his Greek codices anything that disagrees with mine, he, without exercising any judgment, snatching it up as if it were a Hermes A, insults me impudently; he is so dull and obtuse that not only is he unable to notice any faulty word by himself, much less correct it, but he also sticks miserably in even the most trivial errors of Greek punctuation, and is carried headlong into a meaning most alien to the author's mind: in short, one who even attacks all the most celebrated writers of ecclesiastical history, and is such a novice and stranger in history that he does not even have a clear understanding of where the error of Arius consists, but depicts him to us as an ignorant dipuns Cecrops, and at once a most wretched heresiarch, and an orthodox man, through supreme ignorance. Although this last point ought to seem less surprising, especially in a man so cachectic that the pagan Zosimus, vomiting his canine rage against the best emperors and those most deservedly praised for the Christian religion, pleases him more than the pious writers by whom their praises have been commended in written monuments. A witness to this is that insane and clearly sacrilegious Apology, which must be exterminated from the borders of the Christian world with the perpetual ignominy of its parent, in which he behaves in such a way that, as someone once said about the Milesians, they are not fools, but do the same things that fools do, so it can be said of him no less aptly that Leuvenklaius is not a pagan, but does the same things that pagans do. B For what pagan, however hostile and embittered against the Christian name, could have written more sharply on behalf of paganism, and raged more furiously against Christians, than he does, who professes himself to be a Christian, and indeed a purified one? But to return to the subject: since it is demonstrated clearer than the noonday sun, in those Annotations which we have appended to this Life, how often that *doxosophos* interpreter has erred in translating the Greek, and been blind in correcting it, and has betrayed his own ignorance in matters pertaining to history, then indeed I will leave it to the reader to conclude, since he has sinned so many times in one quire, and that the first one, how great an Iliad and sink of errors would have existed if I had wished to examine and collect all that he himself has translated. If these things are annoying for Leuvenklaius to read, let him learn to *metriophronein*, and when he perceives that he is so far removed *apo tou anamartetou*, let him apply his labor to correcting his own errors—which are usually very slight—rather than to slandering and attacking those of others, who, while they live, can perhaps heal themselves; and from then on let him endeavor to withdraw himself from the number of those who, as Nazianzenus said of the Arians, are lenient judges to themselves, but severe censors to others; they have wounds, and they cast lashes at others; they fall shamefully and attack the slight offenses of others; they wallow in the mire and fashion pleasure for themselves from the stains of others; finally, they have eyes oppressed by beams, and offer up the motes in others as a scandal.
TO THE MOST HOLY AND MOST BLESSED PAUL V, SUPREME PONTIFF, WITH GREETINGS AND HUMBLE KISSES OF THE FEET. (From the Edition of 1609.)
Concerning the writings of the Holy Fathers, both Greek and Roman, most blessed Father, it can justly and deservedly be said, what Thucydides writes of his History: *Ktēma es aei mallon ē agōnisma es to parachrēma akouein synkeitai*, that it exists as a permanent monument rather than something to be heard for the pleasure of the mind at the present moment. Truly, the fruits of such sacred muses, drawn from the greatest spirits and the purest minds and inspired by God, accompanied by an excellent genius, "Canescent seclis innumerabilibus [grow gray with countless ages]": and though their authors and parents enjoy in the better part of themselves eternal life in the heavens, yet on earth their fame, conscious of truth, will live as long as the race of pious and studious men shall consist, and shall hold in their hands, day and night, what those *makaritai* have produced for that memory: for if one ought to esteem these treasures (as Domitius Piso used to say), not books. Therefore, St. Jerome, most celebrated of the doctors of the Roman Church, D not disdaining to digest the ecclesiastical writers into order and to weave their catalog, followed the exhortation of Dexter the prefect; whose footsteps Gennadius of Marseilles, insisting upon, labored in enumerating the remaining writers. These works of such great men, filled with treasures of every kind of learning, and especially of heavenly and divine doctrine, and to be preserved with cedar oil, and "with smooth cypress," in chests, *keimēliois*, libraries, magnificently built by pontiffs and princes who love letters and learned men and are distinguished by piety, have for the most part been kept safe, salvaged, and covered: and finally, by the benefit of the typographic art, the storehouses of books, rescued from the injury of time and men, revive daily.
Nor is this care and glory of the republic of letters any less vibrant today in Gaul than in any other regions of the Christian empire; under Henry IV, most Christian and most clement King, as unconquered in arms as he is a lover of peace and the arts, under whose happy auspices the most reverend bishops of Gaul, the prelates, and the clergy of the kingdom of France, with one consent, with supreme study, and with singular kindness and liberality, have placed their best efforts in this excellent cause, so that pious and approved men...
A of both languages might diligently, clearly, elegantly, and correctly edit the authors in more refined type. And this most distinguished undertaking and design has progressed to such a degree that, from the typographical root, watered by a golden rain, a very dense forest of the best bilingual codices [διγλώττων] has begun to sprout.
In these, indeed, the most absolute writings of the blessed Gregory of Nazianzus, the most eminent [κορυφαιότατον] of the theologians of the Eastern Church, whom St. Jerome proclaims as his own mentor and a most eloquent man, and whose explanation of the Scriptures he confesses to have learned, hold almost the pride of place. These, in both languages, have now been edited in the Royal Greek types as accurately as could be done, and have been augmented by us with a sort of supplement of letters hitherto unpublished; under the protection of whose more august name could they more safely be brought into public, than under thine, most holy Father, by whom alone the army of the Church militant is refreshed? Would not the most reverend Jacobus Billius, abbot of Saint-Michel—that learned and faithful interpreter, by whom the writings of the same Gregory of Nazianzus were first translated into Latin and dedicated to Pope Gregory XIII—if today, by the will of God, he were recalled to this life, most willingly and readily consecrate his Gregorian translation and bilingual edition to thy most blessed Name, B when now, in thy Holiness, he could behold all the most illustrious stars of virtues in the world? It is certain that this was in the prayers of his most noble kinsmen, among whom the most reverend Bishop and Duke of Laon, Peer of France, brother [αὐτοκασίγνητος] of James, stands out for no common piety and erudition.
For my part, I have done this willingly, so that, with the consent of so many men distinguished by doctrine and integrity, I might bring forth this prelate and sun of the theologians of the East—exulting to illuminate the times of thy Roman pontificate with the native rays of Attic wit and borrowed graces—dedicated to thy Holiness, everywhere shining with the lights of so many heroic and celestial favors. Nor is it right, most blessed Father, to doubt but that thou, with the calm countenance with which thou beholdest the Christian world and the storms of the Church, C and calmest the heavens, shalt benignly admit this Hyperion of mystagogues into the most august sanctuary of the chair of St. Peter, and hold him most acceptable. As we are most persuaded of this, so may God love us, that thy Holiness may obtain its divine wishes, and the whole company of the pious may long possess thee as their optimus maximus pontiff. Paris, March 21, 1609.
Of Thy Beatitude, The humblest servant, FED. MORELLUS, professor and royal interpreter.
TO THE READER
(From the 1609 and 1630 Edit. Morell.)I know what you are aiming at and where you are hurrying, most pleasant of men; because it is late tomorrow to have knowledge and to learn, and you wish to have knowledge and to learn today. There will certainly be no delay on my part to prevent you from doing so. I have decided to give nothing to your empty and religious ears that might offend them. If it does not displease you to grant a little patience, perhaps it will be good to remember this brief prologue. I call you—and those like you, [φιλογρηγορίους], to whom "they made themselves remembered by others through their merits"—to this. So take it as follows.
When it had been resolved to undertake a new edition of the works of Gregory of Nazianzus in both languages, it was in the interest of the matter, nay, it was worth the toil, to procure ancient Greek codices. The most august library of the most Christian King provided these for us; and the most ample man, Jacobus Augustinus Thuanus, president of the supreme court, very kindly exhibited the most ancient and excellent manuscript from his own library store, D according to his zeal for letters. The most learned man, Antonius Vaquerius of Noyon, communicated to us another codex, which had been compared with various manuscripts in Belgium through the care and study of most learned men. From those codices that the most reverend Jacobus Billius, abbot of Saint-Michel and author of the Latin version of this writer, had read or at least compared, there were collected certain variant readings, not unfruitful.
Now, as for the Greek-German edition, which had been diligently compared by the same never-sufficiently-praised Billius with the Royal manuscripts and with the Medicean ones of the Queen Mother, and with those which the most illustrious Cardinal Sirletus had sent from Italy, [ἱερὰν παρακαταθήκην], the most upright senator of the Parisian supreme court, Paulus Petavius, most freely lent them to us. On the margin of his book, indeed, Billius had noted variant readings, conjectures, and emendations with laborious diligence; nevertheless, he had employed an academic [ἐποχήν], and a caution and constancy in withholding assent, such that he never expressly declared which [λέξιν καὶ ῥῆσιν] he approved more than he rejected. What are you to do here? Should you, as was done of old, provoke the silent and sleeping Philip to the awakened and attentive Philip? It was certainly necessary to judge skillfully, as if with a Mercurial rod, by the Latin interpretation of the same, already long since approved and accepted by the calculation of almost all learned theologians, which reading, as the genuine one, ought to be followed. But here was the work, here was the labor. "In which there are many great differences, if those who judge should stumble—"
A especially where one must prefer the truth. There also occurs a sort of divine rod to relieve you—you who are a lover of truth—and everyone else of this burden, the most reverend Father Fronto Ducæus, a theologian of the Society of Jesus, worthy of so great a name, and most skilled in both languages. He, with indefatigable labor in aiding the Christian and literary commonwealth, has bestowed excellent and continuous effort on this masterpiece; even though at the same time he was being detained by the Latin version and bilingual edition of Chrysostom, yet he deemed this matter to be of greater concern [ἀσχολείας ὑπέρτερον πρᾶγμα]. But in what he has accomplished, you shall easily perceive with great pleasure of mind, if you apply your attention.
We have attempted, B and have added a corollary of unpublished letters, with our own version, such as it is—certainly extemporaneous, and supported in large part by our own single ancient manuscript, written by the hand of a stenographer rather than a calligrapher—so that it may go well with the one who translates, if, cautious within the hope of pardon, he has avoided fault, though he has not merited praise, from work that was too hurried and lacking in care. Unless you weigh the mind of one who has deemed nothing so much his own as that which was public.
What, you will say, Morell, have you contributed no mite here? Indeed, I would have considered it a religious duty to withhold my work in the editing of the writings of this author, who has been my delight since adolescence. I have at least contributed some gleaning or raceme; for there are places in the Greek, especially where suspected of errors—whether from punctuation or from the transposition of letters—that we have applied a healing hand by way of conjecture or with the help of manuscripts. C Furthermore, if you wish to know this too, that "nothing is sweeter than to know all things," the most learned annotations of Billius have been separated by counsel, and more conveniently relegated to the second volume, which will contain the sacred poems of our Gregory, and the scholia that exist on his works, in both Greek and Latin. Live, farewell, and take in good part what is given, and love the authors, helpers, and fellow-workers [συνεργούς] of this gift and labor: mindful of that Pythagorean saying, "Do not hate your friend because of a small offense." D
TO THE TRUTH-LOVING READER, MORELLUS
(From the 1609 edition, Vol. II, at the end.)Your candor of heart, which causes you to take everything in good part and to approve with your own assessment those things which you see undertaken and completed for the public good, does not escape us. Therefore, we did not think it would be either troublesome or unpleasant for you if we should admonish you in a few words regarding our proposed plan and our undoubted determination to publish the works of St. Gregory Nazianzen in Greek and Latin. Know, therefore, that we had in mind to undertake an edition of the works of this most holy and most eloquent prelate, using the codex of the Basel edition of 1550, from the press of Hervagius, which the most illustrious man Jacobus Billius, formerly the most deserving abbot of St. Michael in the Desert, and most skilled in both languages, had accurately collated with the royal French codices and with the Italian ones shared with him by the most illustrious cardinals Charles of Lorraine and Guil. Sirletus—as the most learned Gilb. Genebrardus reports in his preface, while he was striving with earnest prayers to the Supreme Pontiff to have that author printed at his own expense. But because his emendations and conjectures did not everywhere agree with his own Latin interpretation, and many things had been deleted by him in the text, which he nevertheless, persuaded to restore them, had judged should be put back—the "second thoughts are better" [δευτέρων ἀμεινόνων]—and had conversely removed those things in the Latin interpretation which had been left in the Greek; the overseer of the printing corrections did not wish to assume so much for himself that he would pass judgment on the work and keen-witted [ἀγχίνοιαν] opinion of such a great man. Rather, he preferred in good faith to express what had been handed over to him, and then in notes and scholia to represent the various readings collected, and to indicate in ambiguous places those that were more in agreement with the interpretation of the translators or with the sense of the author. These notes, furthermore, as was customary, he had judged should be relegated to the second volume; since he was about to include the other annotations and commentaries of Nicetas, Psellus, Nonnus, and Elias of Crete, together with the poems of Gregory. Since about one thousand two hundred iambic verses were missing from these in the codices of the Royal Library, which Joannes Lewenclaius had published many years ago in Germany in Latin only, and in prose, therefore effort had to be made so that even this part of his works, "not the least [οὐκ ἐλάχιστον] part of the sacred ones," might not be omitted by the French edition. When, therefore, those verses [κείμενα] had been diligently sought through all the libraries of Europe, those codices from which Lewenclaius had once transcribed them and translated them into Latin could nowhere be found. But at last they were sent to us from Rome (so that the "sought-after prize [ζητούμενον ἁλωτόν]" might be obtained) through the study, care, and expense of the most illustrious Cardinal Maffei Barberini, transcribed from the Vatican books and other Roman libraries: then we received another transcript [ἀπόγραφον] of these, sent by the most human and most learned man David Hoeschel, which had been happily redeemed at a price from a Jew in Frankfurt. Meanwhile, however, while this search held up the edition of the second volume, behold, a new monitor from England, who, as someone curious in another’s work, a "meddler in other men's affairs" [ἀλλοτριοεπίσκοπος], and impatient of such a long delay, wished to publish two orations [στηλιτευτικάς] against Julian with the Greek scholia, and added notes in which he included various readings collected from various books, and at the same time observed and indicated typographical errors [σφάλματα], the blemishes of the Parisian edition. There were, indeed, manuscripts once examined by English amanuenses of the most learned man Henry Savile; and he,
through the intervention of Billius, obtained them—a man who is now in possession of the most illustrious Parisian senator, Paul Petau—just as if they had abandoned all hope in the edition of our other volume, they could not bear to see such a harvest of corrections perish to them A *deinopathousi* [suffering grievously]; as if the fortunes of Greece consisted in them. Finally, a *koinos Hermes* [common herald/messenger] was found, Richard Montacutius, who would offer his service to them, and seeking a laurel wreath in a honey-cake, would season the observations of others with gibes and witty jests, with which he might attack the Parisian edition; and in a few months he anticipated our notes. But it happened that while he was carried toward us in an overly *sobaros* [haughty], *propetes* [rash], and angry manner, he also betrayed himself as having been a man who could err; and so he rushed headlong with a blind impulse, that he fell into those very errors which he was throwing at us. For example: our work had missed the error on page 349, *os*, with a grave breathing instead of a smooth one, of course; therefore Montacutius advises it should be read in exactly the same way, not *hōs houtos* [as this], as right reason demands. Page 350, *aiterontes* [seeking], with a rough breathing. Frequently he also corrects old errors of the Aldine or Basilian edition, which were overlooked by Billius, with new errors; as when on page 342, *ethnous te plēreis* [full of nations], he amends it to *ethnous te plērēs* [full of a nation]: as if *plērēs* could agree with the following word *lēptas*. Page 370, *zēlothen* [having been envied/zealous], he reads for *zēlothen* [having been envied]. Page 354, *nikēsantos* [having conquered], he corrects to *kinēsantes* [having moved], for *kinēsantos* [having moved], and wishes to heal an absurdity with an absurdity. Page 379, *hōs oun nekrōn* [as therefore of the dead], for *hōs hōs* [as as]. Page 346, he wishes it to be read as *to Iōna* [to Jonah], utterly ineptly; for what would be the sense, *epasche tō Iōnā* [he suffered for Jonah]. He also shows that he is ignorant of the rules of grammar, when on page 751, he amends *ēdynato* [he was able], as if it were faulty, to *ēdynato*, with a double augment, by Attic usage. *Tis emphraxē toutō to stoma?* [Who shall stop his mouth?] Furthermore, he falsely and wrongly proffers amendments B and various readings from the book of Billius: as on page 397, he asserts that *epanagois* [let us bring back] should be read, where it is written *diexagois* [let us lead through]; yet that Bilian correction, *epanagois* [let us bring back], is to be referred to line 2 of column 2, where in the Basil edition it was read as *apagois* [let us lead away], and Billius corrected it to *epanagois*. Sometimes, however, because Billius had copied many things from the scholia of the Greeks, and had added them in the margin of his book, it came about that Montacutius thought himself able not only to correct, but even to augment the books of Gregory, and inserted such glosses into the text, as we showed on page 152; and on the contrary, from the genuine text he rashly expunged certain things as if they were glosses, which are clearly necessary, *hōn aneu ou to eu* [without which there is no well-being], as is evident from the notes on page 212. It is patent that very often a great many typographical errors could be corrected by collation with the Latin text of Billius: yet he spends whole pages on the most minute details of the omission of accents and breathings and punctuation—or *parakrasei* [corruption]; while in the meantime his own notes, like the stable of Augeas, so teem with mistakes that there is hardly one in which ten or twelve childish lapses do not occur. We could cite six hundred places falsely presented from Gabriel, Billius, and the Royal codices, or even from the Basilian edition, which can be found nowhere in them, in short, *iatros autos helkesi bryōn* [the physician himself teeming with ulcers]. Who could now enumerate his calumnies? Since he has feigned that those things which had been deleted by Billius were eroded by us, as on page 359, page 212, *Tis ekkoyei to kentron tēsde diabolēs?* [Who shall pluck out the sting of this slander?]
He aims at this only, that he might falsely accuse our Parisian edition C as being full of errors: even though nothing of the sort is found in it, such as he himself dreams: "Not innocent in mind," as St. Ambrose writes, "and deadly in hand." Meanwhile our little boat is tossed by *kymasi sykophantikois* [slanderous waves]. But you will learn these things one by one, most fair reader, by reading our notes thoroughly. I shall add this one thing: since he reproaches us with the lamp of Epictetus, we may justly take up the lamp of Diogenes instead, so that we may search for a man in his writings: for nothing of humanity, nothing of *epieikeias* [fairness/kindness] occurs in them; when he detests even the lightest *sphalmata* [errors] as if they were certain monsters, and from a fly he begets an elephant.
OF THE SAME FED. MORELLI, PHALEUCIAN VERSES
The great Gregory, ornament of the Pelasgians, The pious Bishop of Nazianzus, Leaving Paris to seek Rome, Seated on the throne of Peter as supreme Pastor, the Christ-born flock, Adorned with both Greek and Latin, Gladly approaches, greets, and prays— Adorned in worship—that Rome may stand immune, And he himself likewise, That his chaste writings may be read in the whole world.
PREFACE OF MONTAGU
TO THE MOST REVEREND FATHER IN CHRIST AND LORD, LORD RICHARD, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, PRIMATE AND METROPOLITAN OF ALL ENGLAND.
(From the Montagu edition, Eton, 1610.)
It is of great importance to the Christian cause, most reverend Father (as you are well aware), that the writings of the ancient Fathers of the Church be circulated in as corrected a state as possible. For even the Fathers on the opposing side clamor for these, as if they were sworn witnesses in their own cause, and in every question they are wont to appeal to the Fathers as to a supreme tribunal; and we, for our part, willingly and readily admit them as arbiters in controversial dogmas. For they are the princes of the Christian religion, the dispensers of the revealed doctrine, which, derived from the apostles and confirmed by perpetual practice, they have transmitted down even to our own times. Wherefore, those who in the past and in the present have labored in unfolding the writings of the Fathers and in purifying them, achieve a thing glorious for the Fathers themselves, highly pleasing to God, and useful to the commonwealth and the common cause. In which genre, indeed, the first praise is due to the most illustrious and most learned Sir Henry Savile, who, with the utmost fidelity and diligence, and even with indefatigable labor, has corrected, supplemented, and elucidated the writings of Chrysostom, as many as can be had in Greek, in innumerable places. I say confidently, most reverend Lord, that since the invention of typography, no writer, whether ancient or modern, has appeared in the hands of men with such fidelity and A religious care, and so accurately, as our "golden-mouthed" one shall appear. Meanwhile, however, while the work is being pressed forward—which has already proceeded to the third volume, and, God willing, shall proceed to the seventh or eighth—Nazianzen leads the way before him: an orator vehement, a most honeyed writer, and the "most great-voiced" of the Greek Fathers. For so the hosts are wont to invite guests to the dessert, while more sumptuous repasts are being prepared. He leads the way, indeed, and not without reason: he was a predecessor in the episcopate to him who is universally considered a forerunner. Nor could it be thought tolerable that, of two bishops of Constantinople, the one should depart adorned and cultivated in this way, and the other should lie despised in its squalor. A year ago the Parisians published the Nazianzen, in Latin and Greek, but it was neither complete, and it was deformed by very many errors through the utmost negligence. We did not wish, as they say, to do the work twice over, but we have published very necessary corrections, collected from many manuscripts, into all the orations and epistles, by which we have cleansed the Augean stable and restored brightness to Gregory. We have supplied several omitted items, and we publish those invectives against Julian—which had not yet been seen in public—among all his orations the "most eminent," rendered more ornate through the work of Nonnus and the ancient and learned scholiast, and corrected of innumerable errors much more than they had been before. Whatever this little work may be, most reverend Father, it comes to light under your name and under your auspices. For if anything in this kind is elaborated, you seem to claim it by right for yourself, you to whom we, who are of the B "priestly order" (I speak with Nazianzen himself), are bound to approve both ourselves and our work "according to the great commandment." Furthermore, it seemed consistent that an archbishop should hasten to an archbishop, and Gregory, I shall speak freely, to a Gregory. And if this our Nazianzen finds a place in that "shrine" of yours—the exquisitely furnished library which you adorn—it will neither shame him to have passed through the hands of a new man, nor will it repent the latter hereafter to have consecrated himself and his labors in this part to the Church. For the rest, may the "great metropolitan" and the great patriarch of the whole world, the Only-begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ, preserve and protect your paternity, most Reverend, for a very long time for the Church and for all good things.
Your Most Reverend Paternity's Most humbly devoted, RICHARD MONTAGU.
TO THE READER
(From the Montagu edition, Eton 1610.)
We present to you, my reader, these two invective orations—"denouncing the constitution of Julian"—separately in Greek, with Greek scholia and some heretofore unpublished works of the same Gregory. For since it would benefit both the learned and the author that the works of Nazianzen be recalled to the press in a more corrected state—because that Basle edition had appeared most depraved, and also because copies were sold out and not available in the shops—D further: Sir Savile, a man "of the highest degree," as he is regarding literature, had begun to think about an edition. And indeed, after Chrysostom, the "most prolific writer," whom he sought out with great expense through all the libraries and had already placed under the press for the third volume, he had summoned help from all sides to adorn this province: but this recent Latin-Greek edition intervened while he was considering this, published by the Parisian printers.
with a specious title-page adorned with ribbons; which perform anything but what they promise. Perhaps they had, or certainly could have had, the Royal, the Queen’s, Petavius’s books, the codices of Syrletus, Thuanus, and Vaquerius; but, like the lamp of Epictetus, they were for show and not for use, inasmuch as they deformed Gregory more than he had been in the first edition. Hence, my reader, came the earlier resolve I had—partly abandoned—to publish Gregory, lest you should be entirely deprived of that which Nazianzen cannot lack; that illustrious man saw fit to communicate these things which we now provide; yet he, through the love with which he is wont to pursue me, drew me—unfit for the burden and unprepared—to take up this work in his stead. Wherefore, that you may know what has been accomplished by us in this edition of these fragments, we present the Greek text of Nazianzen, collated with various manuscripts, as emended as we are able; we have appended scholia, not useless, copied from a very ancient codex of the College of Blessed Mary Magdalene in the Academy of Oxford. The Caesarean library of Vienna, through the most diligent writer Samuel Slado, provided both this scholiast whom we have attached, the interpreter, and the compiler of the histories. Both, I confess, sometimes wander and are in places clearly corrupt, but we have not been anxious about those, being content only to have faithfully expressed the transcripts everywhere, and we leave the rest to the learned reader. Concerning the unpublished letters and oration, and the more correctly edited testament, we have spoken in the place of the notes. Now, indeed, regarding the corrections which we offer in [his] orations, letters, and his Life, we have gathered these from various manuscripts, which we designate in the individual pages by initial letters; R. notes the codex of the Queen Mother, the Medicean, from that renowned library. P. notes the variety of readings which formerly the most learned A Jacobus Billius had noted at the margin of his book, from Italian and French copies, which book now belongs to Paul Petavius, a senator of Paris. Syrl. notes the most excellent manuscript notes by Cardinal G. Syrletus in Billius’s book at Petavius’s. Tr. denotes a sufficiently ancient codex of the College of the Holy Trinity in the Academy of Oxford, to which book Sir Henry Savile himself had demanded those sixteen orations on which Nicetas the Commentator wrote. Furthermore, the most learned man Richard Thomson and my very dear friend Augustine Lindsel contributed their tokens to this. For the latter sent to me the corrections of Julius Gabrielius, for all the epistles and orations from the Vatican membranes, those edited at Plantin’s, but which had not been seen in the Parisian [editions]: and this is the book which we call G; he however communicated his own codex, collated with the writings in Italy, and this is the one which we signify by Th. Ox. notes the Magdalene membranes, containing some thirty-odd orations and perpetual scholia. Pal. [notes] that codex of the Palatine library which the learned man P. Felckmannus cites in his *Against Athanasius* of Gregory. Bas. is the Basle edition: Bill. [notes] the interpreter Jacobus Billius: El. [notes] the interpreter Elias Cretensis. Sch. notes the papers by Andreas Schottus: and Bod. [notes] a codex, truly memorable, of the Bodleian Library of Oxford; for it possesses all the letters of Nazianzen—both those published earlier and those we are the first to give: and besides, some decades of Basil’s, all still unpublished, which we possess as transcribed from here. I have arranged these readings and corrections for the Parisian edition, following its method in the orations, the pages of the orations, and the page numbers, so that for anyone comparing both books it may not be difficult to follow step by step. Do you, reader, use these, and enjoy them as they have been prepared for your benefit. Farewell.
TO GREGORY XIII, SUPREME PONTIFF AND MOST HOLY FATHER OF THE WHOLE CHURCH, GILBERT GENEBRARD AND JOHN CHATARDUS, PRESENT THIS DEDICATION.
(From the editions of Nivel, 1583, Morel, 1609 and 1630.)Driven by many grave reasons, most holy Pontiff, have we been moved to cause this new, full, and perfect translation of St. Gregory Nazianzen to appear in your most holy name. D First, this was the perpetual and constant will of the most learned and noble interpreter Billius, whose dying wishes we deemed it a sin not to fulfill, especially since he could find no patron for his learning more equitable, no defender of his labors more powerful, no cultivator of his Nazianzen more vehement, nor a prelate more similar to his own virtue. Next, since the name of this Gregory wondrously refreshes and restores you, as the Gregorian chapel at Rome—erected by you most augustly and munificently—declares, and as the most holy shrines, dedicated by you to this divine man most splendidly, testify to the treasures sought out at your expense from all parts of the world; whatever we could obtain of his relics, we ourselves also bring to your sacred treasury, and deposit them with you, as with the most faithful guardian, religiously. Godofredus Billius, brother of the interpreter Jacobus, abbot of St. Vincent of Laon, requested this of us: the rest of his kinsmen, famous not only for the lineage of their race and the chief honors of the kingdom, but also on account of the Catholic profession, conspicuous throughout all Gaul, interpret this as a relief and consolation for the wound received at the passing of such a kinsman, if they, bedewed with the apostolic blessing, and if the remains of their own blood—well-kept by the apostolic throne, to which they are most devoted—and if the memory of their most pious and learned kinsman, the monastic superior Billius, were in some measure...
A understood and appreciated by the most learned—aye, and by that most loving of all the learned—Pontiff.
Receive, therefore, the Gregory of Billius, according to the desired wish of all of us—nay, your own Gregory, whom you attend with such magnificent buildings, such august honors, and such precious gifts. For their sake, we have also added, by the counsel of your venerable Holiness’s nuncio, Giovanni Castelli, Bishop of Rimini, the Gregorian Chapel of Laurentius Frizolius, so that posterity may know that its dedication was owed entirely to you; for the perpetuation and decoration of whose veneration you have expended so much and so great a sum, and, having raised up such numerous seminaries throughout the Christian world at the greatest expense, have furnished the theology handed down by the author himself with type for so many and such varied languages, cast in Rome, with plates and marks. You will be grateful, we well know, to the interpreter who, at such a time, exhibited the author’s most elegant and faithful edition to the Latin world, at a point when it was most useful and indeed almost necessary. Namely, at a time when the Calvinist plague has attempted to graze upon the whole globe of our territories, and has led forth from the cavern of the lower world all those monsters which the theologian once, with labor more than Herculean, had tamed and transmitted to the chasm of hell. It has poured forth for us Vallaeus and atheists of that sort, for whom all religion is a fable. It brought forth Natalis Jornetus, a petty schoolmaster cast into chains at Nîmes this year—and who will perhaps escape through the help of his comrades-in-arms—who composed a book against the patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, and traduces them as imposters and as the authors and heralds of false religions. It begat Beza, who posits two hypostatic unions in Christ in a Nestorian manner; Langus, who asserts that the flesh of Christ was truly and essentially deified in the rite of Eutyches; Brochardus, who soothes the furies of the Calvinists with Manichaean music. It brought forward from the Genevan school the denunciation of that most holy and salubrious little prayer, "Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on us," as implicitly (or rashly) uttered by the Fathers, as dangerous, as barbaric, and as improper.
What future generation will believe such an abundance of blasphemy? Before which the hair of whose body will not stand on end at such an impious license of speech? B The Calvinist has spawned this ulcer—those who shrink from this statement, so sweetly sounded by the Nicene Fathers against the gates of hell: "God from God, Light from Light, very God from very God," as harsh, as improper, and as most dangerous. It has introduced through the Lemanic [Genevan] cesspool a new definition of person or hypostasis, by which the divine person no longer subsists by itself, but through essence and in essence; no longer coheres by itself, but hangs from a certain common substance, and adheres to it in the manner of accidents. Why should I add those who rashly declare themselves "Autotheans," saying that the Son and the Holy Spirit have obtained nothing of their substance from the Father, but are gods of themselves? or the Trinitarians—for so many prodigious words have they stumbled upon for a prodigious impiety—by which three gods exist, now equal and peers, now unequal and disparate? What of the Anti-trinitarians, holding opinions contrary to these, and thus conflating one God in such a way that between them and Sabellius scarcely any difference is perceived? What of those who receive into their communion Valentinus, Paulus, Alciatus, Blandrata, and that Mahometan beast, and derive the mysteries of the most divine faith from the diabolical Alcoran, and join the Alcoran, the Gospel, and the prophetic Scripture as if they were three "divinely inspired" books in a most portentious manner? What of the other disgraces of the human race, let alone the Christian, which have almost extirpated the sense of all theology from the consciences of men? For now, among them, inquiry is not made impurely regarding matters pertaining to God; rather, a most wicked dispute and contention rages about God Himself, the supreme Parent of all things. When one theologian alone C opposes all these most effectively and strongly, the labors undertaken by Billius to present him to us—to those of us who are to fight against these furies—purely and faithfully, will gain, we hope, the greatest favor with you, above all others, to whom the province has been divinely committed of seeing to it that religion suffers no harm. To overthrow these men and to utterly drive them from the whole Church, there appears to be no remedy more present than that you should emulate this patriarch, who bears your own name, and that you should strive against these men in the same manner as he bore himself against the sectarians of his own time. He repelled them with the Word of God; he cultivated and promoted letters, especially those by which the audacity and temerity of these men might be broken. He appointed Eulalius and other upright and learned bishops to resist their blasphemies, impropriety, and ignorance with the Word, with example, and with writings. He aided Basil the Great with great contention so that he might obtain the archbishopric of Caesarea, so that the serpent of the Pneumatomachians and the cancer of the demented Apollinarists might be extinguished in Cappadocia. He implored the aid of Theodosius, the most Christian emperor, to beat back the impudence of the Arians, Macedonians, and Apollinarists, who did not offer themselves to be persuaded by the Word of God. He urged Olympius, Sophronius, Asterius, D Victorius, Modarius, Eutropius, Amphilochius, Julianus, and Candianus—princes and prefects—to destroy these men and to preserve those things which belong to ecclesiastical peace. He fostered peace between princes and Catholic pastors so that the Christian line of battle might be the firmer against the impious. He mingled the sword of the Spirit and the [literal] sword, and, as with the Apostle, he came now "with a rod," now "in charity and in the spirit of meekness" [I Cor. IV, 21], so that he might restore to its purity the Church corrupted by heresies. He cultivated charity with all, even at the cost of his own reputation and throne. "Cast me into the sea," he said, "if the storm has arisen on my account": and thence, [while] both Caesar and other pious men were lamenting.
he departed to the Nectarian, highest and greatest patriarchate, namely the Constantinopolitan, yielding after the apostolic tenure. For he did not merely cultivate the interpreter [Gregory] most affectionately while he lived, but he aided him with counsel, opinion, and his own recondite erudition; in short, he assisted him in every way he could, even by sending from Rome Greek exemplars still deposited with us, by which either corrupted passages might be emended, or obscure ones might be illuminated, or the work itself might be greatly enriched by the addition of new commentaries, orations, epistles, and poems never before edited. Since, from all these, he has now completed his own [work], well-collected and most corrected, you would deserve well, most holy Father, of the Christian cause, and even of Gregory himself—whom you piously cultivate and encourage all to piously cultivate—if you were to order him to be printed anew from his own emended codex, and to hand him over to your most elegant presses, by which you have ensured the printing of the Council of Florence and many other things. Otherwise, our printers grow sluggish and do not easily undertake first-class Greek editions, whether because they are privately insufficient for such great expenses, or because they prefer the immediate profit of Latin and vernacular works to public utility. For they claim that the sale of Greek works is slower, no doubt on account of wars and heresies, by reason of which languages and more solid disciplines everywhere begin to languish unless they are cherished by you; to say nothing of avarice, which does not allow men to apply themselves to these letters, which procure neither great nor easy wealth. It will be to your greatest ornament, and will redound to your immortal glory, if you preserve them and, as you have begun, restore learned books to their original languages and characters, and transmit them to posterity. You have the domestic example of Nicolaus V, a pontiff who can never be sufficiently celebrated, by whose wealth, largesses, power, and authority Greek letters—which in Italy and indeed in the entire Latin world had perished for nearly seven hundred years—resumed spirit and blood; and Hebrew [letters] were valued so highly that five thousand gold coins were promised to one bringing the Hebrew Gospel of St. Matthew to him. In this, he proved himself truly a prelate of the Catholic Church. For the Church is properly called Catholic from the universality of the nations which she gathers into her own bosom, and with whom she communicates and speaks through languages, especially learned and grammatical ones, consecrated by the title of the Lord’s Cross far and wide: not like the Judaic [religion], which was circumscribed by almost one people, or the heretical [religion], which is concluded within the narrow borders of a few nations. But, lest we seem to doubt your propensity toward them, we return to the plan and beseech you that you may favor the memory of such an excellent interpreter, and that you may follow with your apostolic blessing us, who vindicate his monuments from corruption and affix them to your doorposts by the command of his own most noble and religious brethren. Paris, the Kalends of July, the year 1582.
EULOGY OF JACOB BILLIUS
EULOGY OF THE REVEREND FATHER M. JACOB BILLIUS OF PRUNAY, ABBOTT OF SAINT-MICHEL-EN-L’HERM, MOST PIOUS AND MOST LEARNED, ALONG WITH HIS TOMB.
By Joanne Chatardo, Prior of Tossiac, author. To the noble relatives and friends of the deceased.
TO THE READER
(From the Nivel edition, 1583, Vol. II, p. 1548 and following.)I thought I would be doing something worthwhile if I inserted here this eulogy, such as it was published at the time of the death of Billius himself, whom he met while he was sending this Gregorian work to be printed for the second edition, adorning and enlarging it; so that from this, in a few words—and as it were in a summary of his life and death (for from his various most learned and pious writings you will be able to know more)—you might understand who, of what kind, and how great that faithful interpreter of St. Gregory was. He was a true disciple and imitator not only of his doctrine, but also of his morals and most holy life: there is no doubt that those who led a similar life on earth, and spread it throughout the Church of God, also enjoy together in heaven his glory, whom they sincerely cultivated until the last breath of life, and whose ample talents they so diligently, eagerly, piously, holily, and happily expended and multiplied. Farewell and enjoy.
TO POSTERITY
A TO JACOB BILLIUS OF PRUNAY, BORN OF THE MOST NOBLE AND ILLUSTRIOUS BILLIUS FAMILY, MOST PIOUS ABBOT OF SAINT-MICHEL-EN-L’HERM. SKILLED IN SACRED AND POLITE LITERATURE, MOST SKILLED IN THE HEBREW, GREEK, AND LATIN LANGUAGES. MOST FAITHFUL INTERPRETER OF THE GREEK HOLY FATHERS. FIERCE CHAMPION OF THE CATHOLIC FAITH. DEAREST FATHER OF THE POOR. MOST EXERCISED IN ALL WORKS OF RELIGION AND PIETY. FINALLY, MOST CUMULATIVE IN EVERY GENRE OF VIRTUE. RENOWNED FOR MANY BOOKS, GREEK, LATIN, AND FRENCH, FILLED WITH THE UTMOST PIETY AND DOCTRINE, BOTH IN PROSE AND METRE. JOANNE CHATARDO, GRIEVING FOR MANY REASONS, ERECTED THIS.
List of the books he wrote
Collections of consolations, and salutary teachings for the faithful soul, excerpted from the volume of St. Augustine on the Psalms, written in French. Six books on the second coming of the Lord, published in French verse, with the treatise of St. Basil, *On the Judgment of God*. St. Gregory Nazianzen’s tetrastichs, with a brief and familiar French exposition. Two books of Sacred Anthology collected from the most approved Fathers of both languages, and comprised in octastichs, and illustrated with a brief commentary, with some Greek octastichs added at the end. Which two books he rendered into two other French spiritual odes with the greatest dexterity of genius; with French commentaries added, collected almost solely from the ancient theologians, along with some other poetic treatises of the same subject. Certain minor works of St. Gregory Nazianzen, surnamed the Theologian, now published for the first time, and other items rendered into verse, and for the most part illustrated with the commentaries of Cyprius Dadrybrensis. A volume of Greek locutions digested into commonplaces by alphabetical order. B St. John Damascene’s works, much more expanded than before, and for the most part now translated anew. Many things translated from St. John Chrysostom, and inserted into his various writings, such as the explanation on Ps. 50, taken from the library of the most illustrious Catherine de’ Medici, Queen and Mother. A commentary *On Penitence*. Also, the explanation of Ps. 52, and the enarratio on Ps. 100, and the seven following, and on Ps. 118, and the preface. A book of letters from the library of Cujacius the jurist. And finally, a new interpretation of Chrysostom’s own narration on the Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians. All the works of St. Gregory Nazianzen, surnamed the Theologian, which are indeed extant, gifted with a new translation; together with the most learned commentaries of Nicetas Serronius on the sixteen panegyric orations; those of Elias of Crete on some others; of Psellus on the second oration *On Easter*; of Nonnus *On the histories and fables which are found in the invectives against Julian the Apostate*, with brief scholia added everywhere. He left many other works of the same piety and erudition
which, like posthumous children, will, under God’s favor, soon be brought forth for the great benefit of the Christian republic. A From all these works, to be sure, one can easily perceive what kind of man he was and how great, whether we look at his exceptional erudition, his manifold knowledge of things and languages, his Ciceronian eloquence, his singular piety, the integrity of his life and morals, or whatever else orators, poets, historians, philosophers, and theologians are accustomed to desire and commend. For they themselves are mute masters (for such as the man is, such is his speech) of those things he composed and transmitted to posterity, and they bear witness to these things more fully, elegantly, and truthfully than any orator, however eloquent, could do; so that I would have considered it superfluous to weave a longer narrative about them. But if anyone desires to know who he was, what the course of his life was, and what progress he made, he will understand this in a few words from this humble account.
In the year 1535, he was born to most noble and illustrious parents, Ludovicus Billius and Maria Brichantæa of Guise, at which time his most generous father, Ludovicus Billius Corvillæus (for so he was called from his paternal and distinguished village of Corvillæus, just as he was later called Prunæus from his own noble house of Prunæa and the town situated toward Chartres), was serving there in the office of viceroy. B While still a very young boy, so that he might be instructed from his tender years in sound letters and disciplines, and imbibe them as if with a nurse’s milk, he came to Lutetia Parisiorum. Thence, having laid the foundations of Latin letters (for he had only touched upon Greek), he was recalled by his parents, and scarcely eighteen years of age, he was sent to Orléans and Poitiers to apply himself to jurisprudence. But he would frankly admit that he had dallied with this, and in it he had progressed little or nothing, whether because his Minerva was reluctant and unwilling, or because that younger age, being more inclined to youthful games, stood in his way, or even because God was ordaining him for more sublime studies; and he very often lamented this waste of time, which he eventually valued above all else.
Afterwards, orphaned of his parents, he set out for Lyon and Avignon (seeking those places where he might be recognized by no one, so that he might more freely and familiarly enjoy the milder Muses), where he began to burn with an incredible love for Greek letters. C In these, having used almost no teacher, he made such progress in a short time through his own industry (as he was of a sagacious talent, tenacious memory, and very keen judgment) and indefatigable labor that he surpassed all his contemporaries and left them a long way behind; indeed, he had few peers in his own age: he seemed to have understood "more than the elders" (to use the words of Scripture), especially in understanding, explaining, interpreting, and translating sacred and ancient Greek authors. Among these, he took the greatest delight in St. Gregory Nazianzen the Theologian, both for the sake of his supreme eloquence and for his singular piety and doctrine; whence at that time there came upon him a desire to render this man into Latin, and to purge and illustrate him from the numberless D errors and roughnesses which swarmed in him. This is a task that no one else had ever dared to undertake, or could have performed with the same elegance and polish of speech, and with the same happiness and fidelity, both in oratorical and metrical composition, as he himself could.
While he was hiding there, satiating his wondrous thirst for Greek letters day and night, and laying the foundations of the Hebrew language under a certain Jew, lo, scarcely two years having passed at Avignon, he was summoned and recalled by the reverend and most pious Friar Ioannes Billius, abbot of Saint-Michel-en-l'Herm and of the Blessed Mary on the island of Ré. For at that time he was meditating on those abbeys, and on his ample and noble patrimony (for he was the eldest of the brothers), and on abandoning the world itself, and on establishing and choosing a new way of life, namely, the Carthusian (as being indeed a narrower path, but also one more direct to the celestial life), and he was vehemently desiring to substitute his brother Iacobus into his place, and to leave him as his successor, not so much by reason of fraternal obligation, or of flesh and blood (which had already become vile to him), as because of that singular piety and erudition which shone forth in him to all, having conceived of him, as if from the grain in the ear, the hope (not at all vain) that he would one day be the only one who might greatly assist and adorn the Church of God. But the young man, not yet twenty-five years of age, could scarcely be induced to undertake these priestly offices, content with his small Ferrariensis abbey and his own priory of Tossiniacum (with which he finally adorned and enriched me, on account of his great benevolence toward me), because he thought himself to have shoulders unequal to the task of bearing these burdens, and that the very amplest revenues were more of an impediment to his studies of letters (in which he was held by desire alone) than an aid. Truly, at the prayers of his brother and friends, he undertook them—not without frequent weariness and sorrow afterwards. But he conducted himself in them in such a way, and excelled in every kind of piety, that he was an object of admiration and an example not only to his own fellow monks, but to all his neighbors and those traveling there, like another young Daniel.
But that one who by his envy brought death into the world, envying us and the Church of God this happiness, moved by internal wars to defect from the king and Church, at the time of the La Rochelle rebellion (I except those in whom there was a certain spark of piety and love toward the learned), incited the inhabitants of La Rochelle as if from his own hell, and as brisk and most appropriate ministers of his wicked institution, by whose ministry he accomplished against the new abbot what he had once done against Job, the excellent servant of God. For they burned his two monasteries, demolished them, and razed them to the ground. Trees also (for there was a grove there on the seashore, planted with trees eternally green, and most pleasant, and most suitable for the Muses) they partly cut down, partly uprooted: and as many as were in the fortress of Saint-Michel...
(whom he maintained there as a garrison at his own private expense), they found after the warlike engines were brought up and the place captured, and cruelly butchered; some they tore apart with swords, others they strangled with ropes, others they dashed to death by hurling them from heights, others they threw into wells while still half-dead and living. For they first A vomited out their own madness upon their neighbors, and they raged the more cruelly in that the place was more holy and the inhabitants themselves more holy (for the food of Satan himself, as the prophet says, is chosen); the pious abbot was, of course, hateful to them, seeing that he blinded those night-owls with the splendor of his virtue. Yet he himself was absent at the time.
Namely, a little before (reluctantly, indeed, but usefully, by the counsel and urging of his fellow monastics and friends, so that he might take thought for himself, born as he was more for literary studies and peace than for weapons, and that he might preserve himself for better things for the Church of God), he had withdrawn to Nantes. Where, some time after, having heard of this slaughter—so savage and barbarous, committed by the illustrious Martigny, the vice-regent of Brittany, who was there at the time and whom fortune had happened to encounter on the road—he returned home and burst into tears. When I approached him to offer what solace I could as a man, I myself also burst into tears, my voice choking in my throat from anguish, and we both lamented such a miserable slaughter with such abundance that, for both of us, there was a certain pleasure in weeping. But at length, when our tears had dried and we were nearly exhausted, he gathered his resolve and said: "God, they have come into your inheritance, they have set your holy temple for a treasury of apples, they have set the dead bodies of your servants as meat for the fowls of the air, the flesh of your saints for the beasts of the earth, they have poured out their blood like water, and there was none to bury them. Your altars, O Lord, they have pulled down, and they have killed your servants with the sword, and I alone am left of our Michaelites." And just as David, having heard of the such miserable slaughter of the eighty-five men clothed with the linen ephod, brought to pass by the order and the hand of Doeg the Edomite, said to Abiathar the son of Ahimelech, who alone had escaped to him from that disaster: "I am guilty of all the souls of your father's house": so he also said, "I am guilty of all these souls." But even with those mournful words I was consoling him, because the same thing had happened to him as to David, an innocent man and a man after God's own heart, and he had been pierced B by nearly the same weapon as he.
After this ruin and slaughter, he remained for several months at Nantes, not far (because it was not permitted to go closer) from his monastery, like those birds that, even when their nests have been shaken to the ground, are accustomed to fly around them and not depart far. I remember that nothing more baneful or mournful had ever happened to him, and that he had never been struck by a heavier disaster or grief in his life: although many sad and mournful things had happened to him, especially while the civil wars were raging.
For that grief over the cruel and bloody Michaelite slaughter and ruin (concerning which he himself, making mention of it in that dedicatory epistle to the most eminent Cardinal Charles of Lorraine, which he placed before his Nazianzen work, says: "Who," he asks, "could deplore the ruin of our Michaelite monastery with any tragic speech, given the atrocity of the deed?") as it was greater, so it clung deeply and for a long time to his heart and mind. Afterward, driven out of that region, he began to wander hither and thither, and after the manner of pilgrims, he began more eagerly to wait for and inquire after that coming city which is established, and which is not exposed to the force and injury of wars and times. He withdrew first to Laon, to his dearest brother and the reverend abbot of the monastery of Saint-Vincent, in which—and in Saint-Denis (where he also held the office of grand prior)—he spent several years, driven from his own monasteries and stripped of his revenues. But, always desirous of seeing again the [monastery of Saint-] Michel alone, having entered into peace and having the tumults quieted in some measure, now to Paris, now to Oysonville, now to Nantes, now to our monastery at Tours, he journeyed, in the hope of progressing further and arriving there. But with the civil wars reborn, or rather continuing there—or because of the diseases by which they were being struck down, and with the winds of our tempestuous republic blowing against him—he could never land there before the last summer, a few months before he paid the debt of nature.
Meanwhile, indeed, though an invalid and tossed hither and thither by the waves of our most miserable age, he [remained]...
A how never idle he was (for he hated idleness and sloth as a kind of lethal poison, and he supremely abhorred those who were sluggish, as useless and pernicious to the republic); nay, he published more numerous, more learned, and more useful works than perhaps any other man of his age: so that he could say with Paul: "When I am weak, then am I powerful," for "strength is made perfect in weakness" (II Cor. XII, 10, 9). For nothing escaped him, not even a moment of time, nor did he allow any day to slip by without a line, or indeed without at least one page being written. For even when he was suffering from illness (to which he was frequently prone, especially gout and fluxes), once his pain had relaxed or subsided, he would always be composing something, whether in Greek, Latin, French, or anything else. For he had also prepared a sort of repository of sentiments and arguments, which he would turn over in his mind while in bed, when it was not allowed him to leaf through many books, and would dictate to an amanuensis. Moreover, even when he sometimes rode on horseback, he would often withdraw from his retinue to devote himself to meditation and to ruminate on what was in his mind, the headings of which he was accustomed to write down on tablets, and that hurriedly and by stealth.
For he would especially withdraw from me, because I would often object to him and, as it were, wage war upon him, because he would not look after himself, and never relaxed his mind, which was always as taut as a bow, from the study of letters. For there arose no other dissension between us than this, and because he was wasting away his body—slender and lean, and looking almost like a skeleton—by excessive fasting and frequent penances (for he omitted none of these, beyond other spontaneous ones, which the Church commanded). For in a vessel of clay and truly fragile, a great treasure was stored, and his mind was like a precious stone enclosed in a glass ring, and the true Jacob lay hidden beneath the shaggy garments of Esau. Indeed, as he was a great lover of peace, and literary studies themselves require leisure and seclusion, he greatly desired to find some quiet and tranquil place where he might establish and furnish a library, and more freely embrace and more safely cherish the gentler muses.
When many understood this, and being enticed by the hope of gain (for he was willing to remit much of his annual income), they came to him and often instituted discourse with him concerning the exchange of those abbeys of his. But because others were either suspected of heresy, or were soldiers by profession, or were not free from the suspicion of Simony (which he detested above all as a Lernaean hydra of our evils), he preferred to be carried hither and thither perpetually, at the risk of his health and the expense of his studies, rather than to incur the slightest stain on his name, or to harm his conscience, in which he was most vigilant to keep it pure. And often he had a mind to relinquish his other abbey, because that "bigamy" [of holding two offices] did not please him: but this could not conveniently be done on account of the adverse times and places that could tolerate no abbot or B monk there. From the bishopric, which was frequently offered to him, he always fled as from a lethal reef, deeming himself unworthy of such an office, relying on many examples of the holy and most learned ancient Fathers, and terrified by the great danger threatening his soul. Moreover, he was often tormented in spirit, and took it most indignantly that bishops, abbots, kings, and pontiffs should distribute priesthoods so poorly, and should surrender Christ's sheep, redeemed at such a price, to wolves and lions (I add also) and to panderers.
From such a school of Christ, just as he had thoroughly learned virtues of every kind, and especially that which was proper to Him, so he loved them all the more eagerly, and hated all the more the vice contrary to it, which cast the very angels from heaven. With the humble he crawled upon the ground, while with the proud and the haughty B he did not mix well. The nobility of his birth, which was most illustrious, he never displayed (as the vain are everywhere wont to do, and to boast of it), deeming no nobility true except that which is gained or supported by virtue. Likwise, he never exalted his doctrine and manifold knowledge of things and languages, which is wont to make many raise their crests and lift their eyebrows, but rather suppressed them. For he had, as it were, an innate charity, which does not puff up, but edifies (I Cor. VIII, 1) C as is clear from his writings, which certainly breathe nothing else: just as it was known and manifest to everyone from his daily conversations and colloquies. In these he was familiar, affable, and witty, ever distinguished by his pithy sayings and by his piety and erudition.
Concerning the Christian and Gallic republic, the man was more fond of the public than of himself, and frequently and from the heart expressed words, according to the common proverb: where the wound is, there is the hand; where the plague is, there is the tongue. For he lamented daily its most miserable condition today, and said that nothing was to be expected but its brief destruction, and almost a conflagration such as (which may God Almighty avert) happened under Phaethon. Yet such was his prudence, and such his sharp and perspicacious wit and judgment, that he would even conjecture and often divine future events from past ones, and foresee them as if from some high watchtower. As he was a lover of letters, so he was a lover of the learned; but especially of those who would assist the republic of letters and the Church of God. For he diligently avoided the company of those who were hostile to him, and abstained from their books. The most chaste man hated filthy and obscene poets and writers, and all those who abused the talents of God and spent them in celebrating the praises of Bacchus and Venus, or even of undeserving men, rather than of Christ.
His most choice house was like a certain holy monastery and hospice, and a school of virtue, which was evident from his well-behaved and peaceful household staff, so that the prudence of the father of the family was recognized from them: for such as the ruler of the city is, such are the inhabitants in it. To pious, learned, and religious men D
A (namely, those similar to himself) he was open and accessible, and to the poor of Christ, of whom he was always most fond, he was a most bountiful father. Therefore, they followed him in crowds and everywhere, according to that saying of the Gospel: *Wheresoever the body shall be, there shall the eagles be gathered together* 90. He was worthy of being compared with John the Almsgiver, and he could rightly say with Job: *I was an eye to the blind, and a foot to the lame, a father to the poor* 91. These, too, dying, he left in his will as his heirs to his possessions, especially those which remained to him from the patrimony of Christ, regarding it as a kind of sacrilege if they were transferred elsewhere. His table was joyful and lavish, but the more joyful and lavish it was, the more it was equipped with spiritual feasts, which fed and nourished the mind more than the body. His symposia were as much superior to those of Plato as theology and Christian philosophy (with which he was accustomed to season and sprinkle his meals) excel the Platonic. And if anything among them ever escaped him that was directed away from virtue—as sometimes happens to those who are noble and profess the military arts (for whom piety and the Christian religion are often less of a care, and by whom, because he was born of most noble and illustrious parents, he was visited)—he would soon rebuke them in such a friendly manner, and with such grace and wit, that they immediately repented of what they had said or done. For he knew well how to mix and temper the oil of kindness and the wine of severity, as another evangelical Samaritan, and to pour it onto the wounds of sins so that he could treat them easily and without pain. Wherefore they later returned to him better men, and abstained from such things.
B Rome, sent to him by most illustrious cardinals—Pelvé, Sirleto, Caraffa, the sub-datary Baro, Gerardo Ursio, Morino, and others most closely united to him in the name of piety and letters, whom he also celebrated in his own writings—he committed to the press, and pushed forward this work, which had long been interrupted on account of the raging plague; a flux of the bowels broke out, which was soon accompanied by parotitis [mumps] and a catarrh flowing copiously into the lungs: he died, in fact, of consumption. Feeling, however, his disease worsening a few days before he should close his final hour, as if he had heard from Isaiah along with Hezekiah: *Set thy house in order, for thou shalt die* 92, he first requested the sacraments, and receiving them piously, and afterwards repeating them (for while he enjoyed good health, he was most frequent and religious in celebrating the fearful mysteries), he disposed of everything, whether it pertained to the soul, to the body, or to domestic and temporal affairs, so that he left almost nothing untouched, and to him everything seemed to have flowed according to the desire of his heart. With what faith, with what ardent charity, with what profound and lowly (but erected by the hope of better things) humility he received this sacred viaticum, in which he had always placed his greatest protection, and by which he hoped to ascend the celestial mountain against all the attacks of his enemies, can scarcely be explained in words.
He was most friendly and obliging to his friends. Most ready to reconcile those who dissented among themselves, an enemy to none, he cultivated peace with all, as much as was possible. And if any discord should happen to arise, whether through arguing or by doing something else, he would immediately strive to settle it, and diligently took care that the *sun should not set upon his anger*. The narrative would run too long if I wished to recount individual instances (about which, perhaps, I shall speak more fully elsewhere, for in view of the man's dignity and merit, nothing that I have said thus far seems sufficient. For he who has finished his life deserves all the greater panegyrics of his praise, the more he—modest as he was—avoided them while living) in which so great a man excelled and showed himself laudable and admirable. This one thing I will add: that he was born not for himself, but for the Church, and was wholly addicted and consecrated to it. Wherefore, since he desired nothing more ardently than to pour out whatever talent, learning, wealth, and strength he possessed for its utility and service, and feared that, by death—with which frequent illnesses were threatening him—he might be snatched away and not be able to leave his labors and studies to posterity, he betook himself from our Tossiniacus in Touraine to this city with wonderful alacrity of mind, although his health was not yet well confirmed, having been weakened by the flux of the bowels. Where, when he had once again, with the aid of the ancient Greek copies gathered from everywhere, purified all the works of divine Gregory of Nazianzus and made them much more complete C indeed, *A certain friend is discerned in an uncertain matter*.
The second [thing] is that having most gravely detested his transgressions, he sought their forgiveness with the greatest sense of repentance and contrition of heart. In which he used such pious and elegant words, or as if a kind of swan song, that he captivated those standing by into an admiration of him, and drew tears from them. On the day before he breathed out his pious soul, this valiant athlete of Christ, who had *fought the good fight, had finished the course, had kept the faith*, desired also to be anointed with the sacred oil, so that he might not in any part be caught by those enemies who are accustomed to lie in wait throughout the whole of life, but especially at our heel. In this sacred and final anointing, when by his Sanseverian curate, Jacobus Prevotius, an excellent theologian, the mercy of the most holy Trinity and the patronage of the saints in heaven were implored in the customary manner, he responded to each part with such hope and trust that their ready ... D
aid and A support, and as with Jacob the camps of God, or, as with Elisha, the fiery horses and chariots and helpers seemed to be seen around him: *For the angel of the Lord shall encamp round about them that fear him* (Ps. XXXIII, 8). Thus he appeared never to be dismayed by any fear of death, but rather was all the more vigorous and keen, in that he felt himself hemmed in by a greater and more powerful retinue, and closer to the harbor after the stormy and danger-filled crossing of this life's sea.
In this his final illness, however, he was most patient as he always was in all other things, and wished to hear of nothing else but God and His supreme mercy toward sinners, which like a vast sea swallows up all sins. And when I would often speak to him about this, and about the miseries of this life and the heavenly joys opposed to them—which are wont to comfort and gladden those about to depart from here—he would bid me also speak of the gravity and foulness of sin, so that he might feel more loathing and be shaken by greater grief and horror for his own (which were certainly either none, or very few, and such as are commonly admitted in human weakness, and from which hardly even the best man can free himself, and in him never—for *the righteous man is the first accuser of himself* [Prov. XVIII, 17]). He found joy also in the hemistichs of the Psalmist for rousing both his mind and the memory of those things for which he had prepared for himself as viaticum while of sound health, in expectation of death (which he awaited joyfully and wakefully: *for to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain* [Phil. I, 21]). For when a few things had been heard (since his brain could not bear many), he himself would afterward, with eyes always raised to heaven, meditating on these things within himself and ruminating like the clean animals, seem to be caught up into heaven. And when I would sit by him perpetually, and at times contemplate in silence what he was doing, he, weary from meditating or praying, would say: "Come now, say something." Then I, from the biblical treasury, would bring forth now some new, now some old things (Matth. XIII, 52), those foods of the soul which I knew he gladly fed upon and which, according to the imitation of Rebecca, I knew pleased his palate. I would speak also of the mystery of the saving Cross, whose image he would gaze upon with fixed eyes, kiss, and embrace, B like the true brazen serpent curing all the poisonous bites of the ancient serpent (Num. XXI, 8); and by this, like Jacob’s ladder, he seemed to be caught up to the Lord standing upon it and fixed there, and reaching out His hand as it were to him, and to be ascending into heaven (Gen. XXVIII, 12, 13). He also ordered that friends be summoned, some theologians, learned and pious men, whose consolations he would most gladly receive.
His life was thus extended (for, lying in bed during almost the whole time of Advent, he used his bed as a pulpit for declaring the praises of God) until the holy A Nativity of the Lord. After he had heard me speak much concerning its mystery, and had himself meditated at greater length (for his voice was not free, hindered by an infirmity), at the ninth hour of the evening, as the bell of the Sorbonne was tolling, as if preparing himself for sleep, he said to those standing by: "Lift me up." Presently I, who always snatched some opportunity for speaking from his words, and saw his countenance already changing, said: "Lo, you are indeed lifted up: but more highly, and into heaven itself to be lifted up. Behold the choir of angels, and that host of the heavenly militia which today descends from the heavens to the world to sing the praises of God, and to gladden all the pious, has come even to you, and stands about you, with your brother by Gallio joined to him." (For that brother of his, the elder of the new Gallionensian Charterhouse, was most dear and longed-for, both because of the bond of nature and the great intimacy that had existed between them from infancy, and because of the singular candor of his soul and the extreme integrity of his life.) "Lo, behold," I said, "all these are waiting to receive you with open bosom and welcoming arms, destined to perform the same office toward you as toward Lazarus, and so that you may migrate from here to heaven with them." Then, saying "Amen" (our common friend Genebrard being present and listening), he fell asleep in the Lord between my embraces, after we had lived together most amicably for more than twenty continuous years, and in both fortunes.
For he used to say sometimes, when chatting with others about me, that we had given our right hands of fellowship (for so he used to speak affectionately of his pupil), to be separated by no force except that of death. Which, by the supreme benefit of God, happened to me among many other things. For he never used the company of any other person more long or more familiarly, nor did he (if I am not mistaken) more willingly and faithfully entrust his secrets to anyone else. For which reasons, and in testimony of a grateful mind, I have written this eulogy of him, and have paid my last rites to him most sorrowfully. The servant of the Lord and ornament of letters died in the forty-seventh year of his age, at Paris, in the house of his friend Gilbert Genebrard, a Parisian theologian and professor of divine Hebrew letters, in the year of salvation MDLXXXI, at the ninth hour of the evening of that day on which Christ the Lord came into the world, so that He might take him and others like him, the pious, into heaven. His body, exhausted and worn out by many studies, vigils, and labors for the Church of God while he lived, sleeps in the dust in the choir of the church dedicated to Saint Severinus to the right of the high altar, until he is awakened by the Lord, and is united once again with his blessed soul, the companion and consort of his holy labors.