A in the place determined by nature, he wrote his confession. And it was possible to see the wrath sent down by God, waging war with various punishments. For those who had exacerbated the physician and soother of souls, and had removed the interpreter of God from the dispensary of salvation, were delivered to the physicians of bodies for torment: who increased the pain with their ordinary remedies, but did not bring about salvation. For who shall heal him who is punished by God? As the prophet says: "Shall the physicians raise him up, and shall they confess thee?" (Ps. LXXXVII, 11). Thus all the adversaries of the peace of Thy Church perished, O Lord. B It is said, moreover, that the tomb of the monk Ammonius expels the horror of fever. He was buried, however, across the sea in the martyrium of the Apostles. Furthermore, Bishop Dioscorus, who, as they say, had prayed much to God that he might either see the peace of the Churches or die, was held worthy of death, since the world was not worthy of peace: and he was buried in the martyrium that is before the gate; so that very many women, omitting the oaths made by the holy martyr, swore by the prayers of Dioscorus. C About the other monks a great deal of our conversation would be spent in the telling, and you perhaps are hastening to other things, O man of your name, Theodore. DIAC. And who is so unhappy as not to allow place for discourses about virtue? Say then, I pray you, and with whatever reasonable discourse draw my mind away from secular thoughts. EPISC. There is, then, another Hierax, called by a profane name, but adorned with spiritual habits: who first indeed had withdrawn alone into the Porphyrite mountain outside all Egypt and the Thebaid, and indeed without any breath of man, he persevered for four years, content with virtues alone for solace; afterwards he spent twenty-five years in the solitude of Nitria with the aforementioned Fathers. To him, the demons pressing in, as he himself told us, promising a long life, were striving to move him from his proposed hope, transforming themselves into angels of light, saying: "You are to live yet fifty years: how will you endure in the desert?" But he wisely replied through faith, saying: "You have saddened me, saying the time of my purpose is shorter; for I had prepared in the desert an equipment for two hundred years." Which when they heard, they departed howling. And this very man, whom the demons had not moved by promising him a long time of life, so as to drag him into sloth, D Pope Theophilus, by the edict of the Prince, ordered to move, and reduced him to such necessity that he had to go to the Comitat; who now, after the death of Ammonius, has again returned to the most desolate solitude, fearing the parable of the evangelical plow (Luc. IX, 62). Another again, a presbyter named Isaac, a disciple of Macarius, who was a disciple of Antonius, most fond of solitude, spending fifty years, holding all Scripture by memory, carrying cerastes snakes in his hands without danger, from his mother's womb a virgin, when he had begun to inhabit the solitude at seven years of age, after forty years, with the aforementioned, was shaken out like a sieve by Pope Theophilus. Another Isaac, a presbyter, and himself a disciple and successor of Cronius the presbyter, a disciple of the same Antonius, and himself skilled in the Scriptures as much as any, hospitable if any other, so that for the sake of supreme humanity A he built an inn in the desert for the refreshment of sick monks and pilgrims arriving there to visit the blessed Fathers (it is said, however, that he was alien from all anger); when he had spent his thirtieth year in seclusion, he was vexed along with these. Of these, however, Isaac the elder had a hundred and fifty monks under him; whose disciples Theophilus constituted as seven or eight bishops, while Theophilus—that is, the "lover of God"—was [favorable]; the other had two hundred and ten; whose disciples also very many were numbered among the bishops. These are they whom we mentioned the day before yesterday, cast out of the desert by Pope Theophilus for the sake of Isidore the presbyter. These are they whom priests and deacons despised; and whom a manly woman received, for the confusion of men, and a woman deacon received into hospitality for the condemnation of bishops; whose praise is celebrated in the Churches for the sake of many things; imitating that Samaritan, whoever he may be, who finding one wounded by robbers, half-dead in the descent to Jericho, placed him on his own beast, and brought him as far as the inn, and mingling the oil of humanity with astringent wine, made medicine for his wounds. And these things indeed may have been said about them. B But how great an abundance of money and estates she distributed to the poor, it is not for me to say, but for those who received the benefit; for being an exile, I was not a burden to her. But hear what is more excellent regarding her. Orphaned of parents, when she had been joined to a husband, so God willing, who is foreknowing of all things and foreseeing human events, she served the pleasure of the flesh, which commands all, for scarcely twenty months, when her husband had quickly paid his debt to nature. It is said, however, that she is even now a virgin. For she was able to serve the apostolic law: "I wish the younger widows to marry, to be mothers of families" (I Tim. V, 14); yet while she was adorned with wealth and knowledge of many sciences, and not least with liberal talent and beauty and the flower of her age, she, like a doe, boldly leapt over the snares of a second marriage. "For the law is not laid down for the just, but for those who reject the yoke, the profane, and those who cannot be satisfied by lust" (I Tim. I, 9). It happened, however, by a certain satanic envy, that her premature widowhood reached the ears of Emperor Theodosius, who desired to give her in marriage to a certain Elpidius, his kinsman, a Spaniard. C He, when he had greatly entreated her, and had obtained nothing from her, was affected with grief, she signifying: "If my King had wished me to live with a husband, he would not have taken my husband from me; since, however, he recognized me as by no means fitted for the married life, and that I could not please a husband, he both freed him from the bonds of the body, and snatched me from the most heavy yoke and from the slavery of a man, imposing his own sweet yoke of chastity upon my mind." After this answer, Theodosius orders the Prefect of the city that her goods should be preserved until she had completed thirty years of age. Who, immediately after the Emperor's mandate, vexed her to such a degree, incited by Elpidius, that not even the ability