DE CASTITATE ET MEDIIS EAM TUENDI

To his nephew Damian he commends chastity especially among the other virtues; and, that he may guard it the more easily, he urges him to receive the Lord's body daily. Then he instructs him against the snares of the demon. Lastly, he asks that he commend him to the prior, whom he is to admonish concerning the keeping of hospitality.

709DTo DAMIAN, his most dear son, PETER, a sinful monk, the affection of a father's love.

710DBecause the bearer of this letter is anxiously making ready to set out, I cannot write out what must be sent with any polished ordering of style; 711Aand I would have you consider the sense of the truth rather than go hunting after the bedizened allurements of words. For the present, therefore, while I cannot write back at leisure, let it suffice that this be plainly written to you, which the Apostle enjoins by letter upon Timothy as upon one of like age with you: « Till I come, he says, attend unto reading, unto exhortation, and unto doctrine (I Tim. IV). » To whom, assuredly, he had already sent these words before: « Be thou an example of the faithful in word, in conversation, in charity, in faith, in chastity (Ibid.). »

And, to say nothing for the moment of the other virtues which have just now been enumerated in the letter, be zealous to keep chastity — which I set last — not only in the bodily 711Bmembers, but let this same virtue above all reign and be vigorous in the inmost parts of the heart. For there is no virtue which in the flower of youth endures heavier contests, assailed as it is by the inborn ardor of a titillating enticement, as though by a furnace of rising flame. But since I am not permitted to discourse more copiously upon this theme, because in my excessive haste there is no leisure, let it not irk me to set down here, briefly and hurriedly, what the empress Agnes — once crowned indeed with a golden diadem, but now far more happily and incomparably more eminently placed in the bridal chamber of the eternal King — told me yesterday, as the twilight of evening was already slipping away; so that in your mind it may not be so much a fringed prolixity of speaking as the worth of a notable example that gains strength. Now while the aforesaid 711Cbride of Christ and daughter of blessed Peter feeds with delight upon the ordering of all the virtues, yet she lingers the more readily upon the treatment of the cleanness of chastity and modesty. Whence it came about that, while we were talking together in mutual discourse of certain matters touching the salvation of souls, and were especially turning over in our hands, as it were, some little blossoms of chastity in their spring, she brought this forward into the midst: After the emperor Otto, she said, as victor snatched the kingdom of Italy from Berengar, he straightway carried off his two captive daughters into exile in the German parts. And since these, by the comeliness of their countenance and the notable beauty of their persons, recalled the dignity of a royal line, many nobles of the realm began vehemently to press the empress Adelaide, that they might be counted worthy to join to themselves in a dowered union 711Dthe grace of a form so elegant. But these girls, since they despised all their suitors with an altogether equal disdain, and loathed a mortal marriage with the lifted brow of a holy pride — one of them placed two chicks beneath her breasts, and hid them between her garment and her flesh until they had utterly rotted. And when she saw men coming to converse with her, she would secretly loosen her garment, and rejoiced to breathe out the stench upon the nostrils of those who spoke with her. And when day by day those who conversed with her suffered this affront to their noses, at length the baffled eagerness of her seekers ceased; and the virgin of Christ, by the feigned putrefaction of another's flesh, preserved the inviolable 712Aintegrity of her own body. Whence it came to pass that both sisters afterward chose the purpose of the consecrated life, and to the end of their days kept the monastic institution blamelessly. 743

Wherefore let it shame you, O son, to succumb unmanfully to the vice of lust, or even to succumb in thought, seeing that you behold the weaker and frailer sex triumph over it with so great glory. And that you may be able, so to speak, to drive the raging beast out of the field of your own jurisdiction, take pains, brother, to fortify yourself now daily by the reception of the Lord's body and blood. Let the hidden enemy see your lips red with the redness of Christ, 712Band let him shudder at them in terror, and presently flee away trembling into the lurking-places of his own darkness. For what you receive under the visible appearance of bread and wine, he, willing or unwilling, understands to be the truth of the Lord's body and blood.

Moreover, the same venerable queen then told me that lately in the church of Worms, when through negligence the Eucharist had been kept for a rather long time in the pyx, flesh alone was afterward found there. So that, as the gaze of many was bent upon it rather curiously, one would beyond doubt have judged it to be nothing else than true and solid flesh.

Rainald also, the venerable bishop of the Church of Como, being present, set forth as a truthful narrator what had befallen him a little before: There is a priest, he said, in 712Cthe church which by God's appointment I serve — and unless I am mistaken he is alive to this day — who has so small and slender an acquaintance with the learning of letters that even a plainly written passage he can scarcely read syllable by syllable; yet, constrained by excessive poverty, he is compelled somehow to celebrate the solemnities of the Masses. Once, when he had carried the Eucharist of the sacred gift to a sick man, being as he was slothful and negligent, a little of the Lord's blood remained in the chalice. And when, returning into the church, he discovered this, but, hindered by squeamishness, was unwilling to consume it, he presently washed the chalice and cast the water into a marble basin in which there was hallowed water. And — O great token of divine power! — that part of the basin which what had been poured out of the chalice touched, it suddenly turned to a bloody redness, in the place, namely, where 712Dtwo larger drops of blood stand out; and neither those, nor the others which appear beside them to be smaller, can by any effort be either washed off or wiped away, so that the redness of the imprinted blood might in any degree be done away. Since, therefore, that purple gore clung so tenaciously in a vessel of stone, how great a right of power do we suppose that heavenly virtue claims for itself in a Christian breast? And so, most dear son, do not put off fortifying yourself the more frequently with these heavenly sacraments, whereby you may drive back the devices of diabolical craft and crafty contrivance. Rise up girded; stand ever in the battle line, steadfast and strong; and be not ignorant that 713Aan unfailing adversary fights against you untiringly. 744

Meanwhile, as I say these things, there now returns to memory that also which Hildebrand, archdeacon of the Roman Church, related in the presence of the same persons mentioned above and of the bishop: I saw, he said, two holy monks, and obtained no slight place of familiarity with them; who indeed dwelt in separate cells, at the monastery which is built in the place called Aachen; of whom the one, who seemed to be of the greater simplicity, was called by his own name Marinus, and the other 713BRomanus. But as for Marinus, there was scarcely a day on which he did not either behold the devil in some appearance or hear him in a dream — so much so that the ancient enemy would often chant the psalms along with him, and celebrate together with him the offices of divine praise. But once the author of darkness transfigured himself into an angel of light, and, as though laying down a law, charged him: Take heed, he said; since you have been counted worthy both to behold and to address an angel of God, it is unfitting that henceforth you should speak with men. Straightway that man, as though he had received a command from heaven, withdrew himself utterly from converse with the brethren, and bound himself under a rigid strictness of silence. And when brother Romanus first, and then the abbot of the monastery, vehemently pressed him to speak with them, and he would put forth nothing from his plundering lips ( suppl. responsum vel quid simile ), 713Cthe abbot, violently breaking in the doors of the cell, chastised the indiscreet brother with the stripes he deserved, and so compelled him to render the office of speech. And presently he added this by way of admonition: For this reason, he said, the ancient adversary, ever the enemy of good works, attempted to lay silence upon you: that you might both lose the fruit of fraternal edification, and that those who were to be relieved by you might not have the help of your consolation. And so the brother, because he had sinned not from malice but out of simplicity, returned to his right mind with all speed; and, despising the devil's suggestion, humbly acquiesced in the admonitions of the devout father.

But while I rouse you, my son, to bring to nothing the snares of the ancient enemy, I do not omit what the aforesaid queen related that she had heard from the mouth of blessed Leo the Ninth, pontiff of the Roman 713DChurch. So the aforesaid pope said: My aunt, having been made a nun, was established in a certain monastery of men; and there, dwelling in her own cell with a certain pygmy — that is, a woman of short stature — she discharged the offices of daily praise patiently and humbly.

But on a certain night, when she had risen rather early before the [articulum, vel horam vel aliquid simile ] of the night office, and had called out to her companion repeatedly in the accustomed manner, and the other, weighed down by a heavy slumber, made no answer at all, at length, moved to anger, she did not heed what she was saying: Devil, she said, get up. 745 714AAt which word the devil was at hand and drew near, presenting the likeness of her who was sleeping; and, rendering the verses in turn, he began to chant the psalms together with her. And when in unbroken chanting they had come to that place of the psalter where it is said: « Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered, and let them that hate him flee from before his face: as smoke faileth, let them fail (Psal. LXVII), » and the rest — here the malignant spirit at once stopped short, and did not presume to utter these verses. When the holy woman wondered at this within herself, she took fright; and, suspecting not idly what the case was, she set upon herself the sign of the holy cross, and immediately the malignant enemy vanished; and by fraudulently hiding himself he showed who it was that had stood as the holy woman's companion in the psalmody. To this venerable matron also the wicked 714Bspirit brought, in the night hours, the corpse of a certain man who had been hanged for his crimes; and, that he might strike terror into her, he procured for her, so to speak, a guest-gift of this kind. She presently made known to the abbot of the place and to the convent of brethren what the most wicked enemy had done to her; and with submissive [ f. obnixis] prayers she obtained that all the brethren should pour out prayers in common for that wretched man. But afterward it was divinely revealed to a certain person that through the prayers of the brethren that man had obtained mercy. And so the ancient enemy was outwitted, who, while he contrives to mock the living, is compelled to suffer loss over the dead.

To this end, therefore, are examples of diabolical temptation 714Cof this kind set before you: that you yourself may keep skillful watch against the snares of the crafty and deceiving enemy; and that, while it delights you to hear of the victories of others wrestling with the enemy, you may not yourself grow slack through the sloth of a languid body. But let these things now suffice. Commend me to the brethren; humbly suggest to the lord prior on our behalf that he grow not lukewarm from his accustomed fervor of devotion and mercy, but that he fail not to persist in the receiving of guests and the relief of the needy, so far as the household's means allow. And for him too I bring forward a fitting example, which I am confident will profit not a little toward this matter which I am eager to urge upon him. For the same queen Agnes mentioned above said also that a certain man in the parts of Germany used to range, in his zeal for hunting, the trackless glades, the steeps of the mountains, the shadowy depths of the woods. 714DAnd so, while he ran anxiously this way and that, and with careful searching of his curiosity sought out the lairs of wild beasts, he found two women — a mother, namely, and a daughter — wandering miserably through those heaps of winter frost and the deep wastes of snow. He, straightway led by mercy, said to his companion, who alone was following him: Let us lift these women onto our horses, each of us one, and carry them down to the dwellings of men; for either they will perhaps be exposed to the bites of wandering wolves, or beyond doubt they will die by the force of excessive cold. This his companion utterly refuses, and testily protests that he cannot bear such an indignity. To whom his lord said: If you disdain it, I alone will lift them both, and will cheerfully bear this indignity, as you call it. 715AAnd when he had set one 746 behind him and, sitting in the middle, the other before him, at length his comrade, pricked in mind and put to shame, yielded one to his lord, and himself caught up the other to carry her. And so they bore them through most difficult places and long windings, not without grave peril, until they found a mill that met them by chance, and there set them down. The lord further directed that he should hand over a garment to one of them, whereby she might somewhat temper the force of the cold. Some while afterward this man became a monk, and thereafter, as his sickness grew heavy, he was brought to his last hour. Then he began to cry out with great alarm to the brethren who stood by, saying: Do you see the throng of innumerable demons which hems me in on every side, and does not cease to gaze upon me with terrible eyes 715Band to assail me? And when the brethren persisted in unbroken prayers and psalmody, while he nonetheless, trembling in his inmost parts, was still afraid, at length that man who, as has been said, had been his companion in the hunt, standing closer by, cried out: Do you not see that the woman whom together with you I carried to the watermill, holding in her hands that garment which I then gave her, is fanning it, and violently driving out all the demons in this house? A little after — behold, thanks be to God — they have been cast out, and at this woman's driving they have utterly vanished from my sight. And so that man died in the security of a good hope, and found offered to him, as he lay dying, the fruits of mercy which he had shown while alive. For it often happens that amid the many shadows of carnal deeds 715Cone light of a good work breaks forth, which leads a man through to a good end and haven.

Wherefore I judge it not idle if I weave in also that which Stephen, chaplain of the same queen, a man indeed honorable and prudent, related. For he says that Stedelandus, ruler of Galicia, reported what then came to the knowledge of one man, another afterward relating it: There were, he said, three harlots, given over to the obscene foulness of the brothels, and, so to speak, prostituted by base pandering to 716Aevery passer-by; but since that region was mingled by the common habitation of Saracens and Christians, they indeed exposed themselves shamefully to Christians, but utterly renounced the company of Saracens. And when those men grieved that they were scorned in this foul traffic, and complained that an injury was being inflicted upon their people, at length they dragged the women to the tribunal of the governor, and vehemently insisted that they should consent to their own people also, as to the Christians, in the commerce of lust. But when, plying them now with terrors, now with blandishments, they could in no degree obtain this crime from them, the governor's sentence was pronounced, and they were condemned to death. What more? Straightway the executioners approach, and drive their brandished daggers against the bared necks; but their strokes are made void, and they cannot cut 716Beven the topmost skin. Meanwhile, while these women eagerly 747 wish to die, and those men are unable to kill, they are consigned to the custody of the prison. But in the night the Savior appeared to one of them, who was as it were the chief of the rest, and said to her: Fear not; today I will set an end to your contest, and will receive you, with the crown of martyrdom, into the delightfulness of my glory. But on the following day they are led to the tribunals of the judge; the inquiry being made, the same sentence nonetheless stands; their mind is the same as it had been; and, as before, they detest in all things the embraces of the Hagarenes. Straightway therefore the executioners, since they had proved that they could do nothing upon their necks, sever their throats with the sword [desecant], 748 and so make martyrs out of harlots. But since this pen of mine is now carried further than it had determined at the outset, 716Cthe reed must be checked, and a limit set to the compass of a letter. Finally I implore the clemency of the divine mercy, that among the other marks of the virtues and of all holy religion it may pour into you the inviolable strength of a modesty to be kept, and may guard the little vessel of your body in sanctification and honor; so that he who says in the Canticles: « I am the flower of the field, I am the lily of the valleys (Cant. II); » even as he deigned for your sake to become the Son of the Virgin, so may also make you blossom with the flowers of chastity.

Blessed be the name of the Lord.