CHAPTER XVII

THE VIRTUES OF THE MONKS, AND OF OLYMPIAS

Hierax and Ammonius

Bish. Listen, then, best of deacons. [You are worth the trouble], for I see that you will do much good in the world; your youthful zeal is a pledge of an honourable old age.

These men from their earliest childhood, brought up by Christian parents, submitted themselves to God, and when quite young refused to be the slaves of vanity, and to associate with the multitude, but found a desolate spot far out of the world, in the south, where they set up huts, to shield them from the fierce heat of the sun, and the dew from the air. Here they lived, spending their time in prayer and reading, producing by manual labour enough fruit of their toil to provide for their frugal nourishment; thinking it better to herd with deer and sparrows and buffaloes, than to feast with people who knew not God. The eldest of them, who was called Hierax, and is still generally known by that name, once an associate of the blessed Antonius, had attained the age of ninety years, or thereabouts; another was Ammonius, sixty years old, and there were besides two anchorite brethren, and one bishop, who were put in pillory and banished under Valens, as all Alexandria knows. Such masters of learning were they, that not a single point of difficulty which men generally find in the scriptures escaped them. Two of them fell asleep, ending their days in Constantinople; Ammonius, as Aurelius and Sisinnius related, had prophesied of his decease, that there would first be a great persecution and schism among the Churches, but that the originators of it would come to a most disgraceful end, and that so the Churches should be made one. This shall come to pass, as it has already come to pass in part.

The Divine Punishment of the Persecutors

For presently certain of the bishops, and of the lay people as well, were attacked by disease, which rent them with sufferings of various kinds, burning their vitals with slow fever, and setting up such intolerable itchings, that they excoriated with their nails the whole surface of their bodies, and by continual intestinal pains. One man had livid dropsical swellings in the feet; another found the fingers which had written the unrighteous signature shaking with discharges, now hot, now cold, which ran from his four limbs. The abdomen was inflamed, and putrefaction in one member exhaled a far-reaching stench, and bred worms. Other symptoms were asthma, and difficulty of breathing, and tensions of all the limbs; nightmares of ravening dogs changing to savages brandishing swords and yelling in strange tongues like the roaring of the sea, made their sleep to be no sleep. One had his right leg broken like a cabbage stalk, by a fall from his horse, and died immediately from the shock; another entirely lost the use of his voice, and for eight months suffered torments upon his bed, unable to lift his hand to his mouth. Another’s legs were almost eaten away as far as the knees, apparently by aggravated erysipelas; the tongue of another swelled so terribly, they say, with raging fever, that it pressed against his teeth, and blocked the [main channel of] the body. As there was no room for his tongue in the space naturally appointed for it, he wrote a confession of his sins upon a tablet.

One could see the divine wrath carrying out its punitive operations by various forms of vengeance. For as they had provoked the Physician who brings relief to souls, and had driven His mouth-piece from the workshop of salvation, they were delivered over for torture to physicians of the body, who administered pains by the drugs usually prescribed as remedies, and wrought no salvation. For who shall heal him who is being punished by God? As the prophet says, “Shall physicians rise, and praise thee?” Thus perished all who work against the peace of Thy Church, O Lord.

More of the Monks

On the other hand, it is said that the tomb of the monk Ammonius expels the shivering fever; he was buried in the shrine of the apostles, beyond the sea. Bishop Dioscorus, they say, had made it his special petition, that he might see either the peace of the Church, or his own death; as the world was not worthy of peace, he was granted death, and was buried in the martyr’s shrine facing the gate of the city, with the result that most of the women gave up taking oaths by the martyr, and now swear by the prayers of Dioscorus. As for the rest of the anchorites, the telling of the tale would take many words; and perhaps you cannot spare the time, famous sir.

Deac. Nay, who is so sorely pressed, that he must refuse a hearing to tales of heroism? Speak, I pray you, and by every fair word at your command draw away my mind from earthly thoughts.

Bish. Well, there is another Hierax; though he bears a Greek name, his life is adorned by the beauty of his character. On first embracing the life of solitary retirement, he withdrew to Mount Porphyrites, quite outside the boundaries of Egypt and Thebais, free from the breath of men; where he lived for four years of strict devotion, finding the virtues of the life themselves sufficient for his comfort. Then he spent twenty-five years in Nitria, with the fathers I have mentioned. He was assailed by demons, as he told us himself, who were transformed into angels of light, and tried to shake him from the hope set before him, by promising him a long life. “You have fifty years to live,” they said; “how shall you endure, here in the desert?” But he with the intelligence of faith replied, “You distress me when you tell me of a period shorter than my purpose; I had prepared myself for two hundred years in the desert.” Hearing this they vanished howling. Such was the man, whom demons could not shake by the invention of a vast space of time to bring him to accidie, whom Pope Theophilus drove from his home by an edict, and brought to such distress, that he made his way to the capital; a man who now has again, since the falling asleep of Ammonius, returned to the sheer desert, in fearful remembrance of the parable of the plough.

Another, a priest called Isaac, a disciple of Macarius the disciple of Antonius, a man who loved the desert to a fault, fifty years of age, who had the whole scripture by heart, and took up horned snakes in his hands unharmed, a virgin from his mother’s womb, who at seven years of age had taken to the desert, after forty years was sifted out by Pope Theophilus, with the aforesaid monks.

Another priest Isaac, also the disciple of a disciple of Antonius, the priest Cronius, whom he succeeded, extraordinarily learned, like the first Isaac, in the scriptures, hospitable if ever man was—so much so, that in his extraordinary love of his fellow-men, he established a hostel in the sheer desert for the refreshment of sick monks, and of strangers who visited the district to see the blessed fathers—a stranger, they say, to anger, who had lived for thirty years in retirement, was cruelly treated along with the others. The first of these Isaacs had a hundred and fifty ascetics under him; Theophilus, while he was really a Theophilus, appointed disciples of his, to the number of seven or eight, as bishops. The other had two hundred and ten, and many of his disciples, too, are on the roll of bishops.

These are the men of whom I told you two days ago; how they were driven by Pope Theophilus from the desert, on account of Isidore the priest. Those are the men, whom priests and Levites passed by, and whom to the shame of men a manly woman received, and to the condemnation of bishops a deaconess hospitably entertained; a woman whose praise dwells in the Churches for many reasons. She followed the example of the famous Samaritan, whoever he was, who found the man maltreated by the robbers half dead in the descent to Jericho, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to the inn, and mingled the oil of love for his fellow-men with the astringent wine, and so healed his swelling wounds.

The Life of Olympias

Now I must leave the monks, to speak of her. What wealth of money or of goods she distributed to the needy it is not for me to say, but for those who benefited by her generosity; as I lived elsewhere, I had no need to be a burden to her. But listen while I tell of greater virtue yet. She was an orphan, and married; but she was not allowed by the foreknowing God, Who sees the issues of men’s lives before they come to pass, to be the slave of the pleasure of the flesh which claims the obedience of all, even for twenty months; her husband being speedily called to pay the debt of nature. It is reported by common rumour that she is still a virgin; while she might have yielded to the apostolic rule, “I will that the younger widows marry, keep the house,” she could not bring herself to do so, although she had all the advantages of noble birth, and wealth, and an expensive education, as well as personal beauty and the grace of blossoming womanhood—but leapt free as a gazelle over the snare of second marriage. “For the law is not laid down for a righteous man, but for lawless persons, profane,” insatiate for destruction.

Now it happened that through some kind of satanic malice, her premature widowhood was reported to the ears of King Theodosius, who at once set himself to marry her to a kinsman of his own, one Elpidius, a Spaniard. He again and again urged the brave creature to consent, but to his vexation she refused, declaring, “If my King had desired me to live with a husband, he would not have taken away my first; but as He knew me to be unsuitable to the conjugal life, since I am unable to please a husband, He at once set him free from the bond, and delivered me from the burdensome yoke, and from slavery to a husband, while He laid upon my mind His gentle yoke of continence.” At this reply, he ordered the prefect, that her property should be held under trust, until she reached her thirtieth year. The officer, instigated by Elpidius, carried out the king’s command by causing her all possible annoyance; she was not allowed to have any dealings even with the most eminent of the bishops, or to attend church, in the hope that in utter weariness she might be driven to prefer the proposed marriage. But she rejoiced all the more, and gave thanks to God, and made answer to the king: “You have shown towards my humble self kindness worthy of a king, and suitable to a bishop, in commanding this very heavy burden, which caused me anxiety, to be put in trust for proper administration; you will do better yet, if you order it to be dispersed among the poor, and the Churches. Indeed, it has long been my prayer, to be delivered from the vainglory which might come from distributing it in charity, that I may not be so engrossed in material things as to lose the soul’s true wealth.” Hearing on his return from the war with Maximus of her enthusiasm for the disciplined life, the king ordered that she should have the control of her property.

Deac. Then John had good reason to hold her in honour, if she was so strict in her self-discipline.

Bish. Yes indeed; she abstains from flesh food, and seldom visits the baths; if her health requires it (she has chronic stomach troubles) she enters the water in her chemise, because, they say, modesty forbids her to look upon herself.

Olympias’ Charities

Deac. It is reported that she has entirely maintained the blessed John.

Bish. Even if she has, what kindness did she show to him that was worthy of his virtue? She certainly spared him anxiety for his daily barley bread; and this is no small thing for Christ’s workers, whose care, night and day, is for the things of Christ. As Paul says, in saluting Persis, who probably had toiled like Olympias; “Salute,” he writes, “Persis the beloved, who laboured much in the Lord,” “for all seek their own, and not the things of Christ.” I know that she did more to maintain the blessed Nectarius—so much so, that he took her advice even in ecclesiastical affairs—and I need not mention Amphilochius, Optimus, Gregorius, Peter the brother of Basil, and Epiphanius Bishop of Cyprus, those saints to whom she actually made gifts of lands and money. When Optimus was dying in Constantinople, she closed his eyes with her own hands. Besides these, she generously provided everything they required for the wretched Antiochus, Acacius, and Severianus; and to put it briefly, for every priest who visited the city, and a host of ascetics and virgins.

Chrysostom’s Sparing Acceptance

However, as John had decided that he was sent to be a pattern, so to speak, to future bishops of the manner of life required of them, and therefore, that he should preach Christian repentance, as Paul says, at his own charge, without touching anything that belonged to the Church, he accepted meat for each day as it came, and avoided anxiety about such things. They say that he was like a man ashamed of himself, when he partook of material food. When apples are fully ripe, they cannot endure to stay on the branch, but look for the hand of their master; so it is with the saints. When they rise above nature in their love for the beauty of heavenly things, they long, even before the time appointed for their decease, to attain to the promise. We see the same thing in the children of great houses; when they know that honey-cakes are to follow, they often refuse to touch the food set before them, so as to save their appetites for the sweets with which they look forward to satisfying themselves. I leave my observations to the judgment of those who have set out upon the same track in the spiritual journey; for “if the wise man hear a prudent man, he will commend him, and add unto it.”