Chapter XXVII.
That our battles are not fought with our faults in the same order as that in which they stand in the list.
But you must know that our battles are not all fought in the same order, because, as we mentioned that the attacks are not always made on us in the same way, each one of us ought also to begin the battle with due regard to the character of the attack which is especially made on him so that one man will have to fight his first battle against the fault which stands third on the list, another against that which is fourth or fifth. And in proportion as faults hold sway over us, and the character of their attack may demand, so we too ought to regulate the order of our conflict, in such a way that the happy result of a victory and triumph succeeding may insure our attainment of purity of heart and complete perfection.
Thus far did Abbot Serapion discourse to us of the nature of the eight principal faults, and so clearly did he expound the different sorts of passions which are latent within us--the origin and connexion of which, though we were daily tormented by them, we could never before thoroughly understand and perceive--that we seemed almost to see them spread out before our eyes as in a mirror.
VI. Conference of Abbot Theodore. [1362]
On the Death of the Saints.
Chapter I.
Description of the wilderness, and the question about the death of the saints.
In the district of Palestine near the village of Tekoa which had the honour of producing the prophet Amos, [1363] there is a vast desert which stretches far and wide as far as Arabia and the dead sea, into which the streams of Jordan enter and are lost, and where are the ashes of Sodom. In this district there lived for a long while monks of the most perfect life and holiness, who were suddenly destroyed by an incursion of Saracen robbers: [1364] whose bodies we knew were seized upon with the greatest veneration [1365] both by the Bishops of the neighbourhood and by the whole populace of Arabia, and deposited among the relics of the martyrs, so that swarms of people from two towns met, and made terrible war upon each other, and in their struggle actually came to blows for the possession of the holy spoil, while they strove among themselves with pious zeal as to which of them had the better claim to bury them and keep their relics--the one party boasting of their vicinity to the place of their abode, the other of the fact that they were near the place of their birth. But we were upset by this and being disturbed either on our own account or on account of some of the brethren who were in no small degree scandalized at it, inquired why men of such illustrious merits and of so great virtues should be thus slain by robbers, and why the Lord permitted such a crime to be committed against his servants, so as to give up into the hands of wicked men those who were the admiration of everybody: and so in our grief we came to the holy Theodore, a man who excelled in practical common sense. For he was living in Cellæ, [1366] a place that lies between Nitria and Scete, and is five miles distant from the monasteries of Nitria, and cut off by eighty intervening miles of desert from the wilderness of Scete where we were living. And when we had made our complaint to him about the death of the men mentioned above, and expressed our surprise at the great patience of God, because He suffered men of such worth to be killed in this way, so that those who ought to be able by the weight of their sanctity to deliver others from trials of this kind, could not save themselves from the hands of wicked men (and asked) why it was that God allowed so great a crime to be committed against his servants, then the blessed Theodore replied.
[1363] Cf. Amos i. 1.
[1364] Saraceni (Sarakenoi) a name given by the classical geographers to a tribe of Arabia Felix, famous for its predatory propensities. Jerome speaks of the "mons et desertum Saracenorum quod vocatur Pharan" (Liber de situ et nominibus sub voce Choreb) and elsewhere describes their predatory habits (Liber Heb. Quæst in Genesim) "Saracenos vagos...qui universas gentes...incursant." By the seventh century the name had become a merely general term equivalent to Arab, and was accordingly adopted and applied indifferently to all the followers of Mohammed by the writers of the middle ages (cf. the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, sub voce).
[1365] There is no mention of these martyrs in the so-called Martyrologium Hieronymianum, but they are commemorated on May 28, in the Roman Martyrology.
[1366] Cellæ, which was, according to the passage before us, between the deserts of Scete and Nitria, apparently derived its name from the cells of the monks who congregated there. This at least is the explanation of the name given by Sozomen (H.E. VI. xxxi.) who speaks of a region called kellia, throughout which numerous little dwellings (oikemata) are dispersed, whence it obtains its name. Sozomen also speaks (c. xxix.) of Macarius as priest of Cellæ, a fact which gives some ground for conjecturing that Cellæ may be identified with Dair Abu Makâr, one of the four monasteries still existing in the deserts of Nitria and Scete, probably founded by the saint whose name it bears (Macarius). See A. J. Butler's "Coptic Churches of Egypt," vol. i. c. vii.