The Letters and Other Writings

Since there must never be the slightest cause
for you to find fault with my obedience,
a bridle has been set upon my words,
although my grief itself is still untamed.
Your order now is that I moderate myself
and refrain at least from writing
what is not difficult but impossible
to guard against in speech.
Nothing is less in our power than the heart,
which is more apt to command us than to obey.
And so when the heart’s passions rouse us,
no one can contain their sudden surge of pressure
and keep them then from having their effects.
No, they will easily burst out
and still more easily spill over into words,
which are the ready symbols of the motions of the heart:²
as it is written,
“Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth doth speak.”³
I therefore will restrain my hand from writing
what I cannot keep my tongue from saying aloud.
If only the heart that grieves
were as ready to obey as the hand that writes.

And yet you have it in your power
to palliate my grief to some extent,
even if you cannot remove it all.
For as one nail drives out another,⁴
so a new thought drives out an old,
and the heart, which had been set in one direction,
is forced to lay aside or to abandon
its memories of what once was.
And the more this thought—of anything at all—
occupies the heart and distracts it from other things,
the more we think it an honorable thought,
and the new direction in which we turn our hearts
then seems more necessary and compelling.

So then—

All of us, the handmaids of Christ and your daughters in Christ, now approach you as our father with two requests.⁵ We see them both as necessary to us. One is that you teach us how the order of nuns began and tell us of the origin and foundation of our calling. The other is that you institute a rule for us to follow, a written directive suitable for women, detailing in full the condition and habit of our own way of life. This has not been done by any of the Fathers, and because of this failure, it now is the case that both men and women are received into monasteries to profess the same rule, and the same yoke of monastic regulation is laid upon the stronger and the weaker sex alike.

At present, throughout the Latin Church women profess the Rule of Saint Benedict on the same basis as men. But as this rule was written only for men, its instructions can be followed only by men, whether they apply to subordinates or superiors in our orders. For example, the regulations about cowls, scapulars, and breeches—what can they have to do with women?⁶ Or the ones about wearing tunics and woolen clothing next to the skin, when the monthly purgation of excess humors makes this something women must avoid? Then, what does it imply for a convent of women that the abbot himself is required to read the lesson from the Gospel before proceeding to the hymn?⁷ And what about the abbot’s table, where he is required to dine with pilgrims and guests?⁸ Will either be suitable for our religious practice—that an abbess never offer hospitality to men, or that she sit and take her meals with her male guests? On the one hand, the situation of women and men interacting in easy proximity is hazardous for the soul, but certainly most so at table, where gluttony and drunkenness are the rule and wine is consumed for pleasure [“wherein is lechery”].⁹ “It is hard to preserve your modesty at a feast,” Saint Jerome warned a mother and her daughter,¹⁰ and Ovid, the learned poet of seduction, described exactly the kind of opportunities a banquet affords, in the book he entitled The Art of Love:

When wine soaks Cupid’s wings, he cannot fly
But sits there sluggish, rooted to the spot….
A time for laughter, when even a poor man
Unpuckers his brow, all care and sorrow gone….
That’s when girls make off with young men’s souls;
Mixing love and wine adds fuel to the fire.¹¹

But on the other hand, if only the women guests are invited to table, is there not some risk in that, too? There is nothing that so leads a woman astray as feminine finery, and a woman will spread her corruption of mind most easily to another woman—which is why Jerome so vigorously urged women in religious orders to avoid contact with women of the world.¹² Also, if we do invite only women and exclude all men from our hospitality, will that not seriously offend the men on whose kind services all women’s convents must depend, especially if we seem to give so little, or nothing at all, to the men from whom we receive so much? If in the end, however, it turns out to be impossible for us to observe the tenor of the Rule in full, then, I’m afraid, we risk the condemnation of the apostle James: “Whoever shall keep the whole law but offend in one point is become guilty of all.”¹³ [That is to say, if someone fulfills many parts of the law but does not fulfill them all, he still is guilty in the one part he has left unfulfilled: unless he has fulfilled all parts, because of this one part he becomes a transgressor of the whole. As James goes on to say:

For he that said, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” also said, “Thou shalt not kill. Now if thou do not commit adultery, but thou shalt kill, thou art a transgressor of the law.

In other words, someone becomes guilty by transgressing any one precept of the law, because the Lord who set one precept also set the other, and whatever precept of the law is violated will show disdain for God, who made the law not in one but in all of its requirements.]¹⁴

But I do not want to dwell on those parts of the Rule which we cannot observe in full, or cannot without some risk; instead, here are some other points. Where in the world has it ever been the practice for a convent of nuns to work the harvest?¹⁵ Or to test the constancy of the women we accept through the probation of just a single year? Or to instruct them with just three readings of the Rule, as the Rule itself prescribes?¹⁶ What can be more foolish than entering on a path that is both unknown and as yet unexplained? Is there any more presumptuous act than committing yourself to a way of life you do not know or taking vows you have no capacity to fulfill? If discretion is the mother of all virtues and reason the mediator of all good, can something be a virtue or a good which seems so at odds with discretion and with reason? Virtues that exceed the mean and measure should be counted among the vices, Jerome says.¹⁷ Where, then, is the discretion or the reason in loading burdens on the backs of those whose strength has not first been tested to make sure that the tasks assigned to human beings are in line with their natural constitutions? Would anyone give a donkey the same load as an elephant? Or the young or very old the same loads as full adults? Can the frail bear as much as the hardy, or the sickly as much as the well? Can women, who are the weaker sex, bear as much as men, who are the stronger? [Saint Gregory addressed this issue in Chapter 24 of his Pastoral, where he distinguished between women and men regarding both admonition and instruction:

Men should be admonished in one way and women in another, in that heavy burdens should be placed on men and lighter ones on women. Let men take up the greater tasks, but let women be corrected gently with the light ones.]¹⁸

The men who wrote the rules for monks were entirely silent about women, but they also laid down regulations which they knew did not suit women in the slightest. Bull and heifer were not to fit their necks to the same yoke of the Rule: those whom nature had not created equal must not have equal work. Saint Benedict himself was consistently aware of the importance of careful distinctions, steeped as he was in the spirit of all things just. In fact, he tempered everything in the Rule to suit the character of the person involved and the season of the year, and in one passage concluded, “Let all things be done in moderation.”¹⁹ Beginning with the abbot himself, he instructed him to preside over his subordinates “according to the character and understanding of each, adjusting and adapting himself to all in such a way that he may not only suffer no loss in his flock, but may even rejoice in its increase,”²⁰ and later continued:

Let him always keep his own frailty before his eyes and remember not to “break the bruised reed….” Let him be discreet and moderate, bearing in mind the discretion of Jacob, who said, “If I should cause my flocks to be overdriven, in one day they all will die.” Following this and other examples of discretion, the mother of virtues, he should temper all things in a way that the strong may have something to strive for and the weak may not be discouraged.²¹

All of the allowances he made—for the young, the old, and the infirm in general; for feeding the lector and the weekly kitchen workers before the other monks; and for the provision of different kinds and amounts of food to meet the different needs of different men—were based on moderation, and all of them were carefully written down.²² He even relaxed the statutory periods of fast in accord with the season of the year and the amount of labor to be done, as natural weakness would require.²³

Now, if this is the case, what would he do, Saint Benedict, who tempered everything to suit the character of the person involved and the season of the year in such a way as to enable everyone to follow the regulations without complaining²⁴—what provision would he make for women if he were to institute a rule for them, as he did for men? If he found himself compelled to ease the rigor of his rule in certain parts to accommodate the weakness of the young, the old, and the infirm, how would he accommodate the fragility of our sex, whose natural lack of strength is obvious?

You will need, then, to consider how far it is from reason and discretion to insist that women follow the same rule as men, that the weak bear as much as the strong. It seems to me that we do well enough in our weakness if we equal the leaders of the Church and other clerics in Holy Orders in the virtues of abstinence and self-restraint: “Everyone shall be perfect,” the Lord has said, “if he be as his master.”²⁵ If we could equal even the most devout among the laity, I think it would be taken as no small thing, for what seems of little moment in the strong is something we all admire in the weak:²⁶ “Power is made perfect by weakness,” the Apostle says.²⁷ And of course, no one should disparage the devout among the laity, men like Abraham, David, and Job, simply because they were married. As Chrysostom reminds us:

There are many things … a man can do to charm that beast, things such as work, reading, and keeping vigils. “But what are they to us, who are not monks?” That is not a question for me but rather for Paul. “Keep vigil in patience and prayer,” he said, and “Make not provision for the flesh in its concupiscences.” He was not writing only for monks but for all men. A layman should have no more latitude than a monk—except that he may lie with his wife: he has dispensation for that, but for nothing else—and should act in every other way as a monk acts. And Christ did not address the Beatitudes only to monks…. For if he had and if laymen in fact cannot obey them, … it will mean the destruction of the world, for then Christ has confined virtue within very narrow limits. If marriage by itself so hinders us, how can it be called honorable?²⁸

The clear inference is that whoever adds the virtue of self-restraint to the precepts laid down in the Gospel will attain monastic perfection. I only wish our own religious practice reached the heights where it simply fulfilled the Gospel—no need to surpass it, nor for us to try to be anything more than Christians. So, unless I am mistaken, this is why the Fathers decided not to set down a general rule for us, as they did for men, a rule which then would be like some new law, burdening our weakness with a multitude of vows: they obeyed Saint Paul, who said, “The law worketh wrath, for where there is no law, neither is there transgression,” and “The law entered in that sin might abound.” But even he, that great preacher of self-restraint, understood our weakness and urged younger widows to remarry: “I would have it, therefore, that the younger should marry, bear children, be mistresses of families, and give no occasion to the adversary to speak evil.”²⁹ And Saint Jerome agreed, telling Eustochium about the ill-considered vows some women take:

But if, because of some other faults, even those who are virgins are not saved, what will happen to those who have prostituted the body of Christ and turned the temple of the Holy Spirit into a brothel? … Better for a person to have married and to have walked on level ground than to strain for the heights and plunge into the depths of hell.³⁰

Saint Augustine, too, wrote of women’s thoughtlessness in entering orders, in the book he addressed to Juliana on a widow’s self-restraint:

A woman who has not begun on this path should think again; a woman who has begun should persevere. No opening should be given to the devil, and no offering taken from Christ.³¹

Accordingly, Church regulations do not allow women to be ordained as deaconesses before the age of forty, and then only after careful probation, while men may become deacons at age twenty—it is another recognition of our weakness.

There are also those who call themselves the Canons Regular of Saint Augustine.³² They too live in monasteries, claim to follow a rule of sorts, and consider themselves in no way inferior to monks—and yet we see they are permitted to eat meat and wear linen clothing. Now, if we in our weakness could match their virtue, no one would see that as trivial at all. But any allowance made for us in food or drink would only need to be minor and could be made without much risk, since we are protected by a greater natural power of sobriety. Women, it is recognized, can be maintained at less cost and with less nourishment than men, and medical science indicates that we are also less easily intoxicated. As Macrobius writes in Book 7 of the Saturnalia:

Aristotle says that old men are often drunk, but women very rarely…. The female body is extremely moist—witness the lightness and clarity of a woman’s skin and, especially, the regular purgation of her excess humors. So, when wine has been swallowed and incorporated into this great general moisture, it loses its strength … and does not easily strike the seat of the brain, once its force has been dissipated.

The female body, designed as it is for frequent purgation, is pierced with several holes, so that channels and passageways are open for the humors to drain out. Through these holes the fumes of wine quickly evaporate. In old men, on the other hand, the body is quite dry, as is indicated by the roughness and dullness of the skin.³³

So allowances made for us in food and drink are more appropriate to our weakness and our nature and can be made without much risk, since women are less prone to gluttony and drunkenness, as we require less food and are protected by the constitution of our bodies.

Now, it should be enough in our weakness—and may even be thought a great thing—if, living in poverty and self-restraint and occupied with our duties to God, we could equal the leaders of the Church or devout laymen in our own mode of life, or match the so-called canons regular, who pledge themselves to follow the apostles’ way. But in the end, it shows considerable foresight if those who bind themselves to God actually vow less than they perform, in order that there may always be something they can add over and above what they are already bound to do, something of their own accord. The Lord said, “When you shall have done all those things that are commanded you, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which we ought to do’”—in other words, “We are unprofitable, unworthy, and of no account if we rest content with what we ought to do, adding nothing of our own accord”—and he promised in a parable elsewhere, “Whatsoever thou shalt spend over and above, I, at my return, will repay thee.”³⁴

If those who rush blindly into their religious vows—and there are many of them in these times—were to watch more carefully what they were doing, consider beforehand the calling they professed, and actually study the import of the Rule, they would offend less through their ignorance and sin less through their neglect. But as it is, nearly everyone alike comes running to monastic life with little thought at all, and once received in disorder, they proceed to live in disorder, and, as easily as they profess a rule they do not know, will ignore the same rule, substituting customs they prefer for existing law. We must be careful, then, to avoid burdening woman with the load we see causing nearly every man to stagger and collapse. The world has now grown old, we see, and human beings, along with all the other creatures of the world, have lost the ancient vigor of their nature. “The love not of many but nearly of all has grown cold,” to adapt a phrase of the Lord’s.³⁵ In accord with people’s character, then, it is necessary to change, or at least to temper, the Rule that once was written for people to follow.

Saint Benedict, in fact—consistently aware of the importance of careful distinctions—admits that he has already tempered the rigor of monastic regulations in such a way that, in comparison with earlier systems, his Rule is little more than a guide to upright living and the first step in the religious life:

I have written this Rule that we may show in its observance that we have reached a degree of upright living and the rudiments of the religious life. For the one, though, who would hasten towards the perfection of this life there are the teachings of the holy Fathers, whose observance will lead him to the pinnacle of perfection…. And so, whoever you are who are hastening to your home in heaven, with Christ’s help fulfill this minimal Rule, which is the first step, and at length you will attain the greater heights of doctrine and virtue under the protection of God.³⁶

For example, he explains, there was a time when the Fathers used to complete the entire Psalter in a single day. He adjusted the recitation of psalms, however, to the needs of the “lukewarm,” spreading them over the course of a week, so that now monks are content with a smaller number of psalms, as secular clerics are.³⁷

Or another example—What is most inimical to a monastery’s devotions and repose? What most foments lechery and sows the seeds of discord, or destroys reason, which is the image of God in man and our chief distinction from beasts? I mean of course wine, the item of food which scripture condemns beyond any other. Solomon, the wisest of the wise, writes in the Book of Proverbs: “Wine is a luxurious thing, and drunkenness riotous: whosoever is delighted therein shall not be wise.”³⁸

[Who hath woe? Whose father hath woe? Who hath contentions? Who falls into pits? Who hath wounds without cause? Who hath redness of eyes? Surely they that pass their time in wine and study to drink off their cups. Look not upon the wine when it is red, when its color shineth in the glass: it goeth in pleasantly, but in the end it will bite like a snake and will spread poison abroad like a basilisk. Thy eyes shall behold strange women and thy heart perverse things. And thou shalt be as one sleeping in the midst of the sea, and as a pilot fast asleep when the stern is lost. And thou shalt say, “They have beaten me, but I was not sensible of pain. They drew me, and I felt not. When shall I wake and find wine again?]³⁹

Give not wine to kings, O Lamuel, because there is no secret where drunkenness reigneth, and they might drink and forget judgments and pervert the cause of the children of the poor.⁴⁰

In Ecclesiasticus we read, “Wine and women make even the wise fall away,”⁴¹ and when Jerome wrote to Nepotianus about the cleric’s way of life, he seemed outraged that the priests of the old law could surpass our own in their abstinence from drink:

Never smell of wine, or else the words of the philosopher will be spoken about you, “This is not offering a kiss, but proffering a cup.” Saint Paul condemned drunken priests, as does the old law before him: “Whoever serve at the altar shall not taste wine or sikera.” In Hebrew, sikera means anything that can intoxicate, whether it is made by fermentation, or pressing dates, or boiling down apples or honey into a rough, sweet drink, or brewing roasted grain in water. Whatever can intoxicate and disturb your mental balance—stay away from it as you would wine.⁴²

So, here is something that kings must not touch, priests must avoid, and everyone agrees is thoroughly pernicious. And yet Saint Benedict, that most spiritual of men, is obliged by the conditions of the present age to allow it to monks. “Yes,” he says,

we read that wine is not a thing for monks. But since the monks of our day can never be convinced of this, let us at least agree to drink sparingly and not to the point where we are sated, because “wine makes even the wise fall away.”⁴³

[Unless I am mistaken, he had been reading this passage in the Lives of the Fathers: “Abbot Pastor was once told about a monk who did not drink wine, and he replied that wine is not a thing for monks.” And just afterward:

Once there was a celebration of the Mass on Abbot Anthony’s mountain, and they found a jar of wine left over. One of the elders filled a cup and brought it to Abbot Sisoi, who drank it off. Then he brought him a second cup, which he also took and drank off. But when he brought him a third cup, he refused it, saying, “Peace, brother, don’t you know that this is Satan?”

So his disciple Abraham asked him, “If it happens in church on the Sabbath or the Lord’s Day, is it still too much to drink three cups?” And the old man answered, “If it were not Satan, it would not be too much.”]⁴⁴

See how he had to temper the Rule even in what he knew was pernicious and not for monks, because in his day he could not persuade them to abstain. In our day, too, I would call for a similar dispensation, that the same moderation apply in all matters that fall between good and evil and are therefore called indifferent. What persuasion cannot now enforce, our vows should not exact. Once all of these indifferent things are permitted that can be done without offense, it will be enough to forbid the sins alone. In food and clothing both, whatever can be purchased most cheaply will serve, so long as our concern is always for what is necessary and never more than that. We should not give too much thought to what neither commends us to God nor prepares us for his kingdom, for they are only outward things, common to both the chosen of God and his rejected, to the righteous and to hypocrites alike.⁴⁶

This, in fact, more than anything else, is what separates Christian from Jew, the distinction made between inward and outward works—especially since it is love alone that distinguishes the children of God from the children of the devil, the love Saint Paul calls the fulfillment of the law and the end of the commandment.⁴⁷ This is why he disparages the glory of works in favor of justification by faith when he addresses the Jew:

Where then is thy boasting? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we account a man to be justified by faith without the works of the law…. For if Abraham was justified by works, he hath whereof to glory, but not before God. For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was reputed to him unto justice…. But to him that worketh not, yet believeth in him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reputed to justice, according to the purpose of the grace of God.⁴⁸

At the same time, he allows Christians to eat any kind of food, distinguishing this from what is truly righteous:

The kingdom of God is not food or drink, but justice and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit…. All things are clean, but it is evil for that man who eateth with offense. It is good not to eat flesh and not to drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother is offended, weakened, or undone.⁴⁹

Here he does not forbid any food as such but only the eating of what would offend some of the converted Jews when they saw foods being eaten which the law did not allow. Saint Peter was also trying to avoid this kind of offense when Paul corrected him, as Paul reports in his letter to the Galatians. In writing to the Corinthians, however, Paul said, “Food does not commend us to God…. Eat whatever is sold in the markets … for the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof”; and then to the Colossians:

Let no man judge you in food or in drink…. If, with Christ, you be dead to the elements of this world, why do you yet decree as though living in the world, Touch not, taste not, handle not those things which are all unto destruction by their very use, according to the teachings and the precepts of men?⁵⁰

By “elements of this world” he means the principles of the law concerning worldly practices. In its early days, the world—that is, a people as yet worldly—was concerned with teaching these practices, somewhat as it would be with teaching the basic elements of the alphabet. But Christ and those who belong to Christ are dead to these elements—dead, that is, to these worldly practices—when they admit no further obligation to them, that is, when they are no longer living in the world among men who take note of outward forms and decide among them, distinguishing between foods or between one thing and another, saying, “Do not touch this, do not touch that,” and so on. The things that are touched or tasted or handled are destructive of the soul “by their very use,” he says, when we put them to use “according to the teachings and the precepts of men”—that is, of worldly beings who understand the law in a worldly sense—and not according to the teachings of Christ and his disciples.

When Christ sent the apostles out to preach, it was a time when he had to guard most against offense. Nonetheless, he allowed them to eat any kind of food, which would enable them to live in the same manner as their hosts, “eating and drinking such things as they have.”⁵¹ Paul was able to foresee that they would fall away from the proper teaching about this, and he wrote to Timothy:

Now the Spirit manifestly saith that in the last times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to spirits of error and doctrines of devils, speaking lies in hypocrisy …, forbidding marriage or commanding abstinence from the foods which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving by the faithful and by them that have known the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected that is received with thanksgiving: for it is sanctified by the word of God and by prayer. Proposing these things to the brethren, thou shalt be a good minister of Christ Jesus, nourished in the words of faith and of the good doctrine which thou hast attained unto.⁵²

If someone, then, is determined to make a display of his own outward abstinence, would he ever look to Christ and his disciples as a model? Or would he look instead to John and to John’s followers, who were known to be extreme in their fasting? They once took even Christ to task in their apparent devotion to Jewish observances, asking him, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but thy disciples do not fast?”⁵³ But when Saint Augustine examined the difference between virtue and its display, he concluded that such outward works add nothing at all to merit. In his book on the good in marriage he wrote:

Self-restraint is not a virtue of the body but of the soul.⁵⁴ There are times when the virtues of the heart are evident in actions and times when they lie hidden in the propensities of character, as the virtue of the martyrs became apparent in the way they endured suffering…. For example, patience already existed within Job, as the Lord knew and even spoke about, but it came to the notice of men only through the evidence of Job’s temptation….

Or, to make it clearer how virtue can exist in character even if it is not seen in actions, here is an example no Catholic will question: the Lord Jesus hungered, thirsted, ate, and drank in the truth of the flesh—this no one faithful to the Gospel doubts. Can it ever be said, though, that the Lord’s virtue of restraint in food and drink was not as great as John the Baptist’s? “For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they said, ‘He hath a devil.’ And the Son of man came eating and drinking, and they said, ‘Behold a man that is a glutton and a wine drinker, a friend of publicans and sinners….” And the Lord added, “Wisdom is justified by her children,”⁵⁵ that is, by those who see that the virtue of self-restraint must always exist in the propensities of the heart although it becomes manifest only through the opportunity of time and circumstance, as is also true of the virtue of patience in the holy martyrs…. Just as the merit of patience is not greater in Peter, who endured martyrdom, than in John, who did not, so the merit of self-restraint is not greater in John, who remained unmarried, than in Abraham, who had many children. John’s self-restraint was in his actions and Abraham’s in his character alone, but the celibacy of one and the marriage of the other each battled for Christ according to the circumstances of the times.

In those times and even after the days of the Patriarchs, the law cursed whoever did not raise up seed in Israel,⁵⁶ and so a man with the propensity toward self-restraint was not allowed to show it, even though he did possess it. But the fullness of time was come⁵⁷ when it could be said, “He that can take, let him take”;⁵⁸ that is, whoever has the propensity toward virtue should act accordingly, and whoever does not wish to act should not claim falsely that he has it.⁵⁹

The inference is that virtue alone wins merit in the eyes of God: those who are equal in virtue will win equal merit, though they may be unequal in their actions. This is why true Christians are concerned entirely with the inward man, with adorning him with virtue and keeping him clean of vice, caring little or nothing about the outward man. And this is why we read that the apostles behaved in such an uncouth—we can almost say disreputable—manner even in the company of the Lord, as if oblivious to all propriety and reverence, to pluck and strip the grain in the fields and eat it like little boys with no sense of shame at all.⁶⁰ They also did not bother to wash their hands before their meals, which led some to accuse them of uncleanness. The Lord defended them, though, saying, “To eat with unwashed hands doth not defile a man,” and he added that, in general, the soul is not defiled by outward things but only by what may proceed from the heart, that is, by “evil thoughts, murders, adulteries,” and so on.⁶¹ Unless the heart is first corrupted by a depraved will, what is done outwardly in the body cannot be sin. And so, he says that murder and adultery proceed from the heart and can exist even where there is no injury or physical contact: “Whosoever look on a woman to lust after her hath already committed adultery with her in his heart,”⁶² and “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer.”⁶³ And physical contact or injury per se does not make for these crimes, as in cases where violence forces a woman against her will or the law compels a judge to execute a criminal. But no murderer, it is written, has a share in the kingdom of God.⁶⁴

We must consider, then, not what is done but what is in the heart if we seek to please him who searches heart and mind and sees in all the secret places.⁶⁵ The Lord, Paul tells us, “shall judge the secrets of men according to the Gospel.”⁶⁶ And so, he preferred the widow’s offering of just two mites to the most lavish offerings of the rich.⁶⁷ “Thou hast no need of my goods,” he was told, and he loves the gift for the giver more than the giver for the gift. It is written, “The Lord had respect to Abel and to his offerings,”⁶⁸ for he looked first to the man’s devotion before he was pleased with his gift. God is more pleased with the devotion of the heart, the less the heart is taken up with outward things; and the less we put our trust in outward things, the more humbly do we serve him and think the more of what we owe him. And so, after writing about the allowances made for food, Saint Paul tells Timothy about the exercise of the body, saying:

Exercise thyself unto godliness, for bodily exercise is profitable to little, but godliness is profitable to all things, having promise of the life that is now and of the life that is to come.⁶⁹

The mind’s devotion to God earns from him what is necessary to us in this life and what is eternal in the next. What else do we learn from this but Christian wisdom—like Jacob, to make a meal for our Father from our domestic flock and not, like Esau, to go out hunting wild game or act like Jews in regard to outward things?⁷⁰ The Psalmist said, “In me, O God, are vows to thee, which I will pay, my praises to thee.”⁷¹ To which the poet Persius added, “Beyond yourself seek nothing.”⁷²

There are, however, countless testimonials from the learned in both the Church and the secular world which point to this one lesson: we must care nothing for the outward things, which are indifferent, or else we would find the works of the law and what Peter called the unbearable yoke of its slavery⁷³ preferable to the freedom of the Gospel and the sweet yoke and easy burden of Christ.⁷⁴ Yet Christ himself has called us to this yoke: “Come to me,” he said, “all you that labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you.”⁷⁵ And Peter rebuked those who had turned to Christ but still kept to the observance of the law:

My brethren, men, … why tempt you God to put a yoke upon the necks of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we believe we shall be saved, in like manner as they also.⁷⁶

And so I beg of you—who would imitate not only Christ but Saint Peter in your discretion as you do in your name—temper the practices set for us in a way that will suit our weak nature. Let us then be free for the service of offering praise to God, which is the offering he commends to us, rejecting all our outward sacrifices:

If I should be hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine and the fullness thereof. Shall I eat the flesh of bullocks? Shall I drink the blood of goats? Offer to God the sacrifice of praise and pay thy vows to the Most High. And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt praise me.⁷⁷

Of course, we are not saying that we should be exempt from labor when necessity requires it, only that we should not put undue importance on what serves the body but interrupts our celebration of the Office. This is particularly true when the authority of Paul grants women in religious orders a special means of sustenance apart from manual labor. As he writes to Timothy:

If any of the faithful have widows, let him minister to them and let not the Church be charged, so that there may be sufficient for them that are widows indeed.⁷⁸

By “widows indeed” he means all women who are devoted to Christ; for not only is their Husband dead but the world is crucified to them and they to the world.⁷⁹ And so it is right that they find support at Church expense, as if from the private wealth of their own husbands. This is why the Lord himself put his mother under the protection of an apostle instead of her husband,⁸⁰ and why the apostles arranged for seven deacons, the ministers of the Church, to look after the needs of these devoted women.⁸¹ Now, certainly we know that in his letter to the Thessalonians Saint Paul laid down the rule against idlers who mind everyone’s business but their own—“If any man will not work, neither let him eat”⁸²—and that Saint Benedict prescribed manual labor as the best safeguard against idleness.⁸³ But we also know that Mary sat in idleness to listen to Christ’s words while Martha continued working both for her and for the Lord, grumbling about her sister’s leisure as if she envied it and as if she alone “bore the burden of the day and the heats.”⁸⁴ People still will grumble when they minister to the needs of those who are busy with their duties to God. Often they complain less about the taxes of a tyrant than their obligations to the lazy and the idle, as they call them, even though they see them not only listening to Christ’s words but continually reading and chanting those same words. They do not know that it is only a small thing, as Saint Paul has said, to supply material goods to those from whom they receive such spiritual goods,⁸⁵ or that it is only fitting for those who are concerned with earthly matters to serve others who are concerned with matters of the spirit. Even the old law granted this leisure to the ministers of the Church: the tribe of Levi received no inheritance in land but was to take its tithes and offerings from the labor of others, so that it might better serve the Lord.⁸⁶

There is also the matter of fasting, which Christians see as abstinence from vice more than from food—you must consider whether you think anything should be added to what the Church has established, and institute what is fitting for us.

You should also give some thought to two matters in particular: the ordering of the psalms and our conduct of the ecclesiastical Offices. In the first, at least, we need some accommodation to ease the burden on our weakness—if it seems right to you. As we complete the Psalter through the week, it should not be necessary to repeat the same psalms. When Saint Benedict arranged the weekly order to suit his purposes, he also left it open for others to arrange the psalms differently if it seemed best to them,⁸⁷ no doubt aware that the beauty of the Church would grow with time, becoming a splendid edifice where there was once a rough foundation. Before all else, however, we ask you to decide for us how we are to arrange for the reading of the Gospel at the Night Office.⁸⁸ It seems unsafe to bring into our presence the priests or deacons who must read the lesson at a time when we should be most secluded from the sight of any man in order to be freer from temptation and to give ourselves wholeheartedly to God.

It now lies with you, my lord,
while you remain alive,
to institute a rule for us,
a rule which then will bind us for all time.
For you, after God, are the founder of this place,
you, through God, are the planter of our congregation,
and you, with God, should be the guide of our religious life.⁸⁹
Perhaps we will have some other after you,
who then will build on the foundation of another,⁹⁰
and so, we are afraid, will be less concerned with us
or less worthy to be obeyed,
and although he may be equally as willing,
he then will not be equally as able.

Speak and we shall hear.

Farewell.

1 Suo specialiter, sua singulariter. Heloise is using the terminology of formal dialectic, perhaps responding to Abelard’s formal language in the Fourth Letter. The phrase presents difficulties not only because of its clipped form. The word specialiter, “in species,” may have a limiting sense when the reference point is the larger category of genus—compare English “especially” or “specifically” to “generally” or “generically.” Here, however, it is opposed to the more limiting singulariter, “as particular,” “as individual,” “singularly,” or “uniquely,” and therefore points to species as the universal that applies to particulars or individuals. A single manuscript presents the variant reading Domino specialiter, which should be understood as “To her lord in species.”

In Abelard’s metaphysics there is no thing except for particulars, which are unique and distinct from all else, and Heloise’s use of the terms of dialectic here may be an apt way of indicating that, even if Abelard should insist on maintaining an abstract or generic posture toward her, her stance toward him would remain concrete and personal.

2 An understanding of words that is common in Latin treatises on dialectic, deriving ultimately from Aristotle, De Interpretatione 1. Cf. Heloise’s description of her involuntary utterances in the Third Letter, p. 80.

5 The inclusive plural “all of us” should be taken seriously. What follows from this point in the letter seems an orchestrated fugue of different voices developing a set of different themes connected to the central question of women’s religious life: the inapplicability of the Benedictine Rule to women; the historical contingency of the Benedictine and similar Rules; the distinction between formal compliance and the inward disposition seen as proper to a Christian; the general importance of moderation and discretion in the Rule, and some specific areas in which accommodation for women’s nature should be made; the need for better instruction in whatever Rule may be adopted; and the need for a convent’s material support. Some of the voices appear to have been introduced at a later date, as certain comments and sections seem to derive from Abelard’s reply in the Seventh Letter and from other subsequent texts. In all, the main part of the letter, like The Questions of Heloise, has the air of a collective research project, which Heloise could be imagined to have set for the nuns of the Paraclete to help educate them more fully in the principles and particulars of their religious practice and which may well have continued for some time. The translation makes no attempt to distinguish the separate voices; however, passages that appear most plainly to have been composed at a later date are enclosed in brackets.

7 Cf. Rule of St. Benedict, chapter 11. As indicated at the end of the letter when the issue briefly returns, the difficulty is that the Gospel readings should be conducted by a priest or a deacon and are scheduled for the Night Office, a time when inviting a man into the convent is especially unsuitable.

9 A tag from Eph. 5:18, most likely an interpolation imported from Abelard’s reply in the Seventh Letter, where it is also cited.

14 This redundant section is a close paraphrase of Abelard’s answer to the second of Heloise’s Questions, which postdates this letter. Evidently, it is a later interpolation, imported from that source.

18 Regulae Pastoralis Liber 3.1. The comment apparently derives from Abelard’s reply in the Seventh Letter.

21 Rule of St. Benedict, chapter 64. Internal quotations are from Isa. 42:3 and Gen. 33:13.

28 Homiliae in Epistulam ad Hebraeos 7.4, cited in the sixth-century Latin translation of Mutianus, not in the original Greek. Internal quotations are from Eph. 6:18 and Rom. 13:14.

39 Prov. 23:29–35, cited also in the Seventh Letter, from which it seems to be imported here.

42 Epistulae 52.11. Cf. 1 Tim. 3:3 and Lev. 10:9, 10:35. The source of “the words of the philosopher” has not been identified.

43 Rule of St. Benedict, chapter 40. The manuscripts quote the sentence only through “can never be convinced of this,” indicating the rest with “etc.” The internal quotation is from Ecclus. 19:2.

44 This string of quotations from Vitae Patrum 5.4.31, 5.4.36, and 5.4.37 is found in the same form and with the same connecting phrases in the Seventh Letter, from which it seems to be imported here.

45 This short question most likely has its origin as a reader’s query, possibly inspired by a discussion in the Seventh Letter. Its inclusion as part of the text has made it appear that the subject has shifted, and also that Benedict had come to the same sort of accommodation with eating meat as he had with drinking wine. He had not, however, as chapter 36 of the Rule makes clear—the use of meat may occasionally be granted to the sick who are very weak; otherwise, “let all abstain from meat as usual”—and the subject here continues to be wine.

60 Cf. Matt. 12:1 ff. The apostles’ behavior won the Pharisees’ disapproval because it happened on the Sabbath; however, this plays no part in the argument here.

75 Matt. 11:28. The manuscripts quote only through the words “and are burdened,” adding “etc.”

84 For this account of Mary and Martha, see Luke 10:38 ff.; for the quotation, see Matt. 20:12.