The Plague

After this a plague followed hard on the war, and as the feast drew near he spoke to the brothers by letter once more, describing the sufferings this disaster brought, in these words: [a] “To other people the present would not seem a time for a feast. Nor indeed is this or any other time a feast for them, not the times of grief, and not even one they might think the most joyful. Now, certainly, everything is lamentation, everyone mourns, and wailing echoes through the city every day because of the number of those who have died and those who are dying. [b] For as it is written of the firstborn of the Egyptians, so now too ‘there was a great cry, for there is not a house in which there is not one dead’ — and would that it were only one! [c]

“For many terrible things had happened even before this. First they drove us out, and alone, persecuted and put to death by everyone, we kept the feast even then. Every place where each of us was afflicted became a festival ground for us: field, desert, ship, inn, prison. But the brightest feast of all was kept by the perfected martyrs, who feasted in heaven. [e] After that came war and famine, which we bore together with the Gentiles. What they inflicted on us we endured alone, yet we also had our share in what they did to one another and suffered from one another. And again we rejoiced in the peace of Christ, which he has given to us alone. But when we and they had had the briefest breathing space, this disease swooped down on us. To them it was more frightening than any fear and more cruel than any other disaster, and, as one of their own writers has said, ‘the one thing of all that has proved worse than anyone could expect.’ To us it was not that, but a training and a testing no less than the others. For it did not spare us either, but it fell in full force on the Gentiles.” [f]

A little further on he adds: “Most of our brothers, out of their overflowing love and brotherly affection, did not spare themselves but held fast to one another. They visited the sick without any thought for their own safety, served them devotedly and cared for them in Christ, and most gladly departed this life together with them. They were filled with the suffering of others, drew the sickness onto themselves from their neighbors, and willingly took their pains upon themselves. Many who nursed others and brought them back to health died themselves, having drawn the others’ death onto their own heads. The popular saying that always seems a mere politeness they then made true in deed, departing as the others’ ‘offscouring.’ [g] At any rate, the best of our brothers left life in this way: some presbyters and deacons, and some of the people, men very highly praised, so that this kind of death, coming about through great devotion and strong faith, seemed to fall nothing short of martyrdom. They took up the bodies of the saints with open hands and held them to their breasts. They closed their eyes and shut their mouths, carried them on their shoulders and laid them out. They clung to them and embraced them, and prepared them with washing and clothing. And a little while later they received the same service themselves, for those left behind were always following those who had gone before them.

“But the Gentiles did the exact opposite. They pushed away those who were beginning to fall sick and ran from their dearest ones. They threw them half dead into the roads and cast out the dead unburied like garbage, trying to avoid the spread and contagion of death, which, for all their schemes, was not easy for them to escape.”

After this letter too, when the city was at peace, he again sent a festal letter to the brothers in Egypt, and after that he composed still others. There is also one of his in circulation On the Sabbath, and another On Training. Writing again by letter to Hermammon and the brothers in Egypt, he goes through the wickedness of Decius and those who came after him at length, among much else, and he mentions the peace under Gallienus: [h]