Preface to the Second Part of the Conferences

Many of the saints who are taught by your example can scarcely match the greatness of your perfection, in which you shine in this world like great lights with wonderful brightness. Even so, you, holy brothers Honoratus and Eucherius, are so stirred by the great glory of those splendid men from whom we received the first principles of the monastic life that one of you, who presides over a large monastery of brothers, hopes that his community, which learns its lesson from the daily sight of your holy life, may be instructed in the precepts of those fathers, while the other has been eager to make his way to Egypt, to be built up by the sight of them in the flesh. He would leave this province, frozen, as it were, with the cold of Gaul, and fly like a pure turtledove to those lands on which the sun of righteousness looks, and which it comes nearest to, and which abound with the ripe fruits of the virtues. Naturally, the greatness of my love wrings this from me: considering the desire of the one and the labor of the other, I should not shrink from the danger and risk of writing, if only so that the one may gain added authority among his children, and the other may be spared the need of so risky a journey. [a]

Further, neither the Institutes of the coenobia, which we wrote as well as we could in twelve books for Bishop Castor of blessed memory, nor the ten Conferences of the fathers living in the desert of Scete, which we put together somehow or other at the bidding of Saints Helladius and Leontius, the bishops, have been able to satisfy your faith and zeal. So now, so that the reason for our journey may also be known, I have thought it right to write seven Conferences of the three fathers whom we first saw living in another desert, in the same style, and to dedicate them to you. In them, whatever has perhaps been explained obscurely, or even left out, in our earlier works on the subject of perfection may be supplied. But if even this is not enough to satisfy the holy thirst of your desires, seven other Conferences, which are to be sent to the holy brothers living in the islands of the Stoechades, will, I think, satisfy your wants and your ardor.