Preface to the Third Part of the Conferences

With the help of Christ’s grace I published ten Conferences of the Fathers, which were composed at the urgent request of the most blessed Helladius and Leontius. Then I dedicated seven others to Honoratus, a bishop blessed in name as well as in merits, and also to that holy servant of Christ, Eucherius. The same number I have now thought it good to dedicate to you, holy brothers Jovinianus, Minervius, Leontius and Theodore. For the last of you founded that holy and splendid monastic rule in the province of Gaul with the strictness of ancient virtue, while the rest of you by your teaching have stirred up monks not only to seek, first of all, the common life of the coenobia, but even to thirst eagerly for the lofty life of the anchorite. [a]

For these Conferences of the best of the fathers are arranged with such care, and so thoroughly considered in every respect, that they suit both ways of life, by which you have made not only the lands of the West but even the islands flourish with great crowds of brothers. I mean that not only those who still remain in communities, in praiseworthy subjection to a rule, but also those who withdraw to no great distance from your monasteries and try to carry out the rule of anchorites, may be more fully instructed, as the nature of the place and the character of their condition may require. And your earlier efforts and labors have especially contributed to this: because these monks are already prepared and practiced in these exercises, they can more readily receive the precepts and institutions of the elders. They will receive into their cells the authors of the Conferences together with the books of the Conferences themselves, and talk with them, after a fashion, by daily questions and answers. So they will not be left to their own resources to find that way, which is difficult and almost unknown in this country, and full of danger even there, where well-worn paths and countless examples of those who have gone before are not lacking. Rather, they may learn to follow the rule of the anchorite’s life as taught by the examples of those whom ancient tradition, diligence and long experience have thoroughly instructed.