Letters, Book 11
To Rusticiana the Patrician, on the Miracles at Saint Andrew’s Monastery
Gregory to Rusticiana, and so on.
I have received your excellency’s letters. While I was in a state of most grievous sickness, they relieved me completely as to your health, your devotion, and your sweetness. One thing, however, I took amiss: that in those same letters to me what might have been said once was said again and again, “Your handmaid,” and “your handmaid.” For since I have been made the servant of all through the burdens of being a bishop, what reason has she to call herself my handmaid, when I was hers before I took up the office of bishop? And so I beg you by Almighty God that I may never find this word in what you write to me. Further, the gifts which you sent out of a most pure and sincere heart to the blessed Peter, prince of the apostles, have been received and hung up there in the presence of all the clergy. But my son, the magnificent lord Symmachus, finding me ill with the pains of gout and almost despaired of, put off giving me your letters, and gave them to me long after the veils had been received. Afterward I found in your excellency’s letters that they were to have been carried to the church of the blessed Peter with a litany. So this was not done, because, as I have already said, we received the veils before the letters. Nevertheless, the Symmachus I have mentioned did with your whole household what you wished us to do with the clergy. But even if the voices of men were lacking, your offering itself has its own voice before Almighty God. In his loving-kindness I trust that the intercession of the one whose body you have covered on earth may protect you in heaven from all sins, and may rule your house by his provision and guard it by his watchfulness.
As for the affliction of gout which you tell us has come upon you, I am both distressed and exceedingly glad. I am glad because the harmful humor, by attacking the lower parts of your body, has entirely left the higher ones. But I am distressed because I fear you suffer excessive pain in so very slender a body. For where there is too little flesh, what strength can there be to resist pain? As for me, you know what I used to be. But now bitterness of soul and constant irritation, and besides these the affliction of gout, so affect me that my body is dried up as though it were already in the grave. So it happens that I can now rarely get up from my bed. If, then, the pain of gout has reduced the bulk of my body to such dryness, what must I think of your body, which was too dry before the pains came on?
As for the alms you have given to the monastery of the blessed apostle Andrew, there is no need for me to say anything, since it is written, “Hide your alms in the bosom of a poor man, and it will pray for you” (Sirach 29, verse 15). If, then, the good deed itself has its voice in the secret ears of God, whether we cry aloud or keep silent, the very thing you have done so well cries aloud. Moreover, I declare that there are such great miracles in this same monastery of the apostle, and such great care and protection of the monks, that it is as if he himself were in a special way the abbot of the monastery. To speak of a few things out of many which I have learned from the account of the abbot and the prior of the monastery: Two brothers were sent out from there one day to buy something for the use of the monastery. One was a junior, who seemed to be distinguished for good sense; the other was a senior, sent to be the junior’s guardian. Both went out, and from the money they had received to pay for what they were to buy, the one who had been sent as the junior’s guardian stole something without the other knowing. Soon afterward they both returned to the monastery. When they came to the threshold of the oratory, the one who had committed the theft fell down, seized by a demon, and began to be tormented. When the demon had let him go, the monks who gathered around him asked whether by chance he had stolen anything from what he had received. He denied it, and was tormented a second time. Eight times he denied it, and eight times he was tormented. But after his eighth denial he confessed how much money he had stolen. And repenting, lying prostrate on the ground, he acknowledged that he had sinned. When he had undergone penance, the demon came to him no more.
At another time, on the feast of the same apostle, while the brothers were resting during the midday hours, a certain brother suddenly became blind with his eyes open. He began to tremble and to utter loud cries, testifying by these cries that he could not bear what he was suffering. The brothers ran to him and saw him blind with his eyes open, trembling and crying out, cut off from everything around him and with no sense of anything that could be done to him from outside. They lifted him in their hands and cast him down before the altar of Saint Andrew the apostle, and they also prostrated themselves in prayer for him. At once he came to himself again and told what he had suffered. A certain old man, he said, had appeared to him and set a black dog on him to tear him, saying, “Why would you run away from this monastery?” “And when I could in no way have escaped the bites of the dog,” he said, “some monks came and pleaded with that old man for me. He at once ordered the dog to go away, and then I came to myself.” And he often confessed afterward, saying, “On the day I suffered these things I had made a plan to run away from this same monastery.”
Another monk also secretly wanted to leave the same monastery. Having turned the matter over in his mind, he was about to enter the oratory, but he was immediately handed over to a demon and most severely tormented. The demon would leave him, and if he stayed outside the oratory he suffered no harm; but if he tried to enter it, he was at once handed over to the evil spirit and tormented. When this happened often, he confessed his fault, namely that he was thinking of leaving the monastery. Then the brothers gathered on his behalf and bound themselves to continue in prayer for him for three days, and he was so completely cured that the evil spirit never came to him again. He also used to say that while he was being tormented he had seen the same blessed apostle, and had been rebuked by him for wanting to leave the monastery.
Two other brothers also ran away from the same monastery. Beforehand, in conversation, they had dropped some hints to the brothers that they were going down by the Appian Way to make for Jerusalem. But when they had gone out, they turned off the road. And so that there would be no chance of their being found by anyone who might follow them, they found some secluded crypts near the Flaminian Gate and hid themselves there. When they were looked for in the evening and not found in the monastery, some of the brothers followed them on horseback, going out by the gate of Metronus to follow them along the Latin Way or the Appian Way. But suddenly they had the thought of looking for them farther off, on the Salarian Way, and so, going on outside the city, they turned their course onto the Salarian Way. But when they did not find them, they decided to return by the Flaminian Gate. As they were returning, as soon as their horses came in front of the crypts where the men were hiding, the horses stood still, and though they were beaten and urged on, they refused to move. The monks judged that such a thing could not happen without some hidden meaning. They looked over the crypts and saw that the entrance was blocked by a pile of stones; but since their horses would not go in any direction, they dismounted. They moved the stones that had been placed at the mouth of the crypts, went in, and found the men, terrified, inside these dark underground hiding places. The men were taken back to the monastery, and they were so improved by this miracle that it was of great benefit to them to have run away from the monastery for a short time.
I have told you these things so that your excellency may know whose oratory it is on which you have bestowed your alms. Now may Almighty God keep you, in soul and in body, and all your house under his heavenly protection, and grant you a long life for our consolation. I ask that my most beloved son, the lord Strategius, together with his glorious parents, your children, be greeted in my name.