Ennodius Ambrosio et Beato

VI. ENNODIUS TO AMBROSIUS AND BEATUS. We obey God when we command in accordance with his precepts: for our yielding to your petition out of zeal for charity is a mystical injunction. You have demanded with many entreaties that a page of didactic composition be fashioned for you. Willingly, I submitted myself to the claims of many, because, whatever scrutiny may be applied to my words, it suffices if you commend me in my intention. Yet I will not be silent at the threshold of writing about what gives life. Hold God with the whole intention of your mind in pure hearts, and soothe him with the frequentation of prayers around you, drawn away from him by no fornications of souls, by no compromise. Also cherish your neighbors, whom natural fellowship makes, and rejoice that you have done nothing to others that would cause you grief if done to you. The fruit of this good is whatever is desired. Yet the uncertainties of deliberation long held me anxious, whether to promulgate words to you through verse or by epistolary law. I chose to lay open my affection for you along both paths of speaking, because both a forceful elocution befits one who commands, and care with a softer style comes to the aid of minds pressed by admonition. Therefore, kindly receive what has been exacted.

Though whatever the compliant Muse has sounded is delicate with the moisture of honey, and a poem fashioned with charming brilliance captivates the teachable moments of the heart, it is not always fitting that virtue be a poem, when a law that commands a slack flow dissolves what is strong under a bidding zeal. Yet we follow the Pierian mode of speech only as far as care admonishes and as far as genius and the vigor of truth allow. We endure that the ingrained rigor of a soldier of Christ be guarded against an enervated style. Therefore, sometimes shunning the pleasantries of words, let us celebrate solid matter with its own mouth, lest the manliness of the work suffer the losses of an enfeebled discourse. The office of admonisher does not shrink from my profession, because correction befits those who go before, and just as it is fitting for a torch of innocence to be borne to those left behind, so reason demands that you also show by words the path for them to follow, since the exhortation consists of a divided voice: reprove a wise man, he will love you, and let not a secular advocate be silent.

Who holds a teacher in the place of a holy parent. For by right he is placed on the pinnacle of affection whom the readiness of correction commends more readily than natural lineage itself. For to have begotten is a testimony of lust, to have educated is one of piety. Therefore, as you hasten to the citadel of the disciplines, love Modesty, the mother of good works, who, though fruitful in the manifold species of virtues, brings them forth as a virgin, just as shamelessness, wanton and corrupt, brings forth vices. Let her exhort you with this voice, that you may strive toward her: Dye your glowing faces with rosy purple, And reveal the faithfulness of your character from your countenance. Though you scatter spots on snowy skin, be more beautiful in your face, When, sweating, you bear tender dew on your neck. Attribute nothing more to your tongue than to the pattern of your brow. Whatever you wish to love, win for yourself from this source. It is wrong to deny a hand to such a sacred counsel, when even she who speaks, adorned with the dowry of profitable beauty, either amplifies the goods of nobility or suggests them. Therefore, always join to modesty her kinswoman Chastity, who, tempering the prejudice of age with hoary moderation, mixes the coldness of a foreign regimen into years swelling with fervor, and, with the appetite for error subdued, enticing the flesh with the savor of holy conduct, makes the diligent pursuit of what is right appear in you not as something forced. Yet this is to be procured by the chastening of the belly, and its enemy is not to be nourished by the populous errors of dishes.

For feasting, sought at great expense, demands even the losses of good merits, and along one path come the detriments of character or of wealth. If this should extend its step to you, it must be thundered at with these words: I care not to betray the afflicted with a constant face, As long as the monuments of chaste beauty shine before me. For rich bodies suffocate thin sense, And overstuffed guts trample their own minds. But for me the cross is a spear, the cross a shield, the cross a breastplate: With this I shall cover myself, with this I shall strike, with this I shall confirm the treaties of peace. This is my war-leader, by which, as victor treading on the slippery, I detest the dire honey of Cupid's poison. To those running to me, set aside the boy from your deeds, And from my life, young men, presume to sing. Admit this, adorned with the fellowship of Faith, because, just as it holds the principal place in corrected morals, so, stripped of its endowments, it is not held, nor is it right to occupy as a singular what consists of many. Noble garlands are not composed of spoils from a single meadow: from various gems a single diadem is usually formed: the body of admirable electrum has always been produced by the limbs of numerous metals. Therefore, because there is nothing that can surpass faith, let it be fostered and so grow in the harvest of diligence, lest the milky stalk of rich nourishment die, prematurely reaped by the sickle. Therefore, let lame promise depart from your practice, and let the thing to be followed pass through use into nature. Yet let this be thought to meet you with these addresses:

Who desires to join earth with heaven, And to leave behind the vice of a luxurious parent, Let him seek me, a sure glory and the crown Of a high gift. That man fears no dread tribunal, Nor flits about among powerful city-men, Conscious of the right, he holds his course among the waves Of the haven of salvation. Though the barbarian Gelonus swells with pride, Though the Parthian Morinus barks in his guise, He scorns and repels everything That the madness of the world whispers. He enters the inner sanctum of the high king, He remains safe amid the ruins of the rich, He suffers neither the law of the tomb Nor the evils of life. Let the diligence of liberal studies depart from the aforementioned virtues, by which the goods of divine things are enhanced as if by the light of a precious necklace, because imperfect beauty is not far removed from ugliness, and he who has not sufficiently stretched toward the heights of the great has scarcely left behind the depths of the wretched. Yet these, before the gates, as if a nurse of the others, they put Grammar first, which entices the minds of adolescents with the flavor of artistry and smooth speech, and leads them to the Ciceronian heat with sparks of prefigured vapor. The Campus Martius receives the soldier whom the image of simulated combat has animated, nor does he turn his foot back from the war-trumpets, to whom the blare of bugles and the services of war have rung out amid the blandishments of peace. For virtue, nourished by use, grows great, and from training is born the endurance of dangers: men of consummate strength were seen trembling at their beginnings.

It is well if the right hand of rhetors and that freedom of tongues receive swords forged in the furnace of grammarians, swords which do not yield to open blows; a frequent image of striking has contributed to this. In this caution it is necessary that, beyond the almost natural license of immature age, the affection for art should grow, and that from the continuous and imposed necessity through pedagogues, a spontaneous care for a noble work should spring forth. Yet he who acquiesces to being compelled shows that he tends toward good will. He whom the concern of a monitor does not offend already almost has honesty in his pursuit. Nevertheless, to his followers he speaks thus: GRAMMAR. We give flavor to minds while we polish fables. We hold an impartial judge if a little one errs. Withholding hand, I beat modesty with ear and mouth. Whatever the art has that is fearful, the art of speaking tempers. Even among the very doctrines we jest with the little ones. For the master’s rigor commands that you not terrify through everything. That older age called us the best of parents, because we count as our own offspring those whom the swelling womb of a literate seed has given, and lust has not subjugated the rights of a clear mind.

This, as you are already departing, the Mars of eloquence summons with rhetorical trumpets, and like a breastplate of chainmail, it composes the defenses of causes with varied and interconnected small parts. For when the knotty limbs of speech are compressed into a solid and simple form, it paints a single image of discourse, in which diverse elements are joined by square measures so that division does not detract from conjunction, nor can a partition, when needed, separate what must be gathered individually. With the flavor of praise already set forth, a masculine diction and the Latin brow of human speech thus exhorts you: "After the pinnacle of divinity, I am that which either changes what has been done or creates it: to whatever darkness of actions is enveloped, I supply the light which I confer by speaking. I am she through whom men expect guilt from a troubled conscience and innocence from a serene one: through me a dark conscience shines, through me a radiance of its own light is covered by an adventitious night, or if it is ignorant of darkness: there is something which neither purity trusts nor guilt sighs for. For my profit, wherever a Roman is, he keeps watch: fasces, riches, honors—if we do not adorn them, they are cast aside: we rule kingdoms and command salutary things to those in power. What of the fact that the delight of our declamations surpasses all things that have taste, and the opinion we win is eternal? Before the *scipiones* and *trabeae* comes the pompous recitation: concerning the deeds of brave men, what we wish is believed: no one values an act that we pass over in silence: noble offshoots poured forth from us irradiate the whole world with the light of perfect clarity.

poetry, legal expertise, dialectic, arithmetic—though they use me as if I were their mother, yet it is by my assertion that they have value. But hear also a poem, which the play of another's office suggests to us. Let it be ours alone; accusations touch no one. We wipe away the stains of life by the skill of art. If someone stands on snowy merit with the Senate as witness, We force him to say he was born at night. Both the accused and the saint are born from our mouth: While we speak, the captive judgment is led away. The wool of Tarentum, the praise of a city, a gem, power— What are they compared to our joined pride? Whoever serves our studies soon rules the world. Fearing no doubt, art has given me kingdoms. Therefore, dearest ones, strive to attain these things and to guard what you have attained. But you may ask, by what teachers, by what instructors we should use, by whose examples we should be raised, when Faustus and Avienus, the blessedness of our age and the river of Latin eloquence, are held by a secondary lot, bound to courtly councils? While care awaits them, they are unknown to the general public; to attempt their praises is the same as if you wished to assert the light of the sun and the power of divinity. But while these men labor for the public good, the patricians Festus and Symmachus, the material of all disciplines and the constant form of wisdom, do not depart from the most sacred city. In them is the principate of the noble curia; to have seen them is to be educated. Among them there is no talk of games nor a scarcely forgivable mention of pantomimes.

They do not seek popular favor at the cost of modesty: content to please the right rather than the many, they obtain testimony from blameless conduct. Although in all things the commands of these men are to be followed, yet in them there is both a teacher’s silence and a learned form of reticence. There is also Probus Patricius, the tested brilliance of a calm lineage, whom the habits of the learned, refined to perfection, have shaped, and who has drawn from the fountain of both his father and his father-in-law what is pure. There is Cethegus Patricius, his son, a man of consular rank, who, though younger, possesses a white-haired wisdom without the prejudice of age, and has both the savor of the mature and the honey of youth. Let Boethius Patricius go forth, in whom you scarcely notice the years of learning and yet understand that his expertise already suffices for teaching, a man whom the choice of the correctors has judged. There is Agapitus Patricius, rich in both honor and knowledge. There is Probus V. I., whom if you follow, you will have that Faustus and Avienus, who are present even when they are absent, as if present. The other illustrious men, whom report has brought to me only by hearsay, I pass over in silence: through these men, if maturity is now dear to you, or through those I have mentioned, recognize them: for by clear signs it is evident that a friend of good men embraces no one’s character in another unless he has formed it in himself.

Now if the company of matrons pleases you, you have the lady Barbara, a flower of Roman genius, who by the testimony of her face reveals the light of her blood and taste, in whom you will find both a modest confidence and a confident modesty born of good action, speech seasoned with a natural and artful simplicity, so that neither charm disfigures her discourse nor harshness stiffens the splendor of her words to women, in whom care for propriety has so passed into nature that, even if she wished to lie, she could not from horror. A chaste sweetness sounds in her speech, nor is the cloud of her mind concealed by a serene covering of words: what the heart is, so is the speech. May the diadem of women pardon me for presuming, that I envy her peace: I would wish her to be set before all parts of Italy as an example to be imitated, so that those who do not yield to precepts might be formed by examples. There is also there Stephania, the most splendid light of the Catholic Church, whose birth is overshadowed by a greater light if you understand her character, as the sun overshadows the eye of the world: if you set aside the rays of her inborn conduct, nothing will shine more than her blood. May the heavenly dispensation join you to the service of these, all whom I have mentioned. Behold, you have the page as a hostage of my favor, which you follow like a governess. May God grant you always both to will and to do what is fitting. Therefore, if I have not succeeded with a pompous speech, I have aided you with a speech mindful of your profession.

Through you, and through the parents who begot you such as you are, Symmachus, let not a harsh lot await our letter. Give your right hand to a slender man and take me with you through the waves. It is not in keeping with holy character to deceive one who trusts. I delay nothing: behold, I come as a suppliant; have mercy on one who prays, commending humble words to wealthy patrons. Illustrious offspring, take up the words of a dry parent. A saying is noble which shows what is good.