Epistula ad Probam Virginem

Eugippius’s Letter to the Virgin Proba. To the Lady, deservedly venerable and by the fruit of sacred virginity always illustrious in the grace of Christ and in all things upright, Eugippius, the servant of all the servants of God, sends greetings in the Lord. The codex of excerpts, which I had somehow compiled from several works of Saint Augustine at the urging of my lord Abbot Marinus and the other holy brothers, you wished to be immediately transferred to you, with the holy zeal in which you excel; and although the abundant and complete collection of your library contains the works from which I culled a few passages, it nevertheless pleased you to have the excerpts. But I, foreseeing that I might perhaps be accused of rashness by readers, considered it necessary to state the reasons for the deed in a preface: they are as follows. Who does not know that among the great and distinguished Catholic doctors of the Church, the blessed bishop Augustine was and is preeminent? And while all orthodox Christians throughout the whole world venerate him as wonderful in both divine and human learning, the pontiffs of the apostolic see especially, by confirming his writings with their own authoritative approval, have always embraced them with all the greater zeal, inasmuch as they testify that they have used them with all the greater comfort.

For against the many enemies of the church who fight, and especially against the shape-shifting foes of the grace of God, his disciples, instructed by his teaching—or rather, illuminated by that same grace—have always emerged victorious. The rewards of that victory, by the gift of God, benefit posterity so greatly that they both feed the hungry more abundantly and arm the strong with spiritual weapons. Indeed, the Catholic exposition of divine law becomes not only nourishment for the hungry but also armor for those who fight. Nor is it undeserved that the vicar to whom the Lord entrusted his sheep to be fed with his own mouth loved all the more his fellow in the co-pastoral office, who procures abundant fodder for the Lord’s flock from the meadows of the Scriptures, truly considering as their own good what they rejoiced to have found through a brother’s knowledge, knowing that this intelligible salt for seasoning souls would also benefit the most abject of beasts. Of all these, I—utterly more abject—by ruminating and, as it were, licking at a very few of the outstanding works of that blessed man, have culled some things that I had read in their entirety among excellent friends. For who could possess or discover all his works? Therefore, while reading and desiring to have them, since the means were scarcely at hand, I gathered certain things, as if from a vast meadow sprinkled with celestial flowers, from the abundance of his books that was granted to me, needy and sick: needy, that is, in skill; sick in offense, either desiring to be informed by such great teaching or to be healed.

I have truly perceived the truth of Solomon’s saying, “The words of wisdom are a honeycomb, sweetness for the soul, health for the bones,” in the most sweet and healthful teaching of the aforementioned man. Therefore, I trust that the few things I have gathered will be useful not only to me, who am poor in both sense and wealth, but also to those who are endowed with both gifts. For when these same excerpts come into their hands, whether kindled by the ardor of a beggar or moved by the disorderly accumulation, as is usual, they will take pains either to have more diligently more material or to cull more suitable passages from these and, once brought together into one body, to read them frequently. Thus, perhaps, the desire of the unskilled will be able to serve the convenience of the learned; for often what is more ineptly seized by the small is more aptly fulfilled by the great. Certainly, if none of the great deigns to do or have this, at least those to whom the full works of such a man are lacking will perhaps delight in these excerpts, because it will be easier for someone to procure one codex than many. From each individual chapter, the different subjects or even questions and opinions are indicated, along with from which work or book they come, so that if anyone does not know where to find them in full, he may learn.

But the complete book seemed to me ought to be the beginning of the excerpts, and that one especially presented itself to be placed first, which the same blessed Augustine, the bishop, is known to have written to the holy priest Jerome after the first question concerning the soul, solving that question from the epistle of the apostle James which I noted in the first chapter: in which book he wonderfully referred those four virtues, namely prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice, to that broad commandment of the twofold love of God and neighbor, on which the whole law and the prophets depend. For this reason, therefore, I thought it fitting and suitable that charity, by which scattered things are usually united into integrity, should give the beginning of the book to these excerpts, which is both the perfection of all virtues and the fullness of the supreme law; it also gave the end to the work, which has no end. For the nearly last title of the number contains the order of nurturing charity, the last the praise of nurtured charity; by which I adjure those who will read to grant pardon kindly to unworthy me and to bestow the aids of prayers mercifully. If anyone, indeed, transferring this work, should perhaps wish to add other things to those which have been gathered, let him add them in suitable places, so that the two aforementioned titles concerning charity always hold the end of the excerpts.