St. Augustine
invicem corporaliter digressi sumus, accepi. Nunc vero legi epistulam benignitatis tuae de Donato et fratre eius et, quid responderem, diu fluctuavi. Sed tamen etiam atque etiam cogitanti, quid sit utile saluti eorum quibus nutriendis in Christo servimus, nihil mihi aliud occurrere potuit nisi non esse istam viam dandam servis dei, ut facilius se putent eligi ad aliquid melius, si facti fuerint deteriores. Et ipsis enim facilis lapsus et ordini clericorum fit indignissima iniuria, si desertores monasteriorum ad militiam clericatus eliguntur, cum ex his, qui in monasterio permanent, non tamen nisi probatiores atque meliores in clerum adsumere soleamus, nisi forte, sicut vulgares dicunt, “malus choraula bonus symphoniacus est,” ita idem ipsi vulgares de nobis iocabuntur dicentes “malus monachus bonus clericus est.” Nimis dolendum, si ad tam ruinosam superbiam monachos subrigimus et tam gravi contumelia clericos dignos putamus, in quorum numero sumus, cum aliquando etiam bonus monachus vix bonum clericum faciat, si adsit ei sufficiens continentia et tamen desit instructio necessaria aut personae regularis integritas.
2Sed de istis, credo, arbitrata sit beatitudo tua, quod nostra voluntate, ut suis potius conregionalibus utiles essent, de monasterio recessissent. Sed falsum est; sponte abierunt, sponte deseruerunt nobis,
Letters of St. Augustine
received no letter from your Holiness, but now I have read a letter of your Grace about Donatus and his brother. For a considerable time I could not settle what answer to make, but after repeated consideration of what would further the welfare of those whose nurture in Christ is the aim of our service, I could reach no other conclusion than this: we must not put God’s servants in the way of thinking that the worse their behaviour, the easier their advancement to better posts. For it would only make backsliding easier for them and lay a quite undeserved slight on the regular clergy, if we selected for clerical service monks who had run away from their monastery, seeing that our usual practice is to select for adoption to the ranks of the clergy only those of higher merit and character from among the monks who stay on in their monastery. The common people say that a bad accompanist makes a good singer; do we want these same common people to laugh at us in the same way and say that a bad monk makes a good clergyman? It is a great pity if we encourage monks to such demoralizing pride and think fit to lay so serious a slight on the clergy, to whose ranks we ourselves belong. Sometimes even a good monk hardly makes a good clergyman, if he possesses sufficient self-control and yet has not the necessary education or the finish of a man who has gone through the normal training.
In the case we are discussing, your Holiness may,2 I think, have assumed that it was with my consent that they abandoned monastic life for a more desirable sphere of service among the men of their own district. That, however, is not so; they left of their own accord, of their own accord they deserted