Volume II, Treatise V, Chapter V

The Doctrine of the Preceding Chapter, Confirmed by Examples

Tae fame of the sanctity of the Abbot Poemen, being spread all over Egypt, the tribune of the province, being very desirous to see the saint, sent to him, to beg he would permit him to pay him a visit. This message very much afflicted the holy abbot, who having considered with himself, that if he received this visit from the tribune, he would be overwhelmed with visits from others—that these would derange his spiritual exercises, disturb his interior peace, endanger his humility, and perhaps fill him with vainglory, at last resolved to beg his excuse, and not to receive his visit. The tribune, who was extremely mortified, when he heard the answer, said, that he attributed this refusal to his own sins; and conceiving still a greater opinion of the servant of God, resolved to see him at all events. After he had for some time reflected with himself, what means to adopt, he, at last, thought on a measure, which he believed would oblige the saint to receive his visit, or to come himself to see him. It was this; he put the son of the saint’s sister in prison, and under-hand sent word to his mother, that though her son deserved to be punished, yet he would liberate him, on condition that the Abbot Poemen would come to beg this favour of him. This woman went presently to her brother in the desert, knocks at his cell-door, and with sighs and tears, represented the danger her son was in, and conjured him to go to the tribune to intercede for him; but seeing he would neither open the door, nor make any answer to the complaints he heard her make, she at last falling into a great passion, gave him injurious words, calling him a cruel barbarous man, who had no feeling. She reproached him with the hardness of his heart, telling him, he must have bowels of brass, not to be touched with the tears of a sister, and of a mother, who pleaded in behalf of her only son. Hereupon the saint turning to his disciple, go, says he, and tell that woman in my name, that Poemen never had any children, and therefore he knows not what it is, to be afflicted for their loss; and without making any other answer, he sent away his sister with a very sad and heavy heart, The tribune hearing this, and perceiving he must not expect a visit from the saint, endeavoured that some of his friends should persuade him at least, to write to him in favour of his nephew. Being very much pressed by them, he at last resolved to write, thereby to be freed from their importunities.—His letter was couched in these terms: I beseech your highness carefully to examine the affair of this young man; and if you find he has deserved death, let him suffer it; that undergoing the punishment of his crimes in this world, he may in the other, escape the torments of hell.

We read in the life of the fathers, a passage very like this, of the Abbot Pastor. He thought it so dangerous to take part in the concerns of his family, that though he was importuned in the most earnest manner to intercede for one of his nephews, who was condemned to death, yet he could not be prevailed on to do so.

We read in the life of St. Ignatius, that he could never be persuaded to interfere in the marriage of his niece, who was heiress of his family, nor so much as to write one letter to her; and being very much pressed by divers persons of quality, and particularly by the dukes of Naier, and Albuquerque, he answered, that affairs of this sort no longer regarded himself or his profession; that he had a good while renounced the world, and was dead to it; and therefore ought not to return to what he had left, nor meddle with things that did not at all belong to his vocation; and lastly, “that he would not take again the coat he had cast off,” when he had quitted the world; “nor soil his. feet again, after he had washed them.”— (Canticle of Canticles 5:3) |

Neither was it possible to obtain of St. Francis of Borgia, that he should ask a dispensation from Rome, for Don Alvarez Borgia, who wished to marry one of his nieces, a rich heiress; notwithstanding he might thereby have gained a considerable fortune for his son, to whom she would have brought the marquisate of Alcagnez; and though the saint had so much influence with the pope, that he might hope for any thing from him he desired. The emperor Charles V. came to understand by his own knowledge, on another occasion, the truth of what had been told him; that the saint lived without the least tie to flesh and blood. For, having once conversed on an affair that touched the interest of his eldest son, the duke of Gandy, the saint took no more notice hereof, than if he had spoken of the interest of a stranger, which extremely edified the emperor, and confirmed him in the high opinion he had before of him.

Let us, notwithstanding, consider what sort of affairs those were, that these saints refused to meddle in; how soon, and with what ease, they could settle them; and let us take notice on the other hand into what difficulties and intrigues religious, now-a-days, plunge themselves. But if such great saints as these apprehended the infection of secular affairs; how comes it to pass, that we who are far from being saints, have no dread at all of them? It is, in reality, because we are not saints and therefore do not think of what is to come. For, if we truly aspired to sanctity and perfection, we should fear as they did those dangers, which are inseparable from these affairs; and we should avoid them as they did.

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