THAT IT IS MERITORIOUS TO WRITE NEW BOOKS AND TO RENEW THE OLD
Just as it is necessary for the state to prepare arms and to provide
abundant stores of victuals for the soldiers who are to fight for it,
so it is fitting for the Church Militant to fortify itself against the
assaults of pagans and heretics with a multitude of sound writings.
But because all the appliances of mortal men with the lapse of time
suffer the decay of mortality, it is needful to replace the volumes
that are worn out with age by fresh successors, that the perpetuity of
which the individual is by its nature incapable may be secured to the
species; and hence it is that the Preacher says: Of making many books
there is no end. For as the bodies of books, seeing that they are
formed of a combination of contrary elements, undergo a continual
dissolution of their structure, so by the forethought of the clergy a
remedy should be found, by means of which the sacred book paying the
debt of nature may obtain a natural heir and may raise up like seed to
its dead brother, and thus may be verified that saying of
Ecclesiasticus: His father is dead, and he is as if he were not dead;
for he hath left one behind him that is like himself. And thus the
transcription of ancient books is as it were the begetting of fresh
sons, on whom the office of the father may devolve, lest it suffer
detriment. Now such transcribers are called antiquarii, whose
occupations Cassiodorus confesses please him above all the tasks of
bodily labour, adding: "Happy effort," he says, "laudable industry, to
preach to men with the hand, to let loose tongues with the fingers,
silently to give salvation to mortals, and to fight with pen and ink
against the illicit wiles of the Evil One." So far Cassiodorus.
Moreover, our Saviour exercised the office of the scribe when He
stooped down and with His finger wrote on the ground (John viii.), that
no one, however exalted, may think it unworthy of him to do what he
sees the wisdom of God the Father did.
O singular serenity of writing, to practise which the Artificer of the
world stoops down, at whose dread name every knee doth bow! O
venerable handicraft pre-eminent above all other crafts that are
practised by the hand of man, to which our Lord humbly inclines His
breast, to which the finger of God is applied, performing the office of
a pen! We do not read of the Son of God that He sowed or ploughed,
wove or digged; nor did any other of the mechanic arts befit the divine
wisdom incarnate except to trace letters in writing, that every
gentleman and sciolist may know that fingers are given by God to men
for the task of writing rather than for war. Wherefore we entirely
approve the judgment of books, wherein they declared in our sixth
chapter the clerk who cannot write to be as it were disabled.
God himself inscribes the just in the book of the living; Moses
received the tables of stone written with the finger of God. Job
desires that he himself that judgeth would write a book. Belshazzar
trembled when he saw the fingers of a man's hand writing upon the wall,
Mene tekel phares. I wrote, says Jeremiah, with ink in the book.
Christ bids his beloved disciple John, What thou seest write in a book.
So the office of the writer is enjoined on Isaiah and on Joshua, that
the act and skill of writing may be commended to future generations.
Christ Himself has written on His vesture and on His thigh King of
Kings and Lord of Lords, so that without writing the royal ornaments of
the Omnipotent cannot be made perfect. Being dead they cease not to
teach, who write books of sacred learning. Paul did more for building
up the fabric of the Church by writing his holy epistles, than by
preaching by word of mouth to Jews and Gentiles. He who has attained
the prize continues daily by books, what he long ago began while a
sojourner upon the earth; and thus is fulfilled in the doctors writing
books the saying of the Prophet: They that turn many to righteousness
shall be as the stars for ever and ever.
Moreover, it has been determined by the doctors of the Church that the
longevity of the ancients, before God destroyed the original world by
the Deluge, is to be ascribed to a miracle and not to nature; as though
God granted to them such length of days as was required for finding out
the sciences and writing them in books; amongst which the wonderful
variety of astronomy required, according to Josephus, a period of six
hundred years, to submit it to ocular observation. Nor, indeed, do
they deny that the fruits of the earth in that primitive age afforded a
more nutritious aliment to men than in our modern times, and thus they
had not only a livelier energy of body, but also a more lengthened
period of vigour; to which it contributed not a little that they lived
according to virtue and denied themselves all luxurious delights.
Whoever therefore is by the good gift of God endowed with gift of
science, let him, according to the counsel of the Holy Spirit, write
wisdom in his time of leisure (Eccles. xxxviii.), that his reward may
be with the blessed and his days may be lengthened in this present
world.
And further, if we turn our discourse to the princes of the world, we
find that famous emperors not only attained excellent skill in the art
of writing, but indulged greatly in its practice. Julius Caesar, the
first and greatest of them all, has left us Commentaries on the Gallic
and the Civil Wars written by himself; he wrote also two books De
Analogia, and two books of Anticatones, and a poem called Iter; and
many other works. Julius and Augustus devised means of writing one
letter for another, and so concealing what they wrote. For Julius put
the fourth letter for the first, and so on through the alphabet; whilst
Augustus used the second for the first, the third for the second, and
so throughout. He is said in the greatest difficulties of affairs
during the Mutinensian War to have read and written and even declaimed
every day. Tiberius wrote a lyric poem and some Greek verses.
Claudius likewise was skilled in both Greek and Latin, and wrote
several books. But Titus was skilled above all men in the art of
writing, and easily imitated any hand he chose; so that he used to say
that if he had wished it he might have become a most skilful forger.
All these things are noted by Suetonius in his Lives of the XII.
Caesars.