Letter 60: Augustine to Aurelius
At roughly the same time as the previous letter, Augustine wrote to Aurelius, the bishop of Carthage and primate of Africa, about a certain Donatus and his brother who had left the monastery. Augustine counsels Aurelius against allowing monks who have abandoned the monastery to be readily chosen as clerics, since even a good monk does not necessarily make a good priest (paragraph 1). Augustine points out that Donatus and his brother did not leave the monastery with his authorization and that the case of Donatus, who was ordained before any decision of a council, is different from that of his brother, who has not yet been ordained (paragraph 2).
To his most blessed lord and truly most dear brother worthy of reverence with due obedience, his fellow priest, Bishop Aurelius, Augustine sends greetings in the Lord.
1. I received no letter from Your Reverence since we physically parted from each other. But I have now read the letter of Your Grace concerning Donatus and his brother, and I have wavered back and forth for a long time about what reply I should make. But as I pondered again and again what would be conducive to the salvation of those whom we serve in Christ by providing them with spiritual nourishment, nothing else occurred to me but that we should not open this path to the servants of God so that they suppose that they are more likely to be chosen for a better position if they have become worse men. And it is, after all, easy for them to fall, and a most shameful injury is done to the clerical order if those who abandon their monastery are chosen for the army of the clergy since from those who remain in their monastery we usually choose only the more tested and better to be members of the clergy, unless as the common folk say, “A bad flute player makes a good singer.” In the same way the common folk joke about us and say, “A bad monk makes a good cleric.” It is something highly deplorable if we raise monks up to such ruinous pride and think that clerics, among whom we are counted, are worthy of grave abuse. After all, at times even a good monk does not make a good cleric if he has sufficient continence and, nonetheless, lacks the necessary instruction and the personal integrity required.
2. But I am sure that Your Beatitude has thought concerning these men that they withdrew from the monastery by our decision in order that they might be more useful to the people of their region, but that is not true. They left of their own accord; they went off of their own accord while we resisted as much as we could for the sake of their salvation. And with regard to Donatus, since his ordination had already taken place before we determined anything about this in a
council,†1 if he has perhaps been corrected from the perversity of his pride, let Your Wisdom do as you see fit. But with regard to his brother, who was the main reason why Donatus himself left the monastery, I do not know what answer I should give, since you understand what I think. I do not dare to speak in opposition to Your Wisdom, Your Honor, and Your Charity, and I, of course, hope that you will do what you see will be salutary for the members of the Church.