St. Augustine on seeing Ambrose reading in silence
(Confessions 6.3)
Nor had I come yet to groan in my prayers that
thou wouldst help me. My mind was wholly intent on knowledge and eager for
disputation. Ambrose himself I esteemed a happy man, as the world counted
happiness, because great personages held him in honor. Only his celibacy
appeared to me a painful burden. But what hope he cherished, what struggles he
had against the temptations that beset his high station, what solace in
adversity, and what savory joys thy bread possessed for the hidden mouth of his
heart when feeding on it, I could neither conjecture nor experience.
Nor did he know my own frustrations, nor the pit
of my danger. For I could not request of him what I wanted as I wanted it,
because I was debarred from hearing and speaking to him by crowds of busy
people to whose infirmities, he devoted himself. And when he was not engaged
with them - which was never for long at a time - he was either refreshing his
body with necessary food or his mind with reading.
Now, as he read, his eyes glanced over the pages
and his heart searched out the sense, but his voice and tongue were silent.
Often when we came to his room - for no one was forbidden to enter, nor was it
his custom that the arrival of visitors should be announced to him - we would
see him thus reading to himself. After we had sat for a long time in silence -
for who would dare interrupt one so intent? - we would then depart, realizing
that he was unwilling to be distracted in the little time he could gain for the
recruiting of his mind, free from the clamor of other men's business. Perhaps
he was fearful lest, if the author he was studying should express himself
vaguely, some doubtful and attentive hearer would ask him to expound it or
discuss some of the more abstruse questions, so that he could not get over as
much material as he wished, if his time was occupied with others. And even a
truer reason for his reading to himself might have been the care for preserving
his voice, which was very easily weakened. Whatever his motive was in so doing,
it was doubtless, in such a man, a good one.
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