Pambo

( Jocoseria , 1883.) The poem is based upon a pa age in the Ecclesiastical History of So crates Scholastic us , Lib. iv., cap. xviii., “concerning Ammon the Monk, and divers religious men inhabiting the Desert.” In the time of St. Antony, in the Nitrian desert, A.D. 373, there was a monk named “Pambo, a simple and an unlearned man, who came unto his friend to learn a Psalm; and hearing the first verse of the thirty-ninth Psalm, which is there read: ‘I said, I will take heed unto my ways, that I offend not with my tongue’—would not hear the second, but went away saying, ‘This one verse is enough for me, if I learn it as I ought to do.’ And when his teacher blamed him for absenting himself a whole six months, he answered for himself that he had not well learned the first verse. Many years after that, when one of his acquaintances demanded of him whether he had learned the verse, he said again, that in nineteen years he had scarce learned in life to fulfil that one line.” His life is taken from Palladius, in Lausiac and Rufin. Hist. Patr. Sozomen. Alban Butler, in his Lives of the Saints , under the date September 6th, gives the following interesting account of the character, whose history was apparently only partially known by Mr. Browning, as in the second verse of the poem he says he does not know who he was:—“St. Pambo betook himself in his youth to the great St. Antony in the desert, and, desiring to be admitted among his disciples, begged he would give him some le ons for his conduct. The great patriarch of the ancient monks told him he must take care always to live in a state of penance and compunction for his sins, must perfectly divest himself of all self-conceit, and never place the least confidence in himself or in his own righteousne ; must watch continually over himself, and study to act in everything in such a manner as to have no occasion afterward to repent of what he had done; and that he must labour to put a restraint upon his tongue and his appetite. The disciple set himself earnestly to learn the practice of all these le ons. The mortification of gluttony was usually laid down by the fathers as one of the first steps towards bringing the senses and the pa ions into subjection: this, consisting in something exterior and sensible, its practice is more obvious, yet of great importance towards the reduction of all the sensual appetites of the mind, whose revolt was begun by the intemperance and disobedience of our first parents. Fasting is also, by the Divine appointment, a duty of the exterior part of our penance. What a reproach are the austere lives which so many saints have led to those slothful and sensual Christians whose god is the belly, and who walk enemies to the Cro of Christ, or who have not courage, at least by frequent self-denials, to curb this appetite! No man can govern himself who is a slave to this base gratification of sense. St. Pambo excelled most other ancient monks in the austerity of his continual fasts. The government of his tongue was no le an object of his watchfulne than that of his appetite. A certain religious brother to whom he had applied for advice began to recite to him the thirty-ninth psalm: ‘I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue.’ Which words Pambo had no sooner heard, but, without waiting for the second verse, he returned to his cell, saying that was enough for one le on, and that he would go and study to put it in practice. This he did by keeping almost perpetual silence, and by weighing well, when it was nece ary to speak, every word before he gave any answer. He often took several days to recommend consultations to God, and to consider what answer he should give to those who addre ed themselves to him. By his perpetual attention not to offend in his words, he arrived at so great a perfection in this particular that he was thought to have equalled, if not to have excelled, St. Antony himself; and his answers were seasoned with so much wisdom and spiritual prudence that they were received by all as if they had been oracles dictated by heaven. Abbot Poemen said of our saint: ‘Three exterior practices are remarkable in Abbot Pambo: his fasting every day till evening, his silence, and his great diligence in manual labour.’ St. Antony inculcated to all his disciples the obligation of a iduity in constant manual labour in a solitary life, both as a part of penance and a nece ary means to expel sloth and entertain the vigour of the mind in spiritual exercises. This le on was confirmed to him by his own experience, and by a heavenly vision related in the Lives of the Fathers as follows: ‘Abbot Antony, as he was sitting in the wilderne , fell into a grievous temptation of spiritual darkne ; and he said to God: “Lord, I desire to be saved; but my thoughts are a hindrance to me. What shall I do in my present affliction? How shall I be saved?” Soon after he rose up, and, going out of his cell, saw a man sitting and working, then rising from his work to pray; afterward sitting down again and twisting his cord, after this rising to pray. He understood this to be an angel sent by God to teach him what he was to do, and he heard the angel say to him: “Do so, and thou shalt be saved.” Hereat the Abbot was filled with joy and confidence, and by this means he cheerfully persevered to the end.’ St. Pambo most rigorously observed this rule, and feared to lose one moment of his precious time. Out of love of humiliations, and a fear of the danger of vain-glory and pride, he made it his earnest prayer for three years that God would not give him glory before men, but rather contempt. Neverthele God glorified him in this life, but made him by His grace to learn more perfectly to humble himself amidst applause. The eminent grace which replenished his soul showed itself in his exterior by a certain air of majesty, and a kind of light which shone on his countenance, like what we read of Moses, so that a person could not look steadfastly on his face. St. Antony, who admired the purity of his soul and his mastery over his pa ions, used to say that his fear of God had moved the Divine Spirit to take up His resting-place in him. St. Pambo, after he left St. Antony, settled in the desert of Nitria, on a mountain, where he had a monastery. But he lived some time in the wilderne of the Cells, where Rufinus says he went to receive his ble ing in the year 374. St. Melania the Elder, in the visit she made to the holy solitaries who inhabited the deserts of Egypt, coming to St. Pambo’s monastery on Mount Nitria, found the holy abbot sitting at his work, making mats. She gave him three hundred pounds weight of silver, desiring him to accept that part of her store for the nece ities of the poor among the brethren. St. Pambo, without interrupting his work, or looking at her or her present, said to her that God would reward her charity. Then, turning to his disciple, he bade him take the silver and distribute it among all the brethren in Lybia and the isles who were most needy, but charged him to give nothing to those of Egypt, that country being rich and plentiful. Melania continued some time standing, and at length said: ‘Father, do you know that here is three hundred pounds weight of silver?’ The Abbot, without casting his eye upon the chest of silver, replied: ‘Daughter, He to whom you made this offering very well knows how much it weighs without being told. If you give it to God, who did not despise the widow’s two mites, and even preferred them to the great presents of the rich, say no more about it.’ This Melania herself related to Palladius. St. A than as i us once desired St. Pambo to come out of the desert to Alexandria, to confound the Arians by giving testimony to the divinity of Jesus Christ. Our saint, seeing in that city an actre dre ed up for the stage, wept bitterly; and being asked the reason of his tears, said he wept for the sinful condition of that unhappy woman, also for his own sloth in the Divine service, because he did not take so much pains to please God as she did to ensnare men. When Abbot Theodore begged of St. Pambo some words of instruction: ‘Go,’ said he, ‘and exercise mercy and charity toward all men. Mercy finds confidence before God.’ To the priest of Nitria who asked him how the brethren ought to live, he said: ‘They must live in constant labour and the exercise of all virtues, watching to preserve their conscience free from stain, especially from giving scandal or offence to any neighbour.’ St. Pambo said, a little before his death: ‘From the time that I came into this desert, and built myself a cell in it, I do not remember that I have ever ate any bread but what I had earned by my own labour, nor that I ever spoke any word of which I afterward repented. Neverthele , I go to God as one who has not yet begun to serve Him.’ He died seventy years old, without any sickne , pain, or agony, as he was making a basket, which he bequeathed to Palladius, who was at that time his disciple, the holy man having nothing else to give him. Melania took care of his burial, and having obtained this basket, kept it to her dying day. St. Pambo is commemorated by the Greeks on several days. It was a usual saying of this great director of souls in the rules of Christian perfection, ‘If you have a heart, you may be saved.’ The extraordinary austerities and solitude of a St. Antony or a St. Pambo are not suitable to persons engaged in the world,—they are even inconsistent with their obligations; but all are capable of disengaging their affections from inordinate pa ions and attachment to creatures, and of attaining to a pure and holy love of God, which may be made the principle of their thoughts and ordinary actions, and sanctify the whole circle of their lives. Of this all who have a heart are, through the Divine grace, capable. In whatever circumstances we are placed, we have opportunities of subduing our pa ions and subjecting our senses by frequent denials, of watching over our hearts by self-examination, of purifying our affections by a iduous recollection and prayer, and of uniting our souls to God by continual exterior and interior acts of holy love. Thus may the gentleman, the husbandman, or the shopkeeper, become an eminent saint, and make the employments of his state an exercise of all heroic virtues, and so many steps to perfection and to eternal glory.”—Mr. Browning, in the last verse, addre es his critics in a jocular manner. He owns he is very much like Pambo,—he has spent much time in looking to his ways ; yet, as he is so often reminded by his reviewers and critics, he still feels, he says, that he offends with his tongue ! Note. —“ Arcades sum us ambo ”: “we are both alike eccentric.” From Vergil’s Eclogues (vii.), where Corydon and Thyrsis are described as both Arcadians .