6. When among the stormy seas of the flood-swept world, I, beaten so often by anguish and suffering, struggled to reach a haven on the shore, then the old rival stirred up the hatred of his wonted malice, and prepared the usual stumbling-blocks for my latest undoing. For he picked out a very wicked man falsely called Justus, a weakling of puny stature, and with the color very black to behold of the barbarous Ethiopian race; for outwardly on account of his dark skin he was ugly in his sallow appearance, but in his secret heart he was absolutely blacker than a crow. Puny was his body, but filled with criminal acts. Against my will, as he wickedly resisted me, they ordained this fellow a priest. He achieved this honor for no other reason of his being chosen except that he adopted every kind of scurillity which is proper to wilful luxury in the brashness of a manifold madness for the sake of a boisterous humor, and because he was adept in the soft art of eliciting music from the lyre. On account of this, running like a glutton to banquets at many houses, he attained through the lascivious harmony of his frequent singing a wide reputation for music. After he had reached ordination unworthily in his insane arrogation of so high a honor, he even dared through a hypocritical pretension, to profane holy religion. For while he publicly displayed a simulated sanctity in the eyes of men, in secret he was carrying out a truly diabolical iniquity.
After my latest experience of being upset and shaken by shipwreck, I was left alone by everyone, getting the help of consolation from no one, except that I found one person, a very faithful Christian levite of the Lord, Simplicius by name, whose merit corresponded with his name, who, humbly received me with great love of charity into his dwelling. When he set himself at my service with the greatest filial obedience, and when only we two remained for the daily offices of the church, then the envious devil aroused that oft-named shame to the priesthood so that, scheming hatred against us for a long time, out of the excessive plaguing of his invidious malice, he strove with many false ruses of his treacherous madness to put obstacles in our way. But when, with God helping us, he found no grounds for injuring us, inflamed with the fire of diabolical violence, he covered me publicly with insult, and many times before many witnesses, he inflicted the unspeakable scandal of his invective upon me. Raging, and gripped by a heavy drunkenness that could not be shaken off, he burned in such madness of frenzied insanity that he would allow me no quiet even during the night. For when, in the silence of night, I was in hope that I had evaded the pest, he shamelessly often broke in with petulant importunity and at mealtime boldly coming to my poor dwelling, raging at me, as we were eating he introduced only ugly quarreling in place of consoling charity, goaded by his arrogant madness and drunkenness, and glaring like a mad dog, raging with teeth gnashing in unspeakable revilings, full of drink and foaming at the mouth, struggled to tear me apart with his own hands. Frustrated and aflame with the fires of envious iniquity, he struck out with such blind hatred that he did not spare me before the sacred altar. In his rage he was trying to cut my throat with a sword there in the plain view of many, if I confounded beyond measure by his terrible wrongs had not been rescued by the intervention of the brethern.
After the madness of such fury had finally abated, he, then turned in another direction by his insanity, forgetful of his orders wrongfully received, in vulgar fashion whirled about in the obscene giddiness of theatrical immodesty, the while swinging his arms this way and that, in another place circling his wanton feet, going around with mincing steps timed to the routine of the tripudium and hopping on shaky feet, singing wicked ditties, the frightful songs of a sinful dance, he carried on with the devil's ruinous obscenity. Then indeed he was so over-heated and drowned in wine, buried in drunkenness, that he, as a drunken man does, suffered hunger and thirst while he was vomiting. He, giving himself to sleep and enveloped in slothful torpor, was not among those frequently singing hymns and dedicating their nights to God. Never did Christ deign to have such pests as servants!
(trans. M.C. Aherne 1949: 86, 88, 90, 92)
