Commentaria in Isaiam
Indeed even the beasts keep silence at an appointed time: birds sing in the morning and are silent through the day; cicadas in the morning, nightingales are silent at midday; should not a Religious be silent at the hours the rule defines? St. Thomas Aquinas was called from his silence the Dumb Ox, and by being silent and meditating he drew in all his learning. St. Romuald, already old, shut up for seven years, was continually silent. Theodosius in the Spiritual Meadow, chapter 77, spent thirty-five years in solitude, always keeping silence. Of the monks of Blessed Dominic Loricatus, Peter Damian thus says in his Life:
“Throughout the whole week they kept silence under strict discipline; on Sunday, after Vespers, they were loosed from it and had liberty to speak with one another until the office of Compline.”
Radulph the Silent, a monk of Affligem near Brussels, was silent for sixteen years. A fire broke out; and when it could not be put out, Radulph broke his silence and said: “Stop, fire, at this hour; flame, be wholly quiet.” A marvel! At once the fire obeyed and was extinguished. So Thomas of Cantimpré relates, book 2 of the Bees, chapter 14, section 4.
St. John the Silent, from a bishop become a monk, was silent for forty-seven whole years, until the age of 104.
St. Arsenius heard from an Angel: “If you wish to be saved, flee, be silent, be quiet.” The same, when a brother visited him, after the greeting said nothing more, but kept saying to himself: “Arsenius, why did you come out?” And: “I have often repented of having spoken, never of having been silent.”
Thalassius, in Theodoret’s Religious History, chapter 22, knowing the tongue to be slippery, spoke nothing for a very long time. For the same cause Agatho carried a stone in his mouth for three years, as Palladius testifies in the Lausiac History, chapter 50.
Geese flying from Cilicia in flocks, about to cross Mount Taurus, for fear of the eagles that dwell there, which they feel to be hostile, take a large stone in the mouth and stop their beaks so as not to make a noise until the danger is passed. Plutarch is witness, in his book On the Cleverness of Animals. Bees make a noise when they fly, but in the hive they are silent and work. Swallows nesting in the town of Alviano, and drowning all with their loud chattering, hindered the sermon of St. Francis. He commanded them silence; they were silent until the word of God was ended, says St. Bonaventure.
St. Ambrose, book 3 to Virgins, relates that when the many croakings of frogs drowned the ears of a religious congregation, the priest of God commanded them to be still and to render reverence to sacred prayer; then suddenly the surrounding din was hushed. “Let the marshes be silent, then,” says St. Ambrose, “but men will not be silent.”
Among the heathen Pythagoras was famous, who imposed silence on his disciples for five years, that they might learn moderation of speech and to speak rightly by being silent, says Nazianzen.
Philostratus, book 1, chapter 11, writes that Apollonius of Tyana, because he could not keep silent, imposed on himself the five years’ silence of Pythagoras, and observed it so stubbornly that to the Emperor who questioned him he answered not by voice but in writing.
…assigned its part of the day to each business, and gave silence also its part; that Aeschines the Socratic said he had learned from Socrates not only to speak but also to be silent; that the philosopher Harpocrates, who set silence before all things, was worshipped by the Greeks as a god in the image of a man pressing his lips together.
Finally the wisest Solomon says, Ecclesiastes 3, that there is a time to speak and a time to keep silence. Pythagoras, and after him Nazianzen, taught that one must speak when speech is better than silence, and be silent if it were otherwise. St. Jerome on the place cited from Ecclesiastes 3: “Let us first learn not to speak, that afterwards we may unseal our lips to speak; let us be silent for a certain time, that we may hang upon the words of the teacher; let nothing seem right to us except what we learn, that after long silence from disciples we may become masters.”
The means and practice by which one learns to be silent is: First, to close the ears, and to restrain the curiosity of hearing and knowing new things. Hence Abbot John in the Spiritual Meadow, chapter 187: “He who wishes to restrain his tongue,” he says, “let him stop his ears, that he may not hear much!” And Seneca, epistle 105: “There is a certain sweetness of talk,” he says, “which creeps in and flatters, and, no otherwise than drunkenness or love, brings out secrets; no one will keep silent about what he has heard.”
Second, for a time to abstain wholly from speaking, and therefore to withdraw into one’s chamber and beware the company of chatterers. Hence St. Basil, in the Shorter Replies, 308: “Perpetual silence is necessary,” he says, “until by it they are healed of the fault of wantonness in speaking, and in leisure can learn what, when and how it is fitting to speak.” Blessed Peter Damian, epistle 114: “Let the tongue,” he says, “accustom itself to hold itself within the rule of silence, and by being silent learn what it may afterwards utter weightily in speaking; lest, if it now neglects to keep strict silence, it be unable afterwards to restrain the itch of speaking.” Hence Gregory of Nyssa and Olympiodorus on Ecclesiastes 3 note that first it is said: “A time to keep silence,” then “a time to speak”; because the former ought to precede, the latter to follow; for by silence in the time of silence we learn thoroughly what may afterwards be brought forth by speech in the time of speaking.
And Ennodius, book 8, epistle 3, speaking of the philosophy of saying nothing, relates that “the ancients, to speak better, said nothing in the present, and that care of silence was the nurse of speech.”
Third, to think and persuade oneself how great is the strength, glory and fruit of silence. Thalassius, century 4, number 66: “Silence and prayers,” he says, “are the greatest arms of the virtues,” and, as Blessed Antiochus says, homily 103: “Silence is the mother of the virtues”; St. Bernard, sermon On the change of water: “Silence,” he says, “is the guardian of religion, the strength and glory of religion, and the chief guard of quiet of mind.” Hence Blessed Peter Damian, epistle 59 to Desiderius, says that the violator of silence is like the crocodile gaping, whose enemy the hydrus (Pliny assigns these snares to the ichneumon) then enters its throat and gnaws its belly; likewise the oyster incautiously opening itself to the sun, into which the lurking crab first throws a pebble that it may not close, and then feeds on its flesh. Then he concludes: “He (the Religious) lives, surely, while he is shut in under the rule of silence; but he perishes when he opens himself too freely to speak.”
Hence our holy Father Ignatius gave three signs by which one might discern whether there was good discipline in any monastery or college: first, if the gate and enclosure were well kept; second, if all places were clean and in order; third, if silence were well kept, with no gossip, noise or shouting. On the contrary, the disadvantages of talkativeness are very many. See the sayings of the ancients on these, which I reviewed on Leviticus 15:22.
16. But we will flee to horses (of the Egyptians)—for Egypt abounds in horses and cavalry, as appears from 3 Kings 10:28, whereas the Jews in their wars hardly used cavalry, as I showed on Deuteronomy 17:16.
Therefore you shall flee—he plays by antiphrasis on the word flee, as if to say: “You said: We will flee,” that is, we will take refuge with the cavalry of Egypt; therefore you shall flee like men conquered and routed, before the face of the Chaldeans laying waste Egypt.
And we will mount upon swift horses (of the Egyptians); therefore (I being the avenger) they shall be swifter (the Chaldeans) that shall pursue you—in like manner Servius Tullus, king of the Romans, played on the word fleeing in the case of stags and slaves; being born of a slave woman, he dedicated a temple of Diana on the Aventine, because stags are under her protection, and from their swiftness they call fugitives slaves. Therefore he ordained that the festival of slaves be celebrated in this temple on the Ides of August, because on that day he himself had been born of a slave woman. So Bartholomew Marlianus teaches, book 5 of the Antiquities of Rome, chapter 2.
…that God may mock. So Daphidas, abusive toward all, so that he spared not even the gods themselves, went to Delphi and mocked the oracle, asking in derision whether he would find a horse; and when the answer was that he would find one quickly, he boasted everywhere that he neither had a horse nor had lost one. But on his return he was seized by Attalus, king of Pergamum, and thrown from a rock called Horse, and by his death and the penalty of his impiety he proved the truth of the oracle, says Suidas under Daphidas.