From: Isidore of Pelusium, monk at Pelusium
To: Dionysios
Date: ~410 AD
Context: Isidore addresses spiritual forgetfulness as a disease of the soul — real, but curable, and driven off by the weapons of active memory.
Forgetting does not happen outside the range of human experience — it falls upon us like other ailments. It overtakes the souls from which memory has become separated, creeping in quietly. But when one fights against it with the weapons of memory, it flees and is gone.
When you were with us, Dionysios, you had an unforgetting memory of virtue. Since you departed, we have heard that you have given yourself over to forgetfulness. This is why we judged it necessary to write — to help you fight back.
Take up the memory of what you knew and practiced. The disease is real but not permanent. The cure is not complicated: recall what you knew. Think again about what you valued. Return to it. Forgetting retreats from the man who refuses to forget.
Context:Isidore addresses spiritual forgetfulness as a disease of the soul — real, but curable, and driven off by the weapons of active memory.
Forgetting does not happen outside the range of human experience — it falls upon us like other ailments. It overtakes the souls from which memory has become separated, creeping in quietly. But when one fights against it with the weapons of memory, it flees and is gone.
When you were with us, Dionysios, you had an unforgetting memory of virtue. Since you departed, we have heard that you have given yourself over to forgetfulness. This is why we judged it necessary to write — to help you fight back.
Take up the memory of what you knew and practiced. The disease is real but not permanent. The cure is not complicated: recall what you knew. Think again about what you valued. Return to it. Forgetting retreats from the man who refuses to forget.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.