On Virgins 1.1–1.8

If, according to the sentence of the heavenly Truth, we must render an account of every idle word we have spoken; or if every servant who has hidden in his own ground the talents of spiritual grace entrusted to him, which were to be handed to the money-changers so that they might be multiplied by growing interest, whether as a timid lender or as a greedy owner, incurs no small displeasure when his master returns; then we have good reason to fear, we on whom, though our ability is slight, the greatest necessity is laid to lend out to the minds of the people the words of God entrusted to us, lest the interest on our voice too be demanded; especially since the Lord requires of us effort, not success. Hence my decision to write something. For our voice is heard with greater danger to modesty than it is read; a book does not blush. And indeed, distrusting my ability but encouraged by examples of the divine mercy, I venture to compose a discourse; for when God willed it, even a donkey spoke. If, then, an angel should stand by me, set as I am under the burdens of this world, I too shall loosen a mouth long mute; for he who in that donkey loosened the hindrances of nature can loosen the hindrances of unskill. In the ark of the Old Testament the priest’s rod blossomed; it is easy for God to make a flower sprout from our knots too in the holy Church. And why should we despair that the Lord may speak in men, when he spoke in thorns? God did not disdain even a bramble. Would that he might light up my thorns too! There will perhaps be some who wonder that some brightness shines even in our thorns, some whom our thorn does not burn; there will be some for whom our voice, heard from the bush, loosens the sandal from their feet, so that the step of the mind may be stripped of bodily hindrances. But these are the merits of holy men. Would that Jesus might look from some quarter on me, lying under that fig tree still without fruit! Our fig tree too would bear fruit after three years. But whence such hope for sinners? Would that at least that gospel vinedresser of the Lord’s vineyard, perhaps already ordered to cut down our fig tree, might let it alone this year too, until he digs about it and puts in a basket of dung; that perhaps he may raise the needy from the earth and lift up the poor from the dunghill! Blessed are those who tie their horses under the vine and the olive, consecrating the course of their labors to light and gladness. Me the fig tree still overshadows, that is, the alluring itch of the world’s delights: low in height, frail for labor, soft for use, barren of fruit. And perhaps someone will wonder why I dare to write, who cannot speak. And yet if we go back to what we read in the Gospel Scriptures and in the deeds of priests, and let the holy prophet Zechariah be our lesson, he will find that there is something which the voice does not set forth and the pen records. And if the name of John restored the voice to his father, I too ought not to despair of receiving a voice, mute as I am, if I speak Christ, whose generation, according to the prophetic saying, who shall declare? And so, as a servant, I will proclaim the Lord’s household; for the spotless Lord has consecrated for himself a spotless household even in this body of human frailty, full of defilements.

And it is a fitting start, since today is the birthday of a virgin, that we should speak of virgins, and that the book should take its beginning from her praise. It is a virgin’s birthday: let us follow purity. It is a martyr’s birthday: let us offer sacrifices. It is the birthday of holy Agnes: let men wonder, let little ones not despair, let married women be amazed, let the unmarried imitate. But what can we say worthy of her, whose very name was not empty of the light of praise? Devotion beyond her age, virtue beyond nature; so that she seems to me to have had not a human name but an oracle of martyrdom, by which she showed what she was to be. Yet I have something from which help may be found for me. The name of virgin is a title of modesty. I will call her martyr, I will proclaim her virgin. Praise is full enough that is not sought out but already possessed. Let talents, then, give way, let eloquence fall silent: a single word is her praise. Old men, young men, and children sing of her. No one is more praiseworthy than one who can be praised by all. As many people, so many heralds, who proclaim the martyr as they speak. She is said to have suffered martyrdom at twelve years old. The more detestable the cruelty that did not spare even so tender an age; or rather, the greater the power of faith, which found a witness even in that age. Was there room in that little body for a wound? And she who had no room to receive the sword had what was needed to overcome the sword. Yet girls of that age cannot bear even the stern looks of their parents, and are used to crying at the pricks of a needle as if they were wounds. She, unafraid among the bloody hands of the executioners, she, unmoved by the heavy dragging of the grating chains, now offers her whole body to the sword of the raging soldier, not yet knowing what it is to die, but ready; or, if she was dragged against her will to the altars, she stretches out her hands to Christ amid the fires, and on the very sacrilegious hearths makes the sign of the trophy of the victorious Lord; then she puts her neck and both hands into iron bonds; but no bond could hold such slender limbs. A new kind of martyrdom! Not yet fit for punishment, and already ripe for victory; hard to fight, easy to crown; she fulfilled the office of a teacher of virtue, though she bore the disadvantage of her age. No bride would hasten so to the bridal chamber as the virgin went forth to the place of punishment, glad at her success, swift in step, her head adorned not with braided hair but with Christ, crowned not with flowers but with good character. All wept; she alone without tears. Most wondered that, so lavish with a life she had not yet tasted, she gave it up as though she had already lived it out. All were amazed that she already stood forth as a witness to the divinity, who by her age could not yet be her own mistress. In the end she brought it about that she was believed about God, who would not yet have been believed about a man; for what is beyond nature is from the author of nature. With what terror did the executioner act to be feared, with what blandishments to persuade her! How many wished that she would come to them in marriage! But she said: “It is a wrong to my bridegroom to look for one who will please me. He who chose me first will receive me. Why do you delay, executioner? Let the body perish that can be loved by eyes I do not want.” She stood, prayed, bowed her neck. You might have seen the executioner tremble as if he himself had been condemned, the slayer’s right hand shake, his face grow pale fearing another’s peril, while the girl did not fear her own. You have, then, in one victim a twofold martyrdom, of modesty and of religion. She both remained a virgin and obtained martyrdom.

Now the love of purity invites us, and you too, holy sister, silently, by your quiet ways, invite us to say something of virginity, lest the chief virtue seem to be touched on only in passing. For virginity is not praiseworthy because it is found also in martyrs, but because it itself makes martyrs. But who could comprehend by human ability that which not even nature has enclosed within her laws? Or who could embrace in a natural voice what is above the course of nature? It brought from heaven what it was to imitate on earth. And not without reason did it seek its way of life from heaven, which found its bridegroom in heaven. Passing beyond clouds, air, angels and stars, it found the Word of God in the very bosom of the Father, and drew him in with its whole heart. For who, having found so great a good, would leave it? “For your name is ointment poured out; therefore the maidens have loved you and drawn you.” Lastly, it is not my saying that those who neither marry nor are given in marriage will be as the angels in heaven. Let no one wonder, then, if they are compared with angels who are joined to the Lord of angels. Who, then, would deny that this life has flowed from heaven, which we do not easily find on earth until after God came down into the members of this earthly body? Then a virgin conceived in the womb, and the Word became flesh, that flesh might become God. Someone will say: “But Elijah too is found to have been entangled in no desires of bodily intercourse.” That is why he was caught up to heaven in a chariot, why he appears with the Lord in glory, why he is to come as forerunner of the Lord’s advent. “And Miriam, taking a timbrel, led the dances with virginal modesty.” But consider whose figure she then bore. Was it not the Church’s, which as a virgin of spotless spirit joined together the devout gatherings of the people to sing divine songs? For we read also that virgins were appointed to the temple at Jerusalem. But what does the Apostle say? “Now these things happened to them in a figure, as signs of things to come”; for the figure is in a few, the life in many. But after the Lord, coming into this body, joined the union of divinity and body without any taint of confused mingling, then the practice of heavenly life spread through the whole world and took root in human bodies. This is what the angels who ministered on earth declared would come: a race that would render service to the Lord with the obedience of a spotless body. This is that heavenly host which the army of praising angels promised on earth. We have, then, the authority of antiquity from the beginning of the world, and the fullness of the profession from Christ.

This, certainly, I do not share with the Gentiles; it is not common among the barbarians, nor usual among the other living creatures. With them, though we breathe the one same vital breath of this air, share the common condition of the earthly body, and do not differ in the manner of begetting, yet by this alone we escape the reproaches of our common nature: that virginity is affected by the Gentiles but violated once it has been consecrated, assailed by the barbarians, unknown to the rest. Who holds up to me the virgins of Vesta and the priestesses of Pallas? What sort of chastity is this, not of character but of years, which is prescribed not for life but for a period of age? Such integrity is the more wanton, whose corruption is reserved for a later age. They themselves teach that their virgins ought not to persevere and cannot, who have set an end to virginity. What sort of religion is it, where girls are bidden to be chaste and old women unchaste? But neither is she chaste who is held by law, and she unchaste who is released by law. What mysteries! What morals! Where necessity is imposed on chastity, authority is given to lust. And so she is not chaste who is forced by fear, nor honorable who is hired for pay; nor is that modesty which, exposed every day to the abuse of intemperate eyes, is struck by shameful glances. Immunities are conferred, rewards offered; as though this were not the greatest sign of wantonness, to sell chastity. What is promised for a price is dissolved for a price; it is made over for a price and paid out for a price. She who is used to selling chastity does not know how to redeem it. What shall I say of the Phrygian rites, in which unchastity is a discipline, and would it were only of the weaker sex! What of the orgies of Liber, where the mystery of religion is an incitement to lust? What sort of life can the priests have, then, where the debauchery of the gods is worshiped? They have, then, no consecrated virgin. Let us see whether perhaps the precepts of philosophy, which usually claims to be the teacher of all virtues, have formed one. A certain story is told of one of the Pythagorean virgins: when she was being compelled by a tyrant to betray a secret, so that torments might have no power over her to extort a confession, she bit off her tongue and spat it into the tyrant’s face, so that he who would not stop questioning might have no one to question. Yet the same woman, with a brave mind but a swelling womb, an example of silence and a disgrace to chastity, was overcome by desires, she who could not be overcome by torments. So she who could hide the secret of her mind did not cover the shame of her body. She conquered nature, but did not keep discipline. How she must have wished that there were in her voice a defense of her modesty! And perhaps her endurance had trained her for this, to deny her guilt. Not unconquered on every side, then; for the tyrant too, though he could not find out what he was asking, yet found out what he was not asking. How much braver are our virgins, who conquer even powers they do not see, whose victory is not only over flesh and blood but over the very prince of the world and ruler of the age! Agnes, younger in age but greater in virtue, richer in triumph, firmer in constancy, did not take away her tongue for fear, but kept it for her trophy. For she had nothing she feared to betray, since her confession was not of a crime but of religion. So the one only concealed a secret; this one bore witness to the Lord, whom, because her age could not yet confess him, her nature confessed.

In panegyrics it is customary to praise the homeland and the parents, so that by mention of the founder the dignity of the descendant may be enhanced. Though I have undertaken not a panegyric on virginity but a portrait of it, I think it pertinent to make plain what its homeland is and who its author. And first let us define where its homeland is. For if the homeland is where one’s birthplace is, then the homeland of chastity is certainly in heaven. So here it is a stranger, there a citizen. And what is virginal chastity but integrity free from contagion? And whom can we reckon its author but the spotless Son of God, whose flesh did not see corruption, whose divinity did not experience contagion? See, then, how great are the merits of virginity. Christ before the Virgin, Christ from the Virgin: born indeed of the Father before the ages, but born of the Virgin for the sake of the ages. The former belongs to his own nature, the latter to our profit. The former he always was; the latter he willed. Consider also another merit of virginity: Christ is the bridegroom of the virgin, and, if one may say so, Christ belongs to virginal chastity; for virginity is Christ’s, not Christ virginity’s. She is a virgin, then, who was married; a virgin who carried us in her womb; a virgin who gave birth; a virgin who nursed us with her own milk; of whom we read: “What great things the virgin of Jerusalem has done! The breasts will not fail from the rock, nor the snow from Lebanon, nor will the water turn aside that is carried by a strong wind.” What kind of virgin is this, watered by the fountains of the Trinity, for whom waters flow from the rock, breasts do not fail, honey is poured out? Now the rock, according to the Apostle, is Christ. So from Christ the breasts do not fail, from God the brightness, from the Spirit the river. This is the Trinity that waters its Church: the Father, Christ, and the Spirit. But now let us come down from the mother to the daughters. “Concerning virgins,” says the holy Apostle, “I have no command of the Lord.” If the Teacher of the Gentiles did not have one, who could? And indeed he did not have a command, but he had an example. For virginity cannot be commanded, only desired; for things that are above us belong to prayer rather than to instruction. “But I want you,” he says, “to be free from anxiety. For he who is without a wife is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please God … and the virgin thinks of the things of the Lord, that she may be holy in body and spirit. For she who is married thinks of the things of the world, how to please her husband.”

I do not, indeed, discourage marriage; but I set out the benefits of virginity. “Let him who is weak,” he says, “eat vegetables.” One thing I require, another I admire. “Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be loosed. Are you loosed from a wife? Do not seek a wife.” This is the command for the married. But what does he say of virgins? “He who gives his virgin in marriage does well, and he who does not give her does better.” The one does not sin if she marries; the other, if she does not marry, is for eternity. There is a remedy for weakness, here the glory of chastity. The one is not blamed; the other is praised. Let us compare, if you please, the goods of married women with the least of the goods of virgins. Though a noble woman may boast of her fruitful childbearing, the more children she has borne, the more she has suffered. Let her count the comforts of her children, but let her count equally the troubles. She marries, and weeps. What sort of prayers are those that are wept over! She conceives and grows heavy. Fruitfulness, surely, begins to bring a burden before it brings fruit. She gives birth and falls ill. How sweet a pledge, which begins in peril and ends in perils, which will be a pain before it is a pleasure! It is bought with perils, and not possessed at will. Why should I recount the troubles of nursing, of bringing up, of marrying off? These are the miseries of the fortunate. A mother has heirs, but she increases her griefs. Of misfortunes one ought not to speak, lest the minds of the holiest parents tremble. See, my sister, how hard it is to suffer what ought not even to be heard. And these things belong to the present age. “But the days will come when they will say: Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that have not borne.” For the daughters of this age are begotten and beget; but the daughter of the kingdom abstains from the pleasure of a husband and from the pleasure of the flesh, that she may be holy in body and spirit. Why should I go over the burdensome subjection and the servitude of women bound over to their husbands, whom God commanded to serve before he commanded slaves to? I mention these things so that they may obey the more willingly; for to them, if they are good, this is the reward of love; if bad, the penalty of sin. From this arise those incitements to vice, that they paint their faces with sought-out colors, while they fear to displease their husbands, and from adulterating the face they go on to plan the adultery of chastity. What madness this is, to alter the likeness of nature and seek a painting, and, while they fear their husband’s judgment, to betray their own! For she first passes sentence on herself who desires to change what she was born. So while she strives to please others, she first displeases herself. What truer judge of your ugliness, woman, do we look for than yourself, who fear to be seen? If you are beautiful, why do you hide yourself? If ugly, why do you lie that you are beautiful, when you will have the thanks neither of your own conscience nor of another’s mistake? For he loves another woman, and you wish to please another man. And are you angry if he loves another, when he is taught to commit adultery in you? You are a bad teacher of your own wrong. For even a woman who has suffered a pander refuses to play the pander; and though a vile woman, yet she sins not against another but against herself; and crimes are almost more tolerable in the other case; for there it is chastity that is adulterated, here nature. Then, what a price is needed lest even a beautiful woman displease! Here costly necklaces hang from the neck, there a garment of gold trails along the ground. Is this beauty, then, bought or possessed? What of the various allurements applied even to the sense of smell! Ears are weighed down with jewels, another color is poured over the eyes. What remains her own where so much is changed? A woman loses her own senses, and believes she can live? But you, blessed virgins, who know nothing of such torments, rather than ornaments; you whose beauty is holy modesty suffusing your bashful faces and good chastity; you, not bound over to human eyes, do not weigh your merits by another’s mistake. You too surely have the warfare of your beauty, in which the form of virtue, not of the body, does battle: a beauty no age extinguishes, no death can snatch away, no sickness corrupt. Let God alone be sought as judge of beauty, who loves the more beautiful souls even in a less beautiful body. No burden of the womb is known, no pain of childbirth; and yet more numerous is the offspring of a devout mind, which holds all people as its children: fruitful in successors, barren of bereavements, it knows no funerals, it knows heirs. So holy Church, unstained by intercourse, fruitful in childbearing, is a virgin in chastity, a mother in offspring. A virgin, then, gives us birth, filled not by a man but by the Spirit. A virgin gives us birth, not with pain of limbs but with the joys of angels. A virgin nourishes us, not with the milk of the body but with the Apostle’s, with which he nursed the still weak age of the growing people. What married woman, then, has more children than holy Church, who is a virgin in her sacraments, a mother to the peoples, whose fruitfulness Scripture too attests, saying: “For more are the children of the desolate than of her who has a husband”? Ours has no husband, but … whether … the soul in each one weds the Word of God as an eternal bridegroom without any lapse of modesty, barren of injury, fruitful in reason.

You have heard, parents, in what virtues you ought to train your daughters, in what disciplines to instruct them, so that you may have daughters by whose merits your sins may be redeemed. A virgin is God’s gift, her parent’s offering, the priesthood of chastity. A virgin is her mother’s sacrifice, by whose daily offering the divine power is appeased. A virgin is her parents’ inseparable pledge, who does not trouble them about a dowry, does not desert them by moving away, does not offend them by wrongs. But someone wants to have grandchildren and gain the name of grandfather. First he gives up his own while he seeks those of others; then he begins to be cheated of what is certain while he hopes for what is uncertain. He hands over his own wealth and is still asked for more; unless he pays the dowry, he is dunned for it; if he lives long, he is a burden. This is to buy a son-in-law, not to gain one, who sells the parents the sight of their own daughter. Is she carried for so many months in the womb for this, that she should pass into another’s power? Is care taken to make the virgin attractive for this, that she may be taken from her parents the sooner? Someone will say: “So you discourage marriage?” No, I encourage it, and I condemn those who are accustomed to discourage it; for I am in the habit of recounting the marriages of Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and the other women of old as examples of singular virtues. For he who condemns marriage condemns children too, and condemns the fellowship of the human race carried on through the series of generations. For how could age follow age to last through the world, unless the grace of marriage stirred the desire of begetting offspring? Or how can it be proclaimed that the spotless Isaac came to God’s altar as the victim of his father’s devotion, that Israel, set in a human body, saw God and gave the people a holy name, if one condemns their origin? These men, sacrilegious though they are, have one thing which even the wisest may approve in them: by condemning marriage they profess that they ought not to have been born. I do not, then, discourage marriage; but I enumerate the fruits of consecrated virginity. The one is the gift of few, the other of all. Nor can there be virginity unless it has something from which to be born. I compare good with good, so that what excels may shine forth the more easily. Nor do I put forward any opinion of my own, but I repeat that which the Holy Spirit proclaimed through the prophet: “Better,” he says, “is childlessness with virtue.” For first, in that which brides desire above all, to boast of the handsomeness of their bridegroom, they must confess themselves unequal to the sacred virgins, to whom alone it is given to say: “You are fairer in form than the sons of men; grace is poured out on your lips.” Who is this bridegroom? Not one bound to mean services, not proud of perishable riches, but one whose throne is for ever and ever. “Kings’ daughters are in his honor. The queen stood at your right hand in a robe of gold,” clothed about with a variety of virtues. “Hear, then, daughter, and see, and incline your ear, and forget your people and your father’s house; for the King has desired your beauty, for he is the Lord your God.” And notice how much the Holy Spirit has bestowed on you by the testimony of divine Scripture: a kingdom, gold, beauty. A kingdom, either because you are the bride of the eternal King, or because, bearing an unconquered mind, you are not held captive by the allurements of pleasures but rule over them as a queen; gold, because, as that metal is more precious when tested by fire, so the beauty of a virginal body consecrated to the divine Spirit gains an increase of its loveliness; and beauty: who can reckon any beauty greater than the comeliness of her who is loved by the King, approved by the Judge, dedicated to the Lord, consecrated to God; always a bride, always unwed, so that neither has love an end nor modesty a loss? This, surely, is true beauty, which lacks nothing, which alone deserves to hear from the Lord: “You are all beautiful, my near one, and there is no blemish in you. Come hither from Lebanon, bride, come hither from Lebanon; you will pass and pass through, from the beginning of faith, from the head of Senir and Hermon, from the lions’ dens, from the mountains of the leopards.” By these signs is shown the perfect and blameless beauty of the virginal soul, consecrated to the divine altars, which, not bending toward mortal things amid the attacks and lairs of spiritual beasts but intent on the mysteries of God, has deserved the beloved, whose breasts are full of gladness: “For wine gladdens the heart of man.” “The fragrance of your garments,” he says, “is above all spices.” And below: “And the fragrance of your garments is as the fragrance of Lebanon.” See what advance you give us, virgin. Your first fragrance is above all the spices that were put into the Savior’s burial; and it breathes of the dead impulses of the body and of the delights of the limbs that have perished. Your second fragrance, like the fragrance of Lebanon, breathes forth the integrity of the Lord’s body, the flower of virginal chastity.

Let your works, then, build a honeycomb; for virginity is worthy to be compared with bees: so industrious, so modest, so self-controlled. The bee feeds on dew, knows no mating, makes honey. The virgin’s dew too is the divine word, for the words of God come down like dew. The virgin’s modesty is untouched nature. The virgin’s offspring is the fruit of the lips, free of bitterness, rich in sweetness. The labor is shared; the fruit is shared. How I wish you, daughter, to be an imitator of this little bee, whose food is flowers, whose offspring is gathered with the mouth and formed with the mouth! Imitate her, daughter. Let your words spread no veil of guile, have no wrapping of deceit, so that they may have purity and be full of seriousness. Let an eternal posterity of your merits too be brought forth for you by your mouth. And gather not for yourself alone but for many (for how do you know when your soul will be required of you?), lest, leaving storehouses heaped with grain, useful neither for your life nor for your merits, you be snatched away to a place where you cannot carry your treasure. Be rich, then, but for the poor, so that those who share your nature may share your means also. I also show you a flower to be plucked: him, namely, who said: “I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys, as a lily among thorns”; which is a clear sign that the virtues are besieged by the thorns of spiritual wickedness, so that no one carries off the fruit except one who approaches with caution.