On Virgins 3.1–3.7

Since in the two preceding books we have set out what we had to say, it is time, holy sister, to go over the precepts of Liberius of blessed memory, which you often discuss with me, so that the holier the man, the more welcome his words may be. For when, on the Savior’s birthday, at the church of the apostle Peter, you were marking your profession of virginity by a change of dress as well (and on what day better than that on which the Virgin gained offspring?), while many girls of God also stood by, vying with one another for your companionship, he said: “Daughter, you have desired a good marriage. You see how great a people has gathered for the birthday of your Bridegroom, and no one goes away unfed? This is he who, invited to a wedding, turned water into wine. On you too he will confer the pure sacrament of virginity, you who before were subject to the base elements of material nature. This is he who fed four thousand people in the desert with five loaves and two fishes. He could have fed more, if there had been more there to be fed. Indeed, he has called more to your wedding; but now it is not barley bread but a body from heaven that is served. Today, as man, he was born a man of a virgin; but he was begotten of the Father before all things; he resembles his mother in body, his Father in power. Only-begotten on earth, only-begotten in heaven: God from God, offspring of a virgin; righteousness from the Father, power from the Mighty, light from light; not unequal to the one who begot him, not separate in power; not confused by an extension or utterance of the Word, as though mingled with the Father, but distinct from the Father by right of generation. He is your kinsman, without whom neither things in heaven nor in the sea nor on earth subsist. The Father’s good Word, which ‘was,’ it says, ‘in the beginning’: there you have his eternity. ‘And was,’ it says, ‘with the Father’: there you have his power, undivided and inseparable from the Father. ‘And the Word was God’: there you have his innate divinity; for in this summary you must draw your faith. Love him, daughter, because he is good: ‘for no one is good but God alone.’ For if there is no doubt that the Son is God, and God is good, then surely there is no doubt that the Son is the good God. Love him, I say. He is the one whom the Father begot before the daystar, as eternal; begot from the womb, as Son; uttered from his heart, as Word. He is the one in whom the Father is well pleased; he is the Father’s arm, because he is the creator of all; the Father’s wisdom, because he came forth from the mouth of God; the Father’s power, because in him the fullness of the divinity dwells bodily. The Father so loves him that he carries him in his bosom and places him at his right hand, that you may learn his wisdom and know his power. If, then, Christ is the power of God, was God ever without power? Was the Father ever without the Son? If he was always Father, then surely he was always Son as well. Of a perfect Father, then, the Son is perfect. For he who detracts from the power detracts from him whose power it is. Perfect divinity does not admit inequality. Love, then, him whom the Father loves; honor him whom the Father honors; ‘for he who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father’; and he who denies the Son does not have the Father either.” So much for faith.

But sometimes, even when faith is safe, youth is suspect. Use wine, then, in moderation, lest you increase the weakness of the body, not so as to stir up pleasure; for two things alike inflame, wine and youth. Let fasts too bridle tender age, and let sparing food restrain untamed desires as with reins. Let reason call them back, hope soften them, fear check them. For he who does not know how to govern his desires is like one dragged by untamed horses: he is rolled over, crushed, torn, and battered. This is said to have happened once to a young man because of his love for Diana. But the fable is colored with the lies of poets: Neptune, stirred by resentment at a preferred rival, is said to have sent madness into the horses, so that his great power may be proclaimed, in that he overcame the youth not by strength but deceived him by fraud. Hence they even renew a sacrifice to Diana every year, in which a horse is offered at her altars. And they call her a virgin, who could love one who did not love her, a thing that even harlots are usually ashamed of. But let their fables keep their authority, for all I care; for though both are wicked, it is less that a young man should have burned with love for an adulteress so as to perish, than that two gods, as they themselves say, should have contended over adultery; and that Jupiter should have avenged on the physician the grief of his whoring daughter, because he had healed the wounds of the man who had committed adultery with Diana in the woods: a fine huntress, not of beasts but of lusts, or of beasts too, since she hunted naked. Let them grant Neptune, then, lordship over madness, so as to establish the crime of an incestuous love. Let them grant Diana dominion in the woods where she dwelt, so as to confirm the adultery she committed there. Let them grant Aesculapius that he restored a dead man, provided they confess that he himself, struck by lightning, did not escape. Let them grant Jupiter too the thunderbolts he did not have, so that they may bear witness to the disgraces he did have. But let us return from fables to our purpose. I think one should also make sparing use of all foods that produce heat in the limbs; for meat brings down even eagles in flight. In you too let that inner bird of which we read, “Your youth will be renewed like the eagle’s,” keeping to the heights, swift in virginal flight, know no craving for superfluous flesh. Crowded banquets are to be avoided, social calls shunned.

I want even visits to be rarer for the younger, if they must perhaps be paid to parents or companions. For modesty is worn away by courtesies, boldness shows itself, laughter creeps in, restraint is loosened, while refinement is affected. Not to answer a question is childish; to answer is to gossip. I would rather, then, that a virgin lack words than have them to spare. For if women are commanded to keep silent even about divine things in church and to ask their husbands at home, what caution do we think is required of virgins, in whom modesty adorns their age and silence commends their modesty? Or is it a slight example of modesty that Rebecca, when she was coming to her marriage and saw her bridegroom, took her veil, so as not to be seen before she was joined to him? And surely the beautiful virgin did not fear for her beauty but for her modesty. What of Rachel, how she wept and groaned at a kiss snatched from her, and would not have stopped weeping had she not recognized her kinsman? So she both kept the duty of modesty and did not neglect the affection of kinship. And if it is said to a man, “Do not look at a virgin, lest she make you stumble,” what must be said to a consecrated virgin, who, if she loves, sins in mind, and if she is loved, in deed as well? The greatest virtue is that of keeping silent, especially in church. No sentence of the divine readings will escape you, if you apply your ear and hold back your voice. Utter no word from your mouth that you would wish to recall, but let your boldness in speaking be rather sparing. For in much speaking there is abundant sin. To the murderer it was said, “You have sinned; be quiet,” so that he might not sin more; but to the virgin it must be said, “Be quiet, lest you sin.” For Mary, as we read, kept in her heart all the things that were said about her Son; and you, when something is read in which Christ is announced as coming or shown to have come, do not drown it with chatter, but apply your mind. Or is there anything more unworthy than that the divine oracles should be drowned in noise, so that they are not heard, not believed, not revealed; that the sacraments should be surrounded by confused voices, so that the prayer offered for the salvation of all is hindered? The Gentiles show reverence to their idols by keeping silent. Hence this example is told: when Alexander, king of the Macedonians, was sacrificing, a barbarian boy who was holding the light for him caught the fire on his arm, and, though his body was burned, remained motionless, and betrayed his pain neither by a groan nor by a silent tear. So great was the discipline of reverence in a barbarian boy that nature was overcome. And he did not fear the gods, who were nothing, but the king. For why should he fear those who, had the same fire touched them, would have burned? How much better is it that a certain youth at his father’s banquet is bidden not to betray amorous intrigues by insolent signs! And you, virgin of God, at the mysteries refrain from sighs, clearing your throat, coughing, laughing. What he can do at a banquet, can you not do at the mysteries? Let a virgin be marked first by her voice; let modesty close her lips, let religion shut out weakness, let habit train nature. Let her gravity announce the virgin to me first, with modesty meeting the eye, a sober step, a modest face; and let the signs of virtue go before, heralding her integrity. She is not a virgin sufficiently approved about whom one must ask when she is seen. It is often told that when the croaking of a great many frogs was drowning out the hearing of a devout people, a priest of God commanded them to be silent and show reverence to the holy prayer; and at once the din around them ceased. Shall the marshes, then, be silent, and men not be silent? An irrational animal acknowledges by reverence what it does not know by nature; and is the immodesty of men so great that very many do not know how to give to the devotion of their minds what they give to the pleasure of their ears?

These things holy Liberius of blessed memory said to you; and while with others they go beyond the reality, with you they fall short of your example; so fully have you not only matched every discipline by virtue but surpassed it by emulation. For we have fasting among the precepts, but of single days; you, however, with nights and days multiplied, pass countless times without food; and if ever you are asked to take food and lay aside your book for a little, you answer at once: “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.” Your very use of meals is with whatever food comes to hand, so that through distaste for eating fasting may be desired: drink from the spring, weeping in prayer, sleep over a book. These things suited your younger years, until your mind, ripe with age, grew grey; but when a virgin has raised the trophy of a conquered body, labor must be moderated, so that the teacher may be preserved for the generation that follows. A vine of long service, loaded with fruitful branches, soon cracks, unless it is sometimes checked. Yet while it is growing, let it run free, and when it is old let it be pruned, lest it grow wild with shoots or die exhausted by too much fruit. A good farmer keeps his best vine warm with earth, protects it from the cold, and watches lest it be scorched by the midday sun. He also works his field by turns; or if he does not let it lie idle, he alternates different seeds, so that the fields may rest by a change of crops. You too, veteran virgin, sow the hills of your heart at least with different seeds: now with moderate meals, now with less severe fasts, with reading, work, prayer; so that change of labor may be a truce of rest. The whole field does not bear harvest. Here vineyards rise from the hills, there you may see purple olives, here fragrant roses. Often too the sturdy farmer, leaving the plow, scrapes the soil with his finger to set the roots of the flowers; and with the rough hands with which he yokes the struggling bullocks among the vineyards he gently presses the udders of the sheep. For a field is the better, the more various its fruit. So you too, following the example of the good farmer, do not split your ground with unending fasts as with deep-pressed plowshares. Let the rose of modesty flourish in your gardens, the lily of the mind, and let the violet beds drink the stream of the sacred blood. People commonly say: “What you wish to do for long, sometimes do not do.” Something should be added in the days of Lent; but so that nothing is done for display, but all for religion. Let frequent prayer also commend us to God. For if the prophet, who was occupied with the necessities of a kingdom, says, “Seven times a day I have praised you,” what ought we to do, who read, “Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation”? Certainly solemn prayers with thanksgiving are to be offered when we rise from sleep, when we go out, when we are about to take food, when we have taken it, and at the hour of incense, and finally when we go to bed. But even in bed I want you to weave psalms together with the Lord’s Prayer in frequent turn, either when you wake or before sleep bedews your body, so that at the very beginning of rest sleep may find you free from the care of worldly things and meditating on divine ones. Indeed, even he who first devised the name of philosophy used to have a piper play softer music every day before he went to bed, to soothe hearts anxious with worldly cares. But he, like one who washes a brick, tried in vain to wipe out worldly things with worldly things; for he who sought a remedy from pleasure only smeared himself the more with mud. But let us, having wiped away the filth of earthly vices, cleanse the inner parts of our minds from all defilement of the flesh. The Creed too we ought especially to recite every day before dawn, as the seal of our heart; and to it we must return in mind whenever we are afraid of anything. For when is a soldier in his tent, a warrior in battle, without his military oath?

Now who would not understand that it was said for our instruction, when the holy prophet says: “Every night I will wash my bed; I will water my couch with my tears”? For if you take “bed” literally, he shows that so great an abundance of tears ought to be poured out that the bed is washed and the couch watered by the weeping of one who entreats; for weeping belongs to the present, reward to the future, since “blessed are you who weep, for you will laugh.” Or if we take the prophet’s saying of the body, let us wash away the sins of the body with tears of repentance. For Solomon made himself a bed of the wood of Lebanon; its pillars were of silver, its back of gold, its seat set with gems. What is this bed but the form of our body? For in gems the appearance of airy brightness is shown, in gold fire, water in silver, earth in wood; and of these four elements the human body consists, in which our soul reclines, so that it may not be without rest on rough mountains or on the dry ground, but may rest raised above vices, supported by the wood. Hence David also says: “May the Lord bring him help upon his bed of pain.” For how can a bed be one of pain, when a thing that has no sense cannot feel pain? But a body of pain, as a body of death: “Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?” And since we have brought in a verse in which we have mentioned the Lord’s body, lest it perhaps disturb some reader that the Lord took up a body of pain, let him remember that he both grieved and wept at the death of Lazarus, that in his passion he was wounded, and that from the wound came out blood and water, and he breathed out his spirit. The water for washing, the blood for drinking, the spirit for resurrection. For the one Christ is our hope, faith, and love: hope in the resurrection, faith in the washing, love in the sacrament. Yet as he took up a body of pain, so too he turned over his couch in sickness, because he turned it to the profit of human flesh. For by his passion weakness was undone, and death by his resurrection. And yet you ought to mourn for the world and rejoice in the Lord: sorrowful to repentance, glad to grace; though the Teacher of the Gentiles has laid down in a salutary precept that we should both weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. But whoever wishes to untie completely every knot of the question, let him take refuge in the same Apostle: “Whatever you do,” he says, “in word or in deed, do it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” Let us, then, refer all our words and deeds to Christ, who made life out of death and created light out of darkness. For as a sick body is now warmed with warmer things, now cooled with cooler, and a change of remedies, if made according to the physician’s instruction, brings health, but if taken against his order, increases the sickness; so whatever is paid to Christ our physician is a remedy, whatever is taken without him, a harm. The joy, then, should be that of a good conscience, not stirred up by disorderly revelry or by wedding music; for there modesty is unsafe and allurement suspect, where extravagant dancing is the companion of delights. From this I want the virgins of God to be far away. For no one, as a certain teacher of worldly learning said, dances sober, unless he is mad. And if, according to worldly wisdom, the cause of dancing is either drunkenness or madness, what caution do we think the examples of the divine Scriptures give, when John, the forerunner of Christ, slain at the choice of a dancing girl, is an example that the allurement of dancing did more harm than the madness of sacrilegious fury?

And since the memory of such a man must not be passed over cursorily, it is important that we should notice who was killed, by whom, for what cause, how, and at what time. A righteous man is killed by adulterers, and the penalty of a capital crime is turned by the guilty upon the judge. Then, the reward of a dancing girl is the death of a prophet. Lastly (a thing that even all barbarians are accustomed to abhor), amid feasts and banquets the edict to complete the cruelty is issued, and from the banquet to the prison, from the prison to the banquet, the errand of a deadly crime is carried about. How many crimes in one deed! A deadly banquet is spread with royal luxury, and when it has been ascertained that a larger crowd than usual has gathered, the queen’s daughter, sent for from the inmost private rooms, is brought out to dance in the sight of men. For what could she learn from an adulteress but the loss of modesty? Or is anything so inclined to lust as, with disorderly movements, to uncover the hidden parts of the limbs that either nature has hidden or discipline has veiled, to play with the eyes, to roll the neck, to toss the hair? Rightly, then, it goes on to an outrage against God. For what modesty can there be where there is dancing, noise, and clapping? “Then the king,” it says, “being delighted, told the girl to ask of the king whatever she wished.” Then he swore that he would grant her even half his kingdom if she asked. See how worldly men themselves judge of their own worldly powers, that even kingdoms are given away for a dance. “But the girl, prompted by her mother, asked that the head of John be brought to her on a dish.” As for the words “The king was grieved,” this is not the king’s repentance but the confession of his wickedness; for it is the custom of the divine sentence that those who have done impious things condemn themselves by their own confession. “But because of those reclining at table,” it says. What more shameful than to order a murder lest he displease those at table? “And because of the oath,” it says. O new kind of religion! It would have been more tolerable to break his oath. Hence not without reason the Lord in the Gospel commands that we should not swear, lest there be a cause of perjury, lest there be a necessity of sinning. So, lest an oath be violated, an innocent man is killed. I do not know what I should shudder at first. Perjuries are more tolerable than the oaths of tyrants. Who, seeing them run from the banquet to the prison, would not have thought that the prophet had been ordered to be released? Who, I say, having heard that it was Herod’s birthday, a solemn banquet, that the girl had been given the choice of whatever she wished, would not have thought that she had been sent for John’s release? What has cruelty to do with delights? What has pleasure to do with funerals? The prophet is hurried to punishment at banquet time, by a banquet order, by which he would not even have wished to be released; he is slain with the sword; his head is brought on a dish. This was the dish owed to cruelty, on which a ferocity not sated by feasting might feed. Behold, most cruel king, a spectacle worthy of your banquet. Stretch out your right hand, so that nothing may be lacking to your savagery, so that streams of holy blood may flow between your fingers. And since the hunger of unheard-of savagery could not be sated by feasts, nor its thirst quenched by cups, drink the blood flowing from the still gushing veins of the severed head. See the eyes, witnesses of your crime even in death, turning from the sight of your delights. They are closed not so much by the necessity of death as by horror at the luxury. That golden mouth, now bloodless, whose sentence you could not bear, falls silent, and still you fear. Yet the tongue, which often keeps the function of the living even after death, with a quivering movement still condemned the incest. This head is carried to Herodias; she rejoices, exults, as though she had escaped the charge, because she has slaughtered the judge. What do you say, holy women? Do you see what you ought to teach your daughters, and what you ought to make them unlearn? Let her dance, but let her be the daughter of an adulteress. But let her who is modest, who is chaste, teach her daughters religion, not dancing. And you, grave and prudent men, learn to avoid the banquets of detestable men. If such are the banquets of the faithless, what are their judgments?

As I now spread my sails toward the end of this discourse, you do well, holy sister, to suggest what we should think of the merits of those women who have thrown themselves from a height or plunged into a river so as not to fall into the hands of persecutors, since divine Scripture forbids a Christian to lay violent hands on herself. And indeed, regarding virgins placed under the necessity of guarding their chastity, we have a plain answer, since there is an example of martyrdom. There was once at Antioch a holy Pelagia, about fifteen years old, a sister of virgins and herself a virgin. When first she was shut in at home by the trumpet of persecution, and saw herself surrounded by robbers of her faith or her chastity, with her mother and sisters absent, without protection but the fuller of God, she said: “What are we to do, unless you look ahead, captive of virginity? There is both the wish to die and the fear of it; for death is not being received but sought. Let us die, if it is permitted; or, if they will not permit it, let us die. God is not offended by a remedy, and faith removes the crime. Certainly, if we consider the very meaning of the word, what violence is voluntary? This rather is violence, to wish to die and not be able. Nor do we fear the difficulty. For who is there who wishes to die and cannot, when the ways to death are so ready to hand? I will now throw myself headlong and overturn the sacrilegious altars and put out the lighted fires with my blood. I do not fear that my right hand will fail and not finish the blow, or that my breast will shrink from the pain. I will leave no sin to the flesh. I will not fear that a sword may be lacking. We can die by our own weapons; we can die without the executioner’s service, in our mother’s bosom.” She is said to have adorned her head and put on bridal dress, so that you would say she was going not to death but to her bridegroom. But when the detestable persecutors saw that the prey of chastity had been snatched from them, they began to search for her mother and sisters. But they, on spiritual flight, already held the field of chastity, when suddenly, with the persecutors pressing on them on one side and a raging river on the other, shut off from flight, shut in for the crown, they said: “What do we fear? See, here is water; who prevents us from being baptized? This too is a baptism, by which sins are forgiven and kingdoms sought. This too is a baptism, after which no one sins. Let the water receive us, which is wont to regenerate. Let the water receive us, which makes virgins. Let the water receive us, which opens heaven, covers the weak, hides death, makes martyrs. We pray you, God, Creator of all things, that the wave may not scatter our bodies when the breath has left them, that death may not part the remains of those whose life affection did not part; but let there be one constancy, one death, and one burial too.” Having said this, and tucking up their garments a little with a girdle so as to cover their modesty and not hinder their steps, joining hands as though leading a dance, they go forward into the middle of the channel, directing their steps where the water was more torrential, where the depth fell away more steeply. None drew back her foot, none checked her step, none felt for a place to set her foot; anxious when the ground met them, vexed at a shallow, glad at the deep. You might have seen the devout mother, clasping their hands tight in a knot, rejoicing in her children, fearing a mishap, lest the current carry her daughters away from her. “These victims, Christ,” she said, “I offer to you, leaders in chastity, guides on the way, companions in the passion.” But who would rightly wonder that the living had such constancy, when even in death they kept their bodies in an unmoved position? The water did not lay bare a body; the rapid course of the river did not roll them about. Indeed, the holy mother, though without sense, still kept her loving embrace, and did not loosen even in death the devout knot she had tied; so that she who had paid what was due to religion died with love as her heir. For those whom she had joined for martyrdom she held fast even to the tomb. But why, sister, do I use foreign examples with you, whom the inspired succession of an inherited chastity, poured in from a martyr parent, has taught? For where did you learn it, who had no one from whom to learn, living in the country, with no virgin companion, formed by no teacher? You were not, then, a disciple, which cannot be without a teacher, but an heir of virtue. For how could it be that holy Soteris was not the author of your mind, when she is the author of your family? In the time of persecution, raised to the height of suffering even through the insults fit for slaves, she gave up to the executioner even her face, which amid the torture of the whole body is usually free from outrage and looks on torments rather than suffers them: so brave and patient that, when she offered her tender cheeks to punishment, the executioner gave out from striking before the martyr gave way to the outrage. She did not bend her face, did not turn her mouth away, gave no groan, no tear. Finally, having overcome every other kind of punishment, she found the sword she was seeking.