On the Good of Widowhood 1–18

So as not to remain any longer in debt to your request and to your love in Christ for what I promised, I have seized the chance, as best I could amid my other most pressing occupations, to write you something on the profession of holy widowhood. For you laid this burden on me by asking me in person, and since I could not refuse you, you have often pressed me by letter for what I promised. In this work of ours, when you read some things that have very little to do with you, or with all of you who live together in Christ, and that are not strictly necessary for the guidance of your life, you should not therefore judge them superfluous. For this letter, though it had to be written to you, had to be written not for you alone but so that it might benefit others also through you; and that was certainly not to be neglected by us. Whatever you find here, then, that you have never needed or no longer need, but that you see others need, do not be reluctant to keep it or to give it to others to read, so that your love may also be of use to others.

In every question that concerns life and conduct, not only teaching but also exhortation is needed: teaching, so that we may know what is to be done; exhortation, so that we may be stirred up not to be reluctant to do what we already know is to be done. What more, then, am I to teach you than what we read in the apostle? For Holy Scripture fixes the rule of our teaching, so that we do not dare to be wise beyond what we ought to be wise, but are wise, as he himself says, unto sobriety, as God has apportioned to each the measure of faith. Let my teaching you, then, be nothing else than to set out for you the words of the Teacher and to discuss them as the Lord grants.

The apostle, then, the teacher of the Gentiles, the chosen vessel, says: “But I say to the unmarried and to widows, it is good for them if they remain so, even as I.” These words are to be understood in such a way that we do not think widows ought not to be called unmarried because they seem to have experienced marriage. For by the name “unmarried” he means those who are not bound by marriage, whether they have been or not. He makes this clear in another place, where he says, “The unmarried woman and the virgin are divided.” Since he adds “the virgin” as well, what does he want to be understood by “the unmarried woman” but the widow? Hence also, afterwards, he embraces both professions under the one name “unmarried,” saying, “She who is unmarried is anxious about the things of the Lord, how she may please the Lord; but she who is married is anxious about the things of the world, how she may please her husband.” By “unmarried” he certainly meant to be understood not only her who has never married but also her who, freed from the bond of marriage by widowhood, has ceased to be married; for he calls married only her who has a husband, not also her who had one and has one no longer. Therefore every widow is unmarried; but because not every unmarried woman is a widow—for there are virgins also—he has put both here, where he says, “But I say to the unmarried and to widows,” as if to say: what I say to the unmarried I say not only to those who are virgins but also to those who are widows: it is good for them if they remain so, even as I.

Here is your good, compared with that good which the apostle calls his own—if faith is present; or rather, because faith is present. This teaching is short, and it is not to be despised because it is short, but to be held the more easily and dearly because in its brevity it is not cheap. For the apostle was not commending just any good here, since he set it without any ambiguity above the faithfulness of married women. How great a good the faithfulness of married women has—that is, of Christian and devout wives—can be understood from this: when he was giving instruction about fleeing sexual immorality, where he was certainly addressing married people too, he said, “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?” So great a good, then, is faithful marriage that the married themselves are members of Christ. But since the good of widowed continence is better than this good, this profession does not aim at making a catholic widow something more than a member of Christ, but at her having a better place among the members of Christ than a married woman. For the same apostle says: “For as in one body we have many members, and all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another, having different gifts according to the grace that has been given to us.”

Therefore also, when he was admonishing married people not to defraud one another of the debt of carnal union, lest one of them, denied the conjugal debt, should be tempted by Satan through his own incontinence and slip into sexual immorality, he said, “But this I say by way of concession, not of command. For I would that all men were even as I myself; but each has his own gift from God, one in this way, another in that.” You see that conjugal chastity and the marital faithfulness of the Christian bed are also a gift, and a gift from God, so that whatever carnal concupiscence adds, in the manner of lying together, somewhat beyond the need of begetting children is not an evil belonging to marriage but is pardonable because of the good of marriage. For the apostle does not say “I say this by way of concession, not of command” of marriage—which is joined for the sake of begetting children, and by the faithfulness of conjugal chastity, and by the sacrament of matrimony, indissoluble as long as both live, all of which are good—but of that immoderate use of the flesh which is recognized in the weakness of spouses and pardoned through the intervening good of marriage. Again, when he says, “A woman is bound as long as her husband lives; but if her husband has died, she is freed: let her marry whom she will, only in the Lord. But she will be more blessed if she remains so, according to my counsel,” he shows clearly enough that a believing woman who marries again after her husband's death is blessed in the Lord, but that a widow is more blessed in the same Lord: that is, to speak not only with the words of the Scriptures but also with their examples, Ruth is blessed, but Anna more blessed.

First of all, therefore, you must know that the good you have chosen does not condemn second marriages but honours them less. For just as the good of holy virginity, which your daughter chose, does not condemn your one marriage, so neither does your widowhood condemn anyone's second marriage. It was from this chiefly that the heresies of the Cataphrygians and the Novatianists swelled—heresies which Tertullian too puffed up with cheeks that were sounding rather than wise, when with a slanderous tooth he cut down second marriages as unlawful, which the apostle with a sober mind grants as wholly lawful. Let no one's argument, unlearned or learned, move you from this soundness of doctrine; and do not so exalt your own good that you accuse another's as evil when it is not evil. Rather, rejoice in your good all the more, the more you see that by it not only are evils avoided but certain goods are also surpassed. For adultery and sexual immorality are evils. And far from these unlawful things is she who has bound herself by the freedom of a vow and has brought it about that even lawful things are not lawful for her, not by the command of the law but by the counsel of love. Conjugal chastity is a good, but widowed continence is a better good. This better good, then, is honoured by the subordination of that good; that good is not condemned by the praise of this better one.

As for the apostle's words: when he was commending the fruit of the celibate and unmarried, because they think about the things of the Lord, how they may please God, he added, “This I say for your benefit, not to cast a snare upon you,” that is, not to compel you, “but for what is honourable.” We must not think, because he called the good of the unmarried honourable, that the marriage bond is therefore shameful. Otherwise we would condemn even first marriages, which neither the Cataphrygians nor the Novatianists nor their most eloquent supporter Tertullian dared to call shameful. But just as, when he says, “But I say to the unmarried and to widows, it is good for them if they remain so,” he certainly put “good” for “better”—for everything that is called better in comparison with a good is itself without doubt also good (for what else is that which is called better in this way but what is more good?)—and we do not therefore think it follows that he held that it is evil if they marry, because he said, “It is good for them if they remain so”; so also, when he says, “but for what is honourable,” he did not show that marriage is shameful, but commended under the general name of “honourable” what was more honourable than the honourable. For what is more honourable but what is honourable in a greater degree? And what is more honourable is certainly honourable. For he clearly declared that this is better than that good, where he says, “He who gives in marriage does well, and he who does not give in marriage does better”; and that this is more blessed than that blessed, where he says, “But she will be more blessed if she remains so.” As, then, it is better than good and more blessed than blessed, so what he chose to call honourable is more honourable than honourable. Far be it that marriage should be shameful, when the apostle Peter, speaking of it, says: “Husbands, pay honour to your wives as to the weaker and subject vessel, as co-heirs of grace”; and addressing the wives, he urges them to be subject to their husbands after the example of Sarah: “For thus,” he says, “certain holy women who hoped in God adorned themselves, obeying their husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord; whose daughters you have become, doing good and not fearing any disturbance.”

Hence also what the apostle Paul said of the unmarried woman, “that she may be holy both in body and in spirit,” is not to be taken as if a believing married woman, chaste and subject to her husband according to the Scriptures, were not holy in body but only in spirit. For it cannot be that when the spirit is sanctified, the body which the sanctified spirit uses is not holy too. But lest anyone think that we argue rather than prove this from the divine word—since Peter, when about to mention Sarah, said only “holy women” and did not say “in body” as well—let us consider that saying of the same Paul where, forbidding sexual immorality, he says: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Far from it.” Let anyone dare, then, to say that the members of Christ are not holy; or let him dare to separate the bodies of believing married women from the members of Christ. Hence also a little later he says: “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought with a great price.” He said that the body of believers is both members of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit; and there believers of both sexes are certainly meant. There, then, are the married, and there also the unmarried; but they are distinguished in merit, as members preferred to members, yet neither of them separated from the body. When, therefore, speaking of the unmarried woman, he says, “that she may be holy both in body and in spirit,” he wanted a fuller sanctification of the unmarried in both body and spirit to be understood; he did not deprive the body of married women of all sanctification.

Learn, then, your good—or rather, remember what you have learned: your good is praised more because there is another good than which it is better, than if this good could not be good unless that were evil or did not exist at all. The eyes have great honour in the body; but they would have less if they were alone and there were no other members of lesser honour. In heaven itself the sun surpasses the moon with its light but does not disparage it, and star differs from star in glory but is not at odds with it in pride. That is why God made all things, and behold, they were very good: not only good, but also very, for no other reason than that they were all. For at each single work it was said, “God saw that it was good”; but when all were named, “very” was added, and it was said, “God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” For some single things are better than other single things; but all together are better than any single one. So may the sound teaching of Christ make you sound in his body through his grace, so that what you have that is better than others in body and spirit, that same spirit which rules the body may neither exalt insolently nor set apart ignorantly.

Nor, because I have said that Ruth was blessed and Anna more blessed—since the former married twice, and the latter, the wife of one husband, widowed early, lived long—should you at once think that you too are better than Ruth. For in prophetic times there was a different dispensation for holy women: obedience, not concupiscence, drove them to marry, so that the people of God might be propagated, in which the prophets of Christ were sent ahead; for that people itself, through the things that happened among them in figure, whether in those who understood them or in those who did not, was nothing else than a prophet of Christ, from whom the flesh of Christ too was to be born. So that this people might be propagated, then, anyone who did not raise up seed in Israel was held accursed by the sentence of the law. Hence holy women were kindled not by the desire to lie with a man but by devotion to bearing children, so that it is most rightly believed that they would not have sought intercourse if offspring could have come in some other way; and men were allowed the use of several living wives. That the cause of this was not the concupiscence of the flesh but provision for generation is shown by this: while holy men were allowed to have several living wives, holy women were not likewise allowed to be joined to several living husbands, since they would be the more shameful the more they sought what would not make them more fruitful. Accordingly holy Ruth, since she did not have seed in Israel, such as was necessary at that time, sought another husband when her husband died, from whom she might have it. Compared with her, then, twice married, Anna, a widow of one husband, was more blessed, because she was also found worthy to be a prophetess of Christ. We must believe of her, even if she had no children—which Scripture, by keeping silent, has left uncertain—that she foresaw, by that Spirit by which she could recognize him even as an infant, that Christ would very soon come from a virgin. Hence rightly, even without children (if indeed she had none), she refused a second marriage, because she knew that the time had now come when Christ was better served not by the duty of bearing children but by the zeal for continence, not by making a wife's womb fruitful but by making a widow's conduct chaste. But if Ruth too knew that through her flesh the seed was being propagated from which Christ was to have his flesh, and by marrying rendered service to this knowledge, I no longer dare say that Anna's widowhood was more blessed than her fruitfulness.

But you, who both have children and live at that end of the age when it is now the time not for casting stones but for gathering them, not for embracing but for refraining from embrace—since the apostle cries, “But this I say, brothers: the time is short; it remains that those who have wives be as though they had none”—certainly, if you had sought a second marriage, it would have shown no obedience to prophecy or law, not even a carnal desire for offspring, but incontinence alone. For you would have done what the apostle speaks of after saying, “It is good for them if they remain so, even as I”; for he at once added, “But if they do not contain themselves, let them marry; for I would rather they marry than burn.” He said this so that the evil of unbridled lust might not be hurled headlong into the shame of vicious acts, but be caught by the honourableness of marriage. But thanks be to the Lord, because you have borne what you did not wish to be, and the virginity of your offspring has made up for the loss of your own virginity. For Christian teaching, carefully questioned, answers that at this time even first marriages are to be spurned, unless incontinence stands in the way. For he who said, “If they do not contain themselves, let them marry,” could have said, “If they do not have children, let them marry,” if, after the resurrection and preaching of Christ, when there is now so great an abundance from all nations of children to be begotten spiritually, begetting children from the flesh were the same kind of duty as it was in the first times. And what he says elsewhere, “I wish, therefore, the younger women to marry, to bear children, to be mothers of families,” commends the good of marriage with apostolic sobriety and authority; it does not impose the duty of begetting, as though in obedience to the law, even on those who take up the good of continence. Finally, he discloses why he said this when he adds, “to give the adversary no occasion for reproach; for some have already turned back after Satan”; so that from these words of his we understand that those whom he wanted to marry could have done better to contain themselves than to marry, but did better to marry than to go back after Satan, that is, to fall from that excellent resolve of virginal or widowed chastity by looking back to what is behind, and to perish. Accordingly, let those who do not contain themselves marry before they profess continence, before they make a vow to God; for if they do not fulfil it, they are justly condemned. For in another place he says of such women: “For when they have grown wanton in Christ, they wish to marry, having condemnation, because they have made void their first faith,” that is, they have turned their will to marriage away from the resolve of continence. For they made void the faith by which they had earlier vowed what they were unwilling to fulfil by perseverance. The good of marriage, then, is always indeed a good; but among the people of God it was once obedience to the law, now it is a remedy for weakness, and in some a comfort of human nature. For to devote oneself to begetting children, not in the manner of dogs by promiscuous use of women but in the honourable order of marriage, is not a desire to be condemned in a human being; yet the Christian mind that thinks on heavenly things surpasses and overcomes even this more praiseworthily.

But since, as the Lord says, “not all receive this word,” let her who can receive it receive it; let her who does not contain herself marry; let her who has not begun deliberate; let her who has undertaken it persevere: let no occasion be given to the adversary, let no offering be withdrawn from Christ. In the marriage bond, if chastity is kept, condemnation is not to be feared; but in widowed and virginal continence the excellence of a greater gift is sought. Once it has been sought and chosen and offered as the debt of a vow, it is now damnable not only to take up marriage but, even if one does not marry, to wish to marry. For to show this the apostle did not say, “When they have grown wanton in Christ, they marry,” but, “They wish to marry, having condemnation, because they have made void their first faith”—even if not by marrying, but only by wishing. Not that the marriages even of such women are declared worthy of condemnation; but the betrayal of the resolve is condemned, the broken faith of the vow is condemned; what is condemned is not the taking up of a lesser good but the fall from a higher good. In short, such women are condemned not because they afterwards entered into conjugal faith but because they made void the first faith of continence. To suggest this briefly, the apostle did not want to say that those who marry after a resolve of greater holiness have condemnation—not because they are not condemned, but lest marriage itself should be thought condemned in them—but, having said, “they wish to marry,” he at once added, “having condemnation,” and said why: “because they have made void their earlier faith,” so that it may appear that the will that fell from its resolve is condemned, whether marriage follows or not.

Accordingly, those who say that the marriages of such women are not marriages but rather adulteries do not seem to me to consider sharply and carefully enough what they are saying; for they are deceived by a likeness of truth. Because women who, out of Christian holiness, do not marry are said to choose marriage with Christ, some argue from this, saying: “If a woman who marries another while her husband is alive is an adulteress, as the Lord himself laid down in the Gospel, then, since Christ, over whom death no longer has dominion, is alive, a woman who had chosen marriage with him is an adulteress if she marries a man.” Those who say this are moved by a sharp point, but they pay too little attention to how great an absurdity follows from this argument. For since a woman may commendably vow continence to Christ even while her husband is alive, with his consent, then by their reasoning no woman ought to do this, lest she make Christ himself an adulterer—which it is wicked to think—by marrying him while her husband is alive. Next, since first marriages are of better merit than second, far be it that holy widows should think that Christ is, as it were, a second husband to them. For they had him as their husband before also, when they served their husbands in faithful subjection—not carnally but spiritually. His spouse is the church itself, whose members they are, and which, by the integrity of faith, hope, and love, is wholly virgin, not only in holy virgins but also in believing widows and married women. For it is to the whole church, of which all these are members, that the apostle says, “I have betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” And he knows how to make his virgin spouse fruitful without corruption, he whom his mother could bear, even in the flesh, without corruption. But through this ill-considered opinion, by which they think that women who have fallen from their holy resolve are not married if they marry, no small evil results: wives are separated from their husbands, as though they were adulteresses and not wives; and when these people want to restore the separated women to continence, they make their husbands real adulterers, since they have married others while their own wives are alive.

Therefore I cannot say that women who have fallen from the better resolve are committing adulteries, not marriages, if they marry; but I would certainly not hesitate to say that lapses and falls from the holier chastity that is vowed to the Lord are worse than adulteries. For if, as is in no way to be doubted, it offends Christ when one of his members does not keep faith with her husband, how much more gravely is he offended when faith is not kept with himself in what he exacts once it has been offered, though he had not exacted that it be offered! For when anyone does not pay what he vowed, not compelled by command but advised by counsel, he increases the wickedness of the defrauded vow all the more, the less necessity he had to vow. I argue these points so that you may not think either that second marriages are a crime or that any marriages, being marriages, are evil. So do not wish them to be condemned by you, but spurned. The good of widowed continence, then, shines the more brightly when, in order to vow and profess it, women can despise what they both desire and are allowed; but after the profession of the vow, what they desire must be persistently reined in and overcome, because it is no longer allowed.

People commonly raise the question of third and fourth and still more marriages. To answer briefly, I dare neither condemn any marriage nor take away from them the shame of their number. But lest the brevity of my answer displease anyone, I am ready to hear a critic of mine who argues more fully. For perhaps he may bring some reason why second marriages are not condemned but third are. For I, as I warned at the beginning of this discourse, do not dare to be wise beyond what one ought to be wise. For who am I to think that something must be defined which I do not see that even the apostle defined? For he says, “A woman is bound as long as her husband lives”; he did not say the first, or second, or third, or fourth, but, “A woman,” he says, “is bound as long as her husband lives; but if her husband has died, she is freed; let her marry whom she will, only in the Lord; but she will be more blessed if she remains so.” What could be added to or taken from this sentence, as far as this matter is concerned, I do not know. Then I hear the very master and Lord of the apostles and of us answering the Sadducees, when they had put to him the case of a woman who was the wife not of one husband or of two but, if one may say it, of seven, asking whose wife she would be in the resurrection. Rebuking them, he says: “You err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they will neither marry nor take wives; for they will not begin to die, but will be equal to the angels of God.” He spoke, then, of the resurrection of those who rise to life, not of those who rise to punishment. He could therefore have said, “You err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God; for in that resurrection these women of many marriages will not be able to be present,” and then added, “because no one there marries either.” But not even he, as we see, condemned the woman of so many husbands by any hint in his answer. Therefore I dare neither say, against the sense of human modesty, that a woman may marry as often as she wishes when her husbands die, nor dare I, from my own heart and apart from the authority of Holy Scripture, condemn any number of marriages. But what I say to a widow of one husband I say to every widow: you will be more blessed if you remain so.

For this question too is not foolishly proposed, that whoever can may say which widow should be preferred in merit: the wife of one husband who, after living a long time with her husband and bearing children, was widowed while they were alive and well and professed continence; or she who as a young girl lost two husbands within two years, with no children left to comfort her, vowed continence to God, and grew old in it in most persevering holiness. Let those exercise themselves here, if they can, in argument and in showing us something, who weigh the merits of widows by the number of their husbands, not by the strength of their continence itself. For if they say that the wife of one husband is to be preferred to the wife of two, unless they bring some spiritual reason or authority, they will surely be found to prefer to strength of mind not a greater strength of mind but the happiness of the flesh. For both living long with a husband and bearing children belonged to the happiness of the flesh. But if they do not prefer her because she had children, what else was the very fact that she lived long with her husband but the happiness of the flesh? Moreover, the merit of that Anna is commended above all by this, that having buried her husband so soon, she wrestled long with the flesh through her long life, and won. For thus it is written: “And there was Anna, a prophetess, daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in many days and had lived with her husband seven years from her virginity; and she was a widow up to eighty-four years, who did not depart from the temple, serving with fastings and prayers night and day.” You see how the holy widow is praised not only because she was the wife of one husband but also because she lived few years with her husband from her virginity and carried on the gift of widowed continence to so great an old age in so great a service of piety.

Let us set before our eyes, then, three widows, each having one of the things that were all present in Anna. Let us suppose one to be the wife of one husband, who lacks both so long a widowhood, since she lived long with her husband, and so great a zeal of piety, since she does not so serve with fastings and prayers; a second, who after the very short life of her first husband soon lost her second also, and has been a widow for a long time, but who herself also does not devote such effort to the most devout service of fastings and prayers; a third, who not only had two husbands but also lived a long time with both, one after the other, or with one of them, and, widowed at a later age at which, had she wished to marry, she could still have borne children, took up widowed continence, but is more intent on God, more anxious to do what pleases him, serving night and day with fastings and prayers like Anna. If it is disputed which of these is superior in merit, who does not see that in this contest the palm must be given to the greater and more fervent piety? So too, if three others are supposed, each having two of those three things and lacking one, who would doubt that those will be better in whom, among their two goods, devout humility has the greater force, so that their piety may be lofty?

None of these six widows, indeed, matches your standard. For you, if you carry this vow on to old age, can have all three things in which Anna's merit excelled: you had one husband, and he did not live long with you in the flesh. And so, if you show obedience to the words of the apostle, who says, “But she who is truly a widow and left alone has hoped in the Lord and continues in prayers night and day,” and with sober watchfulness avoid what follows, “but she who lives in pleasures is dead while she lives,” all three goods that were Anna's will be yours as well. But you also have children, which perhaps she did not have; and you are not to be praised because you have them, but because you are careful to nurture and bring them up devoutly. That they were born to you was a matter of fruitfulness; that they are alive, of good fortune; but that they are brought up in this way, of will and ability. For the former let people congratulate you; in the latter let them imitate you. Anna, by prophetic knowledge, recognized Christ with his virgin mother; the grace of the Gospel has made you the mother of a virgin of Christ. That holy virgin, then, whom you offered to Christ at her own wish and request, has added something of virginal merit to the widowed merits of her grandmother and mother. For you who have her are not without a share in it, and you are in her what you are not in yourselves. For holy virginity was taken from you when you married precisely so that it might be born from you.