On Not Marrying Again 1–4

That women who have no experience of intercourse with husbands, of birth pangs, and of all the other things that marriage drags with it into people's houses, should seek husbands is no wonder; for the proverb says that even war, so laborious a thing, is sweet to the inexperienced. But that women who have endured countless evils, and often, compelled by the pressure of their affairs, [called] blessed those who are freed from the affairs of the world, and cursed themselves countless times, and the matchmakers, and the day on which the bridal chambers [were made ready] — that these, after so much complaining, should desire the same things again: this is what most astonishes me and leaves me perplexed and seeking the cause why the things they once thought were to be fled, when they were in them, they now, when freed from them, pursue again as desirable. And turning countless reasonings up and down within myself, at last, as I persuade myself, I found the cause of the matter; or rather there is not one cause, nor only two, but more than these. For some, having handed over their former experiences to forgetfulness through the length of time, and remembering only what is at hand, come to marriage as to a release from the evils of widowhood, but find in it others much harder, so that they utter again the same cries as before. Others again, gaping after the affairs of the world, hanging on the glory of the present life, and thinking widowhood a disgraceful thing, choose the miseries of marriage for the sake of empty glory and superfluous vanity. And there are those who are mastered by none of these things but by incontinence alone; they return again to their former state, and try to hide the real cause under the pretexts just mentioned. To accuse them, then, and condemn them for this marriage I neither dare myself nor advise anyone else to do; since this did not seem good even to blessed Paul, or rather to the Holy Spirit. For having said, “A wife is bound by law for as long a time as her husband lives; but if her husband falls asleep, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord,” and having allowed the widow to marry again if she wished, he also said: “But she is more blessed if she remains as she is”; and so that no one would think the injunction human, he added: “And I think that I too have the Spirit of God,” showing that he wrote these things by the Spirit. Let no one, then, think that I say what I am now going to say as accusing or blaming women who marry. For it would be the height of folly and madness for us, on the contrary, to condemn unsparingly those whom the blessed man did not punish but spared — and that when we ourselves are full of countless evils. For if we are bidden not even to judge, so that we may not be judged with the same measure, nor to be harsh judges of what others do wrong, but forgiving and gentle: when you punish something that is not even a sin, and condemn others, you deprive yourself of all pardon, preparing the judge to be harsher to you through your harshness toward your neighbour. It is not, then, to accuse them or to attack them that I have come to this now; for what can be done in the Lord is free of every accusation: “only in the Lord,” he says. Just as, then, when we speak in favour of virginity, we do not exalt it by dishonouring marriage, so when we discourse about widowhood, we do not urge the widow to be content with the first marriage by putting the second marriage among forbidden things; but we acknowledge that this second one too is according to law, though the one marriage is much better than the second. Let no one, then, think that superiority by comparison means wickedness in the thing that is outranked by it. For we do not make this comparison by pushing the thing into the rank of evils; but, leaving it among the things that are lawful and in our power, we prefer and admire what is much better than it. Why so? Because it is not the same for the same woman to be the wife of one husband and of a second. For the woman who was content with the first showed that she would not have chosen even him at the beginning if she had known well the experience of the matter; but she who brings a second bridegroom into the bed of the first has given no small proof of great love for the world and of attachment to earthly things. And the first woman was not excited by anyone else even while her husband lived; but this one, even if she did not sin with others while he was alive, yet admired many others more than him …

But so that we may not make conjectures about her past life, let us compare the thing itself. As virginity is better than marriage, so that marriage is better than this one. For the widow, outranked by virginity only at the beginning, is at the end made equal to it again and joined to it; but this marriage stands apart from it at both ends. Besides this, the woman who bears widowhood easily often practises continence even while her husband is alive; but the woman who finds the matter burdensome is prepared to consort not with two only, or three, but with many more husbands, and scarcely gives it up when old age comes. As, then, that marriage is a sign of great dignity and chastity, so this one is — I would not say of licentiousness, God forbid! — but of a weak and very carnal soul, bound to the earth, unable ever to imagine anything great and lofty. But if someone should say that what is good is the same whether it happens once, or twice, or many times (for it will be equally good, and the one who uses it many times would more justly be praised; so that if marriage is good, the one who uses it continually is more admirable than the one who uses it seldom, and more acceptable), we will say that this might deceive the simpler, but for those willing to pay attention the sophism will be easy to detect. For marriage is not called marriage because of intercourse — for then sexual immorality too would be marriage — but because the married woman is content with one husband; and in this the free and chaste woman differs from the prostitute. For if she is content with one husband all her life, the thing would rightly be called marriage; but if instead of one she brings many bridegrooms into the house, I do not dare call the thing sexual immorality, but I would say that she falls far short of the woman who knew no other husband but one. For that woman heard the Lord saying, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh,” and she clung to him as truly to her own flesh, and did not forget the head once given to her; but this one held neither the first nor the second in the rank of her own flesh: for the first has been thrown out by the second, and the second by the first; she could not well remember the first while attending to the other after him, nor will she look on this one with fitting affection, since her mind is divided toward the departed. So both things happen: both this man and that are thrown out of the honour and love that a husband should have from his wife. And what sort of soul at all does she think the second bridegroom has, brought into the chamber of the first, going up into his bed, and seeing the other man's wife laughing and making merry over these things? A very troubled one, surely; for he will not approach her with much love; for even if he is harsher than all people, he will not be so savage as to feel nothing human, even if she surrounds herself and the house with countless adornments. For the grief that has already seized the house does not allow the gladness to become pure; but as with walls, when some part happens to be badly burned and is then lightly plastered, the blackness spread deep beneath spoils the whiteness of the surface and makes an unpleasing sight, so here too, though she devise many bright things, in the very midst of them the gloomy things show through, and there is a joyless mixture in them. For servants and maids and farmers and tenants and neighbours and relatives of the one who departed first are downcast at what has happened and groan. And if orphans happen to be left, then, if they are very young, those able to understand what is being done kindle a fierce hatred against their mother; and if they happen to be grown, they above all make things unpleasant. The lawgivers too, seeing all this, consoling those who are pained at these things and making their defence that they did not enjoin this marriage by their own will or as a primary thing, but from fear that some worse evil might happen, removed all the festivities of a second marriage: neither pipe, nor clapping, nor wedding song, nor dances, nor bridal crowns, nor anything else of this kind adorns that evening; but they lead the husband to the widowed woman, all but crying out by these means that they are doing what is worthy of pardon, not of praise and applause and crowns.

How then, someone says, did Paul forbid the young women to remain widows even when they wished, writing thus: “But refuse younger widows”? Paul did not forbid those who wished to remain widows; rather, those women compelled Paul, though unwilling, to lay down this law for them. For if you wish to learn Paul's will, hear what he says: “I wish all people to be as I myself am,” in continence. So that blessed man would not fight against himself, nor fall into so great a contradiction; nor would he who wished all people to be in continence forbid those who wished to remain widows. How, then, does he say, “But refuse younger widows”? Tell me, for what reason, and why? For he did not say it simply, but added the reason, saying: “For when they grow wanton against Christ, they wish to marry.” You see that it is not those who wish to remain widows, but those who choose to marry after being widowed, that he forbids to be enrolled as widows and to be ranked in that holy choir; and he does so very wisely. For if you are going to enter a second marriage, he says, do not profess widowhood; for to break faith after the promise is much worse than not to promise at all. As, then, he permitted continual intercourse not by legislating but by making allowance for them — “For I say this,” he says, “by way of concession, not of command,” because of your incontinence — so here too, because of another, greater evil, he enjoined the second marriage, showing that this too belongs to pardon, which condescends to the weakness of the many. And I mean a weakness not of power but of choice. For as the virgin who is corrupted after professing virginity has dared something worse than adultery, so too the widow who has once professed and then trampled on her compact with God will fall under the same sin and be liable to the same punishment; and if I must say something surprising, perhaps to a much greater one; for it is not the same, as I said at the beginning, for the inexperienced woman and for the experienced woman to fall into the same temptations again. And not only here, but having said it before, he says again, “I want younger widows to marry, to bear children, to manage their households,” and adds the reason why he wants these things. And what is it? “To give the adversary no occasion for reproach.” For since it was likely then that many of the widows behaved rather rashly and boldly in their later life, as though freed from a kind of compulsion and mastery, the yoke of a husband, so as even to draw an evil reputation on themselves by their recklessness, he leads them away from this destructive freedom and brings them back to the former yoke. For if a woman who is a widow is going to commit sexual immorality secretly and disgrace herself, he says, it is much better to marry and to give the adversary no occasion for reproach; so that, in order not to furnish occasions for reproach and to live an insolent and whorish life, he enjoined marriage. Hear, at any rate, all the charges he brings against them. When they ought to be turned to prayers and supplications all their time, “they learn,” he says, “to be idle, going about from house to house; and not only idle, but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not.” But he himself does not want this; he wants her to be nailed to spiritual things at all times: “For she who lives in luxury,” he says, “is dead while she lives.” For in the case of the virgin too, he does not want this good to be defined by the chastity of the body, but wants her to spend all her leisure on the worship of God. “For I say this to you,” he says, “not to put a noose on you, but for what is seemly and for devotion to the Lord without distraction.” For he does not want her to be divided, but wholly to belong to spiritual things and to the things in heaven, and to care for the things of the Lord. So too he advises the widow to live, saying: “But the real widow, who is left alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day.” When, then, they spend all their life the leisure that should be spent on the things of the gospel, not only on superfluous and unprofitable things but also on very harmful ones, he reasonably leads them to marriage at last. As God gave the Sabbath to the Jews, then, not so that they should simply be idle, but so that they should abstain from evil deeds, so also the widow and the virgin choose this life not simply in order not to consort with a man, but in order to care for the things of the Lord, so as to attend wholly upon the service of God.

“Yes,” someone says, “but it will be an unbearable evil for a woman inexperienced in affairs to be forced to take on her husband's affairs. For she will not be able to handle them as he did, and from them she will gain only afflictions and the loss of everything.” Have all, then, who did not enter second marriages lost all they had and fallen from everything, and is it impossible to see a widowed woman managing affairs? These are excuses and pretexts and screens for one's own weakness. For many women have managed households more nobly than men, and brought up orphans, and of the property in their hands some increased it and others did not diminish it. For God from the beginning did not entrust everything to men, nor leave the affairs of life to hang on them alone in all things; otherwise the woman would have been easily despised, as contributing nothing to our life. Knowing this, God assigned her a share not smaller; and showing this from the beginning he said, “Let us make him a helper.” For so that the man might not think highly of himself against her because he was made first, and because the woman was formed for his sake, by this word he checked his pride, showing that the affairs of the world need the woman no less than the man. What, then, are these things, and in what does she share with us in holding life together? Since private affairs no less than public ones hold together the present order, he divided them, and entrusted to men all the affairs of the marketplace, and to women those of the house; and if they exchange the order, everything is ruined and lost; so each in his own sphere is much more useful than the other. Therefore, if the affairs of the house depend on a woman's skill, and in this the woman is as much better than a man as craftsmen are better than the unskilled in the crafts they practise, why do we needlessly fear this fear? For to bring in income from outside and gather it belongs to men only, and it is not right for women to make gain; but to preserve and guard what has been gathered belongs to her alone. So, even if acquiring seems more than guarding, without the latter the former becomes useless and superfluous; and often, even when the latter was present, the former not only did no good but ruined everything. For since it is a difficult thing for a man who makes his gain outside to procure just gains (for for the most part these men traffic in the misfortunes of others), what was brought into her hands unjustly and by force has often spoiled even the wife's skill and management. So, even if acquiring is greater than guarding, in another way it is shown to be less, when it not only contributes nothing to the increase of possessions but even ruins what is stored up. Why, then, does the widow fear that in her husband's absence she will manage the household worse, when she had the care of it even while he was alive? “But,” someone says, “he handled it more easily, because through fear of him no one resisted or made difficulties. For servants and stewards and agents and all cowered, and obeyed with much compliance, and no one contradicted; but when the one who inspired fear departs, all trample on the widow, do mischief, grow insolent, confound and tear everything apart; and if she proceeds against them and punishes them — racking, flogging, throwing into prison — there are condemnations, reproaches, accusations from the many.” But if she tramples on her compact with the departed and forgets his love, and the evening on which she was first joined to him, and the applause, and the wedding song, and the nuptial torches, and the first embraces, and the tables, and the salt she shared with him all that time, and the words a wife is likely to enjoy from a husband — if she throws all this away suddenly as though it had never happened, opening the doors of the house to another, and draws him to the bed of the first, the bed that knew everything before — if she does this, is there no one to blame her or reproach her? no one to hate her and call her heartless and faithless and implacable and everything of that kind?