Against Jovinian 1.27–1.35

But we sweat with useless labor. For our opponent objects to us the Apostle's sentence and says: "Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman, being deceived, fell into transgression. Yet she will be saved through the bearing of children, if they continue in faith and love and holiness with sobriety." Let us consider why and from where the Apostle came to this sentence: "I want men to pray in every place, lifting up holy hands without anger and disputing." Then accordingly he gives women precepts for living, and says: "Likewise women too, in becoming dress, adorning themselves with modesty and chastity, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly clothing, but as befits women who profess godliness, with good works. Let a woman learn in silence with all submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence." And lest the condition of the woman should seem harsh, bringing her into the service of her husband, he recalls the ancient law and goes back to the original example: that Adam was made first, then the woman from his rib; that the devil could not deceive Adam, but Eve; that after offending God she was at once made subject to the man, and her turning was toward her husband; and that she who has once been joined in marriage and brought into the condition of Eve may wipe out the ancient error by the bearing of children, on condition, however, that she instruct those children in the faith and love of Christ, and in holiness and chastity. For we should read not "sobriety" (as is wrongly found in the Latin manuscripts) but "chastity," that is, sōphrosynē. See, then, how you are defeated by this testimony too, and how what you thought was for marriage you are compelled to understand as for virginity. For if the woman is saved in the bearing of children, and the number of offspring is the salvation of mothers, why did he add, "if the children continue in love and holiness with chastity"? The woman, then, will be saved if she bears those children who will remain virgins; if what she herself lost she gains in her children, and makes up for the loss and rot of the root by flower and fruit.

Above, in passing, where our opponent had set before us Solomon, the man of many wives, who built the temple of God, I had answered briefly, so as to run through the remaining questions. Now, lest he cry out that both he and the other patriarchs, prophets, and holy men under the law have been dishonored by us, let us set out the view on marriage of this very man who had many wives and concubines. For no one can know better what a wife or a woman is than one who has suffered it. He says, then, in Proverbs: "A foolish and bold woman becomes in want of bread." Of what bread? Surely of that which came down from heaven. And he at once adds: "The earthborn perish with her and run into the depth of hell." Who are the earthborn who perish with her? Surely those who follow the first Adam, who is of the earth, and not the second, who is from heaven. And again in another place: "As a worm in wood, so an evil wife destroys her husband." But if you assert that this is said of bad wives, I too will answer you briefly: what necessity lies on me to fall into doubt whether the woman I marry will be good or bad? "It is better," it says, "to live in a desert land than with a quarrelsome and angry wife." How rare it is to find a wife without these faults, he knows who has married a wife. That is why the sublime orator Varius Geminus put it well: "He who does not quarrel is a bachelor." "It is better to live in a corner of the roof than with a railing wife in a shared house." If a house shared by husband and wife lifts the wife into pride and contempt of her husband, how much more if the wife is the richer and the husband lives in her house! She begins to be not a wife but a mistress, and if she takes offense at her husband, he must move out. "Dripping drives a man out of his house on a winter's day; so too a railing woman from his own house." For by constant quarrels and daily chatter she makes his house leak away, and drives him out of his dwelling, that is, out of the Church. That is why the same Solomon commands above: "Son, do not flow away." And the Apostle to the Hebrews: "Therefore we must attend more closely to what is said, lest perhaps we flow away." Who would keep silent about what is written in a riddle? "The leech had three daughters, beloved with love, but they did not satisfy her, and the fourth is not content to say 'Enough': hell, and the love of a woman, and the earth that is not satisfied with water, and fire does not say 'It is enough.'" The leech is the devil; the devil's daughters, beloved with love, are those that cannot be satisfied with the blood of the slain: hell, the love of a woman, the earth parched and burning. Here it is not the harlot, not the adulteress who is spoken of; but the love of woman in general is accused, which is always insatiable, which when quenched is rekindled, and after plenty is again in want, and makes the manly mind effeminate and allows it to think of nothing except the passion it suffers. We read something similar in the following parable: "By three things the earth is moved, and the fourth it cannot bear: if a slave reigns, and a fool is filled with bread, and a hateful wife has a good husband, and a maidservant drives out her mistress." See, here too a wife is placed among the greatest of evils. And if you answer, "But a hateful wife," I will tell you what I said above: this very danger is grave in my own case. For he who marries a wife is in doubt whether he is marrying a hateful or a lovable one. If he marries a hateful one, she cannot be borne. If a lovable one, her love is compared to hell, to the parched earth, and to burning.

Let us come to Ecclesiastes, and set down a few testimonies from it too. "There is a time for everything, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to give birth and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to uproot what has been planted." We gave birth under the law with Moses; let us die in the Gospel with Christ. We planted in marriage; let us uproot by chastity what was planted. "A time to embrace and a time to be far from embracing; a time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace." And at the same time he warns us not to prefer the law to the Gospel, nor to think the purity of virginity equal to marriage, saying: "Better is the end of a speech than its beginning." And at once he adds: "Do not say, 'What has happened, that the former days were better than these?' For you have not asked wisely about this." And he gives the reason why the later days are better than the former: "For wisdom is good with an inheritance." For under the law death followed the wisdom of the flesh, killing it; in the Gospel an eternal inheritance awaits the wisdom of the spirit. "Behold, this I found, says Ecclesiastes: one man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I did not find. But this I found: that God made man upright, and they have sought out evil thoughts." He says he found an upright human being. Consider the force of the word: in "human being" both man and woman are contained. "And a woman among all these," he says, "I did not find." Let us read the beginning of Genesis, and we shall find that Adam, that is, "human being," is the name of both male and female. Since, then, we were created good and upright by God, we ourselves by our own fault have slipped into worse things; and what had been upright in us in paradise was corrupted when we went out of paradise. But if you object that before they sinned the sex of male and female had been distinguished, and that they could have been united without sin, what would have happened is uncertain. For we cannot know God's judgments, or prejudge his sentence by our own will. What did happen is plain: those who remained virgins in paradise were joined after they were driven out of paradise. Or what harm would it have done, if paradise admits marriage and there is no difference between married woman and virgin, for them to have been united in paradise too, before? They are driven out of paradise; and what they did not do there, they do on earth, so that from the very beginning of the human race paradise dedicated virginity, and earth marriage. "Let your garments be white at all times." The everlasting whiteness of garments is the purity of virginity. "In the morning we sowed our seed, and in the evening let us not cease." We who served marriage under the law, let us serve virginity in the Gospel.

I pass to the Song of Songs, and what our opponent thinks is wholly for marriage I will show contains the mysteries of virginity. Let us hear what the bride says before her bridegroom comes to earth, suffers, enters the underworld, and rises again: "We will make you likenesses of gold with ornaments of silver, while the king is on his couch." Before the Lord rose again and the Gospel shone, the bride had not gold but likenesses of gold. But the silver she promises to have in marriage she had varied and distinguished in widows, the continent, and the married. Then the bridegroom answers the bride and teaches her that the shadow of the old law has passed and the truth of the Gospel has come: "Arise, come, my neighbor, my bride, for behold, the winter has passed, the rain has gone away." This is about the Old Testament. Again, about the Gospel and virginity: "The flowers have appeared on the earth; the time of pruning has come." Does it not seem to you to say the same as the Apostle: "It remains that those who have wives be as though they had none"? And more plainly of the proclamation of chastity: "The voice of the turtledove," it says, "has been heard in our land." The turtledove, a most chaste bird, always dwelling on the heights, is a type of the Savior. Let us read the naturalists, and we shall find that it is the nature of the turtledove, if it loses its mate, not to join another; and we shall understand that second marriage is rejected even by dumb birds. And at once the turtledove says to the turtledove: "The fig tree has put forth its green figs," that is, the precepts of the old law have fallen, "and the vines in flower," from the Gospel, "have given their fragrance." That is why the Apostle too says: "We are the good fragrance of Christ." "Arise, come, my neighbor, my bride, and come. You are my dove in the shelter of the rock, near the outer wall; show me your face, let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet and your face is lovely." While you covered your face with Moses, and the veil was on the law, I did not see your face nor deign to hear your voice, saying: "Even if you multiply your prayers, I will not hear you." But now, with face unveiled, contemplate my glory, and shelter in the outer wall of the firmest rock. Hearing this, the bride opens the mysteries of chastity: "My kinsman is mine, and I am his, who feeds among the lilies," that is, among the most radiant choirs of virgins. Do you want to know what kind of bed our true Solomon, our peacemaker, has, what kind of armed guards? "Behold," it says, "Solomon's bed; sixty mighty men around it, of the mighty men of Israel, all holding spears and trained in war, each man's sword on his thigh." Those around Solomon have a sword on the thigh, like that judge Ehud, the ambidextrous, who killed the very fat enemy, wholly given to the flesh, cutting off all pleasures. "I will go," he says, "to the mountain of myrrh," that is, to those who have put their bodies to death, "and to the hill of Lebanon," to the purest flocks of virgins, "and I will say to my bride: You are all beautiful, my love, and there is no stain in you." That is why the Apostle too says: "that he might present the Church to himself holy, having no stain or wrinkle." "Come from Lebanon, my bride, come from Lebanon. You will come and pass over from the beginning of faith, from the top of Senir and Hermon, from the dens of lions, from the mountains of leopards." Lebanon means leukasma, that is, "whiteness." Come, then, most radiant bride, of whom it is said elsewhere, "Who is this who comes up made white?" and pass through the way of this world, from the beginning of faith, and from Senir, which means "god of the lamp," according to what we read in the Psalm, "Your word is a lamp to my feet, Lord, and a light to my paths"; and from Hermon, that is, "consecration"; and flee the dens of lions and the mountains of leopards, which cannot change their spots. Flee, he says, the dens of lions, flee the pride of demons, so that after you have been consecrated to me I may say to you: "You have wounded my heart, my sister, my bride; you have wounded my heart with one of your eyes, with one ornament of your neck." What he says is of this kind: I do not reject marriage; you have also the left eye, which I gave you for the weakness of those who cannot see what is right. But the right eye of virginity pleases me more; if it is blinded, the whole body is in darkness. And lest we should think he means the love of the flesh and bodily marriage, he at once excludes this sense and says: "You have wounded my heart, my sister, my bride." Where there is the name of sister, every suspicion of shameful love is excluded. "How beautiful are your breasts with wine," of which he had also said above, "My kinsman is mine and I am his; he will dwell between my breasts," in the ruling part of the heart, where the word of God has its lodging. "How beautiful are your breasts with wine." What is that wine which makes the bride's breasts most beautiful and fills them with the milk of chastity? Surely that of which the Bridegroom speaks in what follows: "I have drunk my wine with my milk. Eat, my neighbors, and drink and be drunk, my brothers." That is why the apostles too were said to be full of new wine: of new wine, it says, not of old, because new wine is put into new wineskins; and they did not walk in the oldness of the letter but in the newness of the spirit. This is the wine which, when it has made young men and girls drunk, at once makes them thirst for virginity, and they belch out the surfeit of chastity; and that prophecy of Zechariah is fulfilled, which, at least according to the Hebrew truth, prophesies of the virgins of the Church: "Its streets shall be filled with boys and girls playing. For what is its good, and what its beauty, but the grain of the elect and the wine that makes virgins grow?" These are the virgins of whom it is written in the forty-fourth Psalm: "Virgins shall be brought to the king after her; her companions shall be brought to you with gladness and rejoicing; they shall be brought into the temple of the king."

What is shut and sealed bears the likeness of the Mother of the Lord, mother and virgin. That is why in the Savior's new tomb, hewn in the hardest rock, no one was laid either before or after. And yet this perpetual virgin is the mother of many virgins. For there follows: "Your shoots are a paradise of pomegranates with the fruit of apples." In the pomegranates and apples is signified the harmony of all virtues in virginity. "My kinsman is white and ruddy": white in virginity, ruddy in martyrdom. And because he is ruddy and white, it is at once added: "His throat is sweetness, and he is all desire." The virgin Bridegroom, praised by the virgin bride, praises the virgin bride in turn and says to her: "How beautiful your steps have become in sandals, daughter of Amminadab," which means "of a people offering itself freely." For virginity is voluntary, and therefore the steps of the Church are praised in the beauty of chastity. This is not the time, in the manner of a commentary, to lay open all the mysteries of virginity in the Song of Songs, for I do not doubt that even these will make the fastidious reader wrinkle his nose.

Let Isaiah speak the mystery of our hope and faith: "Behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel." I know that the Jews usually object that in Hebrew the word almah does not mean "virgin" but "young woman." And indeed a virgin is properly called bethulah, while a young woman or girl is called not almah but naarah. What, then, does almah mean? A hidden virgin, that is, not merely a virgin, but a virgin with emphasis; for not every virgin is hidden and set apart from the chance sight of men. Indeed Rebecca too in Genesis, because of her great chastity and the type of the Church which she signified in her virginity, is written almah, not bethulah, as can be clear from the words of Abraham's servant which he speaks in Mesopotamia: "And he said: Lord God of my master Abraham, if you prosper the way on which I go, behold, while I stand by the spring of water, the virgin who comes out to draw water, and to whom I say, 'Give me a little water to drink from your jar,' and who answers, 'Both drink, and I will draw for your camels': she shall be the wife whom the Lord has prepared for my master's son." For in the place where he says, "the virgin who comes out to draw water," the Hebrew has almah, that is, a secluded virgin, guarded by the great care of her parents. Or else let them show me where married women too are called by this word, and I will confess my ignorance. "Behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb and bear a son." If virginity is not preferred to marriage, why did the Holy Spirit not choose a married woman or a widow? For at that time there was Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher, of remarkable chastity, always devoting herself to prayers and fasts in the temple of God. If only a way of life, good works, and fasts, without virginity, earned the coming of the Holy Spirit, she too could have been the mother of the Lord. Let us run on to the rest. "The virgin daughter of Zion," it says, "has scorned you and despised you." Her whom he had called daughter he also called virgin, lest, if he had named her only daughter, you should think her married. This is the virgin daughter to whom it is said elsewhere: "Rejoice, barren one who do not bear; break out and cry, you who are not in labor; for many are the children of the desolate, more than of her who has a husband." This is she of whom God speaks through Jeremiah, saying: "Will a bride forget her ornament, or a virgin her breastband?" Of her there is a great miracle in the same prophecy, that a woman shall encompass a man, and the womb of a virgin enclose the parent of the universe.

"Granted," he says, "that the condition of marriage and of virginity differ; what can you say to this? If a virgin and a widow have been baptized and have remained so, what difference will there be between them?" What we said a little while ago about Peter and John, Anna and Mary, may serve in the present place. For if there is no difference between a virgin and a widow who have been baptized, because baptism makes a new person, then on the same terms harlots and prostitutes, if they have been baptized, will be made equal to virgins. For if past marriages do no harm to a baptized widow, then the past pleasures of harlots and their bodies exposed to public lust will obtain the rewards of virginity after the washing. It is one thing to join to God a mind most pure and stained by no memory; another to remember the embraces of a man and a shameful necessity, and to imitate in memory what you do not do in body. Jeremiah, who was sanctified in the womb and known in his mother's womb, enjoys this privilege because he was destined for the blessedness of virginity. And when all were taken captive, and even the vessels of the temple were plundered as the king of Babylon laid it waste, he alone is free from the enemy, knows nothing of the wrongs of captivity, and received provisions from the victors; and Nebuzaradan, whom Nebuchadnezzar had given no orders about the Holy of Holies, was given orders about Jeremiah. For this is the true temple of God, and these the Holy of Holies, which are consecrated to the Lord by the purity of virginity. By contrast Ezekiel, who was held captive in Babylon, who had seen the storm coming from the north and the whirlwind sweeping all things away, says: "My wife died in the evening, and in the morning I did as I had been commanded." For the Lord had foretold to him that on that day his mouth would be opened, and he would speak and be silent no longer. Note carefully: as long as his wife lived he did not have freedom to warn the people. The wife dies, the marriage bond is loosed, and without any fear he is always in the prophetic office. "For he who was called free is truly the slave of Christ." I do not deny that widows are blessed who remain so after baptism; nor do I detract from the merit of those who persevere with their husbands in chastity. But just as these have a greater reward with God than married women serving the marital duty, so let them too accept calmly that virginity is preferred to them. For if a late chastity, after the pleasures of the body have foamed away, raises them above married women, why should they not know themselves to be below perpetual chastity?

"In vain," he says, "you say these things, since the Apostle appoints bishops, presbyters, and deacons who are husbands of one wife and have children." Just as the Apostle says of virgins that he has no command, and yet gives advice as one who has obtained mercy from the Lord, and does this throughout that whole discussion so as to prefer virginity to marriage, and urges what he does not dare to command lest he seem to cast a snare and impose more weight than human nature can bear, so too in arranging the order of the Church, because the Church was being established raw from among the Gentiles, he gives lighter precepts to those newly believing, lest, frightened, they could not bear them. Indeed the apostles and elders too send letters from Jerusalem, that no further burden be laid on those who believed from among the Gentiles than that they abstain from idolatry and sexual immorality and from blood and things strangled; and, as to little ones and infants, they give milk to drink, not solid food. They give no command about continence, say nothing of virginity, do not call them to fasting, nor do they say what is addressed to the apostles in the Gospel: not to have two tunics, nor a bag, nor money in their belts, nor a staff in the hand, nor sandals on the feet; or certainly that: "If you would be perfect, go and sell all you have and give to the poor, and come, follow me." For if that young man who boasted that he had done everything belonging to the law went away sad on hearing this, because he had many possessions, and the Pharisees mocked this saying of the Lord, how much more did that great multitude of Gentiles, for whom the highest virtue was not to steal others' goods, have no need of a precept about chastity and perpetual continence: people to whom it was written that they should abstain from idols and from sexual immorality, and among whom sexual immorality was reported, and such sexual immorality as is not even among the Gentiles! But the very choice of a bishop tells in my favor. For it does not say, "Let a bishop be chosen who marries one wife and begets children," but "who has married one wife, and has children subject in all discipline." Certainly you admit that a man cannot be a bishop who begets children during his episcopate; otherwise, if he is detected, he will not be held as a husband but condemned as an adulterer. Either permit priests to perform the works of marriage, so that virgins and husbands are the same; or, if priests may not touch their wives, they are holy in this, that they imitate virginal chastity. And this too must be added. If a layman, or any of the faithful, cannot pray unless he abstains from the marital duty, the priest, who must always offer sacrifices for the people, must always pray. If he must always pray, then he must always abstain from marriage. For even under the old law, those who offered sacrifices for the people not only were not in their houses but were purified, separated from their wives for a time, and did not drink wine and strong drink, which usually provoke lust. Married men are chosen for the priesthood, I do not deny it; because virgins are not as many as priests are needed. Just because in an army the strongest men should be chosen, will the weaker therefore not be taken, since not all can be strong? If an army consisted only of strength and not also of the number of soldiers, the weaker would be rejected. As it is, men of the second and third rank of strength are taken, so that the army may be filled up in crowd and number. "And how," you will say, "is it that often in priestly ordination a virgin is passed over and a married man taken?" Perhaps because he does not have the other works befitting virginity; or he is thought a virgin and is not; or his virginity is ill spoken of; or certainly his very virginity breeds pride in him, and while he applauds himself for bodily chastity alone, he neglects the other virtues. He does not care for the poor; he is too eager for money. It sometimes happens that a gloomy face, a knitted brow, a gait like a procession of floats, offends the people; and because they find nothing to blame in his life, they hate only his bearing and gait. Many are chosen not out of love for themselves but out of hatred of another. In many cases mere simplicity wins the vote, and others' prudence and shrewdness are opposed as if they were malice. Sometimes the judgment of the people and the crowd errs; and in approving priests each favors his own manners, so that he looks not so much for a good candidate as for one like himself. It sometimes happens that married men, who are the greater part of the people, applaud married men as if applauding themselves, and think themselves not inferior to virgins in this, if they prefer a married man to a virgin. I will say something which I shall perhaps say to the offense of many; but the good will not be angry with me, because the consciousness of sin will not prick them. Sometimes this happens also through the fault of the bishops, who choose for the clergy not the better men but the shrewder, and think the simpler and innocent unfit; or bestow the offices as if of an earthly army on relatives and kinsfolk, or obey the bidding of the rich. And what is worse than these, they give the rank of cleric to those by whose services they have been won over. Otherwise, if according to the Apostle's sentence there will be no bishops but married men, the Apostle himself ought not to have been a bishop, who said, "I wish all to be as I am." And John will be thought unworthy of this rank, and all virgins and the continent, with whom, as with most beautiful gems, the necklace of the Church is adorned. Bishop, presbyter, and deacon are not names of merits but of offices. Nor is it said, "If anyone desires the office of bishop, he desires a good rank," but "he desires a good work," because one set in the higher order can, if he will, have occasion to exercise the virtues.

"A bishop, then, must be irreproachable," so that he is enslaved to no vice; "the husband of one wife," who has had one wife, not who has one; "sober," or, as is better said in the Greek, "vigilant," that is, nēphaleon; "chaste," for that is what sōphrona means; "orderly," both in chastity and in conduct; "hospitable," so that he imitates Abraham and with strangers, or rather in strangers, receives Christ; "a teacher," for it profits nothing to enjoy the consciousness of virtues unless he can also instruct the people entrusted to him, so as to be able to exhort in doctrine and refute those who contradict; "not given to wine," because he who is always in the Holy of Holies and offers sacrifices will not drink wine and strong drink, for in wine is debauchery. Let a bishop so drink that it is not known whether he has drunk. "Not a striker," that is, one who does not strike the consciences of individuals; for the apostolic word is not describing a boxer, but instructing a bishop what he must not do. Now on the other side it teaches what he should do: "but gentle, not quarrelsome, not covetous, ruling his own house well, having children subject with all chastity." See how great a chastity is required in a bishop: if his children are unchaste, he himself cannot be a bishop, and he offends God by the same fault by which Eli the high priest offended him, who did indeed rebuke his sons, but because he did not cast out the offenders, fell backward and died before the lamp of God went out. "Likewise the women must be chaste," and the rest. In every rank and sex chastity holds the first place. You see, then, that a bishop, presbyter, and deacon are not blessed because they are bishops or presbyters or deacons, but if they have the virtues of their names and offices. Otherwise, if a deacon is holier than his bishop, he will not be worse in Christ's sight because he is lower in rank. Or will Stephen the deacon, who was the first to be crowned with martyrdom, be less in the kingdom of heaven than many bishops, and than Timothy and Titus, whom I do not dare to put below him, nor yet above? As in the legions and the army there are generals, tribunes, centurions, skirmishers and light-armed troops, the common soldier and the companies, but when battle is joined the names of rank count for nothing and courage alone is sought; so in this field and battle in which we fight against demons, not names but deeds are sought; and under the true commander, Christ, more glorious is not the more noble but the braver.