Letters 22.7–22.24

O how often, when I was living in the desert, in that vast solitude which, burnt by the heat of the sun, offers a dreadful dwelling to monks, did I think I was among the pleasures of Rome! I sat alone, because I was filled with bitterness. My limbs were rough in unsightly sackcloth; my filthy skin had taken on the color of an Ethiopian's flesh. Every day tears, every day groans; and if ever sleep overcame me against my resistance, I bruised my bones, which scarcely held together, on the bare ground. Of food and drink I say nothing, since even the sick use cold water there, and to have taken anything cooked is luxury. I, then, who for fear of hell had condemned myself to such a prison, with only scorpions and wild beasts for company, often found myself among dancing girls. My face was pale with fasting, and my mind burned with desires in a cold body; in a man already dead in the flesh, only the fires of lust boiled. So, destitute of all help, I lay at Jesus' feet, watered them with tears, wiped them with my hair, and subdued my rebellious flesh with weeks of fasting. I do not blush at my unhappiness; rather, I lament that I am not what I was. I remember that, crying out, I often joined day to night, and did not stop beating my breast until calm returned at the Lord's rebuke. I even feared my own little cell, as if it knew my thoughts, and, angry and stern with myself, I went alone into the desert. Wherever I saw a hollow valley, a rugged mountain, a steep cliff, there was my place of prayer, there the prison-house of my most wretched flesh; and, as the Lord himself is my witness, after many tears, after my eyes had been fixed on heaven, I sometimes seemed to myself to be among the hosts of angels, and, glad and rejoicing, I sang: "We run after you in the fragrance of your ointments."

But if those endure this who, with bodies wasted, are attacked only by thoughts, what does a girl suffer who enjoys luxuries? Surely that word of the apostle: "Living, she is dead." So if there can be any counsel in me, if one who has experienced it is believed, this I advise first, this I adjure, that the bride of Christ flee wine as poison. These are the first weapons of the demons against youth. Greed does not shake us so, pride does not puff us up so, ambition does not delight us so. We easily do without other vices; this enemy is shut up within. Wherever we go, we carry the enemy with us. Wine and youth are a double fire of pleasure. Why do we add oil to the flame? Why do we supply fuel for fire to a burning body? Paul says to Timothy: "No longer drink water, but use a little wine for your stomach and your frequent illnesses." See for what reasons the drinking of wine is allowed: even pain of the stomach and frequent illness scarcely earn it. And lest we should perhaps flatter ourselves with our sicknesses, he commanded that a little be taken, by the advice of a physician rather than of an apostle (although the apostle too is a spiritual physician), and so that Timothy, overcome by weakness, might still be able to travel about preaching the gospel. Otherwise he remembered that he had also said, "wine, in which is dissipation", and, "It is good not to drink wine and not to eat meat." Noah drank wine and was made drunk in an age still rude; and he was then the first to plant a vineyard; perhaps he did not know that wine makes one drunk. And so that you may understand the mystery of Scripture in all things (for the word of God is a pearl and can be pierced from every side), after drunkenness came the uncovering of the thighs: lust joined to dissipation. First the belly, and at once the rest; for "the people ate and drank, and rose up to play." Lot, the friend of God, saved on the mountain and found alone righteous out of so many thousands of people, is made drunk by his daughters; and although they thought the human race had died out and did this more from desire for children than from lust, yet they knew that a righteous man would not do this unless drunk. In the end he did not know what he had done; and (although will was not in the crime, error is in the fault) from this were born the Moabites and Ammonites, enemies of Israel, who do not enter the assembly of God to the fourteenth generation and for ever.

Elijah, when he fled from Jezebel and lay weary under an oak, is roused by an angel who comes to him, and is told: "Rise and eat." "And he looked, and behold, at his head a loaf of olyra and a jar of water." Surely God could have sent him spiced wine and food made with oil and meats pounded and changed? Elisha invites the sons of the prophets to a meal, and, feeding them on wild herbs, hears the cry of the diners in unison: "Death in the pot, man of God!" He was not angry with the cooks (for he was not used to a more luxurious table), but, throwing meal on it, he sweetened the bitterness by the same power of the Spirit by which Moses had changed Marah. Hear, too, with what fare he ordered those who had come to seize him to be refreshed, when, blinded in eyes and mind alike, he had led them unaware into Samaria: "Set bread and water before them; let them eat and drink and be sent back to their master." A richer table might also have been brought to Daniel from the king's dishes; but Habakkuk carries the reapers' meal, a rustic one, I think. And therefore he was called "a man of desires", because he did not eat the bread of desire and did not drink the wine of lust.

Countless passages are scattered through the divine Scriptures that condemn gluttony and commend simple food; but since it is not my purpose now to discuss fasting, and to go through everything belongs to a work and a volume of its own, let these few out of many be enough. Otherwise, following this example, you can gather for yourself how the first man, obeying his belly rather than God, was cast out of paradise into this valley of tears; how Satan tempted the Lord himself with hunger in the desert; how the apostle cries out, "Food for the belly and the belly for food, but God will destroy both it and them," and of the self-indulgent, "whose god is their belly." For everyone worships what he loves. From this we must carefully see to it that hunger may bring back those whom fullness drove out of paradise.

But if you wish to answer that, born of a noble family, always among luxuries, always among feather beds, you cannot abstain from wine and richer foods or live more strictly by these rules, I shall answer: then live by your own law, since you cannot live by God's. Not that God, the Creator and Lord of the universe, takes delight in the rumbling of our intestines, the emptiness of our belly, and the burning of our lungs, but because chastity cannot otherwise be safe. Hear what Job, dear to God and by God's own testimony blameless and simple, suspects about the devil: "His strength is in his loins, and his power in his navel." The genital organs of man and woman have been named decently under changed names. Hence it is promised that from the loins of David one would sit upon his throne; and the seventy-five souls who entered Egypt came out of Jacob's thigh; and after the breadth of his thigh withered when God wrestled with him, he ceased from begetting children; and whoever is to keep the Passover is commanded to do it with loins girded and mortified; and God says to Job, "Gird your loins like a man"; and John is girded with a leather belt; and the apostles are commanded to have their loins girded and the lamps of the gospel in their hands. And to Jerusalem, which is found spattered with blood in the field of error, it is said in Ezekiel: "Your navel was not cut." So all the devil's strength against men is in the loins, all his force against women in the navel.

Do you want to know that it is as I say? Take examples. Samson, stronger than a lion, harder than rock, who alone and unarmed pursued a thousand armed men, grows soft in Delilah's embraces. David, chosen after the Lord's own heart, who had often sung of the coming Christ with holy lips, after he was captivated by Bathsheba's nakedness as he walked on the roof of his house, added murder to adultery. Notice briefly here too that no glance is safe, even at home. Therefore, repenting, he says to God: "Against you only have I sinned and done evil in your sight"; for as king he feared no one else. Solomon, through whom Wisdom herself sang, who discoursed from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that comes out of the wall, departed from the Lord because he was a lover of women. And lest anyone should trust even in kinship of blood, Amnon the brother burned with unlawful fire for his sister Tamar.

It pains me to say how many virgins fall every day, how many mother church loses from her bosom, over how many stars the proud enemy sets his throne, how many rocks the snake hollows out to live in their holes. You may see many women, widows before they are brides, trying to cover their unhappy conscience only with a lying garment; unless a swelling womb or the wailing of infants betrays them, they walk with head erect and tripping feet. Others drink sterility beforehand and commit murder on a human being not yet conceived. Some, when they feel that they have conceived in sin, plan poisons for abortion, and often, dying themselves as well, are brought down to hell guilty of three crimes: murderers of themselves, adulteresses against Christ, and killers of their unborn child. These are the ones who usually say: "To the pure all things are pure. My conscience is enough for me. God desires a clean heart. Why should I abstain from foods that God created to be used?" And if ever they want to appear witty and merry and have drenched themselves with wine, joining sacrilege to drunkenness they say: "Far be it from me to abstain from the blood of Christ." And any woman they see sad and pale they call a wretch, a nun, and a Manichaean, and consistently so; for to such a way of life fasting is heresy. These are the ones who walk conspicuously in public and with stolen glances draw a crowd of young men after them, who always hear from the prophet: "You have the face of a prostitute; you have become shameless." Let there only be a thin purple stripe in their dress, the head bound loosely so that the hair falls down, a cheaper slipper, a veil fluttering from the shoulders, tight sleeves clinging to the arms, and a mincing walk with loose knees: this is all their virginity. Let women of this kind have their admirers and perish more profitably under the name of virgin; we are glad not to please such.

I am ashamed to say it (what wickedness!); it is sad but true: from where did the plague of the agapetae enter the churches? From where comes this other name for wives without marriage? Or rather, from where this new kind of concubine? I will say more: from where come prostitutes of one man? They are kept in the same house, one bedroom, often one bed, and they call us suspicious if we think anything of it. A brother deserts his virgin sister; a virgin scorns her celibate brother; and while they pretend to be in the same way of life, they seek the spiritual comfort of strangers, so as to have carnal intercourse at home. God rebukes such people in the Proverbs of Solomon, saying: "Will a man bind fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burned? Or will he walk on coals of fire and his feet not be scorched?"

Having hissed off the stage and driven away those who do not wish to be virgins but only to seem so, I now direct my whole speech to you, who, as you have begun to be the first noble virgin of the city of Rome, must work all the harder not to lose both present and future goods. You have indeed learned the troubles of marriage and the uncertainties of wedlock from an example at home, when your sister Blesilla, older in age but less advanced in resolve, was widowed in the seventh month after taking a husband. O unhappy human condition, ignorant of the future! She lost both the crown of virginity and the pleasure of marriage. And although she holds the second rank of chastity, yet what crosses do you think she endures every moment, seeing daily in her sister what she herself has lost, and, while it is harder for her to do without a pleasure she has experienced, receiving a lesser reward for her continence? Yet let her too be secure, let her rejoice: the hundredfold and the sixtyfold fruit come from one seed of chastity.

I do not want you to keep company with married ladies; I do not want you to go to the houses of the nobility; I do not want you to see often what you despised when you chose to be a virgin. If silly women pride themselves on husbands who are judges or hold some high office, if the crowd of callers rushes ambitiously to the emperor's wife, why should you insult your husband? Why do you, the bride of God, hurry to the wife of a man? Learn in this respect a holy pride; know that you are better than they. Nor do I want you to avoid only the company of those who are puffed up by their husbands' honors, whom troops of eunuchs surround, and in whose dresses metals beaten into thread are woven; but flee also those whom necessity has made widows: not that they ought to have wished for their husbands' death, but that they ought gladly to have seized the opportunity for chastity that was given them. As it is, only their dress is changed; their former ambition is not. A troop of half-men goes before the cages of their litters, and with red cheeks their well-fed skin is stretched tight, so that you would think they had not lost husbands but were looking for them. The house is full of flatterers, full of guests. The clergy themselves, who ought to inspire both instruction and awe, kiss the heads of their patronesses, and, with hand outstretched, so that you would think, if you did not know, that they wished to bless them, they receive a fee for their greeting. Meanwhile the women, seeing that the priests need their patronage, are lifted up in pride, and because, having experienced the rule of husbands, they prefer the freedom of widowhood, they are called chaste and nuns, and after a doubtful supper they dream of the apostles.

Let your companions be women whom you see thin with fasting, pale of face, proved by age and by life, who sing daily in their hearts, "Where do you feed your flock? Where do you rest at noon?", who say from the heart, "I desire to depart and be with Christ." Be subject to your parents; imitate your Bridegroom. Go out in public rarely; seek the martyrs in your own room. You will never lack a reason to go out if you are always going to go out whenever it is necessary (and whenever it is not). Let your food be moderate and your stomach never full. For there are very many women who, though sober as to wine, are drunk with an abundance of food. When you rise at night to pray, let it be emptiness, not indigestion, that makes you belch. Read often, and learn as much as possible. Let sleep creep over you as you hold the book, and let the sacred page catch your drooping face. Let your fasts be daily, and your refreshment such as avoids satiety. It does no good to carry an empty stomach for two or three days if the fast is then overwhelmed and made up for by a surfeit. At once the mind, filled up, grows dull, and the watered ground sprouts the thorns of lust. If ever you feel the outer man sighing for the flower of youth, and, after you have eaten and lie down on your bed, the sweet procession of desires shakes you, seize the shield of faith, by which the fiery arrows of the devil are quenched. "All are adulterers; their hearts are like an oven." But you, following the footsteps of Christ and intent on his words, say: "Was not our heart burning on the way, when Jesus opened the Scriptures to us?" and: "Your word is fiery, and your servant has loved it." It is hard for the human soul not to love, and our mind must be drawn into some affection or other. Love of the flesh is overcome by love of the spirit; desire is quenched by desire; whatever is taken from the one grows in the other. Rather, keep repeating: "On my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loved." "Put to death," says the apostle, "your members that are on earth." Hence he himself confidently said: "I live, yet no longer I, but Christ lives in me." He who has put his members to death and walks in the image is not afraid to say: "I have become like a wineskin in the frost; for whatever moisture was in me has been boiled away"; and: "My knees are weak through fasting"; and: "I forgot to eat my bread; at the sound of my groaning my bone has cleaved to my flesh."

Be a cicada of the nights. Wash your bed every night; water your couch with tears. Keep watch and be like a sparrow alone. Sing with the spirit, sing also with the mind: "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits, who is merciful to all your iniquities, who heals all your infirmities, and redeems your life from corruption." Which of us can say from the heart: "For I have eaten ashes like bread and mingled my drink with weeping"? Should I not weep, should I not groan, when the serpent again invites me to forbidden food, when he wants to clothe me, cast out of the paradise of virginity, with the tunics of skin which Elijah, returning to paradise, threw to the earth? What have I to do with pleasure, which soon perishes? What with this sweet and deadly song of the sirens? I do not want to be subject to that sentence passed on condemned man: "In pains and anxieties you will bear children, woman" (that law is not mine) "and your turning will be to your husband." Let her turning be to her husband who does not have Christ as her husband; and finally, "you will die the death": that is the end of marriage. My way of life is without sex. Let marriage have its time and its title; for me virginity is consecrated in Mary and in Christ.

Someone will say: "And do you dare to disparage marriage, which was blessed by the Lord?" It is not disparaging marriage when virginity is preferred to it. No one compares an evil with a good. Let married women too glory, since they come second after virgins. "Increase," he says, "and multiply and fill the earth." Let him increase and multiply who is going to fill the earth; your company is in heaven. "Increase and multiply": this command is fulfilled after paradise and nakedness and the fig leaves that signal the itch of marriage. Let him marry and be given in marriage who eats his bread in the sweat of his brow, for whom the earth brings forth thorns and thistles, whose crop is choked with briars; my seed is fertile with a hundredfold yield. "Not all receive the word of God, but those to whom it is given." Let necessity make one man a eunuch, my will make me one. "A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones." After the children of Abraham were raised up from the hardness of the Gentiles, holy stones began to roll upon the earth. For they pass through the whirlwinds of this world and roll in the chariot of God with the speed of wheels. Let those stitch tunics who have lost the seamless tunic woven from above, who delight in the wailing of infants, which laments at the very beginning of life that they were born. Eve was a virgin in paradise; after the tunics of skin came the beginning of marriage. Your country is paradise. Keep what you were born, and say: "Return, my soul, to your rest." And that you may know that virginity belongs to nature and marriage came after the fault: virgin flesh is born of marriage, restoring in the fruit what it had lost in the root. "A rod will come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower will rise from the root." The rod is the mother of the Lord, simple, pure, genuine, with no shoot from outside clinging to it, and fruitful in oneness after the likeness of God. The flower of the rod is Christ, who says: "I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys." In another place too he is proclaimed as the stone cut out of the mountain without hands, the prophecy signifying that a virgin would be born of a virgin. For "hands" are taken for the act of marriage, as there: "His left hand is under my head, and his right hand will embrace me." With the intent of this meaning agrees also the fact that the animals brought into the ark by Noah in pairs are unclean (an odd number is clean); that Moses and Joshua son of Nun are commanded to walk on holy ground with bare feet; that the disciples are sent to preach the gospel without the burden of shoes and the bonds of leather; that the soldiers, when Jesus' garments were divided by lot, had no boots to take. For the Lord could not have what he had forbidden to his servants.

I praise marriage, I praise wedlock, but because it produces virgins for me: I gather roses from thorns, gold from the earth, the pearl from the shell. "Will the one who plows plow all day?" Will he not also rejoice in the fruit of his labor? Marriage is honored the more when what is born of it is loved the more. Why, mother, do you begrudge your daughter? She was nourished with your milk, brought forth from your womb, grew up in your bosom; you guarded her with devoted affection. Are you indignant that she did not want to be the wife of a soldier, but of the King? She has done you a great kindness: you have begun to be the mother-in-law of God. "Concerning virgins," says the apostle, "I have no command of the Lord." Why? Because his own virginity, too, was not a matter of command but of his own will. For those are not to be listened to who pretend that he had a wife, since, discussing continence and urging perpetual chastity, he added: "I wish that all were as I myself am"; and further on: "I say to the unmarried and to widows: it is good for them if they remain so, even as I"; and in another place: "Have we not the right to take wives about with us, as the other apostles?" Why, then, does he have no command of the Lord concerning virginity? Because what is offered without being compelled deserves a greater reward; because, if virginity had been commanded, marriage would have seemed abolished; and it would have been very harsh to force nature and to extort from human beings the life of angels, and in a way to condemn what had been created.

In the old law there was a different happiness: "Blessed is he who has seed in Zion and a household in Jerusalem"; and "Cursed is the barren woman who did not bear"; and "Your children like olive shoots around your table"; and the promise of riches; and "There will be no one feeble among your tribes." Now it is said: "Do not think yourself a dry tree; you have an everlasting place in heaven instead of sons and daughters." Now the poor are blessed, and Lazarus is preferred to the rich man in purple; now he who is weak is stronger. The world was empty, and, to say nothing of the types, the only blessing was that of children. For this reason Abraham, already old, is joined to Keturah, and Jacob is bought with mandrakes, and beautiful Rachel, a figure of the church, complains of her closed womb. But gradually, as the crop grew, the reaper was sent in. Elijah was a virgin, Elisha a virgin, many of the sons of the prophets virgins. To Jeremiah it is said: "And you shall not take a wife." He who was sanctified in the womb is forbidden to take a wife as the captivity draws near. In other words the apostle says the same: "I think, then, that this is good because of the present necessity, that it is good for a man to be so." What is this necessity that takes away the joys of marriage? "The time is short; it remains that those who have wives be as though they had none." Nebuchadnezzar is near; the lion has come up from his lair. What use to me are marriages that will serve a most proud king? What use little children, whom the prophet laments, saying: "The tongue of the nursing child cleaved to its throat in thirst; the little ones asked for bread, and there was no one to break it for them"? So, as we said, this good of continence was found only among men, and Eve continually bore children in pain. But after a virgin conceived in the womb and bore us a child, "whose government is upon his shoulder, mighty God, Father of the age to come," the curse was loosed. Death through Eve, life through Mary. And therefore the gift of virginity has flowed more richly to women, because it began from a woman. As soon as the Son of God entered upon the earth, he established a new household for himself, so that he who was adored by angels in heaven might have angels on earth too. Then the continent Judith cut off the head of Holofernes; then Haman, whose name is interpreted "iniquity", was burned in his own fire; then James and John, leaving father, net, and boat, followed the Savior, leaving behind alike the affection of blood, the bonds of the world, and the care of the household; then first it was heard: "Whoever wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." For no soldier goes to battle with his wife. A disciple who wishes to go to his father's burial is not permitted. "Foxes have holes and the birds of the sky nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head": so do not be sad if you live in narrow quarters. "He who is without a wife is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please God; but he who is with a wife is anxious about the things of this world, how to please his wife. The married woman and the virgin are divided: she who is not married thinks about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy in body and spirit; but she who is married thinks about the things of the world, how to please her husband."

How many troubles marriage has and by how many anxieties it is bound, I think I have briefly expressed in the book I published against Helvidius on the perpetual virginity of blessed Mary. To repeat the same things now would take very long, and anyone who wishes can draw from that little spring. But lest I seem to have left it out entirely, I will now say this: since the apostle commands us to pray without ceasing, and one who pays the debt in marriage cannot pray, either we pray always and are virgins, or we stop praying in order to serve marriage. "And if a virgin marries," he says, "she does not sin; yet such will have trouble in the flesh." At the beginning of this little book I said beforehand that I would say nothing, or only a little, about the difficulties of marriage, and I give the same warning now. But if you wish to know from how many troubles a virgin is free and by how many a wife is bound, read Tertullian's To a Philosopher Friend and his other little books on virginity, and blessed Cyprian's excellent volume, and what Pope Damasus composed on this subject in verse and prose, and the little works our Ambrose recently wrote to his sister. In these he has poured himself out with such eloquence that he has sought out, set in order, and expressed whatever belongs to the praise of virgins.

We walk by a different path: we do not extol virginity but guard it. Nor is it enough to know what is good unless what has been chosen is guarded more attentively; for the one is a matter of judgment, the other of labor, and the one is shared with many, the other with few. "He who perseveres to the end," he says, "will be saved"; and: "Many are called, but few are chosen." So I adjure you before God and Christ Jesus and his chosen angels not to bring out easily into public the vessels of the temple, which only priests are allowed to see, lest any profane person look into God's sanctuary. Uzzah, touching the ark, which was not permitted, was struck down by sudden death. For no gold or silver vessel was so dear to God as the temple of a virgin's body. The shadow went before; now is the truth. You, indeed, speak simply and in your kindness do not despise even strangers; but unchaste eyes see otherwise. They do not know how to consider the beauty of souls, only of bodies. Hezekiah shows God's treasure to the Assyrians, but the Assyrians saw what they would covet. Finally, when Judea was torn by frequent wars, the vessels of the Lord were the first to be seized and carried off, and amid banquets and crowds of concubines (for the prize of the vices is to defile what is honorable) Belshazzar drinks from the bowls.

"Do not incline your ear to evil words." People often test the mind's judgment by saying something improper. If you, a virgin, listen gladly to what is said, if you relax at every joke, they praise whatever you say and deny whatever you deny. They call you witty and holy and one in whom there is no guile: "See," they say, "a true handmaid of Christ, see, all simplicity; not like that rough, ugly, rustic, frightful woman, who perhaps could not find a husband for that very reason." We are led by a natural evil: we readily favor our flatterers, and although we answer that we are unworthy and a warm blush spreads over our face, yet inwardly the soul rejoices at its own praise. The bride of Christ is the ark of the covenant, gilded outside and inside, the guardian of the law of the Lord. As in the ark there was nothing but the tablets of the covenant, so in you let there be no thought from outside. On this mercy seat, as on the cherubim, the Lord wishes to sit. He sends his disciples to loose you from worldly cares, as on the foal of an ass, so that, leaving the straw and bricks of Egypt, you may follow Moses in the desert and enter the land of promise. Let no one hinder you, not mother, not sister, kinswoman, or brother: the Lord has need of you. And if they wish to hinder you, let them fear the plagues of Pharaoh, who, unwilling to let God's people go to worship him, suffered what is written. Jesus entered the temple and cast out everything that did not belong to the temple. For God is jealous and does not want his Father's house to become a den of robbers. Otherwise, where money is counted, where there are cages of doves and simplicity is killed, where concern for worldly business seethes in a virgin's heart, at once the veil of the temple is torn, the Bridegroom rises in anger and says: "Your house will be left to you desolate." Read the gospel and see how Mary, sitting at the Lord's feet, is preferred to the zeal of Martha (and Martha was certainly preparing a meal for the Lord and his disciples in the diligent service of hospitality): "Martha, Martha," he says, "you are anxious and troubled about many things; but few things are needed, or one. Mary has chosen the good part, which will not be taken from her." Be Mary too; put teaching before food. Let your sisters run about and seek how to receive Christ as a guest; you, having once for all thrown off the burden of the world, sit at the Lord's feet and say: "I have found him whom my soul sought; I will hold him and will not let him go." And let him answer: "My dove, my perfect one, is one; she is the only one of her mother, the chosen one of her who bore her," that is, of the heavenly Jerusalem.