Poems 24.923–25.225

You, then, great care of my heart, prepare yourselves light for Christ, and now, freed from choking packs, loose your feet from their bonds; that you may be clothed with abundant light, be naked to the world, so that when the prince of this world comes he may find nothing of his own in you. And may the clouds, bearers of the godly, easily lift you and carry you in their slender bosom, free from the mass of pressing things and pure of the stain of sins, and may God, the bridegroom King, flood you with his brightness as you are carried to meet him, so that the bright glory of eternal life may swallow up what is mortal in you, and, restored to the image above, conformed to the Master's beauty, you may live an everlasting age, unending like angels, with God the King.

Harmonious souls are joined in chaste love, a virgin youth of Christ, a virgin maiden of God. Christ God, lead these matching doves to your reins, and govern their necks, subjected to your light yoke. For your yoke, Christ, is light, which a ready will takes up and love carries with easy obedience. To the unwilling the godly burden of chaste law is heavy; to the godly it is a sweet burden to conquer the work of the flesh. Away from these bridal chambers be the wantonness of the vain crowd, Juno, Cupid, Venus, names of luxury. The holy children of a priest are joined in a venerable covenant; let peace, modesty and piety come together. For the love of piety is at the same time the honour of love, and peace in harmony with God is the bond of marriage. God hallowed the work of this covenant with his own mouth, and established a human pair with his divine hand. And to mark love the more as undivided, he made two remain from one flesh. For Adam, asleep, was deprived of a rib taken from him, and soon took a partner made from his own bone, nor did he feel the loss of his side, the flesh filled in its place, and he recognized that he had been doubled; and seeing another from himself in a companion body, he soon became his own prophet with a new mouth: “This,” he says, “is flesh from my flesh; this bone I know is from my bones; this is the rib of my side.” Now therefore, since under an ancient image a holy covenant is made between the children of Aaron, let sober joys be stirred with tranquil vows, let Christ sound everywhere in the voice of the godly people. Let no crowd make insolent riot through decorated streets;

let no one cover the ground with leaves, the thresholds with boughs, nor let there be a fanatic procession through the Christ-worshipping city; I do not want profane ostentation to pollute the godly. Let no breeze smell of foreign fumes; let everything breathe the cleanness of modesty. The saints have one ointment, which, poured out in the name of Christ, breathes God with a chaste fragrance. Let no dishes be adorned with superfluous gifts; uprightness is adorned with character, not with wealth. Let the holy daughter-in-law of a priest and wife of a consecrated youth now receive the dowry of light. Let her shudder at garments embroidered with gold or purple; her golden garment is the pure grace of God. Let her also reject necklaces picked out with various gems, so that she herself may be a noble gem for God the Lord. Let not the weight of hateful avarice press the neck dedicated to bear the yoke of Christ the Lord. Rather let her cultivate her character, to please by inner adornment, adorned with saving dowries. Let her not desire costly stones nor the fleeces of the Seres, to squander her revenues in vain; let her be adorned in soul with chaste virtues, so as to be not costly to her husband, but precious. For where the glory of bodily pomp is cared for, the human being grows cheap, depreciated by vice, and the mind, wrongly blinded by the lust of a depraved wish, grows filthy with the shining coverings of the body, nor does the shameless one feel what a disgraceful ornament he wears, so that he who pleases himself by his garment is lighter than his garment. Far be it that she should seem a daughter of an idol's temple, she who has been made the daughter of an apostolic family's house, her skin falsely painted with cosmetics, her eyes tinted with black powder, or her hair with yellow colour.

Scorning the pure beauty of nature with proud crime, she condemns in herself the divine work in her. In vain will this woman boast that she is chaste who adorns herself with so many varied adulterations. But you, young people of Christ, flee all things whose price lies in loss, whose use is in ruin. Believe the divine words, that from these adornments material for punishment arises for the greedy; Isaiah threatens that they will be girded with stiff rope who now wear silks mixed with purple, who drag tunics red with purple and rustling with gold with flowing folds to an ankle-length hem; girded with ropes, wearing sackcloth without end, they will grind great stones in the prison of the mill. And those who heap up their heads with nourished hair will wear shameful baldness on a bare head. Flee being adorned with such dowries, O new bride of a holy man; these things please empty minds. Do not wish to be recognized by noses, wandering with scented clothes and hair, wherever you walk, nor to sit with your head built up like a tower with a heap and twisting of braided hair, lest, having wrongly provoked many by your splendour, you be the wicked source of pestilent enticement. Nor should you, foul in mind, desire to please even your own husband by the increase of your body's charms. You too, holy youth devoted to the sacred books, spurn, as one who loves, the care of bodily beauty. For Christ has compensated you generously, adorning your beautiful soul with everlasting riches, and has adorned you both together with chaste dowries: hope, piety, faith, peace, modesty.

The word of God is silver, and the Holy Spirit gold, and good works are bright jewels for minds. If plain dress offends noble minds, and proud hearts delight in being courted by costliness, let the examples of the saints remove that shame, and the chaste simplicity of the first humans. Look at the ancient parents in the seat of paradise, to whom the whole world was one field. Yet sheepskins were their coverings; are we now ashamed to wear garments woven of spun wool? When beautiful Rebecca came as a holy bride to Isaac, she was covered simply with a veil of modesty. We do not read that she came adorned with various stones, but furnished with a cloak drawn over her, with whose covering she modestly veiled her face, a virgin fearful of the face of her bridegroom as he met her. Or will the dancing girl Herodias please more, who gained the Baptist's death as the price of her feet? Impious, she so avenged the anger of her mother's lust that she received a head as the price of luxury, that head, surely, from which the voice, the herald, had cried to the peoples that the Lamb of God was near. Whence did the impious dancer, a daughter worthy of her father, earn so great a crime, if not from her enticing dress? Yet by this crime she overcame him and compelled him, unwilling, into the deed by the allurements of a pleasing body. For by the art of her nimble feet she led the guests, worthy of the unjust king's feast, into assent. For if a yellow gold leaf had not covered her light soles, so that she might play more shamelessly with painted heels, and if she had not drawn her flowing dress in a curled train, her forehead flashing with gems, her hair poured back:

she would not, entering the corrupted minds of the spectators, have prevailed so cunningly for the unspeakable deed. Herod himself too, proud in his royal garment, swelled, mad, with sacrilegious pride, and, lifted up by his attire, forgetting the honour due to God, died, stinking, of a wound flowing with worms, paying what his deserts deserved, so that he should die filthy with ulcers who had believed himself a god by the honour of his garment. But, granted that royal things befit hearts puffed up with mad pride, what have we to do with Pharaoh? The hollow glory of the world is at odds with our kingdoms, nor does godly light come together with opposing darkness. Let the cleric love a wife made beautiful by Christ's adorning, and love her as beautiful by the light of the heart, and let the reader learn from heavenly history that she was made by divine gift as a help to her husband; and in turn let the woman, to be equal to her holy husband, receive Christ in her spouse with humble mind, so that she may grow into a holy body woven in its joining, so that the husband may be her head, whose head is Christ. In such a marriage the slavery of Eve has ceased, and free Sarah was equal to her godly husband. By such a law Jesus stands by his own who marry as groomsman, and changes water into the nectar of wine. It befits Mary, the mother of the Lord, to be present with these spouses, she who bore God with her virginity unharmed. For God himself built for himself a pleasing temple in the consecrated virgin by a secret rain, descending with silent gliding, as a shower from a high cloud falls with silent dew on a fleece. For no one was ever witness to this secret, by which God took up man from a virgin mother.

O new devices of the Lord for human salvation! A woman becomes pregnant in her womb without intercourse. A bride was not subjected to a husband as her spouse, and a mother by giving birth, she was not a woman by intercourse. She was a spouse by covenant, but she was not a wife in body; undefiled by a man, she was mother to a boy. A great sacrament, by which the church marries Christ and is at once the bride and the sister of her Lord. A bride as a spouse, she is a sister because she is not subjected. … Hence she remains a mother, conceiving peoples by the seed of the eternal Word and likewise bearing them. Hence she is sister and spouse, since without use of the body she is joined in mind to one whose husband is not man but God. By this mother the old man is born just as the infant; this offspring has no age and no sex. For this is the blessed generation of God, which is not of human seed but of the race above. Hence the teacher says that now there is neither female nor male in Christ, but the same body and one faith. For we are all one body, all members for Christ, for whom Christ is the head of the body. And since, having put on Christ, we now lay aside Adam, we at once tend toward the angelic likeness. Therefore this is the work for all born in baptism, that both sexes may attain the perfect man, and Christ, the common head, may stand as all in all, the King delivering his members into the kingdom to the Father. Marrying or being married, a frail stage, now passes away, when all are composed in an eternal body. So, remembering me, live always as an inviolable pair; let the venerable cross be your yoke.

As children of that mother who is bride and sister, take up hearts worthy of godly names, and, as brothers, run together to Christ the bridegroom, that you may be one flesh of the eternal body. Let the love bind you here with which the church embraces Christ, and with which in turn Christ cherishes her with love. Let the bishop, your father himself, bless you; let him himself lead the holy songs for the hymn-singing choirs. Lead, kindly Memor, your children to the Lord before the altars, and commend them, praying, with a sanctifying hand. But what fragrance glides to my nostrils, flowing from heaven? Whence does an unexpected light strike my eyes? Who is that man who approaches from afar with calm steps, whom abundant grace of Christ attends? Whom a blessed company surrounds with heavenly nurslings, recalling the image of the angelic host? I know the man whom divine fragrances accompany and on whose face a starry beauty shines. This is the man, this, rich with the many gifts of Christ the Lord, a man of heavenly light, Aemilius. Rise, Memor, revere your father, embrace your brother; both names are yours in one Aemilius. Memor is both the younger and the elder. Wondrous gift and work of the great God! He who is younger is the father; born later, he is the elder, because as bishop in his see he carries apostolic grey hairs in his breast. Memor is son and brother; he rejoices that there is present a common father for himself and his children. Justice and peace embrace one another in a twofold way, when Memor is joined with like-minded Aemilius. The fillet joins the bishops in divine honour; piety joins them as equals in human love.

Hence Memor, not forgetful of his duty, in right order hands over his dear children to the hands of Aemilius. He, yoking the heads of both under the peace of marriage, veils them with his right hand, and sanctifies them with prayer. Christ, hear the priests; Christ, assent to them as they pray, and to the godly vows of the holy suppliants. Imbue, Christ, those newly married by the holy bishop, and help their modest hearts through chaste hands, so that there may be in both the concord of virginity, or that both may be the seed of sacred virgins. This is the first grade of vows: that they bear limbs not knowing the flesh; but if they come together in body, may the offspring to come be a chaste priestly race, and may the whole house of Memor be a house of Aaron, and may this house of Memor be a house of anointed ones. Be mindful also of Paulinus and Therasia, and Christ will be mindful of Memor for ever.