On the Singleness of Clerics 15–28

And if even there someone worse than the devil is struck by the sight of women, our congregation is not blamed for anyone, since it is gathered for heavenly, not earthly, things. Let him see to it who is wicked there with lustful looks; he in no way harms another who has come forward not to a man but to Christ, for salvation. Indeed, I will shut out the objectors by their own objections, so that they yield not to my propositions but to theirs. If amid the sacred feasts the common assembly can be scandalized, where the tempter, the devil himself, trembles, who will promise himself to be steadfast there where the tempter boldly meets him? And if we are in danger there where God's precepts gather us, what do we do where God's commands separate us? And if we are troubled where we are protected by God's will, how much more where we have against us not only the devil but also the Lord? For with the most sacred commands divine protection is supplied to us, as Isaiah says: “He gave the Law as a help”; but without divine commands there can be no protection.

It is one thing to do what God commands and another to resist his will. His commands must be kept in such a way that, if he commands something that seems unjust by human standards, it is believed just and done; and if he commands something just, it is counted just and done; since what he commands cannot be without victory, he who is able, by justifying, to call injustice justice, and, by rejecting, to prove justice crooked injustice, whose will alone is true justice. For if everything we do, we do only to please the Lord, then surely only that will be just which God wills and commands and approves, whom we long to please. For since servants cannot know of themselves what pleases their masters unless they follow their masters' orders, and since men themselves cannot know the wills of men like themselves unless they receive what they are to observe, much more do mortals not know how to grasp the justice of the immortal God, unless he himself deigns to show the signs of his justice, as Solomon approves, saying: “For who among men can know the counsel of God? Or who can think what God wills? For the thoughts of mortals are timid, and our designs uncertain. For the body that is corrupted weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the mind that thinks of many things. We hardly estimate what is on earth, and we find with labor what is before us; but who will search out what is in heaven? And who knows your mind unless you give wisdom and send your Holy Spirit from on high? And so the paths of those on earth were corrected, and men learned what pleases you, and were healed by wisdom.” Those walking in darkness cannot show themselves light, unless the light offers itself of its own accord to those who do not see. So human blindness does not direct its way to God unless he himself shows the lamp of the Law. Hence David speaks thus: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my paths.” And again: “The commandment of the Lord is bright, enlightening the eyes.” This, then, is light-bearing, whatever has been made known by God; and this is worthy of God, which God himself declares acceptable to his will, so that he may exercise his lordship through all things. Otherwise neither should we be enrolled as servants, nor would he be held as Lord, if we were permitted to render service according to our own will, and chose exercises of righteousness by our own judgment, not God's. Such the apostle Paul makes vain, saying: “Being ignorant of God's righteousness and wishing to establish their own, they have not submitted to the righteousness of God.” Let these vain evasions and these empty, slanderous complaints now be taken out of the way. With God's help we do not fear to be united with women for spiritual acts, since we believe that by God's command we are working righteousness, from which we know that defenses are placed beneath us. But in private, dwellings must be kept separate as much as possible for clergy and virgins who practice continence, because what God judges wrong cannot be right. Cohabitation, even if no shameful practice is known in that very cohabitation, kindles; for it is impossible for integrity to reach victory when it strives to fight against God's commands. For as much as the Law supplies help to the obedient, so much does it incite, or rather it incites sin in, the disobedient, as the apostle says: “The power of sin is the Law.” He, then, who commanded us to triumph with women in his sacred rites himself commands us to beware of battles with women in private.

There are indeed other necessities which compel us to see women in private as well; but these very things the efficacy of divine precept and work commands: that we visit, that we offer consolations, that we wholesomely impart life-giving exhortations. Yet in these duties too no less care must be taken for our conduct, so that signs of purity may shine in our work. Let there be no lack of severity, which can restrain a woman under a cleric, so that she receives our consolation with trembling and so feels the affection of the visit that she reveres the cleric. And, not to wander too slowly through each point, everything we do can be honorable if signs of honor always shine in us, as the apostle Paul embraced all, saying: “Let all your things be done honorably.” And again: “As we have instructed you, walk honorably.” Whatever is done haphazardly does not turn out well, and what is done as holy is not holy unless what is holy is carried out holily, as Solomon asserts, saying: “For those who keep just things justly will be justified.” Sincerity itself, then, must be kept sincerely, and everything that belongs to the vow must also be sealed in act, lest vows commend one thing and acts suggest another. On every side the setting of the will must be proved, and on every side the course of each contest must be completed, lest something be lacking to the triumph if one does not fight more fully. Hence the apostle Paul introduces the lessons of contests: “And whoever competes in the games,” he says, “is not crowned unless he competes lawfully.” And again: “Do you not know that those who run in the stadium all run, but one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. And everyone who competes in the contest is self-controlled in all things; they to receive a perishable crown, but we an imperishable.” This, then, is the fullness of holiness and the perfect palm: that on every side one has nothing with him that he refuses, lest by keeping what he professes to hate he seem to love it.

But if someone says, “I hold my adversary captive, to insult him always,” let him see that the captive does not perhaps begin to prevail against him. A thief is never safely kept shut up with a treasure, nor is a lamb safe living in one cage with a wolf. He willed himself to be penetrated who brought his own enemy within his gates; and he put a sword into his own bowels who opened the place of his dwelling to his adversary's entry; and he who trusts himself to live with an occasion of stumbling says in vain, “I want to be at peace with the devil,” against the apostle who says: “Give no place to the devil.” By every means, then, the place where a treasure has been hidden must be fortified, lest through one hole the thief dig through the whole wall. For if, attacking from outside, he is barely driven off by the walls, how strong will he be if he has received a dwelling within the walls? And if those who shut him out are sometimes taken by him, how much more one who has willingly opened an entrance to him, since Solomon says: “If the righteous is scarcely saved, where will the sinner and the ungodly appear?” All chinks, then, not to say gates, must be closed, lest through one hole the whole camp be penetrated; and all defenses must be set in order, lest through a little that is unfortified the whole city fall, as Solomon repeats, saying: “He who despises small things will fall little by little.”

I am astonished, however, at the judgment of this perversity, that a woman rather than a man is chosen by clergy for a shared household. Is a woman more useful for a cleric's needs than a continent man or a boy is to a continent man? Or will that be a seemly usefulness which an unseemly companionship produces? And where will be what Solomon says: “Every animal loves its like”? And again: “Birds gather to their like.” But even if a woman were thought more useful, carnal advantages ought not to be put before the benefits of spiritual goods; and it was better to put up with any useless man for the sake of guarding one's reputation than to have a woman's good services with a most shameful reputation. Solomon compares this, saying: “Better is the wickedness of a man than a woman who does good.” The devil's favors, then, are always artful. Exercising the ingenuity of his cunning by them, he helps those devoted to holiness with deceitful conveniences in order to destroy them; and, supplying among the continent apparently necessary advantages by mutual assistance, he first drives a man and a woman together, so that after he has made them inseparable through mutual comforts, he may kill simple souls who give themselves to keeping vows of chastity. And withdrawing the arms of his attack, meanwhile, as a calm patron, he suggests proofs of holiness, until he has long nourished a hostile friendship between the two. He makes them affable toward each other and devoted in service; and, a hostile flatterer, removing all obstacles, he rejoices to lend efficacy to their conveniences, so that, commending them to each other with every necessity, he can show them hanging on each other in habitual comfort. He does not wish to hinder them in anything, lest he separate them spiritually as well as carnally. He makes them live unshaken, lest an untimely beginning disturb the compacts of their companionship once begun. He so invites, fosters, and raises them toward the perfection of holiness, while all look on, that they count as God's benefits the very hostile favors by which they are led to perish, not knowing that God never helps what he forbids. Flattering them, the devil so prepares a sense of security in holiness that they think they remain unmoved by lust more firmly when joined than when separated. Leading them with all calm, he disturbs them with no storms or waves, and, as in the middle of the sea, he induces the less cautious to slacken the sails and not look for the rudder, so that he may drown them, roused by a sudden tempest, as shipwrecked by an unexpected commotion. He first shows this gentleness so as to entice two ships to come together; and when he has joined them, he can dash and break them against each other with sudden whirlwinds. He uses these blandishments, withdrawing all darts, checking adversities, suggesting prosperity, and he hides the smoldering fire without any flames until, joining two torches, he kindles both at once; and he refrains so long from setting the weapons of his savagery that, like an expert hunter, he binds what he is going to kill in the cords of his snare. But when he has bound them with an unbreakable chain, like a gladiator trainer he at once compels two gladiators to arm against each other, and then, goading their limbs, immediately fits the swords, immediately kindles the madness, and thrusting both into wounding embraces kills them at once with one blow. So he unfolds what he seems at first to provide; so out of simple love he forges an unlawful love; so through holiness he brings in destruction; while he is content to yield, so he is able to seize more strongly; and while, submissive, he lets himself appear conquered, so he boasts of conquering more fully. The apostle Paul understands his tricks, saying: “For we are not ignorant of his devices.” Badly, then, are they at peace in this partnership who, while the devil makes peace, are led to wars; and they do not advance well in holiness, for whom advancement itself is suborned to their harm by the enemy's art; nor do they strive to climb the ladder of continence by a straight course, whom the adversary labors to draw up to the summit in order to hurl them from on high. But those who have kept to a slippery way must be dashed down by falling lapses, of which Solomon proclaims thus: “There is a way that seems right among men, but its end comes into the depth of the underworld.”

But they say: “If clergy are censured for this union, then many saints with us are to be censured too: whether Elijah, who stayed with a widow; or the apostles, who took women about with them as companions; or John, who took the Lord's mother at the Lord's own charge; or the Lord himself, to whom certain religious women supplied food from their means, whom Martha also served at table, who spoke alone, sitting at the well, with a foreign woman of Samaria, and whose feet, as he reclined, a woman washed with tears and wiped with her hair.” Cunning debaters and deceitful jurists, who, while they wish to transgress, overturn the very laws of disputes and lawsuits; and when they will not be restrained by the competent commands of the laws, they put forward, to mock the judges, unsuitable examples as if they were similar inferences of law. They are exposed through Solomon by the shrewdness of the Law itself: “A sinful man,” he says, “avoids correction and finds a comparison to suit his will.” Such people, then, must first be refuted not by argument but by rebuke, so that they are not instructed by interpreted arguments before they have lost what they found as a support for their defense; as Solomon teaches us against such men, saying: “Do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you become like him; but answer a fool against his folly, lest he seem wise to himself.”

Truly they are great men who compare themselves with the saints, and an outstanding way of life is ours, which seems equal to the prophets or apostles! For the occasion of our luxury we wish to imitate the saints perversely, and in their other acts we do not wish to follow the footsteps of the righteous. In some things we excuse ourselves as too weak to imitate the deeds of our forebears, and in others we declare ourselves equal to them; when Elijah himself, set in distress, confesses before God that he is unequal to his fathers: “Am I better,” he says, “than my fathers?” Elijah is compelled to cry this of his predecessors in his weakness; and we do not hesitate to make our virtue equal to Elijah, or to the prophets and apostles and the Lord? I see plainly that greed is so trampled among us as the apostles left all their own things. I see that gluttony and drunkenness are so absent from our banquets as the apostles, having nothing, were often forced to go hungry. I recognize that fasts, thirst, hunger, and nakedness for the sake of the urgency of teaching alone flourish everywhere among us, just as we read that they triumphed in the apostles. And it is proved that among us the same exercises of virtue are fervent at which all vices trembled before the apostles. We clearly practice the Lord's forty-day fast and the prayers and vigils by which he broke even the silences of the night in the deserts! Do we engage in similar contests against the struggles of vices, and act with such rigor, authority, vigils, sufferings, labor, need, affliction, and abstinence, by which sins are trampled, that no one suspects anything evil of us? It is through these that the apostle Paul boasts that his conscience has been made known to all: “In all things,” he says, “commending ourselves as ministers of God, in much endurance, in afflictions, in tribulations, in necessities, in distresses, in beatings, in imprisonments, in prisons, in riots, in invocations, in labors, in vigils, in fasts, in chastity, in knowledge, in patience, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in love unfeigned, in the word of truth, in the power of God, by the weapons of righteousness on the right and on the left.” For these imitations we are weak; but for taking women about with us we claim the possibility of matching their imitation. And even if someone boasted that he fulfilled all their deeds, no one's persuasion could incline me to believe that there are other apostles now, against the declaration of the apostle Paul: “Are all apostles? Are all prophets?” If Christ dared to compare himself with God, who said, “The Father is greater than I,” or if the apostles dared to make themselves equal to Christ, then let a like strength make us today, today, equal to the apostles! Wretched humanity, are you not afraid of being struck by lightning in this equality, you who do not hesitate to borrow, as if similar, examples for your sins from the Son of God or from the sons of thunder? So great is the elated boasting of pride as to wish to be enrolled as comparable even to the least in the church, when Paul warns and says: “each counting the other better than himself.” And below he added, saying: “Think this among yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.”

We must certainly think less of our own strength, and our weakness must not be compared with the strength of the saints, as the apostle Paul sets forth a lesson for us from himself, saying: “For we do not dare to compare or measure ourselves with some who commend themselves; but we, commending ourselves to ourselves in ourselves, do not boast beyond measure, but according to the measure of the glory which God has measured out to us.” But we consider what he said again: “I labored more than all of them.” Nothing better, nothing more fitting, is set before me with which to conquer, than that I myself should answer from the very one from whom I am answered. Certainly he labored more than all; and yet he trembled to imitate his colleagues in taking women about, lest he expose himself to an uncertain carnal temptation. He himself gave the reason thus: “I so run,” he says, “not as uncertainly; I so fight, not as one beating the air; but I afflict my body and bring it into subjection, lest perhaps, having preached to others, I myself should be found reprobate.” Compare yourself, then, with him, you who boast that you are an apostle, and learn from him what you should fear, who cries and says: “I beg you, be imitators of me.” He, then, who was not ignorant of how much some virtues differ from others, and had made known, by comparison with the gifts of the church, that the glory of the sun and of the moon is one thing, and that of the stars another, would not have confidence about taking women about. But we, on the contrary, flatter ourselves on our equality with the apostles, not looking closely at what the apostles and all the saints did by unconquered virtue; and we seek to break through a difficult way, when a plainer one is set before us through easy things, against Solomon, who says: “Do not trust yourself to a laborious way, lest you set a stumbling block for your soul.” Nor does anyone consider that one man walks safely on slippery ground and another who is unequal to it falls; one climbs mountains running over rocks, and another, if he strains himself, falls; it falls to one to bring ships happily through storms, and such good fortune cannot come to another. The apostle Paul decides this, saying: “Each has his own gift from God, one of this kind, another of that.”

But why do those who confront me with the example of the saints not wish to contemplate another example which they should fear? And why does he who strives to be equal to the apostles not rather set before himself, to frighten himself, the adulterous elders in Daniel? I do not put this forward in order to contradict, as it were, the imitators of the apostles, but to confound those who make themselves equal to the saints. Nor do I deny that we must all follow those whom we have received as teachers; but I contend against those who, wishing to distort the stories of good men to suit their own evils, think the Law supports them, like all who hasten to perish, so that under cover of the saints they want their disgraces hidden, and under imitation of the forebears they commit all sorts of contrary things. The apostle Paul exposes and publishes them, saying: “But what I do, I will also do, to cut off the occasion from those who want an occasion, so that in what they boast of they may be found such as we are. For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ.” They add this to heap up the heap of their perdition, that they defame the good whose example they use for evil; though it would be useful and wholesome enough for them to believe rather that they had not understood the meaning of some story than to think anything dishonorable in the Law. The apostle Paul confounds and rebukes them, saying: “understanding neither what they say nor what they affirm.” And again: “If anyone thinks he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know.” The prejudices of the wanton, then, are void, whom the wandering inventions of their perversity lead astray, and who seek stories suited to their minds to expound, borrowing the patronage of the Law for their evildoing. But to those who do well, all things that are written are good, for they receive well what is well said, as the apostle Paul promises: “We know,” he says, “that the Law is good, if one uses it lawfully.”

We have prevailed by confounding the objectors. Now we turn to instructing besides those same people whom we have conquered, so that we neither allow the saints to remain under accusation nor are counted ignorant in giving an account; so that, publicly defeated, they may repent; or, if they will not, we have discharged what belongs to our diligence, so that, as we have satisfied the saying of Solomon above, so we may satisfy also the apostle Paul, who proclaims: “The servant of the Lord must not quarrel, but be gentle to all, apt to teach, patient, correcting with all modesty those who resist, if perhaps God may grant them repentance to know the truth, and they may recover from the snares of the devil, by whom they are held captive at his will.”

Everything that was done by our forebears was done for good reason, so that an authority fortified on every side might be handed on to us, their descendants, against transgressors. To forestall the heresy which we censured above, about receiving women, the Lord, whether by himself or through his servants, relaxed a little, lest by excessive rigor the Lord's workmanship be wholly condemned. Heretics were foreseen by the Lord who abolish marriage and strive to separate, against the principle of nature and against the gospel, those whom the Lord has joined. Forbidding them, an authority was already then being prepared, so that married women should not be forbidden to come to Christ, whom they served in his presence. But even this permission was not provided without moderation, since what it did, it did not for itself but for others. For if the Lord spoke with the Samaritan woman, he taught for an hour and withdrew, and made no defense for continuing excesses. For an hour he allowed Martha too to serve. But what else was there for the Lord than to serve the meals of the heavenly kingdom? Were there banquets in the Lord's presence? Or was there any other drink or food in his majesty's presence than the teaching alone which fed? As the Lord himself testifies, saying: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me.” So the company of women followed the apostles not that they might ruin them, but that they might learn reverence; and they followed to render the service of kindness, as is recorded in the gospel of the Lord and of them alike: “And it came to pass after this,” it says, “that he went through the cities and villages preaching the kingdom of God, and the twelve were with him, and women who had been healed of unclean spirits and infirmities: Mary called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, who ministered to him from their means.”

Did single men cling to single women, or did they persist in living in an undisciplined dwelling, sharing an alluring companionship, when almost the whole church saw that they followed not for shameless banquets but to learn the pursuits of good conduct? Nothing is described there that could be made equal to our banquets: no laughter, no jesting is said to have been present; nor is it asserted that, as is still customary among some, a choir of singing virgins soothed the ears with poisonous songs. And to show briefly in the case of the apostles how much loose familiarity could displease them: they were driven to have doubts even about the Lord himself speaking with a woman, had not their proven knowledge of his majesty restrained them; as the evangelist relates, saying: “Meanwhile his disciples came, and marveled that he was speaking with a woman; yet no one said to him, ‘What do you seek?’ or ‘Why do you speak with her?’” And what shall I say of the woman who came and threw herself at the Lord's feet, whose grief and weeping the shameless do not blush to claim in defense of their own wantonness? To such a point does their own blindness carry them away that they do not even dare to resist in similar cases, of which Solomon says: “Their malice blinded them, and they did not know the mysteries of God.” John, it is true, is seen to have received the mother of the Lord. But a mother whose conduct the name of mother indicates. Yet I cannot admit other mothers of Christ, nor is she who bore the Majesty to be made equal to all women. Elijah too was commanded by the Lord to leave the wilderness and enter the widow's dwelling. At the Lord's command he labored to stay in a house, he for whom the wilderness provided a palace for rest. The Lord offered him an occasion for doing mighty works, so that in time of famine he might rather supply sufficient food to the widow and her orphans, he who, afflicted with fasts everywhere, had endured want; and he who had been sent to be fed, feeding them instead, caused the miseries of want to be shut out from the wretched. And this cannot favor anyone's looseness, since there was no opportunity for scandal, where, what is worse, he had in passing a needy lodging which any guest would flee. But here, where he was a guest, he fulfilled his task and returned; and even if he had stayed, he could not have been suspect. What sort of affection of shared life was there where there was no food? And what kind of entry did Elijah have to the widow, to whom famine gave hospitality? Whoever you are who wish to be called a disciple of Elijah for living with a widow, first endure the afflictions of the wilderness and the outcome of forty days fasting, and either you will not seek a woman, or there will be no one left to live with a woman; and yet, if you are able, keep yourself. To us, however, the angel and the Lord Christ point out none other than John alone as having come in the spirit and power of Elijah.

Oh, the shame! We are compelled to grieve over what we teach, we who have come to the point of disputing about the awe-inspiring virtues of the saints in comparison with the dissolute. Spare us now, spare us, wantonness! The saints, who carried on religious, modest, venerable, chaste, and decent business with women, never agree with you. Or if you still strive to search out, through the saints, the windings of quibbling, we know that the friends of God are to be remembered only for veneration, as David taught, saying: “But to me your friends, O God, are exceedingly honored.” Let these robbers of modesty and kidnappers of chastity go now and lay out to their little women the troubles of their complaints. With our saints they have no refuge at all; and the church is forbidden by the authority of the apostle Paul to mix with them: “And avoid these,” he says; “for among them are those who creep into houses and lead captive silly women laden with sins, who are led by various desires.”

After this edict, would that they trusted that the examples of angels helped them! They can no longer bend us, who know that angels too fell with women. From them indeed they borrow patronage well enough; but we hear no angel against the apostle Paul: “But even if we,” he says, “or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel other than what we preached to you, let him be accursed.” They are quite mad and burn with the fire of women, all who do not yield to this prohibition; gaping after obscenities, they would rather die than be content to be torn by some separation from the sides of women, so that, to fulfill the filth of their greed, they may not be without the pleasure of a woman even for a moment; and they have this fruit in women, that with their attention always fixed on them they may satisfy the desires of their eyes, lest even a moment pass in which they lacked what they crave. So among them integrity dies, where all living together, whether in feasting or dwelling together, is defiled by corrupt affections. Saint Peter had marked them, saying: “reveling in their feasts, having eyes full of adultery and unceasing sins, enticing unstable souls.” Solomon too notes them: “An abomination before the Lord,” he says, “is one who fixes his eye.” Job plainly testifies that he keeps a pure eye, saying: “And if my heart has consented to my eyes …” Truly, he can avoid being held guilty by his eyes in whom a woman's sudden meeting, against his will, has stirred a scandal, which the mind at once drives out because it did not want it. But he does not deserve to escape the disturbance of his sight who keeps the material of scandal with him, who wishes to enjoy the affections of attention, who seeks to have what thrusts offense on his eyes, whose insatiable greed amid continual stumbling blocks can in no way at all be checked, as Solomon approves, saying: “The underworld and destruction are not satisfied; likewise the eyes of men are insatiable.” And in another place: “The eye is not satisfied with seeing.” And again: “What has been created more wicked than the eye?”