To His Wife 1.1–1.8

I have thought it right, my dearest fellow servant in the Lord, to provide already now what course you should follow after my departure from the world, if I am called before you, and to entrust it to your good faith to observe what has been provided. For we are busy enough with worldly affairs, and we want provision made for each of us. If we draw up wills for such things, why should we not rather look ahead for our posterity concerning divine and heavenly things, and in a manner bequeath a legacy in advance: an admonition and demonstration of those things which are allotted from the immortal goods and from the inheritance of heaven? Only may God grant that you can take in full this trust of my admonition; to him be honor, glory, splendor, dignity, and power, now and for ever and ever. I charge you, then, with all the self-restraint you can, to renounce marriage after my departure; you will confer nothing on me by that, except in so far as you will profit yourself. For to Christians who have departed from the world no restoration of marriage is promised on the day of resurrection, since they will have been transferred, namely, into angelic quality and holiness. Therefore no anxiety that comes from fleshly jealousy, even in the case of the woman whom they claimed had married seven brothers in succession, will offend any of her many husbands on the day of resurrection, nor does anyone wait to put her to shame. The question of the Sadducees gave way to the Lord's sentence. Do not think that, out of concern to keep your flesh intact for myself, I am suspicious of the pain of an insult and therefore urge on you already now the counsel of widowhood. Nothing of shameful pleasure will then be resumed between us. For God does not promise his own such frivolous, such filthy things. But whether what we urge will profit you, or any other woman who belongs to God, we may discuss at length.

We do not indeed deny that the union of man and woman was blessed by God as the seedbed of the human race, and devised for filling the world and furnishing the age, and thereafter permitted, yet as one. For Adam too was the one husband of Eve, and Eve his one wife: one woman, one rib. To be sure, among our ancestors and the patriarchs themselves it was lawful not only to marry but even to make use of marriage many times over. There were concubines too. But although the church was figuratively foreshadowed in the synagogue, still, to interpret simply, it was necessary to institute things that later deserved to be either cut off or moderated. For the law was to come afterwards. For the causes for fulfilling the law had to run on ahead. Likewise the Word of God was soon to succeed the law, bringing in spiritual circumcision. Therefore, through a license then left loose, material was supplied in advance for later corrections, which the Lord by his gospel, and then the apostle in the last times of the age, either cut away where they were excessive or put in order where they were disordered.

But I have not set out the freedom of antiquity and the correction of later times in order to lay the ground for claiming that Christ came to separate marriages and abolish unions, as though I were already now prescribing an end to marrying. Let them see to it who, among their other perversities, teach the disjoining of the one flesh in two, denying him who, having borrowed the woman from the man, joined back together within himself, by the reckoning of marriage, two bodies taken from the partnership of the same material. Indeed, we nowhere read at all that marriage is forbidden, as being, of course, a good thing. Yet what is better than this good we learn from the apostle, who permits marrying but prefers abstinence: the former because of the snares of temptations, the latter because of the straits of the times. When the reasoning of both pronouncements is examined, it is easily seen that the power to marry has been granted us out of necessity; and what necessity grants, it thereby cheapens. Finally, as to what is written, “It is better to marry than to burn,” what sort of good is this, I ask you, which comparison with an evil commends, so that it is better to marry only because it is worse to burn? But how much better is it neither to marry nor to burn? In persecutions too it is better, by permission, to flee from town to town than to be arrested and racked and deny; and more blessed than this are those who have the strength to depart by the blessed confession of testimony. I can say: what is permitted is not good. For what? I must die. If I weep, it is good. But if I fear what is permitted, the reason for its permission is suspect. What is better, however, no one has permitted, as being beyond doubt and plain in its own purity. Some things are not to be sought just because they are not forbidden, even though in a way they are forbidden when other things are preferred to them. For the preference of the higher is a dissuasion from the lower. A thing is not good just because it is not evil, nor is it not evil just because it does no harm. Further, the fully good surpasses this, which not only does no harm but also profits. For you ought to prefer what profits to what does no harm. For every contest strives for the first place; second place has consolation, it does not have victory. But if we listen to the apostle, let us forget what lies behind, stretch forward to what lies ahead, and be followers of the better gifts. Thus, though he lays no snare on us, he shows what is advantageous, saying: “The unmarried woman thinks about the Lord's things, that she may be holy in both body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious how she may please her husband.” For the rest, he nowhere permits marriage in such a way as not rather to wish that we strive after his own example. Happy the one who has proved like Paul!

But we read that the flesh is weak, and from this we flatter ourselves in certain things. Yet we also read that the spirit is strong. For both are set down in one sentence. The flesh is earthly material, but the spirit heavenly. Why then, readier to make excuses, do we put forward what is weak in us, and not defend what is stronger? Why should earthly things not yield to heavenly? If the spirit is stronger than the flesh, because it is also nobler, it is our fault if we follow the weaker. For those separated from marriage, two kinds of human weakness make marriage seem necessary. The first and most powerful comes from the desire of the flesh, the next from the desire of the world. But both are to be rejected by the servants of God, we who renounce both luxury and ambition. The desire of the flesh pleads the duties of age, seeks the harvest of beauty, rejoices in its own disgrace; it says that a husband is necessary to the sex, for authority and consolation, or so that she may be safe from evil rumors. And you, against these counsels of it, apply the examples of our sisters, whose names are with the Lord, who, having sent their husbands on ahead, put no occasion of beauty or age before holiness. For they prefer to be married to God. For God they are beautiful, for God they are maidens. With him they live, with him they converse, him they handle day and night; they assign their prayers to the Lord as dowries, and from him they obtain his favor as marriage gifts as often as they desire. Thus they have secured for themselves the eternal gift of the Lord, and already on earth, by not marrying, they are reckoned among the angelic household. Training yourself by the examples of such women to emulate their continence, you will bury that fleshly desire with spiritual affection, blotting out the temporary and fleeting desires of beauty or age by the compensation of immortal goods. As for this worldly desire, its causes are vainglory, greed, ambition, and insufficiency, through which it contrives the necessity of marrying, promising heavenly delights, forsooth: to lord it over another's household, to brood on another's wealth, to extort finery from another, to spend without feeling the cost. These things are far from the faithful, who have no care about sustaining life, unless we distrust the promises of God and his care and providence, who clothes the lilies of the field with such grace, who feeds the birds of the sky with no labor of their own, who forbids us to be anxious about tomorrow's food and clothing, pledging that he knows what each of his servants needs: not, indeed, heavy necklaces, not tiresome garments, not Gallic mules nor German porters, which inflame the vainglory of marriage, but sufficiency, which suits modesty and chastity. Presume, I beg you, that you need nothing if you appear to the Lord; rather, that you have everything if you have the Lord, whose are all things. Consider heavenly things, and you will despise earthly ones. Nothing is necessary for widowhood sealed before God but to persevere.

People do add further reasons for marrying: concern for posterity and the most bitter pleasure of children. For us this is idle. For why should we be eager to bear children whom, when we have them, we wish to send on ahead, in view, namely, of the straits that threaten, being ourselves eager to be taken out of this most wicked age and received with the Lord, which was the apostle's wish too? Offspring, no doubt, is necessary for a servant of God! For we are secure enough about our own salvation to have leisure for children! We must seek burdens which are avoided even by most of the gentiles, which are compelled by laws, which are got rid of by parricides; burdens that are most troublesome to us, as much as they are dangerous to faith. For why did the Lord pronounce “Woe to those who are pregnant and nursing,” unless because he testifies that the encumbrance of children will be a hindrance on that day of departure? These things are certainly to be charged to marriage. But this will not concern widows. At the angel's first trumpet they will spring up unencumbered; they will freely endure whatever affliction and persecution, with no burden of marriage heaving in the womb or at the breast. So whether one marries for the sake of the flesh, or of the world, or of posterity, none of these necessities befits the servants of God, so that I think it enough to have given way to one of them once and to have expiated all desire of this kind by one marriage. Let us marry every day, and, marrying, be caught by that day of fear like Sodom and Gomorrah! For there they were not merely carrying on marriages and trade; but when he says, “They were marrying and buying,” he points to the most notable vices themselves of the flesh and of the world, which most draw us away from divine disciplines, the one through the pleasure of wantonness, the other through the greed of acquiring. And yet that blindness was then held far from the end of the age. What then will happen if he now keeps us from things that of old were detestable to God? “The time,” he says, “is short. It remains that those who have wives act as though they had none.”

But if those who have wives ought to forget what they have, how much more are those who do not have forbidden to seek again what they do not have, so that a woman whose husband has departed this life should thenceforth impose rest on her sex by abstaining from marriage, which many gentile women offer as a funeral tribute to the memory of their dearest husbands. When something seems hard, let us review others who undertake harder things. For how many there are who seal their flesh immediately after the washing! How many also who by equal consent between themselves remove the debt of marriage, voluntary eunuchs for the desire of the kingdom of heaven! But if abstinence is endured while marriage remains, how much more when it has been taken away? For I believe it is harder to give up what is safe than not to long for what is lost. Is the continence of a holy woman after her husband's death for God's sake plainly hard and arduous enough, when the gentiles bear priesthoods of both virginity and widowhood for their Satan? At Rome indeed those who tend the image of that unquenchable fire, taking care of the auspices of their own punishment together with the dragon himself, are chosen for their virginity. For Achaean Juno at the town of Aegium a virgin is chosen by lot, and the women who rave at Delphi do not know how to marry. Moreover we know that widows attend the African Ceres, drawn away from marriage by a most hard forgetfulness. For while their husbands are still living, they not only withdraw from them but even install other women in their own place, the husbands certainly laughing, all contact being removed, even to the kiss of their children; and yet, with long practice, they persevere in such a discipline of widowhood as shuts out even the comforts of holy affection. The devil has commanded these things to his own, and he is obeyed. He challenges the servants of God, no doubt, by the continence of his own, as if on equal terms. Even the priests of Gehenna are continent. For he has found how to destroy people even in good pursuits, and with him it makes no difference whether he kills some by luxury, others by continence.

To us continence has been shown by the Lord of salvation as an instrument of eternity, a testimony of faith, a commendation of this flesh which is to be presented for the coming garment of incorruption, and finally as submission to the will of God. For besides this, I urge you to reflect that no one is taken out of the world except by the will of God, if not even a leaf falls from a tree without the will of God. The same one who brings us into the world must also take us out. Therefore, when a husband has died by the will of God, the marriage too has died by the will of God. Why should you restore what God has put an end to? Why do you disdain the freedom offered you by a repeated servitude of marriage? “Are you bound to a wife?” he says. “Do not seek to be loosed. Are you loosed from a wife? Do not seek to be bound.” For even if you do not sin by marrying again, he says that affliction of the flesh follows. Therefore let us love, as far as we can, the opportunity for continence; let us drink it in as soon as it comes, so that what we could not do in marriage we may pursue in widowhood. We must embrace the occasion that takes away what necessity was commanding. How much second marriages detract from faith, how much they obstruct holiness, the discipline of the church and the prescription of the apostle declare, since he does not allow the twice-married to preside, since he does not grant that a widow be enrolled in the order unless she has been the wife of one man. For the altar of God must be set forth pure. All that whiteness of the church is described in terms of holiness. Among the nations there is a priesthood of widowhood and celibacy, in rivalry, of course, with God, by the devil. It is unlawful for the king of the world, the Pontifex Maximus, to marry again. How much holiness pleases God, when even the enemy affects it! Not, surely, as being akin to any good, but as affecting, with insult, what pleases the Lord God.

For concerning the honors of widowhood with God, the matter is settled by one saying of his through the prophet: “Do justice to the widow and the orphan, and come, let us reason together, says the Lord.” These two names, the more they are destitute of human help, the more they are exposed to divine mercy, and the Father of all undertakes to protect them. See how the one who has done good to a widow is treated as an equal! How great is the widow herself, whose champion will reason with the Lord! This has not been granted even to virgins, I think. Although in them solid integrity and entire holiness will see the face of God from close by, yet the widow has something more laborious, because it is easy not to seek what you do not know and to turn away from what you have never desired. More glorious is the continence that feels its right, that knows what it has seen. The virgin may be held happier, but the widow more hard-working: the one because she has always had the good, the other because she has found the good for herself; in the one grace is crowned, in the other virtue. For some things belong to divine generosity, others to our own work. What is granted by the Lord is governed by his grace; what is striven for by man is achieved by effort. Strive, then, for the virtue of continence, which provides for modesty; for industry, which does not make women wanderers; for frugality, which spurns the world. Pursue company and conversation worthy of God, mindful of that little verse sanctified by the apostle: “Bad company corrupts good morals.” Talkative, idle, wine-bibbing, curious companions do the most harm to the purpose of widowhood. Through talkativeness words hostile to modesty creep in; through idleness they lead away from seriousness; through drunkenness they insinuate any evil; through curiosity they bring in the rivalry of lust. No woman of this kind knows how to speak of the good of having had one husband. For their god, as the apostle says, is the belly, and so also what is near the belly. These things I commend to you already now, dearest fellow servant, treated abundantly, to be sure, after the apostle, but to be a comfort to you too, since, if it so happens, you will keep my memory alive in them.