On the Good of Widowhood

Contents

Reading pages: 1–18 · 19–29

1. 1Augustine sends the widow he is addressing the promised treatise on holy widowhood and asks her to share it with others.
2. 2Augustine will teach nothing beyond Scripture, but will set out and discuss the apostle's words.
3. 3In 1 Cor 7:8 “unmarried” includes widows as well as virgins, so Paul's praise of remaining unmarried applies to widows.
4. 4Faithful married women are members of Christ; a widow's continence does not make her more than a member, but gives her a better place among the members.
5. 5Marriage, with its offspring, faithfulness, and indissoluble sacrament, is good; a widow who remarries after her husband's death is blessed, but one who remains a widow is more blessed.
6. 6Widowhood does not condemn second marriage, which the apostle allows, against the Montanists, the Novatianists, and Tertullian; it simply ranks higher.
7. 7When Paul calls celibacy “honourable” he does not make marriage shameful, but means that it is more honourable, as Peter's honour for wives confirms.
8. 8Paul's “holy in body and spirit” for the unmarried does not deny holiness of body to faithful married women, whose bodies are members of Christ and temples of the Spirit.
9. 9A good is praised more when there are lesser goods beside it, as God's works are very good all together; so the widow should not be proud of her better gift.
10. 10Under the old dispensation holy women married, and men took several wives, out of duty to propagate the people from whom Christ would come; so Ruth's second marriage need not rank below Anna's widowhood.
11. 11In the last times, when children are begotten spiritually from all nations, a second marriage for a widow with children would show only incontinence; marriage remains good, but a vowed continence must not be broken.
12. 12For one who has vowed continence even the wish to marry is condemned: not because marriage is evil, but because the vow is broken.
13. 13Augustine rejects the view that marriages of women who broke a vow of continence are adulteries, since separating such couples would make the husbands, who then remarry, real adulterers.
14. 14Such marriages are not adulteries, but breaking a vow of continence is worse than adultery; second marriages as such are no crime.
15. 15Augustine will not condemn third or later marriages after a spouse's death, since neither Paul nor Christ did, though their number is a matter of shame; every widow is more blessed if she remains so.
16. 16A widow's merit is measured by the strength of her continence, not by the number of her husbands; Anna is praised for her long widowhood after a short marriage.
17. 17Comparing imagined widows, Augustine gives the palm to the most fervent piety rather than to having had only one husband.
18. 18The addressee can have all Anna's merits, and her daughter's consecrated virginity adds virginal merit to the household.
19. 19Continence ranks above marriage and virginity above widowhood, but no true marriage is condemned; ascetics who condemn second marriages are not to be followed.
20. 20Turning to exhortation, Augustine urges the widow to thank God for her continence as his gift, as the liturgy's “Lift up your hearts … Let us give thanks” teaches.
21. 21Against “enemies of the grace of Christ” who make prayer needless, Augustine argues that continence, like wisdom, is God's gift, to be asked for in prayer, though the will must consent.
22. 22Exhortation works only because God acts within the will; the widows will gain more from their prayers than from Augustine's words.
23. 23The unmarried woman should turn all the care a wife gives to pleasing a husband into pleasing Christ, whose beauty is inward.
24. 24Mother, virgin daughter, and aged grandmother should together please Christ with inward beauty, the grandmother guiding the others in perseverance.
25. 25Time is short and desire can be restrained even by women waiting to marry; much more can it be by those who have vowed continence and so given up hope of marriage.
26. 26Widows should replace carnal pleasures with reading, prayer, psalms, almsgiving, fasting, and vigils, and beware lest suppressed desire turn into avarice.
27. 27Those living in continence must guard their reputation as well as their conscience, for others' sake, and bear unjust suspicion with joy.
28. 28The widows should win others to continence without fearing that the human race or the lesser good of marriage will fail, for the married saints of the past already fill their place.
29. 29Augustine asks for the household's prayers and refers the daughter to his book On Holy Virginity.