On Holy Virginity 1–21

We recently published a book, On the Good of Marriage, in which we also admonished and warned the virgins of Christ that, because of the excellence of the greater gift they have received from God, they should not despise by comparison with themselves the fathers and mothers of the people of God—those whom the apostle commends as the olive, lest the grafted wild olive become proud—who served Christ who was to come even by the propagation of children; nor think them of lower merit because by divine law continence is ranked above marriage and devout virginity above wedlock. For in them the things to come were being prepared and brought to birth which we now see fulfilled wonderfully and effectively; their married life too was prophetic. Hence, not by the usual course of human wishes and joys but by a very deep counsel of God, in some of them fruitfulness deserved to be honored, and in some even barrenness deserved to be made fruitful. But at this time, to those to whom it was said, “If they do not contain themselves, let them marry,” not exhortation but consolation is to be applied; while those to whom it was said, “He who can receive it, let him receive it,” are to be exhorted, so that they may not be afraid, and made afraid, so that they may not be lifted up. Virginity, then, must not only be proclaimed, so that it may be loved, but also warned, so that it may not be puffed up.

This we have undertaken in this discourse. May Christ help us, the son of a virgin and the bridegroom of virgins, born bodily of a virgin womb, wedded spiritually in virginal marriage. Since, then, the whole church itself is a virgin betrothed to one husband, Christ, as the apostle says, of how great honor are its members worthy who keep even in the flesh itself what the whole church keeps in faith, and who imitate the mother of their husband and Lord! For the church too is both mother and virgin. For whose integrity do we care for, if she is not a virgin? Whose offspring do we address, if she is not a mother? Mary bore bodily the head of this body; the church bears spiritually the members of that head. In both, virginity does not hinder fruitfulness; in both, fruitfulness does not take away virginity. So, since the whole church is holy both in body and in spirit, and yet the whole church is a virgin not in body but in spirit, how much holier is she in those members in which she is a virgin both in body and in spirit!

It is written in the gospel that when the mother and brothers of Christ, that is, his relatives according to the flesh, had been announced to him and were waiting outside because they could not reach him for the crowd, he answered: “Who is my mother, or who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand over his disciples he said: “These are my brothers; and whoever does the will of my Father, he is my brother and mother and sister.” What else was he teaching us but to put our spiritual kindred before carnal kinship, and that people are blessed not if they are joined to the just and holy by nearness of flesh, but if they cling to them by obeying and imitating their teaching and conduct? Mary, then, was more blessed in receiving the faith of Christ than in conceiving the flesh of Christ. For to someone who said, “Blessed is the womb that bore you,” he himself answered, “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.” Finally, what did that kinship profit his brothers, that is, his relatives according to the flesh, who did not believe in him? So too her nearness as mother would have profited Mary nothing had she not borne Christ more happily in her heart than in her flesh.

Her virginity itself is also more pleasing and acceptable because Christ, when conceived, did not snatch it away beforehand from a husband who would violate it, in order to preserve it himself; rather, before he was conceived, he chose one already dedicated to God, of whom to be born. This is shown by the words Mary answered to the angel who announced her child: “How,” she says, “shall this be, since I do not know a man?” She would surely not have said this unless she had vowed herself to God as a virgin beforehand. But because the customs of the Israelites still refused this, she was betrothed to a righteous man, who would not take away by violence what she had already vowed but would rather guard it against the violent. Even if she had said only, “How shall this be?” and had not added, “since I do not know a man,” she would certainly not have asked how she, a woman, would bear the son promised her, if she had married intending to have intercourse. She could also have been commanded to remain a virgin, she in whom the Son of God was to take the form of a servant by a fitting miracle; but as an example for holy virgins to come—lest it be thought that only she ought to be a virgin who had deserved to conceive offspring even without intercourse—she dedicated her virginity to God while she did not yet know what she would conceive, so that the imitation of the heavenly life in an earthly and mortal body might come about by vow, not by precept, by the love of choosing, not by the necessity of serving. Thus Christ, by being born of a virgin who, before she knew who was to be born of her, had resolved to remain a virgin, chose to approve holy virginity rather than to command it. And so even in the very woman in whom he took the form of a servant he willed virginity to be free.

There is no reason, then, for the virgins of God to be saddened because they too, keeping their virginity, cannot be mothers of flesh. For virginity could fittingly bear only him who in his birth could have no equal. Yet that birth from the one holy virgin is the glory of all holy virgins; and they too, with Mary, are mothers of Christ if they do the will of his Father. For it is from this that Mary is more praiseworthily and more blessedly the mother of Christ, according to his statement mentioned above: “Whoever does the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother and sister and mother.” All these kinships he shows spiritually for himself in the people he has redeemed: he has holy men and holy women as brothers and sisters, since they are coheirs in the heavenly inheritance. His mother is the whole church, since it is she who, by the grace of God, bears his members, that is, his faithful. Again, his mother is every devout soul that does the will of his Father with most fruitful love in those whom it brings to birth until he himself is formed in them. Mary, then, doing the will of God, is bodily the mother of Christ only, but spiritually both his sister and his mother.

And so that one woman is both mother and virgin not only in spirit but also in body. She is mother in spirit, indeed, not of our head, who is the Savior himself—of whom rather she was born spiritually, since all who have believed in him, among whom she too is, are rightly called children of the bridegroom—but plainly mother of his members, which we are, because she cooperated by love so that the faithful, who are members of that head, might be born in the church; but in body she is mother of the head himself. For it was fitting that our head, by a notable miracle, should be born according to the flesh of a virgin, to signify that his members would be born according to the spirit of a virgin, the church. Mary alone, then, is mother and virgin both in spirit and in body, both mother of Christ and virgin of Christ; but the church, in the saints who will possess the kingdom of God, is in spirit wholly mother of Christ, wholly virgin of Christ, while in body not wholly, but in some she is virgin of Christ, in others mother, but not of Christ. For both believing married women and virgins dedicated to God, by holy conduct and by love from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith, are spiritually mothers of Christ, because they do the will of the Father; but those who bear bodily in married life bear not Christ but Adam, and therefore they hasten so that their offspring, imbued with the sacraments, may become members of Christ, since they know what they have borne.

I have said this lest married fruitfulness perhaps dare to contend with virginal integrity, and put forward Mary herself, and say to the virgins of God: “She had in her body two things to be honored, virginity and fruitfulness, since she both remained intact and gave birth. Since we could not each have this whole happiness, we have divided it, so that you are virgins and we are mothers. Let preserved virginity console you for what you lack in offspring; let the gain of offspring compensate us for lost integrity.” This speech of believing married women to consecrated virgins might in some way be tolerable if they bore Christians in the body, so that the fruitfulness of Mary's flesh, apart from her virginity, would be superior only in this, that she brought forth the very head of these members, while they brought forth the members of that head. But as it is, even if such women contend with this speech—women who are joined and united to husbands only in order to have children, and think of nothing else concerning their children than to win them for Christ, and do this as soon as they can—Christians are nevertheless not born of their flesh, but become Christians afterward, by the church bearing them, in that she is spiritually the mother of the members of Christ, whose virgin she spiritually is. In this holy birth the mothers too cooperate, who bore in the body those who were not Christians, so that they may become what the mothers knew they could not bear in the body; yet they cooperate by that in which they too are virgins and mothers of Christ, namely in faith, which works through love.

No fruitfulness of the flesh, then, can be compared to holy virginity, even virginity of the flesh. For it is not honored because it is virginity, but because it is dedicated to God; and though it is kept in the flesh, it is kept by the religion and devotion of the spirit. And so even the virginity of the body is spiritual, which the continence of piety vows and keeps. For just as no one uses the body unchastely unless wickedness has first been conceived in the spirit, so no one keeps chastity in the body unless chastity has first been implanted in the spirit. Moreover, if conjugal chastity, though it is guarded in the flesh, is nevertheless ascribed to the mind, not to the flesh—the mind under whose presidency and rule the flesh itself is united with no one except its own spouse—how much more, and with how much greater honor, is that continence to be numbered among the goods of the mind by which the integrity of the flesh is vowed, consecrated, and kept for the very Creator of soul and flesh!

Nor, then, is the fruitfulness of the flesh of those women who at this time seek nothing else in marriage than offspring to hand over to Christ to be believed able to compensate for lost virginity. In earlier times, indeed, when Christ was to come according to the flesh, that very descent of the flesh was necessary in a great and prophetic nation; but now, since members of Christ can be gathered from every kind of human beings and from all nations into the people of God and the city of the kingdom of heaven, let him who can receive holy virginity receive it, and let only her who does not contain herself marry. For what then? If some rich woman spent much money on this good work, buying slaves from various nations to make them Christians, would she not provide for the begetting of members of Christ more abundantly and more numerously than by any fertility of the womb? Yet she will not on that account dare to compare her money with the gift of holy virginity. But if, for the sake of making Christians of those who have been born, fruitfulness of the flesh will rightly compensate for lost virginity, the business would be more profitable if virginity were lost for a great price in money, with which many more boys could be bought to be made Christians than would be born from the womb of one woman, however fertile. But if this is said most foolishly, let believing married women have their own good, about which we have discussed in another volume as far as seemed right, and let them honor more fully, as they are most rightly accustomed to do, their better, the good of holy virgins, about which we are discussing in this discourse.

Nor ought married people to compare themselves with the merits of the continent on the ground that virgins are procreated from them; for this is not a good of marriage but of nature, which has been so established by God that from any human intercourse of the two sexes, whether ordered and honorable or base and unlawful, no female is born except a virgin. Yet no consecrated virgin is born; so it happens that a virgin is born even of sexual immorality, but a consecrated virgin not even of marriage.

Nor do we proclaim in virgins that they are virgins, but that they are virgins dedicated to God by devout continence. For—and I would not say this rashly—a married woman seems to me happier than a virgin who is going to marry; for the former already has what the latter still desires, especially if she is not yet even anyone's betrothed. The former is eager to please one, to whom she has been given; the latter many, uncertain to whom she is to be given; she defends the chastity of her thought from the crowd only by this, that she seeks in the crowd not an adulterer but a husband. That virgin, then, is rightly set above a married woman who neither offers herself to the crowd to be loved, as she seeks the love of one out of the crowd, nor, having found him, adorns herself for one, thinking of the things of the world, how she may please her husband; but has so loved him who is beautiful in form beyond the sons of men that, since she could not conceive him in the flesh as Mary did, having conceived him in her heart she has kept even her flesh intact for him. No bodily fruitfulness has produced this kind of virgins; this offspring is not of flesh and blood. If their mother is sought, it is the church. None bears holy virgins but a holy virgin, she who has been betrothed to be presented as a chaste virgin to one husband, Christ. From her, a virgin not wholly in body but wholly in spirit, holy virgins are born, holy in both body and spirit.

Let marriage have its own good: not that it procreates children, but that it procreates them honorably, lawfully, chastely, in partnership, and brings up those procreated in harmony, wholesomely, and earnestly; that the spouses keep the faithfulness of the bed to each other; that they do not violate the sacrament of marriage. Yet all these are gifts of human duty; but virginal integrity, and freedom from all intercourse through devout continence, is the portion of angels and, in corruptible flesh, a meditation of perpetual incorruption. Let all fruitfulness of the flesh, all conjugal chastity, yield to this: the former is not in our power; the latter is not in eternity. Free choice does not have carnal fruitfulness; heaven does not have conjugal chastity. Surely those will have something great beyond the rest in that common immortality who already have something not of the flesh in the flesh.

Hence those are wonderfully foolish who think that the good of this continence is necessary not for the sake of the kingdom of heaven but for the sake of the present world—namely because married people are distracted by more and tighter earthly cares, a trouble which virgins and the continent do not have—as though it were better not to marry only so that the straits of this time might be relaxed, not because it is of any profit for the world to come. So that they may not seem to have put forward this empty opinion from the vanity of their own heart, they bring in a testimony from the apostle, where he says: “Concerning virgins I have no command of the Lord, but I give counsel as one who has obtained mercy from God to be faithful. I think, therefore, that this is good because of the present necessity, since it is good for a man to be so.” See, they say, the apostle shows here that this is good because of the present necessity, not because of future eternity. As though the apostle took account of the present necessity except in providing and counseling for the future, since all his stewardship calls only to eternal life.

The present necessity, then, is to be avoided, but only as something that hinders some of the goods to come: the necessity by which married life is compelled to think of the things of the world, how the husband may please the wife or the wife the husband. Not that these things separate from the kingdom of God, as sins do, which are restrained by precept, not by counsel, because not to obey the Lord's command is damnable; but what could be had more fully in the kingdom of God itself, if more thought were given to how God is to be pleased, will certainly be less when, by the very necessity of marriage, less thought is given to it. That is why he says, “Concerning virgins I have no command of the Lord”; for whoever does not obey a command is guilty and liable to punishment. Therefore, since to take a wife or to marry is not a sin—and if it were a sin, it would be forbidden by command—there is no command of the Lord concerning virgins. But eternal life must be entered with sins avoided or forgiven, and in it there is a certain special glory, to be given there not to all who will live for ever but to some; and to attain it it is not enough to have been set free from sins unless something is vowed to the Liberator himself which it would be no crime not to have vowed, but which it is praiseworthy to have vowed and paid. So he says, “I give counsel as one who has obtained mercy from God to be faithful”; for I ought not to begrudge faithful counsel, I who am faithful not by my merits but by God's mercy. “I think, therefore, that this is good because of the present necessity.” This, he says, about which I have no command of the Lord but give counsel—that is, concerning virgins—I think good because of the present necessity. For I know what the necessity of the present time, which marriages serve, compels: that the things of God are thought of less than is sufficient for attaining that glory which will not belong to all, though they abide in eternal life and salvation; “for star differs from star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead.” It is good, then, for a man to be so.

Then the same apostle adds and says: “Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek release. Are you released from a wife? Do not seek a wife.” Of these two, the first belongs to precept, against which it is not lawful to act. For it is not lawful to put away a wife except for the cause of sexual immorality, as the Lord himself says in the gospel. But what he added, “Are you released from a wife? Do not seek a wife,” is a statement of counsel, not of precept; so it is lawful to do it, but better not to. Indeed, he at once went on: “And if you take a wife, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she does not sin.” But when he had said the first, “Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek release,” did he add, “And if you are released, you have not sinned”? For he had already said above: “But to those who are in marriage I command, not I but the Lord, that the wife not depart from her husband; but if she departs, that she remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband”—for it can happen that she departs through her husband's fault, not her own. Then he says: “And let the husband not put away his wife,” which he likewise set down from the Lord's command; nor did he add there, “And if he puts her away, he does not sin.” For this is a precept, not to obey which is sin; not a counsel, which, if you are unwilling to follow it, means you will gain less good, not that you will commit any evil. That is why, when he had said, “Are you released from a wife? Do not seek a wife,” since he was not commanding so that evil should not be done but counseling so that something better should be done, he at once added: “And if you take a wife, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she does not sin.”

Yet he added: “But such people will have tribulation of the flesh, and I spare you,” exhorting in this way to virginity and perpetual continence so as to deter somewhat even from marriage—modestly indeed, not as from something evil and unlawful, but as from something burdensome and troublesome. For it is one thing to commit the foulness of the flesh, another to have the tribulation of the flesh: the one is committing a crime, the other suffering a labor, which people often do not refuse even for the most honorable duties. But to take on the burden of this tribulation of the flesh, which the apostle foretells to those who will marry, for the sake of having a marriage at this time, when Christ, who is to come, is no longer served by the propagation of offspring through carnal descent, would be very foolish, were it not feared that the incontinent, when Satan tempts them, might fall into damnable sins. As for his saying that he spares those whom he says will have tribulation of the flesh, nothing sounder occurs to me for the present than that he did not wish to disclose and explain in words that very tribulation of the flesh which he foretold to those who choose marriage: in the suspicions of conjugal jealousy, in procreating and nourishing children, in the fears and griefs of bereavement. For how few, once they have bound themselves by the chains of marriage, are not drawn and driven by these feelings? Nor ought we to exaggerate them, lest we fail to spare those whom the apostle thought should be spared.

By this, which I have set down briefly, the reader needed only to be put on guard against those who slander marriage on the strength of the words, “But such people will have tribulation of the flesh, and I spare you,” claiming that this statement condemned it indirectly—as though he were unwilling to state the condemnation itself when he says, “and I spare you”; so that, in sparing them, he did not spare his own soul, if he lied in saying, “And if you take a wife, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she does not sin.” Those who believe this, or want it believed, about holy Scripture are building themselves, as it were, a road to license for lying, or to the defense of their own perverse opinion wherever they think otherwise than sound doctrine requires. For if anything clear is brought forward from the divine books by which their errors are refuted, they have this at hand like a shield, with which, while protecting themselves against the truth, as it were, they lay themselves bare to be wounded by the devil: they say that the author of the book did not say what was true here, sometimes in order to spare the weak, sometimes to frighten the contemptuous, as occasion arises for defending their perverse opinion. And so, while they prefer to defend rather than correct what they think, they try to break the authority of the holy Scriptures, by which alone all proud and hard necks are broken.

I therefore admonish the men and women who follow perpetual continence and holy virginity to prefer their own good to marriage in such a way that they do not judge marriage to be evil, and to recognize that it was said by the apostle not deceitfully but quite truly: “He who gives in marriage does well, and he who does not give in marriage does better. And if you take a wife, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she does not sin.” And a little later: “But she will be happier if she remains so, in my judgment.” And lest it be thought a human judgment, he adds: “And I think that I too have the Spirit of God.” This is the Lord's teaching, this the apostle's, this the true and sound teaching: so to choose the greater gifts that the lesser are not condemned. The truth of God in the Scripture of God is better than the virginity of man in anyone's mind or flesh. Let what is chaste be loved in such a way that what is true is not denied. For what evil might they not think even about their own flesh, who believe that the apostle's tongue, in the very place where it was commending the virginity of the body, was not virgin from the corruption of a lie? First, then, and above all, let those who choose the good of virginity hold most firmly that the holy Scriptures have lied in nothing, and therefore that this too is true which was said: “And if you take a wife, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she does not sin.” And let them not think that so great a good of integrity is diminished if marriage is not an evil. On the contrary, let her rather be confident that the palm of greater glory is prepared for her because she did not fear to be condemned if she married, but desired to be crowned with greater honor because she did not marry. Let those, then, who wish to remain without marriage not flee marriage as a pit of sin, but pass over it as a hill of lesser good, so that they may rest on the mountain of greater continence. For this hill is inhabited under the law that one may not leave it when one wishes; for a woman is bound as long as her husband lives. Yet one climbs from it, as from a step, to widowed continence; but for the sake of virginal continence it is either to be turned aside from, by not consenting to suitors, or leapt over, by forestalling suitors.

But lest anyone think that the rewards of two works, the good and the better, would be equal, it was necessary to argue against those who have interpreted the apostle's saying, “I think that this is good because of the present necessity,” in such a way as to say that virginity is useful not for the kingdom of heaven but for the present world—as though in that eternal life those who had chosen this better thing would have nothing beyond the rest. In this argument, when we came to what the same apostle says, “But such people will have tribulation of the flesh, and I spare you,” we ran into other disputants, who did not make marriage equal to perpetual continence but condemned it altogether. For since each is an error—either to make marriage equal to holy virginity or to condemn it—these two errors, fleeing each other too far, clash head-on, because they would not hold the middle ground of truth; by which, through sure reason and the authority of the holy Scriptures, we find that marriage is not a sin, and yet we do not make it equal to the good either of virginal or even of widowed continence. For some, in striving after virginity, have thought that marriage must be detested like adultery; others, in defending marriage, have wanted the excellence of perpetual continence to deserve nothing more than conjugal chastity—as though either the good of Susanna were a humiliation of Mary, or the greater good of Mary ought to be a condemnation of Susanna.

Far be it, then, that the apostle said to the married or those about to marry, “and I spare you,” as if he were unwilling to say what punishment is due to the married in the world to come. Far be it that Paul should send to Gehenna her whom Daniel freed from temporal judgment; far be it that the marriage bed should be her punishment before the judgment seat of Christ, she who, to keep faith with it, chose to be endangered or to die under a false accusation of adultery. What was the point of that cry of hers, “It is better for me to fall into your hands than to sin in the sight of God,” if God was going to condemn her because she had married, not free her because she kept marital chastity? And now, as often as conjugal chastity is fortified by the truth of holy Scripture against the slanderers and accusers of marriage, so often is Susanna defended with the Holy Spirit against false witnesses, so often is she freed from a false charge—and in a much greater case. For then the charge was brought against one married woman, now against all; then about a hidden and false adultery, now about a true and open marriage; then one woman was accused on the basis of what the wicked elders said, now all husbands and wives are accused on the basis of what the apostle was unwilling to say. “For he kept silent about your condemnation,” they say, “when he said, ‘and I spare you.’” Who said this? Surely he who had said above, “And if you take a wife, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she does not sin.” Why, then, do you suspect a charge against marriage in what he modestly left unsaid, and not recognize the defense of marriage in what he said openly? Or does he condemn by silence those whom he acquitted by speaking? Is not Susanna now accused more mildly—not of marriage, but of adultery itself—than the apostolic teaching is accused of lying? What would we do in so great a danger, were it not as certain and open that chaste marriage ought not to be condemned as it is certain and open that holy Scripture cannot lie?

Here someone will say: What has this to do with holy virginity or perpetual continence, the praise of which was undertaken in this discourse? To him I answer first what I mentioned above, that the glory of that greater good is greater because, to attain it, the good of marriage is passed over, not the sin of marriage avoided. Otherwise it would be enough for perpetual continence not to be blamed, rather than to be especially praised, if it were kept because marrying was a crime. Second, because people are to be exhorted to so excellent a gift not by human opinion but by the authority of divine Scripture, the matter must be treated neither lightly nor in passing, lest the divine Scripture itself seem to anyone to have lied in anything. For those who drive holy virgins to remain so by condemning marriage are dissuading rather than persuading them. For how can they be confident that what is written is true, “And he who does not give in marriage does better,” if they think false what is written just before it, “And he who gives his virgin in marriage does well”? But if they believe without doubt the Scripture speaking of the good of marriage, then, strengthened by the same most truthful authority of the heavenly word, they will run on to their own better good with fervent and confident eagerness. We have therefore now said enough for the task undertaken and have shown, as far as we could, both that the apostle's saying, “I think that this is good because of the present necessity,” is not to be taken as though holy virgins were better than married believers in this world but equal to them in the kingdom of heaven and the world to come; and that his saying about those who marry, “But such people will have tribulation of the flesh, and I spare you,” is not to be understood as though he preferred to keep silent about the sin and condemnation of marriage rather than state it. For two mutually contrary errors, not understanding these two statements, have each seized on one of them. The one about the present necessity is interpreted in their own favor by those who contend that those who marry are equal to those who do not; the one where it is said, “and I spare you,” by those who presume to condemn those who marry. We, however, according to the faith of the holy Scriptures and sound doctrine, say that marriage is not a sin, and yet we place its good not only below virginal but also below widowed continence. We say that the present necessity of the married hinders their merit—not indeed for eternal life, but for the excellent glory and honor that is reserved for perpetual continence—and that at this time marriage is expedient only for those who do not contain themselves; and that as for the tribulation of the flesh that comes from carnal affection, without which the marriages of the incontinent cannot exist, the apostle neither wished to keep silent about it, since he was forewarning of true things, nor to explain it more fully, since he was sparing human weakness.