Against Helvidius: On the Perpetual Virginity of Blessed Mary

Some time ago I was asked by the brothers to reply to a pamphlet by a certain Helvidius, and I put it off. Not because it was difficult to refute on the truth a rustic fellow barely acquainted with even the first elements of learning, but so that he should not become worthy of defeat by my answering him. There was also this: a turbulent man, the only one in the whole world who is both layman and priest to himself (who, as that writer says, thinks talkativeness eloquence, and holds that slandering everyone is the mark of a good conscience), once given matter for dispute, would begin to blaspheme further, and as though from a lofty place pass sentence on the whole world; and, since he could not tear me to pieces with the truth, he would tear me with abuse. But since all these just reasons for my silence have come to a more just end because of the scandal to the brothers, who were being stirred up by his madness, the axe of the Gospel must now be laid to the roots of the barren tree and, together with its fruitless foliage, handed over to the flames, so that he who never learned to speak may at last learn to be silent.

So I must call on the Holy Spirit to defend, by his meaning and my mouth, the virginity of blessed Mary. I must call on the Lord Jesus to guard the lodging of the sacred womb, in which he dwelt for ten months, from every suspicion of intercourse. God the Father himself must also be entreated to show that the mother of his Son was a virgin after childbirth, she who was a mother before she was married. We do not want the open field of rhetorical eloquence, nor do we seek the snares of the dialecticians or the thorny thickets of Aristotle. The very words of the Scriptures must be set out: let him be refuted by the very testimonies he has used against us, so that he may understand that he was able to read what is written, but was not able to recognize what has been established by godliness.

His first proposition was: "Matthew says: 'Now the birth of Christ was thus. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And Joseph her husband, since he was a just man and did not wish to expose her, wanted to put her away secretly. But while he was thinking this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in his sleep, saying: Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for what is born in her is from the Holy Spirit.' See," he says, "you have her betrothed, not entrusted, as you say; and certainly betrothed for no other reason than that she would one day marry. For the evangelist would not have said of people who were never going to come together, 'before they came together'; for no one says of a man who is not going to dine, 'before he dined.' Next, she is called wife by the angel, and joined to him. Let us now hear what Scripture declares: 'Joseph,' it says, 'rising from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him, and took his wife, and did not know her until she bore her son.'"

Let us go through it point by point, and, following his impiety along the very tracks by which it came in, show that he has said things that contradict each other. He admits she was betrothed, and at once wants her to be the wife whom he has admitted to be a betrothed bride. Then the one he calls wife he says was betrothed for no other reason than that she would one day marry. And lest we think this too little: "You have her," he says, "betrothed, and not entrusted, that is, not yet a wife, not yet joined by the bond of marriage. As for his saying, 'For the evangelist would not have said of people who were never going to come together, before they came together, for no one says of a man who is not going to dine, before he dined', I do not know whether to grieve or to laugh." Shall I charge him with ignorance or accuse him of rashness? As if, should someone say, "Before I dined in port, I sailed for Africa," the statement could not stand unless he were at some time to dine in port! Or if we should wish to say, "The apostle Paul, before he went to Spain, was thrown into chains at Rome"; or certainly this: "Helvidius, before he repented, was overtaken by death": must Paul at once go to Spain after his chains, or Helvidius do penance after death, when Scripture says, "But in hell who will confess to you?" Should it not rather be understood that the preposition "before," though it often indicates a sequence, yet sometimes shows only what was previously intended? So it is not necessary that what was intended should happen, since something else intervened to prevent what was intended from happening. So when the evangelist says, "before they came together," he points to the time close to the wedding, when matters had already reached the point that she who had before been a betrothed bride was beginning to be a wife. It is as if he said: before they mingled kisses and embraces, before they consummated the marriage, she was found to be with child. And she was found by no one else than Joseph, who with the eyes of one almost already a husband, with a husband's freedom and attention, noticed the swelling womb of his betrothed. Yet it does not follow, as we have shown by the earlier examples, that he came together with Mary after the birth, since his desire to come together was taken away by the conception in her womb. As for what is said to Joseph in his sleep, "Do not fear to take Mary your wife," and again, "Joseph, rising from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took his wife," this ought to disturb no one, as though, from being called a wife, she had ceased to be a betrothed bride; for we know that it is the custom of divine Scripture to call betrothed women wives. This is proved by the following testimonies of Deuteronomy: "If anyone," it says, "finds a virgin betrothed to a man in the field, and lies with her by force, he shall surely die, because he has humbled his neighbor's wife." And in another place: "But if a girl is betrothed to a man, and a man finds her in the city and lies with her, you shall bring them both out to the gates of that city, and they shall be stoned with stones and shall die: the girl because she did not cry out when she was in the city, and the man because he humbled his neighbor's wife; and you shall root out the evil from among you." And elsewhere too: "And who is the man to whom a wife is betrothed, and he has not taken her? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in battle and another man take her." And if anyone is troubled by the question why a virgin conceived when betrothed, rather than without a bridegroom, or (as Scripture calls him) a husband, let him know that there were three reasons. First, so that through the genealogy of Joseph, to whom Mary was related, Mary's descent too might be shown. Second, so that she should not be stoned by the people as an adulteress under the law of Moses. Third, so that in fleeing to Egypt she might have the comfort of a guardian rather than a husband. For who at that time would have believed the Virgin that she had conceived by the Holy Spirit, that the angel Gabriel had come and brought God's command? Would not everyone rather have condemned her by their sentence as an adulteress, after the example of Susanna, when even today, with the whole world now believing, the Jews argue that where Isaiah says, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb and bear a son," the Hebrew has "young woman," not "virgin," that is, almah, not bethulah? We will discuss this more fittingly against them in another place. In short, except for Joseph, Elizabeth, Mary herself, and a very few whom we may suppose to have heard it from them, everyone thought Jesus the son of Joseph; so much so that even the evangelists, expressing the opinion of the crowd (which is the true law of history), called him the Savior's father, as in this: "And he came in the Spirit into the temple" (Simeon, no doubt), "and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the law." And elsewhere: "And his father and mother were marveling at the things that were said about him." And again: "And his parents went every year to Jerusalem at the solemn day of the Passover." And then: "And when the days were completed, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, and his parents did not know it." And listen to what Mary herself, who had answered Gabriel, "How shall this be, since I do not know a man?", says about Joseph: "Son, why have you done this to us? Behold, your father and I have been looking for you in sorrow." This is not, as many argue, the voice of Jews mocking. The evangelists call Joseph father; Mary acknowledges him as father. Not that (as I indicated above) Joseph was truly the Savior's father, but that, to protect Mary's good name, he was thought by everyone to be his father. Before he was warned by the angel, "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for what is born in her is from the Holy Spirit," he was thinking of putting her away secretly; so sure was he that the child conceived was not his. But enough has been argued, more out of a desire to teach than to answer, about why Joseph is called the Lord's father and why Mary is called his wife; and in this is also briefly contained why certain people are called his brothers.

But since we are reserving its proper place for this little question, and the discussion hurries on to the rest, we must now discuss how Scripture says, "Joseph, rising from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took his wife, and did not know her until she bore her son, and he called his name Jesus." Here, first, our opponent sweats with needless labor to show that the verb "to know" is to be referred to intercourse rather than to knowledge, as if anyone had denied this, or as if any sensible person could ever have imagined the absurdities he refutes. Then he wants to show that the adverb "until," or "up to," signifies a fixed time, at whose completion that happens which did not happen up to the time prescribed, as in the present case: "And he did not know her until she bore her son." "It is plain," he says, "that she was known after the birth, since only the begetting of the son postponed knowing her." And to prove this he heaps up very many examples from the Scriptures, brandishing his sword in the dark like the blindfolded gladiators, and clashing the noise of his tongue only to pierce the limbs of his own body.

To this we answer briefly that both "knew" and "until" are understood in two ways in the holy Scriptures. As for "knew," he himself has argued that it is to be referred to intercourse, while no one doubts that it is often referred to knowledge, as here: "The boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, and his parents did not know it." Now it must be shown that, just as there he followed the custom of Scripture, so also with "until" he is broken by the authority of the same Scripture, which, in using it, often signifies a fixed time (as he himself argued), but often an unlimited one, as in what God says to certain people in the Prophet: "I am, I am, and until you grow old, I am." Will God cease to be after they have grown old? And the Savior says to the apostles in the Gospel: "Behold, I am with you all days until the consummation of the age." So after the consummation of the age will the Lord depart from his disciples, and at the time when they are to sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel, will they be deprived of the Lord's company? The apostle Paul too, writing to the Corinthians, says: "Christ the firstfruits; then those who are Christ's, who believed at his coming; then the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, when he has destroyed every principality and every power and might. For he must reign until he puts all enemies under his feet"; for he has subjected all things under his feet. Granted that it is said of the man; we do not deny it is said of him who suffered the cross, who is afterwards bidden to sit at the right hand. What does he mean by saying, "For he must reign until he puts all enemies under his feet"? Will the Lord reign only until his enemies begin to be under his feet, and after they are under his feet, cease to reign, when surely he will then begin to reign the more, when the enemies have begun to be under his feet? David too, in the fourth psalm of the steps: "As the eyes of a maidservant are on the hands of her mistress, so our eyes are on the Lord our God, until he has mercy on us." So will the Prophet keep his eyes on the Lord only until he obtains mercy, and after obtaining mercy turn his eyes to the ground? Yet he says in another place: "My eyes have failed for your salvation and for the word of your righteousness." I could heap up countless examples on this point and cover all the insolence of my assailant with a cloud of testimonies; but I will add a few more, so that the reader may find similar ones for himself.

The divine word says in Genesis: "And they gave Jacob the foreign gods that were in their hands and the earrings that were in their ears. And Jacob hid them under the terebinth that is in Shechem, and lost them up to this present day." Likewise at the end of Deuteronomy: "And Moses the servant of the Lord died in the land of Moab by the word of the Lord, and they buried him in Geth near the house of Phegor, and no one knows his tomb up to this day." Certainly "this day" must be reckoned as the time at which the history itself was composed, whether you wish to call Moses the author of the Pentateuch or Ezra the restorer of the same work; I do not object. The question now is whether what is said, "up to this day," refers to that age in which the books were published or written. Let him show, then, that after that day, so many years having passed down to us, either the idols hidden under the terebinth have been found or Moses' tomb discovered; for he stubbornly maintains that after "until" and "up to" that begins to be which was not, so long as the "up to" and "until" were being fulfilled. Rather let him notice the idiom of holy Scripture and understand with us the point on which he was hesitating: that things about which there could be doubt if they had not been written are noted, while the rest is left to our understanding. For if, at a still recent time, while those who had seen Moses were alive, his tomb could be unknown, much more after so many centuries have passed. On the same principle we are to understand also the statement about Joseph: the evangelist pointed out the matter about which offense could arise, that she was not known by her husband up to the birth, so that we might understand all the more that she was not known after the birth, since he abstained from her at a time when he could still be in doubt about the vision.

In sum, I ask why Joseph abstained up to the day of the birth. He will of course answer: because he had heard the angel saying, "For what is born in her is from the Holy Spirit." To which we reply: surely he had also heard, "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife." He had been forbidden to leave her, forbidden to think his wife an adulteress. Had he also been separated from relations with his wife, when surely he had rather been warned not to be separated? "And did a just man," he says, "hearing that the Son of God was in her womb, dare to think of intercourse with his wife?" Excellent! So the man who had believed a mere dream so far as not to dare touch his wife: after he had learned from the shepherds' voices that an angel of the Lord had come from heaven and said to them, "Do not be afraid; behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people, for to you is born today a Savior, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David," and that with him the heavenly host had sung praises, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will"; who had seen righteous Simeon, with the infant in his arms, proclaiming, "Now you let your servant depart, Lord, according to your word, in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation"; who had seen Anna the prophetess, the magi, the star, Herod, the angels; this man, I say, who had known such great wonders, dared to touch the temple of God, the dwelling of the Holy Spirit, the mother of his Lord? And certainly Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart. And lest you shamelessly deny that Joseph knew these things: "And his father and mother," says Luke, "were marveling at the things that were said about him." You maintain, with amazing shamelessness, that these words are corrupted in the Greek manuscripts, though not only nearly all the Greek commentators have left them in their volumes, but some of the Latins also have adopted them as they stand in the Greek. Nor is there now any need to discuss the variety of copies, since the whole body of both the Old and the New Scripture has been translated from there into the Latin tongue, and the water from the spring must be believed to flow much purer than from the streams.

"These things," you say, "are trifles, and superfluous arguments, and a disputation more curious than true. Could Scripture not have said, 'And he took his wife, and did not dare to touch her any more,' as it said of Tamar and Judah? Or did Matthew lack words to express what he wanted to be understood? 'He did not know her,' he says, 'until she bore her son.' So after the birth he knew her, whose knowing he had put off until the birth."

If you are so contentious, you will now be overcome by your own reasoning. I do not want you to put any interval between the birth and intercourse. I do not want you to say: "Any woman who has conceived and borne a male child shall be unclean seven days; according to the days of her separation and purification she shall be unclean; and on the eighth day he shall circumcise the flesh of his foreskin, and for thirty-three days she shall remain in the blood of purification and shall touch nothing holy," and the rest. Let Joseph fall on her at once; let him at once hear through Jeremiah: "They have become to me like maddened horses after the mares; each neighed after his neighbor's wife." Otherwise how can "He did not know her until she bore her son" stand, if he waits for the time of purification, if lust long delayed is put off forty more days? Let the newly delivered mother be defiled with blood; let the midwives receive the wailing infant; let the husband hold his exhausted wife. Let the marriage begin so, lest the evangelist have lied! But far be it that this should be thought of the Savior's mother and of a righteous man. There was no midwife there; no busy attendance of women intervened. She herself wrapped the infant in swaddling cloths; she was both mother and midwife. "And she laid him," it says, "in a manger, because there was no place for him in the inn." This statement both refutes the ravings of the apocrypha, since Mary herself wrapped the infant in swaddling cloths, and does not allow Helvidius's lust to be satisfied, since in the inn there was no room for a marriage.

Since we have now answered fully and amply what he had proposed, "before they came together" and "he did not know her until she bore her son," we must come to the third question, so that the order of our reply may follow the order of his argument. For he wants Mary to have borne other sons too, on the basis of what is written: "And Joseph went up to the city of David to be registered with Mary his wife, who was with child. And it happened that while they were there, the days were fulfilled for her to give birth, and she bore her firstborn son." From this he tries to prove that no one can be called firstborn unless he also has brothers, just as he is called only-begotten who is his parents' only son.

We, however, define it thus: every only-begotten is a firstborn; not every firstborn is an only-begotten. A firstborn is not only one after whom others come, but one before whom none came. "Everything," says the Lord to Aaron, "that opens the womb of all flesh that is offered to the Lord, from man to beast, shall be yours; only they shall redeem with a price the firstborn of men and the firstborn of unclean beasts." The word of God has defined what a firstborn is: "Everything," it says, "that opens the womb." Otherwise, if no one is firstborn except one whom brothers follow, the firstborn are not owed to the priests until others have been born, lest perhaps, if no birth follows, he be an only son and not a firstborn. "His redemption," it says, "shall be from one month; the valuation five shekels; the shekel, according to the shekel of the sanctuary, is twenty obols. Only the firstborn of calves, the firstborn of sheep, and the firstborn of goats you shall not redeem, because they are holy." The word of God compels me to dedicate to God everything that opens the womb, if it is of clean animals, and if of unclean, to redeem it by paying a price to the priest. I could answer and say: "Why do you tie me down to the narrow span of one month? Why do you call firstborn one whom I do not know whether brothers will follow? Wait until a second is born. I owe the priest nothing until the one is born through whom he who was born before begins to be firstborn." Would not the very letters speak to me and convict me of folly, saying that he is called firstborn who opens the womb, not he who also has brothers? Finally, I ask about John, who is known to have been an only son: was he also a firstborn? Was he too, according to the law, liable to the law on every point? There can be no doubt. Certainly Scripture speaks thus of the Savior: "When the days of their purification were fulfilled according to the law of Moses, they brought him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord, as it is written in the law of the Lord, 'Every male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord,' and to offer sacrifices according to what is said in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons." If this law concerns only firstborn sons, and those who come after make a firstborn, then one who knew nothing about those who would come after ought not to have been bound by the law of the firstborn. But since even he whom no other brothers follow is bound by the law of the firstborn, it is concluded that he is called firstborn who opens the womb and before whom there was none, not he whom a brother born later follows. Moses writes in Exodus: "And it happened about midnight that the Lord struck every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on his throne, to the firstborn of the captive woman who was in the pit, and every firstborn of the cattle." Answer me: were those who were then slain by the destroyer firstborn sons only, or only sons as well? If only those are called firstborn who have brothers, then only sons were spared from the slaughter. But if only sons were slain as well, it happened contrary to the sentence, that only sons died among the firstborn. Either you will free only sons from the punishment, and be ridiculous; or, if you admit that they were killed, we shall prevail against your will, and only sons too are called firstborn.

His last proposition was (though he wanted to show this very thing in dealing with the firstborn) that brothers of the Lord are named in the Gospels, as here: "Behold, his mother and his brothers were standing outside, seeking to speak with him." And elsewhere: "After this he went down to Capernaum, he and his mother and his brothers." And here: "So his brothers said to him: Leave here and go into Judea, so that your disciples too may see the works that you do. For no one who does anything in secret seeks himself to be in public. If you do these things, show yourself to the world." John adds from above: "For not even his brothers believed in him at that time." Likewise Mark and Matthew: "And he taught them in their synagogue in his own country, so that they were astonished and said: Where did this man get all this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary, and his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us?" Luke too reports thus in the Acts of the Apostles: "These all were persevering with one mind in prayer, with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and his brothers." And the apostle Paul as well agrees with one voice in the same truth of history: "But I went up by revelation, and saw no one except Peter and James the brother of the Lord." And again in another place: "Do we not have the right to eat and drink? Do we not have the right to take wives about with us, as also the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?" And lest anyone should refuse to accept the testimony of the Jews, who also gave the names of his brothers, asserting that they were deceived by an error about the brothers like the one by which "they slipped in supposing the father," he cleverly took precautions and said: "These same names are given by the evangelists in another place, and the same men are the brothers of the Lord, the sons of Mary." Matthew says: "There were also there" (no doubt before the Lord's cross) "many women watching from a distance, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him; among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee." Likewise Mark: "There were also women watching from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the less and of Joseph, and Salome"; and a little after: "and many others who had come up with him to Jerusalem." And Luke as well: "There were Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them."

We have repeated these passages so that he cannot falsely cry out that what supports him has been withheld by us, and that his opinion was overthrown not by the testimonies of the Scriptures but by slippery argument. "See," he says, "James and Joseph, sons of Mary, the same whom the Jews called brothers. See Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses. And James the less, to distinguish him from the greater, who was the son of Zebedee, as Mark also puts it in another place: 'Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joses saw where he was laid; and when the Sabbath was over they bought spices and came to the tomb.'" And of course he says: "How wretched and impious it would be to think this of Mary: that while other women took care of Jesus' burial, we should say his mother was absent, or invent some other Mary, I know not who; especially since the Gospel of John testifies that she was present there, when the Lord from the cross commended her, now a widow, to John as his mother. Or are the evangelists deceived and deceiving, so as to call Mary the mother of those whom the Jews said were the brothers of Jesus?"

O blind fury, and a mind mad for its own destruction! You say that his mother was present at the Lord's cross; you say she was commended to the disciple John because of her widowhood and loneliness: as if, on your view, she did not have four sons and countless daughters whose company she could enjoy! You also call her a widow, which Scripture does not say. And though you set out all the passages of the evangelists, only John's words do not please you. You say in passing that she was present at the Lord's cross, so as not to seem to have passed over it deliberately; and yet you are silent about which women were with her. I would forgive you if you did not know, but I see you keeping silent on purpose. So hear what John says: "Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister Mary of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene." No one doubts that there were two apostles called by the name James: James son of Zebedee and James son of Alphaeus. This James the less, whoever he is, whom Scripture records as the son of a Mary, but not of the Lord's mother: do you want him to be an apostle or not? If he is an apostle, he will be the son of Alphaeus and will believe in Jesus, and will not be one of those brothers of whom it is written, "For not even his brothers believed in him at that time." If he is not an apostle but some third James, how is he to be thought the brother of the Lord, and how will a third be called "the less" to distinguish him from the greater, when "greater" and "less" usually mark a distinction not among three but between two; and when the brother of the Lord is an apostle, as Paul says: "Then after three years I came to Jerusalem to see Peter, and stayed with him fifteen days. But I saw no other of the apostles except James the brother of the Lord"? And in the same letter: "And when they knew the grace that was given to me, Peter and James and John, who seemed to be pillars." And lest you think this James is the son of Zebedee, read the Acts of the Apostles: he had already been killed by Herod. The conclusion remains that this Mary, who is written to be the mother of James the less, was the wife of Alphaeus and the sister of Mary the Lord's mother, whom John the evangelist calls Mary of Cleophas, giving her the name either from her father or from the clan of her family or for some other reason. But if they seem to you to be different women because in one place she is called "Mary the mother of James the less" and here "Mary of Cleophas," learn the custom of Scripture, that the same person is called by different names. Moses' father-in-law is called both Raguel and Jethro. Gideon, with no reason for the change of name given beforehand, is suddenly read as Jerubbaal. Ozias king of Judah is in turn called Azariah. Mount Tabor is called Itabyrium. Again, the Phoenicians call Hermon Sanior, and the Amorite calls it Sanir. The same quarter of the sky is called by three names, Nageb, Theman, Darom: read Ezekiel. Peter is called both Simon and Cephas. Judas the Zealot is called Thaddaeus in another Gospel. And the reader will be able to gather for himself from all the Scriptures many other things of the same kind as these examples.

Now what we are trying to show is how the sons of his aunt Mary, who at first did not believe and afterwards believed, are called the Lord's brothers. It could well be that one believed at once while the others remained unbelieving for a long time; and that this was the mother of James and Joses, that is, Mary of Cleophas, the wife of Alphaeus, and that she is the one called Mary the mother of James the less. If she had been the Lord's mother, he would rather have called her his mother, as in all places, and would not have wished her to be understood as the mother of another by calling her the mother of others. But in this part I do not pull the rope of contention: let Mary of Cleophas be one woman and Mary the mother of James and Joses another, so long as it is agreed that Mary the mother of James and Joses is not the same as the Lord's mother. "And how," you say, "were they called the Lord's brothers if they were not brothers?" You shall now be taught that in the divine Scriptures people are called brothers in four ways: by nature, by nation, by kinship, by affection. By nature: Esau and Jacob, the twelve patriarchs, Andrew and Peter, James and John. By nation, in the sense that all Jews are called brothers among themselves, as in Deuteronomy: "If you buy your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, he shall serve you six years, and in the seventh year you shall let him go free from you." And in the same book: "You shall surely set over yourself a ruler whom the Lord your God chooses, one from among your brothers; you may not set over yourself a foreigner, who is not your brother." And again: "If you see your brother's calf or his sheep straying on the road, do not ignore them; you shall surely bring them back to your brother. And if your brother is not near you, and you do not know him, you shall gather them into your house, and they shall be with you until your brother seeks them, and you shall give them back to him." And the apostle Paul: "I could wish," he says, "that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites." Further, those are called brothers by kinship who are of one family, that is, patria, which the Latins render paternitates, when from one root a great crowd of descendants spreads out, as in Genesis: "And Abraham said to Lot: Let there be no quarrel between me and you, and between my herdsmen and your herdsmen, for we are men who are brothers." And there: "And Lot chose for himself the region of the Jordan, and Lot moved from the east, and they separated each from his brother." And certainly Lot is not Abraham's brother but the son of his brother Haran. For Terah begot Abraham and Nahor and Haran, and Haran begot Lot. And again: "Abraham was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. And Abraham took Sarah his wife and Lot his brother's son." But if you still doubt that a brother's son is called brother, take an example: "When Abraham heard that his brother Lot had been taken captive, he counted his home-born servants, three hundred and eighteen." And after describing the slaughter in the night attack, he added: "And he brought back all the cavalry of Sodom, and brought back Lot his brother." Let these suffice to prove what we have said. But lest you quibble at any point and wriggle out like a slippery snake, you must be bound with the chains of testimonies, so that you cannot hiss in complaint and say you were defeated by twisted arguments rather than by the truth of the Scriptures. Jacob, son of Isaac and Rebecca, when he had gone to Mesopotamia fearing his brother's plots, came near and rolled the stone from the mouth of the well and watered the sheep of Laban his mother's brother. "And Jacob kissed Rachel, and crying out with his voice, he wept, and told Rachel that he was her father's brother and that he was Rebecca's son." See, here too, by the same rule as above, a sister's son is called brother. And again: "And Laban said to Jacob: Because you are my brother, you shall not serve me for nothing. Tell me what your wages are to be." So when twenty years were completed and he was returning to his homeland with his wives and children, without his father-in-law's knowledge, Laban overtook him on Mount Gilead. And when he had searched for the idols Rachel was hiding and had not found them in the baggage, Jacob answered and said to Laban: "What is my fault, and what my offense, that you have pursued me, and that you have searched all my goods? What have you found of all your things? Put it here before your brothers and my brothers, and let them judge between us two." Answer: who are these brothers of Jacob and Laban who were present then? Esau, Jacob's brother, was certainly absent, and Laban the son of Bethuel had no brothers, apart from his sister Rebecca.

There are countless examples of this kind in the divine books. But not to be long, I will return to the last part of the division, that is, that people are also called brothers by affection, which is divided in two, spiritual and common. Spiritual, because all we Christians are called brothers, as here: "Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell in unity." And in another psalm the Savior says: "I will declare your name to my brothers." And elsewhere: "Go, tell my brothers." Common, because all of us, born from one father, are joined to each other in equal brotherhood. "Say," he says, "to those who hate you: You are our brothers." And the Apostle to the Corinthians: "If anyone who is called a brother is sexually immoral, or greedy, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a robber, with such a one do not even eat," and other things like these. Now I ask by which of these ways you understand the Lord's brothers in the Gospel to be so called. By nature? But Scripture does not say so, calling them sons neither of Mary nor of Joseph. By nation? But it is absurd that a few of the Jews should be called brothers, when all the Jews who were there could have been called brothers by this rule. By the affection of human right and of the spirit? But if so, who were more his brothers than the apostles, whom he taught privately, whom he called mothers and brothers? Or if all are brothers because they are human, it was foolish to announce as something special, "Behold, your brothers are seeking you," since all human beings in general are brothers by this right. It remains, then, that according to the explanation above you understand that they are called brothers by kinship, not by affection, not by the privilege of nation, not by nature: just as Lot was called Abraham's brother and Jacob Laban's; just as the daughters of Zelophehad receive an inheritance among their brothers; just as Abraham himself had his sister Sarah as wife. For he says: "She is truly my sister on my father's side, but not on my mother's"; that is, she is his brother's daughter, not his sister's. Otherwise, how could it be that Abraham, a righteous man, should take his own father's daughter as wife, when, with the first human beings, Scripture for the sake of chaste ears does not even name this, preferring that it be understood rather than spoken; and when God afterwards ordains by law and threatens: "Whoever takes his sister, his father's daughter or his mother's, and sees her nakedness, and she sees his nakedness, it is a disgrace; they shall be cut off before the children of their people. He has uncovered his sister's nakedness; he shall bear his sin."

Most ignorant of men, you had not read these things; and leaving the whole sea of the Scriptures, you turned your madness to an outrage against the Virgin, after the example of the man of whom the stories tell that, being unknown to the public and unable to think of any good deed by which to become famous, he set fire to the temple of Diana. When no one revealed the sacrilege, he himself, it is said, came forward into public, shouting that he had set the fire; and when the leading men of Ephesus asked why he had wanted to do this, he answered: "So that, since I could not become known to everyone by good, I might do so by evil." Greek history tells this. But you have set fire to the temple of the Lord's body; you have defiled the sanctuary of the Holy Spirit, from which you want a team of four brothers and a heap of sisters to have come forth. Finally, joining your voice with the Jews, you say: "Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary, and his brothers James and Joses and Simon and Judas, and are not all his sisters with us?" "All," you add, is not said except of a crowd. Who, I ask you, knew you before this blasphemy? Who reckoned you worth two pennies? You have got what you wanted: you have become famous by a crime. I myself who write against you, though I live in the same city as you, do not know, as they say, whether you are white or black. I pass over the faults of language with which your whole book teems. I say nothing of your ridiculous opening. O the times! O the morals! I do not seek eloquence; you have none yourself and asked for it from your brother Craterius. I do not, I say, demand polish of tongue; I seek purity of soul. For among Christians it is a great solecism and fault to say or to do something shameful. I come to the end, and I close you in with a horned question, and will deal with you as though I had done nothing above: the Lord's brothers were so called in the same way as Joseph was called father. "Your father and I," she says, "have been looking for you in sorrow." It is the mother who says this, not the Jews. And the evangelist himself reports: "And his father and mother were marveling at the things that were said about him," and the like, which we have already listed, in which they are called parents. And lest you perhaps plead the variety of copies, since you have most foolishly persuaded yourself that the Greek manuscripts are corrupted, I come to the Gospel of John, in which it is written most plainly: "Philip found Nathanael and said to him: We have found him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets wrote, Jesus the son of Joseph, from Nazareth." This is certainly contained in your copy. Answer me: how is Jesus the son of Joseph, when it is agreed that he was begotten of the Holy Spirit? Was Joseph truly his father? Dull as you are, you will not dare to say so. Or was he supposed to be? Then let the brothers be supposed in the same way as the father was supposed.

But now that the discourse has sailed clear of the rocks and the rough places, the sails must be spread and we must rush upon his epilogue, in which, appearing learned to himself, he calls Tertullian as a witness and sets out the words of Victorinus, bishop of Pettau. Of Tertullian I say no more than that he was not a man of the Church. Of Victorinus I assert what I asserted of the evangelists: that he spoke of brothers of the Lord, not sons of Mary; and brothers in the sense we explained above, by kinship, not by nature. But we are wasting our time on trifles, and, leaving the spring of truth, we chase the little streams of opinion. Could I not set in motion against you the whole line of ancient writers: Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and many other apostolic and eloquent men, who, holding these same views, wrote volumes full of wisdom against Ebion, Theodotus of Byzantium, and Valentinus? If you had ever read them, you would be wiser. But I think it better to answer the points one by one briefly than to lengthen the volume by lingering too long.

I now attack the passage in which, comparing virginity and marriage, you wanted to be eloquent. We laughed at you as in the proverb: "We see a camel dancing." You say: "Are virgins better than Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who had marriages? Are not little ones formed every day in the womb by the hands of God, so that we should rightly blush to think that Mary married after the birth? If this seems shameful to them, it remains that they do not believe that God was born through the genitals of a virgin either. For on their view it is more shameful that God was born through a virgin's private parts than that a virgin married her own husband after the birth." Add, if you like, the other indignities of nature: the womb swelling for nine months, nausea, delivery, blood, swaddling clothes. Picture to yourself the infant wrapped in the usual covering of membranes. Bring in the hard manger, the infant's wailing, the circumcision on the eighth day, the time of purification, so that he is shown to be unclean. We do not blush, we are not silent. The humbler the things he suffered for me, the more I owe him. And when you have gone over everything, you will bring forward nothing more shameful than the cross, which we confess and believe, and in which we triumph over our enemies.

But just as we do not deny what is written, so we reject what is not written. We believe that God was born of the Virgin because we read it. We do not believe that Mary married after the birth because we do not read it. Nor do we say this in order to condemn marriage, for virginity itself is the fruit of marriage, but because we are not permitted to suppose anything rashly about holy men. For by this kind of reasoning from possibility we could argue that Joseph also had several wives, because Abraham had several and Jacob had several, and that the Lord's brothers were from these wives, which many invent with a rashness more bold than pious. You say Mary did not remain a virgin; I claim more for myself: that Joseph himself also was a virgin through Mary, so that from a virginal marriage a virgin son might be born. For if sexual immorality does not befall a holy man, and it is not written that he had another wife, and he was the guardian rather than the husband of Mary, whom he was thought to have, it remains that he who was found worthy to be called the Lord's father remained a virgin with Mary.

And since I am going to say something about the comparison of virginity and marriage, I beg my readers not to think that in praising virgins I have disparaged marriage, or made any distinction of merit between the saints of the Old Testament and of the New, that is, between those who had marriages and those who have wholly withdrawn from the embrace of women; but rather that, according to the conditions of the times, they then were under one sentence, and we, upon whom the ends of the ages have come, under another. As long as that law remained, "Increase and multiply and fill the earth," and "Cursed is the barren woman who does not bear seed in Israel," all married and were given in marriage, and, leaving their parents, became one flesh. But when that voice thundered, "The time is short; it remains that those who have wives be as though they had none," cleaving to the Lord, we become one spirit with him. And why? Because "he who is without a wife thinks of the things that are God's, how he may please God; but he who is with a wife is anxious about the things of this world, how he may please his wife. And the woman and the virgin are divided: she who is not married thinks of the things that are God's, that she may be holy in body and spirit; for she who is married thinks of the things of the world, how she may please her husband." Why do you bark against it? Why do you resist? The vessel of election says this, "The woman and the virgin are divided." See how great is the happiness of her who has lost even the name of her sex: the virgin is no longer called woman. "She who is not married thinks of the things that are the Lord's, that she may be holy in body and spirit." The definition of a virgin is to be holy in body and spirit, since it does no good to have virgin flesh if one has married in mind. "But she who is married thinks of the things of the world, how she may please her husband." Do you think it the same thing to spend days and nights in prayer and to devote oneself to fasting, and to polish one's face for the husband's arrival, to mince one's steps, to feign endearments? The virgin does this so as to look plainer and to darken nature's good by neglect; the wife paints herself at the mirror and, to the insult of her Maker, tries to be more beautiful than she was born. Then infants prattle, the household is in uproar, children hang on her kisses and her mouth, expenses are reckoned, outlays prepared. Here the girded band of cooks pounds the meat; there the crowd of weavers murmurs. Meanwhile word comes that the husband has arrived with his friends. Like a swallow she flits through every corner of the house: is the couch smooth, have they swept the floors, are the cups adorned, is the dinner ready? Answer, I ask, amid all this where is the thought of God? And are these happy homes? Moreover, where drums sound, the pipe shrills, the lyre chatters, the cymbal clashes, what fear of God is there? The parasite glories in insults; the exposed victims of lust come in, and in their thin clothing are thrust half-naked before shameless eyes. In these things the unhappy wife either takes pleasure and perishes, or takes offense, and the husband is stirred to quarrels. Hence discord, the seedbed of divorce. Or if a house is found in which these things do not happen, which is a rare bird, still the very management of the house, the education of children, the needs of the husband, the correction of slaves: how should they not call one away from the thought of God? "It had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women," says Scripture; after which it is said to Abraham, "Whatever Sarah says to you, listen to her voice." She who is not in the anxieties and pain of childbirth, who, the monthly flow of blood having ceased, has ceased to be a woman, is freed from God's curse; nor is her turning toward her husband, but on the contrary her husband is subject to her, and he is commanded by the voice of the Lord: "Whatever Sarah says to you, listen to her voice." And so they begin to be free for prayer. For as long as the marriage debt is paid, earnestness in prayer is neglected.

We do not deny that holy women are found among widows and among married women; but they are those who have ceased to be wives, who even in the necessity of marriage imitate the chastity of virgins. This is what the Apostle, with Christ speaking in him, briefly testified: "The unmarried woman thinks of the things that are God's, how she may please God; but the married woman thinks of the things of the world, how she may please her husband," leaving us a field for understanding on this point. Yet he lays no necessity or snare on anyone, but urges what is honorable, wishing all to be as he himself is. And though he has no command of the Lord about virginity, because it is beyond human beings, and it would in a way have been shameless to force people against nature and to say in other words, "I want you to be what the angels are" (which is why the virgin has a greater reward, since she despises what, if she did it, would be no sin), nevertheless in what follows he adds: "But I give advice, as one who has obtained mercy from the Lord to be faithful. I think therefore that this is good because of the present necessity, for it is good for a man to be so." What is this necessity? "Woe to those who are pregnant and nursing in that day." The forest grows up so that it may later be cut down. The field is sown so that it may be reaped. The world is already full; the earth does not hold us. Every day wars cut us down, diseases take us away, shipwrecks swallow us up; and still we go to law about boundaries? Of this number are those who follow the Lamb, who have not defiled their garments, for they remained virgins. Note what "defiled" means. I do not dare to explain it, lest Helvidius slander me. As for your saying that some virgins are tavern-keepers, I tell you more: there are adulteresses among them, and, what will surprise you more, clergy who are innkeepers and monks who are unchaste. But who does not at once understand that neither a tavern-keeping virgin, nor an adulterous monk, nor an innkeeping cleric can be what they are called? Is it the fault of virginity if a pretender to virginity is in a crime? For my part, to pass over other persons and come to the virgin: she who practices the trade of a shopkeeper does not remain a virgin in spirit, whether or not in body I do not know.

We have played the rhetorician and amused ourselves a little in the manner of declaimers. You forced us to it, Helvidius, you who, now that the Gospel is shining, want virgins and married women to be of the same glory. And since I suppose that, defeated by the truth, you will turn to disparaging my life and to abuse (for even silly women do this, wishing ill in corners to the masters who have defeated them), I say this in advance: your insults will be a glory to me, since with the same mouth with which you disparaged Mary you will tear me to pieces, and the servant of the Lord and his mother will alike experience your dog's eloquence.