Letters 123.5–124.1

Otherwise, it is an absolute good, without comparison with something worse, to be what the apostle is: that is, loosed, not bound; not a slave but free, thinking of the things of God, not of the things of a wife. And directly in what follows he says: “A wife is bound to her husband as long as her husband lives. But if her husband falls asleep, she is free: let her marry whom she will, only in the Lord. But she will be more blessed if she remains so, according to my counsel. And I think that I too have the Spirit of God.” Here the sense is the same, because the Spirit is the same: different letters, but one author of the letters. While her husband lives the wife is bound, and when he is dead she is loosed. Therefore marriage is a bond and widowhood a loosing. The wife is bound to the husband and the husband bound to the wife, so much so that they do not have power over their own bodies and must render each other what is due; and those who serve under the dominion of marriage cannot have the freedom of chastity. His addition, “only in the Lord,” cuts off marriages with heathens, of which he had said in another place too: “Do not bear the yoke with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with iniquity, or what fellowship has light with darkness? What agreement has Christ with Belial, or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? What accord has the temple of God with idols?”—so that, of course, we may not plow with an ox and an ass together, and the wedding garment may not be woven with a varied woof. And at once he takes away what he had granted and, as if regretting his own judgment, draws it back: “She will be more blessed if she remains so”; and he says that this is rather his own counsel. Lest it be despised as a man’s, he confirms it with the authority of the Holy Spirit, so that he may be heard not as a man indulging the frailty of human flesh, but as an apostle commanding by the Holy Spirit. Nor should a widow flatter herself on account of her girlish years because he orders that none be enrolled under sixty. For he who says even of the married, “The time is short; it remains that those who have wives be as though they had none,” does not compel the unmarried or young girls to marry; rather he is discussing those widows who are fed by the provisions of their own families, who are laid upon the necks of their children and grandchildren. He commands these to learn to take care of their own household and to repay their parents and provide for them sufficiently, so that the church may not be burdened and may be able to minister to those who are truly widows, of whom it is written: “Honor widows who are widows indeed”—that is, those who are bereft of all help from their own, who cannot work with their hands, whom poverty weakens and age wears out, for whom God is their hope and prayer their whole work. From this we are given to understand that young widows, except those excused by infirmity, are bound either to their own labor or to the service of their children and relatives. “Honor” here is taken either for alms or for a gift, as in the saying: “Let the presbyters be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the word and teaching.” And in the Gospel the Lord explains that the command of the law which says, “Honor your father and your mother,” is to be understood not in the sound of words, by which a son could cheat his parents’ want with empty flattery, but in supplying the necessities of life. For when God commanded that children should support their poor parents and repay to them in old age the benefits they had received as little ones, the scribes and Pharisees on the contrary taught sons to answer their parents: “Corban”—that is, “It is a gift, which I have vowed to the altar and promised among the temple offerings; if you take food from me, it will be turned to your refreshment.” And so it came about that, while father and mother were in need, the sons offered a sacrifice which the priests and scribes consumed. If, then, the apostle compels poor widows—those, however, who are young and not broken by any infirmity—to work with their own hands, so that the church may not be burdened and may be able to support the aged widows, what excuse does she have who abounds in the wealth of the world, who can even minister to others and make herself friends by the unrighteous mammon, who can receive her into eternal dwellings? Consider at the same time that a widow is not enrolled unless she has been the wife of one husband. And we used to think that this was a privilege of priests only, that no one is admitted to the altar unless he has had one wife. For the twice-married are excluded not only from the priestly office but also from the alms of the church, since a woman who has descended to a second marriage is thought unworthy of its dole. And yet even a layman is held by the priestly law, since he ought to show himself such that he can be chosen for the priesthood. For he is not chosen if he has been twice married; and priests are chosen from among the laity; therefore the layman too is held by the command through which one comes to the priesthood.

What the apostle wills is one thing; what he is compelled to will is another. That he concedes second marriages is due to my incontinence, not to his will. He wills that all be as he himself is and think of the things of God, and, once loosed, never again be bound. But if he sees people slipping through incontinence and coming to the abyss of sexual immorality, he holds out the hand of a second marriage, so that they may wallow with one rather than with many. Let the man who marries a second time not hear this as said harshly or against the apostle’s rule. For the apostle has two wills: one by which he commands, “I say to the unmarried and to widows: it is good for them if they remain as I am”; the other by which he indulges: “But if they do not contain themselves, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn.” First he shows what he wills, then what he is compelled to will. He wills that we remain after marriage as he himself is, and he sets forth the example of his own apostolic blessedness. But if he sees that we do not want what he wants, he grants indulgence to our incontinence. Which of the two wills do we choose? What he wills more and what is good in itself, or what becomes lighter by comparison with an evil and in a way is not even good, because it is preferred to an evil? So we who choose what the apostle does not will but is compelled to will—or rather, what he acquiesces in for those who desire the worse—do not his will but our own. We read in the Old Testament that the high priests were married once, and that the daughters of priests, if they became widows, were to eat of the priestly food, and when they died the funeral rites were to be performed for them as for a father and mother; but if they took other husbands, they became strangers both to their father and to the sacrifices and were to be counted among outsiders.

Even the pagan world observes this, to our condemnation, if truth does not render to Christ what falsehood grants to the devil, who has even devised a chastity that destroys. The hierophant at Athens abjures his manhood and becomes chaste by a permanent impairment; the flamen who has had one wife is admitted to the priesthood; the flaminica too is chosen as the wife of one husband; a man married only once is taken for the rites of the Egyptian bull—to say nothing of the virgins of Vesta and of Apollo, of Achaean Juno, of Diana and of Minerva, who wither away in the perpetual virginity of their priesthood. I will touch briefly on the queen of Carthage, who chose to burn rather than marry King Iarbas; on the wife of Hasdrubal, who, taking her children by either hand, threw herself into the fire below so as not to suffer the loss of her chastity; and on Lucretia, who, having lost the glory of chastity, would not outlive her polluted conscience. And not to weave a long discourse of many examples, which you can take for your edification from the first book against Jovinian, I will recall only one that took place in your own country, so that you may know that chastity is revered even among barbarous, savage and bloodthirsty nations. The nation of the Teutons, setting out from the farthest shores of the Ocean and of Germany, flooded all the Gauls and, after often cutting Roman armies to pieces, was overcome by Marius at Aquae Sextiae. Three hundred of their matrons, when they learned that by the terms of captivity they were to be handed over to other men, first begged the consul that they might be given into service in the temple of Ceres and Venus. When they did not obtain this, and the lictor drove them away, they killed their little children, and in the morning they were found dead, strangled by nooses and holding each other in mutual embraces.

What captivity could not inflict on barbarian chastity, shall a noble matron do—try a second husband, when she has either lost a good first one or found a bad one, so as to strive again against the judgment of God? What then? If she immediately loses the second, will she draw a third by lot? And if he falls asleep, will she go on to a fourth and a fifth, so as to differ in what respect from harlots? A widow must by every means take care not to pass the first bounds of chastity. If she passes them and breaks through a matron’s modesty, she will rave into every kind of wantonness, so that she deserves to hear the prophet saying: “You have got the face of a harlot; you are shameless.” What then? Do we condemn second marriages? Not at all; but we praise first ones. Do we cast the twice-married out of the church? Far from it; but we call the once-married to continence. In Noah’s ark there were not only clean but also unclean animals; it had men, and it had serpents too. In a great house too there are various vessels, some for honor, some for dishonor. There is the bowl for drinking, and there is the chamber pot for nature’s more private needs. For when the Gospels teach a hundredfold, sixtyfold and thirtyfold fruit in the sowing of the good ground, and the hundredfold holds the first rank for the crown of virginity, the sixtyfold is second in number for the labor of widows, and the thirtyfold testifies to the covenant of marriage by the very joining of the fingers—in what number will a second marriage be? Rather, outside the number. Certainly it does not spring up in good ground, but among the brambles and in the thickets of the foxes, to which the most impious Herod is compared; so that she thinks herself praiseworthy in this, if she is better than prostitutes, if she surpasses the victims of public lust, if she is prostituted to one and not to many.

I am about to tell something incredible, which I will prove by the testimony of many. Many years ago, when I was helping Damasus, bishop of the city of Rome, with the church’s correspondence and answering the synodal inquiries of East and West, I saw a pair matched with each other, from the very meanest of the common people: a man who had buried twenty wives and a woman who had had her twenty-second husband, joined to each other in what, as they themselves thought, was their last marriage. Everyone, men and women alike, waited with the greatest eagerness: after so many discharges from the arena, which would carry the other out first? The husband won; and, with the people of the whole city flocking together, crowned and holding a palm, and bowing to the crowd on every side as they cheered by the hundred, he walked before the bier of his much-married wife. What do we say to such a woman? Surely what the Lord said to the Samaritan woman: “You have had twenty-two husbands, and this one by whom you are now buried is not yours.”

Therefore I beseech you, devout daughter in Christ, not to know those texts by which help is given to the incontinent and the wretched, but rather to keep reading those by which chastity is crowned. It is enough for you that you have lost the first rank, that of virginity, and have come through the third to the second—that is, through the duty of marriage to the continence of widowhood. Do not think of the lowest, or rather the rejected, rank, and do not search out examples that are foreign and far away. You have your grandmother, your mother and your aunt, in whom you have abundant models to imitate, and whose teaching and precepts for living are a rule of virtues. For if many women, while their husbands are still living in marriage, understand the apostle’s saying, “All things are lawful, but not all things are expedient,” and make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven—either by consent from their second birth after the washing, or after marriage from the ardor of faith—why should a widow, who by the Lord’s judgment has ceased to have a husband, not joyfully repeat, “The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away,” and seize the opportunity of freedom offered her, to have power over her own body and not become again a man’s handmaid? And certainly it is far harder not to enjoy what you have than to long for what you have lost. Hence virginity is happier in this, that it has not known the incitements of the flesh, and widowhood more anxious in this, that it recalls past pleasures to mind—above all if she thinks she has lost her husband rather than sent him on ahead; the one belongs to grief, the other to joy.

Let the first creation of man teach us to reject more marriages than one. There was one Adam and one Eve—or rather one rib from him—separated into a woman; and what had been divided is joined again by marriage, as Scripture says: “The two shall be in one flesh”—not in two or three—“for this reason a man shall leave father and mother and cleave to his wife,” certainly not to his wives. Paul, expounding this testimony, refers it to Christ and to the church, so that both the first Adam in the flesh and the second in the spirit are husbands of one wife. One Eve is the mother of all the living, and one church the parent of all Christians. As the accursed Lamech divided the one into two wives, so the heretics tear the other into many churches, which according to John’s Apocalypse are to be called synagogues of the devil rather than assemblies of Christ. We read in the book of Songs: “There are sixty queens and eighty concubines, and young maidens without number. One is my dove, my perfect one; she is the only one of her mother, the chosen of her who bore her.” To her the same John writes a letter: “The elder to the elect lady and her children.” Moreover, into the ark, which the apostle Peter interprets as a type of the church, Noah with his three sons brought one wife each, not two. Even of the unclean animals they are taken in pairs, male and female, so that not even among beasts, serpents, crocodiles and lizards does a second marriage have a place. And if of the clean ones seven are taken, that is, an odd number, in this too the palm of virginity and chastity is shown. For when Noah came out of the ark he sacrificed victims to God, not from the even number but from the odd, because the one was prepared for offspring and marriage, the other for sacrifice.

But, you say, the patriarchs did not have one wife each; indeed they had very many concubines too, and, as if that were not enough, David had many wives and Solomon countless. Judah goes in to Tamar as to a harlot, and, according to the letter that kills, the prophet Hosea is joined not only to a prostitute but to an adulteress. If this is granted to us too as a right, let us neigh after all women and, after the example of Sodom and Gomorrah, be caught by the last day selling and buying, marrying and giving in marriage, so that the end of marriage may come only with the end of life. But if, both after the flood and before it, the sentence held good, “Increase and multiply and fill the earth,” what is that to us, upon whom the ends of the ages have come, to whom it is said, “The time is short,” and, “The axe is already laid at the root of the trees”—an axe to cut down the forest of the law and of marriage by the chastity of the Gospel? There is “a time to embrace, and a time to be far from embraces.” Jeremiah, with captivity at hand, is forbidden to take a wife. Ezekiel in Babylon says: “My wife died, and my mouth was opened.” Neither the man about to take a wife nor the man who had taken one can prophesy freely in the work of marriage. Once it was a glory to hear the verse, “Your sons like young olive shoots around your table,” and, “May you see your children’s children”; now it is said of the continent: “He who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit,” and, “My soul has cleaved after you; your right hand has upheld me.” Then it was an eye for an eye; now we offer the other cheek also to the one who strikes us. At that time it was said to warriors: “Gird your sword upon your thigh, O mighty one”; now Peter hears: “Put your sword back into its sheath; for whoever strikes with the sword will die by the sword.” We say this not separating the Law and the Gospel, as Marcion slanderously does, but receiving one and the same God, who, according to the variety of times and circumstances, sows at the beginning and at the end so that he may reap, plants so that he may have something to cut down, lays a foundation so that, when the building is finished, he may set the roof on it. Otherwise, if we come to the mysteries and the types of things to come, then—not by our own judgment but as the apostle explains—Hagar and Sarah, Mount Sinai and Mount Zion, signify the two covenants. Leah with her bleary eyes and Rachel, whom Jacob loves most, bear witness to the synagogue and the church. Hence Hannah too, at first barren, is more fruitful than Peninnah in her fertility—although monogamy has also gone before us in Isaac and Rebekah, whose childbearing alone is a revelation of the Lord; nor did any other woman consult God on her own behalf. What shall I say of Tamar, who gave birth to the twin infants Zerah and Perez—at whose birth the dividing wall separated two peoples, and the hand tied with scarlet even then sprinkled the conscience of the Jews with the passion of Christ—and of the prophet’s harlot, whose likeness signifies either the church gathered from the Gentiles or—what suits the passage better—the synagogue: first taken from among idolaters through Abraham and Moses, then, after adultery and the denial of the Savior, sitting for a very long time without altar, priests and prophets, and awaiting the fellowship of her former husband, so that, after the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, then all Israel may be saved?

I wished to show, as on a small tablet, the widest regions of the earth, so that I may go on to other little questions, the first of which concerns Anna’s advice: “Will you alone waste away, grieving, all your youth, and know neither sweet children nor the rewards of Venus? Do you think ashes or buried shades care for that?” Let her who suffered answer briefly: “You, overcome by my tears, you first, sister, load me in my madness with these evils and cast me before the enemy. I was not allowed to live a life without wedlock and without reproach, like a wild creature, and not to touch such cares. The faith promised to the ashes of Sychaeus was not kept.” You set before me the joys of marriage; I will set against you the pyre, the sword, the fire. There is not so much good in marriage that we hope for as there is evil that can happen and is to be feared. Lust, once spent, always leaves regret behind it; it is never satisfied, and when quenched it is kindled again. It grows by use and fails, and it does not obey reason, being driven by impulse. But you say: “Ample wealth and the management of household property need a husband’s authority.” So, of course, the houses of the unmarried have perished, and unless you yourself are a slave together with your slaves, you will not be able to command your household! Are not your grandmother, your mother and your aunt of their former authority and of even greater honor, since the whole province and the leaders of the churches look up to them? Do soldiers, then, and travelers without wives not manage their little lodgings, and neither invite to banquets nor get invited? As if you could not have servants of proven age, or freedmen in whose hands you were brought up, to be over the house, to answer to the public, to pay the taxes—men who look up to you as their patroness, love you as their nursling, revere you as a saint. “Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you.” If you think about clothing, the lilies of the Gospel will be set before you; if about food, you will be sent to the birds, which neither sow nor reap, and your heavenly Father feeds them. How many virgins and widows have managed their small property without any taint of rumor!

Beware of joining yourself to young women, of cleaving to those on whose account the apostle concedes second marriages, lest you suffer shipwreck in the midst of calm. If it is said to Timothy, “Avoid the younger widows,” and again, “the older women as mothers, the younger as sisters, in all chastity,” why do you not listen to me when I warn you? Flee the company of persons with whom there can be suspicion of evil conduct, and do not keep ready that saying from the crossroads: “My conscience is enough for me; I do not care what people say.” Certainly the apostle provided good things not only before God but also before men, so that the name of God might not be blasphemed among the Gentiles through him. He certainly had the right to take sister women about with him, but he did not want to be judged by an unbelieving conscience. And though he could live by the Gospel, he worked day and night with his own hands, so as not to burden any of the believers. “If food,” he says, “makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat.” Let us too say: if that sister or brother makes not one or two but the whole church stumble, I will see neither sister nor brother. Better that one’s property be diminished than the soul’s salvation; better to lose what, whether we like it or not, will one day be lost, than to give up that for which everything must be given up. Which of us can add to his stature—I will not say a cubit, which is enormous—but a tenth part of one little inch? And are we anxious about what we shall eat or what we shall drink? Let us not, then, think of tomorrow: sufficient for the day is its own evil. Jacob, fleeing his brother and leaving great riches in his father’s house, sets out naked for Mesopotamia, and, to give us an example of his fortitude, with a stone put under his head he sees a ladder set up reaching to heaven and the Lord leaning upon it, by which angels ascended and descended, so that neither the sinner should despair of salvation nor the righteous be secure in his own virtue. And, to pass over much—for this is not the time to discuss everything by gathering testimonies—after twenty years he who had once crossed the Jordan with a staff returns to his homeland a rich master and a richer father, with three droves of flocks. The apostles, strangers throughout the whole world, had no copper in their belts, no staff in their hands, no shoes on their feet; and yet they could say, “Having nothing and possessing all things,” and, “Silver and gold we have none; but what we have: in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, rise and walk.” For they were not weighed down by the burden of riches, and therefore, standing with Elijah in the cleft of the rock, they could pass through the narrow eye of the needle and behold the back of the Lord. But we burn with avarice, and while arguing against money we spread our lap for gold, and nothing is enough for us; and what is said of the Megarians may rightly be applied to us wretches: they build as if they would live forever, they live as if they would die the next day. And we do this because we do not believe the Lord’s words; because the age that all desire promises us, not the nearness of death, which is owed to mortals by the law of nature, but, by an empty hope, spans of years. For no one is so broken in strength and of such decrepit old age that he does not think he will live one more year. Hence forgetfulness of his condition steals upon him, so that an earthly creature, on the very point of being dissolved, is lifted up into pride and in his mind holds heaven.

But what am I doing? With the ship wrecked I am arguing about the cargo. He who was holding back is being taken out of the way, and we do not understand that Antichrist is drawing near, whom the Lord Jesus will slay with the breath of his mouth. “Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing in that day”—both of which are among the fruits of marriage. I will run briefly through a few of our present miseries. That a few of us survive until now is due not to our merit but to the Lord’s mercy. Innumerable and most savage nations have occupied all the Gauls. Everything between the Alps and the Pyrenees, everything enclosed by the Ocean and the Rhine, the Quadi, the Vandal, the Sarmatian, the Alans, the Gepids, the Heruli, the Saxons, the Burgundians, the Alamanni and—O state to be mourned!—the Pannonian enemies have laid waste. “For Assur also has come with them.” Mainz, once a noble city, has been captured and overthrown, and in the church many thousands of people were butchered. The Vangiones were destroyed by a long siege. The very powerful city of the Remi, the Ambiani, the Atrebates, “the Morini, remotest of men,” Tournai, the Nemetes and Strasbourg have been carried off into Germany. The provinces of Aquitaine and of the Nine Peoples, of Lyons and of Narbonne, all except a few cities, have been laid waste, and these too the sword ravages outside and famine within. I cannot mention Toulouse without tears: that it has not fallen until now is due to the merits of its holy bishop Exsuperius. The Spains themselves, on the very point of perishing, tremble daily, remembering the Cimbrian invasion; and whatever others have suffered once, they suffer continually in fear.

I pass over the rest, lest I seem to despair of God’s mercy. For a long time now, from the Black Sea to the Julian Alps, the things that are ours have not been ours, and for thirty years, since the frontier of the Danube was broken, there has been fighting in the very midst of the regions of the Roman Empire. Tears had dried up with age; apart from a few old men, all, born in captivity and siege, did not miss a freedom they had not known. Who would believe it? What histories could encompass in fitting words that Rome is fighting within her own bosom, not for glory but for survival—indeed not even fighting, but buying her life with gold and all her household goods? This has happened not through the fault of the emperors, who are most religious, but through the crime of a half-barbarian traitor, who armed our enemies against us with our own wealth. The Roman Empire once labored under an everlasting disgrace because, when the Gauls were laying everything waste and its army had been routed at the Allia, Brennus had entered Rome; nor could it wipe out that former ignominy until it had brought under its rule both the Gauls, the native soil of the Gauls, and Gallograecia, where those conquerors of West and East had settled. Hannibal, a storm that arose from the borders of Spain, after laying Italy waste, saw the city and did not dare to besiege it. Such reverence for the Roman name held Pyrrhus that, after destroying all before him, he withdrew from the neighborhood and did not dare, though victor, to look upon the city he had learned was a city of kings. And yet for this affront—I will not call it pride, since it ended well for them—the one, a fugitive throughout the whole world, at last found death by poison in Bithynia; the other, returning to his homeland, fell in his own kingdom; and the provinces of both pay tribute to the Roman people. Now, even if all things turn out successfully, apart from what we have lost we have nothing to take from conquered enemies. The ardent poet, describing the power of the city of Rome, says: “What is enough, if Rome is too little?” Let us change this into another saying: “What is safe, if Rome perishes?” “Not if I had a hundred tongues and a hundred mouths, and a voice of iron, could I tell all the punishments of the captives or run through all the names of the slain.” And these very things I have said are dangerous both to the speaker and to the hearers, so that not even groaning is free for us; indeed, we do not dare to weep over what we suffer.

Answer me, dearest daughter in Christ: are you going to marry amid all this? What husband will you take? One, I suppose, who will flee or fight—you understand what follows either—and instead of the Fescennine song the trumpet will blare at you with its harsh and terrible sound, so that the women who attend you as a bride may perhaps be mourners. Or in what delights will you abound, you who have lost the revenues of your estates, who see your little besieged household wasting away with disease and hunger? But far be it from me to think such things of you, to suspect anything untoward of one who has consecrated her soul to the Lord. I have spoken not so much to you as, under your name, to others: women who go round the houses of matrons, fond of wine, curious and talkative, whose god is their belly and whose glory is in their shame; who know nothing of the Scriptures except the precepts about second marriage; who console their own desires in another’s body, so that they may see others doing what they have done themselves and be flattered by the company of the wicked. When you have crushed their shamelessness and their propositions by the interpretation of the apostle’s sayings, read, to learn how you should live in widowhood, the book to Eustochium on keeping virginity, and the others to Furia and Salvina, one of whom is the daughter-in-law of Probus, once consul, the other the daughter of Gildo, who held Africa. This little book will bear the title On Monogamy under your name.

About ten years ago the holy man Pammachius sent me the sheets of a certain person containing a translation—or rather a corruption—of Origen’s books On First Principles, earnestly asking that a Latin translation should preserve the Greek truth, and that the Roman tongue should come to know, either way, whether the writer had spoken well or ill, without the protection of a translator. I did as he wished and sent him the books. When he read them he was horrified and locked them up in his book chest, so that they might not be put about among the public and wound many minds. But a certain brother—one of those who have a zeal for God but not according to knowledge—asked him to hand them over to be read, as if he would return them at once; and because the time was so short, he could not suspect a fraud. The man who had received them to read employed stenographers, copied out the whole work, and returned the manuscript much sooner than he had promised. And with the same rashness and—to put it more mildly—folly, he entrusted to others, more wickedly still, what he had wickedly purloined. And since shorthand abbreviations can hardly preserve accurately large books that discuss mystical matters, especially when they are dictated in secret and in haste, everything in them is so confused that in most places they lack both order and sense. For this reason, dearest Avitus, you ask me to send you the very copy which I translated long ago and gave to no one else, and which the aforesaid brother perversely published.