On the Crown

It happened recently. The bounty of our most excellent emperors was being paid out in the camp, and the soldiers were coming forward crowned with laurel. One of them there, more a soldier of God, more steadfast than the rest of his brothers, who had presumed that they could serve two masters, alone with his head bare and the crown idle in his hand, his Christianity already made public by that very discipline, stood out shining. Then one after another they pointed him out, mocked him from a distance, gnashed their teeth at him close by. The murmur is carried to the tribune, and the man had already stepped out of the ranks. At once the tribune said, “Why is your dress so different?” He said he was not permitted to do as the rest did. Asked for his reasons, he replied, “I am a Christian.” O soldier glorious in God! Then votes were taken, the case was adjourned, and the accused was sent to the prefects. There he laid down his heavy cloak, beginning to be relieved; he loosed the most irksome military boot from his feet, beginning to stand on holy ground; he gave back the sword, which was not needed even for the Lord's defence; the laurel too fell from his hand. And now, reddened with the hope of his own blood, shod with the preparation of the gospel, girded with the sharper word of God, armed completely as the apostle says, and better crowned with the white crown of martyrdom, he awaits in prison the donative of Christ.

Then came opinions about him (whether of Christians I do not know, for those of the heathen are no different): that he was headstrong, reckless, and eager to die, who by being questioned about a matter of dress had brought trouble on the Name; the only brave man, of course, among so many brothers his fellow soldiers, the only Christian! Plainly it only remains for those who have rejected the prophecies of the same Holy Spirit to plan to refuse martyrdoms as well. They mutter, in short, that their peace, so good and so long, is being endangered. And I do not doubt that some are emigrating from the Scriptures, packing their bags, girding themselves for flight from city to city. For that is the only part of the gospel they care to remember. I know their pastors too: lions in peace, deer in battle. But on the questions of confession we shall teach elsewhere. For now, since they also raise the objection, “But where are we forbidden to be crowned?”, I will take up rather this as the proper substance of the present case, so that those who ask from anxious ignorance may be instructed, and those who argue in defence of the fault may be refuted, above all the laurel-crowned Christians themselves, for whom this alone is the question, as though an offence that admits of question could be held to be either no offence or at least an uncertain one. That it is neither no offence nor an uncertain one I will meanwhile show from this.

I say that none of the faithful ever has a crown on his head except at a time of trial of this kind. All observe this, from catechumens to confessors and martyrs, or deniers. You may consider where the authority of the custom comes from, which is now chiefly in question. But when it is asked why something is observed, it is meanwhile agreed that it is observed. Therefore an offence cannot seem to be either no offence or an uncertain one when it is committed against an observance that must be defended already on its own account and is sufficiently authorized by the support of general consent. Of course the reason should be sought, but with the observance kept intact, not for its destruction but rather for its upbuilding, so that you may observe it the more when you are also sure of the reason. But what sort of thing is it for someone to call an observance into question just when he has fallen away from it, and to ask where he got the observance just when he has ceased to keep it? For even if he wants to seem to call it into question so as to show that he did not sin in abandoning the observance, it is nonetheless clear that he sinned before, in presuming to keep it. For if he has not sinned today in accepting the crown, he sinned at some time in refusing it. And so this treatise will not be addressed to those for whom the question is out of place, but to those who, from a desire to learn, bring not a challenge but a request for counsel. For this is always being asked, and I praise the faith that believed it must be observed before it learned why. And it is easy to demand at once where it is written that we should not be crowned. But then, is it written that we should be crowned? For those who demand the support of Scripture for the opposite side prejudge that the support of Scripture ought to be present for their own side too. For if it is said that being crowned is lawful because Scripture does not forbid it, it will equally be turned back that being crowned is not lawful because Scripture does not command it. What will discipline do? Accept both, as though neither were forbidden? Or reject both, as though neither were commanded? But is what is not forbidden thereby freely permitted? No: what is not freely permitted is forbidden.

And how long shall we saw back and forth along this line, when we have an ancient observance which, by coming first, has settled the case? If no Scripture has laid it down, certainly custom has confirmed it, and custom without doubt flowed from tradition. For how can anything come into use if it was not first handed down? “Even where tradition is pleaded,” you say, “written authority must be demanded.” Let us ask, then, whether tradition too ought not to be received unless it is written. We shall certainly deny that it should be received if there are no examples of other observances to prejudge the case, which we maintain without any written instrument of Scripture, on the title of tradition alone and thereafter by the support of custom.

To begin with baptism: when we are about to enter the water, there, and also somewhat earlier in the church under the hand of the president, we solemnly declare that we renounce the devil and his pomp and his angels. Then we are immersed three times, answering somewhat more than the Lord laid down in the gospel. Then, when we have been received, we first taste a mixture of milk and honey, and from that day we abstain from the daily bath for a whole week. The sacrament of the Eucharist, which the Lord commanded at the time of a meal and to all, we receive also in assemblies before dawn, and from the hand of none but those who preside. We make offerings for the dead, for their birthdays, on the anniversary. On the Lord's Day we count it unlawful to fast or to worship on our knees. We enjoy the same freedom from Easter to Pentecost. We are distressed if any of the cup, or of our bread, is shaken to the ground. At every step and movement forward, at every coming in and going out, in dressing and putting on our shoes, at the bath, at table, at lighting the lamps, at going to bed, at sitting down, in whatever our daily life engages us, we mark our forehead with the sign.

If you demand a law of the Scriptures for these and other disciplines of this kind, you will read none. Tradition will be held out to you as their originator, custom as their confirmer, and faith as their observer. That reason supports tradition, custom, and faith you will either perceive for yourself or learn from someone who has perceived it. Meanwhile you will [believe] that there is some reason to which obedience is owed. I add one more example, since it will be fitting to teach from the ancients too. Among the Jews it is customary for their women to veil the head, so that they may be recognized by it. I ask for the law. I set the apostle aside. If Rebecca, seeing her bridegroom from afar, took up a veil, a private modesty could not make a law, or else it would have made one for its own case: let virgins alone be veiled, and that when they are coming to marriage, and not before they have recognized their bridegrooms. If Susanna too, unveiled at her trial, provides an argument for veiling, I can say that here too the veil was a matter of choice. She had come as a defendant, blushing at her disgrace, rightly hiding her beauty, or else because she was now afraid of pleasing. Otherwise I would not suppose that she who pleased walked veiled in her husband's garden. Suppose she was always veiled; in her too, or in any other woman, I look for a law of dress. If I find a law nowhere, it follows that tradition gave this practice to custom, and it would one day have the authority of the apostle through the interpretation of its reason.

By these examples, then, it will be declared that even unwritten tradition can be defended in observance, confirmed by custom, the fit witness to a tradition proved by the persistence of the observance. Custom, moreover, is accepted as law even in civil affairs when law is lacking; nor does it matter whether it rests on Scripture or on reason, since reason also commends law. Further, if law rests on reason, then whatever rests on reason will be law, whoever produced it. Or do you not think that every believer may conceive and establish something, provided it befits God, conduces to discipline, and profits salvation, since the Lord says, “And why do you not judge for yourselves what is just?” And not only about judgment, but about every opinion on matters to be examined, the apostle too says, “If you are ignorant of anything, God will reveal it to you,” he who himself used to supply counsel when he had no command of the Lord, and to speak on his own, having the Spirit of God, the guide into all truth. So his counsel has now obtained the standing of a divine command through the support of divine reason. Demand this reason now, with due regard for tradition, by whatever transmitter it is reckoned; and do not look at the author but at the authority, and above all at the authority of custom itself, which is to be respected for this reason, lest it fail to be the interpreter of reason; so that, if God grants you this too, you may then learn not whether custom is to be observed by you, but why.

The reason for Christian observances becomes greater when nature too defends them, which is the first discipline of all. So nature is the first to prescribe that a crown does not suit the head. Now I think our God is the God of nature, who formed man and, for desiring, judging, and obtaining the fruits of things, arranged definite senses in him through what are, as it were, the proper instruments of the members. He dug out hearing in the ears, kindled sight in the eyes, shut taste in the mouth, fanned smell in the nostrils, set touch on the surface of the hands. Through these services of the outer man, ministering to the inner man, the fruits of the divine gifts are conveyed by the senses to the soul. What fruit, then, comes from flowers? For the proper substance of crowns, certainly the chief one, is the flowers of the field. “Either the scent,” you say, “or the colour, or both alike.” What will be the senses of colour and scent? Sight, I suppose, and smell. What members have been allotted these senses? The eyes, unless I am mistaken, and the nostrils. Use flowers, then, by sight and smell, whose fruit these senses are; use them through the eyes and nostrils, whose members these senses are. The substance was handed to you by God, the fashion by the world. Yet even an unusual fashion does not clash with the usual use. Let flowers be for you, whether inserted or woven together, on a thread or on a rush, what they are when free and loose: things to look at and to breathe. You may think of a crown, if you like, as a bundle of flowers bound together in a row, so that you can carry several at once and enjoy them all together. Why, put them in your bosom, if you are so refined; strew them on your couch, if you are so soft; trust them to your cup, if you are so innocent. Enjoy them in as many ways as you perceive them. But on the head, what taste is there of a flower, what perception of a crown, except only of its binding, where neither the colour is seen, nor the scent drawn in, nor the softness appreciated? It is as much against nature to seek a flower with the head as food with the ear or sound with the nose. And everything that is against nature deserves among all men the brand of a monstrosity, but among us also the charge of sacrilege against God, the Lord and Author of nature.

If you are looking, then, for a law of God, you have that common one openly in the world, on the tablets of nature, to which the apostle too is accustomed to appeal, as when, on the veiling of women, he says, “Does not even nature teach you?”, and when, saying in Romans that the nations do by nature the things of the law, he suggests both a natural law and a lawful nature. And also at the beginning of the letter, when he asserts that males and females exchanged among themselves the natural use of the creature for an unnatural one, as a punishment in requital for their error, he certainly champions natural uses. God himself we first knew by nature, calling him God of gods, presuming that he is good, and invoking him as judge. Do you ask whether nature ought to go before us in the enjoyment of his creation, lest we be carried away where God's rival, together with man himself, corrupted the whole creation, which had been made over to man for fixed [uses]? For this reason the apostle too says that it was subjected to vanity against its will, overturned first to vain uses, then to shameful, unjust, and impious ones. So, then, in the matter of the pleasures of the shows too, creation has been defamed by those who perceive by nature that all the things from which the shows are furnished are God's, but lack the knowledge to understand this as well: that all have been altered by the devil. But we have also dealt with this subject in Greek for the sake of our pleasure-lovers.

So let these crown-wearers meanwhile recognize the authority of nature, in the name of the common wisdom by which they are men, and the pledges of their own religion, by which they worship the God of nature at close quarters; and then, as it were over and above, let them consider the other reasons too which forbid crowns, and indeed all crowns, to our head in particular. For we are pressed to turn from what natural discipline has in common to what is proper to Christian discipline, which must now be defended entirely through the other kinds of crowns as well, which seem to be provided for other uses, as being made of other substances; lest, because they do not consist of flowers, whose use nature has marked out (like this military laurel itself), they be thought not to admit the prohibition of our sect because they have escaped the prescription of nature. I see, then, that I must deal with the matter more carefully and fully, from its origins to its growth and excesses. Secular literature is needed for this, for secular things must be proved from their own instruments. The little I have touched on will, I believe, suffice.

If there was a Pandora, whom Hesiod records as the first of women, hers was the first head crowned, by the Graces, when she was being given gifts by all; hence “Pandora”. But to us Moses, a prophetic, not a poetic, shepherd, describes the first woman, Eve, as more readily girded about her private parts with leaves than about her temples with flowers. So there was no Pandora. But the origin of the crown is to be blushed at even in its falsehood. Now let us take it from their own truths as well. For it is clear that there were definite originators or illustrators of the thing. Pherecydes relates that Saturn was crowned before all; Diodorus, that Jupiter was honoured with this gift by the others after the Titans had been conquered. The same writer gives fillets to Priapus too, and to Ariadne a garland of gold and Indian gems, the gift of Vulcan and afterwards of Liber, and later a constellation. Callimachus put a vine on Juno. So at Argos too her statue, wreathed with a vine-branch, with a lion's skin under her feet, displays the stepmother exulting over the spoils of both her stepsons. Hercules displays on his head now poplar, now wild olive, now parsley. You have the tragedy of Cerberus; you have Pindar and Callimachus, who records that Apollo too, after killing the serpent Delphyne, put on laurel as a suppliant. For among the ancients suppliants were crowned. Harpocration argues that Liber, who among the Egyptians is also Osiris, was deliberately crowned with ivy, because it is the nature of ivy to protect the brain against drunken stupor. But in other respects too even the common people recognize Liber as the originator of the crown, of laurel indeed, in which he triumphed over the Indians, since they call the days solemnized in his honour the “Great Crown”. If you also turn over the writings of Leo the Egyptian, Isis was the first to wreathe her head with the ears of grain she had found, a thing rather for the belly. For those who seek more, the most excellent commentator on this subject too, Claudius Saturninus, will set everything out. For he has a book on crowns, expounding their origins, causes, kinds, and ceremonies in such a way that you will find no charm of flower, no joy of leaf, no turf or vine-branch that is not consecrated to someone's head.

From this we are sufficiently instructed how alien we ought to judge the custom of the crowned head, introduced by those, and thereafter dispensed in honour of those, whom the world believed to be gods. For if the devil, a liar from the beginning, works the lie of divinity in this form too, without doubt he had also provided for himself those in whom the lie of divinity would be acted out. What, then, must be thought among the people of the true God of a thing introduced by the nations, the devil's candidates, and dedicated to them from the beginning, and even then being consecrated to idolatry by idols, and in idols while they were still living? Not as though an idol were anything, but because what others do to idols pertains to demons. Further, if what others do to idols pertains to demons, how much more what the idols themselves did for themselves while they were alive? Clearly the demons had provided it for themselves through those in whom they had first hungered for what they provided.

Hold to this faith meanwhile, while I shake off an objection that comes against it. For already I hear it said that many other things too were introduced by those whom the world believed to be gods, and yet are found today both in our own uses and in those of the ancient saints, and in the things of God, and in Christ himself, who of course lived as a man through no other means than these common instruments of human life. Let it be so; I will not dispute further back about origins. Mercury was the first to set out letters: I will admit they are necessary both for the commerce of life and for our devotion toward God. And if the same god also first strung chords for sound, I will not deny that this invention too has kept company with the saints and served God, when I hear David. Aesculapius first explored remedies: Isaiah too remembers that he prescribed something medicinal for the sick Hezekiah. Paul too knows that a little wine is good for the stomach. Let Minerva also have been the first to build a ship: I shall see Jonah and the apostles sailing. More than that, Christ will be clothed; Paul too will have a cloak. If you name one of the world's gods as the author of each piece of furniture and each vessel, I must recognize Christ reclining on a couch, and offering a basin for the disciples' feet, and pouring water from a jug, and girded with a linen towel, the proper garment of Osiris.

To such an objection I answer everywhere thus: I grant the common use of utensils, but I appeal to the distinction between what is rational and what is irrational, because indiscriminate use deceives, overshadowing the corruption of creation by which it was subjected to vanity. For we say that those things alone have suited both our uses and those of former times, the things of God, and Christ himself, which provide plain usefulness, sure help, and honourable comfort for the necessities of human life, so that they may be believed to have been inspired by God himself, the first provider, instructor, and, if you like, delighter of his own man; but that whatever has exceeded this order does not suit our uses, especially the things which for that very reason are to be found neither in the world's honest use, nor in the things of God, nor in the conduct of Christ.

Finally, what patriarch, what prophet, what Levite or priest or ruler, or later what apostle or evangelist or bishop is found crowned? I think not even the temple of God itself, nor the ark of the covenant, nor the tabernacle of witness, nor the altar, nor the lampstand, though they would surely have had occasion to be crowned both at the first solemnity of dedication and at the second rejoicing of restoration, if it were worthy of God. Yet if they were figures of us (for we are the temples of God, and altars, and lights, and vessels), they also foreshadowed figuratively that men of God ought not to be crowned. The truth will have to correspond to the image. If perhaps you object that Christ himself was crowned, to this you will briefly hear for now: be crowned like that, and it is lawful. Yet not even that crown of insulting impiety did the people devise. It was the invention of the Roman soldiers, taken from the practice of the world, which the people of God never admitted, either in the name of public rejoicing or of inborn luxury; returning from the Babylonian captivity with timbrels and flutes and psalteries rather than with crowns, and rising up after eating and drinking to play without crowns. For neither the description of rejoicing nor the censure of luxury would have kept silent about the honour or dishonour of the crown. So Isaiah too, when he says, “With timbrels and psalteries and flutes they drink wine,” would also have said “with crowns,” if this custom had ever existed in the things of God.

So when you point out that the ornaments of the world's gods are found also among the things of God, in order to claim the crown of the head too among them for common use, you already lay down for yourself that what is not found in the things of God is not to be held in common use among us. For what is so unworthy of God as what is worthy of an idol? And what is so worthy of an idol as what is worthy also of the dead? For it is the custom of the dead too to be crowned in this way, since they themselves at once become idols, both by the dress and by the rite of consecration, which among us is a second idolatry. So it will be the part of those who lack sensation to use a thing whose sensation they lack, just as if they wished to misuse it if they did not lack sensation. But there is no difference in misusing when the reality of using ceases. When the natural power of sensing, by which one uses a thing, has ceased, who can misuse what he has no means to use? But we are not permitted to misuse, according to the apostle, who rather teaches us not to use; except that those who feel nothing do not even misuse. But the whole thing is empty, and the act itself is dead as far as the idols are concerned, but plainly alive as far as the demons are concerned, to whom the superstition pertains. “The idols of the nations,” says David, “are silver and gold. They have eyes and do not see, nostrils and do not smell, hands and will not handle.” For it is through these that flowers are enjoyed. And if he declares that those who make idols will be like them, those are already like them who use anything according to the adornment of idols. “All things are clean to the clean”; so too all things are unclean to the unclean; and nothing is more unclean than idols.

The substances, however, are clean, being God's things, and in this their natural condition common for use. But the manner of the use itself makes a difference. For I too sacrifice a cock for myself, no less than Socrates did for Aesculapius, and if the smell of some place offends me, I burn something from Arabia; but not with the same rite, nor in the same dress, nor with the same apparatus as is done among idols. For if creation is polluted by a bare word, as the apostle teaches, “But if anyone says, ‘This has been offered to idols,’ do not touch it,” much more is it defiled by the dress, rite, and apparatus of things offered to idols. So the crown too becomes a thing offered to idols. For with this rite, dress, and apparatus it is sacrificed to the idols, its own originators, whose use it most properly is, and for this reason above all, so that what is not found in the things of God may not be admitted into common use. Therefore the apostle cries out, “Flee idolatry!”, surely all of it and the whole of it. Think over the thicket, and how many thorns lie hidden in it. Nothing is to be given to an idol; so nothing is to be taken from an idol either. If reclining in an idol's temple is foreign to faith, what of being seen in an idol's dress? What fellowship has Christ with Belial? And so, flee! For he commands a long separation from idolatry, not to be dealt with at close quarters in anything. Even an earthly serpent draws men in with its breath from far off. John goes deeper: “Little children,” he says, “keep yourselves from idols”; not now from idolatry, as from a service, but from idols, that is, from their very likeness. For it is unworthy that you, the image of the living God, should become the image of an idol and of the dead.

Thus far we claim the ownership of this dress for idols, both from the record of its origin and from its use in superstition, and besides from the fact that, while it is not mentioned in the things of God, it is reckoned more and more to belong to those in whose antiquities, solemnities, and services it is found. Indeed their very doors, their very victims and altars, their very ministers and priests are crowned. You have the crowns of all the priestly colleges in Claudius. We have also inserted that distinction between rational and irrational things, to meet those who defend common use in everything on the occasion of certain examples. It remains, then, on this side, to examine the very occasions of crown-wearing, so that, while we show them to be foreign, indeed contrary, to our discipline, we may prove that none of them is supported by any reason by which a dress of this kind could be claimed for common use, like certain things whose examples are thrown at us.

And indeed, to take up the very occasion of the military crown, I think we must first inquire whether military service suits Christians at all. Otherwise, what sort of thing is it to deal with incidentals when the fault lies in what comes before? Do we believe that a human oath of allegiance may lawfully be laid over the divine one, and that one may answer to another lord after Christ, and renounce father and mother and every neighbour, whom the law too commanded to be honoured and loved next after God, whom the gospel too has honoured in the same way, holding them of more account than anything except Christ alone? Will it be lawful to live by the sword, when the Lord declares that he who uses the sword will perish by the sword? And will the son of peace, for whom it will not be fitting even to go to law, take part in battle? And will he administer chains and prison and tortures and punishments, he who is not the avenger even of his own wrongs? Will he now keep guard duty for another rather than for Christ, or even on the Lord's Day, when he does not keep it even for Christ? And will he keep watch before temples which he has renounced? And will he dine there where the apostle does not approve? And will he by night defend those whom by day he has put to flight by exorcisms, leaning and resting on a spear, the kind with which Christ's side was pierced? Will he also carry a standard that is Christ's rival? And will he ask the emperor for a watchword, when he has already received one from God? When dead, will he also be disturbed by the trumpeter's horn, he who awaits being raised by the angel's trumpet? And will a Christian be burned according to camp discipline, he who was not permitted to burn [incense], he to whom Christ remitted the fire he deserved? How many other offences can be seen in the duties of camp life, which must be interpreted as transgression! The very transfer of one's name from the camp of light to the camp of darkness is transgression.

Of course, if faith comes later to some who were already engaged in military service, the case is different, as with those whom John admitted to baptism, and with the most faithful centurions, the one whom Christ [commends] and the one whom Peter instructs; provided that, once faith has been received and sealed, either one must leave at once, as many have done, or one must evade by every means committing anything against God which is not permitted even outside military service, or finally one must suffer for God what civilian faith has equally agreed to. For military service does not promise impunity for sins or exemption from martyrdoms. Nowhere is a Christian anything else. There is one gospel and the same Jesus, who will deny everyone who denies and confess everyone who confesses God, and will save the life lost for his name, but on the contrary destroy the life held as gain against his name. With him the believing civilian is as much a soldier as the believing soldier is a civilian. The state of faith admits no necessities. Those for whom there is one necessity, not to sin, have no necessity of sinning. For even if someone is pressed to sacrifice and to deny outright by the necessity of tortures or punishments, discipline does not wink even at that necessity, because the necessity of fearing denial and undergoing martyrdom is stronger than that of escaping suffering and doing one's duty. Otherwise a plea of this kind overturns the whole substance of the sacred oath, so as to loosen the clasp even for voluntary sins. For the will too could be argued to be a necessity, since it has, of course, something by which it is compelled. Let me lay this down in advance also for the other occasions of the crowns of office, for which this plea of necessity is most familiar; since for this reason either offices are to be fled, so that we do not fall into sins, or martyrdoms are to be endured, so that we break with the offices. On the first aspect of the question, the unlawfulness of military service itself, I will say no more, so that the second may be dealt with. Indeed, if I drive out military service with all my might, I would have issued a challenge about the military crown in vain. Suppose, then, that military service is lawful, up to the occasion of the crown.

But first let me speak of the crown too. This laurel is sacred to Apollo or to Liber: to the one as god of weapons, to the other as god of triumphs. So Claudius teaches, when he also says that soldiers are usually wreathed with myrtle. For the myrtle belongs to Venus, the mother of the sons of Aeneas and also the mistress of Mars, who through Ilia and the Romuluses is Roman. But I do not believe that Venus is Roman together with Mars on the side where there is the grief of a concubine. When military service is also crowned with olive, the idolatry is to Minerva, likewise a goddess of arms, but crowned with this tree for the peace she made with Neptune. In these things the superstition of the military wreath will be everywhere polluted and polluting everything. See how it is polluted by its occasions too. Look: what is to be made of the annual pronouncing of vows? The first takes place at headquarters, the second in the Capitols. Hear, after the places, the words as well: “Then, Jupiter, we vow to you that there will be an ox with horns adorned with gold.” Whose judgment does that utterance express? Surely denial. Even if the Christian is silent there with his mouth, he has answered with his crowned head. The same laurel is proclaimed at the distribution of the donative. Plainly it is no free idolatry, selling Christ for a few gold pieces, as Judas did for silver. Will this be “You cannot serve God and mammon”: to hand yourself over to mammon and to depart from God? Will this be “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's”: not rendering the man to God, and taking the denarius away from Caesar? Is the laurel of triumph made of leaves or of corpses? Is it adorned with ribbons or with tombs? Is it anointed with perfumes or with the tears of wives and mothers, perhaps of some Christians too, for Christ is among the barbarians as well? Has not he who has carried this cause on his head fought even against himself? There is also another military service, that of the imperial households. For they too are called “camp” households, and they too contribute to the solemnities of the Caesars. But even then you are just as much a soldier and servant of another; and if of two, God and Caesar, then certainly not of Caesar, when you owe yourself to God, who, I believe, has the better claim even in things common to both.

They also crown the public orders with laurels on public occasions, and magistrates besides with golden crowns, as at Athens, as at Rome. Even above these are set the Etruscan crowns: this is the name of the crowns, distinguished with gems and golden oak leaves, from Jupiter, which they take with embroidered togas for escorting the chariots of the gods. There are also the provincial golden crowns, which now seek the larger heads of statues rather than of men. But your orders, your magistrates, and the very name of your senate is the church of Christ. You are his, enrolled in the books of life. There your purple is the blood of the Lord, and your broad stripe is his cross; there the axe is already laid at the root of the tree; there is the rod from the root of Jesse. Let the public horses too see to themselves with their crowns. Your Lord, when he chose to enter Jerusalem according to the Scripture, did not even have a donkey of his own. “Some in chariots and some in horses, but we will call on the name of the Lord our God.” From the very dwelling in that Babylon in the Apocalypse of John we are removed, much less from its seat of honour.

The populace too is crowned, now in exultation at the successes of the emperors, now for the particular solemnities of the towns. For luxury tries to catch every public rejoicing. But you are a stranger in this world, a citizen of the city above, Jerusalem. “Our citizenship,” he says, “is in heaven.” You have your own registers, your own calendars; you have nothing to do with the joys of the world; indeed you owe the opposite. “For the world will rejoice, but you will mourn.” And, I think, he calls those who mourn blessed, not those who are crowned. Weddings too crown the bride and groom; and therefore we will not marry heathens, lest they lead us as far as idolatry, with which marriage begins among them. You have the law, indeed from the patriarchs; you have the apostle commanding to marry in the Lord. Secular freedom too crowns. But you have already been redeemed by Christ, and at a great price. How will the world set free another's slave? Even if it seems to be freedom, it will also seem to be slavery. Everything in the world is imaginary, and nothing true. For even then you were free with respect to man, redeemed by Christ; and now you are Christ's slave, though set free by a man. If you think the world's freedom true, so as even to seal it with a crown, you have gone back into slavery to man, which you think freedom, and you have lost the freedom of Christ, which you think slavery.

Shall the occasions of the games also be discussed, which their very titles condemn at once, being of course sacred and funereal? For only this remains, that Olympian Jupiter, Nemean Hercules, poor little Archemorus, and unhappy Antinous should be crowned in a Christian, so that he himself becomes a spectacle that it is tiresome to watch. We have enumerated, I think, all the occasions, and none of them is ours: all are foreign, profane, unlawful, already once renounced in the solemn declaration of the sacrament. For these were the pomps of the devil and his angels: offices of the world, honours, solemnities, popular favours, false vows, human servitudes, empty praises, shameful glories, and in all these idolatries, even in the mere reckoning of the crowns with which all these things are wreathed. Claudius, to be sure, will begin by saying that in Homer's poems even the sky is crowned with stars: certainly by God, certainly for man; therefore man himself also should be crowned by God. But by the world are crowned brothels and latrines and bakehouses, the prison and the gladiatorial school, the very amphitheatres, the very stripping-rooms for the slain, and the very biers of the undertakers. How sacred and holy, how honourable and clean this dress is, judge not from one poetic sky, but from the dealings of the whole world. But a Christian will not even dishonour his own door with laurels, if he knows how many gods the devil has attached even to doors: Janus from ianua, Limentinus from limen, Forculus and Carna from fores and cardines, and among the Greeks too Thyraean Apollo and the Antelian demons.

So far is he from bringing an offering of idolatry to his own head, or rather, I might now say, to Christ, since Christ is the head of the man: a head as free as Christ himself, not liable even to a veil, much less to a binding. Further, the head that is liable to a veil, the woman's, being already occupied by this very thing, has no room for a binding as well. It has the burden of its own humility. If it ought not to be seen bare because of the angels, much more not crowned; perhaps it would then give offence to those crowned angels. For what is a crown on a woman's head but a procuress of beauty, a mark of utmost wantonness, the final denial of modesty, a fanning of allurement? Therefore, by the apostle's foresight, a woman will not adorn herself too elaborately either, so as not to be crowned even by the art of her hair. Yet he who is both the head of the man and the face of the woman, the husband of the church, Christ Jesus: what kind of wreath, I ask you, did he undergo for both sexes? One of thorns, I think, and thistles, as a figure of the sins which the earth of the flesh brought forth for us, but which the power of the cross took away, blunting every sting of death by the endurance of the Lord's head. Certainly, besides the figure, there is ready at hand the insult, the disgrace, the shame, and the cruelty interwoven with them, which then defiled and lacerated the Lord's temples, so that you now may be crowned with laurel and myrtle and olive and some famous leaf, and, what is more in use, with hundred-petalled roses picked from the garden of Midas, with both kinds of lilies and all the violets, perhaps even with gems and gold, as if to rival that crown of Christ which came to him afterwards. For he tasted honeycomb after gall, and he was not greeted as King of glory in heaven before he had been proscribed on the cross as King of the Jews, made at first by the Father a little lower than the angels, and so crowned with glory and honour. If you owe him your head for these things, repay him, if you can, with such a head as he offered his own for yours; or else be not crowned even with flowers, if you cannot be with thorns, because with flowers you may not.

Keep God's property undefiled for him. He will crown it, if he wills. Indeed he does will it; in fact he invites us: “To him who conquers,” he says, “I will give the crown of life.” Be faithful unto death, you too, and you too fight the good fight, whose crown the apostle rightly trusts is laid up for him. The angel of victory also receives a crown as he goes forth on a white horse to conquer; and another is adorned with the circle of a rainbow, a heavenly meadow. The presbyters sit crowned, and with the same gold the Son of Man himself shines above the cloud. If such are the images in a vision, what will the realities be when they are presented? Look at those; smell those. Why do you condemn to a garland or a serpent-band a head destined for a diadem? For Christ Jesus has made us kings to God and his Father. What have you to do with a flower that will die? You have the flower from the rod of Jesse, on which the whole grace of the divine Spirit rested, a flower incorruptible, unfading, everlasting; by choosing it the good soldier too has advanced in the heavenly ranks. Blush, you his fellow soldiers, to be judged now not by him but by some soldier of Mithras, who, when he is initiated in the cave, in the true camp of darkness, when a crown is offered him on the point of a sword, as if in mimicry of martyrdom, and then fitted on his head, is instructed to push it off his head with his hand and transfer it, perhaps, to his shoulder, saying that Mithras is his crown. And from then on he is never crowned, and he holds this as a sign by which to prove himself, should he ever be tested concerning his oath; and he is at once believed to be a soldier of Mithras if he throws down the crown, if he says that his crown is in his god. Let us recognize the devices of the devil, who imitates some of the things of God for this very purpose, to confound and judge us by the faithfulness of his own followers.