by Jerome
(Letter 22 to Eustochium)
Eustochium was born around 368, the daughter of Paula and Toxotius the elder. Her mother was widowed and her family came under the influence of Jerome when he came to Rome, and she followed her mother in refusing marriage and adopting an ascetic life (see also The Life of Paula the Elder). When her mother followed Jerome to Bethlehem, she, alone of Paula’s surviving children, accompanied her, and spent the rest of her life as her mother’s companion, taking over the running of the women’s monastery there after her mother’s death, until her own death in 419. Jerome addressed his Letters 22, 31 and 108 to her, and many of his biblical commentaries on books of the Old and New Testaments. She is mentioned in his Letters 30, 32, 39, 45, 52, 66, 99, 107, 123, 127, 134, 137, 142–3, 151 and 153–4.
Jerome
See headnote to The Life of Marcella.
This letter was written in 384.
I ‘Listen, my daughter, consider and incline your ear; forget your people and your father’s house and the king will desire your beauty.’1 In Psalm 45 God tells the human soul to follow Abraham’s example and go out from its country and its relatives, leaving the people of Chaldaea, who are interpreted as ‘like demons’, to live in the region of the living which the prophet longs for when he says in another passage: ‘I believe I will see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living.’2 But it is not enough for you to leave your country: you must also forget your people and the home of your father; scorning the flesh, you must be embraced by the Bridegroom. ‘Do not look back,’ he says, ‘or stop anywhere in the surrounding area; find safety in the hills so that you cannot be caught.’3 Once you have grasped the plough it is not a good idea to look behind you or to go home from the field or to enter the house to fetch another garment, once you have Christ’s tunic. This is something completely amazing: the father urges his daughter, ‘Forget your father.’ It is said to the Jews: ‘Your father is the devil and you wish to carry out the desires of your father’, and in another passage, ‘Anyone who commits sin is of the devil.’ Born in the first instance of such a parent we are naturally black and even after we have repented, but before we have climbed the hill of virtue, we say, ‘I am black and beautiful, daughter of Jerusalem.’ But you will say, ‘I have gone out from the home of my childhood, I have forgotten my father, I am reborn in Christ. What is my reward for this?’ The passage from the Psalm continues: ‘The king will desire your beauty.’ This, then, is that great sacrament: ‘for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and will be joined to his wife and the two will become one flesh’,4 but now not one flesh, as in that verse, but one spirit. Your bridegroom is not arrogant, not proud: he has married an Ethiopian wife. As soon as you are willing to listen to the wisdom of the true Solomon and come to him, he will tell you everything he knows. Then he will lead you into his bedroom and now that the colour of your complexion has miraculously changed, these words will apply to you: ‘Who is this woman who goes up and has been made white?’5
2 I write this, my lady Eustochium (for it is right that I address the Lord’s bride as ‘lady’), to show you, from the very outset, that I do not intend to write in praise of virginity which you have most commendably approved by adopting it, nor am I going to enumerate the unpleasant aspects of marriage – the swollen belly, the crying baby, the pain caused by your husband’s mistress, the anxieties involved in running a household and all those imagined advantages which death at last cuts short – for even married women can have a certain status if they have an honourable marriage and an untainted marriage bed. But I want you to understand that you are fleeing from Sodom and must take the example of Lot’s wife as a warning. This letter of mine, such as it is, will contain no flattery – for a smooth-tongued flatterer is no better than an enemy – or pompous rhetoric to persuade you that you are already among the angels and have trampled the world beneath your feet now that the blessedness of chastity has been set before you.
3 I do not want your decision to choose this way of life to make you proud but rather fearful. You are walking laden with gold so you must steer clear of robbers. This mortal life is like a stadium: this is where we compete but we are awarded our prize elsewhere. No one is safe when he walks among snakes and scorpions. ‘My sword has drunk its fill in heaven,’6 says the Lord. Do you expect there to be peace on earth when the earth only produces weeds and thorns as food for snakes? ‘Our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the princes and powers of this world and of the present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.’7 We are surrounded by huge hostile forces and our enemies are everywhere. Our flesh is weak and will soon turn to dust; it is fighting against tremendous odds. You will not be safe until it has been dissolved and the prince of the world comes and finds nothing in it; then you will be safe and you will hear the words of the prophet: ‘You shall not fear the terror of the night or the arrow that flies by day or the trouble that stalks through the darkness or the demons’ attack at midday. A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand but it will not come near you.’8 But if a hostile crowd harasses you and you get upset at all their attempts to lead you astray and make you sin, and you say to yourself, ‘What should I do?’ Elisha will reply, ‘Do not fear, for there are more on our side than on theirs.’9 He will pray and say, ‘Lord, open the eyes of your daughter and let her see.’ And when you open your eyes you will see a fiery chariot that will take you up to heaven as it did Elijah, and then you will rejoice and sing, ‘Our soul has escaped like a sparrow from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken and we have escaped.’10
4 As long as we are trapped in this frail little body, as long as we have this treasure in clay jars,11 as long as what the spirit desires is opposed to the flesh and what the flesh desires is opposed to the spirit,12 there is no definitive victory. Our enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.13 David said, ‘You made darkness and it became night when all the animals of the forest creep about, the lion cubs roaring for their prey to find food from God.’14 The devil does not look for unbelievers or for those who are outside and whose flesh the Assyrian king roasted in the fire: he is keen to snatch people from the church of Christ. According to Habakkuk, his foods are of the choicest kind.15 He wishes to overthrow Job and when he has destroyed Judas he seeks power to sift the apostles.16 The Saviour does not come to bring peace on earth, but a sword.17 Lucifer fell, he who rose at dawn and he who was brought up in the garden of delights deserved to be told: ‘If you are carried up on high like an eagle, I will tear you down, says the Lord’,18 for he had said in his heart, ‘I will set my seat above the stars of heaven’, and ‘I will be like the Almighty.’19 And so every day God says to the angels who climb down the ladder of Jacob’s dream, ‘I have said, you are gods and all sons of the almighty. But you will die like men and you will fall like one of the princes.’20 The devil fell first, and since God has taken his place in the divine council and gives his judgement among the gods, the Apostle writes to those who cease to be gods: ‘As long as there is jealousy and quarrelling among you, are you not of the flesh and do you not behave according to human inclinations?’21
5 If the Apostle Paul, the vessel of election who was prepared for the good news of Christ,22 kept his body in subjection on account of the pricks of the flesh and the attractions of vice so that he would be seen to practise what he preached, and yet he could see another law in his body at war with the law of his mind and it held him captive in the law of sin; if after nakedness, fasting, hunger, prison, whippings, tortures, he turned to himself and exclaimed, ‘Wretched man that I am, who will rescue me from this body of death?’,23 do you think that you are safe? Take care, I beg you, that God does not say to you at some point, ‘The virgin Israel has fallen and there is no one who can raise her up.’24 I say boldly, ‘Although God can do everything, he cannot raise up the virgin once she has fallen.’ He can save the girl who has been defiled from punishment but he cannot crown her. Let us fear lest that prophecy be fulfilled in our case, too: even the good virgins will fail25 because there are also bad virgins. The Lord says, ‘Anyone who looks at a woman with lust, has already committed adultery in his heart.’26 So virginity can be lost even by a thought. These are the bad virgins, who are virgins in the flesh but not in the spirit, the foolish virgins who have no oil in their lamps and are shut out by the bridegroom.
6 If bodily virginity is not enough to save even real virgins if they have other faults, what will happen to those who have prostituted the members of Christ and have turned the temple of the Holy Spirit into a brothel? They will immediately be told: ‘Come down, sit on the ground, virgin daughter of Babylon, sit on the ground; there is no throne for the daughter of the Chaldaeans; you will not be called soft and delicate any more. Take this millstone and grind flour, take off your veil, bare your legs, cross the rivers, and your shame will be revealed and your shameful behaviour will be evident.’27 Is this what she is reduced to after she has experienced the wedding chambers of the son of God, after the kisses of her brother and bridegroom? She is the girl of whom the prophet once said: ‘The queen stood at your right hand in a golden robe, covered in many colours’,28 but she will be stripped naked and her skirts lifted up over her face; she will sit beside the waters of loneliness, and having laid aside her pitcher she will spread her legs to every passer-by and will be defiled head to toe.29 It would have been better for her to marry and to have walked in level places than to try to reach the heights and then to fall into the depths of hell. I beg you, do not let the faithful city of Sion become a prostitute; do not let the demons dance there and beasts and sirens make their nests where the Trinity has lived.30 Do not untie the bands that bind your breasts. As soon as lust stimulates your senses and the soothing fire of pleasure caresses you with its sweet heat, cry out, ‘God my helper, I will not be afraid of what the flesh can do to me.’31 When for a little while the inner person shows signs of wavering between vice and virtue, you must say, ‘Why are you sad, my soul, and why are you upset within me? Hope in the Lord, for I shall again praise him, the salvation of my countenance and my God.’32 I do not want you to let foul thoughts develop; do not let the shameful chaos of Babylon gain strength in you. Kill the enemy before it is strong; nip evil in the bud. Listen to the words of the psalmist: ‘Unhappy daughter of Babylon. Happy shall they be who pay you back for what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little ones, and dash them against the rock!’33 Because it is impossible to prevent the natural heat of our senses kindling our passions, he is praised and considered fortunate who, as soon as he begins to have foul thoughts, kills them by dashing them against the rock; for the rock is Christ.34
7 When I was living in the desert, in that vast wilderness which is parched by the blazing heat of the sun and provides a harsh home for hermits, how often I imagined myself among the pleasures of Rome. I used to sit alone because I was filled with bitterness. I looked awful: my limbs clothed in shabby sack-cloth, my filthy skin making me look like an Ethiopian. Every day I wept, every day I groaned, and if from time to time sleep overcame me though I struggled to resist, my bones which scarcely held together would knock against the bare earth. I will not talk about my food and drink: even when they are sick hermits only have cold water, and cooked food is regarded as self-indulgence. And so I who had condemned myself to such a prison out of fear of hell, with only scorpions and wild animals as my companions, often imagined myself being tended to by lots of young women. My face was pale and my body cold from fasting, but my mind was aflame with desire, and now that my flesh was as good as dead only the fires of lust boiled before me. Totally helpless I lay down at Jesus’ feet, I washed them with my tears, I wiped them with my hair and by means of week-long fasts I subjugated my body. I am not ashamed of my misery; rather I lament that I am not now what I was then. I remember how I cried out all night and all day and did not cease from beating my breast until tranquillity returned when the Lord rebuked me. I used to dread my tiny cell as if it knew my thoughts; angry with myself and grim-faced I went deep into the desert on my own. Wherever I saw hollow valleys, rocky mountains, steep cliffs, I would go there to pray, finding there a prison for my wretched flesh. And as the Lord himself will testify, after shedding many tears, after riveting my eyes to the sky, I sometimes felt myself to be among hosts of angels. Exultant with joy I would sing, ‘We run after you for the fragrance of your perfumes.’35
8 If people whose bodies are so emaciated with fasting that the only thing they have to fear is foul thoughts have to endure such things, what temptations will be experienced by a girl who is surrounded by luxury? Do not the Apostle’s words apply to her: ‘she is dead even while she lives’.36 And so if I have the right to advise and if my experiences make me credible, my first piece of advice is this: the bride of Christ should avoid wine as if it were poison, for this is the devil’s primary weapon against young people. Greed does not shake you, nor pride puff you up nor ambition infatuate as much as this. It is easy to avoid other vices, but this enemy is shut up within us and wherever we go we carry him with us. The combination of alcohol and youth is bound to make sensuality explode. Why do we add oil to the flames? Why do we add kindling to a body that is already on fire? Paul writes to Timothy: ‘Do not just drink water, but drink a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments.’37 Notice the reasons he gives for allowing the drinking of wine: stomach pains and frequent ailments are only just a sufficient reason. And in case we perhaps start to indulge every little ailment, he says that only a little wine should be taken, speaking more like a doctor than an apostle – although an apostle is also a spiritual doctor. He was anxious that Timothy should not succumb to this weakness and be unable to travel around as was necessary when preaching the Gospel. Besides, he remembered that he had said: ‘Wine is a cause of debauchery’, and ‘It is a good idea for people not to drink wine and not to eat meat.’38 Noah drank wine and got drunk in the earliest period of history; and then he was the first to plant the vine, so perhaps he did not know that wine caused drunkenness. To help you understand that Scripture is sacramental in every respect – for the word of God is a pearl and can be pierced in every part – after his drunkenness Noah went on to lie down naked and so lust was added to self-indulgence.39 First the stomach and then the rest followed. For the people ate and drank and rose up to revel.40 Lot was the friend of God: he was saved on the mountain and of all the thousands of people he was the only one found to be good, yet he was made drunk by his daughters. And even if they did this out of a desire for children – for they thought the human race was in danger of extinction – rather than out of lust, yet they knew that a good man would not have done this unless he was drunk. Although he did not know what he was doing and was not a willing participant in the crime, his error was a serious one for as a result of it the Moabites and Ammonites were born, those enemies of Israel who down to the fourteenth generation and for ever may not enter into the church of God.41
9 Elijah, when he fled from Jezebel and lay exhausted beneath the oak tree, was roused by the arrival of the angel who said to him, ‘Get up and eat’, and he looked and saw at his head a loaf of bread and a jug of water.42 Surely God could have sent him spiced wine and food flavoured with oil and meat tenderized by beating? Elisha invited the sons of the prophets for a meal and fed them with wild herbs, and then he heard his guests shouting, ‘There is death in the pot, man of God’: he was not angry with the cooks – for he was not accustomed to more luxurious food – but he sweetened the bitterness by sprinkling flour on it; in the same way Moses used his spiritual power to sweeten the waters of Marah.43 Similarly when those who had come to arrest Elisha were struck blind both physically and mentally so that he could lead them into Samaria without their knowledge, notice what food he ordered for their refreshment: ‘Put before them bread and water; let them eat and drink and then be sent back to their master.’44 A more sumptuous meal could have been brought to Daniel from the king’s banquet, but he preferred the ploughman’s lunch brought to him by Habakkuk.45 Daniel was called the ‘greatly beloved’,46 because he did not eat the bread of desire or drink the wine of concupiscence.
10 There are numerous passages scattered throughout Holy Scripture where greed is condemned and simple food approved; but because it is not my intention at this point to discuss fasting – and to deal with these matters adequately would require a book in itself – these few points must suffice. These should enable you to understand why the first man, pandering to his stomach rather than being obedient to God, was expelled from Paradise and sent into this vale of tears, and why Satan used hunger to tempt the Lord in the desert, and why the Apostle exclaims, ‘Food for the stomach and the stomach for food, but God will destroy both’,47 and why he said of the self-indulgent, ‘God is their stomach.’48 Each person worships what he loves. And so one must make sure that hunger brings back to paradise those whom a full stomach once expelled.
11 You may reply that you are born of a noble family and brought up among delicacies and soft beds, and so you are unable to abstain from wine and rich foods or to live according to strict laws like this, and I will answer, ‘Go on then, live according to your law since you cannot live according to God’s.’ Not because God, the creator and lord of the universe, enjoys it when our intestines rumble, our stomach is empty and our lungs seem to be burning, but because it is impossible to preserve chastity in any other way. Job was dear to God and in his eyes pure and innocent, but listen to what he says about the devil: ‘His strength is in his loins and his power in the muscles of his belly’.49 (For the sake of decency the names have been changed but it is the male and female genitals that are being referred to.) Thus the descendant of David who, it is promised, is to sit upon his throne is said to come from his loins; and the seventy-five souls descended from Jacob who entered into Egypt were said to come from his thigh. So also after Jacob wrestled with God his strong thigh withered away and he ceased to produce children; and those who were going to celebrate the Passover were told to gird their loins and mortify them. God said to Job, ‘Gird your loins like a man’,50 while John [the Baptist] wore a leather belt round his waist.51 The apostles were told to gird their loins so that they could carry the lamps of the Gospel.52 In Ezekiel Jerusalem which, sprinkled with blood, is found on the field of wandering is told: ‘Your navel cord was not cut.’53 All the devil’s power against men is in the loins, all his strength against women is in the navel.
12 Do you want proof of my assertions? Here are some examples: Samson was stronger than a lion, tougher than a rock, and alone and unprotected he could fight against armed men, but he grew weak in Delilah’s embraces; David was chosen according to the Lord’s heart and with his holy lips he often sang of the coming of Christ, but after he walked on the roof of his house, he was seduced by the beauty of the naked Bathsheba, and committed not only adultery but murder. Notice how a person cannot use his eyes without danger even in his own house. Then David repented and said to God, ‘I have sinned against you alone and I have done wrong in your sight.’54 Being a king he feared no one else. Solomon, through whom Wisdom sang her own praise, Solomon, who discoursed on all plants from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop which grows out by the wall, withdrew from the Lord because he was a lover of women.55 And as if to show that even close blood-ties provide no safeguard, Tamar’s brother Amnon was fired with illicit passion for his sister.56
13 I cannot bear to tell how many virgins fall every day and are lost to the bosom of mother church – stars over whom the proud enemy places his throne, rocks which the serpent hollows out so he can live in their cracks. You may see many women dressed as widows before they are married to disguise their guilty conscience. Unless they are betrayed by their swelling bellies or crying babies, they walk with heads held high and with tripping feet. Some take medication to ensure sterility and so commit murder of a child that is not yet conceived. Others when they realize they have conceived in sin use drugs to procure an abortion and when (as often happens) they die with their foetus, they go down to hell laden with the guilt of three crimes, namely their own suicide, adultery against Christ and murder of their unborn child. These are the women who are heard to say, ‘To the pure all things are pure.57 My conscience is enough for me. What God wants is a pure heart. Why should I abstain from food which God has created for our use?’ And if occasionally they wish to be charming and entertaining, they drink strong wine in abundance, then adding sacrilege to drunkenness when they say, ‘Far be it from me to abstain from the blood of Christ.’ If they see some other woman sad and pale, they call her ‘a wretch’ and ‘a Manichee’,58 quite logically for according to their principles fasting is a heresy. These are the women who when they go out in public try to draw attention to themselves, and with nods and winks they attract a crowd of young men who follow them. To them the words of the prophet will always apply: ‘You have the face of a whore, you are shameless.’59 It may be that they are content with only a narrow purple stripe on their dress and their hair is tied only loosely to allow it to hang down, that their shoes are cheap and they only have a short cape over their shoulders, that their sleeves are tight and their gait lacks confidence: that is the sum total of their virginity. Let women of this kind have their own admirers and let them go to hell under the pretext of virginity. I have no desire to be respected by such people.
14 It makes me ashamed to speak of this next point, so shocking is it, but it is true, though sad. What is this plague of ‘dearly beloved sisters’ that has entered the churches? Where do these women come from who are wives without being married, a new kind of concubine? Indeed I will go further and say, where do these monogamous prostitutes come from? They share the same house, the same bedroom, even the same bed – and then they call us suspicious if we think something is wrong. A brother deserts his virgin sister, a virgin rejects her celibate brother, and although they pretend to be committed to the same way of life, they seek the spiritual solace of people who are not related to them while their real aim is to have sexual intercourse at home. In the Proverbs of Solomon God rebukes people like this, saying: ‘Can fire be carried in the bosom without setting one’s clothes on fire? Can one walk on hot coals without scorching one’s feet?’60
15 These women who do not want to be but only to seem to be virgins must be exposed and driven away. Then everything I say will be directed to you. Since you are the first noble woman in the city of Rome to adopt the life of a virgin, you must work all the harder not to lose your present benefits as well as future ones. Certainly you have learnt of the difficulties and uncertainties of marriage from the example of your own family, since your sister Blesilla, older than you but less mature in regard to her commitment, was widowed in the seventh month after taking a husband. How wretched is our human condition, ignorant of what lies in store for it! Blesilla has lost both the crown of virginity and the pleasure of marriage. Although as a widow she holds the second degree of chastity, imagine how painful it is for her every day to see in you, her sister, what she herself has lost. She finds it more difficult to be without the pleasure of marriage that she has experienced, and yet she also gets a lesser reward than you for her chastity. Yet she should feel secure and happy: the fruit that is a hundredfold and that which is sixty-fold both spring from the same seed which is chastity.61
16 I do not want you to spend time with married women, I do not want you to go to the homes of noble women, I do not want you to get frequent opportunities to see the things you rejected when you decided to be a virgin. Just because foolish women are in the habit of congratulating themselves if their husbands are judges or appointed to some high position, just because ambitious people rush to pay their respects to the emperor’s wife, does that mean that you should insult your Husband? Why should you who are the bride of God hasten to visit the wife of a mere mortal? In this regard you should learn a holy pride and be aware that you are better than they. But I want you not only to avoid meeting these women who have been made proud by their husbands’ successes, who are surrounded by crowds of eunuchs and whose clothes have fine threads of gold woven into them; I want you also to avoid anyone whom necessity has made a widow. It is not that they ought to have desired their husbands’ death but that they ought to have taken the opportunity for chastity of their own free will by not marrying in the first place. As it is, their former ambition remains unchanged: it is only their clothes they have changed. Rows of eunuchs walk in front of their enclosed litters, and their skin is so plump and their lips so red that you would think they were looking for a husband rather than that they had lost one. Their homes are full of admirers, full of guests. Even the clergy, whom they ought to respect and learn from, kiss the heads of their patronesses and stretch out their hands so you would think they wanted to confer a blessing, if you did not know that they were receiving the fee for their visit. These women, meanwhile, seeing that the priests need their support, become inflated with pride and, knowing what it is like to be under a husband’s authority, they prefer the freedom of widowhood. People call them chaste nuns but after a dubious dinner they fall asleep and dream of the apostles.
17 Choose as your friends those whom you can see have grown thin by fasting, whose faces are pale, who are of a suitable age and way of life and who every day sing in their hearts: ‘Where do you pasture your flock? Where do you let them rest at noon?’62 Such women say, ‘I long to depart and to be with Christ’,63 as if they really meant it. Be obedient to your parents; imitate your Bridegroom. Only go out in public very occasionally, seek out the martyrs in your bedroom. If you go out whenever it is necessary, you will never lack a pretext for doing so. Do not eat large amounts and never let your stomach get full. There are in fact many women who, although they do not drink wine, overdo things by eating too much. When you get up at night to pray, you should not burp from indigestion; no, your stomach should rumble as the result of hunger. Spend much of your time reading and learn as much as possible. Let sleep steal up on you with the book in your hands and let the sacred page catch your head as it droops. Practise fasting every day and do not eat so much that you get full. It is no good going around with an empty stomach for two or three days, if you then compensate by overeating. If you are full up, your mind immediately becomes sluggish and the watered ground produces thorns of lust. If ever you feel that the outer person is sighing for the flower of youth and if as you lie on your bed after a meal a delightful procession of erotic images excites you, seize the shield of faith which alone can destroy the devil’s fiery arrows. ‘They are all adulterers, their hearts are like an oven.’64 Follow closely in Christ’s footsteps and pay close attention to his words, saying: ‘Were not our hearts burning within us when he was opening the Scriptures to us?’65 and ‘Your words were fiery and your servant loved that.’66 It is difficult for the human soul to avoid loving something and our mind must necessarily be drawn towards some kind of affection. Spiritual love is superior to physical love; desire is quenched by desire. As the one diminishes, so the other increases. So always repeat these words: ‘On my bed at night I have sought him whom my soul loves.’67 The Apostle says, ‘Mortify your body on earth’,68 as he himself used to do so he could say confidently, ‘I live, yet not I, but Christ who lives in me.’69 The person who mortifies his body and walks through this world as through an illusion is not afraid to say: ‘I have become like a leather bottle in the frost;70 whatever moisture I contained has evaporated’, and ‘My knees are weak from fasting’,71 and ‘I forgot to eat my bread; because of my loud groaning my bones stick to my flesh.’72
18 Be the grasshopper of the night-time. Wash your bed and sprinkle your couch each night with tears. Stay awake and become like the sparrow in your solitude. Sing with your spirit, sing with your mind: ‘Bless the Lord, my soul, and do not forget all his benefits, he who looks with mercy on all the wicked things you have done, who heals all your weaknesses and redeems your life from corruption.’73 Which of us can say sincerely: ‘Because I have eaten ash as bread and I have mixed my drink with tears’?74 Should I not cry and sigh when the serpent invites me again to partake of forbidden foods? When, after driving us out from the paradise of virginity, he wishes to clothe us in garments of skin such as Elijah on his return to paradise threw to the ground? What have I to do with pleasure which will soon pass? What have I to do with this sweet but deadly siren song? I do not want you to be subject to that sentence imposed on man when he was condemned: ‘in pain and sorrow, woman, you will give birth’ – that law does not apply to me – ‘and your yearning will be for your husband’. Let the woman who does not have Christ as her husband yearn for her husband. When God finished his condemnation by saying, ‘You will die’,75 that is the end of marriage. My rule for life has no place for sex. Let marriage have its place and its status; for me virginity is consecrated in Mary and in Christ.
19 Someone may say, ‘Do you dare to devalue marriage which has been blessed by the Lord?’ You do not devalue marriage by preferring virginity. No one compares a bad thing to something good. Married women should take pride in being the next best thing to virgins. ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.’76 Anyone who wants to fill the earth can be fruitful and multiply, but the company to which you belong is in heaven. The commandment to be fruitful and multiply was originally meant to refer to the period after Paradise, after the nakedness and the fig leaves signifying sexual passion. Let him marry and be married who eats his bread in the sweat of his brow, and whose land produces weeds and thorns, whose plants are choked by brambles. My seed is fruitful and brings forth a hundredfold. Not everybody can accept the word of God but only those to whom it is given.77 Some people may be eunuchs out of necessity; I am one of my own free will. There is a time to embrace and a time to keep from embracing; there is a time to throw stones and a time to gather them up.78 Now that the harshness of the Gentiles has given birth to sons of Abraham, they begin to be holy stones rolling on the ground. They blow through this world like whirlwinds and in the chariot of God they roll by on spinning wheels. Let those people sew tunics who have lost the tunic woven from the top in one piece, who delight in the crying of babies who, as soon as they see the light, lament that they were born. Eve was a virgin in Paradise; it was only after they got their tunics of skin that she began her married life. Paradise is your home. Keep yourself as you were at birth and say, ‘Return, my soul, to your rest.’79 To help you understand that virginity is natural and that marriage follows sin: a virgin is born as flesh from marriage, giving back as fruit what it lost in the root. The branch will go forth from the root of Jesse and the flower will spring from the root.80 The branch is the mother of the Lord, simple, pure, and untainted, with no shoot imported from another plant but fruitful in singleness like God himself. The flower of the branch is Christ who says: ‘I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys.’81 In another passage he is spoken of as a stone cut from the mountain without hands,82 a prophecy signifying that a virgin will be born from a virgin. For the hands are interpreted as the effects of marriage, as when it says, ‘His left hand is under my head and his right hand will caress me.’83 This also agrees with the interpretation that the animals taken into the ark by Noah two by two were unclean, for it is odd numbers that are regarded as clean. Similarly Moses and Joshua were told to walk on holy ground with bare feet while the disciples were sent out to preach the Gospel unburdened by shoes or leather shoelaces; and the soldiers who divided Jesus’ garments by lot found no shoes they could take away. For it was impossible for the Lord to possess anything he had forbidden his servants to have.
20 I am in favour of marriage, I am in favour of wedlock, but only because they produce virgins. I gather roses from a thorn bush, I find gold in the earth and pearls in shells. Surely the ploughman will not plough all day? Will he not also enjoy the fruits of his hard work? Marriage is more highly valued when what it produces is loved more. Why do you envy your daughter, you who are a mother? She is nourished with your milk, she was pulled from your womb, grew in your arms and you have kept her safe with your devoted affection. Are you angry that she does not want to be the wife of a soldier but of a king? She is offering you a great advantage: you are about to become God’s mother-in-law. ‘Concerning virgins,’ says the Apostle, ‘I have no command from the Lord.’84 Why not? Because his own virginity was not the result of a command but of his own free choice. One should not listen to people who claim St Paul had a wife, seeing that when he speaks about continence and tries to persuade them to perpetual chastity, he said, ‘I wish that all were as I myself am. To the unmarried and the widows I say, “It is good for them if they remain as I am”’, and in another passage he says, ‘Do we not have the right to be accompanied by wives like the other apostles?’85 Why, then, does he not have a commandment from the Lord on virginity? Because the reward is greater when virginity is not compulsory but voluntary. If virginity had been obligatory, it would appear to detract from marriage. It would have been hard to compel them to something unnatural and to demand that men lead the life of the angels; this would somehow have been to condemn something given as a rule.
21 The old law had a different ideal of blessedness. ‘Blessed is the man who has his seed in Sion and domestic servants in Jerusalem, and cursed be the sterile woman who did not give birth’, and ‘Your sons are like the new crop of olives around your table.’86 There was also the promise of riches and we are told that ‘there will be no one weak in your tribes’.87 Now it is said, ‘do not think that you are a dry tree’,88 for you have an everlasting place in heaven instead of sons and daughters. Now the poor are blessed and Lazarus is preferred to the rich man dressed in purple; now a weak person is regarded as strong. In those days the world was empty and (passing over examples of childlessness that were meant to be interpreted typologically) children were considered the sole source of happiness. That is why Abraham, when he was already an old man, married Keturah and Jacob was redeemed by mandrakes, and the beautiful Rachel, a type of the church, bewailed the closing of her womb.
But gradually the crop grew and the reaper was sent in. Elisha was a virgin, and so was Elijah and many of the sons of the prophets. To Jeremiah it was said: ‘You must not take a wife.’89 He had been sanctified in the womb and was not allowed to take a wife because captivity was at hand. The Apostle expresses the same thing differently: ‘I think that in view of the impending crisis, it is better for you to remain as you are.’90 What is this impending crisis that takes away the joy of marriage? ‘The time is short; even those who have wives must be as if they did not.’91 Next comes Nebuchadnezzar: a lion has stirred from its lair.92 What good is a wife to me if she will become the slave of a proud king? What good are children, whom the prophet deplores when he says: ‘Thirst causes the tongue of the suckling child to stick to his throat. The little ones demanded bread and there was no one to break it for them.’93 And so, as I said, the virtue of continence was at that time only found in men; Eve continued to give birth in pain. But after a virgin conceived in her womb and gave birth to a boy for us, and the government is on his shoulders,94 a strong God, a father of a future age, the curse was broken. Through Eve came death, through Mary, life. And so the gift of virginity flowed more richly into women because it started with a woman. As soon as the son of God walked on this earth, he established for himself a new family in order that the one who was adored by the angels in heaven might be served by angels on earth as well. Then chaste Judith once more cut off the head of Holofernes; then Haman, whose name means iniquity, was burned by his own fire; then James and John left their father, their nets and the boat and followed the Saviour, leaving behind their family responsibilities and their ties to the world and their care of their homes; then for the first time were heard the words: ‘If anyone wants to become my follower, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.’95 No soldier takes his wife into battle. The disciple who wanted to bury his father was not allowed to do so.96 The foxes have holes and the birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.97 So do not complain if you do not have spacious accommodation. ‘The unmarried man worries about the affairs of the Lord and how he can please God; but the married man worries about the affairs of the world and how to please his wife. The married woman and the virgin are also different: the one who is not married thinks about the things of the Lord, so that she might be holy in body and spirit; while the married woman thinks of worldly things and how she might please her husband.’98
22 As for the inconveniences of the married life and the worries involved, I think I have summed them up in the treatise that I wrote against Helvidius on the perpetual virginity of the blessed Mary. It would take too long to list them all here and if anyone wishes to, he can draw them from that little spring of mine. But in case I should seem to have failed altogether to mention them, I will now point out that the Apostle tells us to pray without ceasing and that the person who is doing his duty within marriage is unable to pray. Either we pray constantly and are virgins or we give up praying so that we can perform our marital duties. ‘If a virgin marries,’ St Paul says, ‘she does not sin; however, those who marry will experience trouble in this life.’99 At the beginning of my letter I stated that I would say little or nothing about the problems of marriage and now I say it again. But if you wish to know how many troubles the virgin escapes and how many the married woman suffers, read Tertullian’s work To a Philosophic Friend and his other treatises on virginity, as well as the outstanding volume by St Cyprian and those both in prose and verse composed by Pope Damasus and those by our friend Ambrose that he recently wrote for his sister.100 In these last works he expresses himself with such eloquence that he has sought out and set forth in a coherent fashion everything relevant to the praise of virginity.
23 I must proceed by a different path for it is not my intention to praise virginity but to preserve it. To know that it is a good thing is not enough: we must protect what we have chosen with great care. To choose it is a matter of judgement – and many people can do this, but to protect it requires great effort, and only a few can manage that. The former we share with most people, but the latter with just a few. Jesus says, ‘The one who endures to the end will be saved’, and ‘Many are called but few are chosen.’101 So I entreat you before God and Christ Jesus and his chosen angels not to bring out of the temple vessels which may only be seen by priests, in case some profane person should look upon God’s sanctuary. Uzziah touched the ark although it was not permitted to do so and as a result he was suddenly struck dead.102 But no gold or silver vessel was ever as dear to God as the temple of a virgin’s body. First came the foreshadowing, now the reality is here. You may speak sincerely and treat strangers kindly, not despising them, but the shameless see things differently. They cannot appreciate spiritual beauty, only physical beauty. Hezekiah showed God’s treasure to the Assyrians but they only saw something to covet.103 As a result Judea was torn apart by a series of wars, and the first things to be captured and carried off were the vessels of the Lord. Belshazzar, surrounded by concubines at his feast, used the vessels as drinking cups,104 because the most wicked thing one can do is to defile what is noble.
24 Do not listen to harmful talk. Those who say something indecent are trying to test your commitment. If you listen with pleasure to what is said or if you burst out laughing at every funny thing, they approve of everything you say, and deny whatever you deny. They call you witty and good, a woman in whom there is no guile. They say, ‘Here is a real servant of Christ! Look how utterly open she is, not like that ugly, repulsive and scary woman, totally lacking in charm, who probably could not find a husband for that reason.’ We are easily seduced by our natural inclination to what is bad: we willingly agree with those who flatter us, and although we may reply that we do not deserve such compliments and a warm blush may spread over our face, yet secretly our soul is pleased to hear them.
The bride of Christ is like the ark of the covenant, covered in gold both inside and out, and a guardian of the Lord’s law. Just as in the ark there was nothing except the tablets of the law, so in you there should be no thought of anything that is outside. The Lord wishes to sit on this mercy seat as he sat upon the cherubim. He sends his disciples so that they may free you from the cares of this world, as they freed the foal of the ass, and so that you may leave the straw and bricks of Egypt and thereby follow Moses into the wilderness and enter the promised land. Do not let anyone stop you, not your mother, not your sister or any female relative nor your brother: your closest relative is the Lord. But if they want to make difficulties for you, let them fear the scourges that afflicted Pharaoh, as is recorded in the Bible, when he refused to let the people of God go so that they could worship God. When Jesus entered the Temple he cast out everything that did not belong to the Temple. For God is jealous and will not allow the Father’s house to become a den of thieves. Otherwise if the place is used to count money, if cages of doves are kept there and simplicity is put to death, in other words if the virgin’s heart is troubled by worldly business, the veil of the Temple is immediately torn, and the Bridegroom gets up in anger and says, ‘Your house is left to you, desolate.’105
Read the Gospel and notice how Mary sitting at the Lord’s feet is preferred to the busy Martha, even though Martha, eager to be hospitable, was preparing a meal for the Lord and his disciples. ‘Martha,’ said Christ, ‘Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; but there are few things that are really necessary, or in fact only one. Mary has chosen the better part which will not be taken from her.’106 You should be like Mary, and prefer spiritual learning to physical food. Let your sisters run round thinking of ways to offer hospitality to Christ. Now that you have put aside the burden of worldly worries, you must sit down at the Lord’s feet and say, ‘I have found him whom my soul was seeking; I will hold on to him and not let him go.’107
And he will reply, ‘My dove, my perfect one, is my only one; she is the darling of her mother, chosen by the one who gave birth to her’,108 in other words the heavenly Jerusalem.
25 Always remain secluded in your room where you will be safe, always let your Bridegroom play with you inside. If you pray, you are talking to your Bridegroom; if you read, he is talking to you; and when sleep weighs down your eyelids, he will come behind the wall and put his hand through the opening109 and touch your stomach. Then you will get up, trembling, and say, ‘I am wounded by love’, and he will say to you, ‘A garden enclosed is my sister, my bride; a garden enclosed, a sealed fountain.’110 Take care not to leave the house and do not express an interest in seeing the daughters of a foreign country, when you have the patriarchs as your brothers, and rejoice in Israel as your father: when Dinah went out she was raped.111 I do not want you to go into the streets to look for your Bridegroom; I do not want you to go round all the corners of the city. You may say, ‘I will rise and go round the city, to the market square and through the streets, and I will try to find the object of my soul’s love.’112 You may inquire, ‘Have you not seen the one whom my soul loves?’113 but no one will bother to reply. The Bridegroom cannot be found in the streets. ‘Strait and narrow is the path that leads to life.’114 Then this passage continues: ‘I looked for him but I did not find him; I called him but he did not reply to me.’115 If only it were simply a question of not finding him! But you will be wounded, stripped naked, and then you will sob, saying, ‘The guards found me as they went round the city;116 they beat me, they wounded me, they took my cloak.’ If the girl who said, ‘I sleep but my heart is awake’,117 and ‘My cousin is a bunch of myrrh lying between my breasts’,118 suffers such things when she leaves her house, what will happen to us, we who are still young girls and who remain outside when the bride goes in with the Bridegroom? Jesus is jealous. He does not want your face to be seen by others. You may try to make excuses and argue, ‘I did cover my face with my veil. I went out to look for you and said to you, “Tell me, you whom my soul loves, where do you pasture your flock, where do you let it lie down at midday, for why should I be like one who is veiled beside the flocks of your companions?”’119 But he will get angry and say, ‘If you do not know yourself, fairest of women, follow the tracks of the flock and pasture your young goats beside the shepherds’ tents.120 Though you are beautiful and your bridegroom loves your beauty more than that of any other woman, unless you know yourself and keep a watch over your heart to keep it safe, unless you avoid the looks of young men, you will leave my bedchamber to pasture your goats which will be set on the left hand.’
26 And so, my dear Eustochium, daughter, lady, fellow servant, sister – for the first term suits your age, the second your rank, the third your devotion to God and the last our affection – listen to what Isaiah says: ‘My people, enter into your bedrooms, close your doors and hide yourselves for a while until the Lord’s anger has passed.’121 The foolish virgins can wander around outside, but you must stay inside with your Bridegroom because if you shut your door and pray to your father in secret, in accordance with the Gospel precept,122 he will come and knock on your door and say, ‘Listen, I am standing at your door, knocking; if someone will open for me, I will come in and eat with him and he with me.’ Then you will at once reply eagerly: ‘It is the voice of my lover who is knocking; open for me, my sister, my dearest, my dove, my perfect one.’123 You must not say, ‘I have taken off my dress, how can I put it back on? I have washed my feet – I cannot get them dirty.’124 Get up at once and open the door for if you delay he may go away, and then you will be sorry and say, ‘I opened the door for my lover but he had gone away.’125 For why should the door of your heart be closed to your Bridegroom? Let it open for Christ and close it to the devil, according to the saying: ‘If the spirit of the one who has power should rise up against you, do not leave your place.’126 When Daniel could no longer stay on the lower floor, he kept the windows in his room open towards Jerusalem:127 you too should have your windows open to let the light in so that you can see the city of God. Do not open those windows of which it is said: ‘Death has come in through your windows.’128
27 You must also be very careful to avoid being seduced by a desire for the admiration of others. Jesus said, ‘How can you believe when you accept glory from one another?’129 Consider how bad the thing must be that prevents the one who has it from believing. We must say, ‘You are my glory’, and ‘Let anyone who takes pride, take pride in the Lord’,130 and ‘If I were still pleasing people, I would not be Christ’s servant’,131 and ‘May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world’,132 and ‘In you we will be praised all day and my soul will be praised in the Lord.’133 When you give to charity, let God be the only one who sees you. When you fast, your face should be cheerful. Your clothes should not be too smart but not too shabby either and should not attract attention by being too distinctive, which might cause passers-by to stop and point at you. Maybe your brother has died or your little sister’s body is to be buried: take care that you yourself do not die if you attend such funerals too often. Do not try to appear very devout or more humble than necessary, in case you win admiration by pretending to shun it. There are many people who hide their poverty, compassion or fasting from others, but in fact they are trying to gain approval by apparently despising it, and perversely they win praise while trying to avoid it. I find many who are free from the other disturbing influences that cause people to experience joy, sickness, hope or fear; but this is a fault that few are free of, and the best person is the one whose character, like a beautiful body, has the fewest blemishes. I am not going to warn you against being proud of your wealth or boasting that you are from an upper-class family or feeling superior to others: I know your humility, I know that you can sincerely say, ‘O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high.’134 I know that the pride which caused the devil to fall has absolutely no place in you or your mother. So it is unnecessary for me to write to you on this subject, for it is the height of folly to teach somebody something he already knows. But now that you have come to despise the boastfulness of the world, do not let this in itself make you boastful. Do not harbour a secret thought that because you have ceased to be admired for clothes of gold, you might be admired for your shabby clothes. When you are in a room full of brothers or sisters, do not take a seat at the far end, pleading that you are not worthy to sit anywhere else. Do not speak quietly on purpose as if your voice were weakened by fasting, and do not lean on someone else’s shoulder as if you were feeling faint. There are some women who disfigure their faces so that men will think that they are fasting; as soon as such women see someone, they groan and look down and cover their faces, just allowing one eye to peep out; they wear dingy clothes and a belt of sackcloth; their hands and feet are unwashed but their stomachs, because they cannot be seen, churn with food. It is with reference to people like this that the following psalm is sung every day: ‘God has scattered the bones of men who please themselves.’135 Other women change their way of dressing and adopt men’s clothes; ashamed to be women as they were born to be, they cut their hair short and shamelessly choose to look like eunuchs. There are other women who put on clothes of sackcloth and dress in childish styles with hooded tunics which make them look like some kind of owl.
28 But it is not only women I should criticize. You should also avoid men whom you see wearing lots of chains or with long hair worn in a feminine style, contrary to the Apostle’s precept, or those sporting a goatee beard, or wearing a black cloak and going around with bare feet, despite the cold. All these things are evidence of the devil. Some time ago Rome groaned over Antimus who was just such a person, and more recently there was Sofronius. When once such people gain access to the houses of the nobility and manage to deceive silly women overwhelmed by their sins, who are always being instructed but never arriving at a knowledge of the truth,136 they put on a martyred look and pretend to practise long fasts while secretly eating at night; I am ashamed to say any more in case I appear to be attacking rather than warning. There are others – I am talking of men of my own order – who are keen to become priests and deacons only so that they may visit women without restriction. All they care about is their clothes and whether they smell nice and whether their feet are bulging out of their shoes. Their hair is curled and still shows traces of the tongs, their fingers are covered in glittering rings and they walk along on tiptoe so that their feet do not get splashed in the wet streets. When you see men like this, think of them as husbands rather than clergy. Some of them devote their whole life and all their efforts to knowing the names, houses and characters of married women.
I will briefly and cursorily describe one of these men, a prime example of this kind of behaviour, so that once you know the master, you may more easily recognize his disciples. He hastens to rise with the sun; he knows exactly in what order to make his morning calls; this old man takes a short cut and barges more or less straight into the bedrooms of women who are still asleep. If he sees a cushion or an elegant tablecloth or any other piece of furniture, he admires and praises it as he handles it, lamenting that he has nothing like this. In this way he does not so much ask for it as extort it from the owner, because all the women are afraid to offend this cunning old fox. He cannot bear chastity or fasting; what he likes is a tasty meal with a plump chicken, usually known as a ‘cheeper’. He has a rude and impertinent way of talking and is always armed with abuse. Wherever you go, he is the first person you see. Whatever piece of news is going around, he is the one either who first reported it or who exaggerated the story. He changes horses every hour – in fact, his horses are so sleek, so spirited that you might think he was the brother of the king of Thrace.
29 That cunning enemy, the devil, uses many different stratagems to deceive us. The serpent was cleverer than any other animal created by the Lord God on this earth. That is why the Apostle says, ‘We are not ignorant of his tricks.’137 But a Christian ought not to affect shabbiness nor dress with elaborate elegance. If there is something you do not know, if you have some doubt about a passage of Scripture, ask someone whose life commends him, whose age puts him above suspicion, whose reputation no one questions and who can say, ‘I gave you in marriage to one man, a chaste virgin to present to Christ.’138 Or if there is no one who can explain the passage, it is better to be safe but ignorant than to expose oneself to danger for the sake of knowledge. Remember that you are walking over a series of traps and that many women who remained virgins for a long time, right at the end of their lives lost the chance to win the crown of chastity which they thought was guaranteed to them.
If any of your servants wish to share your commitment to this way of life, do not treat them with contempt like an arrogant employer. You have all chosen one Bridegroom: together you sing psalms to Christ, together you receive his body, so why should you eat at separate tables? You must challenge other women. The respect you show your virgins will serve as an invitation to others to do the same. But if you notice that one of them is a little weaker in her faith, give her support and comfort, speak kindly to her; make it clear that you value her chastity. If one of them pretends to a vocation so as to escape her servant status, read out to her the words of the Apostle: ‘It is better to marry than to burn with passion.’139 But those idle and gossiping virgins and widows who are constantly doing the rounds of married women’s homes and who in their unblushing effrontery outdo the hangers-on in the comedy plays, these you must flee like the plague. ‘Bad company ruins good morals.’140 They only care about their stomachs and what lies just below their stomachs. This is the kind of advice they tend to give: ‘My pet, make the most of what you have and enjoy life while you can’, and ‘Surely you are not saving your money for your children?’ Tipsy and flirtatious they make mischievous suggestions and encourage even those who are strict with themselves to become self-indulgent, and ‘when their sensual desires alienate them from Christ they want to marry, and so they incur damnation for having violated their original commitment’.141 Do not try to appear too eloquent or to compose popular songs in verse. Do not be overly refined, imitating the affected pronunciation of those married women who speak sometimes with teeth clenched, sometimes with their mouths wide open, or clip their words with lisping tongues. They seem to think that anything natural is uncivilized! Such pleasure they derive from adultery, even of the tongue. What can light and darkness have in common? What agreement does Christ have with Belial?142 What has Horace got to do with the Psalter? Or Virgil with the Gospels? Or Cicero with St Paul? Is not your brother scandalized if he sees you sitting in a temple full of idols? Although all things are pure to the pure and one should reject nothing that is received with gratitude,143 we still ought not to drink from the cup of Christ and the cup of demons at the same time. Let me tell you of my unfortunate past.
30 Many years ago I cut myself off from home, parents, sister, relatives and (what was far more difficult) from the sumptuous food I was used to, for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. I set off for Jerusalem to serve as God’s soldier there, but found I could not do without the books I had collected with great care and dedication while I was in Rome. And so, pathetic creature that I was, I would fast while planning to read Cicero. After staying awake for several nights, after all the tears that welled up from deep within me when I remembered my past sins, I would pick up my copy of Plautus. If I ever came to my senses and began to read one of the prophets, I was put off by the inelegant style and (because my spiritual blindness prevented me from seeing the light) I blamed the sun rather than my eyes. While the old serpent was mocking me in this manner, about halfway through Lent my exhausted body succumbed to a fever which crept deep within me. My poor body became so emaciated that my skin – and this may sound incredible – hung loosely from my bones. Preparations were being made for my funeral for I was hardly breathing, my heart had almost stopped beating and my whole body was growing cold, when suddenly I was snatched up in the spirit and dragged before the judge’s tribunal. Here the light was so bright and those standing around so radiant that I threw myself on the ground and did not dare look up. When asked who and what I was I replied that I was a Christian. But the judge seated there said, ‘You are lying. You are a Ciceronian, not a Christian. Where your treasure is, there is your heart also.’144 I was completely dumbfounded and the flames of my conscience caused me more pain than the strokes of the lash (for he had given orders that I should be beaten). I kept thinking to myself of that verse: ‘Who will praise you in hell?’145 I began to wail and cry out, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, have mercy on me.’146 These words echoed amid the sound of the whip’s lashes. At last those who were standing by fell at the feet of the judge, begging him to have pity on my youth and to give me a chance to repent of my error. Let him inflict a painful punishment if I ever read any books of pagan literature again. I would have been willing to make even greater promises under such pressure at that terrible moment, and so I began to swear an oath, calling on his name: ‘Lord, if ever I possess or read non-biblical books I have denied you.’ After swearing this oath I was dismissed and I returned to the upper world. To everyone’s surprise I opened my eyes, so full of tears that even the sceptical were convinced by my suffering. But this was not sleep nor one of those idle dreams that often delude us. I call to witness the judgement seat in front of which I lay, and I call to witness the judgement that terrified me – may I never again have to submit to such an interrogation! – that I had bruised shoulders and that I could feel the effects of the beating after I woke up. After that I read the books of God much more enthusiastically than I had previously read the books written by men.
31 You must also avoid the sin of covetousness: it is not just a question of not seizing what belongs to others – for this is punishable by the laws of the state – but of not keeping what was yours but now belongs to others. ‘If you have not been faithful with what belongs to someone else, who will give you what is your own?’147 The property of others is a pile of gold and silver, while our own property is a spiritual possession of which it is said elsewhere: ‘The ransom of a man’s life is his wealth.’148 No one can serve two masters; either he will hate the one and love the other or he will endure the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon149 (in other words wealth, for in the Syriac language mammon is the word for wealth). Our obsessive concerns about our food are like thorns that choke our faith; our desire for what the Gentiles have is the root of covetousness. But you may say, ‘I am a delicate girl – you cannot expect me to do manual work. When I am old and if I begin to be ill, who will have pity on me?’ Listen to what Jesus says to the disciples: ‘Do not worry in your heart about what you are going to eat or wear. Is not life more than food and your body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the sky; they neither sow nor reap nor gather the harvest into the barns and yet your father in heaven feeds them.’150 If you are without clothes, the lilies can provide you with a model; if you are hungry, remember how blessed are the poor and hungry; if you are suffering from some pain, read these words: ‘This is why I take pleasure in my infirmities’, and ‘I was given a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, who will beat me to prevent me becoming arrogant.’151 Rejoice in all God’s judgements; for the daughters of Judah exult in all your judgements, Lord.152 Let these words always be heard on your lips: ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked shall I return’, and ‘we brought nothing into the world and we can take nothing from it’.153
32 But nowadays you see many women filling their wardrobes with clothes, wearing new dresses every day, but they still cannot get the better of the moths. A more devout woman wears one dress till it is threadbare, but her cupboards are full of clothes. Parchment is dyed purple, liquid gold is used as ink, books are covered in jewels, but Christ lies naked and dying outside their door. Even if they do hold their hand out to give something, they cannot help blowing their own trumpet at the same time. When they invite people to a fellowship meal, they publish the fact all round the city. I recently saw – well, I had better not mention any names in case you think I am writing a satire – one of the most aristocratic of Roman women in St Peter’s church, preceded by a group of effeminate men, handing out the odd coin to the poor with her own hand, so that she might be thought more holy. While this was happening, an elderly woman, marked by wrinkles and rags, ran on ahead so that she could receive another coin – an occurrence that is not unusual – but when it was her turn, she got a punch instead of a penny and paid with her blood for the wrong she had committed.
The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil154 and so the Apostle refers to it as idolatry. ‘Seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you.’155 The Lord will not let the soul of a good person die of hunger: ‘I was young and now I am old, and I have never seen a good man abandoned nor his children begging for bread.’156 Elijah was fed by ravens that ministered to him,157 the widow of Zarephath who expected to die that night together with her sons went without food so she could feed the prophet: by a miracle the jar of flour filled up and so he who had come to eat food became the one who provided it.158 The Apostle Peter said, ‘I have no silver and gold but I will give you what I have. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ get up and walk.’159 Now there are many whose deeds speak volumes even though they do not actually say, ‘I have neither faith nor mercy, and the gold and silver I do possess I will not give you.’ Let us be content if we have food and clothing. Listen to what Jacob asks for in his prayer: ‘If the Lord God will be with me and will keep me safe on the path along which I travel, and will give me bread to eat and clothes to wear [then shall the Lord be my God].’160 Jacob only asked for what was necessary and yet, twenty years later, he returned to the land of Canaan, a wealthy master and an even wealthier father. There are numerous other examples in Scripture that teach us to avoid covetousness.
33 Having touched on this subject in passing – and if Christ allows, I will devote a separate volume to it – I will mention what happened at Nitria a few years ago. One of the brothers who could be described as thrifty rather than covetous, unaware that the Lord was sold for thirty pieces of silver, on his death left one hundred shillings, earned by weaving linen. The brothers (and there were about five thousand of them living there in separate cells) held a meeting to decide what they should do. Some suggested the money be distributed to the poor, others that it should be given to the church, while some said that it should be sent back to the man’s relatives. But Macarius, Pambo, Isidore and the others whom they called fathers, inspired by the Holy Spirit, decided that it should be buried with the man it belonged to, quoting the words: ‘May your money perish with you.’161 Let no one consider their decision too harsh: all the monks in Egypt are now in the grip of such fear that it is regarded as a crime to leave behind a single piece of gold.
34 Since I have mentioned the monks and I know that you enjoy hearing about what is holy, listen to me for a few moments. There are three types of monks in Egypt: the coenobium which they call ‘sauhes’ in their local language and which we can call ‘those who live in common’; the anchorites who live on their own in the desert and are so called from the fact that they withdraw far from other people; the third kind, known as ‘remnuoth’, is the worst of all and is much despised – though in the province where I live it is the only or at least the dominant kind. These last live in groups of two or three or just a few more, living autonomously. They pool the proceeds of their work, using the money to buy food. Most often they live in towns and villages and everything they sell is extremely expensive, as if it were their craft rather than their way of life that was holy. They often quarrel among themselves because living as they do off their own produce they refuse to be subordinate to anyone else. It is true that they vie with each other in their fasting, making something that should be secret into a cause for boasting. Every thing about them is an affectation: their loose sleeves, shoes puffed up like bellows, coarse clothes; the way they are always sighing, going round to visit virgins, criticizing the clergy and eating so much that they vomit whenever there is a feast day.
35 And so once we have got rid of these pests, let us consider the many men who live together in community, in other words those whom we said were called cenobites. They have a fundamental agreement that they will obey the superiors and do whatever these men tell them. They are divided into groups of tens and hundreds in such a way that every tenth person is in charge of nine others and then every hundredth is in charge of ten leaders. They live separately but their cells are close together. Until three in the afternoon there is a kind of cessation of business: no one is allowed to visit anyone else apart from those whom we referred to as deans or leaders of ten, so that if someone happens to be upset or disturbed, they can calm him by talking to him. After three in the afternoon they all meet together to sing psalms and read passages from Scripture out loud, according to custom. After finishing their prayers, they all sit down while one of them whom they call father stands up in the middle and gives a talk. While he is speaking there is such complete silence that no one dares to look at anyone else or even clear his throat. The power of the speaker’s words is proved by the fact that his audience is in tears. The tears roll silently down their cheeks but they restrain their emotion from breaking out in sobs. When he begins to speak about the kingdom of Christ, about future blessedness and the coming glory, you can see them all sigh gently as they raise their eyes to heaven, saying to themselves, ‘Who will give me wings like a dove and I will fly away and be at rest?’162 The gathering then disperses and they go off in groups of ten, each with its own leader, to the meal at which they take it in turns, week by week, to serve each other. There is no noise at the meal, no one speaks while he is eating. They live on bread, beans and vegetables, seasoned with salt and oil. Wine is only given to the old men who also often have the same food as the children: in this way the older ones who are a bit weak get the sustenance they need, while the little ones who are only just starting out are not harmed by a harsh regime. Then they all rise from the table at the same time and after singing a hymn they return to their accommodation. There they can talk with the others in their group until evening. They might exclaim, ‘Did you see so-and-so, how filled with grace, how calm and self-controlled he is!’ If they notice that someone is ill, they comfort him; if someone is fervent in their love of God, they encourage him in his enthusiasm. And because apart from the communal prayers, each of them stays awake in his own cell at night, they go round to all the different cells, trying carefully, by listening at the door, to ascertain what the person inside is doing. If they find that a monk is being a bit lazy, they do not rebuke him; instead they keep their discovery to themselves but visit him frequently and by starting the prayers they inspire rather than force him to pray.
There is a task allotted to each day: this is given to the dean who takes it to the steward who must, in fear and trembling, give an account each month to the father of the whole community. This man also tastes the food when it is cooked and because no one is allowed to say, ‘I have no tunic or cloak or rush mat’, the steward must arrange everything in such a way that no one has to ask for anything or be in need. But if anyone falls ill, he is moved to a larger room and is looked after so attentively by the older monks that he misses neither the luxuries of city life nor his mother’s loving care. On Sundays they spend all their time praying and reading – in fact this is what they do every day when they have finished their tasks. Every day they learn a passage of Scripture. The regime of fasting is the same all the year round except during Lent – that is the only period when they are allowed to live more austerely. At Whit-sun dinner is replaced by a meal at midday which serves to satisfy church tradition and ensures that the monks do not overload their stomachs with two meals. According to Philo, the imitator of Plato’s dialogues, and Josephus, the Greek Livy, in the second book of his Jewish Captivity,163 the Essenes had similar practices.
36 What I have said about the monks may seem irrelevant given that I am supposed to be writing about virgins, so I will now move on to the third type of monks, namely those known as anchorites, who leave the monastic community and move further into the desert, taking only bread and salt with them. The founder of this way of life was Paul, but it was made famous by Antony and (to go further back in time) its first example was John the Baptist. The prophet Jeremiah also gives a description of this kind of person when he says, ‘It is good for a man to bear the yoke from his youth. He will sit alone in silence because he has lifted the yoke on to himself, and he will offer his cheek to the one who hits him and will be overwhelmed by insults because the Lord will not cast him away for ever.’164 I will give an account of their hardships and their way of life that is in the flesh but not of it, on another occasion if you like. Now I will return to my subject, for it was while I was discussing love of money that I mentioned the monks. If you hold them up before you as examples, you will despise not only gold and silver and other forms of wealth but even earth and heaven themselves. United to Christ you will sing, ‘The Lord is my portion.’165
37 Although the Apostle tells us to pray without ceasing166 and although holy people ought to consider even sleep as prayer, it is nevertheless a good idea to have fixed hours for prayer so that if we happen to be absorbed in some task, the time may remind us of our duty: everyone should know that he or she ought to pray at the third hour, the sixth, the ninth, as well as at dawn and in the evening. You must not start on a meal without having prayed first nor should you leave the table before you have given thanks to the Creator. You should get up two or three times a night to meditate on passages of Scripture you know by heart. When you leave your home, you should be armed with prayer, and when you return from the streets you should pray before you sit down, nourishing your soul before you allow your poor body to relax. Make the sign of the cross before doing anything and before going anywhere. Do not speak disparagingly about anyone and do not spread scandal about your mother’s son. Who are you that you should judge someone else’s servant? It is in front of his own master that he stands or falls. And he will stand for God is able to make him stand.167 If you fast for two days, do not think that you are better than someone who does not fast. You fast and yet you get angry, while another person may eat but perhaps speaks kindly; you work off your irritation and your hunger by picking a fight, while the other person eats in moderation and gives thanks to God. That is why Isaiah proclaims every day: ‘This was not the kind of fast that I chose, says the Lord.’168 And again, ‘For in the days of fasting you do as you please and you oppress all who are under your power. If you fast among judgements and quarrels and you punch anyone who is weak, why do you fast for me?’169 What kind of fast can that be when not only has his anger not evaporated by nightfall but it is just as violent by the time of the full moon? It is yourself you should look carefully at; do not take pleasure in other people’s failure but only in your own achievements.
38 Do not set before yourself examples of women who are concerned with their bodies and who are always reckoning up their income and daily household expenditure. For the eleven apostles were not crushed by Judas’ betrayal, and when Phygelus and Alexander were shipwrecked this did not mean that the others faltered in the race of faith.170 Do not say, ‘So-and-so enjoys her own property; she is respected by everyone; her brothers and sisters come to visit her: surely this does not mean that she is no longer a virgin?’ First of all, it is doubtful whether such a woman really is a virgin. For the Lord will not see as man sees; man sees the outward appearance but God sees into the heart.171 So even if she is a virgin physically, I am not sure whether she is a virgin from a spiritual point of view. The Apostle gave the following definition of a virgin: ‘Let her be holy both in body and spirit.’172 Finally, let her have her own glory. Let her dispute St Paul’s statement – let her enjoy her good things and let her live. It is for us to follow better examples.
Keep the blessed Mary before your eyes. She was of such purity that she was chosen to be the mother of the Lord. When the angel Gabriel came down to her in the guise of a man, saying, ‘Hail, you who are full of grace, the Lord is with you’,173 she was troubled and could not reply; for she had never been greeted by a man. Soon she found out who the messenger was and spoke to him. She spoke without fear to an angel even though she had been afraid to talk to a man. You too could be the mother of the Lord. ‘Take a long new roll and write on it with the pen of a man who is quickly carrying off the spoils, and when you approach the prophetess and you conceive in your womb and give birth to a boy, say, “Lord we have conceived from your fear and we have suffered and have given birth; we have made the spirit of your salvation on earth.” Then your son will reply to you and say, “Here are my mother and my brothers.”’174 And he whose name you just recently inscribed in your heart, whose name you wrote hurriedly on its new surface, after he takes the spoils from the enemy and after he has stripped the principalities and powers, nailing them to the cross, after conception he grows up into an adult and when he reaches maturity, he takes you as his bride rather than his mother. To be as the martyrs, to be as the apostles or to be as Christ is a difficult task but the reward is great. All such efforts are only useful when they are made within the church, when we celebrate the Passover in one house, if we go into the ark with Noah, and if at the fall of Jericho we stay inside with Rahab who was declared innocent.175 Such virgins as are said to exist among the various heretical sects or to be followers of Mani who was completely devoid of purity, must be regarded as prostitutes rather than virgins. For if the devil is responsible for their bodies, how can they honour something made by their enemy? But because they know that the term ‘virgin’ gives one an enviable reputation, they go about like wolves in sheep’s clothing. The Antichrist pretends to be Christ and these women conceal their shameful lives beneath a false cloak of respect. Rejoice, sister, rejoice, daughter, rejoice my virgin: what others pretend to be, you have really begun to be.
39 All the things I have set out in this letter will seem hard to someone who does not love Christ. But anyone who considers the attractions of this world to be rubbish and who thinks everything beneath the sun is worthless if only he can gain Christ,176 anyone who has died with his Lord and risen with him and crucified his flesh with its sins and desires, will openly proclaim, ‘Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship or distress or persecution or hunger or lack of clothes or danger or the sword?’177 And further on, ‘For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come nor strength nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God which exists in Christ Jesus our Lord.’178 For our salvation the son of God became the Son of Man; for ten months he waited in the womb to be born, he endured distress, he came forth covered in blood, he was wrapped in swaddling clothes, he was comforted with kind words and he who has the whole world in his hand was confined in a narrow manger. I say nothing of the fact that until the age of thirty he was content to live in humble poverty with his parents; he was beaten and remained silent; he was crucified and prayed for those who were crucifying him. ‘How shall I repay the Lord for all that he gives me? I will take the cup of salvation and I will call on the name of salvation. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful ones.’179 This is the only suitable return, that blood should be paid for with blood and those who have been redeemed by Christ’s blood should willingly die for their redeemer. Which saint has won the crown without a struggle? Abel who was a good man was murdered; Abraham was in danger of losing his wife and (as I do not want to make this work too long) you can find many examples of those who suffered in various ways. Solomon alone lived in luxury and perhaps that is the reason why disaster befell him. ‘For the Lord disciplines those he loves; he rebukes every child he accepts.’180 Is it not better to fight for a short while, to carry a stake, weapons, food rations, to grow weary while wearing a breastplate but then to experience the joy of victory – rather than to be perpetually enslaved because you could not endure for one hour?
40 Those who love find nothing hard; no hardship is difficult if you desire something. Look at what Jacob put up with for Rachel, his promised bride. ‘So Jacob served seven years for Rachel’, as it says in Scripture. ‘And they seemed to him just a few days because he loved her.’181 That is why he says later, ‘By day the heat consumed me and the frost by night.’182 Let us love Christ, too, and always seek his embraces and then all our difficulties will seem easy. We will think everything long is short; and wounded by his spear, we will say at each hour of the day, ‘Woe is me that I have prolonged my journey. The sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed in us;183 for suffering produces endurance and endurance produces experience and experience hope but hope does not disappoint us.’184 When what you endure seems harsh to you read St Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians: ‘In more labours, in more imprisonments, with unlimited beatings, in frequent deaths – five times from the Jews I received thirty-nine floggings, three times I was beaten with a rod, once I was stoned, three times I suffered shipwreck – day and night I was in the depths of the sea, in frequent travels, in danger of rivers, in danger of bandits, in danger from the Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the desert, danger at sea, danger from false brothers, in hardships, in wretchedness, in many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, in frequent fasting, in cold and lack of clothes.’185 Which of us can claim even the smallest part of this catalogue of virtues for himself? In fact St Paul then goes on confidently, ‘I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. From now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord will award to me.’186 If our food lacks salt we put on a martyred look and imagine we are doing God a favour; when our drink is a little too diluted we smash the cup, knock the table over, beat the servant loudly and claim that if the water is not cold enough he ought to pay with his blood. ‘The kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force.’187 Unless you use violence, you will not capture the kingdom of heaven. Unless you knock urgently, you will not be given the bread of the sacrament.188 Do you not think that it is violence when the flesh desires to be what God is and to climb up to the place from which the angels fell, in order to judge the angels?189
41 Come out from your body for a while, I beg you, and picture before your eyes the reward for your present hardships, a reward which eye has not seen nor ear heard nor the human heart conceived.190 What will that day be like when Mary, the mother of the Lord, will come to meet you accompanied by her company of virgins, when the Red Sea has been crossed and Pharaoh and his army drowned, when Miriam will take the tambourine in her hand and will lead the song to which they will sing in response, ‘Let us sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea’?191 Then Thecla will rush in joy to embrace you. Then your Bridegroom himself will come to meet you and say, ‘Rise, come, my love, my fair one, my dove, for look, the winter has past, the rain is over and gone.’192 Then the angels will be amazed and will say, ‘Who is this who looks out like the dawn, fair as the moon, bright as the sun?’193 The daughters will see you and the queens and concubines will praise and proclaim you. Then another group of chaste women will meet you: Sarah will come with the married women, Anna the daughter of Phanuel with the widows. In different groups there will be your natural mother and your spiritual mother: the former will be happy that she gave birth to you, the latter that she taught you. Then the Lord will truly get up on the ass and enter the heavenly Jerusalem. Then the little ones, about whom the Saviour speaks in Isaiah, ‘See, I and the children whom the Lord has given me’,194 raising up the palms of victory will sing in harmony, ‘Hosanna in the highest; blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, hosanna in the highest.’195 Then one hundred and forty-four thousand hold their harps in front of the throne and the elders and will sing a new song and no one will be able to know that song apart from the appointed group: these are the ones who have not defiled themselves with women,196 for they have remained virgins; these are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. Whenever you are tempted by this world’s empty ambition, whenever you see anything showy in this world, transport yourself to paradise in your thoughts; begin to be what you will be and you will hear from your Bridegroom: ‘Set me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm’, and protected equally by deed and thought, you will cry, ‘Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.’197