Virginity

And I expounded the dignity of virginity, and, calling you a temple of God, I gave, as it were, a wing to your eagerness, lifting you up toward Jesus, and by the fear of the terrible thing I helped you not to fall, saying:

And what need is there to speak of the honours paid you for his sake by those who were his — the living together with virgins, the processions with them, the receptions by virgins, the eulogies upon virginity, the virginal blessings, the letters addressed to you as to a virgin?

remember the days without disturbance, and the nights full of light, and the spiritual songs, and the melodious psalmody, and the holy prayers, and the pure and undefiled bed, and the virginal procession, and the temperate table, and those who prayed earnestly that your virginity might be kept for you uncorrupted.

More examples, and indeed weightier than these others, you may find with more care among our own;

The first kind is virginity from birth;

Set both side by side—one compressed in the garb of a woman, and one who, advanced in maturity, endures in virginity with her own garb:

If on account of men they abuse their garb, let them fulfil it even in this, and as among the heathen they veil the head, certainly in the church let them hide their virginity, which outside the church they conceal.

But if they are veiled at betrothal, because they are mingled both in body and in spirit with the male through the kiss and the joined hands—through which they first unsealed their modesty in spirit, through the common pledge of consciousness by which they agreed upon all their union—how much more will Time veil those women, without whom they cannot be betrothed, and at whose urging, without betro …