Letter 55

55. To Paregorius, presbyter.

I have read your letter with all patience, and I marvel how, when you could have made your defence to us briefly and easily by your deeds, you choose instead to persist in the things charged against you, and attempt to treat what is incurable with long arguments. We are neither the first nor the only ones, Paregorius, to lay down the law that women should not live together with men. Read the canon put forth by our holy fathers in the synod of Nicaea, which plainly forbade the keeping of women brought in to live with the clergy. Celibacy has its dignity precisely in this — in being separated from cohabitation with a woman. So that if a man, while professing celibacy in name, does in deed the things of those who live with women, he plainly pursues the dignity of virginity in title, but does not withdraw from the unseemly thing that gives pleasure.

So much the more readily, then, ought you to have yielded to our request, inasmuch as you say you are free from every bodily passion. For I am neither persuaded that a man of seventy lives with a woman with passion, nor have we ordained what we ordained as though some unseemly act had occurred; but because we were taught by the apostle not to put a stumbling-block or an offence in a brother's way. And we know that what is done innocently by some becomes for others an occasion of sin. For this reason we have enjoined, following the ordinance of the holy fathers, that you separate from the woman.

Why, then, do you accuse the chorepiscopus and recall an old enmity? Why do you find fault with the chorepiscopi as having ears too ready to admit slanders, instead of with yourself for not enduring to withdraw from your habitual association with the woman? Cast her, then, out of your house, and place her in a convent. Let her be with virgins, and you be ministered to by men, so that the name of God may not be blasphemed because of you. But as long as you do these things, the ten thousand sentences which you write in your letters will profit you nothing, but you will die in idleness, and will give account to the Lord for your idleness. And if you dare, without correcting yourself, to cling to the priesthood, you shall be anathema to all the people, and those who receive you shall be excommunicated throughout every Church.