Letter 4

1. "Hearken, O daughter, and see, and incline your ear; and forget your own people and your father's house; and the king shall desire your beauty." In the forty-fourth psalm God speaks to the human soul, that after the example of Abraham it should go out from its own land and from its kindred and leave the Chaldeans — who are interpreted as "like demons" — and dwell in the land of the living, for which the prophet sighs elsewhere, saying: "I believe I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living." But it is not enough for you to go out from your homeland unless you also forget your own people and your father's house and, despising the flesh, are joined to the embraces of the Bridegroom. "Do not look back," he says, "and do not stay anywhere in the surrounding country; make for the mountain, lest you be caught." It is not fitting, when one has set hand to the plough, to look back over the shoulder, nor to return home from the field, nor, having put on Christ's tunic, to come down from the housetops to take another garment. A great marvel: a father exhorts his daughter, "Do not remember your father."

"You are of your father the devil, and you wish to do the desires of your father," is said to the Jews; and elsewhere: "Whoever commits sin is of the devil." Begotten first of such a parent, we are black; and after repentance, before we have yet climbed to the summit of virtue, we say: "I am black and beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem." I have gone out from the house of my infancy, I have forgotten my father, I am born again in Christ. What reward do I receive for this? It follows: "And the king shall desire your beauty." This, then, is that great mystery: "For this cause a man shall leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall be" — in one flesh? No longer, as there, in one flesh, but in spirit. Your Bridegroom is not arrogant, not proud: "He took an Ethiopian woman to wife." As soon as you wish to hear the wisdom of the true Solomon and come to him, he will confess to you all that he knows, and the king will lead you into his chamber, and, your colour wondrously changed, that saying will fit you: "Who is this that comes up made white?"

2. I have said all this for this reason, my lady Eustochium — for I ought to call the bride of my Lord "lady" — that from the very beginning of my discourse you may recognize that I do not now intend to speak the praises of virginity, which you have approved most excellently in following it, nor to enumerate the troubles of marriage — how the womb swells, the infant wails, a rival torments, the cares of a household keep one anxious, and how the final death cuts off all that is thought good (for married women too have their own order, with honourable marriage and an undefiled bed) — but that you may understand that, going out from Sodom, you must fear the example of Lot's wife. There is no flattery in this little book — for the flatterer is a smooth enemy — there will be no pomp of rhetorical speech to set you already among the angels and, with the blessedness of virginity laid out, to put the world beneath your feet.

3. I do not want pride to come to you from your resolve, but fear. You walk laden with gold; the robber must be avoided. This life is a racecourse for mortals: here we contend, that we may be crowned elsewhere. No one walks secure among serpents and scorpions. "My sword is made drunk in heaven," says the Lord — and do you suppose there is peace on earth, which brings forth briars and thorns, which the serpent feeds upon? "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities and powers of this world and of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places." We are surrounded by great armies of enemies; all things are full of foes. The flesh, fragile and soon to be ashes, fights alone against many. But when it has been dissolved, and the prince of this world comes and finds nothing in it, then you will hear without fear, through the prophet: "You shall not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow flying by day, nor the trouble that walks in darkness, nor the assault of the noonday demon. A thousand shall fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand, but it shall not come near you." And if their multitude troubles you, and you begin to seethe at each incitement of the vices, and your own thought says to you, "What shall we do?" — Elisha answers: "Do not fear, for there are more with us than with them," and he prays and says: "Lord, open the eyes of your handmaid, that she may see." And with your eyes opened you will see the chariot of fire that lifts you to the stars after the example of Elijah, and then you will sing in gladness: "Our soul has been snatched like a sparrow from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we are set free."

4. As long as we are held in this fragile little body, as long as we have this treasure in earthen vessels, and the spirit lusts against the flesh and the flesh against the spirit, there is no sure victory. Our adversary the devil, like a roaring lion, goes about seeking something to devour. "You appointed darkness," says David, "and it became night. In it all the beasts of the forest will go about, the roaring young lions, to seize and to seek their food from God." The devil does not seek faithless men, nor those who are outside and whose flesh the Assyrian king burns in the pot: he hastens to seize from the Church of Christ. His foods, according to Habakkuk, are choice: he longs to overthrow Job, and, having devoured Judas, he seeks power to sift the apostles. The Saviour did not come to send peace upon the earth, but a sword. Lucifer fell, who used to rise in the morning, and he who was nurtured in the paradise of delights deserved to hear: "Though you raise yourself up like an eagle, from there I will bring you down, says the Lord." For he had said in his heart: "I will set my throne above the stars of heaven, and I will be like the Most High." Therefore God speaks daily to those who descend by the ladder that Jacob saw in his dream: "I said, you are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High; but you shall die like men, and shall fall like one of the princes." For the devil fell first; and although God stands in the assembly of the gods, and in the midst distinguishes between the gods, the apostle writes to those who cease to be gods: "For where there are dissensions and rivalries among you, are you not men, and walking according to man?"

5. If Paul the apostle, a chosen vessel and prepared for the Gospel of Christ, on account of the stings of the flesh and the goads of vice, chastens his body and brings it into subjection, lest, while preaching to others, he himself be found a castaway, and yet sees another law in his members fighting against the law of his mind and taking him captive in the law of sin — if, after nakedness, fasting, hunger, prison, scourgings, and tortures, turning upon himself he cries out: "Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" — do you think you ought to be secure? Take care, I beg you, lest God ever say of you: "The virgin of Israel has fallen; there is none to raise her up." I speak boldly: although God can do all things, he cannot raise up a virgin after her ruin. He has power indeed to deliver from punishment, but he has no power to crown the corrupted. Let us fear lest that prophecy be fulfilled in us also: "and the good virgins shall faint." Mark what he says: "and the good virgins shall faint" — because there are also bad virgins. "Whoever looks on a woman to lust after her," he says, "has already committed adultery with her in his heart." Therefore virginity perishes even in the mind. These are the bad virgins, virgins in the flesh and not in the spirit, foolish virgins, who, not having oil, are shut out by the Bridegroom.

6. But if even those virgins are virgins, yet on account of other faults are not saved by the virginity of their bodies, what shall become of those who have prostituted the members of Christ and changed the temples of the Holy Spirit into a brothel? At once they will hear: "Come down, sit in the dust, virgin daughter of Babylon; sit on the ground; there is no throne for the daughter of the Chaldeans. You shall no more be called soft and delicate. Take the millstone, grind the meal, uncover your veil, bare your legs, cross the rivers, and your shame shall be revealed and your disgrace shall appear" — and this after the bridal chambers of the Son of God, after the kisses of the kinsman and Bridegroom, the woman of whom the prophetic word once sang in harmony: "The queen stood at your right hand in gilded clothing, surrounded with variety." She shall be stripped, and her hinder parts shall be set before her own face; she shall sit by the waters of the wilderness, and, with her vessel set down, shall spread her legs to every passer-by, and shall be polluted to the very crown of her head. It would have been better for a person to have undergone marriage, to have walked on the level ground, than, while striving for higher things, to fall into the depth of hell.

Let not faithful Sion become a harlot city, I beg, lest after the lodging of the Trinity demons dance there and sirens and hedgehogs make their nests. Let not the breast-band be loosed; but as soon as lust tickles the senses, as soon as the soft fire of pleasure has flooded us with its sweet warmth, let us break out into the cry: "The Lord is my helper; I will not fear what the flesh may do to me." When the inner man begins to waver even a little between vices and virtues, say: "Why are you sad, my soul, and why do you trouble me? Hope in the Lord, for I will confess to him, the salvation of my countenance and my God." I do not want you to let the thought grow; let nothing of Babylon, nothing of confusion, grow up in you. While the enemy is small, kill him; let wickedness be crushed in the seed. Hear the psalmist speaking: "O wretched daughter of Babylon, blessed is he who shall repay you your recompense; blessed is he who shall take and dash your little ones against the rock." Since, then, it is impossible that the inborn heat of the marrow should not rush into the senses of man, that man is praised, that man is proclaimed blessed, who, as soon as he begins to think, kills the thoughts and dashes them against the rock: and the rock is Christ.

7. O how often, when I was set in the desert, in that vast solitude which, scorched by the sun's heat, offers a dreadful dwelling-place to monks, did I imagine myself amid the delights of Rome! I sat alone, for I was filled with bitterness. My limbs were shapeless and bristling in sackcloth; my squalid skin had taken on the foulness of an Ethiopian's flesh. Daily there were tears, daily there was groaning, and if ever sleep, threatening, overcame me as I struggled against it, I bruised my bare bones, scarcely clinging together, on the naked ground. Of food and drink I say nothing, since even the sick use only cold water, and to have taken anything cooked is held to be luxury. And yet I — I who out of fear of hell had condemned myself to such a prison, the companion only of scorpions and wild beasts — often imagined myself amid the dances of girls. My face was pale with fasting, and my mind was hot with desires in a cold body, and before the man himself, already dead in his flesh, the fires of lust alone seethed. So, destitute of all help, I lay at the feet of Jesus, I bathed them with tears, I wiped them with my hair, and I subdued the rebelling flesh with the fasting of whole weeks. I am not ashamed of my wretchedness; rather, I lament that I am not what I was. I remember that I often joined the day to the night with my cries, and did not cease beating my breast until calm returned at the Lord's rebuke. I came to dread even my own little cell as though it were privy to my thoughts, and, angry and stern with myself, I would go alone into the deserts. Wherever I saw the hollows of valleys, the rough places of mountains, the sheer drops of crags, there was the place for my prayer, there the prison-house of my most wretched flesh; and — as the Lord himself is my witness — after many tears, after fixing my eyes on heaven, I sometimes seemed to myself to be among the hosts of angels, and joyful and glad I would sing: "After you we run, in the fragrance of your ointments."

8. But if those who, with their bodies wasted away, are assailed only by their thoughts suffer such things, what does a girl suffer who enjoys delights? Surely that word of the apostle: "Living, she is dead." If, then, there can be any counsel in me, if one with experience may be trusted, this is the first thing I advise, this I solemnly charge: that the bride of Christ flee wine as poison. These are the first weapons of the demons against youth. Avarice does not shake us so, nor pride puff us up, nor ambition delight us. Other vices we are easily without: this enemy is shut up within. Wherever we go, we carry the foe with us. Wine and youth are a twofold kindling of pleasure. Why do we add oil to the flame? Why do we supply fuel of fire to a burning little body?

Paul says to Timothy: "Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for your stomach's sake and your frequent infirmities." See for what causes the drinking of wine is allowed: scarcely does the pain of the stomach and frequent infirmity merit it. And lest we perhaps flatter ourselves on account of our ailments, he commanded that a little be taken, by the counsel rather of a physician than of an apostle — though the apostle too is a spiritual physician — and lest Timothy, overcome by weakness, should not be able to make his rounds of preaching the Gospel. Otherwise he remembered that he himself had said: "wine, in which is excess," and "It is good for a man not to drink wine and not to eat flesh." Noah drank wine and became drunk in the world still raw and young; and at that time he first planted a vineyard: perhaps he did not know that wine makes one drunk. And that you may understand the mystery of Scripture in all things — for the word of God is a pearl, and may be pierced on every side — after the drunkenness followed the uncovering of the thighs; lust was joined to excess. First the belly, and at once the rest: "for the people ate and drank, and rose up to play." Lot, the friend of God, saved on the mountain and found, of so many thousands of peoples, the only just man, is made drunk by his daughters; and although they thought the race of men had failed and did this rather from desire of offspring than of lust, yet they knew the just man would not do this unless drunk; and so he did not know what he had done; and — although the will is not in the crime, the error is in the fault — from this are born the Moabites and Ammonites, enemies of Israel, who even to the fourteenth generation and for ever do not enter the church of God.

9. Elijah, when he was fleeing from Jezebel and lay wearied under the oak, is roused by an angel coming to him, and it is said to him: "Arise and eat." And he looked, and behold, at his head was a loaf of spelt and a jar of water. Could not God in truth have sent him spiced wine, and dishes of oil, and meats altered by some mixture? Elisha invites the sons of the prophets to a meal, and, feeding them with wild herbs, hears the harmonious cry of the diners: "Death is in the pot, O man of God." He was not angry with the cooks — for he had no custom of a more sumptuous table — but, casting flour upon it, he sweetened the bitterness by the same power of the Spirit by which Moses had changed the waters of Marah. And when he had led those who came to seize him, blinded in eyes and mind alike, unwitting, into Samaria, hear with what banquets he commands them to be refreshed: "Set before them bread and water; and let them eat and drink and be sent back to their master." A more opulent table could have been brought to Daniel too from the king's dishes, but Habakkuk carries him, I think, a reaper's rustic meal. And therefore he was also called "a man of desires," because he did not eat the bread of desire nor drink the wine of concupiscence.

10. Innumerable are the passages scattered through the divine Scriptures that condemn gluttony and commend simple foods; but since it is not now my purpose to dispute about fasting, and to follow out the whole subject belongs to its own title and volume, let these few of many suffice. Otherwise, after the example of these you can gather for yourself how the first man too, more obedient to his belly than to God, was cast down into this valley of tears; how Satan tempted the Lord himself with hunger in the desert; and how the apostle cries out: "Food for the belly, and the belly for food, but God shall destroy both this and that," and, of the luxurious: "Whose god is their belly." For each man worships what he loves. From which it must be anxiously provided that hunger may bring back those whom fullness drove out of paradise.

11. But if you should wish to answer that you were born of noble stock, always among delights, always on feathers, and that you cannot abstain from wine and richer foods nor live more strictly by these rules, I will answer: Live then by your own law, since you cannot live by God's. Not that God, the creator and lord of the universe, takes delight in the rumbling of our entrails, in the emptiness of the belly, and in the burning of the lungs, but because chastity cannot otherwise be safe. Job, dear to God and by his own testimony blameless and upright, hear what he suspects about the devil: "His strength is in the loins, and his power in the navel." Decently, by names exchanged, the genitals of man and woman are so called. Hence it is promised that one shall sit upon his throne from David's loins; and seventy-five souls entered Egypt that came forth from Jacob's thigh; and after the breadth of his thigh withered when God wrestled with him, he ceased from the work of begetting children; and he who is to keep the Passover is bidden to do so with loins girded and mortified; and to Job God says: "Gird up your loins like a man"; and John is girded with a leather belt; and the apostles are bidden to have the lamps of the Gospel in their hands with loins girded. But of Jerusalem, found smeared with blood in the field of error, it is said in Ezekiel: "Your navel was not cut." All the devil's strength against men, then, is in the loins; all his might against women is in the navel.

12. Do you wish to know that it is as we say? Take examples. Samson, stronger than a lion, harder than rock, who, alone and unarmed, pursued a thousand armed men, grows soft in the embraces of Delilah. David, chosen according to the heart of the Lord, who had often sung with holy lips of the Christ to come, after he was caught by the nakedness of Bathsheba as he walked upon the roof of his house, joined murder to adultery. Where note this too, briefly, that there is no safe gaze, not even at home. Wherefore, repenting, he speaks to God: "Against you only have I sinned, and done this evil before you." For the king feared no other man. Solomon, through whom Wisdom herself sang, who discoursed from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall, departed from the Lord because he was a lover of women. And lest anyone trust even in nearness of blood, Amnon the brother burned with unlawful fire for his sister Tamar.

13. It grieves me to say how many virgins fall daily, how many the Church, our mother, loses from her bosom, above how many stars the proud enemy sets his throne, how many rocks the serpent hollows out and dwells in their holes. You may see very many who become widows before they were brides, covering an unhappy conscience with a lying garb alone, who, unless the swelling of the womb and the wailing of infants betray them, walk with neck erect and dancing feet. Others provide themselves with barrenness beforehand, and commit murder upon a human being not yet sown. Some, when they perceive that they have conceived from their sin, contrive poisons to procure abortion, and frequently die themselves as well, and are led to the dead guilty of three crimes: self-murderesses, adulteresses against Christ, and parricides of a son not yet born. These are they who are wont to say: "All things are pure to the pure. My conscience is enough for me. God desires a clean heart. Why should I abstain from foods which God created for use?" And if ever they wish to seem witty and merry and have gorged themselves with wine, joining sacrilege to their drunkenness they say: "Far be it from me to abstain from the blood of Christ." And whomever they see sad and pale, they call wretched and a nun and a Manichee; and rightly so, for to such a way of thinking, fasting is heresy. These are they who walk conspicuously through the public square and with furtive nods of the eyes draw after them a flock of young men, who always hear through the prophet: "You have the face of a harlot; you are shameless." Let there be only a thin line of purple in the dress, and the head loosely bound so that the hair falls down, a cheaper slipper, and the mantle fluttering about the shoulders, tight sleeves clinging to the arms, and a broken gait with sagging knees: this is the whole of virginity with them. Let such women have their own admirers and perish more profitably under the name of virgin: gladly do we fail to please such as these.

14. It shames me to say it — what an outrage! It is sad, but true: from what source has the plague of "agapetae" entered the churches? From what source comes the name of wives without marriage? Or rather, from what source this new kind of concubines? I will say more: from what source these one-man harlots? They are kept in the same house, in one bedroom, often in one bed, and they call us suspicious if we suppose anything. A brother deserts his virgin sister, a virgin scorns her unmarried brother, and, while they pretend to be in the same resolve, they seek the spiritual solace of strangers, that they may have carnal commerce at home. Men of this kind God rebukes in the Proverbs of Solomon, saying: "Will a man bind fire in his bosom, and his garments not be burned? Or will he walk on the coals of fire, and his feet not be scorched?"

15. Therefore, having driven out and banished those women who do not wish to be virgins but to seem so, now all my discourse is directed to you, who, as you have begun to be the first noble virgin of the city of Rome, so much the more must labour, lest you lose both the present goods and those to come. And indeed you have learned the troubles of marriage and the uncertainties of wedlock from a domestic example, since your sister Blesilla, older in age but younger in resolve, after taking a husband, was widowed in the seventh month. O unhappy human condition, ignorant of the future! She lost both the crown of virginity and the pleasure of marriage. And although she holds the second grade of chastity, yet what crosses do you suppose she bears at every moment, seeing daily in her sister what she herself has lost, and, since with greater difficulty she is without the pleasure she has tasted, having a lesser reward of continence? Yet let her too be secure, let her rejoice: the hundredfold and the sixtyfold fruit both spring from the one seed of chastity.

16. I do not want you to keep the company of married women, I do not want you to approach the houses of the noble, I do not want you often to see what, in despising, you wished not to be. If little women are wont to applaud themselves over husbands who are judges and set in some dignity, if the ambition of those who pay court runs together to the emperor's wife, why do you do an injury to your own husband? Why, bride of God, do you hasten to a man's wife? Learn in this respect a holy pride; know that you are better than they. And I do not want you only to avoid the company of those who are puffed up by their husbands' honours, whom troops of eunuchs hedge about, and in whose clothes metals are woven, drawn out into thread; but flee also those whom necessity has made widows — not that they ought to have wished for their husbands' death, but that they ought to seize gladly the chance for chastity that is given. But now they only change their dress; the old ambition is not changed. A line of half-men goes before their litters, and their skin, stuffed full, is stretched out with ruddy cheeks, so that you would think they had not lost their husbands but were seeking them. Their house is full of flatterers, full of guests. The clergy themselves — who ought to have been their masters and their fear — kiss the heads of their patronesses and, with hand stretched out, so that you would think they wished to bless them if you did not know better, take a fee for their visit. They meanwhile, who see the priests in need of their protection, are lifted up into pride, and, because, having known the dominion of husbands, they prefer the liberty of widowhood, are called chaste and nuns, and after a doubtful dinner dream of the apostles.

17. Let those be your companions whom you see made thin by fasting, who have pallor on their faces, whom both age and life have approved, who daily sing in their hearts: "Where do you feed? Where do you lie down at noon?" — who say from the heart: "I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ." Be subject to your parents; imitate your Bridegroom. Let going out in public be rare; let your martyrs be sought in your own chamber. There will never be a reason for going out lacking, if you always go out only when it is necessary. Let food be moderate, and let the belly never be filled. For very many there are who, sober from wine, are drunk from the abundance of their food. When you rise at night to prayer, let not indigestion cause you fear, but emptiness. Read more frequently, and learn as much as you can. Let sleep steal upon you holding the book, and let the holy page receive your falling face. Let your fasts be daily and your refreshment shun fullness. It profits nothing to carry an empty belly through two or three days if it is at once overwhelmed, if the fast is made up for by satiety. At once the filled mind grows sluggish, and the watered ground brings forth the thorns of lusts. If ever you feel the outer man sighing for the flower of youth, and, after taking food, the sweet train of lusts shakes you when you have settled yourself on your couch, snatch up the shield of faith, on which the fiery darts of the devil are quenched. "All of them are adulterous; their hearts are like an oven." But you, accompanying the footsteps of Christ and intent on his words, say: "Was not our heart burning within us on the way, when Jesus opened to us the Scriptures?" — and that: "Your word is fiery, and your servant loved it." It is hard for the human soul not to love, and it is necessary that our mind be drawn to some affection. The love of the flesh is overcome by the love of the spirit; desire is extinguished by desire. Whatever is lessened on the one side grows on the other. Rather, repeat continually: "On my bed in the nights I sought him whom my soul loves." "Mortify," says the apostle, "your members which are upon the earth." Hence he himself said confidently: "I live, yet now not I, but Christ lives in me." He who mortified his members and walked in an image does not fear to say: "I have become like a wineskin in the frost; for whatever moisture was in me has been dried up," and: "My knees are weakened by fasting," and: "I have forgotten to eat my bread; from the voice of my groaning my bone has cleaved to my flesh."

18. Be a cicada of the nights. "Wash your bed every night; water your couch with tears." "Watch, and be like the sparrow in solitude." "Sing with the spirit, sing also with the mind": "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his recompenses; who is gracious to all your iniquities, who heals all your infirmities and redeems your life from corruption." Which of us can say from the heart: "For I have eaten ashes like bread and mingled my drink with weeping"? Is it not to be wept and groaned over, when the serpent invites me again to forbidden foods, when, having cast me out of the paradise of virginity, he wishes to clothe me in the garments of skins which Elijah, returning to paradise, threw down to the ground? What have I to do with pleasure, which perishes in a moment? What with this sweet and deadly song of the sirens? I do not wish to lie under that sentence which was pronounced upon the condemned human race: "In pain and anxiety you shall bring forth, O woman" — this law is not mine — "and your turning shall be to your husband." Let her turn to a husband who has not Christ for her husband; and finally, "by death you shall die" — such is the end of marriage. My resolve is without sex. Let marriage have its time and its title: for me, virginity is dedicated in Mary and in Christ.

19. Someone may say: "And do you dare to disparage marriage, which has been blessed by the Lord?" It is no disparagement of marriage when virginity is set before it. No one compares the bad with the good. Let married women too take pride, since they are second to virgins. "Grow," he says, "and multiply, and fill the earth." Let him grow and multiply who is to fill the earth: your company is in heaven. "Grow and multiply." This edict is fulfilled after paradise, and nakedness, and the fig leaves that foretold the itch of marriage. Let him marry and be given in marriage who eats his bread in the sweat of his face, for whom the earth brings forth thorns and briars, whose grass is choked by brambles: my seed is fruitful with a hundredfold crop. "Not all receive the word of God, but those to whom it is given." Let necessity make another a eunuch; let will make me one. "There is a time for embracing and a time for keeping the hands from embrace; a time for casting stones and a time for gathering them." After sons of Abraham were begotten from the hardness of the nations, the holy stones began to roll over the earth. For they pass through the whirlwinds of this world and are rolled in the chariot of God with the swiftness of wheels. Let them sew tunics who have lost the seamless tunic from above, who delight in the wailing of infants weeping in the very dawn of the light that they are born. Eve was a virgin in paradise: after the garments of skins came the beginning of marriage. Your region is paradise. Keep what you were born, and say: "Return, my soul, to your rest." And that you may know that virginity belongs to nature, marriage to what comes after the fall: virgin flesh is born of marriage, rendering in its fruit what it had lost in its root. "A rod shall come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise from the root." The rod is the mother of the Lord, single, pure, sincere, with no germ from without cleaving to it, and, in the likeness of God, fruitful in a single union. The flower of the rod is Christ, saying: "I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys." He who in another place is proclaimed a stone cut from the mountain without hands, the prophet signifying that a virgin was to be born of a virgin. For hands are taken to mean the work of marriage, as there: "His left hand is under my head, and his right hand shall embrace me."

To the meaning of this sense agrees also that the animals which were led into the ark by Noah two by two are unclean — an uneven number is clean — that Moses and Joshua the son of Nun are bidden to walk into the holy land with bare feet, and the disciples are appointed to the preaching of the Gospel without the burden of shoes and the bonds of skins; that the soldiers who divided the garments of Jesus by lot had no boots to take. For the Lord could not have what he had forbidden in his servants.

20. I praise marriage, I praise wedlock, but because it begets virgins for me: I gather roses from thorns, gold from the earth, the pearl from the shell. "Will he who ploughs plough all day?" Will he not also rejoice in the fruit of his labour? Marriage is the more honoured when what is born from it is the more loved. Why do you envy your daughter, mother? She was nourished by your milk, reared from your flesh, grew up in your bosom; you guarded her with watchful affection — and are you indignant that she did not wish to be the wife of a soldier but of a king? She has done you a great benefit: you have begun to be the mother-in-law of God. "Concerning virgins," says the apostle, "I have no commandment of the Lord." Why? Because that he himself should be a virgin was not of any command but of his own will. For we must not listen to those who feign that he had a wife, since, discoursing on continence and urging perpetual chastity, he added: "But I wish all to be as I myself am," and below: "But I say to the unmarried and to widows: it is good for them if they remain so, as I also do," and in another place: "Have we not the power to lead about a wife as the other apostles do?" Why has he no commandment of the Lord concerning virginity? Because there is a greater reward in what is not compelled but offered; because, if virginity had been commanded, marriage would have seemed taken away, and it would have been most harsh to compel against nature and to wrest the life of angels from men, and in a manner to condemn what was created.

21. There was a different happiness under the old law. "Blessed is he who has seed in Sion and a household in Jerusalem," and "cursed is the barren woman who did not bear," and: "Your sons shall be like young olive plants around your table," and the promise of riches, and: "There shall be none weak among your tribes." Now it is said: "Do not consider yourself a dry tree; you have a place for sons and daughters in the heavens, an everlasting one." Now the poor are blessed, and Lazarus is set before the rich man in his purple; now he who is weak is the stronger. The world was empty, and — to say nothing of the types — the only blessing was that of children. Therefore Abraham, already old, is joined to Keturah, and Jacob is bought with mandragoras, and fair Rachel laments her closed womb, in figure of the Church. But little by little, as the harvest grew, the reaper was sent in. Elijah a virgin, Elisha a virgin, and many of the sons of the prophets virgins. To Jeremiah it is said: "And do you take no wife." Sanctified in the womb, with captivity drawing near, he is forbidden to take a wife. The apostle says the same thing in other words: "I think, then, that this is good because of the present necessity, that it is good for a man so to be." What is this necessity that takes away the joys of marriage? "The time is shortened; it remains that those who have wives be as though they had none." Nebuchadnezzar is at hand. The lion has come up from his lair. Of what use to me are marriages that will be slaves to a most proud king? Of what use the little ones, whom the prophet bewails, saying: "The tongue of the suckling clave to the roof of its mouth in thirst. The little ones asked for bread, and there was none to break it for them"? As we have said, then, this good of continence was found only in men, and Eve was continually bringing forth in pains. But after a virgin conceived in the womb and bore us a child, whose government is upon his shoulder, the mighty God, the father of the world to come, the curse was loosed. Death through Eve, life through Mary. And therefore the gift of virginity flowed more richly upon women, because it began from a woman. As soon as the Son of God set foot upon the earth, he established for himself a new household, that he who was adored by the angels in heaven might have angels on earth. Then continent Judith cut off the head of Holofernes; then Haman — which is interpreted "iniquity" — was burned in his own fire; then James and John, leaving their father, their net, and their boat, followed the Saviour, abandoning together the affection of blood, the bonds of the world, and the care of a household. Then for the first time was heard: "Whoever wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." For no soldier goes to battle with his wife. The disciple who wished to go to bury his father is not permitted. "The foxes have holes and the birds of heaven nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head" — lest perhaps you be saddened if you live in narrow quarters. "He who is without a wife is anxious about the things of the Lord, how he may please God; but he who has a wife is anxious about the things of this world, how he may please his wife." The woman and the virgin are divided: she who is not married thinks of the things of the Lord, that she may be holy in body and spirit; for she who is married thinks of the things of the world, how she may please her husband.

22. How many troubles marriage has, and by how many anxieties it is bound, I think I have briefly set forth in that book which we published against Helvidius, on the perpetual virginity of blessed Mary. To repeat the same things now would be very long, and, if anyone pleases, he can draw from that little spring. But, lest I seem to have wholly omitted it, I will now say this: that since the apostle bids us pray without ceasing, and one who in marriage pays the debt cannot pray, either we always pray and are virgins, or we cease to pray that we may serve marriage. "And if a virgin marries," he says, "she does not sin; yet such shall have tribulation of the flesh." And at the beginning of the little book I declared beforehand that I would say either nothing at all or little about the straits of marriage, and now I give the same notice. But if it pleases you to know by how many troubles a virgin is free and by how many a wife is bound, read Tertullian's work to a philosopher friend, and the other little books on virginity, and the excellent volume of blessed Cyprian, and the writings of Pope Damasus composed on this matter in verse and prose, and the works which our own Ambrose lately wrote to his sister. In these he has poured himself out with such eloquence that he has sought out, arranged, and expressed whatever pertains to the praise of virgins.

23. We go forward by a different track: we do not extol virginity, but preserve it. Nor is it enough to know what is good, unless what is chosen is more carefully guarded — for the one is a matter of judgment, the other of labour; and the one is shared with many, the other with few. "He who perseveres," he says, "to the end shall be saved," and: "Many are called, but few chosen." Therefore I charge you before God and Christ Jesus and his chosen angels not lightly to bring out into public the vessels of the temple, which only the priests were allowed to see, lest any profane person look upon the sanctuary of God. Uzzah, touching the ark which was not lawful, was struck down by sudden death. For not even a golden and silver vessel was so dear to God as the temple of a virgin's body. The shadow went before; now is the truth. You indeed speak with simplicity and do not despise even those you do not know, but the eyes of the unchaste see otherwise. They do not know how to consider the beauty of souls, but only of bodies. Hezekiah shows the treasure of God to the Assyrians, but the Assyrians saw what they desired. And so, when Judaea was shaken by frequent wars, the vessels of the Lord were the first to be taken and carried off; and among the banquets and the troops of concubines — since it is the crown of vices to pollute what is honourable — Belshazzar drinks from the cups.

24. "Do not incline your ear to evil words." Often men who speak something unbecoming test the will of the mind. If you, virgin, listen willingly to what is said, if you dissolve into laughter at every jest, they praise whatever you say, deny whatever you deny. They call you witty and holy and one in whom there is no guile, saying: "Behold a true handmaid of Christ, behold all simplicity — not like that horrid, ugly, rustic, terrible woman who perhaps for that very reason could not find a husband." We are led by a natural evil: we willingly favour our flatterers, and although we answer that we are unworthy, and a warm blush floods our face, yet within the soul rejoices at its own praise. The bride of Christ is the ark of the covenant, gilded within and without, the guardian of the law of the Lord. As in that there was nothing but the tables of the covenant, so in you let there be no thought from without. Upon this mercy-seat, as upon the cherubim, the Lord wishes to sit. He sends his disciples to loose you from worldly cares upon an ass's colt, that, leaving the straw and bricks of Egypt, you may follow Moses into the wilderness and enter the land of promise. Let there be no one to forbid — not mother, not sister, kinswoman, brother: the Lord has need of you. And if they should wish to hinder, let them fear the scourges of Pharaoh, who, unwilling to let the people of God go to worship him, suffered the things that are written. Jesus, entering the temple, cast out all that was not of the temple. For God is jealous, and does not wish his Father's house to become a den of thieves. Otherwise, where coins are counted, where there are cages of doves and simplicity is slain, where in a virgin's breast the care of worldly affairs seethes, at once the veil of the temple is rent; the Bridegroom rises in anger and says: "Your house shall be left to you desolate." Read the Gospel and see how Mary, sitting at the feet of the Lord, is set before the zeal of Martha — and certainly Martha was with diligent hospitality preparing a meal for the Lord and the disciples: "Martha, Martha," he says, "you are anxious and troubled about many things; but few things are necessary, or one. Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken from her." Be you too a Mary; prefer doctrine to food. Let your sisters run about and seek how to have Christ as a guest; do you, once the burden of the world has been cast off, sit at the Lord's feet and say: "I have found him whom my soul sought; I will hold him and not let him go," and let him answer: "One is my dove, my perfect one; she is the only one of her mother, the chosen of her that bore her" — namely, the heavenly Jerusalem.

25. Let the secrecy of your chamber always guard you; let the Bridegroom always play with you within. You pray: you speak to the Bridegroom; you read: he speaks to you. And when sleep overcomes you, he will come behind the wall and put his hand through the opening and touch your belly, and, trembling, you will rise and say: "I am wounded with love," and again you will hear from him: "A garden enclosed is my sister, my bride; a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed." Take care not to go out of the house, not to wish to see the daughters of a foreign land, though you have patriarchs for brothers and rejoice in Israel for a parent: Dinah, going out, is corrupted. I do not want you to seek the Bridegroom through the streets, I do not want you to go round the corners of the city. You may say: "I will rise and go about the city, in the market-place and in the streets, and seek him whom my soul loves," and you may ask: "Have you seen him whom my soul loves?" — no one will deign to answer you. The Bridegroom cannot be found in the streets — "Strait and narrow is the way that leads to life" — and indeed it follows: "I sought him and did not find him; I called him and he did not answer me." And would that it were enough not to have found him. You will be wounded, you will be stripped, and groaning you will tell: "The watchmen who go about the city found me; they struck me, they wounded me, they took my veil from me." But if she who had said, "I sleep, and my heart wakes," and, "My kinsman is a little bundle of myrrh to me; he shall lodge between my breasts," suffers this in going out, what shall become of us who are still of youth, who remain outside while the bride enters with the Bridegroom? Jesus is jealous; he does not want your face to be seen by others. Though you should excuse yourself and plead: "I covered my face with a drawn veil; I sought you, I said to you: Tell me, you whom my soul loves, where you feed, where you lie down at noon, lest I become as one veiled over the flocks of your companions" — he will be indignant, he will swell with anger, and will say: "If you do not know yourself, O fairest among women, go out in the footsteps of the flocks and feed your kids in the tents of the shepherds." Though you be fair, he says, and your beauty be loved by the Bridegroom above all women, yet unless you know yourself and guard your heart with all watchfulness, unless you flee the eyes of young men, you will go out from my chamber and feed the kids that are to stand on the left.

26. Therefore, my Eustochium, daughter, lady, fellow-servant, sister — for one name is of age, another of merit; the one is of religion, the other of love — hear Isaiah speaking: "My people, enter into your chambers, shut your door, hide yourself a little, a very little, until the wrath of the Lord pass by." Let the foolish virgins wander outside; be you within with the Bridegroom, for, if you shut the door and according to the Gospel precept pray to your Father in secret, he will come and knock and say: "Behold, I stand before the door and knock. If anyone open to me, I will enter and sup with him, and he with me." And you will at once answer anxiously: "It is the voice of my kinsman knocking: Open to me, my sister, my neighbour, my dove, my perfect one." Nor is there reason for you to say: "I have stripped off my tunic; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I soil them?" Rise at once and open, lest while you delay he pass by and you afterward complain, saying: "I opened to my kinsman; my kinsman had passed by." For what need is there that the doors of your heart be shut to the Bridegroom? Let them be opened to Christ, shut to the devil, according to that: "If the spirit of one who has power ascends upon you, do not give place to him." Daniel in his upper room — for he could not stay in a lowly place — had his windows open toward Jerusalem: do you too have your windows open, but those by which the light may enter, by which you may see the city of God. Do not open those windows of which it is said: "Death has entered through your windows."

27. This too you must avoid more cautiously: that you be not seized by the ardour of vainglory. "How," says Jesus, "can you believe, you who receive glory from men?" See what an evil it is, which he who has it cannot believe. But let us say: "For you are my glorying," and: "He who glories, let him glory in the Lord," and: "If I still pleased men, I should not be a servant of Christ," and: "Far be it from me to glory, save in the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world is crucified to me and I to the world," and that: "In you we shall be praised all the day," and: "In the Lord shall my soul be praised." When you give alms, let God alone see. When you fast, let your face be joyful. Let your dress be neither too clean nor squalid, and not remarkable for any difference, lest the passing crowd halt to look at you and you be pointed at with the finger. A brother is dead, a sister's body must be carried to burial: take care, lest, while you do this too often, you yourself die. Do not wish to seem too religious nor more humble than is necessary, lest by fleeing glory you seek it. For very many, while shunning witnesses of their poverty, mercy, and fasting, desire to please in this very thing, that they despise to please; and, in a wondrous manner, praise, while it is shunned, is sought after. Of the other passions in which the mind of man rejoices, sickens, hopes, and fears, I find more men free; from this fault very few are who have been without it, and he is the best who, as in a fair body, is sprinkled only with the rare blemish of a mole.

And indeed I do not warn you not to glory in riches, not to boast of nobility of birth, not to set yourself before others: I know your humility, I know that you say from the heart: "Lord, my heart is not lifted up, nor are my eyes raised high." I know that pride, by which the devil fell, has no place at all either with you or with your mother. Therefore I have refrained from writing about it. For it is most foolish to teach what he whom you teach already knows. But let not this very thing breed boastfulness in you, that you have despised the boastfulness of the world; let no silent thought creep in, that, because you have ceased to please in gilded clothes, you try to please in squalor; and that, when you come into an assembly of brothers or sisters, you sit on a lowly stool, plead that you are unworthy, deliberately make your voice faint as though spent with fasting, and, imitating the gait of one fainting, lean on another's shoulders. For there are some who disfigure their faces that they may appear to men to be fasting; who, as soon as they see anyone, groan, lower their brows, and with covered face scarcely free one eye to see; their dress is dark, their girdle of sackcloth, and their hands and feet are dirty; only the belly, since it cannot be seen, seethes with food. To these is daily sung that psalm: "God has scattered the bones of those who please themselves." Others, in a man's garb, with changed dress, blush to be the women they were born, cut off their hair, and shamelessly raise eunuch faces. There are those who clothe themselves in haircloth and in cunningly made cowls and, that they may return to infancy, imitate owls and screech-owls.

28. But that I may not seem to dispute only about women, flee men also whom you see in chains, who have womanish hair contrary to the apostle, the beards of goats, a black cloak, and bare feet hardened to the cold. All these are tokens of the devil. Such a man Rome once bewailed in Antimus, such of late in Sophronius. These men, after they have entered the houses of the noble and deceived little women laden with sins, ever learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth, feign sadness, and, as though by long fasting, prolong their stolen meals of the night; I am ashamed to say the rest, lest I seem to inveigh rather than to admonish.

There are others — I speak of men of my own order — who seek the presbyterate and the diaconate for this reason, that they may see women more freely. All their care is for their clothes, that they smell well, that the foot does not slap in a loose shoe. Their hair is curled with the mark of the curling-iron, their fingers gleam with rings, and, lest the road, being damper, splash them, they scarcely press the tips of their toes. When you see such men, count them bridegrooms rather than clergy. Some have set all their study and life upon this, to know the names, the houses, and the manners of married women. Of these I will briefly and concisely describe one who is the chief master of this art, that, the master being known, you may the more easily recognize the disciples. He rises in haste with the sun; the order of his greetings is arranged; he seeks out the short cuts of the streets, and almost into the very bedchambers of the sleeping the importunate old man pushes his way. If he sees a cushion, an elegant napkin, or any piece of household furniture, he praises it, marvels at it, handles it, and, lamenting that he is in need of these things, does not so much obtain as extort them, because each woman fears to offend the city's courier. To him chastity is an enemy, fasting an enemy; he tests a luncheon by its savours, and the fattened bird commonly called the "chick-clucker." His tongue is barbarous and impudent and always armed for abuse. Wherever you turn, he is the first in your face. Whatever new thing has sounded abroad, he is either the author or the exaggerator of the report. His horses are changed at every hour, so sleek, so spirited, that you would think him a brother of the Thracian king.

29. The cunning enemy fights with various ambushes. "The serpent was wiser than all the beasts which the Lord God had made upon the earth." Hence the apostle too says: "We are not ignorant of his devices." Neither affected squalor nor exquisite neatness befits Christians. If you are ignorant of anything, if you doubt anything from the Scriptures, ask one whom his life commends, whom his age excuses, whose reputation does not reject, who can say: "For I have betrothed you to one husband, to present you a chaste virgin to Christ." Or if there is no one who can explain, it is better to be secure in not knowing something than to learn it with danger. Remember that you walk in the midst of snares, and that many veteran virgins have lost from their hands the unquestioned crown of chastity on the very threshold of death. If you have any maidservants as companions of your resolve, do not be lifted up against them, do not be puffed up as a mistress. You have begun to have one Bridegroom, you sing psalms to Christ together, you receive the body together — why should the table be different? Let others too be challenged. Let the honour of virgins be an invitation to the rest. But if you perceive any one weaker in faith, take her up, console her, coax her, and make her chastity your gain. If any one pretends, fleeing servitude, read to her openly the apostle: "It is better to marry than to burn." But those virgins and widows who, idle and curious, go around the houses of married women, who, with the blush of their brow worn away, have outdone the parasites of the mimes — cast them off like certain plagues. "Evil conversations corrupt good manners." Their only care is for the belly and what is next to the belly. Such women are wont to exhort and say: "My little pet, use your goods and live while you live," and: "Are you keeping it for your children?" Wine-bibbing and lascivious, they insinuate every evil, and soften even hearts of iron to delights; and when they have lived wantonly against Christ, they wish to marry, having condemnation because they have made void their first faith.

Do not wish to seem too eloquent, nor to play with metre in lyric songs. Do not, with delicate taste, follow the enfeebled lisping of married women, who now with clenched teeth, now with loosened lips, govern a stammering tongue into half-formed words, thinking everything rustic that is natural. So pleasing to them is adultery even of the tongue. "For what fellowship has light with darkness, what agreement has Christ with Belial?" What has Horace to do with the psalter? What Virgil with the Gospels? What Cicero with the apostle? Is not a brother scandalized if he sees you reclining in an idol's temple? And although all things are pure to the pure, and nothing is to be rejected that is received with thanksgiving, yet we ought not to drink at once the cup of Christ and the cup of demons. Let me tell you the story of my own misfortune.

30. When, many years ago, for the sake of the kingdom of heaven I had cut myself off from home, parents, sister, kindred, and — what is harder than these — from the custom of more delicate food, and was going to Jerusalem to do my service, I could not do without the library which I had put together for myself at Rome with the utmost zeal and labour. And so, wretched man, I would fast that I might read Cicero. After the frequent vigils of the nights, after the tears which the remembrance of past sins wrung from the depths of my heart, I would take Plautus in hand. If ever, returning to myself, I began to read the prophet, the uncultured speech made me shudder, and because I did not see the light with my blind eyes, I thought the fault was not in my eyes but in the sun. While the old serpent thus mocked me, about the middle of Lent a fever, poured into my marrow, invaded my exhausted body and, without any respite — what would be incredible even to tell — so fed upon my unhappy limbs that I scarcely clung to my bones. Meanwhile my funeral was being prepared, and the vital warmth of the soul, while my whole body was now growing cold, throbbed only in my breast, which was still warm; when suddenly, snatched up in the spirit, I was dragged before the tribunal of the Judge, where there was such light and such brightness from the splendour of those standing around that, cast down upon the ground, I did not dare to look up. Being asked my condition, I answered that I was a Christian. And he who presided said: "You lie; you are a Ciceronian, not a Christian; for where your treasure is, there is your heart also." At once I was struck dumb, and amid the blows — for he had ordered me to be beaten — I was tortured more by the fire of conscience, pondering with myself that verse: "And in hell who will confess to you?" Yet I began to cry out and to say, wailing: "Have mercy on me, Lord, have mercy on me." This cry resounded amid the scourges. At last those who stood by, falling at the knees of the one presiding, prayed that he would grant pardon to my youth, that he would give place of repentance to my error, exacting torment thereafter if I should ever again read the books of pagan literature. I, who under such constraint would have been willing to promise even greater things, began to swear and, calling upon his name, to say: "Lord, if I ever again possess worldly books, if I read them, I have denied you."

Dismissed on these terms of the oath, I returned to the upper world, and, to the wonder of all, opened my eyes, so drenched with such a flood of tears that even the unbelieving were brought to faith by my grief. Nor indeed had it been a slumber or empty dreams, by which we are often deluded. The tribunal before which I lay is witness, the judgment which I feared is witness — may it never be my lot to undergo such an inquiry! — that I had bruised shoulders, that I felt the blows after my sleep, and that thereafter I read the things of God with as much zeal as I had not read mortal things before.

31. You must also avoid the evil of avarice — not that you may not covet what belongs to others (for that the public laws too punish), but that you may not keep your own things, which are another's. "If you have not been faithful in what is another's," he says, "who will give you what is your own?" The weights of gold and silver are another's to us; our possession is spiritual, of which it is said elsewhere: "The redemption of a man is his own riches." "No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will bear with the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon" — that is, riches. For in the pagan tongue of the Syrians riches are called mammon. The thought of food is the thorns of faith, the root of avarice, the care of the heathen. But you will say: "I am a delicate girl, and I cannot labour with my own hands. If I come to old age, if I begin to be ill, who will pity me?" Hear Jesus speaking to the apostles: "Do not think in your hearts what you shall eat, nor for your body what you shall put on. Is not the soul more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of heaven, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and your heavenly Father feeds them." If clothing is lacking, the lilies will be set before you; if you are hungry, you will hear the poor and the hungry called blessed; if any pain afflicts you, read: "For this I am well pleased in my infirmities," and: "There was given to me a goad of my flesh, an angel of Satan, to buffet me, lest I be exalted." Rejoice in all the judgments of God; "for the daughters of Judah rejoiced in all your judgments, O Lord." Let that word always sound in your mouth: "Naked I came forth from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return," and: "We brought nothing into this world, and we can carry nothing away."

32. But now you may see very many cramming their wardrobes with clothes, changing their tunics daily, and yet unable to overcome the moths. She who is more religious wears out one garment and trails her rags from full chests. Parchment is dyed purple, gold is melted into letters, the books are clothed with gems, and before the doors Christ dies naked and in want. When she stretches out her hand, the trumpets sound; when she calls to a love-feast, a crier is hired. I saw lately — I keep silent the names, lest you think it a satire — a most noble of Roman women, in the basilica of blessed Peter, with half-men going before her, distributing single coins to the poor with her own hand, that she might be thought more religious. Meanwhile — as it is very easy to know by experience — a certain old woman, covered with years and rags, ran on ahead to receive a second coin; and when she came to her in due order, a fist is offered instead of a penny, and for so great a crime blood is shed.

"The root of all evils is avarice," and therefore it is called by the apostle "the service of idols." "Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added to you." "The Lord will not slay the soul of the just with hunger." "I have been young and now am old, and I have not seen the just man forsaken, nor his seed seeking bread." Elijah is fed by ministering ravens; the widow of Zarephath, herself about to die that night with her sons, feeds the prophet in her hunger, and, in a wondrous manner, with her jar filled, he who had come to be fed feeds her. "Silver and gold," says Peter the apostle, "I do not have; but what I have, this I give you. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, rise and walk." But now many, though they say nothing in word, speak by their deed: "Faith and mercy I do not have; but what I have, gold and silver, I do not give you." "Having food and clothing, with these we are content." Hear what Jacob asks in his prayer: "If the Lord God will be with me and keep me in this way by which I journey, and give me bread to eat and a garment to put on." He prayed only for what is necessary, and after twenty years returns to the land of Canaan rich as a lord and richer as a father. Endless examples from the Scriptures abound, which teach that avarice too must be fled.

33. But since this is now said of it in passing, and is reserved, if Christ grant it, for its own volume, I will relate what happened not many years ago at Nitria. A certain one of the brethren, more sparing than avaricious, and not knowing that the Lord was sold for thirty pieces of silver, left at his death a hundred solidi which he had earned by weaving linen. A council was held among the monks — for in that same place about five thousand dwell in separate cells — as to what should be done. Some said the money should be distributed to the poor, others that it should be given to the Church, some that it should be sent back to his relatives. But Macarius and Pambo and Isidore and the others whom they call "fathers," the Holy Spirit speaking in them, decreed that it should be buried with its owner, saying: "Your money be with you unto perdition." Nor let anyone think this was done cruelly: so great a terror seized them all throughout Egypt that to have left even a single solidus was a crime.

34. And since we have made mention of monks, and I know that you gladly hear what is holy, lend me your ear a little. There are three kinds of monks in Egypt: the cenobium, which in the native tongue they call "sauhes," and which we may call "those living in common"; the anchorites, who dwell alone through the deserts and are named from this, that they have withdrawn far from men; and the third kind is that which they call "remnuoth," the worst and most neglected, and which in our province is either the only or the chief one. These live two or three together, and not many more, living by their own will and authority, and they bring into the common stock parts of what each has earned, so that they may have food in common. But they dwell for the most part in cities and fortified places, and, as if it were the skill that were holy, not the life, whatever they sell is of a higher price. Among these there are often quarrels, for, living by their own provision, they do not endure to be subject to anyone. In truth they are wont to contend in fasting and make a matter of secrecy into a victory. Among them everything is affected: loose sleeves, billowing boots, coarser dress, frequent sighs, the visiting of virgins, the disparaging of clergy; and if ever a feast-day comes, they gorge themselves to vomiting.

35. Having banished these as certain plagues, let us come to those who live more numerously in common, that is, those whom we have said are called the cenobium. The first bond among them is to obey their superiors and to do whatever they command. They are divided into decuries and centuries, so that the tenth man presides over nine men, and again the hundredth has ten such superiors under him. They remain apart, but with their cells joined. Until the ninth hour it is as a court vacation: no one goes to another except those whom we have called "deans," so that, if anyone perhaps wavers in his thoughts, he may comfort him with his words. After the ninth hour they come together in common, the psalms resound, the Scriptures are recited according to custom, and, the prayers being finished and all sitting down, the one whom they call "father" begins to discourse. While he speaks, such silence reigns that no one dares to look at another, no one to clear his throat. The speaker's praise is in the weeping of the hearers. Silently the tears roll down their faces, and the grief does not even break out into sobs. But when he begins to announce the kingdom of Christ, the future blessedness, and the glory to come, you may see all, with a moderate sighing and eyes lifted to heaven, say within themselves: "Who will give me wings like a dove's, and I will fly away and be at rest?" After this the assembly is dissolved, and each decury goes with its father to the tables, at which they minister in turn through the several weeks. There is no noise at the food, no one talks while eating. They live on bread, vegetables, and greens, seasoned with salt and oil. Wine is taken only by the old men, for whom, and for the children, a luncheon is often provided, that the wearied age of the one may be sustained and the beginning age of the other not broken. Then they rise together, and, a hymn being said, return to their lodgings. There each man talks with his own until evening and says: "Did you see this man and that, how much grace is in him, what silence, what a moderate gait?" If they see one weak, they console him; if one fervent in the love of God, they exhort him to zeal. And because at night, apart from the public prayers, each man keeps watch in his own cell, they go around the cells of each and, with ear set close, diligently examine what they are doing. Whomever they catch more sluggish, they do not rebuke, but, concealing what they know, they visit him more often and, beginning first themselves, provoke him to pray rather than compel him. The day's work is fixed, which, when handed to the dean, is brought to the steward, who himself, every month, gives account with great trembling to the father of all. By him, too, the foods, when they are made, are tasted; and since it is not lawful for anyone to say, "I have no tunic or cloak or mat woven of rushes," he so manages all things that no one asks for anything, no one lacks anything. But if anyone begins to fall sick, he is moved to a more spacious infirmary and is cherished by so great a service of the old men that he seeks neither the delights of cities nor a mother's affection. On the Lord's days they give themselves only to prayer and readings — which indeed they do at all times when their little tasks are finished. Daily something is learned from the Scriptures. The fasting of the whole year is equal, except for Lent, in which alone it is granted to live more strictly. At Pentecost the dinners are changed into luncheons, that both the ecclesiastical tradition may be satisfied and they may not burden the belly with doubled food. Such are the Essenes whom Philo, the imitator of Plato's style, and such as Josephus, the Greek Livy, describes in the second book of the history of the Jewish captivity.

36. But since, writing now of virgins, I have disputed almost superfluously of monks, I will come to the third kind, whom they call anchorites, and who, going out from the cenobiums, carry nothing more into the deserts than bread and salt. The author of this life was Paul, its illustrator Antony, and — to ascend to higher things — its prince was John the Baptist. Such a man the prophet Jeremiah too describes, saying: "It is good for a man when he has borne the yoke from his youth. He shall sit alone and be silent, because he has lifted the yoke upon himself; he shall give his cheek to the one who strikes him, he shall be filled with reproaches, because the Lord will not cast off for ever." Their labour and their manner of life, in the flesh but not of the flesh, I will set forth at another time, if you wish. Now let me return to the matter, for, discoursing of avarice, I had turned to the monks. Setting their example before you, you will despise not gold and silver and the other riches only, but the very earth and heaven, and, joined to Christ, you will sing: "The Lord is my portion."

37. After this, although the apostle bids us pray without ceasing, and to the saints even sleep itself is a prayer, yet we ought to have set hours for prayer, so that, if perhaps we have been detained by some work, the time itself may remind us of our duty: the third hour, the sixth, the ninth, and also daybreak and evening — there is no one who does not know these. Let no food be taken by you without prayer first sent up, nor let you withdraw from the table without thanks being rendered to the Creator. In the night we must rise two or three times and go over those parts of the Scriptures that we hold by memory. Let prayer arm us as we go out of our lodging; let prayer meet us as we return from the street before any sitting down; nor let the little body rest before the soul is fed. At every act, at every step, let the hand trace the cross. Disparage no one, nor lay a stumbling-block against the son of your mother. "Who are you, to judge another's servant? To his own master he stands or falls; but he shall stand, for God is able to make him stand." Nor, if you have fasted two days, think yourself better than one who has not fasted. You fast and are angry; he eats and perhaps speaks gently; you digest your mental vexation and the hunger of your belly by quarrelling; he is more moderately fed and gives thanks to God. Hence Isaiah cries daily: "Such a fast I have not chosen, says the Lord," and again: "For in the days of your fasts your own wills are found, and you goad all who go under your power. If you fast for strifes and disputes and strike the humble with your fists, why do you fast for me?" What can that fast be whose anger — I will not say night seizes, but a whole month leaves behind? Considering yourself, do not glory in another's ruin, but in your own work.

38. Nor set before yourself the example of those women who, making provision for the flesh, reckon up the incomes of their possessions and the daily expenses of the household. For the eleven apostles were not broken by the treachery of Judas, nor, when Phygellus and Alexander made shipwreck, did the rest halt from the course of faith. And do not say: "This woman and that enjoys her own property; she is honoured by all; brothers and sisters come together to her: has she therefore ceased to be a virgin?" First, it is doubtful whether such a one is a virgin. For God does not see as man sees. Man looks on the face, God looks on the heart. Next, even if she is a virgin in body, whether she is a virgin in spirit I do not know. But the apostle so defined a virgin: "That she be holy both in body and spirit." Finally, let her keep her own glory to herself; let her overcome the verdict of Paul, enjoy her delights, and live. Let us follow better examples. Set before yourself blessed Mary, who was of such great purity that she deserved to be the mother of the Lord. When the angel Gabriel had come down to her in the likeness of a man, saying: "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you," she was confounded and could not answer; for never had she been greeted by a man. At last she learns who the messenger is and speaks; and she who had dreaded a man converses fearlessly with the angel. You too can be the mother of the Lord. "Take yourself a great roll, a new one, and write in it with a man's pen, of one swiftly taking away the spoils," and, when you have gone in to the prophetess and conceived in the womb and brought forth a son, say: "From fear of you, Lord, we have conceived and travailed and brought forth; we have made the spirit of your salvation upon the earth." Then your son too will answer you and say: "Behold my mother and my brethren." And, in a wondrous manner, he whom a little before you had described in the breadth of your breast, whom in the newness of your heart you had marked with flying pen, after he has taken spoils from the enemy, after he has stripped principalities and powers and fixed them to the cross, being conceived, grows up, and, made greater, begins to have you as a bride instead of a mother. Great is the labour, but great too is the reward — to be what the martyrs are, to be what the apostles are, to be what Christ is.

All these things, indeed, profit only then, when they are done in the Church, when we celebrate the Passover in one house, if we enter the ark with Noah, if Rahab, justified, holds us within while Jericho perishes. But for the rest, virgins such as are said to be among the various heresies and such as are with the most impure Manichee are to be reckoned harlots, not virgins. For if the devil is the author of their body, how can they honour the workmanship of their enemy? But because they know that the name of virgin is glorious, they cover wolves under sheep's clothing. Antichrist counterfeits Christ, and they clothe the foulness of their life with the false honour of the name. Rejoice, sister, rejoice, daughter, rejoice, my virgin: what others pretend, you have truly begun to be.

39. All these things which we have set forth will seem hard to one who does not love Christ. But he who has held all the pomp of the world as filth and counted all things under the sun as vain, that he may gain Christ; who has died with his Lord and risen again, and crucified the flesh with its vices and lusts — he will freely proclaim: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation? Or distress? Or persecution? Or famine? Or nakedness? Or peril? Or the sword?" And again: "For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angel, nor principality, nor things present, nor things to come, nor might, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." The Son of God, for our salvation, was made the son of man; for ten months he waits in the womb to be born; he endures loathings; he is brought forth bloody; he is wrapped in swaddling-clothes; he is mocked with caresses; and he in whose fist the world is enclosed is contained in the narrowness of a manger. I say nothing of how, until his thirtieth year, content with the poverty of his parents, he was obscure: he was beaten and is silent; he is crucified and prays for those who crucify him. "What, then, shall I render to the Lord for all that he has rendered to me? I will take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord." "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints." This is the only worthy recompense, when blood is repaid with blood, and we, redeemed by the blood of Christ, gladly fall for our Redeemer. Which of the saints was crowned without a contest? Just Abel is slain; Abraham is in peril of losing his wife; and — that I may not extend the volume to immense length — seek and you will find that each one suffered diverse things. Solomon alone was among delights, and perhaps for that reason he fell. "For whom the Lord loves he corrects; and he scourges every son whom he receives." Is it not better to fight for a short time, to bear the rampart, the arms, the rations, to grow weary under the breastplate, and afterward to rejoice as victor, than, through the impatience of a single hour, to be a slave for ever?

40. To those who love, nothing is hard; no labour is difficult to one who desires. Consider how much Jacob endured for Rachel, his promised bride. "And Jacob served," says the Scripture, "for Rachel seven years. And they were in his sight as a few days, because he loved her." Hence he himself afterward recalls: "By day I was scorched with heat, and with frost by night." Let us too love Christ, let us always seek his embraces, and everything difficult will seem easy. We shall count brief all things that are long, and, wounded by his dart, at every passing of the hours we say: "Woe is me, for my pilgrimage is prolonged." "For the sufferings of this world are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come, which shall be revealed in us; because tribulation works patience, and patience trial, and trial hope, and hope does not confound." When what you endure seems hard to you, read Paul's second letter to the Corinthians: "In very many labours, in prisons more abundantly, in stripes beyond measure, in deaths often. From the Jews five times I received forty stripes save one; three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I suffered shipwreck; a night and a day I was in the deep of the sea; in journeys often, in perils of rivers, in perils of robbers, in perils from my own nation, in perils from the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the desert, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in labours, in hardships, in many watchings, in hunger and thirst, in very many fastings, in cold and nakedness." Which of us can claim for himself even the least portion of this catalogue of virtues? Surely he afterward said confidently: "I have finished the course, I have kept the faith. There remains for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord will render to me." If the food is too tasteless, we are saddened, and we think we are doing God a favour when we drink water more diluted: the cup is broken, the table overturned, blows resound, and water too lukewarm is avenged like blood. "The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent seize it." Unless you do violence, you will not take the kingdom of heaven. Unless you knock importunately, you will not receive the bread of the sacrament. Does it not seem to you a matter for the violent, when the flesh longs to be what God is, and to ascend thither, whence the angels fell, to judge the angels?

41. Go forth, I beg, a little from the body, and paint before your eyes the reward of the present labour, which neither eye has seen nor ear heard nor has entered into the heart of man. What will that day be, when Mary, the mother of the Lord, will come to meet you, attended by choirs of virgins; when, after the Red Sea and Pharaoh drowned with his army, holding the timbrel she will lead the chant for those who answer: "Let us sing to the Lord, for he is gloriously magnified. The horse and his rider he has cast into the sea"? Then Thecla will fly joyful into your embraces. Then the Bridegroom himself will come to meet you and say: "Rise, come, my neighbour, my beautiful one, my dove, for behold, the winter is past, the rain is gone." Then the angels will marvel and say: "Who is this that looks forth like the dawn, beautiful as the moon, chosen as the sun?" The daughters will see you and praise you, and the queens and concubines will proclaim you blessed. Then another choir of chastity will come to meet you: Sarah will come with the married, Anna the daughter of Phanuel with the widows. They will be, as in different flocks, the mothers of your flesh and of your spirit. The one will rejoice that she bore you; the other will exult that she taught you. Then truly the Lord will mount upon the ass and enter the heavenly Jerusalem. Then the little ones, of whom the Saviour speaks in Isaiah, "Behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given me," lifting up the palms of victory, will sing with one voice: "Hosanna in the highest; blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord; hosanna in the highest." Then the hundred and forty-four thousand will hold harps before the throne and the elders, and will sing a new song, and no one will be able to know that song except the appointed number: "These are they who have not defiled themselves with women — for they have remained virgins; these are they who follow the Lamb wherever he goes." As often as the empty ambition of the world delights you, as often as you see anything glorious in the world, pass over in your mind to paradise; begin to be what you will be, and you will hear from your Bridegroom: "Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm," and, fortified in deed and mind alike, you will cry out: "Many waters cannot quench love, and rivers shall not cover it."