De Corona

It happened lately: the bounty of our most excellent emperors was being paid out in the camp, and the soldiers came up wearing laurel. One of them there, more a soldier of God, more steadfast than the rest of the brethren who had presumed that they could serve two masters, alone with head free, the chaplet idle in his hand—the man now plainly a Christian even by this conduct—shone out conspicuous. In short, they began, one by one, to mark him, to mock him from afar, to gnash their teeth at him close by. The murmur is carried to the tribune; and the man had already withdrawn from the ranks. At once the tribune said, "Why so different a garb?" He denied that it was lawful for him as for the rest. Being asked the reasons, he answered, "I am a Christian." O soldier glorious in God! Thereafter the votes; and the matter being enlarged, the accused was sent to the prefects. There and then he laid aside his heaviest cloaks, having begun to be lightened of his load; he loosed from his feet the most troublesome scout's boots, beginning to stand upon holy ground; he gave back the sword, not necessary even for the Lord's defence; and the laurel too he stripped from his hand; and now, reddened with the hope of his own blood, shod with the equipment of the Gospel, girt with the sharper word of God, wholly armed from the Apostle, and better crowned with the white wreath of martyrdom, he awaits in prison the largess of Christ. Thereafter the verdicts upon him—I know not whether they were Christians' (for the heathen's were no different)—as concerning a man rash and headlong and eager to die, who, questioned about his garb, made trouble for the Name: he alone, forsooth, brave among so many fellow-soldier brethren, alone a Christian! Plainly it remains that they should plan to refuse even martyrdoms, who have spurned the prophecies of the same Holy Spirit. In short, they mutter that so good and long a peace is being imperilled for them. Nor do I doubt that some are migrating their Scriptures, packing their baggage, girding themselves for flight "from city to city"—for of the Gospel they care for no other remembrance. I know their pastors too: lions in peace, deer in battle. But concerning the questions of confessions we shall teach elsewhere. But now, inasmuch as they also object this—"Where, however, are we forbidden to be crowned?"—I will attack rather this local substance of the present cause, that both those who out of the anxiety of ignorance inquire may be instructed, and those who contend in defence of the transgression may be refuted—those very ones, above all, the laurelled Christians, with whom this alone is the question: as though either no transgression at all, or at least an uncertain one, could be held to be that which undergoes inquiry. But that it is neither none nor uncertain I will here meanwhile show.

I say that no one of the faithful knows a crown upon the head otherwise, outside a time of temptation of this kind. So all observe, from catechumens up to confessors and martyrs, or deniers. See, then, whence comes the authority of the practice, about which now especially the question is raised. But when it is asked what is observed, it is meanwhile established that it is observed. Therefore it cannot seem either no transgression or an uncertain one which is committed against an observance now to be vindicated by its own name and sufficiently authorized by the patronage of consent. Plainly, a reason is to be sought, but with the observance preserved—not for its destruction, but rather for its edification, that you may the more observe, when you are also secure as to the reason. But what kind of thing is it, that anyone should then call the observance into question, when he has fallen away from it?—and then ask whence he had the observance, when he has ceased from it? For although he may wish for this reason to seem to summon it to inquiry, that he may show he has not transgressed in the abandonment of the observance, nonetheless it is established that he transgressed before, in the presumption against the observance. For if he did not transgress today in taking up the crown, he transgressed at some time in refusing it. And therefore this treatise will not be for those to whom the question does not pertain, but for those who, out of the eagerness for learning, bring forward not a question but a consultation. For it is always asked about this, and I praise the faith which believed it must be observed before it learned. And it is easy at once to demand where it is written that we should not be crowned. But is it written that we should be crowned? For in demanding the patronage of Scripture on the contrary side, they prejudge that the patronage of Scripture ought also to be present for their own side. For if for this reason it shall be said that it is lawful to be crowned, because Scripture does not forbid it, equally it will be retorted that for this reason it is not lawful to be crowned, because Scripture does not command it. What will discipline do? Will it receive both, as though neither were forbidden? Or will it reject both, as though neither were commanded? But "what is not forbidden is freely permitted." Nay, what is not freely permitted is forbidden.

And how long shall we draw the saw back and forth along this line, when we have an inveterate observance which by anticipating has made the standing rule? If no Scripture has determined this, certainly custom has corroborated it, which without doubt flowed from tradition. For how can anything be in use, if it was not first handed down? "Even in the pretext of tradition," you say, "the written authority must be required." Let us inquire, then, whether tradition too ought not to be received unless written. Plainly we shall deny that it is to be received, if no examples prejudge for us of other observances, which we vindicate, without any instrument of Scripture, by the title of tradition alone, and thence by the patronage of custom. In short, to begin with baptism: when we are about to come to the water, there and then, but also a little before, in the church, under the hand of the president, we attest that we renounce the devil and his pomp and his angels. Thereupon we are thrice immersed, answering something more than the Lord determined in the Gospel. Then, being taken up, we taste beforehand a concord of milk and honey, and from that day we abstain from the daily bath for the whole week. The sacrament of the Eucharist, both commanded by the Lord at the time of a meal and to all, we take even in meetings before dawn, and from no other hand than that of the presidents. We make offerings for the dead, on the anniversary day, for their birthdays. On the Lord's day we count it unlawful to fast, or to worship kneeling. We rejoice in the same immunity from the day of the Passover up to Pentecost. We bear it with anxiety if anything of our cup or our bread is spilled upon the ground. At every advance and movement, at every coming in and going out, at our dress and our shoes, at the baths, at the tables, at the lamps, at our couches, at our seats—in whatever occupation our conversation engages us—we mark our forehead with the little sign.

If for these and other disciplines of this kind you demand a law from the Scriptures, you will find none. Tradition will be held out to you as their originator, custom as their confirmer, and faith as their observer. That reason will give patronage to tradition and custom and faith you will either yourself perceive, or learn from someone who has perceived it. Meanwhile you will believe that there is some reason to which obedience is owed. I add one example further, inasmuch as it will be fitting to teach from old things too. Among the Jews it is so customary for their women to veil the head, that they are thereby recognized. I ask for the law. I defer the Apostle. If Rebecca, on catching sight of her bridegroom afar off, seized a veil, a private modesty could not make a law—or it made one only for her own case. Let virgins alone be covered, and these only when coming to be married, and not before they have known their bridegrooms. If Susanna too, unveiled in the trial, furnishes an argument for veiling, I can say: here too the veil was a matter of choice. She had come as an accused woman, blushing at her infamy, deservedly hiding her comeliness, or because now fearing to please. For the rest, in her husband's arena I do not think she who pleased him walked veiled. Granting now that she was always veiled—in her too I seek the law of the dress, or in any other woman. If I nowhere find a law, it follows that tradition gave this practice to custom, to have at some time the Apostle's authority from the interpretation of reason. By these examples, then, it will be announced that even an unwritten tradition can be defended in observance, confirmed by custom, custom being a fit witness of the then-approved tradition by the perseverance of the observance. But custom even in civil matters is received in place of law, when law is lacking; nor does it differ whether it stands on Scripture or on reason, since reason commends even law. But if law stands on reason, then everything will be law which has stood on reason, by whomsoever produced. Or do you not think that it is lawful for every believer to conceive and establish—provided it suit God, conduce to discipline, profit unto salvation—the Lord saying, "Why do you not also of yourselves judge what is right?" And not concerning judgment only, but concerning every decision of things to be examined, the Apostle too says, "If you are ignorant of anything, God will reveal it to you"—he himself being wont to furnish counsel when he had no precept of the Lord, and to speak of himself, having the Spirit of God, the guide of all truth. And so his counsel obtained the force of a divine precept, from the patronage of divine reason. This now demand, with respect for tradition preserved, by whatever transmitter it is reckoned; and look not at the author, but at the authority, and especially that of custom itself, which is therefore to be cultivated, lest there be no interpreter of reason—so that, if God too shall have given this, you may then learn not whether custom is to be observed by you, but why.

Greater is made the reason of Christian observances, when nature too defends them, which is the first discipline of all. And therefore this first prescribes that a crown does not suit the head. But our God, I think, is the God of nature, who fashioned man, and ordained in him fixed senses for the desiring, the judging, the attaining of the fruits of things, through proper organs, as it were, of the members. He dug hearing in the ears, kindled sight in the eyes, enclosed taste in the mouth, fanned out smell in the nostrils, appraised touch in the hands. Through these ministries of the outer man, ministering to the inner man, the fruits of the divine gifts are conveyed to the soul by the senses. What fruit, then, is there from flowers? For the proper substance—certainly the principal—of crowns is the flowers of the field. "Either the scent," you say, "or the colour, or both alike." What will be the senses of colour, of scent? Sight, I suppose, and smell. What members have obtained these senses? The eyes, if I am not mistaken, and the nostrils. Use, then, flowers by sight and by smell, of which senses they are the fruit; use them through the eyes and the nostrils, of which senses they are the members. The substance is delivered to you by God, the fashion by the world. Although not even an extraordinary fashion clashes with the ordinary use. Let flowers be to you, both inserted and entwined, both on a thread and on a rush, what they are when free, when loose—a matter, namely, for sight and for breathing. A crown, perhaps, you reckon a bundle of flowers gathered in a row, that you may carry more at once, that you may enjoy all together. But indeed put it in your bosom too, if there is so great purity; and strew it on your couch, if there is so great softness; and entrust it to your cup, if there is so great innocence. Enjoy it in as many ways as you perceive it. But on the head, what savour is there of a flower, what sensation of a crown, save only of a band—by which neither is the colour discerned, nor the scent drawn in, nor the tenderness commended? It is as much against nature to pursue a flower with the head, as food with the ear, as sound with the nostril. But everything that is against nature deserves the mark of a monster among all men, but among us also the charge of sacrilege against God, the Lord and Author of nature.

Seeking, then, the law of God, you have that common one set forth in the public of the world, on the tablets of nature, to which the Apostle too is wont to appeal—as in the case of the veiling of the woman, "Does not nature itself teach you?"—and as, to the Romans, saying that the nations do by nature the things that are of the law, he suggests both a natural law and a legal nature. But in the first epistle too, affirming that males and females have changed among themselves the natural use of their condition into the unnatural, by the retribution of their error in turn, as a penalty, he surely gives patronage to natural things. We knew God Himself first according to nature, surely—calling Him "God of gods," presuming Him good, and invoking Him as judge. Do you ask whether nature ought to go before us for the enjoyment of His creation, lest we be carried away by that whereby the rival of God corrupted, together with man himself, the whole creation made over in certain particulars to man's service—whence the Apostle too says that it has been subjected to vanity unwillingly, first overturned to vain uses, then to base and unjust and impious ones? So therefore, in the matter of the pleasures of spectacles too, the creation has been defamed by those who indeed perceive by nature that all things are God's, of which spectacles are constructed, but fail in knowledge to understand this also: that all things have been changed by the devil. But to this matter too, on account of our lovers of games, we have given satisfaction, with a Greek pen as well.

Accordingly, let those crown-wearers acknowledge meanwhile the authority of nature, in the name of the common wisdom by which they are men, and as the pledges of their own religion, by which they worship from close at hand the God of nature; and so, as it were out of abundance, let them discern the other reasons too, which interdict our head in particular from chaplets—and indeed from all of them. For we are urged, from the fellowship of natural discipline, to turn to the propriety of Christian discipline, now wholly to be defended through the other kinds of crowns too, which seem provided for other uses, as built of other substances—lest, because they do not consist of flowers, whose use nature has marked, like this very military laurel, they be believed not to admit the interdiction of the sect, because they have escaped the prescription of nature. I see, then, that the matter must be handled both more carefully and more fully, from the origins down to the developments and excesses of the thing. Secular literature is necessary for this. For secular things must be proved from their own instruments. The little I have touched, I believe, will suffice. If there was any Pandora, whom Hesiod records as the first of women, her head first was crowned by the Graces, when she was endowed by all—whence "Pandora." But to us Moses, a prophetic, not a poetic, shepherd, describes the first woman, Eve, as having girt her parts of shame with leaves rather than her temples with flowers. There was, then, no Pandora. But even from this falsehood the origin of the crown is to be blushed at. Now then, of its true histories too. For certainly it is established that there were certain authors of the thing, or first bringers of it to light. Pherecydes reports that Saturn was crowned before all; Diodorus, that Jupiter, after the Titans were vanquished, was honoured with this gift by the rest. The same gives to Priapus too his fillets, and to Ariadne a wreath of gold and Indic gems, the gift of Vulcan and afterward of Bacchus, and later Callimachus brought in a star, a vine for Juno. So too at Argos her image, garlanded with a vine-shoot, a lion's hide laid beneath its feet, displays the stepmother insulting over the spoils of either stepson. Hercules now bears poplar on his head, now wild olive, now parsley. You have the tragedy of Cerberus; you have Pindar and Callimachus, who records too that Apollo, after the dragon Delphyne was slain, put on the laurel, in which he was a suppliant—for among the ancients suppliants were crowned. Bacchus, the same who among the Egyptians is Osiris, Harpocration argues by industry to be ivy-crowned, because it is the nature of ivy to defend the brain from heaviness. But otherwise too the common people recognize Bacchus as the prince of the crown—the laurel one, plainly, in which he triumphed over the Indians—when it calls the solemn days dedicated to him "the Great Crown." If you turn over the writings too of the Egyptian Leo, Isis first carried about on her head the ears of grain she had discovered—a matter rather of the belly. To those who seek further, all things will be exhibited by that most excellent commentator in this matter too, Claudius Saturninus. For there is a book of his concerning crowns, so expounding both the origins and the causes and the kinds and the solemnities of them, that you will find no grace of flower, no gladness of foliage, no turf or vine-shoot, that has not been consecrated to someone's head: whereby it is sufficiently established how alien we ought to judge the institution of the crowned head, brought forth by them and dispensed thenceforth in honour of those whom the world believed gods. For if the devil works the lie of divinity in this kind too—a liar from the beginning—without doubt he himself had also foreseen those in whom the lie of divinity should be enacted. What, then, is to be held among men of the true God concerning that which was introduced by the candidates of the devil, the nations, and dedicated to them from the beginning, and which even then was being initiated into idolatry by idols and in idols still living?—not as though an idol were anything, but because the things which others do to idols pertain to demons. But if the things which others do to idols pertain to demons, how much more that which the idols themselves made for themselves while they were alive? They themselves, forsooth, had procured demons for themselves through those things for which they had hungered before they procured them.

Hold meanwhile this position, while I shake out the assault of the question. For now I hear it said that many other things too, brought forth by those whom the world believed gods, are nonetheless found today both in our uses and in those of the former saints and in the things of God and in Christ Himself—who, of course, performed the part of a man no otherwise than through those common instruments of human exhibition. Plainly let it be so; nor will I yet dispute further into the origins. Mercury first set forth letters: I will confess them necessary both to the commerce of things and to our studies toward God. But even if the same strung the strings into sound, I will not deny that this art too has been practised with the saints and has ministered to God—hearing David. Aesculapius first explored remedies: Isaiah too remembers that he commanded something medicinal for the ailing Hezekiah. Paul too knows that a little wine profits the stomach. But even if Minerva first built a ship, I shall see Jonah and the apostles sailing. There is more: Christ too will be clothed; Paul too will have a cloak. If you name some one of the gods of the world as the author of each piece of furniture and of the several vessels, I must needs acknowledge Christ both reclining on a couch, and when He offers a basin to the feet of His disciples, and when He pours water from a pitcher, and when He is girt about with a linen cloth—the proper garment of Osiris. To a question of this kind I everywhere answer thus: admitting indeed the fellowship of useful things, but provoking it to the distinction of the rational and the irrational; because indiscriminateness deceives, overshadowing the corruption of the creation, by which it is subjected to vanity. For we say that those things at last have suited both our uses and the higher ones, and the things of God, and Christ Himself, which procure mere usefulnesses and certain supports and honest solaces for the necessities of human life, so that they may be believed inspired by God Himself, the prior provider and instructor and—if you will—delighter of His man; but that those which have exceeded this order do not suit our uses, especially those which for that very reason are recognized neither in the world, nor in the things of God, nor in the conversations of Christ.

Who, in short—what patriarch, what prophet, what Levite or priest or ruler, who even afterward, what apostle or evangelist or bishop—is found crowned? I think not even the temple of God itself, nor the ark of the covenant, nor the tabernacle of witness, nor the altar, nor the candlestick—to which surely, both at the first solemnity of dedication and at the second congratulation of restoration, it would have suited to be crowned, if it had been worthy of God. But if they were figures of us—for we are both the temples of God and altars and lights and vessels—this too they figuratively portended: that the men of God ought not to be crowned. The truth ought to answer to the image. If perhaps you object that Christ Himself was crowned, to this you will hear briefly meanwhile: "So be you too crowned; it is lawful." Yet not even that crown of insulting impiety did the people contrive. It was a device of the Roman soldiers, from the usage of secular matters—which the people of God never admitted, neither in the name of public gladness nor of inborn luxury, returning more readily from the Babylonian captivity with drums and pipes and psalteries than with horns, and rising after food and drink to play without crowns. For neither the description of gladness nor the marking of luxury would have kept silence about the comeliness or the unseemliness of a crown. So far is this true, that Isaiah, since he says, "With drums and psalteries and pipes they drink wine," would have said also, "With crowns," if ever this usage had been in the things of God.

Thus, when you propose for this reason that the ornaments of the secular gods are found even with God, that among these you may vindicate the crown of the head too for common use, you yourself already prescribe to yourself that what is not found in the things of God is not to be held in the fellowship of use among us. For what is so unworthy of God as what is worthy of an idol? But what is so worthy of an idol as what is so even for a dead man? For it belongs to the dead too to be thus crowned—or because they too straightway become idols, both by the garb and the rite of consecration, which among us is a second idolatry. Therefore, since they lack sense, it will be theirs alike to use that thing of whose sense they are deprived, just as if they would abuse it, were they not deprived of sense. But there is no distinction of abusing, when the truth of using ceases. The nature of perceiving ceasing, with what shall anyone abuse, when he has not that with which to use? But for us to abuse is not lawful, according to the Apostle, who teaches us the more readily not to use—except that neither do they abuse who perceive nothing. But it is all idle, and the work itself too is dead, in so far as it is in idols, but plainly alive in so far as it is in demons, to which superstition pertains. "The idols of the nations," says David, "are silver and gold. They have eyes, and see not; nostrils, and smell not; hands, and shall not touch." For through these is the enjoyment of flowers. But if he proclaims that such will those be who fabricate idols, such already are those who use anything after the ornament of idols. "All things are clean to the clean," and so all things are unclean to the unclean; but nothing is more unclean than idols. For the rest, clean substances, as the things of God, are by this their condition common to use. But the very administration of the use too makes a difference. For I too sacrifice a cock to myself, no less than Socrates to Aesculapius; and if the smell of some place offends me, I burn something of Arabia—but not with the same rite, nor in the same garb, nor with the same apparatus as is done among idols. For if the creation is polluted by a bare word, as the Apostle teaches—"But if anyone shall say, This is offered to an idol, touch it not"—much more when it is contaminated by the garb and rite and apparatus of things offered to idols. So the crown too is made a thing offered to idols. For by this rite and garb and apparatus it is offered to idols, its authors, whose use it especially is, so that what is not found in the things of God cannot be admitted into fellowship. Therefore the Apostle cries out, "Flee idolatry!"—all of it, surely, and the whole. Consider the forest, and how many thorns lie hidden in it. Nothing is to be given to an idol, so nothing to be taken from an idol. If to recline in an idol's temple is alien to the faith, what is it to be seen in the garb of an idol? "What fellowship has Christ with Belial?" And therefore, flee. For he enjoins a long divorce from idolatry, in no respect to be dealt with at close hand. Even the earthly dragon absorbs men by its breath from afar. More deeply John says, "Little children, keep yourselves from idols!"—not now from idolatry as a service, but from idols, that is, from their very effigy. For it is unworthy that you, the image of the living God, should become the image of an idol and of a dead one. So far we vindicate the propriety of this garb for idols, both from the reckoning of its origin and from the usage of superstition; and besides from this, that, while it is not referred to in the things of God, it is more and more reckoned theirs in whose antiquities and solemnities and offices it is met with. In short, the very doors, and the victims themselves and the altars, the ministers themselves and the priests of them, are crowned. You have the crowns of all the priestly colleges in Claudius. But we have interwoven also that distinction of differing rational and irrational things, meeting those who defend fellowship in all things on the occasion of certain examples. To this part, then, it remains that the very causes of the crowns be inspected, that, while we show them alien—nay, even contrary—to discipline, we may prove that none of them is supported by the patronage of reason, whereby a garb of this kind too could be vindicated for fellowship, as also are certain things whose examples are objected to us.

For indeed, to attack the very cause of the military crown, I think it must first be inquired whether warfare at all suits Christians. Otherwise, what kind of thing is it to discuss the accidents, when the fault lies in the antecedents? Do we believe that a human oath is lawful to be superinduced upon a divine one, and to answer to another lord after Christ, and to abjure father and mother and every neighbour, whom the law has commanded both to be honoured and to be loved after God—whom the Gospel too has likewise honoured, esteeming only Christ above them? Will it be lawful to occupy oneself with the sword, when the Lord pronounces that he who has used the sword shall perish by the sword? And shall the son of peace work at battle, for whom it will not even be fitting to go to law? And shall he administer chains and prison and torments and executions, who is not even the avenger of his own wrongs? Now too shall he keep guard-watches, either for others rather than for Christ, or even on the Lord's day, when not even for Christ? And shall he keep vigil before the temples which he has renounced? And shall he dine there where it does not please the Apostle? And those whom by day he has put to flight by exorcisms, shall he by night defend, leaning and resting upon the spear with which the side of Christ was pierced through? And shall he carry a standard too, a rival of Christ's? And shall he ask a watchword from the commander, who has already received one from God? Even dead, shall he be disquieted by the trumpet of the trumpeter, who awaits to be roused by the trumpet of the angel? And shall the Christian be cremated by the camp discipline, to whom it was not lawful to cremate, for whom Christ remitted the deserts of fire? How many other transgressions can be discerned thence, to be interpreted as belonging to the duties of camp service! The very transferring of one's name from the camp of light into the camp of darkness is a transgression. Plainly, if the later faith finds any forestalled by warfare, theirs is another condition—like those whom John admitted to the laver, like the most faithful centurions, the one whom Christ approves and the one whom Peter catechizes—provided, nevertheless, that, the faith being received and the seal given, either it must at once be deserted, as has been done by many; or there must be every kind of cavilling, lest anything be committed against God, things which are not permitted even outside warfare; or, lastly, that must be endured for God which the heathen faith too has stipulated. For warfare promises neither impunity of transgressions nor immunity from martyrdoms. Nowhere is the Christian a different thing. There is one Gospel and the same Jesus, who will deny everyone who denies, and confess everyone who confesses, God; and will make safe the soul lost for the sake of His name, but will destroy, on the contrary, the soul gained against His name for gain. With Him the faithful civilian is as much a soldier as the faithful soldier is a civilian. The standing of faith does not admit of necessities. There is no necessity of transgressing for those whose one necessity is not to transgress. For even to sacrifice and directly to deny, one is pressed by the necessity of torments or penalties; yet not even to that necessity does discipline connive, because greater is the necessity of fearing denial and of undergoing martyrdom than of escaping suffering and fulfilling a duty. For the rest, a pretext of this kind subverts the whole substance of the sacrament, so as to loosen the clasp even for voluntary transgressions. For the will too will be able to be contended a necessity, having, namely, that whereby it is compelled. I have forestalled this for the other causes of official crowns too, with which this leading-in of necessity is most familiar—since for that reason either offices are to be fled, lest we fall into transgressions, or martyrdoms are to be endured, that we may break off offices. Of the first kind of question—even of warfare itself being unlawful—I will make no more, that the second may be rendered. Nay, if with all my might I shall have driven out warfare, I shall in vain now have challenged concerning the military crown. Suppose, in short, that warfare is lawful, up to the cause of the crown.

But concerning the crown too I will speak first. That laurel is sacred to Apollo or to Bacchus—to the one as god of weapons, to the other as god of triumphs. So teaches Claudius, when he says too that soldiers are wont to be wreathed with myrtle. For the myrtle is Venus's, the mother of the Aeneadae, and also the mistress of Mars—a Roman through Ilia and the Romuli. But I do not believe Venus to be Roman on this side together with Mars, in that there is a rival's grief. When warfare too is crowned with olive, the idolatry is toward Minerva, equally the goddess of arms, but crowned from this tree also for the peace entered into with Neptune. In these will be the superstition of the military garland, everywhere polluted and polluting all things. Which is now polluted by its causes too. Behold, the annual pronouncing of vows—what does it seem? The first in the headquarters, the second in the Capitols. Take, after the places, the words too: "Then to you, Jupiter, we vow that there shall be an ox with horns decorated with gold." Of what sentence is that the voice? Surely of denial. Even if there the Christian keeps silence with his mouth, crowned on the head he has answered. The same laurel is announced in the dispensing of the largess. Plainly not a gratuitous idolatry, selling Christ for some gold pieces, as Judas for silver! Will this be, "You cannot serve God and mammon"—to hand a hand to mammon and to stand off from God? Will this be, "Render the things that are Caesar's to Caesar and the things that are God's to God"—not to render the man to God and to carry off the denarius to Caesar? The triumphal laurel—is it built of leaves, or of corpses? Is it adorned with ribbons, or with funeral-pyres? Is it anointed with unguents, or with the tears of wives and mothers?—of some, perchance, even Christians; for among the barbarians too there is Christ. He who has carried this on his head, has he not also himself fought for this cause? There is another warfare too, of the royal households. For they too are called "camp-men," and they too are munificent at the Caesarian solemnities. But even then you are likewise the soldier and slave of another; and if of two, of God and of Caesar, certainly then not of Caesar's, when you owe yourself to God—even in common matters, I believe, to the superior.

Public crowns too are placed upon public orders for public causes—but upon magistrates, moreover, golden ones, as at Athens, as at Rome. Over these too are carried the Etruscan crowns. This is the name of the crowns, distinguished with gems and golden oak-leaves from Jupiter, which they take to lead in the sacred cars, with palm-embroidered togas. There are also provincial golden ones, now seeking greater heads—of images, not of men. But your orders and your magistrates, and the very name of senate-house, is the Church of Christ. You are His, enrolled in the books of life. There the blood of the Lord is your purple, and the broad stripe is the cross itself; there the axe is already laid to the trunk of the tree; there is the rod from the root of Jesse. Let the public horses too look to it, with their crowns. Your Lord, when according to the Scripture He wished to enter Jerusalem, had not even a private ass. "These in chariots and these in horses, but we will call upon the name of the Lord our God." From the very dwelling in that Babylon, in the Apocalypse of John, we are removed—much more from its platform. The crowd too is crowned, now out of exultation at the prosperities of the princes, now out of the propriety of municipal solemnities. For luxury is the captatrix of all public gladness. But you are a foreigner of this world, a citizen of the heavenly city, Jerusalem. "Our citizenship," he says, "is in the heavens." You have your own registers, your own calendars; you have nothing to do with the joys of the world—nay, you owe the contrary. "For the world will rejoice, but you will mourn." And, I think, He says, "Happy are they that mourn," not "that are crowned." Marriages too crown bridegrooms; and therefore we will not marry heathen, lest they lead us even to idolatry, with which among them marriages begin. You have a law from the patriarchs indeed; you have the Apostle commanding to marry "in the Lord." Secular emancipation too crowns. But you have already been redeemed by Christ, and indeed at a great price. How shall the world manumit another's slave? Even if it seems liberty, yet it will seem slavery too. All things are imaginary in the world, and nothing true. For then too you were free of a man, redeemed by Christ; and now you are the slave of Christ, though manumitted by a man. If you think the world's liberty true, so as to seal it with a crown, you have returned into the slavery of a man—which you think liberty—and have lost the liberty of Christ—which you think slavery. Shall the causes of contests too be disputed, which their very titles at once condemn—the sacred ones, that is, and the funeral ones? For this remains: that Olympian Jupiter and Nemean Hercules and the poor little Archemorus and the unhappy Antinous should be crowned in a Christian, that he himself should become the spectacle which it is wearisome to behold. We have, I think, enumerated all the causes, and none is with us; all are alien, profane, unlawful, once for all abjured in the attestation of the sacrament. For these were the pomps of the devil and his angels: the offices of the world, the honours, the solemnities, the popular favours, the false vows, the human servitudes, the empty praises, the base glories—and in all these, idolatry, even in the mere reckoning of the crowns with which all these are garlanded. Claudius will indeed allege beforehand that even heaven is crowned with stars in the verses of Homer—certainly by God, certainly for man; therefore man himself too is to be crowned by God. But by the world the brothels too are crowned, and the latrines, and the bakehouses, and the prison, and the gladiatorial school, and the amphitheatres themselves, and the very stripping-rooms, and the very biers. How sacred and holy, how honest and clean, this garb is, you must estimate not from one poetic heaven, but from the commerce of the whole world. But indeed the Christian will not even disgrace his own door with laurels, if he knows how many gods the devil has feigned even for doors: Janus from the door, Limentinus from the threshold, Forculus and Carna from the doors and hinges; among the Greeks too, Apollo of the Doorway and the Antelian demons.

So far is it from him to bring the gift of idolatry to his head—nay, I would already say, to Christ, since "the head of the man is Christ," as free as Christ too, not even liable to a covering, much less to a binding. But even that which is liable to a covering, the head of the woman, by this very thing already occupied, is not free for a binding too. It has the burden of its own humility. If it ought not to be seen with bare head on account of the angels, much more with a crowned one would it then perhaps scandalize those crowned angels. For what is a crown on a woman's head but a procuress of beauty, the mark of utmost wantonness, the extreme denial of modesty, the kindling of allurement? Therefore neither shall a woman be more laboriously adorned, by the Apostle's foresight, so as not even to be crowned with the artifice of her hair. But He who is both the head of the man and the face of the woman, the husband of the Church, Christ Jesus—what wreath, I ask you, did He undergo for either sex? Of thorns, I suppose, and briars, in the figure of transgressions, which the earth of our flesh brought forth to us, but the virtue of the cross took away, blunting every sting of death in the endurance of the Lord's head. Certainly, beyond the figure, the insult is at hand, and the disfigurement and the foulness, and the savagery interwoven with these, which then fouled and mangled the Lord's temples—so that you now may be crowned with laurel and myrtle and olive and some illustrious foliage, and—what is more in use—with hundredfold roses too, gathered from the garden of Midas, and with both kinds of lilies and with all the violets, perhaps even with gems and gold, that you may rival even that crown of Christ which afterward came to Him—because He too tasted the honeycombs after the gall, nor was He saluted King of glory in the heavens before He was posted up to the cross as King of the Jews, first made by the Father a little something lower than the angels, and so crowned with glory and honour. If for these things you owe Him your head, render Him such a one, if you can, as He offered His own for yours; or be not crowned with flowers, if you cannot with thorns, because with flowers you cannot.

Keep for God His own thing untainted. He will crown it, if He will. Nay, He even wills, in short; He invites. "He who shall have conquered," He says, "I will give to him a crown of life." Be you too faithful unto death, and contend you too the good contest, whose crown the Apostle too rightly trusts is laid up for him. The angel of victory too receives a crown, going forth on a white horse, that he might conquer; and another is adorned with the circuit of the rainbow, a heavenly meadow. The elders too sit crowned, and with the same gold the Son of man Himself glitters above the cloud. If such are the images in the vision, what are the truths in the manifestation? Look at those, smell those. Why do you condemn the head with a fillet or a serpent-band, destined for a diadem? For "He has made us kings to God and His Father," Christ Jesus. What have you to do with a flower about to die? You have the flower from the rod of Jesse, upon which the whole grace of the divine Spirit rested—the flower incorrupt, unfading, everlasting; which the good soldier too, by choosing, has advanced to in the heavenly ordination. Blush, fellow-soldiers of his, henceforth to be judged not by him, but by some soldier of Mithras—who, when he is initiated in the cave, in the camp truly of darkness, a sword being interposed, is offered a crown, as if a mimicry of martyrdom; and then, when it has been fitted to his head, he is admonished to repel it with his hand as it comes, and to transfer it, if you will, to his shoulder, saying that Mithras is his crown. And thenceforth he is never crowned, and has this for a token to the proof of himself, if ever he is tempted concerning his sacrament; and he is at once believed a soldier of Mithras, if he has cast down the crown, if he has said that it is in his god. Let us recognize the devices of the devil, who for this reason affects certain of the divine things, that by the faithfulness of his own he may confound and judge us.