On the Singleness of Clerics

I had indeed promised you beforehand a letter, most beloved sons, which, commending the institutions of all conduct from the law, would also contain in summary everything that pertains generally to all clerics for the direction of the rule of discipline. But because certain ones among you have now commonly fallen into disgrace on account of cohabitation with women, I have been compelled to write to you also specifically on this matter, by the correction of the Lord, who, rebuking wretched me with severity on account of your negligence, commanded and ordered that clerics should not cohabit with women.

And although this admonition would suffice by the authority of my letters alone, yet lest anyone mock me as a dreamer, as the brothers mocked Joseph, we add the firmness of the Scriptures: so that all may know that the Lord commands in this way also through revelation what is known to have been commanded before through writings; and that we are not adulterating the word of the Lord, nor wishing to boast vainly of revelations, but that in thus reporting before the sight of the Lord we do not lie in what we say; just as we trust that we have not heard a lie from the Lord, presuming upon the voice of the apostle Paul declaring: For we are not, he says, as many, adulterating the word of God, but out of sincerity, as from God, before him in Christ we speak.

Therefore, placed in the greatest grief over certain putrefied members of our body, and lamenting in groaning the loss of the Church, which through our sluggishness is reduced day by day to an exceedingly small number; we believe ourselves to be relieved in some part, in that the negligence of certain persons cannot harm our diligence, to whom our letters have never been wanting, which through our absence have compensated for the frequency of all their dissimulation: so that each despiser may inscribe himself as guilty, while we with free brow cry out to the despisers what Solomon confidently reproaches: Because indeed I called, he says, and you did not hearken: and I stretched forth my words, and you did not attend, but made my counsels of no effect, and to my reproofs you did not attend, therefore I also will laugh at your destruction, I will rejoice therefore against you, when destruction shall come upon you, and when tumult shall come upon you suddenly: and ruin together with storms, and when tribulation and anguish shall come upon you.

For then they shall call upon me, and I will not hear. The wicked shall seek me, and shall not find me: for they hated wisdom. And they took not up the word of the Lord, neither would they attend to my counsels. For they despised my reproofs: therefore they shall eat the fruit of their own way, and shall be filled with their own impiety. To you now my exhortation is turned, whom we do not wish to experience such precipices of ruin. Fear as much as you can the disasters of such falls: and in this overthrow, let the examples of those who are slipping strike terror into you. He is exceedingly reckless who strives to cross where he has seen another fall: and he is greatly unbridled in whom fear is not struck by the perishing of another. But he is a lover of his own salvation who avoids the onset of another's death.

And he himself is provident who becomes anxious at the calamities of others, as Solomon approves, saying: The shrewd man, seeing evil punished, will be greatly instructed. And again: When the wicked fall, the just shall be greatly afraid. That confidence is adverse which entrusts its life to dangers as a certainty. And that hope is slippery which hopes to be saved amid the kindling of sin. It is an uncertain victory to fight amid hostile arms. And it is an impossible deliverance to be surrounded by flames and not burn. Which Solomon does not deny, saying: Who shall bind fire in his bosom, and his garments not burn? Or who shall walk upon coals of fire, and his feet not be burned? So he that goeth in to his neighbour's wife shall not be clean, nor any one that toucheth her.

Believe, I beseech you, believe divine faith, or rather that, more than our own: because whatever it promises, it cannot deceive, the Lord saying: It is easier, he says, for heaven and earth to pass away, than for one tittle of the law to fall. And again: Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. We therefore deceive ourselves, as often as we believe in a disordered manner, supposing that the precepts of the law are changed by our faith: so that we hope that chastity may be kept immovably everywhere indiscriminately between males and females. It is difficult for one to drink poison and live. It is to be feared by one sleeping on the bank lest he fall, since the Apostle says: He that thinketh himself to stand, let him take heed lest he fall. In this matter it is more expedient to fear well than to trust badly.

And it is more useful for a man to know himself weak, so that he may stand strong; than to wish to appear strong, and emerge weak. Concerning which matter the Apostle rebukes the presumptuous, saying: If any man think himself to be something, whereas he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. Assuredly the self-deceiver has deceived his own soul, who, by not guarding against contrary things, has committed himself to harmful things. But he consults more safely for himself who, always distrustful around evil things, fears every kind of harmful appearance. Whose difference Solomon discussed, saying: The wise man fearing shall decline from all evil, but the fool, trusting in himself, mingles with the wicked. A great counsel of divine wisdom has been found, whereby we may be freed by the aid of fear. Great are the advantages of providence, so that sometimes virtue and victory may come through fear.

Great remedies has the Lord bestowed for salvation, so that even the timid may have praise, as Solomon repeats, saying: Blessed is the man that feareth all things through fear. Inestimable is the mercy of the Lord, which has bestowed upon each man his own glory: and incomprehensible is the piety which has given palms according to the contests: so that by confessing we may overcome the ferocity of men, and by fearing we may conquer the blandishments of women; provided that the Lord may work glories over us both from virtue and from weakness: so that in all things and through all things he may testify himself to be almighty, dividing the differences of triumphs; so that wars may be won by us both by counsels and by strength, lest if we had conquered by the strength of faith alone, the works of wisdom should be empty, contrary to Solomon. Now therefore the arms of wisdom are to be borne, where the contest of the female and male sex is declared.

Whence Solomon thus instructs, saying: Make prudence, he says, known to thee, that it may keep thee from the strange and wicked woman. See now that in this war prudence, not faith, has been given to us as victorious, which would have freed us by the remedy of timidity: and consider what arms are now to be taken up, if you wish to have the aids of the law. Be timid, that you may be intrepid, and although fear in combat may seem to be weakness; yet according to the word of the Apostle, virtue is perfected in weakness. Separate yourselves, I beseech you, separate yourselves from pestiferous contagion. However much each one shall be farther from adversities, by so much he does not feel adversities. He is less stimulated by pleasures who is not where there is a frequency of pleasures.

And he suffers less the troubles of avarice who does not see riches, if we admit the Apostle promising: They that will, he says, be rich, fall into temptation and into the snare, and into many unprofitable and hurtful desires, which drown men into destruction and perdition. Not otherwise is he subject to temptations who is joined to a woman; in whom there is nothing else but what strikes one who draws near. The form of woman has become the sting of sin; and the condition of death arose from nowhere else than from the substance of woman. Which Solomon recalls for our solicitude, saying: From a woman was the beginning of sin, and because of her we all die. Hence we are held mortal, and we do not fear. What if we are already subject to death? Through a woman Christ indeed freed us, but we ought to fear that from which we still die. Then that liberation itself will stand firm in woman, if death, which had come through woman, be overcome by us.

But if still through woman scandals hold sway around us, we have certainly made a loss of the liberation of Christ. Indeed in the future that hope of liberty remains, which we believe Christ has bestowed upon our faith: so that then woman may not harm us at all, when death itself shall have been abolished. For if now we think ourselves invulnerable to feminine darts; what then remains for the heavenly kingdoms? Not without reason does the Apostle rebuke such sentiments, saying: Now you are full, now you are become rich: you reign without us, and I would to God you did reign. The time of struggle is therefore still being carried on, and death through woman still rages. I lie, if we do not see from thence the destruction of many.

How many and what manner of bishops and clerics and laymen alike, after the trodden-down contests of confessions and victories, after great deeds and signs and wonders shown everywhere, are known to have been shipwrecked with all these things, when they wish to sail in a fragile vessel? How many lions has one womanly weakness of sins tamed, which, though it be vile and wretched, makes prey of great ones? Which Solomon speaks of, saying: The price of a harlot is but one loaf of bread, but a woman catcheth the precious souls of men.

These things are treated before us, and we are restrained by no terrors; what would we do, if we heard histories carried on only by report? But this is always the incredulity of human hardness, that it believes not only by hearing, but even by seeing, that others have perished, unless it has seen itself perish; nor is it shaken by the deaths of companions, while it supposes them to have deserved it or to have been weak. But it confidently thinks itself to deserve much, or to be of much strength, not knowing that examples are furnished to all when punishments have been inflicted upon some, as the Lord sets forth and says in the Gospel: Think you that these Galileans were sinners above all the men of Galilee, because they suffered such things? No. I say to you: but unless you shall do penance, you shall all likewise perish, as those upon whom the tower fell in Siloe, and killed them. Think you that they also were debtors above all the men that dwelt in Jerusalem? No.

I say to you: but if you do not penance, you shall all likewise perish.

We wonder if Adam was seduced through Eve, whom no examples of the dying had preceded, and whom but one commandment had bound, when now neither innumerable deaths nor infinite commandments restrain us. To whom it is fittingly said according to the rebuke of the Lord: If Adam had seen the deaths which have been wrought in you, he would long since have done penance in sackcloth and ashes. But I say to you, that it shall be more tolerable for Adam in the day of judgment than for you. Far be that pestilence, and plague, and clandestine destruction. O how disorderly does the proximity of woman hurl its darts, whose neighbour is the robbery of sins! There is no approvable sincerity in this society, which has collisions turbulent as it were with certain waves. In this familiarity friendly concord does not dwell, since it creates nothing but discordant enmities. The Lord indeed made woman a helper for man, but the envy of the serpent assumed a hostile person.

For if she who was born from her own husband tempts to this day the very one to whom she is joined: how much more she who is joined, bound by no law? And if those who are two, united in one flesh, prick one another mutually with temptations, what shall those do who are neither born nor joined in one flesh? Especially because neither is he permitted to invoke God, who is summoned by love of another, nor is he allowed to think on divine things, who has sought for himself one to whom he might show domestic care. On account of which the Apostle thus counsels, saying: I would have you to be without solicitude. He that is without a wife is solicitous for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please God: but he that hath a wife is solicitous for the things of the world, how he may please his wife. What is there now that delights in this union, in which there are only conflicts?

Or what utility favours it, where there are no conjugal duties, when not even those can be secure?

Everything that belongs to woman is a cause of harm: and association with her is always dangerous. By her covenant she brings great troubles; and upon whomever she has fastened herself contrary to right, she inflicts an incurable wound. From coals sparks fly, from iron rust is nourished, asps hiss forth diseases, and woman pours out the pestilence of concupiscence, which Solomon thus compares, saying: From garments the moth proceeds, and from a woman the iniquity of a man. I wish to know what this common affection is, what this always ambiguous discord of disease is, which assails and disturbs one's purpose with wavering counsels. Why has he taken a woman to himself who has disdained to take a wife? Everyone who does not eat flesh, why does he fill his dwelling with the furnishings of the flesh? And he who does not drink wine, why does he take pleasure in the delight of seeing it?

As though the mind were not sometimes nourished by the abundance of foods through sight and taste alike, and the mind were not often stirred by the mere fragrance of fragrant wine. Why does he wish through hypocrisy to be called abstinent by men, and in secret to be distended with flesh and drunkenness? Many have riches which they deny to their own use, but preserve out of greed; if no greed had clung to them, they would not possess the tokens of greed. But because they are possessed by greed, they enjoy in mind what they do not touch in use. So too he who has despised the bond of marriage is bound by the bonds of woman in another way; although he mingles with her in no carnal union, yet he is always delighted by desire, sight, conversation, and companionship. For if he had no desire for woman, he would never take a woman for his pleasures.

Indeed, moreover, he has given me cause for suspicion: he who has not taken a lawful wife, and has refused a lawful one—unless I am mistaken, he has argued publicly to promise men holiness, and in secret not to be without a wife. Two arguments, of holiness and of lust, are here to be wondered at on either side, which each covers the other, and each betrays the other. The clever eunuch and the adulterer envy each other while each takes counsel, and while each seeks both, achieves neither; so that he is by no means reckoned holy who does not enjoy true union, since the Apostle Paul says: Are you bound to a wife? Seek not to be loosed. Are you loosed from a wife? Seek not a wife.

But I grant that the chastity of this continence has not been violated: yet it offers a bad reputation to the suspicious; and he guards the good of chastity in vain by an inward laborious struggle, who causes it to be defamed outwardly, destroying the teaching of Paul who both foresees and warns: Why, he says, is my liberty judged by another's conscience? If I partake with thanksgiving, why am I blasphemed for that for which I give thanks? It is worse than adultery to make continence appear criminal, and to render holiness infamous. He brings blasphemy upon the religion he professes, who has not fulfilled before all men what he confesses; lest Christianity be believed to be a deception, and adultery seem to be clothed with the veil of holiness. On account of this the Lord forewarns in the Gospel, saying: So let your light shine before men, that seeing your good works, they may glorify your Father who is in heaven. This the Apostle Paul also follows, saying: Let not therefore your good be blasphemed.

And again: Providing good things not only before God, but also before men. And in another place: Whether therefore you eat, or drink, or do any other thing, do all to the glory of God. And be without offence to the Jews, and to the Greeks, and to the Church of God, as I also in all things please all men. But perhaps it is objected, what is it that he himself again said? If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. Never do any sayings of the law exclude one another, but all answers are fixed in their proper places. It is not lawful to please men there, where the will of men does not receive the will of the Lord. But where men accept what tends to the glory of God, the Apostle Paul himself has commanded that it be made known to all. Let every one of us, he says, please his neighbour unto good edification.

What reward of holiness then does he expect, who not only provokes blasphemy against holiness from unbelievers, but also furnishes a pernicious example to the faithful; so that the weak may subtly fornicate under the pretext of affection, and the chaste may furnish the teaching of the most unchaste chastity, destroying what the Apostle Paul threatens: Has the weak brother perished, he says, in your conscience, for whom Christ suffered? But sinning thus against the brethren, and striking their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. And indeed this is fitting not only for the young, but also for the old, to have regard for the weakness of the brethren; lest old age provoke the ruin of youth, from which all wholesome instruction ought to proceed: as Eleazar in the book of Maccabees professes and says: I prefer to be sent before into hell, than to forsake the laws of my fathers.

For it is not worthy of our age to dissemble; so that many of the young, thinking that Eleazar, a man of ninety years, had gone over to the life of the foreigners, might themselves through my pretence, and for the sake of a little and corruptible time of life, be led astray through me, and I should bring disgrace and stain upon my old age.

He preferred to expose his life to torments, rather than to become to anyone a teacher of perdition: and we, where there are no torments, are unwilling, by our mere indulgences alone, to set before us the brethren who are to be saved: nor are we content, without any sufferings, to profit both ourselves and others, when he was unwilling to live though about to die: as he continued below, saying: Wherefore departing manfully out of this life, I shall show myself worthy of my old age: and I shall leave an example of fortitude to young men, if with a ready mind and constancy I suffer an honourable death, for the most venerable and most holy laws. Since this is fitting even for laymen, lest they either give occasion of blasphemy to strangers, or set before the brotherhood an opportunity of fornication; this necessity constrains clerics most especially and most urgently; upon whom either religion blasphemed, or the brotherhood lost, will impose double penalties.

Nor will they find in the judgment of the Lord any comfort at all, who have furnished to strangers and brethren the tinder of sinning. On account of this the Apostle Paul thus instructs Titus, saying: Showing thyself an example of good works in doctrine, in integrity, in gravity, in sound and blameless speech: that the adversary may be afraid, having nothing evil to say of us. And again: Show good faith to all, he says, that they may prefer the good doctrine of our Saviour the Lord in all things. So also he writes to Timothy, saying: Be thou an example of the faithful in word, in conversation, in charity, in faith, in chastity. Which also the Apostle Peter exhorts, saying: Let your conversation, he says, be good among the Gentiles: that whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may, by your good works, glorify God. And again: For so, he says, is the will of God, that by doing well you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men.

Nor let anyone propose to himself and say: I wish to have something to overcome: for this is to say, I desire to live under ruin. Who is so foolish as to wish to be pressed hard to a labour, when a delicate triumph is offered to him? For it is not a double triumph to be proved a victor in the presence of woman, as it is in solitude to keep intact the pledge of holiness. And since there is one title of glories, in this place he is the one strong man who labours sufficiently: and he is rewarded equally with the one who has conquered with little labour. What of the fact that he moreover is enrolled as perfect, who shows himself at all times cut off from feminine affections? Since when the Lord in the Gospel calls him perfect who has cut off his entire patrimony for his own use.

Certainly even for any solitary person, daily triumphs for chastity are not lacking; because the human body never ceases to assail the spirit with carnal desires, which the Apostle affirms, saying: The flesh, he says, lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh: for these are contrary one to another, so that you do not the things that you would. You have now your own flesh, which you must always overcome: why do you wish to hire another as well? No one desires to apply a worse fever upon one fever; lest he begin to suffer from an incurable semi-tertian fever, for which no physician can avail to help. Nor does anyone take upon himself an additional burden beyond his own; lest, weighed down by two burdens, he be plunged down to the depths. Wherefore the prophet Jeremiah thus teaches that the burden of holiness is to be borne in solitude.

It is good, he says, for a man when he hath borne the yoke from his youth; he shall sit solitary and keep silence, because he hath taken it up upon himself.

But some malicious follower will take refuge in the saying of the Apostle Paul: Bear ye one another's burdens, and so you shall fulfil the law of Christ: These are not the burdens which the Apostle Paul commands to be borne; but that, bearing with one another, no discord may divide us; and that we may furnish aid to brethren placed in temptations: not that we ourselves should procure temptations for ourselves through women, but rather that we should relieve the weights of temptations; since he knows what kind of yoke holiness is, which is scarcely borne when single. Concerning which not only he himself, but also the Lord, was unwilling to lay down a fixed precept, saying: Not all receive this word, but they to whom it is given. And again: He that can receive it, let him receive it. If therefore the greatness of this burden is with difficulty borne singly; how will it be borne, if it be made heavier by doubled burdens?

And if those who are solitary almost all scarcely endure to sustain the carnal assaults; what do those do who do not hesitate to press upon swords hanging over them from either side? I say more. If husbands and wives, daily bearing conjugal desires, do not suffice for themselves; what do those do who associate themselves with women to increase their assaults? The sight of a woman occurring unexpectedly or in passing for an hour casts, as it were, arrows into someone's eyes. When even a simple regard is not free from danger; what takes place there, where a woman in cohabitation assumes the boldness of freedom? When in domestic affairs she now bares her arms and thighs for the work of wool-spinning, now in the heat uncovers her limbs, now tosses about when weary, or at times is dissolute in her manner, now displays blandishments, and what is more poisonous than all, delights to play the psaltery or to sing? Whose singing it is more tolerable to hear the basilisk hissing.

Against which Solomon thus makes us cautious, saying: Be not frequent with a singing woman, nor hear her, lest perchance thou perish by the force of her charms. I pass over the rest, which are more shameful to speak of than to say: this alone I say, to behold a woman breaking down in grief or anger is already not without sweetness. What do we say if you see her rejoicing, or what is worse, flattering? Once for all I say, every unsuitable companionship of women is the glue of sins, and a poisoned birdlime; by which the devil goes fowling. The companionship of women is unsuitable, whose companionship Solomon again thus teaches us to beware of in all things: With a strange woman, he says, sit not at all, and contend not with her in wine, lest perchance thy heart incline towards her, and by thy blood thou slide into destruction.

Finally, if we trust that our mind will endure always in this companionship, even that ought to be suspect in us; lest those very women who dwell with us should perhaps be moved against us, or be stirred toward other loves by the furious incitements of swift age, and there will be cause for us—or, what is worse, cause without cause—that fornication of another should defile us, among whom occasion of a brothel is suggested to the rest; and we shall be swallowed up by the guilt of another's crime, for which we ourselves furnish the pander's service of uncleanness. On account of which the apostle Paul instructs us concerning such matters, saying: If thy brother is grieved because of thy food, thou walkest no longer in charity. Destroy not him with thy food, for whom Christ died. And again: It is good not to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor to show that in which thy brother is offended, or scandalized, or made weak.

And in another place: This, he says, judge rather, that ye put not a stumbling-block or a scandal before a brother. And of himself he speaks thus: Wherefore if food scandalize my brother, I will eat no flesh for ever, lest I scandalize my brother. When therefore the detestable trouble of this union assails us; and if it cannot make us adulterers, it nevertheless makes us worse than adulterers and those guilty of incest. For who, as a searcher of another's heart, would weigh the quality of each individual; and presume to be a fighter against Satan on behalf of another person, and yet a fit surety before God? He is mad concerning himself who promises anything, not to say if he also seems to place a pledge on behalf of a woman; since the apostle Paul pronounces thus concerning himself, saying: Not that I have already received, or am already justified, or am already perfect: but I follow on, if by any means I may apprehend, in which also I am apprehended by Christ.

Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but one thing, forgetting those things which are behind, toward those things which are before my feet, I follow according to the rule, toward the prize of the high calling of our Lord Jesus Christ. Whosoever therefore are perfect, let us be thus minded. It is a very small thing to me, he says, that I should be judged by you, or by man's day: but neither do I judge myself; but he that judgeth me is the Lord. And in another place: Blessed, he says, is he who judgeth not himself in that wherein he approveth another.

Although therefore we have nothing certain even concerning our own stability, we who are shaken without ceasing, sustaining the stormy assaults amid the waves of the world; yet if anyone has such great confidence in the immovability of his own firmness; let him at least be anxiously afraid lest he himself be a scandal to the sight of others, and let him be terrified by the voice of the Lord threatening: Woe, he says, to this world because of scandals: but nevertheless woe to that man through whom scandal cometh. If we fear and dread these threats of the Lord with a religious heart, let us fear our own danger more on account of others than on account of ourselves, we who are bound (by the apostle Paul) by mutual obligations: Not each one thinking of the things that are his own, he says, but of the things of others. And again: Let no one seek what is his own, but what is another's.

But someone, seizing from Paul himself something to set against this: Each one of you, he says, shall render account to God for himself: and each one shall bear his own burden. He therefore who does not wish to render account for another, ought not to take unlawful part in his affairs or his business: and he who strives to be free and exempt from the burdens of others, let him hold nothing of another's under himself by a contrary condition. For it is necessary that he be subject to another's account, who has handled another's business. He ought to be touched by the loss or expenditure of burdens, in whose keeping the burdens of a brother have perished under insufficient guard; because whatever in our house shall have been lost under less adequate protection, or thieves shall have broken in, is ours, and whatever is badly entrusted to our keeping through our negligence will be required of us. But then we are free from one another, if nothing of another's property is kept with us.

Perhaps someone may say: Therefore we ought not even to assemble together at the house of prayer, lest anyone scandalize anyone. This is the calumnious contradiction of heretical profession, which prescribes against good things so as to assert evil ones; and prejudges against holiness so as subtly to introduce uncleanness; and makes calumnies out of what is lawful, so that it may obtain what is unlawful. On account of which the apostle Paul prescribes against this heresy beforehand, saying: Nevertheless neither is the woman without the man, nor the man without the woman in the Lord. Far be it, far be it, that women should be prescribed against everywhere, or that permission should be granted everywhere. They have their places beside a husband, beside children, beside brothers, beside parents, beside servants; and in the house of prayer only alongside all the clergy. But in a single dwelling, without proper kinship, they have no fitting companions. This is the free woman who stands.

But whatever the free woman has inclined cannot stand, the Scripture saying: Thou shalt not turn aside to the right hand, nor to the left. And the Lord in the Gospel: But what is more than this is from evil. Learn now the measure of temperance, you who seek excess through license. Love women amid the sacred solemnities, and hate them in private communion; if you wish to hold to the teaching of Solomon: There is a time, he says, of loving, and a time of hating. Therefore the companionship of women is to be guarded against when the continual and unanimous frequenting of carnal cares is carried on: because amid their cares the flesh always provokes the incentives of desire; and there it produces the kindling of sin, where, in pondering its own temporal advantages, it shall have felt the thoughts of this life relax a little; as Solomon asserts, saying: Earthly thought depresses the mind that thinks on many things.

But in the assembly of sacred things, where the spirit holds sway, the handmaid, knowing herself, loses the use of her pleasure; she loses also her wantonness while heavenly things are treated, while holy mysteries are celebrated, all humanity is occupied, where all things are not human but divine: where reverence and trembling and terror are instilled; in all souls the perfect substance of the flesh is buried. Even amid the very traffickings of the flesh, many neglect the pleasure of the body, namely when exercises of arms are meditated by legions, or the forum resounds with disputes, or lecture-halls ring with letters, or merchants press earnestly upon their commerce, or craftsmen are intent upon their crafts themselves: how much more where not the carnal work of men but the spiritual work of angels is performed?

The assaults of the enemy can do nothing there, where even the demons themselves yield; and no distinction of any sex is permitted to be considered, where neither age nor dignity but equality alone reigns: and, to speak more fully, all there receive such senses that even conjugal union itself is forgotten, where Christ speaks, is heard, is attended to, and through all things and in all things is alone the whole, the Apostle bearing witness and saying: Where there is neither Jew nor Greek, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian nor Scythian, male nor female, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all. This assembly it is glorious to celebrate with women, in which there is no distinction of quality, where it is lawful only to make all equal without any difference: so that not even in Baptism itself does anyone's nakedness cause shame, where the infancy of Adam and Eve is renewed: nor does one put off, but rather receives, a garment.

But if even there there be someone worse than the devil, who is struck by the sight of women, yet your congregation is blamed for nothing, which is gathered together for heavenly, not for earthly things. Nevertheless if anyone there shall have been with wanton gaze, he in no way harms eternally one who has come not to a man but to Christ for salvation. Indeed I shall also exclude the objectors by their own contradictions, so that they yield not to my propositions but to their own. If amid the holy festivals the common assembly can be scandalized, where the tempter the devil himself trembled; who there promises himself to be steadfast, where the tempter boldly encounters him? And if we are in danger there, where God's precepts gather us together, what do we do where God's commands separate us? And if we are troubled there, where we are fortified by God's will; how much more where we have not only the devil but also the Lord against us?

For with the most sacred commands divine protection is ministered to us, as Isaiah says: He gave the law as a help; but without divine commands there can be no protection.

It is one thing that God commands to be done, and another to resist his will: whose commands are to be so kept that if he shall have commanded something which according to men seems unjust, it is to be believed just and done; and if he shall have commanded what is just, it is to be reckoned just and done: since that which he commands cannot be without justice, he who is powerful enough to call injustice justice by justifying it, and to prove justice a perverse injustice by reprobating it, whose will alone is true justice. For if everything we do, we do for this alone, that we may please the Lord; assuredly this alone will be just, whatever God has willed and commanded and approved, whom we are eager to please.

For since servants cannot know of themselves what pleases their masters, unless they follow the commands of their masters; and certainly men cannot know the wills of other men like themselves, unless they have received what they are to observe: much more do mortals not know how to comprehend the justice of the immortal God, unless he himself deigns to show the evidences of his justices, as Solomon confirms, saying: For who among men can know the counsel of God? Or who can think what God willeth? For the thoughts of mortal men are fearful, and our foresight is uncertain. For the body which is corrupted weigheth down the soul: and the earthly habitation presseth down the mind that museth upon many things. We can hardly guess aright at things that are upon earth, and with labour do we find the things that are before us: but the things that are in heaven, who shall search out? And who shall know thy thought, except thou give wisdom, and send thy Holy Spirit from the highest?

And if the paths of them that are on earth were corrected, and men have learned the things that please thee, and were healed by wisdom: those walking in darkness cannot show light to themselves, unless the light offer itself unbidden to those who do not see it. So human blindness does not direct the way to God, unless he himself show the lamp of the law. Whence David speaks thus, saying: Thy word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my paths. And again: The commandment of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes. This therefore is light-bearing, whatever has been made known by God: and this is worthy of God, which God himself declares acceptable to his will, that he may exercise dominion through all things. Otherwise neither would we be enrolled as servants, nor would he be held as Lord; if we were permitted to render servitude according to our own will, and by our own judgment, not God's, we were to choose the exercises of justice.

Such persons the apostle Paul makes vain, saying: Being ignorant of God's justice, and seeking to establish their own, they are not subject to the justice of God. Let these vain circumlocutions now be removed from the midst, and complaints that are calumniously empty. To spiritual acts with women, with God's help, we do not fear to be united, we who believe that through God's command we perform justice, from which we know that defences are placed under us. But in private, for the very many continent clergy and virgins, separate lodgings are to be maintained, because what God judges iniquitous cannot be just. Yet cohabitation, even if no shameful custom is known in the cohabitation itself, inflames; because it is impossible for chastity to come to victory which strives to fight against God's commands. For as much as the law suggests help to those who obey, so much does it incite sin in those who disobey, the Apostle saying: The strength of sin is the law.

He therefore who commanded us to triumph with women in his sacred assemblies, himself commands us to beware in private of the battles that women bring.

There are indeed other necessities which compel us also privately to see women, yet even these demand the efficacy of a divine work or precept—that we visit, that we offer consolation, that we wholesomely impart vital exhortations: and yet even in these duties no less care must be taken for our conduct, so that marks of purity may shine forth in our actions. Let seriousness not be absent, which under a cleric can restrain a woman, so that she receives our very consolation with trembling, and so feels the affection of the visit that she reveres the cleric. And lest it be too slow to range through each particular: in whatever we do, it can be honorable, if the signs of honor always shine in us—as the Apostle Paul, embracing all things, says: Let all your things be done honestly. And again: As we have commanded you, he says, that you walk honestly.

Whatever is done indiscriminately does not turn out well; and what is carried out as holy is not holy, unless what is holy is performed holily, as Solomon affirms, saying: For they who keep just things justly shall be justified. Sincerely, therefore, sincerity itself must be preserved; and everything that belongs to a vow must be marked also in action, lest vows commend one thing and actions suggest another. The disposition of the will must be proved on every side, and the course of each contest must be completed on every side, lest something be lacking for the triumph if the fight is not waged more fully. Hence the Apostle Paul introduces the lessons of contests: But also he who strives in the contest, he says, shall not be crowned, unless he has striven lawfully. And again: Do you not know, he says, that they who run in the stadium all run indeed, but one receives the prize? So run, that you may obtain it.

For every one who strives in the contest abstains from all things: and they indeed that they may receive a corruptible crown, but you an incorruptible one. It is therefore the fullness of holiness, and the perfect palm, that on every side it have nothing within itself that it would refuse; lest what it professes to hate, it appear to love by holding it.

But if anyone says: I hold my adversary captive, over whom I may always exult—let him take care lest perchance the captive begin to prevail against him. A thief shut in with a treasure is never held securely; nor is a lamb safe that dwells within one cage with a wolf. He willed to be overcome who brought his own enemy within his gates; and he placed an internal sword against himself who opened the place of his dwelling to the entrances of his adversary; and he who trusts to live with a scandal says without cause: I wish to be at peace with the devil—contrary to the Apostle who says: Give no place to the devil. Therefore the place where the treasure is hidden must be fortified on every side, lest through one cavity the thief undermine the whole wall. For if one who assails from without is scarcely driven off from the walls, how much will he avail if he has received a dwelling within the walls?

And if those who shut their gates against him are sometimes captured by him, how much more is he deceived who has voluntarily opened the entrance to him? Since Solomon says: If the just man is scarcely saved, where shall the unjust man appear? All crevices, not to say gates, must therefore be closed, lest through one opening the whole camp be penetrated; and all fortifications must be set in order, lest through one small unfortified point the whole city fall, as Solomon repeats, saying: He who despises small things shall fall little by little.

It comes about, I believe, by the zeal of this perversity, that a woman is chosen by clerics for companionship rather than a man. Is a woman so much more useful to the needs of a cleric as a continent male, or a boy, is useful to a continent male? Or will that be a fitting utility which an unfitting companionship produces? And where will that be which Solomon says: Every animal loves its like? And again: Birds gather with those like themselves. But even if a woman is considered more useful, carnal advantages ought not to be preferred to the benefits of spiritual goods: and it was expedient to endure some useless man for the sake of guarding one's reputation, rather than the good services of a woman with the most shameful reputation. Which Solomon compares, saying: Better, he says, is the iniquity of a man than a woman who does good.

The poisonous arts of the devil are therefore always crafted, by which, exercising the ingenuity of his cunning, he helps those devoted to holiness with deceitful conveniences in order to destroy them: and among the continent, as though supplying necessary advantages through mutual aids, he first brings it about that a man and a woman dwell together equally; so that after he has made them inseparable through mutual consolations, he may be able to kill those who give their simple souls to keeping vows of chastity: and withdrawing meanwhile the weapons of his assault, as a calm patron he suggests arguments for sanctity, until he has nourished for a long time between the two an inimical harmony. He makes them affable to one another and devoted to each other, and as a hostile flatterer removing all obstacles, he rejoices to lend effectiveness to their conveniences; so that commending them to one another by total necessity, he may be able to show them hanging in mutual dependence upon accustomed consolation.

He does not wish to hinder them in anything, lest he separate them both spiritually and carnally. He causes them to live undisturbed, lest the very beginnings of the companionship at an untimely moment trouble the covenants begun. To such a degree does he invite, foster, and raise them up to the perfection of holiness in the sight of all: that they reckon as benefits of God those very contrary things by which they are led to perish; not knowing that God never aids what He forbids. To these the devil, flattering them so greatly, prepares a security of holiness, so that they joined together esteem themselves more than those separated, to persevere unmoved with respect to lust: and leading them along with all tranquility, he disturbs them with no storms or waves; and as though in the middle of the sea he leads the less cautious to slacken their sails and seek no rudder, so that when stirred by a sudden tempest, he may plunge them as shipwrecked men by an unexpected upheaval.

This gentleness he first displays, so that he may entice two ships to come together with one another; and when he has made them joined, he may be able to dash them against each other by sudden whirlwinds and break them: and he uses these flatteries, so that withdrawing all darts and suppressing adversities, suggesting prosperity, he may conceal for so long a smoldering fire without any flames, until joining two torches he may kindle both at once: and he ceases so long to apply the weapons of his savagery, until like a skilled hunter he binds with the bonds of his snare those whom he is about to slay. But when he has bound them fast with an indissoluble chain; like a trainer of gladiators he straightway compels two gladiators to arm themselves against each other; and thereupon goading their members, he at once fits the swords, at once kindles the madness, and driving home wounding embraces, he slays both at once with a single blow.

Thus he unfolds what he before appeared to bestow, thus from simple charity he forges illicit love, thus through holiness he brings upon himself destruction; while he is content to yield, thus he prevails more strongly to seize; and while submissive he suffers himself to appear vanquished, thus he glories more fully in conquering. The Apostle Paul understands his wiles thus, saying: For we are not ignorant, he says, of his devices. Ill at peace therefore in this partnership are those who are destroyed unto war while the devil makes peace, and they do not advance well in holiness, for whom the very progress is suborned by the enemy's craft to their detriment; nor do they strive with a straight course to climb the steps of continence, those whom the adversary labors to bring to the summit in order to cast them down from on high.

But it is necessary that they be dashed by ruinous falls, who have held a slippery path, of which Solomon thus foretells, saying: There is a way which seems right to men; but the last ends thereof come into the depths of hell. But they say: If clerics are censured for this union, many saints who are with us must also be censured. Such as Elijah, who dwelt with the widow: or the Apostles, who led women as companions with them: such as John, who took the Lord's mother, the Lord Himself so appointing; or the Lord Himself, to whom certain devout women provided sustenance from their own means, to whom also Martha ministered at table, and who spoke alone at the well sitting with a foreign Samaritan woman, or at whose feet a woman washed them with tears as He reclined, and wiped them with her hair.

Crafty arguers and deceitful lawyers: who, while they desire to transgress controversies and the proceedings of cases, even pervert the laws themselves; and when they are unwilling to be restrained by the fitting commands of the laws, they throw out inconvenient examples as though similar legal conjectures to mock the judges: who are detected by the sagacity of the law itself through Solomon: A sinful man, he says, avoids correction, and finds a comparison according to his own will. Such men therefore are to be refuted not by argument but rather by correction, so that they may not be instructed by interpreted arguments before they have committed what they found for the comfort of their defense; as Solomon teaches us against men of this sort, saying: Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou become like him; but answer a fool according to his folly, lest he seem wise to himself. Truly great men who compare themselves to the saints, and our distinguished manner of life, which might seem equal to that of Prophets or Apostles.

For the occasion of our lust we wish to imitate the saints perversely; and in other actions we are unwilling to follow the footsteps of the just. In some things we excuse ourselves as weak for imitating the deeds of our elders; and in others we prostrate ourselves as equals to our elders: when Elijah himself, placed in distress, confesses himself before God to be unequal to his fathers. Am I, he says, better than my fathers? This Elijah is compelled to cry out concerning his predecessors in his weakness: and we do not hesitate to equal our virtue to that of Elijah or the Prophets, and the Apostles, and the Lord? I see plainly that avarice is so trampled among you, as the Apostles gave up all their own possessions. I see that gluttony and drunkenness are so absent from your feasts, as the Apostles having nothing were frequently compelled to hunger.

I recognize that fasting, thirst, hunger, nakedness prevail among us everywhere for the sake of the urgency of teaching alone, just as we read they triumphed in the Apostles; and the same exercises of virtues are approved to burn fervently among us, by which the Apostles caused all vices to tremble. Plainly we meditate upon the forty days' fast of the Lord, and the prayers and vigils by which He broke even the nocturnal silences through the solitudes. Do we frequent similar contests against the struggles of vices, and do we so act with rigor, austerity, vigils, sufferings, labor, necessity, affliction, abstinence, by which sins are trampled down, that no one suspects any evil of us?

Through these things the Apostle Paul glories that his conscience has been made known to all: In all things, he says, commending ourselves as ministers of God, in much endurance, in pressures, in temptations, in tribulations, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in seditions, in invocations, in labors, in watchings, in fastings, in chastity, in knowledge, in longsuffering, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in charity unfeigned, in the word of truth, in the power of God, by the armor of righteousness on the right hand and on the left. For these imitations we are weak; and for leading women about we claim for ourselves the possibility of comparable imitation: but even if someone had boasted of fulfilling all those things; no one's persuasion could have inclined me to believe others now to be Apostles, against the profession of the Apostle Paul: Are all, he says, Apostles? Are all Prophets?

If Christ dared to compare Himself to God, who said: The Father is greater than I: or if the Apostles dared to make themselves equal to Christ: a similar fortitude makes us today equal to the Apostles. Wretched humanity, in this equality dost thou not fear to be struck by lightning, thou who dost not hesitate to borrow from the Son of God, or from the sons of thunder, examples as though similar to thy sins? Since it is the pride of elated boasting even to wish to write anyone as comparable to the least members of the Church, when Paul warns and says: Each esteeming the other superior to himself. And below he added, saying: Have this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being established in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal to God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant.

Less therefore must we think of our own powers, nor must our weakness be compared to the fortitude of the saints, as the Apostle Paul sets before us his own teaching concerning himself, and says: For we dare not, he says, compare ourselves or match ourselves with certain ones who commend themselves, but we ourselves commending ourselves among ourselves to ourselves: not glorying beyond measure, but according to the measure of the grace which God has measured out to us. For indeed we contemplate what he said again: I have labored more than all of them, nothing better, nothing more fitting is set before me by which I may conquer, unless I myself prescribe from the very one from whom it is prescribed to me. Certainly he himself labored more than all, and yet he trembled to imitate his colleagues in leading women about, lest he subject himself to carnal temptation unto destruction.

Wherefore he himself gave the reason thus, saying: I, he says, so run, not as uncertainly: so fight I, not as one beating the air, but I chastise my body and bring it into subjection, lest perhaps having preached to others, I myself should be found reprobate. Compare thyself therefore to this man, thou who boastest of the Apostle; and learn from him what thou shouldst fear, who cries out and says: I beseech you, be ye imitators of me. He was unwilling therefore to have confidence in leading women about; who did not ignore how much certain virtues differ from other virtues, and had intimated one glory of the sun, and another of the moon, and another of the stars, drawing a comparison from the ecclesiastical charisms.

But we on the contrary flatter ourselves with apostolic equality, not attending at all to what the Apostles and all the saints accomplished with unconquered virtue, and we seek to break through a difficult path, when a plainer one is set before us through easy things; against Solomon saying: Do not trust thyself, he says, to a laborious way, lest thou place a stumbling block for thy soul. Nor does anyone consider, that one man walks securely on slippery ground, and another who is unequal to it, slips: one ascends mountains over crags at a run, another if he has pressed himself, falls. It falls to one to steer ships happily through storms, and such good fortune cannot befall another; which the Apostle Paul determines, saying: Each one, he says, has his own gift from God, one indeed in this way, and another in that way.

But those who prejudge me by the example of the saints; why are they unwilling to contemplate another example which they might fear: and he who contends to be made equal to the Apostles, why does he not rather set before himself as a warning the adulterous presbyters in Daniel? These things however I do not set forth in order to contradict those who are as it were imitators of the Apostles, but to confound those who make themselves equal to the saints.

Nor do I deny that those are to be followed, whom we have all received as teachers; but I contend against those who, desiring to pervert the histories of good men for their own evil purposes, reckon the law of God to be on their side; as all who hasten to perish, and under the pretext of the saints wish their own disgraces to be concealed, so that under the imitation of their elders they may commit all manner of contrary things; whom the Apostle Paul exposes and makes public, saying: But what I do, and will do, is to cut off the occasion of those who desire an occasion; that in that wherein they glory, they may be found even as we are. For such false apostles are deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ.

They add this to heap up the heap of perdition, so that they defame the good, whose example they use for evil; for whom it would be sufficiently useful and wholesome, if they believed themselves rather not to have understood the reason of any history, than to reckon anything dishonorable in the law: whom the Apostle Paul rebukes and confounds, saying: Understanding neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertions. And again: If anyone thinks he knows something, he has not yet known as he ought to know. The prejudices of the wanton are therefore void, whom the wandering ingenuity of their perversity leads astray; and they seek histories suited to their own meanings to expound, those who acting evilly borrow legal patronages. To those who act well all things are good, whatsoever things are written, who receive blessings well; as the Apostle Paul promises: We know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully.

We have prevailed by confounding those who contradict. Let us thereupon turn to instruct further those same whom we have overcome, lest we either suffer them to remain in their fault as though saints, or be reckoned ignorant in rendering an account, so that publicly vanquished they may do penance: or if they shall be unwilling, we have discharged what pertains to our own diligence; so that as we have satisfied the above-mentioned sentence of Solomon, so we may satisfy the Apostle Paul preaching: The servant, he says, of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle toward all, apt to teach, patient, with all meekness correcting those who resist the truth; if peradventure God may give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth, and they may recover themselves from the snares of the devil, by whom they are held captive according to his will.

Everything that was done by our authors was done with reason: so that a well-fortified authority might be handed down to us their posterity against transgressors, for the purpose of cutting off the heresy which we noted above, concerning the taking in of women; which heresy the Lord relaxed somewhat, either through himself or through his servants, lest by too great a rigidity the whole fabric of the Lord be condemned; for the Lord foresaw the heretics who do away with marriage, and who strive to separate those whom the Lord has joined, contrary to the principle of nature and contrary to the Gospel. Authority was being prepared even then to forbid these men, lest married women who had served in his presence be prevented from coming to Christ. But even that permission which was arranged was not without moderation, and it did not work for itself what it was doing, but for others.

For when the Lord thus addressed the Samaritan woman, he taught her for a time and then departed, and did not make a defense for continuing in excesses. He also suffered Martha to minister for a time. But what else was there for the Lord, except to minister the banquets of the heavenly kingdom? Were there not feasts under the Lord? Or under his majesty was there any other food or drink than discipline alone, which gave nourishment? As the Lord himself testifies and says: My food is to do the will of him who sent me.

So the company of women was fitting for the Apostles not that they might be corrupted, but that they might learn reverence, and they followed for the purpose of rendering the service of human need, as is recorded in the Gospel concerning the Lord and concerning them alike: And it came to pass, it says, after these things, that he himself journeyed through cities and villages, preaching the kingdom of God, and the twelve with him, and women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary who is called Magdalene, out of whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others who ministered to him of their substance.

Did they each attach themselves to individual men, or did they persist in undisciplined cohabitation, living in alluring companionship? There the whole Church will be seen, as it were, so that they followed not for improper feasting, but to learn the pursuits of good conduct. Therefore it is not written there of anything that might be equated with our feasting; no laughter, no jesting is said to have been present. Nor, as is customary among some even to this day, is a chorus of singing virgins said to have charmed ears with poisonous songs. And to prove briefly from the Apostles how much loose familiarity was able to displease them, who were compelled to doubt even concerning the Lord himself speaking with a woman, had not the well-proven knowledge of his majesty restrained them, as the Evangelist reports, saying: Meanwhile, it says, his disciples came, and they marveled that he was speaking with a woman. Yet no one said to him: What do you seek, or why do you speak with her?

But what shall I say of the approach of the woman who cast herself at the feet of the Lord, whose weeping and lamentation the shameless do not blush to demand in defense of their wantonness? To such a degree does their own blindness carry them away, that they dare not struggle against similar cases, concerning which Solomon says: Their wickedness blinded them, so that they did not know the mysteries of God. John moreover appears to have taken the mother of the Lord into his care, but the mother whose name of mother declares her character. Yet I cannot admit other mothers of Christ as well, nor is she to be equated with all women, who gave birth to the Majesty. Elijah also was commanded by the Lord to leave his solitude and enter the dwelling of the widow.

He labored under the Lord's command to remain in a house, to whom solitude afforded comfort and rest; the Lord offered him an occasion for doing great things, so that in a time of famine he might supply sufficient food both to the widow herself and to her children, he who had endured want, afflicted everywhere by fasting; and he who had been sent to be fed, feeding rather and conferring upon the wretched, caused the miseries of destitution to be shut out. And this cannot favor anyone's licentiousness; since there was no opportunity for scandal where, passing through, he had a dwelling more destitute than any guest would flee. But here, among those with whom he lodged, he fulfilled his purpose and returned; who, even if he had tarried, could not have been suspected. What kind of communal effect was there in that place, where there was no food? And what manner of entry did Elijah have to the widow, to whom famine gave hospitality?

Whoever you are who wish to be called a disciple of Elijah in the matter of dwelling with the widow, first endure the afflictions of solitude and the outcome of forty days of fasting, and either you will not seek a woman, or there will be no one to dwell with a woman, and yet if you shall have prevailed, keep it for yourself. But for us, the Angel and the Lord Christ point to none other than John alone as one who came in the spirit and power of Elijah.

Alas for grief! We are compelled to grieve over what we teach: that we have come to this point, that in comparison with the dissolute, we dispute concerning the tremendous virtues of the saints. Spare us, now spare us, O insolence. The saints never agree with you; they who conducted their dealings with women in a religious, modest, venerable, chaste, and decorous manner. Or if you still strive to seek out the windings of cavil through the saints; we nevertheless do not know the friends of God except as being recalled to veneration only, as David taught, saying: But to me thy friends are greatly honored, O God. Let the plunderers of modesty now go, and the kidnappers of chastity, to set forth to their little women the troubles of their complaints.

Among our saints they have no refuge at all, from which the wretched are forbidden by the authority of the Church through the Apostle Paul: And these, he says, avoid; for of this sort are those who creep into houses and lead captive silly women laden with sins, who are led away by various desires.

After this edict, would that they might trust that the examples of Angels are of benefit to them. They cannot now bend us, who know that even Angels fell with women. From these indeed they borrow their patronage well enough, but we hear no Angel speaking against the Apostle Paul: Even if I, he says, or an Angel of God should preach to you otherwise than what we have preached to you, let him be anathema. They are utterly mad, they burn with desire for women, all those who do not yield to this prohibition; and gaping after obscenities, they prefer to die rather than be content to be separated from the sides of women by any distance: so that to fill the gluttony of their greed they may not be without the pleasure of a woman even for a moment of time: and this is the fruit they have in women, that with their attention always fixed upon them, they satisfy the desires of their eyes, lest any moment pass in which they lack what they crave.

Thus integrity dies among them; where all companionship, whether in feasting or in dwelling together, is defiled by corrupt affections. These are the ones whom the holy Apostle Peter designated, saying: Rioting in their feasts, having eyes full of adultery and of unceasing sin, beguiling unstable souls. These also Solomon marks out thus: An abomination it is, he says, before the Lord to fix the eye. Plainly on the contrary, Job testifies that he has a pure eye, saying: And if my heart has consented to my eyes. But indeed he cannot be held guilty in his eyes, upon whom an unexpected encounter with a woman has brought a temptation which his mind immediately expels as something it did not will.

But he does not deserve to escape the disturbance of his sight, who keeps within himself the material of scandal, who wishes to enjoy the affections of his desire, who craves to have what casts offense upon the eyes, whose insatiable greediness amid continual stumbling-blocks can in no way be altogether restrained; which Solomon confirms, saying: Hell and destruction are never satisfied, likewise the eyes of men are insatiable. And in another place: The eye is not satisfied with seeing. And again: What has been created more wicked than the eye?

Not stung by this chastisement, they despise the divine prohibitions with the obstinacy of their wicked familiarity, and moreover still plead charity as their excuse, who according to the word of Isaiah swallow bitterness in place of sweetness, and cover naked foulness with the veil of a good name; while among them true love is violated under the guise of false affection. But charity cries out and protests: such persons I did not join; the other is a false one which, counterfeiting me, invented them. I never oppose the precepts of God, I never favor the dissolute, I do not wish holiness to be blamed on my account. A perverted kinship brings calumnies upon me; I too have incurred dangers among false brethren. Come to my aid, my herald, come to my aid, O Apostle Paul, bear witness for me, lest what you proclaim concerning me be perverted. Now the end of the commandment is charity from a pure heart, and a good conscience, and faith unfeigned.

Shall that be reckoned as love, through which an injury to holiness is assailed with accusations? Or shall their brotherhood be deemed sincere, through whom the daughters of mother Church are brought into guilt? If such is noted as Christian charity; undoubtedly hatreds are better, which, while they separate, defile no one. But this parricidal love is accustomed to unite persecuting brethren, who willingly suffer the daughters of the Church to be defamed as fornicators from their company, contrary to the charity which the Apostle Paul taught, saying: Love works no evil to a neighbor. A fine proof of charity, which not only harms a neighbor with a noxious brotherhood, but also refuses to be subject to the prescriptions of the Apostolic command. Let the assertors of this kind of love be confounded, whom those judge who for the common good forsake even the charity of blood relations. Throughout almost the whole world the human race is joined together, and everywhere natural kinship is separated by mutual journeying abroad.

Parents can, children can, brothers can, and even spouses themselves can—which is more—break asunder the bonds of nature granted to them by God; and clergymen, without God's concession, and moreover against his prohibition, are unable to refuse a charity enslaved to the bonds of women? The desired nearness of relatives is always absent from kinsmen; and clergymen are reluctant to journey away from women who are strangers to them? They who ought to do so even if the Lord had commanded something peculiar or unusual; who have the Holy Spirit to accomplish impossible things, which worldly men do not have. Wherefore the Apostle John thus admonishes, saying: Little children, overcome them, because greater is he who is in you than he who is in this world.

But now what is possible even for the Gentiles (I will not say for Christians) and appears easy, is rendered void among clergymen without any effect; so that it is too little for them to despise the commandments of God, unless they have another disgrace in that they do not even pursue, I will not say overcome, the custom of all the Gentiles: against whom the Lord reproaches through Ezekiel and says: You have not walked in my statutes, and you have not done my judgments. But neither have you done according to the judgments of the Gentiles who are round about you. This love signifies something shameful, I know not what, which is thought to be wrested out contrary to nature.

I have yet something more to marvel at: When I see that very many among Christians, both husbands and wives alike, having resolved upon continence, choose rather to have separate dwellings, so that by the agreement of their common vows, without the irritation of each other's presence and with a harmonious withdrawal, they may be able to obtain it: and our eunuchs cannot endure to sleep without the companionship of a woman? Among those, conjugal love is weighed against continent love; and among the eunuchs, cohabitation with a woman can never have any distaste. Let the charity of the eunuchs say, let it say, lest perhaps in this withdrawal conjugal charity sin the more; so that the counsel of the Apostle Paul might seem to have made a mockery of divorce for married persons: The time that remains, he says, is short. It remains that both those who have wives should strive to be as though they had none, and those who have none should glory as though they had them.

Of these the Apostle himself says: Their glory is in their shame.

It is love, they say. O love that begrudges itself! O charity that desires to be praised in reproach! A great miracle, that the charity of virgins makes virgins believed to be as wives: and the charity of wives makes wives esteemed as virgins. Behold true love, which divides in conjugal union, so as to join in chastity. Behold holy love, which brings upon married persons an absence for their common praise.

These assuredly love one another inseparably, who, in order to win triumphs for themselves, depart from one another; from whom neither sin, nor nature, nor law, nor the Lord, nor the Apostle has forbidden or taken away the power of union, but for the sake of guarding their equal vows, charity which they have vowed withdraws in harmonious absence, they who yield neither to sin, nor to nature, nor to law, nor to the Lord, nor to the Apostle, nor to conjugal union itself; whom a shameful virginity condemns as much as a chaste conjugal life glorifies those others, for whom it should suffice as a disgraceful punishment that eunuchs are judged by married persons. For their rebuke, the children of Israel also must not be passed over in silence, who at the time of Ezra did not hesitate to put away wives and children taken contrary to the divine laws, nor attempted to excuse themselves against the charity of the Lord. But let me confess, if I am permitted.

Those who now, for the sake of dismissing women, cling to those belonging to others: what would they do if they were commanded to cast away children and wives? Or when will they be able to renounce kinswomen for Christ, who put their little women—not their own—before the precepts of Christ? I say they could more easily deny their own parents for the sake of those same little women than leave those little women for the sake of Christ; despising what the Lord himself said in the Gospel: If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father, or mother, or wife, or children, or brothers, and sisters, and his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

If those who hesitate about casting off their parents are unworthy of Christ, what do they promise themselves, whom not parental affection but contempt displays before Christ? And therefore the merits of those are made void, whom they see to make no exception of kinsmen's persons in the contemplation of Christ. And no less—indeed even worse—do those put them to shame, who, fearing to wrestle not only with another's flesh but even with their own, withdraw after cutting away their generative members. Concerning these I suspend my judgment for the moment, leaving it to be brought forth in another disputation. In comparison with the confusion of eunuchs, I do not hesitate to assert as better those who, sparing not even themselves, dare, I will say, to extend temptations to women. Let the spiritual eunuchs answer: what madness is there in the love of women, or what mystery is there in the cohabitation of a woman, that they indulge alien members to their own ruin, when those others do not hesitate to cut away even their own?

These cast away members confirmed in themselves; and those are bound fast to enemy members. These do not hesitate to fight for spiritual integrity with the torment of a body not intact; and those, without torment, being intact, refuse to be without the half that women supply. But no comparison is to be made between those and our own people; lest those condemned by any Christian judgments take comfort. There are some yet more to be mentioned who are worse, so that it may be a greater punishment to be condemned by one who has been mutilated. Let them consider that the Jews to this day, by the command of the law, truncate a part of their flesh by circumcision; and let them know what they deserve, who, though the Gospel commands it, dissemble in performing the Lord's will in the presence of women as though circumcised, not understanding what the Lord himself said: Unless your righteousness shall abound more than that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

I think also that those who reproach us with the charge of idolatry from their Galli may insult us—those who, cutting themselves, willingly torture themselves, provided that, at the cost of their own condition, they obey the pretenses of idols. But our clerics, rather for the gain of their own body, wish to endure the loss of the women dwelling with them; women whom they ought even to uproot from their own substance, if it happened that they were born with them, lest, compared to idolaters and the sacrilegious, they should blush. Concerning these also the Lord rebukes the contemptuous, saying: The children of this world are more prudent than the children of light. Therefore the profane devotion of such persons is to be preferred to our clerics, for whom, at the cost of such great ruin, shameful priesthoods are beloved. But clerics, for the dignity of the heavenly priesthood, shed no blood, endure no iron, there is no wound, there is no torment; but the mere gaze of a woman holds out against the Lord.

So they rush upon women, so they love women, that they do not hope that the impure mysteries of their love can ever be made manifest; just as through those like them they have been shamefully made public and detected; whom the apostle Paul had foreseen even then, saying: The sins of some men are manifest, going before to judgment, but those of others follow after. In like manner also good works are manifest, and those that are otherwise cannot be hidden.

But on the other hand they themselves say: Some of those who despise us, likewise having women in their houses, have obtained martyrdom, so that their innocent conscience was proved. I do not wish anyone to move against me the case of martyrdom; because very often adulterers, and men of blood, and drunkards, and those guilty of every crime, having found an occasion for combat after their conversion, have deserved to attain to the pardon of martyrdom. For this reason martyrdom is called both a crown and a baptism; because it baptizes and crowns alike. Grant now, if it were permitted to some to merit martyrdom with the society of women kept inviolate; even without indulgence, martyrdom itself was not available to those whom the guilt of forbidden cohabitation did not absolve. Nor could it approve them as innocent in that very innocence; those to whom the Church is seen to have forgiven contempt of the law and the foulness of an illicit manner of life, and—what is graver above all—the crime against the Church.

For that innocence is harmful which injures the reputation of the bride of Christ. And since Christ, the innocent Lamb—or rather, what is truer, heavenly innocence itself—despised himself entirely for the Church, so as to render her spotless and without any wrinkle or blemish; what manner of cleric is he to whom the bride of Christ is entrusted, so that for the love of one woman he suffers the whole Church to be blamed? We dare to say: The Son was sent by God the Father from the bosom of the Father, and endured to be absent from his kingdom, so that he might make the Church innocent; and a cleric cannot forsake the side of a woman, lest he render the Church of Christ infamous?

But they say: In martyrdom pardon is granted to us, just as it was granted to parents. Let us all therefore take confidence from this regarding our sins; so that we who labor to do good may wander amid luxuries, and run through the paths of sinners, let loose our restraints, and slacken our reins: let us go wherever the world carries us, and wherever the devil invites us, let us freely fornicate, envy, plunder, defraud, commit all evils without care; martyrdom will come to our aid and we shall escape. For thus the apostle Paul promises: Let us do evil that good may come: whose damnation is just.

Let those entrust their hope to this martyrdom whom astrologers have taught to have foreknowledge of tomorrow; let those await these crowns who have learned through astrologers to know, above Angels and Christ, the times which the Father has placed in his own power, so that they may at least then remember, when they feel the day of the Lord as a thief, that they ought to have acted well before the time of martyrdom. But let us believe that martyrdom hangs over them even now. In the meantime, before they become martyrs, they are subject to the laws: so that they may be brought to judgment, unless they are disarmed of their weapons. It is a wicked boldness to set against them the persons of parents in opposition to the authority of the Lord, from whom the Lord himself has taken away the voice of this contradiction. Walk not, he says, in the legal ordinances of your fathers, and keep not their justifications; and mingle not yourselves in their pursuits, and defile not yourselves.

I am the Lord your God; walk in my commandments, and keep my justifications.

Let them now know that the protections of parents have been taken from them—those who run hither and thither seeking hiding-places of contradictions, lest they ever be without women: and because they are abandoned on every side without the support of defense, having exhausted all their remaining arguments, they think that the sentence of the apostle Paul comes to their aid, and they say: Who are you, that you judge another man's servant? The apostle Paul indeed acknowledges the words of his own ordinance as having been uttered; but he does not recognize those who cite and invoke that ordinance. For he granted that defense to those who impugn no part of the law; and he bestowed that protection on those who do something of their own will, and hinder nothing of ecclesiastical right. He treats of the right of living, and not of eating; confirming the free choice of each individual.

He commanded that no one be judged in matters of a like kind, which divine authority, conceding to the will of individuals, has mercifully permitted in both the doing and the not doing. But those he subjected to ecclesiastical tribunals whom no impunity excused as transgressors of an ordinary transgression; so that those who indiscriminately bring against us as a kind of counter-plea (Who are you, that you judge another man's servant?) may at the same time recognize as reasonable and certain what we receive from the same apostle Paul as a rebuttal: We command you, he says, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw yourselves from every brother walking disorderly, and not according to the tradition which you received from us.

We have escaped, I think, so many bonds of questions, with which the feminine embraces have bound the lovers of eunuchs: who are compelled by perverse interpretations to alter legal decrees; and prefer to be heard proposing vain and fabulous inventions, rather than themselves to hear what is true: of whom the apostle Paul gives notice, saying: They will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables. Let them seek out whatever else they wish, in order to resist the truth on behalf of women. They have no victory, among whom, against Esdras, woman rather than truth prevailed. But you, most dear sons, I address not only by persuasion but by authority. Despise such raving; whose questions you know the apostle Paul to have condemned everywhere, as he wrote to the Romans, saying: I beseech you, brethren, to mark them who make dissensions and offences contrary to the doctrine which you have learned, whether in word or deed, and avoid them.

And likewise he charges Timothy: Contend not in words; for it is profitable for nothing, but to the subverting of the hearers. Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness, and their word will spread as a canker. And to show what doctrine is fitting for clerics in their ordering, so as to set aside questions, he likewise intimates to Titus, saying: But speak you the things that become sound doctrine: that the elder men be sober, prudent, sound in faith, in charity, in sincere patience. Therefore let your obedience receive simple teachings, and avoid the deceitful cunning of shifting contradictions.

Clear a pure path for your steps, and do not sow or tread upon thorns and briars, lest the good seed be unable to bring you the fruits of holiness on account of the thicket of thorns. Wherefore the prophet Jeremiah thus exhorts and teaches, saying: Sow not among thorns. Circumcise yourselves to your God, circumcise the foreskin of your heart. All things therefore that are accustomed to prick and lacerate must be cut away from our field; lest the mind of the husbandman be entangled in his own possession by malignant briers. And all things must be cut away from us, whatever the seething furnace of boiling flesh, teeming with the sulphurous flames of the fire-bearing tinder, causes to seethe; lest even a single spark preserved kindle greater fires. Which Solomon makes plain, saying: From a single spark a fire is increased. Turn away the impure occasions by which the inner parts of the breast are penetrated, so that a clear transparency may be honored in you.

Be content to endure the laborious singularity for the sake of preserving modesty, rather than to arrive at disgrace without labor.

Contemplate what it is to preside over a holy people, and consider what manner of thing it is to attend upon the divine sacraments. Those ought to please others who live for others, and such care of sincerity befits the consecrated as are the sacred things themselves in which they perform the offices of service; lest they offend the Lord in the very thing they handle, or begin to hinder among the people what they preach. On account of which the apostle Paul thus testifies: And we endure all things, he says, lest we give any hindrance to the Gospel of Christ. And again: Giving no offence to any man, that our ministry be not blamed. In this instruction therefore you must labor most earnestly, in those matters in which singularity rather than plurality is the true witness for the manifestation of gravity.

Consider how many evils this manner of life acquires; which sows nothing but corruption, causes vices to spring up, conceives cupidity, brings forth ignominy, stirs up rage, extends fury, feeds lasciviousness, nourishes wantonness, exalts falls, builds ruins, tears away banks, prepares precipices, navigates through dangers, sails toward shipwrecks, rejoices in perdition, fosters destruction, traffics in confusion, lays up reproach as treasure, heaps up accusations, inflames charges, and gathering at once in a mass into one bundle the numerous snares of captivity, through infinite disgraces brings manifold deaths upon the ruin of the lost.

So many and so great slaughters of calamity and most wicked manner of life, no one lays low, no one tramples down, no one buries, save chastity alone in its singularity: which is the unconquered bulwark of holiness, and the strong assault upon infamy; the firmness of fortitude, and the weakness of wanton lasciviousness; the defense of probity, and the destruction of improbity; the victory of the soul, and the spoil of the body; the abundance of glories, and the barrenness of crimes; the bride-companion of holiness, and the repudiation of baseness; the token of sincerity, and the abolition of scandals; the exercise of continence, and the total evacuation of luxury; the secure peace of virtues, and the quiet vanquishing of wars; the summit of purity, and the prison of lust; the harbor of honesty, and the place of shipwreck for ignominy; the mother of virginity, and the enemy of uncleanness; the breastplate of modesty, and the spoil of shamelessness; the destruction of corruption, the wall of rigor, and the overthrow of vulgarity; the sword of severity, the triumpher and slayer of dissolution; the armor of strengths, and the disarming of the dissolute; the dignity of integrity, and the condemnation of fornication; the height of renown, and the precipice of disgrace; the will of good works, and the affliction of vices; the refreshment of chastity, the punishment of wantonness; the acquisition of triumphs, and the loss of crimes; the rest of salvation, and the exile of perdition; the life of the spirit, and the death of the flesh; the condition of angelic quality, the funeral of human substance.

By its restraints all obscenity is bridled, and by its fetters the heels of raging lust are stayed. Against it as against rocks are broken whatever surges of inundating blood arise; and in it the foaming madness of bodily humour is calmed. Which, while it withdraws from itself the supports of concupiscence, is known to carry its own dead members: concerning which the apostle Paul forewarns, saying: Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, lust, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is the service of idols, for which things the wrath of God cometh.

From all these things human nature is castrated by nothing other than the splendid knife of singularity, so that circumcision, acting as steward, may introduce unblemished eunuchs to the banquet of holiness. To singularity, holiness has so promised the nuptial seal of its ring, that without it virginity is surrendered—virginity which, content with itself alone, tames desire, rectifies the mind, subdues concupiscence, extinguishes the longings of ardor, weakens the limbs, enslaves the body: and so crucifies carnal things that both male and female seem to belie their nature in their manner of life, while it operatively cuts away the workings of both sexes: or, making neither of the two, it glories in conferring upon both a third form, so that it is known to meditate upon the image of the resurrection, in the likeness of the Angels, before the resurrection itself. Which the Lord, promising it as a future thing, says: Those who are counted worthy of that age and of the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, nor indeed shall they die.

For they are like the Angels of God: because they are sons of the resurrection. This is what the holy singularity of clerics demands—that before it is transfigured, it may already be seen transfigured into the aspect of angelic brightness, which, cutting off all things from itself, plunders all the contests of concupiscence: whose praises Solomon sets forth, saying: It is better to be without children with glory. For immortality is in the memory of it; because it is known both with God and with men. When it is present, they imitate it, and desire it; when it has withdrawn itself, it triumphs crowned forever, winning the battle of undefiled contests.

There is none without children with glory except singularity alone, which not only is stained by no filth in its own conscience, but is also defamed by no suspicious opinions of plurality. For if chastity—which is difficult—preserves both male and female alike in virginity, it does not have glory; for community itself cannot but obscure it with certain shadows of reproach. Singularity, however, is so clear and manifest to all, that it is shown forth pure and bright to all in the splendor of its own whiteness. Hence the Apostle thus instructs us, saying: Walk as children of light: for the fruit of light is in all goodness, and justice, and truth, proving what is well-pleasing to God. And again: Do all things, he says, without murmuring and hesitation, and be blameless and simple as children of God, without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom you shine as lights in the world.

Thus singularity shines everywhere, so that all do not hesitate to shine on its account: and it so glorifies holiness within itself, that it wrests praise for itself even from its enemies. Which Paul the Apostle commands above all concerning any superior whatsoever, saying: Moreover he must have a good testimony from those who are outside, lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil. Love this, therefore; hold fast to this, which alone can vanquish women: while as yet no concupiscence assails the breast, and while simplicity still remains uncorrupted and at rest, hasten quickly to the protection of secret singularity, lest afterward you be unable to escape.

The approach must be forestalled against all snares, lest a hostile force creeping in first should meet those taken unawares. It is a salutary remedy to anticipate rather than to be anticipated: and to get ahead rather than to be gotten ahead of befits strong powers. Wherever there is foresight, all contrary things are frustrated; but where foresight is neglected, all contrary things hold sway. Before hunger we fight, before want we wear it down by labor. Thus through all things we remove the place for all calamities, while we exercise foresight for future times. How much more must the calamity of women be forestalled beforehand with every precaution; whose desire, if it is permitted to begin, never at all receives an end? Whose likeness Solomon sets forth, saying: Hell, and the love of a woman, and the earth which is not satisfied with water, and fire do not say: it is enough.

Let each one therefore who is secure because he is not yet tempted, fear; because nothing is said of him, let him take heed lest it be said: We are men, we carry our frailty in the flesh. Thus we ought now to surround and gird ourselves on all sides with watchful alertness, so that there be no part that wavers. We receive indeed spiritual strength, through which the frailty of our substance may be strengthened. But spiritual strength has been granted to us in such a way as to protect the provident, not the reckless: to fortify those who renounce the importunities of sins, not those who plunge themselves more deeply into importunate sins. A guardian Spirit has been given to us, but to assist by standing by those who turn away from contrary things, not to favor those who choose contrary things; nor to strengthen those who are willingly and headlong bent toward adversity, but to confirm those who strive to be separated from adversity.

For whoever dares to exercise virtue in pursuit of pernicious endeavors has no help from the Holy Spirit, who wills that no man should be compelled as a willing strong man toward fraudulent victories: nor does he protect—nay rather he abandons—the one whom he has recognized as rushing into dangers to seek triumphs through illicit outcomes; as he himself even then spoke through Solomon, saying: He who loves danger will perish in it.

In its own order, therefore, not by our own will, is the virtue of the Holy Spirit dispensed, and according to his institution are battles brought to a prosperous end. Never has an army fallen except when it was headlong—an army that, eager to act bravely, broke through the dispositions of its leader or commander; much more does he squander his strength perversely who has presumed to triumph without the arms of the teaching of the Spirit as master: since he says: Woe to those who do anything by their own presumption, and not through God.

If therefore there is in you any confidence in spiritual powers, remember what befits those who are spiritual: and if you believe yourselves to be fighting spiritually, acknowledge that what we teach is not carnal, as Paul the Apostle speaks, saying: If anyone thinks himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge what I write to you. There is no reason for you to flatter yourselves with this deceptive persuasion—that because you are spiritual, you should wish to dwell among the weapons of the shameful, and that you are not unfit for the dignity of the clerical office: because greater conflicts are wont to meet those who are greater. The rich are envied more sharply than the poor, and it is not the destitute but the wealthy whom the fierce assault of robbers disturbs. Leaders and princes are sought out by enemies in battle more than soldiers: and the summits, whatever they are that stand higher, are buffeted by violent winds and storms.

Therefore the more each one is able beyond others, the more he should know that he must fear lest he be diminished in anything, on account of which Solomon thus admonishes, saying: He who glories in riches, let him fear poverty. I beg you with all the strength I have, and beyond the strength I have, that these be the pursuits of all clerics: that they enjoy the retirement of blameless singularity—lest either they themselves through women, or women through them, be provoked to shameful mockeries. If anyone has a mother, or daughter, or sister, or wife, or kinswoman, let him keep her in such a way that no maidservant be present, nor any stranger enter; lest he seem to keep his own kinswomen for this purpose, that on their account he may freely admit women who are strangers to him: but if those who are kinswomen cannot be without the ministry of maidservants, or without the solace of female friends, it is better that they move to another dwelling, than that contrary persons be kept on their account.

For it is the human thing that neither should the cleric defraud them of necessary women, nor should they defile the cleric through importunate women. They can be assigned to holy women with whom they may live, provided that no woman dwell together with the cleric. No woman who is despised, no old woman, without kinship, is to be received in particular for domestic service: because transgression is committed more readily in what is illicit where the sin can be secure without suspicion; especially because for desire no ugliness, no contempt of disgust, or baseness exists, but the devil, painting it, makes beautiful whatever has been foul or hideous.

But if anyone, compelled by a journey, lodges with brethren or with strangers where women are present, let him restrain himself entirely, lest he be corrupted by some susceptibility. Withdrawn and apart, let him be free for God and for himself, lest he be caught inwardly by the devil; and let not one who could not be caught outside fall among his own. Let him who has fled enemies go forth for a time for salutary reasons to face them, and again hasten to depart quickly from their sight. Everywhere the presence of women is to be tasted, not prolonged, but the approach to women is to be shown in a manner that is, as it were, passing and fleeting. For the beginnings of wantonness are always being brought forward into the open; and it is a meditation on ruin to make frequent and habitual progress among women. Concerning this matter Solomon has imposed a rule upon us, saying: Do not be assiduous in the midst of women.

Walk thus, therefore; act thus, so that the bright senate of clerics may always stand firm in the Church. Let severity toward women be vigorous in you, let authority prevail, let rigor be maintained, let gravity be revered.

That we may gather all things together at once into a conclusion, we recite to you the summary which Paul the Apostle sets forth, reducing all things to a compendious fullness: Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are modest, whatsoever things are holy, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, if any praise of discipline, think on these things which you have received, and learned, and heard, and seen in me. Do these things; and the God of peace and love will be with you. Amen.