On the Crown

I say that none of the faithful has ever known a crown on the head except at a time of temptation of this kind. All observe this, from catechumens to confessors and martyrs, or those who deny the faith. You will see whence comes the authority of this custom, which is now chiefly under inquiry. Moreover, when it is asked why something is observed, it is at least established that it is observed. Therefore the offense committed against an observance already to be vindicated by its own name, and sufficiently authorized by the patronage of consent, can appear to be neither nonexistent nor uncertain; plainly, so that the reason must be sought—but with the observance preserved, and not for its destruction, but rather for its edification, that you may observe it the more, when you shall also be assured of the reason. But what manner of thing is it that a man should then call an observance into question when he has fallen away from it?

And should then inquire whence he received the observance when he has ceased from it?—when even if he wishes to seem to raise the question in order to show that he did not sin in abandoning the observance, he nonetheless sinned in presuming upon the observance. For if he did not sin today in accepting the crown, he sinned at some time in refusing it. And therefore this treatise will not be directed to those for whom the question does not apply, but to those who, out of zeal for learning, bring not a challenge but a consultation. For this matter is always under inquiry, and I praise the faith which believed it must be observed before it learned why. And it is easy to demand at once: Where is it written that we should not wear crowns? But indeed, where is it written that we should wear them? For those who demand the patronage of Scripture on the opposing side prejudge that the patronage of Scripture must also be present on their own side.

For if it shall be said that it is lawful to wear a crown because Scripture does not forbid it, it will equally be retorted that it is not lawful to wear a crown because Scripture does not command it. What will discipline do? Will it accept both, as though neither were forbidden? Or will it reject both, as though neither were commanded? But what is not forbidden is freely permitted. Nay, what is not freely permitted is forbidden.

And how long shall we saw back and forth along this line, having an inveterate observance which by anticipation has established its standing? If no Scripture has determined this, certainly custom has confirmed it, which without doubt flowed from tradition. For how can anything be adopted in practice if it has not first been handed down? Even in the claim of tradition, you say, written authority must be required. Let us therefore inquire whether tradition, unless it be written, ought not to be received. We shall plainly deny that it ought to be received, if no precedents prejudge the case of other observances which we defend without any documentary support of Scripture, by the title of tradition alone and thence by the patronage of custom.

To begin, then, with baptism: about to enter the water, there and also somewhat earlier in the church under the hand of the president, we solemnly declare that we renounce the devil, and his pomp, and his angels: then we are immersed three times, making a somewhat fuller response than the Lord determined in the Gospel. Thence, having been received, we taste a harmony of milk and honey; and from that day we abstain from the daily bath throughout the whole week. The sacrament of the Eucharist, which was commanded by the Lord to all at the time of a meal, we receive even at our pre-dawn gatherings, and from the hand of none but the presidents: we make offerings for the dead, for birthdays, on the annual day. We count it unlawful to fast on the Lord's Day, or to worship kneeling. We enjoy the same immunity from Easter until Pentecost. We are anxious if any part of our cup or bread falls to the ground.

At every step forward and onward, at every coming in and going out, at the putting on of shoes, at the bath, at the table, at the lighting of lamps, at going to bed, at sitting down, at whatever occupation engages us, we mark the forehead with the sign of the cross.

If you demand a law of the Scriptures for these and other such disciplines, you will find none: tradition will be put forward as their author, custom as their confirmer, and faith as their observer. That there is some reason which will support tradition and custom and faith, you will either perceive yourself, or learn from one who has perceived it; meanwhile you will believe that there is some reason to which obedience is owed. I add one more example, inasmuch as it will also be fitting to teach from ancient things. Among the Jews the veiling of their women's heads is so customary that they are recognized by it. I ask for the law. I set aside the Apostle. If Rebecca, upon catching sight of her betrothed from afar, seized her veil, a private act of modesty could not have made a law, or it may have made one for her own case. Let only virgins be covered, and this when coming to be married, and not before they have come to know their betrothed.

If also Susanna, unveiled in the judgment, furnishes an argument for veiling, I can say: Here too the veil was a matter of choice; she had come as an accused, blushing at her infamy, rightly concealing her beauty, or because she was now afraid of pleasing. Otherwise in the stadium of her husband, I do not think she walked veiled who had pleased him. Let her have been always veiled; even in the very law of dress I seek a law, or in any other instance. If I find a law nowhere, it follows that tradition gave this custom to usage, destined at some point to have the authority of the Apostle from the interpretation of reason. By these examples, therefore, it will be acknowledged that even an unwritten tradition can be defended in observance, confirmed by custom as a sufficient witness of a tradition then approved, from the perseverance of the observance.

Moreover, custom is regarded even in civil affairs as having the force of law when law is lacking: nor does it matter whether it consists in writing or in reason, since reason also commends law. Furthermore, if law consists in reason, then everything which reason shall have established will be law, from whatever source it proceeds. Do you not think it lawful for every believer to conceive and establish what is at least congruous with God, what is conducive to discipline, what is profitable for salvation, the Lord saying: But why do you not also judge of yourselves what is right?—and this not only concerning judgment, but concerning every opinion in matters to be examined. The Apostle also says: If you are ignorant of anything, God will reveal it to you: he himself being accustomed to supply counsel when he had no commandment of the Lord, and to pronounce certain things from himself, yet himself also having the Spirit of God as guide into all truth.

And so his counsel and pronouncement obtained the force of a divine precept from the patronage of divine reason. Demand this now, with due respect for tradition, by whatever author it is reckoned; and do not look to the author but to the authority, and above all to custom itself: which is therefore to be honored, lest it fail to be the interpreter of reason, so that, if God also gave this, you may then learn whether custom ought not to be observed by you.

But why is the reason for Christian observances made the greater, when nature also defends them, which is the first of all disciplines? And therefore nature writes first that a crown does not befit the head. Now I hold that our God is the Lord of nature, who fashioned man, and ordained in him certain senses for seeking, judging, and obtaining the fruits of things, through the proper organs of the members as it were. He dug hearing in the ears, kindled sight in the eyes, enclosed taste in the mouth, ventilated smell in the nostrils, assigned touch to the hands. Through these ministries of the outer man, ministering to the inner man, the fruits of divine gifts are conveyed to the soul by the senses. What fruit, then, comes from flowers? For the proper substance, certainly the chief substance, of crowns is the flowers of the field. Either the scent, you say, or the color, or both together. What will be the senses of color and scent? Sight, I suppose, and smell. What members have been allotted these senses?

The eyes, unless I am mistaken, and the nostrils. Use flowers therefore by sight and smell, whose fruit belongs to those senses; use them through eyes and nostrils, which are the members of those senses. The substance has been given you by God, the fashion by the world, although even an extraordinary fashion does not obstruct ordinary use. Let flowers be for you—whether inserted, or entwined, or on a thread, or on a rush—what they are when free and loose: things, that is, for spectacle and for breathing. If perchance you consider a crown to be a bundle of flowers gathered together in a row, so that you may carry more at once, so that you may enjoy them all equally—then indeed tuck them into your bosom, if there is such great cleanliness: scatter them on your couch, if there is such great softness: and trust them to your cup, if there is such great innocence: enjoy them in as many ways as you perceive them. Otherwise, what taste of a flower is there in the head?

What sense of a crown? None but that of a bond: by which neither is color perceived, nor scent drawn in, nor tenderness commended. It is as contrary to nature to pursue a flower with the head as to pursue a sound with the nose. But everything that is contrary to nature deserves the mark of monstrousness among all men, and among us moreover the charge of sacrilege against God, the Lord and author of nature.

Do you seek therefore the law of God? You have that common one in the public domain of the world, in the natural tablets, to which the Apostle also is accustomed to appeal, as when, concerning the veiling of woman, he says: Does not even nature itself teach you? As when, writing to the Romans, saying that the nations do by nature the things of the law, he both suggests the natural law and the legal nature. But also in the former epistle, affirming that males and females had mutually changed the natural use of their condition into that which is against nature, by way of retribution of error as a mutual punishment, he certainly gives patronage to natural use.

We know God himself according to nature first, and calling him God of gods, and presuming him good, and invoking him as judge: you ask whether nature ought to precede us in enjoying his creation, lest we be swept away by that whereby the rival of God, having corrupted the whole creation assigned to man for certain uses, along with man himself, corrupted it—whence the Apostle also says it unwillingly succumbed to vanity, subverted first by vain uses, then by shameful, and unjust, and impious ones? Thus also, in the matter of the pleasures of spectacles, creation has been defamed by those who, by nature indeed, perceive all things as God's, from which spectacles are constructed; but fall short in knowledge of understanding this also, that all things have been changed by the devil. But we have also satisfied this subject matter on account of our pleasure-loving friends in the Greek style as well.

Accordingly, let these crown-wearers acknowledge for the present the authority of nature, in the name of common wisdom, by which they are men, but also as pledges of their own religion, by which they worship the God of nature at close hand: and so, as if from abundance, let them also look upon the other reasons as well, which forbid crowns upon our head in particular, and indeed all crowns. For we are also pressed by the fellowship of natural discipline to turn to the whole of Christian distinctiveness, now to be defended in full, through the other kinds of crowns as well, which seem to have been devised for other uses, as being made of other materials; lest, because they do not consist of flowers, whose use nature has marked out (as this very military laurel), they should not be thought to admit the sect's prohibition, since they have escaped nature's prescription. I see, therefore, that I must proceed both more carefully and more plainly, from origins through to the developments and excesses of the matter.

Secular writings are necessary for this; for secular things must be proved from their own sources. What little I have touched upon, I believe will suffice. If there was a certain Pandora, whom Hesiod records as the first of women, her head was first crowned by the Graces, when she was being gifted by all, whence the name Pandora. But our Moses, a prophetic shepherd, not a poetic one, describes the first woman Eve as more easily girt about her shameful parts with leaves than her temples with flowers. There is therefore no Pandora. But the origin of the crown is also to be blushed at on account of its falsehood. Now also concerning its own truths. For it is established that the Greeks were the authors or illuminators of the thing. Pherecydes records Saturn as crowned before all others, Diodorus records Jupiter after the Titans were conquered; the same author gives fillets to Priapus, and to Ariadne a garland of gold and Indian gems, the work of Vulcan, the gift of Liber, and afterwards a constellation.

Callimachus put a vine upon Juno. So too Agis shows her sign wreathed with a vine-branch, with a lion's hide placed beneath her feet, displaying the stepmother exulting over the spoils of each stepson. Hercules now bears the white poplar on his head, now the wild olive, now the parsley. You have the tragedy of Cerberus, you have Pindar and Callimachus, who also records that Apollo, after slaying the dragon Delphyne, put on the laurel: Harpocration argues that Liber, the same as Osiris among the Egyptians, was wreathed with ivy by design, because it is the nature of ivy to defend the brain from intoxication.

But even the common people recognize Liber as the originator of the crown, plainly the laurel crown, in which he triumphed over the Indians, when they call the great crown by his name on his solemn days. If you also unroll the writings of Leo the Egyptian, Isis first carried discovered ears of grain about her head, a matter more of the belly. Those who seek more will find everything in that most excellent commentator on this subject as well, Claudius Saturninus. For there is a book of his on Crowns, setting forth their origins, causes, kinds, and solemnities in such a way that you will find no grace of flower, no joy of foliage, no turf or vine-branch, that has not been consecrated to someone's head. By which we are sufficiently instructed how foreign we ought to judge the institution of the crowned head, having been brought forth by those, and thereafter dispensed in honor of those, whom the world believed to be gods.

For if the devil works the lie of divinity in this kind as well, being a liar from the beginning, he had without doubt also himself provided for those in whom the lie of divinity would be enacted. What sort of thing, then, is it to be held among the people of the true God, which was introduced by the candidates of the devil, and dedicated to them from the beginning, and which was even then being initiated into idolatry by idols, and by idols still living? Not as though an idol were anything, but because what others do for idols pertains to demons. Moreover, if what others do for idols pertains to demons, how much more what the idols themselves made for themselves when they were approached? They themselves, that is, procured demons for themselves, through those in whom they had hungered before for what they procured.

Hold fast to this conviction for the present, while I shake out the assault of the question. For I now hear it said: Many other things too have been brought forth by those whom the world believed to be gods; yet they are found today in our own usages, and in those of the saints of old, and in the things of God, and in Christ himself, inasmuch as a man has plainly fulfilled his role through none other than these common instruments of human expression. It is plainly so, nor will I dispute further back into origins. Let Mercury have first set forth letters; I will confess them necessary both for the commerce of affairs and for our own devotion toward God. But also if the same god stretched strings into sound, I will not deny that this art too has served together with the saints, and ministered to God, hearing David. Let Aesculapius have first explored remedies; I remember that Isaiah also prescribed something medicinal to the ailing Hezekiah.

But also Paul that a little wine is good for the stomach. But also that Minerva first fashioned a ship; I will see Jonah sailing and the apostles. More than this, Christ himself will be clothed: Paul too will have a cloak. If also for each piece of household furniture and each individual vessel they name some god of the world as its originator, they must necessarily acknowledge also Christ reclining on a couch, and when he offers a basin for the feet of the disciples, and when he pours water from a pitcher, and when he is girded with a linen cloth, the very garment of Osiris. To a question of this kind I respond everywhere as follows: I admit indeed the fellowship in utensils, but I appeal it to the distinction between rational and irrational things, because passivity deceives, overshadowing the corruption of the condition by which it is subject to vanity.

For we say that those things, and those only, have been fitting for our own uses, and for those of our predecessors, and for the things of God, and for Christ himself, which procure pure utilities, and certain aids, and honorable consolations for the necessary things of human life: so that they may be believed to have been inspired by God himself as the prior provider, and instructor, and, if you will, delighter of his own man. But those things which have exceeded this order, those are not fitting for our uses, especially those which for that very reason are not to be recognized either in the world, or in the things of God, or in the manner of life of Christ.

Who, finally, among the patriarchs, who among the prophets, who among the Levites, or priests, or rulers, who even afterward among the apostles, or evangelists, or bishops, is found crowned? I think not even the temple of God itself, nor the ark of the covenant, nor the tabernacle of witness, nor the altar, nor the lampstand: for which it would surely have been fitting to be crowned both at the first solemnity of dedication and at the second rejoicing of restoration, if it were worthy of God. And yet, if these were figures of us (for we are both temples of God, and altars, and lights, and vessels), they were also foreshadowing this figuratively, that men of God ought not to be crowned. The truth will have to correspond to the image. If perhaps you object that Christ himself was crowned, you will hear this briefly for the present: Be crowned in that manner too, and it is lawful for you. Yet not even that crown of contemptuous impiety was devised by the people.

It was the invention of Roman soldiers, from the practice of secular life, which the people of God never admitted either publicly in the name of joy, or in the name of inborn luxury; returning more easily from the captivity of Babylon with timbrels and pipes and psalteries than with crowns: and rising after food and drink to play without crowns. For neither the description of joy nor the denoting of luxury would have been silent about the adornment or disgrace of the crown. So also Isaiah: For, he says, they drink wine with timbrels and pipes and psalteries: he would have said also with crowns, if this practice had ever existed in the things of God.

So when you propose that the ornaments of the gods of the world are found even among the things of God, in order to claim the crown of the head as well among these for common use; you already prescribe for yourself that what is not found in the things of God is not to be admitted into the fellowship of uses. For what is so unworthy of God as what is worthy of an idol? But what is so worthy of an idol as what belongs also to the dead? For it is also the custom of the dead to be crowned in this way: since they themselves immediately become idols both in the manner and in the dress of consecration, which among us is a second idolatry. Therefore those who lack sense, it will belong to them to use in like manner a thing of which they lack sense, just as if they would misuse it, if they did not lack sense.

But there is no difference in misusing, when the truth of using ceases, with the nature of sensing ceasing; let one misuse it as one will, since one has not the means by which to use it.

But for us, according to the apostle, misuse is not lawful, who teaches more readily that we should not use, except that those who feel nothing do not misuse either. But the whole matter is empty, and the very work is also dead, insofar as it concerns idols; plainly living insofar as it concerns demons, to whom superstition pertains. The idols of the nations, says David, are silver and gold: they have eyes and see not, nostrils and smell not, hands and touch not. For through these it is to enjoy flowers. But if he declares that those who fabricate idols will become such, then those who use anything according to the adornment of idols are already such. All things are clean to the clean, so also all things are unclean to the unclean: but nothing is more unclean than idols. The substances, however, are clean, as things of God, and by this their condition common to use: but the administration of the use itself makes the difference.

For I too sacrifice a cock for myself, no less than Socrates did to Aesculapius: and if the smell of some place has offended me, I burn something of Arabia; but not with the same rite, nor with the same dress, nor with the same apparatus, as is done before idols. For if by a bare word the condition is polluted, as the apostle teaches: But if anyone has said: This is offered to idols, touch it not; much more when you have danced in the dress, and rite, and apparatus of things offered to idols, it is contaminated. So also the crown becomes a thing offered to idols. For it is with this rite, and dress, and apparatus that sacrifice is made to the idol by its authors: whose use is so especially their own that it cannot be admitted into fellowship, since it is not found in the things of God. For this reason the apostle cries out: Flee idolatry; all of it, that is, and the whole of it.

Recall the forest, and how many thorns lurk there. Nothing is to be given to an idol, so also nothing is to be taken from an idol. If to recline in an idol's temple is foreign to the faith, what of being seen in an idol's dress? What fellowship has Christ with Belial? And therefore flee. For he commands a long divorce from idolatry; in nothing are we to act in proximity to it. Even the earthly dragon absorbs men from afar with his breath. More deeply John says: Little children, keep yourselves from idols; no longer from idolatry as from a practice, but from their very image. For it is unworthy that the image of the living God should become the image of an idol and of the dead.

Thus far we claim this dress as belonging to idols, both from the reckoning of its origin and from the practice of superstition, and moreover from the fact that, since it is not found in the things of God, it is all the more reckoned as the image of those in whose antiquities, and solemnities, and offices it is encountered. Their very doors, and their very victims and altars, their very ministers and priests are crowned. You have the crowns of all priestly colleges in Claudius. But we have also interposed that distinction of the difference between rational and irrational things, meeting those who defend fellowship in all things on the occasion of certain examples.

To this part, therefore, it remains to examine the very causes of crowns, so that while we show them to be foreign, nay even contrary to discipline, we may prove that none of them is supported by the patronage of reason, by which a dress of this kind could be claimed also for the fellowship of use: even if there are some whose examples are set against us.

For indeed, to approach the very cause of the military crown, I think it must first be inquired whether military service is fitting for Christians at all. What sort of thing is it otherwise to debate about incidental matters, when there is guilt in the antecedents? Do we believe that a human oath may lawfully be superimposed upon the divine, and that one may answer to another lord after Christ? And renounce father and mother, and every neighbor, whom even the law commands to be honored and after God to be loved He commands, whom also the Gospel, esteeming them no less than Christ alone, so also honored? Will it be lawful to live by the sword, when the Lord has declared that he who uses the sword shall perish by the sword? And shall the son of peace engage in battle, to whom it is not even fitting to go to law? And shall he administer chains and prison and torments and punishments, he who is not even an avenger of his own wrongs?

Now shall he keep watch-duty, and for anyone more than for Christ? Or even on the Lord's Day, when not even for Christ? And shall he stand guard over temples which he has renounced? And shall he dine there where it does not please the Apostle? And those whom by day he has put to flight with exorcisms, shall he by night defend, leaning and resting upon the pilum by which the side of Christ was pierced? Shall he also carry a standard that is a rival to Christ? And shall he ask for the watchword from a commander, who has already received one from God? Shall he also be disturbed at death by the trumpet of the trumpeter, he who awaits being raised by the trumpet of the angel? And shall a Christian be cremated according to military discipline, to whom cremation was not lawful, to whom Christ has granted the merits of fire? How many other things can be observed as offenses in the duties of the camp, to be interpreted as transgressions?

To carry the very name from the camp of light into the camp of darkness is itself a transgression. Plainly, if faith coming later finds some already taken by military service, their condition is different, as was that of those whom John admitted to baptism, as of the most faithful centurions, whom Christ approves, and whom Peter catechizes: provided that, once faith has been received and sealed, either one must immediately desert, as many have done, or must by every means contrive to avoid committing anything against God, such things as are not permitted even by military service; or finally one must suffer for God's sake, which equally the pagan pledge has forbidden. For military service will promise neither impunity for offenses nor exemption from martyrdoms. Nowhere is a Christian anything other than a Christian. One Gospel, and the same Jesus, who will deny every denier, and will confess every confessor of God, and will save the soul lost for His name's sake, but will destroy, on the contrary, the soul gained in opposition to His name.

Before Him the pagan soldier who is faithful is as much a soldier as the unfaithful soldier is a pagan. The state of faith admits no pleas of necessity. There is no necessity for sinning for those for whom there is one necessity: not to sin. For even to sacrifice and to deny outright, a man is pressed by the necessity of torments or punishments: yet not even to that necessity does discipline turn a blind eye, because the necessity of fearing denial and of undergoing martyrdom is greater than that of escaping suffering and fulfilling one's duty. Otherwise, a plea of this kind subverts the entire substance of the sacrament, so as to loosen the clasp even upon voluntary offenses. For even a voluntary act will be able to be contended as a necessity, having of course something by which it is compelled.

Or I would have set this forth beforehand also with respect to the other causes of official crowns, for which the plea of necessity is most familiar: since either offices must be avoided, lest we fall into offenses; or martyrdoms must be endured, so that we may break free from offices. On the first aspect of the question, even that of military service itself as unlawful, I shall say no more, so that the second may be addressed, lest, if I have driven out military service by every means, I should have raised the question of the military crown in vain.

Suppose, then, that military service is lawful up to the point of the cause of the crown. But let us first speak also of the crown itself. That laurel is sacred to Apollo or to Liber: to the former, as the god of missiles; to the latter, as the god of triumphs. So Claudius teaches when he says that soldiers were accustomed to be wreathed also with myrtle. For the Romans wore the myrtle of Venus, mother of Aeneas, not the laurel, even the companion of Mars, through the Iliad and the Romuluses. But I do not believe that Venus is Roman in this respect together with Mars, in which the grief of a mistress is involved. When soldiers are also crowned with the olive, it is idolatry toward Minerva, equally the goddess of arms, but also crowned with this tree for the peace concluded with Neptune. In these things the superstition of the military garland will be defiled and defiling, and all things will now be defiled by their causes as well.

Behold, what does the annual vow-taking appear to be? The first in the headquarters, the second on the Capitols. Hear, after the places, also the words: Then to you, Jupiter, we vowed that there would be an ox with horns adorned with gold. Whose is the voice of that declaration? Surely of denial. Even if the Christian is silent there with his mouth, crowned on his head he has answered. The same laurel is proclaimed at the distribution of the donative—plainly not gratuitous idolatry—selling Christ to some for gold pieces, as Judas did for silver. This will be: You cannot serve God and mammon: to give one's hand to mammon and to depart from God? This will be: Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's: neither to render man to God, and to take the denarius from Caesar? Is the laurel of triumph built up of leaves, or of corpses? Is it adorned with plates of metal, or with funeral pyres?

Is it anointed with perfumes, or with the tears of wives and mothers? Perhaps of some Christians too: for Christ is found even among the barbarians. He who has carried this cause upon his head, has he not himself also made war? There is also another military service of the royal households. For even those of the camp are called munifici, and those of the imperial solemnities themselves. But you too are likewise a soldier and a servant of another: and if of two, of God and of Caesar, certainly then not of Caesar, when you owe yourself to God, even in common matters, I believe, to the greater.

Public orders also are crowned with laurels for public causes, and magistrates moreover with golden ones. Etruscan crowns are also placed upon them in addition. This is the name of the crowns which, distinguished with gems and leaves of oak in gold on account of Jupiter, they take to escort the sacred cars, together with embroidered togas. There are also provincial golden crowns, now seeking heads larger than those of men, being images. But your orders and your magistrates, and the very name of the senate-house, is the Church of Christ. You are enrolled in His books of life. There is your purple—the blood of the Lord—and your broad stripe—in His cross itself; there is the axe laid to the root of the tree, there the rods from Jesse. Let the public horses with their crowns look to themselves. Your Lord, when according to Scripture He wished to enter Jerusalem, did not even have a private ass. These in chariots and these on horses, but we will call upon the name of the Lord our God.

From the very habitation of that Babylon in the Apocalypse of John we are removed, let alone from the tribunal. The common people too are crowned, now from exultation at the prosperity of the rulers, now from the particular character of municipal solemnities: and every public rejoicing is a pursuer of excess. But you are a stranger in this world, a citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem. Our citizenship, he says, is in the heavens. You have your own sentiments, your own calendar: nothing of the world's joys belongs to you; nay, you owe the contrary: For the world shall rejoice, but you shall mourn. And I think He calls the mourners blessed, not the crowned. Weddings also crown the betrothed, therefore let us not marry pagans, lest they lead us even to idolatry, with which among them weddings begin: you have the law from the Patriarchs indeed, you have the Apostle commanding to marry in the Lord. Secular freedom also crowns. But you have already been redeemed by Christ, and indeed at a great price.

How shall the world manumit a slave belonging to another? Even if it seems to be freedom, yet it seemed to be slavery too. All things in the world are imaginary, and nothing is true. For even then, as a freedman of man, you were redeemed by Christ: and now you are a servant of Christ, though manumitted by man. If you think the freedom of the world to be true, so as to seal it also with a crown, you have returned into the slavery of man, which you think to be freedom; you have lost the freedom of Christ, which you think to be slavery. Shall the causes of the athletic contests also be debated, which their very titles immediately condemn? Sacred and funerary, that is—for this remains—that the Olympian Jupiter, and the Nemean Hercules, and the wretched Archemorus, and the unhappy Antinous be crowned in a Christian, so that he himself becomes a spectacle, who ought to be watching the spectacle. We have enumerated, as I think, all the causes.

Not one of them is with us: all are alien, profane, unlawful, already once abjured in the attestation of the sacrament. For these were the pomps of the devil and the offices of his angels, the honors of the world, solemnities, popularities, false vows, human servitudes, vain praises, shameful glories: and in all these things idolatry, even in the mere notion of the crowns with which all these things are wreathed. Claudius will indeed preface his remarks by saying that even the sky is crowned with stars in the songs of Homer; certainly by God, certainly for man, and therefore man himself is also to be crowned by God. But otherwise, brothels are crowned by the world, and latrines, and bakeries, and the prison, and the gladiatorial school, and the very amphitheatres, and the very spoliaria, and the very undertakers' establishments. How sacred, holy, and honorable and clean that custom is, judge not from one poetic sky, but from the commerce of the whole world.

But a Christian will not even disgrace his own door with laurels, if he knows how many gods the devil has also affixed to doorways: Janus from the door, Limentinus from the threshold, Forculus and Carda from the doors and hinges, and among the Greeks the Thyraean Apollo and the Antelian demons.

So far is he from bringing upon his own head the gift of idolatry, nay, I would now say upon Christ, since the head of man is Christ, as free as Christ Himself is: not even subject to a veil, much less to a binding. Moreover, that which is subject to a veil, the head of a woman, already occupied by this very thing, has no room also for a binding; it has the burden of its own humility. If she ought not to be seen with uncovered head on account of the angels, much more would she perhaps scandalize those angels if crowned—if they were crowned at that time. For what is a crown on the head of a woman, but a procuress of beauty, the supreme mark of wantonness, the final denial of modesty, a kindling of allurement? Therefore a woman will not adorn herself more elaborately either, according to the Apostle's provision, so as not to be crowned even by the artifice of her hair.

Yet He who is also the head of man and the face of woman, the man of the Church, Christ Jesus—what kind of garland, I ask you, did He undergo for both sexes? Of thorns and briars, I think, in the figure of the sins which the earth of the flesh brought forth for us, but which the power of the cross took away, blunting every sting of death in the endurance of the Lord's head.

Certainly, beyond the figure, the insult is plain, and the shame and the dishonor, and the cruelty intertwined with these, which at that time both defiled and lacerated the temples of the Lord; so that you now with laurel, and myrtle, and olive, and some illustrious branch, and what is more in use, also with centenary roses gathered from the garden of Midas, and with lilies of both kinds, and all violets, you crown yourselves, perhaps even with gems and gold, so as to rival also that crown of Christ which came to Him afterward, because He also tasted honeycombs after the gall; nor was He first hailed as king of glory in the heavens, before He was condemned to the cross as king of the Jews; made lower first by the Father a little less than the angels, and so crowned with glory and honor.

If on account of these things you owe Him your head, render back to Him such a one as you are able, like that which He offered for yours: or be not crowned even with flowers, if you cannot be with thorns, because you cannot be with flowers.

Keep for God His own possession undefiled. He will crown it, if He wills; nay, He does will it; in short He invites: He who shall overcome, He says, I will give him the crown of life. Be you also faithful unto death. Contend you also the good contest, whose crown the Apostle also confidently trusts is laid up for him by merit. The angel of victory also receives a crown, going forth on a white horse, that he might conquer. And another is adorned with the circuit of a rainbow, a heavenly meadow. And the elders sit crowned: and with the same gold the Son of Man Himself also gleams above the cloud. If such are the images in vision, what are the realities in their manifestation? Look upon those, smell those. Why condemn a head destined for a diadem to a fillet or a dragon-standard wreath? For Christ Jesus has also made us kings unto God and His Father. What have you to do with a flower that must die?

You have the flower from the rod of Jesse, upon whom the whole grace of the divine spirit rested, a flower incorrupt, unfading, everlasting: which also the good soldier, by choosing it, advanced in dignity through heavenly enlistment. Blush for shame, his fellow-soldiers, who are now to be judged not by him but by some soldier of Mithras, who, when he is initiated in a cave—in the true camp of darkness—is offered a crown upon an interposed sword, as a mimicry of martyrdom, and then, when it has been placed upon his head, is admonished to push it away with his hand and transfer it, if he will, to his shoulder, saying that Mithras is his crown; and from that time he is never crowned, and he holds this as a mark to prove his allegiance, if anywhere he should be tested concerning his oath: and straightway he is believed to be a soldier of Mithras, if he has cast down the crown, if he has declared it to be in his god.

Let us acknowledge the devices of the devil, who for this reason imitates certain things from the divine, that he may confound us and judge us by the faith of his own followers.