The Apparel of Women

For even those who established these things are reckoned as condemned to the punishment of death: those angels, namely, who rushed down from heaven to the daughters of men, so that this ignominy too may be added to woman. For when they had disclosed certain materials well hidden, and very many arts not well revealed, to a world far more ignorant at that time (for they had laid bare the working of metals, and had conveyed the properties of herbs, and had published the powers of enchantments, and had pointed out every curious art, even to the interpretation of the stars) they conferred upon women in particular, and as it were specially, that instrument of womanly glory: the gleam of gems by which necklaces are varied, and the rings of gold by which arms are bound, and the dyes from rouge by which wools are coloured, and that very black powder by which the edges of the eyes are drawn out.

What manner of things these are can already for the present be declared from the quality and condition of their teachers, since sinners could show or furnish nothing toward integrity, lovers nothing toward chastity, deserters of the spirit of God nothing toward the fear of God. If they are to be called teachings, evil masters must needs have taught evil. If they are rewards for lust, no reward of any shameful thing is seemly. But what was so important about revealing these things as about bestowing them? Was it that women, without the materials of splendour and without the arts of adornment, could not please men—women who, still unadorned and uncomposed, and (if I may so say) raw and rough, had moved the angels? Or would those angels seem sordid and, through their gratuitous use, contemptuous lovers, if they had contributed nothing to the women they had enticed into wedlock? But this the mind cannot grasp—those who possessed angels could desire nothing more; they had married into greatness, forsooth.

Indeed, those who at times thought of whence they had fallen, and after the heated moments of their lusts sighed for heaven, rewarded that very good of women's natural beauty, as the cause of their evil, in such a way that it should not have profited them that their happiness was their own, but that, drawn down from simplicity and sincerity together with themselves, they might come into offence against God. They were certain that all glory, and ambition, and affectation of pleasing through the flesh was displeasing to God. These are surely the angels whom we are to judge, these are the angels to whom we renounce in the washing; these are surely the things on account of which they deserved to be judged by man. What then will their possessions do before their judges? What commerce is there between those who are about to condemn and those who are to be condemned? I suppose the same as between Christ and Belial.

With what constancy do we mount that tribunal, about to decree against those whose gifts we covet? For to you also the same angelic substance is then promised, the same sex as that of men likewise promises the same dignity of judging: unless therefore we shall here already have prejudged the matter, by pre-condemning their things which we are then to condemn in them, they will rather judge and condemn us.

I know that the scripture of Enoch, which assigned this order to the angels, is not received by some, because it is not admitted into the Jewish treasury. I suppose they did not think that, having been published before the flood, it could have survived that catastrophe, the destroyer of all things. If that is the reason, let them remember that Noah, the survivor of the flood, was the great-grandson of Enoch himself, who surely by family name and hereditary tradition had heard and remembered concerning his great-grandfather's favour with God, and concerning all his teachings; since Enoch had charged nothing else to his son Methuselah than that he should hand on the knowledge of these things to his posterity. Therefore without doubt Noah could have succeeded to the delegation of the preaching, whether also because he would not otherwise have been silent about the disposition of God his preserver, as well as about the very glory of his own house.

If this were not so readily at hand, that too would defend the authority of that scripture. Likewise it could have been possible, after it had been destroyed by the violence of the flood, to reform it again in the spirit: just as it is established that all the instrument of Jewish literature, when Jerusalem had been destroyed by the Babylonian conquest, was restored by Ezra. But since that same scripture of Enoch also prophesied concerning the Lord, it is by no means to be rejected by us in its entirety, as pertaining to us. And we read that every Scripture divinely inspired is profitable for edification. It may now be seen to have been rejected by the Jews for that reason, as also nearly all other things that speak of Christ. Nor is it at all surprising if they did not receive certain scriptures speaking of him whom they were not going to receive even when he himself spoke openly before them. To this is added that Enoch has a testimony in the Apostle Jude.

Let no brand of pre-condemnation now be burned upon womanly pomp from the fate of its authors. Let nothing be imputed to those angels beyond the repudiation of heaven and the marriage of the flesh. Let us examine the qualities of the things themselves, so that we may also detect the designs of the desire for them.

A woman's attire presents a twofold aspect: dress and ornament. By dress we mean what they call the adornment of women; by ornament, what it is fitting to call the unclean adornment of women. The former is reckoned in gold, and silver, and gems, and garments: the latter in the care of the hair, and of the skin, and of those parts of the body which draw the eyes. Against the one we charge the crime of ambition, against the other that of prostitution: so that from this point thou mayest foresee, O handmaid of God, which of these things befits thy discipline, thou who art reckoned according to different institutions, namely of humility and chastity.

Gold and silver, the chief materials of worldly dress, must needs be present from whence they come; from the earth, that is, plainly more glorious, since, lamented with penal labour in the deadly workshops of accursed metals, it has left the name of earth in the fire, and thence from torments into ornaments, from punishments into delights, from ignominies into honours, the fugitive of metal is transformed. But iron and bronze and other most base materials are in equal condition, both of earthly kind and of metallic working: whereby the substance of gold and silver can be judged no more noble by nature. Now if the glory of gold and silver comes from the quality of their use, yet iron and bronze have more of it; whose usefulness is so disposed that they both furnish more and more necessary services of their own to human affairs, and likewise lend gold and silver in their turn for more just purposes.

For rings also are made of iron; certain small vessels for eating and drinking antiquity still preserves in memory as made of bronze. Let it be seen whether even to foul instruments the mad abundance of gold and silver has descended. Certainly no field is prepared by the work of gold, nor is any ship framed by the strength of silver. No mattock plunges gold into the earth; no nail drives silver into planks. I say nothing of all the necessities of life resting upon iron and bronze: since those very rich materials, both to be dug again from the mines and to be brought forth in whatever use, cannot function without the operative force of iron and bronze. Now therefore it must be estimated whence so great a dignity accrues to gold and silver, when they are preferred both to materials of the same kindred as regards kind, and to materials more powerful as regards usefulness.

But those little stones too, which join their pride to gold, what else shall I interpret them to be but stones and pebbles, small fragments of the same earth; not however necessary for laying foundations, or for raising walls, or for sustaining gables, or for thickening roofs? They have learned to build only this stupefaction of women, because they are slowly ground that they may shine, and are cunningly set beneath that they may gleam, and are anxiously bored through that they may hang, and lend mutual enticement to gold. But if ambition fishes anything from the British or Indian sea, it is a kind of shell—I will not say more pleasing than the purple-fish or the oyster, but not even than the peloria in flavour. For I have known shells as the fruits of the sea for this purpose. But if that shell demands something within, its defect ought rather to be its shame than its glory.

And though it be called a pearl, it is nevertheless to be understood as nothing other than some hard and round wart of that shell. They say also that gems are extracted from the foreheads of dragons, just as there is a certain stony substance in the brains of fish. This too will be lacking to the Christian woman, that she become more adorned from the serpent. Thus will she tread upon the devil's head, while from his head she builds up ornaments for her own neck or very head?

All these things possess their favour from rarity and foreignness alone. In short, within the bounds of their native lands they are not held in such esteem. Abundance is always contemptuous of itself. Among certain barbarians, because gold is native and plentiful, they keep those bound in gold in the workhouses, and load the wicked with riches, the wealthier the more harmful. At times truly it has been found how gold too may not be loved. We have also seen the nobility of gems blushing at Rome from the disdain of the Parthians and Medes and the rest of their own peoples, before the matrons, except that they are scarcely kept even for display. Emeralds lie hidden in rings, and the sword alone beneath the cloak knows its own cylindrical scabbard, and pearls in brogues long to emerge from the mud. In short, they have nothing so bejewelled as that which ought not to be bejewelled, if it does not appear; or it appears for this reason, that even when neglected it may be shown.

Likewise even their slaves bear the honour of garments in respect of colours. But walls also make use of Tyrian and hyacinthine and those royal hangings, which you laboriously unravel and transform, in place of painting. Purple is cheaper among them than red ochre. For what just honour of garments comes from the adultery of unjust colours? That which God himself did not produce does not please God, unless perhaps he could not command purple and sky-blue sheep to be born. If he could, then he willed it not; what God willed not, it is certainly not lawful to fabricate. These things therefore are not naturally good, which are not from God, the author of nature; thus they are understood to be from the devil, the adulterator of nature. For they cannot belong to another, if they are not of God: because those things which are not of God must needs be rivals; but there is no other rival of God besides the devil and his angels.

Furthermore, if the materials are from God, not immediately also are such fruits of them; for even all those profane pleasures of worldly spectacles, as we have published our own volume concerning them, even idolatry itself consists of the things of God: yet it is not therefore fitting that a Christian be affected by the frenzies of the circus, or the cruelties of the arena, or the shamelessness of the stage, because God gave both the horse, and the panther, and the voice to man: nor will a Christian therefore commit idolatry with impunity, because both frankincense, and wine, and the fire that feeds upon it, and the animals that become victims are God's creation, since even the very material that is worshipped is of God. So therefore also in the matter of the use of materials, the worth descending from God accuses that which is foreign to God, as guilty, namely, of worldly glory.

For just as each of the things, distributed by God through individual lands and each region by their materials, are mutually foreign to one another, rare among foreigners by exchange, among you rightly, if at all, either sought after or neglected, because there is not so great a fervor of glory in them, being cold among those at home. But indeed from the distribution of possessions, which God, as He willed, ordained, rarity and foreignness, always finding favor among strangers, from the simple cause of not having what God has placed elsewhere, stirs up the desire of having. From this another vice is extended, that of having immoderately; which, even if it must perchance be had, a measure is nonetheless owed. This will be ambition, whence also its name is to be interpreted, because, with desire encompassing the mind, it is born toward the vow of glory; a grand vow indeed, which, as we have said, not nature, nor truth, but a corrupt passion of the mind, desire, has commended. And other vices of ambition and glory.

So too it has inflamed the prices of things, so as to kindle itself as well. Does not desire grow so much greater, the more greatly it has made what it has desired? From the smallest purses a great patrimony is brought forth. Into a single thread ten thousand sesterces are woven. A tender neck bears estates and islands, the thin skin of the ears pays out a calendar's worth, and on the left hand through each finger it plays from individual purses. These are the powers of ambition, to carry the substance of such great usuries in a single and womanly little body.

Handmaids of the living God, my fellow-servants and sisters, by what right I am reckoned among you, the very last indeed by my own right of fellow-service and brotherhood, I dare to address a discourse to you, not indeed out of affectation, but providing for affection in the cause of your salvation. That salvation is established not for women only, but also for men, chiefly in the exhibition of chastity. For since we are all a temple of God, with the Holy Spirit brought into us and consecrated, the keeper and overseer of that temple is chastity, which suffers nothing unclean or profane to be brought in, lest that God who dwells therein, offended, abandon a defiled dwelling. But now we speak not of chastity itself, for the enjoining and exacting of which the divine precepts everywhere pressing are sufficient, but of the things pertaining to it, that is, in what manner you ought to conduct yourselves.

For very many women, which very thing may God permit me to rebuke in all, either simply through ignorance or boldly through dissembling, so conduct themselves as if chastity consisted in the integrity of the flesh alone and in the avoidance of fornication, and as if nothing further were needed inwardly, regarding the arrangement of dress and adornment. But they persist in their former pursuits of beauty and elegance, carrying about the same appearance of themselves as women of the nations, from whom the consciousness of true chastity is absent, because nothing is true in those who know not God as the overseer and master of truth. For even if some chastity among the gentiles can be believed in, it is so far established to be imperfect and unformed that, although it may act in the mind as somewhat tenacious of itself, yet in the license of dress it dissolves itself, by the perversity of the gentiles seeking after that thing whose effect it avoids. How few indeed are there who do not even desire to please strangers?

Who do not wish for that very reason to paint themselves, so as to deny the desire? Although this too may be familiar to gentile chastity, not to transgress, yet to will it; or even to be unwilling, yet not to refuse. What wonder? All things are perverse which are not of God. Let them see therefore, who, by not obtaining the whole good, easily mingle even what they do obtain with evil. You must turn aside from them, as in other things, so also in your manner of conduct, since you ought to be perfect, even as your Father who is in heaven.

But the perfect, that is, Christian chaste women, know that the desire of attracting attention to yourselves is not only not to be sought, but even to be execrated: first because the pursuit of pleasing through beauty, which we know to be a natural inciter of lust, does not come from an upright conscience; why then do you stir up that evil in yourself? Why do you invite that from which you profess yourself to be a stranger? Then because we ought not to open the way to temptations, which sometimes by their persistence accomplish what God drives away from His own, and certainly at least disturb the spirit with scandal. We ought indeed to walk so holily and with the whole substance of faith that we may be confessed and secure in our conscience, desiring to persevere in this, yet not presuming upon it.

For he who presumes fears less, takes less precaution, is in greater danger. Fear is the foundation of salvation; presumption is an impediment to fear. It is therefore more useful if we hope that we cannot sin, than if we presume that we cannot; for by hoping we shall fear, by fearing we shall take heed, by taking heed we shall be saved; on the contrary, if we presume, neither fearing nor taking heed, we shall with difficulty be saved. He who acts securely is not anxious, does not possess a safe and firm security. But he who is anxious, he truly will be able to be secure. And concerning His own servants, the Lord in His mercy takes care, so that it may even be granted to them to presume happily upon His goodness. But why are we a danger to another? Why do we bring desire upon another?

Which if the Lord, by amplifying the law, does not distinguish from the act of fornication in punishment, I know not whether He holds guiltless her who has been the cause of another's perdition. For he perishes at the same time through your beauty, if he has desired it, and has already committed in his mind what he has desired, and you have become a sword to him. That you may be free from fault, you will not be freed from odium; just as when robbery has been committed in someone's field, the crime does not touch the owner; yet since his land is marked with ignominy, he himself too is sprinkled with infamy. Do we paint ourselves so that others may perish? Where then is: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself; care not for your own things only, but for another's? No utterance of the Spirit of the Holy Spirit ought to be directed and received toward the present matter only and not toward every occasion of usefulness.

Since therefore both our own cause and that of others is involved in the pursuit of most dangerous beauty, know now that not only the platform of contrived and elaborated beauty is to be refused by you, but even natural comeliness is to be obscured by dissimulation and neglect, so as to be likewise troublesome to the assaults of eyes. For even if beauty is not to be accused, as a felicity of the body, as an addition to the divine workmanship, as a kind of refined garment of the soul; yet it is to be feared on account of the injury and violence of beholders, which even the father of faith Abraham feared in the beauty of his wife, and calling Sara his sister, redeemed safety with dishonor.

Now let not the dignity of beauty be feared, so that it may be considered neither burdensome to those who possess it, nor destructive to those who desire it, nor dangerous to those joined to it; not exposed to temptations, not surrounded by scandals: it suffices that it is not necessary to the angels of God. For where chastity is, there beauty is idle, because the proper use and fruit of beauty is luxury, unless someone thinks there is another harvest of bodily beauty. Let those women extend the beauty both given to them and seek what has not been given, who think that they also render to themselves what is demanded of beauty, when they render it to another. Someone will say: Why then, with luxury excluded and chastity admitted, is it not lawful to enjoy the praise of beauty alone and to glory in the good of the body? Let him see, whom it pleases to glory in the flesh. But for us, first indeed there is no pursuit of glory, because glory is the disposition of exaltation.

Moreover, exaltation is not fitting for professors of humility according to the precepts of God. Then if all glory is vain and stupefying, how much more that which is in the flesh, at least for us! For even if one must glory, we ought to wish to please in the goods of the spirit, not in the flesh, because we are followers of spiritual things; in those things in which we labor, let us also rejoice; from those things let us gather glory, from which we hope for salvation. The Christian will indeed glory even in the flesh, but when it has endured laceration for Christ's sake, so that the spirit also may be crowned in it, not so as to draw after itself the eyes and sighs of young men. Thus what is idle in you in every respect, you may rightly both disdain when you do not have it and neglect when you do have it.

Let a holy woman be naturally beautiful, let her not so readily be an occasion; certainly if she shall be so, she ought not to be ignorant of it, but even to hinder it.

As though I were speaking to gentiles, addressing you with a gentile and common precept of all, you ought to please your husbands alone. But you will please them so much the more, as you take no care to please others. Be secure, blessed ones; no wife is unbeautiful to her own husband; she has pleased sufficiently, since she was chosen, whether commended by character or by form. Let none of you think that, if she moderates the adornment of herself, she will incur the hatred and aversion of her husbands. Every husband is an exactor of chastity; but a faithful husband does not demand beauty, because he is not captivated by the same goods as the gentiles think; an unfaithful husband on the other hand even holds it suspect, on account of that wicked opinion of the gentiles against us. For whom then do you nourish your beauty? If your husband is faithful, he does not require it; if he is a gentile, he does not trust it.

Why are you eager to please one who is either suspicious or not desirous?

These things are certainly not suggested to you for the purpose of insinuating a wholly crude and savage condition; nor do we persuade you of the good of squalor and filth, but of the measure and hinge and justice of cultivating the body. One must not go beyond what simple and sufficient cleanliness desires, beyond what is pleasing to the Lord. For those women sin against Him who anoint the skin with cosmetics, stain the cheeks with rouge, smear the eyes with soot. They evidently displease themselves with God's workmanship, they rebuke it in their own persons, they find fault with the Artificer of all things. For they find fault when they correct, when they add to it, taking these additions from the adversary artificer, that is, from the devil. For who would show how to change the body, except he who transformed the spirit of man with malice? He without doubt contrived ingenuities of this kind, so as in some manner to lay hands upon God in us.

What is born is the work of God; therefore what is fashioned is the business of the devil. How wicked it is to superimpose the ingenuities of Satan upon the divine work! Our servants borrow nothing from our enemies, the soldiers of an emperor desire nothing from his foe. For to seek something for use from the adversary of him in whose hand you are, is transgression. Will a Christian be helped in anything by that evil one? I know not whether the name perseveres to him. For he will belong to him whose teachings he desires to be instructed by. But how foreign to your disciplines and professions, how unworthy of the Christian name it is, to wear a fictitious face—you to whom all simplicity is enjoined; to lie in appearance—you to whom the tongue is not permitted to lie; to seek what has not been given—you to whom abstinence from what belongs to another is exercised in appearance—you whose pursuit is chastity!

Believe, blessed ones, how will you keep the precepts of God, if you do not keep His lineaments in yourselves?

I see certain women dyeing their hair with saffron, who are ashamed even of their own nation, that they were not born German or Gallic; and so they transfer their homeland to their hair. They bring ill and worst omens upon themselves with a flame-colored head, and they think it becoming, what they defile. Moreover, the force of medicaments burns harm into the hair and preserves destruction even for the brain, as does the constant application of any liquid whatsoever, and then the heat of the sun, desirable at once for animating and drying the hair. What beauty is there with injury? What comeliness with filth? Shall a Christian woman heap saffron upon her head, as upon an altar? For whatever is customarily offered to an unclean spirit, unless it be applied to proper and necessary and wholesome uses, for which God's creature was intended, can be seen as a sacrifice. But indeed the Lord says: Who among you can make a black hair white, or a white one black?

And so they refute God; behold, they say, in place of white or black we make it golden, more pleasing by grace; although they also attempt to make black from white, those who repent of having lived to old age. What presumption! The age longed for in vows blushes, confesses its theft, sighs for the youth in which we transgress, and the occasion for gravity is adulterated. Let not so great a folly be found among the daughters of wisdom. Old age, the more it shall have striven to be concealed, the more will it be detected. This is our eternity from the youthfulness of the head. This incorruptible thing we have always to put on for the house of the Lord, which innocence promises. You hasten well toward the Lord, you make good speed to depart from this most iniquitous age, you for whom it is unseemly to draw near to the end.

For what does so great a laboriousness of adorning the head contribute to salvation? Why is it not permitted for your hair to rest, now bound up, now loosened, now raised up, now pressed down? Some are eager to confine it in ringlets, others, that it may slip away loose and flying, with no good simplicity. You affix moreover certain monstrous masses of sewn and woven hairpieces, now after the manner of a cap, as it were a sheath for the head and a covering for the crown, now a platform built up at the back of the neck. It is a wonder that this is not done in direct opposition to the Lord's precepts. It has been declared that no one can add to his own stature. You plainly do add, by building upon your necks certain pads or the bosses of shields.

If you are not ashamed of the monstrousness, be ashamed of the defilement, lest you fit upon a holy and Christian head the cast-off hair of another head, perhaps unclean, perhaps guilty and destined for gehenna. Nay, drive away all this servitude of adornment from a free head. You labor in vain to appear adorned, you employ in vain the most skilled builders of hairdressing. God commands you to be veiled, I believe, lest the heads of certain women be seen. And in that day of Christian exultation I shall see, whether you rise again with white lead and rouge and saffron and in that encirclement of the head, whether angels thus painted will lift you up in a cloud to meet Christ. If these things are now good and of God, then also they will meet the rising bodies and recognize their own places. But nothing can rise again except flesh and spirit alone and pure; those things therefore are condemned which do not rise again in flesh and spirit, because they are not of God.

Abstain today from things that are condemned. Let God see you today such as He will see you then.

Evidently now I drive away women also from their own practices, I, a man and a rival of their sex. Or are certain things also taken away from us, in respect of the gravity we must maintain, on account of the fear owed to the Lord?

For indeed in men too, as in women, the desire to please is innate by the fault of nature—for women on account of men, for men on account of women—and this sex too acknowledges its own peculiar tricks of appearance: to shave the beard more keenly, to pluck it out, to shave it round about, to arrange the hair, even to dye its grayness, to remove the first down of the whole body, also to distinguish the face with a woman's pigment, and to smooth the rest with the roughness of some powder, then to consult the mirror on every occasion, to inspect it anxiously—yet when God is known, the desire to please being taken away, all those things are refused through the freedom from luxury as idle, as hostile to chastity. For where God is, there is chastity, there is gravity, her helper and companion. In what manner therefore shall we handle chastity without its instrument, that is, without gravity?

But how do we apply gravity to the administration of chastity, unless severity is carried about also in face and dress and in the whole aspect of the person?

Wherefore also with regard to dress and the rest of the encumbrances of your adornment, the cutting away and shaking off of excessive elegance must likewise be attended to by you. For what does it profit to exhibit the face indeed frugal and unencumbered and displaying a simplicity worthy of divine discipline, yet to abuse the rest of the body with fringed garments as though we did not? For, he says, the fashion to occupy oneself with the follies of pomps and delicacies? How closely these pomps attend to the business of luxury and clamor against the disciplines of chastity, it is easy to discern, in that they prostitute the grace of beauty by the companionship of dress; so much so that, if they be absent, they render it void and thankless, as it were disarmed and shipwrecked. On the other hand, if beauty is lacking, the support of elegance supplies grace as it were from its own store.

Finally, ages already at rest and drawn into the harbor of modesty are called away by the splendor and dignity of dress, and their severity is disturbed by desires, the allurement of attire compensating, of course, for the coldness of age. Therefore, blessed ones, first of all do not admit into yourselves the panders and procurers of dress and adornment; then if the account of your wealth or birth or former dignities compels any of you to go forth in such pomp, at least take care, now that you have attained wisdom, to restrain yourselves from such things, lest you usurp license with full rein under the pretext of necessity. For how shall we be able to fulfill the humility which we Christians profess, not rooting out again the use of your riches or elegances, which make for glory? But glory is accustomed to exalt, not to humble. Shall we then not use our own things? But who forbids us to use them? Yet according to the Apostle, who advises us to use this world as not using it.

And they that buy, he says, let them be as though they possessed not. Why so? Because he had said before: The time is gathered together. If therefore he shows that even wives themselves are to be held as though they were not held, on account of the straits of the times, what of these vain accessories of theirs? For do not also many do thus, and assign themselves to voluntary celibacy for the kingdom of God, laying aside of their own accord so strong and yet altogether permitted a pleasure? Some forbid themselves God's own creation, abstaining from wine and animal foods, the enjoyment of which involves no danger or anxiety; but they immolate to God the humility of their soul in the chastening of their diet also. Sufficiently therefore have you also used riches and delicacies, sufficiently have you gathered the fruit of your dowries before the knowledge of saving disciplines. We are they upon whom the ends of the ages have come.

We are destined by God before the world for the reckoning of the times; as though being chastened and castrated, if I may so say, from the world, we are instructed by the Lord. We are the circumcision of all things, both spiritual and carnal, for in spirit and in flesh we circumcise worldly things.

Forsooth God showed how to dye wools with the juices of herbs and the secretions of shellfish. It had slipped His mind, when He commanded all things to be born, to ordain purple and scarlet sheep: God also devised the workshops of those garments which, light and thin, should be heavy only in price; God also produced so many works of gold, for enclosing and setting off little stones; God inflicted the painstaking wounds upon ears, and held of such account the vexation of His own work and the torment of an infant then first feeling pain, that from those scars born of iron upon the body certain grains should hang, which the Parthians indeed insert everywhere throughout all their things in place of studs—although even gold itself, by whose glory you are possessed, the writings of the pagans report to serve as chains for a certain people.

So far are these things from being truly good; they are good only by reason of rarity; but by the arts introduced through sinful angels, who also revealed the very materials, the elaboration combined with rarity created preciousness, and from it the lust of possessing precious things excited women. But if those same angels who both uncovered materials of this kind and their allurements—I mean gold and brilliant stones and their workmanship—and also taught the very art of eye-painting and the dyeing of fleeces among other things, have been condemned by God, as Enoch reports: how shall we please God, rejoicing in the things of those who provoked the wrath and judgment of God?

Now let God have foreseen these things, let God have permitted them; let not Isaiah rebuke any garment of purple, let him reproach no crescents, let him blunt no cluster-ornament—yet not as the pagans, so let us also flatter ourselves, reckoning God only as the institutor, and not also as the inspector of His own institutions. For how much better and more cautiously shall we act, if we presume that all things were indeed provided by God at that time and placed in the world, that they might now be such as they are, in which the discipline of His servants might be proved, so that through the liberty of using them the experience of continence might advance. Do not wise heads of households of set purpose offer and permit certain things to their servants, that they may test whether and in what manner they use what is permitted, whether properly, whether modestly? How much more praiseworthy is he who has abstained altogether, who has feared even the indulgence of the Lord?

Thus therefore also the Apostle: All things, he says, are lawful, but not all things edify. How much more easily will he fear unlawful things, who stands in awe of lawful ones?

But what cause have you for going forth more elaborately adorned, since you are removed from those things which require such? For you neither frequent temples, nor demand spectacles, nor know the festival days of the pagans. It is for these assemblies and the mutual seeing and being seen that all pomps are brought forth in public, that either luxury may ply its trade or glory may wax insolent. But for you no occasion of going out is not somber: either some sick person among the brethren is to be visited, or sacrifice is offered, or the word of God is administered. Each of these is a business of gravity and holiness, and one for which there is no need of extraordinary and elaborate and loose attire. And if the necessity of friendships and duties toward pagans calls you, why do you not go forth armed with your own weapons?

So much the more, as you go to those who are strangers to the faith, that there may be a distinction between the handmaids of the devil and of God, that you may be an example to them, and that they may be edified in you, and that, as the Apostle says, God may be glorified in your body; but He is glorified in the body through chastity, and certainly also through the attire befitting chastity. But indeed it is said by some, lest His name be blasphemed in us, if we take away anything from our former habit and dress. Let us then not take away from ourselves our former vices also; let us be the same in morals too, if also the same in outward appearance, and then truly the nations will not blaspheme. It is a great blasphemy when it is said: since she became a Christian, she goes about more poorly. Will you fear to appear poorer, from the time you have become richer, and more squalid, from the time you have become cleaner?

Ought Christians to walk according to the pleasure of the pagans, or according to the pleasure of God?

Let us only desire not to be a cause of just blasphemy. But how much more blasphemable is it, if you who are called priestesses of chastity go forth adorned and painted after the manner of the unchaste? Or what less do those most unhappy victims of public lusts possess? Whom if certain laws once restrained from the ornaments and adornments of matrons, now certainly the wickedness of the age, daily increasing, has equated with the most honorable women even to the point of confusion in distinguishing them; although the enticements of beauty, never unconnected with a body that is prostituted and owing them, are also suggested by the Scriptures. That mighty city, which presides over seven mountains and many waters, when it had merited from the Lord the name of harlot, in what attire was it described in keeping with its appellation? It sits indeed in purple and scarlet and gold and precious stone. How accursed are those things, without which one accursed and prostituted could not be described!

That Tamar, because she had painted and adorned herself, was for that reason seen by Judah's suspicion to be sitting for hire; so much so that, because she lay hidden under a veil, she passed in the quality of her attire for a harlot by deception, and brought it about that he both wished and addressed and bargained with her as a harlot. From this we learn that provision must be made in every way against unchaste encounters and suspicions as well. For why is the integrity of a chaste mind stained in another's suspicion? Why is that hoped for in me which I oppose? Why does not my attire proclaim my morals, lest the spirit be wounded through the ears by unchastity? Let it be permitted to appear chaste; certainly it is not permitted to appear unchaste.

Perhaps some woman may say: It is not necessary for me to be approved by men, for I seek not the testimony of men; God is the beholder of the heart. We all know this, yet let us recall what the same God said through the Apostle: Let your moderation appear before men. To what end, unless that malice may have no access to you at all, and that you may be both example and testimony to the wicked? Or what is the meaning of: let your works shine? Or why did the Lord call us the light of the earth? Why did He compare us to a city set upon a mountain, if we do not shine out among those who are in darkness and stand forth among those who are sunk down? If you hide your lamp under a bushel, left in darkness you will necessarily be stumbled upon by many. These are the things that make us luminaries of the world, namely our good works.

But good, at least that which is true and full, does not love darkness, but rejoices to be seen and exults in the very notice it draws to itself. It is not enough for Christian chastity to be; it must also be seen. For so great must be its fullness that it flow out from the soul into the outward bearing, and pour forth from the conscience onto the surface, so that it may also look outward upon what is, as it were, its own furnishing, befitting faith to be kept for ever. For those pleasures must be shaken off, by whose softness and looseness the strength of faith can be made effeminate. Otherwise I know not whether a hand accustomed to being encircled by a bracelet can endure to grow numb in the hardness of a chain. I know not whether a leg accustomed to an anklet can suffer itself to be bound tight in the stocks. I fear for the neck, lest, occupied with the snares of pearls and emeralds, it give no room to the sword.

Wherefore, O blessed women, let us practise ourselves in harder things, and we shall not feel them; let us leave behind more pleasant things, and we shall not desire them; let us stand unencumbered for every eventuality, having nothing that we fear to leave behind. These are the fetters of our hope. Let us cast away earthly ornaments, if we desire heavenly ones. Love not gold, in which the first sins of the people of Israel are marked out. You ought to hate that which destroyed the Jews, who, forsaking God, worshipped it. Even then gold was the fuel of fire. Moreover, the times of Christians always, and now most especially, are passed not in gold but in iron. The robes of martyrdoms are being made ready, are borne up by angels as their bearers.

Come forth now, adorned and built up with the cosmetics and ornaments of prophets and apostles, taking from simplicity your whiteness, from chastity your blush, having painted your eyes with modesty and your mouth with silence, inserting into your ears the word of God, fastening about your necks the yoke of Christ. Your head submit to your husbands, and you will be adorned enough. Keep your hands busy with wool, fix your feet at home, and they will please more than in gold. Clothe yourselves in the silk of uprightness, in the fine linen of holiness, in the purple of chastity. Thus adorned, you will have God as your lover.