The Shows

But indeed there is no one who does not also put forward this, that all things were established by God and attributed to man (as we ourselves declare), and that all things are good, as befits a good author: and that among these are reckoned all those things from which spectacles are assembled—the circus, for example, and the lion, and the strengths of the body, and the pleasantness of the voice. Therefore it seems that nothing can be alien or hostile to God which is established by His own creation; and that what is not hostile to God need not be avoided by the worshippers of God, because it is not alien to Him either. Plainly even the very structures of places—the stones, the mortar, the marbles, the columns—are things of God, who gave them as instruments of the earth; and even the very acts themselves are transacted beneath the sky of God.

How wise an arguer human ignorance thinks itself to be, especially when it fears to lose something of this kind from the joys and fruits of the world! You will find more people whom the danger of losing pleasure, rather than life, deters from this sect. For even a fool does not greatly fear death as something owed, and even a wise man does not despise pleasure as something so great, since for both fool and wise man alike there is no other gratification of life but pleasure. No one denies—because no one is ignorant of what nature itself spontaneously suggests—that God is the creator of the universe, and that the universe, as good as it is, has been entrusted to man.

But because they do not know God thoroughly, except by natural right, and not also by intimate acquaintance—from afar, not from near—they must necessarily be ignorant of how He commands or forbids the things He has established to be administered, and likewise who is His rival on the opposing side, adulterating the uses of the divine creation; for you will know neither the will nor the adversary of Him whom you know but little. Therefore one must look not only at the purpose for which all things were established, but by whom they have been perverted. For thus it will appear by whose power they were established, if it appears by whose they are not. There is a great difference between corruption and integrity, because there is a great difference between the founder and the corrupter. Moreover, all kinds of evils which even the pagans both forbid and condemn as beyond doubt consist of the works of God. Do you wish murder to be accomplished by iron, by poison, by magical bindings?

Iron is as much a thing of God as herbs, as angels: did God provide these things for the slaying of man? And yet He abolished every kind of murder by one chief commandment: Thou shalt not kill. Likewise gold, bronze, silver, ivory, wood, and whatever material is seized upon for fashioning idols—who placed it in the world but God, the author of the world? Did He do so in order that these things might be worshipped against Himself? And yet the supreme offense in His sight is idolatry. What is there that is not of God, which offends God? But when it offends, it has ceased to be of God; and when it has ceased, it offends. Man himself, the doer of all wickedness, is not only the work of God but even His image, and yet both in body and in spirit he has defected from his maker.

For we did not receive eyes for lusts, nor the tongue for evil speaking, nor ears as a receptacle for evil speaking, nor the throat for the sin of gluttony, nor the belly for the satiety of gluttony, nor the genitals for the excesses of immodesty, nor the hands for violence, nor the feet for a wandering life, nor was the spirit therefore breathed into the body, that it might become the source of plots, and frauds, and wicked thoughts—I think not. For if God, the exactor of innocence, hates all malice and so great a wickedness as has been devised, it is beyond doubt that He did not establish whatever He created for the destruction of the works which He condemns, even though those same works are carried out through the things He created, since the whole reason for condemnation is the perverse administration of creation by created beings.

We, therefore, who, having come to know the Lord, also discern His rival, who, having found the founder, at the same time detect the corrupter—we ought neither to wonder nor to doubt that, since that force of the corrupting and rival angel from the beginning cast down man himself, the work and image of God, the possessor of the whole universe, from his integrity, the entire substance of the world was likewise changed together with him into perversity against the founder, so that in the very thing which he had grieved to be granted to man and not to himself, he might both make man guilty before God and establish his own dominion.

Armed with this understanding against the opinion of the pagans, let us turn rather to the objections of our own people. For the faith of some, either too simple or too scrupulous, demands scriptural authority for this renunciation of spectacles, and places itself in uncertainty because abstinence of this kind is not explicitly and by name enjoined upon the servants of God. Plainly we nowhere find it set down as openly as it is written, Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not worship an idol, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not commit fraud; so expressly defined as: Thou shalt not go to the Circus, thou shalt not go to the theatre; thou shalt not watch a contest or a gladiatorial show. But we do find that that first utterance of David pertains to this matter as well, where he says, Blessed is he who has not gone into the council of the ungodly, and has not stood in the way of sinners, and has not sat in the seat of pestilence.

For even if he seems to have praised that just man because he did not take part in the assembly and gathering of the Jews who were deliberating about denying God; yet divine Scripture always extends broadly wherever, in accordance with the sense of the present matter, discipline is also fortified, so that here too the voice is not foreign to the prohibition of spectacles. For if he called the assembly of a few Jews at that time the council of the ungodly, how much more so great a gathering of a pagan people!—unless pagans are more pious, less sinners, less enemies of Christ than the Jews were then—with which the rest also agrees. For at spectacles one both stands and is in the way. For they call the gangways of the tiers running around the circuit "ways," and the divisions of the sections of the people along the slope.

The very place set in a curve for sitting is also called a "seat." And so, on the contrary, unhappy is he who has gone into any council of the ungodly, and has stood in any way of sinners, and has sat in any seat of pestilence. Let us understand what is said generally, when something is also capable of being interpreted specifically. For even some things pronounced specifically have a general import. When God admonishes or rebukes the Israelites in matters of discipline, He surely addresses all: when He threatens destruction to Egypt and Ethiopia, He pronounces judgment beforehand upon every sinful nation. Thus every sinful nation is called Egypt and Ethiopia, from the species to the genus. Just as also, from the origin of spectacles, every spectacle is called a council of the ungodly, from the genus to the species.

Lest anyone think that we are arguing from inference, let me turn to the primary authority of our own seal. When we enter the water and profess the Christian faith in the words of its law, we testify with our own mouth that we have renounced the devil and his pomp and his angels. What will be the chief and foremost thing in which the devil and his pomp and his angels are reckoned, if not idolatry?—from which comes every unclean and wicked spirit, so to speak, since I need not dwell longer on this. Therefore, if it shall be established that the entire apparatus of spectacles consists of idolatry, it will beyond doubt be prejudged that our testimony of renunciation in the washing also pertains to spectacles, which are given over to the devil and his pomp and his angels—namely through idolatry.

We shall recount the origins of each, by which they grew up in their cradles in the world; then the titles of certain ones, by what names they are called; then the apparatus, with what superstitions they are equipped; then the places, to what presiding deities they are dedicated; then the arts, to what authors they are assigned. If anything among these shall not pertain to an idol, that thing will pertain neither to idolatry nor to our abjuration.

Concerning the origins indeed, as matters more secret and unknown to the majority of our people, it was necessary to search more deeply, and from no other source than from the records of pagan literature. There are many authors who have published commentaries on this subject. From these the origin of the games is handed down as follows: that Lydians, emigrants from Asia, settled in Etruria, as Timaeus relates, under the leadership of Tyrrhenus, who had yielded to his brother in a contest for the kingdom; and so in Etruria, among the other rites of their superstitions, they also established spectacles in the name of religion. From there the Romans borrowed the craftsmen they had summoned, the occasion, and the designation, so that the games were called Ludi from the Lydians. But even if Varro interprets ludi from ludus, that is, from play, just as they also called the Lupercalia ludi because they run about playing; nevertheless he reckons that play of the young men among feast days, temples, and religious observances.

Nothing more now about the reason for the name, since the reason for the thing itself is idolatry. For even when the games were indiscriminately called Liberalia, they plainly sounded the honor of Father Liber. For to Liber they were first celebrated by country folk on account of the benefit which they ascribe to him, in gratitude for the discovery of wine. Then the games called Consualia, which at the beginning honored Neptune—for they also called him Consus. Then Romulus dedicated the Equiria to Mars: although some also defend the Consualia as belonging to Romulus, on the ground that he dedicated them to the god Consus, as they will have it, the god of counsel—namely that counsel by which he then devised the seizure of the Sabine maidens for his soldiers as wives. A fine counsel indeed, and even now among the Romans themselves just and lawful—not to say, before God.

For it contributes to the stain of the origin, that you should not think good what received its beginning from evil, from shamelessness, from violence, from hatred, from a fratricide as its founder, from a son of Mars. And now the altar of that Consus in the Circus is buried at the first turning-post beneath the ground, with an inscription of this kind: Consus in counsel, Mars in battle, The Lares mighty in the comitium. The public priests sacrifice at it on the Nones of July, the flamen of Quirinus and the Vestals on the twelfth day before the Kalends of September. Then the same Romulus established games for Jupiter Feretrius on the Tarpeian hill, which Piso recorded were called Tarpeian and Capitoline. After him Numa Pompilius made games for Mars and for Robigo—for they also invented a goddess Robigo. Then Tullus Hostilius. Then Ancus Martius, and the rest. Who also in order, and for what idols they established games, is set down in Suetonius Tranquillus, or in those from whom Tranquillus received it.

But these things will be sufficient to establish the charge of idolatry in the matter of origin.

To the testimony of antiquity there is added the subsequent posterity, bearing the form of the origin also in the titles of the present time, by which it is marked to what idol and to what superstition the games of either kind are assigned. The Megalesian and the Apollinarian, likewise the Cerealian and the Neptunalian, and the Latiar, and the Floralian are celebrated in common; the remaining games, arising from the birthdays and solemnities of kings, and from public prosperities and municipal calendars, have the causes of superstition as the reasons for their origin. Among these, even the commemorative editions given by bequest in memory of private individuals make offerings to the dead—this too in accordance with the antiquity of the institution. For from the very beginning games were reckoned under two heads: sacred and funerary, that is, for the gods of the nations and for the dead.

But as regards idolatry, it makes no difference with us under what name and title, so long as it reaches the same spirits to whom we renounce, whether they make them for the dead or for their gods. Accordingly, as they make them for their dead as for their gods, the condition of both parties is one, the idolatry is one, and our renunciation against idolatry is one.

The common origin, therefore, of both kinds of games, and their common titles, as arising from common causes, necessarily means they share a common apparatus by reason of the general guilt of idolatry, their foundress. But the Circus games have a somewhat more pompous staging, to which properly belongs this name, pompa, which precedes them, proving in itself what it is, from the procession of images, from the train of statues, from the chariots, from the tensae, from the armamaxae, from the thrones, from the crowns, from the spoils—how many sacred rites besides, how many sacrifices precede, intervene, and follow—how many colleges, how many priesthoods, how many offices are set in motion: these things are known to the people of that city in which the assembly of demons has taken up its seat. If in the provinces these things are administered with less care, in proportion to lesser resources, yet all Circus games everywhere must be referred to that source from which they are also sought; they are tainted from the same place from which they are derived.

For even a slender stream carries the quality of its source, and a small shoot carries the quality of its own branch. Let ambition or frugality consider how it offends God: whatever kind of circus procession it may be, even if it carries few images, it is idolatry in one; and if it draws but one thensa, it is nonetheless the wagon of Jupiter: any idolatry, however meanly equipped or modestly furnished, is splendid in the reckoning of its own guilt.

That I may also treat of the places, in accordance with my purpose, the circus is consecrated principally to the Sun, whose temple gleams in the middle space, and whose image gleams from the gable of the temple, because they did not think he should be consecrated under a roof, whom they have in the open. They say that this spectacle was first held by Circe, offered, as they will have it, to her father the Sun; and from her they argue the name of the Circus is derived. Plainly that sorceress transacted this business for those in whose name she was priestess, namely for demons and angels. How many idolatries, then, do you recognize in the very appearance of the place itself! Each ornament of the Circus is a temple in itself. The eggs they ascribe to the honor of the Castors, who are not ashamed to believe that those were hatched from an egg, born of Jupiter in the form of a swan.

The dolphins they dedicate to Neptune; the sessian columns they support from sowings, the messian from harvests, the tutelinian from the guardianship of fruits. Before these stand three altars, serving three gods—the great, the powerful, the mighty. These same they consider to be the Samothracian gods. The enormous obelisk, as Hermateles affirms, is prostituted to the Sun: its inscription, and hence its very account, is a superstition from Egypt. The council of demons was cold without their great mother; she therefore presides there over the Euripus. Consus (as we have said) lurks beneath the ground at the turning-posts. The idol of Murcia also was set up there. For they hold Murcia to be the goddess of love, to whom they vow a shrine in that part. Take note, O Christian, how many unclean names have taken possession of the Circus. That religion is foreign to you which so many spirits of the devil have occupied. Concerning places, indeed, there is occasion to treat the matter further, to forestall the question of certain persons.

For you say: What then, if I go to the Circus at some other time, shall I be in danger of defilement? There is no rule about places. For not only those gathering-places of spectacles, but even the temples themselves, a servant of God can enter without danger to his discipline, when a simple and urgent cause requires it, provided it does not pertain to the proper business or function of that place. Otherwise, even the streets, and the forum, and the baths, and the taverns, and our own houses are not altogether without idols; Satan and his angels have filled the whole world. Yet we do not fall away from God merely because we are in the world, but only if we touch any of the world's crimes. Accordingly, if I enter the Capitol or the Serapeum as a sacrificer and worshipper, I shall fall away from God, just as I would as a spectator in the circus or theatre.

Places do not defile us in themselves, but what is done in places, by which we have argued that even the places themselves are defiled: from things defiled we are defiled. We mention, therefore, to what gods such places are dedicated, in order to show that what is done in the places belongs to those to whom the places are dedicated.

Now concerning the art by which the circus games are presented. Horsemanship was formerly a simple matter, practiced from the back, and as a common use it was not guilty of any offense. But when it was pressed into service for the games, it passed from a gift of God to the service of demons. And so this form is assigned to Castor and Pollux, to whom Stesichorus teaches that horses were distributed by Mercury. But Neptune also is equestrian, whom the Greeks call Hippios, the horseman. As for the yoke, they have ordained four-horse chariots for the Sun and two-horse chariots for the Moon. But also Erichthonius, son of Minerva and Vulcan, and indeed born of lust that fell to the ground, is a demonic portent—nay, the devil himself, not a serpent. But if Trochilus of Argos is the inventor of the chariot, he dedicated that work first to Juno. If Romulus at Rome first displayed a four-horse chariot, I suppose he too is enrolled among the idols, if he is the same as Quirinus.

The four-horse chariots, having been brought forth by such authors, deservedly clothed idolatry in the colors of the charioteers, and from the beginning there were only two, white and red: white was vowed to winter, on account of the bright snows; red to summer, on account of the redness of the sun. But afterwards, as both pleasure and superstition advanced, some consecrated the red to Mars, others the white to the Zephyrs; the Green to the Earth-mother or to spring, the Blue to sky and sea, or to autumn. But since every form of idolatry is condemned by God, that form also is surely condemned which is profaned in honor of the elements of the world.

Let us pass on to theatrical matters, of which we have already shown the common origin and equal titles, in accordance with the very name of the games from the beginning, and their administration joined together with the equestrian from the start. The apparatus also shares in that part which pertains to the stage: for from temples and altars, and that unhappy business of incense and blood, the procession moves amid flutes and trumpets—those two most polluted arbiters, of funerals and of sacred rites, the designator and the haruspex. Thus, as we pass from the origins of the games to the circus games, we now direct our course from there to the scenic games, by reason of the fault of the place. The theatre is properly a shrine of Venus. It was in this way, in the end, that this kind of structure came to exist in the world.

For often the censors, when theatres were springing up again, destroyed them at the very height of their growth, consulting the interests of morality, foreseeing clearly the great danger to it from licentiousness—so that already from this point the judgment of the pagans themselves, agreeing with us, may serve as testimony to them, and the prerogative even of human discipline may serve to reinforce our own. And so Pompey the Great, lesser only than his own theatre, when he had built that citadel of all shamelessness, fearing that at some time the censors' censure might be visited upon his memory, placed a temple of Venus on top of it, and calling the people to the dedication by edict, named it not a theatre but a temple of Venus: Beneath which, he said, we have placed steps for spectacles—and so he covered a condemned and condemnable work with the title of a temple, and deceived discipline by means of superstition. But Venus and Liber go well together.

These two demons are conspired and leagued together—of drunkenness and of lust. And so the theatre of Venus is also the house of Liber. For they also called other scenic games properly Liberalia, beyond those devoted to Liber, which are the Dionysia among the Greeks, likewise instituted by Liber. And plainly in the scenic arts too there is the patronage of Liber and Venus, which are the private and proper domain of the stage, in gesture and the flowing movement of the body. For they sacrificed softness to Venus and Liber: to the one through sex, to the other through dissolution, both being dissolute. But what is performed by voice and melody and instruments and lyres, Apollo and the Muses and Minervas and Mercuries hold as their proprietors. Hate, O Christian, those whose authors you cannot but hate. Now we wish to say something about the arts, and about those whose authors we execrate by name. We know that the names of the dead are nothing, just as neither are their images.

But we are not ignorant of who it is that operates and rejoices under those names and the images set up for them, and falsely claims divinity—namely the wicked spirits, the demons. We see, therefore, that even their arts are dedicated to the honors of those who inhabit the names of their founders, and that they are not free from idolatry, whose founders are for that very reason held to be gods. Indeed, as regards the arts, we ought to have laid down the principle more deeply: that the demons, foreseeing from the beginning their own interests among other things, also breathed into men the inventions of such arts—the defilements of spectacles by which they might draw man away from God and bind him to their own honor. Nor would what was destined to come to them have been preoccupied by others. Nor would they have published these things through other men at that time, than through those very ones in whose names and images and histories they had established the deceit of consecration to transact their business.

That the order may be completed, let us also enter upon a treatment of the contests. Their origin is close to that of the games. Hence they too are instituted as sacred or funerary, and are held either for the gods of the nations or for the dead. Hence their titles: the Olympian games for Jupiter, which at Rome are the Capitoline; likewise the Nemean for Hercules, the Isthmian for Neptune, and the remaining contests are funerary. What wonder, then, if the apparatus of the contests is defiled by idolatry—by profane crowns, by priestly presidents, by the ministers of the colleges, and finally by the very blood of oxen? To supplement the matter of place, and of the common place for the college of the Musical and Minervalia and Apollinarian arts, and also the Martial arts, through combat and trumpet, they rival the circus with the stadium, which is itself a temple, and the temple of that very idol whose solemnities it celebrates.

But the gymnastic arts were handed down by the discipline of the Castors and Hercules and Mercuries.

There remains the recognition of that most distinguished and most welcome spectacle. It is called a munus from officium, since officium is also the name for munus. The ancients considered that by this spectacle they were performing an officium for the dead, after more humane men had tempered that practice with cruelty. For formerly, since it was believed that the souls of the departed were propitiated by human blood, they used to purchase captives or slaves of evil disposition and sacrifice them at funerals. Afterwards it pleased them to disguise their impiety with pleasure. And so those whom they had equipped with arms, trained as best they could at the time, only to learn how to be killed, they would presently on the appointed day of the Infernal rites dispatch at the tombs. Thus they consoled death with homicides. Such was the origin of the munus; but it gradually advanced to such favor as also to cruelty, because the sword did not sufficiently satisfy pleasure unless human bodies were also torn apart by wild beasts.

What was therefore offered to the dead was reckoned as a parentatio. This form is accordingly idolatry, since idolatry is also a form of parentatio. Both the one and the other minister to the dead. Now in the idols of the dead demons take up their abode—that we may also consider the titles: although this kind of exhibition has passed from the honors of the dead to the honors of the living, I mean quaestorships and magistracies and flaminates and priesthoods—yet since the dignity of the name is held by the crime of idolatry, whatever is administered in the name of dignity must necessarily share also in its stains, from which it derives its causes. We shall interpret the same of the apparatus, to be reckoned in the staging of those very honors: that the purple, the fasces, the fillets, the crowns, and finally the proclamations and edicts, and the previous day's porridges, are not without the pompa of the devil, without the invitation of demons.

What then shall I say of that dreadful place, which not even perjuries can endure? For by more numerous and more terrible divine powers is the amphitheatre consecrated than the Capitol is a temple of all demons. As many unclean spirits take their seat there as the place holds men. And to conclude also concerning the arts, we know Mars and Diana as the presiding deities of both kinds of games.

I think we have sufficiently fulfilled the order of how many ways and in how many modes the spectacles involve idolatry—in their apparatus, in their places. Concerning sacrifices indeed we are certain that they are in no way fitting for us, who have twice renounced idols. Not that an idol is anything (as the Apostle says), but that what they do, they do to demons, who dwell in the consecrations of idols, whether of the dead or of what they consider to be the forms of gods. Therefore, since both conditions of idols are one—inasmuch as the dead and the gods are one—we abstain from both forms of idolatry, and we despise temples no less than tombs: we acknowledge neither altar, we adore neither image: we do not sacrifice, we do not perform parentalia; but neither do we eat of what has been sacrificed or offered at parentalia, because we cannot eat the supper of God and the supper of demons.

If therefore we free our throat and belly from defilements, how much more do we keep those narrower parts of ours—our eyes and ears—from the pleasures of things offered to idols and to the dead, pleasures which do not pass through the intestines but are digested in the very spirit and soul: whose purity pertains to God more than that of the intestines.

Now, having interposed the name of idolatry, which alone as a subject ought to suffice for the renunciation of spectacles, let us treat the matter by another reasoning as well, for the sake of abundance: chiefly on account of those who flatter themselves that this abstinence has not been prescribed by name, as though too little were pronounced even concerning spectacles, when the lusts of the world are condemned. For just as there is a lust for money, or rank, or gluttony, or licentiousness, or glory, so also there is a lust for pleasure; and spectacles are a species of pleasure. I hold that lusts named in general terms contain within themselves pleasures as well; and pleasures understood equally in general terms are distributed specifically even into spectacles. Moreover, we have noted above concerning the condition of the places, that they do not defile us through themselves, but through the things which are done there, through which they have at the same time absorbed defilement, and then spit it back upon others.

Let the principal charge of idolatry see to itself, then, as we have said; let us bring the remaining qualities of the things themselves against all the commands of God. God has commanded that the Holy Spirit, as being tender and delicate by the good of His own nature, be treated with tranquility, and quiet, and peace, and not be disturbed with frenzy, nor with bile, nor with anger, nor with grief. How shall the Holy Spirit be able to agree with spectacles? For no spectacle is without the agitation of the spirit. For where there is pleasure, there is also eagerness, by which pleasure has its savour. Where there is eagerness, there is also rivalry, by which eagerness has its savour. Moreover, where there is rivalry, there are also frenzy and bile, and anger and grief, and the rest that flows from these, which are incompatible with the discipline.

For even if someone enjoys spectacles with moderation and propriety, according to the condition of his rank, or age, or even his nature, he is nevertheless not of unmoved mind, without a silent passion of the spirit. No one comes to pleasure without emotion, no one endures emotion without its attendant vicissitudes. Those very vicissitudes are the incitements of emotion. But if emotion ceases, there is no pleasure, and that person is already guilty of vanity by attending where he gains nothing. I think, moreover, that even vanity foreign to us is something we must avoid. What of the fact that he himself judges himself, placed among those whose like he, being unwilling, confesses himself to detest? It is not enough for us if we ourselves do nothing of the sort, unless we are also not associated with those who do such things. If thou sawest a thief, it says, thou didst run with him.

Would that we did not even dwell together with them in the world; yet even in the world we are separated from worldly things, because the world belongs to God, but worldly things belong to the devil.

Since, therefore, frenzy is forbidden to us, we are removed from every spectacle, even from the Circus, where frenzy properly presides. Behold the people coming to the spectacle already with frenzy, already tumultuous, already blind, already stirred up over their wagers. The Praetor is slow for them; their eyes are always rolling in his urn with the lots. Then they hang in suspense at the signal; there is one voice of one madness. Recognize the madness from the vanity. They have sent it, they say, and they announce to one another what has been seen by all at the same time. I hold the testimony of blindness: they do not see what it is; they think a napkin has been sent; but it is the maw of the devil cast down from on high. From that point, therefore, one proceeds into frenzies and passions and discords, and whatever is not permitted to priests of peace. Hence curses, reproaches without justice, even votes of hatred without merit of love.

For what do those who are not their own accomplish there in pursuit of their own ends? Unless perhaps this alone, through which they are not their own: they are saddened by another's misfortune, they rejoice at another's good fortune. Whatever they desire, whatever they abominate, is foreign to them; and so love among them is idle, and hatred unjust. But perhaps it may be permitted to love without cause, rather than to hate without cause. God certainly forbids even hatred with cause, He who commands that enemies be loved. God does not even permit cursing with cause, He who commands that those who curse be blessed. But what is more bitter than the Circus, where they spare not even their princes or their fellow citizens? If any of those things with which the Circus rages is anywhere fitting for the saints, it will also be permitted in the Circus. But if it is fitting nowhere, then neither in the Circus.

Likewise we are commanded to put away all unchastity. By this reasoning, therefore, we are also separated from the theatre, which is the private assembly-place of unchastity, where nothing is approved but what is not approved elsewhere. Thus its chief charm is fashioned largely out of filth, which the Atellan mime-player enacts with his gestures, which even the mime represents through women, banishing the modesty of the sex, so that they may blush more readily at home than on the stage; which the pantomime, moreover, suffers in his body from boyhood, so that he may become a skilled performer. Even the very prostitutes, victims of public lust, are brought forth upon the stage, more wretched in the presence of women, before whom alone they used to hide, and are paraded before the eyes of every age and every rank; their location, their fee, their description, and even those who have no need of them, are proclaimed.

I say nothing of the rest, of those things which it would be fitting to lurk in darkness and in their dens, lest they contaminate the day. Let the senate blush, let all the orders blush. Those very destroyers of their own modesty, shuddering at their own gestures in the light and before the people, let them blush once a year. But if all unchastity is to be execrated by us, why should it be permitted to hear what it is not permitted to speak? Since we know that even buffoonery and every idle word is judged by God, why should it be equally permitted to see what it is a disgrace to do? Why should those things which, when uttered by the mouth, defile a man, not seem to defile a man when admitted through the eyes and ears: since the ears and eyes are attendants upon the spirit, nor can the master be kept clean when his attendants are defiled? Thou hast, therefore, also the prohibition of the theatre, from the prohibition of unchastity.

But if we also disdain the teaching of secular literature as reckoned foolishness before God, sufficient prescription is given us also concerning those kinds of spectacles which secular literature marks out for the theatrical or athletic stage. For if tragedies and comedies are the performers of crimes and lusts, bloody and wanton, impious and prodigal: no recollection of any atrocious or base matter is better; what is rejected in the deed is not to be received even in the word. But if you also contend that the stadium is named in the Scriptures, you will certainly prevail in that point. But you will not deny that what takes place in the stadium is unworthy of your sight: fists and kicks and blows and every insolence of the hand, and whatever disfigurement of the human face, that is, of the divine image.

You do not approve anywhere vain races, more vain javelin-throws and leaps more vain still; nowhere will strength, whether injurious or vain, please you; nor even the cultivation of an artificially built-up body, as though it surpassed the handiwork of God. And on account of the idleness of Greece you shall hate fattened men. And wrestling is the business of the devil. The devil overthrew the first men. That very gesture is the serpent's power: tenacious for seizing, tortuous for binding, fluid for slipping away. You have no use for crowns; why do you hunt pleasures by means of crowns?

Shall we now also await the repudiation of the amphitheatre from the Scriptures? If we can contend that cruelty, if impiety, if savagery is permitted to us, let us go to the amphitheatre. If we are such as we have learned to be, let us delight in human blood. It is good when the guilty are punished. Who but a guilty man will deny this? And yet an innocent man cannot rejoice at the punishment of another, since it is more fitting for an innocent man to grieve that a fellow man of his has become so guilty as to be so cruelly consumed. But who is my guarantor that the guilty are always condemned either to the beasts or to whatever punishment, and that innocence is not also brought in, either by the vengeance of the judge, or by the weakness of the defender, or by the pressure of the examination?

How much better, therefore, is it to be ignorant when the wicked are punished, lest I know also when the good perish, if they have any good sense at all. Certainly indeed gladiators come innocent into the training-school, to become victims of public pleasure. Even those who are condemned to the training-school—what manner of thing is it that from a lesser offence they should advance and be reformed into murderers? But I have answered these things to the pagans. For the rest, far be it that a Christian should learn at greater length concerning the aversion from this spectacle: although no one can express all these things more fully than one who still attends, preferring not to fill himself with evil rather than to remember it.

How vain, therefore—nay, how desperate—is the reasoning of those who without doubt put forward evasion for the admission of pleasure, claiming that no mention of this abstinence is specifically determined in the Scriptures, which directly forbids a servant of God to attend assemblies of this kind. I recently heard a new defence of a certain self-indulgence. The sun, he says—nay, even God Himself—looks on from heaven, and is not defiled. Plainly the sun also sends his rays even into a sewer, and is not polluted. Would that God beheld none of the wickednesses of men, so that we might all escape judgment. But He beholds also robberies, He beholds also falsehoods, and adulteries, and frauds, and idolatries, and spectacles themselves. For this reason, therefore, we shall not look on, lest we seem to be seen by Him who beholds all things. You compare, O man, the accused and the judge: the accused, who because he is seen, is accused; the judge, who because he sees, is judge.

Do we then also pursue frenzy outside the bounds of the circus, and devote ourselves to unchastity outside the pivots of the theatre, and to insolence outside the stadium, and to mercilessness outside the amphitheatre, because God has eyes even outside the tiers, and the steps, and the awnings? We err; nowhere and never is excused what God condemns. Nowhere and never is it permitted, what is never and everywhere not permitted. This is the integrity of truth, and the fullness and equality of fear owed to it, and the faithfulness of obedience: not to change one's judgment, nor to vary one's verdict. That which is truly good or evil cannot be otherwise. But all things are fixed in the truth of God.

The pagans, with whom there is no fullness of truth, because God the teacher of truth is not theirs, interpret good and evil according to their own will and caprice: what is good in one place is evil in another, and what is evil in one place is good in another.

Thus it comes about that he who in public scarcely lifts his tunic for the necessity of the bladder, the same man in the circus exults in no other way than by thrusting all his modesty into the face of everyone; and he who guards the ears of his virgin daughter from every foul word, himself leads her to the theatre to hear those voices and gestures; and he who in the streets restrains or denounces one who conducts a quarrel with his hands, the same man in the stadium casts his vote for heavier blows; and he who shudders at the body of a man dead by the common law of nature, the same man in the amphitheatre gazes down with most patient eyes upon bodies gnawed and mangled and foul with their own blood.

Moreover, he who comes to the spectacle in order to approve the punishment of a murderer, the same man compels a gladiator to commit murder with whips and rods when he is unwilling; and he who demands a lion for any more notorious murderer, the same man begs the wooden sword for a fierce gladiator and bestows the cap as a prize; and that same man, when the other is finished, demands him again for the spectacle of his face, recognizing more gladly at close range the man he wished to kill from afar, so much the more hardened if he was unwilling.

What wonder at this inconsistency of men who mix and interchange the condition of good and evil through inconstancy of feeling and variety of judgment? For indeed the very promoters and administrators of spectacles—those most beloved charioteers, stage-players, athletes, and arena-fighters, for whom men lay down their souls, and women, or even those others, their bodies, for whose sake they commit in those places the very things they censure—these same men they degrade from that very art which they magnify, nay, they openly condemn with infamy and diminution of civil status, barring them from the curia, the rostra, the senate, the equestrian order, and all other honours at once, and from certain distinctions as well. What great perversity! They love those whom they punish; they devalue those whom they approve. They magnify the art; they brand the artist. What manner of judgment is it, that a man should be disgraced on account of those things through which he earns favour?

Nay, what great confession is it of an evil thing, whose authors, though they are most acceptable, are not without stigma!

Since, therefore, human memory, even with the clamour of the pleasure of delight, judges them worthy of condemnation, having stripped them of the goods of rank upon a certain reef of notoriety, how much more does divine justice take notice of craftsmen of this kind? Will that charioteer, that disturber of so many souls, that minister of so many frenzies, so many statues, as a priest crowned, or painted like a pimp, whom the devil adorned to be snatched up in a chariot against Elijah? Will he also please, who changes his features with a razor?—faithless toward his own face, which, not content to make it resemble Saturn and Isis and Liber, he moreover exposes to the insults of slaps, as though he were making sport of the Lord's precept? The devil, of course, also teaches one to offer the smitten cheek patiently. So too he has raised up the tragedians on their buskins, because no one can add one cubit to his stature: he wishes to make Christ a liar.

But now concerning the very practice of masks, I ask whether it pleases God, who forbids the making of every likeness—how much more of His own image. The author of truth does not love falsehood: everything that is feigned is adultery before Him. Accordingly He will not approve one who lies in voice, sex, and age, and who asserts loves, angers, groans, and tears, since He condemns all hypocrisy. Moreover, when in the law He prescribes that cursed is he who shall put on women's garments, what will He judge of the pantomime, who is even tended to with women's garments? Surely also that craftsman of fists will go unpunished? For he received such scars from the caestus, and the calluses of blows, and the cauliflower ears from God together with his own body. For this purpose God fashioned eyes for him, that they should fail from being beaten. I say nothing of him who sets a man before a lion, lest he seem too little a murderer, who afterwards slaughters the same man.

In how many more ways shall we argue that nothing among those things assigned to the spectacles is pleasing to God or fitting for the servants of God—nothing that is not pleasing to the Lord—since we have shown that all things were instituted on account of the devil, and furnished from the devil's resources: for nothing is not the devil's, whatever is not God's, or displeases God. This will be the pomp of the devil, against which we renounce in the seal of faith. But what we renounce, we ought not to share in by deed, or by word, or by sight, or by looking on. Otherwise, do we not renounce and annul the seal when we annul the testimony of it? Does it then remain for us to demand an answer even from the pagans themselves? Let them now declare to us whether it is lawful for Christians to attend a spectacle. And yet from this very thing they most of all understand a Christian act—from the renunciation of spectacles.

And so he plainly denies it who removes that by which he is recognized. But what hope remains in a man of this sort? No one crosses over into the enemy's camp except by throwing away his own arms, except by abandoning the standards and the oaths of allegiance to his own commander, except having agreed at the same time to perish.

Will he then think of God at that time, placed where there is nothing of God? He will have peace in his mind, I suppose, while striving for a charioteer; he will learn chastity, struck dumb at the mimes. Nay, in every spectacle no greater scandal will present itself than that very more elaborate adornment of women and men: that very agreement, that very conspiracy or dissension among themselves in their partisanships, fanning the sparks of lusts through their mutual commerce. No one, in short, when entering a spectacle, thinks first of anything except to be seen and to see. But when the tragedian is crying out, will he recall the exclamations of some prophet, and amid the effeminate actor's tunes will he compose a psalm to himself, and when the athletes are performing, will he be about to say that one must not strike back? Will he also be able to be reminded of mercy while fixed upon the bites of bears and the sponges of net-fighters?

May God avert from His own so great a craving for ruinous pleasure. For what manner of thing is it to go from the Church of God into the church of the devil? From heaven (as they say) into the mire? To weary those hands which you have lifted up to the Lord, afterward by applauding an actor? From the mouth from which you have uttered Amen over the Holy One, to give testimony to a gladiator, and to say forever and ever to anyone at all other than God and Christ?

Why then should they not also become penetrable to demons of that sort? For there also occurred an example—the Lord being witness—of that woman who went to the theatre and came back from it with a demon. And so in the exorcism, when the unclean spirit was being charged with having dared to attack a believer, he said with assurance and most justly: I did it rightly, for I found her in my own domain. It is established also that to another person a linen cloth was shown in a dream on the night of that day on which she had heard a tragedian, with a reproach naming the tragedian, and that that woman was not in the world beyond the fifth day. How many other proofs besides have followed from those who, by communicating with the devil at the spectacles, have fallen away from the Lord. For no one can serve two masters. What has light to do with darkness? What have life and death to do with each other?

We ought to hate those assemblies and gatherings of the pagans, if only because there the name of God is blasphemed, there daily lions are demanded against us, from there persecutions are decreed, from there temptations are sent forth. What will you do, caught in that seething pool of impious votes—not as though you could suffer anything there from men, no one recognizes you as a Christian—but reflect on what is being done concerning you in heaven. For do you doubt that at that very moment when you have been in the church of the devil, all the angels are looking down from heaven, and marking each one—who has spoken blasphemy, who has heard it, who has lent his tongue, who his ears to the devil against God? Will you not therefore flee the seats of the enemies of Christ, that chair of pestilences, and the very air itself which broods overhead, defiled by wicked voices? Let certain things be sweet and pleasing and simple, even honorable.

No one blends poison with gall and hellebore, but injects that evil into seasoned dishes and well-flavored and above all sweet ones: so too the devil steeps the deadly thing he concocts in the things most pleasing and acceptable to God. Everything there—whether powerful, or honorable, or resonant, or melodious, or subtle—regard just as drippings of honey from a poisonous buttercup: and do not value the throat of pleasure so highly as the danger through its sweetness.

With such sweets are their own guests fattened, and the places and times and the one who invites are theirs. Our feasts, our weddings are not yet; we cannot recline at table with them, because neither can they with us. The matter is arranged by turns. Now they rejoice, we are in conflict. The world (He says) shall rejoice, but you shall be sorrowful. Let us therefore mourn while the pagans rejoice, so that when they begin to mourn, we may rejoice—lest, rejoicing together now, we should then likewise mourn together. You are too dainty, O Christian, if you also covet pleasure in the world; nay, you are too foolish if you think this is pleasure. Certain philosophers have given this name to quiet and tranquility; in it they rejoice, in it they are diverted, in it they even glory. You sigh for turning-posts and stages and dust and arenas. I would have you say: can we not live without pleasure, we who must die with pleasure?

For what else is our desire, than that which is also the Apostle's—to depart from the world and to be received with the Lord? Here is pleasure, where also is desire.

But now if you think that this span of time requires entertainments, why are you so ungrateful as not to have enough of, nor to acknowledge, so many and such great pleasures contributed to you by God? For what is more delightful than the reconciliation of God the Father and Lord, than the revelation of truth, than the acknowledgment of errors, than the pardon of so many past sins? What greater pleasure than disgust at pleasure itself, than contempt of the whole world, than true liberty, than a clean conscience, than a sufficient life, than no fear of death; that you tread upon the gods of the nations, that you drive out demons, that you perform cures, that you seek revelations, that you live unto God? These are the pleasures, these the spectacles of Christians—holy, everlasting, free of charge.

In these interpret for yourself the games of the Circus; behold the races of the world, mark the seasons gliding by, count the intervals, await the turning-posts of the consummation, defend the fellowships of the Churches, be roused at the sign of God, be raised up at the trumpet of the angel, glory in the palms of martyrdom. If the teachings of the stage delight you, we have enough of literature, enough of verses, enough of maxims, enough also of songs, enough of voices—not fables, but truths; not tricks, but simplicities. Do you want boxing and wrestling as well? Here they are—not few, but many. Behold impurity cast down by chastity, faithlessness slain by faith, cruelty crushed by mercy, wantonness overshadowed by modesty: and such are the contests among us, in which we ourselves are crowned. Do you want blood as well, and something of that sort? You have Christ's.

But what a spectacle is close at hand—the coming of the Lord, now undoubted, now exalted, now triumphant! What that exultation of the angels, what the glory of the rising saints! What the kingdom of the just thereafter! What the new city of Jerusalem! But there are also other spectacles still to come—that last and perpetual day of judgment, unexpected by the nations, derided by them, when so great an antiquity of the world and so many of its generations shall be consumed in a single fire. What then the breadth of the spectacle! What shall I admire? What shall I laugh at? Where shall I rejoice, where exult—seeing so many and such great kings who were announced as received into heaven, groaning together with Jupiter himself and with their very own witnesses in the lowest darkness? Likewise the governors, the persecutors of the Lord's name, melting in flames more fierce than those with which they themselves raged against Christians?

Those wise philosophers, moreover, blushing before their disciples burning together with them—philosophers who persuaded them that nothing pertained to God, who affirmed that souls were either nonexistent or would not return to their original bodies—and the poets too, trembling not before the tribunal of Rhadamanthus or Minos, but of the unexpected Christ? Then the tragedians are to be heard more, surely more vocal in their own proper calamity. Then the actors are to be recognized, far more supple through the fire. Then the charioteer is to be watched, all glowing red on his fiery wheel. Then the athletes are to be contemplated, hurled not in the gymnasiums but in the fire—except that not even then would I wish to see them, preferring rather to fix an insatiable gaze upon those who raged against the Lord. This is he (I shall say)—the son of a carpenter or a harlot, the destroyer of the Sabbath, the Samaritan and one who has a demon.

This is he whom you purchased from Judas, this is he who was beaten with a reed and with fists, dishonored with spittle, given gall and vinegar to drink. This is he whom the disciples secretly stole away, that it might be said he had risen, or whom the gardener removed, lest his lettuces be damaged by the crowds of visitors. To see such things, to exult in such things—what praetor or consul or quaestor or priest will provide you from his own generosity? And yet these things we already have in some measure through faith, represented by the spirit in imagination. But as for those things which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man—I believe they are more pleasing than the circus and both theatres and every stadium.