For it is shameful that those who await the palm of virginity should beg indulgence for an offence, and that those who have castrated themselves even from things lawful should incur something unlawful; for it is indeed lawful to enter into the fellowship of matrimony. And as those are to be praised who, for the love of Christ and the glory of the heavenly kingdom, have despised the union of marriage, so those are to be condemned who, for the pleasure of incontinence, after they have vowed themselves to God, abuse the apostolic remedy. Therefore, as we have said, those who forsake marriages spurn not things unlawful, but things lawful.
But if such persons swear, if they curse, if they detract, if they suffer themselves to listen to those who detract, if they render evil for evil, if they incur the crime of covetousness in things belonging to others or of avarice in their own, if they harbour the poisons of jealousy or envy, if against legal and apostolic institutions they say or think anything unbecoming, if in the flesh, with zeal for pleasing, they go forth dressed up and adorned, if they do other unlawful things, as is wont to happen—what will it profit them to have spurned what was lawful and to practise what is not lawful? If you wish that your having despised lawful things should profit you, see that you do none of those things which are not lawful.
For it is foolish to have feared what is less, and not to fear what is greater [or not to avoid those things which are forbidden, while having spurned indeed those things which are permitted]. For the Apostle says: 「The unmarried woman thinks about the things of the Lord, how she may please God, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit; but she who is married thinks about the things of this world, how she may please her husband.」 He asserts that the married woman pleases her husband by thinking about the things of the world, but the unmarried woman pleases God, in that she has no care of the age. Let her tell me, then, who has no husband and yet thinks about the things of the world—whom does she desire to please? Will not the married woman begin to be preferred to her? For the former, by thinking about the things of the world, is pleasing at least to her husband, but the latter can please neither a husband, whom she does not have, nor God.
But neither does it befit us to pass over in silence that which he said: 「The unmarried woman thinks about the things of the Lord, how she may please God, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit.」 [She thinks, he says, about the things of the Lord; not about the things of the age, not the things of men, but she thinks about the things of God.] What, then, are the things of the Lord? Let the Apostle tell: 「Whatever things are holy, whatever things are just, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, if any praise of discipline.」 These are the things of the Lord, which the holy and truly apostolic virgins meditate upon and think about day and night, without any interval of time.
The kingdom of heaven belongs to the Lord, the resurrection of the dead belongs to the Lord, immortality belongs to the Lord, incorruption belongs to the Lord, the splendor of the sun which is promised to the saints belongs to the Lord, as it is written in the Gospel: 'Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.' To the Lord belong the many mansions of the righteous in the heavenly places; to the Lord belong the thirtyfold, the sixtyfold, and the hundredfold fruit. When women ponder these things, and ponder by what works they may be able to merit them, they ponder the things that are the Lord's. To the Lord also belongs the law of the new and the old testament, in which the holy utterances of His mouth shine forth; and if any virgins meditate upon these things without ceasing, they ponder the things that are the Lord's, and that prophetic word is fulfilled in them:
'Eternal foundations are upon the solid rock, and the commandments of God are in the heart of a holy woman.' There follows, 'how she may please God' — God, I say, not men — 'that she may be holy both in body and in spirit.' He did not say that she should be holy in a single member or in the body alone, but that she should be holy in body and spirit. For a member is one part of the body, whereas the body is the joining together of all the members. When therefore he says that she should be holy in body, he testifies that she ought to be sanctified in all her members, because the sanctification of the rest of the members will profit nothing if corruption is found even in one. Indeed, she will not be holy in body — which consists of all the members — if it has been defiled by the pollution of even a single one.
But that what I say may become more evident and clear: suppose a woman has been purified by the sanctification of all her members, and only her tongue sins, because it blasphemes or bears false witness — will all the members set the one free, or will the rest be judged on account of the one? Therefore, if the sanctification of the other members will not profit when there is a fault in one, how much more, if all are corrupted by the disgrace of various sins, will the integrity of a single one profit nothing! Wherefore I beg you, O virgin, do not flatter yourself in chastity alone, nor trust in the integrity of a single member, but, according to the Apostle, preserve the sanctity of your body wholly intact.
Cleanse your head from all defilement, for it is a crime, after the sanctification of the anointing, to be soiled with the juice or powder of saffron or any other pigment, or to be adorned with gold or gems or any other earthly finery — that which already shines with the splendor of heavenly adornment. For it is a great affront to divine grace to prefer worldly and secular ornament. Cleanse your forehead, that it may blush at human deeds and not at divine ones, and receive that confusion which begets not sin but the grace of God, as the Scripture says: 'There is a confusion that brings sin, and there is a confusion that brings grace.'
Cleanse your neck, that your hair may not bear golden nets nor hang with necklaces, but rather wear about it those ornaments of which the Scripture says: 'Let mercy and faith not depart from you; bind them upon your heart as upon your neck.' Cleanse your eyes, by withdrawing them from all covetousness, by never turning them away from looking upon the poor, and by keeping them free from all paints, in that sincerity in which they were made by God. Cleanse your tongue from lying, for 'the mouth that lies slays the soul'; cleanse it from detraction, from swearing of oaths, from flattery, from perjury.
I would not have you think the order reversed, that I said the tongue should be cleansed from swearing oaths before perjury; for you will more easily escape perjury if you do not swear at all, so that that saying may be fulfilled in you: 'Keep your tongue from evil, and let your lips not speak guile.' And be mindful of the Apostle who says: 'Bless, and curse not.' And recall also this more frequently: 'See that none render to any man evil for evil, nor cursing for cursing, but on the contrary, blessing, for to this you are called, that you may possess a blessing by inheritance.' And this also: 'But if any man offend not in tongue, he is a perfect man.'
For it is unlawful that those lips by which you confess God, beseech Him, bless Him, and praise Him, should be polluted by the filth of any sin. With what conscience, I know not, does the tongue beseech God when it either lies or curses or detracts? God hears holy lips, and quickly grants the prayers which an undefiled tongue utters. Cleanse your ears, that they may lend hearing to none but holy and true discourses, that they may never receive obscene or shameful or worldly words, nor hear anyone disparaging another, on account of that which is written: 'Hedge in your ears with thorns, and listen not to a wicked tongue,' that you may have a part with Him of whom it is said:
'Because by hearing and by sight he was righteous' — that is, he offended neither with his eyes nor with his ears. Cleanse your hands, that they be not stretched out to receive, but drawn in toward giving; not ready to strike, but fully prompt for all works of mercy and piety. Cleanse your feet, that they may not walk the broad and spacious way which leads to the splendid and costly banquets of the world, but rather tread the steep and narrow path which leads to heaven, for it is written: 'Make straight paths for your feet.' Recognize that your members were formed by God the Maker not for vices but for virtues:
and when you have cleansed all your members from every filth of sin and have been sanctified in your whole body, then understand that chastity will profit you, and with all confidence await the palm of virginity. I think I have expressed briefly yet fully what it is to be holy in body; now we must understand what follows — 'and in spirit' — that is, that what it is unlawful to do in deed, it is also not lawful to conceive in thought. For she is holy both in body and in spirit who offends neither in mind nor in heart, knowing also that God is the inspector of the heart, and therefore takes care to keep her soul, together with her body, in every way clean from sin, knowing that it is written: 'With all watchfulness keep your heart,' and again:
'God loves a holy heart, and all the undefiled are acceptable to Him,' and elsewhere: 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God' — which I judge to be said of those whom conscience convicts of no guilt of sin, of whom I think John too has spoken in his epistle: 'If our heart reprove us not, we have confidence toward God, and whatsoever we ask we shall receive from Him.' I would not have you suppose that you have escaped the crime of sin if the will is not followed by the act, since it is written: 'Whosoever shall look upon a woman to lust after her, has already committed adultery with her in his heart.' Nor say, 'I did indeed think it, but I did not carry it out,' because it is unlawful even to desire what it is unlawful to do.
Wherefore blessed Peter also commands, saying, 'purifying your souls'; for if he had known of no defilement of the soul, he would not have desired that it be purified. But we ought also to consider more attentively that passage which contains: 'These are they who were not defiled with women, for they remained virgins; these follow the Lamb whithersoever He goes,' and to note whether these are joined to that divine company and range through all the courts of heaven by the merit of integrity and chastity alone, or whether there are also other things by which virginity, thus aided, attains the glory of so great a blessedness. But whence shall we be able to know this? From what follows, unless I am mistaken, in which it is written:
'These were redeemed from among men, the firstfruits to God and to the Lamb, and in their mouth was found no lie, for they are without blemish before the throne of God.' You see therefore that they are said to cleave to the Lord's footsteps not in one member only, but that they are those who, besides virginity, have led an immaculate life, free from all contagion of sin. For this reason above all the virgin spurns marriage, that, being more secure, she may more easily guard from all fault even that which is also required of married women, and may fulfill all the commandments of the law. For if she does not marry and yet nonetheless does those things from which even married women are bidden to be free, what will it profit her not to have married?
For although it is lawful for no Christian to sin, and it befits all who are cleansed by the sanctification of the spiritual washing to run an immaculate course of life, so that they may be brought into the inmost bosom of the Church, which is described as being without spot, without wrinkle, or any such thing — much more is it necessary for the virgin to fulfill this, whom neither husband, nor children, nor any other necessity prevents from accomplishing the divine Scripture, nor can she, if she sin, be defended by any excuse. O virgin, keep the resolve appointed to you for a great reward. Glorious before the Lord is the virtue of virginity and chastity, if it be not weakened by other lapses into sins and evils.
Recognize your state, recognize your place, recognize your resolve. You are called the bride of Christ: see that you admit nothing unworthy of Him to whom you appear betrothed. He will quickly write a bill of divorce if He sees in you even a single adultery. Whatever woman is pledged with the earnest-gifts of a human betrothal at once carefully and diligently inquires from the household, the intimates, the friends of the bridegroom what manners the young man has, what he especially loves, what he accepts, by what habit he lives, by what custom he governs himself, what foods he uses, in what things above all he delights and rejoices. And when she has learned these things, she so tempers herself in all matters that her compliance, her pleasantness, her diligence, her whole life may accord with the manners of the bridegroom.
You also, who have Christ as your bridegroom, inquire from the household and intimates of your bridegroom what His manners are, and earnestly and skillfully ask in what things especially He delights, what arrangement of garments upon you He loves, what kind of adornment He desires. Let His most intimate friend Peter tell you, who does not permit even married women bodily adornment, as he wrote in his epistle: 'Let wives likewise be subject to their own husbands, that, if any believe not the word, they may be won without the word by the conduct of the women, while they behold your chaste conduct in the fear of God:'
'whose adorning let it not be the outward adorning of hair, or wearing of gold, or putting on of apparel, but the hidden man of the heart, in the incorruption of a quiet and modest spirit,' which is in the sight of God of great price. Let another Apostle also speak, the blessed Paul, who, writing to Timothy, testifies the same concerning the discipline of faithful women: 'In like manner also women in becoming attire, adorning themselves with modesty and sobriety, not with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly raiment, but as becomes women professing chastity through good conduct.' But perhaps you say: Why did these same Apostles not give a command?
Because they did not judge it necessary, lest such an admonition should seem to virgins to be an injury rather than a correction. Nor would they ever have believed them capable of such great rashness, that they would presume to take up carnal and earthly adornments not even conceded to married women. In truth, the virgin ought to adorn and array herself: for how will she be able to please her bridegroom, unless she comes forth arrayed and adorned? Let her be plainly adorned, but with inner ornaments, and let her be arrayed spiritually, not carnally, because God desires in her not the beauty of the body but of the soul. Therefore you also, whoever you are who desire your soul to be loved and indwelt by God, array it with all diligence and adorn it with spiritual garments. Let nothing unseemly, nothing foul appear in it.
Let it shine with the gold of righteousness and gleam with the gems of holiness, and sparkle with the most precious pearl of chastity; instead of fine linen and silk, let it be clothed with the tunic of mercy and piety, according to what is written: 'Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercy, kindness, humility,' and the rest. And let it seek not the comeliness of white-lead or any other pigment, but let it have the whiteness of innocence and simplicity, possess the rosy color of modesty and the purple blush of shame. Let it be washed with the heavenly soap of doctrine and cleansed with spiritual lye. Let no stain of malice, no stain of sin be left in it.
And lest at any time it give off the foul odor of sin, let it be drenched with the most sweet ointment of wisdom and knowledge. Such is the adornment that God seeks, and a soul thus arrayed He desires. Remember that you are called a daughter of God, according to what He says: 'Hear, O daughter, and see.' And you yourself too, as often as you name God your Father, testify that you are a daughter of God. Therefore, if you are a daughter of God, see that you do none of those things which are unbefitting to God your Father, but do all things as a daughter of God. Learn how the daughters of the nobles of this world conduct themselves, to what manners they accustom themselves, and by what disciplines they train themselves.
So great in some is the modesty, so great the gravity, so great the restraint, that out of regard for human nobility they surpass the manner of other people; and lest by some lapse of their own they brand any mark of infamy upon their honorable parents, they strive in a certain way to make for themselves among men a second nature of habit. You too, therefore, regard your origin, behold your lineage, attend to the glory of your nobility. Recognize that you are the daughter not of man only, but also of God, and adorned with the nobility of a divine birth. So conduct yourself that in you the heavenly birth may appear and the divine high-birth may shine clearly.
Let there be in you a new gravity, an admirable honorableness, an astonishing modesty, a wondrous patience, a virginal gait and the bearing of true chastity, speech always modest and uttered in its own time, so that whoever sees you may marvel and say: 'What is this patience of a new gravity among men? What modesty of shame, what restraint of honorableness, what maturity of wisdom? This is no human institution nor mortal discipline. Something heavenly is fragrant to me in this earthly body. I think that God dwells in certain people.' And when he has come to know that you are a handmaid of Christ, he will be seized with even greater astonishment and will ponder what manner of Lord that is whose handmaid is such.
If therefore you wish to be with Christ and to have a part with Christ, you must live by the example of Christ, who was so estranged from all malice and wickedness that He did not even render the like to His enemies, but rather prayed even for them. For I would not have you think those souls Christian which not only — I will not say hate — but do not love their brothers or sisters, their neighbors, with their whole heart and conscience before the testimony of God; since for Christians, after the likeness of Christ, it is necessary to love even their enemies. If you desire to have fellowship with the saints, cleanse your breast from the thought of malice and wickedness. Let no one circumvent you, let no one seduce you with deceitful speech. The heavenly court will receive none but the holy, the just, the simple, the innocent, and the pure:
Malice has no place with God. He who desires to reign with Christ must be clean from all wickedness and guile. Nothing is so contrary, nothing so detestable to God as to hate someone, to wish to harm someone; nothing so commendable as to love all. The Prophet, knowing this, testifies, teaching: 'You that love the Lord, hate evil.' See that you love human glory in nothing, lest your portion too be reckoned among those to whom it was said: 'How can you believe, who seek glory from one another?' and of whom it is said through the Prophet: 'Heap evils upon them, heap evils upon the glorious of the earth,' and elsewhere: 'Be confounded by your boasting, by the reproach in the sight of the Lord.'
For I would not have you look to those who are virgins of the world, not of Christ, who, forgetful of their resolve and profession, rejoice in delights, take pleasure in riches, and glory in the origin of their bodily nobility — who, if they truly believed themselves to be daughters of God, would never after a divine birth admire human nobility, nor glory in any honored father. If they perceived that they had God as their Father, they would not love the nobility of the flesh. Why, O foolish one, do you flatter and please yourself in the nobility of your lineage? God made two human beings at the beginning, from whom the whole forest of the human race descended: worldly nobility was not bestowed by the equity of nature, but by the ambition of covetousness.
Certainly we are all made equal through the grace of the divine washing, and there can be no distinction among those whom the second birth has begotten, through which both rich and poor, both free and slave, both noble and ignoble are made sons of God; and earthly nobility is overshadowed by the splendor of heavenly glory and nowhere any longer appears at all, while those who before were unequal in secular honors are equally clothed with the glory of heavenly and divine nobility. There is no longer any place there for ignobility, nor is anyone base-born whom the sublimity of a divine birth adorns — except in the eyes of those who do not think heavenly things are to be preferred to human ones.
Or if they do think so, how vain it is that they should prefer themselves in lesser matters to those whom they know to be their equals in greater ones, and that they should consider as placed beneath them on earth those whom they believe to be their equals in the heavens. But you, whoever you are, a virgin of Christ and not of the world, flee all the glory of the present life, that you may attain that which is promised in the future. Avoid words of contention and the causes of animosity; shun also the occasions of discords and quarrels. For if, according to the Apostle's teaching, the servant of the Lord must not quarrel, how much more the handmaid of God, whose mind ought to be as much more modest as her sex is more bashful.
Restrain your tongue from evil-speaking and put upon your mouth the bridle of the law, so that you may speak then, if perchance, when to be silent would be sin. Beware lest you say anything that may come into reproach. A word once uttered is a stone let fly: wherefore it must be pondered long before it is brought forth. Blessed indeed are the lips which never put forth what they would wish to recall. The speech of a chaste mind ought also to be chaste, which should always edify rather than ever destroy the hearers, according to what the Apostle commanded, saying: 'Let no evil speech proceed out of your mouth, but if any be good for the edification of faith, that it may give grace to the hearers.' The tongue is held in check —
which knows to frame words about nothing but divine things; and the mouth is holy from which heavenly utterances are always brought forth. Deter detractors of the absent as it were by the malignant authority of Scripture, because the Prophet too commemorates this among the virtues of the perfect man: 'if in the sight of the righteous the malignant be brought to nothing,' who has uttered against his neighbor things that are not to be approved. For it is not lawful for you patiently to hear the disparagement of another, since you do not wish your own to be received from others. For whatever comes against the Gospel of Christ is unjust, if you allow to be inflicted upon another what it is grievous to have done to yourself.
Accustom your tongue always to speak of good things, and direct your hearing rather to the praise of the good than to the censure of the wicked. See that whatever good you do, you do it for God's sake, knowing that you will receive from the Lord only so great a reward for the thing as you have accomplished it for the cause of His fear and love. Strive rather to be holy than to seem so, because it profits nothing to be esteemed what one is not, and it is the guilt of a double sin not to have what is believed and to feign not to lack what one does not have. Delight in fastings rather than in feasts, mindful of that widow who 'departed not from the temple, serving God with fastings and supplications day and night.' And if a widow, and indeed a Jewess, was such, what now ought a virgin of Christ to be?
Love rather the banquet of divine reading, and desire to be filled with spiritual feasts, and seek rather those foods by which the soul is refreshed more than the body. Flee the indulgence of flesh and wine as the fomentations of heat and the incitements of lust. And then, if perchance, use a little wine, when pain of the stomach and excessive weakness of the body compel it. Conquer wrath, restrain animosity, and whatever it is that brings repentance after the deed, shun it as the abomination of a sin close at hand. It is fitting that the mind which desires to be the dwelling-place of God be sufficiently tranquil and quiet, and far from all the disturbance of fury — which He testifies through the Prophet, saying:
'Upon whom shall I rest, save upon the humble and quiet and him that trembles at my words?' Believe God to be the watcher of all your works and thoughts, and beware lest you do or think anything that is unworthy of the divine eyes. When you desire to perform prayer, show yourself such as if you were about to speak with the Lord. When you say a psalm, recognize whose words you are saying, and delight rather in the compunction of the soul than in the sweetness of a tinkling voice. For God approves the tears of the one who chants more than the gracefulness of the voice, as the Prophet says: 'Serve the Lord in fear, and rejoice in Him with trembling.' Where there is fear and trembling, there is no lifting up of the voice, but a tearful and weeping casting down of the soul.
Apply diligence to all your acts, because it is written: 'Cursed is the man who does the works of the Lord negligently.' Let grace increase in you with your years, let righteousness increase with your age, and let your faith appear to be the more perfect the older you are, because Jesus, who has left us an example of living, 'increased' not only in bodily age, but also in wisdom and spiritual grace 'before God and men.' Reckon that you have lost all the time in which you have not felt yourself to be better. Preserve to the very end the resolve of virginity once begun, because it is virtue not only to have begun but to have completed, as the Lord says in the Gospel: 'He that shall persevere unto the end, the same shall be saved.'
Beware therefore lest you give to anyone even an occasion of lusting, because your bridegroom God is a jealous God: for an adulteress of Christ is more guilty than an adulteress of a husband. Be therefore to all a pattern of living, be an example, and go before in deed those whom you outrun in the sanctification of chastity. Show yourself a virgin in all things: let no corruption be cast against your head. Whose body is intact, let her conduct also be inviolable.
And since at the beginning of the letter we premised that you have been made a sacrifice of God — which assuredly imparts its holiness also to others, so that whoever has worthily partaken of it may himself also be a partaker of sanctification — so therefore through you also, as through a divine victim, let others be sanctified, with whom you should show yourself so holy in all things that whoever has touched your life either by hearing or by sight may feel the power of sanctification and understand that so much grace is poured into him from your conduct that, while he desires to imitate you, he too may be worthy of the sacrifice of God. III. Letter of Severus to the holy Bishop Paul.
After I learned that all your cooks had renounced your kitchen — because, I suppose, they disdained to offer their service for cheap pottages — I have sent you from our own workshop a young lad, well taught to cook the pale bean and to season common beets with vinegar and broth, and to set cheap porridge before the hungry jaws of the monks; ignorant of pepper, unacquainted with silphium, familiar with cumin, and exceedingly skilled at driving the clattering mortar with sweet-smelling herbs. He has one fault: that he is no civil enemy of all gardens; for, if admitted, he will mow down with the sword whatever is nearest, and will never be sated with the slaughter of mallows. But in providing himself with firewood he will be no slanderer to you: