A. The Christian Tradition: Old Testament Passages
1. For the creation myth from Genesis, see Amt, 13-16
2. Exodus, 20:17 (from the Ten Commandments)
You shall not covet your neighbor's house, you shall not covet
your neighbor's wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox,
or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor's
3. Leviticus 20:10
If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both
the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death
4. Proverbs
Hear, my son, your father's instruction, and reject not your
mother's teaching, for they are a fair garland for your head (1:8-9)
Happy is the man who finds Wisdom, and the man who gets understanding ... she is more precious than jewels, and nothing you can desire can compare with her (3:13, 3:15)
Does not Wisdom call, does not understanding raise her voice? On the heights beside the way, beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries aloud: "To you, O men, I call, and my cry is to the sons of men. O simple ones, learn prudence; O foolish men, pay attention. Hear, for I will speak noble things, and from my lips will come what is right; for my mouth will utter truth." (8:1-7)
Who can find a good wife? She is far more precious than jewels.
The heart of her husband trusts her, and he will have no lack of gain.
She does him good, and not harm, all the days of her life. She seeks wool
and flax, and works with willing hands ... She rises while it is yet night
and provides food for her household and tasks for her maidens ... She puts
her hand to the distaff and her hands hold the spindle. She opens
her hand to the poor, and reaches out her hands to the needy ... She makes
herself coverings ... She makes linen garments and sells them ... She opens
her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue ...
Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises
her ... Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the
Lord is to be praised. Give her the fruit of her hands, and let her works
praise her in the gates. (31:10-31).
B. The Christian Tradition: the New Testament
1. Mark 10:2-12
And the Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, "Is it lawful
for a man to divorce his wife?" He answered them, "What did Moses command
you?" They said, "Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce,
and to put her away." But Jesus said to them, "For your hardness
of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation,
‘God made them male and female [Gen. 1:27].' ‘For this reason a man shall
leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall
become one flesh [Gen. 2:24].' So they are no longer two but one flesh.
What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder."
And in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. And he
said to them "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery
against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits
adultery."
2. Mark 16:1-14
And when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother
of James, and Salome, bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him.
And very early on the first day of the week they went to the tomb when
the sun had risen. And they were saying to one another, "Who will roll
away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?" And looking up, they
saw that the stone was rolled back — it was very large. And entering
the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a
white robe, and they were amazed. And he said to them, "Do not be
amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen,
he is not here; see the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples
and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him,
as he told you." And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling
and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to any one,
for they were afraid. Now when he rose early on the first day of
the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out
seven demons. She went and told those who had been with him, as they
mourned and wept. But when they heard that he was alive and had been
seen by her, they would not believe it. After this he appeared in
another form to two of them as they were walking into the country.
And they went back and told the rest, but they did not believe them.
Afterward he appeared to the eleven themselves as they sat at table; and
he upbraided them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they
had not believed those who saw him after he had risen.
3. Galatians 3:28
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there
is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
4. 1 Corinthians 11:3-9
But I want you to understand that he head of every man is Christ, the
head of a woman is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. Any man
who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, but any
woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled dishonors her head
- it is the same as if her head were shaven. For if a woman will not veil
herself, then she should cut off her hair; but if it is disgraceful for
a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her wear a veil. For a man ought not
to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is
the glory of man. (For man was not made from woman, but woman from man.
Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man).
5. 1 Peter 3:1-7
Likewise you wives, be submissive to your husbands. So that some, though
they do not obey the word, may be won without a word by the behavior of
their wives, when they see your reverent and chaste behavior. Let
not yours be the outward adorning with braiding of hair, decoration of
gold, and wearing of fine clothing, but let it be the hidden person of
the heart with the imperishable jewel of a gentle and quiet spirit, which
in God's sight is very precious. So once the holy women who hoped
in God used to adorn themselves and were submissive to their husbands,
as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord. And you are now her children
if you do right and let nothing terrify you.
6. Romans 16:1-2
I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deaconess of the church at Cenchreae,
that you may receive her in the Lord as befits the saints, and help her
in whatever she may require from you, for she has been a helper of many
and of myself as well.
7. See also the important texts printed in Amt, 16-23.
C. The Christian Tradition: the Church Fathers
Although medieval theories about women, men, and gender were ultimately
derived from the Bible, most of those beliefs had been filtered first through
the well-trained theological and exegetical minds of the great Church Fathers
of the 3rd and, especially, the 4th centuries A.D. Among the greatest
of these thinkers were Tertullian, Ambrose of Milan, Jerome, and Augustine.
1. Tertullian (c.160-230 A.D.), The Apparel of Women, book 1, chapter 1 [trans. Edwin Quain, Tertullian: Disciplinary, Moral and Ascetical Works (NY: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1959), 117-118]
If there existed upon earth a faith in proportion to the reward that
faith will receive in heaven, no one of you, my beloved sisters, from the
time when you came to know the living God and recognized your own state,
that is, the condition of being a woman, would have desired a too attractive
garb, and much less anything that seemed too ostentatious. I think,
rather, that you would have dressed in mourning garments and even neglected
your exterior, acting the part of mourning and repentant Eve in order to
expiate more fully by all sorts of penitential garb that which woman derives
from Eve - the ignominy, I mean, of original sin and the odium of being
the cause of the fall of the human race. "In sorrow and anxiety,
you will bring forth, O woman, and you are subject to your husband, and
he is your master [cf. Genesis 3:16]." Do you not believe that you are
[each] an Eve?
The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives on even in our
times and so it is necessary that the guilt should live on, also.
You are the one who opened the door to the Devil, you are the one who first
plucked the fruit of the forbidden tree, you are the first who deserted
the divine law; you are the one who persuaded him whom the Devil was not
strong enough to attack. All too easily you destroyed the image of
God, man. Because of your dessert, that is, death, even the Son of
God had to die. And you still think of putting adornments over the
skins of animals that cover you?
2. Saint Ambrose, Bishop of Milan (4th century), Exposition on the Gospel of Luke [from Patrologia Latina, ed. Migne, vol. 15, col. 1844. Translated by Vern Bullough, "Medieval Medical and Scientific Views of Women," Viator 4 (1973), 499].
She who does not believe is a woman and should be designated by the name of her bodily sex, whereas she who believes progresses to complete manhood, to the measure of the adulthood of Christ. She then does without worldly name, gender of body, youthful seductiveness, and garrulousness of old age.
3. Saint Jerome (a Church Father of the 4th century).
Jerome was a strong advocate of Christian asceticism, and for that
reason he often appeared to have a low opinion of marriage. As the
following quotation might suggest, he also appeared, at least at times,
to have a low opinion of women's nature. But some of his closest
spiritual relations were with women, and he respected those who provided
models of the life of Christian virginity. Compare, then, this first
passage with the longer letters that follow. How, then, would you assess
his views of women and his general assumptions about gender?
a. Jerome, Commentary on the Letter to Ephesians
From: PL 26: 533, trans. Vern Bullough, "Medieval Medical and Scientific
Views of Women," Viator 4 (1973), 499.
As long as woman is for birth and children, she is different from man as body is from soul. But if she wishes to serve Christ more than the world, then she will cease to be a woman and will be called man.
b. Jerome, Letter XXII to Eustochium
Perhaps the most famous of all of Jerome's letters, in which he
lays down at great length (1) the motives which ought to actuate those
who devote themselves to a life of virginity, and (2) the rules by which
they ought to regulate their daily conduct. Eustochium was the daughter
of Jerome's oldest and closest female friend, the Roman widow Paula.
Paula had bankrolled Jerome during his days as a theologian and philosopher;
ultimately she moved to Bethlehem to be near him. There they each
founded and led monasteries, one of monks, the other of nuns. Paula
had several daughters, all of whom Jerome advised. I provide only
some of the paragraphs of this long letter.
... I write to you thus, Lady Eustochium (I am bound to call my Lord's
bride ‘lady'), to show you by my opening words that my object is not to
praise the virginity which you follow, and of which you have proved the
value, or yet to recount the drawbacks of marriage, such as pregnancy,
the crying of infants, the torture caused by a rival, the cares of household
management, and all those fancied blessings which death at last cuts short.
Not that married women are as such outside the pale; they have their own
place, the marriage that is honorable and the bed undefiled. My purpose
is to show you that you are fleeing from Sodom and should take warning
by Lot's wife. There is no flattery, I can tell you, in these pages.
A flatterer's words are fair, but for all that he is [still] an enemy.
You need expect no rhetorical flourishes setting you among the angels,
and while they extol virginity as blessed, putting the world at your feet.
...
How often, when I was living in the desert,
in the vast solitude which gives to the hermits a savage dwelling place,
parched by a burning sun, how often did I fancy myself among the pleasures
of Rome! I used to sit alone because I was filled with bitterness. Sackcloth
disfigured my unshapely limbs and my skin from long neglect had become
as black as an Ethiopian's. Tears and groans were every day my portion;
and if drowsiness chanced to overcome my struggles against it, my bare
bones, which hardly held together, clashed against the ground. Of
my food and drink I say nothing: for, even in sickness, the solitaries
have nothing but cold water, and to eat one's food cooked is looked upon
as a self-indulgence. Now, although in my fear of hell I had consigned
myself to this prison where I had no companions but scorpions and wild
beasts, I often found myself among bevies of girls. My face was pale
and my frame chilled with fasting; yet my mind was burning with desire,
and the fires of lust kept bubbling up before me when my flesh was as good
as dead.
Now, if such are the temptations of men who, since their bodies are emaciated with fasting, have only evil thoughts to fear, how must it fare with a girl whose surroundings are those of luxury and ease? Surely, to use the apostle's words, ‘She is dead while she lives." Therefore, if experience gives me a right to advise, or clothes my words with credit, I would begin by urging you and warning you as Christ's spouse to avoid wine as you would avoid poison. For wine is the first weapon used by demons against the young. ...
You will tell me, perhaps, that, high-born as you are, reared in luxury and used to reclining softly, you cannot do without wine and dainties, and would find a stricter rule of life unendurable. If so, I can only say ‘Live, then, by your own rule, since God's rule is too hard for you.' Not that the Creator and Lord of all takes pleasure in a rumbling and empty stomach, or in fevered lungs; but that these are indispensable as means to the preservation of chastity ....
I cannot bring myself to speak of the many virgins who daily fall and are lost to the bosom of the church, their mother; stars over which the proud foe sets up his throne, and rocks hollowed by the serpent that he may dwell in their fissures. You may see many women widows before they are wed, who try to conceal their miserable fall by means of deceitful clothing. Unless they are betrayed by swelling wombs or by the crying of their infants, they walk abroad with dancing feet and heads in the air. Some go so far as to take potions to insure barrenness, and thus they murder human beings almost before their conception. Some, when they find themselves with child through their sin, use drugs to procure abortion, and when (as often happens) they die with their offspring, they enter the lower world laden with the guilt not only of adultery against Christ but also of suicide and child murder. Yet it is these who say: "‘Unto the pure all things are pure;' my conscience is sufficient guide for me. A pure heart is what God looks for. Why should I abstain from meats which God has created to be received with thanksgiving?" And when they wish to appear agreeable and entertaining they first drench themselves with wine, and then joining the grossest profanity to intoxication, they say: "Far be it for me to abstain from the blood of Christ." And when they see another who is pale or sad, they call here ‘wretch' or ‘manichaean' [manichaeans were an unorthodox group of early Christians; they believed matter was inherently evil, and thus were fervent ascetics] ; quite logically, indeed, for on their principles fasting involves heresy. When they go out they do their best to attract notice, and with nods and winks encourage hordes of young fellows to follow them. Of each and ll of these the prophet's words are true: "You have a whore's forehead; you refuse to be ashamed." Their robes have only a narrow purple stripe, it is true; and their head-dress is somewhat loose, so as to leave the hair free. From their shoulders flutters the lilac mantle which they call ‘maforte'; they have their feet in cheap slippers and their arms in tight-fitting sleeves. Add to these marks of their profession an easy gait, and you have all the virginity that they possess. Such [alleged virgins] may have eulogizers of their own, and may fetch a higher price in the market of perdition, merely because they are called virgins. But to such virgins as these I prefer to be displeasing.
I blush to speak of it, it is so shocking; yet though sad, it is true. How does this plague of the agapetae [literally ‘beloved sisters', or women who lived with the unmarried clergy supposedly as spiritual sisters, but really (in too many cases) as mistresses. Many church councils passed decrees against the practice] come to be in the church? From where do these unwedded wives, these novel concubines, these harlots (so I call them, even though they cling to a single partner) come? One house holds them and one chamber. They often occupy the same bed, and yet they call us suspicious if we fancy anything amiss. A brother leaves his virgin sister; a virgin, slighting her unmarried brother, seeks a brother in a stranger. Both alike profess to have the same goal, to find spiritual consolation from those not of their kin; but their real aim is to indulge in sexual intercourse. It is on such people that Solomon in the book of Proverbs heaps his scorn. "Can a man take fire in his bosom," he says, "and not burn his clothes? Can one walk on hot coals and not burn one's feet?"
We cast out, then, and banish from our sight those who only wish to seem and not to be virgins. Henceforward I may bring all my speech to bear upon you who, as it is your lot to be the first virgin of noble birth in Rome, to have to labor the more diligently not to lose good things to come, as well as those that are present. You have at least learned from a case in your own family the troubles of wedded life and the uncertainties of marriage. Your sister, Blaesilla, older than you in age but behind you in declining [to take] the vow of virginity, has become a widow only seven months after she has taken a husband. Hapless is the plight of us mortals who do not know what is before us! She has lost, at once, the crown of virginity and the pleasures of wedlock. And, although, as a widow, the second degree of chastity is hers, still can you not imagine the continual crosses which she has to bear, daily seeing in her sister what she has lost herself; and, while she finds it hard to go without the pleasures of wedlock, having a less reward for her present continence? Still she too may take heart and rejoice. The fruit which is an hundredfold and that which is sixtyfold both spring form one seed, and that is seed is chastity.
Do not court the company of married ladies or visit the houses of the high-born. Do not look too often on the life which you despised to become a virgin. Women of the world, you know, plume themselves because their husbands are judges or are in other high positions. And the wife of the emperor always has an eager throng of visitors at her door. Why do you, then, wrong your husband? Why do you, God's bride, hasten to visit the wife of a mere man? Learn in this respect a holy pride; know that you are better than they. And not only must you avoid interaction with those who are puffed up by their husband's honors, who are hedged in with troops of eunuchs, and who wear robes decorated with threads of gold. You must also shun those who are widows from necessity and no from choice. Not that they ought to have desired the death of their husbands; but that they have not welcomed the opportunity of continence when it has come. As it is, they only change their garb; their old self-seeking remains unchanged. To see them in their capacious litters, with red cloaks and plump bodies, a row of eunuchs walking out in front of them, you would think that they had not lost husbands but were seeking them. Their houses are filled with flatters and with guests. The very clergy, who ought to inspire them with respect by their teaching and authority, kiss these ladies on the forehead, and putting forth their hands (so that, if you knew no better, you might suppose them to be in the act of blessing), take wages for their visits. They, meanwhile, seeing that priests cannot do without them, are lifted up into pride; and as, having had experience of both, they prefer the license of widowhood of to the restraints of marriage, they call themselves chaste women or nuns. After an immoderate supper they retire to rest in order to dream of the apostles.
Let your companions be women pale and thin with fasting, and approved by their age and their conduct. .... when you rise at night to pray, let your breath be that of an empty and not that of an overfull stomach. Read often, learn all that you can. Let sleep overcome you, the scroll still in your hands; when your head falls, let it be on the sacred page. .... It is hard for the human soul to avoid loving something, and our mind must of necessity give way to affection of one kind or another. The love of the flesh is overcome by the love of the spirit. Desire is quenched by desire. What is taken from the one increases the other. Therefore, as you lie on your couch, say again and again, "By night have I sought Him whom my soul adores." "Mortify, therefore," says the apostle, "your members which are upon the earth." .....
Someone may say, "Do you dare detract from wedlock, which is a state blessed by God?" I do not detract from wedlock when I set virginity before it. No one compares a bad thing with a good thing. Wedded woman may congratulate themselves that they come next to virgins. "Be fruitful," God says, "and multiply, and replenish the earth." He who desires to replenish the earth may increase and multiply if he wishes. But the train to which you belong is not on earth, but in heaven. The command to increase and multiply first finds fulfillment after the expulsion from paradise, after the nakedness and the fig-leaves which speak of sexual passion. Let them marry and be given in marriage who eat their bread in the sweat of their brow; whose hand brings forth to them thorns and thistles, and whose crops are choked with briars. My seed produces fruit a hundredfold. .... Let those stitch coats to themselves who have lost the coat woven from the top throughout; who delight in the cries of infants which, as soon as they see the light, lament that they are born. In paradise Eve was a virgin, and it was only after the coats of skins that she began her married life. Now paradise is your home too. Keep therefore your birthright and say "Return to your rest, O my soul." To show that virginity is natural while wedlock only follows guilt, what is born of wedlock is virgin flesh, and it gives back in fruit what in root it has lost.
I praise wedlock, I praise marriage, but it is only because they give me virgins .... Why, mother, do you grudge your daughter her virginity? She has been reared on your milk, she has come from your womb, she has grown up in your bosom. Your watchful affection has kept her a virgin. Are you angry with her because she chooses to be a king's wife and not a soldier's? She has conferred on you a high privilege; you are now the mother-in-law of God. ....
In those days, as I have said, the virtue of continence was found only in men: Eve still continued to travail with children. But now that a virgin has conceived in the womb and has borne to us a child of which the prophet says, "Government shall be on his shoulders, and his name shall be called the mighty God, everlasting Father," now the chain of the curse is broken. Death came through Eve, but life has come through Mary. And thus the gift of virginity has been bestowed most richly on women, seeing that it has had its beginning from a woman. As soon as the son of God set foot upon the earth, He formed for Himself a new household there; that, as He was adored by angels in heaven, angels might serve Him also on earth. Then chaste Judith once more cut off the head of Holofernes.....
There is also a difference between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman cares for the things of the lord so that she will be holy both in body and in spirit. But she who is married cares [only] for the things of the world how she may please her husband. ....
Let the privacy of your chamber guard you forever; let the Bridegroom sport with you within forever. Do you pray? You speak to the Bridegroom. Do you read? He speaks to you. When sleep overtakes you He will come behind and put His hand through the hole of the door and your heart shall be moved for Him; and you will awake and rise up and say "I am sick of love." Then He will reply, "A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring blocked off, a fountain sealed."
Do not go from home or visit the daughters of a strange land, even though you have patriarchs for brothers and Israel for a father. Dinah went out, and was seduced. Do not seek the Bridegroom in the streets; do not go round the corners of the city. For though you may say, "I will rise now and go about the city: in the streets and in the broad avenues I will seek Him whom my soul adores," and although you may ask the watchmen, "Did you see Him whom my soul adores?" no one will deign to answer you. The Bridegroom cannot be found in the streets: "straight and narrow is the way that leads to Life." So the Song goes on: "I sought him but I could not find him; I called him but he gave no answer."
c. Jerome, Against Jovinian, selections
In 390 AD a monk named Jovinian gave up the ascetic life and wrote
a treatise defending the sanctity of the Christian married life and criticizing
the exaltation of virginity. This is Jerome's response. Notice that
in discussing the problems of marriage, he refers to a pagan treatise on
marriage by Theophrastus; Theophrastus was a real person (died 287 BC),
but so far as modern scholars know, he never wrote on marriage. Might
Jerome have invented him as an authority? Why? This so-called Theophrastan
misogyny is extremely famous (thanks to Jerome); we will encounter it frequently
in the Middle Ages.
... What am I to do when the women of our time press me with apostolic authority, and before the first husband is buried, repeat from morning to night the precepts which allow a second marriage? Seeing that they despise the fidelity which Christian purity dictates, let them at least learn chastity from the heathen. A book On Marriage, worth its weight in gold, passes under the name of ‘Theophrastus.' In it the author asks whether a wise man should marry. And after laying down the conditions - that the wife must be fair, of good character, and honest parentage; that the husband must be in good health and of ample means; and after saying that under these circumstances a wise man sometimes enters into the state of matrimony, he immediately proceeds thus:
"But all these conditions are seldom satisfied in marriage. A wise man therefore must not take a wife. For in the first place his study of philosophy will be hindered, and it is impossible for anyone to attend to his books and his wife. Matrons want many things, costly dresses, gold, jewels, great outlay, maid-servants, all kinds of furniture, litters, and gilded coaches. Then come curtain-lectures that last the whole night: she complains that one lady goes out better dressed than she; that another lady is looked up to be all: "I am a poor despised nobody at these ladies' assemblies." "Why did you ogle that creature next door?" "Why were you talking to the maid?" "What did you bring from the market?" "I am not allowed to have a single friend, or companion." She suspects that her husband's love goes the same way as her hate. There may be in some neighboring city the wisest of teachers; but if we have a wife we can neither leave her behind nor take the burden with us. To support a poor wife is hard; to put up with a rich one is torture. Notice too that in the case of a wife you cannot pick and choose; you must take her as you find her. If she has a bad temper, or is a fool, if she has a blemish, or is proud, of has bad breath, or whatever her fault may be - all this we learn after marriage. Horses, cattle, asses, even slaves of the smallest worth, clothes, kettles, wooden seats, cups, and earthenware pitchers - all are first tried, and then bought; a wife is the only thing that is not shown before she is married, for fear that she may not give satisfaction. Our gaze must always be directed to her face, and we must always praise her beauty; if you look at another woman, she thinks that she is out of favor. She must be called "my lady", her birth-day must be remembered, we must swear by her health and wish that she may survive us, respect must be paid to the nurse, to the nurse-maid, to the father's slave, to the foster child, to the handsome hanger-on, to the curled darling who manages her affairs, and to the eunuch who ministers to the safe indulgence of her lust: names which are only a cloak for adultery. Upon whomsoever she sets her heart, they must have her love even if they don't want her. If you give her the management of the whole house, you must yourself become her slave. If you reserve something for yourself, she will not think you are loyal to her; but she will turn to strife and hatred, and unless you quickly take care, she will have the poison ready. If you introduce old women, and soothsayers, and prophets, and vendors of jewels and silken clothing, you imperil her chastity; if you shut the door in the face of these sorts of people, she is injured and fancies that you suspect her. But what is the good of even a careful guardian, when an unchaste wife cannot be watched and a chaste one ought not to be? For necessity is but a faithless keeper of chastity, and she alone really deserves to be called pure who is free to sin if she chooses. If a woman is pretty, she soon finds lovers; if she is ugly, it is easy to be wanton. It is difficult to guard what many long for. It is annoying to have what no one thinks worth possessing. But the misery of having an ugly wife is less than that of watching a pretty one. Nothing is safe, for which a whole people sighs and longs. One man entices with his figure, another with his brains, another with his wit, another with his open hand. Somehow, or sometime, that fortress which is attacked on all sides is bound to be captured. Men marry, indeed, so as to get a manager for the house, to solace weariness, to banish solitude; but a faithful slave is a far better manager, more submissive to the master, more observant of the master's ways, than a wife who thinks she proves herself to be mistress only when she acts in opposition to her husband; that is, if she does what pleases her, not what he commands. But friends, and servants who are under the obligation of having received benefits, are better able to wait upon us in sickness than a wife who makes us responsible for her tears (she will sell you enough tears to make a deluge in hopes of gaining part of your inheritance); who boasts of her anxiety, yet drives her sick husband to the distraction of despair. But if she herself falls ill, we must fall sick with her and never leave her bedside. Or if she happens to be a good and agreeable wife (how rare a bird she is!), we have to share her groans in childbirth, and suffer torture when she is in danger [ie., during labor or birthing]. A wise man can never be alone. He has with him the good men of all time, and turns his mind freely wherever he chooses. What is inaccessible to him in person he can embrace in thought. And, if men are scarce, he converses with God. He is never less alone than when alone. Then again, to marry for the sake of children, so that our name may not perish, or that we may have support in old age, and leave our property without dispute, is the height of stupidity. For what is it to us when we are leaving the world if someone else bears our name, when even a son does not all at once take his father's title, and there are countless others who are called by the same name. Or what support in old age is he whom you bring up, and who may die before you, or turn out to be a reprobate? Or at all events when he reaches mature age, he may think that you take too long in dying. Friends and relatives whom you can judiciously love are better and safer heirs than those whom you must make your heirs whether you like it or not. Indeed, the surest way of having a good heir is to ruin your fortune in a good cause while you live, not to leave the fruit of your labor to be used in unknown ways after you have died."
d. Jerome, Letter to Laeta (Letter CVII), 403 AD
Laeta was the daughter-in-law of Paula, Jerome's closest female
friend (Laeta is thus the sister-in-law of Eustochium). Laeta had
written to Jerome asking how she ought to bring up her infant daughter
(also called Paula) as a virgin confessed to Christ. In this letter
Jerome instructs Laeta in detail on the child's training and education.
He advises Laeta to send the child to Bethlehem where she will be under
the care of her grandmother (the elder Paula) and aunt (Eustochium); Laeta
agreed, and the younger Paula eventually succeeded Eustochium as the head
of the elder Paula's nunnery.
The apostle Paul writing to the Corinthians and instructing in sacred discipline a church still untaught in Christ has among other commandments laid down this one: "If a woman has a husband who does not believe [in Christ], and if he is content to live with her, let her stay with him. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the believing husband; how else how were your unclean children made holy?" Should any person have supposed hitherto that the bonds of self-discipline are too far relaxed and that too great an indulgence is conceded by the teacher, let him look at the house of your father, a man of the highest distinction and learning, but one still walking in darkness [ie., still pagan]; and he will perceive as the result of the apostle's counsel sweet fruit growing from a bitter stock and precious balsams exhaled from common canes. You yourself are the offspring of a mixed marriage; but the parents of Paula - you and my friend Toxotius - are both Christians. Who could have believed that to the heathen pontiff Albinus should be born - in answer to a mother's vows - a Christian granddaughter; that a delighted grandfather should hear from the little one's faltering lips Christ's Alleluia and that in his old age he should nurse in his bosom one of God's own virgins? Our expectations have been fully gratified. The one unbeliever is sanctified by his holy and believing family. For, when a man is surrounded by a believing crowd of children and grand-children, he is as good a candidate for the faith. I for my part think that, had he possessed so many Christian kinsfolk when he was a young man, he might then have been brought to believe in Christ. For though he may spit upon my letter and laugh at it, and though he may call me a fool or a madman, his son-in-law did the same before he came to believe. Christians are not born but made. For all its gilding the Capitol [ie., the center of the Roman pagan cult] is beginning to look dingy. Every temple in Rome is covered with soot and cobwebs. The city is stirred to its depths and the people pour past their half-ruined shrines to visit the tombs of the martyrs. The belief which has not been accorded to conviction may come to be extorted by very shame.
I speak thus to you, Laeta my most devout daughter in Christ, to teach you not to despair of your father's salvation. My hope is that the same faith which has gained you your daughter may win your father too, and that so you may be able to rejoice over blessings bestowed upon your entire family. ...
I have nearly wandered into a new subject, and while I have kept my wheel going, my hand have been molding a flagon when it has been my goal to frame a pitcher. For, in answer to your prayers and those of the saintly Marcella, I wish to address you as a mother and to instruct you how to bring up our dear Paula, who has been consecrated to Christ before her birth and vowed to His service before her conception. ... Since Paula has been born in answer to a promise, her parents should give her a training suitable to her birth. ...
Here is how a soul must be educated which is to be a temple of God. It must learn to hear nothing and to say nothing but what belongs to the fear of God. It must have no understanding of unclean words, and no knowledge of the world's songs. Its tongue must be steeped while still tender in the sweetness of the psalms. Boys with their wanton thoughts must be kept away from Paula; even her maids and female attendants must be separated from worldly associates. For if they have learned some mischief they may teach even more. Get for her a set of letters made of boxwood or of ivory and called each by its proper name. Let her play with these, so that even her play may teach her something. And not only make her grasp the right order of the letters and see that she forms their names into a rhyme, but constantly disarrange their order and put the last letters in the middle and the middle ones at the beginning so that she may know them all by sight as well as by sound. Moreover, as soon she begins to use the stylus [the Roman pen] upon the writing-tablet [of wax], when her hand falters, either guide her soft fingers by laying your hand upon hers, or else have simple copies cut upon a tablet; so that her efforts confined within these limits may keep to the lines traced out for her and not stray outside of these. Offer prizes for good spelling and draw her onwards with little gifts such as children of her age delight in. And let her have companions in her lessons to excite emulation in her, so that she will be stimulated when she sees them earn praise. You must not scold her if she is slow to learn but must employ praise to excite her mind, so that she may be glad when she excels the others and sorry when she is excelled by them. Above all you must take care not to maker her lessons distasteful to her lest a dislike for them begun in childhood may continue into her more mature years. The very words which she tries bit by bit to put together and to pronounce ought not to be chance ones, but names specially fixed upon and heaped together for the purpose, those for example of the prophets or the apostles or the list of patriarchs from Adam downwards as it is given by Matthew and Luke. In this way while her tongue will be well-trained, her memory will likewise be developed. Again, you must choose for her a master of approved age, life, and learning. A man of culture will not, I think, blush to do for a kinswoman or a highborn virgin what Aristotle did to Philip's son [ie., to Alexander the Great] when, descending to the level of an usher, he consented to teach Alexander his letters. Things must not be despised as of small account in the absence of which great results cannot be achieved. The very rudiments and first beginnings of knowledge sound differently in the mouth of an educated man and an uneducated. Accordingly, you must see that the child is not led away by the silly coaxing of women to form a habit of shortening long words or of decking herself with gold and purple. Of these habits, one will spoil her conversation and the other her character. She must not therefore learn as a child what afterwards she will have to unlearn. The eloquence of the Gracchi [famous Roman orators] is said to have been largely due to the way in which from their earliest years their mother spoke to them. Hortensius became an orator while still on his mother's lap. Early impressions are hard to eradicate from the mind. When once wool has been dyed purple, who can restore it to its previous whiteness? ...
We are always ready to imitate what is evil; and faults are quickly copied where virtues appear unattainable. Paula's nurse must not be intemperate or loose, or given to gossip. Her bearer must be respectable, and her foster-father of grave demeanor. When she sees her grandfather, she must leap upon his breast, put her arms around his neck and, whether he likes it or not, sing "Alleluia" in his ears. She may be fondled by her grandmother, may smile at her father to show that she recognizes him, and may so endear herself to everyone as to make the whole family rejoice in the possession of such a rosebud. She should be told at once whom she has for her other grandmother [ie., the elder Paula] and whom for her aunt [Eustochium]; and she ought also to learn in what army it is that she is enrolled as a recruit, and what Captain it is under whose banner she is called to serve. Let her long to be with the absent ones [again, J. refers to Paula and Eustochium, who were then living with him in Bethlehem] and encourage her to make playful threats of leaving you for them.
Let her very dress and garb remind her to Whom she is promised.
Do not pierce her ears or paint the face that is consecrated to Christ
with white lead or rouge. Do not hang gold or pearls around her neck
or load her head with jewels, or be reddening her hair make it suggest
the fires of Gehenna. Let her pearls be of another kind and such
that she may sell them hereafter and buy in their place the pearl that
is ‘of great price' [Matthew 13:46]. In days gone by a lady of rank,
Praetextata by name, at the bidding of her husband Hymettius, the uncle
of Eustochium, altered that young virgin's dress and appearance and arranged
her neglected hair after the manner of the world, desiring to overcome
the resolution of the virgin herself and the expressed wishes of her mother
[the elder Paula]. But lo in the same night it befell her
that an angel came to her in her dreams. With terrible looks he menaced
punishment and broke silence with these words: "Have you presumed to put
your husband's commands before those of Christ? Have you presumed to lay
sacrilegious hands upon the head of one who is God's virgin? Those hands
shall forthwith wither so that you may know through torment you have done,
and at the end of five months you will be carried off to hell. And furthermore,
if you persist in your wickedness, you shall be bereaved both of your husband
and of your children." All of these things came to pass in due time,
a speedy death marking the penitence too long delayed of an unhappy woman.
So terribly does Christ punish those who violate His temple, and so jealously
does He defend His precious jewels. I have related this story here not
from any desire to exult over the misfortunes of the unhappy, but to warn
you that you must with much fear and carefulness keep the vow which you
have made to God.