I fear, venerable sons, lest, while for the preservation of your peace or chastity I presume to suggest something to you in rustic and unlearned speech, I should seem, in the eyes of those who know not how great is the power of charity, to incur the mark of presumption. For although I am both conscious of my own sins and not unaware of your purity, I nevertheless, though lukewarm, presume to admonish the fervent, though sluggish to spur on the running as though negligent, though languid to give counsel to the healthy, and, remaining on the way myself, to summon you to the desire of the eternal fatherland; and because, according to your holy vow, I am not able to visit you more frequently, I send this little admonition to your serenity, piously and humbly, in place of my presence.
But this presumption, as I have said, charity itself, which knows not to fear, thrusts upon me. Therefore I beg you, venerable sons, that, granting pardon to my boldness, whatever I suggest you may receive patiently and kindly; and, having regard to my rusticity and bashfulness, read over this exhortation of mine, such as it is, rather privately, attributing it to no one else, lest the ears of any learned person be struck by the harshness of our discourse. For we, though by God's favor we know nothing sinister of your most holy manner of life, nevertheless, on account of the manifold snares of the enemy — of whom it is said, His names are a thousand, his arts of harming a thousand;
on account therefore of his venomous cunning and evilly flattering lusts, we admonish your holy conscience with such words as we have, though lukewarm; and though we are less than fit warriors, we provide you spiritual arms against the fiery arrows of the devil. Rejoice and exult in the Lord, venerable sons, and give Him unceasing and abundant thanks, who has deigned to draw and summon you from the dark manner of life of this world to the harbor of quiet and religion. Consider, brethren, unceasingly whence you have come and whither you have feared to arrive. You have faithfully left behind the darkness of the world, and have happily begun to see the light of Christ; you have despised the fire of lust, and have come to the refreshment of chastity;
you have rejected gluttony, and chosen abstinence; you have rejected avarice and luxury, and held to chastity and mercy. But I beg you, venerable sons, that as much as you are secure concerning things past, so much may you be solicitous concerning things to come. For all crimes or sins quickly return to us, if they are not daily assailed by good works. Hear the apostle Peter saying: Be sober and watch, because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour. As long as we live in this body, let us, with Christ as our helper and leader, fight against the devil day and night.
For there are some — which is worse — who are negligent and lukewarm, who glory only in the name of Christianity, and think that it suffices them to have changed their garment and to have taken up the habit of religion, not knowing that word of the prophet: Son, when thou comest to the service of God, stand in justice and fear, and prepare thy soul for temptation; nor considering the sentence of the Psalmist: For the words of thy lips I have kept hard ways; and that which the Apostle said: Through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of heaven. For we can lay aside worldly garments and put on religious ones in a single day or in the moment of a single hour;
but good morals we ought to keep perpetually, and to labor, as long as we live, with Christ as our helper, against the pleasures of this wickedly sweet world, because not he who has begun, but he who shall have persevered unto the end, he shall be saved. First of all, therefore, let the soul which desires to keep religion strive with all the strength of faith to conquer gluttony and to avoid drunkenness, and let it keep a moderate table and a modest meal, so that its flesh may neither be weakened by excess of abstinence, nor provoked to luxury through abundance of delicacies; then let it lay a deep foundation of humility, bridle the tongue, flee detraction as poison, neither utter idle words itself, nor willingly let words uttered by another pass into its ears;
let it accustom itself to have a manner of clothing neither too abject nor changeably pompous nor of a dangerous elegance. Let it either frequently read the reading itself, or receive the words of the reader with all the eagerness of the heart. From the divine fountains of the Scriptures let it perpetually draw the water of salvation — that water, namely, of which the Lord says: He that believeth in me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. From the flowers also of paradise, that is, from the meanings of the holy Scriptures, let the holy soul strive perpetually to adorn itself, and upon those precious pearls let it unceasingly bestow its ears; from them let it fashion for itself rings and bracelets, while it exercises good works. There let us seek the ornaments of chastity, there the holocausts of compunction.
But he who desires to keep religion with an unstained heart and a pure body, let him either never go out in public, or certainly not except for great and unavoidable necessity. Nor let anyone say: My own conscience suffices me. Let each say to himself whatever pleases him: that excuse is wretched and hateful to God, which proceeds rather from unchastity than from a good conscience. For when either a man or a woman first begins to be on familiar terms with a man, she is recognized as sufficiently modest and, as it were, holy. But the devil at first withdraws his devices, until, little by little, as constant familiarity grows, he nourishes hostile things between the two.
For the cunning enemy makes them, in a short time, mutually devoted to each other, without any reckoning of lust, without any loss of chastity, and so surrounds them with a false security that he leads them, as it were, in a soothing tranquility, like two little boats out into the deep; and while they think themselves secure, they do not even seek the aid of fastings, as though they were culprits; and when he has made them secure, dashing them one against the other, he suddenly plunges them beneath the tempest, and driving them into wounding embraces, at one blow he slays them both together. So long does he conceal the fire beneath, without any flames, until, joining the two torches, he sets them both ablaze at once.
Thus the devil unfolds what before seemed to offer protection; thus, as it were, out of simple charity he forges an illicit love, and while at first it is despised to yield, thus he is able the more to take possession. Behold, each one is secure concerning his own conscience — but is it so, that when he sees someone taking scandal from him, he cannot be responsible? Does he, just as he knows his own conscience, likewise see the will of another? Behold, your eye looks simply, and perhaps that other cruelly lusts. You rejoice in your own capacity, and do not fear the other's ruin. For if you show yourself too familiar, you nourish another's concupiscence. Even if you yourself do not sin, you nevertheless destroy another, and it will be a cause for you, even without cause, that the lust of another stains you.
Do not, I beg you, do not give occasion to any persons, nor grant familiarity, lest perchance the concupiscence of someone, kindled against you for evil, begin to seek elsewhere what it could not obtain in you. But perhaps someone says: I am secure concerning my own conscience. Far be it that this proceed from a religious mouth: for he has already fallen who is confident of his own virginity. If, with Christ's help, he desires to conquer lust, let him know most certainly that he who does not overthrow unworthy familiarity will quickly destroy either himself or another. But perhaps someone says: I do not flee familiarity for this reason, that I wish to have something to conquer; I desire to hold my adversary captive. See lest your adversary begin to rebel against you. See lest that captivity lead you captive.
Hear the Apostle saying: Flee fornication; against the other vices we ought to resist with all our strength, but against lust it is not expedient to fight back, but to flee. Be therefore a fugitive from lust, if you wish to be an outstanding fighter for chastity. But attend diligently to what I have said: when anyone alone is incited by the goads of lust, let him, with Christ's help, fight back against himself as much as he prevails, because he has no place to which he might flee; but when the devil supplies fuel for pleasure through the fellowship — the opportune fellowship, that is — of another, let the holy soul, as much as it prevails, flee that very familiarity, as I said above. And so, when anyone is tempted in himself, let him, with God's help, resist himself;
when through the company of another his conscience is tickled, even lightly, let him flee, as if from a venomous serpent, with all the speed he can. But that we may be able to keep all these things, let us hold to a reasonable abstinence, because that saying of a most holy man is true: As you restrain the belly, so also its venomous motions; let us also, as much as we can, keep true humility. For the integrity of the flesh is not preserved where the mind is corrupted by the swelling of pride, especially where the flame of anger also frequently rises up, and quickly consumes the flowers of chastity and virginity.
For a soul chastely devoted to God ought not to decline to have constant familiarity — neither of strangers, nor even of its own kinsfolk — whether by their coming to it or by itself walking to them, lest it either say what is not fitting or what is not expedient, or see something that may be contrary to chastity. For if the vessels which are offered in the church, or placed upon the sacrosanct altar, are called holy by all, and it is not lawful that they be afterward recalled from the church into a lay house or fitted for human uses; if vessels which can have neither understanding nor sense have so great a dignity, what dignity, think you, does a person created after the image of God have before Him?
As therefore the holy vessels, destined to serve human uses, neither can nor ought to be recalled from the church, so it is not fitting, not becoming, not expedient for any religious person to be entangled in the obligations of his own kinsfolk, or to be constrained by the pernicious familiarity of any strangers whatsoever. Above all, I admonish this: that you flee the evil of envy as a viperous poison, and that you prepare among yourselves, one for another, spiritual remedies through holy conversations. For there are some — which is worse — who, when they come together, inflict greater wounds upon themselves by detracting, or by murmuring against their superior, than they compound spiritual medicines.
But you, holy and venerable sons, if you see anyone fainthearted, bestow consolation; if anyone proud, apply the medicine of humility; if you see anyone angry, minister the refreshment of patience. If you are nobly born, rejoice rather in the humility of religion than in the dignity of the world. And so dispense your earthly substance that thereby you may be able to have spiritual wings by bestowing well and quickly, and not, by reserving something for yourselves or by disbursing too tardily, have carnal fetters. For earthly substance, if it is disbursed too tardily, is recognized to bind the wings of the soul as if with force, or rather as if with birdlime, because that word which is written is true: The impediments of the world made them wretched.
But if anyone was poor before he took up holy religion, he ought to give thanks to God, who was unwilling to bind him with the goods of this world. For many — which is worse — their own goods so hold bound, that they cannot return to the eternal fatherland. But you are already, by Christ's favor, happy in this world, you who have despised both the goods and the pleasures of this world, not only in heart but also in body. Hold, therefore, your hands to the plow, and do not look back; and because you have been counted worthy to ascend upon the roof of perfection, let not the pleasure of this world cast you down from it. Remember Lot's wife, who, looking back, was turned into a pillar of salt.
Let never an oath, never a curse proceed from your mouth. Not only your bodies, but also your hearts, guard with all solicitude, on account of that which is written: With all watchfulness keep thy heart; and that which the Lord says in the Gospel: For out of the heart come forth evil thoughts. For if in the heart we are moved to nothing evil, whatever is holy is brought forth from the mouth, because, as it is written, Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. For the tongue is wont to bring forth that which the conscience has supplied from the workshop of the heart. And therefore, if you wish to bring forth good things from the mouth, always think in the heart the things that are holy.
You ought so to apply yourselves to reading and prayer that meanwhile you may also be able to do something with your hands; yet especially accustom yourselves to be free for reading until the third hour, and dedicate the better part of the day to holy work. Let prayer itself proceed from the heart with silence, so that it is scarcely heard in the mouth. For he who wills to pray with a loud voice harms both himself and another, while by his garrulity he suspends another's mind from holy and secret prayer. And in those very works which you exercise with your hands, loathe and despise worldly and pompous garments, which serve not usefulness but vanity, so that even in those earthly works you may be able to exercise whatever befits sobriety and honesty.
For many display in their works that which they love in their morals. They prepare for themselves worldly ornaments, loving the world and serving pleasure or luxury. But to you, to whom the world is crucified, let nothing be common with such persons. Whatever the flesh arrays for luxury, let it be rejected by your superior as an enemy and a thing contrary. For there are some — which is worse — who, for the vanity of this world, are more eager to give their labor to earthly desires than to devote themselves to divine reading, while they desire coverlets beautiful and embroidered, tapestries, plumed cushions also, and the rest of things like these, at enormous expense and superfluous outlay, for the lust of the eyes,
not knowing that which the Lord cries out and says through John the Evangelist: Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world, for all that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh and the concupiscence of the eyes and the pride of life. What does it profit to guard virginity and the integrity of the body, if one is unwilling to avoid the concupiscences of the eyes? There are also some who wish to give even the greater part of their goods to their kinsfolk, and perhaps to the rich, rather than to the poor, and do not consider that, while they bestow their substance upon those persons for luxury, they consume themselves with eternal beggary. But someone will say: Ought I then to despise my parents? Far be it that we should say that you ought not to honor your parents:
How can it be that we should preach that parents are not to be loved, when we say that even enemies are to be loved? Love your parents as much as you are able, especially if they are chaste and honorable; ever pay them honor, and out of your resources leave them some small gifts. But the whole of whatever is greater and more profitable, whatever will be of use right up to the end of the age, give to the poor, that your almsgiving may pass over, for the refreshment of the poor, into the kingdoms of heaven until the day of judgment. Whatever you give them less, they will be able to provide for themselves afterward (those who could not labor). But you, whatever you have prepared too little for yourself through mercy, in that age you will never be able to find it.
And yet, if there are any kinsfolk who lack either food or clothing, we have a reward with God if you give them the means by which they can be sustained. For we are to come before the tribunal of the eternal Judge, and if we have done well, we shall happily hear: 「Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom; for I was hungry and thirsty,」 and the rest; 「as long as you did it to one of these least, you did it to me.」 He did not say: 「Come, receive the kingdom of God because you heaped up the riches of your kinsfolk; because you left them the means to live in luxury in the world」; that indeed he did not say, but rather that which he records in the Gospel, and which the prophet had also foretold: 「He has dispersed, he has given to the poor.」
Consider, I pray, 「he dispersed, he gave to the poor」; he did not say to rich men living in luxury, not to those who love this world. For that rich man of whom we read in the Gospel, who was clothed in purple and fine linen, left his brothers rich; but afterward, burning in hell, he sought a taste of refreshment and could not find it. But you, holy souls worthy of God, do everything spiritually, and offer to him to whom you have consecrated your souls—nay, render back to him your substance. It is fitting that he should receive earthly things from you, who prepares eternal things for you; let him receive earthly substance from you, who has bestowed on you the crown of virginity;
you are the more his debtors, since he gave you the power to follow that spotless Lamb wherever he goes. Indeed the rest of the multitude of the faithful follows Christ, not wherever he goes, but wherever they themselves are able. For penitents and the married can follow Christ by other paths of righteousness, save that one where he advances in the beauty of virginity. For they cannot do anything to be virgins, in whom it has come to pass that they cannot be virgins. But you, holy sons, follow him, holding perseveringly to what you have vowed ardently. Take heed lest the good of virginity perish from you, since you can do nothing to make it return.
Again and again, holy souls dedicated to God, I entreat, and with all humility I presume to give counsel for the preserving of virginity's reward, that you labor with all your strength to repel from yourselves or from your own an unfitting familiarity. Far off, indeed far off, be that plague which disordered familiarity hurls; there is no security in such fellowship: it suffers collisions, as if by certain turbulent waves; in this familiarity no friendly concord dwells, which grows only through discordant enmity. For to preserve the dignity of holy religion, security is a far more holy witness than disordered familiarity. Give heed, holy soul;
understand diligently how many evils are born of disordered familiarity. For the familiarity of any woman, if it begins to be frequent, sows nothing but corruption: it makes vices sprout, conceives lust, prepares disgrace, extends fury, feeds wantonness, nurtures petulance, exalts falls, builds ruins, raises up steep banks, opens up precipices, is shipwrecked amid perils, is cheapened by shipwrecks, rejoices in perdition, fosters inner ruin, purchases confusion, treasures up reproach, exaggerates accusations, inflames excuses, and in droves at once are massed the numerous snares of entrapments, and through infinite disgraces it brings in the destruction of the lost by a manifold death.
So many and such great evils of pernicious familiarity no one lays low, except one who has striven to have but seldom, or with difficulty, that fellowship whereby he might be imperilled. For the holy soul who has willed to guard its secret should flee, by strength of mind, the evil of constant company. Let this holy solitude be for it an invincible bulwark of sanctity, a strong assault upon infamy, the firmness of fortitude, and the enfeebling of wanton lasciviousness, the safeguard of what is one's own, and the destruction of weakness, the victory of the soul and the plunder of the body's foe, the freedom of glories and the captivity of crimes, the bridal escort of holiness and the repudiation of foulness, the token of sincerity, and the washing away of scandals, the exercise of continence, and the utter emptying-out of luxury.
the secure peace of the virtues, and the restless assault of wars; the summit of purity, and the prison of lust; the harbor of honor, and the shipwreck-place of ignominy for virginity, and the abundance of uncleanness; the breastplate of modesty, and the spoil of what is one's own; the wall of incorruption, and the severe restraint of vulgarity; the dignity of integrity, and the overthrow of fornication; the enrichment of glory, and the precipice of comeliness's ruin; the will to good works, and the deed of vices; the refreshment of chastity, and the punishment of petulance; the acquisition of triumphs, and the loss through crimes; the rest of salvation, and the exile of perdition; the life of the spirit, and the death of the flesh; the state of angelic quality, and the funeral of human substance.
All these evils, by God's help, will be strongly overcome, and those good things which we have named will be happily acquired, if disordered familiarity is spurned by holy souls. Give heed, I pray, holy souls, that among all the struggles in which Christian warfare is ever engaged, the battles of chastity alone are the harder, where the fight is daily and victory rare; chastity has been allotted a grievous enemy who is daily conquered and yet feared: daily, I say, he is conquered, and yet is not permitted to provoke. No one conquers securely who fights with himself. Perilous... they glory in the Christian name. And therefore both the five foolish and the five wise are named, because five senses are found to be in all people.
Sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch; and because through these senses, as through certain doors and windows, either life or death enters into our soul. Of these the prophet also said: 「Death has entered through the windows.」 Therefore there too five virgins are called wise, who use these senses well, and there five foolish, who through these five senses take in death rather than life. But how these five senses, like five virgins, either guard virginity or lie subject to corruption, let us inquire more diligently.
If any man or woman looks upon his son or daughter, his servant or maidservant, and gazes intently with concupiscence, one virgin is corrupted, because through the eyes, that is, through the windows of the body, the poison of death has entered into the secret place of the heart. But if anyone, whether religious or layman, willingly listens to men slandering, and uttering idle words and songs lascivious or foul, and receives them with a pleasing ear and delight, another virgin is corrupted. And if he is not content with modest food, but seeks costly delicacies, and if he ever studies to speak evil, a third virgin is corrupted.
But if he also diligently seeks out exotic perfumes, that he may be able to please men, the fourth virgin is violated. If he wishes to touch with his own hands his sons or others' daughters with delight for the sake of lust, and seeks with a voluptuous mind garments too soft, then also the fifth virgin is corrupted. For as these five senses, ranged like five virgins, are corrupted in men, so, on the contrary, when holy souls bridle these five senses—that is, sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch—from all unlawful things, and relax them soberly and chastely toward those things that are lawful and legitimate, therefore the five virgins signify all the good, and the other five prefigure those who are evil.
And truly, most beloved brothers, what does it profit a man or a woman, a cleric or a monk or a nun, if virginity is kept in the body, when the integrity of the heart is violated through evil desires? What does it profit to display chastity in one member, and to have corruption in all the senses? For even those virgins who follow the Lamb, if you attend diligently, do not follow the Lamb for this reason—that they kept only the virginity of the body. For when he had said, 「These are they who did not defile themselves with women,」 he went on to add, 「and in their mouth was found no lie. They are without spot.」
Whoever, therefore, glories only in the virginity of the body, attend diligently: if he loves a lie, he will not be able to follow Christ with those holy virgins. Let no virgin, therefore, presume upon the virginity of the body alone, for if she is disobedient or given to loose talk, let her know that she will be shut out from that bridal chamber of the heavenly Bridegroom. Since, therefore, the virgin holds the hundredfold degree, and the married woman the thirtyfold, yet a chaste married woman is better than a proud virgin: for she, chastely and humbly serving her husband, has possessed the thirtyfold degree; but for the proud virgin not even one degree will remain, and there is fulfilled in her what the Psalmist says: 「You will save a humble people, and will humble the eyes of the proud.」 And because the Apostle calls the whole Church a virgin...
The Apostle calls her a virgin, considering in her not only the virgins of the body, but desiring the incorrupt minds of all, speaking thus: 「I have fitted you to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ」—so that the soul not only of nuns, but also of all men and women, if with chastity of the body it is willing to preserve virginity in those five senses named above, may not doubt that it is the bride of Christ. For Christ is to be understood as the Bridegroom, not of bodies, but of souls.
And therefore, most beloved brothers, both men and women, both boys and girls, if they keep virginity up to marriage and through these five senses—that is, sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch—while they use them well, do not corrupt their souls, on the day of judgment, with the doors opened, they will happily deserve to enter into the eternal bridal chamber of the Bridegroom. But those who both corrupt their bodies before marriage by adulterous union, and afterward throughout their whole life, by living evilly—or, it may be, by seeing evilly, hearing evilly, speaking evilly—do not cease to violate their souls, if fruitful and worthy penance does not come to their aid, they will cry out in vain with the doors shut: 「Lord, Lord, open to us,」 and they will deserve to hear:
「Amen I say to you, I do not know whence you are.」 If, therefore, brothers, we—both clerics and monks, and nuns, and those placed in marriage—faithfully and diligently give heed to these things, and with chastity of the body also guard the integrity of the heart by the Lord's help, we shall not with the foolish be cast into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth; but, admitted with the wise to the spiritual nuptials, we shall deserve to hear: 「Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Lord.」