Leander, by the mercy of God, to Florentina, very dear to me in Christ, my daughter and sister. As I searched, most illustrious sister Florentina, with what heaps of riches I might make you heir, with what lot of patrimony I might enrich you, many images of deceitful things came before me; and when I drove them away as troublesome flies with the hand of the mind, I said silently: Gold and silver is of the earth, and into the earth it returns; estate and patrimony, their revenues are cheap and transitory, for the figure of this world passes away (1 Cor. VII). For whatever I beheld under the sun, I judged nothing worthy of you, sister; I believed nothing to be most pleasing as a gift for you: I beheld all things to be changeable, perishable, and vain.
Whence I perceived the saying of Solomon to be true, saying (Eccles. II): I magnified my works, I built myself houses, I planted vineyards, I made gardens and orchards, and I set in them trees of every kind, I made myself pools of water, that I might water the wood of springing trees. I possessed servants and maidservants, and had a great household; herds also and flocks of sheep, and herds of goats too, beyond all who were before me in Jerusalem. I heaped up for myself silver and gold, and the substance of kings and provinces; I made for myself men singers and women singers, and the delights of the sons of men; cups and pitchers for the service of pouring out wine. And I surpassed in riches all who were before me in Jerusalem.
Yet all this pomp of mortals he concluded with such an end, that he said: And when I turned to all the works that my hands had made, and to the labors in which I had toiled in vain, I saw in all things vanity and affliction of spirit, and that nothing endures under the sun. And again he himself says: I detested all my industry, with which under the sun I most studiously labored, being about to have an heir after me whom I know not, whether he be wise or foolish; he shall rule over my labors in which I toiled and was anxious; and is anything so vain? Wherefore I ceased, and my heart renounced laboring any further under the sun.
Instructed also by such an oracle, you would not think me a true parent, sister, if I were to enrich you with those things which stand by no stability, which, subject to worldly chances, would forsake you and leave you naked. I would also heap miseries upon you, and subject you to fear and dread, if I thought that those things which a thief could carry off, which the moth could furrow, rust devour, fire consume, earth bury, water wash away, the sun scorch, rain defile, ice constrict, were to be conferred upon your sisterhood. By these human things surely the mind, entangled, is turned away from God, and recedes from that immovable form of abiding truth.
Nor can a heart which is agitated by so many worldly troubles, beaten by so many goads of temporal cares, admit to itself the sweetness of the divine word, or the suavity of the Holy Spirit. If therefore I were to bind you with these chains, and burden you with such weights, and oppress you with the mass of earthly thought, you ought to esteem me an enemy, not a parent; you would feel me to be a slayer, not a brother. Alas! dearest sister, since whatever is enclosed by the axis of heaven the earthly foundations sustain, and is rolled upon the face of the soil, we find nothing worthy with which you could be enriched; it must be sought above the heavens, whence you have increased the gift of virginity, that there you may find the reward and patrimony of virginity.
For by way of recompense the merit of integrity is recognized, and is weighed by its own retribution. For by how much it would be thought cheap if it were enriched with transitory and earthly gifts, by so much is virginity illustrious and excellent, which, having trodden down and renounced worldly pleasures, while on earth it keeps the integrity of angels, has obtained the Lord of angels as its portion. What then is the inheritance of virginity? Is it not that of which the Psalmist speaks: The Lord is the portion of my inheritance (Ps. XV)? And again: My portion is the Lord (Ps. CXVIII)? See, sister, how much you have advanced, see what a lofty summit you hold, that you have found the grace of many benefits in one and the same Christ.
He is the Bridegroom, He is the Brother, He is the Friend, He is the portion of inheritance, He is God and Lord. You have in Him a Bridegroom whom you may love: For He is beautiful in form above the sons of men (Ps. XLIV). He is a true Brother whom you may hold; for you also by adoption are the daughter of Him whose Son He is by nature. He is a Friend of whom you may not doubt; for He Himself says: One is my friend (Cant. VI). You have in Him an inheritance which you may court, for He Himself is your portion of inheritance. You have in Him a price which you may acknowledge, because His blood is your redemption. You have in Him a God by whom you are ruled, a Lord whom you may fear and honor.
Virginity claims for itself the whole prerogative in Christ, so that He before whom the angels tremble, whom the Powers serve, whom the Virtues obey, to whom things heavenly and earthly bend the knee, Him the virgin claims for herself as Bridegroom, to whose bridal chamber she hastens adorned with virtues, Him she cherishes in the bridal bed of the heart, in a chaste bed. And what more could He confer upon her to whom Christ has given Himself as Bridegroom, and has paid His own blood under the title of dowry and gift? For those who take wives are wont to bestow dowries, to confer rewards, and in exchange for the loss of modesty to hand over their patrimonies; so that they seem rather to have sent out wives than to have married them.
Your Bridegroom, O virgin, gave you His blood as dowry, with it He redeemed you, with it He joined you to His own union, so that you might not lose your modesty, and might have rewards. For by how much more bountiful is the reward of the dowry, by so much is the love more immense. For He loves much her whom He espoused to Himself with His own blood. And for this reason He chose rather that His own body be opened by the stroke of a wound and the dart of a sword, that He might purchase your integrity for Himself, that He might preserve your chastity. For on the contrary He cared for man: that just as His death is our life, and His humility is the medicine of our pride, so also by His wounds our integrity was bought, who therefore willed to be smitten with a wound, lest He allow us to be smitten by the hammer of the whole earth.
For you were bought with a price, says the Apostle, do not become servants of men (1 Cor. VII). Why, virgin, do you wish to give your body to a man, which has already been redeemed by Christ? Another redeems you, and you desire to marry another? You serve under the title of another's freedom, and you condemn yourself to voluntary servitude? If the whole world is enrolled under the title of the deity, what is more precious than the blood of Christ, by which the world was redeemed? Weigh the wage and the price, that you may see that He who redeemed is worth more than that which He redeemed. By how much therefore does the virgin understand perversely, who, with the buyer despised, follows the merchandise; and with the blood of Christ set aside, embraces the world which has been redeemed. I am not fit to utter, most loving sister, the rewards of virginity:
for it is an unspeakable gift, hidden from the eyes, concealed from the ears, barred to the understanding. What all the saints hope to be, and what the whole Church awaits to become after the resurrection, that you already are. This corruptible, says the Apostle, shall put on incorruption (1 Cor. XV). But truly after the resurrection of the body. Behold, you already know the glory of incorruption. You already possess in the present age that portion of glory. For how great is the blessedness which is laid up for you in the future! What crown remains for you unto eternity, which the grace of incorruption, to which many desire to attain, you have here! Rejoice therefore that you are such, as you were formed by the hands of God.
He therefore certainly establishes whole and entire her whom He enriched with integrity, whom He prepared for the rewards of integrity. For the perverse corrupt men who are natural, whom God formed whole. And this was the first offense of the human race, this the cause of the condemned origin, when the first-formed ones were unwilling to be what they had been created: therefore they deserved to be condemned in themselves and in their offspring. The retainer of restored chastity is in you, O virgins, which the first humans lost in paradise. For you have kept the condition of the first-born humans, you who have persevered such as they were instituted. But beware of their examples. Alas! O grief! dearest sister, flee the examples of the first humans, shudder at the hisses of the most ancient serpent;
lest the vitiated earth begin to germinate for you thorns and thistles, and that which ought to bring forth lilies and roses as the mark of virginity should produce the nettle and chaff: the one to burn, the other to lacerate. For you are the first-fruits of the body of the Church. You therefore, out of the whole mass of Christ's body, are oblations acceptable to God, and consecrated on the heavenly altars. For by your resolve, and by its own faith, the whole Church has obtained the name of virginity, since in it the better and more excellent part are you, who have dedicated to Christ the integrity of your soul and body. And although in all its members generally the Church remains a virgin by faith, yet in the part of its members which you are, it is not unfittingly a virgin even bodily:
namely by that kind of speech by which either the whole is named from a part, or the part from the whole. Meditate as a dove, most holy virgin, and ponder in mind what glory remains for you in the future; you who did not yield to flesh and blood, nor prostrated that most holy body to corruption. Come then, presume to think, understand with what embraces Christ desires you, you who have trodden down the world's enticements; with what longing that virginal choir awaits you, you whom the heights of heaven see hastening by those very steps by which that virginal choir itself came to Christ. Mary also, the Mother of the Lord, the summit and pattern of virginity, the mother of incorruption, rejoices, she who by her example bore you, and remains whole;
by her example she bore you, and knew no pangs; she begot a Bridegroom, and is a virgin. Happy that mother who knew how to bring forth, not to be corrupted. Blessed that fecundity, which by childbearing filled the world, inherited the heavens, nor lost the veils of virginity. Let your heart burn, sister, with that fire which Christ sent upon the earth. Let the flame of His fire rouse you, and that virginal choir following Mary. Take her then with the eye of the mind, accompany those choirs, join yourself to them with the desire of the soul, hasten there, speed there: there is laid up the crown of justice, which the Lord, the just Judge, will render to you in that day (2 Tim. IV). Feel that your brother's soul desires your advancements, feel your brother's longing that you may be with Christ.
For although I do not have in myself what I wish to accomplish in you, I would grieve to have lost what I desire to hold in you: meanwhile there will be for me a certain portion of remission, if you, who are the better part of our body, have not stood in the way of sinners; if what you hold, you hold most firmly. Woe is me! if another receive your crown. You are my safeguard with Christ, you my dearest pledge, you my most sacred victim, by which I do not doubt to be expiated from the filth of sin. If you are accepted by God, if you have lain with Christ in the chaste bed, if you have clung to Christ's embraces with the most fragrant odor of virginity, surely, mindful of your sinful brother, you will obtain for the guilt of your sibling the indulgence which you ask.
He will not sadden you, who has united you to His own fellowship. His left hand, in which is honor and glory, under your head; and His right hand, in which is length of life, will embrace you (Cant. II). Offered to such embraces of the Bridegroom, asking my pardon, you will obtain it. Your love in Christ will be my indulgence: and whatever small hope of remission I have, if the sister whom I love shall have passed over to the nuptials of Christ; and in that terrible and dreadful judgment there will be a breathing-space, where there shall be examination of deeds, acts, or of things committed: where, alas for me! I am to be compelled to render an account of my losses, you will be my consolation, you my breathing-space.
And the punishment that is owed to me for my negligence will perhaps be assuaged by the intercession of your chastity. You will defend me by your progress from the guilt of my own deeds, if you cleave to Christ; and if you please Him, I shall not be burdened on account of that wherein I displease Him, for while He is gracious to you, He will spare me; nor will He suffer a brother to perish whose sister He has betrothed to Himself. Through you perhaps the bond which I have incurred will be forgiven me; while Christ cherishes you in love, He does not punish me for my sin. Have mercy, sister, not only on yourself but also on me, that from the source whence glory remains for you, at least pardon may be granted to me. Many virgins will be in your company: with them you will easily obtain for me whatever you ask. Indeed Mary herself, the mother and leader of virgins, will entreat her Son on behalf of your merit;
and lest it grieve her to see you praying for me, He will perhaps raise me up as I lie fallen, and will console me as I mourn beneath the guilt of conscience. Let not my hope toward God be confounded through you. By my exhortation, therefore, by my ministry, by God's gift indeed, yet by my service, you hold this profession. Let your integrity, then, be for me a cause of pardon, even as it will be for you a cause of a crown. Turn away your eyes, I beg, from the false and empty things of the world. Look toward the heavens, where your Bridegroom is. Direct your mind thither, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God (Col. III). For all that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh and the concupiscence of the eyes (1 John II). Seek the things that are above: where your life is, there also are your desires; where your Bridegroom is, there let your treasure also be.
I do not wish you to be moved by the pleasure of the world, nor adorned with the splendor of the flesh. Adorned flesh quickly stirs another's lust, and the appearance of young men provokes desire in itself, when a woman arrays herself to go forth bedecked. To wish to please other men's eyes is the disposition of a harlot; and it is reckoned an injury to the heavenly Bridegroom if you walk so as to please lustful eyes. Be, I beg, a judge between brides and virgins: consider the hope of each, weigh which path each holds. The virgin is eager to please God; the bride, the world. The virgin keeps the integrity in which she was born; the bride is corrupted. And what kind of thing is it, where nature does not remain whole as it began to be?
First, an injury is inflicted upon the divine work, when that which He fashioned whole is corrupted by lust, defiled by lust. In you God recognizes His own work; for He holds those whom He has kept whole and does not corrupt; God receives such as He made them. All things, therefore, that now perish from the body are to be restored in the resurrection. Virginity once lost is neither here repaired nor received again in the world to come. It is true that God ordained marriage; but for this end, that from it virginity might be born: so that by the multiplied succession of virgins it might gain in the offspring what marriage had lost. Both the root and the fruit of marriage is virginity. From wedlock indeed a virgin is born: who, if she is not corrupted, is added to the reward of marriage.
Married women have cause to rejoice, if their fruit is laid up in the heavenly granary. You too will heap up the merits of your common parents; both will be rewarded by your honors; when your offspring cleaves to Christ, they themselves will receive in the fruit what they had lost in the seed. Recall, my sister, the miseries of human marriage, and close your eyes, that you may not see its vanity. These are the first perils of marriage: corruption, the loathings of corruption, the burden of a pregnant womb, the pain of childbirth that often comes to the very brink of death, where both the gift of marriage and its fruit perish; while the mother together with the offspring fails, and all that nuptial pomp is frustrated by the end of death. What they supposed to be a cause of joy, who has found to be an occasion of dying?
What will she do after death, who has reckoned all her joy in marriage? She who wished to please a man, not God, what will she do as she departs from the world? She who was anxious how she might please the world, what part can she have with Christ? Such women first give themselves away to men to no good purpose, and together with their chastity lose their liberty, when, having taken a dowry, they consign their captive virginity. What wretchedness remains to her who sells her modesty? But if perchance, as often happens, she loses the gift of the world by mischance, then she is both bereft of her modesty and has lost the price. You see how naked and destitute she remains in both! For her husband she is surely bound by a double peril of fear: she fears to lose the good, she fears to keep the evil. What middle place of joy, then, is there amid these things?
What forms of allurement does she devise to please the eyes? With what foreign perfumes does she steep her garment? And, to delight the senses, she counterfeits another complexion. She who adulterates her face, smeared with varied paint, that she may not be the one she was born, and may deceive a man by a borrowed appearance, not her own. See whether it is not a kind of sorcery, to devise an art by which to provoke another's lust. And she who thus corrupts her face, what manner of mind do you suppose she has corrupted? She has committed a threefold adultery: of the mind, which meditated such deceit; of the body, which changed its appearance by artifice; of dress, which is fragrant not with its own but with a borrowed scent. Of these evils the virgin is ignorant; she has her sex, yet knows not the necessity of her sex.
Forgetful of feminine frailty, she stands firm in manly resolve, and has strengthened the weak sex by virtue: nor has she handed over to servitude the body, which by the law of nature lies subject to man. Happy the virgin, who draws her body to glory, not to punishment! That other woman hears by the desert of sin: You shall be under the power of your husband, and in pains shall you bring forth (Gen. III). But you, having attained virginity, have shaken your neck free from such a yoke; nor, pressed by the burden of wedlock, will you be bent down to the earth, but standing erect on high you look up to the heavens; so that you might ascend by lawfully despising the very thing whence she fell by presumptuously eating. Eve tasted of the forbidden thing, and lost her virginity. It was lawful for a virgin to marry, but she who did not marry has joined herself to the angels. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage;
but they shall be as the angels of God (Matt. XXII). See, the virgin who does not marry is likened to the angels. For it is lawful to beget children; but those who have spurned this necessity hear Christ saying: Blessed are the barren that have not borne, and the breasts that have not given suck (Luke XXIII). On the contrary, woe is there pronounced to the pregnant: Woe to them that are with child and that give suck in that day. And so virginal thoughts are reckoned in place of children. Why then does she seek those over whom she might grieve in bearing, who has holy thoughts in which she may rejoice as she meditates? Through fear of you, O Lord, she says, we have conceived in the womb, and have brought forth the Spirit of salvation (Isa. XXVI). Behold a happy conception, an incorrupt progeny, a fruitful birth:
where the offspring of good thought is brought forth, and pain is unknown. As many happy shoots as there are holy thoughts, so often does she conceive, as often as by holy meditation she receives the divine Spirit. For the heavenly conception gives birth to virtues. And lest you think yourself barren, you will have as many sons as virtues you have brought forth. By a single conception of the Holy Spirit you bring forth many offspring. The virgin's first offspring is the virtue of modesty; the second of patience; the third of sobriety; the fourth of temperance; the fifth of charity; the sixth of humility; the seventh of chastity, that what is read may be fulfilled, that the barren has borne seven (1 Sam. II). Behold, by a single conception of the sevenfold Spirit you have brought forth seven offspring. Do not say:
Behold, I am a dry tree, for thus says the Lord to the eunuchs: They that shall keep my rest, and shall choose the things that I willed, and shall hold fast my covenant, I will give them in my house and within my walls a place, and a name better than sons and daughters; an everlasting name will I give them, which shall not perish (Isa. LVI). You see, most beloved sister, that virgins hold the chief place in the kingdom of God? And not undeservedly. For they have despised the fashion of the world, and therefore have come to the heavenly kingdom. Here they begin the blessedness of the heavenly life, who have not known to bear children in pains; and who have spurned the defilements of lust and the foul couplings of wedlock have rightly obtained the nuptials of Christ.
I do not wish you to be moved by the pompous processions of married women, and their crowded retinue of dependents. These women often fall upon the ambushers of chastity in those whom they reckoned to be guardians of their purity. And when they see themselves courted by the comeliness of so many men, this comes into their minds, which they practice with their own husbands in their beds; and what they have experienced with one, they meditate upon with many. I will not fear ill will, if I have spoken the truth. Let those whose conscience has stung them strike at me with envy, provided I tell those who are making progress what they ought to beware of in those women who shine only in the work of the flesh.
It is certain, my sister, that she who has arranged the sheen of her garments, who has been fragrant with foreign perfume, has altered her eyes with paint, overlaid her face with a borrowed whiteness, fitted her arms with golden bracelets, set rings on her fingers, made her hands gleam with starry brilliance by the array of gems, weighed down her ears with metal, hidden her neck beneath pearls and a varied covering of jewels, and burdened her head with gold; it is certain, I say, that this woman is not chaste: she who has so arranged herself to this end, that she may strike the eyes of many, move the minds of many, and entice their hearts. For though through fear of her husband she may not commit fornication openly, yet she fornicates inwardly in her soul.
But she is truly chaste who pleases her husband by a simple manner of dress and good morals, and pleases God by the good of chastity. The apostle Peter expresses the manner of such women, and depicts by his precept both the adornment of their dress and the uprightness of their morals, when he says: Let the adornment of a woman be not outwardly of ornament or of gold or of fine apparel, but the adornment of the heart (1 Pet. III). The same thing also the apostle Paul brought forward, saying: Likewise also women adorning themselves with modesty and sobriety, not with plaited hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly clothing; but, as becomes women, professing godliness through good works (1 Tim. II). Those whom you find to be out of tune with and at variance from these precepts, flee from as leaders to hell and companions of the abyss.
For they will urge that wherewith they are full, who, though not by word, yet by their very dress proclaim shameful deeds. And her who has glittered with gold and shone with gems, shun as you would idols; reckon her an idol, not a human being, who has presumed to defile, with varied artifice, a form well fashioned by God. Whence also the Scripture says: Deceitful is grace, and vain is beauty; the woman that fears God, she shall be praised (Prov. XXXI).