A marriage-settlement is made in your favour to-day but in a short time you will be constrained to make your will. Your husband will feign sickness and will do for you what he wants you to do for him. Yet he is sure to live and you are sure to die. Or if it happens that you have sons by the second husband, domestic strife is certain to result and intestine disputes. You will not be allowed to love your first children, nor to look kindly on those to whom you have yourself given birth. You will have to give them their food secretly; yet even so your present husband will bear a grudge against your previous one and, unless you hate your sons, he will think that you still love their father. But your husband may have issue by a former wife. If so when he takes you to his home, though you should be the kindest person in the world, all the commonplaces of rhetoricians and declamations of comic poets and writers of mimes will be hurled at you as a cruel stepmother. If your stepson fall sick or have a headache you will be calumniated as a poisoner. If you refuse him food, you will be cruel, while if you give it, you will be held to have bewitched him. I ask you what benefit has a second marriage to confer great enough to compensate for these evils?
16. Do we wish to know what widows ought to be? Let us read the gospel according to Luke. "There was one Anna," he says, "a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel of the tribe of Aser." [1603] The meaning of the name Anna is grace. Phanuel is in our tongue the face of God. Aser may be translated either as blessedness or as wealth. From her youth up to the age of fourscore and four years she had borne the burden of widowhood, not departing from the temple and giving herself to fastings and prayers night and day; therefore she earned spiritual grace, received the title daughter of the face of God,' [1604] and obtained a share in the blessedness and wealth' [1605] which belonged to her ancestry. Let us recall to mind the widow of Zarephath [1606] who thought more of satisfying Elijah's hunger than of preserving her own life and that of her son. Though she believed that she and he must die that very night unless they had food, she determined that her guest should survive. She preferred to sacrifice her life rather than to neglect the duty of almsgiving. In her handful of meal she found the seed from which she was to reap a harvest sent her by the Lord. She sows her meal and lo! a cruse of oil comes from it. In the land of Judah grain was scarce for the corn of wheat had died there; [1607] but in the house of a heathen widow oil flowed in streams. In the book of Judith--if any one is of opinion that it should be received as canonical--we read of a widow wasted with fasting and wearing the sombre garb of a mourner, whose outward squalor indicated not so much the regret which she felt for her dead husband as the temper [1608] in which she looked forward to the coming of the Bridegroom. I see her hand armed with the sword and stained with blood. I recognize the head of Holofernes which she has carried away from the camp of the enemy. Here a woman vanquishes men, and chastity beheads lust. Quickly changing her garb, she puts on once more in the hour of victory her own mean dress finer than all the splendours of the world. [1609]
17. Some from a misapprehension number Deborah among the widows, and suppose that Barak the leader of the army is her son, though the scripture tells a different story. I will mention her here because she was a prophetess and is reckoned among the judges, and again because she might have said with the psalmist:--"How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea sweeter than honey to my mouth." [1610] Well was she called the bee [1611] for she fed on the flowers of scripture, was enveloped with the fragrance of the Holy Spirit, and gathered into one with prophetic lips the sweet juices of the nectar. Then there is Naomi, in Greek parakeklemene [1612] or she who is consoled, who, when her husband and her children died abroad, carried her chastity back home and, being supported on the road by its aid, kept with her her Moabitish daughter-in-law, that in her the prophecy of Isaiah [1613] might find a fulfilment. "Send out the lamb, O Lord, to rule over the land from the rock of the desert to the mount of the daughter of Zion." [1614] I pass on to the widow in the gospel who, though she was but a poor widow was yet richer than all the people of Israel. [1615] She had but a grain of mustard seed, but she put her leaven in three measures of flour; and, combining her confession of the Father and of the Son with the grace of the Holy Spirit, she cast her two mites into the treasury. All the substance that she had, her entire possessions, she offered in the two testaments of her faith. These are the two seraphim which glorify the Trinity with threefold song [1616] and are stored among the treasures of the church. They also form the legs of the tongs by which the live coal is caught up to purge the sinner's lips. [1617]
18. But why should I recall instances from history and bring from books types of saintly women, when in your own city you have many before your eyes whose example you may well imitate? I shall not recount their merits here lest I should seem to flatter them. It will suffice to mention the saintly Marcella [1618] who, while she is true to the claims of her birth and station, has set before us a life which is worthy of the gospel. Anna "lived with an husband seven years from her virginity"; [1619] Marcella lived with one for seven months. Anna looked for the coming of Christ; Marcella holds fast the Lord whom Anna received in her arms. Anna sang His praise when He was still a wailing infant; Marcella proclaims His glory now that He has won His triumph. Anna spoke of Him to all those who waited for the redemption of Israel; Marcella cries out with the nations of the redeemed: "A brother redeemeth not, yet a man shall redeem," [1620] and from another psalm: "A man was born in her, and the Highest Himself hath established her."
About two years ago, as I well remember, I published a book against Jovinian in which by the authority of scripture I crushed the objections raised on the other side on account of the apostle's concession of second marriages. It is unnecessary that I should repeat my arguments afresh here, as you can find them all in this treatise. That I may not exceed the limits of a letter, I will only give you this one last piece of advice. Think every day that you must die, and you will then never think of marrying again.
[1539] i.e. a celibate.
[1540] Lucius Furius Camillus, the hero who conquered Veii and freed Rome from the Gauls.
[1541] Wisdom iv. 13.
[1542] Horace, A. P. 94: the allusion is to a scene in the Heauton Timorumenus of Terence.
[1543] Matt. viii. 22.
[1544] 1 Joh. ii. 6.
[1545] Ex. xx. 12.
[1546] Ps. xlv. 10, 11.
[1547] Cant. iv. 7.
[1548] Ps. xlv. 10.
[1549] Cf. 1 Pet. iii. 3.
[1550] Hac ambitione ditata.
[1551] Numb. xi. 20, 31-4.
[1552] 1 Pet. ii. 22.
[1553] Furia's sister-in-law Blæsilla was through her mother Paula descended from the Gracchi. See Letter CVIII. § 33.
[1554] Acts xx. 28.
[1555] Virg. A. iv. 32.
[1556] See Letter XXXVIII. § 5.
[1557] Persius i. 32 sqq.
[1558] Propositum. The word was passing from the meaning of a purpose into that of a formal vow.
[1559] Rom. x. 2.
[1560] Titiana.
[1561] Ezek. xxxiii. 12.
[1562] Gen. xxviii. 12.
[1563] Rev. iii. 16.
[1564] Luke vii. 47.
[1565] 1 Tim. v. 5.
[1566] Eph. vi. 16.
[1567] 1 Tim. v. 6.
[1568] Ezek. xviii. 20.
[1569] 1 Tim. v. 24, 25.
[1570] 1 Cor. ix. 27.
[1571] 1 Tim. iv. 4.
[1572] The island of Lemnos in the Ægean Sea.
[1573] The hundred-eyed son of Inachus appointed by Hera to be the guardian of Io.
[1574] 1 Cor. vi. 18.
[1575] Luke xxi. 34.
[1576] Eph. v. 18.
[1577] Ter. Enn. iv. 5, 6.
[1578] 1 Tim. v. 23.
[1579] Rom. xiv. 21.
[1580] Rom. xiv. 2.
[1581] Dan. i. 16.
[1582] i.e. Ahab and Zedekiah whose fate is recorded Jer. xxix. 20-23. According to Jerome tradition identified them with the elders who tempted Susannah, although these latter are said to have been stoned and not burned.
[1583] Matt. xiii. 45, 46.
[1584] Jer. vi. 16. The ways.' Vulg. VA V. More than one' is Jerome's Gloss.
[1585] Ex. xxxiii. 3.
[1586] Gen. xxxvii. 23.
[1587] Ezek. xvi. 12.
[1588] Afterwards Bishop of Tolosa (Toulouse). He is mentioned again in Letters CXXIII. and CXXV.
[1589] Luke xvi. 9.
[1590] Ps. xli. i, PBV.
[1591] Matt. v. 42.
[1592] Gal. vi. 10.
[1593] Cf. Matt. xxv. 35, 36.
[1594] 1 Cor. vi. 12.
[1595] Prov. xix. 25, Vulg.
[1596] Cf. Virg. A. iv. 298.
[1597] Her cousin Eustochium seems to be meant.
[1598] Ex. xv. 21.
[1599] Matt. xxv. 4.
[1600] Matt. xxvii. 29.
[1601] 1 Tim. v. 15, 11.
[1602] Agrorum tributa.
[1603] Luke ii. 36.
[1604] Penuel (A.V. Phanuel) means face of God' cf. Gen. xxxii. 30.
[1605] Asher = blessedness or wealth.'
[1606] 1 Kings xvii.
[1607] Joh. xii. 24.
[1608] i.e., that of penitence.
[1609] Judith xiii.
[1610] Ps. cxix. 103.
[1611] The meaning of Deborah.
[1612] Jerome appears to have read ntmy for nmy. The latter means my pleasantness.'
[1613] Made long afterwards.
[1614] Isa. xvi. 1 Vulg. the rock of the desert' is a poetical name for Moab.
[1615] Mark xii. 43.
[1616] Isa. vi. 2, 3. See Letter, XVIII. ante.
[1617] Isa. vi. 6.
[1618] See Letters XXIII., LXXVII., etc.
[1619] Luke ii. 36.
[1620] Ps. xlix. 7. Vulg.
[1621] Ps. lxxxvii. 5.