V

Your cruelty is our glory. Only beware lest it turn out that by the very fact that we have endured it, we seek only to prove that we are not afraid of it, but voluntarily call it. When Arrius Antoninus was strongly persecuted in Asia, all the Christians of that country came before his tribunal, forming a tremendous force. Then he, ordering a few to be taken away, said to the rest: "Miserable people! If you want to die, then you have stones and ropes.

Spare Carthage if you do not spare yourself. Spare the province, in which every one has become the prey of soldiers and his enemies, when they have learned thy decision. We have no teacher but the one God; He is before you and cannot hide; but you can do nothing to Him. But those whom you consider your teachers are people, and they themselves have time to die. However, this sect will not be destroyed. You should know that then it increases more when it seems to be destroyed. For in everyone who sees such patience, perplexity is aroused, and everyone is inflamed with a desire to know what is the matter, and when he comes to know the truth, he himself will immediately follow it.

About women's jewelry

Book One

If there were more faith on earth than is expected to be rewarded in heaven, then I am sure, my beloved sisters, that none of you, having known God and contemplating your own misfortune, would wish to appear cheerful, much less proud, in your garb; but on the contrary, I would faithfully try to wear the coarsest and simplest clothes. In such an attire everyone would recognize in you a grieved and repentant Eve, and by your modesty you would be able to erase on the one hand the shame of the first crime brought upon you by your foremother, and on the other hand, the reproach made to your sex for being the cause of the destruction of the entire human race. Every wife cannot but recognize in her person the primordial criminal Eve, because she, like her, bears children in illnesses, endures the same torments, and is in the same tone of dependence. The punishment of the first wife does not cease to lie on her entire field, which for this reason seems to be unable but participate in her crime. Why, poor wife! You were, so to speak, a door for the devil, you received from him the forbidden fruit for our destruction, you were the first to rebel against your Creator, you seduced him whom the devil did not dare to attack, you blotted out the best features of divinity in man, and finally the correction of your guilt cost the life of the Son of God Himself; and after all this, you dream, you dare to adorn in every way that skin which was given to you only to cover your shame (Gen. 3:21).

If, from the very beginning of the world, the finest wool of Milesian wool and the cotton paper gathered by the Scythians from the trees had been in use, if luxury had henceforth established the value of the purple robe of Tyre, the embroidery of the Phrygians, and the cloth of Babylon, if men had since that time begun to give lustre to garments by the whiteness of pearls and the dazzling radiance of precious stones, if the avarice of man had at the same time extracted gold from the heart of the earth, if the curiosity of women had invented the use of a mirror for the easiest deception of the eyes by borrowed pleasures, if all this mixture of pride and vanity had been combined in the world from its very beginning: do you think, dear sisters, that your foremother Eve, burdened with the burden of her sin, expelled from the paradise of sweetness, from the abode of happiness, half dead both from repentance and from the premonition of her deserved death, Do you think, I say, that in this state she would take care of so many vain and magnificent adornments to cover her poor body and to avoid the shame caused by sin? And so, if you wish to revive in yourselves your foremother Eve, who is starved and repentant, then you do not need to seek and call for that which she did not have and did not call during her life. as to her funeral ceremony.

The inventors of these adornments, I want to say, the alleged sons of God, who left God to possess the daughters of men (Gen. 6:2), were condemned to death for this, and this also served to dishonor the wife. It is they, or their descendants, who have invented, or discovered many things, carefully concealed by nature, and have learned many arts, which it would be better not to know; I say, they showed people how to look for metals in the interior of the earth, they discovered the power and quality of herbs; they were the first to cast enchantments, and dreamed of finding a spider to know the future in the arrangement of the stars. Their chief endeavour was to furnish their wives with all the instruments of vanity with which they adorn themselves with such discernment: from their hands flowed the glitter of the diamonds with which the necklaces shine, all the gold on their wrists, the pleasant variety of colours of the fabrics, in short, all the various substances which women use to adorn themselves and to conceal their faces. The quality of all these things may be judged by the qualities of their inventors: he must be utterly blind who does not see that sinners will never bring us to innocence, that seducing lovers will never teach chastity, that these rebellious spirits, so to speak, or their minions, will never instill in us the fear of the God whom they have forsaken. If their inventions were real sciences, then such worthless teachers cannot adequately instruct in them; but if these gifts are nothing but a pledge of debauchery, then what can be more shameful?

But whoever may be the seducers of the female sex, whoever may be the inventors of those arts and fabrics which produce vanity, especially in the hearts of women, let us endeavour to examine the very nature and essence of these things, in order to know exactly what causes impel us to seek them with such diligence. By the word dress of women I mean, first, their clothing proper, gold, silver, precious stones, and other ornaments belonging thereto, and secondly, their extreme care to remove their hair in a variety of ways, to maintain their nobility, to preserve freshness and complexion, and to apply to the secular mode of life other parts of the body exposed to the eyes of men. I believe that the first of these whims proceeds from vanity, and the second is real debauchery. I leave it to the Christian wives, the servants of God, to judge whether they can find here anything resembling humility, something in accordance with chastity, which they have made their first duty to observe inviolably.

What are gold and silver, which constitute the main substance of the splendor of secular people? Why is this substance, which is the same earth, more precious to them than the earth trampled underfoot? Is it not because the extraction of it from the deep caves where it was created often costs the lives of those unfortunates who are condemned to extract it from there? Or is it because it has changed its appearance from fire, and takes the name of metal, in order to serve such a use, to what ambition of man does it wish to turn it? I find nothing else in all this than the same thing that happens to iron, copper, and other products of the earth, and ordinary metals; and therefore it is foolish to suppose that these precious substances are endowed by nature with any precedence over other metals; but, on the contrary, nothing is more prudent than to prefer iron and brass to them, because from the latter we gain much more benefit and services than from gold and silver, which are sometimes justly used in the same way as them.

The land was never cultivated with gold, and ships were never built of silver. Never did a golden sword protect anyone's life, and silver walls did not serve as a bulwark for people either against bad weather or against enemy attacks. Finally, gold and silver have never been used for the extraction and processing of iron, whereas they themselves are of no use without the aid of iron. From all this I do not see that gold and silver have received any advantage from nature over other metals.

Is there anything better to say in favor of precious stones, which are revered more than gold and silver? Are they not of the same substance as flints and barren cartilage, which are nothing but eruptions of the earth? Of these precious stones it can be said with certainty that they do not bring any direct benefit. They cannot be used either for the foundations of houses, or for the construction of fortress walls, or for covering buildings, or for the construction of terraces. They serve only to satisfy the ambition of women and to increase their pride; and for this elegant use, they are polished with such difficulty, in order to give them a greater luster, so skilfully worked to amaze the eye with an excellent combination and variety of colors, so carefully pierced to hang to the ears, so skillfully set with gold, in order to give them a new beauty by a mixture of this metal.

But ambition is not satisfied with these things that are taken out of the earth. He needs people to dive into the depths of the sea, and there seek out and draw new food for him from the smallest shells; and what is most surprising, the so-called pearls are nothing but a deficiency of these shells, as a sickly excrescence formed within these animals. In general, there is nothing in the world that vanity does not take advantage of for its own satisfaction: it even penetrates into the head of the dragon in order to find there an imaginary precious stone to adorn itself, as if it were not enough for a Christian woman that her ancestor learned from the serpent to disobey God, and as if she needed it from the animal, which served as an instrument for our tempter, to borrow the substance for the ignition in oneself of the fire of ambition in pride. Do you not think, dear sisters, that the best way to erase the head of the serpent is to value its eruptions so dearly? Is this not a clear sign that you silently submit to him, when you wear these stones on your head, when you set them to adorn your brow with glory?

If the value of so many things you respect were recognized at least by the general agreement and approval of all nations, I might think that you had allowed yourself to be carried away by the mighty force of common opinion. But these substances, which you revere as precious, are despised in the lands from which they come, and are highly valued only where they are foreign, that is, where their real value is unknown. The abundance of these things instills indifference to them; and among the Parthians, Medes, and other nations who abound in gold mines, chains are often forged of gold for slaves and criminals, so that the latter, burdened with what we call wealth, are the more miserable the richer they are, and thus prove the truth that gold can sometimes be an object of contempt.