On Veiling Virgins

​But meanwhile I do not wish to attribute this custom to truth. Let it be a custom for the time being, so that I may oppose custom even to custom. Throughout Greece and certain of its barbarian lands, many churches veil their virgins. There is also this institution somewhere under this sky, lest anyone should ascribe that custom to Greek paganism or barbarian custom. But I have proposed those churches which the apostles themselves or apostolic men founded, and I think before certain others. Therefore, those also have the same authority of custom; they oppose times and predecessors rather than these later ones. What shall we observe, what shall we choose? We cannot reject a custom which we cannot condemn, inasmuch as it is not foreign, because it is not of foreigners, with whom indeed we share the right of peace and the name of brotherhood. There is to us and to them one faith, one God, the same Christ, the same hope, the same sacraments of washing; to say it once for all, we are one church. Thus, whatever belongs to our people is ours. Otherwise, you divide the body. Nevertheless here, as is wont to be done in all variously established and doubtful and uncertain matters, an examination had to be applied, as to which of the two so diverse customs would more agree with the discipline of God. And by all means that one is to be chosen which shuts up the virgins, known to God alone, for whom, besides the fact that glory is to be sought from God and not from men, even their own good itself is a thing to blush at. You would confound a virgin more by praising her than by blaming her; because the brow of sin is harder, having been taught impudence by and in the sin itself. For that custom, which denies virgins while it displays them, no one would have approved except some who are such as the virgins themselves. For such eyes will want a virgin who is seen, as the virgin has who wants to be seen. In turn, the same kinds of eyes desire each other. It belongs to the same lust to be seen and to see. It is as much the part of a holy man to blush if he has seen a virgin, as it is of a holy virgin if she has been seen by a man.

​But neither did those most holy predecessors wish to distinguish between the customs. Yet among us, until very recently, communion was shared with both customs more tolerably. The matter was left to free choice, so that each woman as she wished might either be covered or be exposed, just as also to marry, which itself is neither forced nor forbidden. Truth was content to make a pact with custom, so that tacitly under the name of custom it might enjoy itself, even if only in part. But since acknowledgment had begun to progress, so that through the freedom of both customs the indication of the better part might emerge, immediately that adversary of good things and of many institutions did his work. The virgins of men go about against the virgins of God, excited to reckless audacity with a completely bare forehead, and they seem to be virgins who can ask something from men, let alone such a deed, namely that their rivals, who are so much freer as they are handmaids of Christ alone, should be surrendered to them. “We are scandalized,” they say, “because some walk differently from others,” and they prefer to be scandalized than to be provoked. Scandal, unless I am mistaken, is an example not of a good thing, but of a bad one, edifying to sin. Good things scandalize no one, except a bad mind. If modesty, bashfulness, the disdain of glory, striving to please God alone is a good thing, let those who are scandalized by such a good acknowledge their own evil. For what if the incontinent also should say they are scandalized by the continent, is continence to be recalled? And lest the multi-married be scandalized, is monogamy to be rejected? Why do they not rather complain that the petulance and impudence of ostentatious virginity are a scandal to themselves? On account of such market-like heads, then, are holy virgins to be dragged into the church, blushing because they are recognized in public, trembling because they are uncovered as if summoned to defilement? For they are no less unwilling to suffer this. Every exposure of a good virgin is the suffering of defilement; and yet, to suffer violence of the flesh is less, because it comes from the course of nature. But when the spirit itself is violated in a virgin by the removal of the veil, she learns to lose what she was protecting. O sacrilegious hands, which were able to drag off the dress dedicated to God! What worse would any persecutor have done, if he had known this was chosen by a virgin? You have stripped the girl from her head, and now the entire virgin is not herself to herself, she has been made another. Arise, therefore, O truth, arise and break forth as if from patience! I wish you to defend no custom; for now even that one, under which you used to enjoy yourself, is being stormed. Demonstrate that it is you who cover the virgins. Interpret your own scriptures yourself, which custom does not know. For if it had known them, it would never have been.