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| Of the Reasons Assigned by the Apostle for Bidding Women to Be Veiled.
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Chapter VII.—Of the
Reasons Assigned by the Apostle for Bidding Women to Be
Veiled.
Turn we next to the examination of the reasons
themselves which lead the apostle to teach that the female ought to be
veiled, (to see) whether the self-same (reasons) apply to
virgins likewise; so that hence also the community of the name
between virgins and not-virgins may be established, while
the self-same causes which necessitate the veil are found to exist in
each case.
If “the man is head of the
woman,”299
of course (he is) of
the virgin too, from whom comes the woman who has
married; unless the virgin is a third generic class, some
monstrosity with a head of its own. If “it is shameful for
a woman to be shaven or shorn,” of course it is so for a
virgin. (Hence let the world, the rival of God, see to it,
if it asserts that close-cut hair is graceful to a virgin in like
manner as that flowing hair is to a boy.) To her, then, to whom
it is equally unbecoming to be shaven or shorn, it is equally
becoming to be covered. If “the woman is the glory
of the man,” how much more the virgin, who is a glory
withal to herself! If “the woman is of the
man,” and “for the sake of the man,” that rib of
Adam300
was first a virgin. If
“the woman ought to have power upon the head,”301
all the more justly ought the virgin,
to whom pertains the essence of the cause (assigned for this
assertion). For if (it is) on account of the angels—those,
to wit, whom we read of as having fallen from God and heaven on account
of concupiscence after females—who can presume that it was bodies
already defiled, and relics of human lust, which such angels yearned
after, so as not rather to have been inflamed for virgins, whose
bloom pleads an excuse for human lust likewise? For thus does
Scripture withal suggest: “And it came to pass,” it
says, “when men had begun to grow more numerous upon the earth,
there were withal daughters born them; but the sons of God, having
descried the daughters of men, that they were fair, took to themselves
wives of all whom they elected.”302
For here the Greek name of women does seem to have the sense
“wives,” inasmuch as mention is made of
marriage. When, then, it says “the daughters of
men,” it manifestly purports virgins, who would be still
reckoned as belonging to their parents—for wedded
women are called their husbands’—whereas it
could have said “the wives of men:” in
like manner not naming the angels adulterers, but husbands, while they
take unwedded “daughters of men,” who it has above
said were “born,” thus also signifying their
virginity: first, “born;” but here, wedded to
angels. Anything else I know not that they were except
“born” and subsequently wedded. So perilous a face,
then, ought to be shaded, which has cast stumbling-stones even so far
as heaven: that, when standing in the presence of God, at whose
bar it stands accused of the driving of the angels from their (native)
confines, it may blush before the other angels as well; and may repress
that former evil liberty of its head,—(a liberty) now to be
exhibited not even before human eyes. But even if they were
females already contaminated whom those angels had desired, so much the
more “on account of the angels” would it have been the duty
of virgins to be veiled, as it would have been the more possible
for virgins to have been the cause of the angels’
sinning. If, moreover, the apostle further adds the prejudgment
of “nature,” that redundancy of locks is an honour to a
woman, because hair serves for a covering,303
of course it is most of all to a virgin that this is a
distinction; for their very adornment properly consists in this, that,
by being massed together upon the crown, it wholly covers the very
citadel of the head with an encirclement of hair.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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