[796] Epist., cxi.
[797] The names of Penelope, Andromache, Alcestis, and Antigone will be forever illustrious types of the domestic virtues.
[798] The Fathers frequently contrasted the few heathen vestal virgins with the multitude of Christian celibates. The Christian emperors and the early councils resolutely repressed harlotry, drunkenness, wanton dancing, and immodest plays and books.
[799] Conc. Nic., 8; Ancyra, 19; Laodic., 1; Neo Caes., 3.
[800] Tertul., Contr. Marc., iv, 34, etc.
[801] Tertullian wrote a special treatise on the subject—De Monogamia. The injunction that a bishop should be the husband of one wife was regarded as a prohibition of a second marriage. Some of the Fathers, however, dissented from this view, as Hermes, (Pastor, ii, 4); Augustine, (De Bono Viduitatis, 12). On many pagan tombs occurs the word univiræ—“Once married.” There are several examples of wives in the prime of their youth and beauty devoting themselves to retirement on the death of their husbands, as the wives of Pompey, of Drusus, and of Lucan.
[802] The beauty and dignity of Christian wedlock are nobly expressed by Tertullian in the following passage, addressed to his own wife: “How can I paint the happiness,” he exclaims, “of a marriage which the church ratifies, the sacrament confirms, the benediction seals, angels announce, and our heavenly Father declares valid! What a union of two believers—one hope, one vow, one discipline, one worship! They are brother and sister, two fellow-servants, one spirit and one flesh. They pray together, fast together, exhort and support one another. They go together to the house of God, and to the table of the Lord. They share each other’s trials, persecutions, and joys. Neither avoids nor hides any thing from the other. They delight to visit the sick, succour the needy, and daily to lay their offerings before the altar without scruple or constraint. They do not need to keep the sign of the cross hidden, nor to express secretly their Christian joy, nor receive by stealth the eucharist. They join in psalms and hymns, and strive who best can praise God. Christ rejoices at the sight, and sends his peace upon them. Where two are in his name he also is; and where he is, their evil cannot come”—Ad Uxorem, ii, 8. He thus describes the difficulties which a Christian woman married to an idolater must encounter in her religious life: “At the time for worship the husband will appoint the use of the bath; when a fast is to be observed he will invite company to a feast. When she would bestow alms, both safe and cellar are closed against her. What heathen will suffer his wife to attend the nightly meetings of the church, the slandered supper of the Lord, to visit the sick even in the poorest hovels, to kiss the martyr’s chains in prison, to rise in the night for prayer, to show hospitality to stranger brethren?”—Ibid.
[803] Jungere cum infidelibus vinculum matrimonii prostituere gentilibus membra Christi.
[804] Ad Ux., ii, 2-9. Jerome says that women married to heathen become part of that body whose ribs they are.—Cont. Jovin., i, 5.
[805] Secret marriages were forbidden, nor might this union take place without the approbation of the earthly as well as of the heavenly parent.—Tert., Ad. Ux., ii, 9.