Chapter I.—Introduction.  Modesty in Apparel Becoming to Women, in Memory of the Introduction of Sin into the World Through a Woman.

If there dwelt upon earth a faith as great as is the reward of faith which is expected in the heavens, no one of you at all, best beloved sisters, from the time that she had first “known the Lord,”1    Comp. Heb. viii. 11; Jer. xxxi. 34 (in the LXX. it is xxxviii. 34). and learned (the truth) concerning her own (that is, woman’s) condition, would have desired too gladsome (not to say too ostentatious) a style of dress; so as not rather to go about in humble garb, and rather to affect meanness of appearance, walking about as Eve mourning and repentant, in order that by every garb of penitence2    Satisfactionis. she might the more fully expiate that which she derives from Eve,—the ignominy, I mean, of the first sin, and the odium (attaching to her as the cause) of human perdition.  “In pains and in anxieties dost thou bear (children), woman; and toward thine husband (is) thy inclination, and he lords it over thee.”3    Comp. Gen. iii. 16, in Eng. ver. and in LXX.  And do you not know that you are (each) an Eve?  The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age:4    Sæculo.  the guilt must of necessity live too.  You are the devil’s gateway:  you are the unsealer5    Resignatrix.  Comp. the phrase “a fountain sealed” in Cant. iv. 12. of that (forbidden) tree:  you are the first deserter of the divine law:  you are she who persuaded6    “Suasisti” is the reading of the mss.; “persuasisti,” a conjectural emendation adopted by Rig. him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack.  You destroyed so easily God’s image, man.  On account of your desert—that is, death—even the Son of God had to die.  And do you think about adorning yourself over and above your tunics of skins?7    See Gen. iii. 21.  Come, now; if from the beginning of the world8    Rerum. the Milesians sheared sheep, and the Serians9    i.e., Chinese. spun trees, and the Tyrians dyed, and the Phrygians embroidered with the needle, and the Babylonians with the loom, and pearls gleamed, and onyx-stones flashed; if gold itself also had already issued, with the cupidity (which accompanies it), from the ground; if the mirror, too, already had licence to lie so largely, Eve, expelled from paradise, (Eve) already dead, would also have coveted these things, I imagine!  No more, then, ought she now to crave, or be acquainted with (if she desires to live again), what, when she was living, she had neither had nor known.  Accordingly these things are all the baggage of woman in her condemned and dead state, instituted as if to swell the pomp of her funeral.

CAPUT PRIMUM.

Si tanta in terris moraretur fides, quanta merces ejus exspectatur in coelis, nulla omnino vestrum, sorores 1304D dilectissimae, ex quo Deum vivum cognovisset, et 1305A de sua, id est de foeminae conditione didicisset, laetiorem habitum, ne dicam gloriosiorem appetiisset, ut non magis in sordibus ageret, et squalorem potius affectaret, ipsam se circumferens Evam lugentem et poenitentem; quo plenius id quod de Eva trahit (ignominiam dico primi delicti, et invidiam perditionis humanae) omni satisfactionis habitu expiaret (Genes., III, 16). In doloribus et anxietatibus paries , mulier, et ad virum tuum conversio tua; et ille dominabitur tui; et Evam te esse nescis? Vivit sententia Dei super sexum istum, in hoc saeculo: vivat et reatus necesse est. Tu es diaboli janua, tu es arboris illius resignatrix, tu es divinae legis prima desertrix, tu es quae eum persuasisti , quem diabolus aggredi non valuit. Tu imaginem Dei, hominem, tam facile elisisti: 1305B propter tuum meritum, id est mortem, etiam Filius Dei mori habuit; et adornari tibi in mente est super pelliceas tuas tunicas? Age nunc, si ab initio rerum et Milesii oves tonderent, et Seres arbores nerent, et Tyrii tinguerent, et Phryges insuerent, et Babylonii intexerent, et margaritae canderent et ceraunia coruscarent , si ipsum quoque aurum jam de terra cum cupiditate prodisset; si jam et speculo tantum mentiri liceret: et haec Eva concupisset de paradiso expulsa, jam mortua, opinor. Ergo nec nunc appetere debet, aut nosse, si cupit reviviscere, quae nec habuerat, nec noverat, quando vivebat. Ideo omnia ista damnatae et mortuae mulieris impedimenta sunt, quasi ad pompam funeris constituta.