On Perfumes and Crowns

Crowns and perfumed oils are not necessary for us. They push a person toward pleasures and indulgences, especially as night comes on. I know that the woman brought an alabaster jar of perfumed oil to the holy supper, anointed the Lord’s feet, and refreshed him; and I know that the ancient kings of the Hebrews were crowned with gold and precious stones. But the woman had not yet received the Word — she was still a sinner — and she honored the Master with what she thought the most precious thing she owned, the perfumed oil. With the ornament of her own person, her hair, she wiped off what was left over, while she spent on the Lord tears of repentance. “That is why her sins are forgiven.” [a]

This may be a sign of the Lord’s teaching and of his suffering. The feet anointed with fragrant oil stand for God’s teaching, traveling with fame to the ends of the earth: “For their sound has gone out to the ends of the earth.” And, if I do not seem to be pressing the point too hard, the feet of the Lord that were anointed are the apostles, who received, as prophecy said they would, the fragrant anointing of the Holy Spirit. So those who traveled the world and preached the good news are called, figuratively, the feet of the Lord — and the Holy Spirit foretells them in the psalm, “Let us worship at the place where his feet stood,” that is, where the apostles, his feet, arrived; for he came to the ends of the earth by being preached by them. The tears are repentance. And the loosened hair announced release from the love of finery, and announced too the distress patiently borne that goes with preaching for the Lord’s sake, the old love of praise done away with by the new faith.

Besides, it points to the Lord’s suffering, if you take it in the hidden sense, this way. The oil is the Lord himself, and the mercy that reaches us comes from him. But the perfumed oil, which is oil adulterated, is Judas the traitor, by whom the Lord was anointed on the feet as he was released from his stay in the world — for it is the dead who are anointed. The tears are ourselves, the repentant sinners who have believed in him and to whom he has forgiven our sins. The disheveled hair is Jerusalem in mourning, the deserted city, over whom the prophets’ laments were spoken. The Lord himself will teach us that Judas the deceiver is meant: “The one who dips with me in the dish is the one who will betray me.” You see the treacherous guest. And this same Judas betrayed the Teacher with a kiss; he was a hypocrite, giving a treacherous kiss in imitation of another hypocrite long before. And he rebukes that people about whom it was said, “This people kisses me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.” So it is not unlikely that by the oil he means the disciple who was shown mercy, and by the tainted and poisoned oil, the traitor.

This, then, is what the anointed feet foretold: the treachery of Judas, when the Lord went to his suffering. And the Savior himself, when he washed the disciples’ feet and sent them off to do good, was marking out their journey for the good of the nations, making them beautiful and clean beforehand by his own power. Then the perfumed oil breathed its fragrance over them, and the sweet-smelling work that reaches everyone was announced; for the Lord’s suffering has filled us with sweet fragrance, and the Hebrews with guilt. The apostle showed this most clearly when he said, “Thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and makes known through us the fragrance of the knowledge of him in every place. For we are to God the sweet fragrance of the Lord, among those who are being saved and among those who are being lost — to the one a fragrance of death that leads to death, to the other a fragrance of life that leads to life.”

And the kings of the Jews, who used gold and precious stones and an embroidered crown — the anointed ones, wearing Christ on the head as a sign — were adorned with the head of the Lord without knowing it. The precious stone, or the pearl, or the emerald, points to the Word himself. The gold, again, is the Word who cannot be corrupted, who lets in none of the poison of decay. That is why the Magi brought him gold at his birth, the sign of kingship. And this crown, made after the image of the Lord, does not fade as a flower does.

I know the words of Aristippus of Cyrene too. Aristippus was a man given to luxury. He put a trick argument and asked for an answer to it, in these terms: “A horse anointed with perfumed oil is not damaged in what makes it a good horse, and a dog that has been anointed is not damaged in what makes it a good dog — and no more is a man,” he added, and finished there. But a dog and a horse take no notice of the perfume, while in creatures whose senses are more reasoning, smearing girlish scents over themselves is all the more open to blame. There is no end to the varieties of these perfumes: the Brenthian, the Metallian, the royal, the Plangonian, the Psagdian of Egypt. Simonides is not ashamed to say, in iambic lines,

For a merchant was on hand. They use the ointment made from lilies too, and the one from cypress. Nard is highly prized among them, and so is the perfume made from roses, and the others besides that women use — wet and dry alike, scents for rubbing on and scents for burning. Day after day their minds are set on satisfying a hunger that is never satisfied, on an endless variety of fragrance. So they reek of extravagance. They perfume and sprinkle their clothes, their bedding, and their houses. Luxury all but forces even the chamber pots to smell of perfume.

There are some who are annoyed at all the attention paid to this, and it seems to me they are right to be so set against perfumes — because perfumes make a man womanish — that they banish the men who compound and sell them from well-ordered cities, and banish the dyers of flower-colored wool as well. For it is not right that clothes and oils which set traps should be let into the city of truth. What is very much required is that the men who belong to us give off the smell not of perfumes but of nobility and goodness. And let a woman breathe the scent of the true royal perfume, the perfume of Christ, and not of ointments and scented powders. Let her always be anointed with the deathless oil of moderation, and take her delight in the holy ointment, the Spirit. This is the sweet-smelling perfume Christ prepares for his disciples, mixing it from the spices of heaven.

That is why the Lord himself is anointed with perfume, as David mentions: “That is why God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your companions; myrrh and stacte and cassia come from your clothes.” But let us not detest perfumes without noticing what we are doing, like vultures or beetles — they say that these die when they are smeared with perfume. Let a few perfumes be picked out by women, ones that will not overpower a husband. Too much anointing with perfume smells of a funeral, not of married life. And yet oil itself is an enemy to bees and insects; and some men it does good to, while others it calls out to a fight, and men who were cowards before, once they are oiled, it turns in the stadium to all-out fighting.

Since perfume is nothing but oil made smooth, do you not think it is bound to turn noble manners womanish? Certainly it is. And just as we have given up luxury in what we taste, so we renounce indulgence in what we see and smell, in case we let back into the soul, through the senses as through doors left unwatched, the excess we have driven out. So when we say that the Lord, the great High Priest, offers God the incense of sweet fragrance, we must not imagine a sacrifice and the sweet smell of burning incense. We must understand it to mean that the Lord lays on the altar the acceptable offering of love, the fragrance that belongs to the spirit.

To take it up again: plain oil is enough by itself to make the skin supple, loosen the sinews, and take any heavy smell off the body, if we need oil for that. But taking trouble over sweet scents is a bait that draws us into lust. The man with no self-control is led about on every side — by his food, his bed, his talk, by his eyes, his ears, his jaws, and by his nostrils too. As oxen are pulled along by rings and ropes, so the pleasure-lover is pulled by burning perfumes and ointments and the sweet scents of crowns. But since we give no place to a pleasure that is tied to no use worth having in life, come, let us draw a line here too and pick out what is useful. For there are sweet scents that do not make the head heavy or stir up desire, and do not smell of embraces and loose company, but which, taken with moderation, are healthy: they feed the brain when it is out of sorts, and strengthen the stomach. So a man should not chill himself with flowers when what he wants is to loosen his sinews. Their use is not to be laid aside altogether; perfumed oil is to be used as a medicine and a help, to bring the strength back up when it has weakened, and against head colds and chills and low spirits — as the comic poet says:

Rubbing the feet, too, with the grease of warming or cooling ointments is done for the good it does; and so in people who are soaked in it this way, a pull and a flow take place from the head down to the lower parts. But a pleasure with no usefulness attached to it raises the suspicion of a prostitute’s habits, and is a drug that provokes the passions. Rubbing yourself down with perfume is one thing, and anointing yourself with it is something else entirely. The first is womanish; anointing is in some cases good for you. So Aristippus the philosopher, when he had been anointed with perfume, said that the wretched men who take the woman’s part with other men deserved to die miserably for bringing the usefulness of perfume into disrepute. “Honor the doctor for his usefulness,” Scripture says, “for the Most High made him, and the art of healing is from the Lord.” Then it adds, “And the compounder of ointments will make his mixture” — since ointments have plainly been given for use, not for indulgence. We are not to care in the least about the exciting properties of ointments, but to choose what is useful in them, since God has allowed oil to be produced to ease people’s pains.

And foolish women who dye their gray hair and anoint their curls go gray all the faster because of the perfumes they use, which are drying by nature. That is why people who anoint themselves grow drier, and the dryness makes them grayer. For if gray hair is a drying-out of the hair, or a lack of heat, and the dryness drinks up the moisture that is the hair’s natural food and turns it gray, how can we go on being fond of ointments, by which ladies go gray in the very act of trying to escape gray hair? And as dogs with a keen nose track wild animals by the scent, so people of moderation track the loose by the excess of perfume they wear.

The use of crowns, too, has sunk into scenes of partying and drunkenness. Do not put a crown around my head. In spring it is a delight to pass the time in the dewy meadows, while the soft, many-colored flowers are in bloom, and to enjoy a natural and pure fragrance, as the bees do. But to dress yourself in “a crown woven from the fresh meadow,” and wear it at home, would not suit a man of moderation. It is not fitting to stuff wanton hair with rose petals, or violets, or lilies, or other such flowers, stripping the turf of its blooms. For a crown around the head chills the hair, both by its moisture and by its coolness. That is why doctors, having settled on physical grounds that the brain is cold, approve of anointing the chest and the tips of the nostrils, so that the warm vapor passing gently through may healthily warm what is chilled. A man ought not, then, to cool himself with flowers.

Besides, people who crown themselves destroy the pleasure there is in flowers. They do not enjoy the sight of them, since they wear the crown above their eyes; and they do not enjoy the fragrance, since they have put the flowers up out of the way, above the organs they breathe with. The fragrance rises and drifts off naturally, and the breathing organ is left with none of the enjoyment, the scent having been carried away. Like beauty, a flower gives its delight when it is looked at; and it is right to glorify the Creator by the enjoyment of the sight of beautiful things. Using them is harmful, and the use passes swiftly away and is paid back with regret. Their short life is proved soon enough, for both fade, the flower and beauty alike. And whoever touches them is cooled by the one and inflamed by the other. In a word, to enjoy them by anything but sight is a crime and not a luxury.

It suits us, who truly follow Scripture, to enjoy ourselves with moderation, as in paradise. We must count the woman’s crown to be her husband, and the husband’s crown to be marriage, and the flowers of a marriage the children of them both, which the divine farmer picks from meadows of flesh. “Children’s children are the crown of old men.” And the glory of children is their fathers, it is said; and our glory is the Father of all; and the crown of the whole church is Christ.

Like roots and plants, flowers too have their own individual properties: some beneficial, some harmful, and some dangerous as well. Ivy is cooling. The nut tree gives off a vapor that dulls the senses, as the derivation of its name shows. The narcissus is a flower with a heavy scent; the name proves it, and it brings a numbness (narkē) over the sinews. The vapors of roses and violets, being mildly cool, relieve headaches and keep them off. But we are not allowed to drink with others to drunkenness at all, or even to grow heated with wine. The crocus and the cypress flower, for their part, bring on an easy sleep. Many of them, too, warm the brain with their scents — the brain being cold by nature — and drive off the discharges of the head as vapor. This, they say, is how the rose (rhodon) got its name: because it sends out a copious stream (rheuma) of scent (odōdē). And that is why it fades quickly.

But the use of crowns did not exist at all among the ancient Greeks; neither the suitors nor the luxurious Phaeacians used them. At the games the honors came in this order: first, the gift to the athletes; second, the crowd rising to applaud; third, the showering with leaves; and last of all the crown — Greece having given herself over to luxury after the Persian war.

Those, then, who are trained by the Word hold back from wearing crowns — not because they think that this Word, whose seat is in the brain, would be tied down by them, nor because the crown is the sign of the recklessness of a party, but because it has been dedicated to idols. So Sophocles called the narcissus “the ancient coronet of the great gods,” speaking of the divinities born from the earth; and Sappho crowns the Muses with the rose:

They say, too, that Hera delights in the lily, and Artemis in the myrtle. For if the flowers were made especially for people, and senseless people have taken them not for their proper and thankful use but have misused them in the thankless service of demons, then we must keep away from them for conscience’s sake. The crown is a sign of undisturbed calm. That is why they crown the dead — and idols as well, for the same reason, testifying by that very fact that the idols are dead. Revelers do not celebrate their rites without crowns, and once they are ringed about with flowers they are at last inflamed past all measure. We must have nothing in common with demons. And we must not crown the living image of God the way dead idols are crowned. For the beautiful crown of amaranth is stored up for those who have lived well. That flower the earth is not able to bear; heaven alone is competent to produce it.

Further, it would be unreasonable for us, who have heard that the Lord was crowned with thorns, to crown ourselves with flowers and so insult the Lord’s holy suffering. For the Lord’s crown pointed prophetically to us: we were once barren, and now we are set around him through the church, of which he is the head. But it is also a figure of faith — of life, in the material of the wood; of joy, in the name “crown”; of danger, in the thorn; for there is no coming near the Word without blood. But this plaited crown fades, and the plaiting of their perversity comes undone, and the flower withers. For the glory of those who have not believed in the Lord fades.

And they crowned Jesus when he had been lifted up, bearing witness to their own ignorance. Being hard of heart, they did not understand that this very thing, which they called the Lord’s disgrace, was a prophecy wisely spoken: “The Lord was not known by the people” — the people that went astray, that was not circumcised in understanding, whose darkness was never lit, that did not know God, denied the Lord, forfeited its place as the true Israel, persecuted God, and hoped to bring the Word down into disgrace. The man they crucified as a criminal, they crowned as a king. So the man they did not believe in, they will come to know as the loving God, the Lord, the Just One. They provoked him to show himself the Lord; and when he was lifted up they bore witness to him, ringing him who is exalted above every name with the diadem of righteousness, by means of the ever-blooming thorn.

This diadem is hostile to those who plot against him and holds them down; it is friendly to those who make up the church, and defends them. This crown is the flower of those who have believed in the glorified One, but it covers with blood and punishes those who have not believed. It is a sign, too, of the Lord’s work carried through, since he bore on his head — the ruling part of his body — all our wrongdoing, by which we had been pierced. For by his own suffering he rescued us from offenses and sins and thorns of that kind; and having destroyed the devil he said in triumph, and deservedly, “Death, where is your sting?” And we eat grapes from thorns and figs from thistles, while those to whom he stretched out his hands — the disobedient and fruitless people — are torn into wounds.

I can show you another hidden meaning in it as well. When the Almighty Lord of the universe began to give law through the Word, and wanted his power made plain to Moses, a godlike vision of light that had taken on a shape was shown to him in the burning bush — and the bush is a thorny plant. But when the Word had finished giving the law and finished his stay among people, the Lord was again crowned, in the hidden sense, with thorn. On his departure from this world to the place he had come from, he repeated the beginning of his old descent, so that the Word — seen first in the bush, and afterward taken up crowned by the thorn — might show the whole of it to be the work of one power: he himself being one, the Son of the Father, who is truly one, the beginning and the end of time.

But I have wandered off from the instructor’s way of speaking and brought in the teacher’s. So I go back to my subject.

To take it up again, then: we have shown that in the field of medicine, for healing, and sometimes for moderate refreshment as well, the delight that comes from flowers and the benefit that comes from ointments and perfumes are not to be overlooked. And if some ask, What pleasure is there in flowers, then, for people who do not use them? — let them know that ointments are made from flowers, and are extremely useful. The Susinian ointment is made from various kinds of lilies; it is warming, it opens the bowels, it draws and moistens and cleanses, it is fine in texture, it works against bile, and it softens. The Narcissinian is made from the narcissus, and is just as beneficial as the Susinian. The Myrsinian, made from myrtle and myrtle berries, is an astringent, and stops discharges from the body; and the one made from roses is cooling. For in a word, these too were created for our use.

“Listen to me,” it is said, “and grow like a rose planted beside streams of water, and give out a sweet fragrance like frankincense, and bless the Lord for his works.” We would have much to say about them, if we were to speak of flowers and scents as made for necessary purposes and not for the excesses of luxury. And if a concession has to be made, it is enough for people to enjoy the fragrance of flowers; but let them not crown themselves with them. For the Father takes great care of humanity, and gives to us alone his own skill. That is why Scripture says, “Water and fire and iron and milk and fine wheat flour and honey, the blood of the grape and oil and clothing — all these things are for the good of the godly.”