Shoes, Jewels, and Gold

Women who love display behave the same way about shoes, showing off their extravagance here too. Those sandals with gold flowers on them are truly disgraceful — and on top of that they see fit to have nails driven into the soles in winding patterns. Many women even have lovers’ embraces carved into them, as though by walking they could hand a rhythm on to the ground and stamp their own wantonness into it. So we must say goodbye to gold-plated and jeweled mischief in sandals, to Attic and Sicyonian half-boots and Persian and Etruscan boots. Setting the right aim in front of us, as our truth always does, we are bound to choose what agrees with nature. [a]

Shoes are partly for covering the foot, partly for protecting it when it strikes against something, and for saving the sole from the roughness of hill paths. Women may have a white shoe, except when traveling; on the road a greased shoe is what they need, and there they require nailed shoes. For the most part they ought to keep their shoes on, since it is not fitting for a woman’s foot to be shown bare — and besides, a woman is a delicate thing and easily hurt. But for a man bare feet are perfectly in keeping, except when he is on military service. “Wearing boots is next door to wearing bonds.”

Going barefoot suits exercise best, and it is best for health and for ease, except where necessity prevents it. But if we are not traveling and cannot bear bare feet, we may use slippers or white shoes — “dust-feet,” the Athenians called them, because, I suppose, they bring the feet close to the dust. As a witness for plainness in shoes, let John be enough: he said he was not worthy to untie the strap of the Lord’s shoes. The man who showed the Hebrews the pattern of the true philosophy wore no elaborate shoes. What more this may mean will be shown elsewhere.

It is childish to be so taken with dark or green stones, and with what the sea throws up on foreign shores — bits of the earth. Chasing after clear stones of unusual color, and colored glass, is what silly people do, drawn by whatever makes a striking show. Children do the same when they see a fire: the brightness pulls them to it, and they are too senseless to understand the danger of touching it. It is the same with the stones that foolish women hang on chains and set in necklaces — amethysts, thunderstones, jaspers, topaz, and the Milesian [e]

And the pearl, prized above everything, has invaded the women’s quarters beyond all measure. It grows in a kind of oyster, like a mussel, and is about the size of a large fish’s eye. These wretched women are not ashamed to have spent enormous trouble on a little oyster, when they might have adorned themselves with the holy jewel, the Word of God — whom the Scripture somewhere calls a pearl — the pure and clear Jesus, the eye that keeps watch in the flesh, the transparent Word, by whom the flesh, born again by water, becomes precious. For the oyster in the water wraps the flesh all around, and out of it the pearl is produced.

We have heard, too, that the Jerusalem above is walled with holy stones, and we grant that the twelve gates of the heavenly city, made to look like precious stones, stand for the surpassing grace of the apostles’ voice. For in precious stones the color lies on the surface, and the color is the precious part, while the rest of the stone stays common earth. It is fitting that the city of the holy ones, which is built in the spirit, should be walled with these as symbols. So by that flashing of stones is meant the flashing of the spirit that nothing can imitate — deathlessness and holiness of being. But these women understand nothing of what the Scripture is picturing. They gape after jewels as hard as they can, and offer this astonishing defense: “Why may I not use what God has put on display?” And, “I have it by me — why should I not enjoy it?” And, “Who were these things made for, then, if not for us?” That is the talk of people who know nothing at all of God’s will. The first necessities — water and air — he supplies free to everyone; what is not necessary he has hidden in the earth and in the water. And so ants dig, and griffins guard gold, and the sea hides the pearl-stone. But you busy yourselves over what you do not need. Look: the whole sky is lit up, and you do not look for God — while gold, which is hidden, and jewels are dug up for you by men among us who have been condemned to death.

You are setting yourselves against the Scripture, too, which cries out plainly: “Seek first the kingdom of heaven, and all these things will be added to you.” But suppose everything has been granted to you and everything is allowed you — still, “if all things are lawful, not all things are useful,” says the apostle. God brought our race into fellowship by first sharing what was his own, when he gave his own Word to be shared by all and made all things for all. So all things are common, and the rich are not to take more than their share. To say “I own things, and own them in plenty; why then should I not enjoy them?” is worthy neither of the man who says it nor of the society he lives in. Far more lovable is this: “I have — why should I not give to those who need?” For a man like that, who keeps the command, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” is perfect. This is the true luxury, the treasure worth storing. What is poured out on foolish cravings is to be counted waste, not spending. God has given us, I am well aware, the freedom to use things — but only so far as we need them; and he has decided that the use should be shared. It is monstrous for one man to live in luxury while many go without. How much more splendid to do good to many than to live in style! How much wiser to spend money on people than on jewels and gold! How much more useful to gain decent friends than lifeless ornaments! What estate has ever done anyone as much good as doing someone a kindness has? It remains, then, to dispose of this objection: who will have the more expensive things, if everyone chooses the simpler? Men will, I would answer, if they use them without partiality and without fuss. But if it is impossible for everyone to practice self-restraint, then, with a view to using what we need, we must look for what is most easily got, and say a long goodbye to these superfluities.

In short, they must throw off ornaments altogether, as girls’ trinkets, and give up adornment entirely. They ought to be adorned inside, and to show the inner woman beautiful. Beauty and ugliness are displayed in the soul and nowhere else. That is why only the good man is really beautiful and good, and why it is laid down as a rule that only the beautiful is good. Excellence alone shows through a beautiful body and flowers out in the flesh, displaying the lovable comeliness of self-control, whenever the character shines out through the shape of a person like a beam of light. Every plant and animal is beautiful by its own particular excellence. And the excellence of a human being is righteousness, self-control, courage, and godliness. So the beautiful man is the one who is just and self-controlled and, in a word, good — not the one who is rich. But nowadays even soldiers want to be decked out in gold, not having read that line of poetry:

The love of ornament is a long way from caring about virtue: it lays claim to the body instead, once love of the beautiful has turned into empty show, and it has to be driven out completely. Putting things on the body that do not belong there, as though they did, breeds the practice of lying and the habit of falsehood. It shows not what is decent and plain and truly childlike, but what is pompous and self-indulgent and soft. These women blot out real beauty by shading it over with gold. And they do not know how great their offense is when they fasten ten thousand costly chains around themselves. Among the foreign peoples, they say, criminals are bound with gold; and these women seem to me to be copying those rich prisoners. Is the gold necklace not a collar? Do the necklets they call kathemata not stand in for chains? Among the Athenians that is the very name such things go by. The clumsy things around women’s ankles Philemon in the Synephebus called ankle-fetters:

What else is this adornment you all long for, ladies, but putting yourselves on show in fetters? If the material takes away the disgrace, then wearing the fetters makes no difference either way. To me, women who put themselves in chains of their own accord seem to be glorying in expensive misfortunes.

Perhaps these are the very chains that the poets’ story says were thrown around Aphrodite when she was caught in adultery — which makes ornaments nothing but the badge of adultery. Homer called them golden chains as well. But women today are not ashamed to wear the plainest badges of the evil one. For just as the serpent deceived Eve, so gold ornament has driven other women mad after vicious practices, using the serpent’s shape as the bait: they have lampreys and snakes made up as jewelry. So the comic poet Nicostratus lists: “chains, collars, rings, bracelets, snakes, anklets, hellebore.”

So Aristophanes, in the strongest terms of blame, sets out the whole array of a woman’s ornament as a catalogue, in Women at the Thesmophoria:

But I have not yet named the chief of them. What then?

I am tired and irritated with counting up this crowd of ornaments, and I cannot help wondering how the women who carry such a load are not worn to death by it. What a foolish bother! What a silly craze for display! They squander their wealth like prostitutes on what is disgraceful, and in their love of show they disfigure God’s gifts, copying the craft of the evil one. The rich man storing things up in his barns and saying to himself, “You have plenty of goods laid up for many years; eat, drink, be merry” — him the Lord in the Gospel called, plainly, a fool: “This night they will take your soul from you; whose then will the things you have prepared be?”

Apelles the painter, seeing one of his students painting a figure loaded with gold color to represent Helen, said to him: “Boy, since you could not paint her beautiful, you have made her rich.” The ladies of our own day are Helens like that: not really beautiful, only expensively turned out. To them the Spirit says through Zephaniah: “Their silver and their gold will not be able to rescue them on the day of the Lord’s anger.” But women who have been trained under Christ should adorn themselves not with gold but with the Word, through whom alone the gold ever came to light.

The ancient Hebrews would have been happy if they had thrown their women’s ornaments away, or had only melted them down. But they cast their gold into the shape of an ox and worshiped it as a god, and so got no good out of either their craft or their attempt. Still, they taught our women in the plainest way to keep clear of ornaments. The craving that goes whoring after gold turns into an idol, and it is tested by fire — which is all that luxury is kept for, since it is an idol and not a real thing. And so the Word, reproaching the Hebrews through the prophet, says, “They made things of silver and gold for Baal” — that is, ornaments. And with the clearest threat he says, “I will punish her for the days of the Baals, on which they burned sacrifices to them, and she put on her earrings and her necklaces.” And he added the reason for the adornment when he said, “And she went after her lovers, and forgot me, says the Lord.”

So let us hand these baubles back to the crafty master who invented them, and take no part in this prostitute’s adornment, and commit no idolatry under a plausible excuse. This is why the blessed Peter says so admirably: “In the same way, let women adorn themselves not with braided hair or gold or expensive clothes, but — as suits women who profess to be godly — with good works.” He is right to tell them to keep such decking out far away from them. Grant that they are beautiful: nature is enough. Do not let art fight against nature — that is, do not let falsehood strive with truth. And if they are ugly by nature, the things they put on themselves convict them of what they do not have. So it suits women who serve Christ to take up plainness. Plainness really does make for holiness: it brings excess down to the level of the rest, and it supplies, out of whatever is at hand, the enjoyment people go looking for in superfluities. Plainness, as the name shows, is not conspicuous. It is not inflated, not puffed up about anything, but altogether even and gentle and level and free of excess, and so it is enough. And having enough is a condition that reaches its proper end with nothing too much and nothing lacking. The mother of these is Justice, and their nurse is Self-Sufficiency; and self-sufficiency is a condition satisfied with what is necessary, which by itself supplies whatever goes to make up the blessed life.

Let the ornament on your wrists, then, be holy: open-handed sharing, and the work of managing a household. “For whoever gives to the poor lends to God.” “And the hands of the courageous will be made rich.” By “courageous” he means those who look down on wealth and are free in giving it away. And on your feet let a brisk readiness for doing good show itself, and a journey toward righteousness. Modesty and purity are your collars and necklaces; these are the chains God forges. “Happy is the man who has found wisdom, and the mortal who knows understanding,” says the Spirit through Solomon, “for it is better to buy her than treasures of gold and silver, and she is worth more than precious stones.” She is the true decoration.

And do not let their ears be pierced, against nature, so that earrings and eardrops can be hung on them. It is not right to force nature against her will. Nor could the ears have any better ornament than true teaching, which finds its own way into the channels of hearing. Eyes anointed by the Word, and ears pierced for understanding, make a person a hearer and a contemplator of things divine and holy; and the Word truly displays the true beauty “which no eye has seen and no ear has heard before.”