Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew

⁸ Heardest thou not what Paul says, “Rejoice in the Lord?” He said not, “in the devil.” When then will you be able to hear Paul? When, to gain a sense of your wrong actions? drunken as you are, ever and incessantly, with the spectacle I was speaking of. For your having come here is nothing wonderful nor great; or rather it is wonderful. For here you come any how, and so as just to satisfy a scruple, but there with diligence and speed, and great readiness. And it is evident from what you bring home, on returning thence.

For even all the mire that is there poured out for you, by the speeches, by the songs, by the laughter, you collect and take every man to his home, or rather not to his home only, but every man even into his own mind.

And from things not worthy of abhorrence you turn away; while others which are to be abhorred, so far from hating, thou dost even court. Many, for instance, on coming back from tombs, are used to wash themselves, but on returning from theatres they have never groaned, nor poured forth any fountains of tears; yet surely the dead man is no unclean thing, whereas sin induces such a blot, that not even with ten thousand fountains could one purge it away, but with tears only, and with confessions. But no one has any sense of this blot. Thus because we fear not what we ought, therefore we shrink from what we ought not.

And what again is the applause? What the tumult, and the satanical cries, and the devilish gestures? For first one, being a young man, wears his hair long behind, and changing his nature into that of a woman, is striving both in aspect, and in gesture, and in garments, and generally in all ways, to pass into the likeness of a tender damsel. Then another who is grown old, in the opposite way to this, having his hair shaven, and with his loins girt about, his shame cut off before his hair, stands ready to be smitten with the rod, prepared both to say and do anything. The women again, their heads uncovered, stand without a blush, discoursing with a whole people, so complete is their practice in shamelessness; and thus pour forth all effrontery and impurity into the souls of their hearers. And their one study is, to pluck up all chastity from the foundations, to disgrace our nature, to satiate the desire of the wicked demon. Yea, and there are both foul sayings, and gestures yet fouler; and the dressing of the hair tends that way, and the gait, and apparel, and voice, and flexure of the limbs; and there are turnings of the eyes, and flutes, and pipes, and dramas, and plots; and all things, in short, full of the most extreme impurity. When then will you be sober again, I pray you, now that the devil is pouring out for you so much of the strong wine of whoredom, mingling so many cups of unchastity? For indeed both adulteries and stolen marriages are there, and there are women playing the harlot, men prostituting, youths corrupting themselves: all there is iniquity to the full, all sorcery, all shame. Wherefore they that sit by should not laugh at these things, but weep and groan bitterly.

“What then? Are we to shut up the stage?” it will be said, “and are all things to be turned upside down at your word?” Nay, but as it is, all things are turned upside down. For whence are they, tell me, that plot against our marriages? Is it not from this theatre? Whence are they that dig through into chambers? Is it not from that stage? Comes it not of this, when husbands are insupportable to their wives? Of this, when the wives are contemptible to their husbands? Of this, that the more part are adulterers? So that the subverter of all things is he that goes to the theatre; it is he that brings in a grievous tyranny. “Nay,” you will say, “this is appointed by the good order of the laws.” Why, to tear away men's wives, and to insult young boys, and to overthrow houses, is proper to those who have seized on citadels. “And what adulterer,” will you say, “has been made such by these spectacles?” Nay, who has not been made an adulterer? And if one might but mention them now by name, I could point out how many husbands those harlots have severed from their wives, how many they have taken captive, drawing some even from the marriage bed itself, not suffering others so much as to live at all in marriage.

“What then? I pray you, are we to overthrow all the laws?” Nay, but it is overthrowing lawlessness, if we do away with these spectacles. For hence are they that make havoc in our cities; hence, for example, are seditions and tumults. For they that are maintained by the dancers, and who sell their own voice to the belly, whose work it is to shout, and to practise everything that is monstrous, these especially are the men that stir up the populace, that make the tumults in our cities. For youth, when it has joined hands with idleness, and is brought up in so great evils, becomes fiercer than any wild beast. The necromancers too, I pray you, whence are they? Is it not from hence, that in order to excite the people who are idling without object, and make the dancing men have the benefit of much and loud applause, and fortify the harlot women against the chaste, they proceed so far in sorcery, as not even to shrink from disturbing the bones of the dead? Comes it not hence, when men are forced to spend without limit on that wicked choir of the devil? And lasciviousness, whence is that, and its innumerable mischiefs? You see, it is thou who art subverting our life, by drawing men to these things, while I am recruiting it by putting them down.

“Let us then pull down the stage,” say they. Would that it were possible to pull it down; or rather, if you be willing, as far as regards us, it is pulled down, and dug up. Nevertheless, I enjoin no such thing. Standing as these places are, I bid you make them of no effect; which thing were a greater praise than pulling them down.