Chapter LXXVIII. Of avoiding familiarity with women; and of his manner of talking with them

Against Familiarity with Women

112. He enjoined the absolute avoidance of that honeyed poison, familiarity with women, which leads even holy men astray; for he feared lest thereby the frail spirit should quickly be broken and the strong often be made weak. Except in the case of the most approved man he judged it to be as easy for any one associating with women to escape their contagion as (in Scriptural phrase) to walk in the fire without burning the soles of one's feet.¹ And, that he might speak by action, he showed himself a pattern of all virtue. To such a degree was a woman unwelcome to him that you would suppose her to be not so much a warning or example as an object of dread or horror. When in speaking he encountered the troublesome loquacity of women, he, with downcast face and short words, would call on them to be silent. Sometimes, on the other hand, with his eyes fixed on heaven, he seemed to be drawing thence the answers he gave to those who were muttering of earth. But those women in whose minds a holy urgency of devotion had placed the abode of wisdom, he taught by wondrous but brief discourses. Whenever he spoke with a woman he uttered what he had to say in a tone loud enough to be heard by all. Once he said to a companion: "I tell thee the truth, dearest brother, there are two women only whose faces I should recognise if I looked at them. The face of such an one (he added) and of such an one is known to me: but that of no other."

Well said, father, for the sight of them makes no one holy. Well said, I repeat, for they bring no light, but much loss, were it but loss of time! They are a hindrance to those who would take the arduous journey, and look upon that Countenance which is full of graces.