Consecrated Virginity
Forgoing marriage not from scorn of love but to give the whole self to the Kingdom
Consecrated virginity is the deliberate renunciation of marriage for the sake of the Kingdom. Paul commends the unmarried state in 1 Corinthians 7, and the Fathers elaborated it into a celebrated form of Christian life: Methodius praised it in his Symposium, and Gregory of Nyssa devoted a treatise, On Virginity, to it. It was understood as freeing a person for undivided devotion to God rather than as a rejection of marriage's goodness.
Key passages(8)
Each passage is tagged by what it does with the idea: explains it, applies it in practice, redefines it with a new meaning, or challenges it. Relevance shows how directly the passage is about this idea.
58. What is it, then, that even they who hear me not follow my teaching, and those who hear me follow me not? For I have known many virgins who had the desire, but were prevented from going forward by
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Letter CXXVIII. To Gaudentius. Gaudentius had written from Rome to ask Jerome’s advice as to the bringing up of his infant daughter; whom after the religious fashion of the day he had dedicated to a
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22. And now by plainest witnesses of divine Scriptures, such as according to the small measure of our memory we shall be able to remember, let it more clearly appear, that, not on account of the prese
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Dialogues of Sulpitius Severus · Sulpicius Severus
“But as to familiarities which take place between virgins and monks, or even clerics, how true and how courageous were his words! And, on account of these, he is said not to stand high in favor with c
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Ephraim Syrus: Fifteen Hymns For the Feast of the Epiphany · Ephrem the Syrian
Hymn VIII. (Resp.—Happy are ye whose bodies have been made to shine!) 1. God in His mercy stooped and came down,—to mingle His compassion with the water,—and to blend the nature of His majesty—with
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On the Decease of His Brother Satyrus · Ambrose of Milan
71. And certainly if they have ever found any consolation who have thought that death is the end of sensation and the failing of our nature, how much more must we find it so to whom the consciousness
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The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians · John Chrysostom
Homily V. Colossians i. 26–28 “Even the mystery which hath been hid from all ages and generations: but now hath it been manifested to His saints, to whom God was pleased to make known what is the ri
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Letters of Athanasius with Two Ancient Chronicles of His Life · Athanasius of Alexandria
3. So now, those who keep the Passover in like manner, the Lord again reproves, as He did those lepers who were cleansed, when He loved the one as thankful, but was angry with the others as ungrateful
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