or the women who elected to
abide on the natural, but despised, plane for which the Almighty
intended them. Too many of the former gave scandalous proof that their
ambition for virginal sanctity was unequalled by their steadfastness in
the contest. Nature has a way, when insulted, of making reprisals. The
writings of the Fathers are full of lamentations and exhortations which
indicate that the youthful female saints of their time found it one
thing to aspire to the glory of virginity and quite another to live
consistently with its character. All were not satisfied with the
indemnification provided by the joys of conscious holiness for the loss
of those pleasures which they denied themselves by their vows. Very
early there sprang up among the celibates of the Church a fashion of
choosing spiritual companions, the choice usually being made from among
the opposite sex. The canons of many of the first councils dealt with
the _agapetae_ who professed to be the spiritual sisters of the unmarried
clergy. Even in the days of persecution this had become prevalent;
Cyprian wrote severe strictures on the custom, but did not succeed in
bringing about its abolishment. Jerome speaks of it in unrestrained
terms: "How comes this plague of the _agapetae_ to be in the Church?
Whence come these unwedded wives, these novel concubines, these
prostitutes, so I will call them, though they cling to a single partner?
One house holds them, and one chamber. They often occupy the same couch,
and yet they call us suspicious if we fancy anything amiss. A brother
leaves his virgin sister; a virgin, slighting her unmarried brother,
seeks a brother in a stranger. Both alike profess to have but one
object, to find spiritual consolation from those not their kin.... It is
on such that Solomon in the Book of Proverbs heaps his scorn. 'Can a man
take fire in his bosom,'" he says, '"and his clothes not be burned?'"
These insurrections of nature continued until Church celibacy became a
fully organized system and the women devoted to perpetual virginity were
shut away in convents; even then, if all reports be true, the enemy,
though cast down, was not effectually destroyed.

The effect of this laudation of virginity upon the women who chose to
remain in the world was equally detrimental to good morals. The natural
result of the system might have been easily imagined, if the good sense
of the teachers of that age had not been dulled by the conception of the
hum