Chapter XIII.

For state reasons, the various orders of the citizens also are crowned with laurel crowns; but the magistrates besides with golden ones, as at Athens, and at Rome. Even to those are preferred the Etruscan. This appellation is given to the crowns which, distinguished by their gems and oak leaves of gold, they put on, with mantles having an embroidery of palm branches, to conduct the chariots containing the images of the gods to the circus. There are also provincial crowns of gold, needing now the larger heads of images instead of those of men. But your orders, and your magistracies, and your very place of meeting, the church, are Christ’s. You belong to Him, for you have been enrolled in the books of life.48    Phil. iv. 3. There the blood of the Lord serves for your purple robe, and your broad stripe is His own cross; there the axe is already laid to the trunk of the tree;49    Matt. iii. 10. there is the branch out of the root of Jesse.50    Isa. xi. 1. Never mind the state horses with their crown. Your Lord, when, according to the Scripture, He would enter Jerusalem in triumph, had not even an ass of His own. These (put their trust) in chariots, and these in horses; but we will seek our help in the name of the Lord our God.51    Ps. xx. 7. From so much as a dwelling in that Babylon of John’s Revelation52    Rev. xviii. 4. [He understands this of Rome.] we are called away; much more then from its pomp. The rabble, too, are crowned, at one time because of some great rejoicing for the success of the emperors; at another, on account of some custom belonging to municipal festivals. For luxury strives to make her own every occasion of public gladness. But as for you, you are a foreigner in this world, a citizen of Jerusalem, the city above. Our citizenship, the apostle says, is in heaven.53    Phil. iii. 20. You have your own registers, your own calendar; you have nothing to do with the joys of the world; nay, you are called to the very opposite, for “the world shall rejoice, but ye shall mourn.”54    John xvi. 20. And I think the Lord affirms, that those who mourn are happy, not those who are crowned.  Marriage, too, decks the bridegroom with its crown; and therefore we will not have heathen brides, lest they seduce us even to the idolatry with which among them marriage is initiated.  You have the law from the patriarchs indeed; you have the apostle enjoining people to marry in the Lord.55    1 Cor. vii. 39. You have a crowning also on the making of a freeman; but you have been already ransomed by Christ, and that at a great price.  How shall the world manumit the servant of another? Though it seems to be liberty, yet it will come to be found bondage. In the world everything is nominal, and nothing real.  For even then, as ransomed by Christ, you were under no bondage to man; and now, though man has given you liberty, you are the servant of Christ. If you think freedom of the world to be real, so that you even seal it with a crown, you have returned to the slavery of man, imagining it to be freedom; you have lost the freedom of Christ, fancying it is slavery. Will there be any dispute as to the cause of crown-wearing, which contests in the games in their turn supply, and which, both as sacred to the gods and in honour of the dead, their own reason at once condemns? It only remains, that the Olympian Jupiter, and the Nemean Hercules, and the wretched little Archemorus, and the hapless Antinous, should be crowned in a Christian, that he himself may become a spectacle disgusting to behold. We have recounted, as I think, all the various causes of the wearing of the crown, and there is not one which has any place with us: all are foreign to us, unholy, unlawful, having been abjured already once for all in the solemn declaration of the sacrament. For they were of the pomp of the devil and his angels, offices of the world,56    [A suggestive interpretation of the baptismal vow, of which see Bunsen, Hippol., Vol. III., p. 20.] honours, festivals, popularity huntings, false vows, exhibitions of human servility, empty praises, base glories, and in them all idolatry, even in respect of the origin of the crowns alone, with which they are all wreathed. Claudius will tell us in his preface, indeed, that in the poems of Homer the heaven also is crowned with constellations, and that no doubt by God, no doubt for man; therefore man himself, too, should be crowned by God.  But the world crowns brothels, and baths, and bakehouses, and prisons, and schools, and the very amphitheatres, and the chambers where the clothes are stripped from dead gladiators, and the very biers of the dead. How sacred and holy, how venerable and pure is this article of dress, determine not from the heaven of poetry alone, but from the traffickings of the whole world.  But indeed a Christian will not even dishonour his own gate with laurel crowns, if so be he knows how many gods the devil has attached to doors; Janus so-called from gate, Limentinus from threshold, Forcus and Carna from leaves and hinges; among the Greeks, too, the Thyræan Apollo, and the evil spirits, the Antelii.

13. Coronant et publicos ordines laureis publicae causae, magistratus uero insuper aureis, ut Athenis, ut Romae. Superferuntur etiam illis Etruscae. Hoc uocabulum est coronarum quas gemmis et foliis ex auro quercinis ab Ioue insignes ad deducendas tensas cum palmatis togis sumunt. Sunt et prouinciales aureae, imaginum pro numero capita maiora quaerentes. Sed tui ordines et tui magistratus et ipsum curiae nomen ecclesia est Christi. Illius es concriptus in libris uitae. Illic purpurae tuae sanguis Domini, et clauus latus in cruce ipsius; illic secures, ad caudicem iam arboris positae; illic uirgae ex radice Iesse. Viderint et publici equi cum coronis suis. Dominus tuus, ubi secundum scripturam Hierusalem ingredi uoluit, nec asinum habuit priuatum. « Isti in curribus et isti in equis, nos autem in nomine Domini nostri inuocabimus. » Ab ipso incolatu Babylonis illius in Apocalypsi Iohannis submouemur, nedum a suggestu. Coronatur et uulgus, nunc ex principalium prosperitatum exultatione, nunc ex municipalium sollemnitatum proprietate. Est enim omnis publicae laetitiae luxuria captatrix. Sed tu, peregrinus mundi huius et ciuis ciuitatis supernae Hierusalem, -- « Noster, inquit, municipatus in caelis », -- habes tuos census, tuos fastos, nihil tibi cum gaudiis saeculi, immo contrarium debes. « Saeculum enim gaudebit, uos uero lugebitis. » Et, puto, felices ait lugentes, non coronatos. Coronant et nuptiae sponsos. Et ideo non nubemus ethnicis, ne nos ad idololatriam usque deducant, a qua apud illos nuptiae incipiunt. Habes legem a patriarchis quidem, habes apostolum in Domino nubere iubentem. Coronat et libertas saecularis. Sed tu iam redemptus es a Christo, et quidem magno. Seruum alienum quomodo saeculum manumittet? Etsi libertas uidetur, sed et seruitus uidebitur: omnia imaginaria in saeculo et nihil ueri. Nam et tunc liber hominis eras, redemptus a Christo, et nunc seruus es Christi, licet manumissus sis ab homine. Si ueram putes saeculi libertatem, ut et corona eam consignes, redisti in seruitutem hominis, quam putas libertatem, amisisti libertatem Christi, quam putasti seruitutem. Numquid et agonisticae causae disputabuntur, quas statim tituli sui damnant, sacras et funebres scilicet ? Hoc enim superest, ut Olympius Iuppiter et Nemaeus Hercules et misellus Archemorus et Antinous infelix in christiano coronentur, ut ipse spectaculum fiat quod spectare non debet. Vniuersas, ut arbitror, causas enumerauimus, nec ulla nobiscum est : omnes alienae, profanae, inlicitae, semel iam in sacramenti testatione eieratae. Haec enim erant pompae diaboli et angelorum eius : officia saeculi, honores, sollemnitates, popularitates, falsa uota, humana seruitia, laudes uanae, gloriae turpes; et in omnibus istis idololatriae, in solo quoque censu coronarum, quibus omnia ista redimita sunt. Praefabitur quidem Claudius etiam caelum sideribus apud Homeri carmina coronatum, certe a Deo, certe homini : igitur et homo ipse a deo coronandus est. Ceterum a saeculo coronantur et lupanaria et latrinae et pistrinae et carcer et ludus et ipsa amphitheatra et ipsa spoliaria ipsaeque libitinae. Quam sacer sanctusque, quam honestus ac mundus sit habitus iste, noli de uno poetico caelo, sed de totius mundi commerciis aestimare. At enim christianus nec ianuam suam laureis infamabit, si norit quantos deos etiam ostiis diabolus adfinxerit : Ianum a ianua, Limentinum a limine, Forculum et Carnam a foribus atque cardinibus, etiam apud Graecos Thyraeum Apollinem et Antelios daemonas.