De Spectaculis

I. ON THE SPECTACLES. CYPRIAN TO THE PEOPLE STANDING IN THE GOSPEL. Just as it greatly saddens me and grievously afflicts my spirit when no occasion to write to you presents itself—for it is a loss to me not to converse with you—so nothing restores such joy and cheerfulness to me as when the opportunity returns. I consider myself to be with you when I speak to you through letters. Therefore, although I know that you are certain of what I say and doubt nothing of the truth of my words, yet the sincerity of the matter is also asserted by this argument: for no occasion whatsoever is allowed to pass by, and my affection is proven. Hence, although I am sure that you are no less serious in the conduct of your life than faithful in the sacrament, nevertheless, since there are no lack of flattering advocates and indulgent patrons of vices who lend authority to vices and—what is worse—turn the censure of the heavenly scriptures into a defense of crimes, as if the pleasure of spectacles, sought for the relaxation of the mind, were innocent and without fault—for the vigor of ecclesiastical discipline has been so enervated and is so precipitated by every languor of vices, worse still, that not an excuse but authority is now given to vices—I have decided, not now to instruct you, but to remind you who are already instructed, lest, because wounds are badly bound, the scars of healed health break open.

For no evil is more difficult to extinguish than that which has easy returns, while it is both asserted by the consensus of the multitude and flattered by excuse. Are they not ashamed, I say, are they not ashamed, faithful men and those claiming for themselves the authority of the Christian name, to vindicate from the divine scriptures the vain superstitions of the Gentiles mixed with spectacles, and to confer divine authority upon idolatry? For when that which is done by pagans in honor of some idol is frequented as a spectacle by faithful Christians, both Gentile idolatry is asserted and true and divine religion is trampled underfoot in contempt of God. Shame restrains me from recounting their prescriptions and defenses in this matter. "Where," they say, "are these things written, where are they forbidden? Otherwise, Elijah the Israelite is a charioteer, and David himself danced before the ark. We read of the nabla, cithara, cymbals, drums, flutes, lyres, and choruses. The apostle also, boxing with the caestus, sets forth the contest of our struggle against spiritual wickedness. Again, when he takes examples from the stadium, he also places the crowns as prizes. Why, then, may a faithful Christian man not watch what it was permitted to write in the divine scriptures?" At this point I might not undeservedly say that it would have been far better for these people to know no letters at all than to read letters in such a way.

For words and examples which have been set forth for the exhortation of evangelical virtue are transferred to the patronage of vices: because these things were not written to be watched, but so that greater urgency might be aroused in our minds for things that will profit, while among the pagans there is so much urgency in things that do not profit. Therefore, it is an argument for the arousal of virtue, not a permission or license for watching pagan error, so that through this the mind may be more inflamed toward evangelical virtue on account of divine rewards, when through the calamity of all labors and sorrows one struggles to attain earthly gains. For that Elijah is the charioteer of Israel does not provide patronage for watching the circus games: he never ran in any circus. And that David danced choirs before God does nothing to help Christian faithful sitting in the theater: he never danced a Greek libidinous fable, twisting his limbs with obscene movements. The nabla, the cithara, the tibia, the tympana, and the citharae sang of God, not of an idol. Therefore, it will not be prescribed that illicit things be watched. By the devil as craftsman, things from the saints have been changed into illicit things. Therefore, let modesty prescribe for these people, even if holy scripture cannot. For some scripture provides more in commanding: having suffered shame, it forbade more because it was silent, truth, lest if it had descended even to these things, it would have thought very badly of its faithful. For also, often in precepts, certain things are more usefully left unspoken. They often admonish while they are forbidden.

Thus also things are passed over in silence while they are written in the divine Scriptures, and in place of precepts, severity speaks and reason teaches what Scripture has left unspoken. Let each one merely deliberate with himself and speak with the person of his own profession; he will never do anything unbecoming: for conscience will have greater weight, which will owe itself to no other but itself. What has Scripture forbidden? It has forbidden that to be watched which it forbids to be done. All those kinds of spectacles, I say, it has condemned, when it abolished idolatry, the mother of all games, whence these monsters of vanity and frivolity have come. For what spectacle is without an idol, what game without a sacrifice, what contest is not consecrated to the dead? What place does a faithful Christian have among these? If he flees idolatry, what place is there for him? What of one who is already sanctified, who takes pleasure in criminal things? What of one who approves the superstitions against God which he loves while he watches? Moreover, let him know that all these things are inventions of demons, not of God. Shamelessly does he exorcise demons in church whose pleasures he praises in the spectacles; and although once renouncing them, the whole matter was severed in baptism, when after Christ he goes to the spectacle of the devil, he renounces Christ as if he were the devil. Idolatry, as I have already said, is the mother of all games, which, so that faithful Christians may come to her, flatters them through the pleasure of the eyes and ears.

Romulus first consecrated the Circus to Consus, as the god of counsel, for the purpose of carrying off the Sabine women; others consecrated the remaining games. When famine had seized the city, at the people's demand, scenic plays were procured and dedicated to Ceres and Liber, and afterwards to the remaining idols and the dead. Those Greek contests, whether in song, on the lyre, in voice, or in strength, have their various presiding demons; and whatever else there is that either moves the eyes or delights the ears of spectators, if its origin and institution are sought, it presents as its cause either an idol, a demon, or a dead person. Thus the devil, the craftsman, because he knew that idolatry in its naked form would be abhorred, mixed it with spectacles, so that through pleasure it might be loved. What need is there to pursue further or to describe the monstrous kinds of sacrifices in the games, among which sometimes a man becomes a victim through the crime of a priest, while hot blood from a slaughtered victim is caught in a foaming bowl, and while it still seethes, it is cruelly poured into the face of the thirsty idol, as if to a thirsty god; and amidst the pleasures of the spectators, the death of some is dispensed, so that through a bloody spectacle men may learn to be savage, as if a man's private rage were not enough, unless he also learns it publicly. For the punishment of man, a rabid beast is nurtured in luxury, so that it may rage more cruelly before the eyes of the spectators. The trainer teaches the beast, which perhaps would have been more senseless if a crueler master had not taught it to be savage.

Therefore, to say nothing of how broadly idolatry proves it, how vain are the contests themselves: the quarrels over colors, the rivalries over chariots, the partisanships over honors, rejoicing that a horse was swifter, grieving that it was slower, counting the years of a beast, knowing its consuls, learning its ages, tracing its lineage, recalling its grandfathers and great-grandfathers. How utterly idle is this business—nay, how shamefully disgraceful? This man, I say, who from memory reckons the whole offspring of the equine race and recites this place with great speed and without stumbling—if you ask him about the parents of Christ, he does not know, or is more wretched if he does know. If, again, I ask him by what route he came to that spectacle, he will confess: through a brothel, through the naked bodies of prostitutes, through slippery lust, through public disgrace, through common lewdness, through universal insult. Even if I do not charge him with what he perhaps committed, he nevertheless saw what ought not to have been committed, and led his eyes to the spectacle of idolatry through lust. He dared to bring the holy with him into a brothel, if he could—he who, dismissed from the Lord’s house and hastening to the spectacle, still bearing with him, as is customary, the Eucharist, carried the holy body of Christ among the obscene bodies of prostitutes, this faithless man, earning more condemnation from the journey than from the pleasure of the spectacle.

But to make the transition now to the shameless jests of the stage, it is shameful to recount what is said, shameful even to accuse what is done—the twists of plots, the deceits of adulterers, the impudicities of women, scurrilous jokes, sordid parasites, and the very fathers of families themselves, in togas, now stupid, now obscene, in all things foolish, with certain names shameless. And although no person of any kind or profession is spared by these wicked words, yet all gather together for the spectacle. The common disgrace delights them, evidently, either to recognize their leisure or to learn. They rush together into that brothel of public modesty, into that school of obscenity, lest anything be done in secret less than what is learned in public; and among the very laws themselves, whatever is forbidden by law is taught. What, amid these things, does a faithful Christian do, to whom it is not permitted even to think of vices? Why is he delighted by images of lust, so that, with modesty laid aside in them, he becomes bolder for crimes? He learns and does, while he grows accustomed to seeing. Yet those women whom their own misfortune has prostituted into the servitude of public lust—the place conceals them, and they console their disgrace with hiding places: they blush to be seen, even those who have sold their modesty. But this public monstrosity is carried out before all eyes, and the obscenity of prostitutes is surpassed: it has been sought how adultery might be admitted through the eyes.

To this disgrace a fitting disgrace is added: a man broken in all his limbs, a male dissolved beyond womanly softness, whose art is to expedite words with his hands; and for the sake of some one person—neither man nor woman—the whole city is stirred up, so that the lusts of fabulous antiquity are danced out. Thus whatever is not permitted is loved, so that even what age had hidden, memory brings back before the eyes. Lust is not satisfied with using its own present evils, unless it makes its own from the spectacle that which even a former age had erred in. It is not permitted, I say, for faithful Christians to be present; it is not permitted at all, not even for those whom Greece, trained in its vain arts, sends everywhere for the allurements of ears. One imitates the raucous clangor of the war trumpet; another modulates mournful sounds by inflating the flute with his breath; another, contending with choruses and with the melodious voice of a man, modulates the holes of the pipes with his own breath, which he had drawn from his upper viscera by effort—now released, now shut in and repressed, now emitted through certain holes and poured into the air, and again breaking the sound into joints, he works to speak with his fingers, ungrateful to the craftsman who gave the tongue. What shall I say of the useless cares of comedies, what of those great frenzies of the tragic voice, what of the sinews joined with shouting?

Even if these things were not dedicated to idols, they still ought not to be attended or watched by Christian faithful: because even if they had no crime, they contain in them the greatest and most unbecoming vanity for the faithful. For that other madness of the rest is an obvious business for idle men: the body grows fat in its own injury, in the feeding-pen, so that it may strike or be struck more robustly, and the first victory is to have been able to hunger beyond measure of the human belly, over the title of the crown of the gluttonous, shameful market: the unhappy face is hired out for blows, so that the more unhappy belly may be fattened. Moreover, how foul are the wrestlings themselves: a man lying beneath a man is entangled in dishonest embraces and bonds. In such a contest, let him see who wins; modesty is conquered. Behold, another leaps naked, another hurls a bronze sphere into the air with strained strength. This glory is madness. Finally, remove the spectator, and you have restored vanity. These spectacles must be shunned by Christian faithful, as we have often said, being so vain, so pernicious, so sacrilegious: and our eyes and ears must be guarded. We quickly become accustomed to what we hear, swiftly to what we see. For when the human mind is led to vices themselves, what will it do to itself if it has examples? The slippery nature of the body, which falls of its own accord, what will it do if it is pushed? The mind must be called away from these things.

A Christian has better spectacles, if he wishes; he has true and profitable pleasures, if he recollects himself. And, to omit those things which he cannot yet contemplate, he has this beauty of the world which he may see and admire: let him look upon the rising of the sun, and again its setting, recalling days and nights in mutual alternation; the globe of the moon, marking the courses of the seasons with its increases and wanes; the glittering choruses of stars, shining ceaselessly from their highest mobility; the whole year’s limbs divided by turns, and the days themselves with the nights distributed through the spaces of the hours; the balanced mass of the earth with its mountains, and the spreading rivers with their springs; the extended seas with their waves and shores; and, meanwhile, the constant air, equally by the highest conspiracy and bonds of concord, extended in the middle, animating all things by its tenuity, now pouring down rains with gathered clouds, now recalling serenity with restored rarity; and in all these, their proper inhabitants: in the air, the bird; in the waters, the fish; on the earth, man. These, I say, and other divine works besides, let them be spectacles for Christian faithful. What theater built by human hands can be compared to these works? Though it be constructed with great masses of stone, the crests of mountains are higher; and though its coffered ceilings gleam with gold, they will be surpassed by the splendor of the stars. Never will one who has recognized himself as a son of God marvel at human works. He casts himself down from the height of his nobility who can admire anything after God.

Let the faithful Christian, I say, devote himself to the sacred Scriptures: there he will find spectacles worthy of his faith. He will see God establishing His world and, together with the other animals, making men that admirable fabric and bettering it. He will behold the world in its delights, just shipwrecks, the rewards of the pious and the punishments of the impious, seas dried up for a people and, again, seas stretched out for a people from a rock. He will behold harvests descending from the sky, not pressed from threshing-floors by the plough: he will observe rivers offering dry crossings by restraining their columns of waters: he will see in some the faith struggling with fire, wild beasts overcome by religion and turned to gentleness: he will also gaze upon souls already recalled from death itself: he will further consider from the tombs the wonderful lives of bodies, already of the perfected, reduced. And in all these things he will see an even greater spectacle: that devil who had triumphed over the whole world lying vanquished beneath the feet of Christ. How seemly a spectacle is this, brothers, how joyful, how necessary? To gaze always upon one’s own hope and to open one’s eyes to one’s own salvation. This is the spectacle that is seen even by those who have lost their sight. This is the spectacle that is presented not by a praetor or a consul, but by Him who is alone and before all things and above all things, indeed from whom all things come, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and honor for ever and ever. I wish you, brothers, to fare well.