Chapter IV — On the vain adornment of women

I. I undertake to discuss a most grave question, the knowledge of which is especially necessary to Confessors and Preachers. I shall touch on it in few words, so far as can be done.

II. Question I. Can women licitly adorn themselves? Answer. St. Paul, 1 Timothy 2, says: Women in decent apparel, adorning themselves with modesty and sobriety. St. Thomas, II-II, q. 169, art. 2, ad 4, discourses luminously on this matter. Women can licitly adorn themselves, either to preserve the decency of their state, or to add something further, that they may please their husbands. Garments were instituted not only for covering the shameful parts and preserving nature, and guarding it from cold and heat, but also for distinguishing grades and sexes. Wherefore noble men and magistrates use more refined garments than others. Noble women too can licitly adorn themselves more elegantly than plebeians, either to please their husbands, or to enter into marriage.

III. Question II. Is immoderate adornment of women disapproved by holy Scripture? Answer. Vehement and most sharp are the declamations of the Prophets against the superfluous and immodest adornment of women. Isaias, chapter 3, has these words: And the Lord said: Because the daughters of Sion are haughty, and have walked with stretched-out necks, and wanton glances of their eyes, and made a noise as they walked with their feet, and moved in a set pace: the Lord will make bald the crown of the head of the daughters of Sion, and the Lord will discover their hair. In that day the Lord will take away the ornaments of shoes, and little moons, and chains, and necklaces, and bracelets, and bonnets, and bodkins, and ornaments of the legs, and tablets, and sweet balls, and earrings, and rings, and jewels hanging on the forehead, and changes of apparel, and mantles, and fine linen, and crisping pins, and looking-glasses, and lawns, and headbands, and fine veils. And instead of a sweet smell there shall be stench, and instead of a girdle a cord, and instead of curled hair baldness, and instead of a stomacher a hair-cloth.

IV. St. Peter, chapter 3, restrains the adornment of women in these words: Whose adorning let it not be the outward plaiting of the hair, or the wearing of gold, or the putting on of apparel. St. Paul, 1 Timothy 2, says: Not with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly attire, but as it becometh women professing godliness. I pass over very many other oracles of Scripture against the vain pomps of women.

V. Question III. Do the holy Fathers detest the pomps of women? Answer. Tertullian, Cyprian, Chrysostom, Augustine, Jerome, and the other Fathers published whole books against the ornaments of women. Would the holy Fathers have inveighed so vehemently against the pomps of women, unless these were criminal? Tertullian, book On the dress of women, chapter 11, says: For the very sake of assembling together and of seeing and being seen mutually, they bring forth their pomp into public, so that either luxury may drive its trade, or glory grow insolent. St. Cyprian, book On discipline and the dress of virgins, cries out: If you adorn yourself too sumptuously, and go about in public in a notable manner, drawing the eyes of youths upon you, dragging after you the sighs of young men, nourishing the lust of desire, kindling the fuel of sighing — so that, though you yourself do not perish, you yet destroy others, and offer yourself as a sword and poison, as it were, to those who see you — you cannot be excused, as though you were of chaste and modest mind. For brevity's sake I pass over the testimonies of the other Fathers.

VI. Question IV. Do women sin who adulterate their face with cosmetics and antimony? Answer. All affirm it. Tertullian, in the place cited, chapter 5, inveighs sharply against so great a corruption: In this too they offend, that they anoint the skin with medicaments, stain the cheeks with rouge, and darken the eyes with soot. Doubtless the workmanship of God displeases them. In their very selves they reprove and reprehend the artificer of all things. For they reprove him when they amend, when they add — taking, of course, these additions from an adversary craftsman, that is, from the devil ... I see certain women also turning their hair yellow with saffron. They are ashamed even of their own nation, that they were not born German or Gallic women: thus do they transfer their fatherland to their hair. Even in Tertullian's time the women of Gaul led the rest in luxury, vanity, rouges, antimony, and white lead.

VII. Cyprian, book On the dress of virgins, has similar words: God says: Let us make man to our image and likeness. And does anyone dare to change, to alter, what God has made? They lay hands upon God, when they strive to reform and transfigure what he has fashioned, not knowing that whatever is born is the work of God; whatever is altered, of the devil.

VIII. Passing over the testimonies of Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine, St. Thomas, II-II, q. 169, art. 2, ad 2, teaches this: The painting of women ... cannot be without sin ... Yet such painting is not always with mortal sin, but only when it is done for the sake of wantonness, or in contempt of God. St. Bernardino of Siena, with Alexander of Hales, Tome I, sermon 47, article 1, writes as follows: Women who smear themselves with vermilion, or wear counterfeit hair, sin mortally for three reasons ... For Alexander of Hales asks, on the fourth book, distinction on the Sacrament of the Eucharist: Whether women painted, or wearing counterfeit hair, whether of the living or of the dead, taken up for their adornment, ought to approach sacred Communion? And he answers that such women sin mortally, and render themselves unworthy of sacred Communion. And this he says is so chiefly on account of three things that follow from it: first, an offense against God; second, an offense against one's neighbor; third, an offense against oneself. Let this suffice to have touched on briefly, out of the many things I ought to have adduced from the Fathers.

IX. Question V. What do certain men teach on this argument? Answer. Fr. Diana, Tome 7 of the coordinated edition, resolution 9, number 6, writes this on the adornment of women: But I think that there is no sin, even if it were superfluous and excessive, provided it be according to the custom of the country. Can the custom of the country, then, derogate from the holy Scriptures, from the doctrine of all the Fathers, and from nature herself, which abhors superfluities?

X. Fr. Lessius, in answer to the testimonies of Scripture and of the Fathers, book 4, chapter 4, doubt 14, number 114, answers: Those Scriptures either contain an exhortation, since they have no word of precept; or, if they contain a precept, the discourse is of those who adorned themselves that they might please others, as Doctor Thomas notes in the Gloss; or certainly it was expedient at that time, for the edification of the Heathen, that this be commanded. This method of interpreting the Scriptures being admitted, they come to nothing. Was it expedient at that time that an honorable and modest adornment of women be commanded, but not in ours? Why should not a similarly graceful answer be furnished to many other oracles of divine Scripture as well? Are the divine precepts, then, matters of the times? Are they exhortations, not precepts? The universal tradition of the Fathers cries out to the contrary. But this invention is so vain that it collapses of itself.

XI. Question VI. When is the adornment of women to be judged superfluous and deadly? Answer. From various heads the adornment of women can be deadly: 1. From the excessive affection of displaying beauty. 2. From the depraved end of pleasing and of kindling the fire of lust. 3. From its effects. Debts are not paid, alms are not laid out, the wages of craftsmen are defrauded, patrimonies are squandered. Women addicted to vain ornament most frequently prostitute their chastity, and beneath the most splendid apparatus of garments the most putrid harlotries are hidden. For commonly men are not ignorant of the incomes of families; hence, beholding wives burdened with so many pomps, they infer that these women acquire them by harlotry, whence they shine with the splendor of their pomps.

XII. A certain and precise rule cannot be designated for when the superfluous adornment of women is a mortal sin. This, however, is certain: that most frequently women sin mortally in this kind, especially in our time, on account of the continual mingling of women and men. For to this end such women devote their study, that they may shine in these gatherings, and each strives to outdo the rest in outlandish fashions of dress. The malice of such adornment must be gathered not so much from the superfluous price and value of the clothing, as from the vain and immodest form of the ornament. For clothing can be costly, elegant, and of great price, and at the same time modest and becoming, as can happen in a noble matron and a princely woman. But commonly the clothing of these women is vain, immodest, and unchaste, and proves such women to be shameless, proud, and lost to modesty. These women are fans of concupiscence, routers of modesty and chastity, the scandals of cities, and a perpetual subject of murmuring.

XIII. Cajetan, in this matter, gave the reins too loosely, and teaches a lax doctrine. Many more benign writers have gone further still. Their reading, especially in this matter, must be neglected; and the doctrine of the divine Scriptures and of the holy Fathers must be kept before the eyes. Would the Scriptures, would the Fathers, have inveighed so vehemently against these allurements and enticements of women, if their adornment were indifferent, or only lightly harmful?

XIV. Most opportune is the argument of Denis the Carthusian, who, Tome I, work, article 14, writes thus: The holy and glorious Fathers, and the most illumined Doctors, would not have written so rigorously against superfluous and exquisite adornment, against curious and superfluous dress, unless they had judged that mortal fault existed in it. For venial sins do not deserve such reprehension and condemnation. Hence a certain Noble writes in his treatise: Women adorning themselves vainly harm themselves more than others: because they sin mortally, even if they entice no others ... Moreover, if a woman neither desires a man, nor wishes to be desired, but nevertheless indiscreetly and inordinately displays her adornment and beauty, laying a snare for others, she sins mortally — just as it is written in Ecclesiasticus: He that layeth a snare for another shall perish in it; and he that diggeth a pit shall fall into it ... Finally the Apostle commands: A woman ought to have a covering upon her head because of the Angels — that is, of Priests, and Clerics, and spiritual men, lest they fall on her account. In the preceding article, too, it is proved from the words of the holy Cyprian, Jerome, Chrysostom, and Ambrose, that women and virgins so adorning and displaying themselves furnish men and youths with fuel for sin, incitements of lust, and expose themselves as a sword and a poison, as it were, to those who look upon them. Furthermore Jerome says: The polish, the adornment, and the beauty of a woman is fire to the young, fuel for lusts, a sign of an unchaste mind. How can she weep for her sins, who bares her skin and draws furrows upon her face? Such adornment is not the comeliness of God, but the veil of Antichrist. With what confidence does she raise to heaven a face which her Maker does not recognize?

XV. Blessed Henry Suso, of the Order of Preachers, a prodigy of evangelical penitence, and greatly illumined with the light of divine Wisdom, in his treatise entitled Spiritual Colloquies between Jesus and Brother Henry Suso, chapter 10, teaches this: "But moreover consider to what women have fallen, and how by the female sex in these times the fear and honor of God are despised and trampled underfoot. For so many women are found in the World who, stripped of all modesty, are more unchaste and shameless than men themselves. I speak not of honorable, pious, and religious women; but of those who, given over to the World, wear away their time in words, deeds, garments, and manners, sacrifice the hearts and senses of men to their loves, and study to please men more than God. These are the dens of robbers, and the abysses of hell. God dissembles their crimes, and sustains them with great patience, without any profit. Meanwhile they themselves wish to be held for honorable and well-mannered matrons; and yet they smell fouler to God than public harlots. For these latter at least often tremble, and pass their life in fear and trembling, and are struck by anguish for their salvation. But those, with a shameless brow, walk about secure on the great road of perdition, and, caught in an unbridled and silent dishonesty, pass their days in a tremendous blindness toward God and their own souls. Wherefore they are dearer to demons than harlots. For, going forth clothed in proud garments, always unchaste and dishonest in gesture, gait, words, and eyes, they incite and move men to Venus more than prostituted women. By this means they gain more souls for the Devil, by their allurement, than those do. Believe me, I would have you know, a hundred deadly crimes are perpetrated in the mind by these women every single day; nor for that do they recognize even one of them, but reckon themselves modest and well-mannered. And yet how many young men, how many men, blinded by their beauty and by the sight of so free an immodesty, desire them with deliberate mind — which very often happens, even if they cannot obtain them. Wherefore these women are guilty and partakers of all these consents and deadly crimes. For by their lascivious dress, their shameless gait, and their unchaste eyes, they furnish to those who see them an occasion of sinning, and a handle for desiring them. Nay, if a man, gazing on these vain women in the streets and in the churches, is so kindled to lust that, to extinguish the fire, he seeks a harlot, these wretched women are guilty of all these crimes, however much they may be unwilling to believe or to understand this. Know that, death being at hand, the demon thrusts before the eyes of their mind specters of pride, of pleasures, of unworthy vanities, and of other crimes which they never acknowledged, that he may thrust them more securely into despair and the abyss of eternal death. Nor do the paschal sacraments profit their salvation, nor the sacred viaticum, since in life they receive the sacraments with the intention of persevering in the abuse of luxury, of pomps, and of depraved habits. Nor in the extremity of death do they remember the sins which through their own malice they do not know. Therefore they receive me into a filthy and putrid heart; and it would be better for them to have a hundred thousand demons than to admit the living and tremendous God into a breast polluted with mortal crime. But woe to the Confessors who neglect to enlighten these wretched and most unhappy women."

XVI. You have heard, O Confessors, the testimonies of the holy Scriptures, of the Fathers, and of the graver Theologians. Let the petty distinctions cease, then, by which certain men contend to ally the World with the Gospel. They renounced pomps in the profession of Christian Baptism. What are these pomps? Surely none other than those which savor of worldly vanity, which soften the hearts of men, which kindle concupiscence. Come. If Christian women had promised to Satan and to the World that they would pursue more exquisite pomps; if they had pledged that with their whole zeal and every effort of their powers they would devote their labor to luxury, haughtiness, ambition, and vanity — could they rave more impotently? Are Mahometan, pagan, or Lutheran women vainer, more ambitious, and more unbridled than Catholic women? What, then, did they promise to Christ in Baptism? What is the obligation of the profession of renouncing pomps and the works of Satan? What is its meaning? Woe, woe to the Confessors who admit to the sacraments of Christ these vain and theatrical little matrons, women lost to shame and to the ruin of Christian modesty.

XVII. Question VII. Do women sin mortally who walk about with bared breast? Answer. Several more recent writers defend this nakedness of the bosom as innocent of grave fault, if it be according to the custom of the country. Hence I judge this opinion false, improbable, and lax. The custom of the country is a mere invention. What? Will the custom of the country render honest a corruption most full of scandal, and disapproved by the divine Scriptures, by the Fathers, and by the Theologians? If the divine Scriptures and the Fathers command that a woman's head be veiled; if they condemn curled and crimped hair — what darts of zeal would they not have hurled against this most putrid custom? The Fathers do not mention so great an impudence, because in their time women were not so wanton and unbridled. As soon as this most unchaste abuse appeared, all the men of God execrated it alike.

XVIII. I compress the matter into few words. That adornment of women is asserted to be forbidden by natural and divine law which is an enticement to lust, and a proof of wantonness. But bare breasts provoke men to lust; therefore the open display of them is forbidden. Nor does it matter that women, most craftily and most immodestly, adorn their breasts with small black and translucent bands: because they do not conceal or cover them, but with these devices rather irritate and entice men more to contemplation. Those veils are diabolical incitements, which the more efficaciously kindle curiosity. Nor may you babble that, custom having been introduced, these bared breasts lose the force of enticing and kindling lust, because things familiar move less. These are surely ravings, and the specters of madmen. Do sumptuous, familiar, and daily banquets lose the force of irritating the hungry? Human appetites are not restrained by use, but strengthened and fattened. Abstinence alone, and the withdrawal from dangers and incitements, brings concupiscence into servitude. The custom, then, or habit that is urged is a detestable abuse, and a monument of ruined honesty and of unchastity. Let Confessors, then, refuse absolution to these weak women who unfurl the banners of prostitution and harlotry along the public ways.

XIX. Question VIII. Do women sin who show themselves to be gazed upon by men by whom they foresee they will be shamefully loved? Answer. If a woman, led by no just cause of necessity or utility, goes out of doors, and foresees that she will be shamefully loved by this or that man, she sins gravely, according to the common opinion of the Theologians. Nor is the will of exercising liberty a just reason to free her from fault. For human liberty is subject to the laws of charity. Charity...

...however, commands that the spiritual loss of the Neighbor be avoided, especially when this can be secured without grave detriment. Nor can a brief impediment to one's own liberty be counted in place of notable detriment. Some other reason, then, besides the exercise of one's own liberty, must be assigned, that she licitly go out in this case. But a legitimate cause of going out would be the necessity of going to Church, of visiting the sick, of transacting one's own business.

XX. The scandal of the little ones must nevertheless be distinguished from pharisaical scandal. To avoid the former, a woman, when she foresees that she will be shamefully loved by this determinate man, must for some one occasion either omit Mass, or go to another Church, or defer hearing Mass: since the precept of avoiding scandal prevails over the precept of hearing Mass. But in practice this rarely happens, because the scandal of the little ones — of those who sin either from ignorance or from mere weakness — rarely occurs. For men commonly sin from malice, and so the scandal is pharisaical, which, according to all, must be despised when it cannot be avoided without a disturbance of order. A girl, or a beautiful woman, foresees that she will be shamefully loved by certain men at such a banquet, because she knows that certain immodest men, burning with lust, will attend there: if she can abstain from such a banquet without grave inconvenience, she is bound to restrain herself, because the precept of charity presses, that the danger of a mortal sin being perpetrated by the Neighbor be avoided, when this can be secured without notable detriment. Read more in Tome II on the Decalogue, dissertation 9, chapter 10.

XXI. Question IX. Do women sin mortally who allow their little gallants to serve them, and enjoy their familiar conversation, while from many indications they probably gather that these men burn toward them with the love of Venus? Answer. All affirm that such women sin deadly, even though they themselves be altogether alien from any lust whatsoever, because they cooperate in the sin of others, and furnish scandal. Wherefore the women and little matrons of our age who receive their handsome and pretty clients and candidates of Venus daily into familiar conversation, keep them seated at their sides, and enjoy their service in walking, in going up, and in going down — these women, I say, in the case supposed, are in continual mortal sin. Let them, then, either come to their senses, or bid farewell to the sacraments, lest, as often as they thus receive them, they multiply sacrileges. Let Confessors think to themselves that a hard account must be rendered to the eternal Judge for the absolutions which they have given to feigned penitents.

XXII. Question X. Is it licit for sailors and coachmen to carry their masters to the house of a mistress, or a mistress to the house of her master? Answer. Fr. Diana, Tome 7 of the coordinated edition, treatise 5, resolution 42, testifies that this case occurs frequently, and, with Merolla, defends the affirming opinion. This opinion is false to me, and contained in thesis 51 proscribed by Innocent XI, concerning servants who help their master climb through a window to fornicate — which thesis has been transcribed above. Unless sailors and coachmen render this service, they lose their gain, says Diana. What an excellent reason! When sailors and coachmen evidently know that this is a mistress, and that the master practices concubinage, they help the master, and contribute to fornications evil by their own nature. Sporer, treatise 5 on the Decalogue, chapter 1, section 3, number 99, contends with Diana, Tamburini, Castropalao, and others, that these actions are licit. But these authors are deceived: because although these actions, precisely, are indifferent as regards the circumstances, yet in the case set forth they are in very deed shameful, as is plain from the same thesis condemned concerning servants who help their master to fornicate.

XXIV. Question XI. Can love letters be carried to a friend's mistress? Answer. Fr. Tamburini, book 5 on the Decalogue, chapter 1, § 4, number 20, absolutely denies it; but he adds immediately: I confess, however, that if such a friendship were of great value to you, and you truly feared to lose it, you could be excused: because then a just fear of notable harm is added. This doctrine is false to me, like the other which the same author teaches in the same place, concerning those who carry a girl on their shoulders by office, whom he probably excuses from mortal sin when they bring a girl to a lascivious young man — provided the sin does not please them, and they perform the aforesaid services for a good end, for instance for a just wage. Tamburini adds: If these carriers or porters were so religious as to be unwilling to hire out themselves and their services in such conveyances, they would easily suffer notable harm to their gain. As my very small opinion suggests, this doctrine occasions scandal. A husband sins when he furnishes his wife an occasion of sinning that he may catch her in adultery — although he can permit an adultery which he cannot prevent, that a wife caught in the actual crime may come to her senses. It is likewise forbidden to carry love letters containing base things, or a book provoking to a duel, whatever certain men blurt out to the contrary: because such persons become partakers of the sins.

XXV. Question XII. Is it licit to serve prostitutes, to accompany them to the house of a lover, to open the door for the lover, to make the bed? Answer. Laymann, Tamburini, Sporer, Caramuel, and other Probabilists teach a lax — some a most lax — doctrine on this argument. I transcribe a few words from Caramuel. Servants can, with a safe conscience, minister foods at the table of a prostitute or a concubine — not only common foods, but also warm ones, and season food that provokes to Venus, and make ready a private bed ... It would not be a mortal sin to procure for a master and his mistress, about to have relations, a lodging, or to prepare one better than usual, or to strew it with flowers. The reason is that it is one thing to fornicate, another to have a greater delight, in the genus of luxury, in the fornication itself. Read Tome 2 on the Decalogue, dissertation 9, chapter 12, where you will find the lax theorems of certain authors.

XXVI. To the question I answer that not only can servants and maids not licitly open the door for a lover entering to fornicate with his mistress, nor bring her into the master's house, nor carry a torch before them, accompany her, or make the bed; but I say that it is in no way licit to serve or minister to a prostitute at all. Seriously weigh the words of the condemned proposition, and especially these: or cooperating in some similar way; and thence you will gather that the opposite opinion of many is proscribed. What of the fact that holy Scripture itself forbids and execrates this servitude? Depart from the tents of these wicked men, and touch nothing of theirs, lest you be involved in their sins: Numbers 16. Again Isaias, chapter 52 [recte], cries out: Depart, depart, go ye out from thence, touch no unclean thing, go out of the midst of her; and Jeremias, chapter 48: Flee, and save your lives. Whence I argue thus:

XXVII. God commands that the fellowship of the wicked be declined. Let those who teach that service rendered to prostitutes is licit tell us: is there a fellowship worse than that of prostitution, and a more wicked society? They reply that maidservants serve prostitutes not insofar as they are prostitutes, but insofar as they are women; that they minister to them not in their prostitution, but in indifferent matters, such as cooking food, sweeping the house, making the bed, and the like. Be it so. But while these maidservants render these services, do they not dwell in the house of Babylon, in the tents of the wicked, in the houses of harlots, from which the holy Scriptures command us to depart? Navarrus, says a certain most recent writer, speaks more benignly, and indeed, he adds, perhaps in some circumstances an excuse could be found. This writer, frequently doubting and bashful, insinuates a benignity pernicious to souls. In no circumstance can Christian maidservants licitly serve prostitutes: since both the divine Scriptures and the law of nature command that we flee the fellowship and society of the wicked. The same must be said of servants who serve public usurers, whom the aforesaid writer excuses when they count out the money to be lent, since they fear expulsion from service and the difficulty of finding another master. These servants cannot licitly serve public usurers in usurious dealing. Therefore they ought at once to give up such service, and sustain their life by another way.

XXVIII. Question XIII. Is it licit to let a house to prostitutes? Answer. The Probabilists commonly affirm it — Sanchez, Azor, Diana, Vasquez, Castropalao, Tamburini, the Salmanticenses, Sporer, and others. A certain most recent writer defends the same opinion, when the house is in a part of the city not much frequented and quite exposed, and the landlord would otherwise be burdened, being of slender fortune, unless he let the house: since the house is not granted for sinning, but for dwelling. These are the enticements by which the poison is concealed from the soul. Even the Benignists, who defended the thesis proscribed by Innocent XI, said that the servants held the ladder and helped their master not to fornicate, but to climb up. The authors cited, to obscure the truth, speak sophistically. Who would deny that the letting of a house for dwelling is licit? The dispute now is whether it is licit to let a house to a prostitute who intends to open a brothel in the aforesaid house, and to make gain by the prostitution of her body. This we assert to be illicit and vicious. Princes permit prostitutes. What of it? If the letting of a house made to prostitutes is illicit, then, just as the permission of the Prince does not purge prostitution from crime, so neither does it purge the letting of the house — unless perhaps in more remote places already designated by the Prince himself for prostitutes specially deputed.

XXIX. What has been said of prostitutes must likewise be said of public usurers and of pimps, and of those who let garments, bed-hangings, and the ornaments of an entire bedchamber to prostitutes, that, clad in the finest garments and shining with elegant adornment, they may receive richer fornicators. What? Is it not licit to clothe a prostitute, and to furnish the little bed on which she sleeps? Licit indeed. But it is one thing to clothe a poor woman, another to let out splendid ornaments for her to practice prostitution. The first is an office of charity; the other, a trafficking in iniquity.

XXX. Question XIV. Is it licit to lend someone a bedchamber for fornication? Answer. Fr. Diana defends the affirming opinion, resolution 48, in these words: A most noble man insistently sought from his friend his house for the purpose of fornicating; and if he had denied him this, he would have fallen into most grave harm. He asked me whether he would sin by doing this? And I answered in the negative. Because to lend a bedchamber is not, from its object, intrinsically evil. To lend a bedchamber, not only is it not evil from its object, but it is good. But to lend it for fornication is a most shameful crime. No less lax is the opinion which the same Fr. Diana defends, alleging Castropalao for it, saying that it is licit to give a gift to a judge's mistress, that she may intercede with him.

XXXI. Question XV. A mistress painting a picture of herself to be given to her lover — does she commit the sin of Scandal? Answer. Fr. Sporer, treatise 5, chapter 1, section 3, number 93, citing Tamburini, Diana, and other Probabilists, teaches that a painter can paint a mistress's picture for her lover under a most grave urgent necessity, for instance fear of death, of mutilation, or of another similar evil. This opinion is also defended by the Salmanticenses, who cite Azor, Sanchez, Castropalao, Bonacina, and others. And they speak in that sense in which the painter knows that he is painting a mistress's picture for her lover, whom he probably foresees will abuse it for kindling his lust for her. This opinion, by its manifest laxity, destroys itself, without needing confutation.

XXXII. Question XVI. Do painters licitly depict shameful pictures? Answer. All absolutely deny it. Fr. Sporer, in the place cited, number 92, reports Tamburini, teaching with other more recent writers, that a painter can licitly paint very shameful and obscene things once or twice, if the painter's necessity were so great that he needed such gain for food, clothing, and other things of this kind. This opinion is false, and full of scandal. Will it be licit, then, according to these men, to sin once or twice for the sake of procuring food and clothing? How absurd this is, everyone sees. A precise rule for defining...

...what obscene painting is cannot be designated. The image of a beautiful girl, with face, breasts, and bosom expressed in vivid colors, incites by its own nature to lust, even though the shameful parts be covered. The nudity which is licit in women and men while they live is, more or less, likewise licit in their images. There is need of Christian prudence.

XXXIII. Question XVII. What must be said of those who keep obscene pictures openly displayed in their houses? Answer. Fr. Diana, Tome 7, treatise 5, resolution 63, affirms indeed that they sin mortally — unless, he says, they retain them for the sake of ornament, and covered with some veil. What ornament can they present, if they are covered and hidden? Lascivious images are idols of Venus, and simulacra of demons. The devil attempts to play the ape of Christ. The Christian Religion brought in sacred pictures, to rouse the Faithful to piety and to the imitation of the heroic deeds of the Saints. The devil, that he might more powerfully kindle worldly men to lust, devised lascivious images of Venus, of Dido, of Cleopatra. What remedy is there for so great a scandal? One only. Either to erase with the brush everything that savors of obscenity, or to burn such images. This is the sole remedy. It is by no means enough to cover them with a veil and keep them shut up within a closed chamber; but they must be burned altogether, or everything obscene must be effaced with the brush. Nor can they be sold or given away, just as goods infected with plague cannot be sold or given as gifts. Those who keep these obscene images must be altogether rejected from the sacraments, until they have removed these scandals and substituted other sacred images, that they may, so far as they can, compensate for past scandals.

XXXIV. Question XVIII. Is it licit to seek the undoing of a bewitchment from a sorcerer or a witch? Answer. Some affirm it, provided it can be removed without sorcery — even if you foresee that the sorcerer will probably use the help of the demon. This opinion is false to me. For while you foresee that the sorcerer will probably use the art of the demon, you contribute to his sin, and consent to his iniquity. You ought, then, to seek the undoing of the bewitchment from the sorcerer with an express protestation that it be done without the demon's help.

XXXV. Question XIX. What must be said of the frequenting of comedies, and of the promiscuous conversation of men and women? Answer. I shall give the resolution of this question in the text of the Decalogue's commandment. Against theatrical spectacles I have published two dissertations, with a third added on personating Priests. Public theaters, which today are commonly, or at least most frequently, put on, are obscene and shameful; therefore those who frequent them sin. Of the pestiferous conversation of women and men I shall speak in the place cited, and I shall explain the ignorance and negligence of Confessors who admit such little women and beardless youths to the sacraments.

XXXVI. Question XX. What must those do who have pushed others into sin by false doctrine or fraud, or have drawn them back from good, from entering Religion? Answer. They are bound, so far as can be done, to compensate the damage: and first to retract the false doctrine, and to withdraw from sin — since those who by deceit, fraud, or false doctrine impel others into sin, sin not only against charity, but also against justice. He who, without fraud or false doctrine, has seduced others to sin by bad example alone, sins only against charity: because these others, knowingly and freely — though allured by the bad example — consented to the sin. He who draws others back from entering Religion by depraved means commits a scandal, which he is bound to repair. But he commits no sin, if he draws someone back from Religion with the intent of consulting the other's eternal salvation. Those who, knowingly and for human reasons, hinder candidates from entering Religious Orders in which the spirit of evangelical perfection flourishes, sin against charity, if they use only persuasions and entreaties which do not take away liberty. For if they employ force and frauds, they sin also against justice. In which case they ought to apply all diligence to repair the harm inflicted, both to the one wishing to enter and to the Religious Order.