[The church] mourns in its eyes, that is in its faithful, because it is written, Your eyes are as doves apart from your reticence, because they see spiritually and know how to keep silent about the mysteries which they have seen.

Having been cleansed from every habit of the vices of the flesh and converted to the one true God from the worship of a multitude of shameful gods, Christ the Lord praises the twin beauty of the church of the Gentiles, both body and soul. For the first beauty of the soul is that it would know its Creator, second that it would know itself, the kind of thing it is or the reason for which it was created.

But Christ, beholding his church, for whom he himself, as you find in the book of the prophet Zechariah, had put on filthy garments,^[1] now clothed in white raiment, seeing, that is, a soul pure and washed in the laver of regeneration, says, Behold, you are fair, my love, behold you are fair, your eyes are like a dove’s, in the likeness of which the Holy Spirit descended from heaven. The eyes are beautiful like those of a dove, because in the likeness of a dove the Holy Spirit descended from heaven.

We are not to administer rebukes until we have removed from our eye the beam of envy or malice or pretense, so that we may have clear vision to cast out the speck from a brother’s eye. For we shall then see that speck with the eyes of the dove, the kind of eyes that are commended [as belonging to] the spouse of Christ, the glorious church which God has chosen for himself, the church which has neither spot nor wrinkle,^[1] that is, the church which is pure without guile.

So they say that these eyes have fainted after the Lord’s salvation, because of the holy coming of the incarnation, which they bore with such longing that it could allow them no rest. So they were right to faint, because they had no period of leisure.

For if goats and the hair or skins of goats always signified the foulness of sinners and never the humility of penitents, that animal would by no means have been reckoned among the clean [animals], nor would it have been said in praise of the bride: Your hair is like a flock of goats.

Your teeth are like a flock of ewes to be shorn. A sincere confession is a spiritual shearing! And further: all of them big with twins, signifying the twofold grace, either that perfected by water and the Spirit, or that announced in the Old and in the New Testament.

The teeth of the church^[1] are those through whom she speaks. Of what sort are your teeth? Like a flock of sheep that are shorn. Why that are shorn? Because they have laid aside the burdens of the world. Were not those sheep, of which I was a little before speaking, shorn, whom the bidding of God had shorn when he said, Go and sell what you have, and give to the poor; and you shall find treasure in heaven: and come and follow me?^[2] They performed this bidding: shorn they came. And because those who believe in Christ are baptized, what is there said which come up from the washing means they have come up from cleansing. Whereof every one bears twins. What twins? Those two commandments, whereupon hang all the law and the prophets.^[3]

[There is a] pleasing comparison to those that are shorn; for we know that goats both feed in high places without risk and securely find their food in rugged places, and then when shorn are freed from what is superfluous. The church is likened to a flock of these, having in itself the many virtues of those souls which through the laver lay aside the superfluity of sins and offer to Christ the mystic faith and the grace of good living, which speak of the cross of the Lord Jesus.

Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes. What do shorn ewes mean? Those who lay aside secular burdens. What does shorn mean? Those who lay aside their fleeces, like the load of secular burdens. Those persons were your teeth, about whom it is written in the Acts of the Apostles that they sold all their possessions and laid the proceeds at the feet of the apostles, so that distribution might be made to each, as there was need.^[1] You have received the fleeces of your shorn ewes. That flock has come up from the washing of holy baptism. All have given birth, because they have fulfilled the two commandments.

He says to the church, his spouse, Your teeth are like a flock of sheep that are shorn, which come up from the washing, all with twins, and there is none barren among them. By this twin offspring the twofold object of love is meant, namely, God and the neighbor: On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.^[1]

Now is the time to examine the beauty attributed to the teeth of shorn sheep. . . . If we look at the literal meaning of this verse, I do not see how teeth can be compared with prolific sheep. . . . What then can we gather from these words? Persons reducing the divine mysteries into small fragments for a clearer interpretation of the text make spiritual food more easily acceptable for the body of the church. They perform the function of teeth by receiving the thick, dense bread of the text into their mouths. By a more subtle contemplation, they make the food delectable.

And in the song of the bride, hair, teeth, lips, cheeks, the neck, and breasts, are praised by the bridegroom. The bride is either the soul of man, which enters into marriage with Christ, or the church. The parts of the body are interpreted figuratively: if they are said of the soul, then they apply to its powers.

In order to [gain knowledge of heavenly things], we study the examples of the saints who have gone before. They are said to feed among the lilies. For what is meant by lilies but the conduct of those who say with all truth, We are unto God a sweet savor of Christ.^[1]

God the Word says to [the church], You are all fair, my love, and there is no blemish in you, for guilt has been washed away. Come here from Lebanon, my spouse, come here from Lebanon, from the beginning of faith^[1] you will pass through and pass on, because, renouncing the world, she passed through things temporal and passed on to Christ.

This teaches us the bride’s place of origin, that she comes from the worship of idols. For Mount Lebanon is full of idols, whence you come, it says, hastening past through the law. Without knowing the law, you were taught the mystery of Christ.

This is indeed true beauty, to which nothing is wanting, which alone is worthy to hear the Lord saying, You are all fair, my love, and no blemish is in you. Come hither from Lebanon, my spouse, come hither from Lebanon. You shall pass and pass through from the beginning of faith, from the top of Senir and Hermon, from the dens of lions, from the mountains of the leopards. By which references is set forth the perfect and irreproachable beauty of a virgin soul, consecrated to the altars of God, not moved by perishable things amidst the haunts and dens of spiritual wild beasts but intent, by the mysteries of God, on being found worthy of the beloved, whose breasts are full of joy.

You pass through and penetrate from the beginning of faith. That is, you will pass through to fight the world and you will penetrate to Christ to triumph over the world. You have heard that he removes you from the incursions of lions and leopards, that is, of spiritual evils. You have heard that the beauty of your virtues pleases him; you have heard that he prefers the fragrance of your garments, that is, the sweet perfume of integrity, to all other perfumes. You have heard that you are an enclosed garden, full of the products of delightful fruit trees. Ask, therefore, for the Holy Spirit to breathe on you on your couch and to gather the fragrances of a holy mind and spiritual gifts.

We require prayer, in fact—attentive and earnest prayer—for our eyes to become like doves with the gift of spiritual sight, getting beyond the veil of the letter and distinguishing clearly the hidden mysteries.^[1] It is not possible by any other way, you see, to come to know the meaning of the divine Scripture, especially the Song of Songs, than having the very one who inspired those composers illuminate our vision by sending rays of grace and give a glimpse of the hidden sense.

Come hither from Lebanon. You shall pass and pass through. This verse must be often repeated by us, that at least being called by the words of the Lord, she may follow if there be any who will not trust the words of man. We have not formed this power for ourselves, but have received it; this is the heavenly teaching of the mystic song.

Come with me from Lebanon, my bride, with me from Lebanon. You shall come and pass on from the beginning of faith, from the top of Senir and Hermon, from the lions’ dens, from the mountains of the leopards. Lebanon is, being interpreted, whiteness. Come then, fairest bride, concerning whom it is elsewhere said, Who is she that comes up, all in white?^[1] Pass on by way of this world, from the beginning of faith, and from Senir, which is by interpretation, God of light, as we read in the psalm: Your word is a lantern unto my feet, and light unto my path,^[2] and from Hermon, that is, consecration, and flee from the lions’ dens, and the mountains of the leopards who cannot change their spots.

Truly you inflamed us with desire for you by one word of confession, which you rightly possessed, seeing with your interior eyes. For you made a confession by your necklace. These things were said to the bride by friends of the bridegroom, that is, by angelic powers. For, since the power of the visual faculty is twofold, one sees the truth and another wanders astray after vanity. Because the pure eye of the bride is opened only toward the nature of the good but the other is idle, therefore the friends give praise only to one eye, calling her sister on account of their kinship with respect to freedom from passion but calling her bride on account of her marriage to the Word. Because he says that your eye is one, therefore, insofar as it beholds one thing, likewise is your soul one, insofar as it is not divided into many dispositions. And your necklace is perfect, given that you imposed the divine yoke upon yourself, for this necklace is surely the yoke of the Lord. For this reason, we confess that you created a heart for us by your wondrous dowry, which is to say that our souls and minds were brought to the contemplation of the light through you. For in you we contemplate the sun of justice as though in a mirror.

Flee, he says, from the lions’ dens, flee from the pride of devils, that when you have been consecrated to me, I may be able to say unto you, You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride, you have ravished my heart with one of your eyes, with one chain of your neck. What he says is something like this—I do not reject marriage: you have a second eye, the left, which I have given to you on account of the weakness of those who cannot see the right. But I am pleased with the right eye of virginity, and if it is blinded, the whole body is in darkness. And that we might not think he had in view carnal love and bodily marriage, he at once excludes this meaning by saying, You have ravished my heart, my bride, my sister. The name sister excludes all suspicion of unhallowed love. How fair are your breasts with wine, those breasts concerning which he had said above, my beloved is mine, and I am his: between my breasts shall he lie, that is, in the princely portion of the heart where the Word of God has its lodging.

You should not grieve that you are destitute of those bodily eyes which ants, flies and creeping things have as well as do people. Rather you should rejoice that you possess that eye of which it is said in the Song of Songs, You have ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; you have ravished my heart with one of your eyes. This is the eye with which God is seen and to which Moses refers when he says, I will now turn aside and see this great sight.^[1]

Christ, then, feeds his church with these sacraments, by means of which the substance of the soul is strengthened, and seeing the continual progress of her grace, he rightly says to her, How comely are your breasts, my sister, my spouse, how comely they are made by wine, and the smell of your garments is above all spices. A dropping honeycomb are your lips, my spouse, honey and milk are under your tongue, and the smell of your garments is as the smell of Lebanon. A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse, a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed. By which he signifies that the mystery ought to remain sealed up with you, that it be not violated by the deeds of an evil life, and pollution of chastity, that it be not made known to you, for whom it is not fitting, nor by garrulous talkativeness it be spread abroad among unbelievers. Your guardianship of the faith ought therefore to be good, that integrity of life and silence may endure unblemished.

He calls her a garden, not as though bearing a single fruit of piety and virtue, but as one producing many and varied fruits; and locked as though sealed off and proof against intrigue. . . . She is also a fountain sealed. She is not available to everyone but to those thought worthy of these streams; the Lord in the sacred Gospels also says of this fountain, Whoever drinks of the water I shall give will not thirst forever, and instead there will be in them a spring of living water gushing up to life eternal.^[1] Properly, then, he refers to her as a fountain sealed for not being available to everyone but to those thought worthy. The divine sacraments, after all, are available not to the uninitiated but to the initiated, not to those wallowing in iniquity after initiation but to those living an exact life or purified through repentance.

[This garden] is closed to the world but opened to the heavenly bridegroom. And the fountain where we are anointed after baptism was sealed by the Holy Spirit.

The divine and conceptual Scriptures are compared with dew, with water,^[1] with milk,^[2] with wine,^[3] and with honey,^[4] for they have the power like water to produce life, like milk to give growth, like wine to revive, like honey both to purify and preserve.

Your lips distill a honeycomb, bride; honey and milk are under your tongue. Here it refers to the teachers of the church, offering religious teaching and, as it were, carrying honeycomb of bees on its lips, and distilling drops of honey, containing not only honey but also milk, and providing to each the appropriate nourishment, both suited to the infants and adapted to the mature.^[1] Now, honeycombs borne on the lips of the teachers are the divine Scriptures, which contain bees that make honeycombs and produce honey, the sacred prophets and apostles. These latter fly about the meadows of the Holy Spirit, as it were constructing the honeycombs of the divine Scriptures, filling them with the honey of doctrine and dispatching them to us for our benefit. The letter resembles the honeycomb, while the sense hidden in it resembles the honey; the lips of pious teachers release the drops of this honey. Also, milk flowing from their tongue reaches those in need of milk.

Fragrance of your garments like the fragrance of frankincense. We said before that the bridegroom himself became her garment, and blessed Paul confirms it in the words, All of you who were baptized into Christ put on Christ.^[1] Now, the bridegroom is both God eternal and was born a man from the holy Virgin in the last days. While remaining what he was, he took as well what is ours, and clothed the bride who was formerly left naked—hence his saying to her, fragrance of your garments like the fragrance of frankincense. She is clothed with Christ, who is both God and man. Now, frankincense is a symbol of the true doctrine of God, since under the norms of the old law it was offered to God.^[2]

If then this spouse of Christ—which is the church—is a garden enclosed, what is closed cannot be open to the stranger and profane. If the church is a sealed fountain, one who is outside, without access to the fountain, cannot drink from it or be sealed there. If there is but one well of living water—that which is within—then one who is without can have no life or grace from the water which only those within are allowed to use and drink.^[1]

We know, too, that since it is the well of living water^[1] and a fountain enclosed, it is defiled with no filth from a heretical abyss; that it is also a garden and filled with herbs great and small alike, some of little value, some precious; and that it is also the eight souls from the ark.^[2]

A garden enclosed [is virginity] because it is shut in on all sides by the wall of chastity. A fountain sealed up is virginity, for it is the fount and wellspring of modesty that keeps the seal of purity inviolate, in whose source there may shine the image of God, since the pureness of simplicity coincides with the chastity of the body.

Because a seal protects the inviolability of whatever it guards, it scares off thieves; everything not stolen remains unharmed for the master. Praise of the bride in the Song would then testify to her excellence in virtue because her mind remains safe from enemies and is guarded for her Lord in purity and tranquility. Purity seals this fountain while the radiance and transparency of the bride’s heart is unclouded by no mire of evil thoughts.

Watch out that the firmness of your mind not be bent and softened by the bodily pleasure of intercourse and thus dissolve into all her embraces and open up her fountain, that ought to have been shut and closed in by zealous intent and reasoned consideration. You are an enclosed garden, a fountain sealed. For once the firmness of the mind is dissolved, thoughts of bodily pleasure pour forth; they are very harmful and flare up into an unrestrained longing for grave danger. But if careful attention had been devoted to guarding the lively mind, it would have checked them.

In gardens of this kind the water of the pure fountain shines, reflecting the features of the image of God, lest its streams mingled with mud from the wallowing places of spiritual wild beasts should be polluted. For this reason, too, that modesty of virgins fenced in by the wall of the Spirit is enclosed lest it should lie open to be plundered. And so as a garden inaccessible from without smells of the violet, is scented with the olive and is resplendent with the rose, that religion may increase in the vine, peace in the olive and the modesty of consecrated virginity in the rose.

This account can be even better read as an allegory of the church, prophetical of what was to happen in the future. Thus the garden is the church itself, as we can see from the Canticle of Canticles; the four rivers are the four Gospels; the fruit-bearing trees are the saints, as the fruits are their works; and the tree of life is, of course, the Saint of saints, Christ.

He so departed from the abode of the womb that the virginal door did not open, and what is sung in the Canticle of Canticles was fulfilled: My sister, my spouse, is a garden enclosed, a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed up.

Taking all these things, therefore, into consideration, I think that I am not rash in saying that there are some in the house of God after such a fashion as not to be themselves the very house of God, which is said to be built upon a rock.^[1] [The church] is called the one dove,^[2] which is styled the beauteous bride without spot or wrinkle,^[3] and a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed, a well of living water, an orchard of pomegranates with pleasant fruits. [This] house also received the keys, and the power of binding and loosing.^[4]

I think that we have sufficiently shown, both from the canon of Scripture and from the letters of Cyprian himself. [Thus] bad people, while by no means converted to a better mind, can have, and confer, and receive baptism, of whom it is most clear that they do not belong to the holy church of God, though they seem to be within it. [But] they are covetous, robbers, usurers, envious, evil thinkers, and the like; while [the church] is one dove,^[1] modest and chaste, a bride without spot or wrinkle,^[2] a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed, an orchard of pomegranates with pleasant fruits, with all similar properties that are attributed to her.

When the Word raises his bride to such a point through her ascents, he leads her even further, saying that her garments have the scent of frankincense. Scripture testifies that Christ is clothed with this frankincense.^[1] The end of a virtuous life is participation in God, for frankincense manifests the divinity. The soul is not always led by the Word to what is higher by means of honey and milk, but after having been compared with the scent of frankincense, the garden becomes an image of paradise. It is not loosely guarded as with our first parents, but protected from every side by recollection of the bridegroom’s command.

In order that we may know the plants that the Word cultivates in believers, the Song calls the trees he planted pomegranates. These issue from the bride’s mouth. The pomegranate is difficult for a thief to grasp because of its thorny branches, and its fruit is surrounded and protected by a rind bitter and harsh to the taste. Once the pomegranate ripens in its own good time, and once the rind is peeled off and the inside revealed, it is sweet and appealing to the sight much like honey to the taste; its juice tastes like wine and affords much pleasure to the palate. I think that the issues from the bride’s mouth [are] a garden of pomegranates present in the souls of those listening to her. We must heed her words and not become soft by indulgence and enjoyment of this present life. Rather we should choose a life that has become toughened by continence. Thus virtue’s fruit is inaccessible to thieves and is protected by the bitter covering of self-control. Surrounded by a solemn, austere way of life, it wards off as though by spiny thorns those who approach the fruit with evil intent.

Pomegranate is to be taken figuratively as love, since countless seeds are contained together within the one skin, pressed together without squeezing or ruining one another, remaining fresh unless one of the seeds in the middle goes bad. You can also gain a different insight from the sections in the middle: we see many ranks also among the saved, one of virgins, one of ascetics, one of those drawing the yoke of marriage, and of the affluent, one of those living a life of poverty, one of slaves in love with godliness, one of masters exercising lordship lawfully. The pomegranate, too, then, has walled off compartments, as it were, separating its seeds into certain divisions. This is the reason he compares the presents of the bride to an orchard of pomegranates.

[This garden] also contains a spring and a well of water alive and babbling from Lebanon. It contains not only the gospel teaching that flows openly but also the well of the law, which is a well of water alive that also holds hidden streams that babble, emit a sound and flow from Lebanon. The way of life according to the law blossomed in Jerusalem, which is figuratively called Lebanon, but this well changed direction toward the Lord’s bride, the church, and though hidden, it flows with a babble and irrigates the orchard of the church.

If the garden enclosed is the spouse of Christ, which is the church, a thing enclosed cannot lie open to outsiders and profane people. And if the fountain is sealed, there is no access to the fountain to anyone placed outside either to drink or to be sealed therewith. The well of living water, also, if it is one, is the same which is within; one who is situated outside cannot be vivified and sanctified by that water of which it is granted only to those who are within to have all use and drink.

The place of his burial was a garden. . . . What is he going to say who was buried in the garden? I gather my myrrh, and my spices;^[1] and again, Myrrh and aloes with all the finest spices. These were the tokens of his burial, and in the Gospels it is said, The women came to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared,^[2] and there also came Nicodemus, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes.^[3]

Virtues are signified by the perfumes and the trees of Lebanon are the prophets. Myrrh and aloes, finally, demonstrate that the buried Christ communed with the saints who preceded him, for, descending to hades, he led them out.

We find the well in the mystical sense in the Canticle of Canticles, where the Scripture says, the fountain of gardens, the well of living water which runs with a strong stream from Lebanon. Indeed if you pursue the depth of the mysteries, the well appears to you to be mystical wisdom set in the deep, as it were. But if you wish to drink the abundance of love, which is greater and richer than faith and hope, then you have your fountain. For love abounds, so that you can drink it in close at hand and water your garden with its abundance, so that the latter overflows with spiritual fruits.

Now who is the fountain sealed, or who is signified by the wellspring of living water? It is the Savior himself, of whom it is written: For with you is the fountain of life.^[1]

For this reason, too, the church, guarding the depth of the heavenly mysteries, repels the furious storms of wind, and calls to it the sweetness of the grace of spring, and knowing that its garden cannot displease Christ, invites the bridegroom, saying, Arise, O north wind, and come, you south; blow upon my garden, and let my ointments flow down. Let my brother come down to his garden and eat the fruit of his trees. For it has good trees and fruitful, which have dipped their roots in the water of the sacred spring, and with fresh growth have shot forth into good fruits, so as now not to be cut with the axe of the prophet, but to abound with the fruitfulness of the gospel.

Recognize also the voice of the church inviting us when it says, Arise, O north wind, and come, O south wind, blow through my garden and let my ointments flow forth. Let my brother come down into his garden and eat the fruit of his apple trees. For knowing even then, O holy church, that from these also you would have fruitful works, you promised to your anointed one the fruit from such as these. It was you who first said that you were brought into the king’s chamber, loving [Christ’s] breasts above wine.^[1] For you loved him who loved you, you sought him who nourished you, and you despised dangers for religion’s sake.

By exalting the kingdom of the north above all kingdoms of the world, therefore, Almighty God commands what is [now] the kingdom of the Romans to arise. By inspiring prophets from the south, by revealing his Christ through a Virgin, whom the prophets of the south had celebrated as proceeding from a dense and intact body (as the prophet Habakkuk said, God will come from the south, that is, the Word of the Father, and the holy one from a mountain shadowy and dense,^[1] which refers to the assumed humanity), paradise begins to be redolent with fragrances of the deaths of the martyrs, precious and wonderful aromas, and to give great praise to the Lord, the King of heaven, and to all the heavenly host, as the prophet predicted: Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.^[2]

Having thus learned where to seek out Christ, learn now how to merit that he may be seeking you. Arouse the Holy Spirit by saying, Awake, O north wind, and come, O south wind! Blow upon my garden, and let its fragrance be wafted abroad. Let my beloved come to his garden and eat its choicest fruits. The garden of the Word is the affection of a flourishing soul, and its fruit is the produce of virtue.

O my sister, my bride, come. Lest you associate anything base with the concept of bride, the word sister is adjoined to preclude any dishonorable love. Come, my sister: love is something sacred and for that reason I call you sister. My bride: I call you my bride that I may have a wife, and from you, my wife, beget sons in number, sons as many as clusters of grapes on the vine.

The bridegroom comes down and takes delight in the diversity of her fruit; he rejoices because he has found a stronger food and one that is sweeter, too.^[1] For there is a kind of bread of the word, and a honey, one speech more ardent, another more persuasive. There is also one faith that is more hot like wine, another that is more clear like the taste of milk. Christ dines on such food in us. He drinks such drink in us; with the intoxication of this drink, he challenges us to make a departure from worse things to those that are better and best.

I have eaten my bread with my honey. This solid is gathered from the flowers of various virtues by the cooperative work of those bees that proclaim wisdom. Holy church puts it in honeycombs so that it may be the food of Christ.

Come, brethren, drink deeply of love. Wine to cheer the heart of people. The wine of the flesh does not cheer the heart of humankind but overpowers it and produces madness; it is written, in fact, that it is not for kings to drink wine.^[1]

This inebriation makes people sober. This inebriation is one of grace, not of intoxication. It leads to joy, not to befuddlement. In the banquet hall of the church there will be pleasant odors, delightful food, and drink in variety. There will be noble guests and attendants who grace that occasion. It will not be otherwise! What is there that is nobler than to have Christ at the church’s banquet, as one who ministers and is ministered unto?