375. Moreover, in certain regions there are families which labor under the sickness of jealousy more than others. By them Wives are imprisoned, tyrannically withheld from converse with men, shut off from the sight of them by windows provided with lattices stretching [from top] to bottom, and are terrified by threats of death if the husband find reason for the suspicion he nurses; besides other hardships which wives there suffer from their jealous husbands. Of this jealousy there are two causes: One is the imprisonment and stifling of the thoughts in respect to the spiritual things of the Church, the other is an intestine lust for revenge.
[2] As regards the first cause--the imprisonment and stifling of the thoughts in respect to the spiritual things of the Church--its effects can be concluded from what has previously been demonstrated, namely, that every one has conjugial love according to the state of the Church with him; and that this love is from the Lord alone because the Church is from Him (nos. 130, 131). Therefore, When men, living and dead, are approached and invoked in place of the Lord, it follows that there is no state of the Church with which conjugial love can act as one, and the less so when men's minds are terrified into that worship by threats of a frightful prison. Hence it comes to pass that their thoughts, and with them their speech, are violently imprisoned and suffocated, and with these suffocated, things flow in which are contrary to the Church or which, if they favor the Church, are imaginary. From all this, nothing else redounds but burning heat for harlots and icy cold for the consort. It is from these two together in one subject that this ungovernable fire of jealousy comes.
[3] As concerns the second cause, namely, an intestine lust for revenge, this entirely inhibits the influx of conjugial love, absorbs it, swallows it up, and turns its delight which is heavenly into the delight of revenge which is infernal; and the nearest object to which it is determined is the wife. Moreover, it is from appearance that the malignity of the atmosphere there, Which is impregnated with the virulent exhalations of the surrounding region, is a subsidiary cause.