City of God 1.12–1.22

Chapter 12. On the burial of human bodies, which takes nothing away from Christians even if it is denied them.

But, they say, in such a slaughter the corpses could not even be buried. Godly faith does not greatly dread this either, holding the promise that even devouring beasts will not harm bodies that are to rise, bodies of which “not a hair of the head will perish.” The Truth would by no means say, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul,” if whatever enemies wished to do to the bodies of the slain could harm the life to come. Unless perhaps someone is so absurd as to argue that those who kill the body should not be feared before death, lest they kill the body, but should be feared after death, lest they prevent the slain body from being buried. Then what he said is false: “Who kill the body and afterwards have nothing more they can do,” if they have so much they can do to corpses. Far be it that what the Truth said should be false! For it is said that they do something when they kill, because there is feeling in the body as it is killed, but that afterwards they have nothing they can do, because there is no feeling in the slain body. So the earth did not cover many bodies of Christians, but no one separated any of them from heaven and earth, the whole of which he fills with his presence who knows how to raise up what he created. It is indeed said in the psalm: “They have given the mortal remains of your servants as food to the birds of the sky, the flesh of your saints to the beasts of the earth; they have poured out their blood like water around Jerusalem, and there was no one to bury them.” But this was said rather to magnify the cruelty of those who did these things than the unhappiness of those who suffered them. For though these things seem hard and dreadful in the sight of men, yet “precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.” So all these things, the care of the funeral, the manner of burial, the pomp of the procession, are consolations for the living rather than aids for the dead. If a costly burial profits the ungodly, a cheap one or none will harm the godly. A crowd of servants gave that rich man in purple a splendid funeral in the sight of men; but a far more glorious one in the sight of the Lord was given to that poor man covered with sores by the ministry of angels, who did not carry him out to a marble tomb but lifted him up into Abraham's bosom. Those against whom we have undertaken to defend the city of God laugh at this. Yet even their philosophers despised the care of burial. And often whole armies, while dying for their earthly country, did not care where they would lie afterwards or to what beasts they would become food, and poets could say of this, to applause: “He who has no urn is covered by the sky.” How much less ought they to mock Christians over unburied bodies, to whom it is promised that the flesh itself and all its members will be restored and made whole in a moment of time, not only from the earth but also from the most hidden bosom of the other elements into which dissolved corpses have withdrawn.

Chapter 13. The reason for burying the bodies of the saints.

Yet the bodies of the dead, especially of the righteous and faithful, are not for that reason to be despised and cast away, bodies which the Spirit has used in holiness as organs and vessels for every good work. For if a father's garment and ring, or anything of that kind, is dearer to his descendants the greater their affection for their parents, then the bodies themselves are by no means to be spurned, which we wear far more intimately and closely than any clothing. For these belong not to ornament or to an aid applied from outside, but to the very nature of man. Hence the funerals of the righteous of old were cared for with dutiful devotion, their obsequies celebrated and their burial provided; and they themselves, while they lived, gave their sons instructions about burying or even moving their bodies; and Tobit, on the angel's testimony, is commended for having won God's favor by burying the dead. The Lord himself too, who was to rise on the third day, proclaims the good work of a devout woman and commends it to be proclaimed, because she poured precious ointment over his limbs and did this for his burial. And those who took his body from the cross and took care that it was wrapped and buried with diligence and honor are mentioned with praise in the gospel. These authorities, however, do not teach that there is any feeling in corpses; they signify that the bodies of the dead too belong to the providence of God, who is pleased even by such offices of devotion, and this to support faith in the resurrection. And here we also learn, to our benefit, how great the reward can be for the alms we give to the living who can feel, if not even what is paid in duty and care to the lifeless limbs of men is lost with God. There are indeed other things that the holy patriarchs said about the burial or moving of their bodies which they wished to be understood as spoken by a prophetic spirit; but this is not the place to treat them, since what we have said is enough. But if the things needed to sustain the living, such as food and clothing, even when they are lacking with severe affliction, do not break the strength of the good to bear and endure, nor root godliness out of their soul, but make it more fruitful by exercising it, how much less, when the things usually applied to caring for funerals and burying the bodies of the dead are lacking, do they make wretched those who already rest in the hidden dwellings of the godly! And so, when these things were lacking to the corpses of Christians in that devastation of the great City or of other towns as well, it is neither the fault of the living, who could not provide them, nor the punishment of the dead, who cannot feel them.

Chapter 14. On the captivity of the saints, who never lacked divine comfort.

But, they say, many Christians were even led away captive. This would indeed be most wretched if they could be led anywhere where they did not find their God. In the holy Scriptures there are great comforts for this disaster too. The three young men were in captivity; Daniel was; other prophets were; and God was not lacking as their comforter. So he who did not desert the prophet even in the belly of the beast has not deserted his faithful under the rule of a nation that is barbarian, yet human. These things too the people we are dealing with prefer to mock rather than believe; yet they believe their own literature when it says that Arion of Methymna, the famous lyre-player, when he was thrown from a ship, was taken up on a dolphin's back and carried to land. But, they say, our story of the prophet Jonah is more incredible. Certainly more incredible, because more wonderful; and more wonderful, because more powerful.

Chapter 15. On Regulus, who offers an example of captivity endured even voluntarily for the sake of religion, which yet could not profit him though he worshipped the gods.

Yet these people have among their own famous men a most noble example of captivity endured even voluntarily for religion's sake. Marcus Regulus, a commander of the Roman people, was a captive among the Carthaginians. Since they preferred to have their own men returned by the Romans rather than to keep the Romans' men as captives, they sent this Regulus above all to Rome with their envoys to obtain this, having first bound him by an oath that, if he did not accomplish what they wanted, he would return to Carthage. He went, and in the senate he argued for the opposite, because he did not think it was in the interest of the Roman state to exchange captives. After this argument he was not compelled by his own people to return to the enemy, but because he had sworn, he did so of his own will. And they killed him with elaborate and horrible tortures. For they shut him up in a narrow wooden box, where he was forced to stand, studded on every side with very sharp nails, so that he could not lean in any direction without the most atrocious pain, and they killed him by keeping him awake as well. They are right, surely, to praise a virtue greater than so great a misfortune. And he had sworn by the gods, the prohibition of whose worship, these people think, is inflicting these disasters on the human race. If, then, these gods, who were worshipped so that they would make this life prosperous, either willed or permitted these punishments to be inflicted on a man who kept his oath, what worse could they have done in their anger to a perjurer? But why should I not conclude my reasoning both ways? He certainly worshipped the gods in such a way that, for the sake of keeping his oath, he would neither stay in his homeland nor go anywhere else from there, but did not hesitate at all to return to his bitterest enemies. If he thought this was useful for this life, whose end he found so horrible, he was without doubt mistaken. For by his own example he taught that the gods do not help their worshippers at all toward this temporal happiness, since he, devoted to their worship, was both conquered and led away captive, and, because he would not act otherwise than he had sworn by them, was tormented and killed by a new, previously unheard-of, and exceedingly horrible kind of punishment. But if the worship of the gods gives happiness after this life as a reward, why do they slander the Christian times, saying that the disaster befell the City because it stopped worshipping its gods, when even worshipping them most diligently it could have become as unhappy as Regulus was? Unless perhaps someone struggles against the plainest truth with such madness of astonishing blindness as to dare to argue that a whole city worshipping the gods cannot be unhappy, but one man can, because the power of their gods is suited to preserve many rather than individuals, when a multitude consists of individuals. But if they say that Marcus Regulus, even in that captivity and those bodily torments, could be happy by the virtue of his mind, then let true virtue rather be sought, by which a city too can be happy. For a city is not happy from one source and a man from another, since a city is nothing other than a multitude of men in concord. For this reason I do not yet discuss what kind of virtue there was in Regulus; it is enough for now that by this most noble example they are compelled to admit that the gods are not to be worshipped for bodily goods or for the things that happen to a man from outside, since he preferred to lack all these things rather than offend the gods by whom he had sworn. But what are we to do with people who boast of having had such a citizen as they fear to have as a city? And if they do not fear it, then let them admit that something like what befell Regulus could have befallen a city too that worshipped the gods as diligently as he did, and let them not slander the Christian times. But since the question arose about those Christians who were even taken captive, let those who impudently and imprudently mock the most wholesome religion on this ground consider this and be silent: if it was no disgrace to their gods that their most attentive worshipper, while keeping faith with his oath to them, lost his homeland, having no other, and as a captive among the enemy was killed by a long death through a punishment of new cruelty, much less is the Christian name to be accused on account of the captivity of its consecrated people, who, awaiting the heavenly homeland with true faith, know that they are pilgrims even in their own dwellings.

Chapter 16. Whether the violations which captivity, even of consecrated virgins, may have suffered could defile the virtue of the mind without the consent of the will.

They certainly think they are bringing a great charge against the Christians when, exaggerating their captivity, they add the violations committed not only against other men's wives and girls about to marry, but even against some consecrated women. Here it is not faith, not godliness, not the virtue itself that is called chastity, but rather our discussion that is squeezed into a tight place between modesty and reason. Nor are we so much concerned here to give an answer to outsiders as to give consolation to our own. Let it be laid down and established first, then, that the virtue by which one lives rightly rules the members of the body from its seat in the mind, and that the body is made holy by the exercise of a holy will; and while that will remains unshaken and steadfast, whatever another does with the body or in the body, which cannot be avoided without sin on one's own part, is no fault of the one who suffers it. But since not only what pertains to pain but also what pertains to lust can be perpetrated on another's body, whatever of that kind has been done, even if it does not strike out the chastity held fast by a most constant mind, still strikes in shame, lest it be believed that what perhaps could not happen without some pleasure of the flesh was done with the consent of the mind as well.

Chapter 17. On voluntary death through fear of punishment or disgrace.

And so, as for those women who killed themselves so as not to suffer anything of this kind, what human feeling would refuse to forgive them? And as for those who refused to kill themselves, so as not to avoid another's outrage by their own crime, whoever counts this against them will not escape the charge of folly himself. For certainly, if it is not lawful to kill a man on private authority, even a guilty one, since no law grants leave to kill him, then surely he who kills himself is also a homicide, and he becomes the more guilty in killing himself the more innocent he was in the matter for which he thought he should be killed. For if we rightly detest the deed of Judas, and the Truth judges that when he hanged himself with a noose he increased rather than expiated the guilt of that wicked betrayal, since, despairing of God's mercy, he repented to his destruction and left himself no room for saving repentance, how much more should one who has nothing in himself to punish by such a penalty abstain from killing himself! For when Judas killed himself he killed a wicked man, and yet he ended this life guilty not only of Christ's death but of his own, because, though he was killed on account of his crime, he was killed by another crime of his own. Why then should a man who has done no wrong do wrong to himself, and by killing himself kill an innocent man so as not to suffer a guilty one, and commit his own sin against himself so that another's may not be committed against him?

Chapter 18. On another's violent lust, which the mind suffers unwillingly in a body overpowered.

But, it is said, the fear is that even another's lust may pollute. It will not pollute if it is another's; if it pollutes, it will not be another's. But since chastity is a virtue of the mind, and has courage as its companion, by which it resolves to endure any evils rather than consent to evil, and since no one, however great of soul and chaste, has it in his power what is done with his flesh, but only what he assents to or refuses in his mind, who in his right mind would think that he loses his chastity if perhaps in his seized and overpowered flesh a lust not his own is exercised and satisfied? For if chastity perishes in this way, then chastity will not be a virtue of the mind, nor will it belong to the goods by which one lives well; it will be counted among the goods of the body, such as strength, beauty, sound health, and anything of that kind, goods which, even if they are diminished, do not diminish a good and just life at all. But if chastity is something of that kind, why do people struggle for it, lest it be lost, even at the peril of the body? If, however, it is a good of the mind, it is not lost even when the body is overpowered. Indeed, when the good of holy continence does not yield to the uncleanness of carnal desires, the body itself is also made holy; and therefore, while it persists with unshaken purpose in not yielding to them, holiness does not perish even from the body itself, because the will to use it in holiness remains, and, as far as lies in the body, the capacity as well. For the body is not holy because its members are intact, or because they are not handled by any touch, since they can suffer violence by various accidents, even wounds, and doctors, when helping toward health, sometimes do things there that make one shudder to see. A midwife, examining a certain virgin's integrity by hand, whether from malice, ignorance, or accident, destroyed it while she examined it. I do not think anyone is so foolishly wise as to think that she lost anything even of the holiness of her body, although the integrity of that member was now lost. Therefore, while the purpose of the mind remains, through which the body too was found worthy to be made holy, the violence of another's lust does not take away holiness even from the body itself, which the perseverance of its own continence preserves. Or indeed, if some woman, her mind corrupted and the vow she had made to God violated, goes to her seducer to be defiled, do we call her holy even in body as she goes, when that holiness of mind by which the body was made holy has been lost and destroyed? Far be this error from us! Let us rather be taught by this that, just as the holiness of the body is not lost while the holiness of the mind remains, even when the body is overpowered, so the holiness of the body is lost when the holiness of the mind is violated, even if the body is untouched. Therefore a woman who has been violently overpowered without any consent of her own, and forced by another's sin, has nothing to punish in herself by voluntary death; how much less before it happens, lest a certain homicide be committed while the outrage itself, though another's, is still uncertain!

Chapter 19. On Lucretia, who killed herself because of the violation inflicted on her.

Will they perhaps dare to contradict this clear reasoning, by which we say that when the body is overpowered, and the purpose of chastity is in no way changed by any consent to evil, the outrage belongs only to him who lay with her by force, and not to her who was forced and consented to him with no will of her own, they, I mean, against whom we are defending not only the minds but also the holy bodies of Christian women overpowered in captivity? They certainly extol Lucretia, a noble matron of old Rome, with great praise for her chastity. When the son of King Tarquin had lustfully taken possession of her body by force, she disclosed the crime of that most wicked young man to her husband Collatinus and her kinsman Brutus, men of great distinction and courage, and bound them to avenge it. Then, sick at heart and unable to bear the foul thing done to her, she killed herself. What shall we say? Is she to be judged an adulteress or chaste? Who would think this question needs much labor? Someone, declaiming on this, said excellently and truly: “Marvelous to tell, there were two, and only one committed adultery.” Brilliantly and most truly said. For looking at the most defiled desire of the one and the most chaste will of the other in the joining of two bodies, and attending not to what was done by the union of members but to what was done by the difference of minds, he said: “There were two, and only one committed adultery.” But what is this, that the heavier vengeance falls on her who did not commit adultery? For he was driven from his homeland with his father; she suffered the supreme penalty. If that is not unchastity by which she is forced against her will, this is not justice by which a chaste woman is punished. I appeal to you, laws and judges of Rome. You did not wish even a criminal to be killed with impunity after his crimes without being condemned. If, then, someone brought this charge before your court, and it were proved to you that a woman had been killed, not only uncondemned, but chaste and innocent, would you not punish the one who did it with fitting severity? This is what that Lucretia did: that Lucretia, that so celebrated Lucretia, killed the innocent, chaste Lucretia who had suffered violence as well. Pronounce sentence. If you cannot do so because the one you could punish is not present, why do you praise with such celebration the slayer of an innocent and chaste woman? Certainly you can in no way defend her before the judges of the underworld, even such as are sung of in the poems of your poets, placed as she would be among those “who, guiltless, brought death on themselves by their own hand and, hating the light, threw away their lives”; she longs to return to the world above, but “divine law forbids, and the gloomy marsh of hateful water binds her.” Or perhaps she is not there because she killed herself not guiltless but conscious of guilt? For what if (a thing she alone could know), although the young man attacked her violently, she was also enticed by her own lust and consented, and, punishing this in herself, grieved so that she thought it had to be expiated by death? Even so she ought not to have killed herself, if she could have done fruitful penance before her false gods. Yet if perhaps it is so, and that saying, “There were two and only one committed adultery,” is false, and rather both committed adultery, the one by open assault, the other by hidden consent, then she did not kill herself guiltless, and so her learned defenders can say that she is not in the underworld among those “who, guiltless, brought death on themselves by their own hand.” But this case is so hemmed in on both sides that if the homicide is lessened the adultery is confirmed, and if the adultery is cleared the homicide is increased; and there is no way out at all when it is said: “If she was defiled, why praised? If chaste, why killed?” For us, however, to refute those who, strangers to every thought of holiness, insult Christian women who were forced in captivity, it is enough, from the example of this so noble woman, that it was said in her great praise: “There were two, and only one committed adultery.” For they preferred to believe Lucretia such that she could not have stained herself by any adulterous consent. That she killed herself, then, because she had suffered an adulterer, though she was no adulteress, was not love of chastity but weakness of shame. For she was ashamed of the foul deed of another committed on her, even if not with her; and as a Roman woman, too greedy for praise, she feared that if she lived it would be thought that what she had suffered by violence while she lived she had suffered willingly. So she thought she must apply that penalty as a witness of her mind before the eyes of men, to whom she could not show her conscience. For she blushed to be believed a partner in the deed if she bore patiently what another had shamefully done in her. The Christian women did not do this, who suffered similar things and yet live, and did not avenge on themselves another's crime, lest they add their own crimes to the crimes of others, if, because enemies had committed violations on them in lust, they should commit homicides on themselves in shame. For they have within them the glory of chastity, the testimony of conscience; they have it before the eyes of their God and seek nothing more, since they have nothing more in which to act rightly, lest they turn aside from the authority of the divine law while wrongly avoiding the offense of human suspicion.

Chapter 20. That there is no authority which grants Christians the right of voluntary death for any reason.

It is not for nothing that nowhere in the holy canonical books can any divine command or permission be found for us to put ourselves to death, whether to obtain immortality itself or to avoid or escape any evil. For we must understand that we are forbidden where the law says: “You shall not kill,” especially because it did not add “your neighbor,” as it did when it forbade false witness: “You shall not,” it says, “bear false witness against your neighbor.” Yet if anyone bears false witness against himself, he should not therefore think himself free of this crime, since the one who loves has received the rule for loving his neighbor from himself, as it is written: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Further, if one who confesses a falsehood about himself is no less guilty of false witness than if he did it against his neighbor, although in the commandment forbidding false witness it is forbidden against one's neighbor, and to those who do not understand rightly it might seem not to be forbidden that anyone stand as a false witness against himself, how much more must it be understood that it is not lawful for a man to kill himself, since in the words “You shall not kill,” with nothing added afterwards, no one, not even the one to whom the command is given, is understood to be excepted! Hence some try to extend this commandment even to wild beasts and cattle, so that it is not lawful to kill any of them either. Why not then also plants and whatever is nourished and fixed in the ground by roots? For this class of things too, although it does not feel, is said to live, and therefore can also die, and so, when violence is used, be killed. Hence the apostle too, speaking of seeds of this kind, says: “What you sow is not brought to life unless it dies”; and it is written in the psalm: “He killed their vines with hail.” When we hear, “You shall not kill,” do we then count it a sin to pull up a shrub, and most madly acquiesce in the error of the Manichees? Setting aside these ravings, then, when we read, “You shall not kill,” if we do not take this as said of plants, because they have no feeling, nor of irrational animals, flying, swimming, walking, or creeping, because they are not joined to us by reason, which it has not been given them to have in common with us (whence by the most just ordinance of the Creator both their life and death are subject to our use), it remains that we understand what was said, “You shall not kill,” of man: therefore neither another nor yourself. For he who kills himself kills nothing other than a man.

Chapter 21. On the killings of human beings which are exempted from the crime of homicide.

The same divine authority, however, has made certain exceptions to the rule that it is not lawful to kill a human being. But apart from those whom God orders to be killed, whether by a law given or by an express command to a particular person for a time (and he does not himself kill who owes his service to the one who commands, as a sword is an instrument to the one who uses it; and so those have by no means acted against this commandment, “You shall not kill,” who have waged wars on God's authority, or who, bearing the person of public power, have punished criminals with death according to his laws, that is, according to the command of most just reason; and Abraham was not only not blamed with the charge of cruelty but was even praised under the name of godliness, because he was willing to kill his son, not wickedly, but obediently; and it is rightly asked whether it must be taken as by God's command that Jephthah killed his daughter, who came to meet her father, when he had vowed that he would sacrifice to God whatever first met him as he returned victorious from battle; nor is Samson excused for crushing himself with his enemies by the fall of the house except because the Spirit, who worked miracles through him, had secretly commanded it), apart from these, then, whom either a just law in general or God himself, the fount of justice, in particular orders to be killed, whoever kills a human being, whether himself or anyone else, is bound by the charge of homicide.

Chapter 22. Whether voluntary death can ever belong to greatness of soul.

And those who have done this to themselves may perhaps be admired for greatness of soul, but not praised for soundness of wisdom. Yet if you consult reason more carefully, it will not even rightly be called greatness of soul when someone kills himself because he cannot bear some hardships or the sins of others. For a mind is rather shown to be weak if it cannot bear either the harsh slavery of its body or the foolish opinion of the crowd; and that soul is rightly called greater which can bear a life of troubles rather than flee it, and can despise human judgment, especially that of the crowd, which is mostly wrapped in the fog of error, in comparison with the light and purity of conscience. Therefore, if it must be thought a work of great soul when a man inflicts death on himself, that Theombrotus is the better instance of this greatness of soul, who, they say, having read Plato's book in which he discussed the immortality of the soul, threw himself headlong from a wall and so departed from this life to the one he believed to be better. For nothing pressed on him, whether calamity or crime, true or false, which he could not bear and so removed himself; only greatness of soul was present for seizing death and breaking the sweet bonds of this life. Yet that this was done greatly rather than well, Plato himself, whom he had read, could have witnessed to him; Plato would surely have done it first and foremost, or even commanded it, had he not judged, with the very mind by which he saw the immortality of the soul, that it must by no means be done, and indeed must be forbidden. But, they say, many have killed themselves so as not to come into the hands of enemies. We are not now asking whether it was done, but whether it ought to have been done. For sound reason is to be preferred even to examples; and examples do agree with it, but those which are the more worthy of imitation the more excellent they are in godliness. The patriarchs did not do it, nor the prophets, nor the apostles; for the Lord Christ himself, when he warned them, if they suffered persecution, to flee from city to city, could have warned them to lay hands on themselves so as not to come into the hands of their persecutors. Further, if he did not command or advise that his own should depart from this life in that way, those for whom he promised to prepare eternal dwellings when they departed, whatever examples the nations who do not know God may put forward, it is plain that this is not lawful for those who worship the one true God.