Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3

BOOK I. PREFACE. Concerning the plan and argument of the work undertaken. The most glorious City of God—whether in this present course of time, while she journeys as a pilgrim among the ungodly, living by faith, or in that fixed estate of the eternal seat which she now awaits with patience, until righteousness be turned into judgment, and which she shall then obtain by excellence in final victory and perfect peace—I have undertaken in this work, established for you and owed by my promise to you, to defend against those who prefer their own gods to her Founder, dearest son Marcellinus: a great and arduous work, but God is our helper. For I know with what strength there is need.

that it may be brought home to the proud how great is the power of humility, by which it comes about that the loftiness which is given by divine grace—not usurped by human arrogance—surpasses all earthly summits that totter with temporal instability. For the King and Founder of this City, of which we have undertaken to speak, has in the Scripture of His people revealed the verdict of the divine law, in which it is said: 'God resists the proud, but to the humble He gives grace.' But this, which belongs to God, the puffed-up spirit of a proud soul also affects, and loves to have said of itself in its praises: 'To spare the subjected and to subdue the proud.'

Wherefore also concerning the earthly city—which, when it seeks to dominate, even though peoples serve it, is itself dominated by its very lust for domination—nothing is to be passed over in silence of whatever the plan of this undertaken work demands to be said and the capacity permits. CHAPTER I. Concerning the adversaries of the name of Christ, whom in the devastation of the City the barbarians spared on account of Christ. For from this city arise the enemies against whom the City of God is to be defended; yet many of them, correcting the error of their impiety, become citizens within her quite fit for the purpose;

but many indeed blaze up against her with such great fires of hatred, and are so ungrateful for the manifest benefits of her Redeemer, that today they would not be moving their tongues against her, had they not, fleeing the enemy's sword, found in her sacred places that life of which they boast. Are not even those Romans hostile to the name of Christ whom the barbarians spared on account of Christ? The shrines of the martyrs and the basilicas of the apostles bear witness to this, which in that devastation of the City received those who fled to them, both their own people and strangers.

Up to this point the bloodthirsty enemy raged; there the fury of the slaughterer received its limit; thither were they led by enemies showing mercy—enemies who had spared, even outside those places, those whom they might otherwise have attacked, lest they fall upon men who showed no like mercy. Yet these same men, who elsewhere were savage and raging in hostile fashion, after they came to those places where what would have been lawful elsewhere by the law of war had been forbidden, restrained all the cruelty of striking and broke off their lust for taking captives. Thus many escaped who now disparage Christian times and impute to Christ the evils which that city endured; but the good things which were done to them, that they might live, for the honor of Christ.

they impute not to our Christ but to their own fate, whereas they ought rather, if they had any right understanding, to ascribe those harsh and hard things which they suffered from the enemy to that divine providence which is wont by wars to amend and grind down the corrupted morals of men, and likewise to exercise by such afflictions the just and praiseworthy life of mortals, and, when it has been proved, either to transfer it to better things or to detain it still on these earths for other uses:

But this—that even amid such things, on account of the name of Christ, or in places most consecrated to the name of Christ and most spacious, and chosen for the sake of a more abundant mercy to hold the capacity of the multitude, the truculent barbarians, contrary to the custom of war, spared them—this they ought to ascribe to Christian times, hence to give thanks to God, hence truly to flee to His name, that they might escape the penalties of eternal fire, which name many of them falsely usurped, that they might escape the penalties of present destruction. For among those whom you see wantonly and insolently insulting the servants of Christ, there are very many who would not have escaped that ruin and slaughter, had they not feigned themselves to be servants of Christ.

And now with ungrateful pride and most impious madness they resist His name with a perverse heart, that they may be punished with everlasting darkness—His name, to which they fled with mouth, even though deceitful, that they might enjoy the temporal light. CHAPTER II. That no wars were ever so waged that the victors, on account of the gods of those whom they had conquered, spared the conquered. So many wars have been waged and recorded, whether before the founding of Rome or from its rise and dominion: let them read and bring forward that any city was so captured by foreigners, that the enemies who had taken it spared those whom they found to have fled to the temples of their gods; or that any leader of barbarians commanded that, when a town was stormed, none should be struck who had been found in this or that temple.

Did not Aeneas see 'Priam at the altars, defiling with blood the fires which he himself had hallowed'? Did not 'Diomedes and Ulysses, having slain the guards of the topmost citadel, snatch the sacred image, and with bloody hands dare to touch the virgin fillets of the goddess'? Yet what follows is not true: 'From that time the hope of the Greeks ebbed and, slipping back, was carried away.' For afterward they conquered, afterward they destroyed Troy with sword and fire, afterward they cut down Priam as he fled to the altar. Nor did Troy perish because she lost Minerva. For what had Minerva herself first lost, that she should perish? Was it perhaps her own guardians? This indeed is true; for once they were slain, she could be carried off. For it was not the men who were kept safe by the image, but the image by the men.

How then was she worshiped, that she might guard the homeland and the citizens, she who could not guard her own guards? CHAPTER III. How imprudently the Romans believed that the household gods (penates), who had not been able to guard Troy, would profit them. Behold, in what gods the Romans rejoiced to have committed the City to be preserved! O too pitiable an error! And they are indignant with us when we say such things about their gods; nor are they indignant with their own authors, to whom they paid a fee to learn them, and whom they besides counted most worthy both of a public salary and of honors.

Indeed in Virgil, whom little children read for this very reason—that the great poet, the most renowned and best of all, being imbibed by tender minds, may not easily be effaced by forgetfulness, according to that saying of Horace: 'The jar will long keep the scent with which, when new, it was once steeped'—in this Virgil, then, Juno is brought in, hostile to the Trojans, saying to Aeolus, king of the winds, to incite him against them: 'A race hateful to me sails the Tyrrhenian sea, carrying Ilium into Italy and the conquered penates.' Was it then to these conquered penates that prudent men ought to have entrusted Rome, that she might not be conquered? But Juno said these things like an angry woman, not knowing what she was saying. What of Aeneas himself, so often called 'pious'—does he not narrate thus:

'Panthus, son of Othrys, priest of the citadel and of Phoebus, himself drags with his hand the sacred things and the conquered gods and his little grandson, and frantically in his course makes for the threshold'? Does he not declare that the gods themselves—whom he does not hesitate to call conquered—were entrusted to him rather than himself to them, when it is said to him: 'To you Troy commends her sacred things and her penates'? If therefore Virgil says that such gods were both conquered and, that even when conquered they might somehow escape, were commended to a man: what madness it is to think that Rome was wisely committed to such guardians, and that, unless it had lost them, it could not have been laid waste! Nay rather, to worship conquered gods as guardians and defenders—what else is it than to hold not good deities, but bad names?

For how much more wisely is it believed, not that Rome would not have come to that calamity unless they had first perished, but rather that they would long ago have perished, had not Rome preserved them as far as it could! For who, when he considers it, does not see with how great vanity it was presumed that they could not be conquered under conquered defenders, and that they perished because they lost their guardian gods, when the only possible cause of perishing could have been the will to have guardians that were going to perish? Therefore, when those things about the conquered gods were being written and sung, it was not that it pleased the poets to lie, but truth compelled men of sense to confess. But these matters are to be treated more diligently and copiously in another place, more opportunely:

Now let me, as I can, briefly dispatch what I had set out to say about the ungrateful men, who, blaspheming, impute to Christ those evils which they deservedly suffer for the perversity of their morals; but that they are spared, even such men, on account of Christ, they do not even deign to attend to, and they exercise those tongues against His name with the madness of a sacrilegious perversity—those very tongues with which they falsely usurped that very name, that they might live, or which tongues they suppressed in fear in the places consecrated to Him, that, being there safe and protected, where on His account they were unharmed by the enemy, they might thence leap out against Him with hostile curses. CHAPTER IV.

Concerning the asylum of Juno in Troy, which freed no one from the Greeks, and the basilicas of the apostles, which defended from the barbarians all who fled to them. Troy herself, as I said, the mother of the Roman people, could not protect her citizens, in the consecrated places of her gods, from the fires and sword of the Greeks, who worshiped those same gods; nay even 'in the asylum of Juno the chosen guards, Phoenix and dire Ulysses, were keeping watch over the spoil; hither from every side the treasure of Troy, snatched from the burning shrines, and the tables of the gods and bowls of solid gold and captive raiment are heaped up. Boys and trembling mothers in a long line stand round about.' A place consecrated to so great a goddess was chosen, forsooth—not one from which it was not permitted to lead out captives, but where it pleased them to shut captives in.

Compare now that asylum, not of any common god of the rabble or of the throng of the populace, but of Jupiter himself's sister and wife and queen of all the gods, with the memorial shrines of our apostles. Thither were carried the spoils snatched from the burnt temples and the gods—not to be given to the conquered, but to be divided among the conquerors; but hither, what was found elsewhere to belong to those places was carried back with honor and most religious reverence. There liberty was lost, here preserved; there captivity was shut in, here forbidden; there men were pressed into captivity to be possessed by domineering enemies, hither they were led to be set free by enemies showing mercy:

Finally, that temple of Juno the avarice and pride of the frivolous little Greeks had chosen for themselves; these basilicas of Christ the mercy and humility of even the savage barbarians chose. Unless perhaps the Greeks indeed, in that victory of theirs, spared the temples of the gods they had in common, and did not dare to strike or take captive the wretched and conquered Trojans who fled thither, but Virgil, after the manner of poets, lied about those things. Nay rather, he described the manner of enemies overthrowing cities. CHAPTER V. Concerning the general custom of enemies overthrowing conquered cities, what Cato thought. This custom even Cato, as Sallust writes—a historian of ennobled truthfulness—does not omit to recall in his opinion which he delivered in the senate concerning the conspirators:

'That maidens and boys are ravished, children torn from the embrace of their parents, matrons subjected to whatever pleased the victors, temples and houses despoiled, slaughter and conflagration carried out: in short, that all things are filled with arms, corpses, blood, and mourning.' Here, if he had passed over the temples in silence, we might suppose that enemies are wont to spare the abodes of the gods. And these things the Roman temples feared not from foreign enemies, but from Catiline and his associates, most noble senators and Roman citizens. But these, of course, were lost men and parricides of their fatherland. CHAPTER VI. That not even the Romans ever so captured any cities that in their temples they spared the conquered.

Why then should our discourse range through the many nations which waged wars among themselves and nowhere spared the conquered in the seats of their gods? Let us look at the Romans themselves, the very ones, I say; let us recall and regard the Romans, of whose chief praise it was said: 'To spare the subjected and to subdue the proud,' and that, when injury was received, they preferred to pardon rather than to pursue: when they stormed, captured, and overthrew so many and so great cities, that they might rule far and wide, let there be read to us which temples they were wont to exempt, so that whoever fled to them might be set free. Or did they so act, and did the writers of those same deeds keep silent about this?

But would those who especially sought out things to praise pass over these most illustrious tokens of piety, as they reckoned them? The distinguished man of the Roman name, Marcus Marcellus, who took Syracuse, a most adorned city, is reported first to have wept over it as it was about to fall, and to have shed his own tears for it before its blood. He took care also that chastity should be preserved even in the enemy. For before the victor had ordered the town to be invaded, he established by edict that no one should violate a free body. Yet the city was overthrown after the manner of wars, nor is it anywhere read that it was commanded by so chaste and clement a commander, that whoever fled to this or that temple should be held unharmed.

This would by no means have been passed over, since neither his weeping nor what he had decreed concerning chastity being in no wise violated could be kept silent. Fabius, the overthrower of the city of Tarentum, is praised for having abstained from the plunder of the images. For when his scribe suggested to him what he ordered to be done about the statues of the gods, of which many had been captured, he seasoned his self-restraint even with a jest. For he asked of what sort they were, and when it was reported to him that there were not only many great ones, but even armed ones, 'Let us leave,' he said, 'the angry gods to the Tarentines.' Since therefore the writers of Roman deeds could not keep silent either about that man's weeping or this man's laughter, neither about that man's restrained mercy nor this man's witty self-restraint: when would it have been passed over.

if they had so spared any men in honor of some one of their gods, that they forbade slaughter or captivity to take place in any temple? CHAPTER VII. That in the overthrow of the City, the things which were done harshly happened according to the custom of war; but the things which were done clemently proceeded from the power of the name of Christ. Whatever, then, of devastation, slaughter, plundering, burning, and affliction was committed in that most recent Roman calamity, the custom of wars did this;

but what was done after a new manner—that with an unwonted aspect of things the barbarous savagery appeared so mild, that the most spacious basilicas were chosen and decreed to be filled with the people who were to be spared, where no one was to be struck, whence no one was to be carried off, whither many were to be led by enemies showing mercy to be set free, whence none were to be carried into captivity even by cruel enemies: whoever does not see that this is to be ascribed to the name of Christ, to the Christian time, is blind; whoever sees it and does not praise, is ungrateful; whoever resists him who praises, is insane. Far be it that any prudent man should impute this to the ferocity of the barbarians. The most truculent and savage minds He terrified, He bridled, He wondrously tempered, who long beforehand said through the prophet:

'I will visit their iniquities with a rod, and their sins with scourges; but my mercy I will not scatter away from them.' CHAPTER VIII. Concerning the advantages and disadvantages which are for the most part common to the good and the bad. Someone will say: 'Why then did that divine mercy come even to the impious and ungrateful?' Why do we suppose, unless because He bestowed it who daily makes His sun to rise upon the good and the bad, and rains upon the just and the unjust?

For although some of them, considering these things, by repenting correct themselves from their impiety, while others indeed, as the apostle says, despising the riches of God's goodness and longsuffering, after their hardness of heart and impenitent heart, treasure up for themselves wrath in the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his works: nevertheless the patience of God invites the wicked to repentance, as the scourge of God instructs the good unto patience; and likewise the mercy of God embraces the good to cherish them, as the severity of God seizes the wicked to punish them. For it has pleased divine providence to prepare for the future good things for the just, which the unjust shall not enjoy, and evil things for the impious, with which the good shall not be tormented;

but these temporal goods and evils He willed to be common to both, that neither might the goods be too greedily desired, which the wicked also are seen to possess, nor the evils shamefully shunned, with which the good also are for the most part afflicted. But it makes the greatest difference of what sort is the use either of those things which are prosperous, or of those which are called adverse. For the good man is neither exalted by temporal goods nor broken by evils; but the bad man is for this reason punished by this kind of unhappiness, because he is corrupted by happiness. Yet God often shows His operation more evidently even in the distribution of these. For if now every sin were punished with manifest penalty, nothing would be thought to be reserved for the last judgment;

again, if the divinity now openly punished no sin, it would be believed that there is no divine providence. Likewise in prosperous matters, if God did not grant them with most evident bounty to certain who ask, we should say that these things do not pertain to Him; and likewise if He gave them to all who ask, we should judge that He is to be served only for the sake of such rewards, nor would such service make us pious, but rather greedy and avaricious. Since these things are so, whoever, good and bad alike, were afflicted, are not therefore not distinguished, because that which both suffered was not distinct. For the dissimilarity of the sufferers remains even in the similarity of the sufferings, and although they are under the same torment, the virtue and the vice are not the same.

For as under one fire gold gleams red and chaff smokes, and under the same threshing-sledge the stalks are crushed and the grain is cleansed, nor is the dross mingled with the oil because it is pressed out by the same weight of the press: so one and the same force, rushing in, proves, purifies, refines the good, but condemns, devastates, exterminates the bad. Whence in the same affliction the bad detest and blaspheme God, but the good pray and praise. So great is the difference—not what sort of things, but of what sort each one suffers them. For when stirred by the same motion, the mire exhales a horrible stench and the ointment fragrantly gives off a sweet scent. CHAPTER IX. Concerning the causes of correction, for which both the good and the bad are scourged alike.

What then did the Christians suffer in that devastation of things, which would not rather, to those faithfully considering these matters, avail unto their advancement? First, that, humbly considering the very sins on account of which God, being indignant, filled the world with such great calamities, although they are far from the wicked, the disgraceful, and the impious, yet they do not so reckon themselves alien from offenses, that they should judge themselves unworthy to suffer temporal evils for them.

For—setting aside the fact that each one, however praiseworthily he lives, yields in certain things to carnal concupiscence, even if not unto the enormity of crimes and the gulf of disgraceful deeds and the abomination of impiety, yet to some sins, whether rare or so much the more frequent as they are smaller—this then being set aside, who at last is easily found, who would so regard, as they ought to be regarded, those very men on account of whose horrendous pride and luxury and avarice and execrable iniquities and impieties God, as He foretold with threatening, grinds down the lands? Who would so live with them as one ought to live with such men?

For most often the duty of teaching, admonishing, and at times even rebuking and correcting them is wrongly neglected, whether because the labor is irksome, or because we are ashamed to offend their countenance, or because we shun enmities, lest they hinder and harm us in these temporal matters—whether those which our cupidity still strives to acquire, or those which our weakness dreads to lose; so that, although the life of the wicked displeases the good, and therefore they do not fall with them into that damnation which is prepared for such after this life, nevertheless, because for that reason they spare their damnable sins while they fear them in their own (albeit slight and venial) matters, they are justly scourged with them in temporal things, although they are by no means punished in eternity; justly they feel this life bitter when they are afflicted by God along with them—this life whose sweetness, by loving, they were unwilling should be bitter to those sinning.

For if anyone spares those who do evil from rebuking and correcting them because he seeks a more opportune time, or fears for those very persons, lest they be made worse by it, or lest they hinder others, weak ones who need to be instructed unto a good and pious life, and oppress them and turn them from the faith: this seems to be not an occasion of cupidity, but a counsel of charity. That is blameworthy, when those who live differently and shrink from the deeds of the wicked nevertheless spare the sins of others, which they ought to unteach or rebuke, while they guard against their offenses, lest these harm them in those things which the good use lawfully and innocently, but more greedily than was fitting for those who sojourn in this world and bear before themselves the hope of the heavenly fatherland.

For not only the weaker, leading a married life, having children or seeking to have them, possessing houses and households (whom the apostle addresses in the churches, teaching and admonishing how they ought to live—both wives with husbands and husbands with wives, and children with parents and parents with children, and servants with masters and masters with servants), willingly acquire many temporal, many earthly things and lose them with grief, on account of which they do not dare to offend men whose most contaminated and most wicked life displeases them; but even those who hold a higher grade of life and are not entangled in marriage bonds and use

scanty food and clothing, for the most part, while they fear the snares and assaults of the wicked against their reputation and safety, abstain from reproving them; and although they do not so fear them as to yield to perpetrating like deeds at any of their threats and wickednesses, yet those very deeds which they do not perpetrate with them, they nevertheless for the most part are unwilling to rebuke, when perhaps by rebuking they might correct some, lest, if they should not be able, their own safety and reputation come into peril and ruin—not from that consideration by which they see their reputation and safety to be necessary for the benefit of men to be instructed, but rather from that weakness by which the flattering tongue and human favor delight, and the judgment of the crowd is dreaded, and the torture of the flesh or its loss is feared; that is, on account of certain bonds of cupidity, not on account of the offices of charity.

It does not therefore seem to me a small reason why, when the wicked are scourged, the good are scourged along with them, whenever it pleases God to punish corrupt morals even with the affliction of temporal penalties. For they are scourged together, not because they lead an evil life together, but because together they love the temporal life — not equally, indeed, yet together — a life which the good ought to despise, so that the wicked, being rebuked and corrected, might attain the eternal life. And if these latter were unwilling to be companions in attaining it, they should be borne with and loved even as enemies; for as long as they live it is always uncertain whether they will change their will for the better. In this matter the good have not merely an equal but a far weightier cause, those to whom it is said through the prophet:

He indeed shall die in his own sin, but his blood will I require at the watchman's hand. For to this end watchmen — that is, the rulers set over the peoples — are appointed in the churches, that they should not spare to rebuke sins. Nor yet is anyone entirely free from this kind of guilt who, though he be not a ruler, nevertheless knows of many things needing admonition or reproof in those to whom he is joined by the necessity of this life, and yet neglects them, avoiding their displeasure on account of those things which in this life he uses not improperly, but in which he takes more delight than he ought. Then the good have another reason why they are afflicted with temporal evils, such as Job had:

that the human soul might be tested and made known to itself, with how great a strength of piety it loves God freely, for nothing in return. CHAPTER X. That to the saints nothing is lost in the loss of temporal things. When these things are rightly considered and clearly perceived, mark well whether any evil has befallen the faithful and the godly which was not turned to their good — unless perchance we are to suppose that apostolic sentence to be void where he says: We know that to those who love God all things work together for good. They lost all they possessed. Their faith? Their godliness? The goods of the inner man, who is rich before God? These are the riches of Christians, with which the Apostle, being wealthy, said: But godliness with contentment is great gain.

For we brought nothing into this world, and neither can we carry anything out. But having food and covering, with these let us be content. For those who wish to become rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and hurtful desires, which plunge men into ruin and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evils, which some coveting have strayed from the faith and have entangled themselves in many sorrows. Those, therefore, whose earthly riches perished in that devastation, if they so possessed them — as they had heard from that man who was poor without and rich within — that is, if they used the world as not using it, were able to say what that man, sorely tried and in no way overcome, said:

Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return into the earth. The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; as it pleased the Lord, so it is done; blessed be the name of the Lord. Thus the good servant counted his great possessions to be the very will of his Lord, to whom, following close in mind, he grew rich; nor was he grieved while living to be left without those things which, dying, he was soon to leave behind. But those weaker ones, who, though they did not prefer these earthly goods to Christ, yet clung to them with some measure of desire, felt by losing them how much they had sinned by loving them. For they grieved just as much as they had entangled themselves in sorrows, as I recalled above that the Apostle said.

For it was necessary that there should be added to them also the discipline of experience, of which the discipline of words had so long been neglected by them. For when the Apostle said: Those who wish to become rich fall into temptation, and the rest, he assuredly reproved covetousness in riches, not the possession of them, since elsewhere he gave this command, saying: Charge the rich of this world not to be high-minded, nor to trust in the uncertainty of riches, but in the living God, who gives us all things richly to enjoy; that they do good, be rich in good works, give readily, share, lay up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come, that they may lay hold on the true life.

Those who did these things with their riches were comforted for light losses by great gains, and rejoiced more over those things which by readily giving they more safely kept, than they grieved over those things which by timidly retaining they more easily lost. For this could perish on earth — that which they were loath to transfer thence. For those who took the counsel of their Lord, who says: Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves dig through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven, where no thief approaches and no moth corrupts —

for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also — these proved in the time of tribulation how rightly they had judged in not despising that most truthful Teacher and the most faithful and most unconquerable Guardian of their treasure. For if many rejoiced that they had their riches there where it happened that the enemy did not reach, how much more surely and securely could those rejoice who at their God's admonition had migrated their treasure thither, where the enemy could by no means reach at all! Hence our Paulinus, bishop of Nola, from a most opulent rich man become by his own will most poor and abundantly holy, when the barbarians laid waste Nola itself, being held captive by them, prayed thus in his heart, as we afterwards learned from him: Lord, let me not be tormented for gold and silver;

for where all my goods are, you know.' For there he had all his goods, where He had shown him to store up and treasure them, who had foretold these evils to come upon the world. And so those who had obeyed their Lord admonishing them where and in what manner they ought to lay up treasure, did not lose even those earthly riches when the barbarians broke in. But those who repented of not having obeyed learned what was to be done with such things, if not by foregoing wisdom, then certainly by following experience. But, they say, some good Christians too were tortured, that they might surrender their goods to the enemy. Yet they could neither surrender nor lose the good by which they themselves were good. But if they preferred to be tortured rather than surrender the mammon of iniquity, they were not good.

But those who suffered so much for gold ought to have been admonished how much was to be endured for Christ, so that they might rather learn to love Him who would enrich with eternal felicity those who suffered for Him, and not the gold and silver for which it was most wretched to suffer — whether it was hidden by lying or surrendered by telling the truth. For amid the torments no one lost Christ by confessing Him, no one saved his gold except by denying it. Wherefore the torments were perhaps more useful, which taught that the incorruptible good is to be loved, than those goods which, without any useful fruit, tormented their owners by their very love. But some too, who had nothing to surrender, were tortured because they were not believed. And these perhaps desired to have it, and were not poor by holy will;

to such it had to be shown that not their possessions but their very desires were worthy of such torments. But if they did not have gold and silver hidden away with a purpose of a better life, I do not indeed know whether it ever happened to any such that he was tortured while believed to possess it; yet even if it did happen, assuredly he who amid those torments confessed holy poverty was confessing Christ. Wherefore, even if he did not deserve to be believed by the enemy, yet the confessor of holy poverty could not be tortured without a heavenly reward. Many Christians too, they say, were laid waste by long-lasting famine. This also the good faithful turned to their own use by enduring it piously. For those whom famine slew, it snatched away from the evils of this life, just as bodily sickness does;

but those whom it did not slay, it taught to live more sparingly, it taught to fast more enduringly. CHAPTER XI. On the end of the temporal life, whether longer or shorter. But indeed many Christians too were slain, many consumed by the foul variety of many deaths. If this is to be borne with grief, it is at any rate common to all who have been brought forth into this life. This I know, that no one has died who was not at some time going to die. But the end of life makes the long life and the short life equal in this respect. For neither is one thing better and another worse, nor one greater and another shorter, which now alike is not. And what does it matter by what kind of death this life is ended, when he for whom it is ended is not compelled to die again?

Now since to each mortal, under the daily mishaps of this life, innumerable deaths in a manner threaten, so long as it is uncertain which of them is to come, I ask whether it is better to suffer one by dying, or to fear them all by living. Nor am I ignorant how much more readily one chooses to live long under the fear of so many deaths, than by dying once to dread none thereafter. But one thing is what the weakly fearful sense of the flesh shrinks from, another what the reason of the mind, carefully sifted, proves. That death is not to be deemed evil which a good life has preceded. For nothing makes a death evil but what follows death. Therefore those who must of necessity die need not be much concerned by what chance it comes that they die, but whither, by dying, they are compelled to go.

Since therefore Christians know that the death of the religious poor man, amid the licking tongues of dogs, was far better than that of the impious rich man in purple and fine linen, what harm did those horrible kinds of death do to the dead who lived well? CHAPTER XII. On the burial of human bodies, which, even if denied to Christians, takes nothing from them. But indeed in such slaughter of corpses they could not even be buried. Neither does godly faith dread this overmuch, holding to what was foretold: that not even devouring beasts shall harm bodies that are to rise again, of which not a hair of the head shall perish. The Truth would in no way say:

Fear not those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul, if anything that enemies might wish to do with the bodies of the slain could harm the life to come. Unless perchance someone is so absurd as to contend that those who kill the body ought not to be feared before death, lest they kill the body, and ought to be feared after death, lest they suffer the slain body not to be buried. False then is what Christ says: Those who kill the body, and afterwards have no more that they can do, if they have so much that they can do to corpses. Far be it that what the Truth has said should be false. For something is said to be done by them when they kill, because there is sensation in the body in being killed;

but afterwards they have nothing they can do, because there is no sensation in a body that has been slain. And so the earth covered not many bodies of Christians; but no one separated any of them from heaven and earth, which the presence of Him fills wholly, who knows whence to raise up what He created. It is indeed said in the psalm: They have set the dead bodies of your servants as food for the birds of heaven, the flesh of your saints for the beasts of the earth; they have poured out their blood like water round about Jerusalem, and there was none to bury them — but this rather to exaggerate the cruelty of those who did these things, not to mark the unhappiness of those who suffered them.

For although 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. Accordingly all these things — that is, the care of the funeral, the manner of burial, the pomp of the obsequies — are rather the consolations of the living than aids to the dead. If costly burial profits the impious in any way, then cheap burial, or none, will harm the godly. The throng of servants exhibited splendid obsequies in the sight of men to that purple-clad rich man; but far more glorious in the sight of the Lord did the ministry of angels render to that ulcerous poor man, who did not carry him forth into a marble tomb, but bore him up into Abraham's bosom. Those against whom we have undertaken to defend the City of God laugh at these things.

Yet even their own philosophers have despised the care of burial. And often whole armies, while they died for an earthly fatherland, took no thought where afterwards they might lie or to what beasts they might become food; and on this subject the poets were permitted to say, to applause: He is covered by heaven, who has no urn. How much less ought they to insult Christians over unburied bodies, to whom the refashioning of the very flesh and of all its members is promised to be restored and made whole again in a moment of time — not only from the earth, but even from the most secret bosom of the other elements, into which the dissolved corpses have withdrawn. CHAPTER XIII. What is the reason for burying the bodies of the saints.

Nor yet are the bodies of the departed to be despised and cast away, and most of all of the righteous and faithful, which the Spirit used as instruments and vessels for every good work in holiness. For if a father's garment and ring, and whatever is of this kind, is the dearer to descendants the greater their affection toward their parents, by no means are the bodies themselves to be spurned, which assuredly we wear far more intimately and conjoined than any garments. For these belong not to ornament or aid applied from without, but to the very nature of man.

Hence the funerals of the ancient righteous were tended with dutiful piety, their obsequies celebrated, and burial provided; and they themselves, while they lived, gave charge to their sons concerning the burying, or even the transferring, of their bodies; and Tobit is commended, on the angel's testimony, as having merited God's favour by burying the dead. The Lord Himself too, who was to rise again on the third day, proclaims, and commends to be proclaimed, the good work of the devout woman, who poured precious ointment over His members and did this toward His burial. And those are praised in the Gospel who received His body from the cross and took diligent and honourable care to cover and bury it.

But these authorities do not admonish us that there is any sensation in corpses; rather they signify that the bodies of the dead also pertain to God's providence, to whom even such offices of piety are pleasing, for the sake of establishing faith in the resurrection. Here too that wholesome lesson is learned, how great may be the reward for the alms which we bestow on the living and the sentient, if not even this perishes with God which is rendered in office and diligence to the lifeless members of men. There are indeed other things also which the holy patriarchs wished to be understood as said in a prophetic spirit concerning the storing or transferring of their bodies; but this is not the place to treat of them, since those things suffice which we have said.

But if those things which are necessary for sustaining the living — such as food and clothing — though they be lacking with grievous affliction, do not break in the good the virtue of bearing and enduring, nor root out piety from the soul, but rather make it more fruitful by being exercised: how much more, when those things are lacking which are wont to be applied to the tending of funerals and the laying out of the bodies of the dead, do they not make wretched those who are already at rest in the hidden abodes of the godly! And through this, when these things were lacking to the corpses of Christians in that devastation of the great city, or even of other towns, it is neither the fault of the living, who could not provide them, nor the punishment of the dead, who cannot feel them. CHAPTER XIV.

On the captivity of the saints, to whom divine consolations were never lacking. But many Christians too, they say, were led away captive. This indeed is most wretched, if they could be led anywhere where they did not find their God. There are in the holy Scriptures great consolations even for this calamity. There were in captivity the three young men, there was Daniel, there were other prophets; and God the Consoler was not lacking. Thus then He did not desert His faithful ones under the dominion of a nation, barbarous indeed yet human, who did not desert the prophet even in the belly of the beast.

These things too those with whom we are dealing prefer to deride rather than to believe, who nevertheless in their own writings believe that Arion of Methymna, the most noble harper, when he had been cast from the ship, was received on a dolphin's back and carried to land. But that account of ours concerning the prophet Jonah is more incredible. Plainly more incredible because more wonderful, and more wonderful because of a greater power. CHAPTER XV. On Regulus, in whom there stands an example of captivity to be endured even willingly for religion's sake, which nevertheless could not profit him as a worshipper of the gods. Yet these men have, even among their own illustrious men, a most noble example of captivity to be borne even willingly for religion's sake. Marcus Regulus, a general of the Roman people, was a captive among the Carthaginians.

Since the Carthaginians preferred to have their own men restored to them by the Romans rather than to hold the Romans' captives, to obtain this they sent to Rome especially this same Regulus along with their envoys, having first bound him by an oath that, if he had failed to accomplish what they wished, he would return to Carthage. He went, and in the senate urged the contrary, since he did not judge it useful for the Roman commonwealth to exchange captives. Nor after this persuasion was he compelled by his own people to return to the enemy; but because he had sworn, he fulfilled it of his own accord. But they put him to death with devised and dreadful tortures.

For having enclosed him in a narrow wooden frame, where he would be forced to stand, and fixed on every side with the sharpest nails, so that he could not lean to any part of it without most atrocious pains, they destroyed him even by depriving him of sleep. Deservedly indeed they praise a virtue greater than so great a misfortune. And he had sworn by those gods, by the prohibition of whose worship these men suppose such calamities to be inflicted on the human race. If, then, those who were worshipped for this very end — that they might render this life prosperous — either willed or permitted such penalties to be inflicted on a man who swore truly, what worse could they have done in their wrath to a perjurer? But why do I not rather conclude my reasoning so as to cover both cases?

He certainly so worshipped the gods that, for the sake of the fidelity of his oath, he neither remained in his fatherland nor went anywhere else, but did not in the least hesitate to return to his most ferocious enemies. If he reckoned this useful for this life, of which he earned so dreadful an end, beyond doubt he was deceived. By his own example indeed he taught that the gods profit their worshippers nothing toward this temporal felicity, since that man, devoted to their worship, was both conquered and led away captive, and, because he was unwilling to act otherwise than as he had sworn by them, was tortured to death by a new and previously unheard-of and exceedingly horrible kind of punishment.

But if the worship of the gods renders felicity as a reward after this life, why do they slander the Christian times, saying that that calamity befell the City because it ceased to worship its gods, when even one worshipping them most diligently could become as unhappy as that Regulus was? Unless perchance someone strives against the most manifest truth with such madness of marvellous blindness as to dare to contend that a whole city worshipping the gods cannot be unhappy, but a single man can — namely, that the power of their gods is fitter to preserve many rather than single individuals, although a multitude is composed 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 soul, then let true virtue rather be sought, by which even a city can be happy. For a city is happy from no other source than a man, since a city is nothing other than a concordant multitude of men. Wherefore I do not for now dispute what kind of virtue there was in Regulus; it suffices for the present that by this most noble example they are compelled to confess that the gods are not to be worshipped for the sake of bodily goods or of those things which befall a man from without, since that man preferred to lack all these rather than to offend the gods by whom he had sworn. But what shall we do with men who boast that they had such a citizen, the like of whom they fear to have as a city?

But if they do not fear it, then let them confess that something such as befell Regulus could also befall a city that worships the gods as diligently as he did, and let them not slander the Christian times.

But since the question has arisen about those Christians who were also taken captive, let those who shamelessly and imprudently mock at the most wholesome religion on this account consider this and be silent: that if it was no reproach to their gods that their most attentive worshipper, while he kept faith with his oath toward them, was deprived of his fatherland — having no other — and as a captive among enemies was slain by a lingering death in the punishment of a new cruelty, then much less is the Christian name to be charged with crime in the captivity of its consecrated ones, who, awaiting the heavenly fatherland with truthful faith, knew themselves to be pilgrims even in their own homes. CHAPTER XVI.

Whether the virtue of the soul could be contaminated, without the consent of the will, by the defilements which the captivity even of consecrated virgins perchance suffered. They think indeed that they bring a grave charge against Christians when, exaggerating their captivity, they add also the violations committed — not only upon others' wives and maidens about to be married, but even upon certain consecrated women. Here, however, it is not faith, not piety, not that very virtue which is called chastity, but rather our discussion, that is straitened within certain narrow bounds between modesty and reason. Nor do we here so much take care to render an answer to others as to render consolation to our own.

Let it therefore first be laid down and established that the virtue by which one lives rightly commands the members of the body from the seat of the soul, and that the body is made holy by the use of a holy will; and that, while this remains unshaken and stable, whatever another may do with the body or in the body, which cannot be avoided without one's own sin, is free from the guilt of the one who suffers it. But because not only what pertains to pain, but also what pertains to lust, can be perpetrated in another's body, whatever of this kind shall have been done, even though it does not shake out the chastity held with most constant mind, yet it strikes in shame, lest it be believed to have been done with the will of the mind also, which perchance could not be done without some pleasure of the flesh. CHAPTER XVII.

On voluntary death for fear of punishment or of disgrace. And through this, both as to those women who killed themselves lest they should suffer anything of this kind — what human feeling would refuse to pardon them? — and as to those who were unwilling to kill themselves, lest by their own crime they might avoid another's outrage, whoever shall lay this to their charge as a crime will not himself escape the crime of folly. For if it is by no means lawful by private authority to kill a man, even a guilty one, whose killing no law grants license for, then assuredly he who kills himself also is a homicide, and becomes the more guilty in killing himself the more innocent he was in that cause for which he thought he ought to kill himself.

For if we rightly detest the deed of Judas, and Truth judges that when he hanged himself with a noose he rather increased than expiated the guilt of that wicked betrayal, since by despairing of God's mercy he, fatally repentant, left himself no place for wholesome penitence — how much more ought he to abstain from his own slaying who has nothing in himself which he might punish by such a penalty! For Judas, when he killed himself, killed a wicked man, and yet he ended this life guilty not only of Christ's death but also of his own, because, although it was on account of his own crime, he was slain by another crime of his own.

But why should a man who has done no evil do harm to himself, and by killing himself slay an innocent man, lest he suffer another guilty one, and perpetrate upon himself his own sin, lest another's sin be perpetrated upon him? CHAPTER XVIII. On another's violent lust, which the unwilling mind endures in the oppressed body. But indeed, it is feared lest another's lust, even though another's, should pollute. It will not pollute, if it is another's; but if it pollutes, it is not another's. But since chastity is a virtue of the soul, and has fortitude for its companion, by which it determines to endure any evils whatsoever rather than to consent to evil, and since no one magnanimous and chaste has in his power what may be done with his flesh, but only what he may assent to or refuse with the mind:

who in that same sound mind would suppose himself to lose chastity, if perchance in his seized and oppressed flesh a lust not his own should be exercised and satisfied? For if chastity perishes in this way, then assuredly chastity will not be a virtue of the soul, nor will it pertain to those goods by which one lives well, but it will be numbered among the goods of the body, such as are strength, beauty, sound health, and whatever is of this kind; which goods, even if they are diminished, do not at all diminish a good and just life. But if chastity is something of this kind, why is there toil, even at the body's peril, on its behalf, lest it be lost? But if it is a good of the soul, it is not lost even when the body is oppressed.

Nay rather, when the good of holy continence does not yield to the uncleanness of carnal concupiscences, the body itself too is sanctified; and therefore, when it persists with unshaken intention in not yielding to them, the sanctity does not perish even from the body itself, because the will to use it holily perseveres and, as far as is in the body's own power, the ability too. For the body is not holy because its members are intact, nor because they are touched by no contact, since by diverse mishaps they can even, being wounded, suffer violence, and physicians sometimes, while bringing aid to health, do there things which the sight shrinks from. A midwife, examining as it were with her hand the integrity of a certain virgin, whether by malevolence or by unskillfulness or by chance, destroyed it while she inspected.

I do not think anyone is so foolishly wise as to suppose that this woman lost anything even of her body's own sanctity, although the integrity of that member was now destroyed. Wherefore, while the soul's purpose remains, through which the body too merited to be sanctified, the violence of another's lust does not take away sanctity even from the body itself, which the perseverance of her own continence preserves. But, on the other hand, if some woman, corrupted in mind and her purpose violated which she had vowed to God, goes forth to be defiled to her deceiver, do we call her, as she goes to this, holy even in body, when the sanctity of soul, through which the body was being sanctified, is lost and destroyed?

Far be this error, and let us rather be admonished hereby that the sanctity of the body is so not lost while the sanctity of the soul remains, even though the body be oppressed, just as the sanctity of the body too is lost when the sanctity of the soul is violated, even though the body be untouched. Wherefore a woman violently oppressed and assailed by another's sin without any consent of her own has nothing in herself which she should punish by a voluntary death; how much less before this is done! lest a certain homicide be committed, while the very outrage, though another's, still hangs uncertain. CHAPTER XIX. On Lucretia, who slew herself on account of the rape inflicted upon her.

Or will those against whom we defend not only the minds but even the sacred bodies of Christian women violated in captivity dare, perhaps, to contradict this clear principle, by which we say that, when the body is overpowered yet the resolve of chastity remains unaltered by any consent to evil, the disgrace belongs only to him who overpowered her and lay with her, and not to her who, having been overpowered, in no way consented in will to the one lying with her? Lucretia, to be sure, that noble matron of ancient Rome, they extol with great praises of her chastity.

When the son of King Tarquin had lustfully overpowered her body by violence and taken his pleasure, she made known the crime of that most wicked young man to her husband Collatinus and to her kinsman Brutus—men most illustrious and most valiant—and bound them to avenge it. Then, sick at heart and unable to bear the foul deed committed against her, she destroyed herself. What shall we say? Is she to be judged an adulteress or chaste? Who would think there is any difficulty to labor over in this dispute? One man, declaiming excellently and truly on this matter, says: 「Wondrous to tell, there were two, yet only one committed adultery.」 Splendidly and most truly spoken.

For, looking upon the most defiled lust of the one and the most chaste will of the other in the union of two bodies, and attending not to what was done by the joining of limbs but to what was at work in the diversity of their souls, he says: 「There were two, yet only one committed adultery.」 But what is this, that a heavier punishment is exacted upon her who did not commit adultery? For he was driven from his country together with his father, while she was struck down with the supreme penalty. If that is not unchastity by which one unwilling is overpowered, then this is not justice by which the chaste is punished. I appeal to you, O laws and judges of Rome. After crimes were perpetrated, you surely did not wish even a guilty man to be slain with impunity uncondemned.

If, then, anyone should bring this charge before your tribunal, and it were proven to you that a woman had been slain who was not only uncondemned but also chaste and innocent, would you not punish the one who had done it with fitting severity? This is what that Lucretia did; that—that—so-celebrated Lucretia slew the innocent, chaste Lucretia who had suffered violence. Pronounce your sentence. But if you cannot do so for this reason, that she is not present whom you might punish, why do you praise with such great acclaim the slayer of an innocent and chaste woman? Whom certainly you can by no means defend before those judges of the underworld even of the sort that are sung in the songs of your poets—she being set, namely, among those

who with their own hand wrought death for themselves, guiltless, and loathing the light cast away their souls; for whom, though they long to return to the world above, the divine law stands in the way, and the dismal swamp of the loathsome flood binds them fast. Or is she perhaps not there for this reason, that she slew herself not as innocent, but conscious of evil within herself? For what if (a thing she alone could know) she, though the youth rushed upon her by violence, was herself also enticed by her own desire and consented, and, punishing this in herself, so grieved that she thought it must be expiated by death? And yet not even thus ought she to have killed herself, if she could have performed a fruitful repentance before the false gods.

Nevertheless, if perchance it is thus, and that saying is false—that there were two and only one committed adultery—but rather both committed adultery, the one by manifest invasion, the other by hidden consent, then she did not slay herself innocent, and therefore it can be said by her literary defenders that she is not among those in the underworld who 「with their own hand wrought death for themselves, guiltless.」 But this case is so pressed on both sides that, if the homicide is extenuated, the adultery is confirmed; if the adultery is purged away, the homicide is heaped up; nor is any way out found at all, when it is asked: If she was an adulteress, why is she praised;

if she was chaste, why was she slain? Yet for us, in order to refute these men who insult Christian women violated in captivity, men estranged from every thought of holiness, this noble woman's example suffices, in that it was said amid her illustrious praises: 「There were two, yet only one committed adultery.」 For Lucretia was the more believed by them to be one who could not stain herself by any consent to adultery. That she therefore killed herself—herself, not an adulteress—because she had endured an adulterer, is not love of chastity but weakness of shame.

For she was ashamed of another's foulness committed against her, even though not with her, and, being a Roman woman too greedy of praise, she feared lest it be thought that, what she had suffered by violence while she lived, she had suffered willingly if she lived on. Therefore she thought that punishment must be brought before the eyes of men as a witness of her mind, since she could not display her conscience to them. For she blushed to be believed an accomplice in the deed, if she should patiently bear what another had foully done in her. Christian women did not do this, who, having suffered similar things, yet live and did not avenge upon themselves another's crime, lest they should add their own to the crimes of others—if, because the enemy by lusting had committed defilements upon them, they should out of shame commit homicides upon themselves.

For they have within them the glory of chastity, the testimony of conscience; and they have it before the eyes of their God, and they seek no more, where they have nothing further that they may rightly do, lest they swerve from the authority of the divine law while they wrongly avoid the offense of human suspicion. CHAPTER XX. That there is no authority which grants to Christians, in any cause whatever, the right of voluntary death. For not in vain can it be found that nowhere in the holy canonical books has it been divinely commanded or permitted to us that, for the sake either of attaining immortality itself or of avoiding or escaping any evil, we should inflict death upon ourselves. For we are to understand that we are forbidden this also where the law says: Thou shalt not kill—especially since it did not add:

「thy neighbor」, as when it forbade false witness it said: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Nor, however, should anyone, if he bear false witness against himself, think himself free of this crime, because the lover received from himself the rule of loving his neighbor, since indeed it is written: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Moreover, if one who confesses what is false about himself is no less guilty of false witness than if he did this against his neighbor—since in that precept by which false witness is forbidden, it is forbidden against one's neighbor, and it could seem to those not rightly understanding that it is not forbidden for anyone to stand as a false witness against himself—

how much more is it to be understood that it is not lawful for a man to kill himself, since in that which is written, Thou shalt not kill, with nothing thereafter added, no one—not even the very one to whom the command is given—is to be understood as excepted! Hence some try to extend this precept even to beasts and cattle, so that on this account it should not be lawful to kill any of them either. Why then not also herbs and whatever is nourished and fixed in the soil by its roots? For this kind of thing too, although it does not feel, is said to live, and through this can also die, and accordingly, when force is applied, can be killed. Hence the Apostle too, when he was speaking of seeds of this sort, says: Thou, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die; and in the Psalm it is written: He killed their vines with hail.

Shall we then, on this account, when we hear 「Thou shalt not kill」, count it a sin to pluck a shrub, and most madly acquiesce in the error of the Manichaeans? With these ravings, then, set aside, when we read 「Thou shalt not kill」, if we do not take this saying to be about bushes, because they have no sensation, nor about irrational animals—flying, swimming, walking, creeping—because they are associated with us by no reason, which has not been given them to share in common with us (whence by the most just ordinance of the Creator both their life and death are subjected to our uses): it remains that we understand it to have been said about man, 「Thou shalt not kill」—therefore neither another nor thyself. For indeed he who kills himself kills nothing other than a man. CHAPTER XXI.