And not undeservedly; because there was no fear at all and no correction, the Spaniards began to burn in the same flames with which the Gauls had burned. In which, as I said above, is that most wicked and most grievous thing: that although the members, so to speak, of sinful men had been burned, the vices of the sinners were not cured. And therefore God was compelled by our crimes to scatter enemy plagues from place to place and from city to city, and to send peoples roused almost from the farthest ends of the earth even across the sea, to punish the crimes of the Africans. For what? Could they not have dwelt within the Gauls, once carried away from their native soil? Or, that they might not dwell there, whom did they fear—those who, unharmed by us, had laid all things waste up to that time?
But grant it—within the Gauls they were afraid. What of Spain, where they had even crushed our armies in war? Did they, now victors, now triumphant, dread to settle or to remain—men to whom it had fallen to rise to such a pinnacle of valour that, after the trials of war, long prepared, they perceived that the strength of the Roman commonwealth, even with the aid of barbarians, could not be a match for them? XIII. They could then dwell there, and they were not afraid. But that heavenly hand, which had drawn them thither to punish the outrages of the Spaniards, was likewise compelling them to pass over to lay Africa waste. Indeed they themselves confessed that what they did was not their own doing: that they were driven and urged on by divine command.
From which it can be understood how great are our evils, for whose devastation and torment the barbarians are compelled to go against their will—according, that is, to that word which the destroyer of the land of Israel, the king of the Assyrians, speaks: Have I come up to this place without the Lord's will? The Lord said to me: Go up against this land and destroy it. And elsewhere the sacred discourse: Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will send and take Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, my servant, and he shall come and smite the land of Egypt. Whence we can recognise that all things which are afflicted are indeed struck by the judgment of God, yet nonetheless, as I have often recalled, are overthrown on account of sins.
And through this, whatever has been done is to be ascribed to sins, not to God; because it is rightly ascribed to that thing which demanded that something be done. For a murderer too, when he is put to death by the judge, is punished by his own crime; and a robber or a sacrilegious man, when he is burned in the flames, is consumed by his own crimes. Whence also, that the Vandals crossed over into Africa is to be attributed not to divine severity but to the crime of the Africans; for they drew them thither by a grave and long-standing iniquity, before ever they came. And therefore we ought to understand that it belonged to the divine mercy that He deferred a punishment long due, but to the expiation of the sins and crimes that at length the sinful people received what it deserved.
Unless perhaps we believe the Africans did not deserve this—when surely none deserved it more, inasmuch as into them all kinds of wickedness and impurity flowed together at once. For other men, even if they are bound by some disgraces of vice, are nonetheless not entangled by certain others: even if they are not free from drunkenness, they are free from malice; even if they seethe with lust, they do not rage with rapacity; many, in short, even if incontinence of body accuses them, are commended by simplicity of soul. But in the Africans, in almost all of them, there is nothing of this that pertains to both, that is, to the good as much as to the bad, because the whole is utterly evil. So thoroughly, once the sincerity of their original nature was shut out, did vices make in them, as it were, another nature. XIIII.
For, excepting a very few servants of God, what was the whole territory of Africa but one house of vices, like to that brazen cauldron of which the prophet speaks: O city of blood! the cauldron whose rust is in it, and its rust has not gone out of it—because the blood shall not go out of it? He compared the city, as we see, to the cauldron, and iniquity to blood, that we might understand, namely, that iniquity is in the city of that people as boiling blood is in the cauldron. And not unlike this is that word of the sacred discourse: The house of Israel has become to me all mingled together, brass and iron and tin and lead; in the midst silver is mixed. Therefore say this: Thus says the Lord God:
Because you have all become one mixture, I will melt you down and blow upon you in the fire of my wrath. The sacred discourse named metals most unlike one another. And how are diverse things melted down in the same crucible? Namely because in the diversity of metals the dissimilarity of men is signified. And therefore even silver, that is, the metal of nobler material, is given to the same fires, because they condemned the disposition of a nobler nature by a degenerate life. Just as also we read that the Lord said through the prophet concerning the prince of Tyre: Son of man, take up a lamentation over the prince of Tyre, and say to him: Thus says the Lord God: You were the seal of the likeness, and the crown of comeliness in the delights of paradise;
You were clothed with every precious stone, sardius and topaz and emerald. And again: With silver, He says, and with gold you have filled your treasuries; from the multitude of your traffic you have filled your storehouses. Are not all these things such that they seem to be spoken specially of the Africans? For where were greater treasures, where greater traffic, where fuller storehouses? With gold, He says, you have filled your treasuries from the multitude of your traffic. I add more: that Africa was once so rich that the abundance of her traffic seems to me to have filled not only her own treasuries but even those of the world. And what after this? Your heart, He says, was lifted up in your beauty; because of the multitude of your sins I have cast you down to the earth.
How does this too fit the African power, or in what way does it seem to have been cast down to the earth? How, except that, when it lost the loftiness of its ancient power, it lost, as it were, a heavenly dignity? And I will bring forth, He says, fire from the midst of you; this shall devour you. What is truer than this? For from the very midst of their iniquity went out the fire of sin, which devoured the felicity of the former time. And all, He says, who knew you among the nations shall be grieved over you. Let us not think this fits them, unless the overthrow of the African soil is the mourning of the human race. You have become, He says, a perdition, and you shall be no more forever. That all things there have now been led into perdition is sufficiently established;
It remains that the continuation of eternal punishments should not follow upon the penalties of present evils. XV. But let not God allow this, according to the affection of His mercy. For as far as the desert of our crimes is concerned, the matter so stands that it might seem able to be endured. For what expiation was not always committed there? Nor do I speak of all, because they are almost monstrous and such great things cannot be known or told. I speak of the obscenity of impurities alone, or above all, and, what is more grievous, of sacrileges. I pass over in some measure the madness of cupidity, the vice of the whole human race; I pass over the inhumanity of avarice, the evil proper to almost all Romans; let drunkenness be left aside, common to noble and ignoble alike; let pride and arrogance be passed over in silence;
So peculiar is this a kingdom of the rich, that they think they perhaps lose something of their right, if anyone else should wish to claim anything of it for himself: let there be passed over, finally, almost every crime of frauds, falsehoods, and perjuries; no Roman state was ever free of these evils, even though this crime was more especially the crime of all the Africans. For just as into the bilge of a deep ship the drainings of all filth flow, so into their morals vices flowed together as if from all the world. For I know no wickedness which did not there overflow, since surely even pagan and savage peoples, although they have their own evils in particular, are yet not in all things worthy of execration.
The nation of the Goths is faithless but chaste; that of the Alans unchaste but less faithless; the Franks are liars but hospitable; the Saxons are savage in cruelty but wondrous in chastity: all nations, in short, have, as they have their own peculiar evils, so also certain goods. In the Africans, in almost all of them, I know not what is not evil. If inhumanity is to be accused, they are inhuman; if drunkenness, they are drunkards; if falsehood, they are most false; if guile, they are most fraudulent; if cupidity, they are most greedy; if faithlessness, they are most faithless. Their impurity and blasphemy are not to be mingled with all these, because in those evils we have spoken of above they surpassed the vices of other nations, but in these they surpassed even their own. XVI.
And first, to speak of impurity: who does not know that all Africa has ever burned with the obscene torches of lusts—so that you would think it not a land and dwelling-place of men, but an Etna of unchaste flames? For as Etna seethes with certain internal fires of its boiling nature, so did she seethe perpetually with the abominable fires of fornications. Nor do I wish to be believed in this matter on my own assertions; let testimony be sought—that of the human race. Who does not know that all Africans generally are unchaste, unless perhaps those converted to God, that is, changed by faith and religion? But this is so rare and unusual as it can seem rare for any Gaius not to be a Gaius, or any Seius not to be a Seius.
For it is as infrequent and unusual for an African not to be unchaste as it is unusual and strange for an African not to be an African. For so general is the evil of impurity in them, that whoever of them has ceased to be unchaste seems not to be an African. Nor will I run through individual places or examine all their cities, lest I seem to seek out and investigate zealously the things I say. I am content with one only, the chief and, as it were, the mother of all the cities there—that city ever rival to the Roman citadels, once in arms and valour, afterwards in splendour and dignity. I mean Carthage, both most adversary to the city of Rome and, in the African world, as it were a Rome:
Which for this reason alone suffices me as example and testimony, because it had within itself all those things by which throughout the whole world the discipline of the commonwealth is either administered or governed. For there were all the instruments of public offices, there the schools of the liberal arts, there the workshops of philosophers—all the training-grounds, in short, whether of languages or of morals; there too were military forces and powers governing the militia, there the proconsular honour, there the daily judge and ruler, in name indeed a proconsul, but in power a consul:
There, in short, all the dispensers of affairs, and the dignities differing among themselves both in rank and in title, the managers, so to speak, of all streets and crossroads, governing almost all the places of the city and the members of the people. With this one alone, then, are we content as an example and testimony of the rest, so that we may understand, namely, what those cities were which had lesser administrations of upright office, when we have seen what sort of city that was where there were ever the highest rulers. At which point I am nearly brought to regret my promise—that is, what I pledged above: that, passing over almost all the crimes of the Africans, I would speak chiefly of their impurities and blasphemies.
For I see a city, as it were, gushing with vices; I see a city seething with every kind of iniquity, full indeed of crowds but more of shameful deeds, full of riches but more of vices—men outdoing one another in the wickedness of their disgraces, some contending in rapacity, others in impurity, some languid with wine, others distended with gorging, these wreathed with garlands, those smeared with perfumes, all ruined by the various rot of luxury, but almost all laid low by one death of sins; not all indeed intoxicated with wine, yet all drunk with sins. You would think them peoples of no sound condition, of no sense of their own, neither whole in mind nor steady in step, rushing upon one another in droves as after the manner of drunken mobs.
But now that other thing—of what kind, or how grievous—differing indeed in sort, but not differing in iniquity, unless perhaps differing in this: that it is greater. I mean the proscriptions of orphans, the afflictions of widows, the crosses of the poor: who, groaning daily to God and imploring an end to their evils, and—what is most grievous—sometimes even, through the force of excessive bitterness, begging for the coming of the enemy, at length obtained from God that they might at last endure in common with the barbarians the overthrows which they alone had before endured from the Romans. XVII. But grant all these things be passed over, because they are done in almost the whole Roman world, and I pledged that I would say only a little of these evils in this place.
What then of the shamelessness and impurity of which I speak—had it not alone sufficed for the overthrow of the Africans? For what part of the city was not full of filth, what street or path within the city was not a brothel? So thoroughly had nearly all the crossroads, all the ways, been cut off as if by pits of lusts, or veiled over as if by nets, that even those who utterly abhorred this thing could yet scarcely avoid it. You would have seen, as it were, the watch-posts of robbers, snatching the spoils of the wayfarers passing by, who by the density of frequent ambushes had so hedged in absolutely all the paths, all the windings and byways, that scarcely anyone was so cautious as not to run into some snares of ambush, even one who had extricated himself from very many.
All the citizens of that city stank, so to speak, with the mire of lust, breathing in upon one another the foul reek of shamelessness. But these horrid things were nonetheless no horror to them, because the same horror had infected them all. For you would think there had been one bilge of lusts and fornications, a mire gathered as it were from all the refuse of streets and sewers. And what hope could there be there, where—apart from what was in the temple of the Lord—it was permitted to see nothing at all but what was filthy? And yet why do I say 'in the temple of God'? For this indeed pertains only to the priests and clergy:
Whom I do not scrutinise, because I preserve reverence for the ministry of my Lord, and whom I judge to have been the only pure ones at the altar, just as we read that Lot alone was on the mountain when Sodom perished. But as for what pertains to the common people, who in that so countless multitude was chaste? Chaste, do I say? Who was not a fornicator, not an adulterer, and that without ceasing, without end? Therefore I must needs cry out again: what hope could there be in that people, where, when even one adulterer at times pollutes the ecclesiastical congregation, there, among those so many thousands, if you sought most diligently, you could scarcely find a chaste man even in the church? I will say much more.
Would that these things which we have spoken of were the only ones, and that the impurity of the men there had been content to be defiled only by the fornications of filthy women. That is more grievous and more wicked: that those things of which the blessed Apostle Paul complains with the utmost lamentation of soul were among the Africans almost all present—namely that the males, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their desires toward one another, males working shame with males and receiving in themselves the recompense of their error which was fitting. And as they did not approve to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, that they might do the things which are not fitting. Did the blessed Apostle say this of barbarians and savage nations?
By no means, but of us—that is, specially of the Romans: whom indeed the Africans, because they were never able of old to conquer in empire and eminence, conquered in the one thing they could, in impurity. Whoever therefore thinks he has a right to be angry at me, let him rather be angry at the Apostle, namely because what we say the Africans were, he said their masters the Romans were. XVIII. But perhaps what we speak of was hidden, or at least the managers of public discipline everywhere provided for this, lest, being made public, they should defile the eyes of the city with things most wicked. But if this had indeed been done, although many would have existed foul in the deed itself, yet not all would have been
Defiled in sight and mind; and a matter sufficiently disgraceful, when it is done in secret, is wont not to earn credence for the crime. But it is beyond all execration of monstrous guilt to commit the utmost crime and to have no shame at the crime. What, I ask, could have happened there more prodigious? In a Christian city, in an ecclesiastical city, which once the apostles had established by their teachings, which the martyrs had crowned by their sufferings, men professed themselves women in their own persons, and that without any veil of modesty, without any covering of shame; and so, as though it were too little guilt if only the authors of that evil were defiled by so great an evil, by the public profession of the crime the crime of the whole city was also brought about.
For the whole city indeed saw this and suffered it, the judges saw and acquiesced, the people saw and applauded; and so, with the fellowship of disgrace and crime spread through the whole city, even if the deed did not make this common to all, the assent made it common to all. But was there perhaps at some time an end of the evil, or some amendment of that blot? Who could believe or even hear that men had converted to womanish softness not only their own use and nature, but even their countenance, gait, dress, and everything whatsoever that belongs either to the sex or to the appearance of a man?
So thoroughly were all things turned into their opposite, that, whereas nothing ought more to be a matter of shame to men than if they should seem to have anything womanish in themselves, there nothing seemed more base to certain men than if in anything they should seem to be men. XVIIII. But this, you say, was the disgrace of a few, and what was not perpetrated by many could not harm all. Now indeed I have said above, most often, that in the people of God even the crime of one man was a plague to many—as from the theft of Achar the people fell, as from the zeal of Saul a pestilence arose, as from the numbering by holy David came mortality. For so is the church of God, as it were, an eye. For as, even if a small speck of dirt falls into the eye, it blinds the whole light, so in the ecclesiastical body
Even if a few do filthy things, they obscure almost the whole light of the church's splendour. And therefore the Saviour Himself named the chief part of the church an eye, saying: The lamp of your body is your eye. If your eye be single, your whole body will be bright; but if your eye be evil, your whole body will be dark. Whence also the Apostle says: Do you not know that a little leaven corrupts the whole lump? Although I would say that there it was not a little of this evil, but too much—not because the effeminate were very many, but because the softness of a few is the ruin of very many. For even if there are few who endure disgraceful things, there are many who are polluted by the filth of the few.
For just as one harlot makes many fornicators, so the abominable commingling of a few effeminates defiles almost the greatest part of the people. And I know not which of them are worse before God, since in the sacred writings they are condemned by an equal lot. For neither the effeminate, He says, nor the abusers of themselves with mankind shall possess the kingdom of God. That therefore is the more to be groaned over and lamented: that such a crime as this seemed to be even the crime of the whole commonwealth, and the entire dignity of the Roman name was branded with the infamy of a prodigious deed.
For when men took up womanish dress and broke their gait more than women, when they wove upon themselves certain tokens of monstrous impurity and veiled their heads with the female bindings of coverings, and this publicly in a Roman city—the highest and most renowned city there—what else was it than a disgrace to the Roman empire, that in the very bosom of the commonwealth the most execrable outrage should be openly permitted to be committed? For a great and most powerful authority, which is able to restrain the greatest crime, as it were approves that it ought to be done, if knowingly it suffers it to be perpetrated; for in whose hand it is to forbid, he commands the doing, if he does not forbid the committing. XX.
Again, since grief demands it, I ask of those who are angry: among what barbarian nations were these things ever done, or ever permitted to be done with public impunity? Finally, that it may not be necessary to dispute or investigate longer on this matter, let us compare those very devastators of Africa with the peoples of the Africans. Let us see what like thing was done by the Vandals.
And surely the barbarians, swollen with elation, proud in victory, dissolved by the affluence of riches and delights—who assuredly, even if they had always been most continent and most disciplined, might yet have been changed by so great a felicity of things favouring them—having entered, namely, as it is written in the divine letters, a land flowing with milk and honey, fruitful, most opulent, as if drunk with the abundance of all delights: in which it would surely have been no wonder at all if a barbarian nation had run to luxury, where nature herself was in a manner like one running to luxury.
Who would not think that the Vandals, having entered these places, immersed themselves in every mire of vices and impurities, or, to speak most gently, at least did those things which had been continually done by the Africans, into whose rights they had migrated? And surely, if only that, they were to be judged most continent and most modest, whom felicity itself had not made more corrupt. For how rare is any wise man whom prosperity does not change, in whom vice does not grow with prosperity? And through this it is certain that the Vandals were most temperate, if, being such as those were who were captured and subjugated, such were they, the victors. Therefore, in so great an affluence of things and luxury, none of them became effeminate. Does this seem too little?
Surely even noble Romans had been on familiar terms with this. But why do I add still more? None even among the Romans there was polluted by the incest of the effeminate. Surely among the Romans this was long since so esteemed that it was thought to be a virtue rather than a vice, and those men believed themselves the more of manly courage who had most broken men by the shamefulness of female use. Whence also came that practice, that to the camp-followers who once accompanied the boys of the army, these stipends of labour were decreed as if for well-deserved campaigns, that, because they were brave men, they should change men into women. O the outrage!
And this the Romans—I add more—and this Romans not of this time; yet, lest we accuse the ancients, Romans, but not the old ones—already corrupt, already dissolute, already unlike themselves and their own, and more like Greeks than Romans; so that, as we have often said already, it is no wonder at all if the Roman commonwealth at length suffers what it has long deserved. XXI. This impurity, then, began to be among the Romans before the Gospel of Christ, and—what is more grievous—did not cease even after the Gospels. And who after this would not marvel at the peoples of the Vandals?
Who, having entered the most opulent cities, where all these things were done everywhere, so obtained the delights of corrupted men that they repudiated the corruptions of morals, and possess the use of good things while shunning the defilements of evil ones. Such things as these, then, can suffice for their praise, even if I say no others: for they abominated the impurities of vices; I add still more: they abominated even those of women, they shuddered at the haunts and brothels, they shuddered at the couplings and contacts of harlots. Can this be seen credible to any—that the Romans committed these things, that the barbarians shuddered at them? Or is there anything after these things we have said that can seem worth saying? But there is, and there is much more. For that we said they shunned foul things is the lesser part;
For one can shudder at dishonourable things without removing them: this is of great and singular merit, not only not to be polluted by the blot oneself, but even to provide that others never be polluted. For he is in a manner a steward of human salvation who does not only act that he himself be good, but strives to effect this also, that others cease to be evil. Great indeed is what we say, great and preeminent. Who believes that the Vandals did this in the Roman cities? For the impurity of the flesh has been removed from them all. But how removed? Not as some things are wont to be removed by the Romans, who decree that there be no stealing and yet steal, who decree that there be no adultery and are the first to commit adultery. Although I can almost not say that they steal;
For the things they do are not thefts, but robberies. For the judge punishes embezzlement in another, when he himself is an embezzler; he punishes plunder, when he himself is a plunderer; he punishes the assassin, when he himself is a gladiator; he punishes the breakers of bolts and doors, when he himself is an overthrower of cities; he punishes the despoilers of houses, when he himself is a despoiler of provinces. And would that this were only for those who are set in power, and to whom the very honour grants the right of practising robberies: that is the more grievous and more intolerable, that even private men do this, having formerly discharged the same honours. So much does honour, once obtained, grant them of benefit, that they always have the right of robbing.
So much so that, even when they have ceased to hold public power for administering, they nonetheless do not cease to hold private power for robbing; and thus that power which the judges held is lighter than this which private men hold: for in the former they are often succeeded, in the latter never. Behold what the statutes of the laws avail; behold what the definition of sanctions profits, which they most of all despise who administer them. Truly the humble and abject are compelled to obey, the poor little folk are constrained to comply with commands, and unless they comply, they are punished. For in this matter they have the same reasoning as in tributes: they alone serve the public commands, just as they alone pay the tributes.