XIII. ON THE CARE TO BE TAKEN FOR THE DEAD, TO PAULINUS. For a long time, venerable fellow-bishop Paulinus, I have been a debtor to your holiness for a reply, ever since you wrote to me through the servants of our most religious daughter Flora, asking of me whether it profits anyone after death that his body is buried near the memorial of some saint. For this the aforesaid widow had asked of you on behalf of her son deceased in those parts, and you had written back consoling her; and you also announced that concerning the corpse of the faithful young man Cynegius, that which she desired with a maternal and pious affection had been accomplished — namely, that he should be laid in the basilica of the most blessed confessor Felix.
On which occasion it came about that through the same bearers of your letters you also wrote to me, pressing this kind of question, and demanding that I should answer what seemed to me thereon, yourself not being silent as to what you think. For you say it seems to you that the motions of religious and faithful souls, who take care of such things for their own, are not empty. You add too that it cannot be idle that the whole Church has been accustomed to supplicate for the dead, so that from this it may also be inferred that it profits a man after death, if by the faith of his own such a place is provided for the burial of his body, in which the aid of the saints, sought even in this manner, may appear. But since these things are so, how it is not contrary to this opinion what the Apostle says, you signify that you do not sufficiently see:
'For we shall all stand before the tribunal of Christ, that every one may receive according to the things which he hath done in the body, whether it be good or evil.' For this apostolic sentence admonishes that before death there be done what may profit after death, not then, when there is now to be received what each one has done before death. But this question is thus resolved: since by a certain manner of life, while one lives in this body, it is acquired that such things should be of some help to the dead, and thereby, according to the things they have done in the body, they are helped by the things which after the body have been religiously done for them.
For there are those whom these things help in no way at all — whether they be done for those whose merits are so evil that they are not worthy to be helped by such things, or for those whose merits are so good that they need no such aids. It is therefore by the kind of life which each has led in the body that it is brought about that whatever is piously done for him profit or profit not, when he has left the body. For the merit through which these things may profit, if none has been prepared in this life, is sought in vain after this life. So it comes about that neither does the Church, nor the care of their own, expend in vain for the dead whatever of religion it can, and yet every one bears according to the things which he hath done in the body, whether good or evil — the Lord rendering to each according to his works.
For that this which is expended may profit him after the body, it was acquired in that life which he led in the body. This my brief reply could have sufficed for your inquiry; but attend a little to what other things may raise difficulties, to which I judge a response must be made. In the books of the Maccabees we read of a sacrifice offered for the dead. But even if it were nowhere at all read in the ancient Scriptures, the authority of the universal Church, which shines forth in this custom, is not small, where in the prayers of the priest which are poured out to the Lord God at His altar, the commendation of the dead also has its own place. But whether the place of his body profits anything to the soul of the dead is to be inquired more laboriously.
And first, whether it makes any difference toward inflicting or increasing misery after this life upon the spirits of men, if their bodies have not been buried, is to be seen not according to opinion however widely spread, but rather according to the sacred writings of our religion. For it is not to be believed, as is read in Maro, that the unburied are prevented from sailing and crossing over the infernal stream — because forsooth 'nor is it granted to carry them over the dreadful banks and hoarse-sounding waters, before their bones have rested in their seats.'
What Christian heart would incline to these poetic and fabulous fictions, when the Lord Jesus — so that Christians might fall securely amid the hands of enemies who held their bodies in their power — asserts that not a hair of their head shall perish, exhorting them not to fear those who, when they have killed the body, have nothing more that they can do? Whence in the first book 'On the City of God' I have spoken enough, as I judge, to blunt the tooth of those who, imputing the barbarian devastation — especially that which Rome lately suffered — to Christian times, object also this, that Christ did not there succour His own.
When it is answered them that the souls of the faithful were, according to the merits of their faith, received up by Him, they mock over the unburied corpses. And so I unfolded that whole question concerning burial in words such as these. 'But in so great a slaughter of bodies,' I said, 'they could not even be buried.' Yet devout faith is not overly frightened by this, holding fast the prediction that even devouring beasts shall do no harm to bodies destined to rise again, of whom not a hair of the head shall perish. In no way would Truth have said, 'Fear not those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul,' if anything that enemies might wish to do to the bodies of the slain could stand in the way of the life to come.
Unless perhaps 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. It is therefore false, what He says: 'those who kill the body and afterward have nothing more that they can do' — if they have so many things that they may do to the corpses. Far be it that what Truth has spoken should be false! For it was said that they do something when they kill, because in the body there is sensation in the killing; but afterward they have nothing that they can do, because there is no sensation in the slain body.
And so the earth did not cover many bodies of Christians, yet no one of them did anyone separate from heaven and earth, which He wholly fills with His presence who knows whence to raise up again what He created. It is indeed said in the psalm: 'They have set the dead bodies of Thy servants as food for the birds of heaven, the flesh of Thy 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 was said rather to magnify the cruelty of those who did these things, not the wretchedness of those who suffered them. For however hard and dire these things may seem 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 consolations of the living rather than aids to the dead. If a costly burial profits the impious in anything, then a mean burial, or none at all, will harm the pious. For that rich man clothed in purple a throng of servants provided splendid obsequies in the sight of men; but far more splendid in the sight of the Lord did the ministry of angels furnish to that ulcerous poor man, who did not bear him up into a marble tomb, but raised him into Abraham's bosom. These things are laughed at by those against whom we have undertaken to defend the City of God. And yet even their own philosophers held the care of burial in contempt.
And often whole armies, while they died for their earthly fatherland, took no care where they should afterward lie, or to what beasts they should become food; and it was permitted the poets to say plausibly on this matter: 'He is covered by the sky, who has no urn.' How much less ought they to insult over the unburied bodies of Christians, to whom the refashioning of that very flesh and of all its members is promised — to be rendered and restored 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! Nor yet on that account are the bodies of the dead to be despised and cast aside, and most of all of the just and the faithful, which the Spirit used holily as organs and vessels for all good works.
For if a father's garment and ring, or anything of this sort, is the dearer to posterity the greater the affection toward the parents, then in no way are those very bodies to be spurned which we wear far more intimately and closely joined than any raiment whatever. For these belong not to adornment or to some aid applied from without, but to the very nature of man. Whence also the funerals of the ancient just were tended with dutiful piety, and their obsequies celebrated, and their burial provided; and they themselves, while they yet lived, gave charge to their sons concerning the burying, or even the transferring, of their bodies. And Tobias, by burying the dead, is commended, on an angel's testimony, to have deserved well of God.
The Lord Himself also, who was to rise again on the third day, proclaims the good work of the devout woman, and commends it as worthy to be proclaimed — that she poured precious ointment over His limbs and did this toward His burial. And they are commemorated with praise in the Gospel who took His body down from the cross and diligently and honourably saw to its covering and burial. But these authoritative examples do not admonish us that there is any sensation in corpses, but signify that the bodies of the dead also pertain to the providence of God — to whom even such offices of piety are pleasing — for the purpose of establishing faith in the resurrection.
Where also this is wholesomely learned: how great may be the recompense for the alms which we bestow upon the living and sentient, if not even this is lost with God which is paid out in duty and diligence to the lifeless members of men. There are indeed also other things which the holy patriarchs concerning their bodies — whether to be laid up or to be transferred — willed to be understood as spoken in a prophetic spirit; but this is not the place to treat of them, since those things we have said suffice. But if the things necessary for sustaining the living, such as food and clothing, though they be lacking with grievous affliction, do not break the virtue of enduring and bearing amid good things, nor uproot piety from the soul, but rather make it, being exercised, more fruitful:
how much more, when there are lacking those things which are wont to be applied to the tending of funerals and the laying up of the bodies of the dead, do they not make wretched those already at rest in the hidden abodes of the pious! And by 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 furnish them, nor the punishment of the dead, who cannot feel them. This is my judgment concerning the cause and reason of burial; which I have therefore transferred from another book of mine into this one, because this could more easily be recited by me than the same thing could have to be expressed in another way.
But if this is true, then surely even the provision of a place among the memorials of the saints for the burying of bodies is a mark of good human affection toward the funerals of one's own. For if there is some religious feeling in that they be buried, there cannot be none when it is regarded where they be buried. But when such consolations of the living are sought, whereby their devout mind toward their own may appear, I do not see what aids there are for the dead, save this: that while they recall where the bodies of those they love are laid, they may, in prayer, commend them to those same saints as to patrons, that they may be aided before the Lord, being taken under their protection. This indeed they could do, even if they could not inter them in such places.
But for no other reason are those tombs of the dead which are made conspicuously called either 'memorials' or 'monuments,' except because they recall to memory those who have been withdrawn by death from the eyes of the living — lest by forgetfulness they be also withdrawn from the hearts — and by admonishing make them to be thought upon. For both the name 'memorial' shows this most plainly, and 'monument' is so named because it admonishes the mind, that is, reminds it. On which account the Greeks too call that a 'mnēmeion' which we call a memorial or monument, since in their tongue the very memory whereby we remember is called 'mnēmē.'
And so when the mind recalls where the body of one most dear is buried, and there occurs a place honoured by the name of a martyr, it commends the beloved soul to that same martyr with the affection of one who remembers and prays. And when this is rendered to the dead by the faithful most dear to them, there is no doubt that it profits those who, while they lived in the body, so lived as to have merited that such things should profit them after this life.
But even if some necessity, no facility being given, should permit neither the burying of bodies nor their burying in such places, still the supplications for the spirits of the dead are not to be omitted — supplications which the Church has taken upon herself to make for all the departed in Christian and catholic fellowship, even with their names unspoken, under a general commemoration, so that to those who lack for these offices parents or sons or any kinsfolk or friends, they may be rendered by the one common devout mother. But if these supplications, which are made with right faith and piety for the dead, were lacking, I think it would profit their spirits nothing, however much their lifeless bodies were laid in holy places.
When therefore a faithful mother desired that the body of her faithful deceased son be laid in the basilica of a martyr — if indeed she believed his soul to be aided by the merits of the martyr — this, that she thus believed, was a kind of supplication, and it profited, if it profited anything. And that she has recourse in mind to the same sepulchre, and more and more commends her son in prayers, it is not the place of the dead body that aids the spirit of the departed, but the living affection of the mother arising from the memory of the place. For at once both who is commended and to whom he is commended touches, and not fruitlessly, the religious mind of the one praying.
For those who pray also do with the members of their body what befits suppliants, when they bend the knees, when they stretch forth the hands, or even prostrate themselves upon the ground, and whatever else they do visibly — although their invisible will and the intention of the heart is known to God, nor does He need these signs that the human mind should be laid open to Him. But by this a man rather rouses himself to pray and to groan more humbly and more fervently; and, in some way I know not, since these motions of the body cannot come to pass save with a motion of the soul going before, yet when these same are done outwardly and visibly, that inner invisible motion which caused them is increased, and by this the affection of the heart, which went before that these things might be done, grows because they are done.
Nevertheless, if anyone be so held, or even bound, that he cannot do these things with his members, not on that account does the inner man fail to pray, and before the eyes of God in the most secret chamber, where he is pricked with compunction, to prostrate himself. So also, although it matters greatly where he who supplicates God for the spirit of his dead should lay the body — since both the preceding affection chose a holy place, and, the body being laid there, the holy place, when recalled, renews and augments the affection that had gone before — nevertheless, even if he cannot bury where the religious mind chose the one he loves, in no way ought he to cease from the necessary supplications in commending him.
For wherever the flesh of the dead may lie, or not lie, rest is to be procured for the spirit, which, when it went forth thence, took with it the sensation whereby it could be present to how each one fares, whether in good things or in evil; nor does it look to be aided in its life by that flesh, to which it itself furnished life, which it drew away in departing and will restore in returning — since it is not the flesh that gains for the spirit, but the spirit for the flesh, even the merit of that very resurrection, whether it revive unto punishment or unto glory.
We read in the ecclesiastical history, which Eusebius wrote in Greek and Rufinus turned into the Latin tongue, that the bodies of the martyrs in Gaul were exposed to dogs, and that the leavings of the dogs and the bones of the dead were consumed with fire to the utmost destruction, and those same ashes were scattered in the river Rhone, lest anything be left to any memorial whatever. And this is to be believed to have been divinely permitted for no other reason than that Christians might learn, in confessing Christ — while they despise this life — much more to despise burial. For that which was done to the bodies of the martyrs with monstrous savagery, if it harmed them in anything, whereby their most victorious spirits should rest the less blessedly, would surely not have been suffered to be done.
By the very fact, then, it was declared that the Lord did not say, 'Fear not those who kill the body and afterward have nothing more that they can do,' because He would not permit them to do anything to the bodies of their dead, but because whatever they were permitted to do, nothing would come to pass whereby the Christian felicity of the departed should be diminished, nothing thence would reach the sensation of the living after death, nothing to the detriment even of the bodies themselves that would bear upon their rising less whole. And yet, out of that affection of the human heart, whereby no one ever hated his own flesh, if men know that something will be lacking to their bodies after their death which the solemn custom of burial requires in each one's nation or country,
they are grieved as men, and, though it does not pertain to them after death, they fear for their bodies before death — so that it is found in the books of Kingdoms that God, through a prophet, threatened another prophet, who had transgressed His word, that his corpse should not be brought into the sepulchre of his fathers. Which scripture runs thus: 'Thus saith the Lord: Because thou wast disobedient to the mouth of the Lord, and didst not keep the commandment which the Lord thy God enjoined thee, and hast turned back and eaten bread and drunk water in the place wherein He commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat bread nor drink water, thy corpse shall not be brought into the sepulchre of thy fathers.'
At how great a price this punishment is to be reckoned — if we consider it according to the Gospel, where we have learned that after the body is slain nothing is to be feared lest the lifeless members suffer aught — it is not even to be called a punishment. But if we consider the human affection toward one's own flesh, the living man could be frightened or grieved thereat, though he was not to feel it when dead; and this was a punishment, since the mind grieved that this would befall his body, although when it came to pass he would not grieve. For thus far the Lord willed to chastise His servant, who had spurned to fulfil His precept not through his own obstinacy, but believed himself to obey when a stranger's deceiving falsehood misled him — when he did not obey.
For it is not to be thought that he was so slain by the beast's bite that his soul was thereafter snatched to the torment of Tartarus, seeing that the very same lion which had killed him guarded his body — the beast of burden also, on which he rode, being unharmed, and standing together with that huge wild creature in fearless presence beside its master's corpse. By which marvellous sign it appears that the man of God was rather chastened temporally, even unto death, than punished after death. Concerning which matter the Apostle, when on account of certain offences he had made mention of the infirmities and deaths of many, says: 'For if we judged ourselves, we should not be judged by the Lord; but when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, that we be not condemned with the world.'
Indeed he who had deceived him buried him honourably enough in his own monument, and took care to be buried himself beside his bones, thus hoping that his own bones too might be spared when the time should come — when, according to the prophecy of that man of God, Josiah king of Judah in that land dug up the bones of many of the dead, and with those bones defiled the sacrilegious altars which had been set up for graven images. For he spared that monument where the prophet lay, who more than three hundred years before had foretold these things; and for his sake not even the burial of him who had seduced him was violated. For by that affection whereby no one ever hated his own flesh he had provided for his corpse — he who had slain his own soul by a lie.
From this, therefore — that each one naturally loves his own flesh — it was both a punishment to the one to learn that he would not be in the sepulchre of his fathers, and a care to the other to provide that his bones should be spared, if he lay beside him whose sepulchre no one would violate. This affection the martyrs of Christ, contending for the truth, overcame. Nor is it a wonder that they despised what they were not going to feel once death was accomplished, they who could not be conquered by torments which they felt while living. God could indeed — He who suffered the lion no further to touch the prophet's body which itself had slain, and made a guardian of the slayer — He could, I say, have kept off from the slain bodies of His own the dogs to which they had been thrown;
He could also in innumerable ways have terrified the savagery of those very men, that they should not dare to burn the corpses, nor to scatter the ashes: but this trial too ought not to have been lacking from the manifold variety of temptations, lest the fortitude of confession, which yielded not to the monstrousness of persecution for the safety of the body, should tremble for the honour of a sepulchre; and finally, lest the faith of the resurrection should dread the consuming of bodies.
These things too, therefore, ought to have been permitted, so that even after such examples of so great horror, the martyrs, fervent in the confession of Christ, might become witnesses also of this truth — in which they had learned that those by whom their bodies were slain would afterward have nothing that they could do, since whatever they did to the dead bodies they would in fact do nothing, when in flesh devoid of all life neither could he who had migrated thence feel anything, nor could He who created it lose anything therefrom.
But amid these things which were being done to the bodies of the slain, while the martyrs, not fearing them, endured with great fortitude, yet among the brethren there was a mighty grief, because no power was given to render the due rites to the funerals of the saints, nor to withdraw anything secretly, as the same history testifies the vigils of the cruel guards permitted. Thus, while no wretchedness touched those who had been slain — in the tearing of their members, in the burning of their bones, in the scattering of their ashes — yet a great compassion tormented these who could bury none of them, because in men in no way feeling they in some way felt; and where there was now no suffering of those, there was the wretched fellow-suffering of these.
According to that wretched fellow-suffering which I have spoken of, those men are praised and blessed by King David who showed the mercy of burial to the dry bones of Saul and Jonathan. What mercy, after all, is shown to those who feel nothing? Or is it perhaps to be recalled into our opinion that the unburied could not cross the infernal river? Far be this from the Christian faith! Otherwise it went most ill with so great a multitude of martyrs, whose bodies could not be buried, and Truth spoke to them falsely: 'Fear not those who kill the body and afterward have nothing more that they can do,' if they could do them so great evils whereby they should be hindered from passing to the longed-for places.
But since this is without any doubt most utterly false, and neither does the burial denied to their bodies harm the faithful in anything, nor, if it be furnished to the unfaithful, does it profit them in anything — why then are those who buried Saul and his son said to have done a work of mercy, and on that account blessed by the pious king, unless because the hearts of the compassionate are well affected, when they grieve in the bodies of others' dead over those things which, by that affection whereby no one ever hated his own flesh, they do not wish to be done after their own death to their own bodies; and what they wish to be shown to themselves, when they shall not feel it, they take care to show to others who feel nothing, while they themselves feel? Certain visions are related which seem to bring to this discussion a question not to be neglected.
For it is reported that not a few of the dead have appeared, whether in dreams or in some other manner whatsoever, to the living who knew not where their bodies lay unburied, and, the places being pointed out, have admonished them that the burial which had been lacking should be furnished them. If we should answer that these things are false, we shall seem to come impudently against the writings of certain of the faithful and against the perception of those who affirm that such things happened to them. But it must be answered that the dead are not on that account to be thought to feel these things, because they seem to say or indicate or ask these things in dreams.
For the living too often appear to the living while asleep, though they themselves know not that they appear, and hear from them these things which they had dreamed, as the dreamers say that they saw them in dreams doing or speaking something. If, therefore, someone can see me in his dreams indicating to him something that has been done, or even foretelling something that is to be — while I am utterly ignorant of it and care nothing at all, not only what that man dreams, but whether he wakes while I sleep, or sleeps while I wake, or whether we both wake or sleep at one and the same time, when he sees the dream in which he sees me:
what wonder is it if the dead, not knowing nor feeling these things, are nevertheless seen in dreams by the living and say something which the wakers recognize to be true? By angelic operations, therefore, I should believe it comes to pass — whether it be permitted from above or commanded — that they seem to say something in dreams about the burying of their bodies, while they whose bodies these are know nothing at all of it. And this is sometimes done usefully, whether for some consolation of the living to whom those dead pertain, whose images appear to the dreamers, or that by these admonitions the humane office of burial may be commended to the human race — which, though it help not the departed, is yet neglected with a culpable irreligiousness.
But sometimes by deceptive visions men are cast into great errors, which it is just that such should undergo. As if someone should see in dreams what Aeneas is related, by poetic falsehood, to have seen among the shades, and there should appear to him the image of some unburied man and speak such things as Palinurus is said to have spoken to him; and when he awakes, should find the body there where, while he dreamed, he heard it lay unburied, being admonished and asked to bury the one found; and because he finds this to be true, should therefore believe that the dead are buried in order that their souls may pass to the places whence he dreamed that the souls of the unburied are prohibited by an infernal law: does he not, so believing, stray very far from the path of truth?