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