For that could perish on earth which one was loath to transfer hence. For those who received the counsel of their Lord who said: 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, where the moth and rust destroy, and where thieves dig through and steal; but treasure up for yourselves a treasure in heaven, whither the thief approaches not, neither does the moth corrupt; for where thy treasure is, there will thy heart be also' — these, in the time of tribulation, proved how rightly they had judged in not despising a most truthful teacher and a most faithful and most invincible guardian of their treasure. For if many rejoiced that they had their riches there, whither it happened that the enemy did not approach:
how much more certainly and securely could those rejoice who, by the admonition of their God, migrated thither whither the enemy could by no means approach at all! Whence our Paulinus, bishop of Nola, from a most opulent rich man voluntarily a most poor and most abundantly holy man, when the barbarians laid waste Nola itself, and he was held by them, thus prayed in his heart, as we afterwards learned from him: 'Lord, let me not be tortured on account of gold and silver; for where all my things are, Thou knowest.' For there he had all his things, where He who had foretold these evils to come upon the world had shown him to store up and treasure them.
And on this account, those who had obeyed their Lord admonishing them where and in what manner they ought to treasure up, did not lose even those earthly riches themselves when the barbarians rushed in. But those who repented of not having obeyed learned what ought to be done about such things, if not by preceding wisdom, at least by consequent experience. But indeed, some even good Christians were tortured that they might betray their goods to the enemy. Yet they could neither betray nor lose the good by which they themselves were good. But if they preferred to be tortured rather than to betray 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, that they might rather learn to love Him who would enrich with eternal felicity those who suffered for Him, and not gold and silver, for which it was most wretched to suffer, whether it was hidden by lying or betrayed by telling the truth. For indeed amid the torments no one lost Christ by confessing Him, no one saved gold except by denying it. Wherefore the torments were perhaps more useful, which taught that an incorruptible good was to be loved, than those goods which without any useful fruit tortured their owners by love of them. But some, even not having anything to betray, were tortured because they were not believed. And these perhaps wished to have it, and were not poor by a holy will;
to whom it had to be demonstrated that not their fortunes but their very cupidities were worthy of such torments. But if, by the resolve of a better life, they had no gold or silver stored away, I do not indeed know whether it happened to any such that he was tortured while believed to have it: yet even if it did happen, assuredly he who amid those torments confessed holy poverty was confessing Christ. Wherefore, although he did not deserve to be believed by the enemy, nevertheless the confessor of holy poverty could not be tortured without a heavenly reward. Many, they say, even Christians, a long-lasting famine devastated. This too the good faithful turned to their own uses by piously enduring it. For those whom the famine slew, it snatched from the evils of this life, as a bodily disease does:
but those whom it did not slay, it taught to live more sparingly, it taught to fast more prolongedly. But indeed many Christians also were slain, many were consumed by the foul variety of many kinds of death. If this is to be borne with difficulty, 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 same of a life as long as of a short one. For neither is one thing better and another worse, nor one thing greater and another shorter, which now equally is not. And what does it matter by what kind of death this life is ended, when he to whom it is ended is not compelled to die again?
But since to each of mortals, under the daily chances of this life, innumerable deaths in a manner threaten, so long as it is uncertain which one of them is going to come: I ask whether it is better to suffer one by dying, or to fear 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 it is one thing which the sense of the flesh, weakly timid, recoils from, another thing which the reason of the mind, diligently sifted out, convinces. That death is not to be thought evil which a good life has preceded. For nothing makes death evil except that which follows death. Those, therefore, who must necessarily die need not greatly care what happens to make them die, but whither dying they are compelled to go.
Since therefore Christians know that the death of the religious poor man amid the tongues of the licking 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? But indeed, in so great a slaughter of corpses, they could not even bury them. Yet pious faith does not too greatly dread this, holding fast the prediction that not even the devouring beasts will harm the bodies that are to rise again, of whom 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 the enemies might wish to do to the bodies of the slain could injure the future life.
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 killed body not to be buried. Then is that false which Christ says: 'Those who kill the body, and afterward have nothing more that they can do,' if they have so many things which they can do to the corpses? Far be it that what the Truth has said should be false. It is said that they do something when they kill, because in the body there is sensation in the act of killing; but afterward they have nothing that they can do, because there is no sensation in the killed body.
And so the earth did not cover many bodies of Christians, but no one separated any of them from heaven and earth, all of which is filled by the presence of Him 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 rather to exaggerate the cruelty of those who did these things, not to signify the unhappiness of those who suffered them. For although these things seem harsh 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 condition of the burial, the pomp of the obsequies — are rather solaces of the living than aids of the dead. If a costly burial profits the impious man anything, a cheap one or none at all will harm the pious man. The crowd of servants furnished splendid obsequies in the sight of men to that purple-clad rich man, but the ministry of angels furnished far more glorious ones in the sight of the Lord to that ulcerous poor man, who did not bear him up into a marble tomb, but lifted him up into Abraham's bosom. They laugh at these things, those against whom we have undertaken to defend the City of God. Yet even their own philosophers despised the care of burial.
And often whole armies, while they died for their earthly fatherland, cared not where they should afterward lie or for what beasts they should become food, and it was permitted the poets to say plausibly concerning this matter: 'He is covered by heaven who has no urn.' How much less ought they to insult over Christians concerning unburied bodies, to whom even the reformation of the very flesh and of all its members is promised to be restored and made whole in a point of time, not only from the earth, but even from the most secret bosom of the other elements, whither the dissolved corpses have withdrawn. Nor yet on that account are the bodies of the departed, and most of all of the just and faithful, to be despised and cast away, of which the Spirit made holy use as of organs and vessels for all good works.
For if a father's garment and ring, and anything of this kind, is dearer to posterity in proportion as the affection toward parents is greater: in no way are those bodies themselves to be spurned, which assuredly we wear far more familiarly and intimately than any garments whatever. For these do not pertain to ornament or to an aid which is applied from without, but to the very nature of man. Whence also the funerals of the ancient just were cared for with dutiful piety, and their obsequies celebrated, and their burial provided; and they themselves, while they lived, commanded their sons concerning the burying or even the transferring of their bodies; and Tobias is commended, by the witness of an angel, as having merited well with God by burying the dead.
The Lord Himself, too, about to rise again on the third day, proclaims the good work of the religious woman and commends it as worthy to be proclaimed, because she poured out precious ointment upon His members and did this toward His burial. And in the Gospel those are praised with commendation who took His body down from the cross and carefully and honourably cared for its covering and burial. But these authorities do not admonish us of this — that there is any sensation in corpses — but signify that the bodies also of the dead pertain to the providence of God, to whom even such offices of piety are pleasing, for the sake of establishing faith in the resurrection.
Here too we learn a wholesome lesson: how great the reward may be for the acts of mercy which we render to the living and the sentient, if not even this is lost in God's sight, namely the office and careful attention paid to the lifeless limbs of men. There are indeed other things which the holy patriarchs wished to be understood as spoken in a prophetic spirit concerning the burying or removing of their bodies; but this is not the place to treat of them at length, since what we have said suffices. Yet if those things which are necessary for the sustaining of the living, such as food and clothing, though their absence brings grievous affliction, do not break in good men the virtue of endurance and forbearance, nor uproot piety from the soul, but rather, having exercised it, make it more fruitful:
how much more, when there are lacking those things which are wont to be applied to the care of funerals and the burial of the dead, do they not make wretched those who are already at rest in the hidden abodes of the pious! And therefore, when these things were wanting 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 were not able to provide them, nor the punishment of the dead, who cannot perceive them. But many, they say, even Christians, were led away captive. This indeed would be 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; nor was God, the Consoler, absent.
Thus, then, He did not forsake His faithful ones under the dominion of a nation, barbarous though it was, yet human — He who did not forsake His prophet even in the belly of the beast. These things too those with whom we deal prefer to mock rather than to believe, though they believe in their own writings that Arion of Methymna, that most renowned harper, when he had been cast from a ship, was taken up on the back of a dolphin and carried to land. Truly that story of ours about the prophet Jonah is more incredible. Plainly more incredible because more marvelous, and more marvelous because it shows greater power. But these men have, among their own illustrious heroes, a most noble example of captivity to be endured 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 keep the Romans' captives, they sent this Regulus in particular, along with their own envoys, to Rome to obtain this, having first bound him by an oath that, if he did not accomplish what they wished, he would return to Carthage. He went, and in the senate advised the contrary, since he did not think it advantageous to the Roman commonwealth to exchange captives. Nor after this counsel was he compelled by his own people to return to the enemy, but because he had sworn, he willingly fulfilled it. And they put him to death with contrived and horrible tortures.
For they shut him up in a narrow wooden frame, where he was forced to stand, and which was pierced on every side with the sharpest nails, so that he could not lean toward any part of it without the most cruel torments; and thus they killed him even by keeping him awake. Rightly indeed do they praise a virtue greater than so great a misfortune. Yet he had sworn by those gods whose worship, they suppose, when forbidden, brings these disasters upon the human race. If, then, those who were worshiped precisely in order to make this present life prosperous either willed or permitted these punishments to be inflicted on one who swore truly, what worse could they have done in anger to a perjurer? But why should I not rather bring my reasoning to bear upon both alternatives?
He certainly worshiped the gods in such a way that, for the sake of keeping his oath, he neither remained in his fatherland nor went anywhere else, but did not in the least hesitate to return to his bitterest enemies. If he judged this to be advantageous to this life — this life of which he earned so horrible an end — beyond doubt he was deceived. For by his own example he taught that the gods profit their worshipers nothing toward that temporal felicity, since he, devoted to their worship, was both conquered and led away captive, and, because he refused to act otherwise than as he had sworn by them, was tormented and destroyed by a new and previously unheard-of and exceedingly horrible kind of torture.
But if the worship of the gods renders felicity as a reward after this life, why do they slander Christian times, saying that this calamity befell the City because it ceased to worship its gods, when it might, even while worshiping them most diligently, become as wretched as that Regulus was? Unless perchance, against the most manifest truth, someone should so struggle with the madness of astonishing blindness as to dare to contend that a whole city worshiping the gods cannot be wretched, but a single man can — namely, on the ground that the power of their gods is fit to preserve many rather than individuals, though a multitude is composed of individuals. But if they say that Marcus
Regulus, even in that captivity and those tortures of the body, could be blessed by the virtue of his soul — then let true virtue rather be sought, by which even a city can be blessed. For a city is not blessed from one source and a man from another, since a city is nothing else than a harmonious multitude of men. Wherefore I do not for the present dispute what sort of virtue there was in Regulus; it suffices now that by this most noble example they are compelled to confess that the gods are not to be worshiped for the sake of the body's goods or of those things which befall a man from without, since he preferred to be deprived of 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 as they dread to have their city become?
But if they do not dread it, then let them confess that something such as befell Regulus could also befall a city worshiping the gods as diligently as he did, and let them not slander the Christian times.
But since the question arose concerning those Christians who were also led into captivity, let those consider this and hold their peace who shamelessly and imprudently mock at the most wholesome religion on this account: that if it was no reproach to their gods that a most attentive worshiper of theirs, while keeping toward them his sworn faith, was deprived of his fatherland, having no other, and, a captive among his enemies, was slain by a lingering death in the torment of a novel cruelty — then far less is the Christian name to be blamed for the captivity of its consecrated ones, who, awaiting with truthful faith the heavenly fatherland, knew themselves to be pilgrims even in their own dwellings.
They think indeed that they are casting a great crime against the Christians when, exaggerating their captivity, they add also the outrages committed — not only upon others' wives and maidens about to marry, but even upon certain consecrated women. Here, in truth, it is not faith, nor piety, nor that very virtue which is called chastity, but rather our own discussion that is straitened by certain difficulties between modesty and reason. Nor do we here so much care to render an answer to strangers as to give consolation to our own people.
Let it therefore first of all be laid down and established that the virtue by which one lives rightly holds command from the seat of the soul over the members of the body, and that the body is made holy by the exercise of a holy will; and that, so long as this will remains unshaken and firm, whatever another may do with the body or in the body which cannot be avoided without one's own sin is beyond the fault of the sufferer. But since not only what pertains to pain, but also what pertains to lust, can be perpetrated upon another's body, whatever of such a kind is done, even though it does not shake out chastity retained by a most steadfast soul, yet inflicts shame, lest it be believed to have been done with the mind's consent as well, which perhaps could not be done without some pleasure of the flesh.
And on this account, both as regards those who killed themselves lest they should suffer anything of this kind — what human feeling would refuse to pardon them? — and as regards those who refused to kill themselves, lest by their own crime they might avoid another's disgrace, whoever shall lay this to their charge as a crime will himself not escape the charge of folly. For assuredly, if it is not lawful by private authority to kill a man even though guilty, whom no law grants license to slay, then surely he too who kills himself is a murderer, and becomes the more guilty in killing himself the more innocent he was in that cause for which he thought he ought to be killed.
For if we rightly detest the deed of Judas, and the 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 in his deadly remorse he left himself no room for saving repentance — how much more ought he to abstain from his own destruction who has in himself nothing to 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, since, though slain because of his own crime, he was slain by another crime of his own.
But why should a man who has done no evil do evil to himself, and by killing himself kill an innocent man, lest he suffer a guilty one at another's hands, and perpetrate upon himself his own sin, lest another's be perpetrated upon him? But indeed, it is feared lest another's lust should defile him even against his will. It will not defile, if it be another's; but if it defile, it is not another's. Yet since chastity is a virtue of the soul, and has fortitude for its companion, by which it resolves to endure any evils whatsoever rather than to consent to evil, and since no magnanimous and chaste person has it in his power what shall be done with his flesh, but only what he shall approve or refuse with his mind:
who, being of sound mind, would suppose that he loses his chastity, if perchance in his seized and overpowered flesh a lust not his own is exercised and satisfied? For if chastity perishes in this way, then assuredly chastity will not be a virtue of the soul, nor will it belong 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 anything of this kind; which goods, even if they be diminished, do not diminish at all the good and just life. But if chastity is something of this sort, why is labor undertaken for it, even at peril to the body, lest it be lost? But if it is a good of the soul, it is not lost even when the body is overpowered.
Nay more, when the good of holy continence does not yield to the uncleanness of the concupiscences of the flesh, the body itself is sanctified; and therefore, when it persists with unshaken intention in not yielding to them, the holiness is not lost even from the body itself, because the will to use it holily perseveres, and, so far as lies in the body, the capacity also. For the body is not holy because its members are intact, nor because they are touched by no contact, since in various mishaps they may even, when wounded, suffer violence, and physicians, sometimes rendering aid to health, do there things which the sight shudders at. A midwife, examining as it were by hand the maidenhood of a certain virgin, whether through malice or ignorance or accident, destroyed it while she inspected.
I do not suppose anyone is so foolishly wise as to think that anything was lost to this maiden even of her body's holiness, although the integrity of that member was now destroyed. Wherefore, the purpose of the soul remaining, through which the body also merited to be sanctified, the violence of another's lust does not take away holiness even from the body itself, which the perseverance of one's own continence preserves. But if, on the contrary, some woman, corrupted in mind and her purpose violated which she had vowed to God, should go to be defiled to her seducer, shall we call her, as she goes to this, holy even in body, that holiness of soul being lost and destroyed through which the body was being sanctified?
Far be this error from us, and let us rather be admonished by it that, just as the holiness of the body is not lost while the holiness of the soul remains, even when the body is overpowered, so the holiness of the body is lost when the holiness of the soul is violated, even when the body is untouched. Wherefore a woman who has been violently overpowered without any consent of her own, and oppressed by another's sin, has nothing in herself to punish by a self-inflicted death; how much less before this is done, lest a certain murder be committed while the outrage itself, though another's, is still in doubt and uncertain!
But will those men perhaps dare to contradict this clear reasoning, by which we say that, when the body is overpowered while the purpose of chastity is in no way changed by any consent to evil, the outrage belongs only to him who, in overpowering, has lain with her, not to her who, being overpowered, consented by no will to the one lying with her — those men against whom we defend not only the minds but also the holy bodies of Christian women who were overpowered in captivity? Lucretia, certainly, a noble matron and of ancient Rome, they extol with great praises of chastity.
When the son of King Tarquin had lustfully possessed her body, having violently overpowered it, she disclosed the crime of that most wicked youth 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 impatient of 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 that any labor need be spent on this controversy? Excellently and truthfully did a certain one, declaiming on this, say: "Marvelous to tell, there were two, and one committed adultery." Splendidly and most truly.
For, looking upon the most defiled desire 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 members but to what was done by the diversity of souls, he said: "There were two, and one committed adultery." But what is this, that a heavier vengeance was taken upon her who did not commit adultery? For he was driven from his fatherland together with his father, but she was slain by the utmost penalty. If that is not unchastity by which one is overpowered against her will, then this is not justice by which a chaste woman is punished. I appeal to you, O laws and judges of Rome. Surely, after crimes had been perpetrated, you were unwilling that any criminal should be put to death uncondemned and unpunished.
If, therefore, anyone should bring this crime before your judgment, and it should be proved to you that a woman had been slain who was not only uncondemned but even chaste and innocent, would you not punish him who had done it with fitting severity? This is what that Lucretia did; she — she, that so-lauded Lucretia — slew the innocent, chaste Lucretia who had suffered violence. Pronounce your sentence. But if for this reason you cannot, because she does not stand present whom you might punish, why do you praise with such great acclaim the slayer of an innocent and chaste woman?
Certainly you cannot by any reasoning defend her before the infernal judges, even such as those chanted in the songs of your poets, she being placed, forsooth, among those "who guiltless wrought their own death by their hand, and, loathing the light, flung away their souls; for whom, though longing to return to the world above, fate stands in the way, and the dismal marsh with its unlovely water binds them fast." Or is she perhaps not there, because she slew herself not innocent, but conscious of evil within herself? For what if (a thing which she alone could know) — though the youth rushed upon her violently, she yet, enticed by her own lust, consented, and, punishing this in herself, so grieved that she thought it must be expiated by death? Although not even so ought she to have killed herself, if she could have practiced fruitful repentance before false gods.
But nevertheless, if perchance it is thus, and that saying is false that there were two and 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 learned defenders that she is not among the infernal shades among those "who guiltless wrought their own death by their hand." But thus this case is straitened on both sides, so that, if the murder is extenuated, the adultery is confirmed; if the adultery is cleared, the murder is heaped up; nor is any way out found at all, where it is said: "If she was adulterous, why praised?
if she was chaste, why slain?" For us, however, in this so noble example of this woman, for the refuting of those who, alien from all thought of holiness, insult the Christian women who were violated in captivity, it suffices that among her illustrious praises it was said: "There were two, and one committed adultery." For such a Lucretia was believed by them to be one who could not have stained herself by any adulterous consent. Therefore, that she slew herself, being no adulteress, because she had endured an adulterer, is not the love of chastity, but the weakness of shame.